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Who Pays the Coronaman? - Covid #8


Tywin Manderly

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6 minutes ago, Triskele said:

In BNW soma is like the universal drug that everyone's taking to stay placated.  It's a bit unclear from my recollection whether Huxley meant it to be an exact stand-in for the pharmaceutical we know as soma today.  My hunch is kind of not really.  

It's almost certainly based on the eponymous drink of the gods in the Vedas. This is basically the same idea as nectar and ambrosia in Greek mythology, but he wanted to be less obvious about it.

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32 minutes ago, Triskele said:

In BNW soma is like the universal drug that everyone's taking to stay placated.  It's a bit unclear from my recollection whether Huxley meant it to be an exact stand-in for the pharmaceutical we know as soma today.  My hunch is kind of not really.  

 

22 minutes ago, Altherion said:

It's almost certainly based on the eponymous drink of the gods in the Vedas. This is basically the same idea as nectar and ambrosia in Greek mythology, but he wanted to be less obvious about it.

It would appear that an ape should use his hands....wiser......

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CNN just did a news report out of Spain. One doctor who likes to snorkel thought his snorkelling mask could be a substitute for the official masks and it actually looks pretty good. They detach the breathing tube on top and use a modified filter used in ventilators to replace it. The hospital has 3D printers that make the filters, and they last for 5 days before they need replacing.

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On 3/28/2020 at 6:10 PM, Rippounet said:

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.

Thanks for your account and glad you both are fine! Viruses had been bad this season. I had for new year some cough fits that lasted two days and were gone and then a bad flu mid February but it didn't feel like anything you describe.

May I ask you which home management were you recommended during the disease? Like drink lot of liquids and stay warm? Something else that may help to avoid major problems? Some people are given inhalators, I read.

Since I think at some point I'm going to get I'd like to be prepared but it's hard to find that information. For the moment I taking a lot of Vitamin C an D together with some echinacea pills. Trying to eat healthy but it's harder with sparse shopping visits.

 

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6 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

CNN just did a news report out of Spain. One doctor who likes to snorkel thought his snorkelling mask could be a substitute for the official masks and it actually looks pretty good. They detach the breathing tube on top and use a modified filter used in ventilators to replace it. The hospital has 3D printers that make the filters, and they last for 5 days before they need replacing. 

Somewhere they want to use the positive pressure anti-snoring masks as substitute too for relatively milder cases

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1 minute ago, rotting sea cow said:

Somewhere they want to use the positive pressure anti-snoring masks as substitute too for relatively milder cases

The doctors said Cpap masks were on the list but the snorkelling masks really cover the face well.

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Amid the devastating absolute numbers, it's worth noting that the rates of growth in cases and deaths are starting to slow almost across the board.

The Financial Times ran some good charts on this today. South Korea is clearly the star pupil so far: nearly five weeks since the 10th death and they have already managed to get their fatalities growth rate to well below 10%/day. Italy is now at around 10%, but peaked at around 40% (S Korea never went above 20%). 

The big question now is around further waves and the effects of relaxing lockdowns. 

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2 hours ago, Arakan said:

That is actually a relatively „soft“ outcome given the circumstances. It would mean the infection can be limited to roughly 10% of the population until a viable vaccine or viable anti virals are found. 

1% of 150,000,000 is still 1,500,000, and that's how many people will potentially die in the U.S. 

 

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We’re still at less than a thousand in SC.  Columbia and Charleston are going for “Shelter in Place” orders.  They’re are just over 100 for each city metro.

Greenville, where I live, has 57 cases.

Grocery stores are filling back up.  I’m a little embarrassed by how happy it made me to walk into a largely filled grocery store.  I hope it means the supply chains are catching up and the panic buying is slowing.

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5 hours ago, Mudguard said:

You shouldn't be able to detect viral RNA after all the dead virus has been cleared by the body.  I think this can take up to a week or two, but I'm not sure.

Apparently a SARS-Cov study from 2004 found some people were testing positive on PCR tests, but not viral cultures, up to 2 months(!) after the infection. But this may be to slow disposal of stuff through the intestine, as rectal swabs were mentioned. Not sure what sort of tests are being done after people are declared well, or even to declare people well.

Also, there's a preprint paper discussing the mRNA vaccine that is being trialled as a phase 2 study in the U.S., and concerns that it will actually exacerbate the illness under certain circumstances because of the way it binds to the protein it targets; an alternative protein is suggested as potentially being safer (but so far as I can find no one has developed an mRNA vaccine focusing on that). This was a vaccine that was being fast-tracked, so ... we'll see what happens.

