The Coronavirus Thread...

[lostxn]

Glad to hear you're healthy but I don't think we can trust any numbers China has released

That's fine, the point is respect this fucking virus and keep safe.

 

[skidadl]

Well my COVID19 test was negative and I'm still feeling pretty well. Looks like I just have a fucking cold. Nice timing.

But obviously very relieved because I was super worried about having transmitted it to my father-in-law or some of nursing colleagues. Thank goodness not. Conscience clean.

Now the bad news. Dallas is getting hit pretty hard now. Young people are getting very ill from this thing which is pretty weird and not what we saw in China. I thought it was a just a testing thing. They intubated 3 young people at my hospital today alone. One guy went from talking and coughing to being on a respirator in 4 hours. Frightening.

Our working theory it may be related to smoking/vaping but that's just a guess. All I have to say is don't be cavalier about this shit. You don't want it. It's not the fucking flu. Don't be a moron. Listen to the recs. It's not just your life you're risking.

What were the procedures for getting tested? I've heard it was hard to get a test and expensive to buy.

 

[lostxn]

What were the procedures for getting tested? I've heard it was hard to get a test and expensive to buy.

What you've heard is right. I was a high risk case as a health care worker. My hospital did it for me with a 24 hour turnaround. I actually got tested elsewhere (at a free standing ER) for $2,000 and it was a ONE WEEK turnaround. For fucks sake... That's 2k I likely won't get back without an act of Congress (which we might get).

Starting with me, the hospital created a protocol for testing people going forward so we don't pull healthy people from shifts waiting for the test.

Generally, what we are telling patients is go home and quarantine yourself. We don't test because there is no treatment and the majority of people (80%) can go home and get better. About 20% require hospital admission. They get tested.

There is going to be community drive-through testing setup soon at American Airlines Center. Parkland is also setting something up for themselves. It was supposed to be this last week but they couldn't swing it.

There is one place which I think is the best solution. It's called Everlywell.com. It's an Austin-based company that is testing people by mail. You order the test, they send it to you and you swab yourself and send it back. Then you get your results over the web. This way you don't have to endanger anyone and don't have to wait in line with other sick people who may actually have the disease. It's about $130,

 

[yimyammer]

The only source listed in this article is one tweet from an account ran by the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China

damn, figures it was too good to be true.

what do you think the truth is over there?

I sure dont believe they only have 90,000 cases

 

[yimyammer]

Wolverine!

Love that movie

 

[yimyammer]

Well my COVID19 test was negative and I'm still feeling pretty well. Looks like I just have a fucking cold. Nice timing.

But obviously very relieved because I was super worried about having transmitted it to my father-in-law or some of nursing colleagues. Thank goodness not. Conscience clean.

Now the bad news. Dallas is getting hit pretty hard now. Young people are getting very ill from this thing which is pretty weird and not what we saw in China. I thought it was a just a testing thing. They intubated 3 young people at my hospital today alone. One guy went from talking and coughing to being on a respirator in 4 hours. Frightening.

Our working theory it may be related to smoking/vaping but that's just a guess. All I have to say is don't be cavalier about this shit. You don't want it. It's not the fucking flu. Don't be a moron. Listen to the recs. It's not just your life you're risking.

can you say what hospital?

 

[yimyammer]

Tru dat. They suck at math

I'm sure they're good at math, they're just better at lying

 

[yimyammer]

There is one place which I think is the best solution. It's called Everlywell.com. It's an Austin-based company that is testing people by mail. You order the test, they send it to you and you swab yourself and send it back. Then you get your results over the web. This way you don't have to endanger anyone and don't have to wait in line with other sick people who may actually have the disease. It's about $130,

have they started yet? I searched the site and didn't see anything related to C19

 

[yimyammer]

Omni Hotel in Dallas:

 

[lostxn]

have they started yet? I searched the site and didn't see anything related to C19

Monday

 

[lostxn]

can you say what hospital?

Prefer not to but Parkland has quite a few as well.

 

[yimyammer]

Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team
Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID- 19 mortality and healthcare demand

cliffs:

Summary of Imperial Paper on Twitter
We can now read the Imperial College report on COVID-19 that led to the extreme measures we've seen in the US this week. Read it; it's terrifying. I'll offer a summary in this thread; please correct me if I've gotten it wrong.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imp...16-03-2020.pdf

The Imperial College team plugged infection and death rates from China/Korea/Italy into epidemic modeling software and ran a simulation: what happens if the US does absolutely nothing -- if we treat COVID-19 like the flu, go about our business, and let the virus take its course?

Here's what would happen: 80% of Americans would get the disease. 0.9% of them would die. Between 4 and 8 percent of all Americans over the age of 70 would die. 2.2 million Americans would die from the virus itself.
It gets worse. People with severe COVID-19 need to be put on ventilators. 50% of those on ventilators still die, but the other 50% live. But in an unmitigated epidemic, the need for ventilators would be 30 times the number available in the US. Nearly 100% of these patients die.

So the actual death toll from the virus would be closer to 4 million Americans -- in a span of 3 months. 8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die.
How many is 4 million people? It's more Americans than have died all at once from anything, ever. It's the population of Los Angeles. It's 4 times the number of Americans who died in the Civil War...on both sides combined. It's two-thirds as many people as died in the Holocaust.

Americans make up 4.4% of the world's population. If we extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the world (warning: MOE is high here), this gives us 90 million deaths globally from COVID-19, in 3-6 months. 15 Holocausts. 1.5 times as many people as died in all of World War II.

