Coronavirus Thread

buffnut453 said:

The big fear is the impact on hospital capacity once flu season starts. With COVID already stressing medical services in some US cities, there just aren't beds available to also treat the usual number of people who are hospitalized due to seasonal flu.

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There wasn't a flu season this year as it was all COVID there was almost no flu. It's probable that this will happen in this winter as well.

buffnut453 said:

From what I saw, only about 40 percent of people seemed serious about taking precautions.

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The rest are obliviots - a portmanteau word created from oblivious idiots - who are oblivious to reason and their own stupidity, and who wear their stupidity with pride.

From a friend in Victoria - home of Australia's worst outbreak. ADF = Australian Defense Force. Most of these comments can be applied world wide

Pointing the finger

Before we get too hung up on blaming the state govt, or the federal govt, or China for our COVID situation let's review some facts:

1. We had to bring in mandatory quarantining in hotels, because we couldn't trust people to stay home after returning from overseas.

2. We then had to bring in security, because we couldn't trust people to stay in those hotels.

3. We then had to bring in ADF, because we couldn't trust the security guards not to have sex with those in quarantine in the hotels.

4. We had to get police to door knock and check up on people, because we couldn't trust those who were meant to be self-isolating to actually stay at home.

5. We also have to have police and ADF reinforce the metropolitan Melbourne zone and state borders, because we can't trust people to follow the restrictions.

6. We are now being asked to use masks, because we cannot trust people to social distance when they are in public.

7. Through it all, our supermarkets have had to introduce shopping restrictions because we couldn't trust people to not to take more than what they needed.

So we can get as mad as we want at politicians or health officials for imposing restrictions, or the country where the virus originated, but essentially it's our own fault that we find ourselves here.

Too many people aren't willing to think of others rather than just themselves.

Selfishness, lack of empathy and stupidity seems to be as much of a disease as COVID-19 itself.

"... here wasn't a flu season this year as it was all COVID"

Please clarify this statement, Doctor.
Are you saying there were no Flu cases last year? or, Are you saying there were no Flu cases REPORTED last year.
There is no scientific evidence that COVID has eradicated seasonal Flu, that I am aware of, so I am left to conclude that COVID numbers have been conflated with statistically typical Flu incidents, inflating the COVID numbers.

buffnut453 said:

The big fear is the impact on hospital capacity once flu season starts. With COVID already stressing medical services in some US cities, there just aren't beds available to also treat the usual number of people who are hospitalized due to seasonal flu.

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Yeah, I figure we're going to be in the same condition we were in through March or April.

We'll have to end up using stadiums, and large indoor places to house people that the hospitals can't make up for. I hope the folks at the farms are still wearing the masks, because it could imperil our food supply if they all get sick.

People don't seem to have the discipline to just stay home or wear a mask long enough to drive this virus to extinction. Had the WHO & CDC been honest with us about the efficacy of face-masks (the CDC knew based on trials done years earlier regarding the concern of the Avian Flu which involved various types of masks including some based on articles of clothing -- they apparently didn't want healthcare workers to be without masks -- despite the fact that such articles of clothing would be in our closets, and not their inventories) there wouldn't be all this confusion about the effectiveness of them, and we'd have probably been free of this thing.

Instead, where I live, we have about 10 new cases everyday, and about 300 people in the hospital.

Zipper730 said:

Had the WHO & CDC been honest with us about the efficacy of face-masks (the CDC knew based on trials done years earlier regarding the concern of the Avian Flu which involved various types of masks including some based on articles of clothing -- they apparently didn't want healthcare workers to be without masks -- despite the fact that such articles of clothing would be in our closets, and not their inventories) there wouldn't be all this confusion about the effectiveness of them, and we'd have probably been free of this thing.

Instead, where I live, we have about 10 new cases everyday, and about 300 people in the hospital.

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I think you're being a tad harsh on the WHO and the CDC. When COVID first emerged, it wasn't clear how the disease was transmitted. The full title of the disease is Novel Coronavirus...and the Novel part means it hasn't been seen before, so experience from other viruses won't necessarily be applicable.

Viruses use different transmission mechanisms, and it takes time to determine which mechanisms are most relevant. There's no point recommending face masks if primary transmission occurs through some other mechanism. Again, we need to stop thinking of COVID as somehow equivalent or similar to influenza. It's a different disease and requires a different response.

michaelmaltby said:

"... here wasn't a flu season this year as it was all COVID"

Please clarify this statement, Doctor.
Are you saying there were no Flu cases last year? or, Are you saying there were no Flu cases REPORTED last year.
There is no scientific evidence that COVID has eradicated seasonal Flu, that I am aware of, so I am left to conclude that COVID numbers have been conflated with statistically typical Flu incidents, inflating the COVID numbers.

