Coronavirus COVID-19 Thread

NaffNaffBobFace

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...parts of the country are being shamed for going outside, others are being praised for being out in the streets by the thousands...
I don't think the protests have had enough time for the infection to gestate long enough to show in the figures yet. Soon, yes, but for the time being we can't really pin any rise on that (yet) if that's what you mean there about thousands being praised for going out?

What has massively peeved me all the way through this from my own countries response to the crisis, is that there has been no attempt at precautions. At all. In any way. They took three months to agree covering your face might help. "But if your mask gets virus on it you might get it from the mask" You dumbasses if your mask has virus on it you would have got the freakin' virus without on anyway and the mask stops you chucking the virus out if you are asymptomatic. I think a lot of research will have to be conducted after this in to Pandemics and the best way to approach a new virus no one has any info on. Precautions that reduce the transmission rate. Distancing. Face coverings. Earlier lockdowns when it is present and spreading in the country. Until you know what it is, you need to use some catch-all measures to... well, catch all. And then once the understanding arrives modify the approach going forward.

It's the reliance on "We are following the science" well with a new virus there is no science to follow until its researched and discovered so following the science is following jolly bob-all. Did everyone jump off buildings until Newton dreamed up the theory of gravity because there was no science to follow? No they all took the precaution of making sure they did not fall to their deaths.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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COVID Catharsis Corner - Reports from around the world from today Saturday 20th of June:

- New Zealand: Two new asymptomatic cases discovered in couple who returned on a repatriation flight from India.

- Germany: R rate ("reproduction" or basically the transmission rate from person to person) jumps from 1.06 to 1.79. This means under the old 1.06 rate if 100 people had it, after three generations 119 new people would have it. Under the new 1.76 rate if 100 people had it after three generations 573 new people would have it.

- UK: Group of MPs urge government to consider a 4 day working week to aid recovery, as apparently used to good effect in the Great Depression.

- USA: Crowds gather for Trump Tulsa rally as six staff members involved in setting up the event test positive for COVID-19

- UK: Data from the peak (in April) indicates daily death rate was over 1000 for 22 days in a row, during the period that only information from hospitals was being reported in the daily data keeping the number below 1000. The highest day had close to 1,500 deaths in all settings, but only 981 were reported publicly using the hospital only data.

- Costa Rica: Government to stop the reopening of economy as cases rise.

- Northern Ireland: No new cases reported for first time since beginning of Lockdown in March/April.
 
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Jolly_Green_Giant

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I don't think the protests have had enough time for the infection to gestate long enough to show in the figures yet. Soon, yes, but for the time being we can't really pin any rise on that (yet) if that's what you mean there about thousands being praised for going out?

What has massively peeved me all the way through this from my own countries response to the crisis, is that there has been no attempt at precautions. At all. In any way. They took three months to agree covering your face might help. "But if your mask gets virus on it you might get it from the mask" You dumbasses if your mask has virus on it you would have got the freakin' virus without on anyway and the mask stops you chucking the virus out if you are asymptomatic. I think a lot of research will have to be conducted after this in to Pandemics and the best way to approach a new virus no one has any info on. Precautions that reduce the transmission rate. Distancing. Face coverings. Earlier lockdowns when it is present and spreading in the country. Until you know what it is, you need to use some catch-all measures to... well, catch all. And then once the understanding arrives modify the approach going forward.

It's the reliance on "We are following the science" well with a new virus there is no science to follow until its researched and discovered so following the science is following jolly bob-all. Did everyone jump off buildings until Newton dreamed up the theory of gravity because there was no science to follow? No they all took the precaution of making sure they did not fall to their deaths.

Yeah I dont think they have either. And you're right, there is no... idk how to put this, scientific standard? It's how I've been approaching this from the beginning. I knew they were saying don't wear masks in the beginning because they wanted to preserve them for hospital workers. From what I understand from my medical training, unless those masks are sealed, you're just putting a barrier up between your mouth and the rest of the world. Its more to keep your junk in you than everyone elses out. Studies showing how long it lasts in the air have been inconsistent (I'll admit, I havent seen anything lately so idk where were at now) and I've seen conflicting reports about the WHO saying asymptomatic transmission is really rare. Then, as soon as that was said, it seemed to upset people so they retracted that. That's not scientific, that's politics.


