COVID-19/Coronavirus Information and Support Thread (see OP for useful links)
- Thread starter baldgye
- 13,285 comments
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- 7,689
- Michigan
- Rallywgn81
We jumped from 6 to 25 cases in the past 24 hours. Not much worried though. We saw the panic doing going on so managed to get our normal grocery shopping done before that started happening here. Did pick up a good deal of dry bulk. Unfortunately being in this apartment were dont have much for cold storage. Hoping out local meat markets won't be stripped bear next weekend.
- 3,786
- Brisbane, Australia
- Chameleon9000
Question for the more initiated; has there ever been something quite like this is the modern world? I know there was SARS and MERS and things like that in the relatively recent past, but I wasnt old enough to actually experience any of it, and the power of hindsight could have definitely partially downplayed the actual impact that those diseases had on surface-level society. But has there been anything like this; the panic buying, public closures, moderate hysteria and general tomfoolery the likes of which this has caused, since like WW1?
- 15,397
- TRAPPIST-1g
- ProjectWHaT
https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-deadly-delusion-eea324fe9727
Based on these simple estimations, the "flatten the curve" idea will not work. The health care system is completely out numbered by the simple estimations of how many people will need intense care or else they will die. Mitigation will not work and containment is unavoidable and needed immediately. Current half-hearted policies are not doing enough. Governments need to follow China's levels of containment to have any hope of diminishing the virus's impact.
Definitely worth reading the Medium article, but here are some quotes from the article:
EDIT:
An actual professor responded to where I saw the article. Interested to see his take on it
it appears the article begins with the assumption that the curve requires herd immunity and they claim that that is not needed.
Based on these simple estimations, the "flatten the curve" idea will not work. The health care system is completely out numbered by the simple estimations of how many people will need intense care or else they will die. Mitigation will not work and containment is unavoidable and needed immediately. Current half-hearted policies are not doing enough. Governments need to follow China's levels of containment to have any hope of diminishing the virus's impact.
Definitely worth reading the Medium article, but here are some quotes from the article:
The US has about 924,100 hospital beds (2.8 per 1000 people). California has only 1.8. Countries like Germany have 8. South Korea has 12. (Their hospital system got overloaded nonetheless.) Most of these beds are in use, but we can create more, using improvisation (for instance using hotels and school gyms) and strategic resources of the military, national guard and other organizations.
Based on Chinese data, we can estimate that about 20% of COVID-19 cases are severe and require hospitalization.
More important is the number of ICU beds, which by some estimates can be stretched to about a 100,000, and of which about 30,000 may be available. About 5% of all COVID-19 cases need intensive care, and without it, all of them will die.
An important part of the equation are ventilators. Most of the critically ill COVID-19 cases die of an infection of the lungs that makes it impossible to breathe and even destroys so much tissue that the blood can no longer be sufficiently oxygenated. These patients need intubation and mechanical ventilation to give them a chance of survival, or even an ECMO machine, which oxygenates the blood directly. About 6% of all cases need a ventilator, and if hospitals put all existing ventilators to use, we have 160,000 of them. In addition, the CDC has a strategic stockpile of 8900 ventilators that can be deployed in hospitals that need them.
If we take the number of ventilators as a proximate limit on the medical resources, it means we can take care of up to 170,000 critically ill patients at the same time.
Without containment, the virus becomes endemic, and leading epidemiologists like Marc Lipsitch (Harvard) and Christian Drosten (Charité Berlin) estimate that between 40% and 70% of the population get infected until we develop some degree of herd immunity.
In a population like the US (327 million), that means between 130 million and 230 million. Let’s assume that 55% of the US population (the middle ground) get infected between March and December, and we are looking at 180 million people.
Of the 180 million, 80% will be regarded as “mild” cases...About 20% will develop a severe case and need medical support to survive...And about 6% may need intubation, because they can no longer breathe on their own.
The brown line near the bottom: that’s our limited supply of ventilators and intensive care beds! The red curve does not contain all cases of COVID-19, but only those 6% that will die if we cannot put them on a ventilator for something like four weeks.
This is how our normally distributed curve looks like when it contains 10.8 million patients, of which no more than 170,000 are ill at the same time:
Dampening the infection rate of COVID-19 to a level that is compatible with our medical system means that we would have to spread the epidemic over more than a decade!
But the point of my argument is not that we are doomed, or that 6% of our population has to die, but that we must understand that containment is unavoidable, and should not be postponed, because later containment is going to be less effective and more expensive, and leads to additional deaths.
