SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Classical Mechanic said:
How are so few old people catching it, young population or are they just staying at home?
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4 or 5 of the deaths in Bavaria happened in a nursing home in Würzburg. One of the caregivers brought it in after a holiday in Austria or Italy, when I remember that correctly. Several of the staff were infected, too.

I guess you cannot really stop the infection of old people, especially in families. You just can minimize that.

The hospital in 10 miles distance has three Corona cases, all middle age - one in intensive care without intubation. 5 of the staff infected.
 
Arruda said:
That's tabloid level reporting mate, that doesn't cut it as an argument.
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Good to know that the Times is no longer part of the quality press.
Let's try these sources then:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...alist-wouldnt-stay-quiet-covid-19-coronavirus

The financial news outlet Caixin reported last week that authorities had ordered the destruction of samples collected from infected patients in December – and the loss of valuable information about the virus. Health commission officials also ordered scientists to stop testing, and institutions not to release information.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/li-wenliang-coronavirus-whistleblower-doctor-profile

Li tried to warn fellow doctors in the early days of the outbreak, posting a message alerting them to a mystery new disease at his hospital in late December...

Security forces came to his house four days after he sent that public health warning and accused him of “making false comments” and acting illegally to disturb social order. He signed a statement agreeing not to discuss the disease further.
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berbatrick said:
I know that they covered it up initially, and no, that does not convince me, since the stuff they've been suppying since then seems to check out. If they actually wanted to cover it up fully, they could have told the rest of the world nothing at all.
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In that case, we are in some agreement.
I'm not claiming that they are not doing their best to deal with the outbreak - at this stage.
My criticism is focused on the way they handled the outbreak in its early stages. More transparency and openness on their side would have saved many, many lives - not just in China, but all around the world as well.
 
SnowRoll said:
My criticism is focused on the way they handled the outbreak in its early stages. More transparency and openness on their side would have saved many, many lives - not just in China, but all around the world as well.
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Whilst technically that can be true, far more damning things can be said about nearly any other country in the world in that regard. It's a silly argument because of that.

You really think some local authorities asking a doctor to hush himself, by that period - bear in mind the entire timeline of discovery of disease and it's implications - made that much of a difference?

Compared with the hesitation and fluffing around in a country like Italy that's incredibly minor, given the information we (the west) already had available. And we've yet to see how those same levels of irresponsibility will fare in countries like Germany, UK or US.
 
SuperiorXI said:
Yeah, agreed. It was just an observation... to see the number go up so quickly is disturbing.
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It's not that quick though, because there are nearly 8 billion people on the planet, with hundreds of thousands of them dying every day. The numbers involved in the coronavirus are still tiny.
 
It's interesting to see how different people view the situation. I was reading the comment section of Der Spiegel yesterday (very left/green leaning normally, not sure about average age) and was surprised by how critical many users were of Germany's drastic measures (which compared to other countries aren't very drastic at all). I've been thinking about this and how we deal with the situation going forward. The average age of people who have died from Covid-19 in Italy is 79.5 and the number of young people without pre-existing conditions dying is almost negligable. The exceptions make the news of course and serve as a reminder that nobody is completely save but even then it turns out these people had been ill before (such as in the unfortunate case of the 34-year old in America who was a cancer survivor). So in hindsight, wouldn't the best strategy have been to completely isolate the high-risk groups and let the young develop some kind of herd immunity while continuing normal life as much as possible? I'm not saying what is right or wrong (nor do I know) so I would like to hear some people who are better educated on this subject.
 
Jericholyte2 said:
Very stressful day at the house with the missus being a teacher.

She had a briefing from the head that all teachers are to use Microsoft Teams to run virtual classes (kids already abusing this, calling teachers 24/7), lesson work to be provided to all as they normally would be, just on an online format, plus a week of supervising those kids still going in. Her week just so happens to be the half term week so the immediate question is, does she get the week back in lieu?

Worst is that friends who teach at other schools have been given NO teaching commitments! Simply attendance at the school for 1 day each week!

