Everything COVID19 - PART 4

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Micklebot

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Apr 27, 2010
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Like you said - saying they did nothing is wrong. If you could work from home on your laptop, that's what you did and are doing. I'm sure many people voluntarily cut down on trips and restaurant visits. But then you see video of crowded cafes and restaurants and you know many are not doing any distancing. And then you compare Ontario at 14.5 million people with a megacity in Toronto, with hundreds of thousands of people flying and driving back from hotspots in the United States and Europe.... we have less deaths than Sweden with 4 million more people. Per capita things just look ugly for Sweden.

How much are thousands of lives in Ontario worth to some people? Is it worth those outings to restaurants with friends and family?

There are lessons to be learned. I do want an inquiry. Not to blame Doug Ford or anybody but to figure out what we can do to avoid this situation next time. Maybe a situation like South Korea or Germany where the lockdown is shorter because there is better testing and tracing infrastructure and better healthcare capacity to deal with outbreaks.

Sweden is not a lesson for Ontario or Canada. It's not even a lesson for Quebec. There are better countries to learn from.
One big thing they did is take away financial barriers for calling in sick when you are even just a little sick. That's something that should probably stay in place until there is a vaccine.

I think there are things to learn from Sweden; the way I see it, they skipped the lockdown step and went straight to the gradual re-opening stage. They've gone a few months trying to figure out how to safely have cafés and restaurants open. There's likely some things they've tweaked and improved on, some that worked right away, and some that outright didn't. I'm sure there are some things we can take away from their experiences that will help improve our future.

So far, they aren't the model I'd emulate on a country wide basis, but I think looking at it on a macro level might not be the right way. What failed in Stockholm might have been fine in a smaller region like Halland where their per capita cases was closer to Ottawas (I honestly don't know the finer details of what's going on by region, just that Halland reported 500 cases and has a population of about a third of Ottawas). Local demographics, things like if there's a senior home, or a meat processing plant, an international airport hub ect might influence the best course of action.
 

The Lewler

GOAT BUDGET AINEC
Jul 2, 2013
4,675
2,815
Eastern Ontario Badlands
We are persuing herd immunity one way or another .

A vacccine is a short cut to creating herd immunity .

There is no viable scenario in which Ontario and Quebec are able to deploy contract tracing to the point of extinguishing Covid.
 

thinkwild

Veni Vidi Toga
Jul 29, 2003
10,815
1,468
Ottawa
We are persuing herd immunity one way or another .

A vacccine is a short cut to creating herd immunity .

There is no viable scenario in which Ontario and Quebec are able to deploy contract tracing to the point of extinguishing Covid.

It would sure take a major effort, like a wartime rallying of resources. But im still hopeful we can get to that point sometime. Some countries do seem to be there.

If they announce 60% of us have antibodies and they consider that herd immunity, im not sure id feel confident enough to return to normal yet. But if I were given a vaccine, then I would. Similarly if we keep planking the curve until a treatment comes out that makes this just a real bad cold and no longer fatal, then I would also return to normal without herd immunity.

Theoretically if we start from a good place, all of us could take a home test and upload results somewhere, we could monitor the outbreaks, focus the resources on tracing, retesting, isolating and pretty quickly get it really well under control. But we cant seem to martial those testing resources yet to make it viable. Maybe if we keep stalling we will be able to soon.

I wonder if 3d printing will be a big part of this digital turning point. Looks like a great opportunity now to repatriate manufacturing lost to low wage countries.
 

Knave

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Mar 6, 2007
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We are persuing herd immunity one way or another .

A vacccine is a short cut to creating herd immunity .

There is no viable scenario in which Ontario and Quebec are able to deploy contract tracing to the point of extinguishing Covid.

Why do you think we would be unable to do it to the level where at least COVID-19 is controllable for the next year?

A vaccine is the only way we'll get immunity. This 'herd immunity' through infection thing is a bunch of BS.

Anything we can do to delay spread, delay death and learn about treatment/patient care to improve survival rates, bolster our testing/tracing... the better.
 
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Larionov

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Feb 9, 2005
4,394
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Ottawa, ON
So the World Health Organization said today that we should assume that COVID-19 will be endemic - in other words, it will never be fully eradicated, and like AIDS, the seasonal flu, etc., we'll just need to learn to live with it and manage it.

This is what many have suspected all along, and in an odd way this is good news. We can all stop waiting for a vaccine or miracle treatment and get on with living our lives, knowing that this virus, while no picnic, is not a serious threat to most people. It is, of course, a threat to the elderly or immune compromised, just as flu, food poisoning, etc. is. (My wife takes a medication that suppresses her immune system a bit, so we know the drill.)

