Official Covid-19 Discussion Thread

[hankscorpioLA]

Exactly.

Midway through cancer treatments, the patient is in a state where their symptoms are significantly worse than before, but the cancer isn't cured yet. It's been attacked and weakened, but more treatment is still needed, which will result in worse symptoms. But if you stop now, the cancer will just grow back, and probably be even stronger.

You wouldn't tell your oncologist not to treat you because it will make you feel sick. You understand that it's something you have to go through if you want to survive.

That's where we are right now. The virus is the cancer, social distancing is the treatment, and the economy is the symptoms.

We have been weakening the virus with social distancing, which has kept it from overwhelming our society. But we haven't controlled the virus, so if we stop now, it just comes back. And we must bear the economic hurt because the alternative is significantly worse.

Please provide quantifiable and measurable support for this statement: "We have been weakening the virus with social distancing, which has kept it from overwhelming our society."

"But we haven't controlled the virus, so if we stop now, it just comes back. And we must bear the economic hurt because the alternative is significantly worse."

If that were a universal truth, how can you explain what's happening in Sweden or what's been happening in countries like China, Iran, Germany, Czech Republic, Norway and Denmark who've begun to ease their restrictions?

Have they been experiencing a rise in cases and deaths since those changes have been made?

That's a lot of situations and they are all somewhat different. Especially Sweden. Not sure how they fit in there since they are heading towards catastrophe.

Keep in mind that there is going to be a pretty substantial lag between easing restrictions and any impacts that may have, especially if you are still reporting a large, though decreasing, number of cases, as is happening in most of the examples you provided.

If you ease restrictions today, you may not see a ramp up of cases for a month or longer.

Having said that, Iran's decline in daily new cases has slowed substantially in the past few days. Same with Denmark. Germany is in a different situation because of their robust testing capabilities. The others are harder to tell.

[hankscorpioLA]

That's where we are right now. The virus is the cancer, social distancing is the treatment, and the economy is the symptoms.

The treatment isn't working as well as expected. In the meantime, many more people are being affected by the ramifications of the treatment, not the virus itself.

Compare the growth rate prior to lockdown measures to the growth rates after lockdown measures were taken.
Calculate the change in growth between each period.

Did the growth rates decline or increase after lockdown measures were taken? By which percentage?

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/#cases-growth-factor

While not all countries decided to take measures at the same time, many of them started around the middle of March, about 30 days ago.

If you look at the daily cases growth rate factor before the middle of March, the average daily growth rate factor prior to March 11 was about 1.1117.

If you look at the daily cases growth rate factor after the middle of March, the average daily growth rate factor after most of the lockdown measures around the world were put into place has been about 1.1062.

So... by those calculations, these lockdown measures have been able to produce a 0.0055 decline in the daily growth rate factor of this virus.

We've gone from a 11.17% daily growth rate to a 10.62% daily growth rate.

Since I can't find any stats or run any calculations for any scenarios that haven't occurred, I can't offer an answer to the question of how different these numbers would be if not for the measures taken, but do you believe they're worth a 0.55% change in the number of people being infected?

Wow.

You are going to take one piece of data - global daily growth rate of cases - and apply it universally to the entire world to make a case about a viral pandemic that has hit different parts of the world at different times and hit countries with vastly different capabilities and responses?

OK.

The reason the growth rate globally hasn't slowed is because, while some countries that were hit earlier are seeing declining numbers, they are being more than offset by the rapidly increasing numbers from the United States.

So....no.

[Fairview4Life]

And this isn’t excess deaths, this is undercounting Covid by a lot.

Read on Twitter

[dohboy_24]

Why is the data okay if it's being used to justify the lockdown measures being taken, but not question them?

What data would be more appropriate to use?

[dohboy_24]

And the numbers to support this claim are where? Also, the mortality rate here is significantly higher.

I ask you again, what are your calculations on what a saved life is worth?

Take the number of flu deaths this year and divide by the number of days = daily number of people who die from the flu.

Do the same for communicable diseases and coronavirus. Compare.

Saving someone who would otherwise die of the flu or any other communicable disease is just as valuable as someone saved from this virus.

I'm not saying one is more valuable than the other, our government is.

[Zeno]

And this isn’t excess deaths, this is undercounting Covid by a lot.

Read on Twitter

As an aside, I wonder the impact that the physical distancing measures are having on the death rate from flu and a reduced number of automobile accidents right now. I'd have to imagine it's saving some additional lives though that is not the intention of measures.

[Kevin Willis]

Why is the data okay if it's being used to justify the lockdown measures being taken, but not question them?

What data would be more appropriate to use?

What is the point you are trying to make? It would be easier if you explain that a bit more and how you're using data to support it.

