COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[Jovan Dragisic]

We will know just how bad this was once the dust settles, but from a medical standpoint this is not "just a flu."

At high levels of decision making, this seems to be the first stage. First you try to pretend it's just a flu. The medical people can clearly see this is not the case, but the rest of the public can't. The second stage is "fuck, it's much worse than the flu". Then you deal with that, but you also need to deal with how to keep people from starting mass revolutions due to your shutting everything down. The third stage is really tricky, you gotta make enough people believe that once you get some kind of control over the virus, your economic system still exists. Like, you've based everything on money, you know money doesn't really exist anymore, you do not want people to find this out, you have to throw all economic theory that you know of down the drain and figure out how the fuck you're gonna barter with everybody else for everything you need, and you need a lot - food, energy, the rest. To quote Arthur Jensen: "It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet". This applies in the same way to all forms of capitalism - the high level banking capitalism in the US, the banking-production capitalism in Germany and Italy, the welfare capitalism in the rest of Western Europe, the crony capitalism in Eastern Europe, the thinly veiled military junta capitalism in emerging markets, as well as other forms of market economy like the theocracy cronism in the Middle East, the reinvented socialism in China, whatever the fuck is going on in Russia...

China seems to be in the early stage three territory. The rest of the world is teetering between stages one and two. Eagerly waiting for stage four to present itself.

[MatthewG]

Matthew I'll take this on. I'm a medic in the UK. Although I'm not an intensivist I work in an allied specialty and frequently I'm in intensive care. The first graph shows the reduction in footfall at 17 stations in the UK as a proxy for reduced contacts. In Europe a number of metrics have been used to measure reduced contacts.

The second graph is number of new cases identified per day in the UK. This is about 5000 cases at the moment and does not seem to be rising - hence flattening the curve. If the new case rate per day remains 5000 the curve of the graph becomes a horizontal flat line. It is most worrying to see this rising. It has been shown that the average Covid patient spreads the virus to 2.5 other people. If those people spread to another 2.5 people each, in a month 400 are affected and in 2 months 160,000 are affected. If social contacts are halved each Covid patient might spread the virus to 1.25 people each, resulting in 15 new cases after a month and 225 cases after 2 months. The goal in a pandemic is to get the existing infections causing less than one new infection each. That way the disease declines and dies out as it has nowhere to go. At the moment the data suggests that in the UK that at the very most we are at a state of an existing infection causing only one new infection. Once the new infection rate is stable, then the death rate per day will stop going up but there will be a delay of possibly a couple of weeks before that happens

Regarding testing, in the UK for weeks testing capacity has only allowed those being admitted to hospital to be tested and we have been able to fulfil that consistently. So testing policy has been consistent. In recent days healthcare workers who are sidelined with suspect Covid symptoms have started to be tested as testing capacity has increased. Despite that the number of cases has not increased even though we are diagnosing Covid positive healthcare workers. It's therefore possible that the number of new cases may be starting to fall since we are testing more people and the number of positives is stable.

The third graph shows the number of hospital beds being occupied by Covid patients in different regions. You can see numbers still rising but the curves are getting flatter as the rate of new infections stabilizes.

At the end she alludes to critical care. There are normally just over 4000 critical care beds in the UK operating at about 80% capacity. Up to 4 April 2249 Covid patients had been admitted to ICU in the UK with about 1600 still there on 4 April. That's 40% of the country's capacity and remember there's normally 80% occupancy for other conditions. 80% + 40%=? Therefore extra critical care beds created and ICUs in London especially are very stretched. If there is exponential growth in infections or no flattening of the curve, then the system reaches capacity and breaks. The British government calculated that if they just let the virus run through the population ICU capacity would be exceeded by a factor of 8 with obvious consequences of thousands of preventable deaths.

Thank you woodman, much appreciated.

I'm finding the below webpage to be really useful in tracking the UK data on the virus:

Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional - Office for National Statistics

However there is some key data that is missing for me, do you happen to know where I can download the following data in a table format:

- A complete a list of the Daily COVID19 tests from the first day of testing up until 8 April 2020. I've been on the UK government's guidance page but can't find any files that tracks all tests carried out from January 2020. It would be useful to see the Date / Tests done / People tested / Positive results.
- A week by week report for Critical Care Bed Capacity across England & Wales from January 2020 up until 8 April 2020. It would be useful for me to see the number of critical care beds available against the number of patients that are occupying a critical care bed each week (with a stated reason for critical care). Again I've tried searching online and found the message on the NHS website "Due to the coronavirus illness (COVID-19) and the need to release capacity across the NHS to support the response, we are pausing the collection and publication of these and some of our official statistics."

[Robin UK]

Another MD raising the issue of coercion regarding COD recording on death certificates. This should be the current headline news re. COVID-19. It’s a total scandal!

Watch from from 6:33

YouTube

[wiigelec]

Some additional context:

Let's consider the current projections of 60,000 deaths by August 4th.