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There were still cases of flu but not statistically significant. We stopped testing for flu in March as there just wasn't the point anymore. Both conditions are treated the same way anyway so not testing for it doesn't make that much difference.

michaelmaltby said:

"... here wasn't a flu season this year as it was all COVID"
..... so I am left to conclude that COVID numbers have been conflated with statistically typical Flu incidents, inflating the COVID numbers.

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Actually the number of Covid deaths is far higher than reported in most jurisdictions, the most accurate reporting being from New York.

Two financial newspapers (from memory the Economist and ????) did similar but different studies about two months back at the height of the NY infection. Both found that the death toll from Covid greatly exceeded the official toll in many countries.

They compared the death toll for a number of weeks last year with the death toll for the equivalent weeks this year. Last years death toll includes all the flu deaths for that year.

For the current year New York reported just over 1300 additional deaths per week and attributed just under 1300 to Covid. The balance, well under 100, were attributed to persons suffering heart attacks, strokes, etc, who refused to go to hospital.

In Britain, Spain and Italy the additional deaths were in many cases more than double the deaths from Covid. I think it is safe to say that the death toll in those countries from persons suffering heart attacks, strokes, etc, who refused to go to hospital was not higher than the death toll from Covid and that the Covid death toll in those countries was in fact around double the reported deaths.

Was this false reporting by these governments? Probably not because most would only record those known to have Covid and no-one was going to waste a hard to get test on a corpse and therefore deprive a living person of the test they need.

Additionally here in Australia the flu death rate in the ACT has been less than 10% of last years toll because better hygiene and social distancing have dramatically reduced the spread of the flu. Australia has even lower social distancing hand washing requirements than most countries.

Here social distancing is 1.5m = 4sq m. The US has six feet = 1.83= 10.52sq m, most countries have 2m spacing or 12.57sq m.

Here the government says hand washing needs 20 seconds with ordinary soap. The WHO say 40 to 60 seconds.

Fortunately for us Australia is sparsely populated and the vast majority of cities are, by world standards, low density. New York state has 20m population, Aus 24m. NYC has 8.4m and covers 784sq km, Sydney has 5.3m in 4,196sq km giving a population density of just 1,171 persons per square kilometre. Greater Sydney - City of Sydney The NYC population density is almost ten times higher at 10,194/sq km and Manhattan's 25,846/sq km means that small area has almost 25 times Sydney's density.

MiTasol said:

So we can get as mad as we want at politicians or health officials for imposing restrictions, or the country where the virus originated, but essentially it's our own fault that we find ourselves here.

Too many people aren't willing to think of others rather than just themselves.

Selfishness, lack of empathy and stupidity seems to be as much of a disease as COVID-19 itself.

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Never a truer word said !

Italy report 16 August 2020, weekly changes
Cases 253,915, +3,349, deaths 35,396, +191, recovered 203,786, +1,688, active cases 14,733, +1,470 (+~80% to past week), tests 7,557,417, +262,573 (-~20% to the already low past week), people tested 4,455,931, +159,201
fatality rate 13.9% (-0.1)
mortality rate 587 per million (+3)
test rate 125.3 per thousand (+5.1)
positive rate 5.7% (-0.1)
test rate this week 4,353 per million (-1,169)
positive rate this week 2.1% (+0.7)
new case rate this week 56 per million (+15)

buffnut453 said:

I think you're being a tad harsh on the WHO and the CDC.

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The disease was called SARS-CoV-2. SARS = Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. That's either airborne or through respiratory droplets.

Zipper730 said:

The disease was called SARS-CoV-2. SARS = Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. That's either airborne or through respiratory droplets.

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The SARS refers to the impact of the virus on the patients' lungs and ability to breathe. It has nothing to do with the mode of transmission. Pneumonia is a common lung disease that can just as easily be contracted by eating or drinking something as it can from airborne droplets. Again, the exact transmission mechanism has to be known in order for corrective measures to be recommended. Now, it's perhaps reasonable to assume that a disease that affects the lungs might be transmitted by airborne means...but it's not guaranteed.

Also bear in mind the likely reaction, particularly in the US, if the WHO or CDC had said back in March "Right, everybody should wear masks, now!" Remember the messaging coming out of governments at that time? Lots of (paraphrasing here) "It isn't here yet", "I don't think we need to worry", "It'll all just blow over". Even with over 170,000 deaths, there are millions of Americans who still balk at wearing a mask. Do you really think they'd respond well to such a directive after, say, a dozen deaths?

buffnut453 said:

The SARS refers to the impact of the virus on the patients' lungs and ability to breathe. It has nothing to do with the mode of transmission. Pneumonia is a common lung disease that can just as easily be contracted by eating or drinking something as it can from airborne droplets.

