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Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

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Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#281

Post by wool_gather »

luch wrote: post #214
bistro wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because everyone gets the flu shot in EU, or because nobody cares?

No unless you're at risk (old person or with medical issues) you usually don't get the flu shot. The reason is to actually to build the so-called "herd immunity" I think. Same thing with antibiotics (no need to give evolutionary "ammunition" to virus and bacteria if we don't need to).

There's a misunderstanding here. Vaccine confers immunity to an individual. Herd immunity means that an infection cannot get a foothold in a community if a certain portion of the members are immune.

Widespread vaccination is important exactly because it produces herd immunity.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#282

Post by gnulinux »

simonh wrote: post #109
VikingCoder wrote: post #81

It's weird, it's almost like this is following the exponential growth that literally everyone said it would.

Not literally everyone. There were a few people writing it off as a 'scare' and a 'hoax'.

For example, the president of the United States.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#283

Post by gnulinux »

codetwelve wrote: post #246
Someone wrote: post #238

”The state is home to more than 6% of the world's confirmed cases so far” World population: 7½ billion. 6% of that: 450 million. Population of New York State: 20 million. ⇒ overrepresentation factor: 22½. Open question: how much of that is due to more testing being done in New York State, compared to, say, India or Pakistan (large, less wealthy countries that may skew the statistics)

Uhmm confirmed cases.. I don't know why you're calculating population.

They're trying to calculate overrepresentation of US patients.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#284

Post by mrb »

js2 wrote: post #229
viklove wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Loyola University Health System in Chicago—which set a hospital flu-activity record of 190 confirmed cases between January 7 and 13 It's not even close to what we saw just this week from coronavirus. Stop making a comparison where there isn't one to be made, this is much worse than the flu.

Coronavirus is serious. Also, get your flu shot. I don't understand why this is even remotely controversial.

I suppose his point is that the coronavirus overwhelms hospitals much, much more seriously than the flu does.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#285

Post by adolph »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #194
TomMckenny wrote: post #122

Judging from the comments, explaining the severity of the epidemic is now politically charged. Epidemiologists and the medical field have made it clear we are _under_ reacting. But apparently some politicians want to down play the problem and their obfuscation is echoed in every corner of the web with great zeal and again drowning out reality. It's like the climate change denial phenomenon but at high speed.

The fact that we're more likely to listen to a politician (or a media figure) rather than someone who has spent the better portion of four decades studying a topic is one of the most existential threats we face. We need to figure out a way to get through the tribal mentality. Right now, a significant plurality (if not an actual majority) of people are more concerned about their side winning points than about effectiv…

It's a tricky problem. People listen to politicians and media figures (if they are different) because those entities are listenable and provide a constant standard flow of communication--that is their expert area. In contrast the veteran epidemiologist or any other expert is primarily an expert in that domain and not an expert in reaching a broad audience.

If the collective "we" (if there is such a coherent thing) were to listen primarily to experts, we would need to constantly shift which expert to which we are listening, depending on the problem of the day. Additionally, each of those experts would have to take time out of their expert practice area to become a highly skilled communicator.

Is the Surgeon General an expert or politician/media figure? Is the WHO reflective of experts all the time or is it an institution with political and media concerns?

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#286

Post by rootusrootus »

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #278
dingaling wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is much worse than the flu. The CDC estimates that up to 710,000 Americans have been hospitalised by the flu in the past six months out of 54 million infected. Up to 59,000 of them died. IN SIX MONTHS. In the USA alone. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... Stop trivialising influenza.

59k deaths out of 54 million infections is a 0.1% fatality rate. While the average fatality rate for COVID19 using global statistics is around 4%, let's use South Korea as an example because they have been testing much more frequently than other countries. The South Korea fatality rate is about 1%, so we'd see 540k fatalities in the US for similar infection rates. Also, initial R0 transmission statistics for COVID19…

> using global statistics

Let's keep it real, the flu infection rate given by the CDC is hindsight knowledge. The real time "global statistics" for COVID19 are with vastly restricted testing. There's not really a valid comparison to be made at this point.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#287

Post by rootusrootus »

viklove wrote: post #270
dingaling wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is much worse than the flu. The CDC estimates that up to 710,000 Americans have been hospitalised by the flu in the past six months out of 54 million infected. Up to 59,000 of them died. IN SIX MONTHS. In the USA alone. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... Stop trivialising influenza.