I have every reason to call into question the accuracy of data due to the known incentives hospitals have to mark patients as having or dying from COVID. Having worked in an ER I believe I have a good perspective from when this starts, either calling 911 or walking into the ER / urgent care or being referred to the ER by a primary care provider.

I know this is going off on a tangent but I want to try and paint a picture of what I see.

Say you're a 65 year old lady with a history of COPD who starts having more trouble breathing than usual, starts sweating and feeling dizzy. You're too sick to drive to the ER so you call an ambulance. The 911 operator asks you a few questions and determines you are at risk for having covid. The call comes in as a virus alert and they head to your house in full PPE. (this literally just happened with my aunt, similar symptoms, no copd, same process). They check your lungs and hear fluid gurgling at the base of them, and they check your O2 saturation and its lower than normal (COPD sats arent great to begin with). You get to the hospital and everyone comes out in full PPE as well and you are taken to a special area for covid isolation. At some hospitals you might already be labeled as a covid patient until tests show otherwise.

To shorten this up, it could very well be the COPD exacerbated by covid. It's a comorbidity.

Okay, so what? Well now you're either dead or being discharged and the hospital has to determine whether or not you were a "COVID patient" or a COPD patient. They have every incentive to label you as a COVID patient because the government will pick up the tab (or are supposed to as far as they know) and It's almost guaranteed. Since it's almost guaranteed they can charge whatever they want for your treatment and will most likely get it. Its why you see stuff like that million dollar itemization of care, because they know they can get most of that.

Now, its the hospitals turn to collect everyone's data and figure out who they can mark as covid and who they cannot. If the guidelines are loose, the system is open for exploitation and you bet your ass they will try to get as much money as possible considering im hearing about hospitals laying staff off because a lack of patients (lots of services were halted, elective surgery, outpatient care, etc...). We saw this happen with a hospital who supposedly used staff to fill a line for supposed covid patients. It was reported it was staged by CBS but they denied such things. I think the staff of the hospital were the ones that admitted to it.

So then you are presented with the possibility of error in the data collection or a mismanaging of the data collection process because these hospitals most likely had no idea how to even begin. So then the hospitals have to give this data to the county or state health department, and we know its not going to be 100% accurate. We saw spikes every weekend, and it was explained to me that instead of correlating it to people being off work and mingling as usual on the weekends, it was actually due to the data being reported at weeks end instead of daily.

Then you get accusations that the state health departments may be fudging numbers one way or the other or that a rise in positive cases is just due to more testing.


I'm not the type of person who would be able to make decisions with data that looks like swiss cheese.


Then you have the socioeconomic fallout from the lockdowns to contend with, which has now become a left right political issue. We still don't know how well they worked even though it was the most straight forward and simple answer to everything. The psychological impacts are showing their teeth and will only get worse.

With all that said, my personal view on this is that the virus is never going away, current guidelines and suggestions help but we have yet to fully understand their effectiveness. I don't know which direction we need to go in to save the most lives, because the threat of global conflict is added into my equations and I don't think that's really on too many peoples radar atm. I get that im paranoid but I like to believe I've had my finger on most of this from the beginning. I have a hard time articulating all of this because its a lot of pieces of the puzzle im looking at and I really don't know how to explain every perspective I have.
 

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I wasn’t going to add any more to this thread but this is relevant.


Today, our case numbers have hit the highest they’ve been in more than two months. I know that’s not what people want to hear – but sadly, that is our reality.

The experts tell us that, largely, the numbers are being driven by families – families having big get-togethers and not following the advice around distancing and hygiene. In fact, around half of our cases since the end of April have come from transmission inside someone’s home.
 

Jolly_Green_Giant

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That is good news, but I suspect that will change in the next few weeks.

Let us know what he says!
I hope so too. It just confuses me though you know? You hear thousands are infected and hospital ICU beds are at 80% capacity, but I mentioned to someone earlier that some hospitals maintain that rate year round due to everything else. My uncle's telling me things are fine and slow in the greater miami area and local hospitals are supposedly the same here. So while the cases are on the rise again I wonder if everything seems calmer to me than is presented simply due to the fact that ive worked in the medical field before. I hope the best for everyone and I'm making an effort to look at this more objectively, but its rough.


