Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[TVScout]

3 hours ago, mission27 said:

https://time.com/5818547/ventilators-coronavirus/ for example

In layman's terms the issue is unlike bacterial pneumonia once you go on a ventilator for COVID it could be weeks before you're off it and the O2 pressure damages the lungs + other potential complications, so it may not be the ideal treatment even in some very severe cases

New York City says 80% of people who go on a vent do not survive and I guess some doctors are suggesting the vents are doing more harm than good 

Sounds like folks are exploring other therapeutic approaches to getting oxygen levels up and trying to avoid ventilators when at all possible

Fee article:

I spent six days on a ventilator with covid-19. It saved me, but my life is not the same.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/09/my-near-death-experience-ventilator/?utm_campaign=wp_for_you&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_personalizedforyou

[mission27]

Just now, ramssuperbowl99 said:

No model is the history of models just says "millions are going to die". The models which said we could see tens of millions infected and millions dead if we don't do anything. That model was accurately reported by the media to get people to start social isolation. You don't shut the global economy down because a few thousand people die of the flu.

Eh, there's been a lot of subsequent and very valid criticism of the Imperial model and personally I think it was completely jacked up

Just like you shouldn't start giving everyone in the country a drug you don't know works because of one study that hasn't been peer reviewed its also arguably irresponsible to shutdown the global economy and billions of people's lives because of one alarming study that hasn't been published yet and hasn't stood up to peer review and I do believe there was a rush to pretty extreme responses in the wake of Imperial that led to all the dominoes falling (it would have been hard for any country to hold out and risk becoming a pariah for months or years) 

My personal view is in the final analysis, in the years to come, people will look back and say three things:

1. We reacted too slowly, initially 

2. When we did react it was a pretty sudden and extreme overreaction in the other direction.  We basically decided overnight we would accept a once in a century global economic depression to prevent a worst case scenario we didn't know was coming and potentially did more harm from this reaction than the virus would have caused unabated 

3. There was a much smarter way to go about it that would have balanced avoiding the activities with the greatest chance of spreading the virus with not shutting down the world and next time that's what we're going to do 

But we'll see

[ramssuperbowl99]

10 minutes ago, mission27 said:

My personal view is in the final analysis, in the years to come, people will look back and say three things:

1. We reacted too slowly, initially 

This is entirely true.

Quote

2. When we did react it was a pretty sudden and extreme overreaction in the other direction.  We basically decided overnight we would accept a once in a century global economic depression to prevent a worst case scenario we didn't know was coming and potentially did more harm from this reaction than the virus would have caused unabated 

We were seeing cases double every three days and it still took about a month to start seeing a level off. If your pie in the sky CFR is right, then maybe history says we overreacted.

But without knowing the CFR, I would say if anything we undereacted. We were slow to start wearing masks, we still aren't taking temperatures at grocery stores, etc. etc. Even now our adherence to social distancing isn't nearly as adhered to as we'd like.

Quote

3. There was a much smarter way to go about it that would have balanced avoiding the activities with the greatest chance of spreading the virus with not shutting down the world and next time that's what we're going to do 

That's only possible when you can real time test and selectively quarantine people. We're at 30k cases per day, so really we're at least an order of magnitude away from really being able to track this thing. And we're still seeing resistance to the type of systematic testing that would be the way to manage this "smarter strategy" that you're talking about.

Edited April 10, 2020 by ramssuperbowl99

[rob_shadows]

26 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

The truly sad part of these back to back sentences is that the 2nd one shows you don't understand it at all and still haven't read past the final result. 

No model is the history of models just says "millions are going to die". The models which said we could see tens of millions infected and millions dead if we don't do anything. That model was accurately reported by the media to get people to start social isolation. You don't shut the global economy down because a few thousand people die of the flu.

Don't blame your laziness to read past the first sentence or your inability to understand how assumptions work in mathematics on the media.

I just personally think you could have gotten people to comply with the recommendations without working them into a panic, you seem to disagree and that's fine. 

We really aren't as far apart on this whole thing as you seem to think, we both agree it's a serious situation. We both agree the social distancing is working and should continue. We just disagree on whether or not speculative numbers should be thrown around so freely. And to me that's not a massive disagreement and certainly not worth getting into any kind of heated argument about with someone I've always liked as a forum poster so I'm going to do ahead and agree to disagree on that part and get back to waiting (Im)patiently for my final fantasy 7 remake pre-order to unlock.

