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Will We Stand The Corona Test of Time? - Covid #7


Tywin Manderly

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3 hours ago, Arakan said:

Are you satisfied with your chancellor Kurz‘ approach so far? His handlings or the pandemic are the model for the Bavarian lockdown approach. My sister lives in Salzburg. Borders are closed and I cannot visit or see her even in case of emergency. It is all so fucked up. 

At this point it is mostly propaganda as far as I can tell. The whole coalition is just spinning bullshit to avoid panic as far as I can tell(and I have always voted green...). Still it could be worse the FPÖ could still be part of the goverment. 

The are doing stuff Austrian style. Many good ideas with half-assed implementation. 

Maybe I know too many nurses, doctors and caretakers but there is a lack of everything and the only people that are tested are those that can make it happen(doctors and nurses mostly) and those that are non-essential for the economy.  

My local GPs asked for the donation of protective equipment because they had run out when the goverment still allowed skiing.

A lot of completely unnecessary factories are still running. The son of a cousin is in quarantine because there was a case in his kindergarten but my cousin who works for the voest(steel industry) is still doing shifts(12 hours now because they wanted to reduce the number of shift handovers). He has close contact with his son every day.  Seems like a recipe for disaster. 

We are still doing better than many other countries I believe. 

Edit: But our healthcare system suffered significant damage because of austerity programs and is far less prepared for the current situation than it was 20 years ago according to many doctors. There is a lack of redundancy that is shocking. It is still one of the best in the world I suspect.

Edit2: If Bavaria implements our governments ideas properly I think it will work out rather well for you though.

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On the bright side of things, here in my province I just heard from the Chief Medical Officer of the province that a total of 7 people are on ventilators. We have 578 cases, and from other places I thought we would have more on ventilators. However, we just had a death in a nursing home and if the virus spreads there that number could go up quickly.

eta: Toronto is doing an update now. Our population is 3 M, we have 281 cases. The province has tested 32,000 people, most, I would think, in and around Toronto.

 

 

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New Icelandic study found that around 50% of its positive C19 cases were completely asymptomatic.

Still more work needs to be done, but if proven, this is both good and bad. The virus may have spread way further than we thought and herd immunity will be achieved much more quickly, but it also means the percentages will still be devastating. The overall death rate will be far smaller than originally thought, but the much greater spread of the virus may make up the difference.

It does lean into the idea that this might be over sooner than thought, but the peak will still be fucking horrible.

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27 minutes ago, Werthead said:

New Icelandic study found that around 50% of its positive C19 cases were completely asymptomatic.

Still more work needs to be done, but if proven, this is both good and bad. The virus may have spread way further than we thought and herd immunity will be achieved much more quickly, but it also means the percentages will still be devastating. The overall death rate will be far smaller than originally thought, but the much greater spread of the virus may make up the difference.

It does lean into the idea that this might be over sooner than thought, but the peak will still be fucking horrible.

There's not nearly enough evidence yet to make this claim.  These early studies, like the Icelandic study and the cruise ship studies, should be qualified that about half of the cases were asymptomatic at the time of testing.  It's likely that some of these people developed symptoms later on.  Also, this study really says very little about the death rate.  The study doesn't track a cohort of cases from infection to resolution, which is what is needed to determine the death rate.

Also, the death rate is greatly impacted on whether the hospitals are overwhelmed, as we've seen in Italy.  We have not hit the peak of this pandemic yet, so it's way too early to conclude anything about the death rate.  In South Korea, which has also tested very heavily, the death rate is 1.3% and slowly climbing as cases run their course, which can take weeks.  The initial estimates of 1 to 2% when every patient receives optimal health care seems to still hold.  I don't think we are going to see much deviation from that, except in cases where the health care system is overrun or unusual distributions of infections occurs (i.e. large numbers of elderly).

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Actual good news (WaPo Limited Clicks).

The coronavirus isn’t mutating quickly, suggesting a vaccine would offer lasting protection

Quote

The coronavirus is not mutating significantly as it circulates through the human population, according to scientists who are closely studying the novel pathogen’s genetic code. That relative stability suggests the virus is less likely to become more or less dangerous as it spreads, and represents encouraging news for researchers hoping to create a long-lasting vaccine...

“That’s a relatively small number of mutations for having passed through a large number of people,” Thielen said. “At this point the mutation rate of the virus would suggest that the vaccine developed for SARS-CoV-2 would be a single vaccine, rather than a new vaccine every year like the flu vaccine.”

It would be more like the measles or chickenpox vaccines, he said — something that would likely confer immunity for a long time.

