OT: Coronavirus chat

[henchman21]

It is another situation where we just don't know enough, and organizations like the WHO and CDC are going to error on the side of caution. If this coronavirus is like (most) other coronaviruses, we will build up antibodies that give protection for a year or two but weaken over time. There might be enough in 3-4 years down the roas where the body may not have to fight it off as strong, but could easily be re-infected. Making it still impactful, but the body has a game plan. Now much of the thought on coronavirus immunity is based on weaker viruses where the body hasn't had to fight hard to gain immunity... naturally the body doesn't keep those 'instructions' around as long. There is some evidence in SARS and MERS infections that were severe, that they might still have near immunity until this day. Typically, deep lung infections will develop a longer immune response than those that just stick around in your throat. Nobody really knows what that means today.

 

[henchman21]

How can you compare the ability to spread in Wyoming to states that aren't that aren't nearly as rural? Certain models likely don't take spread rates of different living environments into account.

You can't treat it as a one size fits all, that didn't and hasn't stopped people from chastising Wyoming for their response based upon flawed models. You can compare states like Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska, Montana, Iowa, etc to other comparable states and more broad, you just need to be careful on conclusions. You can't say that Denver would have the same result as Casper if Colorado did what Wyoming did. But rural Colorado, could have similar applications to Wyoming. Colorado as a state isn't that dissimilar to Utah. Sweden could have similar applications to other European countries. There is just a lot to learn here and we don't know enough. As we have differences, they should be investigated.

 

[avsfan09]

You can't treat it as a one size fits all, that didn't and hasn't stopped people from chastising Wyoming for their response based upon flawed models. You can compare states like Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska, Montana, Iowa, etc to other comparable states and more broad, you just need to be careful on conclusions. You can't say that Denver would have the same result as Casper if Colorado did what Wyoming did. But rural Colorado, could have similar applications to Wyoming. Colorado as a state isn't that dissimilar to Utah. Sweden could have similar applications to other European countries. There is just a lot to learn here and we don't know enough. As we have differences, they should be investigated.

That’s very fair. We obviously as figuring it out as we go and these models need to be changed as we figure out their weaknesses and how to incorporate them. That said I still sort of agree with caution as a first reaction but they have gone too far imo in some areas I’ll admit.

 

[Foppa2118]

It makes way less sense to chastise the models, than chastise weak responses in places like Wyoming.

I mean talk about crying wolf. What good are you doing by criticizing the models over and over? What do you think they are going to rely on next time? Someone's hunch? That's a more reliable method? No they're going to rely on models again, so why make people think they shouldn't trust them?

It's easy in hindsight to say that the models show less danger based upon new data, but what if it didn't? What if there was a delay for the virus to hit rural areas? We've seen spikes in places like South Dakota as late as last week.

If they limit the deaths to around 60k for the virus this year, that's a best case scenario basically.

The real takeaway from all this is the piss poor response from the federal government, and the way too lackadaisical approach from certain governors, states, and the general public who didn't take this seriously enough, even late in the game when it was obvious they should.

This is a dress rehearsal for the real pandemic health experts have been worried about for a long time, and it's told us that we are still incredibly unprepared, and the response by certain parts of the general public and government was quite simply not good enough to prevent a truly dangerous pandemic.

 

[flyfysher]

You can't treat it as a one size fits all, that didn't and hasn't stopped people from chastising Wyoming

The issue needs to be how to keep Covid-19 infections from spreading.

Even though the Chinese lifted the lockdown in Wuhan, they closed off entry into China to foreigners from other nations where Covid-19 is running rampant because they couldn't risk letting infections run rampant there again. It just illustrates the principle of what happens in Vegas really doesn't just stay in Vegas.

In America, the law views the right to travel as 'fundamental' such that to impinge on it would invoke strict scrutiny (highest level of review) by the courts as a constitutional matter. So states would be hard pressed to ban travel from another state where an outbreak occurs. (I think a state could make a compelling argument but you'd need to litigate it which would be pointless and stupid under the circumstances). That's why you need a national versus a state strategy in dealing with bringing Covid-19 infections under control.

