Has the Corona Virus infected anyone you know?

[CMJ]

I will say though, we should stay on our current course until at least mid to late April.  Anyone who is talking about opening things back up before then is certifiable.

[FirefightnRick]

3 hours ago, CMJ said:

I don't think we can go that extreme long term either - but we'll have to accept a larger death toll than would normally be acceptable.

So probably between 12,000 -75,000?

 

 

Rick

[CMJ]

7 minutes ago, FirefightnRick said:

So probably between 12,000 -75,000?

 

 

Rick

I'm afraid at least 100K.

[MeanGreenTeeth]

6 hours ago, CMJ said:

I will say though, we should stay on our current course until at least mid to late April.  Anyone who is talking about opening things back up before then is certifiable.

I think realistically, we'll probably start seeing states back off around that time frame.    You can't put a massive chunk of the economy on hold 12-18 months.  I think 2 months is a massive strain as-is.  I expect we might see parts of the country come on and off restrictions for some time while outbreaks flare, but we're tempting a depression even with what we're doing (and the number of lives lost from that would almost certainly exceed the virus long-term).   I know some folks are hoping to make Trump look stupid, but honestly, we'd better hope he's "right" on chloroquine.  A vaccine is a least a year away, and there is a real possibility that a vaccine isn't even possible.  I also saw an article the other day from a doctor mentioning that human's don't generally get long-lasting immunity from coronoviruses.  We'd better pray that isn't true if this thing becomes endemic.

[CMJ]

9 hours ago, MeanGreenTeeth said:

I think realistically, we'll probably start seeing states back off around that time frame.    You can't put a massive chunk of the economy on hold 12-18 months.  I think 2 months is a massive strain as-is.  I expect we might see parts of the country come on and off restrictions for some time while outbreaks flare, but we're tempting a depression even with what we're doing (and the number of lives lost from that would almost certainly exceed the virus long-term).   I know some folks are hoping to make Trump look stupid, but honestly, we'd better hope he's "right" on chloroquine.  A vaccine is a least a year away, and there is a real possibility that a vaccine isn't even possible.  I also saw an article the other day from a doctor mentioning that human's don't generally get long-lasting immunity from coronoviruses.  We'd better pray that isn't true if this thing becomes endemic.

What I'm most worried about is this is like the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu and has multiple waves.  The first wave was slightly more deadly than a normal flu season, the second was apocalyptic, and the third was somewhere between the other two.

 

I hope this isn't the weakest wave, but I fear it may be.

Edited March 24, 2020 by CMJ

[meangreendork]

8 hours ago, CMJ said:

What I'm most worried about is this is like the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu and has multiple waves.  The first wave was slightly deadly than a normal flu season, the second was apocalyptic, and the third was somewhere between the other two.

 

I hope this isn't the weakest wave, but I fear it may be.

I have the same worries. I also don't think a 3 month shutdown - at least how we're doing it now - is feasible. We would just end up with a lot of evicted folks on the street.

If we did anything longer than that, looking at how the UK is doing things may help. Substantial financial aid for those who can't work, plus loans and grants for businesses of all sizes.

I'd like to see contact tracing, booth and drive thru testing, and IR temp scanning if possible. 

Gotta buy time for treatments and vaccines and for the medical/emergency responders.

[ntmeangreen11]

If you're 60+ and a republican how are you watching this clown show unfold and thinking "Well, I'm probably going to be hospitalized and potentially die but at least the libtards aren't winning?"

Now claiming the libtards are blocking the financial bill because they just want to screw the public out of money when I don't think anyone, red or blue can comprehend why on Earth 500 billion dollars to people who don't need it is included? That's common sense, shouldn't be political. 

Texas Lt Gov last night on Fox news saying grandparents should just go ahead and swallow the sword, get this infection, die, and secure the economy for the younger generation. Pretty easy to say as Lt Gov when you're guaranteed a respirator.

Man all of the above has the devils fingerprints all over it and ya'll are complicit in blindly following the spray tan yankee who acts more like the anti christ than someone you want to follow in a time of crisis.

Remember when they asked Trump what his favorite bible verse was in 2015? He couldn't recite one. Not one. 

I can vividly remember people claiming Obama was the anti christ, I wonder what caused that? His actions and words or skin color? yeah the latter, and nothing more.

Keep supporting the spray tan yankee people, he really cares about us southern folk.

To beat this all we gotta do is grab it by the pussy as our great christian leader once said.

[MeanGreenTeeth]

3 hours ago, ntmeangreen11 said:

If you're 60+ and a republican how are you watching this clown show unfold and thinking "Well, I'm probably going to be hospitalized and potentially die but at least the libtards aren't winning?"

