The Worldwide C0VlD-19 Coronavirus Pandemic Discussion Thread...

[Lex DeVille]

Ya'll can stop worrying. I know how to defeat Coronavirus. We recruit the flu and common cold viruses and combine them with something like rabies to battle COVID 19 for us. See below for theoretical model..

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsMN716zTxc

 

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[BellaPippin]

Ya'll can stop worrying. I know how to defeat Coronavirus. See below for theoretical model..

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsMN716zTxc

Hahaha I loved that scene, hyped for T-Rex and also because it's so ridiculous she's running on stilettos after the whole ordeal

But your argument is flawed because

View: https://youtu.be/P9yruQM1ggc

 

[Ernman]

This is the problem with news headlines, often they state something without the context to understand it.

Understatement of the decade

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Smart people

Seriously?

France, Amid Coronavirus Outbreak, Holds Largest-Ever Gathering of People Dressed as Smurfs, for Some Reason

“It was more important. The coronavirus is no big deal. It’s nothing.”

slate.com

“We figured we wouldn’t worry, and that as French people we wouldn’t give up on our attempt to break the record,” one Smurf (or Schtroumpf, in French) told AFP in a video of the event. “Now we’re champions of the world.”

Another Smurf chimed in: “It was more important. The coronavirus is no big deal. It’s nothing.”

The first Smurf agreed. “There’s no risk,” he said. “Yes, we’re going to Smurferize the coronavirus.”

France currently ranks fifth on the list of most affected countries, with 1,200 confirmed cases and 21 deaths.

You know, it's fine if you're just putting yourself at risk... but for every infection you put others at risk.

Darwinism at its best ...

 

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[BellaPippin]

Darwinism at its best ...

Chi just cancelled the St Patrick's parade, not even mad

 

[GIlman]

The pace had slowed down in SK and as of today is trending back up. Granted there are many unknowns, would you expect a similar scenario in other countries? Short term declines follows by secondary outbreaks? Maybe as a factor of the virus mutating?

Thanks for bringing your in depth knowledge to this discussion, it has been invaluable!

The question that comes to my mind is did the actual rate decrease ever or is it simply attributable to sampling bias and sampling error.

Each day SK tests a small subset of the population, it is not a sampling of the entire population. Any decrease day to day simply means that the subset sampled that day had fewer infections that the subset sampled the day before. It is not a true representation of the whole population but a guesstimate based to a small ever changing subset of the population.

Also, a negative test for any person simply means at the exact moment they were tested, they were not infected (or it was too early and not detectable). But literally 1 second after the test was taken that person could come in contact with something and become infected, the test they just took would show up negative because they had not been contaminated at that moment in time, even though by time the actually received the negative test results (hours or days later) they were now in actuality positive for CV.

I imagine that there is an issue with apathy to being retested. The more times any one person tests negative, the more apathy to being retested they are likely to experience. Especially if they had symptoms similar to CV and tested negative. This is normalcy bias if they stop seeing the need to be tested because they begin to believe any symptoms are likely not related to CV because past symptoms had tested negative.

The only way to 100% overcome sampling bias and error, would be to test every person in the country everyday.

Short of this, doing moving daily averages such as a 7 or 14 day moving average would help to smooth the data and make daily blips not seem relevant so much. You would be able to see the trend more clearly, however all moving averages will lag if there are large real changes.

you could also have mandated scheduled tests. Say 1/30th of the population scheduled to be tested on the same day every month, so you were getting the entire population every 30 days and people couldn’t self select not to be tested.

these are somethings you could do to get better data, but as I stated above only testing everyone at some interval such as daily or weekly could you really have a truly accurate rate.

 

[Sander]

Status in Denmark.

262 cases yesterday.
340 earlier today.
442 now.

 

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[SkyLake]

Status in Denmark.

262 cases yesterday.
340 earlier today.
442 now.

Actual cases worldwide have probably superated 1 million by now.

Schools are still open in UK, US and Canada and most other countries. And on top of that, these countries are all in denial.

While people in Italy are experiencing the most surreal time since WW2. No sports, no events, work from home for everyone except people who have to be at work.

There is a law coming into effect in Italy which will suspend mortgage payments and other various expenses for a few months. Imagine if this becomes the situation in the US.. where people can't make mortgage payments anymore. Then maybe the gov will do something?

 

[Gabry_ITA]

Not quite the same. The Chinese literally blocked off roads with concrete slabs and commanded people indoors by drone.

The Italian lockdown is simply a travel ban, no?

