Cont: 2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 3

[Dave Rogers]

All these quarantine, and other prophylactic measures like masks are only meant to lower the peak and stretch out the curve, thereby lessening the load on medical resources. Which will only lower the deaths by how many people are saved by the medical care.

Not just those people; there are also the people suffering from completely unrelated life-threatening conditions who might have been saved by medical intervention but were not because the healthcare system was overloaded to the point of collapse.

Dave

 

[JeanTate]

Not just those people; there are also the people suffering from completely unrelated life-threatening conditions who might have been saved by medical intervention but were not because the healthcare system was overloaded to the point of collapse.

Dave

And more: the people with “underlying medical conditions” who are likely to get infected and die, and who made a decision to not seek care (postpone dialysis or chemo, put up with worsening diabetes or COPD, etc), but who died. Most of these would be “avoidable deaths”.

And it’s not just death ... many of those who suffer severe covid-19 and survive do not recover the pre-infection health.

And so on ...

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Country     Total       Total     Total      New        Total            Active    Serious  Tot Cases/  Deaths/
                 Cases      New     Deaths  Deaths    Recovered    Cases     Critical   Million        Million

[URL="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/"]Australia[/URL]    4,163      +528       17        +3       244               3,902           28         163     0.7  Jan 24
[URL="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/"]Sweden[/URL]     3,700      +253      110       +5         16               3,574          255         366    11  Jan 30

What are those figures telling us? Sweden is doing little do manage Covid-19 but Australia is.

Or Sweden is actually testing more people than Australia is.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

That is a little too simplistic. I have been looking at some of the maths (well ... YouTubes) behind this.

The isolation measures being undertaken in countries like Australia won't necessarily reduce the total number of people who are ultimately exposed to the virus. What they will do is ensure that the peak infection rate never gets so high that it overwhelms the medical system. The down side is that the peak infection rate occurs later it will take longer before the virus has swept its course.

The Spanish flu of 1918 provides a case study. Philadelphia ignored the warnings and carried on business as usual. Within a few weeks, cases soared and so did the death rate as its hospitals were pushed beyond their ability to cope. However, it was all over for Philadelphia within a few months.

OTOH St. Louis implemented all of the isolation procedures we are seeing today. It had the desired result. The peak infection rate never got so high that its hospitals couldn't cope. Its biggest peak was after the virus had run its course in Philadelphia (probably as its restrictions were relaxed).

This YouTube explains the "flattening the curve" objective. (See from 6:45 for the Philadelphia/St. Louis experience).

Medical care wasn't the best back then but think about it. So it goes through faster, the death count will not just be high from flu, but the overwhelmed hospitals meant people also died of other things because the hospitals were over capacity. In addition, in overcrowded hospitals, patients and staff without flu are almost universally exposed.

Getting over it sooner comes with a great cost.

Today where medical care does do a lot of good, the effect would be even greater.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Yeah, I have seen that paper, and I must admit that I am not competent enough to review it or really understand the methodolgy.

But my take is that "viable in aerosol form for up to 3 hours" is different in meaning to "its main method of transmission is through aerosols".

Presumably the study involved artificially aerosolizing the virus. We know that it can be aerosolized, so how long it can remain viable in that form is not really relevant, is it?

What we want to know is how commonly it aerosolizes and whether it does so outside of medical procedures (and some other not particularly common situations).

In other words, we want to know if people spread it simply by breathing.

Maybe you, maybe not but it seems to me an awful lot of people are bent on claiming aerosols are not an issue.

We don't know. Just yesterday some 'expert' doctor being interviewed on the news again dismissed airborne spread.

(Not you) Prove it isn't or stop telling people you know. It's so not evidence based medicine.

 

[dann]

Or Sweden is actually testing more people than Australia is.

This is all I could find about the current strategy in Sweden:

Sweden has changed the approach it's taking to coronavirus tests, meaning the majority of people with symptoms will no longer be tested.
Fact check: Has Sweden stopped testing people for the coronavirus? (TheLocal.se, March 20, 2020)

 

[Belz...]

And there are signs China severely underreported deaths from COVID-19.

I'm shocked.

One company with three factories in Malaysia makes one fifth of the world's condoms, and they are closed due to coronavirus and aren't making any.

“We are going to see a global shortage of condoms everywhere, which is going to be scary,” [their chief executive] said. “My concern is that for a lot of humanitarian programmes … in Africa, the shortage will not just be two weeks or a month. That shortage can run into months.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...om-shortage-coronavirus-shuts-down-production

We're definitely going to take that virus in the ass.

I'm wondering if the projections/predictions are taking into account possible (I said possible for all the goddamn pedantic twits) upticks in other diseases.