Now claiming the libtards are blocking the financial bill because they just want to screw the public out of money when I don't think anyone, red or blue can comprehend why on Earth 500 billion dollars to people who don't need it is included? That's common sense, shouldn't be political. 

Texas Lt Gov last night on Fox news saying grandparents should just go ahead and swallow the sword, get this infection, die, and secure the economy for the younger generation. Pretty easy to say as Lt Gov when you're guaranteed a respirator.

Man all of the above has the devils fingerprints all over it and ya'll are complicit in blindly following the spray tan yankee who acts more like the anti christ than someone you want to follow in a time of crisis.

Remember when they asked Trump what his favorite bible verse was in 2015? He couldn't recite one. Not one. 

I can vividly remember people claiming Obama was the anti christ, I wonder what caused that? His actions and words or skin color? yeah the latter, and nothing more.

Keep supporting the spray tan yankee people, he really cares about us southern folk.

To beat this all we gotta do is grab it by the pussy as our great christian leader once said.

I think you meant to post on 4chan/pol/

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

Most people are worried about the travel industry and service industries (for good reason), but this is really going to be a killer for hospitals,. 

All elective procedures (surgeries, etc) are cancelled. Only emergencies are getting scheduled. 

That means normal money making procedures that fund the rest of the hospital are not happening to balancing out the budget. Paying for the hospital for uninsured ICU patients or patients that will not be able to pay their max out of pocket (when they recover) will lead them to bankruptcy and hospital without a way to pay the bills. It is the equivalent of the MG football team cancelling their season and not collecting the MG scholarships from us donors ... How long do you think softball and soccer could survive?) 

Already we know some physicians that have their contracts cancelled because they will not be collecting revenue for the next three months at least. It isn't like these physicians can go out and find another gig - since all elective procedures are postponed. So ... what do you do? You lay off your whole staff, you break your lease and close your clinic. 

I can see a future where a ton of surgery centers, ERs and community hospitals will be shuttering up. 

I don't see how the surgery center I am invested in will survive two months without revenue. 

So even in an 'industry' which can 'benefit' from more patients - it has to be the right kind of patient.

[greenminer]

1 hour ago, SteaminWillieBeamin said:

Most people are worried about the travel industry and service industries (for good reason), but this is really going to be a killer for hospitals,. 

All elective procedures (surgeries, etc) are cancelled. Only emergencies are getting scheduled. 

That means normal money making procedures that fund the rest of the hospital are not happening to balancing out the budget. Paying for the hospital for uninsured ICU patients or patients that will not be able to pay their max out of pocket (when they recover) will lead them to bankruptcy and hospital without a way to pay the bills. It is the equivalent of the MG football team cancelling their season and not collecting the MG scholarships from us donors ... How long do you think softball and soccer could survive?) 

Already we know some physicians that have their contracts cancelled because they will not be collecting revenue for the next three months at least. It isn't like these physicians can go out and find another gig - since all elective procedures are postponed. So ... what do you do? You lay off your whole staff, you break your lease and close your clinic. 

I can see a future where a ton of surgery centers, ERs and community hospitals will be shuttering up. 

I don't see how the surgery center I am invested in will survive two months without revenue. 

So even in an 'industry' which can 'benefit' from more patients - it has to be the right kind of patient.

Considering how much the public pays in monthly health premiums, maybe we could give the hospitals all they need and pass the bill onto the health insurance agencies.

[El Paso Eagle]

4 minutes ago, greenminer said:

Considering how much the public pays in monthly health premiums, maybe we could give the hospitals all they need and pass the bill onto the health insurance agencies.

Then the question becomes what do they need? The charges are so out of control it is almost impossible to tell what their cost are and what they are over-charging for to make up for some different expense. 

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

1 minute ago, greenminer said:

Considering how much the public pays in monthly health premiums, maybe we could give the hospitals all they need and pass the bill onto the health insurance agencies.

"We"  is  a funny term to use here. We are victims of this private insurance game. In Texas, hospitals for the most part are not legally capable of employing the physicians. They have to hire their 501c entity. So ... there is no employment to guarantee payment to the physicians. There is no call the arms to get them working. When the 501c folds from not being able to pay the bills (these 501c groups of multi-specialty groups - so when only one of the specialties collecting, the whole entity will ultimately fail) -- then the hospital will be understaffed even more because they can't hire physicians directly. 

