Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic

[mishie]

I was talking about the US myself, which is admittedly my bad, but since you asked...

I'm using this because it has an easy to read graph: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/ Let me know if you use something different.

If you look at the cases, it looks like you're containing it. If you look at the deaths, it doesn't. In fact, you seem to have had a spike in deaths after the lockdown came into effect if I'm getting my dates right.

Which brings us to a problem about this disease. Testing has been horribly done almost all over. It's typically just for people feeling ill, and has been constrained by faulty and contaminated testing.

Look at this graph and tell me when the lockdown started. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Keep in mind it has an incubation period. You should be seeing a slightly less steep angle around the start of April.

Show me statically that our quarantine procedures have been working. Seriously. I am not seeing it at all.

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I'm sorry, what the actual fuck are you talking about when you say it doesn't look like we're containing it? Because if you actually look at all of the graphs, and more importantly the numbers next to them, it paints a hilariously different picture. Are you actually trying to say that the fact that we had an entire 15 deaths over 2 days, at a time which lines up perfectly as from them being from people that were infected before isolation measures were put in place, as a spike? Because that's fewer deaths in the entire country than what most states in America are getting per day. Also if you look at the graph for active cases, you'd note that it's basically in a free fall right now, and funnily enough on that same day which you're calling a massive spike in deaths, we went from 4633 active cases to 3418. So oddly enough right after we started quarantine we had immediate and massive effects on the disease.

 

[evildice]

Now do Sweden, which has no lockdown:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

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I don't know enough about Sweden to have an opinion on what their numbers mean.

Are you in Sweden now?

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

Now do Sweden, which has no lockdown:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

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United States Population: 328.2 million
Sweden Population: 10.23 million
Australia Population: 24.99 million
New Zealand Population: 4.86 million

United States Covid Cases: 876,174 (2669 / million people)
Sweden Covid Cases: 16,755 (1637 / million people)
Australia Covid Cases: 6,661 (266 / million people)
New Zealand Covid Cases: 1451 (298 / million people)

United States Covid Deaths: 49,651 (56 / 1000 infected or 151 / million people)
Sweden Covid Deaths: 550 (32 / 1000 infected or 53 / million people)
Australia Covid Deaths: 75 (11 / 1000 infected or 3 / million people)
New Zealand Covid Deaths: 16 (11 / 1000 infected or 3 / million people)

Sweden has chosen a strategy of protecting the elderly (who are encouraged to isolate) and achieving herd immunity. Any decrease in their infection rate is due to achieving population saturation. The numbers agree with our strategy right now.

 

[TanaNari]

Show me statically that our quarantine procedures have been working. Seriously. I am not seeing it at all.

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I feel like, since this was addressed to me, I should respond directly... but there's nothing I can say which evildice and xicree have not already said.

But to add, this is a neat thing to look at.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/mapping-spread-new-coronavirus/

The first little graphic they've got gives you a great visual map of infected vs deaths, and raw vs population adjusted numbers.

Once you remember that "certain nations" are lying through their fucking teeth about the numbers, and even the more honest nations haven't yet had the opportunity to get a true head count (nor do I expect them to- the priority must always be 'save lives first, mourn the dead second')

Now do Sweden, which has no lockdown:

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Okay, LET's do Sweden:

That's Sweden right now.

Or, here's another one of note:

This one is especially telling. Sweden was one of the countries that had warning before the virus got its footholds, unlike Italy, Spain, and France which were fucked before they ever had a chance or knew there was cause for alarm.

Sweden, in spite of having (and by extension wasting) 30 days more warning than Italy, currently has the fastest climbing death rate (once adjusted for population) of anyone in the EU, and it's one of the few where the rates are still climbing linearly rather than reaching the peak of their bell curve.

At this rate, Sweden will overtake Italy in terms of per-capita deaths within a week or so. Where, if they started distancing strategies in the same rough time as the rest of us, they'd probably be sitting somewhere between Austria and Slovenia right now.

Your own example is the best possible proof of the point you've been arguing against.