A complete lack of national organisation on this. I’ve pushed her to go to the union rep today as it surely isn’t right that members of the same unions would have such vastly contrasting workload expectations from their schools.
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Teachers are obviously a crucial part of the national effort on this, I'm not sure some moaning they get less time off is a good look to be honest.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
So in hindsight, wouldn't the best strategy have been to completely isolate the high-risk groups and let the young develop some kind of herd immunity while continuing normal life as much as possible?
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The young person may transmit the infection to an older/high risk person. The govt/authorities would still have to identify and make space for the high risk people.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
It's interesting to see how different people view the situation. I was reading the comment section of Der Spiegel yesterday (very left/green leaning normally, not sure about average age) and was surprised by how critical many users were of Germany's drastic measures (which compared to other countries aren't very drastic at all). I've been thinking about this and how we deal with the situation going forward. The average age of people who have died from Covid-19 in Italy is 79.5 and the number of young people without pre-existing conditions dying is almost negligable. The exceptions make the news of course and serve as a reminder that nobody is completely save but even then it turns out these people had been ill before (such as in the unfortunate case of the 34-year old in America who was a cancer survivor). So in hindsight, wouldn't the best strategy have been to completely isolate the high-risk groups and let the young develop some kind of herd immunity while continuing normal life as much as possible? I'm not saying what is right or wrong (nor do I know) so I would like to hear some people who are better educated on this subject.
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After a while it probably will be like this as economically it is a too big burden to keep it the way it is now until there is a vaccination. Some of the preventive actions will be kept for awhile but not all.

The shutdowns right now are made as the health systems needs time to be prepared to cope with the whole situation and the extension of the virus has to be slowed down.

You cannot keep the risk population really save as there always is contact with the normal world.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
So in hindsight, wouldn't the best strategy have been to completely isolate the high-risk groups and let the young develop some kind of herd immunity while continuing normal life as much as possible? I'm not saying what is right or wrong (nor do I know) so I would like to hear some
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I think they've tried to go as close to that as they can at the moment (with the "strongly advise" stuff). With home delivery services working as they do now, they've still got to shop. Realistically, giving the amount of time we're talking about, they also need to get outdoors and get at least some exercise.

Some of the most vulnerable will live with younger family members or in care homes or in supported living. Others will rely on carers (paid or family) visiting every day for support with routine stuff like getting out of bed etc. Others will require (physical) checkups/treatments for other medical reasons.

If the German figures are any guide, the older ones are trying to protect themselves, presumably by social distancing. From the ones I've spoken to here, most of them expect to do the same in the UK - though I do keep hearing phrases like "after this weekend/Mother's Day" for the tougher concepts (like don't let the family visit).

And of course, right now - the weekly shopping trip may require trips to multiple shops, or even at multiple times given the number of empty shelves. In some places it'll require queues as well.
 
My place of work slowly allowing people to work from home, I'll be off home today with a box of stuff to commence from Monday, no idea when we'll all see our colleagues again.

I also had to go across 3 supermarkets last night, to get a weeks shop. Buying for myself, my mrs and my 18 month old daughter. No nappies, no milk, anywhere.

Crazy times.
 
China reporting a second successive day without any new cases, there is good news out there.

Also, people are not respecting social distancing so I have decided to cough anytime someone comes near.
 
KiD MoYeS said:
China reporting a second successive day without any new cases, there is good news out there.

Also, people are not respecting social distancing so I have decided to cough anytime someone comes near.
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The danger will come if there remains no clear leadership and the deaths start mounting.

Then people will be as scared as they are panicked, and a stray cough or standing to close will start fights.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
It's interesting to see how different people view the situation. I was reading the comment section of Der Spiegel yesterday (very left/green leaning normally, not sure about average age) and was surprised by how critical many users were of Germany's drastic measures (which compared to other countries aren't very drastic at all). I've been thinking about this and how we deal with the situation going forward. The average age of people who have died from Covid-19 in Italy is 79.5 and the number of young people without pre-existing conditions dying is almost negligable. The exceptions make the news of course and serve as a reminder that nobody is completely save but even then it turns out these people had been ill before (such as in the unfortunate case of the 34-year old in America who was a cancer survivor). So in hindsight, wouldn't the best strategy have been to completely isolate the high-risk groups and let the young develop some kind of herd immunity while continuing normal life as much as possible? I'm not saying what is right or wrong (nor do I know) so I would like to hear some people who are better educated on this subject.
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Young people may not die but that doesn't mean they don't get seriously ill. There are otherwise perfectly healthy teenagers and 20 somethings in intensive care in Italy. If we just let everybody get it we would soon overflow hospitals even with the young population.
 
