COVID-19 Coronavirus Thread

[kamkar]

I see AU and DK are neck and neck in # of confirmed cases.

 

[jokiin]

I see AU and DK are neck and neck in # of confirmed cases.

Guess that's not good considering the size differences

 

[Nigel]

Guess that's not good considering the size differences

Very different situation, quite likely due to it having been summer in Oz, making it more difficult for the virus to spread, plus in normal times, Denmark probably has a lot more social interactions allowing it to spread faster.

Currently looks like Australia is going to manage to wipe it out soon, without needing immunity, either natural or vaccine derived. Just hope the approaching winter won't increase the spread.

 

[Dashmellow]

Australia currently has 2 deaths per million people and Denmark has 47 deaths per million. So far this seems to be one of the few metrics for comparing what is happening between countries of dramatically different size and populations.

The US has 67 deaths per million whereas the UK has 156, not a good trend for UK.

 

[Nigel]

yeah same video, I didn't see it as him saying what should happen though, rather as what he thought might happen

The experts seem to be split into two camps, the medical experts who all seem to think that the only way out of this is to use their medical technology and develop a vaccine to provide immunity, and the scientists, most of which don't believe a vaccine will arrive soon enough and so the way out is through building up natural immunity to manage the situation until a vaccine does arrive.

Bill is clearly on the medical expert side and isn't even looking at the data that would support the other side:

It is true that if you did that approach over a period of several years, enough people would be infected, you would have herd immunity.
Herd immunity is meaningless until you infect over half the population, and so you can take, You will overload your medical systems.
Your case fatality rate instead of being instead of being 1% will be 3 / 4%.

No middle course on this thing.

A lot of that is just wrong.

The more immunity you have, the slower the virus spreads, and the easier it becomes to wipe it out through targeted isolation and case tracking (mobile app etc.), and the less likely it is to take off again unnoticed. You certainly don't need 50% of the population infected to have a big effect on the rate of spread, and you don't need to overload your hospitals, you can control the load on the hospitals by controlling the amount of isolation. It also doesn't need to take several years, some countries are already a significant way through.

I don't see any reason why the fatality rate would change unless you overloaded your hospitals, and the data seems to support that, the slower countries appear to have similar fatality rates to the faster countries, having accounted for size of population and amount of testing. A faster spread doesn't change how it affects an individual, unless there is overload in the hospitals.

Clearly, while we are waiting for a vaccine, a middle course is the best path, not an extreme either way.
Ideally we would wipe it out immediately, as Australia appears to be doing, but where that is looking impossible, letting it spread for a while and building up some immunity will make a wipe out possible, and will also give protection against another outbreak.

 

[Nigel]

Australia currently has 2 deaths per million people and Denmark has 47 deaths per million. So far this seems to be one of the few metrics for comparing what is happening between countries of dramatically different size and populations.

The US has 67 deaths per million whereas the UK has 156, not a good trend for UK.

A week ago, Denmark and UK were equal on deaths per million, but Denmark has slowed its progress so much that it is now reopening the schools, while the UK is making much faster and steady progress and has pulled ahead, in fact we are currently making faster progress than any other country, even leaving the US behind. UK hospitals are busy, but not overloaded, and that is how we want it to stay for a while, so that soon we can fully reopen almost everything, except probably the bars and restaurants.

Meanwhile Boris left hospital and is now recovering at home

 

[Dashmellow]

A week ago, Denmark and UK were equal on deaths per million, but Denmark has slowed its progress so much that it is now reopening the schools, while the UK is making much faster and steady progress and has pulled ahead, in fact we are currently making faster progress than any other country, even leaving the US behind. UK hospitals are busy, but not overloaded, and that is how we want it to stay for a while, so that soon we can fully reopen almost everything, except probably the bars and restaurants.