I wasn’t going to add any more to this thread but this is relevant.


Sorry man. You guys had it going good for the longest time and you seemed pretty proud of that. Do you think that encouraging people to get out of the house more would be better or worse for those families? They obviously wont or cant follow guidelines so I wonder if going out would make things better or make things worse. I understand they have a high probability of going out and infecting someone else, but what if creating a cluster in a household is more dangerous?
 

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I hope so too. It just confuses me though you know? You hear thousands are infected and hospital ICU beds are at 80% capacity, but I mentioned to someone earlier that some hospitals maintain that rate year round due to everything else. My uncle's telling me things are fine and slow in the greater miami area and local hospitals are supposedly the same here. So while the cases are on the rise again I wonder if everything seems calmer to me than is presented simply due to the fact that ive worked in the medical field before. I hope the best for everyone and I'm making an effort to look at this more objectively, but its rough.





Sorry man. You guys had it going good for the longest time and you seemed pretty proud of that. Do you think that encouraging people to get out of the house more would be better or worse for those families? They obviously wont or cant follow guidelines so I wonder if going out would make things better or make things worse. I understand they have a high probability of going out and infecting someone else, but what if creating a cluster in a household is more dangerous?
I‘m not sure if you read the press release but the limits on household visitors is being increased from 20 back down to 5. The Premier also flagged that people were going back to work too soon and that was problematic.

We’re even seeing retransmission in New Zealand; the virus isn’t going away on its own. All we can do is act swiftly and stop people from becoming complacent.
 
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NaffNaffBobFace

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Yeah I dont think they have either. And you're right, there is no... idk how to put this, scientific standard? It's how I've been approaching this from the beginning. I knew they were saying don't wear masks in the beginning because they wanted to preserve them for hospital workers. From what I understand from my medical training, unless those masks are sealed, you're just putting a barrier up between your mouth and the rest of the world. Its more to keep your junk in you than everyone elses out. Studies showing how long it lasts in the air have been inconsistent (I'll admit, I havent seen anything lately so idk where were at now) and I've seen conflicting reports about the WHO saying asymptomatic transmission is really rare. Then, as soon as that was said, it seemed to upset people so they retracted that. That's not scientific, that's politics.


I have every reason to call into question the accuracy of data due to the known incentives hospitals have to mark patients as having or dying from COVID. Having worked in an ER I believe I have a good perspective from when this starts, either calling 911 or walking into the ER / urgent care or being referred to the ER by a primary care provider.

I know this is going off on a tangent but I want to try and paint a picture of what I see.

Say you're a 65 year old lady with a history of COPD who starts having more trouble breathing than usual, starts sweating and feeling dizzy. You're too sick to drive to the ER so you call an ambulance. The 911 operator asks you a few questions and determines you are at risk for having covid. The call comes in as a virus alert and they head to your house in full PPE. (this literally just happened with my aunt, similar symptoms, no copd, same process). They check your lungs and hear fluid gurgling at the base of them, and they check your O2 saturation and its lower than normal (COPD sats arent great to begin with). You get to the hospital and everyone comes out in full PPE as well and you are taken to a special area for covid isolation. At some hospitals you might already be labeled as a covid patient until tests show otherwise.

To shorten this up, it could very well be the COPD exacerbated by covid. It's a comorbidity.

Okay, so what? Well now you're either dead or being discharged and the hospital has to determine whether or not you were a "COVID patient" or a COPD patient. They have every incentive to label you as a COVID patient because the government will pick up the tab (or are supposed to as far as they know) and It's almost guaranteed. Since it's almost guaranteed they can charge whatever they want for your treatment and will most likely get it. Its why you see stuff like that million dollar itemization of care, because they know they can get most of that.

Now, its the hospitals turn to collect everyone's data and figure out who they can mark as covid and who they cannot. If the guidelines are loose, the system is open for exploitation and you bet your ass they will try to get as much money as possible considering im hearing about hospitals laying staff off because a lack of patients (lots of services were halted, elective surgery, outpatient care, etc...). We saw this happen with a hospital who supposedly used staff to fill a line for supposed covid patients. It was reported it was staged by CBS but they denied such things. I think the staff of the hospital were the ones that admitted to it.