Massive Spanner said:
Bleak. It's appalling that such a rich country has such a poorly equipped healthcare system, but I guess we knew that, which is why we are taking such measures early on compared to other European countries.
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Is ireland not one of the poorest mainstream European countries?
 
11101 said:
Young people may not die but that doesn't mean they don't get seriously ill. There are otherwise perfectly healthy teenagers and 20 somethings in intensive care in Italy. If we just let everybody get it we would soon overflow hospitals even with the young population.
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One of the key Italy patients, one of the first handful to get and spread it, is 33 and a marathon runner, extremely fit and healthy. Last I heard he was being kept alive by a vent and various HIV drugs.

I think that the most dangerous idea out there is that only the already ill or old are at risk.
 
Revan said:
I am hardly saying any bullshit. It is the most detailed study we have had so far, which forecasts 2.1m Americans dying if we only mitigate the problem, and 4m if we do nothing and leave it as the flu. Interpolate the numbers for the world, and you get what I am saying.

It also is conservative in many cases, using a significantly lower fatality rate than the one given from WHO. It is also precisely the study that the UK government is using to make their policy (thus while they gave up on herd immunity).

The silliness was more from 'this is just the flu' brigade who thankfully seem to have disappeared in the last week.
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As far as I can see this isn't so. Their worst case prediction is 2.2 million Americans dying in an unmitigated epidemic (top of page 7). That's not the worst that can happen (since it assumes a constant ifr of 0.9% and they admit they fail to take into account excess deaths due to overwhelmed health systems), but it is the worst case scenario they put a figure on - the actual worst case scenario is left to our imagination

My main concern regarding the study is based on what seems to me (so could very well be wrong) a critical oversight in its evaluation of suppression/mitigation strategies. It seems to assume that ICU "surge capacity" is the number of empty units available exclusively to covid-19 patients. In the UK these units run at an average 80% of surge capacity year round. Cancelling elective surgeries will reduce this figure but I'm not sure we can completely clear the decks.

This doesn't really change the best strategy though, which is still, and obviously, to go as hard as possible at containing the epidemic to keep it as close to nhs capacity as possible while pouring every available resource into securing supply lines, making sure our front line heath staff are protected, expediting basic ICU training and building ICU's like motherfeckers.
 
Nogbadthebad said:
One of the key Italy patients, one of the first handful to get and spread it, is 33 and a marathon runner, extremely fit and healthy. Last I heard he was being kept alive by a vent and various HIV drugs.

I think that the most dangerous idea out there is that only the already ill or old are at risk.
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He is 38 but otherwise yes, he was on a ventilator for almost a month. He is apparently talking now and out of ICU and maybe he can help piece together where he got it from.
 
KiD MoYeS said:
China reporting a second successive day without any new cases, there is good news out there.

Also, people are not respecting social distancing so I have decided to cough anytime someone comes near.
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Yeah and I'll believe that when I see real evidence rather than the word of the Chinese authorities.
 
Redlambs said:
Had to drive across London to Reading for work, and to be honest it took the same time as usual. There is still so much going on.
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I'm driving at one of the busiest roads in Belgium daily, and there's hardly anyone around. It's spooky actually. Last night when I drove home it took 5 minutes to see the first car, otherwise there are thousands.
The busiest street in Brussels was completely empty yesterday too.
 
It's not just behaviour that needs to change, it's mindset.

This is Barclays in the US, but its just leaked there, I have no doubt our financial institutions are doing exactly the same.

 
arnie_ni said:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_and_social_rankings_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe

Below greece for example
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I think you're confusing overall wealth vs per capita wealth, there.

Obviously we will be behind Greece in total GDP, wealth overall because it's 12m vs 4.8m people.