Okay so you're a hospital. You have X number of ventilators, let's say to use a common example. If the current trends continue you will have more Covid patients that need ventilators then you have ventilators in Y number of days.

But something as big and far reaching is as this mass quarantine is bound to have secondary and unforeseen consequences. Through some means we have a spike in some totally unrelated health issue Z because of the outbreak or response to the outbreak.

People are staying home, people are avoiding doctors offices, people are making medication they have last longer, medical supplies are running low... it's not crazy to thing this could all cause a secondary medical issue of some kind.

And then the Covid Patients plus the new "Auxiliary Issue Patients" overwhelm your number of ventilators weeks before even the optimistic predictions.

That's what happens when decisions are made based on panic.

 

[psionl0]

Medical care wasn't the best back then but think about it. So it goes through faster, the death count will not just be high from flu, but the overwhelmed hospitals meant people also died of other things because the hospitals were over capacity. In addition, in overcrowded hospitals, patients and staff without flu are almost universally exposed.

Getting over it sooner comes with a great cost.

Today where medical care does do a lot of good, the effect would be even greater.

This is all true.

I mainly put up this info because a TV news report shown locally suggested that with isolation measures, the peak infection rate would be lower, come earlier and the whole thing would be over sooner. As the maths and history shows, this is not the case.

As for the higher death rate that comes from not taking action, I doubt that could even be justified on economic grounds.

 

[Belz...]

A little bit of happy news on the Canadian front:

The Bank of China sent a big shipment of PPE supplies to Canada as a "Thank You" to Canada for sending aid to China back in early February when they were in the midst of their outbreak.






Edit to add: Trudeau got a lot of flack for sending China those supplies, so it seems those same people now have egg on their face. I'm glad to see China returned the favour now that we're about to hit the ugly part of this outbreak.

Wow, who'd have thunk it? Being nice to people bears fruit!

Coronavirus social distancing limit is at least four times too short because infectious droplets can fly much further than current 6 foot (2 metre) restriction, study warns


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...cing-EIGHT-metres-avoid-coronavirus-risk.html

That's why you stay home if you have symptoms.

Fucie projecting 100 Thousand deaths in the US is a best case scenario.
My god. That is more then US Casualaties in every war since World War 2 combined.

It's going to be much higher than that.

 

[pipelineaudio]

yay, we have influential people here saying that New York is fine and many showing pictures of empty hospitals.

 

[Planigale]

Thanks to all those who made suggestions. In terms of a rapid and easy to introduce fix we have gone for the low tech; mass order of white boards and marker pens. I knew we'd find some use for all that alcohol gel...

 

[The Atheist]

We are dealing with a novel coronavirus that is viable in aerosol for up to 3 hours...

Sure, and I agree with your point on eye protection - my mind was just boggling at a pic of one of NZ's testing facilities and seeing half the medical staff not wearing eye protection.

My point is simply that it appears that hands seem to be the major method of transmission. I'm not denying any of the other means. People need to be treating everything they buy from the supermarket as though it's infected. Nothing to do with the GI infections, although the foecal-oral route is a sure means of easy infection.

This is the problem: Someone coughs on the packet of bread, you bring it home, wash your hands and then open it up to make a sandwich, transferring viral particles from the packet to the bread in the meantime.

Eat well!

So, how many patients have recovered after being on a respirator?

I don't know whether that's a stat that's easily available, but I have seen a few anecdotal accounts from people claiming to be at the epicentre who say that if you're over 70 and go on a respirator, you're almost certain to exit it horizontally.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Guardian is saying like 50% if you go on a ventilator

 

[steenkh]

This is the problem: Someone coughs on the packet of bread, you bring it home, wash your hands and then open it up to make a sandwich, transferring viral particles from the packet to the bread in the meantime.

Eat well!

I read that you are not in danger by eating the virus. The important thing is to keep it from the windpipe and the lungs. Apparently, the digestive enzymes enzymes doing a decent job of destroying the virus.

 

[William Parcher]

For America, hurricane season starts in 2 months. That is going to sting during a lethal virus pandemic. Conflicting orders.

1. Stay inside your home.
2. Evacuate.

Old people and the high-risk people will have a choice. Become infected during the evacuation or stay and endure the hurricane.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Guardian is saying like 50% if you go on a ventilator

https://www.theguardian.com/society...ve-care-uk-patients-50-per-cent-survival-rate

It was based on a sample of only 165 people, so..

 

[Dr.Sid]

It's mostly a rumor now .. but !

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/7152...eath-toll-21-million-phones-vanish/index.html

 

[William Parcher]

It's mostly a rumor now .. but !

Unable to pay the cellular bill.

 

[Dr.Sid]

Unable to pay the cellular bill.

Not an option, read the article.

 

[William Parcher]

21 million dead is also not an option.

What's your best guess here?