Very much looking forward to it. Sister works at a unit in Omaha that doesn’t typically handle things like this but is now working on it as well as their typical duties for cancer patients. I haven’t really been able to talk to her much considering how much she has been working and honestly I want to talk to her about shit other than the virus when we do.
My question is the medical supply problem, especially protective equipment. The number nationwide does not seem like a particularly high enough number to be facing these shortages yet. Is this something where most places simply don’t typically have the need or storage for many extras of these items? I can definitely see the fear of shortages being an issue knowing that we are going to continue to add cases rapidly…it just seems early to me to be hearing those type of issues already. I could definitely see it in the hardest hit areas already.
ActivitiesGuy and ED would be better sources for this, but as AG said above, the admin types like to keep the absolute minimum on hand in interests of the bottom line. Much like a company who does not keep a significant cash reserve under most circumstances. When they need to order extras and the rest of the world also needs supplies, both they and the manufacturer (who couldn’t foresee the jump in demand and adjust in time) get shortages.
Obviously places like NYC and Cali are hard hit.
Also, this is the price we pay for not having a health security/pandemic plan.
I wasn’t referring to the average Joe hoarding surgical masks. I was referring to the benefit a medical professional would receive when being in close contact with an infected patient. It’s certainly less risky for a medical professional to be around an infected patient whilst wearing these masks (until the point wherein the mask becomes moist). The avg Joe probably won’t even wear them adequately and/or will wear them continuously throughout the day, even when they no longer serve as an efficient barrier.
If I wanted a mask, I’d buy a gas mask… These aren’t being handed out to/used by medical professionals if I recall correctly… I’m not being a massive dick by acquiring one of these if I chose to do so… At least I don’t think I am? Correct me if I’m wrong.
As to an Australian perspective on this pandemic… What our government has done (or rather, is refusing to do) is absolutely pathetic. Just yesterday in QLD. a video surfaced showcasing a very packed Bondi Beach… No restrictions, no preventative measures taking place… I’m not typically for authoritative measures, but when you’ve got an impending explosion of cases, it’d be smart to flatten the curve of infection, esp considering how under resourced we are for a situation of this calibre
If we have cases in the millions (with the current trajectory of infection we most certainly will) hospitals may become so overwhelmed we will have to start choosing/prioritising certain patients coming in need of intensive care… How many months til we start a rule like “those above 70 can’t be admitted”?
It’s too late… even if the PM finally decides to take this seriously, we’ve now got over 1,000 cases (known and diagnosed). Considering one can’t even seem to get a test here (even if symptomatic) unless they’ve been in contact with a known case I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual number of cases is in The hundreds of thousands
I had the “flu” about a month ago, my symptoms were
severe fever/elevated heart rate
shortness of breath
dry cough
sore throat
headache
swollen lymph nodes
… It’s not flu season… Was put on tamiflu regardless and a doctor refused to test me for covid-19… Did I have covid 19? Who knows, I’m willing to bet we have many cases just like this that go by untested.
You made a valuable post. With respect, would you please cut it from here and paste it to the other thread to keep THIS thread focused on the medical/scientific facts? Per ActivitiesGuy request at the start of the thread. It would keep productive info less spread out.
Generally other thread is for personal experiences, economic, political, social commentary. This thread at request of AG is (hopefully) going to stay to medical/scientific.
You would have to ask AG, but I assume that would be the preferred goal. His hope is to provide a "what do we know about this disease, its spread, treatment, and prognosis of patients as well as health systems”.
Also, questions regarding that.
Possibly more dry facts, less journalism. Will wait to confirm his preference
I can only speak for myself but I would like to keep the substance of this thread confined to posts from people who are subject matter experts. That’s who I am interested in hearing from at this point.
I don’t know any epidemiologists or biochemists in real life. I know a lot of people who are acting like they are epidemiologist and biochemists, which is why having this source of information is helpful to me.
