Who Pays the Coronaman? - Covid #8

[Arakan]

UK exploding in deaths. Friends and working colleagues from London told me about the situation only a week ago in the City. I told them I fear London will face a Milano, Madrid situation. It’s happening. 

[Maithanet]

Here's an article from my friend's newsletter on the subject of masks, I found it quite informative. 

TLDR version is that masks are probably good, but usually only if used properly.  They do have some drawbacks like irritating the face that could cause you to touch your face more.  Having a mask that fits properly is pretty essential.  It probably isn't a bad idea to use an improvised mask if you're going outside, even though the benefit is probably minimal, it is better than nothing. 

Continuing my series, Here's an update on the number of coronavirus test results by day in the US.

3/23 - 54k

3/24 - 64k

3/25 - 74k

3/26 - 97k

3/27 - 107k

[Ran]

I see the NY Times reported on Sweden approaching things with a more deliberate pace than other countries. A significant point that the article does not make, however, is the fact that both the Danish and Norwegian health authorities were overruled by politicians on matters such as closing borders and closing schools; it was the politicians who chose those measures against advice from their own experts. Matters are different here in Sweden, with Sweden's Public Health Agency and its experts providing policy that the government has enacted.

So, we are not on lock down in Sweden, even in Stockholm, the worst-hit area. Preschool and elementary schools are still open (other schools have moved to distance learning). People still go to work (though they work from home if they can). For the most part, these factors as well as Swedish natural inclinations (Swedes have a very high level of trust of the government and many takes its recommendations seriously without requiring legal force)  has made social distancing fairly easy (Sweden has the largest amount of single-person households in the OECD -- over 50% of households are single-person -- and extremely generous [more so than ever right now] sick leave provisions). While some were predicting doom when it seemed like we had 27 new deaths yesterday, it turns out that these are spread out over a number of days as post-mortem determinations took awhile to be made and reported in (mostly in Stockholm) in a number of cases. Today, there's only 10  new deaths, and only 15 new ICU cases. In fact, the trend on ICU cases has been edging downward at the moment. 

There's a lot of disinformation being aimed at Sweden right now (apparently Russian trolls are a part of it), like the false claim that we're trying the "herd immunity" approach. From what I understand of the Swedish approach, it's that it is impossible to eliminate the disease -- it's no more eliminatable than H1N1 at this stage, as China and South Korea are discovering with every fresh outbreak -- and that you have to choose between extraordinary efforts (whether draconian lockdowns or enormous levels of surveillance -- BTW, Sweden's currently one of the few EU countries that has not tried to pry into mobile phone geolocation data) to keep cases down for many months or more moderate efforts to keep cases at the level the health care system can manage while attempting as much normalcy as possible; either way, so long as you do not surpass your healthcare resources, the amount of deaths per capita will likely be not much different when all is said and done, unless you seriously plan to maintain visitor quarantines and repeat local or regional lockdowns for the next 12-18 months.  Sweden's basically choosing to take its lumps now, within reason.

Extreme measures make sense when extreme problems present themselves -- when the cases overwhelm the health care system, you need to tighten the rules. The Swedish authorities believe that they so far have been succeeding in flattening the curve to keep it from going above what they want. Hopefully, they're right, and they aren't afraid to tighten things up when needed (yesterday they did change the rule from events of greater than 500 people being banned to events of greater than 50, but they really mean events of various kinds; restaurants, schools, etc. are still operating)

[Mudguard]

13 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

But what is the effectiveness of that, and how is the contamination of them controlled? Sure it's better than nothing, but we are failing people at all levels. 

Are you in a hospital? Because I am, and things are breaking down faster than my idiot managers can handle.

ETA:

And many are people are coughing a lot, including myself. But it feels like I'm the only one who washes their hands after each fit. Many of my coworkers still think this is much to do about nothing.

 

The facial covering is more for preventing someone who is unknowingly sick from spreading droplets rather than preventing a healthy person from getting sick, although it may help some with that too.  The proper usage can be easily taught.  There are quite a few studies that show that it works at reducing transmission in certain situations.  People have also performed droplet or particle capture experiments with diy masks, and they appear to work very well.

I don't doubt that your managers are idiots.  When things calm down and return to normal or whatever the new normal will be, I hope you can get another job somewhere else or go back to school because your workplace sounds like a hellhole.  

As for me, I work in a medical diagnostic company that sent all nonessential employees home a couple weeks ago, so I've been working from home for a while now.  Some of our employees have been classified as essential, but only those that support a product on the market or anything related to SARS-Cov-2, but the vast majority have been told to go home.  A lot of R&D is going to be paused for potentially months.