It's not like China but we can't go out without a significant reason: work, buy food and drugs, medic or veterinary needs.
We have to bring with us a self-certification that explains why you're out. If the reason is not significant, you're charged. And there already are cases where people have been charged.
The government is thinking to close all workplace, except drugstores and supermarkets, 'till april.
The situation isn't good but it depends: Lombardy are in difficult, 'cause there aren't so many intensive-therapy slots in hospitals. We didn't expect a massive epidemy.
Here the hospital of my town, where ambulances formed a queue for the ER (overflowing-hospitals from other parts of Lombardy diverted ambulances to my town's hospital).
Other regions are good and I hope that they'll continue to be in this good situation.

I'm not saying that this is the apocalypse but we have to be clever and protect elderly and fragile people.
We are in Lombardy, the richest and more developed region in Italy, we're not, with respect, Congo. But in many provinces we are in difficult.

So, no panic but don't underestimate: be safe and smart and all will be good.

 

[Sander]

Schools are shutting down one by one, if students or teachers are infected.

Gyms are closing.

Our government most likely will forbid groups of 1000 people or more later today.

An employee at a nursing home was infected earlier today, most likely visited all the elderly people before she was tested positive.

Public transportation will only fill 50% capacity.

The event, hotel and travel industry are bleeding money. Restuaurants are laying people off already.

A soccer team have asked their fans to send selfies to put on the seats, now they can't attend.

 

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[ChickenHawk]

Well, it's official. The World Health Organization has just declared this a pandemic.

 

[Bekit]

Well, it's official. The World Health Organization has just declared this a pandemic.

It's about time.

 

[biggeemac]

Well, it's official. The World Health Organization has just declared this a pandemic.

Well, I guess we get to see how many of us are recession proof and how many are not. I've been curious for the last three years how well we would do in a major recession.

 

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[ChickenHawk]

Not to sound like a broken record, but if you haven't already stocked up enough food/supplies/whatever, what the heck are you waiting for?

I'm in a state with no confirmed cases. Here, things are still somewhat normal. Yes, there are bare shelves in the expected places (cleaning supplies, wipes, hand sanitizer), but not much else has changed. But, as we've seen from impacted areas, this can change very quickly so this is no time to be complacent.

A Note to Parents: One of the things I purchased in advance was candy for my son's Easter basket. It's a small thing, but I'd hate to be unable to get it when Easter comes around. Better safe than sorry!

 

[Ernman]

Well, it's official. The World Health Organization has just declared this a pandemic.

The spread of the coronavirus across more than 100 countries now qualifies as a global pandemic, World Health Organization officials said on Wednesday, confirming what many epidemiologists have been saying for weeks. (sorry this was a news headline I copied - unable to credit source)

 

[MTEE1985]

A Note to Parents: One of the things I purchased in advance was candy for my son's Easter basket. It's a small thing, but I'd hate to be unable to get it when Easter comes around. Better safe than sorry!

Completely agree. The bunny has 100% immunity. We have also been making sure we have paints, markers etc. in the event that schools are closed for any period of time so the kiddos have things to do.

In other news...
Pandemic
Noun
an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population : a pandemic outbreak of a disease

Antonym: nothing burger

 

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[VDP]

Just in theory but if we all (all as in everyone around the world) stayed home for a month, wouldn't everything be alright after that? And would that be worth it?

 

[Trevor Kuntz]

"Please spell 'Nothing burger'"

"Hmm, could you please use it in a sentence?"

"Yes. 'After ignoring repeated warnings to prepare for community outbreak, Rivoli's only food source during quarantine was a nothing burger.'"

 

[LightningHelix]

Just in theory but if we all (all as in everyone around the world) stayed home for a month, wouldn't everything be alright after that? And would that be worth it?

Not exactly, but the benefit would be that the spread would be reduced, thus giving hospitals the breathing room to deal with this at a steady pace. In the end we need to buy time for a vaccination/treatment option.

 

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[Trevor Kuntz]

Just in theory but if we all (all as in everyone around the world) stayed home for a month, wouldn't everything be alright after that? And would that be worth it?

I had thought about this as a thought experiment, and it theoretically seems that if everyone in the world quarantined in their own room for a full month, you could wipe out multiple viruses at one time. However, many of these viruses are also present in or originated from livestock and wild animals, so you'd have to cull or quarantine them also. So it's not really a feasible solution; only a vaccine or social measures for reducing the R0 to less than 1 would be effective, as far as I am aware.

 

[BlindSide]

Super dumb questions incoming:

1.Do you think there is less of a chance you will get this virus if you got a flu shot?

2. If there is one thing I do hate, is how much fear there is around the people who have it, as opposed to death. Whenever I get the flu, I really don’t need the doctor, I just recover at home. I am curious if there is any info out there around your chances if you just stay home, eat healthy, drink plenty of water, etc etc?

3. If you get it - are you going to the hospital? Or staying home?

 

[c_morris]

3. If you get it - are you going to the hospital? Or staying home?

Staying home with a dose of common sense. Obviously if the level of discomfort gets so bad that I'm worried for my life, then ya, emerg, here I come.