China has demonstrated to us that containment works: the complete lockdown of Wuhan did not lead to starvation or riots, and it has allowed the country to prevent the spread of large number of cases into other regions....Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, now observes less than 10 cases per day.
For some reason, Western countries refused to learn the lesson. Italy thought they could get away with letting the virus spread, until their hospitals collapsed under the load, and older people or those with a history of cancer, organ transplants or diabetes were excluded from access to critical care. The US, UK and Germany are not yet at this point: they try to “flatten the curve” by implementing ineffective or half hearted measures that are only meant to slow down the spread of the disease, instead of containing it.
This means that some countries will stomp out the virus and others will not. In a few months from now, the world will turn into red zones and green zones, and almost all travel from red zones into green zones will come to a halt, until an effective treatment for COVID-19 is found.
EDIT:
An actual professor responded to where I saw the article. Interested to see his take on it
it appears the article begins with the assumption that the curve requires herd immunity and they claim that that is not needed.
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- 29,889
- Bratvegas
- GTP_Liquid
He's a :censored:ing idiot. But that isn't news to anyone.
Once again, the Onion is too believable; just get a doctor who always tells you you are in perfect health.
- 3,600
- Middelburg
Can you order and pay online groceries? They'll drop it on your doormat
==
Erasmus MC (Dutch university hospital in Rotterdam) together with Utrecht MC claimed to have found a antibody against Covid19 and published it this morning.
Could be a medicine for the next wave at the end of the year. Testing and producing still takes months.
A (Dutch) source: https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/wetens...n-vondst-antilichaam-tegen-covid-19~ae6b1a87/
- 2,216
- Isle of Wight, UK
Good idea but I'm not sure. I think the problem is more that the average Dutch supermarket worker has never seen a Santander visa debit and they assume it's a credit card, which it makes sense they wouldn't take. I think a Coop down closer to Arnhem central accepted it when I first got here, so that's where I'll try, but I generally use cash for everything so it's gonna be a bit of a guessing game today.
Luckily the coffeeshop still takes cash...
- 7,689
- Michigan
- Rallywgn81
- 2,538
- Netherlands
- Denur; GTP_Denur
Yep
- 9,262
- Corsham
- lipming
My grandfather's cremation and thanksgiving service were due to take place next Monday. The cremation is still happening but only with my grandmother, mum and uncles & aunts present, but the thanksgiving has been postponed until after all this blows over because we have a large extended family travelling from across the country, and if my very frail and grieving grandmother did catch it it's unlikely she'd have the strength or will to fight it...
- 1,830
- England
- Player_7421
- Player 7421
The selfish people in my area have really made me angry.
Buying more than 2 packets of ibruthen at once in self-serve checkouts at the local Tesco. (I’ve seen it myself). Having no thought for the elderly people & people who actually need it right now, like myself to reduce the pain in my right hand in which I crushed. (It really works). But tbh i’m concerned for the elderly.
Buying more than 2 packets of ibruthen at once in self-serve checkouts at the local Tesco. (I’ve seen it myself). Having no thought for the elderly people & people who actually need it right now, like myself to reduce the pain in my right hand in which I crushed. (It really works). But tbh i’m concerned for the elderly.
Dotini
(Banned)
- 15,742
- Seattle
- CR80_Shifty
This coronavirus pandemic is definitely a century-level event. A Black Swan. Together with economic disruption it is affecting, albeit in greatly differing degree, most every country and most individuals on the planet. The change in consciousness, perception, attitude, awareness, emotions, and even in behavior has probably affected more people on Earth than any other event in living human memory. Although probably WWII cumulatively over the course of 4 years comes closest, or even exceeds it. I remember the sudden shock of seeing the towers falling on 9/11, Katrina and the flood of New Orleans with the shootings on the bridge. These events are bad enough but not in the same category. Also I remember of couple of oil crisis events back in the 70's. These caused a lot of panic buying and tomfoolery such as theft from your car's gas tank.
- 3,600
- Middelburg
Joey D
Premium
- 47,451
- Lakes of the North, MI
- GTP_Joey
- GTP Joey
The days following 9/11 were similar. All TV stations played news around the clock, there weren't even any cartoons on for the better part of two weeks. Gas went up to $9-$10 a galloon in the days following, but the state governments eventually stepped in and put a stop to that. There was a run on every store and things were picked bare because no one knew what was really happening or if more attacks were coming. Also, all major events were canceled until they could figure out security.