Meanwhile Boris left hospital and is now recovering at home

Your happy spin on the UK is always laughable as your death count grows higher, now 2.4 times per million that of the US despite the huge number of cases here and fast approaching that of France which is in dire straights. Since the very beginning, for you the whole pandemic experience has been a ghoulish race to see how many people you can kill off to speed up your "herd immunity", lives be damned as long as it's not yours, of course! While the whole world behaves like we're all in this together, you always seem to have a peculiar toxic compulsion to act as if the UK is always superior to every other nation in every way, except the facts on the ground and the ensuing suffering this entails don't quite support that. You have a lot of deaths considering your population and sadly there are many more to come. But the escalating number of deaths are never part of your boastful calculations somehow.

 

[kamkar]

I think its more a thing of population density, and i don't know how it is compared to AU.
At least you have no red dots in the outback, so in a few years people from out there will come tearing thru towns in cars with blower engines claiming "I am the night rider"

 

[Dashmellow]

In consideration of concerning reports we've all been hearing about how long coronavirus can survive on various surfaces, this is an interesting article from The Philadelphia Enquirer (3/19/20) with some worthwhile and encouraging information about corona virus half-life. Something to think about next time you open your mail.

Can the coronavirus really live for 3 days on plastic? Yes, but it’s complicated.

Takeaway:

"When the scientists placed virus-laden droplets on plastic, they found that half of the virus was gone after about seven hours. Half of what remained was gone after another seven hours, and so on. By the end of Day Two, there was less than 1/100 of the original amount, and after three days the remnants were barely detectable. For stainless steel, the half-life for the virus was five or six hours, and for cardboard it was even shorter: less than four hours."

 

[Dashmellow]

My neighbor "Bubba" thinks "Spork" was a pointy-eared dude on a TV show and his sister "Bubbette" agrees.

Personally, one of my favorite alternatives to "spork" is a portmanteau I invented myself: "foon" (fork + spoon) . I rarely use the term because nobody knows what the hell I'm talking about and Urban Dictionary has a different definition for foon.

If you plug the word "foon" into the search bar on an online dictionary it generally redirects to spork, although you can find some references to foon.

 

[Nigel]

as your death count grows higher, now 2.4 times per million that of the US

For every country, the death count per million is growing higher, at different rates.

If you want to minimise deaths then the best way to do it is to get the epidemic over and finished as soon as possible. without putting the health care system at risk.

Every time someone visits their elderly parents to take shopping or whatever, they are put at risk. Get the epidemic finished twice as fast and only half the visits are necessary, which reduces the risks considerably and will avoid many deaths among the elderly and high risk.

The countries with high death counts are simply further into the epidemic than others, and as long as they haven't overloaded their hospitals then those are the countries that are going to end up with the lowest death counts when it is all over, except for countries that manage to wipe the virus out in some other way, but only the more isolated countries seem to have much hope of doing that, and doing so leaves them at continuous risk of further outbreaks until a vaccine arrives.

 

[Dashmellow]

For every country, the death count per million is growing higher, at different rates.

If you want to minimise deaths then the best way to do it is to get the epidemic over and finished as soon as possible. without putting the health care system at risk.

Every time someone visits their elderly parents to take shopping or whatever, they are put at risk. Get the epidemic finished twice as fast and only half the visits are necessary, which reduces the risks considerably and will avoid many deaths among the elderly and high risk.

The countries with high death counts are simply further into the epidemic than others, and as long as they haven't overloaded their hospitals then those are the countries that are going to end up with the lowest death counts when it is all over, except for countries that manage to wipe the virus out in some other way, but only the more isolated countries seem to have much hope of doing that, and doing so leaves them at continuous risk of further outbreaks until a vaccine arrives.

It is always the same tedious argument with you over and over and over. You have zero concern for how many people die horrible deaths in this scourge as long as it is over as fast as possible and as long as you yourself are not one of the victims. This has far more to do with simply avoiding the overwhelming of hospitals. It has to do with minimizing the death count until emerging treatment options and vaccine efforts come to fruition and other important measures can be put into place. It is not the zero sum game you seem to think it is when human lives are at stake. (+717 new deaths reported just today in the UK - 167 p/million) (currently 69 p/million the US)

But the real issue here Nigel, which you repeatedly omit in your arguments and replies is your propensity to present your dialectic as some sort of unconscionable race to an imagined finish line where the UK is always the "winner". As you said in your previous post on this matter:

we are currently making faster progress than any other country, even leaving the US behind!

