Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[11B4V]

Why we got to make it racist.

[Oexmelin]

will you please, just please, shut up and do what you're told to help other people get through this alive.

[Grey Fox]

The US is growing way above trend - another 43% of new cases today - really worrying.

I don't know, the early numbers are so under-reported, it might actually just be 20%.

[Sheilbh]

I've moaned about the press a lot but this is bullshit from the government too:

Whitehall sources say most shops could close and transport could be restricted to key workers in London by the weekend under plans being considered in Government

I hoped the daily press conferences where a step forward but you be drip-drip-dripping news like this in off the record briefings like it's a normal day in Westminster. This will make panic buying and the number of people in shops worse. These are effectively wartime measures - they need to grow up and either state them in Parliament or in that daily press conference

[mongers]

The US is growing way above trend - another 43% of new cases today - really worrying.

On those London boroughs I was having a look at, there's been some significant changes in the I think three days since I posted:

Borough      Cases      Cases perIncrease
      15th   18th   100thous   
Haringey   270624   16   29   10.72   81.25%
Brent   330795   20   45   13.60   125.00%
Lambeth   325917   26   61   18.72   134.62%
Southw.   317256   33   70   22.06   112.12%
Westm.   255324   37   68   26.63   83.78%
Kens.Ch.   156197   43   55   35.21   27.91%
               
Hants.   1376316   55   77   5.59   40.00%

[Iormlund]

No idea of the truth of it but I hear in Spain walking the dog is one of the few occasions you're allowed to go outside for. Dogs must be loving this. Family home all day and fighting each other to take them for walks.

It's true.

I can understand. I'm getting cabin fever. Haven't seen the Sun or a tree in 6 days now.

Not even went out for shopping?

Nope.

I saw this coming a few weeks before hysteria set in, so I'm well stocked for at least another week, maybe two.
In addition I've been sick. Most likely a cold, but you never know. And even if it is a cold it is best not to pass it to anyone. The COVID lines are busy as it is without more people calling after they cough twice.
And finally, I'm in the at-risk category, so now that there are probably a few thousand infected in town I need to be more careful when I go out shopping. I have a couple surgery masks, but their usefulness is questionable. My sis might take over as designated family shopper.

Don't you have a balcony you can sing from?

That I do, but it's really tiny, in one of the lower floors and the street is short and narrow. So I don't have much of a view in any direction.

[Admiral Yi]

That I do, but it's really tiny, in one of the lower floors and the street is short and narrow. So I don't have much of a view in any direction.

You don't need a view to sing.

[mongers]

Nope.

I saw this coming a few weeks before hysteria set in, so I'm well stocked for at least another week, maybe two.
In addition I've been sick. Most likely a cold, but you never know. And even if it is a cold it is best not to pass it to anyone. The COVID lines are busy as it is without more people calling after they cough twice.
And finally, I'm in the at-risk category, so now that there are probably a few thousand infected in town I need to be more careful when I go out shopping. I have a couple surgery masks, but their usefulness is questionable. My sis might take over as designated family shopper.
......

Very sensible and socially responsible chap.

[viper37]

First case in my area. (in Rivière-du-Loup, for those in Quebec).

94 cases in Quebec (including 2 who are not from Quebec), 1 death.  An elderly died after contracting the virus from someone who travelled abroard and did not respect the quarantine, because, you know, it was bothersome staying at home for 14 days.  I guess the good news is, they won't have to move their butts every sunday to visit their parents now.

Canada has 647 cases + 39 possible + 10 recovered. 9 deaths so far (7 in British-Columbia, 1 in Ontario, 1 in Quebec).

[viper37]

So you're saying nows the perfect time to go on a crime spree?

The worst time.  Get arrested, sit in a jail cell for six months waiting for a trial, die of covid.

I'll take my chances. Time served before trial still counts double.  Commit a murder, get 12.5 real years only!   

Good time to make a Corleone out of myself.   



@BB: you never read anything I posted.  Shhh. 

[mongers]

First case in my area. (in Rivière-du-Loup, for those in Quebec).

94 cases in Quebec (including 2 who are not from Quebec), 1 death.  An elderly died after contracting the virus from someone who travelled abroard and did not respect the quarantine, because, you know, it was bothersome staying at home for 14 days.  I guess the good news is, they won't have to move their butts every sunday to visit their parents now.

Canada has 647 cases + 39 possible + 10 recovered. 9 deaths so far (7 in BC, 1 in Ontario, 1 in Quebec).

Worrisome.