Per capita we are 3rd in GDP (a bit misleading as we're a tax haven), 1st for opportunity, 3rd lowest below poverty line, 3rd most developed, 6th by min wage, 9th by average wage etc.

Regarding our health service, we actually spend more per capita than a lot of countries, the UK included, which is why it's such a disgrace that our health service is so crap compared to other European countries.
 
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Massive Spanner said:
I think you're confusing overall wealth vs per capita wealth, there.

Obviously we will be behind Greece in total GDP, wealth overall because it's 12m vs 4.8m people.

Per capita we are 3rd in GDP (a bit misleading as we're a tax haven), 1st for opportunity, 3rd lowest below poverty line, 3rd most developed, 6th by min wage, 9th by average wage etc.
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Yea made a quick edit there. The link said per capita but the table is actually total.

Didnt actually know that. With the housing crisis, the bailout from the eu etc, just never felt like ireland fully recovered
 
Nogbadthebad said:
It's not just behaviour that needs to change, it's mindset.

This is Barclays in the US, but its just leaked there, I have no doubt our financial institutions are doing exactly the same.

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Peak capitalism is as fundamentally flawed as peak communism.

Communism will always fail people because ultimately people are selfish and greedy.

Capitalism will always fail people because ultimately people are selfish and greedy
 
Nogbadthebad said:
It's not just behaviour that needs to change, it's mindset.

This is Barclays in the US, but its just leaked there, I have no doubt our financial institutions are doing exactly the same.

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There must be something about banking that destroys your humanity.
 
A bit of good(ish) news from a published study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0822-7

Using public and published information, we estimate that the overall symptomatic case fatality risk (the probability of dying after developing symptoms) of COVID-19 in Wuhan was 1.4% (0.9–2.1%)
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Note that that figure is based on symptomatic cases. Once asymptotic cases are accounted for that mortality rate will reduce significantly. The study also suggests that older people are more likely to develop symptoms. An earlier study estimated that 17% of those onboard the Diamond Princess were asymptotic, but this was from a population of average age 60+. In the UK the average age is 40. According to the new study "the risk of symptomatic infection increased with age (for example, at ~4% per year among adults aged 30–60 years)". If this is anything close to accurate it indicates that substantially more than 17% of our population will be asymptotic.

41591_2020_822_Fig2_HTML.png
 
Ultimately, most of the measures in place are not because the virus is debilitating, but simply to stop it spreading. This is key, and really, when it reaches a certain threshold or saturation point, it will surely become more effective to simply isolate the vulnerable groups and let everyone else carry on as normal.

If the virus was debilitating for a high proportion of victims it would be another story entirely, but it isnt. For most people it will be a mild to moderate illness. As someone who came back from Northern Italy just before this all kicked off, the massive concern for me at the time wasnt my own health but to avoid spreading it - especially to anyone vulnerable. I think we are close to reaching a point where it is simpler and more effective for the country to simply say anyone elderly, or with respiratory conditions, or otherwise vulnerable - stay inside and isolate, and everyone else crack on and keep the country running closer to "normal".

Based on the amount of asymptomatic cases, I think this would be more effective, myself.
 
arnie_ni said:
Is ireland not one of the poorest mainstream European countries?
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What the hell is a "mainstream country"?

I'm kinda picturing mass-produced countries, designed to appeal to the widest possible audience while in shadowy corners of Europe hide the hipster nations where everyone has a beard and a flannel shirt.
 
Siorac said:
What the hell is a "mainstream country"?

I'm kinda picturing mass-produced countries, designed to appeal to the widest possible audience while in shadowy corners of Europe hide the hipster nations where everyone has a beard and a flannel shirt.
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Countries that used to be cool but sold out.
 
Siorac said:
What the hell is a "mainstream country"?

I'm kinda picturing mass-produced countries, designed to appeal to the widest possible audience while in shadowy corners of Europe hide the hipster nations where everyone has a beard and a flannel shirt.
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UK Italy France ireland spain Germany, rather than smaller less touristy destinations was what i was getting at. But i was looking at the wrong figures
 
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