There is an even larger problem that vividly illustrates the point. If a governor closes off or impinges on interstate travel then that invokes the commerce clause which is definitely the sole province of the federal sphere. The federal government should be implementing a national strategy to minimize and bring Covid-19 under control.

 

[Northern Avs Fan]

I just sanitized my groceries. This is my life now...

 

[SirLoinOfCloth]

This seems way too soon to me. Considering how long this disease can last in those infected and how long they can stay infectious.

My fiancee is now going into day 14 of isolation from everyone. She still has fevers of 102F, still has breathing difficulties, cramps etc. She's been sick probably for 15/16 days and in quarantine on her own for 2 full weeks and she's still really sick.

 

[Avsboy]

Even NYC's rate of infection is starting to diminish slightly, but it's not enough. Everyone needs to keep this up at least for another month or else there will be an immediate further acceleration.

 

[Northern Avs Fan]

This seems way too soon to me. Considering how long this disease can last in those infected and how long they can stay infectious.

My fiancee is now going into day 14 of isolation from everyone. She still has fevers of 102F, still has breathing difficulties, cramps etc. She's been sick probably for 15/16 days and in quarantine on her own for 2 full weeks and she's still really sick.

There aren’t any stay at home orders here in Canada that I am aware of.

The government is basically telling everyone not to leave home unless it’s for groceries, or essential work.

If they cancel the order in Colorado, I hope government officials tell people to continue practicing social distancing and to stay at home. The last thing you want is for people to resume normal activity and make the spread of the virus worse.

Also... I hope your fiancée gets back to 100% soon.

 

[Ceremony]

Why does America have so many people who seem eager to go around killing the old and vulnerable?

 

[henchman21]

Why does America have so many people who seem eager to go around killing the old and vulnerable?

Lack of savings, not social safety net, health care tied to employment... mix that with ~30m people being unemployed by the end of the month in the US and you have people with other things they are looking out for and scared of.

 

[Ceremony]

Lack of savings, not social safety net, health care tied to employment... mix that with ~30m people being unemployed by the end of the month in the US and you have people with other things they are looking out for and scared of.

Does this apply to all the people with guns and signs saying the virus is a hoax?

Given the reaction by countries and populations elsewhere in the world under similar measures, you'd think this might make people wonder if their system is really as great as they think it is.

 

[henchman21]

Does this apply to all the people with guns and signs saying the virus is a hoax?

Given the reaction by countries and populations elsewhere in the world under similar measures, you'd think this might make people wonder if their system is really as great as they think it is.

Those people are more on the fringes and are the tin foil hat types. They are not the normal in the US or really anywhere. They are just very loud and obnoxious. The growing swell of support on re-opening is people being fearful about impacts elsewhere. 15-20% unemployment and job losses that we haven't seen since the 30s is a scary proposition for many. Especially in a country that has such a poor savings rate and the tie between healthcare and employment that the US has.

I agree. This relatively sudden shock to the economy and problems it will cause, exposes flaws within the US economy. Flaws that are always there and get exposed eventually... but the US doesn't tend to learn lessons very well. So I might be pessimistic here, but I really can't see the US making meaningful changes after this. The hive mind is strong and the US is about as individualistic as it comes.

This was all very predictable when shutdowns started. People can take it for a while, but going on 5-6 weeks without an end in sight and no plans on how to re-open will cause this anxiety.

 

[Pokecheque]

We went through the Great Recession in 2008, we knew exactly what caused it, and did absolutely NOTHING to prevent it from happening again. I doubt there'll be any real reform after this either.

 

[Pokecheque]

It scares me that we're already talking about reopening everywhere when proper testing and tracing methods have not yet been put in place. Every city that decided to open early has suffered a severe spike in cases right afterward.

Much as I acknowledged that we can't stay shuttered forever, all of this seems more fueled by a desperate need to restart the economy rather than a well-thought out plan to keep people safe while returning to a sense of normal.