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

Sweden currently has the fastest climbing death rate (once adjusted for population) of anyone in the EU, and it's one of the few where the rates are still climbing linearly rather than reaching the peak of their bell curve.

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I originally put my stats in terms of deaths per infections but when it's done per million people it's an even worse ratio, wow.

And added in the USA too, just to triple-slam-dunk the point home here.

 

[TanaNari]

Also worth noting... as with all human-vector diseases, population density matters. Human-to-human vector viruses (like Wuhan Flu, most other variants of the common cold, and the types of influenza we care about) spread much faster through cities than they do through rural zones. Stockholm, Sweden's largest city, has 970,000 people. Compare that to Paris, and her 2.15 million or Madrid's 3.22 million. Or the big boys, like NYC's 8.54 and Tokyo's 13.9.

All else being equal, it would spread several times faster through France and Spain by sheer power of vectors alone. Not unlike how, in the USA, it's spreading through New York and California exponentially faster than it's spreading through Wyoming.

I originally put my stats in terms of deaths per infections but when it's done per million people it's an even worse ratio, wow.

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Yeah, Sweden's (lack of) strategy is a shameful failure by all possible measure.

Unless the goal is to reduce social security costs by killing the sick and elderly. In which case: Massive Success!

 

[mishie]

So this might be a bit anecdotal, but I feel like it says a lot that when I talk to to other medical professionals that work overseas, they're saying things like "today I had 4 patients die in the first hour, and then I got to go home an hour early because by then all of the patients in ICU were dead", "I've been using the same mask for the past we're that limited on PPE" or my favorite "today the hospital ran out of bodybags". Meanwhile in a hospital in Australia my biggest problems are "it sure is annoying that I had to shave my beard off" and "I'm so bored that I'm looking for phone games to kill time with and I can't find any good ones".

And honestly those are some pretty nice problems to have all things considered.

 

[seeing_octarine]

This is a Natural Disaster.

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Your post was going so well right up till here. It is not a natural disaster. It is not caused by the geological processes of the Earth. Moreover, unlike any natural disaster or even acts of god, pandemics like this are *preventable* if proper precautions are taken. And I'm not talking about quarantine measures after the fact. With proper safety procedures being adhered to in animal handling, meat handling, and biolab work, pandemics like this never get the opportunity to start at all.

 

[Aleh]

With proper safety procedures being adhered to in animal handling, meat handling, and biolab work, pandemics like this never get the opportunity to start at all.

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Yeah, no. Sorry.

Those things are all important, of course, but they're not curative. Spillover events happen all the fucking time, and they will continue to happen even if we were perfect in all recommended precautions with each of those things.

 

[mishie]

Legit though, please send me recs for good phone games I'm so goddam bored. Work has just been amazing the past month or so because all the elective shit has been cancelled, and people are staying at home instead of going out and doing stupid shit. Plus those that do get hurt with minor injuries that would normally go to Emergency are just staying at home because they're scared of catching Corona.

The only downside is that eventually we will have to do all these delayed patients, and I don't trust the doctors to not all assume that theirs are the highest priority so theirs should be seen first. But that's all future problems.

 

[Drak4806]

I think the biggest problem is the fact that this virus is unlikely to go away unless we go full lockdown with everyone forced to stay in their homes unless they want to get shot for two months then keep the borders closed until we have a vaccine. With the recent numbers from New York it seems that a huge number of people who have this have no or almost no symptoms yet are still capable of spreading it not to mention the fact that it can take over a week to start showing symptoms.

Keeping people isolated is the best idea and I support it but I also understand why people want it lifted because the economic damage caused by having everything closed for another two months at least. Its also bad when in two months the lockdown gets lifted and people go back to work only to find that there are no jobs and people don't have any money.

 

[Xicree]

. It is not a natural disaster.

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For all intents and purposes it is a natural disaster. Ie an event caused by nature which can only be mitigated and endured via preparation.

Just because humans managed to find all the right ways to make it worse doesn't stop it from being a natural disaster.


Prevented yes it can be to a point. But it is like building shelters from hurricanes. You can have the right structures in place and in their event... weather the storm as if it were just another pleasant evening.


If you do not have the right preparations in place then the effects of the storm are magnified by multitudes.

