Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[YUPPIE]

anyone find it offensive how China started the virus and yet despite all these demands for opening their labs from Aussie and the US, their response is "fuck off"

[stevenho]

Could be, i tend to throw those easily susceptible to certain conspiracy theories in the same group.

Yeah, WHO recommending Swedish approach is a "conspiracy theory".
OK buddy.

[Forogil]

I don't know what people expect with these herd immunity plans. I'm not seeing us reaching herd immunity anytime soon with infection values this low.

If we keep the current # of newly infected per day (say, 1200/d in Germany), napkin math would put the time frame until the remaining 65% of the population is infected (assuming a herd immunity of 70% and a current exposition level of 5%) at (83*10^6 people * 0.65)/1200 people/day = 44958 days. Or 123 years.
Needless to say, that wouldn't work.

Even if we assume, that the real infection rate is 10x of what is reported through tests, we would need 12 years to reach that 70%. Not to mention that in 12 years, that bug will mutate like crazy.

Am I missing sth. here? Must be.

Hmm... You assume that 5% of Germans have been infected in 1.5 months, and conclude that it will take 12 year to reach 70%; that seems odd.

If 5% really are infected, that means that the real infection rate is 25 times the reported (which wouldn't be unrealistic, and it could even be higher - but imperial college model predicts that 0.85% have been infected making the real rate just 5 times higher than reported). That's why randomized tests of the population are important.

And if restrictions are lifted - or people become sloppier in following them - then the infection rates will start to increase, and it will take considerably shorter time.

[Acidbaron]

Yeah, WHO recommending Swedish approach is a "conspiracy theory".
OK buddy.

I was referring to your lack of understanding about the lockdowns, but i get that all this must be pretty hard for you to keep track off

[stevenho]

I was referring to your lack of understanding about the lockdowns, but i get that all this must be pretty hard for you to keep track off

Oh so you're responding to my post and not talking about the contents of said post.
Gotcha.
Please try to stay on topic next time instead of only being able to post ad personams. Thank you.

[Forogil]

Maybe I've missed it being mentioned among all the talk about meat and stuff, but yesterday South Korea confirmed that their potential relapses were false positives.
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200429000724

Good to have that confirmed.

[Acidbaron]

Oh so you're responding to my post and not talking about the contents of said post.
Gotcha.
Please try to stay on topic next time instead of only being able to post ad personams. Thank you.

If that is your conclusion, why are you trying to derail the thread?

[Forogil]

Their economy is just as hurt as their neighbours.

https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/coronakris...iantType=large

Restaurants, bars, schools and rock concerts aren't what's keeping the economies afloat.

Hmm.. Are there really rock concerts in Sweden at the moment? Let me check.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/s...step-r3gjr0hhr

Ok, at least one concert, and it seems it was really lame.

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World Health Organization praises Sweden for coronavirus response resisting shutdowns.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...ting-shutdowns

GG

A more complete source is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHgdpSSQMKk starting from 40m20s to about 47m.

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And to lighten up the mood:

I've heard that WoW also have put restrictions in place due to covid-19:

You are no longer allowed to do Horrific Visions without a mask.

[Skulltaker]

What I wonder: people are always talking about "ICU capacity" in form of "beds available" but what about the supporting infrastructure and personnel?
Would a 100% ICU occupation be viable for an extended period of time? I think the surrounding systems should be designed in such a way that they could but given our past need for the units somewhat doubt it that they could cope with 40K patients for time frame of 2 years.

ICU capacity always includes personnel to operate it. Assuming that no personnel operating the official ICU capacity falls ill, yes, 100% capacity can be maintained indefinitely. Of course, personnel needs time off, falls sick, etc, so 100% capacity can never be achieved to begin with. But theoretically speaking, yes.

Presuming it's very unlikely we have a effective vaccine any time soon the 2and wave will hit us way less so overall we gave to wait with any verdicts about the final best way on how this pandemic should have been dealt with in terms of life and economy .

