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

[karaddin]

@Triskele I dunno, I'm scared of a worst case where it spikes basically but people have become bored of it as a news story and they just ignore all the people dying etc.

I've seen people pointing out in the last week the lack of public mourning for the dead. After 9/11 or the Oklahoma bombing there were TV specials, people talking about those that were lost etc. These? Just loaded into freezer trucks and the family can't even have a proper funeral, no collective mourning to make up for that.

[Loge]

People are definitely getting careless here. Had to go to the grocery store and nobody even made a feeble attempt to keep their distance, the store personnel being the worst offenders. At least they had reduced the number of carts and a guy was sanitising them.

Meanwhile a crowd of 3000 gathered in Munich to protest against the lockdown. And the police did nothing. 

[dog-days]

2 hours ago, Loge said:

People are definitely getting careless here. Had to go to the grocery store and nobody even made a feeble attempt to keep their distance, the store personnel being the worst offenders. At least they had reduced the number of carts and a guy was sanitising them.

Meanwhile a crowd of 3000 gathered in Munich to protest against the lockdown. And the police did nothing. 

This is something that puzzles me. On the radio today (sorry, no source for the statistics) I heard that in Germany about 50% of people support lockdown with less support in younger age groups, more in older ones. In Britain about 75% of people were said to support lockdown with support broadly even across all age-groups.

Now, my expectations would have been the reverse. Germany (I think) has less casualisation in its labour force. Plus, an ex boyfriend from NRW liked to boast that Germany has more of a sense of collective social responsibility than Britain, the latter having sold its soul to Anglo-American capitalist culture a long time ago. While not agreeing with him completely on that score, the last twenty years do seem to suggest that the German population has a little more political discernment and a wider vision than us Inselaffen. 

So what's happening? So far in Britain I don't think there has been much organised opposition to lockdown. What's different in Germany?

 

[Sophelia]

18 minutes ago, dog-days said:

So what's happening? So far in Britain I don't think there has been much organised opposition to lockdown. What's different in Germany?

 

Fewer deaths.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

11 hours ago, karaddin said:

@Triskele I dunno, I'm scared of a worst case where it spikes basically but people have become bored of it as a news story and they just ignore all the people dying etc.

I've seen people pointing out in the last week the lack of public mourning for the dead. After 9/11 or the Oklahoma bombing there were TV specials, people talking about those that were lost etc. These? Just loaded into freezer trucks and the family can't even have a proper funeral, no collective mourning to make up for that.

Went to the grocery store last night - seemed to be maybe a Mother’s Day rush, but there were a lot of people, few social distancing, 80% not wearing a mask.  Our neighbors had a suicide death in the family and had a zoom wake and apparently said “fuck it” and had their family over to mourn that they hadn’t seen in 2+ months, block party.

I do not know it it is apathy or being worn down or not being able to “see” the immediate impact or nice weather or wishful thinking or just fatalism at where we see this situation heading.  Standing in line, I had a sinking dread that a second wave is starting now, and going to be much worse, and that we’ve already burned through whatever willpower and safety net was available, in American society, with little to no effect.

[Fragile Bird]

It would really help to know where some of you guys are, at least in a general way if you don't want to mention an actual city.

[karaddin]

9 hours ago, Triskele said:

Just to make sure I understand:

 

You're not really questioning the expectation of a new spike but saying it won't lead to a re-shutdown and we'll just go ignore mode even with the spike again?  

ETA:  Key edit on meaning changing "by" to "but

Yes, that's my fear. That the only thing which forced the hand of leaders was a mass public freak out, but the public interest wasn't even sustained long enough to bring the infections down, just level it out for a bit. I don't see how it could be remotely possible that there won't be a spike, and Trump very clearly won't want to lock down a second time.

Granted much like the situation in Aus, the governor's have power over most of the lockdown related decisions so I guess it comes down to them. Good for some states, but bad for others and unless state borders wind up shut them that's bad for everyone.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 hours ago, karaddin said:

I can't get my head around pretending this is all fine

Money.

Quandary solved. 

[karaddin]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Money.

Quandary solved. 

Most people aren't making bank out of it though. I understand the motivation from those that will, even as I condemn it, just not all those they dupe.

[Rippounet]

A bit more on the "early" cases of Covid-19...

