That’s another reason for optimism. It took like 59 years to get a polio vaccine. While this may not be perfect it took 65 days for this. Scientists can work together all over the world at the same time sharing information instantly.
I’ve got faith in them.
Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand
My scientific survey:
Percentage of people at my workplace who thought panic buyers were idiots before the weekend: 95%
Percentage of people at my workplace who panic bought over the weekend: 95%
Man, this thread has a few annoying parts.
Without blowing the situation out of proportion, last thing you want to spend energy on is bullshit conspiracy theories, black vs white rants and all of that.
Save it for the years to come and stay focused on what’s going on, it’s going to serve you much better.
I’m from Italy too and I live in Bergamo province, also known as:
In a municipality that’s pretty much at the middle point between Bergamo, Milano, Brescia, Crema, Lodi… basically surrounded by areas with the highest cases and death rates.
The hope here, based on a few statistical charts, is that we’re more or less at the peak in these days and should see a progressive flattening in the curve starting from next week.
Gotta wait and see.
I can’t say much more than what has already been said about the reality of this situation.
Lombardy has one of the best healthcare systems in Europe, and hospitals are at their absolute limit. Nurses, medics, sanitary workers of every level are working inhuman shifts, protective gear is running low and they’re exposed to contagion. Many of them are expected to develop PTSD as an aftermath, since it’s more or less like a war scenario: ICU and breathers are limited in quantities, they do have to decide who gets treatments and who gets pulled out and dies.
People are not allowed in Covid hospital areas (or in hospitals at all unless they are sick, injured or need serious medical care), so those affected by Covid die alone without getting the chance to see their close ones. They don’t get a funeral either, cemeteries are full and crematorium runs 24/7.
It’s not the apocalypse as you’d expect it to be from a movie, but it’s serious, and there’s a lot of pain involved. Don’t buy the bullshit that it only hits the old and the weak and such. Obviously death rate for old people and for compromised (oncological, immunodeficiency and stuff) is much higher, but it’s dangerous for younger people too, it causes serious lung infection, and it can be deadly without serious pre existing patologies. Talking about diabetes, high pressure and such, things that normally require mild medication and allow people to live their lives and die of old age, paired with coronavirus it gets deadly.
So put it in perspective - it’s not a death sentece, and it’s not a generic flu either.
Actually, it’s a double edged sword. You have the incredibly high infection rate that can spike up complication rates, which can overload healthcare systems and lead to further increase in mortality rates simply due to the lack of resources (human and machines), while at the same time you still have people who get injured, hearth attacks, cancer and everything else that need to be treated and lack resources because the healthcare system is already overloaded. So there’s a “secondary” increase in accessory death rates due to… well, pretty much everything else that needs medical treatment and can’t be treated due to the running emergency.
Right now, here in Italy, the hope is somehow to shield south Italy from the same peaks that happened in the north, since the southern healthcare system has always been a sinking ship. They simply don’t have the means to face something like this and if it spreads down there as it did up here, we’re in for some serious war bulletin.
As for the numbers, statistics and such, I see many asked why Italy seems to have such a high infection rate and death rate. A couple factors, actually.
First of all, I wouldn’t trust a single data that comes out of places like China or Russia, for obvious reasons. You can’t expect any degree of transparency from them.
Other than that, many european major players like Germany and France have a history of faking datas and statistics to save face and appear as virtous and efficient countries (Dieselgate anybody?).
You don’t have that many infected if you don’t test people, right?
You don’t have that many deaths either if you DON’T label as deaths associated to coronavirus those with pre existing patologies.
Just look at the huge spike in Spain in the last few days, you can tell that they haven’t disclosed real numbers until shit hit the fan and are now running for cover.
It’s true that average age in Italy is very high, it’s true that we were the first ones outside of China to be seriously hit by the virus, and it’s true that our government reacted slowly and with some back and forth, and that all of this contributes to spreading and death rate, but I’d seriously take numbers from other countries with a grain of salt.
I’ll avoid my thoughts about Europe and the European Union for now, it would be too easy to say that it’s a gutter, and we always knew that. A naked king.
As for South Korea, since someone asked - they’ve been lucky, unlucky and efficient at the same. They didn’t have many cases until a case of super-spreader, a single person who infected over 1000 others and caused a serious surge. They were already testing like hell and tracking down all possible infected, and did the same thing with the super spreader and managed to surgically contain the spreading.
