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Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

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Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#51

Post by bart_spoon »

throwawycorona wrote: post #32

I did not know about the screening for coronavirus being ineffective. A 35 y/o guy at work died from the flu a little over a week ago (Denver). If it was coronavirus, they'd know, wouldn't they?

It’s not that screening is ineffective, it’s that the initial kits sent out by the CDC were defective. That isn’t true everywhere (places where patients have been evacuated to have testing capabilities, like California, Chicago, and Omaha), and samples can still be tested at the CDC, it just leads to a delay. It’s not ideal but it isn’t like testing simply isn’t working.

As for the man in Denver, it would be very unlikely to be COVID. There is some evidence starting to emerge currently of transmission now occurring in the US, but it’s still very early and concentrated to where you might expect. It takes a while for coronavirus to kill (about 7-14 days after symptoms appear), and so if this dude was sick with it, he would almost certainly have to have had either traveled out of the country (to China), or been close with someone who had. That is something any competent medical staff will ask, and if it were the case, they could send samples to be tested to the CDC.

It may be possible moving forward that if community transmission starts spreading here in the US, things could start slipping through the cracks, but at this point it’s highly unlikely that anyone in Colorado who died a week ago was sick with COVID

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#52

Post by bart_spoon »

sonicxxg wrote: post #17
moultano wrote: post #3

I sent this email to my team last night. Feel free to steal it for your own workplaces. We should consider working from home. You may all have seen the news by now. A patient was just diagnosed with COVID-19 at UC Davis after having no known contact with anyone travelling. Importantly, they were diagnosed after being intubated already for 7 days. It is suspected that this is the first known case of public transmissio…

I wonder why people/news seem so obsessed about the death rate itself, while ignoring the incidence of permanent organ tissue damage caused in survivors, as some papers already indicate. I'm assuming this has to be studied further.

As far as I’ve seen, the only papers have been on permanent organ damage in SARS and MERS. I don’t know how there would be a paper out on COVID19 given that it’s barely been a month since it started infecting a large number of patients.

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#53

Post by AzzieElbab »

claudeganon wrote: post #22
AzzieElbab wrote: post #20

What about spare capacity that US medical system possess as opposed to say neighboring Canada? Otherwise, all points are valid.

They're actually worse off (ranked 36th vs. US' 32nd) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hosp... Here are the full stats: https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=30183

See, this is where the stats are wrong. Example; https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/daily-bed-census-does...

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#55

Post by panarky »

kelchm wrote: post #39
bart_spoon wrote: post #9

Who is this person? As far as I can tell it’s just some random person speculating. Is there a reason we should be taking them seriously? Because a lot of this seems like fear mongering.

It is fear mongering. The CDC attributed 61,000 deaths in the US to the flu in the 2017/2018 season alone.

Please stop comparing COVID-19 to the flu.

The flu infects 50 million people in the US every year and kills 0.1% of them.

COVID-19 appears to have higher mortality by at least 20x.

It also appears to be more contagious.

But if it can't be contained before a vaccine is ready, and assuming it only infects the same number of people as the flu, a million could die.

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#56

Post by blaser-waffle »

lvh wrote: post #28
1121redblackgo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which points do you have issues with? I think they all seemed on 'on-base'.

By their own admission, they fail to quantify their findings. So, my issue is that they’re sound bites that a lot of people were predisposed to agree with (eg “American healthcare is bad and expensive”) and therefore unlikely to evaluate critically. People have also argued the opposite: the US is special because we have large natural borders (mostly). Or maybe the US is special because the US has a large Chinese-Amer…

Why listen to HN randos for that matter?

(Counterpoint: HN has a huge selection bias for educated, technical types and a higher overall pool of talent. Doesn't mean disinformation campaigns and marketing won't work on this crowd, though)

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#57

Post by lvh »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #56
lvh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By their own admission, they fail to quantify their findings. So, my issue is that they’re sound bites that a lot of people were predisposed to agree with (eg “American healthcare is bad and expensive”) and therefore unlikely to evaluate critically. People have also argued the opposite: the US is special because we have large natural borders (mostly). Or maybe the US is special because the US has a large Chinese-Amer…

Why listen to HN randos for that matter? (Counterpoint: HN has a huge selection bias for educated, technical types and a higher overall pool of talent. Doesn't mean disinformation campaigns and marketing won't work on this crowd, though)

Sure! If the thread had been posted on HN I'd raise similar skepticism :)

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#58

Post by onyva »

Considering most of this is common knowledge and was largely discussed elsewhere recently, it’s still shocking to see how normalized is USA’s dystopian existence. It’s like COVID19 is the least of their problems considering what‘s considered “normal”.

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#59

Post by mercer »

bart_spoon wrote: post #47
1121redblackgo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which points do you have issues with? I think they all seemed on 'on-base'.

Well just about none of them are substantiated with any data. You can say things like “people in the US will avoid going to the hospital because of the bill” and it sounds right because of our perception of the US health system, but is it really? Do we have actual numbers showing this is actually the case, and if so, how extensive it will be? And do we have reason to believe those numbers will hold in this exceptiona…

> Well just about none of them are substantiated with any data. You can say things like “people in the US will avoid going to the hospital because of the bill” and it sounds right because of our perception of the US health system, but is it really? Do we have actual numbers showing this is actually the case, and if so, how extensive it will be? And do we have reason to believe those numbers will hold in this exceptional circumstance? Yes, when people believe they might have the flu, they could potentially try and wait out going to the doctor. But do we believe that in an environment where we have people so acutely aware of the coronavirus outbreak that they are buying out supplies of masks, posting long twitter screeds on potential doomsday scenarios, and side-eyeing every Asian-American with a cough, that when they start to show symptoms they still are going to get hung up on the cost of a clinic visit?

How dense do you have to be to assume that the default answer to pretty much all these questions is "no" or [citation needed]?

It's like asking for data to prove the world is round. Sure, in isolation that's a fair enough question, but practically speaking it's idiotic.

Lots of people over here would not go to a doctor when they have flu symptoms, even if it's free to do so because we're not retarded, collectively. But if it can cost money it's obvious we'd be even less likely to do so, society and 'Asians' and spread of corona-virus be damned.

The common reaction to something uncommon is, well, common. I'd say it's upon the 'commoners' to provide data that this thing that experts say is worrisome is, in fact, not.

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#60

Post by mercer »

bart_spoon wrote: post #50
nabla9 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epidemiologists would point out things differently, but the bottom line is that US is not prepared. Eric Feigl-Ding, Epidemiologist at Harvard pointed out: - US has no free testing or treatment for population. - US government does not cover any preventive measures for healthcare workers like China does.

Feigl-Ding has been fearmongering since the virus hit the mainstream, including tweeting out non peer reviewed preprinted papers claiming the R0 of the disease was far higher than it is, with commentary that was sensational (“HOLY MOTHER OF GOD”) and simply wrong (claiming the R0 was 8x higher than SARS, when current estimates are that it’s similar). He’s had to walk back lots of claims and has been so irresponsible…

While I feel you downplay the issue too much, I do agree with this. There are better sources than Eric Feigl-Ding with less ridiculous names.
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