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

Rivoli

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No as a matter of fact you did not post word for word. Here is a direct copy and paste from the article of their conclusions.

“On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many had two or three,” he says.

This does not mean that C0VlD-19 did not contribute to a patient's death, rather it demonstrates that Italy's fatality toll has surged as a large proportion of patients have underlying health conditions.

What they are saying is very clear. What you have stated is a profoundly false and misleading characterization of this article.

Direct cause of death means the lungs failing and person dying, ONLY because the lungs failed. However, the reason people with other illnesses dying (comorbidies) is because they can be pushed into heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure, etc due to the pneumonia. If you are not completely healthy something like severe pneumonia can push you over the edge faster. Had these people not gotten covid pneumonia they would have years or decades longer just fine with their other medical conditions.

What are we asking? When you look up the death rate of something, aren’t we talking about directly contributable?
 
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.B.

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One thing I find hard to comprehend is that some people want this outcome to be as bad as possible. Even though that won't happen, that's the vibe some people give off....

From what I have read (mostly the first 20 pages), several forum members started to share their observations and fears about covid as early as one month ago, not because they wanted it to be bad, but because they wanted to raise awareness so that other members could take some preventive measures at their level if they thought that it would be best.

And I'm thankful to all of them for that (@Bekit, @ChickenHawk, @lowtek, just to name a few)

EDIT: they started to share their observations and fears as early as 2 months ago (end of January) not 1 month ago.
 
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Vigilante

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From what I have read (mostly the first 20 pages), several forum members started to share their observations and fears about covid as early as one month ago, not because they wanted it to be bad, but because they wanted to raise awareness so that other members could take some preventive measures at their level if they thought that it would be best.

And I'm thankful to all of them for that (@Bekit, @ChickenHawk, @lowtek, just to name a few)

The best part of the early window of this thread, for anyone who listened (and I listened) was prepping before prepping was cool. To that end, I took reasonable preparation and sustaining supplies that could last me another month, thanks SOLELY to the awesome posters here at the forum sounding the alarm. At that time, everyone thought THEY were panicking, but it was the opposite. Now everyone ELSE is panicking, but the people who took prudent early action are sitting in the cat birds seat today.
 
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ChickenHawk

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A friend in Houston just received this emergency alert on her phone.

Extreme alert.
STAY HOME. C0VlD-19 case count is rapidly rising in every area of Harris County. Protect yourself and your family by staying home and severely limiting contact with others. Harris County issued a Stay Home Work Safe order thru April 3, 2020. Non-essential businesses must close. Remain at home except for essential activities. Visit readyharris.org for more.


In related news, several weeks ago, the mayor of Houston decided to combat this sickness by taking all of his staff to "AsiaTown" for lunch and urging his fellow citizens to do the same.
 

Vigilante

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A friend in Houston just received this emergency alert on her phone.

Extreme alert.
STAY HOME. C0VlD-19 case count is rapidly rising in every area of Harris County. Protect yourself and your family by staying home and severely limiting contact with others. Harris County issued a Stay Home Work Safe order thru April 3, 2020. Non-essential businesses must close. Remain at home except for essential activities. Visit readyharris.org for more.


In related news, several weeks ago, the mayor of Houston decided to combat this sickness by taking all of his staff to "AsiaTown" for lunch and urging his fellow citizens to do the same.

@Kak
 

reedracer

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I think it is either coincidental (not conspiracy) or under-reporting, but it is interesting how Russia seems to be minimally affected thus far.
They are closing in on 1000 cases. Moscow on lockdown.
 
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MoneyDoc

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From what I have read (mostly the first 20 pages), several forum members started to share their observations and fears about covid as early as one month ago, not because they wanted it to be bad, but because they wanted to raise awareness so that other members could take some preventive measures at their level if they thought that it would be best.

And I'm thankful to all of them for that (@Bekit, @ChickenHawk, @lowtek, just to name a few)
Right and I was not referring to members on here. Just the general public. You should come see the people around me... I honestly just want to fly out to Dubai at this point.
 