 

 

[El Paso Eagle]

11 minutes ago, SteaminWillieBeamin said:

"We"  is  a funny term to use here. We are victims of this private insurance game. In Texas, hospitals for the most part are not legally capable of employing the physicians. They have to hire their 501c entity. So ... there is no employment to guarantee payment to the physicians. There is no call the arms to get them working. When the 501c folds from not being able to pay the bills (these 501c groups of multi-specialty groups - so when only one of the specialties collecting, the whole entity will ultimately fail) -- then the hospital will be understaffed even more because they can't hire physicians directly. 

According to the Texas Medical Association, this ensures that physicians are able to exercise professional medical judgment relating to a patient's health care needs without financial or other outside pressures. So perhaps this is a good thing to help make sure the patients get the care they need, not just what the hospital believe they can charge/recover.

 

 

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

That's true in some respect and I see their point about independence. Yet, I think it obfuscates costs and resources and isn't the best for planning got big events like this.

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

The other side of the 'not hospital employed' argument is that when you are in a 'you eat what you cut' mode, then you aren't truly out of the model it is accusing the hospitals of using. When a doctor needs to see x number of people to cut even, xy to survive or xyz to thrive (but run a cute rate style of practice) ... What do you think they will do? 

A salary from a hospital will eliminate that. And allow for planning budgets and growth and move physicians where most needed.

Edited March 26, 2020 by SteaminWillieBeamin

[CMJ]

We're now at the beginning of the spike if you examine the coronavirus fatality numbers in the USA. Let's hope we're not gonna be like Italy, but at first glance it is not encouraging. I'm picking March 19th as the start date to look at because that is the first day we lost over 50 people to the illness.

March 19 - 57 deaths
March 20 - 49 deaths
March 21 - 46 deaths
March 22 - 111 deaths
March 23 - 140 deaths
March 24 - 225 deaths
March 25 - 247 deaths

To compare to Italy, they haven't had a day with less than 100 deaths since March 9th. The last day they had under 300 deaths was March 14th, the last under 400 was March 17th, and the last under 600 was March 19th.

 

We are over five times more populated than Italy.  This isn't gonna end for a long time.

 

[FirefightnRick]

More good news in the New England Journal of Medicine.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387

 

Quote

On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%.⁴ In another article in the Journal, Guan et al.⁵ report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.² 

 

 

Rick

 

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by FirefightnRick

[GBarksdale]

I don't know anyone who has contracted the virus, except -- back around Christmas my daughter developed what they're saying are the main symptoms of COVID-19.  Fever, persistent cough. She was out of school for a week and she wasn't the only one.  It swept through her DC area high school.  Actually made the news here.  There are a lot of international students from Asia, State Department workers, etc -- people who travel overseas regularly, including to China.  News reports say that the virus was in Wuhan in November, so it's not inconceivable that it somehow made it here before before the first publicized cases in February.

Of course, there's no way to know for sure if my daughter had been exposed to COVID-19 in December, except to get her tested for the antibodies.  But that's not possible at the moment.

[CMJ]

2 hours ago, FirefightnRick said:

More good news in the New England Journal of Medicine.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387

 

 

No one ever suggested fatality rates of 10-36% worldwide for this thing.  But a 0.1% mortality rate seems really low balling it.  Maybe in Germany where even the reported rate is around 0.5 that makes sense.

 

Right now (which constantly changes...but 25,879 deaths from 549,474 known cases as stands now as I type this) the recorded mortality rate world wide is 4.5 percent.  I assume it's overstated significantly because of low symptom individuals, etc ... so we'll divide that by 10.  Even a fatality rate of 0.45% likely gets you millions of death world wide from this thing given the speed of its spread.

Edited March 27, 2020 by CMJ

[FirefightnRick]

54 minutes ago, GBarksdale said:

I don't know anyone who has contracted the virus, except -- back around Christmas my daughter developed what they're saying are the main symptoms of COVID-19.  Fever, persistent cough. She was out of school for a week and she wasn't the only one.  It swept through her DC area high school.  Actually made the news here.  There are a lot of international students from Asia, State Department workers, etc -- people who travel overseas regularly, including to China.  News reports say that the virus was in Wuhan in November, so it's not inconceivable that it somehow made it here before before the first publicized cases in February.

Of course, there's no way to know for sure if my daughter had been exposed to COVID-19 in December, except to get her tested for the antibodies.  But that's not possible at the moment.

Prior to this past most recent February Texas had over 50 schools during this 19-20 school year close due to Flu.  One small 2A district north of where I live was one of them.  That’s what flu does every flu season. 

The great news about this strain is it doesn’t seem to greatly affect children or the very young and healthy considering there’s only been one death world wide(a 14 year old in China) of a child under 15.

 

 Rick

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

The good news is that after the whole world isolating and some countries are doing it with military, that we need to take some great assumption "If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%." and then... and only then... will it be similar to a really bad flu?

