Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes? • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by Fjolsvith » Thu, May 07, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

jaggederest wrote: post #121

guscost wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav... http://euromomo.eu There's nothing for the USA as a whole, it will be compiled from states' records and estimates eventually. But it already seems obvious to me that the excess deaths in the next few years from secondary effects (avoiding hospitals, drug overdoses, suicides, stress/panic attacks, less traffic/police on roads, etc) will far outnumber the…

I don't envy those who have to make these decisions. I think the public health impact from prolonged isolation could actually outweigh the direct effects of the virus. Just mental health alone is going to be rocked to the foundations.

And, people are going to be very angry when they learn that you can get the coronavirus when locked up at home. [1] They will wonder why they had to lose their job from the quarantine.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/05/06/majori...

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

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Post by snapetom » Thu, May 07, 2020, 3:39 PM UTC

newacct583 wrote: post #88

JackFr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A solid month of messaging “stay at home” and “hospitals are overwhelmed” and ratings driven fear-mongering been far more effective than policy makers ever intended.

Hospitals were overwhelmed in many places in the world. People absolutely should have stayed home. Or are you trying to claim that the virus is a hoax or something? This is a real risk. We've seen what happens in Madrid and Milan if you lock down just ~10 days too late.

> Or are you trying to claim that the virus is a hoax or something?

HN isn’t the place to push hyperbole and straw man. Go back to Reddit for that.

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

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Post by downerending » Thu, May 07, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #204

downerending wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus in other countries, they expect a massive uptick in polio, tuberculosis, etc., due to lack of vaccination and treatment. Some of this is inevitable. Some of this is due to economic lockdown, which will simply crush third-world economies.

That makes little sense. If people are isolating for COVID, it's going to knock down transmission of the other infectious diseases too.

It's because they're not getting vaccinated, which makes a big difference.

Believe I also read that there's a vaccination window for TB--it doesn't work for adults. So each year of lowered vaccination coverage matters that much more. Globally a million people die of TB each year.

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

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Post by downerending » Thu, May 07, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

downerending wrote: post #89

scarmig wrote: post #10

It'd be interesting if the quarantine from the coronavirus has also quarantined us from the ravages and stresses of day to day life, leading to improved cardiovascular outcomes. I'd be curious about suicide statistics as well--would they be going up or down right now?

It's early days, but I suspect suicides will approach actual COVID-19 deaths in the end, at least in places and cultures where suicide is "acceptable". Even the most stable will have trouble with financial ruin and watching their children go hungry, and most of the newly jobless are not that stable.

Just this morning saw mention of an Australian study indicating that the excess suicide count was projected to be 10x that of COVID-19 deaths.

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

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Post by drdeadringer » Thu, May 07, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

chapium wrote: post #47

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.

I don't know if you are in on this, but... https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/38-of-new-yorkers-a...

Then they're "just" pickling their liver at home instead of also getting into fights at bars, driving drunk, and falling down in front of moving vehicles on top of that.

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

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Post by pmorici » Thu, May 07, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #51

pmorici wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that the effect is only long term exposure?

Seems like a pretty subtle and non-acute thing. Maybe even analogous to smoking: something that gradually erodes your health, not something that suddenly kills you.

I would tend to think there is both long term damage and chance of increased immediate death due to things like asthma and heart attack triggered by polluted air.

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

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Post by zenexer » Fri, May 08, 2020, 12:05 AM UTC

wiether wrote: post #198

zenexer wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. People aren’t working, aren’t seeing friends/family, and don’t have regular appointments. For many of us, if we died tomorrow, it’d take a while before anyone noticed. I have no idea how many of my friends are still alive; I assume most are fine because they're young, but I’ve lost contact with most of the people I normally see on a daily or weekly basis. When we come out of this, who will be left behind? And…

> I have no idea how many of my friends are still alive Where do you live ? They don't have phone or Internet ? I exchange daily with every people I call friend; I exchange daily with my close family; I exchange weekly with the rest of my family and people I don't consider friends but still care about. I'm not a health worker nor someone working in something that matters and I have the luck to still be able to work f…

I keep in touch with many of my friends online, but not all of them. There are plenty of friends I typically only see in person.

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

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Post by sfj » Fri, May 08, 2020, 9:53 AM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #90

sfj wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Opening things back up prematurely, without sufficient testing, is just going to get people killed. But how many will get killed? Allowing people to drive down the street also kills people. What's the limit?

Well, do you have research on how many excess deaths there would be if states started opening up now? California is taking a cautious approach by only opening in stages after cases have stabilized, and only after testing is present. Do you have a better plan than what a group of public health experts have come up with?

I think that, instead of requiring locking everyone in their homes to save a few, we should give people the option to isolate themselves from everyone else. This would entail free rent and clean food delivery sponsored by the government.

This would then reduce covid-19 to a risk factor on par with every other self-inflicted risk. If you worry about your health, stay home, if not go live your life. It would actually be compatible with our constitution as well, which would be nice.

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

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Post by makomk » Fri, May 08, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #184

umvi wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I notice you skipped South Korea. What stopped it there? South Korea is anomalous. Has literally any other country been able to replicate their success? > 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. Containment/minimizing covid-19 deaths is a very short-sighted…

South Korea contained the epidemic with massive testing and contact tracing. There is literally no reason why that could not be done here, once we get the number of cases down via lockdown measures. But, it would be foolish to start opening things up until the infrastructure to do that testing and contact tracing is in place. If the choice is saving capitalism or saving 450,000 lives, I choose lives. I don't give a s…

South Korea's peak testing rate per capita is lower than the US's per capita testing rate now or at any point in the last month or so. Same when comparing to many of the European countries. Their testing was fairly substantial compared to what other countries were doing a few months ago, but it wasn't "mass testing" in the sense that the US press and experts are currently advocating. (Most of the tests were focused on Shincheonji members, even though infections almost certainly weren't - they just made an easy target). It was, however, enough to indicate that testing and contact tracing was missing a substantial chunk of infections which were spreading within the community. Somehow they managed to stamp those out by tightening social distancing measures without a full lockdown or mass testing, and there's no good explanation for why this worked.

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

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Post by axguscbklp » Fri, May 08, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

macintux wrote: post #205

axguscbklp wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the government could (if it were so inclined) pay people to stay home indefinitely I'm a bit skeptical, and would be even if instead of "indefinitely" we were just talking about a couple of years. I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but I'm curious about how the math would work out, in your opinion.

The Federal reserve pumped, I believe, about 1 trillion dollars into the economy in March. That would pay every unemployed worker somewhere around 80k. Yes, that’s somewhat apples to oranges due to the way the reserve operates, but the money is available if the will is.

Thanks for the explanation. Yes, that makes sense. I originally, for some reason, thought that you were saying that the government could pay the entire country to stay home indefinitely - on re-reading your comment, I see that this is a rather silly misreading on my part of what you actually wrote.