Looking beyond Western society and the measures the richer countries enact to combat this will mean we surely overcome it at some point, you have to assume that when this really hits Africa (doesn't seem too far away) it's going to be far worse, right?
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
I'd be looking at going home ASAP if I were you and it's safe to do so.
Do people think this is something larger than we're anticipating but the government aren't informing us due to the panic it may bring?
Ridiculous
Some responses in there that might answer questions people might have.
The government don't know. The health experts don't know. The central banks don't know.
A lot of people will die. How many? No one knows. There will be a major global recession. How bad? No one knows. Could it be the start of the second, decades-long Great Depression? Sure, it could be. But no one knows.
I fecking not this is horrific as it is. The data doesn’t show that so far though.
If closing schools earlier was a good idea (quite possible ) why did Scotland and Wales wait to do so. Is this a devolved power?
Except we don't really have the luxury of time to see how it goes.
Stop the spread now or it will spread further and faster. We are wasting time with half measures, even if this is a step in the right direction.
Can't remember the word for this kind of testing (after the fact testing), but China have declared they won't be doing it.
The partitioning of Berlin and the Cold War.
But I think it could turn out to be a close run thing after the dust settles.
I hope the vaccine is not called the final solution to covid!
Just read the tragic news that a guy who was put in isolation and samples sent for testing, committed suicide by jumping off the hospital floor.
I'm a teacher and I'm using e-learning platforms to create sets of task to do online each day for all my classes, including those at the age of seven, since they schools closure here in Poland (6 days ago). The platfrom I use gives me all the detailed information (i.e. how much time each student spent on each given task, how many times was it completed and what was the score. I'm also introducing real time online classes (need a day or two to implement that). Am I a proper teacher? Please say it so.
On a serious note, our government suggested we 'did our best to teach students somehow' and gave some useful online sources. Pretty sure yours will do the same.
Nah I said I read a few today online who were gagging for 4 months off full pay. I never generalised all teachers. I have friends who are teachers who aren't like that.
The excess teachers might have to be used in another capacity now. They are paid by the public. They shouldn't be off doing nothing whilst there is a crisis. Just my opinion.
Its a fair enough question, but i would really refrain at the moment from engaging with anything close to scaremongering, the data just doesnt align with it.
I think my household pretty much lost its entire income today
I'm a pretty level headed guy and I've been trying desperately to keep my wife in particular chilled as she suffers with anxiety and panic attacks as it is but its fair to say I'm pretty much shitting it now.
Whatever assistance they're putting in place better be quickly and easily accessible, really don't need more stress of having to jump through hoops to get food for my kids
I'd probably be bawling right now if I wasn't so numb, or currently sitting on hold for 53 mins trying to cancel my virgin media
I'm a pretty level headed guy and I've been trying desperately to keep my wife in particular chilled as she suffers with anxiety and panic attacks as it is but its fair to say I'm pretty much shitting it now.
Whatever assistance they're putting in place better be quickly and easily accessible, really don't need more stress of having to jump through hoops to get food for my kids
I'd probably be bawling right now if I wasn't so numb, or currently sitting on hold for 53 mins trying to cancel my virgin media
You lost your job or....?
Sorry to hear mate
I used to love it... Now I want to play as the people, not the damn virus. To Greenland all!
She's 65 years old, it could hitler sooner or later.
Our exams have been put online. My year is graduating so I think my graduation ceremony will be online. Crazy
Ah. Fair enough. Anyone in your situation would be sensible to have two weeks supplies stashed away in case you end up too sick to get out and have no way to get food delivered. By all accounts, anorexia is a prominent symptom so if you do get Covid-19 two weeks supply of food will probably be a hell of a lot less than you’d eat over two weeks while healthy!
I'm so sorry, there has to be help very quickly for families in your situation.
I'm a self employed consultant, got word from the 2 companies that make up probably 80% of my earnings that my services won't be required in the short term (which will almost inevitably be long term too right)
Wife works at a small independent nursery, if the closure goes beyond 2 weeks which there's every chance it will the business will almost certainly fold, shes been on reduced hours all week as is as the owners been shitting it (understandably)
Anyone know industries where they might be hiring people? I've heard delivery driving might be the only options right now given the demand
Yep. Had to laugh at teacher on 5live there now asking if teachers would also be in the 'key worker' group. The answer is no ffs. Teachers tend to have an incredibly high opinion of the importance of their career.
