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Coronavirus


Steve

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40 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

Younger people (in their 20s, at least) have been getting seriously ill from the virus all along. The news just seems to have been equating the low death rate to younger people being safe from the virus. There's a pretty wide gap between "everything's fine" and "not quite dead."

 

The mortality rate for the lower brackets according to that article Simon posted is very low (3 in 10,000 down to 2 in 100,000).

 

Grabbing the bottom 3 brackets were talking roughly 6 per 1,000 requiring hospitalization (bad) to 3 per 10,000 needing critical care.

 

It's the older brackets that get hammered.  People are legitimately concerned about their parents and grandparents.

 

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Scottish Fox, sure...but given that the concern was from Dr. Birx, the issues are twofold.  #1:   among the younger age groups, is the percentage of cases that need higher levels of care rising?  Not clear.  #2 is simply that there are only so many ICU beds available at a time.  That's the core fear:  too many cases for the system capacity.  

 

The other fear is, as was noted...how much was earlier testing focused on older people?  Go back to some of the earlier stories...for every case we know about, data suggests there were 5 we didn't know about.

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The hammer is falling.

 

New unemployment claims shot up by 1/3, from 211K to 281K, last week.

 

Far worse...preliminary data from 15 states, including Washington, predicts claims reported next week, to be about 630K.  

Probably paywalled for most of you but here's the story:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/19/upshot/coronavirus-jobless-claims-states.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

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I work at a hospital (in the liver transplant clinic offices, not dealing with patients). I'm in a group of four, two pre-transplant, two post-transplant. Last Friday they had us begin working from home 4 days a week, each of us coming in on a different day to do the tasks we can't do from home (printing and mailing letters, scanning documents, etc). Today they announced that starting next week only ONE of us will come in each week to handle all of that for the whole group. So my next trip to the office will be April 9th. The game store where I play in a twice-monthly game has suspended hosting games there til at least mid-April (though they're still open for business). My gym closed too. Fun fun fun.

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Sacramento County just got hit with a shelter in place order starting at midnight tonight. No non-essential personnel or travel is allowed to further extend the efforts of social distancing. Looks like martial law is slipping in ever so slowly without being called that.

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After 9/11, technicians at my work reduced their scope of work, temporarily. They recognized that they were all preoccupied, and that minds-not-on-task was a major driver of accidents, and they worked with supervisors to reflect that in the workload.

 

A few years later there was a murder. Not on site, but it was one of ours murdering another one of ours. Everyone was shaken. The workload was adjusted.

 

That is happening now. We have a pretty good culture (and a good union) that lets workers voice these kind of safety concerns. Nobody in our town has died. Our company hasn't laid off anyone or cut their hours. But people are afraid. There is one thing on their minds.

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2 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

The mortality rate for the lower brackets according to that article Simon posted is very low (3 in 10,000 down to 2 in 100,000).

 

Grabbing the bottom 3 brackets were talking roughly 6 per 1,000 requiring hospitalization (bad) to 3 per 10,000 needing critical care.

 

It's the older brackets that get hammered.  People are legitimately concerned about their parents and grandparents.

 

What I was trying to say -- and probably failed to, sorry -- is that many younger people feel like they're immune to serious repercussions, and acting accordingly. Just look at the news clips with comments from the morons on Spring Break. But we've known it's possible to have a serious reaction in the younger population for a long time. The article is acting like this is news. It's not.

 

"We are concerned about the early reports coming out of Italy and France," said Birx. "There are concerning reports out of France and Italy about some young people getting seriously ill and getting very ill in the ICUS. "

 

I mean, we've had some young people getting seriously ill already in the US, weeks ago. Including in ICUs. This statement makes it seem like some switch has been flipped or the virus has suddenly mutated. It hasn't. It's the kind of statement that causes undue alarm. The fact is that coronaviruses as a group don't mutate very quickly, which is a good thing.

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44 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

What I was trying to say -- and probably failed to, sorry -- is that many younger people feel like they're immune to serious repercussions, and acting accordingly. Just look at the news clips with comments from the morons on Spring Break. But we've known it's possible to have a serious reaction in the younger population for a long time. The article is acting like this is news. It's not.

 

 

 

 

I mean, we've had some young people getting seriously ill already in the US, weeks ago. Including in ICUs. This statement makes it seem like some switch has been flipped or the virus has suddenly mutated. It hasn't. It's the kind of statement that causes undue alarm. The fact is that coronaviruses as a group don't mutate very quickly, which is a good thing.

 

Or perhaps they have collectively come to the conclusion that the oldest generation (which owns the vast preponderance of wealth in this country) dying off sooner rather than later plays to their advantage...

 

I doubt that they've thought it through that far in advance because, callow youth, and all that, but you never know...

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55 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

What I was trying to say -- and probably failed to, sorry -- is that many younger people feel like they're immune to serious repercussions, and acting accordingly. Just look at the news clips with comments from the morons on Spring Break. But we've known it's possible to have a serious reaction in the younger population for a long time. The article is acting like this is news. It's not.

 

The illusion of immortality is practically a fundamental condition of the young and protected.

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What makes me want to scream are those still saying "oh it's not serious."   Just got one such on my Nextdoor.  Say what?  OK, if said individual meant it's not that serious here...true enough, just really terribly phrased.  We've got no cases locally....YET.  And I hope to heck it stays that way;  I just know that's pretty much a pipe dream, and I stopped smoking a few years ago....

 

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