Compare that to the 2017 all cause mortality figures, and assume the 60,000 will be in addition to. So:

(2,813,503 + 60,000) / 2,813,503 = 1.0213

The current pandemic projections represent an increase in all cause mortatility of 2.13%.

Compared to the current unemployment rate of 10% which will likely continue to increase over the next several months...

COVID-19
FastStats - Deaths and Mortality
Record 16.8 million have sought US jobless aid since virus

[Barry Charles]

He’s been sounding the alarm about pandemics for a few years I believe... I seem to recall a Ted Talk or two about it.

That of course doesn’t give him a pass at all...

Bill Gates gave a Ted talk about this in 2015. He was correct but not original.

The left has anointed him as an enlightened wise one, because his charitable giving aligns with their ideology. And that’s fine. He is a philanthropist just not a prophet.

(In some ways Gates is the Alan Alda equivalent if that reference means anything to you. Soft spoken, talented, not too overtly alpha. People take medical advice from both)

[bikesandcars]

Won’t the disease resume its virulent spread “travel” restrictions are lifted? If so, won’t the total death count be ~ same?

Unless the majority of the deaths are due to missed care at overburdened hospitals, we’re spitting into the wind.

Please clarify.

Yes, this is all about the hospitals IMO.. that and saving the cities...and saving the older people that make the rules in this country. I don't mean that to sound cruel, I don't want anyone to get sick, it's just my observation.

Covid is real, the numbers are still climbing at mildly exponential rates, and the hospitals in certain cities are at max capacity and coming up with alternative plans.

You can't hide from something that spreads so easy. The government is choosing to let people get it slowly for a long time vs letting people get it quickly and having it go away. This theoretically saves lives in the long term by giving folks access to better hospital care....we shall see.

IMO The longer it's around the worse the global impact. A vaccine isn't coming soon from what I understand. When it is EVER a good idea to let something bad hang around more than necessary????

Evil conspiracy idea: Cities vote Dem. Media Dem controlled. Election year. Dems don't want cities hammered, and especially just cities hammered. Media / Dems souding alarm early to minimize impact. Media / Dems making sure all the country gets hammered along with the cities by shutting EVERYTHING down (not just cities). The idea of quarantine isn't bad... it's the universal application that drives me nuts.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Actually it is known. Jobs destroyed by events often don't come back. 2008 at is a recent example. A lot of businesses in my area, shut down and never reopened. In a few cases, the buildings are still empty. Sure, folks went and found jobs, but instead of their own business, they found jobs working at Walmart and Papa Johns. In my case, the home contractors had no work, so they had no work for me. As I had no work, I stopped ordering steel. As the steel distributor had lower sales, they laid off workers. Do you see where this is going?

I'm sure he does. The LVNs will not.

Some additional context:

Let's consider the current projections of 60,000 deaths by August 4th.

Compare that to the 2017 all cause mortality figures, and assume the 60,000 will be in addition to. So:

(2,813,503 + 60,000) / 2,813,503 = 1.0213

The current pandemic projections represent an increase in all cause mortatility of 2.13%.

Compared to the current unemployment rate of 10% which will likely continue to increase over the next several months...

COVID-19
FastStats - Deaths and Mortality
Record 16.8 million have sought US jobless aid since virus

The LVNs will be along later to tell us that this doesn't matter, that this is a really bad disease.

[Cheesepuff]

"Attorney General William Barr Wednesday called the restrictions in effect in many states to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus "draconian" and said they should be revisited next month.

Asked by Fox News host Laura Ingraham about the balance between religious freedoms and the need to protect people from the coronavirus with restrictions like stay-at-home orders, Barr said the federal government would be "keeping a careful eye on" states' use of broad powers to regulate the lives of their citizens. "

Coronavirus: Barr says 'draconian' rules may need to be revisited soon


Every time this guy speaks, I like him better.

[Mark Rippetoe]

The idea of quarantine isn't bad... it's the universal application that drives me nuts.

That's not what a quarantine IS.

I'm finding the below webpage to be really useful in tracking the UK data on the virus:

Horrific video shows coronavirus particles from runners can infect you even if you’re 2m away – The Sun

You people are allowed to go for one run a day. Your allowance is one per day. ALLOWED. But it's that bad here too.

[RKC]

Bill Gates gave a Ted talk about this in 2015. He was correct but not original.

The left has anointed him as an enlightened wise one, because his charitable giving aligns with their ideology. And that’s fine. He is a philanthropist just not a prophet.

(In some ways Gates is the Alan Alda equivalent if that reference means anything to you. Soft spoken, talented, not too overtly alpha. People take medical advice from both)

I can totally see taking medical advice from Alan Alda, he did play a doctor for 11 years after all.. and not to mention basically ended the Korean war.
I'm indifferent about Gates... but MASH is sacred.