Part of the problem regarding health care capacity (speaking from my experience in Canada) is that emergency rooms, clinics and Dr. offices are filled with people with the sniffles, headaches and otherwise minor issues that pass with a bit of time.

I refuse to go to a hospital unless absolutely necessary.

 

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[GIlman]

@Rivoli since you have been using Dr Fauci as proof that this was a nothing burger, I present you with his about face.

'It's eye-opening how real this is': How coronavirus made it from CPAC to Congress | CNN Politics

The revelation that an attendee at last month's Conservative Political Action Conference just outside of Washington tested positive for the virus has set off a chain reaction around Washington, as multiple Republican lawmakers who came in contact with the patient have now self-quarantined.

www.cnn.com

I wasn’t going to even respond to you, and won’t continue if you just want to troll the subject further, but I will assume you were just naive and not simply being a jerk.

Dr Fauci was in a tough spot, towing part political and part medical line. Things he was saying made no sense to me, but it’s hard to call out an “expert” that people want to put their trust in.

If you read my posts going back weeks you will see that I (and many other HCP) have been directly contradicting him and most other public facing Dr’s.

I actually think it’s a tragedy that they were not upfront and honest about this. There has been a terrible political undertone to all this. Granted, I’m sure many were hoping for a miracle to bail their asses out when all the data pointed to them just deceiving the public.

Do I think them being less than upfront will change the outcome of this? No, but it will erode the public’s trust in anything they say in the future, which is unfortunate.

Probably in reality they knew things would get worse, but just wanted to kick the can down the road and deal with it later and claim that some new information has changed to outlook now.

I do want to reiterate that no one knows the absolute mortality rate from this. Certainly an order of magnitude higher than the flu. Hopefully when all is said and done it will be on the lower not higher end Of that range.

 

[Trevor Kuntz]

Super dumb questions incoming:

1.Do you think there is less of a chance you will get this virus if you got a flu shot?

2. If there is one thing I do hate, is how much fear there is around the people who have it, as opposed to death. Whenever I get the flu, I really don’t need the doctor, I just recover at home. I am curious if there is any info out there around your chances if you just stay home, eat healthy, drink plenty of water, etc etc?

3. If you get it - are you going to the hospital? Or staying home?

1. The coronavirus is unrelated to the flu. They are both viruses, but only related like how apples and oranges are both fruits. So, it won't protect you from coronavirus, but it will less your chance of ALSO getting the flu at the same time. I have seen some people who are getting pneumonia vaccination. I don't know enough to recommend it or not recommend it. Perhaps Gilman could answer that for you.

2. Looks like an 80% chance that if you stay home and drink fluids and monitor your health, you will be assymptomatic or endure mild symptoms including coughing, fever, etc. The main risk is that the disease evolves into acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). This is when your lungs decrease function and your blood oxygen levels begin to drop. ARDS is the potentially fatal outcome of the virus and what you need to be on alert for.

3. Most likely, by the time you or I catch the virus, going to the hospital prior to severe symptoms won't be an option. In Italy, they are sending infected people home unless they are A.) severely symptomatic and B.) younger/likely to survive in an ICU.

I recommend having a thermometer (oral, rectal, or temporal) and a pulse oximeter to measure your blood oxygen levels. For me personally, I will be checking my blood oxygen levels hourly the moment I get sick. If my blood oxygen level starts going down and gets around 90%, I'm going straight to the hospital with my fingers crossed. Otherwise, if I am in the lucky 80%, I will ride it out at home.

 

[GIlman]

1. The coronavirus is unrelated to the flu. They are both viruses, but only related like how apples and oranges are both fruits. So, it won't protect you from coronavirus, but it will less your chance of ALSO getting the flu at the same time. I have seen some people who are getting pneumonia vaccination. I don't know enough to recommend it or not recommend it. Perhaps Gilman could answer that for you.

2. Looks like an 80% chance that if you stay home and drink fluids and monitor your health, you will be assymptomatic or endure mild symptoms including coughing, fever, etc. The main risk is that the disease evolves into acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). This is when your lungs decrease function and your blood oxygen levels begin to drop. ARDS is the potentially fatal outcome of the virus and what you need to be on alert for.

3. Most likely, by the time you or I catch the virus, going to the hospital prior to severe symptoms won't be an option. In Italy, they are sending infected people home unless they are A.) severely symptomatic and B.) younger/likely to survive in an ICU.

I recommend having a thermometer (oral, rectal, or temporal) and a pulse oximeter to measure your blood oxygen levels. For me personally, I will be checking my blood oxygen levels hourly the moment I get sick. If my blood oxygen level starts going down and gets around 90%, I'm going straight to the hospital with my fingers crossed. Otherwise, if I am in the lucky 80%, I will ride it out at home.