Quote

Italian scientists investigate possible earlier emergence of coronavirus
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-timing/italian-scientists-investigate-possible-earlier-emergence-of-coronavirus-idUSKBN21D2IG

Two links that presumably argue that the "French" strain of the virus did not in fact come from China:

Quote

 

Coronavirus outbreak in France did not come directly from China, gene-tracing scientists say (South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3081959/coronavirus-outbreak-france-did-not-come-directly-china-gene

The earliest sample in the French clade was collected on February 19 from a patient who had no history of travel and no known contact with returned travellers.

Several patients had recently travelled to other European countries, the United Arab Emirates, Madagascar and Egypt but there was no direct evidence that they contracted the disease in these destinations.

To the researchers’ surprise, some of the later strains collected were genetically older – or closer to the ancestral root – than the first sample in this clade.

A possible explanation, according to the authors, was that local transmission had been occurring in France for some time without being detected by health authorities.

The French government may have missed detecting the transmission. According to the researchers, a large proportion of those patients might have had mild symptoms or none at all.

The researchers also found that three sequences later sampled in Algeria were closely related to those in France, suggesting that travellers from France might have introduced the virus to the African country and caused an outbreak.

[...]

France is the latest in a growing number of countries and areas where no direct link between China and local outbreaks could be established.

[...]

Some prominent scientists, including Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, said the virus might have been spreading quietly in humans for years, or even decades, without causing a detectable outbreak.

 

Quote

Phylogenetic network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/17/9241

And a video about the earliest Covid-19 case in France (December) (in French, sorry):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNSrQ49jFV8

Now all this is interesting food for thought but one should bear in mind that we are in the midst of an information war between the US and China, with the US (well, Trump) seeking to blame China, while China has an interest in tracing the virus to another country. It's very obvious that the SCMP article above has an agenda for instance.
Nonetheless, I think the idea of different strains in different countries would explain some of the weird differences we can all notice from one geographical area to others.
The underlying -and chilling- conclusion however, is that this virus may be mutating at an alarming rate and the possibility of seeing a more lethal strain emerge is not nil.

 

[Loge]

27 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

It would really help to know where some of you guys are, at least in a general way if you don't want to mention an actual city.

Berlin, Germany. Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in the south-west of the city. Generally a rather well-to-do area with an oldish population (average age just unter 50).

[Martell Spy]

Washington state. We are sort of almost opened up. In 2 weeks what the Governor calls phase 2 starts, but he also had to announce it for it to take effect. Couple of key things is offices and haircut places will open. I fully expect another wave, just hopefully not right away. 

I think Insley is handling it well, to be clear. I expect a wave to come from somewhere else.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Most people aren't making bank out of it though. I understand the motivation from those that will, even as I condemn it, just not all those they dupe.

I don't expect people to remember what I post, but my long running thesis is that the average person is lazy, greedy and dumb.

Two of the three solves what's occurring here. And duping people is frankly what runs the world. Put your sunglasses on now.

[Paladin of Ice]

1 hour ago, Sophelia said:

Fewer deaths.

Are far right parties like AFD involved in protests and working against lockdowns and such? I saw some online comments where people who aren’t far right were talking about the right trying to adopt any position to undermine the government or get into power and generally stoking resentment.

 As for my experiences: in the New York City suburbs people are being pretty good so far about wearing masks and respecting distancing, at least that I’ve seen. Grocery stores require masks, have sanitizing wipes for carts, one local store is really strict about only letting in so many people at once, a number of stores require people to wear gloves while inside, etc.

My dad, who has become a dyed in the wool Republican cultist over the course of the last 20 years or so grumbles about how we need to open up, but as far as I know all he does is grumble.

 And medical labs and testing is doing much better than we were on testing and getting results, but that’s an extremely low bar because a month to a month and a half ago things were a terrifying goddamn catastrophe. Not that I necessarily trust a lot of the new tests that are coming out, since the FDA has pretty much given up on properly regulating COVID medical tests and is letting anyone who wants to rush a test to market. Some of my colleagues and I were openly deriding my company’s antibody testing as a shameless cash grab when it first came out, now at least it gives some useful information, although I keep hearing that false negative and false positive rates for both swab and antibody testing remain horrifically high compared to what usually goes on the market for medical testing. Most are still better than nothing, however.