It's hard to take you seriously when you take a range given by the CDC (38,000,000 – 54,000,000) and cherry-pick it as a specific figure that makes your position look stronger. You're arguing in bad faith. Even according to the figures you've given from the CDC, the flu has a 0.1% death rate, which is nowhere near the 1.4% death rate COVID-19 currently has in the US. No one is trivializing the flu, but it's silly to…

> 1.4% death rate

We don't know that. At all. In the past these kinds of on-the-fly estimates during the spread of an infection have turned out to be overestimates. Sometimes by an order of magnitude.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#288

Post by thu2111 »

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #278
dingaling wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is much worse than the flu. The CDC estimates that up to 710,000 Americans have been hospitalised by the flu in the past six months out of 54 million infected. Up to 59,000 of them died. IN SIX MONTHS. In the USA alone. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... Stop trivialising influenza.

59k deaths out of 54 million infections is a 0.1% fatality rate. While the average fatality rate for COVID19 using global statistics is around 4%, let's use South Korea as an example because they have been testing much more frequently than other countries. The South Korea fatality rate is about 1%, so we'd see 540k fatalities in the US for similar infection rates. Also, initial R0 transmission statistics for COVID19…

If you want to know fatality rates you need a controlled population. South Korea isn't that, its level of testing isn't even much higher than Switzerlands at this point.

There are only two known populations in which everyone was forced to be tested and their movement was limited, which thus makes up a controlled study: the Diamond Princess and the town of Vo in Italy. In both cases the fatality rate is much less than 1%. In fact in Vo it was zero.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/20/eradic...

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-a...

In prior pandemics like this one the final fatality rate ended up being much lower than the initial reports: like an order of magnitude lower. So we would expect to see the same this time.

0.1% or less is well within the bounds of possibility, as the essay by Ioannadis explains.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#289

Post by rootusrootus »

lojack wrote: post #129
joegahona wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love a more comprehensive discussion about the flu shot, because I've only used anecdotal evidence, and I suspect a lot of other people do the same. The first two years I got the flu shot from my employer at the time was 2007-2008, and I got a violent flu both years. Didn't get one after that for years, until last Feb, when I felt like I was going to die. Eventually went to urgent care, where I got fluids and she…

The problem with anecdotes around the flu shot is there's a clear bias involved. If you get the shot and end up getting the flu its because the shot didn't work. If you get the shot and don't end up getting the flu it might be because the flu shot was effective, or it could also be because you just didn't come in contact with the virus. You always get a reminder of when it doesn't work and you (almost) never get a re…

> getting the flu and was violently sick

That's what it took for me. Now I always get the flu shot, even if inconvenient. The last time I had the flu, it hurt so bad that I swore I'd never miss the flu shot again. Haven't got the flu since, which is part luck and part shot, but still, I'll take whatever protection I can get.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#290

Post by rsynnott »

seph-reed wrote: post #244
rsynnott wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, normally, it's hyperbole. But that Texas Lieutenant governor going on about how old people would be happy to lay down their lives for the economy was definitely getting into actual death cult territory.

I enjoy how 2 weeks ago most people had a kill the boomers rhetoric, and now it's my grandma/grandpa. It's (likely) a change for the better, but one I haven't seen pointed out yet.

> most people

Who were these "most people"? I've only seen this from a few random twitter people, plus the aforementioned Texas lt governor, who is presumably a psychopath (and a stupid psychopath, too; who, precisely, does he think is voting for him...)

He was, to some extent, only saying the quiet part out loud, though. Those calling for ending restrictions within the next few weeks are saying "let's kill the olds for the economy"; they're just being a little more euphemistic than he was.

The funny thing is, even if some country did this awful thing, it almost certainly wouldn't work; a million dead senior citizens isn't really conducive to a normally functioning economy. People would be absolutely traumatized (and rightly so), and there wouldn't exactly be much discretionary consumer spending.

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