Morrisons are hiring because of the huge increase in online shopping.
This is Nazi time for this kind of joke you guys.
I read that in my head in a very camp German accent.Sure, why would education be important..
In Germany they are stocking up on Sausage and Cheese. That's the Wurst Käse scenario.This is Nazi time for this kind of joke you guys.
Yeah check out companies like amazon. Heard theyre on a hiring spree re deliveries. Good luck man.
Not sure if this has already been posted but it’s essentially an exec summary of the Imperial Collage study that freaked out the entire world over the weekend.
Copied from Facebook written by Dr Joel Strehl
I am a US surgeon and critical care physician. I rarely post—and almost never post about medical related issues. This is different. I would STRONGLY recommend everyone take 5 minutes and read this. Don’t panic, but please be smart and follow the guidelines.
We can now read the report on COVID-19 that so terrified every public health manager and head of state from Boris Johnson to Donald Trump to the dictator of El Salvador that they ordered people to stay in their houses. I read it yesterday afternoon and haven't been the same since. I urge everyone to read it, but maybe have a drink first, or have your family around you. It is absolutely terrifying. The New York TImes confirms that the CDC and global leaders are treating it as factual.
Here's a brief rundown of what I'm seeing in here. Please correct me in comments if I'm wrong.
The COVID-19 response team at Imperial College in London obtained what appears to be the first accurate dataset of infection and death rates from China, Korea, and Italy. They plugged those numbers into widely available epidemic modeling software and ran a simulation: what would happen if the United States did absolutely nothing -- if we treated COVID-19 like the flu, went about business as usual, and let the virus take its course?
Here's what would happen: 80% of Americans would get the disease. 0.9% of them would die. Between 4 and 8 percent of all Americans over the age of 70 would die. 2.2 million Americans would die from the virus itself.
It gets worse. Most people who are in danger of dying from COVID-19 need to be put on ventilators. 50% of those put on ventilators still die, but the other 50% live. But in an unmitigated epidemic, the need for ventilators would be 30 times the number of ventilators in the United States. Virtually no one who needed a ventilator would get one. 100% of patients who need ventilators would die if they didn't get one. So the actual death toll from the virus would be closer to 4 million Americans -- in a span of 3 months. 8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die.
How many people is 4 million Americans? It's more Americans than have died all at once from anything, ever. It's the population of Los Angeles. It's four times the number of Americans who died in the Civil War...on both sides combined. It's two-thirds as many people as died in the Holocaust.
Americans make up 4.4% of the world's population. So if we simply extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the world -- now we're getting into really fuzzy estimates, so the margin of error is pretty great here -- this gives us 90 million deaths globally from COVID-19. That's 15 Holocausts. That's 1.5 times as many people as died in World War II, over 12 years. This would take 3-6 months.
Now, it's unrealistic to assume that countries wouldn't do ANYTHING to fight the virus once people started dying. So the Imperial College team ran the numbers again, this time assuming a "mitigation" strategy. A mitigation strategy is pretty much what common sense would tell us to do: America places all symptomatic cases of the disease in isolation. It quarantines their families for 14 days. It orders all Americans over 70 to practice social distancing. This is what you've seen a lot of people talking about when they say we should "flatten the curve": try to slow the spread of the disease to the people most likely to die from it, to avoid overwhelming hospitals.
And it does flatten the curve -- but not nearly enough. The death rate from the disease is cut in half, but it still kills 1.1 million Americans all by itself. The peak need for ventilators falls by two-thirds, but it still exceeds the number of ventilators in the US by eight times, meaning most people who need ventilators still don't get them. That leaves the actual death toll in the US at right around 2 million deaths. The population of Houston. Two civil wars. One-third of the Holocaust. Globally, 45 million people die: 7.5 Holocausts, 3/4 of World War II. That's what happens if we use common sense: the worst death toll from a single cause since the Middle Ages.
