Covid-19 discussion and humor thread [Was: CDC says don't touch your face to avoid Covid19...Vets to the rescue!

[K-9]

9 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

I'm surprised only 30% are worried about having to go to work while sick.

 

A lot of people are rightly worried about the impact on their financial situation; I wonder if some of our leaders translate that to "therefore they all want to go back to work ASAP"?  Most of the small business owners I've been in contact with are scared of the impact on their businesses and sick about the impact on their employees, but they don't want to reopen because then they're scared about their employees getting sick or about spreading illness.  They recognize it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

Better to be damned if you don’t in this case. 

6 minutes ago, BillsFan4 said:

 

Why this isn’t glaringly obvious to everyone is beyond comprehension. It is willful ignorance. 

[B-Man]

 

[K-9]

I wonder if the situation in Mississippi, where the governor signed an executive order superseding local authorities’ ability to close businesses, will be a microcosm of a federal order to do the same nationally in a few weeks. 

[BillsFan4]

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/25/21193670/trump-easter-coronavirus-isolation-relax-rules-economy-social-distancing

‘Relaxing isolation rules won’t help the economy, say economists’

 

 

 

[MJS]

11 minutes ago, BillsFan4 said:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/25/21193670/trump-easter-coronavirus-isolation-relax-rules-economy-social-distancing

‘Relaxing isolation rules won’t help the economy, say economists’

 

Stocks have actually been way, way up the past few days. Probably a result of the impending stimulus package. But I bet they drop again soon.

[K-9]

1 minute ago, BillsFan4 said:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/25/21193670/trump-easter-coronavirus-isolation-relax-rules-economy-social-distancing

‘Relaxing isolation rules won’t help the economy, say economists’

 

 

 

This concept put forth by Glen Beck, Dan Patrick and others that the “economy” is “America” and “America” is the “economy” is strange. The economy will recover like it always has. I wish I could say the same for people with upper respiratory infections. 

[John in Jax]

1 hour ago, B-Man said:

 

WOW! This is AMAZING.

[B-Man]

 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

6 minutes ago, B-Man said:

 

 

??

I guess it's being a party-pooper, but ya know, they could have been asked to do this back in February....in which case, doctors, nurses and first responders might all be equipped with face shields today and less likely to fall ill.....horse barn left locked, I know

[K-9]

8 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

??

I guess it's being a party-pooper, but ya know, they could have been asked to do this back in February....in which case, doctors, nurses and first responders might all be equipped with face shields today and less likely to fall ill.....horse barn left locked, I know

Good point about the timing and, while it’s too late for some areas, this can really benefit areas that are still ahead of the curve. I read somewhere that Nike is gonna produce PPE but I don’t know if that’s true or not. 

[Halloween Land]

2 hours ago, BillsFan4 said:

 

Best doctor in the world! Just a really nice guy that is working his but off! 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/21194485/public-health-distancing-state-federal-power-trump-coronavirus-covid-19

 

Info about roles and responsibilities (excerpts of longer article)

(...)

During a public health crisis like this one, they [governors and local officials] are the ones who have the final say, says Ross Silverman, professor of health policy and management at Indiana University. “Public health powers are generally handled at the state level,” he says. The federal government plays a major role in resource allocation and can offer states suggestions and expertise, but state and local governments are largely responsible for on-the-ground decision-making.  “For the most part, when we have public health concerns, they arise mostly at the local and state level. The way the system is constructed really reflects that history as far as public health is concerned,” Silverman says.

Legally, the states can maintain social distancing orders and business closures, even if Trump says that they shouldn’t, but that can create communication problems. “It sends really mixed messages,” Silverman says. (...)
 

While states can make their own decisions about the types of public health responses they think are necessary, they’re reliant on resources and regulations from the federal government during an unprecedented crisis like the COIVD-19 pandemic. For example: states had to wait for COVID-19 tests to be approved and manufactured at the federal level. Mismanagement and errors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention meant they had to wait longer to receive federal tests, and Food and Drug Administration regulations meant they (State and local DOH, Universities) weren’t allowed to make their own for weeks. (...)
 

The federal government also, in theory, has access to reserves of drugs and protective equipment through the Strategic National Stockpile. States do not have direct access to the stockpile. The federal government can put pressure on companies to produce things like masks, either informally or under the Defense Production Act, which lets the president require companies to take on federal contracts for certain items. It also has a far more extensive and flexible budget. “States respond to the crisis first and foremost with the resources they have,” Silverman says. “The way it’s set up to work is that the feds provide a boost, and are the backup if states run out of something.”

In this crisis, though, states have struggled to access that boost. The national stockpile is more limited than the situation requires, Trump hasn’t used the Defense Production Act to boost manufacturing of masks and ventilators, and the federal government has largely left the states to negotiate for and purchase supplies on their own.

 

 

[Hardhatharry]

Over 80k cases int he US and by tomorrow will pass China and Italy.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

This article contains some good factual information about different public policy scenarios and their potential impact on the current epidemic.