I’m fairly certain we will go on a nationwide lockdown very soon. I think that may have been the plan all along, but they have been taking baby steps to avoid panic. I can’t imagine the riots at the grocery store if 2 weeks ago they said we are going on a 7 day lockdown.
A lockdown with exceptions.
I don’t claim to have a solution, and I hope that this works out for the best. I was just wondering how it would go otherwise.
The fact is that I’m pessimistic and skeptical of a lot of things. You have to wait and see how many people get sick and how bad the economic implications are to say which would be worse, and by then it’s too late to change anything. One way or another it’s a bad situation, and I’m not here looking for an argument or a debate.
The only reason for panic shopping is because everyone else is doing it so if you don’t then you might have no food, soap, or toilet paper. Panic shopping is a self-perpetuating problem in this case.
You are right, the problem is that if you make one comment there are a couple guys who will try to turn it into a whole new debate.
Apparently a 21 year old Spanish soccer coach just died. Young and healthy people are at less risk, but the risk is still there.
I read something the other day about one city (Milan? Can’t remember) where some of the first cases started having a large Chinese community and that people had been travelling for Chinese new year. If a few people went to Wuhan or nearby and back that would make sense.
The problem is this part. Don’t make comments then expect people to ignore them. I mean, you made the comment for a reason, no?
Logically it makes no sense to wonder. Think about what you’re saying based on what we know is factual from the virus at this moment. At this moment based on how the virus spreads does it make actual logical sense to completely ignore what has already been proven to be effective against it?
Well you’re never going to know because only one action can be taken. What you’re suggesting we experiment with is essentially something that defies actual logic based on the factual evidence have. And the teams of people who are far more intelligent in this area than you or I combined. Who are all in agreement with one thing. Typically when you don’t understand something (which you don’t) very clearly it makes sense to listen to what every single expert agrees on.
Well when you frequently say absolutely outlandish things people are going to comment on them. This is a forum where people debate things. It’s essentially the point of it. If you’re not looking for discussion just read.
Yeah we’re back to “I shouldn’t have to read this on a public forum.”
You really don’t need to do that. You can look at Italy; they have taken measures to limit people’s movements and ability to gather in groups in order to slow the spread. They probably should have taken these steps sooner. Regardless, look at how overloaded their healthcare system is even with the measures they have taken. Now imagine if they didn’t take any steps and just let it run its course. It’s not wild speculation to think even more people would be infected and even more would need hospitalization. And having more people draining the healthcare system, more people dying, more people sick and unable to work, go to school, provide basic and essential services, etc., would have a significant impact economically. If people don’t work because they’ve been told to stay home or don’t work because they are sick, they still are not working. Add in more people who will recover from illness only to have permanent damage done and require more healthcare over the course of their lives than they would otherwise as well as being limited when it comes to performing their jobs. In other words, they will be some degree of disabled.
I don’t see there being some trade off between hurting the economy or taking serious steps to slow down the spread of the illness. The economy will be hurt either way and it’s quite possible that in the long term it will be hurt more if we don’t take serious steps.
Just saw this story:
i suppose at this point it is a double edged sword: if many more people actually have it than detected, the death rate is possibly much less, and the suffering of those who recover.
Still, will the number of infected people might be likely at the high end of projections.
I forget if this has been posted up thread, but maybe good to put out there at this time.
This is the correct way to look at it. The economy is going to be hurt either way. It was going to be hurt no matter what. In one scenario you’re chancing that an incredibly contagious virus won’t be that bad so keep on keeping on. In the other you’re taking steps to prevent it because we don’t know what it would be like for the whole world to have it at the same time.
To me that’s a pretty no brainer decision especially when we’re talking about short term stuff right now. It’s also why essentially all the most intelligent health professionals are saying the same thing. It’s kinda like on here. When the vast majority of t-nation writers say one thing it makes more sense to listen to them than bro at the gym.
That’s just a small part of the equation, and most likely non relevant.
What we know for sure right now are a few solid points:
Chinese gov admitted they knew about the virus AT LEAST two months before they disclosed infos to the rest of the world, so they knew already around October, but didn’t warn other countries. From October to January, nobody else knew and there were no mobility restrictions of any kind in place, this delay alone pretty much made sure the virus could spread to the rest of the globe, it was just a matter of time;
We haven’t found and I guess we’ll never find our patient zero, we know our patient-1 but we don’t know who infected him: it’s a guy whose condition got worse quickly and he was discovered to be the first confirmed case here in Italy. He’s 38 and a marathon runner, btw, and he’s been unconscious and attached to a breather for 20 days before starting to recover, since we’re talking about young-ish and healthy people being affected too.
