Coronavirus General Discussion

[Kriegsspiel]

IMG_3433.JPG

What was he sitting on, a dull Iron Maiden?

[WiseOne]

Can we all agree that the virus will inevitably spread throughout the population until it "burns out" via herd immunity?

Yes, this is exactly what is expected to happen. Fauci, Cuomo and others have stated as much. "Flattening the curve" is about reducing the height of the peak, not reducing the total area under the curve. Lockdowns cannot and will not prevent infection over time, only delay it. i.e. it will not "save lives". They will assuredly hurt people in a different way though. The different approaches to lockdown simply reflect different abilities to understand these concepts on the part of governors and mayors making the decisions.

Agree with Xan, MangoMan and others about the silliness of trying to categorize businesses as "essential" vs. "not". All businesses are essential to someone. Just for starters, there's the business owner, the owner's family, the landlord who isn't getting rent paid, the landlord's family, employees of the business, charities depending on donations from these people, the town/city/state depending on them paying their taxes, someone who needs goods or services provided by that business that the governor sitting in his mansion didn't think about, etc.

Take this example: a store selling mattresses. Mattresses aren't essential, right? You only buy them every 20 years or so, so a few months won't make a difference. Well, what if you fell and hurt your back, and now you need a new mattress that doesn't aggravate your back pain? You need to go to a store to try them out to find the one that works best. Well, you can't, so you have to live with the back pain. You can't get physical therapy either, since gyms and PT centers are all closed. Which means you'll turn to alcohol and narcotics to deal with it. What's the essential and not essential items in this story?

[Dieter]

Can we all agree that the virus will inevitably spread throughout the population until it "burns out" via herd immunity?

Yes, this is exactly what is expected to happen. Fauci, Cuomo and others have stated as much. "Flattening the curve" is about reducing the height of the peak, not reducing the total area under the curve. Lockdowns cannot and will not prevent infection over time, only delay it. i.e. it will not "save lives". They will assuredly hurt people in a different way though. The different approaches to lockdown simply reflect different abilities to understand these concepts on the part of governors and mayors making the decisions.

Agree with Xan, MangoMan and others about the silliness of trying to categorize businesses as "essential" vs. "not". All businesses are essential to someone. Just for starters, there's the business owner, the owner's family, the landlord who isn't getting rent paid, the landlord's family, employees of the business, charities depending on donations from these people, the town/city/state depending on them paying their taxes, someone who needs goods or services provided by that business that the governor sitting in his mansion didn't think about, etc.

Take this example: a store selling mattresses. Mattresses aren't essential, right? You only buy them every 20 years or so, so a few months won't make a difference. Well, what if you fell and hurt your back, and now you need a new mattress that doesn't aggravate your back pain? You need to go to a store to try them out to find the one that works best. Well, you can't, so you have to live with the back pain. You can't get physical therapy either, since gyms and PT centers are all closed. Which means you'll turn to alcohol and narcotics to deal with it. What's the essential and not essential items in this story?

More people can live for longer without a new mattress vs food and water, so can see prioritizing to limit interactions.

And yes, there are a lot of important items not considered essential that negatively impact people.

>> Lockdowns cannot and will not prevent infection
>> over time, only delay it. i.e. it will not "save lives".

While possibly true, not intuitively obvious to me. I would think it could have lives by:
(Ok, postpone death, we all die)

* Don't overwhelm medical facilities, so can get needed treatment
(Especially early on)

* Less need for emergency medical in general with fewer accidents, etc

* Time to learn how to best treat with available resources / medicines, as well as preventative measures (Vitamin D! People making masks, ...)

* Magic may happen and a cure / vaccine find quickly (I'm not backing on this, but possible...)

[dualstow]

I’m not sure how to phrase this, but Isn’t there also a kind of critical mass of infection that we’d hit with no lockdown at all?

[Tortoise]

Can you elaborate on what you mean, using whatever terms make the most sense to you?

The Covid-19 death curves that the epidemiologists have shown us are all shaped roughly like bell curves — steep rise in the beginning, slower rise as peak approaches, peak is reached, then a tapering off.

The area under the curve (total number of deaths) remains the same whether the curve has a higher peak that occurs sooner or a lower peak that occurs later — provided the peak does not exceed hospital capacity.

