Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

joshuaweissburg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 232 posts

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

#171

Post by juanre »

cableshaft wrote: post #159
nradov wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blood oxygen saturation measurement techniques are pretty simple and well understood. Even the cheaper devices are usually accurate within a few percent. But if my level was getting to 85% I would head straight to the ER.

Yeah, I heard a lot higher number myself. Here's a study I found online about it: "Conclusion: Among outpatients with pneumonia, oxygen saturations https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/3/325/305087

Thank you both. Note taken and comment edited.

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

#172

Post by steveeq1 »

Kaiyou wrote: post #142
Barrin92 wrote: post #42

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'm thinking of this as a temporary hysteria. Nothing much you can do to reason with hysterical people. The only thing that sometimes works for hysteria is a good slap in the face.

It is temporary hysteria. Remember 'swine flu'? The infection fatality rate ended up being like 10x better than what the media initially reported.

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

#173

Post by exhilaration »

whoisjuan wrote: post #4

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?

Two things I'd like to share on the topic of how easily covid infections are transmitted:

A Washington state choir decided to go ahead with their practice on March 6th. There were no handshakes or hugs, everyone was given hand sanitizer on the way in. 45 members contracted COVID-19, 2 died. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-29/corona...

#2: This video was posted on /r/Coronavirus/ and was pretty interesting. It's got some visualizations of how micro droplets remain suspended in air: https://vimeo.com/402577241

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

#174

Post by dboreham »

Xenograph wrote: post #62
dboreham wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what? Assuming a 10 mile journey, the probability of death is 1.25E-7. CFR for 20-49 age group is 0.3% (probability 3E-3) So either my math is wrong or you are wrong by only 4 orders of magnitude.

Keep in mind that CFR takes into account only those that are confirmed positive (which are mostly people who already have severe symptoms). That said, parent comment's math is still way off (see my sibling comment).

Parent cited a postitive testing patient, driving themselves to hospital.

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

#175

Post by steveeq1 »

ashildr wrote: post #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.

It's not "statistically irrelevent", but the risk is being overblown. There's a lot of availability bias being introduced by the media right now.

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

#176

Post by steveeq1 »

wccrawford wrote: post #137
whoisjuan wrote: post #4

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?

My understanding was the social distancing won't actually prevent everyone from getting covid19, it'll just slow it down so that we don't all get it at once. Most people will end up with it. So given that, I'd say the changes are nearly 0%. To actually keep infections to a minimum, we need to actually quarantine, but (again, my understanding) that will have too many other negative effects, and the economic hardships…

So much this. And I wish people would understand this concept. We are going to get hyperinflation now, US dollars will become worthless soon, and the social safety net will disappear. This is going to cause a lot more societal grief than corona.

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

#177

Post by gdubs »

Barrin92 wrote: post #42

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…

Novelty plays a role in fear. People in the Midwest get used to tornadoes. People in Florida get used to hurricanes. We all drive in cars, despite passing by severe accidents at a somewhat regular cadence.

Going from healthy to struggling to breath can be incredibly disconcerting — something a relatively young person may never experienced. When there’s no certainty of outcome, rational people may lose their normal comfort in statistics.

People are human, after all. Sure, we could all work on our resilience — but some compassion for people is warranted too.

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

#178

Post by steveeq1 »

pixl97 wrote: post #9
whoisjuan wrote: post #4

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?

Except the grocery runs. >A had taken a few hikes, grocery store and takeout runs. It is the worst possible place you could go. People touching everything, air not circulating well.

Worst possible place you can go? Even the hospital? Even a homeless shelter?

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

#179

Post by nzhkr »

DanBC wrote: post #152
dustinmoris wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true though. Where we live 70% of the COVID-19 patients which are currently in intensive care are very overweight men. Just being fat itself puts a huge strain on your health, you're more likely to get a lot of illnesses with age and a lot of these patients probably should be taking already medication in order to prevent a heart attack or other issues coming up and the only reason why some of them are currently…

> Where we live 70% of the COVID-19 patients which are currently in intensive care are very overweight men. Not really true. Here's data from the UK ICUs. Page 15 shows BMI. Here are the numbers of people by BMI. First column is BMI, second column is the percentage of people in ICU. BMI COVID-19 And here's the numbers of people dying or being discharged from critical care alive. BMI Risk increases with BMI, but it's…

> Not really true.

> Here's data from the UK ICUs. Page 15 shows BMI.

> Here are the numbers of people by BMI. First column is BMI, second column is the percentage of people in ICU.

   BMI   COVID-19
Your data kind of proves the point which the OG has made that 70% of patients are overweight though.

A BMI > 25 is overweight. When I look at the table which you have posten then I calculate that ~73% of patients in ICU in the UK are overweight indeed then.

There is 35.04% of patients with a BMI > 25, another 31.33% of patients with a BMI > 30 and 7.2% of patients with a BMI of > 40.

Either I don't understand the data which you have posted or you didnt?

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

#180

Post by steveeq1 »

californical wrote: post #32
praeter wrote: post #31

If you don't get tested - the odds are you won't - the relief of recovery is quickly replaced with doubt, "was it really Covid-19?" And you must fearfully go on acting like it wasn't.

Not if you're people I've talked to recently -- any cold or flu and people are like "yeah I had it any it wasn't too bad, I don't get all the fuss. I'm immune to it now!" Even though they never got tested

For the vast majority of corona viruses cases, it is, in fact "not too bad".

There is survivorship bias in the media reports. Mild cases don't get reported because it's bland, common, and everyday. The ones that cause death DO get reported because it's clickbait basically. This biases the population to overestimate the risk from this.

Post reply on HN