Edited April 10, 2020 by rob_shadows

[rob_shadows]

And for the record I'm not saying this as someone who hasn't been effected at all by this whole thing. As I said the lockdown doesn't effect my much because I'm antisocial anyway but I did miss a week of work (unpaid) at my own suggestion because I came down with a cough and wanted to be cautious so don't get the wrong idea and think I'm not taking anything seriously.

Edited April 10, 2020 by rob_shadows

[mission27]

31 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

I agree with everything except your hopes and dreams that the CFR is going to be that low or that we will resume normalcy shortly.

Every population we've looked at in a controlled way has shown a CFR far far below 1% and hospitalization rates in the low single digits, if not 1%. So maybe its not 0.2%, but I can't imagine its anywhere near the WHO number.  That would be truly shocking to me and also to most epidemiologists who have ventured a guess here and to the public health experts including our beloved Dr. Fauci.  IMO its somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% but we'll see.  

And it depends what we mean by normal and soon.  We aren't going to stop living under the cloud of coronavirus until its eradicated, but since we don't know when it will be eradicated (could be never!) ,we need to get to a point where people can live their full lives anyway.  And living full lives can't mean people stay home or go outside occasionally for work or exercise.  That's called prison.  We live under the cloud of car accidents and cancer and HIV / AIDS and mass shootings and terrorism and all sorts of other things and people still see their friends and family and date and start families and buy houses and go to school and work and church and play sports.  We need to figure out how to get there even if this disease is still in our community. 

Resuming "normalcy" shortly, imho, is not a maybe thing.  Its a we do it or our way of life is irretrievably shattered thing.  It has to be done in a gradual way and we need to vigilant on testing.  But I just don't see how telling someone they need to stay home or not travel or only venture out for 'essential' activities for the next 6 or 12 or 18 months is a solution.  That will be the end of us.  There are people in Wuhan now getting on airplanes, and trains, going to school, going to malls, restaurants and bars in Shanghai and Beijing are open again.  If the CCP didn't think they could extend these restrictions longer in a country with authoritarian government and state run enterprise, there's no way its going to fly here.  

31 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

I would argue the worst thing segments of our media did in this was downplay and attempt to politicize this issue in the early going where social distancing could have helped slow down or maybe even prevent the critical mass of cases that lead to exponential growth. But people who constantly look to criticize the media aren't going to talk about that.

I 100% agree

This is classic human nature:

People everywhere throughout history have a tendency to deny a problem exists as long as they can and then at the last possible minute realize its a cluster and overreact by taking things to the other extreme

This is exactly what our leaders across the world have done here

In this case though I'd argue the media (with the exception of a few outlets) was pretty consistently on the doomsday train from mid-late February and was actually far ahead of public officials, and good for them, but I'd argue what they're doing now is not particularly helpful.  The alarm has been raised.  What we need now is level headedness and plan to get back to our lives, not alarmist talk about permanent suffering 

I see Dr. Fauci saying very sensible things about precautions we will need to take for the next months and maybe years but also saying he thinks people will be able to go on vacations this summer and live normal lives and then the media headlines are "Fauci says we will never shake hands again"

I see Justin Trudeau on TV saying we will not return to 'full' normalcy until there is a vaccine but also saying in the coming weeks and months things will start to get back to normal as this particular outbreak ends and then the media headlines are "Trudeau says we will not be back to normal for years"

This spinning and sensationalizing things, its really not helpful.  Its going to make people depressed and make people question whether what we are doing is worth it.  There's a better way

[mission27]

27 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

That's only possible when you can real time test and selectively quarantine people. We're at 30k cases per day, so really we're at least an order of magnitude away from really being able to track this thing. And we're still seeing resistance to the type of systematic testing that would be the way to manage this "smarter strategy" that you're talking about.

Right but we're a country of 350m people.  So you are talking about less than .01% of the population getting sick every day.  Its a big number but its no bigger than the European countries per capita.  In terms of Italy or Spain, that corresponds to about 5-6k new cases a day, which they hit and exceeded and are already clearly on the other side of.  The EU as a whole was regularly reporting 30k-40k or more cases per day for weeks but those numbers are dropping and Europe is talking about easing distancing in the coming weeks.  

