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Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

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Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#171

Post by pmiller2 »

umvi wrote: post #157
pmiller2 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, what knowledge and/or credentials do you have to base the conclusion that "public health experts (and basically all medical experts) are in over their heads" on? Do you know what contained the outbreak in China, South Korea, and other countries?

> And, what knowledge and/or credentials do you have to base the conclusion that "public health experts (and basically all medical experts) are in over their heads" on? Nobody alive on earth right now has ever experienced anything like this before at this scale. So by definition, there are no "veterans", there is no one with any experience whatsoever, just people who did case studies of past pandemics when air travel…

Japan? Not well:

> There are just five ICU beds per 100,000 people in Japan, less than half the number in Italy, and doctors' associations have warned that hospitals are already stretched thin. [0]

I notice you skipped South Korea. What stopped it there?

Glad you are admitting your own ignorance. Now, if you would just listen to the people who do know a little something about viral epidemics and their containment, you could cure that little condition.

In the meantime, you should stop spewing these dangerous ideas. You sound exactly like the Texas Lt. Governor. And, let me tell you: neither I nor my family are dying for you.

---

[0]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japan-state-of-emergency-extend...

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#172

Post by pmiller2 »

jfnixon wrote: post #165
pmiller2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death rate is the proxy for cases. What matters when attempting to contain the disease is prevalence of the disease.

I think this is backwards. We have been using infection rates as a proxy for death rates, since deaths are a lagging indicator. It is certain we are missing a huge percentage of cases, and expanding testing will uncover those. It is completely unclear that uncovering more mild and asymptomatic cases will result in more deaths, so new cases are a bad proxy for future deaths.

Maybe in an ideal world, but we're not actually measuring infection rates. Dead is pretty objective, and easy to measure, and, we know that the number of deaths will roughly track the number of infections. That's why things like deaths and hospitalizations are what the state of California is watching closely.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#173

Post by pmiller2 »

postalrat wrote: post #153
pmiller2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's entirely avoidable. I'm referring to unnecessary deaths from COVID-19, which, as we've seen here in California, and the Bay Area specifically, have not hit numbers suggested by initial models because we implemented shelter in place. I don't see anything more to your argument than what the woman standing with a sign saying "I want a haircut" is saying. Your attitude is dangerous. People will die unnecessarily…

Are you willing at all to consider the models were flawed and shelter in place is only delaying deaths a few months?

Not until you can demonstrate that to me.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#174

Post by pmiller2 »

umvi wrote: post #162
pmiller2 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes - "Survival of the fittest" Are you suggesting that people who have the ability to isolate themselves at home while still earning a living are somehow "fitter"? As I suggested before, your argument as a whole amounts to nothing more than the woman who waves the sign saying "I want a haircut". Is your life more important than your barber or stylist's? If not, why are you asking them to risk it for you?

No, I'm suggesting those that are most vulnerable to covid-19 (old, immuno-compromised, etc) will die off in the first wave and won't be around if there is a second wave. You can't die twice. Thus the mortality rate would plummet.

And, that's exactly why we're sheltering in place.

Which do you value more: those peoples' lives, or corporate profits?

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#176

Post by roca »

jfnixon wrote: post #163
roca wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news for Australia is that you are probably eliminating the virus and will be able to reopen everything soon, safely. The key point of the comment you are responding to --- "If hospitals are empty, it's time to stop sheltering in place, because it means it's working too well" does not apply to Australia, because it assumes a "flatten the curve until we reach herd immunity" strategy which is not Australia's s…

Australia (and New Zealand) have no clear strategy to defeat the virus. They have won the opening battle and are claiming the war is over. Unless Oz and NZ cut themselves off from the rest of the planet, no, the virus war isn't over. Herd immunity through vaccine or infection is the only rational strategy for a disease like C19. There is no vaccine, and possibly will never be a vaccine. Sorry to be a realist.

NZ, at least, has a clear strategy to defeat the virus: eradicate the virus internally, mandatory 14-day quarantine for everyone entering the border (and only NZ residents plus a few essential workers are allowed to enter) to keep it out, intense contact tracing and testing to snuff out outbreaks from cases that slip through. (I think this is also the Australian govt strategy but I haven't been watching their press conferences.)

Sure, the war isn't over, but it's at least plausible this will be effective for a long time. Versions of it are working in China and a number of other countries that were able to stop the spread in time.