So then you are presented with the possibility of error in the data collection or a mismanaging of the data collection process because these hospitals most likely had no idea how to even begin. So then the hospitals have to give this data to the county or state health department, and we know its not going to be 100% accurate. We saw spikes every weekend, and it was explained to me that instead of correlating it to people being off work and mingling as usual on the weekends, it was actually due to the data being reported at weeks end instead of daily.

Then you get accusations that the state health departments may be fudging numbers one way or the other or that a rise in positive cases is just due to more testing.


I'm not the type of person who would be able to make decisions with data that looks like swiss cheese.


Then you have the socioeconomic fallout from the lockdowns to contend with, which has now become a left right political issue. We still don't know how well they worked even though it was the most straight forward and simple answer to everything. The psychological impacts are showing their teeth and will only get worse.

With all that said, my personal view on this is that the virus is never going away, current guidelines and suggestions help but we have yet to fully understand their effectiveness. I don't know which direction we need to go in to save the most lives, because the threat of global conflict is added into my equations and I don't think that's really on too many peoples radar atm. I get that im paranoid but I like to believe I've had my finger on most of this from the beginning. I have a hard time articulating all of this because its a lot of pieces of the puzzle im looking at and I really don't know how to explain every perspective I have.
I am very lucky to live in a country where all medical costs are paid for my my taxes so there is no pressure on a hospital to put me in one category or another to maximize the cash return on their work keeping me alive or my ability to pay for that.

I hear where you are coming from in that regards, however I would think the solid condition for counting someone as a COVID patent is if their test for COVID-19 comes back positive they are a Coronavirus patent no matter the other issues they are having, and if negative they are not.

There was an internet meme going round a month or two back, saying if a guy died in a car crash but had COVID they'd count him as a COVID death which wasn't right, but my argument to that is would he have survived the accident if it was not for the COVID infection? I wonder if it's a bit like HIV/AIDS - very few people die of that, they die of the other illnesses that come in and take advantage of the compromised immune system. COVID can destroy the lungs, but by far the most people who have succumb to it have had existing underlying health conditions.

The data and the systems set up to collate the data always seemed to be lackluster. In a pandemic the weekend numbers in the UK would drop away as the admin teams had the weekend off. It struck me as incredibly business as usual just when all hands should have been to the pumps, the band playing as the titanic sank suddenly stopping to take their 15 minute union break... and back to my annoyance about not taking precautions until systems were put in place and research conducted to make the science to base decisions off of confidently. Where was that basic self-preservation? Well it wasn't there all the people on the response team got the virus. Inconceivable.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3sLhnDJJn0
 
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Jolly_Green_Giant

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I‘m not sure if you read the press release but the limits on household visitors is being increased from 20 back down to 5. The Premier also flagged that people were going back to work too soon and that was problematic.

We’re even seeing retransmission in New Zealand; the virus isn’t going away on its own. All we can do is act swiftly and stop people from becoming complacent.
Yeah seeing that it's back in NZ is demoralizing to say the least. And no, I didn't read the full press release as I was just focused on what you had quoted, but I went back and read it.


Complacency set in here maybe a few weeks in so I don't ever see our country unified behind this. I really really really do blame a lot of this on the election and politics. Is your countries politics as chaotic as it is here? Its in every facet of our society and it distorts everything were being presented. No one has a solid foundation to ground themselves to.
 
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NaffNaffBobFace

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Is your countries politics as chaotic as it is here?
I am fairly sure as a mere member of the electorate I am not, and never was supposed to be, in a position to be able to know/tell 🙂

There may have been someone who was, though:


"Arrogant and offensive. Can you imagine having to work with these truth twisters?"

The civil service are the hands and feet of the policy makers in power. What the MP's say, the civil service makes happen. These are the people that no matter who is in power, year after year, are the same people still there doing the work, no matter what that happens to be, even if that task flips on its head when a new political party comes in and all the aims change over night, they are the ones that get on with it.

So yeah, when the people who do the legwork say they can't get on, you know there's a fairly high chance the whole thing is a cheese chase down Coopers Hill.

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

But then, I'm not really in a position thats ment to be able to tell, all this nonsense may be by design and if that's the case... make of that what you will. All I know is I have a pot-hole right outside my house which is busy destroying my car whenever I pull in/out of my drive 🙂
 
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COVID Catharsis Corner - Reports from around the world from today Sunday 21st of June:

- USA: Donald Trump reveals at Tulsa Rally that he had ordered COVID testing to be slowed down as numbers rose, stating “When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down.”

