At what point did you / will you take the coronavirus epidemic seriously?

[jay santos]

Another wave of coronavirus will likely hit the US in the fall. Here's why and what we can do to stop it

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/02/health/coronavirus-second-wave-fall-season/index.html

A Second Wave Of Coronavirus Is Likely Inevitable

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saibala.../#61552e9c4d70

Fauci: Second wave of coronavirus 'inevitable'

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/49...all-inevitable

I understand it's predicted by some. I thought you said it's already occurring in other countries that have started opening up.

[Jarid in Cedar]

https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/...233003520?s=19

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

Now that it is apparent that everyone has a trigger surrounding this issue, including Jay, Omaha, SU, et al, I will partially retract my snarky comment to Jay and dive in.

First lets start with a few thing:

1. You will not find a single comment from me that advocates or promotes shelter in home or other social distancing measures. .

Trust me. I know that lives will continue to be lost, that there will always be a baseline of death from this and other diseases. I have no delusions. I am not a huge advocate of shelter in place for the majority of circumstances.

My gripe is that there a dismissive callousness that reads through when people say, well all the deaths are the elderly and sick anyway, so we really shouldn't be concerned about the death counts/death rates. It is a spur in my saddle.

[tooblue]

Which you would expect since they didn’t lock everything down. When talking about efficacy of countries responses, I think we should consider the ultimate outcome and not what it is at this point in time. Now, ultimately Sweden may be worse off, but there’s a good chance they have peaked and won’t spike again unlike their neighbors that now have to decide if they continue economic ruin or allow for spikes to occur.

A vaccine is a long ways off, if one is ever developed. Maybe a miracle treatment will present itself, but even that would ave a long ways off.

The idea that Sweden didn't lock down everything is incorrect. They approached their lock down differently by trusting so called "Swedish stoicism," the general populace's inherent trust in government and willingness to socially distance without too much direct intervention by authorities.

I don't know that Sweden is much worse off, but there is certainly no evidence yet that they have peaked and won't spike again. On the contrary, if this is a seasonal virus like its cousins, it will return and there will be more deaths.

The best hope is better treatments are developed to deal with it, because any vaccine likely will be as much a crap shoot as the flu vaccine.

[tooblue]

Nothing in there about allowing all the old people to die.

My comment in part was snarky, but it is well documented that this virus is particularly deadly for those over 60 and or health compromised. So yes, ten times more deaths in Sweden than in neighbouring countries means that many more older Swedes have died.

[Northwestcoug]

The idea that Sweden didn't lock down everything is incorrect. They approached their lock down differently by trusting so called "Swedish stoicism," the general populace's inherent trust in government and willingness to socially distance without too much direct intervention by authorities.

I don't know that Sweden is much worse off, but there is certainly no evidence yet that they have peaked and won't spike again. On the contrary, if this is a seasonal virus like its cousins, it will return and there will be more deaths.

The best hope is better treatments are developed to deal with it, because any vaccine likely will be as much a crap shoot as the flu vaccine.

This is what I understand also. They are still banning larger (>50) gatherings and still practice social distancing. They are not as far away from us as SU would like them to be.

[Omaha 680]

This is what I understand also. They are still banning larger (>50) gatherings and still practice social distancing. They are not as far away from us as SU would like them to be.

No businesses were ordered closed including restaurants. Most schools stayed open. That's pretty freaking far away from the us response. When talking about national economic impact, banning large gatherings is nothing compared to the other measures I mentioned above.

[Jarid in Cedar]

IMO, the only thing that has spared most of the country from experiencing a major outbreak is the lack of air travel to and from the major hot-spots nationwide. And the relative isolation that most communities in the midwest and west have from each other.

California has about 60% the deaths per million as Germany. Texas less than half Germany. Same with Florida. How do you explain that?

A couple of things I think play into it. The outbreak in New York(most of the eastern seaboard) was carried there from the Italy outbreak, California from the China/Asia outbreak. There are slight genomic differences that show that. So, most of what I say from here on, starts with that premise.

The severe outbreak in New York was likely due to the virus being seeded in multiple areas over a relatively short period of time. During the month of February, approximately 140,000 people landed in NYC airports from Italy alone. And we didn't suspend air travel from Europe until March 14th. On that day, Italy had only reported 21,000 cases and 1400 deaths so far. And at that time, there were roughly 2000 cases and 40 deaths in the US. Within 2 weeks, cases exploded to over 120,000 and 3000 deaths in the US. That type of explosive growth requires multiple smaller outbreaks morphing together. Basically, there were too many small sparks thrown into the field of grass. Population density matters, but even after removing NYC numbers, the remaining state of New York would have the most cases and deaths compared to every other state.

Comparatively, we shut down travel from China on January 30th, and the Chinese had essentially locked down the Hubei province 2 weeks prior. There was very little travel from China, specifically Wuhan, from the middle of January on. With that, many of the outbreaks on the west coast were started from Americans who had been abroad in Asia. This represented a significantly lower volume of imported cases to the west coast, which made it harder for an outbreak to spread exponentially in the fashion that it did in the NY, NJ, CO region.

And as I stated in the previous post, the dramatic drop in air travel in the US since mid March has helped shelter a healthy chunk of the country from having as big of an outbreak as the eastern seaboard.

