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

razor

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Sorry WillHurtDontcare tried to quote your post but can’t get to work.

This is where we are now. My wife is due in 3 weeks. She doesn’t want to go to prenatal appointments etc. Worried what will happen if she or I contracts the virus before the birth. Worried about getting it at the dr’s or at the hospital. No one has good answer. When you call hospital or doctor with concern all they care about is if you have symptoms or not. Worrisome times.

@WillHurtDontCare

I'm in a similar boat - my girlfriend is due in two weeks. I looked for some studies online, and the ones I found were promising. The number of participants in the studies were small, but for the most part it seems like pregnant women were ok and generally gave birth to healthy babies in spite of having COVID. Also, the women did not pass COVID on to their babies.

After seeing that, I stopped looking because I really can't control it anyway. My gf is 38, so not having the baby at a hospital is a much bigger risk to both her and the baby than the scenarios where we get COVID at the hospital. I'm actually more worried about whether or not I'll be able to be there for the birth (currently the birth partner or support person is still allowed at our hospital, but that could always change).

@GIlman may have more insight and better access to the studies - would love to hear his opinion.
 
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ChrisV

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wow wow wow

31507

Ford is re-purposing seat-cooling squirrel-cage-type blower fans from F-150 trucks to pull in air through the filters and blow the air into the feeder hose for the hood.

 

GIlman

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Saw this idea (on Twitter, but from a very smart person).

Why not let everyone <45yrs of age get back to work so the economy doesn't go to total crap. Let them run the percentage gauntlet and treat the bad cases, let the group build immunity. Then 14 days later release the next age group (45-55), etc. Seems like a decent compromise between total lockdown and the #notdying4wallstreet crowd. Would like to hear opinions on that one.

Also, someone earlier was asking about people literally being welded sealed into their homes in China. Here's a vid I found of such a practice in action.


The small white sign on the door supposedly says something to the effect of "infected person from Wuhan do not visit" or something like that.

14 days is being a misused figure for lots of things that aren’t applicable. 14 days is the number of days with a known or possible exposure that someone has to quarantine to see if they do become positive. It’s an alternative to lab tests. After 14 days if they have zero symptoms they resume life as normal.

if they do become positive, then it’s taking most people 4-5 weeks to clear the infection from that point. So you are looking 5+ weeks for almost everyone. Then you have unequal times of initial infection unless you inoculate (give it to people) intentionally. So it would takes many months per wave of people.

Also, the big crush is over 70. 70% of admissions in New York have been over 70 years old. So the thing that really overwhelms the system is this demographic. The < 70 year olds suffer because the 70+ age group completely overwhelms the system by themselves.
 
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razor

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In the midst of the debate over economy vs health, this was a reality check for me.

I have a friend who is in the Philippines right now. I have known him since ~2008.

I was just chatting with him on facebook and this was what he said.

"it is Getting rough out here , we are down to one person a family to get out of the house to get neccesities. The numbers is going up badly everyday...One of my good friend died and was buried the same day in [city] and is suspected to have died because of the virus yesterday.

We are about to expect the worse if the lockdown goes on as people around losed jobs and mass shortage of food. We are trying to help with what we have but our resources is thinning fast as well. But still thankful to be alive another day.

this coming weeks will be more harder because the government had already locked down businesses and factories too along with little works where most of the people are making a living in a daily basis.

supplies are limited everyday and only one person from a family can get out once a day to buy food and supplies. The worst part is a lot of people specially those who make it one day at a time financially are now without work and income to buy food and supplies."


This really struck me hard.

Here I am, sitting in my nice, comfortable house, with heat and electricity and a belly full of nutritious food. And while I am seriously contemplating a scenario where I don't have money or food, that day is far enough off in the future to feel like it possibly won't ever happen at all.

And while Congress debates this insanity of a stimulus package, and people debate the relative merits of health vs wealth, I still assume that there will be food on the table and maybe even a merciful reprieve on housing and utility bills and we'll get through this one way or another.