Yes, you are making faster progress, alright. That would indeed be the above quoted fact that the UK currently has a fatality rate (per million) 2.4 times that of the US which you gleefully and ghoulishly tout as a macabre achievement of some kind.

Of course, actual experts who know better find UK's handling of the crisis to be literally laughable. Such as William Hanage, professor of evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health who wrote an article in the Guardian: I’m an epidemiologist. When I heard about Britain’s ‘herd immunity’ coronavirus plan, I thought it was satire.

Amusingly, ever since the whole forced herd immunity solution became widely discredited you still tenaciously cling to this failed theory. At some point herd immunity will indeed be vital but you can't safely push the throttle forward and bring it on immediately unless your intention is to kill off a lot of innocent people.

Perhaps you would like to see that happen Nigel, but according to actual experts, rather than nihilistic, self appointed know-it-all internet forum pundits like you, "the best policy for controlling the spread of the coronavirus is social distancing, which is why many medical professionals were relieved when the U.K. government rapidly changed its strategy."

You know, outside of DCT, for a variety of reasons I have fairly regular contact with people from different parts of the world. Without fail, with each and every phone call and correspondence there is a mutual expression of compassion, concern and support in the face of coronavirus. Not once, despite the given situation occurring in each nation has there ever been a condescending or critical remark or a comparison of numbers or policy. Only people's humanity shines through. This even happened with a small Chinese seller of electronics parts on eBay I don't even know that somehow evolved into a brief back and forth correspondence with good wishes for the health and safety of each other and our loved ones and it became what I can now describe as a friendship I hope to revisit sometime.

For the longest time now, years actually, we here on DCT have witnessed you making all sorts of critical, condescending remarks, swipes and subtle insults directed at the United States and other nations too, always from a self aggrandizing UK perspective. More recently, in the very midst of the horrific crisis Australia endured as a result of the severe bushfires all you could do was offer up criticism and harsh taunts about energy and natural resouce policy while spouting boasts about the UK's alleged climate superiority to Australia and you've continued to gleefully rub their noses in this tragedy for months since then at every available opportunity. And all during your dubious boasts about the UK's "perfect" climate strategy you've conveniently omitted mention of the major red alert storm events that lashed the British Isles last year with historic flooding and high winds, a historic heat wave as well as the highest number of wildfires on record in the UK during 2019.

And so now, here you are doing the exact same thing with COVID-19! Since your very earliest posts to this thread you have minimize the obvious impact of the disease on the UK, boasted about your country's alleged prowess, expertise and readiness in the face of an unfolding disaster and splattered condescending remarks in every direction. You've even implied that Italians are somehow genetically predisposed to contract coronavirus and alleged this to be the reason for their severe outbreak although there doesn't appear to be any available documented evidence to support such a contention. It's basically a racist theory on your part. In each and every instance there is never a kind word or expression of compassion, empathy or support from you towards any nation or peoples in the face of this pandemic. All we get is a nonstop, self serving narrative and an elitist attitude.

 

[jokiin]

At least you have no red dots in the outback

nobody there, about 95% of the population lives around the coastlines

 

[SawMaster]

Nothing in the outback but Holden wrecks and roaring diesels at steaming 45 degrees In time each station (ranch) and mine out there will likely get exposed, and everyone in the place will get it, so the worst percentages but only in the smallest numbers. Needing a ventilator out there would be pretty close to a death sentence

Phil

 

[jokiin]

Nothing in the outback but Holden wrecks and roaring diesels at steaming 45 degrees

I'm impressed

 

[SawMaster]

And maybe the occasional "fried-out Kombi" too I'm a huge fan of 80's music worldwide,though not much for 'disco' stuff. The interior of Australia is about as desolate a place as you can find, but the natives found ways to survive there and the tough and hardy people making a living there now impress me deeplyBut this disease has no respect for anyone, and when it arrives to them it will probably be the hardest times they've ever seen, and perhaps even something they cannot recover from The flying Doctors who take care of those distant people simply can't handle the kind of problems this disease brings and there's no temporary workforce on hand to keep things going till people recover. You can't call on your neighbor (nor can they or you offer any help) when they or you are in an equally bad way The long-term effects of this disease are going to emerge soon and are going to have an impact on all of us even if we weren't affected by the disease itself. We're going to be forced to change how we do many things and stop doing a lot of things we've been doing which we should have never done to start with simply because it will be impossible to continue doing them.

