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Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

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Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#261

Post by cameldrv »

hadtodoit wrote: post #233
bamboozled wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan apparently has a much lower death rate and number of infections too. Should we trust those numbers? I'm going to say no.

In that case I wouldn't trust any country not to fudge the numbers. As far as Japan goes, I believe the numbers are close enough. They have a very high population of elderly and smokers. People would be dropping like flies and making a lot of noise about it if the numbers were far worse. Social distancing, wearing masks, staying home when sick, cleaning all fomites frequently are things the Japanese were doing before…

Weirdly, smoking appears to be protective from COVID. 13.7% of people in the U.S. are smokers, but only 1.3% of COVID hospitalizations are of smokers.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#262

Post by cameldrv »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #46
teapourer wrote: post #27

To be clear, the Korean government officially still recommends social distancing. They are especially worried about the family picnics mentioned in the article, and have officially closed many public parks in response. To repeat: don't take this as a sign that Korea believes it has successfully managed the outbreak.

The article and discussions about Korea seem to mainly revolve around testing and contact tracing. These are complex and expensive, and substantially more difficult to manage in a country like the US which is 7x the population, and is somewhat decentralized (50 states). Meanwhile, the on the street observations in the article are: masks, masks, masks. Masks are cheap and easy. So let's start with masks, masks, masks…

We are richer per capita, the large population of the U.S. should give us economy of scale (for software development etc), and the lower population density should mean less contacts to trace per case. There's no excuse. We passed a 2 trillion dollar coronavirus bill and there's no contact tracing army? Madness.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#263

Post by cameldrv »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #138
misun78 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you are not including Cuomo — the governer at the epicenter of the worst hit NY — in your “list of good governers”? This was his quote from early March: "People are reacting like this is the Ebola virus. This is not the Ebola virus. This hysteria that you see, this fear that you see, the panic that you see is unwarranted. We have dealt with worse viruses. This spreads like the flu, but most people will have it…

He’s pretty much right though. It spreads worse than the flu and Dr. Ioaniddis recently published a serological study showing it seems to have a mortality rate similar to the flu. An overwhelming majority of people who get it will not die. Ioaniddis et. al. suggests the evidence points towards 1~2 out of a thousand mortality rate. We should not be panicking. We should be mitigating the disease based on the evidence a…

The Ioaniddis survey was a total sham. The true fatality rate will wind up being something like 1-2%, if counted by excess deaths.

A town in Italy, Castiglione d'Adda, had 1.4% of its population die in March. Normally 0.1% dies in a month. That town did a serological survey of blood donors, and 70% came up positive. That exact number won't apply everywhere because there are different age distributions, different comorbibitities, different genes, etc., but that is the ballpark we're looking at.

0.15% of New York City has already died. That should tell you how reliable Ioaniddis' numbers are.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#264

Post by lbeltrame »

grey-area wrote: post #260
lbeltrame wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Waiting until "it's all over" was not the goal of safer-at-home. Someone should tell that to the Italian authorities. At least until recently, some public statements seemed to inch in that direction ("zero new infections"), although more recently they realized that this is hardly possible at this point (especially if the estimates of the actual vs effective cases are true - talking about at least one order of magni…

I'm watching Italy/Spain with great interest at this point as both are loosening restrictions (after going through the same sort of hell as New York). If they don't see a new bump up in a few weeks for them, it means prevalence is far higher than we think in those countries (good news for them).

So far in Italy nothing will change until May 3rd. But the government is in total chaos over this (mainly because they're afraid of death themselves...). Lots of very unpractical ideas to keep distancing from so-called experts, too.

I guess we'll have to see what happens. Personally, although I'm very aware of the risks and will prepare accordingly, I'll be glad if I can finally get out of this isolation.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#265

Post by shadowprofile77 »

collyw wrote: post #77
nradov wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This video has a good explanation of why the Spanish policy is ineffective. https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-joh...

