Coronavirus COVID-19 Thread

[Radegast74]

Given each state implements their own laws around this (and some appear to be doing very little), how accurate do you think this projection is?

It as an amalgam of all states, *based on the current data **so far** *, so in a nutshell...there is a joke about forecasting, something about "predicting what you don't know today and then explaining why you were wrong tomorrow," but there are somewhat standard methods. And making decisions based on any data is going to be more sound than just "going with your gut feeling" as humans are subject to all sorts of cognitive biases.

They have predictions based on each state, which show that there are differences in when the peak will hit, and how bad it will be...see the plots below for Utah and New York State:

 

[Vavrik]

Nationally by the way, there is a single data point currently showing a potential rollover beginning. A single data point, occurring on a Monday and representing Sunday is a little suspect but if the trend holds it's a good sign right now. The prediction for totals on Sunday was well over 339,000 and we see only 337,000. That's a good start if the trend holds. (change the display from Log scale to Linear scale to see it clearly)

An interactive visualization of COVID-19 | 91-DIVOC

An interactive, data-forward visualization of COVID-19 data by Prof. Wade at The University of Illinois. Updated daily.

91-divoc.com

Recovery here is going to be messy, because as @Radegast74 says, each state is managing it's own response. The Federal government has no power over that without running into the constitution. Also keep in mind that the numbers above are a subset of the real numbers, but still can represent the trend.

 

[Jolly_Green_Giant]

I was watching an interview on local news with the mayor of Miami, who is at home because he has COVID-19. The reporter asked him how bad does he think things can get, and he replies "Apocalyptic" . The reporter was a bit taken back and asked "Apocalyptic? Really?" and the mayor went on to say, yeah, have you ever seen what happens when a hurricane comes in and leaves people without power for months on end? When they're out of work and cant pay their bills and put food on the table? He's like, it gets real, real quick.

Been there, went through hurricane Andrew, was without power for 3 months. Couldn't go anywhere because of debris on the roads. We had to rely on our neighbors to eat. Not everyone else had nice neighbors. According to wikipedia Miamis crime rate went up 50% just because of looting. It stopped when they brought in the Army.

When people can't eat, they will find food by any means necessary. To understand how far people will go to get food when on the brink of starvation, just think about yourself and what you would do if you were at the hungriest you can ever remember being, but not having any money to buy food and no food in your house or food that anyone can give you.

Spoiler: What if . . .

To take it further with very common scenarios:

There's also no money coming in anytime in the future, because you just got laid off.

Your rent is due (and your landlords mortgage is due, adding to the pressure of it all).

Your Utilities are due. (Try taking a shower with the water shut off, or flushing the toilet for that matter. The food in your fridge will go bad).

Something important like your AC just broke.

Your girl / boyfriend / spouse just left you for someone who isn't poor.

They left the kids with you.

The kids are starving.

Your pets are also starving and wondering why you stopped feeding them.

Your goldfish was the first casualty.

Your car broke down, because you didnt have the money to maintain it.

You're out of your medication.

What would you do?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1245848540183695360

View: https://twitter.com/NBCNewsNow/status/1245848540183695360

 

[Radegast74]

Very interesting interview with a NY surgeon from a hospital in Westchester (hour North of NCY) from yesterday, 4/5, detailing her current experience treating COVID-19 patients:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fdGS_WrYQY

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

UK numbers for 6th April:

51,608 total confirmed, 5,373 total deaths. Confirmed cases down on yesterday but still in line with the few days before, total deaths down on yesterday but the number of confirmed cases keeps raising (it has not yet hit zero) - so the cap between positives and fatalities just building up that debt gap again between how many are sick and how many have succumb. I can't find any data on the number of recovered which would hold a bearing on that.

Disclaimer: this is only info from the hospitals, nothing is known about the state of the contagion outside of the most serious cases, unless something is and they are just not telling us :)

 

[ColdDog]

title was misleading as she didn't touch on the topic at all,

Point is, do you want to be put on life support knowing there could be complications for the rest of your life after the experience. Its a personal choice, and there has been a lot of controversy around it. At 49 years, my living will says no.

