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

pratyush_utd said:
But evidence was already there as late as December 2019. There is nothing factual in that tweet even at that time. Not sure how much WHO knew at that time but i was merely pointing out that reporting Chinese authority findings is not WHO job. Same case in aborted trial report. Not sure why you are so touchy about WHO criticism.
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No there were suspicions but no clear evidence. And it's definitely WHO's job to report chinese authorities findings(or findings from anywhere else), that's one of the most efficient way to have critical reviews of researches/reports.
 
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redshaw said:


With news coming out of Switzerland of kids don't spread the virus and grandparents can hug their grandchildren it could be important to read this and wait for more information.
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I'd say the red one is the best Christmas tree.
 
pratyush_utd said:
But evidence was already there as late as December 2019. There is nothing factual in that tweet even at that time. Not sure how much WHO knew at that time but i was merely pointing out that reporting Chinese authority findings is not WHO job. Same case in aborted trial report. Not sure why you are so touchy about WHO criticism.
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I'm sorry if you find someone questioning the validity of your posts to be touchy but you're misled. Disseminating updates on novel viruses is exactly part of the job of the WHO.

They believed a new virus may be circulating in Decmeber but it wasn't confirmed as not just SARS until the second week of Jan. It wasn't until the 21st that Chinese experts confirmed human to human transmission.

You seem to want to attack the WHO on this but not know why? Which efforts were disadvantaged because of that tweet exactly?
 
P-Ro said:
I do understand that the evidence of the drug's effectiveness was sketchy and anecdotal but nonetheless I'm still unsure of the reason for a placebo to be administered in the first place. I'm struggling to see how the placebo effect could have any influence on the immune system's response to a novel virus. In my mind it's the same as comparing the mortality rate of those who received remdesivir with those who have gone to a witch doctor to be cured. The drug's effectiveness is based on mortality and not on anything that a placebo should have any effect on. It was said by @Revan earlier that the results would be anecdotal if the placebo wasn't administered, but it can't be just anecdotal if you've got a large set of data from those who have survived/died having not taken remdesivir but who have received the same type of care as the others in the trial, minus the drugs. I'm clearly no medical professional so I'll happily be explained the reasoning behind it.
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The placebo affect is very real. Even thought it obviously won't keep someone alive who would otherwise die. If a patient knows they are getting a new experimental drug they might be more likely to say they're getting side effects. Feeling a bit queasy, having a headache, whatever. If enough patients decide the drug is making them sick(er) that could cause a promising drug to get canned. Conversely, they might ignore how shitty the new drug is making them feel because they're desperate to continue with this potential miracle cure.

Same thing applies to treating physicians. They might be quicker to stop treatment if they know a patient is on an untested medicine and they worry that it's making them unwell. Or persist with treatment past the point where it's obvious that it's not helping. And so on and so forth.

To be clear, the patients on the placebo arm don't get no treatment. They usually get SOT (standard of care) which is the best possible drugs/treatment that we are certain will help. All they're missing out on is the uncertain benefit that adding an unproven treatment to SOT might bring.
 


Absolute doozy of a twitter thread on a new Nature publication about spread within China.

Two things I learned.

Chinese outbreak precisely coincided with Chinese version of spring break and enormous migration of Chinese people. Which was shit luck for the whole world.

Travel bans delay (by a few weeks) but don’t stop spread.
 
Leroy The Red said:
Utter twat, genuinely despise people like this. An actual grown woman behaving like this. Amazingly she’ll publish this to her social media account and people will be agreeing with her behaviour.
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Virtually all 99 posts on YouTube slammed her
 
Leroy The Red said:
Utter twat, genuinely despise people like this. An actual grown woman behaving like this. Amazingly she’ll publish this to her social media account and people will be agreeing with her behaviour.
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Have things changed so much in Ireland? Why didn't she just say initially I'm on my way to court and have a dispensation? Harassing a couple of police officers doing their job, its ridiculous hope every police officer watching takes the car registration!
 
Pogue Mahone said:


Absolute doozy of a twitter thread on a new Nature publication about spread within China.

Two things I learned.

Chinese outbreak precisely coincided with Chinese version of spring break and enormous migration of Chinese people. Which was shit luck for the whole world.

Travel bans delay (by a few weeks) but don’t stop spread.
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That is pretty significant though because it buys you precious time to prepare.

The problem I see with travel is that its constantly adding a wildcard into your system. You can model this thing pretty well in a 'closed' system, to know where you are and what you need to do. But air travel especially is a pain - you could have potentially infected people landing at Heathrow and then making their way to each of Manchester/Birmingham/Liverpool/London and infecting people on the way while they share trains/public transport.
 
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Carolina Red said:
What part of “I believe” do you fail to understand?
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I understand perfectly. We are not going to agree, best leave it.