I didn't watch it, but a couple of the bullet points look pretty untrustworthy. Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people. It's a fair bit nastier, certainly in some cases, or the hospitals wouldn't be full. The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1% How can we be sure until we have widespread testing? At least 50% of the population o…

>it's a fair bit nastier, certainly in some cases, or the hospitals wouldn't be full

While I agree that it probably is indeed nastier than your average flu, it actually wouldn't have to be much nastier to achieve health system saturation in places where it hits groups that are particularly vulnerable (the elderly mainly). Almost all healthcare systems operate on fairly thin margins of tolerance for overload, and a virus of even mild percentages for hospital-worthy or lethal cases could easily, temporarily overload clinical infrastructure if it comes out of the blue and is moving through a population that was entirely virgin to it before the infection in question arrived. This lack of immunity among all parts of society means massive numerical surges in cases very quickly and consequently, major numerical surges in that small fraction of cases that end up being bad enough to warrant hospitalization.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#266

Post by noobermin »

lokedhs wrote: post #258
noobermin wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh, SG should have never let people come particularly from countries with covid outbreaks during March. While spreading across the dorms is a big part of the internal spreading, it's clear the outbreak that started in March were clusters involving people coming to sg from abroad. Almost everyone shut down travel from China (particularly Wuhan) but no one shut down travel from Europe during March. Biggest mistake eve…

The vast majority of people entering Singapore in March were Singapore citizens returning. A lot of them were students who came back because the schools had closed. The mistake was not letting them it, but to let them self-quarantine at home. This led to them infecting other family members who then spread it further. This has changed now as anyone entering Singapore has to be quarantined in a separate facility.

Why is letting them stay where they were an issue? The country (an isolated island, Palau) where my parents are from did that even for students and it's kept covid19 from reaching there till now. Given their situation, they can't afford any cases at all until there's a vaccine. I get you care about your citizens abroad but it's clear that's where all the hotspots in sg turned up in March.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#267

Post by _ph_ »

marvin wrote: post #161
_ph_ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, first of all, there were no masks to wear. Not even enough to properly equip all medical personal. But yes, if people would wear masks whenever there is the risk that they are sick, be it Covid-19, the flu or just a cold, it would be beneficial.

You can make them yourself on a sewing machine, or even sewing by hand if you're desperate. My partner and I have made ~20 in some of our spare time in the last three weeks, for ourselves and our close family and friends. It's not high tech. Didn't even have to go out and buy more materials.

Making your own masks is certainly something many people can do, but also many that can't. But many who can, are doing that now. And slowly the supply of commercial masks is improving here in Germany too. As the lockdown is slowly released, people will be wearing masks and that should help a lot with keeping infection numbers down. And hopefully wearing masks becomes standard now when affected by any kind of infectious disease.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#268

Post by tooltalk »

Chunklight wrote: post #69
Aeolun wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing is true for Japan. Everything seems fine for a while, and suddenly the numbers explode.

Mysteriously right after the Olympics were postponed.

Nobody believed Japan. Trump had to call Abe to consider postponement and Canada was the first country to announce they wouldn't send their athletics to the summer Olympics in Tokyo on March 22.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#269

Post by Tiksi »

saiya-jin wrote: post #118
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has done a controlled study on this, so no one really knows. It ranges from zero to many. The reason government and medical signaling on the subject has been so mixed is that it isn’t apparent they are very effective, especially the jury rigged cloth masks that people are using.

Even basic mask works quite well in stopping infected person spreading it further. This isn't some recent covid-related revelation, but long known fact. To say it for the 1000th time - this doesn't make you magically virus-proof, but significantly lowers the infection rate of those who have it. On large enough scale, this behavior makes significant difference in infection rates. I have yet to see a single western lea…

New York and New Jersey have gone past recommending masks, and have mandated them for anyone out in public, along with limiting the number of people allowed to go into a store, and a 6ft distance in any line/queue.

Re: Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

#270

Post by collyw »

varjag wrote: post #147
collyw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is expected that 70% of the population will get coronavirus then we will have herd immunity. The lock down is about stopping the healthcare systems getting overwhelmed (that will cause unnecessary deaths). That's the way I understand things. The same number of deaths will occur are likely to occur in the long term unless Sweden's ICU beds get full. If anyone has an alternative interpretation I am open to hearing i…

The eventual arrival of a vaccine may allow the states who are flattening the curve to have lower total amount of casualties.

True, but it doesn't sound like it's going to happen any time soon. There was no vaccine for SARS.
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