The handwashing, the 6ft separation, cleaning of surfaces, are all important in reducing transmission.  Dude, thank you for taking it seriously.  We really need more of that.  I'm just saying that wearing a facial covering is also something we all can do that would also help, and I'm very worries that we aren't doing enough, certainly as a country, to get the R0 under one.  Might as well grab all the low hanging fruit.  I bought some buffs (head wrap, not sure what they are called, but to me it's just a droplet catcher), so in this instance, I'm going to practice what I preach when I go out even if I look like an idiot where I live.  

[Mudguard]

21 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Here's an article from my friend's newsletter on the subject of masks, I found it quite informative. 

TLDR version is that masks are probably good, but usually only if used properly.  They do have some drawbacks like irritating the face that could cause you to touch your face more.  Having a mask that fits properly is pretty essential.  It probably isn't a bad idea to use an improvised mask if you're going outside, even though the benefit is probably minimal, it is better than nothing. 

 

Continuing my series, Here's an update on the number of coronavirus test results by day in the US.

3/23 - 54k

3/24 - 64k

3/25 - 74k

3/26 - 97k

3/27 - 107k

The logic for wearing masks is simple.  If you are sick, the recommendation is to wear a mask, or a facial covering if you don't have a mask in order to reduce the spread of infectious droplets.  There is a lot of evidence that people who don't know that they are infected are unknowingly spreading the disease, and one of the main vectors for transmission is through droplets.  If everyone wore a mask or facial covering, then those infected people would be wearing a mask when in public that would catch their driplets, which is what we want.  If people don't wear masks, then these people unwittingly continue to spread droplets full of virus all over the place.  If they are close to you, these droplets could be deposited right in your face.  Or if they cough in the produce section, it coats all your food.  I don't understand why this is considered acceptable.

[Zorral]

It should be no surprise, yet surprised to see globally, nationally and locally people behaving no differently in this medical catastrophe than they did in the middle ages or in Justinian's time, or even earlier in many times and many places.

First the ruling class hides the information because it is bad for business; then it does nothing as the cases and deaths mount up; then it does too little and too late, while misinformation and superstition spread as quickly as the virus, an enormous portion of the general populace ignores safety measures either out of assholery or denial -- or poverty! Ruling classes everywhere everytime do nothing about what they know help prevent such wide scale catastrophes, no one prepares for one occurring, no one has intelligent response beyond exhausting the very people called upon to do the response.

Once again proving the adage information doesn't make people smart.  To which in the age of fnoose we add, it makes people even stupider.

 

[Mudguard]

33 minutes ago, Ran said:

I see the NY Times reported on Sweden approaching things with a more deliberate pace than other countries. A significant point that the article does not make, however, is the fact that both the Danish and Norwegian health authorities were overruled by politicians on matters such as closing borders and closing schools; it was the politicians who chose those measures against advice from their own experts. Matters are different here in Sweden, with Sweden's Public Health Agency and its experts providing policy that the government has enacted.

So, we are not on lock down in Sweden, even in Stockholm, the worst-hit area. Preschool and elementary schools are still open (other schools have moved to distance learning). People still go to work (though they work from home if they can). For the most part, these factors as well as Swedish natural inclinations (Swedes have a very high level of trust of the government and many takes its recommendations seriously without requiring legal force)  has made social distancing fairly easy (Sweden has the largest amount of single-person households in the OECD -- over 50% of households are single-person -- and extremely generous [more so than ever right now] sick leave provisions). While some were predicting doom when it seemed like we had 27 new deaths yesterday, it turns out that these are spread out over a number of days as post-mortem determinations took awhile to be made and reported in (mostly in Stockholm) in a number of cases. Today, there's only 10  new deaths, and only 15 new ICU cases. In fact, the trend on ICU cases has been edging downward at the moment. 

There's a lot of disinformation being aimed at Sweden right now (apparently Russian trolls are a part of it), like the false claim that we're trying the "herd immunity" approach. From what I understand of the Swedish approach, it's that it is impossible to eliminate the disease -- it's no more eliminatable than H1N1 at this stage, as China and South Korea are discovering with every fresh outbreak -- and that you have to choose between extraordinary efforts (whether draconian lockdowns or enormous levels of surveillance -- BTW, Sweden's currently one of the few EU countries that has not tried to pry into mobile phone geolocation data) to keep cases down for many months or more moderate efforts to keep cases at the level the health care system can manage while attempting as much normalcy as possible; either way, so long as you do not surpass your healthcare resources, the amount of deaths per capita will likely be not much different when all is said and done, unless you seriously plan to maintain visitor quarantines and repeat local or regional lockdowns for the next 12-18 months.  Sweden's basically choosing to take its lumps now, within reason.