Ødegaard said:
Sweden is taking a chance and that might work out for them but I highly doubt we'll end up seeing Sweden with less deaths than those countries who are social distancing. If anything they are hoping to be done with the deaths faster and they are risking the lives of their people on those hopes.
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There are other sections of your post I disagree with in some ways but wanted to focus on this. If you are going to have an opinion on something then at least take the time to look into what you are forming an opinion on. Sweden is and has been social distancing.

Wibble said:
And you may need in excess of 80% infected (or vaccinated) before herd immunity is achieved so Sweden won't be anywhere near there yet. To get there it means lots more deaths or a vaccine. If a vaccine the avoidable deaths prior to that are for nothing.
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It is not a straight trade off of deaths and economy though. There are other factors to weigh up such as general health, mental health both in their pure form and as a by-product of a possible (harsher) economic downturn. How can we quantify deaths as a result of (more) severe lockdowns in terms of suicides, murders? What about increase in domestic and child abuse which would also funnel into possible suicides or future mental health issues? just because some of things can't be labelled or quantified with a number or statistic doesn't mean they are not to be taken into consideration.

Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Which is nonsense obviously, unless you believe New York, Belgium, The UK, hell even Ireland “willingly“ let a bunch of people die.
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Even if it were true (it isn't) then by the same logic any country now loosening restrictions are basically saying "we've had enough of this now, go out and die".
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
I keep saying, we are living in an episode of Brasseye and the majority of the population are happy to be starring in it.
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We need to find a pensioner who is going to walk laps of their garden until either A) the government gets hold of the situation, including providing frontline workers with their equipment they need to do their job sufficiently, or B) the pensioner drops dead with sheer exhaustion with the world's cameras on them.
 
Maticmaker said:
Have things changed so much in Ireland? Why didn't she just say initially I'm on my way to court and have a dispensation? Harassing a couple of police officers doing their job, its ridiculous hope every police officer watching takes the car registration!
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I'm sure they're very well aware of her already. She's a well-known crank (banned from youtube for violating their hate speech policy) who has form:

 
Leroy The Red said:
Utter twat, genuinely despise people like this. An actual grown woman behaving like this. Amazingly she’ll publish this to her social media account and people will be agreeing with her behaviour.
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This is the danger of social media. As time passes, every dissenting or challenging voice is either blocked or muted and narcissistic types end up in a noise vacuum of people who are of similar views to themselves. They then share their opinions and more and more are only met with positive reinforcement and it creates intolerable monsters who are incapable of even acknowledging a differing viewpoint.
 
TMDaines said:
We need to find a pensioner who is going to walk laps of their garden until either A) the government gets hold of the situation, including providing frontline workers with their equipment they need to do their job sufficiently, or B) the pensioner drops dead with sheer exhaustion with the world's cameras on them.
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It's feeling less and less like real life, this, and more like one giant bizarre lab experiment.

"Let's see how surreal we can make things before anyone says 'excuse me sir, this is fecking weird'".
 
Denis79 said:
Yeah seems that way, I have a lot of former colleagues and friends in Sweden and some of them are very critical of government. Nurses are free to go to restaurants, pubs bars and later work in elderly homes without protective gear. A good friend lost his father to the virus in an elderly home and he's furious about how everything was handled from start to finish. They refused him intensive care saying he simply was too old for it, while they according to my friend still have intensive care spots available. Disgrace.
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So sorry for your friend and his family. That must be a horrible experience.

About the bolded part, ive read here and heard many other say the same, that intensive care for this virus, like an ventilator, would be "too much" and the treatment itself would kill some older people. And thats why some get refused treatment. Somebody correct me if im wrong.

And again, not trying to take anything away from the sorrow your friend must feel. I cant imagine.
 
redshaw said:


Important counterpart to the viral load study.
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Unfortunately, doesn’t contradict anything the other study says and concludes as follows:

We find that social distancing alone, as implemented in China during the outbreak, is sufficient to control COVID-19. While proactive school closures cannot interrupt transmission on their own, they can reduce peak incidence by 40-60% and delay the epidemic.
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If we combine what we learn from this and previous paper we would conclude that kids less likely than adults to get infected but, once infected, are just as likely to pass it on. Hence school closures are effective at flattening the curve and re-opening then could cause another surge.
 
Bullhitter said:
There are other sections of your post I disagree with in some ways but wanted to focus on this. If you are going to have an opinion on something then at least take the time to look into what you are forming an opinion on. Sweden is and has been social distancing.
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Their social distancing is inadequate to be called social distancing, they are somewhat slowing the spread but it's not near enough going by how it looks currently with the amounts of death they have. Tegnell has been quoted saying he believes Sweden is close to herd-immunity which has been called on as bullshit by tons of experts in Norwegian papers.
There are even reports of healthcare workers going out in Sweden and then interacting with the older population the day after.

I think you missed the s button when writing in your alias.
 
Ødegaard said:
Their social distancing is inadequate to be called social distancing, they are somewhat slowing the spread but it's not near enough going by how it looks currently with the amounts of death they have. Tegnell has been quoted saying he believes Sweden is close to herd-immunity which has been called on as bullshit by tons of experts in Norwegian papers.
There are even reports of healthcare workers going out in Sweden and then interacting with the older population the day after.