 

[henchman21]

It scares me that we're already talking about reopening everywhere when proper testing and tracing methods have not yet been put in place. Every city that decided to open early has suffered a severe spike in cases right afterward.

Much as I acknowledged that we can't stay shuttered forever, all of this seems more fueled by a desperate need to restart the economy rather than a well-thought out plan to keep people safe while returning to a sense of normal.

There are some places that have proper test and trace in place, but the reality of the situation in the country as a whole is twofold. We don't have enough testing medium and there are not enough public health epis employed to do it at a wide scale. Federal, state, county, and cities gov'ts would have to at least double their staffing to do it at a wide scale (many areas would have to go much further)... and there are not enough qualified people nor are their budgets to support that. It is a good goal and a great one to state, but the reality just isn't there for the staff to track that many cases. On the testing, if you lower the accuracy, you can greatly increase how many tests can be given... but you're going to get a lot more false positives. It becomes a quality vs quantity compromise.

Not all places have seen an uptick in cases when re-opening. Some have, some haven't. But odds are there will be an overall uptick if the virus isn't curbed by temperature (still signs are there that it is). The spread will increase as people get back into groups inside together. The initial point of the 'flatten the curve' was to keep hospitals from being overrun... overall (NYC metro being the large exception) that has held true in the US. Many hospitals are under capacity and could handle an uptick to a certain degree. NYC won't be able to for a while. Each area is going to be different and needs to have some leeway on handling it and regions should be working together on a strategy.

I'd argue the US hasn't had a well thought out plan through this whole situation. Everything has been reactionary. The closures were sped up to quell pressure and attempt to reign in numbers without even a thought to how to re-open. It was a quick drastic measure. We've heard plenty of arguments for a while that we shouldn't even think about re-opening until x, y, and z happen. Which isn't a realistic with people or the situation. The second areas closed, plans and benchmarks should have been established to figure out how and when to re-open. Because that hasn't been happening 5-6-7 weeks into this, and there are vast economic and personal ramifications, people are getting testy and demanding to open. Which is causing this reactionary opening we are seeing. I understand why things can be reactionary and at first, sometimes that is the best that can be done... this far into it, there should be solid plans of how to move forward.

Some places have done it. Polis has outlined it well for Colorado... not only publicly, but inside the state's public health handling of it.

 

[Freudian]

Lots of countries and possibly lots of states in the US went into lockdown without really thinking of an exit strategy. They pumped the emergency brakes because they were afraid and wanted to appear as they were taking powerful measures.

The problem is what next? How long are you going to keep people in their houses? How do you go about opening up? What do you open up? How vulnerable will your population be after being stuck at home?

I think the images from Italy scared the crap out of a lot of politicians but we now see from a lot of other European countries that the health care systems are able to cope, even if the workload is high. The mortality numbers tend to go down, even though it's hard to tell without proper antibody tests. Italy seems to be the exception here for a lot of reasons (demographics, Covid-19 being able to spread for a long time undetected it overwhelmed them once it became clear it was everywhere).

I guess the US are a week or two behind Europe, so now when they are starting to ease up on restrictions in countries like Denmark, Norway, Germany and Austria, the Governors are looking at what's happening.

 

[Balthazar]

They plan to reopen soon here in Quebec too, they'll do it gradually they say. I thought it was a given that schools would remain closed until September but no, they are reopening schools as well.

In today's presser the Health minister said that they now believe the R0 to be close to 5 and it will require ~80% of people getting it and recovering to obtain herd immunity.

It seems like herd immunity is Plan A, Plan B and Plan C of all the governments now even though we don't know the actual number of people who got it so we have no clue how many lives it will cost. According to various studies, it's now believed that under 5% of people got it. Considering the number of deaths already, that's pretty damn bad if we need to get to 80%.

Worse, we're not even sure if we can get herd immunity at all from COVID19 and if so, how long it will last. I know they don't have a choice but the whole thing f***ing sucks.