[Fragile Bird]

Excellent interview with virologist Peter Piot, one of the discoverers of the Ebola virus in 1976 and now director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medecine. He fell ill with Covid-19 in mid-March and spent a week in hospital.

Quote

After fighting viruses all over the world for more than 40 years, I have become an expert in infections. I’m glad I had corona and not Ebola, although I read a scientific study yesterday that concluded you have a 30% chance of dying if you end up in a British hospital with COVID-19. That’s about the same overall mortality rate as for Ebola in 2014 in West Africa. That makes you lose your scientific level-headedness at times, and you surrender to emotional reflections. They got me, I sometimes thought. I have devoted my life to fighting viruses and finally, they get their revenge. For a week I balanced between heaven and Earth, on the edge of what could have been the end.

 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/finally-virus-got-me-scientist-who-fought-ebola-and-hiv-reflects-facing-death-covid-19

[Fez]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

Yes, that's my fear. That the only thing which forced the hand of leaders was a mass public freak out, but the public interest wasn't even sustained long enough to bring the infections down, just level it out for a bit. I don't see how it could be remotely possible that there won't be a spike, and Trump very clearly won't want to lock down a second time.

Granted much like the situation in Aus, the governor's have power over most of the lockdown related decisions so I guess it comes down to them. Good for some states, but bad for others and unless state borders wind up shut them that's bad for everyone.

It'll probably be too late, but its pretty easy to imagine a public freakout again. Right now, because of the relative success of the initial lockdown, there's a ton of people who don't know anyone who was infected by the virus, much less who died from it. If things start getting unchecked for a while, that'll change. But by the time we reach that point, I'm not sure there's much that can be done anymore. As always, the issue is that people are too fucking myopic.

Also, I do think there will be collective mourning eventually. The problem is, that kind of thing is generally the cathartic end to a bad situation. But we're still in the middle of that situation, with no end in sight yet. And I think it feels strange to people, subconsciously at least, to mourn for those lost, when we know there are still tens of thousands more to be lost. I generally dislike the war metaphors for fighting a virus, but I do think its apt in this one. There isn't mourning in the middle of a battle, there isn't the time or energy for it; that's what happens afterwards.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

It would really help to know where some of you guys are, at least in a general way if you don't want to mention an actual city.

Small town part of the Oklahoma City MSA. People are acting like it's over now. Posted in the U.S. Politics thread about coming across a Little League game with about 60-70 people yesterday. Most of the restaurants I've driven by look like they're packed to capacity.

And that's exactly what our fucking POS governor wants.

[Fez]

This seems a bit grim (the title link is wrong). https://theathletic.com/1763139/2020/05/10/covid-19-antibody-study-of-mlb-employees-finds-that-7-percent-have-had-the-virus/

MLB did antibody testing of 5,603 of their employees and found that only 0.7% have had the virus. Now this isn't going to be representative of America. MLB employees are 80% white and have above average salaries. They also have almost entirely been working from home since the lockdowns started. 

However, this is in contrast to the testing of people going out and about that has shown much higher rates of antibodies. And suggests that things could get very bad very quickly for the people who have been sheltering at home if social distancing is dropped too early.

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, Fez said:

MLB did antibody testing of 5,603 of their employees and found that only 0.7% have had the virus. Now this isn't going to be representative of America.

0.7% of Americans having covid would be about 2.3 million people.  Which is almost double the current confirmed positives, but still assuredly an underestimate of the actual number infected.  Not that mlb players are a representation at all of Americans generally (as you said).

[Fez]

7 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

0.7% of Americans having covid would be about 2.3 million people.  Which is almost double the current confirmed positives, but still assuredly an underestimate of the actual number infected.  Not that mlb players are a representation at all of Americans generally (as you said).

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29158392/few-positive-coronavirus-tests-mlb-employees

This mostly wasn't players I think (certainly not the 40% of samples that came from women). The Diamondbacks for instance sent in 362 samples. I think its mostly front office staff, business side staff, stadium management staff, executives, etc. So I don't think it's a study of millionaires, but it is a study of people who are doing well enough for themselves.

However, I think a lot of people (including me) are to some extent really hoping that those antibody studies finding 15% or more of people to have had the virus to be correct. Since that would imply huge numbers of asymptomatic cases and that progress is being made towards herd immunity.