Disclaimer: none of the following is intended as medical advice for any particular patient or as a recommendation for treatment or diagnosis. I am not your physician and anything contained here is not intended as individualized medical advice nor should it be construed to be advice for any one person or medical condition in particular. Consult your physician or seek other medical advice from qualified medical providers who know and have access to your or your families complete medical records and history. Never rely on information on the internet to make medical decisions, including this. All medical decisions must be made between you and your doctor, and I am not your doctor.

Sorry, hate to post that but you all know why I do.

Pretty spot on, but I’ll add my 2 cents. Yes getting all your vaccines up to date is a good idea. One of the things about flu people don’t know is there are many secondary deaths not from the flu virus, but from superimposed bacterial pneumonia’s that take hold because flu beat down your immune system. Vaccines are a good line of defense, unless there is a medical reason you can’t get vaccines. Ask your doctor.

Going to the ER is a personal choice only you can make. I would never tell someone when is the right time to go, because I’m not there to see what’s really going on.

I can tell you how I plan to manage my own family. If my family member has cold and flu symptoms, I will watch them at home. If they develop distress I will take them in for an X-ray. I have an advantage here in that I deal with this daily and so am pretty comfortable assessing sick people. Everyone has to do what they are comfortable doing, don’t necessarily follow my example because our family is a pretty extreme outlier, between myself and my partner: she works in a cath lab dealing with critical patients all the time.

Realize a couple things about going to the hospital though. 1) your Illness statistically is more likely to be anything besides CV, at least at this moment in time. 2) there may be people working or visiting the hospital with CV so there is some exposure risk. 3) if your symptoms are not causing you enough breathing problems you will probably be sent home. 4) the hospitals I have any inside information about do not have large # of CV tests at this time, they are not likely to test anyone unless they have strong suspicion. This is dynamic and could change at anytime as more test kits become available.

That’s all I can really offer, it’s an individual choice if or when to go to the hospital we all have to make.

A tool I personally don’t want to be without is a pulse oximeter. it will give you objective data how well your body is oxygenating. They are cheap. Realize this is just one datapoint though and you shouldn’t rely on it alone to decide if someone needs to go to the hospital

Amazon.com: pulse oximeter fingertip

 

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[Sander]

Breaking: Denmark shuts down.

Schools, daycares, institutions are shutting down from friday.

All non critical employees will be sent home. Police, military, health system will continue working, but everyone else shall stay home at least 14 days.

Earlier today, around 340 was infected. Now 513. It was 35 this monday.

Shit just got real. Really real.

 

[BellaPippin]

Super dumb questions incoming:

1.Do you think there is less of a chance you will get this virus if you got a flu shot?

Yes get the flu shot if you don't have it because you can first catch the flu somewhere, and then catch CV with an immune system already fighting a virus, you're not gonna have done a solid to your body.

 

[ShamanKing]

Staying home with a dose of common sense. Obviously if the level of discomfort gets so bad that I'm worried for my life, then ya, emerg, here I come.

Part of the problem regarding health care capacity (speaking from my experience in Canada) is that emergency rooms, clinics and Dr. offices are filled with people with the sniffles, headaches and otherwise minor issues that pass with a bit of time.

I refuse to go to a hospital unless absolutely necessary.

The Last time I got sick was years ago was after visiting someone in a hospital.

 

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[Fox]

Well, Poland now has the fear.

Within 24 hours the mood has changed. I did my first toastmasters event tonight and all of them were spooked good. Looks like schools, cinemas, etc are all closed/closing too.

Looking at the Italy numbers it jumped from around 20 to 10k in 18days. Poland is around 20 now also.

I already stocked up but I will be probably doing another soon and if possible a third. I am actually feeling really good and positive overall but there is very little downside to being fully supplied.

Sounds funny but I actually already got a magnesium fire kit, wind up light, purified water bottle, full first aid kit, and several survival books. I am focused on the business and feeling positive but I am prepared for anything ha!

One interesting dynamic is this - I am living here in Poland and speak very little (like no) Polish. I am dating a Russian girl who just moved to the city. If things do lockdown it's going to be interesting ha. I got to think 100% self-reliance.

While I 100% think that preparation is important (go stock!) I think it is important to remember that previous generations have been through much worse and this level of uncertainty is how most humans have lived forever. Mindset will be a big factor so make sure you are mentally "stocked up" too.

 

[Vigilante]

All state universities, some private schools in Florida move classes online due to coronavirus threat

All of Florida's public universities are moving classes online, following a new directive regarding the C0VlD-19 coronavirus from the State University System of Florida. Some private colleges and universities, including the University of Tampa, are taking classes online, as well.

bit.ly