Finally, the Imperial College team ran the numbers a third time, this time assuming a "suppression" strategy. In addition to isolating symptomatic cases and quarantining their family members, they also simulated social distancing for the entire population. All public gatherings and most workplaces shut down. Schools and universities close. (Note that these simulations assumed a realistic rate of adherence to these requirements, around 70-75% adherence, not that everyone follows them perfectly.) This is basically what we are seeing happen in the United States today.
This time it works! The death rate in the US peaks three weeks from now at a few thousand deaths, then goes down. We hit, but don't exceed (at least not by very much), the number of available ventilators. The nightmarish death tolls from the rest of the study disappear; COVID-19 goes down in the books as a bad flu instead of the Black Death.
But here's the catch: if we EVER relax these requirements before a vaccine is administered to the entire population, COVID-19 comes right back and kills millions of Americans in a few months, the same as before. The simulation does indicate that, after the first suppression period (lasting from now until July), we could probably lift restrictions for a month, followed by two more months of suppression, in a repeating pattern without triggering an outbreak or overwhelming the ventilator supply. If we staggered these suppression breaks based on local conditions, we might be able to do a bit better. But we simply cannot ever allow the virus to spread throughout the entire population in the way other viruses do, because it is just too deadly. If lots of people we know end up getting COVID-19, it means millions of Americans are dying. It simply can't be allowed to happen.
How quickly will a vaccine be here? Already, medical ethics have been pushed to the limit to deliver one. COVID-19 was first discovered a few months ago. Last week, three separate research teams announced they had developed vaccines. Yesterday, one of them (with FDA approval) injected its vaccine into a live person, without waiting for animal testing. Now, though, they have to monitor the test subject for fourteen months to make sure the vaccine is safe. This is the part of the testing that can't be rushed: the plan is to inoculate the entire human population, so if the vaccine itself turned out to be lethal for some reason, it could potentially kill all humans, which is a lot worse than 90 million deaths. Assuming the vaccine is safe and effective, it will still take several months to produce enough to inoculate the global population. For this reason, the Imperial College team estimated it will be about 18 months until the vaccine is available.
During those 18 months, things are going to be very difficult and very scary. Our economy and our society will be disrupted in profound ways. Worst of all, if the suppression policies actually work, it will feel like we are doing all this for nothing, because the infection and death rates will be very low. It's easy to get people to come together in common sacrifice in the middle of a war. It's very hard to get them to do so in a pandemic that looks invisible precisely because suppression methods are working. But that's exactly what we're going to have to do.
Copied from Facebook written by Dr Joel Strehl
I am a US surgeon and critical care physician. I rarely post—and almost never post about medical related issues. This is different. I would STRONGLY recommend everyone take 5 minutes and read this. Don’t panic, but please be smart and follow the guidelines.
We can now read the report on COVID-19 that so terrified every public health manager and head of state from Boris Johnson to Donald Trump to the dictator of El Salvador that they ordered people to stay in their houses. I read it yesterday afternoon and haven't been the same since. I urge everyone to read it, but maybe have a drink first, or have your family around you. It is absolutely terrifying. The New York TImes confirms that the CDC and global leaders are treating it as factual.
Here's a brief rundown of what I'm seeing in here. Please correct me in comments if I'm wrong.
The COVID-19 response team at Imperial College in London obtained what appears to be the first accurate dataset of infection and death rates from China, Korea, and Italy. They plugged those numbers into widely available epidemic modeling software and ran a simulation: what would happen if the United States did absolutely nothing -- if we treated COVID-19 like the flu, went about business as usual, and let the virus take its course?
Here's what would happen: 80% of Americans would get the disease. 0.9% of them would die. Between 4 and 8 percent of all Americans over the age of 70 would die. 2.2 million Americans would die from the virus itself.
It gets worse. Most people who are in danger of dying from COVID-19 need to be put on ventilators. 50% of those put on ventilators still die, but the other 50% live. But in an unmitigated epidemic, the need for ventilators would be 30 times the number of ventilators in the United States. Virtually no one who needed a ventilator would get one. 100% of patients who need ventilators would die if they didn't get one. So the actual death toll from the virus would be closer to 4 million Americans -- in a span of 3 months. 8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die.