ChickenHawk

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I think it is either coincidental (not conspiracy) or under-reporting, but it is interesting how Russia seems to be minimally affected thus far.
Russia closed its border with China on Jan. 30 to protect their own citizens. In contrast, on Feb. 1, the mayor of Florence Italy responded to the virus by initiating "Hug a Chinese Day", encouraging Italian citizens to hug Chinese people and post the pix on social media.

Fast forward seven weeks, and here we are.
 

Rivoli

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Russia closed its border with China on Jan. 30 to protect their own citizens. In contrast, on Feb. 1, the mayor of Florence Italy responded to the virus by initiating "Hug a Chinese Day", encouraging Italian citizens to hug Chinese people and post the pix on social media.

Fast forward seven weeks, and here we are.
God that is hilarious.
 
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Jon L

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Does anyone know if randomized testing is being done here in the US? And if its not, is there a plan to institute it?

The debate for and against massive shutdowns of the economy is interesting and all, but none of us (including the experts) will know much of anything concrete until we can definitively say 'this is how many people are infected with the virus, and they are in these locations.' And, we can't do that unless we have random testing.
 

GIlman

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What are we asking? When you look up the death rate of something, aren’t we talking about directly contributable?

No, causal vs attributable are different.

If someone is in a horrible car crash, has their leg amputated, gets a horrible blood infection and dies 1 day after the car crash. Would you say they died from the car crash or the infection? Technically the cause of death would be blood infection, but the reason they got the blood infection was because they got into a horrible car crash. Had they never had the crash they would have never experienced the infection. A led to B. Had A not occurred neither would have B.

Based on your argument, this person died of an infection, totally ignoring the car crash, but the infection was not independent, in fact it was DEPENDENT on the car crash having occurred.

The analogy is exactly the same in this case.
 

Jon L

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No, causal vs attributable are different.

If someone is in a horrible car crash, has their leg amputated, gets a horrible blood infection and dies 1 day after the car crash. Would you say they died from the car crash or the infection? Technically the cause of death would be blood infection, but the reason they got the blood infection was because they got into a horrible car crash. Had they never had the crash they would have never experienced the infection. A led to B. Had A not occurred neither would have B.

Based on your argument, this person died of an infection not due to a car crash, but the infection was not independent, in fact it was DEPENDENT on A.

The analogy is exactly the same in this case.
I think they died because of low blood pressure, not the infection or septic shock. Damn that low blood pressure.
 

.B.

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Korea's numbers are interesting because they pretty much test everyone surrounding a confirmed patient.
Did you sneeze and came out positive with Corona? Your family, your friends, your coworkers, the people in the supermarket you shop in... Everyone gets notified, tested, quarantined and followed.
This skews the numbers both ways, though. They know exactly how many cases they have, and that gives us an idea about the true mortality rate. But because they do know exactly who and how many cases they have, they can focus all their efforts on controlling the spread and give their patients the best healthcare possible.

Each country is really a bag on its own. Some countries like Germany and SK did an excellent job and will probably barely get affected by this. Others like, Italy/Spain, will be the model we study in the future for what NOT to do in a pandemic.

There are two schools of thought these days. Complete lockdown for months, or "F*** it, open back everything and let these sniffles run their course". Each country is taking various measures leaning towards one side of the spectrum or the other, and only the future will really tell which approach was the best anyway.

If there is one lesson to be learned from all this, though, it's to always save for a rainy day. Even if the virus turns out to be an overhyped dud, the market rushes and the general panic will affect every business, no matter the kind.


In addition to what you observe for Korea:

-) Singapore: one of the first countries to be hit,
but they had excellent proactive measures in place BEFORE the start of the pandemic.
As a result, every suspect would be tested, quarantined and monitored early.

Result: they only have 683 infected and they only got their first 2 deaths this week!
31551


-) On the other side of the spectrum, in Wuhan out of their first batch of 40 people identified with covid19 in January, 15% died. Even though the hospital was not overwhelmed yet. So they had the hospital beds, the care, the respirators etc.

31549
source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext

Of course it was only a small batch of people.
Maybe not statistically valid.
But that was when they still had time to write detailed reports before being overwhelmed with cases.

So to come back to the never ending discussion of "what is the actual death rate"

Both those situations may indicate that being able to monitor someone infected early and giving proper care early gives better chances of survival.