This is one of the biggest unknowns about Corona, and if this preliminary evidence is correct, then potentially this worldwide nightmare could be 99% controlled in just a couple of years. 

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10 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

There's not nearly enough evidence yet to make this claim.  These early studies, like the Icelandic study and the cruise ship studies, should be qualified that about half of the cases were asymptomatic at the time of testing.  It's likely that some of these people developed symptoms later on.  Also, this study really says very little about the death rate.  The study doesn't track a cohort of cases from infection to resolution, which is what is needed to determine the death rate.

Also, the death rate is greatly impacted on whether the hospitals are overwhelmed, as we've seen in Italy.  We have not hit the peak of this pandemic yet, so it's way too early to conclude anything about the death rate.  In South Korea, which has also tested very heavily, the death rate is 1.3% and slowly climbing as cases run their course, which can take weeks.  The initial estimates of 1 to 2% when every patient receives optimal health care seems to still hold.  I don't think we are going to see much deviation from that, except in cases where the health care system is overrun or unusual distributions of infections occurs (i.e. large numbers of elderly).

Good points, although you'd hope that such studies would track the asymptomatic patients for some time afterwards to confirm, but clearer figures will take several weeks to emerge.

On the bad news scale of things, studies on the Diamond Princess show C19 surviving on some surfaces up to 17 days, which is way longer than the previous claims (3 days I think was the maximum on very hard surfaces). Looks like they're still trying to work out how and why.

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3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Fuck. I suspected it was too good to carry on. Hopefully this might be plateauing (and hopefully lower than Iran's, which has plateaued around 1,000 per day, JFC) before an eventual proper decline.

From what I've seen Iran is claiming about 120-ish deaths per day (which is obviously still a lot).

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Jesus, I've never been more jealous of the Scandinavian countries than I am now. Look at this site:

https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/

Look at the quality information, the way it's presented, the easy way to drill down by county, the openness. Man.

Also Norway locked down things early and their curve is so far awesome. 

Perhaps surprisingly a Swedish friend of mine was saying that she found the Swedish advice on who was at risk so unclear that she thought the UK's information was better.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

32% is better than nothing, but fucking hell, that is absolutely nowhere near what is needed to get on top of this.

I'd want to see the same kind of coverage for Italy and Spain (maybe the UK, but I fear for the results).

I remember seeing some stats on the reduced usage of the tube and rail UK networks somewhere but I can't find it now.

Anecdotally, there's a bus stop just outside my house and the last few days I don't think I've seen anybody on the buses I've seen go past.

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

I can’t find the figure for new cases today, I was hoping that at least would be lower? You’d expect deaths to lag behind new cases due to the time it takes to die from it.

5249 today which is about 500 above yesterday but down on the previous 3 days (Saturday had 6557 cases). Looking at the Chinese stats their downward slope was a bit bumpy at times so I don't think we could expect a continuous decline even if there was a downward trend.

I also saw some speculation that the Italian trend could be complicated because some of the measures came into effect in Lombardy first so there might be a different trend in the rest of Italy (although thankfully the other Italian regions have seem much less impact so far).

Away from Europe I see Modi in India has introduced what sounds like possibly the most stringent lockdown in the world for the entire country on 4 hours notice. While I'm not sure about the practicalities of such a sudden change, he's certainly showing decisiveness that a lot of other world leaders seem to be lacking.

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4 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Good points, although you'd hope that such studies would track the asymptomatic patients for some time afterwards to confirm, but clearer figures will take several weeks to emerge.

On the bad news scale of things, studies on the Diamond Princess show C19 surviving on some surfaces up to 17 days, which is way longer than the previous claims (3 days I think was the maximum on very hard surfaces). Looks like they're still trying to work out how and why.

Hopefully they can learn more soon about what causes some people to be asymptomatic, or have truly mild symptoms. For a virus to be able to kill healthy young adults with no known underlying conditions (rarely, but it has happened) while completely sparing others seems very strange to me.

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14 minutes ago, Fez said:

Hopefully they can learn more soon about what causes some people to be asymptomatic, or have truly mild symptoms. For a virus to be able to kill healthy young adults with no known underlying conditions (rarely, but it has happened) while completely sparing others seems very strange to me.

I've seen some suggestions on viral load: if you pick up the virus via a surface that's been touched hours beforehand, you might have a very low initial exposure which your body either fights off with little or no symptoms, or at least better prepares the body for a more in-depth battle once it hits in full force. If you get a huge dose at once, from someone coughing right next to you, you're much more likely to get a more serious illness. They think that's why health care workers and doctors are being much more seriously hit, because their exposure is continuous.

