Coronavirus

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Tom Cowan said:

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/student-suspended-showing-fellow-students-065443749.html

looks like things are going well... bad as I felt they would

 

I wonder how many of the school officials pushing the suspension feel that wearing a mask is an infringement on their rights....

[death tribble]

As the European countries begin the slide down the top 20, the UK is now out of the top 10.

Brazil and India have over 2 million cases each and the US has 5 million cases

[Badger]

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Yeah. If that volcano in Iceland erupts as expected, it'll pretty much be the trifecta.

 

I get the concerns over hunger, and people's livelihoods. But it isn't either/or. If our countries don't manage transitions out of lockdown carefully, with all necessary precautions, we'll be back into the same spiral of rampant infection within a few weeks, and have to shut down again, and that's going to make both the immediate and long-term impacts even worse. We need to be smart, and organized. Right now America has huge patches of neither, starting at the top.

Well hunger is always going to a bigger priority than disease prevention for the living.  In places in the world where starvation becomes it will be the hell with shelter in place, if I starve I will be dead anyway and you roll the dice. America is less prone to that, though, and applies less to it.

[archer]

13 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

Had a brief thought - realized the vaccine information on herd immunity is a good way to analyze herd immunity by coronavirus and its cost.

 

https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/news/20181130/what-herd-immunity-and-how-does-it-protect-us

 

From 2018.  Just a reminder why Herd Immunity is not going to work. 80-95% of the population would have to be infected to largely stop a highly infectious disease.

 

 

This is (part) of what irks me about discussion of herd immunity on TV news. They said early on that COVID-19 was just as infectious as measles which needs the 80-95% to reach herd immunity...and that was before they discovered that COVID-19 had mutated so that the current strain going around only needs 1/10th the amount to infect someone compared to the original strain did.

 

But the doctors who talk about herd immunity on TV talk about 60% of the population being the needed threshold as if COVID is one of the not-very-contagious diseases. And that's even on real news channels rather than FOX.  

 

I know they don't want to scare people to the point that they turn off TV news but they aren't doing anyone any favors by soft-petaling the truth.

[Ragitsu]

Do you ever feel like screaming at everyone to stop the minimization? I do.

[TrickstaPriest]

4 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

UN Food Relief program was suggesting we might see more than 100 million people starve to death due to the economic impacts of Coronavirus.

 

Yeah, and I know you have gotten responses since, but that's 100 million worldwide.  While that's a huge amount, more than the raw calculation of deaths (roughly 11 million per 10% of the world infected), production and means might collapse anyway because four to five times as many people would be sick to the point of near incapacitation for literally over a month. 

 

It's also the 'high estimate' of starvation versus the low estimate of coronavirus - if 40% of the US gets infected, that calculates to a couple million straight deaths, but around eight million others who need hospitalization and won't get it.  If half those die, that triples the death rate, and it soars much more than starvation (actually, more than all deaths combined including starvation from production/work loss).

 

It's unfortunately 'equivalent' - starvation versus virus prevention, and many of those deaths will be in places that didn't adequately prepare to begin with.

 

To actually succeed going forwards, food support programs will be needed, strong organization of resources for testing and supplies is necessary, and finding ways to safely begin work.  But that means remote work, not in-person, with only a few essentials.  That means a lot of bored kids playing video games and doing online classes.

 

Until we reach this point, the US will continue to be ravaged by coronavirus until we can count millions, if not ten million, deceased, two to three times as bad as the Spanish Flu (if a little slower in progression).

[TrickstaPriest]

22 minutes ago, archer said:

But the doctors who talk about herd immunity on TV talk about 60% of the population being the needed threshold as if COVID is one of the not-very-contagious diseases. And that's even on real news channels rather than FOX.  

 

A 60% threshold would still kill as many people as the Spanish Flu just on the straight calculations we have, and that's ignoring the fact that all hospitals would essentially fail... likely doubling, or potentially tripling, the fatality rate.  Of the Spanish Flu.  It would also kill around as many people as everything else does put together.

 

And what happens when mutation means that this 'need' would be annually, or near every three years?

[Ragitsu]

Never forget to mention long-term health effects (and accompanying psychological trauma) when talking about COVID-19 survivors; deaths are tragic, but they aren't the only part of this ghastly equation.

[TrickstaPriest]

42 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

Never forget to mention long-term health effects (and accompanying psychological trauma) when talking about COVID-19 survivors; deaths are tragic, but they aren't the only part of this ghastly equation.

