2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 2

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Belz... said:
What I mean is that pushing the panic button too much might create a major economic crisis. Diminishing returns and all.
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Not pushing it will have the same result as industries shut down because of spreading disease and absent employees.
 
angrysoba said:
Yeah, panic is always a bad idea.

That said, a calm and rational implementation of what may seem drastic measures may not be.

Actually, the more I think about the UK response, the more I am of the opinion that it is a really well-thought-out and rational plan.

It has received some shrill criticism, but it makes sense to me, and if I am correct, this is what they are doing (bear in mind, this is largely my interpretation, and I could be wrong.):

The policy implementations are heavily influenced by the Nudge Unit, which is basically how to apply behavioural psychology to people's choices. The term that is used by its originators is "choice architecture". When people are faced with a choice, they most often resort to a default setting.

A lot of people have been demanding that the UK ban large scale sporting venues or have them played behind closed doors, shut down pubs and restaurants, lock down cities, and close schools. These ideas seem logical because it stops large scale congregations. However, they could have negative side effects as they might end up making people switch to default alternatives:


For example, in Paris and Spain, football games were played behind closed doors, so the fans took to the streets and the bars and the pubs and had impromptu drinking sessions. Result: Greater risk of infection

When cities and areas were locked down in Italy and (I think) in Spain, the residents just fled them and went to live with their relatives in the countryside. Result: Spreading of the virus and putting high-risk elderly people into contact

Close schools? Result: Working families send their kids to grandma.

What has the UK done differently?

I think, and this is really my assumption more than anything, they have tried to go stage by stage to change people's default settings.

First, they have pointed out who is at greatest risk and told them to self-isolate. They have been very clear not to have Sunday lunch with granny and grand dad. Try to keep them away. This means that if and when the schools close, the parents' first thought will not be to send them to granny because they already fear for granny's life.

Second, they have told people to stay away from pubs and restaurants and to stop social gatherings. This creates the default that going out drinking is a bad idea. This means that if and when the pubs and restaurants are formally closed, the first thing that strikes people is not to go out and drink on the streets.

As for sporting events, that has mostly been taken care of by venues themselves. Mostly they will have been hearing government warnings and unilaterally closing anyway.

I think (and hope) that overall it creates more compliance, because people's changing choice architecture makes them feel that they are the ones who made the decisions and they feel less resentful at being told what to do.

We shall have to see if it works.
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The Guardian: Britain must change course – and resume Covid-19 testing to protect frontline NHS staff

Re some of your points: sending the kids to grandmas' is fine if the family units themselves keep from getting the infection. And not all families send kids off to grandma.

People who don't want schools to close come up with other rationales that can also be debunked.
 
Meadmaker said:
My great fear of the moment is that I don't see a path to normalcy from here.

Yes, someday schools will be open and I can go to restaurants again, and unemployment will be back to normal, but I don't see how we get from here to there in weeks, or even months, and if we don't get there in months, the economic fallout will last years.
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As soon as there is treatment and a vaccine, things will return to normal. Probably a fair number of businesses will have gone out of business by then, sadly.
 
casebro said:
China's are dropping too. Is it possible that there is a small, finite section of the population that is susceptible, and those two countries have hit them all? Aren't they using two different strategies?
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:confused:

So they didn't really implement drastic isolation.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
As soon as there is treatment and a vaccine, things will return to normal. Probably a fair number of businesses will have gone out of business by then, sadly.
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Yes. Very true, but a very long way off.


One possibility is a genuinely widely available, inexpensive, test. (100 dollars or so). That's not impossible. My understanding is that it's a DNA PCR test, and I know the folks at ancestry.com can do that for 100 dollars. Obviously, it isn't the same thing, but it's in the same general area. If someone could make it the same...

Anyway, whatever is required, if they could get an inexpensive, widely available, test, they could start testing everyone who comes into contact with anyone who has tested positive. Anyone who tests positive is quarantined. Do that, and people will be willing to live with a little bit of risk in order to be able to have sushi once in a while, and keep their jobs.


Until then...…………….this kind of sucks, both medically and economically.


ETA: I really know nothing about DNA testing, except that you can find out that you're Irish for a hundred bucks, and that when it's part of a crime investigation, you get exactly the information you need before the next commercial break.
 
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Fast Eddie B said:
Not independently verified, but this just crossed my Twitter feed:

[qimg]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49673438057_bd88d499f2.jpg[/qimg]
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Not sure how one can do that. Ventilators are used with one person for a number of reasons.

I'll look into it.


There are some theoretical papers but I'm not seeing where it has been implemented. But it's possible someone is trying it.


https://www.resuscitationjournal.com/article/S0300-9572(08)00542-X/fulltext
We appreciate the author's enthusiasm and creativity in attempting to develop a solution for a looming problem. However, we believe the authors’ enthusiasm overstates the success of the system and perhaps encourages planners when the implementation of the system still has huge hurdles to overcome. We believe the defendable conclusion of this work is that the system is capable of supporting four paralyzed, size-matched, and sedated individuals with normal lungs who are hemodynamically stable, if hourly blood gases are used to confirm appropriate oxygenation and ventilation. Currently this strategy should be likened to dividing standard antibiotic doses among four patients who do not have a bacterial disease. If the authors or other groups want to disprove our contention that this strategy will be very dangerous if employed for more than a very short period of time (significantly shorter than 12 h) than they need to evaluate it in patients at risk of adverse outcomes due to the appropriate disease process.
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Skeptic Ginger said:
No, it was not eliminated and even had it been, the wet markets are still a petri dish of potential species jumps.
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Why isn't there more global pressure on China to ban these markets? It seems crazy that so many viruses have cone from these places and yet they're still allowed.
 
Skeptical Greg said:
I do not see in any of those links that human tests are being conducted..
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:rolleyes:

They are testing the vaccine right here in Seattle. People getting the injections have been shown on the news. They are in phase one trials, looking first at vaccine safety.

I'm not going to hunt down a link for you. Try searching for vaccine trials in Seattle.
 
The current situation in Canada:

Public Health Canada's Coronavirus web site said:
Areas in Canada with cases of COVID-19 as of March 18, 2020, 9:30 am EST

Province, territory or other | Number of confirmed cases | Number of probable cases
British Columbia|186|0
Alberta|97|0
Saskatchewan|2|6
Manitoba|8|7
Ontario|189|0
Quebec|74|0
Newfoundland and Labrador|0|3
New Brunswick|2|6
Nova Scotia|1|6
Prince Edward Island|1|0
Repatriated travellers|9|0
Total cases | 569 | 28
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The latest from CBC News
CBC News said:
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The number of confirmed cases has increased from 424 yesterday to 569 today, a 34% day over day increase. So we're still seeing a doubling every 2 days and a bit.

[Doomsday-mode]A this rate everyone in the country will be infected by April 24 and there will be 598,000 deaths. We're doomed, I tell ya. DOOMED! :eek:[/Doomsday-mode]

Despite rather different responses, the US and Canada are seeing the typical 10:1 ratio (based on population) of infections and deaths between the two countries.
 
Belz... said:
Too much of what we're discussing.
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Sorry, too vague.


Belz... said:
Why assume that I haven't done that?
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So if I present a counterpoint to your post it's not valid because obviously you know it already?

Let me word it differently, do you think Italy and Spain did a bit too much?

Think it wouldn't have mattered had they done more?

Think the fact Trump dropped the ball for the first two months, (now what other country did that? Hmmm), might be one reason we need extreme measures to control the epidemic now?
 
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