[Xan]

provided the peak does not exceed hospital capacity.

I don't think this has been sufficiently demonstrated either. How many of the people who go on ventilators are actually saved as opposed to dying in the following, say, month anyway? To me this is the big question and I can't find that anyone has even asked it, apart from that fellow with the oddly-colored website whose name escapes me at the moment.

The point of the lockdown is to save people who can be saved with proper medical attention (particularly with a ventilator) but who would die without it. But how much difference does medical intervention actually make?

I think we're owed some solid numbers on that if we're expecting to continue any form of lockdown.

[dualstow]

Can you elaborate on what you mean, using whatever terms make the most sense to you?

I’ll try. I’ll work on it.

[I Shrugged]

pmward, Here is an article from Arizona that is pretty good. Well I think so because they say what I've been thinking for several weeks. Namely that the only measure that means anything is hospitalizations. And they say AZ has been trending down.

https://www.12news.com/article/news/hea ... 61c883890c

[pmward]

pmward, Here is an article from Arizona that is pretty good. Well I think so because they say what I've been thinking for several weeks. Namely that the only measure that means anything is hospitalizations. And they say AZ has been trending down.

https://www.12news.com/article/news/hea ... 61c883890c

Interesting. Though considering our new cases and deaths are still both trending up (today was our 2nd largest increase in new cases to date) I'm not sure how sustainable that is. It seems like it may be more of a red herring than anything.

EDIT: I also wonder about if this has a lot to do with our large snow bird population, it is mid May, and April-May is about the time of the year that they fly back north for the summer. We have a large retiree population year round, but it is especially high in the winter through April-May timeframe.

[I Shrugged]

pmward, Here is an article from Arizona that is pretty good. Well I think so because they say what I've been thinking for several weeks. Namely that the only measure that means anything is hospitalizations. And they say AZ has been trending down.

https://www.12news.com/article/news/hea ... 61c883890c

Interesting. Though considering our new cases and deaths are still both trending up (today was our 2nd largest increase in new cases to date) I'm not sure how sustainable that is. It seems like it may be more of a red herring than anything.

EDIT: I also wonder about if this has a lot to do with our large snow bird population, it is mid May, and April-May is about the time of the year that they fly back north for the summer. We have a large retiree population year round, but it is especially high in the winter through April-May timeframe.

As the article said, case counts are not worth much. The more you test, the more cases you count. And deaths are not real time reporting, and are subject to bias and error both ways. Hospitalizations tell the story.

[vnatale]

pmward, Here is an article from Arizona that is pretty good. Well I think so because they say what I've been thinking for several weeks. Namely that the only measure that means anything is hospitalizations. And they say AZ has been trending down.

https://www.12news.com/article/news/hea ... 61c883890c

Interesting. Though considering our new cases and deaths are still both trending up (today was our 2nd largest increase in new cases to date) I'm not sure how sustainable that is. It seems like it may be more of a red herring than anything.

EDIT: I also wonder about if this has a lot to do with our large snow bird population, it is mid May, and April-May is about the time of the year that they fly back north for the summer. We have a large retiree population year round, but it is especially high in the winter through April-May timeframe.

Surprisingly I've not kept up on it....but given Arizona's now "liberal" policy (of which I share your concern)….is it being talked about as being one of the places where a disproportionate amount of baseball games would be played given that it already has all the facilities there that are used for spring training? Plus, on top of it them being much smaller than major league parks would not be an issue if there are not going to be fans in attendance.

Vinny

[Dieter]

Hmmm, a combination of hospitalizations and deaths seen like useful information.

In related news --

"
As first reported on NPR, as many as 15 to 20 out of every 100 tests may produce falsely negative results. A subsequent study released this week indicated that the test could be missing as many as 48% of infections.
"

One way to get the count down -- push a great that falls half the time!

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... virus-test

[Dieter]

Can we all agree that the virus will inevitably spread throughout the population until it "burns out" via herd immunity?