And for that, the country must have enough of the right hospital resources available.
And that is only possible with proactive measures in place to keep the number of infected people low.

If on the other hand you wait to have respiratory problems to go to the hospital, you may end up with the higher mortality rate, like Wuahn had with their first "batch" of infected people.

Then again, I'm not a doctor and not a scientist.

My conclusion is also, in doubt, better safe than sorry: I will do my best not to get it.
 

GIlman

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I think they died because of low blood pressure, not the infection or septic shock. Damn that low blood pressure.

Dang, you be right...My bad :)
 
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NovaAria

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Does anyone know if randomized testing is being done here in the US? And if its not, is there a plan to institute it?

Like everything it touches, bureaucracy ruined the opportunity for this one. Test kits can either be bought, or can be made locally in any lab with qualified personnel.
To go back to South Korea's example. A private company made test kits and got them approved for patient use within a week. In the US, Trump had to personally lessen the red tape needed after more than a 100 virologists wrote a letter to Congress about the FDA's requirements.

Basically, it comes back to the good old problem: Government inefficiency. SK had companies proving that their tests worked before putting them to use, the US had labs sacrificing lambs to Odin and waiting for the stars to allign before getting their tests approved.
 

Rivoli

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No, causal vs attributable are different.

If someone is in a horrible car crash, has their leg amputated, gets a horrible blood infection and dies 1 day after the car crash. Would you say they died from the car crash or the infection? Technically the cause of death would be blood infection, but the reason they got the blood infection was because they got into a horrible car crash. Had they never had the crash they would have never experienced the infection. A led to B. Had A not occurred neither would have B.

Based on your argument, this person died of an infection, totally ignoring the car crash, but the infection was not independent, in fact it was DEPENDENT on the car crash having occurred.

The analogy is exactly the same in this case.

The average person who hasn’t had 3 heart attacks is trying to understand how many deaths have been abused by COVID 19. It’s not really accurate to count someone who has THREE co-morbidities in that analysis
 

GIlman

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Does anyone know if randomized testing is being done here in the US? And if its not, is there a plan to institute it?

The debate for and against massive shutdowns of the economy is interesting and all, but none of us (including the experts) will know much of anything concrete until we can definitively say 'this is how many people are infected with the virus, and they are in these locations.' And, we can't do that unless we have random testing.

It's not really randomized, but surveillance...or at least that's what we call it in the medical industry. Probably you mean the same thing.

But apparently in Telluride, they were doing surveillance testing on the town following an outbreak that involved a bunch of children under 4.

Actually what needs to be done is a 2 part concurrent study. First do the actual COVID 19 virus test to look for the virus, and at the same time test for the Antibody to see if they have been infected and recovered.

All of these models are pretty much crap, this data set repeated in multiple places and analyzed will give you a much much more accurate view of what's going on. Models are totally unpredictable, find a model you like, there's one to support any position.
 
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GIlman

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The average person who hasn’t had 3 heart attacks is trying to understand how many deaths have been abused by COVID 19. It’s not really accurate to count someone who has THREE co-morbidities in that analysis

Again, you are speaking of things you are not educated in. One or 3 heart attacks is one comorbidity listed under Coronary Artery Disease - each heart attack is not considered an independent comorbidity. For three comorbidities you have to have say Coronary Heart Disease, Hypertension (High Blood Pressure), and Asthma. But again, the question isn't what underlying diseases they have or do not have, the question is if they would have died had they never been infected with Coronavirus.

Yes, a couple or people were on deaths doorstep, and pneumonia or not they would have died in the short term. However, saying 9 out of 10 deaths, like you claim, were this it the case ... is absurd and not supported by any data.
 
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Jon L

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It's not really randomized, but surveillance...or at least that's what we call it in the medical industry. Probably you mean the same thing.

But apparently in Telluride, they were doing surveillance testing on the town following an outbreak that involved a bunch of children under 4.

Actually what needs to be done is a 2 part concurrent study. First do the actual COVID 19 virus test to look for the virus, and at the same time test for the Antibody to see if they have been infected and recovered.

All of these models are pretty much crap, this data set repeated in multiple places and analyzed will give you a much much more accurate view of what's going on. Models are totally unpredictable, find a model you like, there's one to support any position.
randomized is great, but I'll take surveillance above what we have now.