As far as Texas, I have a friend who is the ER director for a hospital in San Antonio. He told me that they haven't tested a single patient the last 2 1/2 weeks because their hospital didn't have any tests. So that may explain their numbers, especially if they are only reporting deaths based on confirmed tests. I guess we will see what their "deaths above seasonal norms" looks like in a few weeks.

[SeattleUte]

My gripe is that there a dismissive callousness that reads through when people say, well all the deaths are the elderly and sick anyway, so we really shouldn't be concerned about the death counts/death rates. It is a spur in my saddle.

I haven’t seen anyone say this. Maybe you could show me an example. The point is that this virus is more deadly for certain tranches of the population than others. It’s important to address this in deciding risk factors and how to minimize risk. The virus practically comes with an instruction manual.

We need a lot more data, and more communication, not less. There should be an app that enables us to input age and health facts and provides us a risk estimate.

The problem is that politicians don’t want to talk about trade-offs, because they fear they have to say there are no trade-offs in order to get elected. That certainly is Cuomo’s approach.

People who want to talk about demographics and mortality rates are being honest. They are not doing anything wrong.

Instead, the prevailing approach has been to advocate for lockdowns and nothing else. No analysis of the public health and human suffering cost of that, or whether it can go on and for how long, and if not, an exit strategy and the consequences of lockdown even for limiting risk from the virus.

[Northwestcoug]

No businesses were ordered closed including restaurants. Most schools stayed open. That's pretty freaking far away from the us response. When talking about national economic impact, banning large gatherings is nothing compared to the other measures I mentioned above.

You’re right about the above. Still, they banned museums, sporting events, and visits to nursing homes. Restaurants are fined if they don’t adhere to social distancing measures. They are more relaxed than most, but not to the extreme they’ve been made out to be.

[Uncle Ted]

Which you would expect since they didn’t lock everything down. When talking about efficacy of countries responses, I think we should consider the ultimate outcome and not what it is at this point in time. Now, ultimately Sweden may be worse off, but there’s a good chance they have peaked and won’t spike again unlike their neighbors that now have to decide if they continue economic ruin or allow for spikes to occur.

A vaccine is a long ways off, if one is ever developed. Maybe a miracle treatment will present itself, but even that would ave a long ways off.

Yep...

A coronavirus vaccine cannot be reasonably expected until the end of 2021, professor says: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/04/a-co...ssor-says.html

WHO envoy warns coronavirus vaccine may never be developed: https://nypost.com/2020/05/04/who-en...-be-developed/

And by the time we do get a vaccine that shows promise that damn thing may have already mutated into something worse...

Mutant strain of coronavirus that makes it more infectious has 'dominated' the US and Europe - and vaccines in development may NOT work against it, study suggests: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...-dominant.html

So the fatties and old farts are most likely doomed sooner or later. Hey, maybe someone could make them a bubble suit...

[Uncle Ted]

As far as Texas, I have a friend who is the ER director for a hospital in San Antonio. He told me that they haven't tested a single patient the last 2 1/2 weeks because their hospital didn't have any tests. So that may explain their numbers, especially if they are only reporting deaths based on confirmed tests. I guess we will see what their "deaths above seasonal norms" looks like in a few weeks.

Oh crap! Even without any tests our numbers have been going up. We are so screwed!

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[myboynoah]

You’re right about the above. Still, they banned museums, sporting events, and visits to nursing homes. Restaurants are fined if they don’t adhere to social distancing measures. They are more relaxed than most, but not to the extreme they’ve been made out to be.

I read that Sweden acknowledged that despite its best intention, it still wasn't able fully shield its vulnerable population. Did it ever reissue that study where it said it found major errors on the spread of the virus? I saw a tweet claiming 20% immunity in Stockholm, but is that based on that old study?

The country is top ten in population mortality rate due to COVID. Time will tell on how that works out for Sweden, but as noted already, the U.S. is a much different place.

[Northwestcoug]

I read that Sweden acknowledged that despite its best intention, it still wasn't able fully shield its vulnerable population. Did it ever reissue that study where it said it found major errors on the spread of the virus? I saw a tweet claiming 20% immunity in Stockholm, but is that based on that old study?

The country is top ten in population mortality rate due to COVID. Time will tell on how that works out for Sweden, but as noted already, the U.S. is a much different place.

I think you're right. It banned visits to nursing homes in late March as a response to a worsening outbreak. And no, I haven't seen a reissue of that study. I think the 20% was based on the retracted one.

[Uncle Ted]

The best hope is better treatments are developed to deal with it, because any vaccine likely will be as much a crap shoot as the flu vaccine.

NWCoug says that Remdesivir is our best hope and Hydroxychloroquine is a bunch of crap. Remdesivir, however, will be like $4,500 for a treatment course! This drug, of course, comes from the same company that rapes americans for that hep C drug that costs $84,000 per course. But maybe we can take a little trip to India, see the Taj Mahal, and get this drug on the cheap too.

[Northwestcoug]

NWCoug says that Remdesivir is our best hope and Hydroxychloroquine is a bunch of crap. Remdesivir, however, will be like $4,500 for a treatment course! This drug, of course, comes from the same company that rapes americans for that hep C drug that costs $84,000 per course. But maybe we can take a little trip to India, see the Taj Mahal, and get this drug on the cheap too.