 

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23 minutes ago, Paxter said:

Amid the devastating absolute numbers, it's worth noting that the rates of growth in cases and deaths are starting to slow almost across the board.

The Financial Times ran some good charts on this today. South Korea is clearly the star pupil so far: nearly five weeks since the 10th death and they have already managed to get their fatalities growth rate to well below 10%/day. Italy is now at around 10%, but peaked at around 40% (S Korea never went above 20%). 

The big question now is around further waves and the effects of relaxing lockdowns. 

It's been a daily update for at least 2 weeks now, always worth linking again:

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

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It's interesting that Sweden claims to be approaching the pandemic in a more sensible manner by not enforcing public movement restrictions. But beware of any claims that this is an effective means for control. Sweden has a higher per capita infection rate than the UK and close to the same infection rate as the USA. It has close to the same number of confirmed cases as Australia but half the population. It has double the population of New Zealand but 7x the number of cases.

I would conclude that Sweden's approach is not better at controlling the pandemic than anyone else's, but might be better at maintaining the economy and keeping people happy (at least until they get the disease). Depending how the New Zealand response pans out it might prove to be considerably worse than some responses. It's certainly not been as effective as China's, if you believe China's almost down to zero new daily cases. According to official numbers China is only about 7000 people away from eradicating the disease within its borders. That would be very impressive if true.

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14 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

Apparently a SARS-Cov study from 2004 found some people were testing positive on PCR tests, but not viral cultures, up to 2 months(!) after the infection. But this may be to slow disposal of stuff through the intestine, as rectal swabs were mentioned. Not sure what sort of tests are being done after people are declared well, or even to declare people well.

The virus (both SARS, SARS-COV-2, and MERS) continues to be shed in the faeces for weeks after the respiratory infection has cleared. This is pretty well documented. But no, viral RNA won't hang around after the virus has cleared. Outside the virion, RNA has a ridiculously short half-life in vitro, and an even shorter one in vivo (we're talking minutes). It's why its a pain in the ass to work with.

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50 minutes ago, Paxter said:

Amid the devastating absolute numbers, it's worth noting that the rates of growth in cases and deaths are starting to slow almost across the board.

The Financial Times ran some good charts on this today. South Korea is clearly the star pupil so far: nearly five weeks since the 10th death and they have already managed to get their fatalities growth rate to well below 10%/day. Italy is now at around 10%, but peaked at around 40% (S Korea never went above 20%). 

The big question now is around further waves and the effects of relaxing lockdowns. 

Define across the board? 
Do we know the real situation in Brazil, India, Indonesia? Iran, Egypt? Bangladesh? You should specify for which country you speak. 

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6 minutes ago, Arakan said:

Define across the board? 
Do we know the real situation in Brazil, India, Indonesia? Iran, Egypt? Bangladesh? You should specify for which country you speak. 

A friend (US) who is teaching in Xalapa, Mexico, says everything there is entirely normal.  Nothing has shown up.  Which means ... it's going to start very soon, he thinks.

 

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3 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It's interesting that Sweden claims to be approaching the pandemic in a more sensible manner by not enforcing public movement restrictions. But beware of any claims that this is an effective means for control. Sweden has a higher per capita infection rate than the UK and close to the same infection rate as the USA. It has close to the same number of confirmed cases as Australia but half the population.

The vagaries of different standards and capacity for testing of cases makes this not very useful. Better statistics would be how many people require intensive care per capita and how many people die per capita, and the growth rates of same. 

3 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It has double the population of New Zealand but 7x the number of cases.

Again, not too useful. Sweden had its first case registered on January 31st, New Zealand had its first on February 28th. There's also the fact that we had hundreds of cases come in from people who had vacationed in Italy and people who were visiting Iran -- it was only a week ago that more than half of cases were from local transmission rather than foreign sourced. New Zealand, being a remote island, seems to have had only a relative trickle of these if the Wikipedia entry for the pandemic is correct, and making contract tracing much easier. I can't quite tell if you've reached the 50/50 point on community transmission or not. 

3 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I would conclude that Sweden's approach is not better at controlling the pandemic than anyone else's, but might be better at maintaining the economy and keeping people happy (at least until they get the disease). 

