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The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

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Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#171
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is underrated. This thing must have been spreading since November here. I know a person who back in January acquired something like pneumonia and a bad fever, went to the hospital for awhile and tests were negative for flu, etc. doctors just didn’t know what it was. The person has COPD however. But anecdotally I’ve noticed quite a few more colleagues over the last few months out sick “with the flu or som…

If COVID19 was spreading in the US since November then the US hospital system should have been overwhelmed by now with intensive care patients. The first infection in China was traced back to November and they were building hospitals by early February. The only places I've seen the first US infection being dated that early are conspiracies on Chinese social media that claim the origin of COVID19 to be the US instead…

”If COVID19 was spreading in the US since November then the US hospital system should have been overwhelmed by now with intensive care patients.”

Or the fatality and hospitalization rates have been overestimated due to severity bias.

We know this to be true, actually. We just don’t have good estimates of what the true rates are.

It wouldn’t be shocking at all to find out the virus is already widespread, and only slightly more dangerous than influenza.

Even in Italy, if there is widespread infection, the ~4k dead would reflect a low mortality rate.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Heath system going out has huge cascading problems for society. Worse than the huge cascading problems caused by making a double digit percentage of the population unemployed indefinitely?

Merkel publicly estimated 40-70% of the population of Germany would catch Corona this year. Let's assume that holds true for the US. The most reliable public numbers so far suggest 1-3% death rate. Let's assume that holds true in the US also. US population is 330 million. The lower bound of the estimates above (40% catch, 1% of those die) is 1.32 million people die. The upper bound (70% catch, 3% of those die) is 6.9…

With your upper bound estimate it would be a 360% increase if you included the 2.6M from all causes.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#173
post #72

165M deaths actually sounds plausible for covid19, if it overwhelms health care in India and developing world countries...

And how many deaths would a greater-then-the-great-despresison depression will cause?

The wider this disease spreads, the more likely mutations and new strains will appear. This could very quickly spiral out of control. If you are insinuating that an economic shutdown will cause more deaths, you are probably incorrect. Although, we will never know the answer for certain.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If COVID19 was spreading in the US since November then the US hospital system should have been overwhelmed by now with intensive care patients. The first infection in China was traced back to November and they were building hospitals by early February. The only places I've seen the first US infection being dated that early are conspiracies on Chinese social media that claim the origin of COVID19 to be the US instead…

You’d think mild cases wouldn’t have the same viral load as the severe cases. Even if you’re technology contagious it may be less for the mild cases. Especially asymtomatic. You’d not be coughing or sneezing more than usual which must have some effect. Just a thought. No one seems to have mentioned this idea.

What is this idea exactly? That the virus rolled through Seattle and other areas with just a bunch of relatively mild cases and without a critical uptick in hospital load? I am not an epidemiologist but that does not seem realistic.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#175

From what I read in this article and other sources, performing more tests seems to be a very promising approach to get this pandemic under control. The number of positive tests and death rates are published every day on all channels. I wish the number of performed tests would be also published daily. What gets measured gets managed. I wonder what limits the number of tests that can be performed. How much would it cos…

I think testing mostly matters to prove to people this is real, but tests don't actually stop the disease. They aren't a cure.

I don't know how to get there from here, but I would like to see a great deal more focus on best practices and cultural change. That's how this pandemic will be stopped and prevented from recurring. Tests will only elucidate how bad it is, but aren't actual treatment.

Stop touching your face.

Stop touching everything.

Stop shaking hands. Maybe adopt bowing instead as a respectful greeting.

Wash your hands.

Be more supportive of remote work.

Design more services that help make flexible remote work a good thing for workers. (I like the Textbroker model. I've tried to promote that previously. No one cared or thought it mattered. Now, maybe people will pay attention.)

Light one small candle rather than curse the dark. Focus on promoting solutions. We don't do enough of that.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#176

Corona is killing a negligible % of the population, mostly very old and very sick people (checkout the official data from the Italian health ministary - average age of dead patiences is 79.5 years, all of them with severe background illness, in a part of the country where 29% of the population is at least 60 yeard old. Those are the facts.). If anyting, what we are experiencing is not a corona pandemic but a massive,…

> checkout the official data from the Italian health ministary Post link plz

Not the op and I don't know where the age data is but for the regional data on confirmed cases, tests and deaths, iterate the "24" in this URL up by 2 each day at 6pm Italy time to see them. Alternatively go to the main domain and go to the 'news and media' section

http://www.salute.gov.it/imgs/C_17_pagineAree_5351_24_file.p...

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#177
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how much of the US’s growth is due to us finally having some (albeit not enough) testing?

Yeah I’m not sure what people are expecting to happen here. This virus has been circulating in the US for months and testing was limited. There’s surely many multiples of infected people than currently reported, and that’s true for any country that isn’t doing blanket testing of entire population.

Even if that (EDIT: ‘that’ being an idea that virus has been circulating for months) were true (which almost certainly it is not), so what? The only logical explanation for this is that percentage of severe cases relative to totally susceptible and infected is orders of magnitude lower, and now the total number of infected is so large that number of severe cases is starting to get noticeable. But that is not the picture we are getting from South Korea that had much more comprehensive testinG.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death curve is also deceptive - there were likely many patients who were recorded as dying of the flu, or of influenza-like illness, that actually died of COVID-19, due to a lack of testing. The bottom line is that it’s very difficult to make a conclusive statement based on the data collected prior to widespread testing. As for that Medium article, it’s written by a tech exec with zero education or professional e…

The death curve is a lot less deceptive than the number of cases.

Overall death rate is much less deceptive than known overall virus deaths.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#179

From what I read in this article and other sources, performing more tests seems to be a very promising approach to get this pandemic under control. The number of positive tests and death rates are published every day on all channels. I wish the number of performed tests would be also published daily. What gets measured gets managed. I wonder what limits the number of tests that can be performed. How much would it cos…

I think testing mostly matters to prove to people this is real, but tests don't actually stop the disease. They aren't a cure. I don't know how to get there from here, but I would like to see a great deal more focus on best practices and cultural change. That's how this pandemic will be stopped and prevented from recurring. Tests will only elucidate how bad it is, but aren't actual treatment. Stop touching your face.…

Testing helps a lot more than that, because it helps you catch infected people before they spread it further. This was a key factor in China and South Korea getting the disease under control.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#180
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often tests are not performed on a random sample of the population but only on people that are symptomatic. But not all symptomatic people receive tests. Knowing those two number (number of symptomatic people who would have qualified for a test, were it available; number of test performed) could paint q better picture.

Until recently Ontario had very stringent testing pre-requisites: 2 or more symptoms, history or travel in the last 14 days. Even then, on average, only 2% of tested people tested positively for SARS-Cov-2. In my opinion that makes the notion of much more larger population having it and not noticing due to the lack of testing, at least at this stage, highly unlikely.

They should be doing some tests via random sampling anyways just to make sure.
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