COVID-19 #13 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Disease

[Meera of Tarth]

On 5/2/2020 at 8:35 AM, rotting sea cow said:

I understand of the death rates. I just learned of someone I once met who died after one and half months in a clinic in Spain. My concern is that the number of new infections is still pretty high despite strict lockdown order. I cannot wrap my head about it. How these people are getting infected, by whom? In comparison Austria and Germany with less strict measures brought that number to a more reasonable level.

Spain is only doing tests to people who are hospitalised or with big symptoms since late March, and then also as far as I'm concerned with not many- if any- restrictions to doctors and clinical staff; or, just recently, when the situation stabilised, to those who live in nursing homes and places like this to try to separate them from other who got it.  So all the confirmed cases are true but they are not representativr of all the ones who got it. There were many more at the start of the lockdown probably. 

There are some discrepancies in the deaths in different Autonomous Communities because not all the deaths that happened outside hospitals got reported, and also about numbers of cured cases because, as Simón, (the spokesperson doctor in the virus crisis in Spain) told today, there are some who got cured without the PCR test but had the antibody test positive. 

Antibody testing has been done in a frequency we don't know, but now an statistical analysis of the population with a sample has started been doing. 

I don't know about the differences. One could think that since a great amount of the deaths happened to elders, it could be because spaniards tend to have a culture of being more in contact with them than other countries, especially through grandsons and granddaughters.

Others say that the big demonstartion of Women's Day had a big impact a week before lockdown, but it's also true that some numbers raised again in countries like Germany where lockdown measures have not been as strict so as to walk and exercise outside, etc. Now that these measures of walking and doing exercise outside are starting in Spain, if the temperatures don't help, the cases will rise again, especially in areas like Madrid a d Catalonia where there are the majority of them. 

Eventually, if the real. Amount of cases (probably assymptomatic) were high at a certain point, due to the thing developing exponentially, it could explain why it escalated higher more quickly, there were already more cases than the ones we thought. 

[The Anti-Targ]

5 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

So I was reading a New York Times article yesterday and apparently the fastest a new vaccine has ever been developed and put into circulation was four years. So, er, that's not massively encouraging.

That's not quite true, technically every annual 'flu shot is a new vaccine that needs to be approved. But it is not a vaccine for a completely new never seen before disease. Then again the only very serious diseases that caused pandemics that have been brand new never seen before recently have been HIV, SARS and MERS. HIV will probably never get a vaccine, SARS and MERS are manageable without a vaccine so there wasn't the same urgency to make one.

 

[Meera of Tarth]

On 5/1/2020 at 10:14 PM, rotting sea cow said:

A bit related to the topic of the slow cases reduction in Italy and Spain.

Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1

I cannot judge how solid this analysis is, but it strict lockdowns are no better than more relaxed measures (paper doesn't argue for no mesaures), then Spain and Italy made a serious mistake.

I could not disagree with this more. What makes a difference in the number of deaths is No Contact.

no contact or minimising it  can be achieved in two different ways: recomendations of no contact trusting the society or with full lockdown measures. 

If society doesn't behave in a way that ensures no contact, more deaths will happen. 

In Italy or Spain, at those rates, and at the base number there was at that point (much higher than the official one bc of assymptomatic cases) full lockdown had not been done, more people would have died. Period. Unless, people would have realised, extremely quickly on their own, that better not leave homes and apply personal lockdown. 

Same for other countries, where partial lockdown occurred. Regardless of the real case numbers there were in at that point, if social contact with no protection still happened, more people got it. Of course, if people is responsible and just a few don't implement those protections, and, apart from that, the real cases at the start of the lockdown are not as high as other countries which have already reached a real case figure that will have a bigger impact, the effects won't be as high as in another country. 

But if not, they will. Even if just a little. 

Regardless of that, it is more likely much less peoppe will got it with full lockdown measures when the numbers are already high and society is not responsible. 

When the number of cases is about (or has) to saturate the clinical capacities, then death rates will also increase at an even higher rate because decisions will have to be made. Who has the chances to go to hospital. Who has more chances to live with the ventilator, who doesn't. This has happened in many countries. Italy, Spain, the US.. . 

