Novel Coronavirus COVID-19

[amaysngrace]

My daughter said a tech came back up from the morgue last night and said it was full.  They call it the freezer.

She also said they have 52 beds and 51 of them were being used as of last night.  

Maybe they were all being used until that one person went to the morgue. 

 

[preraph]

I'm sorry to hear it's still so bad there, Amaysingrace.  Dallas is still on the upswing in cases, but the percent of available beds, etc. is staying about 60% capacity, which isn't bad.  I just went out to eat for the first time during this.  I went to a neighborhood TexMex place.  It's good because it's huge and never crowded, and then they also took out a row of tables, so everything is way far apart, but it's bad because it's a lot of Hispanics there and not one of them wearing masks, though the servers did, thank goodness.  And they used plastic silverware , so that was probably good.  I don't think it's nearly as dangerous eating a place like that as going to the grocery and going in or even unloading the grocery pickup.  

[sothereiwas]

So far in my state, COVID-19 has killed about 20% of the number of people who normally die of the flu. Businesses and working people are being decimated. In my county literally no one has died of this bug. This whole shelter at home thing has been a terrible overreaction for our locale., 

[elaine567]

7 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

COVID-19 has killed about 20% of the number of people who normally die of the flu.

Study looking st deaths in Italy showed men are losing, on average, 13 years of life to the coronavirus while women are losing 11.
That is s big chunk of life

[sothereiwas]

58 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

Study looking st deaths in Italy showed men are losing, on average, 13 years of life to the coronavirus while women are losing 11.

Can you explain what that means to you?

[elaine567]

It means that the people losing their lives were not people who were about to shuffle off their mortal coil in a year or two anyway as is the assumption when talking about older people dying from the virus.
Even younger people dying are assumed to be on their last legs anyway, so somehow their deaths do not matter.
I guess it is a protective mechanism as large numbers of deaths are not something we are used to dealing with.

[Timshel]

3 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

I guess it is a protective mechanism as large numbers of deaths are not something we are used to dealing with.

Yes, that is exactly what it means.

[sothereiwas]

18 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

I guess it is a protective mechanism as large numbers of deaths are not something we are used to dealing with.

Perhaps you missed it, but I just mentioned that in a typical flu season we see 5x this number of deaths each year in my state from flu. 

Edited May 7, 2020 by sothereiwas
Removed extraneous

[gaius]

There was actually a good article a few days ago arguing the flu death rate is likely a lot lower than we think, as most of the deaths in the 60k+ figures are part of a CDC estimate.

The highest yearly confirmed flu death rate in the last few decades was 15k, with most years clocking in in the mid thousands. And we're up to 70,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths in a little over 2 months with no end in sight.

Although Juha disagrees on the numbers. But I'll get to that after dinner.

[basil67]

4 hours ago, sothereiwas said:

So far in my state, COVID-19 has killed about 20% of the number of people who normally die of the flu. Businesses and working people are being decimated. In my county literally no one has died of this bug. This whole shelter at home thing has been a terrible overreaction for our locale., 

Have you considered that the shelter at home thing has been instrumental in your deaths staying so low?  

[carhill]

No real limitations, people are out and about as normal, checked today, 24 cases in the county, no recoveries listed, no deaths. Most likely all those cases are in the county seat, the only town of real consequence in the county. The rest of the 5,000 square miles is forest. Myself, I've been in two states during this episode, pretty much normal in both, people seem a bit freaky in CA. Only thing I'm consciously paying attention to is not touching my face, eyes, ears, etc. Hand washing per historical norm. I have a OSHA-approved have face respirator with N95 pre-filters but have only used it once, on a job in an attic not because of the Covid-19 deal. Apologies for any repetition, only know of one person who tested positive, a customer whom I haven't seen, apparently he's doing fine, don't know anyone who knows anyone who died. If not for all the constant press, and customers suddenly disappearing, I wouldn't have a clue there was a 'pandemic'.

[amaysngrace]

My infectious disease Doctor, the one who treated my tick bite, now has it.

[amaysngrace]

So far I know one person who died (a woman I taught. CCD with), one person who recovered (my son’s friends’ Dad) and one who just recently tested positive (my doctor).

One nurse my daughter worked with last week tested positive but I don’t know her.

[amaysngrace]

Make that two people who died 

My aunt’s brother died yesterday in Massachusetts, not my uncle, my uncle’s wife’s brother and my cousins’ uncle.  

[sothereiwas]

10 hours ago, basil67 said:

Have you considered that the shelter at home thing has been instrumental in your deaths staying so low?  

Probably helped. It's never been enforced here, and businesses are open in violation in some cases. Still, zero dead. Zero.

As I said, we generally lose 5x as many to flu at the state level; sheltering at home would likely have prevented that every year as well, should we have done this every year? I think not. Even without enforcement people are standing clear of each other and businesses are limiting occupancy. I've never been a person who would go into a crowded restaurant, for instance, and IMO it's high time the rest of America caught up to me on that one. Personal space - it's always been a thing, respect it people. 