Meanwhile, people are locked down in the Philippines who depend on that day's work to buy that day's food. Now their factories are closed.

No stimulus package for them. No $1,000 helicopter money payments for them.

I am struck, hard, with how MUCH I have to be grateful for.

Thanks for this post; it is a great reminder to be grateful and realize that things could always be (much) worse.

I hope your friend continues to be ok. It's hard to imagine losing your loved-ones and not being able to have a funeral or some kind of gathering to grieve together.
 
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ChrisV

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GIlman

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@WillHurtDontCare

I'm in a similar boat - my girlfriend is due in two weeks. I looked for some studies online, and the ones I found were promising. The number of participants in the studies were small, but for the most part it seems like pregnant women were ok and generally gave birth to healthy babies in spite of having COVID. Also, the women did not pass COVID on to their babies.

After seeing that, I stopped looking because I really can't control it anyway. My gf is 38, so not having the baby at a hospital is a much bigger risk to both her and the baby than the scenarios where we get COVID at the hospital. I'm actually more worried about whether or not I'll be able to be there for the birth (currently the birth partner or support person is still allowed at our hospital, but that could always change).

@GIlman may have more insight and better access to the studies - would love to hear his opinion.

And @WillHurtDontCare things are very preliminary at the moment. I’m gonna be frank with you that data is very limited at the moment so it’s very hard to make any concrete statements.

here is one pertinent study. Numbers are small but they did not find any maternal fetal spread of covid. Meaning that in these 38 women studied they found no cases where an infected mom passed it to the baby. Obviously that’s only one concern, the primary concern is not becoming infected in the first place


From my reading SARS and MERS has increased mortality because in pregnancy the immune system is ramped up in different ways and there was increased risk of cytokine storm, which can lead to bad outcomes. So far from limited data this does not appear to be the case with Covid19.

Certainly having a baby at the hospital is safer as far as the delivery for both the mother and the baby. My dad is an OB and he always said his job was to watch nature do it’s thing, except In the off chance it didn’t work. Then he was there to help nature along. That’s probably an accurate view. Home birth is usually safe, but if you personally are the unlucky one and have a complication it doesn’t matter what any statistic says as far as safety. It’s absolute to you.

So you just have to weigh the relative risk of getting infection in the hospital vs risk of home birth, if that’s something your even considering. First babies tend to be the most risky, unless there was problems with the first birth in which case there is also more problems with the second. If there is prior history of C-section I would not attempt at home.

but at the end of the day you got to discuss this with your doctor and come up with a plan that works based on your own situation. Certainly don’t take any of my advice (
I’m just some random person on the internet), just use it to make an informed decision that you discuss and make your own OB.
 
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Jon L

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Just watched an interview of a guy that lived through the 1918 Spanish Flu. They isolated everyone back then, too, preventing people from congregating in large numbers etc.

he said, "The memories were so deep in their minds that those that survived were reticent until about 1922 about getting back together in large numbers, feeling at ease in church..."

This will change things for a number of years to come.
 
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Madame Peccato

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Numbers in Italy:

54030 infected people, of which 3360 are in ICU
6820 dead (average age: roughly 78.5 years)
8326 recovered (12.04% of the total infected)

You might have seen videos of Italian mayors going outside and yelling at people who are not respecting the quarantine (there are a bunch on YouTube with subtitles). Unfortunately, some people are still dismissing this as "just the flu". I guess it's because nobody they know has died yet. They might see the effects of their stupidity sooner than they expect.

Our economy is in shambles. Not that it wasn't already, but this quarantine is probably the nail in the coffin. I was waiting for this to be 100% honest, I felt like we needed a reset, since our economy was held together with stitches and patches. It had to happen eventually.

I'm curious to see what comes next.