Basically the government is telling people to go get it and roll the dices. Just make sure we don't all get it at the same time.

 

[henchman21]

Yeah we have no real clue who has had it. The antibody tests can give an indication, but they are riddled with false positives too. Some studies in California point to the spread being 40-80 times higher than the official numbers.... but the errors in the tests mean it could be as little as 10 times real easily too. If the 80 is true and translates throughout the country to other areas... Then ~70m people in the US have either had it or currently have it. If it is only 10 times, then only 8m. If only 5 times, then 4m. Drastically different implications on a variety of levels.

I wouldn't say herd immunity is the total plan, but living with the reality of the virus is inevitable.

 

[Foppa2118]

There are some places that have proper test and trace in place, but the reality of the situation in the country as a whole is twofold. We don't have enough testing medium and there are not enough public health epis employed to do it at a wide scale. Federal, state, county, and cities gov'ts would have to at least double their staffing to do it at a wide scale (many areas would have to go much further)... and there are not enough qualified people nor are their budgets to support that. It is a good goal and a great one to state, but the reality just isn't there for the staff to track that many cases. On the testing, if you lower the accuracy, you can greatly increase how many tests can be given... but you're going to get a lot more false positives. It becomes a quality vs quantity compromise.

Not all places have seen an uptick in cases when re-opening. Some have, some haven't. But odds are there will be an overall uptick if the virus isn't curbed by temperature (still signs are there that it is). The spread will increase as people get back into groups inside together. The initial point of the 'flatten the curve' was to keep hospitals from being overrun... overall (NYC metro being the large exception) that has held true in the US. Many hospitals are under capacity and could handle an uptick to a certain degree. NYC won't be able to for a while. Each area is going to be different and needs to have some leeway on handling it and regions should be working together on a strategy.

I'd argue the US hasn't had a well thought out plan through this whole situation. Everything has been reactionary. The closures were sped up to quell pressure and attempt to reign in numbers without even a thought to how to re-open. It was a quick drastic measure. We've heard plenty of arguments for a while that we shouldn't even think about re-opening until x, y, and z happen. Which isn't a realistic with people or the situation. The second areas closed, plans and benchmarks should have been established to figure out how and when to re-open. Because that hasn't been happening 5-6-7 weeks into this, and there are vast economic and personal ramifications, people are getting testy and demanding to open. Which is causing this reactionary opening we are seeing. I understand why things can be reactionary and at first, sometimes that is the best that can be done... this far into it, there should be solid plans of how to move forward.

Some places have done it. Polis has outlined it well for Colorado... not only publicly, but inside the state's public health handling of it.

There are very few states if any that have done enough testing, I'm not sure why you would say that. Most states need to do MORE testing. A lot more to have enough data to safely reopen.

I hope these early openings work out ok, but some of these governors (especially in Georgia where their numbers are still on the incline) are basically making their decisions off their hunches, and pressure from businesses and wall street. Not the data they have, because most don't have enough.

They're just hoping there isn't a big rebound, and that's a terrible public health strategy.

 

[Balthazar]

There are very few states if any that have done enough testing, I'm not sure why you would say that. Most states need to do MORE testing. A lot more to have enough data to safely reopen.

I don't think they care about that as much as they did at first, at least not here.

Tests aren't as reliable as they thought they were and they simply don't have enough. The #1 deciding factor appears to be how many people show up at the hospital...if they have enough room they'll open up the economy. If/when they get overwhelmed they'll close it again. Rinse and repeat until vaccine or herd immunity.

 

[Pierce Hawthorne]

Newfoundland seems to be in a really fantastic place in all of this right now. We had one really bad outbreak from an infected person attending a funeral home, which resulted in the infection of like 75% of our total cases and all 3 deaths are related to that outbreak.

But since that situation calmed down things have really started turning around. Today was our 5th day in a row without a single new case on the island. And we only have some ~50 active cases at this point and 200 recovered.

