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Covid Your Mouth When You Sneeze (Corona Virus/Covid-19 # 2)


Mlle. Zabzie

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4 minutes ago, Gorn said:

I assume they did. Their nationwide measures include shutting down movie theaters, sports venues and churches, and limiting restaurants and cafes until 6 pm, so I doubt they'd skip airports.

With millions of people in either quarantine or self-isolation, the few good investments right now would be Amazon, Netflix and video game publishers.

Malpensa airport's web site still says the airports "are continuing regularly."

https://www.milanomalpensa-airport.com/en/

If that's true the quarantine can't be very effective.

 

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3 hours ago, karaddin said:

Malice, corruption and incompetence are a hell of a combo

Hmm - I'm sure some of this is there and we don't really need more examples of the incompetence of the current administration, but I also think the US public health system suffers from a significant degree of fragmentation which means states are unprepared for public health emergencies, and the way the system is built, it's designed to fail in some respects.

Here's something from the Ebola crises from the paper I linked earlier in the thread - They're talking about one of the first Ebola patients in the US at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital (THPH) 

Quote

Duncans experience highlights the variable nature of preparation for Ebola in American hospitals. There was little preparation at THPH in the kinds of specific infection control measures required for Ebola and similar highly infectious viral hemorrhagic infections. The individual nature of infection disease control within hospitals, within the context of overlapping federal, state and local health regulations is neither surprising and nor is the willingness of tertiary care hospitals to take on ambitious tasks such as treating an Ebola patient without previous experience.

There is no system in Texas, or most states, to control hospitals investments or autonomy. Decisions about, for example, their desire and capacity to treat very high-risk infectious diseases are left to the managers of competitive hospitals

Within this fragmented and individualized system of care, it is unsurprising that two THPH nurses, Nina Pham and Amber Joy Vinson, were exposed to Ebola. A later report commissioned by Texas Health Resources concluded that CDC and others were learning alongside the actual providers...it appears that there was a lack of effective and efficient collaboration prior to the event.... The roles and responsibilities of all parties were not clearly outlined in advance(Cortese et al., 2015). Subsequent legal action by Pham also claimed that THPH was simply unprepared to handle a disease like Ebola, with managers googling the relevant infection control protocols (Duncans family settled a case against THPH) (Nina Pham v. Texas Health Resources Inc., 2015).

None of this should really have been surprising in a fragmented system where CDC is largely advisory, public health authorities have little legal authority or capacity to direct patients around the health care system, health systems are both diverse and often left to themselves, and ex post regulation via lawsuits is common.

 

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I am in one of Italy's neighbour countries. All trips to Italy are discouraged according to the ministry of health. All events where more than 500 people were expected to gather are cancelled, and visits to hospitals and elderly homes are forbidden.

12 cases in my country as of now, mostly it seems these are people who have been infected outside the country and travelled back. It is somewhat worrisome, but what is scarier is people's panic. At least the shops are not emptied out like some people say in this thread.

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On 3/7/2020 at 10:16 AM, Jeor said:

I think one of the things that Western governments are grappling with is that it's now becoming clearer that, for all the criticisms that have been levelled at it, China looks like it's getting things under control. They bought the rest of the world a few weeks' grace by taking such draconian action, but it's also helped themselves as it looks like they're now back in the driver's seat. Following that blueprint is tough for liberal democracies. 

There's also a lot of delay built into the system. The Atlantic (limited clicks) is reporting that only 1895 people have been tested in the USA so far. That's pretty mind-boggling considering a nation like South Korea has, according to Bloomberg news, apparently tested (limited clicks) 140,000 people already. Pretty big misstep by the American health system and it means it's only going to get worse.

Italy has started putting China-level controls in place in Lombardy, but it's way too late.

If the UK was to take those steps now, it might help seriously curtail the spread of the virus. But it looks like Boris won't consider it until things are at least as bad as they are in Italy. We might get lucky and it might not spread as far, as fast, but I would not put money on that.

The American situation is becoming seriously alarming. So few people have been tested, the virus seems to have several transmission areas and Trump has politicised the issue, so his supporters seem to see it as another way of "sticking it to the libs" by ignoring the health warnings. I've already seen Facebook and Twitter polls circulating by the red hats saying variations on "Who do you trust more? Trump and God or Science and Money-Hungry Doctors?" The US could have a China-level explosion in cases in the coming weeks.

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13 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Is anyone else in the U.S. getting nervous that the count in cases here is rising so slowly compared to other countries with outbreaks?

If you don't look you can't find. 

It's disturbing that the president would rather not count cases (those on the cruise ship) because it'll make the numbers look bad. Direct admission of dishonesty (not wanting to count cases accurately) and lack of concern for the health and well-being of his citizens. He is more concerned about how he personally appears than about trying to fix the problems. Morally bankrupt is a euphemism here. 