I know a lot of people who are feeling the effects of the quarantine. These people are super bored, and hate staying at home in general. How could we help them? I don't know yet, stuff like Netflix and books can only keep you entertained for so long.
 

c_morris

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These people are super bored, and hate staying at home in general. How could we help them? I don't know yet, stuff like Netflix and books can only keep you entertained for so long.
The younger generations that never lived pre-internet don't know how good they have it. If this happened when I was in my late teens/early 20's, I'd go bat sh*t crazy.

There are ways to stay connected these days that didn't exist 20 years ago.

I guess it's all relative. I'm sure people would have said the same about me being able to play my NES to entertain myself back in the 80's.
 
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Ernman

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I actually have some mild symtoms, roughly 2 weeks after I had a meal at a restaurant with a friend. The friend is also starting to develop slight symtoms today. We have both been self isolating for the last 12 days.
Hope you're among the lucky ones.
 

GIlman

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Prince Charles tested positive.

Wish him well.

Wish him the best. Hope he makes a speedy recovery.

It does however raise a statistically significant way William could be king as a young man.
 
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Kak

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MattR82

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MattR82

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If I'm gonna go by my moronic friends, which include a quarantined doctor and a weed dealer, so covering both ends of the spectrum, the only thing people care about at the moment is call of duty....
 
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biggeemac

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Just watched an interview of a guy that lived through the 1918 Spanish Flu. They isolated everyone back then, too, preventing people from congregating in large numbers etc.

he said, "The memories were so deep in their minds that those that survived were reticent until about 1922 about getting back together in large numbers, feeling at ease in church..."

This will change things for a number of years to come.
I literally told my wife yesterday that society wont know how to act once we are past this event and the resulting social distancing measures. I think several years, if not longer, is a safe bet.
 

ygtrhos

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GIlman

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I literally told my wife yesterday that society wont know how to act once we are past this event and the resulting social distancing measures. I think several years, if not longer, is a safe bet.

I just had a crazy thought.

If you were to look at families where all 4 people had the infection, all at once or over time, we would expect the following.

If you had a family of 4, father in 50’s, mother in 40’s, and two teenage kids, based on the numbers we have so far there would be a 2.1% chance of losing 1 of your family members in that family. So 1 out of every 48 families similar to this would be impacted.

families with 40 yo father, 40 yo mother and 2 teens would be 1.2% or 1 in 83 families like this would lose one family member.


of course, let’s see how the numbers by age group in the United States sort out. Hopefully our numbers are improved, fingers crossed. But that’s pretty eye opening to me
.
 

Suzanne Bazemore

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I just had a crazy thought.

If you were to look at families where all 4 people had the infection, all at once or over time, we would expect the following.

If you had a family of 4, father in 50’s, mother in 40’s, and two teenage kids, based on the numbers we have so far there would be a 2.1% chance of losing 1 of your family members in that family. So 1 out of every 48 families similar to this would be impacted.

families with 40 yo father, 40 yo mother and 2 teens would be 1.2% or 1 in 83 families like this would lose one family member.


of course, let’s see how the numbers by age group in the United States sort out. Hopefully our numbers are improved, fingers crossed. But that’s pretty eye opening to me
.
I was thinking about the numbers, too, but from the standpoint of infection rate. If, in China, the R0 value is 2.5, and they can weld people into their houses when they get sick, then who do those 2.5 people consist of? Is it just people in their household?
I wonder if this R0 value has held in other countries. Will it be worse in America? In my county, for example, we have a stay at home order, but people still go out to get groceries and get to-go food and stuff. It seems to me like if someone gets sick here, they will infect a lot more than 2.5 people. Our family units are usually larger, and we run around more and expose more people outside our families.
 
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JAJT

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Something that has been cropping up a lot in various discussions I'm seeing is the concept of "viral load" as it pertains to mortality rates, especially as it pertains to younger people.

The theory, which may very well be baseless, is that receiving a very large "dose" of the virus (taking a crowded subway every day, for example) may significantly decrease your body's chance to fight the disease "normally" compared to someone who has incidental initial contact (like a one-off handshake, or handling a cereal box that was stocked by an infectious person).

