Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[alfred russel]

BB, I vigorously object to your willingness to confine people to their homes because you assess the risk for them to leave as excessive.

But let me put it another way. The German government projected that 70% of their population will be infected before this is over. Lets run with that. Out of a group of 10 of us, that means 7 will be infected. One of us volunteers to be among the 7. Will you really forbid this, knowing that:

-it increases the risk for the other 9,
-the volunteer has a risk of death of perhaps 1/500, while others in the group may be an order of magnitude higher, so it actually increases the projected death total of the full population,
-for many people who are high risk of dying after infection, they are put at increased risk of infection by the nature of their risk...for example, a dialysis patient has to regularly leave home for treatment.
-dragging the process out to get to the 7 is causing severe social and economic strain, and accelerating the process will reduce this.

is there a difference between 1000 cases in 1 day and 1000 in 1 month to you?

If the same percent of the population is going to get it and it doesn't overwhelm the medical system, going fast lessens the economic and social destruction, can reduce total deaths by allowing the lower risk to be disproportionately infected, and may reduce reinfections if antibodies aren't long lasting.

[jimmy olsen]

Holy moly!

https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/employment-population-ratio.htm

[crazy canuck]

BB, I vigorously object to your willingness to confine people to their homes because you assess the risk for them to leave as excessive.

But let me put it another way. The German government projected that 70% of their population will be infected before this is over. Lets run with that. Out of a group of 10 of us, that means 7 will be infected. One of us volunteers to be among the 7. Will you really forbid this, knowing that:

-it increases the risk for the other 9,
-the volunteer has a risk of death of perhaps 1/500, while others in the group may be an order of magnitude higher, so it actually increases the projected death total of the full population,
-for many people who are high risk of dying after infection, they are put at increased risk of infection by the nature of their risk...for example, a dialysis patient has to regularly leave home for treatment.
-dragging the process out to get to the 7 is causing severe social and economic strain, and accelerating the process will reduce this.

is there a difference between 1000 cases in 1 day and 1000 in 1 month to you?

If the same percent of the population is going to get it and it doesn't overwhelm the medical system, going fast lessens the economic and social destruction, can reduce total deaths by allowing the lower risk to be disproportionately infected, and may reduce reinfections if antibodies aren't long lasting.

And that is the issue, isn't it

[alfred russel]

And that is the issue, isn't it

It started out that way, but I don't think it is.

The medical system is below capacity in most of europe and north america and yet the locations with higher rates of infection are being cast in a negative light. For example, Sweden versus its neighbors.

[jimmy olsen]

[Zoupa]

And that is the issue, isn't it

It started out that way, but I don't think it is.

The medical system is below capacity in most of europe and north america and yet the locations with higher rates of infection are being cast in a negative light. For example, Sweden versus its neighbors.

Oh you don't think it is. Ok then.

[alfred russel]

Oh you don't think it is. Ok then.

Is it the issue? Because I got the distinct impression that you aren't cool with loosening restrictions even if the looser restrictions don't result in an overwhelmed medical system.

[Sheilbh]

It started out that way, but I don't think it is.

The medical system is below capacity in most of europe and north america and yet the locations with higher rates of infection are being cast in a negative light. For example, Sweden versus its neighbors.

Yeah. But that's what I mean by lockdown isn't a policy it's a policy failure that buys time. The medical system is below capacity because of loads of measures that were taken including lockdown.

So we can deal with it if we are able to keep R below 1 through testing and contact tracing, with probably slightly modified behaviour and there's loads of approaches to that but it's what most European countries are trying to do, what South Korea and Taiwan have tried to do. And in Europe it's generally being done once there are clear downward trends (jury's out on UK because we don't know what the lockdown lifting will be, or when).

From what I've seen there's emphasis on testing in the US, but I'm not sure how much focus there is on the contact tracing. So it feels like without that bit of the solution you either lift lockdown and the R rises and you get to a point of lockdown or overwhelm the system, or there's a modified version of Sweden - so there's still a lot of social distancing but you try and keep infections within the capacity of the healthcare system.

I'm not sure what approach the various states are going for but it seems, from here, like they're seeing lockdown v no lockdown as the policy choices which I don't think is right. I think it's contact tracing v Sweden, lockdown's just what happens when you fuck up and get uncontrolled community infection.

Edit: Incidentally in a useful reminder this is a devolved responsibility so, for the most part (borders are the big exception) Boris Johnson is Prime Minister of England, Wales have announced the changes to their lockdown which are modest:

    People will be allowed to exercise more than once a day. But it should be local and not involve any travel.
    Garden centres should be open with physical distancing measures.
    Local authorities can plan to open libraries and recycling centres.

Nicola Sturgeon has said the only change Scotland is considering is related to outdoor exercise. I think both have said they're not looking at schools re-opening yet.

[Zoupa]

Oh you don't think it is. Ok then.

Is it the issue? Because I got the distinct impression that you aren't cool with loosening restrictions even if the looser restrictions don't result in an overwhelmed medical system.

My measure of success is lives saved, not length of lockdown time or how much capacity our medical system is at.

[The Brain]

Oh you don't think it is. Ok then.

Is it the issue? Because I got the distinct impression that you aren't cool with loosening restrictions even if the looser restrictions don't result in an overwhelmed medical system.

My measure of success is lives saved, not length of lockdown time or how much capacity our medical system is at.

Are you prepared to put a price tag on human lives?

[mongers]

I think it's still too early for the UK to ease lock-down, because whilst Spain,France and Italy with their strictly rules are now down to 200-300 daily deaths, the UK is still in the region of 600-700 deaths per day, more than twice the rate, even adjusting for population.

So no early easing of restrictions.

[celedhring]

I'm kinda sweating our own opening process. We had an uptick in transmissions today which might start to reflect "Phase 0" of the opening process, and we're already proceeding to Phase 1 in most places (not Madrid or Barcelona, though).

That said, the uptick seems very localised in Catalonia, which might reflect the starting of an increased testing program by the regional gov this week.

[Syt]

Austrian government says the April relaxations had no negative effect. The opening of all shops will be evaluated next week (i.e. 2 weeks after coming into effect). Also, restaurants open again next week under strict rules, so we will see how that pans out.

[Zoupa]

Oh you don't think it is. Ok then.

Is it the issue? Because I got the distinct impression that you aren't cool with loosening restrictions even if the looser restrictions don't result in an overwhelmed medical system.

My measure of success is lives saved, not length of lockdown time or how much capacity our medical system is at.

Are you prepared to put a price tag on human lives?

I work in health care so guess my answer.

[mongers]

We've entered an new era for medicine, a UK NHS database of all surgery during the last five weeks shows that if you get corona-virus within the 30 day period around the operation, then the mortality rate is 30%

source: Dr Joel Dunning, cardiothoracic surgeon at the James Cook university hospital UK.