So no, this isn't the same as the normal flu - it takes a lot of measures to make sure it can be in the range of the flu. 

I don't think there is anything new in this report. Besides that, the final death toll is calculated after the fact. The number always increases. For example: eventually death's will include the normal ICU patients that couldn't get a bed or vent because of all the COVID-19 patients that flooded the system and then that non-COVID-19 patient died from their symptoms.
 

Edited March 27, 2020 by SteaminWillieBeamin

[outoftown]

How much do I believe the USA are still underestimating this and therefore not taking the right measures? I just put a lot of money into inverse  index ETFs today. If I turn out to be wrong, I will be happy for everyone elses earnings and health (and that will be good for my own job security and earnings). But I am afraid I am indeed gonna make good money betting against the economy, because it is so related to US health system and politics right now.

Edited March 27, 2020 by outoftown

[KRAM1]

Still hasn't affected either of us with the virus nor anyone we know, but it is affecting our family in a completely different way. Those of you who actually do know me may recall that our son and daughter-in-law are both Navy M.D.'s stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, VA (Norfolk Naval Base).  There is a Mercy Ship attached to the Norfolk base that is preparing to leave for New York to help with the coronavirus outbreak. Whether that is a good idea or not is another story, but none the less it is going...and it must be manned.  So, some 800 folks...docs, nurses, support personnel...have been taken from the Portsmouth hospital (along with personnel from other military hospitals around the country) to man this hospital ship. So, guess which hospital is totally understaffed right now and is struggling to keep up with patient care? Bingo...you got it.  The specialists, like our son and DIL, are being assigned primary care duties, ER duties, etc. in an attempt to keep up...BUT, get this, our DIL has been given 72-hour notice that she may be deploying to either the Hospital Ship or another military hospital to help fill the void. WHAT?  Portsmouth is 800 staff short already and you pull more to go staff somewhere else? Ahhhhhhhh...your government at work!  Both son and DIL "get it" they signed up for this possibility (they had already both been deployed during the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan/Iraq wars), but not easy with four little ones at home to care for with school cancelled and "shelter-in-place" requirements. So, no, this virus has not infected anyone with know as yet, but it certainly is affecting our family in many ways.

But, I will add...health care workers (wherever they may be and whatever their jobs may be) are certainly doing their best to fight back this virus. If you know a health care worker from the front desk staff to the nurses to the doctors to the janitorial staff...thank them for showing up every day and doing what they can to battle this virus back!

[FirefightnRick]

2 hours ago, SteaminWillieBeamin said:

So no, this isn't the same as the normal flu - it takes a lot of measures to make sure it can be in the range of the flu. 

 

That’s not what the article is claiming.  Key word=“may”

“may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate ofapproximately 0.1%)” 

Of course it is the New England Journal of Medicine.  What do those idiots over there know, right?

 

 

Rick

[outoftown]

35 minutes ago, KRAM1 said:

Still hasn't affected either of us with the virus nor anyone we know, but it is affecting our family in a completely different way. Those of you who actually do know me may recall that our son and daughter-in-law are both Navy M.D.'s stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, VA (Norfolk Naval Base).  There is a Mercy Ship attached to the Norfolk base that is preparing to leave for New York to help with the coronavirus outbreak. Whether that is a good idea or not is another story, but none the less it is going...and it must be manned.  So, some 800 folks...docs, nurses, support personnel...have been taken from the Portsmouth hospital (along with personnel from other military hospitals around the country) to man this hospital ship. So, guess which hospital is totally understaffed right now and is struggling to keep up with patient care? Bingo...you got it.  The specialists, like our son and DIL, are being assigned primary care duties, ER duties, etc. in an attempt to keep up...BUT, get this, our DIL has been given 72-hour notice that she may be deploying to either the Hospital Ship or another military hospital to help fill the void. WHAT?  Portsmouth is 800 staff short already and you pull more to go staff somewhere else? Ahhhhhhhh...your government at work!  Both son and DIL "get it" they signed up for this possibility (they had already both been deployed during the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan/Iraq wars), but not easy with four little ones at home to care for with school cancelled and "shelter-in-place" requirements. So, no, this virus has not infected anyone with know as yet, but it certainly is affecting our family in many ways.

But, I will add...health care workers (wherever they may be and whatever their jobs may be) are certainly doing their best to fight back this virus. If you know a health care worker from the front desk staff to the nurses to the doctors to the janitorial staff...thank them for showing up every day and doing what they can to battle this virus back!

You have my (and I am sure everyone elses) sympathy. Thanks to your son and DIL, and also to their children, who are also bearing a part of that sacrifice.