[Fairview4Life]

Read on Twitter

[beanbag]

And the numbers to support this claim are where? Also, the mortality rate here is significantly higher.

I ask you again, what are your calculations on what a saved life is worth?

Take the number of flu deaths this year and divide by the number of days = daily number of people who die from the flu.

Do the same for communicable diseases and coronavirus. Compare.

Saving someone who would otherwise die of the flu or any other communicable disease is just as valuable as someone saved from this virus.

I'm not saying one is more valuable than the other, our government is.

And do you believe saving these lives is worthwhile?

[Double Bubble]

Spoiler:

Right, but his reason for making the video in the first place was to help people understand that "wet market" is not the standard name for a "filthy exotic meat market" as everyone outside
China was beginning to believe.

The FB posts with comments like "China allowing wet markets to re-open! WTF is wrong with these people!?" makes the entirety of China look bad when it shouldn't.

There needs to be an understanding of the difference.

My guess is this PSA from a white guy in China is motivated by fear of becoming another Michael Kovrig. Otherwise why in the hell anyone would anyone go out of their way to defend a totalitarian state?

You could be on to something here. This white guy's PSA to defend his totalitarian state could be motivated by fear. Or just maybe, just maybe he wants to show the world a little bit of the truth from all the misinformation he sees online. You may not be aware of this but there are actually Canadians, Americans, Europeans, etc (basically all races in the world) that lives in China right now and actually loves it there. They're there because they want to and they can leave any time. They're not all locked up in chains in this totalitarian state despite what you may have heard being stuck in your basement and never walking outside to see the world for yourself.

Lol ok clown. Sorry if that hits u in the feels, Im sure you’re not biased at all.

Since you’re an expert on China why don’t you explain the politics and human rights record of the Chinese state. Go ahead I’m intrigued by your insight

Was not aware that European Canadian and American were “races” as well, silly me I thought they were nationalities.

[YelloC]

Do other countries have less reliance on facilities to take care of their aging populations?
In other words, do other cultures look after their elders personally instead of sending them to old people prison. Not saying they are treated like prisoners but the general business structure is similar.
Having a grandmother who died of Alzheimer’s I understand the need for outside help when dealing with advanced stage illness but it seems like a lot of older people are sent to live at long term care homes for the sole reason of being old.

Spain and Italy has been rocked by this CCP virus. Their cultures generally involves multigenerational households. Children don't leave the house until they get married, hence where we get the term Italian mama's boy. Part of the reason why the virus was such a disaster there was that the young people traveled and brought the virus home and infected the whole family.

Hmmm we have some immigrant populations that think the same. Serbian families, for instance, do.

I can see how the viral load in an older person could be increased by a larger amount of a asymptomatic people moving around a household, especially one with children that are too young to understand the gravity of the current situation.
It will probably bear out that the seniors who live one their own with a good family support system will have the best outcomes.
My Mom is the designated caregiver for my last remaining grandparent because most of my Aunts are healthcare workers.
The whole long term care model needs a rethink after this pandemic. If minimum wage is 14 an hour, healthcare workers should start at 20 with full-time jobs. For profit facilities should be a thing of the past and long term care should be merged with the healthcare system. You can’t expect accountability when caring for seniors is guided by shareholder satisfaction.
If a for profit long term bed becomes available due to covid19, you know the next person that gets that bed will be paying more than the last. That could be why they’re not sending residents to the hospital where they could survive thus remaining a resident at a lower rate.

[NinjaBro]

Lol ok clown. Sorry if that hits u in the feels, Im sure you’re not biased at all.

Since you’re an expert on China why don’t you explain the politics and human rights record of the Chinese state. Go ahead I’m intrigued by your insight

Was not aware that European Canadian and American were “races” as well, silly me I thought they were nationalities.

I wouldn't say I'm pro China, I'm more anti morons.

[Gold Dragon]

Watch on YouTube

Trajectory of confirmed cases

[Fairview4Life]

Read on Twitter

[Vaclac]

Read on Twitter

Also, this study shows that in Santa Clara, 50 to 85x as many people have had the virus than have been counted.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/health/santa-clara-coronavirus-infections-study/index.html

A study in the Netherlands also showed 20x more people have had it than have been counted and a study of pregnant women in New York city also showed way more people have had it than case counts suggest.

This means the actual death rate is much lower than people have been estimating, probably less than half a percent. That's still a lot of raw numbers of death when multiplied by the entire population but it's a lot less bad than a lot of people have suggested, especially those trying to justify the extreme measures taken, which have their own costs, not just to the stock market but very real damage to so many people's lives. No doubt social distancing has been effective in slowing the spread - the problem is that means we can never stop or else the infections will pick up again and then we would have to admit that all our efforts did not save lives as we have been told but rather just delayed those deaths by the length of time we were able to practice extreme social distancing.