 

[AllyDoodle]

I'll try to keep this as unpolitical as I can, but apparently Trump is telling people they should drink and inject disinfectant to fight the coronavirus.

The sad thing is there are Darwin award winners that will do just that.

 

[OverReactionGuy]

I already told people not to drink bleach. That's not much better.

 

[TanaNari]

I'll try to keep this as unpolitical as I can, but apparently Trump is telling people they should drink and inject disinfectant to fight the coronavirus.

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That never happened.

He mentioned that a specific drug, hydroxychloroquine- well known for its ability to treat a diverse number of symptoms common to several diseases (including lupus and malaria) was showing promise against Wuhan Flu. And there's good reason to believe it does have an impact... at this point, almost no doubt it has some impact, really the question is, 'does it have enough impact to justify the risks and expense?'

https://www.medicinenet.com/hydroxy..._side_effects_of_hydroxychloroquine_plaquenil

Given that it is an extremely well-known drug which is cheap to produce and has generally moderate side effects if taken for short periods of time (which it would be- you either recover or die from Covid-19 symptoms well before hydroxychloroquine reaches dangerous toxicity), the risks and costs are minimal.

Efficacy is controversial, but as of this moment it has enough preponderance of evidence that thousands of medical professionals consider it worth taking the chance on. I think the major theory is that some combination of the 'anti-inflammatory' and 'hemoglobin' effects of the drug help mitigate the damage being done to the lungs.

This drug has already been noted as having some success in the SARS and MERS outbreaks, and because of this was one of the first drugs tested against Wuhan Flu (which is basically SARS/MERS 3.0- that's right, this is the third time this specific fucking virus has made this jump into humans).

And, in fact, the reason it was tested against SARS and MERS is because people discovered that the drug, in being used for malaria and lupus victims, was having the pleasant side effect of less severe coronavirus common colds... I don't think it was never intentionally used against the common cold, but as side effects go, there are worse than 'accidentally cures other diseases'.

Before Trump said a word about it, it was being promoted by doctors in over a couple dozen nations (which is probably where he heard about it from), and was mentioned in multiple newspapers (maybe he heard it from those, I dunno)- and both the FDA, and Spain's equivalent of the FDA, have given clearance for using the drug for the purposes of attempting to fight back against the worst symptoms of all forms of coronavirus. But not for use on mild cases, because this shit does have risks far beyond what's acceptable for treating mere cold symptoms.

https://www.newsweek.com/fda-says-hydroxychloroquine-chloroquine-can-used-treat-coronavirus-1494925

That goes into more detail on some of the stuff.


Now, it's true that some dumbfuck for some reason got confused and drank fish tank cleaner- specifically chloroquine phosphate (presumably because he was too stupid to read properly)- which basically a form of bleach, but Trump never suggested that as an option.

And you'd have to be as stupid as the guy who drank that shit to blame Trump for it.

 

[mishie]

That never happened.

He mentioned that a specific drug, hydroxychloroquine- well known for its ability to treat a diverse number of symptoms common to several diseases... including lupus and malaria. It also saw some success in the SARS and MERS outbreaks, and because of this was one of the first drugs tested against Wuhan Flu (which is basically SARS/MERS 3.0- that's right, this is the third time this specific fucking virus has made this jump into humans).

And, in fact, the reason it was tested against SARS and MERS is because people discovered that the drug, in being used for malaria and lupus victims, was having the pleasant side effect of less severe coronavirus common colds... I don't think it was never intentionally used against the common cold, but as side effects go, there are worse.

Before Trump said a word about it, it was being promoted by doctors in over a couple dozen nations, and was mentioned in multiple newspapers- probably because both the FDA, and Spain's equivalent of the FDA had given clearance for using the drug for the purposes of attempting to fight back against the worst symptoms of all forms of coronavirus. But not for use on mild cases, because this shit does have side effects far beyond what's acceptable for treating mere cold symptoms.

Now, it's true that some dumbfuck for some reason got confused and drank fish cleaner- specifically chloroquine phosphate- which basically a form of bleach, but Trump (or indeed anyone sane) ever promoted drinking that shit.