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Unfortunately, for all the spin the Trump administration wants to put on keeping the numbers down by not testing many people, there's no mistaking the fact when people start dying. The travel ban bought them a bit of time, but it's now been a few weeks and the cases and Covid-related deaths are going to start rolling in, whether you test them or not.

I've got a trip to the USA (West Coast) planned in five weeks' time - it was for a conference that has since been cancelled. Looks like I won't be able to get full refunds, so I'll probably be in the hole for $1500 with cancellation fees for flights and hotels. I'm figuring I might still just make a holiday out of it - better to pay $4,000 for a decent overseas vacation than to pay $1500 for the privilege of staying at home, but if things explode in the next few weeks (as they well might), I could get lucky if flights etc get cancelled on me and I'll be off the hook for some of that money, so will stay put in Sydney.

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On 3/5/2020 at 9:12 PM, Filippa Eilhart said:

there are literally zero deaths in under 9-year olds so you really don’t have to worry about the kids.

I’ve read that it doesn’t seem to affect children as badly but I still can’t help but be concerned.

 

I’m more worried about my gran though, I went and got her lots of food and groceries yesterday so she doesn’t have to go to the supermarket.

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18 hours ago, Platypus Rex said:

@rotting sea cow

I want to respond to your post from this past Monday (prior thread) where you followed up to my response the opinions of your friends, the biologist/enterologist couple, who had "nothing but praise for China" and its "draconian methods" which "bought time" for the rest of the world.  In your followup post, you made the following remarkable statement, in support of your opinion that western figures somehow prove that China cannot be falsifying its data:

It doesn't matter if they had ~90k cases and 3k deaths or 10x as much. If they want to keep face, they still need to report them in a consistent way otherwise we should already know the real virulence based in our own data.

I find it remarkable that you think 27,000 extra Chinese deaths would not matter.  I would guess, however, that President Xi agrees with you on some level.  He certainly has other piorities, anyhow.  But all you have really done here is admit that China could indeed be falsifying its data.   All they need is a little guile.

All China need do, to "save face" is present a "representative" subset of that caseload that (if they get sick) will receive adequate hospital care.  Such a sample might indeed show a death rate vaguely similar to what we now see now emerging in Western nations.  And if it ends up being even better (when all the data is in), well, that will be only be used by China advocates like yourself and your two friends, to extol the virtues and superiority of the Communist authoritarian system.

And certainly many Chinese citizens have been told (according to reporting in the New York Times) that they cannot have hospital treatment without an official diagnosis for the new virus. 

Naturally, the "plausible" sample of cases, that China has chosen to give the world will not be, representative of the death toll among those who are welded into their homes and left to possibly die there.  Nor will it be representative of those infected people who are rounded up and sent to mass quarantine camps where they are surrounded by countless other sick people, and where they receive little to no medical care, and inadequate food.

Nor will it include people with other illnesses, who die, after being denied hospital treatment, or being welded in their homes, or after being herded into quarantine camps.  These will include many, many people who might otherwise have survived.  They too, are part of the human cost of this disease in China.

You mention Italy as confirming the Chinese death rate.  But again, the death rate is irrelevant unless we know the actual case totals.  Only then can we have some vague idea of the actual human cost in lives lost. 

But never mind.  Let's discuss Italy's case fatality rate (CFR), so far, and compare it to that of China's death rate, so far:

As of today:

Italy's CFR is only 4.2% (197 deaths divided by a case total of 4,636);

China's CFR is 3.8% (3,070 deaths divided by a case total of 80,652).

So it looks like China's figures are actually better than those of Italy, even though Italy is generally considered to be an advanced Western nation.  Go China!  Co Communism!  Hurray for President Xi!

But wait!  We may actually be underselling the remarkable achievements of President Xi and his Chinese Communist party.  For various reasons, the above death rates may not be comparable.

Italy is still early in its crisis.  It's case totals include far fewer resolved cases.  By "resolved" cases, I mean those where the patient has either died or recovered.  Fewer resolved cases means more active cases.  More active cases means a greater potential for the CFR to increase as more cases resolve.  Italy's resolved cases now are only ~16% of their case totals (720/4,636).  China's resolved cases are now about ~73% of their case totals (58,591/80,652).

If I recall correctly correctly, China, at an equivalent state of its crisis, when the % of resolved cases was still relatively low, had a CFR somewhere in the range of 1.5% to 2.2%.

Wow, so it's almost like China is doing almost TWICE as well as Italy in terms of its death rate, and doing so at a time when reports leaking out of China (since sternly suppressed) suggested that China's hospital system was being completely overwhelmed, to an extent that Italy has not yet experienced. 

And what will happen after cases continue to rise, and Italy's hospital system IS overwhelmed.

