[News] Coronavirus

A place to discuss the now-global coronavirus outbreak.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

I thought the whole reason to live in New Hampshire was to isolate yourself?

Wasn't there some push a few years ago for a bunch of Libertarians to move to New Hampshire to turn it into an enclave? What would be a more appropriate description of Libertarian philosophy than having a communicable disease and, rather than staying home to sequester yourself, going out and mingling with other people because it's what you really want to do?

This suggests the actual number of cases in the Snohomish county area is much higher than the confirmed number. A lot of it is probably because many of the cases are mild or asymptomatic.
https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/

Our preliminary analysis puts this at 570 with an 90% uncertainty interval of between 80 and 1500 infections.

The gist of it is person A brings the virus back from China. Person B tests positive weeks later during a flu screening, the second case of "community" transmission in the US. We have an idea of the rate of mutation based on genome sequences that have been submitted. The differences in the genome of the virus between A and B suggest that B's virus was descended from A, not a separate source, and that it circulated for about 5 weeks. So going back to A, and going with the MIDAS network COVID-19 estimates for transmission rates, you get the numbers above.

For fruits and vegetables should any special precautions be taken?

There's been no cases where coronavirus has been transmitted through food, so you'd probably be good taking the standard precautions you would against e. coli contaminations and the like: wash your fruits and veggies and then wash your hands.

Australia lost its' mind this week and decided that stockpiling toilet paper was the answer.

Dry goods have been in strong demand and sanitizer is mostly sold out, but the need for a 3 year supply of bog rolls has reached fever pitch with shelves cleared absolutely everywhere.

Luckily I should be able to last until the end of the month so I can just shot normally once this ridiculous mania dies down.

an optomistic take on the situation with an interesting angle? A quarantined boat is an ideal—if unfortunate—natural laboratory to study a virus.

This is where the Diamond Princess data provides important insight. Of the 3,711 people on board, at least 705 have tested positive for the virus (which, considering the confines, conditions, and how contagious this virus appears to be, is surprisingly low). Of those, more than half are asymptomatic, while very few asymptomatic people were detected in China. This alone suggests a halving of the virus’s true fatality rate.
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On the Diamond Princess, six deaths have occurred among the passengers, constituting a case fatality rate of 0.85 percent. Unlike the data from China and elsewhere, where sorting out why a patient died is extremely difficult, we can assume that these are excess fatalities—they wouldn’t have occurred but for SARS-CoV-2. The most important insight is that all six fatalities occurred in patients who are more than 70 years old. Not a single Diamond Princess patient under age 70 has died. If the numbers from reports out of China had held, the expected number of deaths in those under 70 should have been around four.

The average age on a cruise is about 103 though, so...

polypusher wrote:

The average age on a cruise is about 103 though, so...

so...not sure what point you're making; I *think* you're saying cruise ships aren't a good sample because people are old?

but that would be *even better* because from the article:

On the Diamond Princess, six deaths have occurred among the passengers, constituting a case fatality rate of 0.85 percent.

Just snarking about the death statistics tied to age.

I guess I should clarify my opinion, given some of the really bad takes I've been seeing elsewhere on this hellish internet of ours: I think COVID-19 is a huge problem but that running out and buying face masks and pallets of toilet paper is misguided. (And also annoying because this week was my regularly scheduled time to buy toilet paper.)

Wash your hands, because you should be doing that anyway.

Gremlin wrote:

(And also annoying because this week was my regularly scheduled time to buy toilet paper.)

The median Goodjer age has reached close to the level where we'll be discussing our bowel movements.

TP runs don't make sense but if everyone is doing it you have to do it also or be caught with TP when you need it.

Rat Boy wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

(And also annoying because this week was my regularly scheduled time to buy toilet paper.)

The median Goodjer age has reached close to the level where we'll be discussing our bowel movements.

The good news is Gremlin's regular enough to schedule his TP runs. It's all about that fiber intake.