<Snip>

Take this example: a store selling mattresses. Mattresses aren't essential, right? You only buy them every 20 years or so, so a few months won't make a difference. Well, what if you fell and hurt your back, and now you need a new mattress that doesn't aggravate your back pain? You need to go to a store to try them out to find the one that works best. Well, you can't, so you have to live with the back pain. You can't get physical therapy either, since gyms and PT centers are all closed. Which means you'll turn to alcohol and narcotics to deal with it. What's the essential and not essential items in this story?

So, um, we are looking to get a new mattress before too long.
(Nothing critical though).

And my back often hurts when I'm not careful (too much volleyball in my youth, and need to improve home office Ergonomics.

So far I'm doing more meditation and stretching than alcohol and medicine.

Life.

[Kriegsspiel]

pmward, Here is an article from Arizona that is pretty good. Well I think so because they say what I've been thinking for several weeks. Namely that the only measure that means anything is hospitalizations. And they say AZ has been trending down.

Interesting. Though considering our new cases and deaths are still both trending up (today was our 2nd largest increase in new cases to date) I'm not sure how sustainable that is. It seems like it may be more of a red herring than anything.

As the article said, case counts are not worth much. The more you test, the more cases you count. And deaths are not real time reporting, and are subject to bias and error both ways. Hospitalizations tell the story.

I read the rationale for hospitalizations being the key metric a few days ago and it seems like the best single metric, for sure. I'm hoping that decision-makers adopt it, and don't flip out when testing ramps up and they see a massive spike in positives.

[dualstow]

Survivors is a British post-apocalyptic fiction drama television series created by Terry Nation and produced by Terence Dudley at the BBC, that broadcast from 1975 to 1977. It concerns the plight of a group of people who have survived an apocalyptic plague pandemic, which was accidentally released by a Chinese scientist and quickly spread across the world via air travel. Referred to as "The Death", the plague kills approximately 4,999 out of every 5,000 human beings on the planet within a matter of weeks of being released.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors ... TV_series)

I cross-posted in the youtube thread: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2221&p=197012#p197012
I think there was a thread about virus TV shows, movies and books, but I don’t see it.

[WiseOne]

provided the peak does not exceed hospital capacity.

I don't think this has been sufficiently demonstrated either. How many of the people who go on ventilators are actually saved as opposed to dying in the following, say, month anyway? To me this is the big question and I can't find that anyone has even asked it, apart from that fellow with the oddly-colored website whose name escapes me at the moment.

The point of the lockdown is to save people who can be saved with proper medical attention (particularly with a ventilator) but who would die without it. But how much difference does medical intervention actually make?

I think we're owed some solid numbers on that if we're expecting to continue any form of lockdown.

Those numbers have been reported for New York State: 80% of COVID patients who go on ventilators eventually die, after being on them usually several weeks. And I haven't seen numbers but there is qualitative reporting that the longer a patient is on a vent, the higher that number gets - i.e. the ones who get off the vent successfully will do so within the first few days.

Bottom line, running out of vents will shorten the delay to death but probably won't have a big impact on the overall death rate. The bigger problem is bed space and personnel - people can't keep working overtime under strenuous conditions for weeks on end. In fairness though, hospitals often get overrun, usually during flu season and most commonly public hospitals that are run on shoestring budgets. I saw plenty of packed ERs with patients waiting 24 hours to be seen, and gurneys lined up in hallways during residency, depending on the hospital I was rotating through. It was not fun but the world did not end, and it wasn't even considered newsworthy.

[pmward]

pmward, Here is an article from Arizona that is pretty good. Well I think so because they say what I've been thinking for several weeks. Namely that the only measure that means anything is hospitalizations. And they say AZ has been trending down.

https://www.12news.com/article/news/hea ... 61c883890c

Interesting. Though considering our new cases and deaths are still both trending up (today was our 2nd largest increase in new cases to date) I'm not sure how sustainable that is. It seems like it may be more of a red herring than anything.

EDIT: I also wonder about if this has a lot to do with our large snow bird population, it is mid May, and April-May is about the time of the year that they fly back north for the summer. We have a large retiree population year round, but it is especially high in the winter through April-May timeframe.

Surprisingly I've not kept up on it....but given Arizona's now "liberal" policy (of which I share your concern)….is it being talked about as being one of the places where a disproportionate amount of baseball games would be played given that it already has all the facilities there that are used for spring training? Plus, on top of it them being much smaller than major league parks would not be an issue if there are not going to be fans in attendance.

