Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Maladict]

Germany's top virologist was in a press conference with the science minister today and claimed that Germany could by now do 500.000 tests per week

Give some to us? We can only manage 10.000 a week.
We'll stop asking for our grandparents' bicycles to be returned.

[jimmy olsen]

3.28 million people lost their jobs in the US last week. 

[DGuller]

3.28 million people lost their jobs in the US last week. 

What are the typical numbers?

[Zanza]

3.28 million people lost their jobs in the US last week. 

What are the typical numbers?

Below 500k in normal times, below 1m in bad recessions apparently:

[Legbiter]

Give some to us? We can only manage 10.000 a week.
We'll stop asking for our grandparents' bicycles to be returned.

That means you can basically only test health care workers, those who show up in hospital and maybe some people to see if they have recovered.

[garbon]

Edit: Apparently retailers have looked at their data and basically the people stockpiling and hoarding = 3% of people. Everyone else was just buying a little bit extra/more than normal.

So all those people (including the crying nurse) who lambasted greedy stockpilers were basically shaming a mostly non-existent group?

[Fate]

I know it sounds awful but the value of CPR in the public's mind far outstrips its utility in saving lives. Only 10-15% of those who need to receive CPR ever leave the hospital alive afterwards and that's during non-pandemic conditions.

In a pandemic it's an extremely dangerous procedure for healthcare workers due to the risk of not having appropriate PPE and the risk of aerosolizing COVID-19.

Yeah. One thing I'd like to know too is how many of those who have to go on ventilator actually survive and recover? 

If you get intubated with COVID-19 due to ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) your mortality rate is about 50%, per what I hear from Italian and Chinese physicians. I don't have stats for break down by age. Normally ARDS has a 30-50% mortality rate so this is about what we'd expect.

And the duration of intubation is usually around 14 days - which is extremely long for an ARDS patient.

[mongers]

I know it sounds awful but the value of CPR in the public's mind far outstrips its utility in saving lives. Only 10-15% of those who need to receive CPR ever leave the hospital alive afterwards and that's during non-pandemic conditions.

In a pandemic it's an extremely dangerous procedure for healthcare workers due to the risk of not having appropriate PPE and the risk of aerosolizing COVID-19.

Yeah. One thing I'd like to know too is how many of those who have to go on ventilator actually survive and recover? 

If you get intubated with COVID-19 due to ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) your mortality rate is about 50%, per what I hear from Italian and Chinese physicians. I don't have stats for break down by age. Normally ARDS has a 30-50% mortality rate so this is about what we'd expect.

And the duration of intubation is usually around 14 days - which is extremely long for an ARDS patient.

Thanks for that Fate.

So in the worse case, ICU respirator care could be more a method for managing death, rather than the life saving procedure that many of the media are portraying it as by focusing on the number of respirators?

[Fate]

I know it sounds awful but the value of CPR in the public's mind far outstrips its utility in saving lives. Only 10-15% of those who need to receive CPR ever leave the hospital alive afterwards and that's during non-pandemic conditions.

In a pandemic it's an extremely dangerous procedure for healthcare workers due to the risk of not having appropriate PPE and the risk of aerosolizing COVID-19.

Yeah. One thing I'd like to know too is how many of those who have to go on ventilator actually survive and recover? 

If you get intubated with COVID-19 due to ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) your mortality rate is about 50%, per what I hear from Italian and Chinese physicians. I don't have stats for break down by age. Normally ARDS has a 30-50% mortality rate so this is about what we'd expect.

And the duration of intubation is usually around 14 days - which is extremely long for an ARDS patient.

Thanks for that Fate.

So in the worse case, ICU respirator care could be more a method for managing death, rather than the life saving procedure that many of the media are portraying it as by focusing on the number of respirators?

I wouldn't phrase it so grimly - ventilators save 50% of patients. 100% of these patients would die without the intervention. It's reasonable for the press to focus on the number of ventilators as it's the best tool we have to save severe COVID-19 cases.

There are objective criteria we use to judge whether you'd ever recover from prolonged ventilation. There are some people so sick that if you intubated them they'd never be extubated. If you don't meet those criteria we won't intubate in the first place and will allow you to have a natural death with a morphine drip and other comfort measures.

[mongers]

I wouldn't phrase it so grimly - ventilators save 50% of patients. 100% of these patients would die without the intervention. It's reasonable for the press to focus on the number of ventilators as it's the best tool we have to save severe COVID-19 cases.

There are objective criteria we use to judge whether you'd ever recover from prolonged ventilation. There are some people so sick that if you intubated them the'd never be extubated. If you don't meet those criteria we won't intubate in the first place and allow you to have a natural death with a morphine drip and other comfort measures.

Thanks for the informative reply, Fate.

One things for certain, this crisis certainly highlights some people's underlying outlook on life; some of us are apparently pessimists. 

[Maladict]

Give some to us? We can only manage 10.000 a week.
We'll stop asking for our grandparents' bicycles to be returned.

That means you can basically only test health care workers, those who show up in hospital and maybe some people to see if they have recovered.

That's probably why our daily numbers look so weird, going up and down all the time.

Apparently Roche has a near monopoly on testing fluid here, with nothing being produced locally. We're only getting the scraps they can spare in Switzerland at the moment.

[Berkut]

Is a ventilator and intubation the same thing?

[alfred russel]

I wouldn't phrase it so grimly - ventilators save 50% of patients. 100% of these patients would die without the intervention. It's reasonable for the press to focus on the number of ventilators as it's the best tool we have to save severe COVID-19 cases.

100%?

Isn't a BVM a potential stop gap in any event, assuming ventilators are unavailable? People like me would be happy to spend their days pumping away right now.

[Fate]

Is a ventilator and intubation the same thing?

For the lay press they're probably trying to say the same thing. Intubation is the act of placing an endotracheal tube through the mouth into the trachea. Ventilator is the machine that pumps air through the tube into the lungs. In order to be ventilated you have to be intubated.

[Sheilbh]

That's probably why are daily numbers look so weird, going up and down all the time.

Apparently Roche has a near monopoly on testing fluid here, with nothing being produced locally. We're only getting the scraps they can spare in Switzerland at the moment.

I think one change after this will be the production of some medical equipment - PPE, bits of tests such as swabs etc - will be treated like some "national security" manufacturing. I don't think countries will be willing to rely on global supply chains for this stuff again. It was cited by the Chief Medical Officer as part of the issue the UK is having is just dealing with global supply chain when the entire world is demanding the same parts and same things.

Also Derbyshire Police is using drones to shame people:
https://twitter.com/DerbysPolice/status/1243168931503882241?s=20

I'm not really that sure on this - it seems to me that if you have access to private transport then there's nothing wrong leaving town/cities (which are more crowded) to go to nearby countryside like the Peak District for your daily exercise. It seems good from a social distancing perspective so long as people are sensible