 

I don't know enough about how common the LT HE's are - I'm waiting on more research and so on to know more about it (articles don't tell me much).

 

I will say the 'survivability' calculations are biased over the average trend, which is improving explicitly because our medical understanding is.  But the same resources used for those improved medical approaches will collapse if the virus explodes out, so... at the least, I'm reserved as to the continued effectiveness of that should strong approaches be abandoned.

 

Like, you know, teachers teaching students, physically, in classrooms.

[Michael Hopcroft]

If there's a good thing about this month compared to four months ago, it's that manufacturers got the message and stepped up their production of masks, sanitizer and hand soap to the point that they're easily available now. As you may remember, this was not the case in earlier stages of the pandemic. This has removed all excuses for not having a mask -- masks are not affordable enough that everyone who wants one can have several.

 

Ideally, "whoever wants one" would be everybody, but we all know what's going on out there.

 

I've also had a much easier time getting toilet paper. I don't necessarily like the prices, but I can get it.

[Ragitsu]

12 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

I don't know enough about how common the LT HE's are - I'm waiting on more research and so on to know more about it (articles don't tell me much).

 

The frequency is effectively a non-issue; these effects happen. By this point, I've discovered that people who claim they need precise figures (in order to be persuaded to the side of compassion) aren't liable to really care. Finally, I don't need to remind you how substandard our healthcare infrastructure is compared to most of the developed world...we just don't have the luxury of adequate facilities plus medical supplies to squander on the moderate to severe cases.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

1 hour ago, Ragitsu said:

 

The frequency is effectively a non-issue; these effects happen. By this point, I've discovered that people who claim they need precise figures (in order to be persuaded to the side of compassion) aren't liable to really care. Finally, I don't need to remind you how substandard our healthcare infrastructure is compared to most of the developed world...we just don't have the luxury of adequate facilities plus medical supplies to squander on the moderate to severe cases.

 

Our healthcare infrastructure is fine....for making a profit. Sigh....   grumblegrumble

[Old Man]

3 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

To actually succeed going forwards, food support programs will be needed, strong organization of resources for testing and supplies is necessary, and finding ways to safely begin work.  But that means remote work, not in-person, with only a few essentials.  That means a lot of bored kids playing video games and doing online classes.

The “Hunger Virus” idea has been coopted by corporate interests to push their “open everything” agenda. By contrast, the original paper calls for necessary lockdowns to contain the virus, plus government aid to ensure food gets to the people who need it. And compared to the amount of money printed on Wall Street’s behalf, $18B of food aid seems like a bargain. 

[TrickstaPriest]

12 minutes ago, Old Man said:

The “Hunger Virus” idea has been coopted by corporate interests to push their “open everything” agenda. By contrast, the original paper calls for necessary lockdowns to contain the virus, plus government aid to ensure food gets to the people who need it. And compared to the amount of money printed on Wall Street’s behalf, $18B of food aid seems like a bargain. 

 

Thanks.  It's a media briefing, but one with data and over a hundred citations.  I really appreciate sharing hard information like this - and it also brings context to that line of dialogue I keep on seeing.

[unclevlad]

4 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

Do you ever feel like screaming at everyone to stop the minimization? I do.

 

I think my answer is self-evident from my posts.

 

But...not screaming, at least not when it's the media types.  Their effort now reads as active disinformation to push a political agenda, regardless of the consequences.  That deserves something harsher than a few screams.

[unclevlad]

4 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

I don't know enough about how common the LT HE's are - I'm waiting on more research and so on to know more about it (articles don't tell me much).

 

I will say the 'survivability' calculations are biased over the average trend, which is improving explicitly because our medical understanding is.  But the same resources used for those improved medical approaches will collapse if the virus explodes out, so... at the least, I'm reserved as to the continued effectiveness of that should strong approaches be abandoned.

 

Like, you know, teachers teaching students, physically, in classrooms.

 

 

The CDC tracks hospitalization due to Covid-19.  From just now:

Quote

Cumulative COVID-19-associated hospitalization rates since March 1, 2020, are updated weekly. The overall cumulative COVID-19 hospitalization rate is 130.1 per 100,000, with the highest rates in people aged 65 years and older (360.2 per 100,000) and 50-64 years (196.3 per 100,000).

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html  and scroll down a couple screens.