- UK: New rules due to start on Monday to give government more powers to intervene and protect critical companies to a pandemic response from being taken over by foreign interests stating "The UK is open for investment, but not for exploitation."

- New Zealand: New COVID case discovered, in a traveler who returned from Dheli.

- Australia: Area of Victoria identified as being at risk of second wave as number of cases rise to highest level in two months.

- Americas: Nearly half of new global infections occurring in the Americas with the US and Brazil accounting for over a third of new infections and deaths.

- World: COVID-19 continues to simmer as hotspot countries suffer while those who have bought it under control with lockdowns struggle to keep infections under control while easing restrictions to revive their economies.
 

Jolly_Green_Giant

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I was under the impression that the US was doing absolutely horrible. Looking at the deaths per 100k the US is around 36 whereas the UK is at 64 according to johns hopkins with a few other countries in between. The case fatality rate for the US is 5.3% whereas its 14% in the UK. That really changes my perception of how it's impacting everyone.


 

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I would be curious to see the reasons why.

Is it that age demographics? More young people in the States are being tested positive and recovering, thus skewing the number?
Aha, you might be on to something there - combine that with the fact UK only tested the sick in hospital with no wider testing in the community for months and months even through the peak of cases deaths in April, if someone is sick enough with it to attend hospital they are going to have a much higher mortality rate than if they test positive but are an asymptomatic carrier who doesn't get ill at all. That might be it but might not, I dunno, but it sounds likely.

The US's hyper high testing regime really has been a positive in this respect and have given your country a powerful overview of the impact. :like:
 

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Had some profound statement but decided,...Nah....Orson Wells "War of the Worlds" comes to mind:mad:
Ive had 500hrs of kemo, a bone marrow transplant and radiation! Im still here and the advice given to me and others in my boat with less than optimal imune systems is to behave in the same manner as with any possible viral exposure...........Hmmmmmmmm what other pandemics take place each year without the fan fair?....Hmmm.
So I have given up licking people on the cheeks as a form of introduction as well as sharing handkerchiefs and tasting my hands after opening storefront doors....
Hell if I can navigate the world after the media has milked this cow endlessly than any one can:like:
Cheers gang:o7:
 

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Aha, you might be on to something there - combine that with the fact UK only tested the sick in hospital with no wider testing in the community for months and months even through the peak of cases deaths in April, if someone is sick enough with it to attend hospital they are going to have a much higher mortality rate than if they test positive but are an asymptomatic carrier who doesn't get ill at all. That might be it but might not, I dunno, but it sounds likely.
Sounds about right, but the other problem is when we say something like 0.6% mortality rate, its just the average between all the age ranges.

South Korea gave us the 0.6% number after widespread testing. But once you drill down, the stats are not pretty depending on your age bracket!

1592840405324.png
 

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I would be curious to see the reasons why.

Is it that age demographics? More young people in the States are being tested positive and recovering, thus skewing the number?
I looked all over on the johns hopkins site I linked and couldn't find anything having to do with age. That information would definitely be good to have and it surprised me that it might not be there.
 

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Sorry old man, you don't have covid so youre not making us money. Time to go!








And here's another good segment about the effects of the economic stimulus.



 
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COVID Catharsis Corner - Reports from around the world from today Monday 22nd of June:

- UK: Millions of people "shielding", where someone has been advised by the government to remain in voluntary quarantine as their health is considered to be more at risk, have been advised they may be able to spend time outside from the 6th of July and that shielding itself may not be required from August 1st.

- Germany: R number now 2.88. If the R number is 1.01 and 100 people have the virus, after three generations of transmission there would be 103 people with the virus. At 2.88 if 100 people have the virus after 3 generations of transmission there would be 2,388 people with the virus. Reports suggest this is being skewed by hotspot local outbreaks and is not countrywide.

- USA: 29 states have reported a spike in COVID cases.

- South Korea: Second waves strikes in and around capital city.

- World: World Health Organisation points out the pandemic is accelerating - the first one million cases took three months to reach, the latest one million cases came in only the last 8 days.

- India: Delhi to convert 25 hotels in to COVID treatment centers.
 
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