[Fairview4Life]

Count excess mortality if you want to count deaths. But that’s also beside the point. The extreme measures are to try and reduce the healthcare load and stop people from dying from not only Covid but a million other things people die from everyday because they couldn’t get quality care.

Opening up now will not save the economy. Not implementing quarantines and isolation would not have kept the economy running smoothly. Like a fifth of all NY first responders were out sick a few weeks ago. Grocery store workers have been getting sick and dying. A giant pork processing plant in South Dakota had more than a fifth of its workforce test positive and a bunch of people die.

If everyone went back to normal, which wouldn’t happen anyway as restaurants and movies etc would still be empty even if they were allowed to open, but if they did, that isn’t saving the economy. Having a huge chunk of the workforce out sick isn’t going to help a business stay afloat. Trying to pretend that if we just tried to weather the storm and let a bunch of people die quickly (other people, naturally), everything would have continued normally is just extremely silly. The economy still tanks in a pandemic even without restrictions. You can see that in states that tried to remain open for business. Even supposedly safe “rural” ones. This debate is just so stupid.

Print money. Let businesses keep people on the payroll while they stay home. Freeze rents and mortgages. Dramatically increase testing, tracing and isolation. Finally figure out if previously sick people are immune. Start slowly opening things up with social distancing rules in place beginning with open air parks etc.. Get a vaccine made and distributed. That’s how we should be proceeding. None of that has changed in the past 2 months.

[Gold Dragon]

This means the actual death rate is much lower than people have been estimating, probably less than half a percent. That's still a lot of raw numbers of death when multiplied by the entire population but it's a lot less bad than a lot of people have suggested, especially those trying to justify the extreme measures taken, which have their own costs, not just to the stock market but very real damage to so many people's lives. No doubt social distancing has been effective in slowing the spread - the problem is that means we can never stop or else the infections will pick up again and then we would have to admit that all our efforts did not save lives as we have been told but rather just delayed those deaths by the length of time we were able to practice extreme social distancing.

The death rate is not the main problem with Covid19. When health systems are not overwhelmed, the CFR (case fatality rate) is usually under 1% (somewhere betweem 0.5-0.8%). When you include all the undetected cases it is lower and probably approaches the case fatality rate of influenza which is around 0.1% of cases. It is when health systems get overwhelmed that that the CFR goes up to 2-5%.

The main problem with Covid19 is its infectivity (R0 of 2.5, double that of influenza) and hospitalization rate (15-20% of confirmed cases, influenza has a rate around 1%) leading to health systems rapidly becoming overwhelmed.

And yes, if nothing changes on the ground then lock downs simply delay cases and deaths. But the time that we get from lockdowns allow us to make real changes to reduce cases and deaths including:

1. increase medical capacity (PPE, ICU beds, health care workers)
2. learn more about virus transmission and ways to minimize transmission (masks, societal awareness, behavioural change)
3. investigate treatment options (remdesivir, plasma exchange)
4. keep cases low enough to allow traditional public health measures to control spread (contact tracing, widespread testing and early identification)

[Fairview4Life]

Read on Twitter

Good thread about the power the WHO doesn’t have over member states like China.

[Vaclac]

And yes, if nothing changes on the ground then lock downs simply delay cases and deaths. But the time that we get from lockdowns allow us to make real changes to reduce cases and deaths including:

1. increase medical capacity (PPE, ICU beds, health care workers)
2. learn more about virus transmission and ways to minimize transmission (masks, societal awareness, behavioural change)
3. investigate treatment options (remdesivir, plasma exchange)
4. keep cases low enough to allow traditional public health measures to control spread (contact tracing, widespread testing and early identification)

Taking extreme measures to buy some time to expand healthcare capacity makes sense and that was the initial explanation given. But are we still doing that? Are we doing that with urgency proportional to the extreme costs of the measures we are using to buy this time? From day 1 we should have been moving heaven and earth to build field hospitals and ventilators. I think we acted too slowly even when we were doing those things, but I haven't heard any reports recently of field hospitals continuing to be built.
Massive testing and contact tracing is a plan I could theoretically support if it appeared to be a plan leaders were seriously pursuing. But we need orders of magnitude more tests, and they need to be much more accurate tests than the current ones that have a 30% false negative rate. Again, occasionally politicians will complain weeks afterward about missing testing goals, but if seriously this is the plan we need to set how many tests we need and how we will get there and give daily updates about our progress. No one seems to have the attitude that these measures are extreme and should not last a day longer than necessary.

[Fairview4Life]

So then do those things. Don’t open up because those things aren’t being done. That doesn’t make any sense.