Extreme measures make sense when extreme problems present themselves -- when the cases overwhelm the health care system, you need to tighten the rules. The Swedish authorities believe that they so far have been succeeding in flattening the curve to keep it from going above what they want. Hopefully, they're right, and they aren't afraid to tighten things up when needed (yesterday they did change the rule from events of greater than 500 people being banned to events of greater than 50, but they really mean events of various kinds; restaurants, schools, etc. are still operating)

California and other states tried the group size restriction, going quickly from 500 to lockdown.  Looks like the doubling rate in Sweden is about 7 days for the last two weeks, which is much better than many other countries, but not good enough, which is why they shrank the group size.  I'm skeptical that will be enough, but good luck.  

[Fragile Bird]

Canadian experience: 6% of cases require hospitalization and 2.6% are in critical condition. 30% of people being hospitalized are younger than 40.

The Quarantine Act is in force, meaning all people entering Canada (we still have many returning travellers) must be quarantined for 14 days.

The federal government has ordered that no person with symptoms can board a plane or a train. Bus travel is regulated by provinces, but the major bus lines have stopped travel.

The province of British Columbia, which saw the first community cases, is cautiously reporting they are seeing a slowdown in new cases. On the other hand, Quebec has been reporting more and more cases, which I think can be attributed to the fact their spring break is a week earlier than the rest of the country and people still travelled, especially to the US where there were 'almost no cases'.

Death rate is 1%. Many of the deaths came from a nursing home in BC and a nursing home in Quebec.

eta: per capita testing is among the highest in the world, top 6 or 7.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

even though the benefit is probably minimal, it is better than nothing. 

Is it though? Giving a false sense of safety could actually be worse. 

Anyways, I'm about to go out with the dog. It's a nice day, despite the gloomy weather. I'm curious as to what I will see.

And the strangest bit about all of this since we're on "lock down" now too, should I wear my medical badge as to keep people away? I'd hope not, but the thought exists. 

[Arakan]

11 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Canadian experience: 6% of cases require hospitalization and 2.6% are in critical condition. 30% of people being hospitalized are younger than 40.

The Quarantine Act is in force, meaning all people entering Canada (we still have many returning travellers) must be quarantined for 14 days.

The federal government has ordered that no person with symptoms can board a plane or a train. Bus travel is regulated by provinces, but the major bus lines have stopped travel.

The province of British Columbia, which saw the first community cases, is cautiously reporting they are seeing a slowdown in new cases. On the other hand, Quebec has been reporting more and more cases, which I think can be attributed to the fact their spring break is a week earlier than the rest of the country and people still travelled, especially to the US where there were 'almost no cases'.

Death rate is 1%. Many of the deaths came from a nursing home in BC and a nursing home in Quebec.

eta: per capita testing is among the highest in the world, top 6 or 7.

Thanks for the info. It seems Canada is relatively „lucky“ that the % of critical cases (I assume those who have severe respiratory problems) are on the lower end (assuming systematic testing). Probably a variety of Canada specific variables at play. Let’s hope it stays that way. Here in GER we are now at 3.2% (1,600 cases in ICU) though it is difficult to get hard data on this and everything is so fast moving at the moment anyway. 
It’s crazy to think that the difference between something like 3.0% and 4% translates into possibly ten thousands of lives. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

The facial covering is more for preventing someone who is unknowingly sick from spreading droplets rather than preventing a healthy person from getting sick, although it may help some with that too.  The proper usage can be easily taught.  There are quite a few studies that show that it works at reducing transmission in certain situations.  People have also performed droplet or particle capture experiments with diy masks, and they appear to work very well.

I don't doubt that your managers are idiots.  When things calm down and return to normal or whatever the new normal will be, I hope you can get another job somewhere else or go back to school because your workplace sounds like a hellhole.  

As for me, I work in a medical diagnostic company that sent all nonessential employees home a couple weeks ago, so I've been working from home for a while now.  Some of our employees have been classified as essential, but only those that support a product on the market or anything related to SARS-Cov-2, but the vast majority have been told to go home.  A lot of R&D is going to be paused for potentially months.

The handwashing, the 6ft separation, cleaning of surfaces, are all important in reducing transmission.  Dude, thank you for taking it seriously.  We really need more of that.  I'm just saying that wearing a facial covering is also something we all can do that would also help, and I'm very worries that we aren't doing enough, certainly as a country, to get the R0 under one.  Might as well grab all the low hanging fruit.  I bought some buffs (head wrap, not sure what they are called, but to me it's just a droplet catcher), so in this instance, I'm going to practice what I preach when I go out even if I look like an idiot where I live.  

Like all systems, it only works if everyone buys in. When 20% buy in, 40% kind of do and another 40% don't care, where is the former left? 