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Yeah uh, I've got some real bad news for you bud, you're thinking of the OTHER dumb thing that Trump said, since he's gone on to say some other amazing shit, and just to quote him:

"A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you're totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn't been checked, but you're going test it. Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way.
And I think you said you're going test that too. Sounds interesting. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number in the lungs. It would be interesting to check you're going have to use medical doctors with that, but it sounds interesting to me. And so we'll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that's pretty powerful."​

 

[AllyDoodle]

See, this is the kind of debate I wasn't trying to start, so it might be a good idea to just drop it now before mods get involved.

 

[zup]

Electromagnetic radiation can be harmful to biological organisms. What a shocking revelation.

I would not hold my breath they manage to develop a miracle cure any time soon though.

 

[Drak4806]

After doing a little bit of research what most likely happened was him not explaining things properly because he's exhausted being in charge of the country during the pandemic. He might have been talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_irradiation_therapy or something else regarding the UV light thing since there are a bunch of different light things he could be referring to. As for the disinfectant part he might have referring to one of many different chemicals to get rid of the virus

Honestly its really interesting reading about all these experimental treatments and stuff that will admittedly will most likely never be used.

 

[TanaNari]

Yeah uh, I've got some real bad news for you bud, you're thinking of the OTHER dumb thing that Trump said, since he's gone on to say some other amazing shit, and just to quote him:

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Got direct links that include context? Because I've seen a lot of people twist words in lots of ways to make a perfectly reasonable statement sound batshit insane. Trump is hardly the only example, but he is on the receiving end of such dishonesty at an alarming frequency.

After doing a little bit of research what most likely happened was him not explaining things properly because he's exhausted being in charge of the country during the pandemic. He might have been talking about

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See, now, that would make sense. Blood irradiation is tricky enough to explain for people for the professionals who work in the industry, let alone laymen.

Electromagnetic radiation can be harmful to biological organisms. What a shocking revelation.

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Oh, I dunno... I could see a use. If businesses (and airports, especially airports) start including specific radiation bulbs, that would be a great way to reduce infectivity of far more than just coronavirus. Assuming there's a way to make them deadly to diseases but harmless to people... that's the tricky part.

Honestly its really interesting reading about all these experimental treatments and stuff that will admittedly will most likely never be used.

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Certainly, this scare is as good an excuse as any to update our anti-disease technology into the 21st century. Even today, the best of our tech is shit that was pioneered in the 1800s. I want antivirus lasers, dammit!

 

[mishie]

Got direct links that include context? Because I've seen a lot of people twist words in lots of ways to make a perfectly reasonable statement sound batshit insane. Trump is hardly the only example, but he is on the receiving end of such dishonesty at an alarming frequency.

See, now, that would make sense. Blood irradiation is tricky enough to explain for people for the professionals who work in the industry, let alone laymen.

Oh, I dunno... I could see a use. If businesses (and airports, especially airports) start including specific radiation bulbs, that would be a great way to reduce infectivity of far more than just coronavirus. Assuming there's a way to make them deadly to diseases but harmless to people... that's the tricky part.



Certainly, this scare is as good an excuse as any to update our anti-disease technology into the 21st century. Even today, the best of our tech is shit that was pioneered in the 1800s. I want antivirus lasers, dammit!

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https://www.c-span.org/video/?471458-1/president-trump-coronavirus-task-force-briefing

It's at about 26:30 when he starts talk about this, and there's also some other amazing highlighted segments where he'll say one thing and then immediately after someone else will contradict him and explain the exact opposite.

 

[TanaNari]

I'll... watch that one tomorrow. It's too far past when I should have been asleep for me to sit down for an hour of conference video. Wouldn't want anyone to mistake a lack of immediate response as a response in its own right.

 

[Rakdos92]

Now, it's true that some dumbfuck for some reason got confused and drank fish tank cleaner- specifically chloroquine phosphate (presumably because he was too stupid to read properly)- which basically a form of bleach, but Trump never suggested that as an option.

And you'd have to be as stupid as the guy who drank that shit to blame Trump for it.