Now, of course countries won't stand by and do nothing. So the Imperial College team ran the numbers again, this time assuming a "mitigation" strategy: all symptomatic cases in the US in isolation. Families of those cases quarantined. All Americans over 70 social distancing.

This mitigation strategy is what you've seen a lot of people talking about when they say we should "flatten the curve": try to slow the spread of the disease to the people most likely to die from it, to avoid overwhelming hospitals.
And it does flatten the curve -- but not nearly enough. The death rate from the disease is cut in half, but it still kills 1.1 million Americans all by itself. The peak need for ventilators falls by two-thirds, but it still exceeds the number of ventilators in the US by 8 times.

That leaves the actual death toll in the US at right around 2 million deaths. The population of Houston. Two Civil Wars. One-third of the Holocaust. Globally, 45 million people die: 7.5 Holocausts, 3/4 of World War II. That's what happens if we rely on mitigation & common sense.

Finally, the Imperial College team ran the numbers again, assuming a "suppression" strategy: isolate symptomatic cases, quarantine their family members, social distancing for the whole population, all public gatherings/most workplaces shut down, schools and universities close.

Suppression works! The death rate in the US peaks 3 weeks from now at a few thousand deaths, then goes down. We hit but don't exceed the number of available ventilators. The nightmarish death tolls from the rest of the study disappear.
But here's the catch: if we EVER relax suppression before a vaccine is administered to the entire population, COVID-19 comes right back and kills millions of Americans in a few months, the same as before.

After the 1st suppression period ends in July, we could probably lift restrictions for a month, followed by 2 more months of suppression, in a repeating pattern without triggering an outbreak or overwhelming the ventilator supply. Staggering breaks by city could do a bit better.

But we simply cannot EVER allow the virus to spread throughout the entire population in the way other viruses do, because it is just too deadly. If lots of people we know end up getting COVID-19, it means millions of Americans are dying. It simply can't be allowed to happen.

How quickly will a vaccine be here? Last week three separate research teams announced they had developed vaccines. Yesterday, one of them (with FDA approval) injected its vaccine into a live person, without waiting for animal testing. That's an extreme measure, but necessary.

Now, though, they have to monitor the test subject for 14 months to make sure the vaccine is safe. This part can't be rushed: if you're going to inoculate all humans, you have to make absolutely sure the vaccine itself won't kill them. It probably won't, but you have to be sure.

Assuming the vaccine is safe and effective, it will still take several months to produce enough to inoculate the global population. For this reason, the Imperial College team estimated it will be about 18 months until the vaccine is available.
During those 18 months, things are going to be very difficult and very scary. Our economy and society will be disrupted in profound ways. And if suppression actually works, it will feel like we're doing all this for nothing, because infection and death rates will remain low.

It's easy to get people to come together in common sacrifice in the middle of a war. It's very hard to get them to do so in a pandemic that looks invisible precisely because suppression methods are working. But that's exactly what we're going to have to do. /end

 

[Cotton]

Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team
Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID- 19 mortality and healthcare demand

cliffs:

Interesting read.

 

[yimyammer]

I'll do this daily until update this thing finally ends (I'm afraid we're in for months minimum and likely some level of altered behavior for 18 months).

Using a 35% daily increase in daily cases, I did a spreadsheet guessing what the total number of cases in the US would be on 4/9/20 (its upthread if you want to see it, the total is almost 7 million), so far, its unfortunately right on track:

and we know this figure is understated because we dont know the number of people who have the virus in the US that haven't been tested yet

Studying these figures and seeing some reports from inside China makes it obvious as hell China is lying through their teeth. No way they've only had 81,008 cases thus far

 

[Cotton]

This is 100% correct. We are a resourceful people. Just let the people figure this thing out and stop forcing mandates on us and taking our liberties in the process.

 

[jsmith6919]

 

[L.T. Fan]

Just like TP. No need for the per-person buying restrictions and it’ll work out.

Kind of reminds me of all the safety precautions, procedures and equipment we have to wear at work. A lot of it is overbearing, making it longer to finish jobs and is essentially common sense, but they’re in place because someone fucked up. If we would accept more injuries and fatalities at work and let it naturally weed out the dumbasses, we common sense workers wouldn’t need to have all these rules in place.

This TP mania and shopping panic should taper off in another 3 weeks. The initial shoppers have their supply of TP and the recovery groups that are in process now will have gotten to the end of their pursuit in another two weeks or so then those that are the normal every day shoppers will be back in service. Just give it time for the panic and paranoia the get satisfied then the stock market will begin a recovery.

The biggest reaction hasn’t been the fear of the virus rather the panic of not having the necessities of the normal routine.

 

[Cotton]

Okay, so I have to clear my conscience a bit. I want to publicly apologize to @boozeman. What I said to him yesterday was uncalled for. For that, I am sorry.

Carry on.

 

[L.T. Fan]

...and to protect the ~20k or ~2% of infected that would die from this thing, we’ve now screwed the economy for 99% of us while throwing unknown amount into joblessness and poverty for year(s) to recover from.

To quote Dances with Wolves, our leaders have decided this is a ‘good trade.’

I don’t think you can look at the fatalities and say they are victims of a policy decision. There are some of our society who are very vulnerable to health hazards and no amount of maneuvering can avoid the inevitability of things like a pandemic or normal seasonal exposures. Even if there are no new infectious diseases each year, the normal seasonal viruses will still claim their victims due to the nature of individuals of failing health problems.

 

[boozeman]