Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[mission27]

3 minutes ago, squire12 said:

 

access points for the virus into your body is the mucus membranes.   Nose, mouth (respiration vs ingestion) and eyes.  "eating" the virus is a very unlikely way to get infected as the stomach environment is not conducive to the virus surviving.   It would still have to be absorbed somewhere along the digestive tract which is unlikely

The thing that people always bring up when you say this is "then how did it originally spread from animal to human through eating" and idk what the answer is.  My guess is there is a difference between live virus inside tissue that's being served raw shortly after death vs. droplets on the surface of your food?   But I'm sure someone could explain that

 

[diehardlionfan]

41 minutes ago, mission27 said:

Look mission is among the 25m Americans with asthma and has many loved one in other more at risk populations.  I get it.  But those same underlying conditions absolutely exist in populations in Germany, Italy, NYS, and Diamond Princess where we've done more widespread testing and that evidence still gets you to a CFR below 0.5%. 

It seems like some people look at a CFR of say 0.3% and think "sure that's the CFR for a healthy person but for the old and sick its much higher" which is wrong.  For healthy people and young people the CFR is actually orders of magnitude lower because almost none of the numerator is in this population and for the most sick and old its clearly higher.  The CFR is an average and the average person is not a 25 year old in perfect health.  The average person is actually middle aged and has pre-existing conditions.  Its going to be different for everyone, but outside of the very old or very sick the risk is clearly pretty low, including for middle aged people with some risk factors. 

One way to look at it, the median age in Germany is 45.  The majority of 45 year olds almost certainly have at least one risk factor (diabetes, heart disease, obesity, asthma, cancer, smoking, whatever).  So if the CFR in Germany is 0.3% theoretically then the CFR for a 45 year old with a risk factor is probably also in that ballpark (or more likely lower because of the non-linear skew we see towards the elderly) 

To look at it a different way, WHO calculated China's CFR at 2.3%.  If we say the CFR accounting for unreported cases is more like 1/5th of that or around 0.5%, which IMO is still an overstatement, then simplistically you could assume the CFR for each age group is also one fifth of their reported CFR.  Btw I think thats actually understating the CFR for old people and overstating it for anyone under 70, since relatively more of the unreported cases were likely in that younger age range.  But its conservative in this context.  That would get you to the following CFRs:

0-9: 0.00%

10-20: 0.04%

20-49: 0.06%

50-59: 0.26%

60-69: 0.72%

70-79: 1.60%

80+: 2.96%

If we say only 1/10 cases are known, which tbh is probably closer to the truth, then all those numbers get cut in half again and accounting for the above skew of reported cases to old people the 20-49 number is probably even lower.  It wouldn't surprise me if the true CFR of this disease for 20-49 year olds was 0.01% or 0.02%.  That's the vast majority of our working age population.  Is it really reasonable to ask all of these people to stay home for 12-18 months and sacrifice their happiness and wellbeing and economic future indefinitely?  To me that seems like way too extreme of an approach here.  A better approach would be to let younger people get back to work in the next 1-2 months, put in place more traditional public health response as best we can like testing contact tracing and asking people to wear masks in crowded spaces, and continue to provide support to the most at risk folks in the 70+ or 80+ range to the extent those people choose (and it should be a choice) to continue isolating. 

My point wasn’t about your philosophy. My point was the assumptions being used in your risk assessment.

I’m not even talking about your self determined numbers.

Im talking about the lack of data available for this virus. I’m not concerned about hypothetical infection rates etc. I want to see autopsy data and data on survivors pulmonary functions. The data that everyone keeps comparing is largely invalid. We know that death figures in countries that started testing late is invalid because so many died without testing. We know demographics and medical condition are part of the equation and we know that general health in different countries varies. I would suggest average health data most Europeans suffer less health impairments at 45 than average Americans. The U.S. has had falling life expectancy for some time. Last I checked the U.S. ranked 64th or so.

We don’t have data on permanent damage caused by the disease. It’s all well and good to say the young are less vulnerable to death. But there is also risk of impairment.