At some point the government should realize the best thing they can do is probably to provide information and trust the citizens to protect themselves.

Edited May 8, 2020 by sothereiwas

[Piddy]

3 hours ago, amaysngrace said:

Make that two people who died 

My aunt’s brother died yesterday in Massachusetts, not my uncle, my uncle’s wife’s brother and my cousins’ uncle.  

I'm originally from Massachusetts and still have family up there on Cape Cod.  Massachusetts has been hit hard by the virus.  

[chillii]

But if you look at it this way , would ltaly had ever gone through everything they have , because of the flu , or uk or spain, l've never heard of anything like that in any country because of the flu. So whatever the numbers this still must be a very very different thing . And then imagine if those countries didn't lockdown when they did . covid cases could've been 10 or 50 times more , who knows . But what could've say just ltaly alone have done if the numbers were even only 10x worse , could you imagine .

Edited May 8, 2020 by chillii

[sothereiwas]

24 minutes ago, chillii said:

this still must be a very very different thing .

Not the point. 

The point is that we're (locally) well below what has historically been an acceptable fatality count, so the measures (locally) are out of proportion, historically speaking, to the present conditions. A correction is needed, we're off course.

[Piddy]

We still don't know a lot about the Covid-19 virus.  Like HIV it could've been around for sometime before it spread like wildfire.  HIV was in Africa for decades before it spread.  Still, getting rid of the wet markets would be fine with me.

[chillii]

11 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

Not the point. 

The point is that we're (locally) well below what has historically been an acceptable fatality count, so the measures (locally) are out of proportion, historically speaking, to the present conditions. A correction is needed, we're off course.

 

l'd agree while the numbers are that low , until or if they took off later.

 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2020 by chillii

[sothereiwas]

15 minutes ago, Piddy said:

We still don't know a lot about the Covid-19 virus.  Like HIV it could've been around for sometime before it spread like wildfire.  HIV was in Africa for decades before it spread.  Still, getting rid of the wet markets would be fine with me.

There are wet markets and wet markets. In the places I've been, a wet market was just a market devoted to selling meat. It wasn't primarily a slaughterhouse. Probably was just named such for historical reasons.

Open, sloppy, public slaughterhouses just seem like a foolish idea in the 21st century. 

[schlumpy]

13 hours ago, basil67 said:

Have you considered that the shelter at home thing has been instrumental in your deaths staying so low?  

That would be a consideration Basil if the New York Governor had not presented convincing statistics that the majority of deaths from the virus in his state were from the group that stayed at home. I'm not sure how to interpret it. New York with it's subway system is much different then the rest of the country especially Ohio where I live.

Commonsense says the stay-at-home group should have lower fatalities so there has to be a factor that explains that but it has not be presented.

The current mortality numbers for Sweden are not much above the US numbers. That also suggests that the stay-at-home solution was not as effective as presented.

[sothereiwas]

46 minutes ago, schlumpy said:

Commonsense says the stay-at-home group should have lower fatalities so there has to be a factor that explains that

Perhaps if there are a lot more of the stay at home people in the survey (likely) and some of those people were not very careful or completely truthful (also likely) then we would see a result like this. Places that are not hotspots don't seem to be benefitting from sheltering at home. Probably better to gradually ease up and be watchful in such places, like rural or less dense communities. 

[elaine567]

The stay at home solution will reduce contact but there will always be people who flout it, always be people who visit relatives and friends, people who will wander about with symptoms, people who will wander about and spread the disease with no symptoms.
Some will have entered the lockdown with the virus and then spread it to others in their family. Some will have contact with key workers on the frontline.
If there is a large proportion of people in a community with the virus then shopping, out walking, picking up prescriptions, mail, travelling on public transport etc. are all going to be sources of viral spread. They may be "stay at home" but how many truly stayed at home, hand on heart? 
The total lockdown of Wuhan is really the only way to stop the virus dead, when there is a lot of virus about.

[Philosopher]

2 hours ago, sothereiwas said:

Not the point. 

The point is that we're (locally) well below what has historically been an acceptable fatality count, so the measures (locally) are out of proportion, historically speaking, to the present conditions. A correction is needed, we're off course.

The problem is that at the moment governments are largely flying blind. There has not been a pandemic of an airborne novel virus in recent history. Also the measures taken to control it are in modern times largely untested (as far as I know nationwide lockdowns to control a pandemic have not been done before in modern times). The fatality rate is still yet not fully known, it is not known how effective the measures taken to control it will be and they do not know what the long term economic, social and political impacts of those measures will be. 

In twenty years time the answers to these questions will probably be known and historians will be able to make an assessment on whether the aggressive measures taken to control the virus was the right thing to do.