In the worst of times you will see the best side of people, and the true value of everything will be made manifest. Those who have striven to help others will find their efforts being returned to them as best can be done, and they will survive. Those who simply sought to gain wealth from the efforts of others will find themselves failed, friendless, and on their own, which is how it should be. The biggest lesson we have to learn from this is the true value of people which transcends any economic aspects of life. If we don't learn that now, the lesson will be much tougher when something next comes around trying to teach us what we must sooner or later learn.

Phil

 

[country_hick]

That's a rationalization I just don't buy.

People have killed in the name of the religion known as "the state" that can and has required people to kill in the states name sometimes under penalty of death FOR THOSE who refuse to kill other people in service to the state. What is the difference between nazi Germany telling its people to become soldiers so they can kill other people who do not fit their idea of being part of a pure race and a religion telling its followers to kill in its name? I see none. I am specifically talking about a state that tells its people to attack other people that the state considers less valuable than their own people. When the state decides to wage war to take resources from others or to remove a certain population (like the Jews) because of animosity towards that group it does not remove the "state religion" belief or the decision to follow blindly the orders to kill in a religious fervor when the citizens each make the decision to kill those who have not attacked that state or its citizens by becoming "soldiers".

 

[Dashmellow]

People have killed in the name of the religion known as "the state" that can and has required people to kill in the states name sometimes under penalty of death FOR THOSE who refuse to kill other people in service to the state. What is the difference between nazi Germany telling its people to become soldiers so they can kill other people who do not fit their idea of being part of a pure race and a religion telling its followers to kill in its name? I see none. I am specifically talking about a state that tells its people to attack other people that the state considers less valuable than their own people. When the state decides to wage war to take resources from others or to remove a certain population (like the Jews) because of animosity towards that group it does not remove the "state religion" belief or the decision to follow blindly the orders to kill in a religious fervor when the citizens each make the decision to kill those who have not attacked that state or its citizens by becoming "soldiers".

You are right in some ways as there are many similarities and overlaps and certainly the results can be the same. A "state" though is a essentially a political/economic entity. And indeed some theocratic "states" also happen to be political/economic entities, like Iran and Saudi Arabia for instance, so the lines get blurred. The difference is the organizing principle (a core assumption from which everything else by proximity can derive a classification or a value). Religious values and motivations are quite different from governmental "state" values.

Earlier, I used the example of the Islamic "State" fighter beheading an "infidel" on video because it is such a stark example of the point I was making. The "infidel" gets beheaded merely because his belief in his God, his religion, his "organized superstition" if you will, is different than the Islamic fighter's "organized superstition" and the fact that the "infidel" doesn't believe in the same God, doesn't share the same "organized superstition" is so objectionable to the Islamic fighter that he condemns the infidel to die a horrific death in Jihad. ...............(BTW, the Islamic "State" was never actually a legitimate "state" in the traditional sense. It was really more of an aspiration.

Even with the Nazis killing six million Jews, their motivation was entirely different. They basically scapegoated the Jews for cultural and economic reasons not necessarily religious ones and the true goals of the Third Reich were all about political and territorial conquest and domination.

 

[Nigel]

Bill Gates becomes the top contributor to the World Health Organization, as Trump halts USA funding.
It is a somewhat surprising list:

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have said US President Donald Trump's decision to halt funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) is "as dangerous as it sounds".

"The world needs WHO now more than ever," they responded on Twitter.

 

[kamkar]

I saw the Americans set a new 24H death record pretty much 100 people dying every hour for a day.