 

[Aramsolari]

Point is, do you want to be put on life support knowing there could be complications for the rest of your life after the experience. Its a personal choice, and there has been a lot of controversy around it. At 49 years, my living will says no.

I don't think there's much controversy about this at all. Ventilators are critical equipment used in modern Medical treatment. To put it simply, it helps you breath when your respiratory system has been compromised. This video makes it sound like it's some sort of Palliative or End of Life care (Who's this random lady anyway?)....it's not. It's not a feeding tube or urinary catheter used when you're an invalid (ie Vegetative state). My sister had a really bad bout of Pneumonia a couple of years ago when she was in her 20s. She was hospitalized and had to use a Ventilator. She's now perfectly healthy with no lingering complications. Ventilators are important on the best of days, now it's absolutely crucial in helping people recover from Covid19.

Source: I've been around Medical folks all my life and my partner is a Nurse (Clinical Nursing Instructor in charge of Covid19 education) at a major hospital.

 

[Grimbli]

Point is, do you want to be put on life support knowing there could be complications for the rest of your life after the experience. Its a personal choice, and there has been a lot of controversy around it. At 49 years, my living will says no.

I've heard some harsh stories about people being brought back from cardiac arrest, pretty horrible stuff. I've not heard anything about what happens by using a ventilator (don't usually look that stuff up), so I'm not sure if lifetime problems would occur because of the ventilator or because of the issue that led to its usage. Although I may now look up that information.

I was just commenting on the fact that the title had absolutely nothing to do with the content and is thus misleading. It would have been nice going into it knowing what the content would be, because I had trouble following her for part of the video as I was confused where she was trying to lead us. I kept expecting an answer to the title.

 

[Aramsolari]

I've heard some harsh stories about people being brought back from cardiac arrest, pretty horrible stuff. I've not heard anything about what happens by using a ventilator (don't usually look that stuff up), so I'm not sure if lifetime problems would occur because of the ventilator or because of the issue that led to its usage. Although I may now look up that information.

I was just commenting on the fact that the title had absolutely nothing to do with the content and is thus misleading. It would have been nice going into it knowing what the content would be, because I had trouble following her for part of the video as I was confused where she was trying to lead us. I kept expecting an answer to the title.

I looked up her credentials. She's a Caregiver. She's NOT a Medical Professional like a Doctor or a certified Clinical Nurse.

 

[Grimbli]

I looked up her credentials. She's a Caregiver. She's NOT a Medical Professional like a Doctor or a certified Clinical Nurse.

I didn't think she was after about 30 seconds of watching. Usually a professional will have a more professional video.

I mean, come on, she wasn't even wearing a stethoscope.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Breaking news: UK prime minister's condition has worsened throughout day and has been admitted to Intensive care, apparently still conscious and communicating but oxygen administered prior to going into ICU but not at this point requiring a Ventilator.

Foreign Sectary has been advised they are now deputizing "where needed" which I assume is anything from pick up some random emails all the way up to do everything if invasive ventilation is required.

 

[Radegast74]

I looked up her credentials. She's a Caregiver. She's NOT a Medical Professional like a Doctor or a certified Clinical Nurse.

I didn't think she was after about 30 seconds of watching. Usually a professional will have a more professional video.

I mean, come on, she wasn't even wearing a stethoscope.

I didn't bother watching the video...what I can say from my line of work is that while it sucks to have to be in a position to need mechanical ventilation, you absolutely can get back to living a normal life afterwards. Yeah, some people can experience complications, but a lot depends on how you were doing / what your co-morbid diseases are that got you there in the first place. Were you relatively healthy going in? You would likely be relatively healthy going out. (The problem is that the typical need for mechanical ventilation is because of severe chronic lung diseases, which do not have good long-term outcomes, which biases the survival rates.)