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Pneumonia can also be contracted by shoving breathing tubes down someone's throat in an effort to treat, say Covid-19. Italian hospitals had one of the worst rates for bacterial pneumonia infection in Europe, before the pandemic.
Lots of elderly people in Europe died from pneumonia, not Covid-19, in the early days, as treatment regimes were developed.
This will all come out when the various enquiries across the world are completed in the next couple of years.

I'm just saying that this is a far more complicated issue than most of the armchair pundits allow. I often see meaningless comparisons between countries who collect data in different ways. Look at the Russian data for infections and deaths...seriously?

One thing is for sure, here in the UK our current rolling average daily death rate is at about 12-14 (depending which set of data you believe) and in most European countries it is something similar. In the US it is over 1,000 a day and every day hundreds of Americans are dying needlessly. If I was an American I would be asking why.

buffnut453 said:

The SARS refers to the impact of the virus on the patients' lungs and ability to breathe. It has nothing to do with the mode of transmission. Pneumonia is a common lung disease that can just as easily be contracted by eating or drinking something as it can from airborne droplets. Again, the exact transmission mechanism has to be known in order for corrective measures to be recommended. Now, it's perhaps reasonable to assume that a disease that affects the lungs might be transmitted by airborne means...but it's not guaranteed.

Also bear in mind the likely reaction, particularly in the US, if the WHO or CDC had said back in March "Right, everybody should wear masks, now!" Remember the messaging coming out of governments at that time? Lots of (paraphrasing here) "It isn't here yet", "I don't think we need to worry", "It'll all just blow over". Even with over 170,000 deaths, there are millions of Americans who still balk at wearing a mask. Do you really think they'd respond well to such a directive after, say, a dozen deaths?

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You forgot two.

"It will just go away. It will simply disappear from one day to the next."

and...

"It's a hoax."

You actually have a bunch if people here who think this virus will magically go away come November 3rd. The whole world has come together to create this elaborate hoax.

A wee update on the new outbreak in Kiwiland. The country has been placed in a Level Two lockdown situation (see here for definitions: Home ) Auckland, our largest city is in Level 3 lockdown, which still gives local freedoms, so not as severe conditions as when we were in Level 4 a few months back. We have 78 active cases since the weekend, with them all in quarantine and 5 recovering in hospital, no deaths yet - our total death toll stands at 22.

To put that into perspective, thankfully some helpful people on the internet have done their sums and came up with the following figures, On Saturday the USA had 53,523 new cases, NZ, 7. On Sunday the USA had 37,516 new cases, NZ, 13, On Monday the USA had 29,225, NZ, 9. Total in 3 days, USA 120,264, NZ, 29. Just to clarify, this is not considered a 'big surge'; our figures are still incredibly low compared to the rest of the world. It's not over yet, folks.

The misinformation is really starting to flow over this, even the country's deputy leader of the opposition has put forward the theory that the government was deliberately hiding the fact there had been new cases. Thankfully there has been a backlash and he's had to admit that he didn't intend on stoking the fires of conspiracy.

Out of interest's sake, how to recognise a conspiracy: COVID: Top 10 current conspiracy theories - Alliance for Science

Al Jazeera tends to hold a considered view on things: Why are there so many conspiracy theories around the coronavirus?

nuuumannn said:

The misinforma6tion is really starting to flow over this, even the country's deputy leader of the opposition has put forward the theory that the government was deliberately hiding the fact there had been new cases. Thankfully there has been a backlash and he's had to admit that he didn't intend on stoking the fires of conspiracy.

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The problem with the conspiracy theories is that censoring them simply reinforces the attitude that it's a coverup.

Zipper730 said:

The problem with the conspiracy theories is that censoring them simply reinforces the attitude that it's a coverup.

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While there definitely will be people who will claim that the "censoring" proves a cover-up, quite some of those might be the ones who would believe in the conspiracy myth anyway, no?

With something like Corona going on, I fear we have to try and figure out what is more harmful, possibly giving credibility to the conspiracy myths by censoring them or letting them run rampant and possibly convince more gullible people.

I found these rather sobering numbers which cover the last week.

New Zealand: 73 new cases, 0 deaths
South Korea: 1,101 new cases, 1 death
Australia: 2,060 new cases, 107 deaths
Italy: 3,410 new cases, 191 deaths
United Kingdom: 7,672 new cases, 73 deaths
Germany: 8,192 new cases, 33 deaths
France: 17,184 new cases, 107 deaths
United States: 343,925 new cases, 7,034 deaths