The masks are a good thing. Shit alternatives are sketchy. And no, these things can not be easily taught. People are fucking idiots. 

ETA: And with that, off into quarantine land with Bailey.

[Fragile Bird]

We need masks, that's the big problem.

After this is over, the government here should take the position that everyone should own a box of masks and wear them whenever they are sick, like with colds. That will likely have an impact on doctor and hospital visits.

Oh, and I hope someone sets up a Canadian supply. The problem is once China starts allowing exports of masks they may wipe out the local supplier.

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, JoannaL said:

Did you have fever and coughing? I ask because I had the same symptomes you describe (problem breathing, strange feeelings in the lungs) but since I had no coughing/fever I was unsure if it could be covid-19. It felt diffrent though from any cold/flu I had before (milder than a flu but scary). While I had it, I prayed that it is not the coronavirus. Now though, since I am feeling well again (and my family is healthy as well) I pray that it was the virus ( and I can visite my elderly mother again soon).

I didn't really have any fever (just one bad night of shivers, which was one of the very first symptoms). Coughing otoh... yeah I did have coughing fits some days, but really nothing major, and not continuously through the two-ish weeks that the whole thing lasted.

From what I understand (and from what doctors told me), symptoms vary widely from one individual to another. The one constant seems to be respiratory trouble. Though the last doctor I saw yesterday did tell me my case was very typical of Covid-19. To be specific:
1) A bad day/night of shivers (and/or fever) signaling initial contamination.
2) Sore throat (and a blocked or runny nose) (around +2/+3 days). Also, general fatigue.
3) Respiratory troubles (with aching/burning/tickling sensations in the lungs) starting around +3/+4 days and lasting for about a week.
4) A distinct improvement (around +10days).
5) A last bad couple of days (with some wheezing in my case) before being in the clear (at around +14/+15 days).

I have no idea why there is an improvement around +10 days. I'd read about it but it still surprised me when the symptoms came back with a vengeance at the end. Anyway, point is you don't get all the symptoms all the time, you don't necessarily get fever, and even the coughing isn't necessarily bad. Also, bear in mind that I do smoke a bit, which goes a long way to explain why I felt the entire thing.
My GF who doesn't smoke coughed even less than I did and didn't feel anything more than tingling sensations in her lungs, unpleasant but not painful. In her case it was close to... a cold. Though she lost much of her appetite and even experienced a brief loss of both taste and smell at some point.
Honestly, if not for the media attention around the virus we would have both assumed we'd had some weird cold or flu. The reason why we are considered to have had Covid-19 (authorities noted down our household as "contaminated" at some point) is because we are both teachers in Paris and that the odds of us experiencing those symptoms at this specific time because of something else are infinitesimal.

[Derfel Cadarn]

(UK only)

I know a lot of people are getting cabin fever. I’m ‘gifting’ some kindle copies of my book for free to hopefully help ease this. More details in the Literature forum Amazing Book Deals thread. UK only as I can only gift to UK AmaZon accounts.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Mixed weather in Minneapolis. It's warm, but very gloomy. Normally people would be everywhere. Instead it felt like a wasteland, which is a good thing. There were a few other people walking their dogs, a few joggers, and some families playing together in the parks, but that was about it. There weren't many cars either. Hopefully this is the same outside of my neighborhood. 

[Fury Resurrected]

27 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Mixed weather in Minneapolis. It's warm, but very gloomy. Normally people would be everywhere. Instead it felt like a wasteland, which is a good thing. There were a few other people walking their dogs, a few joggers, and some families playing together in the parks, but that was about it. There weren't many cars either. Hopefully this is the same outside of my neighborhood. 

In Uptown there were still a lot of people walking yesterday, though they did stay further away that usual, except for the people riding bicycles on the sidewalks who are always assholes

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

In Uptown there were still a lot of people walking yesterday, though they did stay further away that usual, except for the people riding bicycles on the sidewalks who are always assholes

I've been wondering if it would be a good time to check my bike out and ride the Greenway. It's actually a good loophole to the shutdown. I could go check Uptown, the metro and even to the fort in a day to see what's going on. 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Honestly, if not for the media attention around the virus we would have both assumed we'd had some weird cold or flu.

Thank you so much for that description.  I hope you don't mind that I'm sharing it with some others, like Charlie Stross?

[Rippounet]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Thank you so much for that description.  I hope you don't mind that I'm sharing it with some others, like Charlie Stross?

What is it you're trying to say ? 

[Arakan]

Interesting. The UK Deputy CMO said that the WHO advice for systematic mass testing is for poor countries only with bad health service and thus not necessary for the UK. 

Well sometimes you just cannot make it up. She really said that. Speechless.