If there is never a vaccine, then there will be harder decisions for all these countries in the future about how to deal with countries that failed to defeat the virus. It seems fine to worry about that later.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#177

Post by pmiller2 »

umvi wrote: post #154
fzeroracer wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I guess I have to explain some things here. > Not that bold, since it is how most diseases/viruses work (with a few exceptions like HIV, and there's no reason to assume covid-19 is an exception) This is objectively wrong and I'll lead into why in the next point. > Yes, chickenpox is one-and-done. Once you've had it, you (basically) can't get it again. Chickenpox is not one-and-done. If you catch chickenpox, the…

> Chickenpox is not one-and-done. If you catch chickenpox, the virus remains latent and can manifest itself as Shingles. The boils covering your entire body is one and done. Shingles is far less severe by comparison (my sister had it in high school and it was just a painful rash on her side that went away after a few weeks- and yes, it was definitely confirmed to be zoster despite her young age) and only reactivates…

I believe you are conflating the case fatality rate with the infection fatality rate.

> Kilpatrick, from UC Santa Cruz, said that if the estimates from New York stand up to scrutiny, the infection fatality rate in New York City would be approximately 0.8%.

> [...]

> Epidemiologists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, for example, analyzed data from the Diamond Princess, the ill-fated ship on which more than 700 passengers got infected. Researchers adjusted for the fact that cruise passengers are older than average and estimated the coronavirus’ infection fatality ratio as 0.6%.

[...]

> Now let’s talk about the flu. Comparisons to the flu keep coming back like a many-headed hydra, and they roared back last week with a vengeance.

> The estimates I’ve seen for influenza IFR range from about 0.14% on the upper end to 0.04% on the lower end. So if the IFR for this coronavirus ends up being around 0.5%, that’s still many times worse than the flu.

[...]

> Marc Lipsitch, head of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, has estimated that ultimately 20% to 60% of the population could be infected with COVID-19. By comparison, because of immunity provided by flu shots and past infections, only about 10% to 20% of the population gets sick with influenza every year, according to Kilpatrick.

> Kilpatrick sketched out what this meant: “If it’s five times deadlier than the seasonal flu, and three times as many people are going to get it, that means we’re going to get 15 times as many deaths. And 15 times 30,000, which is the middle-of-the-road kind of a seasonal flu year, that’s 450,000 deaths — about half a million deaths — that’s a pretty big, scary number, I think.”

All quoted text is from https://www.propublica.org/article/what-antibody-studies-can...

Is 450,000 people "hardly anyone"? More importantly, what matters more to you: their lives, or corporate profits?

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#178

Post by mmortal03 »

JackFr wrote: post #61
dade_ wrote: post #17

Cars kill us: Far fewer car crashes, more sleep as no need to commute so early in the morning, no horrible drive into the office screaming and honking at the idiot driver, no horrible drive home while texting. Alcohol kills us: no drunk fights at bars, drunk driving, falling in front of moving vehicles. Not saying it explains it, but a lot of people get hurt and die for stupid reasons.

The article focuses on strokes and heart attacks which presumably should remain constant.

It wouldn't reduce all of the incidents, but heart attack risk is higher in those who don't get enough sleep, so he's not wrong on that, if people are getting more sleep at the moment.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#179

Post by irrational »

Maybe working from home is just less stressful. Or, maybe they are finally getting time to exercise, thus putting of the strokes (I don't know if exercise will put off a stroke, but maybe). I know I see a magnitude more people around my neighborhood out walking, jogging, etc. than I ever saw before.

Re: Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes?

#180

Post by roca »

newacct583 wrote: post #168
roca wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "well on the way to containment" mean? The new cases/deaths stats in California, for example, are not showing any long-term decreasing trend: https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-case...

California is split. The Bay Area is past peak, socal is still growing. Washington and Oregon are well past peak, around half of their peak new infection rate. New York is crossing under 1/3 now. Likewise New England and a few other smaller states are clearly over the hump. This stuff works. All these places could have easily blown right through health care capacity like Milan, but they didn't. The really frustrating…

That doesn't really answer what containment means or what the long-term strategy is.

If you relax lockdowns while you still have a significant number of active cases then expect outbreaks to reoccur. So is the plan to stay locked down until active cases in the applicable area are essentially zero, i.e. eradication? If so, how long will that take? If not, what is the plan?

I know there's no easy solution here but even my well-informed California friends don't seem to know what the plan is.

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