 

The Atlantic, of course, is biased in its political views, which probably biases the writing in ways I'm not well equipped to detect.   Please try to read it for the facts and the productive suggestions, which as far as I can tell are verifiably correct and expert-endorsed (I could not find another article that put them all together - if anyone has one, send it to me please).  Keep in mind that when public health and epidemiology experts are  speaking of "worse" etc, they are speaking of verifiable factual actions that were taken or not taken.

 

If you feel it is factually incorrect, please let me know.  Be aware knee-jerk political comments here will be shot out the airlock.  Take it over to PPP if that's your need.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/

 

“No matter what, a virus [like SARS-CoV-2] was going to test the resilience of even the most well-equipped health systems,” says Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious-diseases physician at the Boston University School of Medicine. More transmissible and fatal than seasonal influenza, the new coronavirus is also stealthier, spreading from one host to another for several days before triggering obvious symptoms. To contain such a pathogen, nations must develop a test and use it to identify infected people, isolate them, and trace those they’ve had contact with. That is what South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong did to tremendous effect. It is what the United States did not.

(....)
In a crucial month when the American caseload shot into the tens of thousands, only hundreds of people were tested. That a biomedical powerhouse like the U.S. should so thoroughly fail to create a very simple diagnostic test was, quite literally, unimaginable. “I’m not aware of any simulations that I or others have run where we [considered] a failure of testing,” says Alexandra Phelan of Georgetown University, who works on legal and policy issues related to infectious diseases.
(....)
A pandemic-preparedness office that was part of the National Security Council was dissolved in 2018. On January 28, Luciana Borio, who was part of that team, urged the government to “act now to prevent an American epidemic,” and specifically to work with the private sector to develop fast, easy diagnostic tests. But with the office shuttered, those warnings were published in The Wall Street Journal, rather than spoken into the president’s ear. Instead of springing into action, America sat idle.

(....)

America has mishandled the COVID-19 crisis to a substantially worse degree than what every health expert I’ve spoken with had feared. “Much worse,” said Ron Klain, who coordinated the U.S. response to the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014. “Beyond any expectations we had,” said Lauren Sauer, who works on disaster preparedness at Johns Hopkins Medicine. “As an American, I’m horrified,” said Seth Berkley, who heads Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. “The U.S. may end up with the worst outbreak in the industrialized world.”

[as Hard Hat Harry said, by the end of the week we will overtake China and Italy for # of cases, and reportedly we are still only testing a fraction of symptomatic people]

(....)

Having fallen behind, it will be difficult—but not impossible—for the United States to catch up. To an extent, the near-term future is set because COVID-19 is a slow and long illness. People who were infected several days ago will only start showing symptoms now, even if they isolated themselves in the meantime. Some of those people will enter intensive-care units in early April.
(....)
Italy and Spain offer grim warnings about the future. Hospitals are out of room, supplies, and staff. Unable to treat or save everyone, doctors have been forced into the unthinkable: rationing care (...)The U.S. has fewer hospital beds per capita than Italy. A study released by a team at Imperial College London concluded that if the pandemic is left unchecked, those beds will all be full by late April. By the end of June, for every available critical-care bed, there will be roughly 15 COVID-19 patients in need of one.  By the end of the summer, the pandemic will have directly killed 2.2 million Americans, notwithstanding those who will indirectly die as hospitals are unable to care for the usual slew of heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents. This is the worst-case scenario. To avert it, four things need to happen—and quickly.
-The first and most important is to rapidly produce masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment [to keep HCW healthy] (...some mfrs already making equipment, but invoke the Defense Production Act to get more of them on board and to control prices and distribution...)  A “massive logistics and supply-chain operation [is] now needed across the country,” says Thomas Inglesby of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. That can’t be managed by small and inexperienced teams scattered throughout the White House. The solution, he says, is to tag in the Defense Logistics Agency—a 26,000-person group that prepares the U.S. military for overseas operations and that has assisted in past public-health crises, including the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
-This agency (Defense Logistics Agency) can also coordinate the second pressing need: a massive rollout of COVID-19 tests. Those tests have been slow to arrive because of five separate shortages: of masks to protect people administering the tests; of nasopharyngeal swabs for collecting viral samples; of extraction kits for pulling the virus’s genetic material out of the samples; of chemical reagents that are part of those kits; and of trained people who can give the tests. (...) As capacity expands, tests must be used carefully. The first priority, says Marc Lipsitch of Harvard, is to test health-care workers and hospitalized patients, allowing hospitals to quell any ongoing fires. Only later, once the immediate crisis is slowing, should tests be deployed in a more widespread way.

--These measures will take time, during which the pandemic will either accelerate beyond the capacity of the health system or slow to containable levels. Its course—and the nation’s fate—now depends on the third need, which is social distancing. Think of it this way: There are now only two groups of Americans. Group A includes everyone involved in the medical response, whether that’s treating patients, running tests, or manufacturing supplies. Group B includes everyone else, and their job is to buy Group A more time. Group B must now “flatten the curve” by physically isolating themselves from other people to cut off chains of transmission. Given the slow fuse of COVID-19, to forestall the future collapse of the health-care system, these seemingly drastic steps must be taken immediately, before they feel proportionate, and they must continue for several weeks. [basically, until PPE and testing is in place]

Persuading a country to voluntarily stay at home is not easy, and without clear guidelines from the White House, mayors, governors, and business owners have been forced to take their own steps. Some states have banned large gatherings or closed schools and restaurants. At least 21 have now instituted some form of mandatory quarantine, compelling people to stay at home. And yet many citizens continue to crowd into public spaces.