Initially, authorities expected a friend of his to be patient zero, who’s a manager that works in China and travels back and forth for business and came back to Italy when the news of the virus were known but there was no quarantine yet at the airports. He got back in January shortly before quarantine, and neither him or the company he works for bothered to contact authorities about the fact he just came back from an area of infection. He went on to live his usual life in the following days, moved around for work, had meetings, dinners (including a dinner with patient-1) and such, but he tested negative.
So on one side, we lost time following a dead end; on the other side you can see how dumb and foolish people can be moving around recklessly without bothering about the situation.
Right now, it seems that the actual patient zero and the origin of infection might be in Germany. Our researchers, the same who isolated the virus (first in the world) have followed the genetic trail and declared that the italian strain of the virus shares a cluster with the one found in Baviera, where a chinese woman (from Shangai, who had contact with her parents in Wuhan before moving to Germany for a meeting) infected a german colleague. Same reason why the virus strains in Mexico, Finland, Scotland and other countries all seem to trail back to the german strain found in Baviera. They’re waiting to get approval to publish their results on scientific paper;
Overall, they might have contributed to some degree, but see point 1 and 2. Chinese government acted criminally by allowing people to move freely to and from China when they already knew about the disease and this alone made sure the virus could spread to the rest of the world, helped by the fact that people simply didn’t seem to care if they moved around China during the outbreak once they got to their origin country or moved to other countries. I mean, before the lockdown, A LOT of people were still concerned if they could go from here to there, fly to that other country, have their holiday and so on.
The fact that a country has or doesn’t have big chinese communities at that point is pretty much irrelevant, you’re guaranteed shit will spread anyway and you don’t have a single patient zero to look for.
Bingo. Obviously older people and the already sick will be most vulnerable but the idea that it’s just a sniffle and a cough if you’re not old isn’t reality based. Also worth pointing out that at least in my country we are already obese and unhealthy in many areas.
No doubt it’s not a death sentence by any means and no one is saying that. The virus itself doesn’t even have to kill people. You get an entire population of sick people and you’re going to have deaths due to a lack of resources in your hospitals.
It’s been well known for a while now, there are a lot of asymptomatics positives and people with VERY mild symptoms around.
While it contributes to decreasing death rate (since death rate is based on actual tested positives and there are probably 10 to 100 times more around with no symptomps or mild symptoms), it actually feeds the problem.
People with no symptoms or mild symptoms think they have nothing, go around, infect other people. Infection rate is crazy high (even considering only those with relevant symptoms), and symptoms take 7-14 days to manifest, so the new infected go around and infect others before symptoms appears.
At that point, with this dynamic and infection rate, even the small % of the real total who has severe complications tends to appear in sudden spikes and overloads hospitals, they literally flood in day after day.
You either act immediatly, lock the main aggregation points, test everyone and track back all the contacts that the positives had, like they did in S.Korea, or you fall into the loop of doom, with the timing this thing has for incubation once you start seeing an increase in severe cases it’s already too late, you can only lockdown and brace for impact.
I said this before, but this is a watershed moment in research collaboration and open access. You have scientists setting up Slack teams across the globe to communicate and pass info in near real time, you have the bioRxiv servers processing pre-prints at record pace, and you have traditionally stodgy publishers like Elsevier making any and all coronavirus research open access as well as having a group of editors on staff 24/7 to review and publish papers in a matter of days instead of months.
It is absolutely unreal. If it worked like this all the time I can’t help but wonder how much more shit we could solve quicker.
This vaccine is a draft version, there’s no doubt about that. I think we’ll go through several drafts (whether publicly known or not)
An interesting story on the retail food supply situation, at least here in Canada:
I wonder if strawberries are suddenly going through the roof, but we do have food production of our own when the weather picks up. We also have livestock year round.
Interesting, I placed an order with PC Express pickup service. As a first time customer to their service of online ordering, having someone pick it off the shelves so I can just pay online and show up and it is ready, my $30 discount for an order over $100 doesn’t exist anymore.
I emailed them wondering if at some future point I will be accommodated, but I have my doubts.
Hey, I mean just because an economist says it, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.