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Funny that. The woman who used it on her husband? Had a history of mental illness such as paranoia, depression, anger, and alcoholic abuse. In 2012 she told her therapist that she was considering divorcing her husband. There were also financial problems.
Well, I dunno about y'all, but this reads more like "stupid person <accidentally> poisons her husband".

 

[TanaNari]

Funny that. The woman who used it on her husband? Had a history of mental illness such as paranoia, depression, anger, and alcoholic abuse. In 2012 she told her therapist that she was considering divorcing her husband. There were also financial problems.

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Huh. That's certainly a new way of looking at the situation.


Oooh, fresh news (like, literally just heard it on TV)- apparently studies are showing that this virus doesn't do well in the heat... we can expect it to weaken as summer approaches.

Not so great news for the southern hemisphere. Also won't win the battle on its own. But it's a start.


Another update- they just discovered that at least one Covid death happened on Feb 6, three weeks before anyone realized it was in America. And it's looking like up to 15% of the population in certain areas already have covid antibodies.

Fifteen percent. Meaning that tens of millions of people may already have gotten this disease without any notable harm (or indeed even realizing they had it).

If that turns out true on the international scale, then we need to redraw our assumptions of this disease. It means one of three things:

1- The virus is far less deadly (and infectious) than projected (Yay!) because it must have started far earlier than we realized and stayed under the radar (less yay, but I'll take it). We might even need to rename it to Covid-18.

2- There was a different covid outbreak (like SARS or MERS) that occurred earlier (maybe years ago, maybe only months ago), but had mild enough symptoms to go unnoticed (mistaken for just another common cold, probably) until we started looking for covid antibodies. Maybe the weaker strain started first, then had a mutation into this more deadly strain.

Either way, the antibodies for the different strains would be too similar for our technology to tell the difference.

Which would suggest Covid 19 is far deadlier than we've given it credit for- a 15% herd immunity thanks to the earlier strain would drastically reduce vectors and fatalities. It also means that somewhere out there a "safe strain" might exist, which would make the pursuit of a vaccine about a hundred times easier if it can be identified and cultivated.

3- The testing system is complete shit... but that's looking less likely by the day, since these sorts of results have been appearing at a consistent rate even as more samples and methodologies should be reducing such false positives.

 

[MadGreenSon]

Funny that. The woman who used it on her husband? Had a history of mental illness such as paranoia, depression, anger, and alcoholic abuse. In 2012 she told her therapist that she was considering divorcing her husband. There were also financial problems.
Well, I dunno about y'all, but this reads more like "stupid person <accidentally> poisons her husband".

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Ah, the Stupidity Defense, where one makes the case that the defendant was too dumb to realize that the thing they were doing could kill someone. Not a hugely successful argument to my understanding.

 

[daimahou]

stuff

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... Shouldn't you be sleeping?

 

[TanaNari]

... Shouldn't you be sleeping?

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There are lots of things I *should* be doing. At least this one I can blame on something outside my control rather than just my own laziness.

Fuck insomnia.

 

[zup]

Oh, I dunno... I could see a use. If businesses (and airports, especially airports) start including specific radiation bulbs, that would be a great way to reduce infectivity of far more than just coronavirus. Assuming there's a way to make them deadly to diseases but harmless to people... that's the tricky part.

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They have installed a photon disinfectant system in some of the toilets I clean, though the whole place is closed now because of the pandemic. Uses blue light instead of UV. Not that I know how they evaluate if or how well it works.

 

[Derrandoo]

They have installed a photon disinfectant system in some of the toilets I clean, though the whole place is closed now because of the pandemic. Uses blue light instead of UV. Not that I know how they evaluate if or how well it works.

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That's interesting, I've only heard of blue light bathrooms as public installations where the blue light is meant to discourage IV drug usage. Its much harder to see veins under blue light apparently.

 

[AllyDoodle]

That's interesting, I've only heard of blue light bathrooms as public installations where the blue light is meant to discourage IV drug usage. Its much harder to see veins under blue light apparently.

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Something like that. A couple of service stations around my area used to have them before getting rid of them for some reason.