Everyone likes to sound smart and be informed, including me, but if you weren’t a subject matter expert in 2019 you haven’t become one since. The internet is full of armchair exerts right now. We are lucky to be able to hear from actual experts that we’ve known for years here.
Canada has so far, or I wonder, been hit fairly mildly with this. At last check we had 1,087 cases, 13 deaths. Still, we have only 15 recoveries, so I wonder if the death figure might radically change
This is what makes pandemics so difficult to control–by the time things look like a pandemic, it’s way too late to do much about it.
Here’s the analogy I like to use. Consider a pond. Now, toss one lily pad onto it. Say this particular pad reproduces at a rate of 1/d. So Day 1 there’s only the one you tossed out there, Day 2 there are 2, Day 3 there are 4, etc. Now assume that, given the relative sizes of the pond and the pad, the pond will be completely covered on Day 48. Question: On what day will the pond be half-covered?
For many, the temptation is to say ‘Day 24,’ but that’s incorrect. It’s Day 47. (Which makes sense if you think about–given the number of pads doubles every day, if there are n on Day 48, there must be 1/2n on Day 47.) Working backwards, we can see that the pond will be only 1/4th covered on Day 46, 1/8th on Day 45, 1/16th on Day 44, etc.
Now consider walking out there on Day 40. What would the pond look like? Would it appear to have an impending lily-pad problem? No; in fact, depending on where you looked, you might be hard-pressed to find any lily pads at all. Yet at that juncture the pond is only a week-and-a-half from being completely taken over.
This is how the dynamics of a pandemic play out. One day you’re looking around and there’s no sign of it, and seemingly a day or two later it’s everywhere. This is what happened in Italy, and is what South Korea managed to avoid. Currently the US appears to be on the Italy curve, if not worse (@ActivitiesGuy, please correct me if recent data say otherwise.) I don’t know enough about the Canadian response to hazard a guess as to whether you’re Italy or SK; maybe AG can shed some light on it.
Probably not by much. Based on the latest statistics, 13 deaths out of 1087 cases is more or less what is expected. We will have to wait and see, but this is the latest news:
The question is how much of that discrepancy is due to being able to get adequate medical treatment, and how much worse it would be if no ventilators or hospital beds are available.
If anything good comes of this, it will be that the medical system will get a major upgrade. In Canada it was really going down the drain lately, with hospitals at 120% capacity and patients in beds in hallways and storage rooms.
And how people are looking at them and saying we are following how things unfolded in Italy. But the thing about Italy that doesn’t get stated enough is that it is mostly confined to one region. Every state here could look like that one region.
Yes. Italian healthcare is decentralized and for example the province of Veneto largely ignored federal guidelines and focused on aggressive testing of all social contacts of identified cases, resulting in lower death rates and lower ICU occupancy.
Because Italy was first is a big reason. Look at Spain now; it might end up worse there. Also, it isn’t exactly Italy but a region of Italy. Other parts who were able to take measures to stop or slow the spread are not as bad as Lombardia. This is the lesson. Act early and you can slow it down. If not, once you are a step behind, it’s too late.
Let me know if you want me to post stuff that comes from local researchers and experts. Living in Italy, and having the sheer luck of being a few weeks ahead, there is some great insight being shared here that might not make it to foreign public for a while due to, well, being in full emergency.
Stuff like this:
shared by one of our top epidemiologists.
It could provide some sort of “in hindsight” view to readers.
First, thanks for all the commentary you’ve provided to us. Second, I am not only shocked by the callousness, but also highly irritated. As I posted in another thread and have told my friends, I have seen a huge increase in social-media and spoken-word-conversation edgelording because of the virus, people saying only old people get and/or die from it (somehow it doesn’t matter then old person might live for 20 more years), that only people with other morbidities die from it, that the panic and preventive measures are overblown, and that forbidding some businesses to be operating is an infringement on one’s rights.