We know the percentages of Americans with specific diagnosed diseases  and we know the ages. What I’m suggesting is until you can reasonably assess risk you can’t make determinations of impact to younger age groups.Part of the risk assessment is number of people likely to suffer life altering impairment as a result of the disease. Death is only one negative outcome. 

There’s plenty of ways to look at opening up the economy and how fast. I wasn’t offering commentary on any of that simply pointing out that we don’t know what we don’t know. Information is slow to come out yet once it does seems to change. It’s the nature of preliminary research.

This is the ultimate risk management challenge. In order to be successful the strategy has to be developed based on as much real data as is available. Much of that needed data will come post mortem or post recovery. 

 

[diehardlionfan]

12 minutes ago, mission27 said:

The thing that people always bring up when you say this is "then how did it originally spread from animal to human through eating" and idk what the answer is.  My guess is there is a difference between live virus inside tissue that's being served raw shortly after death vs. droplets on the surface of your food?   But I'm sure someone could explain that

 

Raw food and the virus becomes airborne when cutting the food or ripping it apart. Perhaps during butchering, skinning. It’s a good question.

[MacReady]

I personally don’t buy the human eating a bat patient zero theory for that very reason.  I was looking into whether or not it was safe to order pizza and read that it can’t really survive in the stomach, so I don’t know how eating the bat could be the cause.

I’m not outright denying that as the cause, but at the same time I don’t have complete faith in it.  
 

I’m not suggesting it was man made or anything, I just think there’s too much uncertainty to take it as animal consumption being the cause.

[pwny]

15 minutes ago, mission27 said:

The thing that people always bring up when you say this is "then how did it originally spread from animal to human through eating" and idk what the answer is.  My guess is there is a difference between live virus inside tissue that's being served raw shortly after death vs. droplets on the surface of your food?   But I'm sure someone could explain that

 

Do we even know if it originally spread through eating and not by touching an infected bat and then that person touching their eyes?

[vikesfan89]

30 minutes ago, squire12 said:

 

access points for the virus into your body is the mucus membranes.   Nose, mouth (respiration vs ingestion) and eyes.  "eating" the virus is a very unlikely way to get infected as the stomach environment is not conducive to the virus surviving.   It would still have to be absorbed somewhere along the digestive tract which is unlikely

Probably a dumb question but What if you have a cut on your hands?

[dtait93]

2 hours ago, Xenos said:

I think you should just keep copying and pasting this post every time someone thinks the cure is worse than the disease.

So if the cure is going to take as long as many people are suggesting (because we won’t be completely cured from this in a few months), poverty rates will sky rocket. If you look at the suicide statistics from the 2008 recession there was a massive increase because of the increase in economical poverty. The unemployment peak reached 10% during that time and according to the NYT our true unemployment rate currently is closer to 13% and increasing rapidly. 

The longer we go on like this the mental health crisis will be exacerbated through anxiety, debt, home foreclosures, isolation, etc. How many more businesses will be gone forever? It’s not like when this thing is, “over” they just open back up. Many used their life savings to start their business and now everything they worked for is gone. In a month’s time we’re already at 700,000 jobs lost and a $1200 check isn’t sustaining anyone. Domestic and child abuse rates are increasing daily because of the lockdown as well. There are long lasting problems I respectfully don’t think you have considered if you think the cure can’t be worse than the disease.

Edited April 11, 2020 by dtait93

[husker_vikes3]

On 4/8/2020 at 9:52 PM, bucsfan333 said:

RIP, @fretgod99 and @husker_vikes3.

[bucsfan333]

5 minutes ago, husker_vikes3 said:

[pwny]

32 minutes ago, vikesfan89 said:

Probably a dumb question but What if you have a cut on your hands?

There’s no evidence that bloodborne transmission is possible. 

Edited April 11, 2020 by pwny

[pwny]

1 hour ago, naptownskinsfan said:

My concern right now is that many places are mandating gloves to be used by service employees (not just back of house/kitchen) and I vehemently disagree with that. 