I agree with you on the models. Like that London study quoted earlier in this thread - the authors are now playing both sides of the field... At least they'll be able to say, 'see, I was right!' at the end of all this.
 

Andy Black

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Does anyone know if randomized testing is being done here in the US? And if its not, is there a plan to institute it?

The debate for and against massive shutdowns of the economy is interesting and all, but none of us (including the experts) will know much of anything concrete until we can definitively say 'this is how many people are infected with the virus, and they are in these locations.' And, we can't do that unless we have random testing.
I watched the news in Ireland last night and the medical spokesperson said only 6% of the people that family doctors have recommended to be tested have tested positive. They have therefore added *additional* criteria before someone gets tested, bringing it in line with WHO criteria. Apparently the criteria has changed 4 times already. They want the % to be higher.

There’s limited number of testing kits. There’s limited (but rapidly growing) centres that perform the tests. There’s a backlog that has to be worked through.

Tests are used in conjunction with contact tracing, self-isolation of people who test positive and people they’ve been in contact with. Anyone who hasn’t been tested who displays symptoms are to self-isolate anyway, along with whoever they live with.

The most important part of the puzzle is that the general population practices social distancing, regular hand washing, and proper cough hygiene.

It seems like we’re not trying to find everyone who has the virus but to lock it down where we find it, while the rest of the population practices social distancing to prevent further spread.
 
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Devampre

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Ever wonder if this virus was intentionally released?

I'm not necessarily saying that it was a biological attack to ruin the reputation current political leaders in the upcoming elections (intent for an alleged attack of this caliber could be many different things.) But, with the amount of information and misinformation by numerous media and people in different positions of power trying to uphold a public image; I don't believe ruling out the possibility that this was done by someone with malicious intent is wise.

*tips tinfoil hat*
 

ChrisV

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ChrisV

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on Feb. 1, the mayor of Florence Italy responded to the virus by initiating "Hug a Chinese Day", encouraging Italian citizens to hug Chinese people and post the pix on social media.
I'm sorry but that's pretty funny in retrospect

31556
 
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LightningHelix

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Yes. it is. Some countries are even more. Italy 1 in 10 are dying.

View attachment 31555

To be fair, I'm pretty sure that it's difficult to monitor how many successful recoveries there are (first you have to clearly define what "recovery" really means. No symptoms or no sign of the virus?). That would require those who got tested to return and get tested again to confirm that they are recovered. Which means that the person has to be willing to return to the hospital and the staff have to have another test kit ready at that time.

I'm sure a large chunk of recoveries go undocumented. We could say that the "maximum" potential death rate is 10% in Italy, but its probably less than that.

Is it 0.3% or something like that, I doubt it. Using Diamond Princess as an example, its probably somewhere around 1.6% - 5.5% (depending how many critical survive.)

But that really depends on where that virus get into. All it takes is one person to bring it to a nursing home and you are likely to see several deaths.
 

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The US has surpassed every country with 82,000 confirmed cases.

China has 81,000 confirmed cases with 60,000 recoveries in Hubei
Italy has 80,000 confirmed cases with 11,000 recoveries

US has 82,000 confirmed cases with 600 recoveries.

WE SLACKIN!!!!

Any ideas on how the entrepreneurial-minded folks can help out our healthcare system? It seems to be being put to the test right now... and failing in comparison with other countries.
 
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SD Entrepreneur

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Interesting article... data is king and we do not have enough at this point to make assumptions and perfect decisions. As data continues to become available models, forecasts and other decisions will become clearer and a bit easier to make-

A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data (source)

The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population.
 
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Vigilante

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The US has surpassed every country with 82,000 confirmed cases.

China has 81,000 confirmed cases with 60,000 recoveries in Hubei
Italy has 80,000 confirmed cases with 11,000 recoveries

US has 82,000 confirmed cases with 600 recoveries.

WE SLACKIN!!!!

Any ideas on how the entrepreneurial-minded folks can help out our healthcare system? It seems to be being put to the test right now... and failing in comparison with other countries.

United States has surpassed every country in testing

Nobody believes China’s numbers
 

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