Just like "there are no atheists in foxholes" (I can't find a scientific study for that line, ha ha...), a lot of people not currently facing a tough decision like this mis-perceive the circumstances in which requiring mechanical ventilation would occur. A lot of the time it is used to just get the sick person over a critical hump, and after which they can then get discharged from a hospital. To say in advance, "I don't want to be hooked up to any machines ever to prolong my life" is a bit of an over-reaction, it really depends on the circumstances (such as what got you in that position, and can you expect to fully recover afterward).

Most people in the hospital facing such a choice do not "want to live forever," they would like survive long enough for some concrete, near-term goal, e.g., to see their kid graduate HS or college, or see a daughter get married, or see a grandchild get born. An intervention such as mechanical ventilation can help a lot of sick people achieve a goal like that.

 

[Grimbli]

Were you relatively healthy going in? You would likely be relatively healthy going out. (The problem is that the typical need for mechanical ventilation is because of severe chronic lung diseases, which do not have good long-term outcomes, which biases the survival rates.)

This was my initial thought. Obviously things like cardiac arrest are a massive trauma for your body to go through and being revived you'll still have to live with the consequences of that trauma. But for a ventilator, I don't know much about them, I've never known anyone that needed to go on one. Good to know it's not an instant reduction in quality of life no matter the circumstance. That video made it seem so.

 

[August]

AU update.

As at 6:00am on 7 April 2020 AEST, there have been 5,844 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia. There have been 100 new cases since 6:00am yesterday

Of the 5,844 confirmed cases in Australia, 42 have died from COVID-19. More than 304,000 tests have been conducted across Australia.

 

[August]

What’s a little grim is the mortality rate goes up even as the number of infections decreases. People who have been fighting the disease in intensive care either recover or their immune system is overwhelmed.

A more useful measure might be how many of those infected require hospitalisation - data we don’t have access to yet. Our modelling should be released later today.

 

[ColdDog]

Breaking news: UK prime minister's condition has worsened throughout day and has been admitted to Intensive care, apparently still conscious and communicating but oxygen administered prior to going into ICU but not at this point requiring a Ventilator.

Sorry to hear about your prime minister and he is one of the most powerful people in your country... sad to see so much death and misery that "probably (for the snowflakes)" could have been mitigated in the early days.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Warnings in the UK that despite having been in a lockdown situation for nearly three weeks now, accurate figures for fatalities are still a pipe dream as no one seems to have implemented a priority the reporting system:

Coronavirus: Warning over daily death figures

Spikes or dips may in part reflect bottlenecks in the reporting system, rather than real changes in the trend.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Sorry to hear about your prime minister and he is one of the most powerful people in your country... sad to see so much death and misery that could have been mitigated in the early days.

You don't have to be sorry for the President of the UK, of all the people in the UK it was he who chose when actions were committed to stating several times they were not going to commit to action "until the time is right", and it was inevitable with an early strategy to let everyone in the UK get COVID-19 he'd get it too. When you sign the order to do something and it effects every single person, you are not exempt from that. He knew the risks and accepted when and how to execute the strategy.

I am glad to see you are sympathetic to those who are suffering physical and mental anguish a this trying time, some of whom have posted in this very thread. Empathy is one thing the world seems to be in short supply in the best of times let alone the worst of times.

 

[ColdDog]

When you sign the order to do something and it effects every single person, you are not exempt from that.

Times like these are very hard... as much as despised Obama's policies, I would still have done my duty to protect him, just like any President. Boris - agree with his politics or not, he is still "your" leader and the fact he has been infected is an issue for your whole country. Best wishes from the USA.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Times like these are very hard... as much as despised Obama's policies, I would still have done my duty to protect him, just like any President. Boris - agree with his politics or not, he is still "your" leader and the fact he has been infected is an issue for your whole country. Best wishes from the USA.

I feel you may have misinterpreted my phrasing, please point out where you got the impression I was not concerned about Mr Johnsons well being and I would be happy to correct you.