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Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

joshuaweissburg.com

111–120 of 232 posts

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would in fact be good news in a certain way, because either it's as deadly as reported and nowhere near as contagious as your last paragraph suggests, or its far more contagious and widespread but thus nowhere near as deadly as is being seen from case fatality rates derived from known cases. I'm not stating anything new with this really, but your case is likely one of many, many others in which a person felt my…

I believe there have been several random studies and very educated estimates that came from these that show that the mortality rate is about 0.5% or even lower, which might put it close to the same order of magnitude as the flu. However, crucially, it is much much more contagious than the flu. With an R0 of 2 or more (some estimate up to 6) the difference after a few days, because of exponential growth, is as much as…

I would hazard to guess that it's well above 1% of the state that's infected so far if even conservative multiples of 5x for undiagnosed cases apply.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#112
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a matter of caution, I always keep psychostimulants handy. Particularly: ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, and amphetamine salts. Also keep some other beta receptor agonists, like Ventolin. You never know when it can save your life.

Are those medicines actually advisable for covid?

I don't think the person was referring to COVID-19 specifically but just other ailments that could be treated with those? /shrug

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#113
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we already have direct evidence that when it spreads without any containment it causes unacceptably extreme amounts of sickness and death That hasn't happened in Sweden.

Sweden didn't take no measures. Sweden took flexible measures[1]. Social distancing, allowing anyone who felt sick to stay home, encouraging people to work from home (and 50% Swedes apparently can do that[2]). The problem is that when American employers grant to no sick leave to employees and are brutally against ever doing so, applying the flexible Swedish model to the US would be extremely hard. The model involves…

All I know is that the streets are just as crowded, people are still going out and businesses are still open. There are plenty of news reports showing that.

There is no known method of stopping the spread of this disease. Even if you flatten the curve, without a vaccine, the area under the curve remains the same.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#114
> So I had a higher chance of dying from this disease than winning a raffle at a small concert.

I know this is not the main topic of this article, but I’ll steal this sentence to convey the importance of taking precautions against COVID-19 to people who feel that it’s statistically irrelevant.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#115
post #106
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we already have direct evidence that when it spreads without any containment it causes unacceptably extreme amounts of sickness and death That hasn't happened in Sweden.

Yet.

I'm hoping they succeed in getting herd immunity.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#116
post #5

So he claims that he got it despite practicing all the social distancing protocols, hand-washing, etc. Has anyone calculated what are the probabilities of infection in an area with an active infection cluster while practicing social-distancing and other hygiene measures?

I don’t know but I’ve become aware of just how difficult it is to remain pristine. Touch a door handle? After that did you touch your phone, keys or wallet at the store? Did you touch your car door handle? When you washed your hands, did you disinfect the faucet handle and soap dispenser after? It’s always a game of percentages even when you’re careful.

Just brushing rapidly against any of those surfaces can potentially aerosolize it as well. Not to mention that the radius of air-borne transmission route keeps changing. And on top of that we haven't got a lot of data on other vectors like food.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would in fact be good news in a certain way, because either it's as deadly as reported and nowhere near as contagious as your last paragraph suggests, or its far more contagious and widespread but thus nowhere near as deadly as is being seen from case fatality rates derived from known cases. I'm not stating anything new with this really, but your case is likely one of many, many others in which a person felt my…

I believe there have been several random studies and very educated estimates that came from these that show that the mortality rate is about 0.5% or even lower, which might put it close to the same order of magnitude as the flu. However, crucially, it is much much more contagious than the flu. With an R0 of 2 or more (some estimate up to 6) the difference after a few days, because of exponential growth, is as much as…

I have a proble with a single number mortality rate gor this virus, because mortality differs by the two or three orders of magnitude depending on the age. Not an infant and younger than 2 (or even 30)—almost zero chances to die (Italy's data). Over 70/80? It's 30-40%.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#118
post #39
post #35

the word mask only comes up once in the entire writeup, when he went to the hospital. Did he wear a mask at all times when outside his house?

Should he have? The only person he mentions coming to his house is his friend who also had Covid-19.

i mean when he's going grocery shopping, etc around here everyone seems to have a mask everywhere even when walking their dog with no one else round for hundreds of feet.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#119
post #5

So he claims that he got it despite practicing all the social distancing protocols, hand-washing, etc. Has anyone calculated what are the probabilities of infection in an area with an active infection cluster while practicing social-distancing and other hygiene measures?

I don’t know but I’ve become aware of just how difficult it is to remain pristine. Touch a door handle? After that did you touch your phone, keys or wallet at the store? Did you touch your car door handle? When you washed your hands, did you disinfect the faucet handle and soap dispenser after? It’s always a game of percentages even when you’re careful.

In order to be infected from a door handle, somebody the last few seconds had to sneeze in his hand, touch the handle, you'd have to really touch the whole handle and then take the hand to your mouth/nose. It is unlikely. They find virus RNA on surfaces but it is not activate. Infections from surfaces are vastly overestimated. Staying and talking with an infectious person in a room is underestimated.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#120

I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about the psychological nature of this pandemic. The author of the article is 39 years old, I'm quite surprised by the severity of the experience that he reports. There was a similar article in the NYT recently by a woman whose husband contracted COVID, had a relatively 'normal' pneumonia, but the article read like a war report out of an Ebola zone, allusions to C…

I think older people are more worried about those they are taking care of than themselves. At least it's true in my case.
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