They've also expanded testing to the point now where anybody who has any 2 of the symptoms related to the virus are eligible to get tested. So wake up one day with a cough and a sore throat or a runny nose and a sore throat... And you automatically qualify to get tested.

My suspicion here is if we can make it to 14 days without any new cases, we'll start seeing very fast action towards opening places up. And if we can go another 14 days after the last confirmed case has recovered without new cases... I think the entire province opens up again.

I said from the beginning that as an island NL had a really good chance to do extremely well fighting this virus. With the sanctions in place for travel right now, there's only 3 spots on the island where people can travel here from away. With everything streamlined into those 3 places its easy to screen everyone entering the province and turn away anybody who cant take proper isolating measures immediately.

Long story short I think NL will end up being one of(If not the very first) the first provinces in Canada to get back to a sense of normalcy very quickly here. My thoughts are that by May 15th some restrictions are lifted, and small social gatherings(5 or 10 people probably) are allowed again... And by June 1st if those days go well, we see wide range restrictions lifted.

Social distancing practices in grocery stores and retail stores likely remain in effect for a long time regardless. But some sense of normalcy will come back here soon if we keep going like we are now with nobody getting infected.


Because, we're seeing in the US already that people are growing impatient and want to get back to work and back to a sense of normalcy even with a massive number of active cases across the country. So... People here in Newfoundland will quickly grow impatient and unsatisfied if they try to keep restrictions enforced when there's nobody infected and no cases going on in the island.

 

[henchman21]

I've seen some statements saying that the US needs to do up to 30m tests per week to open up. Some say 4m. To date, there have been 4m tests total. There isn't enough reagent nor enough capability to test 4m per week in the US, even if you stopped nearly all other tests. There isn't enough bandwidth. Mass testing isn't the way out.

 

[Balthazar]

Newfoundland seems to be in a really fantastic place in all of this right now. We had one really bad outbreak from an infected person attending a funeral home, which resulted in the infection of like 75% of our total cases and all 3 deaths are related to that outbreak.

But since that situation calmed down things have really started turning around. Today was our 5th day in a row without a single new case on the island. And we only have some ~50 active cases at this point and 200 recovered.

They've also expanded testing to the point now where anybody who has any 2 of the symptoms related to the virus are eligible to get tested. So wake up one day with a cough and a sore throat or a runny nose and a sore throat... And you automatically qualify to get tested.

My suspicion here is if we can make it to 14 days without any new cases, we'll start seeing very fast action towards opening places up. And if we can go another 14 days after the last confirmed case has recovered without new cases... I think the entire province opens up again.

I said from the beginning that as an island NL had a really good chance to do extremely well fighting this virus. With the sanctions in place for travel right now, there's only 3 spots on the island where people can travel here from away. With everything streamlined into those 3 places its easy to screen everyone entering the province and turn away anybody who cant take proper isolating measures immediately.

Long story short I think NL will end up being one of(If not the very first) the first provinces in Canada to get back to a sense of normalcy very quickly here. My thoughts are that by May 15th some restrictions are lifted, and small social gatherings(5 or 10 people probably) are allowed again... And by June 1st if those days go well, we see wide range restrictions lifted.

Social distancing practices in grocery stores and retail stores likely remain in effect for a long time regardless. But some sense of normalcy will come back here soon if we keep going like we are now with nobody getting infected.


Because, we're seeing in the US already that people are growing impatient and want to get back to work and back to a sense of normalcy even with a massive number of active cases across the country. So... People here in Newfoundland will quickly grow impatient and unsatisfied if they try to keep restrictions enforced when there's nobody infected and no cases going on in the island.

IMO this is a case where it would be worth it to wait longer to make sure that there's no active case on the Island anymore because you have the rare opportunity of going down to zero. Even if it takes a month it's really worth it and as long as no one is traveling between the island and the main land you guys could back go to normality. This is something the rest of us can't even dream of.

 

[ABasin]

\but living with the reality of the virus is inevitable.

That is the stark reality.