How many people is 4 million Americans? It's more Americans than have died all at once from anything, ever. It's the population of Los Angeles. It's four times the number of Americans who died in the Civil War...on both sides combined. It's two-thirds as many people as died in the Holocaust.
Americans make up 4.4% of the world's population. So if we simply extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the world -- now we're getting into really fuzzy estimates, so the margin of error is pretty great here -- this gives us 90 million deaths globally from COVID-19. That's 15 Holocausts. That's 1.5 times as many people as died in World War II, over 12 years. This would take 3-6 months.
Now, it's unrealistic to assume that countries wouldn't do ANYTHING to fight the virus once people started dying. So the Imperial College team ran the numbers again, this time assuming a "mitigation" strategy. A mitigation strategy is pretty much what common sense would tell us to do: America places all symptomatic cases of the disease in isolation. It quarantines their families for 14 days. It orders all Americans over 70 to practice social distancing. This is what you've seen a lot of people talking about when they say we should "flatten the curve": try to slow the spread of the disease to the people most likely to die from it, to avoid overwhelming hospitals.
And it does flatten the curve -- but not nearly enough. The death rate from the disease is cut in half, but it still kills 1.1 million Americans all by itself. The peak need for ventilators falls by two-thirds, but it still exceeds the number of ventilators in the US by eight times, meaning most people who need ventilators still don't get them. That leaves the actual death toll in the US at right around 2 million deaths. The population of Houston. Two civil wars. One-third of the Holocaust. Globally, 45 million people die: 7.5 Holocausts, 3/4 of World War II. That's what happens if we use common sense: the worst death toll from a single cause since the Middle Ages.
Finally, the Imperial College team ran the numbers a third time, this time assuming a "suppression" strategy. In addition to isolating symptomatic cases and quarantining their family members, they also simulated social distancing for the entire population. All public gatherings and most workplaces shut down. Schools and universities close. (Note that these simulations assumed a realistic rate of adherence to these requirements, around 70-75% adherence, not that everyone follows them perfectly.) This is basically what we are seeing happen in the United States today.
This time it works! The death rate in the US peaks three weeks from now at a few thousand deaths, then goes down. We hit, but don't exceed (at least not by very much), the number of available ventilators. The nightmarish death tolls from the rest of the study disappear; COVID-19 goes down in the books as a bad flu instead of the Black Death.
But here's the catch: if we EVER relax these requirements before a vaccine is administered to the entire population, COVID-19 comes right back and kills millions of Americans in a few months, the same as before. The simulation does indicate that, after the first suppression period (lasting from now until July), we could probably lift restrictions for a month, followed by two more months of suppression, in a repeating pattern without triggering an outbreak or overwhelming the ventilator supply. If we staggered these suppression breaks based on local conditions, we might be able to do a bit better. But we simply cannot ever allow the virus to spread throughout the entire population in the way other viruses do, because it is just too deadly. If lots of people we know end up getting COVID-19, it means millions of Americans are dying. It simply can't be allowed to happen.
How quickly will a vaccine be here? Already, medical ethics have been pushed to the limit to deliver one. COVID-19 was first discovered a few months ago. Last week, three separate research teams announced they had developed vaccines. Yesterday, one of them (with FDA approval) injected its vaccine into a live person, without waiting for animal testing. Now, though, they have to monitor the test subject for fourteen months to make sure the vaccine is safe. This is the part of the testing that can't be rushed: the plan is to inoculate the entire human population, so if the vaccine itself turned out to be lethal for some reason, it could potentially kill all humans, which is a lot worse than 90 million deaths. Assuming the vaccine is safe and effective, it will still take several months to produce enough to inoculate the global population. For this reason, the Imperial College team estimated it will be about 18 months until the vaccine is available.
During those 18 months, things are going to be very difficult and very scary. Our economy and our society will be disrupted in profound ways. Worst of all, if the suppression policies actually work, it will feel like we are doing all this for nothing, because the infection and death rates will be very low. It's easy to get people to come together in common sacrifice in the middle of a war. It's very hard to get them to do so in a pandemic that looks invisible precisely because suppression methods are working. But that's exactly what we're going to have to do.