However, unlike this panic, the days following 9/11 brought people together. Places of worship were jam-packed, you helped your neighbor, blood donations were at an all-time high, people were just nice. It only lasted through the end of 2001 though and then people went back to being dicks in 2002, but for those few months, the US was a strange, community-driven place.
- 939
- Zürich
I'm now pretty convinced I've already had this. I was ill 2 weeks ago, and ended up having a full week and a half off work.
All the symptoms I had match the reported symptoms, but I didn't really have that much more of a cough, nor what I would call much worse breathing difficulties than normal. Let me explain, I'm asthmatic (and stupidly a smoker) so a cough and breathing difficulties are part of normal life for me and not something that I get overly alarmed about as through breathing/relaxing exercises and medication I can get myself under control. There are good days and bad days, and the last 2 weeks have been what I would simply call very very bad days on the breathing front, and I ended up quadrupling my asthma medication intake. For somebody who has never experienced breathing difficulties I'm guessing my situation would have been terrifying for them. It wasn't pleasant for me, but as I said I'm used to it.
The flu like symptoms seemed to be relatively mild, I was running a high temperature, but not what I would call a full blown fever, had major headaches and muscle pain, especially in the back of my neck, but the worst was a massive bout of shivers - I honestly could not stop violently shaking. After the main symptoms eased I was just left incredibly tired and listless for a few days, but still with the aforementioned breathing difficulties
I was never tested as when I called my doctor the assistant stated that they didn't want to see me unless I was having serious difficulties, which on my personal scale of illness I wasn't, and he just sent a sick note through the post covering my time off work. I now understand fully why they didn't want to see me, and why the doctor just sent the sick note. Normally I would have had to have seen him before he would given me the sick note.
It didn't really click with me at the time that it could be the corona virus, as up to the point where I fell ill there had only been a very few confirmed cases in Switzerland, and it was only during the week I was ill that all the public information regarding the virus was given out - I was stuck at home feeling pretty ill anyway so I effectively self isolated without the need to be told to.
In hindsight, however, I have to consider that Zürich is a pretty cosmopolitan place, and is a very popular destination for people from all over the world, especially from China, and there are many Italians that commute daily across the border (I'm saying this as a fact, and in no way am I holding any people or culture to blame). As my work commute is on very packed public transport it doesn't take too much of a stretch of the imagination that it's highly likely that I picked it up before the current emergency situation developed.
All the symptoms I had match the reported symptoms, but I didn't really have that much more of a cough, nor what I would call much worse breathing difficulties than normal. Let me explain, I'm asthmatic (and stupidly a smoker) so a cough and breathing difficulties are part of normal life for me and not something that I get overly alarmed about as through breathing/relaxing exercises and medication I can get myself under control. There are good days and bad days, and the last 2 weeks have been what I would simply call very very bad days on the breathing front, and I ended up quadrupling my asthma medication intake. For somebody who has never experienced breathing difficulties I'm guessing my situation would have been terrifying for them. It wasn't pleasant for me, but as I said I'm used to it.
The flu like symptoms seemed to be relatively mild, I was running a high temperature, but not what I would call a full blown fever, had major headaches and muscle pain, especially in the back of my neck, but the worst was a massive bout of shivers - I honestly could not stop violently shaking. After the main symptoms eased I was just left incredibly tired and listless for a few days, but still with the aforementioned breathing difficulties
I was never tested as when I called my doctor the assistant stated that they didn't want to see me unless I was having serious difficulties, which on my personal scale of illness I wasn't, and he just sent a sick note through the post covering my time off work. I now understand fully why they didn't want to see me, and why the doctor just sent the sick note. Normally I would have had to have seen him before he would given me the sick note.
It didn't really click with me at the time that it could be the corona virus, as up to the point where I fell ill there had only been a very few confirmed cases in Switzerland, and it was only during the week I was ill that all the public information regarding the virus was given out - I was stuck at home feeling pretty ill anyway so I effectively self isolated without the need to be told to.
In hindsight, however, I have to consider that Zürich is a pretty cosmopolitan place, and is a very popular destination for people from all over the world, especially from China, and there are many Italians that commute daily across the border (I'm saying this as a fact, and in no way am I holding any people or culture to blame). As my work commute is on very packed public transport it doesn't take too much of a stretch of the imagination that it's highly likely that I picked it up before the current emergency situation developed.