 

That is, I think, per 100,000 population...not cases.  130 per 100,000 is 1300 per million, or about 430,000 total hospitalizations.  BUT, note that this won't catch, let's say, cases where the patient died w/o ever going to the hospital.  So, *roughly speaking* we're looking at 10% of recognized cases are serious.  For contrast:

 

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

 

Roughly 1 to 1.5% of flu cases require hospitalization.

 

That's not specifically LT HE, but...figure if the medical bill for each hospitalization averages, let's say, $20K...which is probably LOW...we're already at almost $900M in medical expenses.  For LT HE...well, ok, the correlation may not be that great, but let's tie things together.  160K deaths, 430K hospitalizations...if it gets bad enough to put you into the hospital, you are in SERIOUS trouble.  From that info alone, the suggestion that the percentage that will be suffering a good 2-3 months even after being discharged must be *significant.*  

 

Yeah, you can overplay this.  This is an aggregate over all age groups, and older people raise the rates significantly.  Still...fine, do you really want to deal with a 2% chance that your kid's gonna end up in the hospital, fighting to breathe, should he catch it?  And take the outbreak at the Georgia camp SERIOUSLY.  44% tested positive...260.  Every set of parents is going to be sweating bullets until their kid's cleared...so the impact is far higher than that maybe 10 or so will end up in the hospital.  So just gauging by the risk assessment numbers is also absurd.

[TrickstaPriest]

34 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

Yeah, you can overplay this.  This is an aggregate over all age groups, and older people raise the rates significantly.  Still...fine, do you really want to deal with a 2% chance that your kid's gonna end up in the hospital, fighting to breathe, should he catch it?  And take the outbreak at the Georgia camp SERIOUSLY.  44% tested positive...260.  Every set of parents is going to be sweating bullets until their kid's cleared...so the impact is far higher than that maybe 10 or so will end up in the hospital.  So just gauging by the risk assessment numbers is also absurd.

 

I more meant that I didn't break up LT HE as part of my breakdown because I didn't have solid numbers on that.  It is good to know the current data on hospitalization rate (10%), which is still substantial given the infection rate could be huge.  If nothing else, hospitalizing 10% of the population who get sick, when upwards of 50% of people can get easily sick from this, is... well, a lot of full hospitals.

 

The Georgia camp CDC documentation is really important to get in front of people who think that kids can't get sick from it, and more importantly, that there won't be a big deal from it.

 

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6931e1.htm

[Old Man]

The last paper I found that dealt with lasting consequences found that somewhere around half of survivors still had problems months after discharge. Shortness of breath, inability to focus, cardiac arrhythmia, and so on. I must have linked it up thread somewhere but I’m on my phone right now. 

[unclevlad]

Half of all survivors, or half of those hospitalized, who survived?  I would well believe the latter.

 

If we take as a working estimate, that 40% of those hospitalized die...then half the rest is another 30%.  

 

It would be nice to have things broken down by age groups, tho, as older folks are at extreme risk.  Still...if I was 30 again, I wouldn't be happy with, say, a 1-2% risk of severe complications should I get infected.  Those are not good odds.  

[Grailknight]

I got off without any real complications from my bout with Covid-19. So did my 82 year aunt. My sister however needs a an oxygen machine to combat her lingering viral pneumonia. She has to carry oxygen tanks to go out and can't stand for over 30 seconds. The doctors are hopeful this will fade in 3-6 months but they don't really know when or if her lungs will clear.

[archer]

My kids both got back the results of their latest COVID tests and both are negative now.

 

My and my spouse's tests are scheduled to take place on August 17th (their earliest opening) and we'll be getting the results back about 5-7 days after that.

 

What a country....

[assault]

Covid 19 coronavirus: US Government issues New Zealand travel warning due to its '23 active cases'

[Tom Cowan]

4 hours ago, assault said:

Covid 19 coronavirus: US Government issues New Zealand travel warning due to its '23 active cases'

Not sure if I should be laughing  or confused. My county has more active cases then that.

[Cygnia]

[Michael Hopcroft]

7 hours ago, archer said:

My kids both got back the results of their latest COVID tests and both are negative now.

 

My and my spouse's tests are scheduled to take place on August 17th (their earliest opening) and we'll be getting the results back about 5-7 days after that.

 

What a country....

They haven't tested you already? And you have to make an appointment to take it? My first test was on no notice (albeit the results took a week to get to me) and I went to a public-funded clinic. (well, taxpayer-funded if you want to be technical). I was potentially symptomatic (still am, but it's more long-term deconditioning), so that mjay have made a difference. But it's still incomprehensible that people can;t get tested more quickly. I cannot make sense of it.