This only holds true if an immunity to the virus is actually 100%. If you only develop a temporary resistance to it, then Sweden will simply be hit by a second wave delayed by a few months, compared to other nations. If your percentage of infected is now comparably higher than that to other nations you would have more people immunized, but if that immunity dissipates in a few months and people start getting reinfected it would hit you just as hard.

World Health Organization praises Sweden for coronavirus response resisting shutdowns.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...ting-shutdowns

GG

Interesting. Where exactly in the article does it say that he praises swedens 'limited' approach? All he does is say that they did a better job communicating with their population, not that their measures were better in any way. And seeing how high their mortality rate is, I doubt he'd actually say that. No words about resisting the shutdown. If you merely analyzed the numbers you could say 'They relied more on their population to maintain social distancing. Clearly, that failed hard.'

[stevenho]

Interesting. Where exactly in the article does it say that he praises swedens 'limited' approach?

Huh?
Are you confusing me with someone else too?

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If that is your conclusion, why are you trying to derail the thread?

Ping me when you decide to talk about the topic at hand, instead of talking about me.

[Acidbaron]

Huh?
Are you confusing me with someone else too?

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Ping me when you decide to talk about the topic at hand, instead of talking about me.

Why do you continue to derail the thread?

[TigTone]

Why do you continue to derail the thread?

We are his entertainment. My guess.

[Tuor]

The problem is that people are focusing on hard measures instead of effective measures.

We already tried the herd imunity option (Sweden did), it isn't working.
We already tried lockdowns, it does help containning the virus, but it commes with nasty economical side effects.
We already tried just to focus on economy (Belarus), and its not good.

If you see any other option other then these 3, just tell us.

Look at New Zealand and S. Korea that both seem to have covid-19 under control. The common factor is extensive testing and contact tracing.
Additionally New Zealand have had a lockdown and closed the borders (which is much simpler for an island nation).
But S. Korea haven't had a lockdown, only closed the border for parts of China for some time, and merely stopped mass gatherings.

My country is doing quite well with testing, guess what??? After a month and a half in lockdown the stupid virus still gives kicks (spiking), same shit in Switzerland, actually same shit everywhere, besides Czech Republic. Without hard measures we not going anywhere. A month and a half has passed by, and now we have no other option then slowly start going back to economy.

Also, if i remember well, when i said that, i was speaking about the vaccine being developed by the british.

But testing and contact tracing is complicated (and involves personnel, chemicals, PPEs, coordination etc) and doesn't sound impressive.

Most countries, including mine, did that at the beggining, they just lost control. That includes most of Europe, contact tracing is part of a phase 2 pandemic, we already on phase 3.

A lockdown is much simpler - and looks more impressive; especially if you say that it is complete lockdown, but add so many exceptions that it becomes meaningless; and in practice they are not working that well (R is just barely below 1 in most countries) and most countries are already planning to lift them - which will lead to new cases, either in the near future (if warm weather is enough to stop it - which doesn't seem likely; and in that case the lockdown was likely counter-productive) or in the fall (and no vaccine will have cleared phase III trials by then; and it's unclear if they have been tested on the risk-groups - going directly to mass-vaccination without that has a high risk of back-firing lending momentum to the anti-vaccination movement killing a lot more in the future).

We have no other option left other then risking, there are a lot of people running out of food just because they can't afford to buy food because they lost their jobs. Life isn't binary, isn't just black and white, there are other important variables. I asked this to Phaelix, will you die from a virus, or will you die from being hungry?? Like i said, life isn't binary, so most countries are doing something betwin.

[Gaidax]

I mean whatever, if you have some countries ready to kill their populace in a huge open air lab experiment and people actually support it, then more power to them.

I'm just glad I do not live in Sweden, but in a country that actually managed to manage this thing well without having to kill 3k people in process.

[Granyala]

Hmm... You assume that 5% of Germans have been infected in 1.5 months, and conclude that it will take 12 year to reach 70%; that seems odd.