Lots of discussions about how maybe many of the asymptomatic / less serious cases only received a small viral load on infection compared to the folks who "get it bad" who may have overwhelmed their body with a high viral load. It may be the difference between letting your body 'get ahead' of it or being outnumbered from the start.

Lots of anecdotes about how this may be why we see young doctors and nurses and healthcare providers get hit hard and die despite being "young and healthy" - they are exposed to it regularly and often.

This may be totally baseless. I just find it interesting that it seems to be the "discussion du jour" right now in many comment sections.
 

GIlman

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I was thinking about the numbers, too, but from the standpoint of infection rate. If, in China, the R0 value is 2.5, and they can weld people into their houses when they get sick, then who do those 2.5 people consist of? Is it just people in their household?
I wonder if this R0 value has held in other countries. Will it be worse in America? In my county, for example, we have a stay at home order, but people still go out to get groceries and get to-go food and stuff. It seems to me like if someone gets sick here, they will infect a lot more than 2.5 people. Our family units are usually larger, and we run around more and expose more people outside our families.

After the quarantine in China started, highest rate of infection was health care workers and family members of already infected.
 
G

GuestUser4aMPs1

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From @snowbank that's interesting.


tl;dr version...

1: Staying Inside and taking the necessary precautions is technically +EV, because the actions to do so (hand washing, isolation, etc.) are minimal compared to the maximum consequence (DEATH) of not doing so.

2: It's not wise to derive CFR from our current calculation of Deaths/Cases = CFR. In reality, CFR is not nearly as linear as there are many, MANY unseen factors we're not even aware of that determine CFR.

3: Nobody really knows what the hell they're doing.
 
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Vigilante

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From @snowbank that's interesting.


tl;dr version...

1: Staying Inside and taking the necessary precautions is technically +EV, because the actions to do so (hand washing, isolation, etc.) are minimal compared to the maximum consequence (DEATH) of not doing so.

2: It's not wise to derive CFR from our current calculation of Deaths/Cases = CFR. In reality, CFR is not nearly as linear as there are many, MANY unseen factors we're not even aware of that determine CFR.

3: Nobody really knows what the hell they're doing.

That guy is still around? I just assumed that the CoronaVirus already took him out. Looking forward to his next book, or whatever
 

sparechange

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IGA is selling Chinese Fried Rice at $0.19 cents LOL

regular price is around $2.29 i think, bought a bunch of these, funny how corona beer sales tanked and it effects ''rice from china'' the package of rice I just bought is from a company based in TEXAS, distributed by a Canadian company :rofl:
 

Envision

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Well I have 0 confidence in our politicians that this 2 trillion dollar stimulus package is going to do anything to actually fix the problem. They’ve essentially done everything backwards.

-The virus is not contained
-There is completely inadequate testing
-The economy has maybe 1-2 months before we start to see actual fundamental issues (credit markets etc)
- Were pumping money into an economy without a definitive restart date.

it’s frustrating watching these geriatric morons try to understand what this virus is, what they’re doing to the economy and the long term impacts of what’s already been done.
 
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JAJT

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Well I have 0 confidence in our politicians that this 2 trillion dollar stimulus package is going to do anything to actually fix the problem.

While this (and other) stimulus packages around the world may not do what they say it will do, it does accomplish one huge goal - stifling public dissension.

Governments around the world are playing "anesthesiologists of the masses" right now. They know people are going to lose jobs, going to get sick, going to die, going to see loved ones die, go bankrupt, and it may take years to recover financially once the dust settles.

By throwing a few thousand bucks at everyone though, they fairly effectively get everyone to put down their pitchforks (for now) and kick the can down the road.

Not to say governments around the world aren't doing good, but it's hard to argue that regardless of the approach taken, putting any amount of cash into people's hands is low hanging fruit to get people to feel like you're on their side.
 

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