When Italy and Spain had no real capacity to treat everyone, if lockdown had not been applied, more people would have died in their homes or in the streets. A 2% of 1000000 is not the same as 2℅ of 50000.

It's also quite absurd to compare figures at different levels of lockdown and especially at different initial rate figures (and numbers of intensive care units and doctors and equipment to not get covid per inhabitant) in between countries. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, ljkeane said:

So I was reading a New York Times article yesterday and apparently the fastest a new vaccine has ever been developed and put into circulation was four years. So, er, that's not massively encouraging.

When I read that many took a decade to make, I began instantly rolling my eyes at the 12 to 18 month window. Maybe it will happen, but I doubt it.

I hate to say it, but the world is probably going to have to follow Sweden and just let things run their course. Everything we've been doing seems pointless once you learn the virus can live on surfaces for days at a time.

[rotting sea cow]

37 minutes ago, Meera of Tarth said:

I could not disagree with this more. What makes a difference in the number of deaths is No Contact.

Don't put too much thought on that paper. The author - despite knowing a bunch of math - works on oceanography.

Anyway, I think he didn't advocated no measures, but tried to demonstrate that the draconian lockdowns are not more helpful than more relaxed measures. Which is an interesting though. It might be true that a few measures are enough to bring the infections to an manageable level, but it might strongly depend on cultural behaviours, the cities structure and the underlying infected population. Italy and Spain were the first to deal with the disease in the Western hemisphere.  Little was understood at that time.

 

[Fragile Bird]

Surely the whole idea was not to overwhelm the hospital system? The idea is to open up gradually, knowing there will be more cases and more people in hospital, just not a tidal wave. No one is going to be able to wipe out the virus, unless it just disappears likes SARS did.

New Zealand and various small islands around the world may be able to wipe it out, but if those islands depend on tourism it will just be brought back. Several Caribbean islands are reporting no new cases and all old cases resolved, but hey, St. Lucia needs tourists to survive.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

but hey, St. Lucia needs tourists to survive.

My mom and step-dad got back from island hoping for a few weeks like a month or so ago. They said it was a complete ghost town regarding tourists. 
 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Everything we've been doing seems pointless once you learn the virus can live on surfaces for days at a time.

The virus can live on some surfaces for days at a time, but the probability of infection by that vector is extremely low, especially when people maintain the hand washing regime.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The virus can live on some surfaces for days at a time, but the probability of infection by that vector is extremely low, especially when people maintain the hand washing regime.

And how exactly does hand washing help when afterwards, people touch dozens of various surfaces while repeatedly adjust their masks? 

That is, by the way, assuming said people are washing their hands. Or even have masks on.

[Werthead]

34 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And how exactly does hand washing help when afterwards, people touch dozens of various surfaces while repeatedly adjust their masks? 

That is, by the way, assuming said people are washing their hands. Or even have masks on.

There's not much you can do to help people who are fucking idiots. But as long as you as an individual are washing your hands after coming into contact with any possible infected surface and are not adjusting a mask or touching your face every five seconds, the chances of infection from that vector are vanishingly slim.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

There's not much you can do to help people who are fucking idiots. But as long as you as an individual are washing your hands after coming into contact with any possible infected surface and are not adjusting a mask or touching your face every five seconds, the chances of infection from that vector are vanishingly slim.

Do you think these are realistic expectations? 

[Meera of Tarth]

4 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

Don't put too much thought on that paper. The author - despite knowing a bunch of math - works on oceanography.

Anyway, I think he didn't advocated no measures, but tried to demonstrate that the draconian lockdowns are not more helpful than more relaxed measures. Which is an interesting though. It might be true that a few measures are enough to bring the infections to an manageable level, but it might strongly depend on cultural behaviours, the cities structure and the underlying infected population. Italy and Spain were the first to deal with the disease in the Western hemisphere.  Little was understood at that time.

 

Yes, totally agree, and individual behaviour understanding the effects on society. That's why Asian countries tend to be more effective dealing with those measures than Western cultures. Although, well, expertise on that matter with other previous similar diseases help in organising massive tests and so on, and some Asian countries had that.

[Fragile Bird]

59 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Do you think these are realistic expectations? 