-In these moments, when the good of all hinges on the sacrifices of many, clear coordination matters—the fourth urgent need. The importance of social distancing must be impressed upon a public who must also be reassured and informed.

The whole article is good, and I encourage everyone to read it, but I do recognize while I believe the facts are good and the sources legitimate and well-regarded, the writing will strike some as biased.  Please read it anyway and try to work beyond that.

Discussion welcome; again, if you feel it is factually incorrect, please let me know, and again be aware knee-jerk political comments here will be shot out the airlock.  Take it over to PPP and have-at-it if that is your personal need.

[RocCityRoller]

Been a while since I posted here.

 

It is important to note that globally the number of people with Coronavirus is under reported.

There are probably hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people with the virus who show little to no symptoms.

Many show cold or flu type symptoms, or none at all.

They get the virus, feel a bit off or nothing and move on with life.

 

After the pandemic scare is over I am willing to bet 20-50% of the world population will test positive for Coronavirus antibodies, meaning that the person was infected but showed few symptoms, much like swine flu.

 

The good news is that many people with Coronavirus just feel 'sick' or even nothing at all.

The bad news is that many people with little to no symptoms can spread the virus without knowing it.

This is the drive for social distancing, don't infect those weaker than you just because you do not show symptoms.

 

As for the 'epidemic' in NY

NY has conducted far more Coronavirus testing than any other state

Hence it looks like the virus is spreading faster in NY than other states. You can't confirm a case without testing.

 

NY has over 37k confirmed Coronavirus infections

NJ 6800

CA 3247

MI 2805

WA 2600

 

NY also has also tested over 103k people, this accounts for 20% of testing in the USA.

NY 103479

WA 34292

FL  22142

MA 17794

CA 18329

 

It's not possible to have more coronavirus confirmed infected than the count tested.

Since NY has tested more people, the count of people infected looks high.

CA has only tested 18329, they couldn't possibly have 37,000 cases..... but they might.

 

Data from:

https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/state-data-and-policy-actions-to-address-coronavirus/

 

lot's of goodies to how states are responding to coronavirus

also good stats on testing and infected cases.

 

Basing any stats on those ill enough to go to a doctor or hospital admission is faulty.

It skews the bad numbers (hospitalizations and deaths) higher than what is actually happening.

 

We do need to be wary that the cure is not worse than the disease, while trying to protect our most vulnerable.

 

PS almost half a million tests have been conducted in the USA since 3/16. The results have been found to be accurate.

This is why you develop a proper test. almost 500k tests have now been analyzed. I expect that rate to escalate over the next 2-4 weeks.

 

The news and social media will have a field day with the epidemic spreading. The truth is the number of tests being conducted is increasing yielding more confirmed cases.

 

I expect this to plateau in NY and NJ in 2 weeks.

The rest of the USA in 4-6 weeks.

 

and then it will be over

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sundancer]

18 minutes ago, RocCityRoller said:

 

The news and social media will have a field day with the epidemic spreading. The truth is the number of tests being conducted is increasing yielding more confirmed cases.

 

I expect this to plateau in NY and NJ in 2 weeks.

The rest of the USA in 4-6 weeks.

 

and then it will be over

 

 

 

It may slow because we are quarantined, but once we lift that, it will spike unless we are much, much, much more prepared. 

 

On another note, sounds like we are moving to a national view of things as the government will start classifying counties by risk. 

[BringBackFergy]

39 minutes ago, Sundancer said:

 

It may slow because we are quarantined

Isn’t that what “flattening the curve” means....stay inside to slow it so it doesn’t peak at an unmanageable level. That’s what we’re doing...most of us anyway. 

[Sundancer]

3 minutes ago, BringBackFergy said:

Isn’t that what “flattening the curve” means....stay inside to slow it so it doesn’t peak at an unmanageable level. That’s what we’re doing...most of us anyway. 

 

Yes, but quarantining is a TEMPORARY measure and we need to re-open in a way that's ready for the next wave that will happen when we re-open.

 

I'm not knocking the effect of the quarantines, but noting they are not a solution. They are just triage.  

 

[BillsFan4]

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

USA now #1 in coronavirus cases. 

 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

10 minutes ago, BringBackFergy said:

Isn’t that what “flattening the curve” means....stay inside to slow it so it doesn’t peak at an unmanageable level. That’s what we’re doing...most of us anyway. 

 

Yes, I believe that's Sundancer's point - the social distancing is to "flatten the curve" so it stays manageable - but then unless we have measures in place to control it as restrictions are lifted, it will simply peak again.

 

Unless, of course, those who predict a warm-weather diminishment are correct - but then, be prepared for another surge in fall.