Not at all.
I took the cases/day from worldofmeters for recent days b/c our head of state said that we are at an R0 of 1 and want to keep it that way.
That metric has declined significantly since the beginning.

If we want to keep the current rate of infection (as opposed to the rate at the height of the outbreak), then my math applies.

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ICU capacity always includes personnel to operate it. Assuming that no personnel operating the official ICU capacity falls ill, yes, 100% capacity can be maintained indefinitely. Of course, personnel needs time off, falls sick, etc, so 100% capacity can never be achieved to begin with. But theoretically speaking, yes.

Interesting. In other words: we would have the resources to be less restrictive than we currently are.

[segara82]

It's even easier to make new humans, just takes a while.

Don't worry, we will see a new batch delivered in about 8 months.

But on a more serious note: How we react and protect the current older generation(s) will have an effect on how our generation will be treated in the future when similar problems arise. While nowadays quite a few youngsters look forward to the removal of the old ones for various reasons (including economical ones), once it's their turn they will scream bloody murder to be seen the same way they currently see the elder.

[Tuor]

Not at all.
I took the cases/day from worldofmeters for recent days b/c our head of state said that we are at an R0 of 1 and want to keep it that way.
That metric has declined significantly since the beginning.

If we want to keep the current rate of infection (as opposed to the rate at the height of the outbreak), then my math applies.

Relax, no other virus ever before reached the so called herd imunity, not the spanish flu, not measles not even Ebola. Most likely Sars-cov-2 will just disapear within a year or so. untill then, we have to prevent dead people... And somehow go back to economy.

EDIT:

OH SHIT STUPID MIGRAINES...

[Cynep]

Oh please, the reason we see 'only' another 130k deaths is because the lockdown an social distancing work. If we had not done that we would have exceeded that prediction. It is easy to restart the economy, it is impossible to revive the dead.

Yes, social distancing and other measures work, exponential growth has been stopped; that's precisely my point - prevention paradox.

Now instead of a horrible plague we have socially polarizing intrusive measures and approaching economic crisis. Herd immunity unachievable before the vaccine, the vaccine unrealistic this year. We'll have a steady trickle of death for months and months while people can't live their former lives, no end of social distancing in sight. One problem was prevented, another one is being created. I'm not saying it was better to let millions die, but some people will.

Oh, and before the global economy will have its "easy restart", children born during the crisis will go to school. Boomers, millennials, zoomers... this new generation will be called paupers. I claim copyright, a generation of paupers.

[Granyala]

Don't worry, we will see a new batch delivered in about 8 months.
But on a more serious note: How we react and protect the current older generation(s) will have an effect on how our generation will be treated in the future when similar problems arise. While nowadays quite a few youngsters look forward to the removal of the old ones for various reasons (including economical ones), once it's their turn they will scream bloody murder to be seen the same way they currently see the elder.

*chuckles*

Oh absolutely they will. They may feel invincible now, just wait until their bodies start betraying them.
In general, you can judge any society by how it treats the weak, old and unlucky ones.

Just for the record: I am not a person that considers the life of an old human less valuable than the life of a young one.
The old one most likely worked his butt off, so the younger generation has a better time, they deserve our respect and us taking care of them.
Within reason of course.

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Relax, no other virus ever before reached the so called herd imunity, not the spanish flu, not measles not even Ebola. Most likely Sars-cov-2 will just disapear within a year or so.

Uuh, I don't know man. Coronaviruses have been around for a long time. I'm sure this one will stick around too.
Of course it will be severely slowed down if even 30% of the population are immune but we're currently closer to 1-2%.

[Forogil]

Not at all.
I took the cases/day from worldofmeters for recent days b/c our head of state said that we are at an R0 of 1 and want to keep it that way.
That metric has declined significantly since the beginning.

The daily infections haven't declined that much, only about a factor of 3 or so compared to the average.

As previously stated Germany either have significantly less than 5% infected at the moment, or the ratio of real infections to detected cases is a lot higher than 10 - which would significantly reduce the time to infect the other 65%.

Your assumptions are basically not internally consistent.