Donald Trump and a lot of governors seem to think so.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

46 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Donald Trump and a lot of governors seem to think so.

Go use a public bird bath! 

[Which Tyler]

 

[Filippa Eilhart]

eerily apt.

[The Anti-Targ]

Lots more statements being made about proof the virus came from the Wuhan Lab albeit the virus has a natural origin. What's the implication here? The lab was studying this specific virus and it leaked out somehow? The lab was not studying this specific virus but it was incidentally present in animals in the lab? The virus was known about for months (if the lab was studying the virus), or perhaps a year or more before the outbreak? The lab deliberately infected people to see if it affected humans? If the virus was naturally occurring then it is possible the lab had it / was studying it and at the same time the source of the outbreak was not the lab but the natural cycling of the virus in wild and domestic animals that came into contact with people. After all, if the lab found the virus out in the wild it means it was prevalent enough in the wild animal / bat population(s) for scientists to find this particular virus as opposed to any of the other hundreds of coronaviruses that cycles through the wild. Was the lab studying this virus specifically because it originally found the virus in people who had picked it up naturally?

For New Zealand, the good news is this is out first real 0 new cases day. In the past the net change in cases has been zero (and negative on one day), but that's because some people in the "probable" category got ruled out as actual cases but at the same time there were some new actual cases. But today there are no actual new cases. also no deaths and now under 200 active cases. Now the long tail of trying to get active cases down to zero starts with daily recovery number being about 10, so with a handful of new cases still likely to crop up we'll be about a month before we might possibly get to zero active cases.

I wonder when this ANZAC bubble might happen. Aus got 21 new cases today, and If Australia keeps getting double digit new cases it will mean Australia will continue to present an ongoing, albeit low grade, risk. And we don't want anyone bringing it back / in from Australia if we make a bubble.

[BigFatCoward]

despite there being no change to the official position my train was at least twice as busy as it has been.  its still really quiet and social distancing isn't a problem, but clearly people are starting to drift back to work. 

[Loge]

On that paper being written by an oceanographer, that's not necessarily a bad thing if he knows his math. The model he used seems to have been picked randomly, though, so it's all BS. Still, from what I found on Wikipedia, modelling an epidemic is just solving ordinary differential equations, and they are similar to what's used in chemistry. Hardly witchcraft. 

As for Italy and Spain, looking at the daily case numbers I wouldn't say they are doing poorly. I'd rather worry about the US, Canada and the UK. I don't really see any decline at all. Canada is even still growing. And then there's Russia and Brazil, which are climbing up the leaderboard fast. Not much to be smug about for Mr. Putin. And let's not forget India. If they don't manage to contain the virus things will get really ugly. Africa and the rest of Latin America don't get much attention either but the virus is definitely spreading there. 

[rotting sea cow]

8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Lots more statements being made about proof the virus came from the Wuhan Lab albeit the virus has a natural origin. What's the implication here? The lab was studying this specific virus and it leaked out somehow? The lab was not studying this specific virus but it was incidentally present in animals in the lab? The virus was known about for months (if the lab was studying the virus), or perhaps a year or more before the outbreak? The lab deliberately infected people to see if it affected humans? If the virus was naturally occurring then it is possible the lab had it / was studying it and at the same time the source of the outbreak was not the lab but the natural cycling of the virus in wild and domestic animals that came into contact with people. After all, if the lab found the virus out in the wild it means it was prevalent enough in the wild animal / bat population(s) for scientists to find this particular virus as opposed to any of the other hundreds of coronaviruses that cycles through the wild. Was the lab studying this virus specifically because it originally found the virus in people who had picked it up naturally?

There might be a grain of truth on those allegations.  China is refusing to cooperate in any investigation.  Reportedly. With so much propaganda, noise, baseless allegations, it not easy to discern the reality. I'm unable to judge in one way or another. 

One thing that I'm however starting to find strange is that countries are looking back and finding more and more earlier cases and COVID related deaths. For me it means that either the disease did spread with astonishing speed or the outbreak started earlier. But in the later case, shouldn't we see evidence in the molecular clock? According to it the first case was around the 15 Nov, so community spread in China started to pick up really in December.