I think you missed the s button when writing in your alias.
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Being close to herd immunity is nonsense. Though I don't think he claimed to be close certainly not in terms of Sweden as a country.

Deaths is a number with an insane amount of variables.

I think you should attempt to be better than feeling the need to resort to playground level name-calling and if you insist on doing so at least try to be better and/or more original. 1/10.
 
Bullhitter said:
This is the danger of social media. As time passes, every dissenting or challenging voice is either blocked or muted and narcissistic types end up in a noise vacuum of people who are of similar views to themselves. They then share their opinions and more and more are only met with positive reinforcement and it creates intolerable monsters who are incapable of even acknowledging a differing viewpoint.
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Yup, quite scary actually. Someone like Katie Hopkins epitomises this, she has one million followers. We’re all going about our business in a country where a large number of people are actively following and agreeing with the views of Katie Hopkins. Terrifying.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Unfortunately, doesn’t contradict anything the other study says and concludes as follows:



If we combine what we learn from this and previous paper we would conclude that kids less likely than adults to get infected but, once infected, are just as likely to pass it on. Hence school closures are effective at flattening the curve and re-opening then could cause another surge.
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And while I know that it has been mentioned, schools environment is risky in countries/areas where the virus is definitely circulating. In a classroom you just need one infected kid to contaminate all adults in the school and it's potentially worse if the kid is asymptomatic because before anyone realizes it the community infection is way beyond school premises.

The hard talk is going to be that not all regions/areas should follow the same rules, we will probably have to quarantine geographical areas where the virus is circulating at a certain point in time while the rest of the country/world live its life.
 
Denis79 said:
Yeah seems that way, I have a lot of former colleagues and friends in Sweden and some of them are very critical of government. Nurses are free to go to restaurants, pubs bars and later work in elderly homes without protective gear. A good friend lost his father to the virus in an elderly home and he's furious about how everything was handled from start to finish. They refused him intensive care saying he simply was too old for it, while they according to my friend still have intensive care spots available. Disgrace.
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I'm sorry about your friend, I hope he is doing ok in this difficult time.

I will say though that his not going to the ICU, without knowing all of the details, likely has nothing to do with Covid or their response to it.

Despite what some think, ICU is not the logical end point for all patients. We turn down patients for ICU in the UK all the time, as do pretty much all healthcare systems (other than America, where seemingly if you have the money, anybody goes).

This is a reflection of the fact that a) ICU care is brutal and not everyone will get through it b) some peoples' underlying functional state, which can make ICU care futile and impossible to wean off ( some patients once on a ventilator for instance will never be able to come off it because their lungs won't ever function again) and c) the fact that ICU care is incredibly expensive and so there will always be some degree of rationing, even in normal times.

Im not saying that this is your friend necessarily but we still sadly see some family members insist in everything (resuscitation, ICU etc) on their crumbly 91 year old grandma with every medical problem under the sun, who can't leave their bed or do anything for themselves.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Not only that @africanspur, to call them “miserable” you have to also look at it long term and believe other countries will do better once restrictions are eased. You have to consider that this virus is likely to be around for at least a year, probably longer and imagine that countries who “started well” will continue to do so out of lockdown.
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Pretty much. Some countries have smashed the initial stage but we need to see what happens long term. For now, we should commend them, with the understanding that long term....we still don't know how things are turning out.
 
Germany is reopening museums, zoos, botanical gardens, exhibitions, churches, memorial sites and playgrounds. A concept for schools and daycare centres is to be announced next week. That leaves restaurants for whom the Whit weekend at the end of May is being discussed as a possible date for reopening.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
Germany is reopening museums, zoos, botanical gardens, exhibitions, churches, memorial sites and playgrounds. A concept for schools and daycare centres is to be announced next week. That leaves restaurants for whom the Whit weekend at the end of May is being discussed as a possible date for reopening.
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Brilliant news man, good for you guys.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
Germany is reopening museums, zoos, botanical gardens, exhibitions, churches, memorial sites and playgrounds. A concept for schools and daycare centres is to be announced next week. That leaves restaurants for whom the Whit weekend at the end of May is being discussed as a possible date for reopening.
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Excellent. Europe will be watching closely hoping for good news!
 
seen this a few times on FB

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@Arruda

I won't do a big back and forth, I imagine neither of us has the time currently. There are many things we'll agree on, some we won't and many things I believe we won't know until long in the future.

What I will say, having said similar to both family and colleagues, that while it is very important to keep yourself well informed, if reading about it non stop is causing you anxiety, it is also important to take a break at times and read about other things, so as not to get overwhelmed.

That may come across in a patronising way but I genuinely mean it sincerely.

Good luck in the ED, I have only fond memories of my time there. I am sure you will be well supported and a major asset to the team.
 
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