- 7,689
- Michigan
- Rallywgn81
It struck me this morning that there is a bit of a weird dichotomy here. Seems around me, the same people that would be saying something like "man, when you're sick, you shouldn't come to work and be getting everyone else sick with your crud" are the same that right now are saying "I cant believe everyone is so worried about this virus. Just go about your day like nothing is wrong and stop worrying about it."
Veinz
Premium
- 5,202
- Ontario
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappen...k-lysol-wipes-to-re-sell-for-profit-1.5496733
This just makes me angry, this couple out of Vancouver bought as many Lysol wipes as they could and resold them on Amazon for profit. Their account is now blocked but they will try and sell it some other way. Someone on reddit posted a link to the competition bureau to report them, I may just do that.
https://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/frm-eng/GHÉT-7TDNA5
This is what a piece of 🤬 looks like. He was charging $89 per pack btw.
This just makes me angry, this couple out of Vancouver bought as many Lysol wipes as they could and resold them on Amazon for profit. Their account is now blocked but they will try and sell it some other way. Someone on reddit posted a link to the competition bureau to report them, I may just do that.
https://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/frm-eng/GHÉT-7TDNA5
This is what a piece of 🤬 looks like. He was charging $89 per pack btw.
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UK deaths jump to 21
The total number of deaths in the UK from coronavirus has almost doubled in the past 24 hours, going up from 11 to 21, the National Health Service says.
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...e-families-are-going-to-lose-loved-ones-video
The total number of deaths in the UK from coronavirus has almost doubled in the past 24 hours, going up from 11 to 21, the National Health Service says.
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...e-families-are-going-to-lose-loved-ones-video
- 14,055
- Ireland
- driftking18594
- CiaranGTR94
- 7,618
- Exorcet
- OE Exorcet
So long as worry doesn't equate to being concerned, I kind of agree. Be cautious, look out for people at risk if you know any, but go about your business as much as you can. That's what I'm doing.
- 7,689
- Michigan
- Rallywgn81
Ok, one question I have on the numbers regarding the age groups and the effects on them. The group 60 and over are at greatest risk. But, the 30 to 50 group, without treatment, how much likely are they to survive?
I ask, because, it seems to be the gist of the "it's not so bad" crowd seems to be that only thebold are effected, just look at the death rates. Now, that's dandy, but I have to wonder, what are the rates of hospitalizations between the 30 to 60 and the 60+. Is it that the elderly make up the vast majority of those hospitalized? Or is it the younger group just responds to treatment better?
If it's the latter more than the former, then wouldn't it be kinda hard to avoid over taxing our healthcare system with the "quarantine the elderly, everyone else back to work" mentality? Wouldn't you still just get a crap load of people sick really quick? Especially since research seems to suggest the whole wash your hands and you'll be fine thing is not all that effective?
Also, when speaking of capacity, it seems we speak on a national level. The US can accommodate x amount of beds but we should only see y amount of patients. How does that look locally though? Detroit might be alright with a shrinking population but plenty of hospital's still. But what about the Nothern parts of the LP and pretty much all of the UP? People there are as much as 4 to 6 hours away from a proper hospital, and those would fill up very fast. How might that play out for those folks, especially if we do see even middle case scenario and they now may have to drive 8 or more hours to get to a facility that may or may not be at full occupancy?
I'm not for the panic, and not into the doomsday scenarios of all this, but these questions I dont think I've heard asked or addressed.
I ask, because, it seems to be the gist of the "it's not so bad" crowd seems to be that only thebold are effected, just look at the death rates. Now, that's dandy, but I have to wonder, what are the rates of hospitalizations between the 30 to 60 and the 60+. Is it that the elderly make up the vast majority of those hospitalized? Or is it the younger group just responds to treatment better?
If it's the latter more than the former, then wouldn't it be kinda hard to avoid over taxing our healthcare system with the "quarantine the elderly, everyone else back to work" mentality? Wouldn't you still just get a crap load of people sick really quick? Especially since research seems to suggest the whole wash your hands and you'll be fine thing is not all that effective?
Also, when speaking of capacity, it seems we speak on a national level. The US can accommodate x amount of beds but we should only see y amount of patients. How does that look locally though? Detroit might be alright with a shrinking population but plenty of hospital's still. But what about the Nothern parts of the LP and pretty much all of the UP? People there are as much as 4 to 6 hours away from a proper hospital, and those would fill up very fast. How might that play out for those folks, especially if we do see even middle case scenario and they now may have to drive 8 or more hours to get to a facility that may or may not be at full occupancy?
I'm not for the panic, and not into the doomsday scenarios of all this, but these questions I dont think I've heard asked or addressed.
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