We're clearly a couple weeks behind and I'm not saying people are going to go back to their lives tomorrow or Monday or the week after.  But I think sometime in May is realistic that these restrictions will and should start to get lifted and we will likely be living 90% of our normal lives by the summer, with the difference being people who show any symptoms will need to be tested, you'll see more people wearing masks in public, few large public gatherings, we will need to be ready to institute restrictions in metro areas if we see new outbreaks developing, and need to restrict travel from countries where we see large outbreaks developing

[naptownskinsfan]

59 minutes ago, TVScout said:

Fee article:

I spent six days on a ventilator with covid-19. It saved me, but my life is not the same.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/09/my-near-death-experience-ventilator/?utm_campaign=wp_for_you&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_personalizedforyou

It scares me too.  A very close friend of mine who passed away a year ago had a heart issue that required surgery two years before, and he went in last year with a recurrence and he never came out of the hospital.  The amount of time he spent on a ventilator stunned me, and in the end, I think the trauma from it just caused his body to give up. 

[mission27]

15 minutes ago, mission27 said:

Right but we're a country of 350m people.  So you are talking about less than .01% of the population getting sick every day.  Its a big number but its no bigger than the European countries per capita.  In terms of Italy or Spain, that corresponds to about 5-6k new cases a day, which they hit and exceeded and are already clearly on the other side of.  The EU as a whole was regularly reporting 30k-40k or more cases per day for weeks but those numbers are dropping and Europe is talking about easing distancing in the coming weeks.  

We're clearly a couple weeks behind and I'm not saying people are going to go back to their lives tomorrow or Monday or the week after.  But I think sometime in May is realistic that these restrictions will and should start to get lifted and we will likely be living 90% of our normal lives by the summer, with the difference being people who show any symptoms will need to be tested, you'll see more people wearing masks in public, few large public gatherings, we will need to be ready to institute restrictions in metro areas if we see new outbreaks developing, and need to restrict travel from countries where we see large outbreaks developing

One final point on this

I hear some people suggesting that our priority should be getting people 'back to work' and that quote on quote non-essential quality of life stuff like letting people go out to dinner or travel  is less important 

1. People are not going to accept that.  They are not going to accept being let out of prison once a day to go work 8 hours and then sent back home.  That's unrealistic.  As soon as you have people doing that, they will want to and eventually just decide to resume their lives. 

2. That sort of suggestion shows a very fundamental misunderstanding of the economy of the US, Canada, UK, and EU.  We are consumer driven.  Until we have people back living their lives and doing 'non-essential' things we wont be able to send people back to work because the economy will be gutted 

[mission27]

4/9/2020 MoL Scores:

"Looking at it now
It all seems so simple
We were lying on your couch
I remember

You took a Polaroid of us
Then discovered (then discovered)
The rest of the world was black and white
But we were in screaming color"

- Taylor Swift

Today parts of Europe slow down in their descent but Spain and Italy get good numbers and the state by state data gets weird

Tier 1: Outbreak under control, safe to begin relaxing social distancing measures

South Korea: 1.5 (remarkable what they've been able to do, they should give us all hope)

Australia: 2.4 

China: 3.3 (a little bit of an uptick the last few days, partly just a result of the reported active case numbers we are working off being so low, but some worry of a spike in cases near the border with Russia - watch this one)

Tier 2: New case growth is minimal suggesting social distancing is working, likely a few weeks away from breaking into tier 1

Austria: 3.2 (getting there)

Hong Kong: 3.3 (even more so than Austria I'm tempted to put HK in Tier 1, their daily case numbers are really low and it looks like the wave 2 has come to an end)

Italy: 4.3 (another day and another new low for Italy)

Switzerland: 5.3

Israel: 5.7 

Iran: 6.4* (if you believe the numbers they've peaked in active cases, MoL aint so sure)

Germany: 6.5 (active cases continue to inch down, looks almost certain 4/6 as the Apex)

Portugal: 6.7

Spain: 6.8 (lowest new cases since March 22nd, almost 3 weeks ago, and for the first time active cases were virtually flat, think we are at the apex)

Philippines: 6.8 (#seasonality)

Netherlands: 7.0

France: 8.3 (no choice but to move them up, the data is still really messy but occam's razor says they're slowing down just as much as the rest of Europe and the blips are due to changes in reporting methodology) 

Global: 8.7

Ireland: 8.9

Sweden: 9.2 (sort of a scary uptick, their MoL is still below where it was 3-4 days ago but maybe headed the wrong way again)

Belgium: 9.4

Tier 3: Countries in this group that are showing increased MoLs have the potential to go deep into the danger zones, but countries with falling MoLs may only be a couple of days from tier 2 status and may have already peaked in gross # of new cases