Vinny

Yes, matter of fact I've heard rumors that the entirety of the MLB season for all teams could be played here. Also, the SF 49ers are looking to play here if we have NFL this year. Matter of fact Ducey in his press conference specifically made mention that pro sports were opened up, so I do think this had a lot to do with his decision to rush the opening. He definitely has dollar signs in his eyes with all these sports teams interested in coming to play here.

Side note: I've noticed my estimated home value on Zillow has been ripping to the upside the last couple months by an unusual amount, I wonder how much these rumors of the pro sports teams playing here have to do with that? We also had Taiwan Semiconductor announce plans to open a manufacturing facility here this morning.

[Kriegsspiel]

Coronaviruses enter lung tissue via the ACE2 receptor, which varies structurally among human populations. In particular, the Chinese population has fewer variants that bind weakly to the coronavirus S-protein. This global variation suggests that the ACE2 receptor has coevolved with different environments, some of which have favored susceptibility to infection of lung tissue by coronaviruses.

It has been argued that respiratory viruses boost the immune response of lung tissue and thereby prevent more serious pulmonary diseases, like tuberculosis, pneumonia, and pneumonic plague. This preventive effect has been shown with other viral pathogens, notably γherpesvirus 68 and cytomegalovirus. Some human populations may have therefore gained protection from severe respiratory infections by becoming more susceptible to mild respiratory infections, such as those normally caused by coronaviruses.

This commensal virus-host relationship would have been especially adaptive wherever respiratory pathogens could easily propagate, i.e., in crowded environments, where many people live in proximity not only to each other but also to animal sources of infection. In regions that have long had crowded environments, natural selection may have favored susceptibility to infection by coronaviruses, which are normally mild in their effects, as a means to maintain a strong immune response to deadly pulmonary diseases.
link

Guys, corona is our friend, she's just being a little bitchy right now.

[WiseOne]

So much for hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment, not that this should come as a surprise:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2012410

I am sorry that this drug ended up being used as a political football, resulting in raising a lot of false hopes. Other treatments are perhaps more promising (like remdesivir) but they're at best partially effective. Vaccination is pretty much the only solution for viruses.

I can't wait to hear how the anti-vaxxers will react to the COVID vaccine when it comes out.

[Kriegsspiel]

I'm still holding out hope that near-constant inebriation is legit.

[Xan]

I can't wait to hear how the anti-vaxxers will react to the COVID vaccine when it comes out.

Noting the "when" language, are you confident that this will happen, WiseOne? I certainly hope so!

[Kriegsspiel]

Wouldn't it be a trip if the anti-vaccine people were right, and vaccines cause autism? But we kept doing them? That would be a crazy timeline. We'd obviously be a starfaring species with insane tech, PLUS everyone will have a house-autist who can paint a picture of the London skyline from memory.

[dualstow]

The Rise of Sanitised Travel (Infographic)
https://simpliflying.com/sanitised-travel/

[stuper1]

So much for hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment, not that this should come as a surprise:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2012410

I am sorry that this drug ended up being used as a political football, resulting in raising a lot of false hopes. Other treatments are perhaps more promising (like remdesivir) but they're at best partially effective. Vaccination is pretty much the only solution for viruses.

I can't wait to hear how the anti-vaxxers will react to the COVID vaccine when it comes out.

I'm not exactly an anti-vaxxer, but I do think that people should be careful about what they inject into their bodies. And I think that people should be cautious where big bucks are involved for say a pharmaceutical company.

Regarding a potential COVID vaccine, I certainly won't be in line to get injected in the first week. I'm in my mid 50s. I probably wouldn't get the vaccine until my mid 60s, and only then if it had been shown to be safe by then. If I get sick before then, I will quarantine myself and stay away from older/sickly people who might die from it.

[barrett]

When I look around online I see that smoking in the US causes about 480,000 deaths annually.

COVID-19 has killed about 88,000 in two months more or less, for an annualized rate of 528,000 deaths. And it looks like only about 14% of Americans smoke.

Is it fair to say that the virus is about as dangerous as long-term smoking?