Denmark went full lock down more than two weeks ago, and the effect of the lockdown has so far been nil compared to Sweden's more modest changes when comparing deaths per capita. Norway has done better on that score, but is smaller and even less population dense than Sweden (about comparable with New Zealand, in fact, although Oslo is far more dense than Auckland, and Stockholm even more dense than that).

 

3 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Depending how the New Zealand response pans out it might prove to be considerably worse than some responses. It's certainly not been as effective as China's, if you believe China's almost down to zero new daily cases.

A lot of people don't believe that, no. Even so, there's also the question of the long term impact of periodic shutdowns of industry going forward -- which is what's happening in parts of China right now, because new outbreaks keep happening. Japan is seeing more and more cases. South Korea keeps getting outbreaks.

The success of the Swedish strategy can only be determined a year or two from now when we see how its overall health outcomes, including yearly deaths, compares to the outcomes in other countries which used different methods. The failure of it will not need that much time to determine, however, as the failure will be seen if serious cases overwhelm the healthcare resources and Sweden becomes the Nordic Spain or Italy. So far, Sweden has a lot of capacity, and in fact its rate of new ICU admissions and deaths has been down the last few days, when presumably our policy of social distancing, work for home, etc. kicked in.

 

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45 minutes ago, Arakan said:

Define across the board? 
Do we know the real situation in Brazil, India, Indonesia? Iran, Egypt? Bangladesh? You should specify for which country you speak. 

Across the board was intended to mean “across countries which have confirmed fatalities over 100” (for the fatalaties data) or "cases over 5,000" for the new cases data. 

ETA: Worth looking at the FT website for a more fulsome look at the stats.

ETA: Correction of who was in the FT sample. 

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55 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It's interesting that Sweden claims to be approaching the pandemic in a more sensible manner by not enforcing public movement restrictions. But beware of any claims that this is an effective means for control. Sweden has a higher per capita infection rate than the UK and close to the same infection rate as the USA. It has close to the same number of confirmed cases as Australia but half the population. It has double the population of New Zealand but 7x the number of cases.

I would conclude that Sweden's approach is not better at controlling the pandemic than anyone else's, but might be better at maintaining the economy and keeping people happy (at least until they get the disease). Depending how the New Zealand response pans out it might prove to be considerably worse than some responses. It's certainly not been as effective as China's, if you believe China's almost down to zero new daily cases. According to official numbers China is only about 7000 people away from eradicating the disease within its borders. That would be very impressive if true.

The other thing Sweden has going for it is it is coming into summer as the pandemic will be peaking which is very important for peoples immunities to help minimise the effect. I'm in NZ as well and I think we had to do something before winter or it would have been crippling. I suspect there are thousands of other undiagnosed cases out there, which isn't actually a bad thing because it would mean the fatality rate is not as bad as statistically reported. I think Sweden will be OK.

The economic hit for NZ is going to be nasty though and the taxpayer is going to be paying this off for a long time. At least the starting point was relatively healthy. I'm mainly concerned about what we do after the lock down. Are we going to close off the borders until a vaccine is developed? The self isolating methods we have imposed on overseas travelers have proven to be utterly inadequate and I'm mainly concerned we will be repeating this lock down in another few months.    

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The Sweden approach also relies heavily on individuals acting responsibly and mostly voluntarily adhering the social distancing and social isolation that is being mandated in a lot of countries. Some countries with a high sense of social responsibility among residents will have a high rate of compliance with recommended actions among individuals and organisations. Countries with a less well developed sense of social responsibility would perform extremely poorly in controlling the disease if the Sweden approach was transplanted there.

So part of my concern about media appearing to suggest the Sweden approach is more sensible than approaches in other countries is that what might work (still unproven) in Sweden will not work elsewhere. And in that context I think this comment that I read in an article is particularly irresponsible because it is criticising other government's decisions in a very offhand manner

Quote

"Sweden is an outlier on the European scene, at least,'' said Johan Giesecke, the country's former chief epidemiologist and now adviser to the Swedish Health Agency, a government body. "And I think that's good.''

Other European nations "have taken political, unconsidered actions" instead of ones dictated by science, Giesecke asserted.

Now, as some pleb nobody I can go onto web forums and criticise countries for what they're doing with scant evidence and information, because I have no influence on public thinking and the only consequence is people think / say I'm a dick. But a public official being quoted in the media claiming their approach is better, and worse disparaging the decisions of other govts is not helpful. I hope the above quote is Dr. Giesecke being taken out of context by the media, because that's what media does, and it's not actually his publicly stated sentiment.

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