So no.  Italy's figures do not confirm China's figures.  They show that China is, or was, doing MUCH BETTER than Italy, at an analogous stage of the crisis.  Go China!  Go Communist Party!  Go President Xi!

Or maybe, just maybe, this dictatorial regime is falsifying its data, as I suggested it might be doing, and as dictatorial regimes have always done.

 

So do you have any actual reporting from a reputable news organization that shows that China is falsifying their data regarding the coronavirus outbreak?  If so, please provide a link.  Or are you just making up conspiracy theories that have as much validity as conspiracies like the US holding aliens in Roswell?

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The small city of Fremont, Nebraska just to the northwest of Omaha has shut its schools -- and Midland University, the private college located there, has also shut down -- because of Nebraska's first local case of Covid-19 (the maps you see on the TV which have shown Nebraska with 13 cases for a while are misleading because those cases were cruise ship passengers who had been airlifted to the biocontainment facility at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.) 

https://www.omaha.com/livewellnebraska/health/fremont-schools-midland-university-closing-temporarily-because-of-coronavirus-scare/article_888d66b9-adb1-55ec-ba33-ef0961814ae7.html

 

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15 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

I’d be worried if we find out it’s been in Vegas for a couple weeks. 

 

We had a case in Ontario who seems to have caught it in Las Vegas. So yes, it is in Vegas.

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3 minutes ago, Ran said:

Among new cases in Sweden today, our first apparent infection brought from ... not Iran, not Italy, but the United States. Ugh.

Such a news was, sadly, long overdue. Just because the US administration is in denial is no reason for us to not treat the US as an infection hub.

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18 minutes ago, Toth said:

Such a news was, sadly, long overdue. Just because the US administration is in denial is no reason for us to not treat the US as an infection hub.

Look, the data suggest that it has been quietly circulating in the US for weeks.  Think it could get really bad here in terms of burden on our health system.  

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17 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Look, the data suggest that it has been quietly circulating in the US for weeks.  Think it could get really bad here in terms of burden on our health system.  

No doubt about that. My thought process however was more that from an outsider that we should treat any incoming flights from the US as if coming from Italy or Iran.

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I had plans to go to the casino in Harrington DE next week for my birthday. I'm not going. Even if it's not that big of a destination place it still gets a lot of people, it's a casino, race track, fairground, and they have live entertainment and buffets and stuff.

I don't think I'm being paranoid. If it was something like a doctor's appointment or something important I'd still go, but even if it's minimal risk, to risk it at all for a day at a casino, possibly bring it home and infect my mother, it's just not worth it.

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1 minute ago, drawkcabi said:

I had plans to go to the casino in Harrington DE next week for my birthday. I'm not going. Even if it's not that big of a destination place it still gets a lot of people, it's a casino, race track, fairground, and they have live entertainment and buffets and stuff.

I don't think I'm being paranoid. If it was something like a doctor's appointment or something important I'd still go, but even if it's minimal risk, to risk it at all for a day at a casino, possibly bring it home and infect my mother, it's just not worth it.

There is nothing wrong with being careful.

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10 hours ago, Loge said:

Italy has now put the north under quarantine. I wonder if that includes shutting down airports. Shouldn't that be the first thing? Haven't seen them mentioned in the press coverage. 

You understimate the total incompetence of pretty much all European leaders. Shutting down airports and blocking trains from going to and from Italy should've been mandatory 10 days ago. They're still not doing it. EU governments are still at the "You shouldn't go to Italy" stage, instead of doing the obvious and necessary: "The border is closed and everyone who's in Italy right now stays there until the epidemics is over".

Heck, quarantine isn't officially in place in Northern italy since it was proclaimed before the official approvals were done, which take time - meanwhile, thousands of people fled the North and went back South or migrated to neighbouring European countries, basically ensuring this stuff will propagate farther and faster.

No need to say I'm pissed off like Hell at current Western leaders. China screwed up big time first, but then blockaded big parts of the country and bought us weeks of free time so that we could react. Meanwhile, fucking useless Western governments did literally nothing, not even banning flights from China, not putting anyone coming from there under quarantine, and we see now the result of their rank amateurism. As Werth said, Italy at long last begins to do the right thing, but it comes way late, and now the bulk of Europe and America should do the same if we want to contain this virus. (granted, I'm also pissed off because I'm growingly convinced that I won't go anywhere in vacation before late autumn, if things go better than expected, and most probably not at all this year, all thanks to a few idiots in charge of our countries)

There will be a major political price to pay when this is over, whatever the current government is, and it won't be limited to China and Iran. Looks like the pandemic and the economic recession it brings will do what the Dems couldn't do to Trump.

 

7 hours ago, Gorn said:

the few good investments right now would be Amazon, Netflix and video game publishers.

Netflix stocks are some of the few who went up recently. Valve/Steam isn't public, I think, but they'd make a killing - and will surely see a surge in daily users.

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