Again this is something else they need to more seriously investigate before confirming, but I think absolutely minimising your exposure to any possible source of contagion is what everyone is doing anyway.

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14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

They think that's why health care workers and doctors are being much more seriously hit, because their exposure is continuous.

Although an obvious factor is that overworked people working to exhaustion will be immunocompromised. But yes, makes sense that picking up a relatively few examples of a virus is easier to deal with than a large amount of it all in one go.

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26 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Actual good news (WaPo Limited Clicks).

The coronavirus isn’t mutating quickly, suggesting a vaccine would offer lasting protection

This is one of the biggest unknowns about Corona, and if this preliminary evidence is correct, then potentially this worldwide nightmare could be 99% controlled in just a couple of years. 

I'm optimistic that a vaccine that works will be developed.  As long as there isn't a random mutation to one of the membrane proteins that is important to the immune response, which could happen, then it should work.

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Regarding the number of unconfirmed cases: there actually is a quite simple way to get a good idea. Take a random sample of asymptomatic people, 10.000 should suffice, repeat this 3 times over a period of a month and this should give a relative good indication. It’s an important question but all the answers so far are virtually useless, it’s just based on speculation, assumptions and maybe wishful thinking. 
 

I am aware that right now no impacted nation has the time nor the resources to do so. But it should be done. 

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How are data visualization sites working for people in various countries? A group of IT guys put together one for Sweden, C19.se, which is honestly super-impressive in how clearly data is laid out, down to region-level. It's in Swedish, but you can probably figure out what "Dödsfall" and "Intesivvärd" are, which by process of elimination tells you what "Smittad" means. 

Looking at the growth chart, it's Stockholm, Uppsala, and (for reasons I don't fully understand) Östergötland that have infection and new intensive care cases that are the most worrying. Västra Götland and Skåne have very modest growth in new cases, suggesting social distancing and other things have been working.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I've seen some suggestions on viral load: if you pick up the virus via a surface that's been touched hours beforehand, you might have a very low initial exposure which your body either fights off with little or no symptoms, or at least better prepares the body for a more in-depth battle once it hits in full force. If you get a huge dose at once, from someone coughing right next to you, you're much more likely to get a more serious illness. 

Makes sense and would explain why Italy and Spain are suffering so much. Cultural factors mean that people have been on average exposed to way more viruses than the average Norseman - or even German.

 

Hopefully, everyone here will stay safe, and your families and friends as well.

I should add, specially for those in the US right now. Trump apparently wants to lift all measures for Easter so that people can have their usual big gatherings. This is sheer madness, it would be a bloodbath. Hopefully, someone will make him understand this is bad for the country, as well as bad for the economy and bad for his reelection chances (since he probably cares more about the latter).

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23 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

I should add, specially for those in the US right now. Trump apparently wants to lift all measures for Easter so that people can have their usual big gatherings. This is sheer madness, it would be a bloodbath. Hopefully, someone will make him understand this is bad for the country, as well as bad for the economy and bad for his reelection chances (since he probably cares more about the latter).

I'd say it's safe to say that most governors will not adhere to this. Even the crazy Republican ones, perhaps even especially those -- the ones like DeSantis or Edwards or Abbott who have been doing precious little to get ahead of this thing now are going to be screaming for assistance come Easter. 

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3 minutes ago, Ran said:

I'd say it's safe to say that most governors will not adhere to this. Even the crazy Republican ones, perhaps even especially those -- the ones like DeSantis or Edwards or Abbott who have been doing precious little to get ahead of this thing now are going to be screaming for assistance come Easter. 

No buddy, this screams "it happened for a reason." If Trump lifts the quarantines and people get sick from church and Easter festivities, it was always God's will.

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8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

No buddy, this screams "it happened for a reason." If Trump lifts the quarantines and people get sick from church and Easter festivities, it was always God's will.

Ugh, so true. Is there anything more irritating than a collective which turns its back on human divinity to make wishes at a cloud?

Much easier to bear an unanswered prayer and cite unknowable justifications on behalf of a distant nonhuman entity than to accept having failed oneself.

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19 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Ugh, so true. Is there anything more irritating than a collective which turns its back on human divinity to make wishes at a cloud?

Much easier to bear an unanswered prayer and cite unknowable justifications on behalf of a distant nonhuman entity than to accept having failed oneself.

Truth be told, this forum has actually soften my distaste of the deeply religious, and at the same time has served as a useful way of highlight the frauds that lead most of these movements. Some are good people though, like Rev. William Barber.

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