Interesting that today/yesterday both the UK and USA death totals overtook that of South Korea(84 dead)

[Admiral Yi]

Korea had a flare up in Seoul, in a call center, after it had been decided on the basis of no new cases reported that things were safe.

If 50% of cases are asymptomatic, that means the only way we can be sure is if 100% of people are tested.

[viper37]

A coronavirus cautionary tale from Italy: Don't do what we did

Many of us were too selfish to follow suggestions to change our behavior. Now we're in lockdown and people are needlessly dying.

ROME – "As in any war, we have to choose who to treat and who not."

That was a headline on March 9 in Il Corriere della Sera, a leading newspaper in Italy, that informed us that hospitals in Italy's north, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in our country, were being stretched thin and the health care system was on the brink of collapse.

An anesthesiologist at a hospital in Bergamo, one of the cities with the most cases of Covid-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, told the paper that the intensive care unit was already at capacity, and doctors were being forced to start making difficult triage decisions, admitting people who desperately need mechanical ventilation based on age, life expectancy, and other factors. Just like in wartime. The article was inexplicably placed on page 15, while the main headline on the newspaper's front page relayed the political quarrels over the measures to curb the contagion.

The hospital in Bergamo was not the only hospital in the area dealing with a lack of capacity and rationing of care. The same day, I heard from a manager in the Lombardy health care system, among the most advanced and well-funded in Europe, that he saw anesthesiologists weeping in the hospital hallways because of the choices they are going to have to make.

In the days since, overwhelmed hospitals have set up tents as makeshift hospital wards, and cargo containers have been placed at the entrances of medical centers to sort out patients coming at an increasing pace. Some of the people who can't get medical care are dying in their homes.

As more medical professionals started to describe similar situations on social media and in interviews, the Italian society of anesthesiologists published extraordinary new guidelines to help doctors facing ethical dilemmas, making clear that the "first come, first served" criterion that had been used among patients with the same illnesses and level of risk in ordinary times was not appropriate in dealing with the current emergency.

Until last week, the Italian public health care system had the capacity to care for everyone. Our country has universal health care, so patients aren't turned away from hospitals here. But in a matter of days, the system was being felled by a virus that I, and many other Italians, had failed to take seriously.

The inability of the medical system to deal with the flow of patients in critical condition is not one of the problems of this complex medical emergency. It is the problem. I shouldn't have been surprised. As a journalist, I had read, heard, and spoken to several experts explaining that the most immediate threat of Covid-19 was the hospital system becoming overwhelmed, and therefore the most pressing need was to avoid too many people getting sick at the same time, as resources are limited. (It's what's called "flattening the curve.")

But that information was somehow stored in some remote interstice of my mind, covered by an incessant flow of bits and charts on the mortality rate of the elderly, political mismanagement, quarrels over under-testing and over-testing, market collapses, projections on the economic impact of the epidemic, and so on. All of this is, of course, extremely relevant — but at the same time feels totally irrelevant when lives are being lost in a situation that was preventable. As of Friday night, 1,266 people have died in Italy due to the outbreak.
So here's my warning for the United States: It didn't have to come to this.

We of course couldn't stop the emergence of a previously unknown and deadly virus. But we could have mitigated the situation we are now in, in which people who could have been saved are dying. I, and too many others, could have taken a simple yet morally loaded action: We could have stayed home.

What has happened in Italy shows that less-than-urgent appeals to the public by the government to slightly change habits regarding social interactions aren't enough when the terrible outcomes they are designed to prevent are not yet apparent; when they become evident, it's generally too late to act. I and many other Italians just didn't see the need to change our routines for a threat we could not see.

Italy has now been in lockdown since March 9; it took weeks after the virus first appeared here to realize that severe measures were absolutely necessary.

According to several data scientists, Italy is about 10 days ahead of Spain, Germany, and France in the epidemic progression, and 13 to 16 days ahead of the United Kingdom and the United States. That means those countries have the opportunity to take measures that today may look excessive and disproportionate, yet from the future, where I am now, are perfectly rational in order to avoid a health care system collapse. The United States has some 45,000 ICU beds, and even in a moderate outbreak scenario, some 200,000 Americans will need intensive care.

Before the outbreak hit my country, I thought I was acting rationally because I screened and processed a lot of information about the epidemic. But my being well-informed didn't make me any more rational. I lacked what you might call "moral knowledge" of the problem. I knew about the virus, but the issue was not affecting me in a significant, personal way. It took the terrible ethical dilemma that doctors face in Lombardy to wake me up.