USA: 10.7 (damn close to jumping into Tier 2, maybe a day or two away, we are getting close to apex IMO)

UK: 12.4 (great news with Boris getting out of ICU)

Canada: 12.4 

Japan: 14.4 (still dropping, it looks like they might pull out of this without the most extreme measures at least not for more than a couple weeks)

Brazil: 15.9 

Turkey: 16.2 

Tier 4: Aggressive growth, still likely have not peaked in single day cases, and likely a week or two minimum from peak in deaths (however many of these countries are still slowing down)

India: 19.2 (the data is a mess but its really concerning, MoL sending our thoughts and prayers to the people of India and best wishes that this doesn't get worse)

USA State Level MoLs

Note there are some big inconsistencies in the data today in Washington state and Minny.  Do not believe those numbers right now.  South Dakota continues to be a **** show, as does the Wilmington-Philly-DC area.  To our doubters like @mistakey etc. I find it interesting the MoL was the first to point out this hot spot, told everyone Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci would bring this up yesterday, and now they've spoken about it at length two days in a row.  

The MoL would like to thank everyone for their contributions to this important work including @ET80 @acowboys62 @dtait93 @Dome @naptownskinsfan @kingseanjohn @Malfatron @Shady Slim @malagabears @daboyle250 @vikesfan89 @ramssuperbowl99 @sdrawkcab321 @Nazgul @kingseanjohn and the others who love us so much

We'd even like to thank @pwny @Glen for their critical attitude because of the attention it brings to the great work MoL is doing 

I would tag Webby as well, who makes this all possible, but I do not want to get banned

@TLO

[dtait93]

43 minutes ago, mission27 said:

I hear some people suggesting that our priority should be getting people 'back to work' and that quote on quote non-essential quality of life stuff like letting people go out to dinner or travel  is less important 

And the people saying “non-essential” quality of life stuff is less important are, sorry to say (not really), idiots. Tell that to the people who run businesses like our family friends - who were running a very successful wedding and events setup/rental company who had every single event cancel on them in the matter of a week and a half last month - and are struggling to pay their bills while they watch their savings vanish. “Non-essential” businesses are VERY essential. Especially when they are shutting down left and right. There is hardly any work out there for these sort of people when their businesses are shut down, and with it happening to so many people (don’t forget all the laid off employees), it makes it harder for them to get a job at the, “essential” places of work because they’re all competing against each other.

Edited April 10, 2020 by dtait93

[squire12]

@mission27

Curious on your thoughts whether the Easter holiday weekend will induce an uptick in cases 5 -10 days out?

Temptation for some gatherings with family and churches.

Hopefully not the case, but people have a way of making bad decisions.

[mission27]

Just now, squire12 said:

@mission27

Curious on your thoughts whether the Easter holiday weekend will induce an uptick in cases 5 -10 days out?

Temptation for some gatherings with family and churches.

Hopefully not the case, but people have a way of making bad decisions.

Its certainly something I'm worried about, also worried about the Passover holiday in orthodox Jewish communities in the US that seem to be more resistant to the distancing rules as well as in Israel (although their government is cracking down very hard and is probably in a better position to do so)

My hope is the vast majority of people will do the right thing and observe the holidays virtually, if this was a month from now it'd be a different story IMHO, but we aren't at a point yet where we can all be gathered in churches and synagogues without people dying and I think most people get that

[mission27]

Your big risk tbh is going to be in rural communities and there is a lot less of this in rural communities although this could certainly cause some mini outbreaks to develop in places that aren't prepared to cope with it

But I don't think its going to be more than a blip or materially alter our timeline 

[Xenos]

2 hours ago, rob_shadows said:

I understood it perfectly, I also understood that there was no reason to create a panic by telling people millions were going to die when at that particular time it really WAS just speculation with no models backing it up because it had literally just started spreading and there were no models to even create yet. 

The only models that were available at that time were models based on what was happening in other countries and there was no evidence whatsoever to suggest a death toll in the millions. 

You can say "well that's what would have happened if we didn't do anything!" All you want but there was never a realistic chance we aren't going to do anything. There was a question of how far we were going to go sure, but we were always going to be doing something to slow the spread... No one with half a brain every actually thought no action would be taken.

 

 

I mean our original way was treating it like the flu and thinking that it would just go away by washing our hands and staying home if we were not feeling well. I suppose it was extremely "lucky" that Italy thought the same way as well and became our unfortunate guinea pig.