Yeah. Unless they are changing gloves exactly as often as they would have been washing their hands—and evidence seems to suggest that people just don’t change gloves constantly—you’re just running the risk of cross contaminating foods with actual food borne pathogens. Doesn’t seem the greatest idea imo. 

[mission27]

41 minutes ago, diehardlionfan said:

My point wasn’t about your philosophy. My point was the assumptions being used in your risk assessment.

I’m not even talking about your self determined numbers.

Im talking about the lack of data available for this virus. I’m not concerned about hypothetical infection rates etc. I want to see autopsy data and data on survivors pulmonary functions. The data that everyone keeps comparing is largely invalid. We know that death figures in countries that started testing late is invalid because so many died without testing. We know demographics and medical condition are part of the equation and we know that general health in different countries varies. I would suggest average health data most Europeans suffer less health impairments at 45 than average Americans. The U.S. has had falling life expectancy for some time. Last I checked the U.S. ranked 64th or so.

We don’t have data on permanent damage caused by the disease. It’s all well and good to say the young are less vulnerable to death. But there is also risk of impairment.

We know the percentages of Americans with specific diagnosed diseases  and we know the ages. What I’m suggesting is until you can reasonably assess risk you can’t make determinations of impact to younger age groups.Part of the risk assessment is number of people likely to suffer life altering impairment as a result of the disease. Death is only one negative outcome. 

There’s plenty of ways to look at opening up the economy and how fast. I wasn’t offering commentary on any of that simply pointing out that we don’t know what we don’t know. Information is slow to come out yet once it does seems to change. It’s the nature of preliminary research.

This is the ultimate risk management challenge. In order to be successful the strategy has to be developed based on as much real data as is available. Much of that needed data will come post mortem or post recovery. 

 

I dont disagree with anything you're saying but while we are learning more and more every day, the damage to people's lives and the economy every day is also growing, we may not have time to get these answers.  Eventually we will need to make decisions, relatively soon imo, in the absence of perfect information

[mission27]

25 minutes ago, dtait93 said:

So if the cure is going to take as long as many people are suggesting (because we won’t be completely cured from this in a few months), poverty rates will sky rocket. If you look at the suicide statistics from the 2008 recession there was a massive increase because of the increase in economical poverty. The unemployment peak reached 10% during that time and according to the NYT our true unemployment rate currently is closer to 13% and increasing rapidly. 

The longer we go on like this the mental health crisis will be exacerbated through anxiety, debt, home foreclosures, isolation, etc. How many more businesses will be gone forever? It’s not like when this thing is, “over” they just open back up. Many used their life savings to start their business and now everything they worked for is gone. In a month’s time we’re already at 700,000 jobs lost and a $1200 check isn’t sustaining anyone. Domestic and child abuse rates are increasing daily because of the lockdown as well. There are long lasting problems I respectfully don’t think you have considered if you think the cure can’t be worse than the disease.

And ultimately life and death is not the only thing that matters

Dooming a large percentage of the population to 12-18 months of isolation followed by years or decades of economic hardship is horrible, regardless of how many people would end up taking their lives.  Overall societal well-being is not just about life expectancy and death rates

I would argue there's absolutely a middle ground.  But 12-18 month lockdown is extreme to the point of being far worse than the 'do nothing' approach tbh 

[bucsfan333]

7 minutes ago, pwny said:

Yeah. Unless they are changing gloves exactly as often as they would have been washing their hands—and evidence seems to suggest that people just don’t change gloves constantly—you’re just running the risk of cross contaminating foods with actual food borne pathogens. Doesn’t seem the greatest idea imo. 

There are people at work that wear masks. But some don't wear them over their noses. And others are constantly touching them and moving them.

All kinda defeats the purpose.

[pwny]

2 minutes ago, bucsfan333 said:

There are people at work that wear masks. But some don't wear them over their noses. And others are constantly touching them and moving them.

All kinda defeats the purpose.

From the sound of it, it’s not just defeating the purpose but potentially making it significantly worse by introducing additional hand to face contact.

 Not a big brain moment.