I put myself in their shoes, and realized that everything should be done in order to avoid those ethically devastating choices: How do we decide who gets an ICU bed and who doesn't? Age? Life expectancy? How many kids they have? Their special abilities? Is the patient's profession a relevant factor? Is it right to save a middle-aged doctor who will save more lives if he survives as opposed to a younger person who's been unemployed for the last 12 months? These are the kind of theoretical questions you are asked to weigh in leadership classes at business school. But this is not a personality test. It's real lives.

The way to avoid or mitigate all this in the United States and elsewhere is to do something similar to what Italy, Denmark, and Finland are doing now, but without wasting the few, messy weeks in which we thought a few local lockdowns, canceling public gatherings, and warmly encouraging working from home would be enough stop the spread of the virus. We now know that wasn't nearly enough.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced the latest step in a process that has progressively turned Italy into a fully quarantined country. Shops are mandated to be closed at all times, with the exception of pharmacies, food stores, and newsstands, as the government wisely considers information a primary need. All non-essential jobs have been temporarily stopped. People who still go to the office are requested to prove the absolute necessity to do so by signing a certificate that must be submitted and vetted by the police. Transgressors face up to three months in jail and a fine. Going out for physical activity is permitted, provided it's short and solitary. Schools and universities — which have been shut down since March 4 — will be closed at least until April 3, but the date will likely be extended.

Life in lockdown is hard, but it is also an exercise in humility. Our collective well-being makes our little individual wishes look a bit whimsical and small-minded. My wife and I work from home, or at least we try to. We help the kids with their homework, following the instructions their teachers send every morning via voice messages and video, in a moving attempt to keep alive their relationships with their students.

So far, my two young sons are less bored than we'd thought they'd be, and are coping well. And thank God for our small shared rooftop where they can run for a little while in the afternoon, at least until the woman on the 5th floor complains about the noise during her nap time. Either I or my wife goes out once a day to take a short walk and get some food when we need it. Despite cops being stationed on the street to dissuade everyone from leaving their homes, we both think there are still too many people out and about. We read. We pray. We play soccer in the hallway. It's a time of reflection and silence, a moment in which some big questions emerge — like why, exactly, we decided not to have a TV.

Strangely, it's also a moment in which our usual individualistic, self-centered outlook is waning a bit. In the end, each of us is giving up our individual freedom in order to protect everybody, especially the sick and the elderly. When everybody's health is at stake, true freedom is to follow instructions.

Mattia Ferraresi is a writer for the Italian newspaper Il Foglio.

Not that it would convince anyone too pigheaded to do as they're being told by scientists.

[viper37]

Speaking of worrysome...
Some people in their 30s with coronavirus being placed on ventilators: Ontario health minister

Ontario's health minister says some people in their 30s with novel coronavirus are being placed on ventilators, adding the COVID-19 pandemic is a "very serious health situation for all Ontarians."

Christine Elliott made the remarks during a press conference with Premier Doug Ford and Finance Minister Rod Phillips at Queen's Park Wednesday afternoon.

Elliott said while younger people more often seem to be carriers of the virus and do not often experience severe symptoms, there have recently been situations where "people in their 30s are now becoming very ill and are having to be placed on ventilators."

"We're seeing that certainly across Ontario," Elliott said.

"We're also seeing it in places like the United States, in New York for example. Very significant increase in cases. They are finding their health system is being severely overburdened right now. We don't want to get to that situation in Ontario."

It is not clear if the individuals Elliott was referring to have underlying health conditions, though medical experts have said that older people and those with underlying conditions are most susceptible to developing severe symptoms of COVID-19.

Elliott encouraged social distancing and asked people to not gather in crowds.
In that same press conference, Elliott said automakers in Ontario are looking to be outfitted with tools needed to create ventilators.

The province has ordered 300 additional ventilators, she said, adding that the current supply of the machines is sufficient for the time being.

Ontario reported 23 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, bringing the provincial total to 203.

[viper37]

I stocked up 3 weeks ago.

I've now got:

4 red wine
3 white wihe
Ca. 40 bottles of beer
1.75 L of Ketel One vodka
Abour 300 ml of Buffalo Trace bourbon
750 ml of Hennessy (gift from ny father in law)

I feel ready. 

I think I have only 2 red wine bottles left
I'll have to renew my stock before they decided it has to be shutdown as a non-essential service.   
(they do have limitations on the number of clients at the same time in any given store due to the pandemic, that's a good thing; grocery stores have also enabled new policies as they were raided last week-end: first time I couldn't buy milk there in all my life)