Gremlin wrote:

I guess I should clarify my opinion, given some of the really bad takes I've been seeing elsewhere on this hellish internet of ours: I think COVID-19 is a huge problem but that running out and buying face masks and pallets of toilet paper is misguided. (And also annoying because this week was my regularly scheduled time to buy toilet paper.)

My wife and I both work at different hospitals, and both have preemptively started rationing face masks because of expectations of hoarding by the public over the next few months.

10 dead in Washington state now. Pence apparently going there tomorrow. Not sure why that helps?

Stele wrote:

10 dead in Washington state now. Pence apparently going there tomorrow. Not sure why that helps?

He’s got his eyes on the Resolute Desk and is betting he’s more likely to survive COVID-19 than Donald “the healthiest president ever” Trump?

ruhk wrote:

My wife and I both work at different hospitals, and both have preemptively started rationing face masks because of expectations of hoarding by the public over the next few months.

Every piece of advice I've seen from people I trust has been "if you're not sick, stop touching your face and start washing your hands with soap and warm water religiously, masks will not protect you."

Prederick wrote:
ruhk wrote:

My wife and I both work at different hospitals, and both have preemptively started rationing face masks because of expectations of hoarding by the public over the next few months.

Every piece of advice I've seen from people I trust has been "if you're not sick, stop touching your face and start washing your hands with soap and warm water religiously, masks will not protect you."

I have a cousin who’s been buying as many boxes of masks as she can. I’ve explained to her that anything short of a fitted respirator won’t protect her and she’s keeping them from people who may actually need them, but she keeps buying them anyway.

Everything is starting to be sold out here. Rice, pasta, tinned tomatoes, eggs, even condoms.

The mask shortage for health practitioners is also evident here. Dentists are predicted to run out in April. GPs are going to hardware stores because the public has mostly bought out traditional sources of masks.

I'm a bit more relaxed now that it seems inevitable the virus is out of control in Sydney. We've had local transmissions and we can't trace anything, so it's just a matter of time before most of us get it here. I've been working on fixing my handwashing and face touching habits too. At least this will have a lasting benefit.

I think that's the thing Bfgp, they can't contain it, we're going to get sick.

Think of it like the Flu. It exists. It kills millions of people every year. We all know it's there yet we all still go about our lives and sometimes we get sick, sometimes we don't. Once the hysteria of the unknown passes, people will just go about their lives again and hopefully medical improvements over the next year find a way to limit this in the future.

BlackSabre that's all well and good for those who will only suffer a bad dose of flu. For those at risk of death what is a hysterical reaction?

More referring to the excessive buyout of toilet paper and silly things. The vast majority of people will get sick and nothing bad will happen, but they add to the panic by mass buying items which aren't even needed and causing the issue to be larger than it is.

Yes, I absolutely understand that this is a bad virus and it's doing a lot of damage and the resulting deaths is something that is horrible. My issue is with the reaction from people. The flu also kills people every year and we don't react this way to it.

If you really want to get into it, look at leading causes of death and you'll see heart disease killing far more people yet people almost just laugh at it and still do the exact things which lead to it rather than away from it.

This is worse than the flu.

BlackSabre wrote:

More referring to the excessive buyout of toilet paper and silly things. The vast majority of people will get sick and nothing bad will happen, but they add to the panic by mass buying items which aren't even needed and causing the issue to be larger than it is.

Yes, I absolutely understand that this is a bad virus and it's doing a lot of damage and the resulting deaths is something that is horrible. My issue is with the reaction from people. The flu also kills people every year and we don't react this way to it.

If you really want to get into it, look at leading causes of death and you'll see heart disease killing far more people yet people almost just laugh at it and still do the exact things which lead to it rather than away from it.

I take your point on proportional reaction but I hope there isn't a general feeling that it's all inevitable so carry on as normal. What I'm most worried about in the UK is a quick spread that overwhelms medical capacity and people do not get the care they need relating to this or other health issues. What is the spare capacity of ventilators at your nearest hospital?

A case just tested positive at my wife's office. Time to self quarantine

Yikes. Take care of yourselves.