Going forward, this will be a risk management exercise, both for people at risk and businesses who want to make the public feel more safe. It is definitely not an insurmountable hill to climb. Let's get on with re-opening our economy and society and start tackling that risk management task...
 

Knave

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Mar 6, 2007
21,627
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Ottawa
So the World Health Organization said today that we should assume that COVID-19 will be endemic - in other words, it will never be fully eradicated, and like AIDS, the seasonal flu, etc., we'll just need to learn to live with it and manage it.

This is what many have suspected all along, and in an odd way this is good news. We can all stop waiting for a vaccine or miracle treatment and get on with living our lives, knowing that this virus, while no picnic, is not a serious threat to most people. It is, of course, a threat to the elderly or immune compromised, just as flu, food poisoning, etc. is. (My wife takes a medication that suppresses her immune system a bit, so we know the drill.)

Going forward, this will be a risk management exercise, both for people at risk and businesses who want to make the public feel more safe. It is definitely not an insurmountable hill to climb. Let's get on with re-opening our economy and society and start tackling that risk management task...

Why?

We're on the path to ending AIDS. We've eliminated smallpox. We had measles under control and were on the path towards eliminating that until certain groups started popping up on Facebook spreading anti-vaccine propaganda.

And just so we're all aware - seasonal flu does have a dozens of vaccines for many different strains and is much less deadly. There are also legitimate medical treatments to deal with it. HIV also has a treatment and is not easily transmittable. We're not flying in blind every flu season, HIV isn't contagious via cough.

It's perfectly possible to get a vaccine and eventually eradicate COVID-19.
 

maclean

Registered User
Jan 4, 2014
8,380
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I suspect that with this virus though, the number of infections stemming from touching a surface is relatively low as the viral load would have to be high/fresh on that surface and you'd have to immediately touch your nose/mouth/eyes for it to enter your system.

People seemed to really focus in on the idea of it staying active for days on surfaces, while the science only showed that there was genetic material still on surfaces, but with no inkling of whether it was still alive or not. But that notion really latched onto the deep-rooted cooties concept in people's brains.

Maybe a situation like South Korea or Germany where the lockdown is shorter because there is better testing and tracing infrastructure and better healthcare capacity to deal with outbreaks.

South Korea tracks your phone. If you're a foreign journalist and you come there they are very nice and give you a SIM card and then they keep a close watch on you. I'm sure it's all very useful for keeping the virus in check, but I'm equally sure many many people in North America would not go in for that.

Germany's big success has been in keeping the death rate low despite a lot of infected people. Their measures have not been all that extreme, though they also vary from state to state there, but in many ways it was closer to the Swedish idea of relying on people to be sensible than dictating it outright. Their cases per 1M pop is actually around the level of Canada, a bit higher. I don't know if you can say at this point the lockdown will have been shorter there because North America is a couple weeks behind.
 

dumbdick

Galactic Defender
May 31, 2008
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One day we're going to get some doomsday virus. Something deadly but slow to present, that transmits easily and asymptomatically long before people know they're infected. By the time we figure out something is going on, a big percent of the population will already be doomed and society will completely collapse.

Thankfully, COVID isn't that!

Still, it's amazing how just some minor changes to the characteristics of this virus could get us to that awful scenario. God help us if we start designing these custom viruses.
 

Nac Mac Feegle

wee & free
Jun 10, 2011
34,829
9,252
One day we're going to get some doomsday virus. Something deadly but slow to present, that transmits easily and asymptomatically long before people know they're infected. By the time we figure out something is going on, a big percent of the population will already be doomed and society will completely collapse.

Thankfully, COVID isn't that!

Still, it's amazing how just some minor changes to the characteristics of this virus could get us to that awful scenario. God help us if we start designing these custom viruses.


I'm not so sure about that. I don't think one virus is going to do it. I think it'll be more death by a thousand cuts....and covid-19 might very well be one of those cuts.

What happens to all those folks who got covid-19, and now have some permanent damage (known or not). There's your next wave of immune compromised people for the next novel virus...in addition to the immune compromised folks who do escape this one. The "next" virus that would normally wipe out 0.5-1% of the population now suddenly hits 5-10%....we have folks crying about the economy over a 2-month shutdown, image what happens when we see a significant amount of young working people (immune compromised via covid-19) suddenly dropping.



Oh, we've been designing these types of viruses for a few decades now. So, yeah....one slip-up in the lab, and we're living The Stand.....
 
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Knave

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Mar 6, 2007
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17,000 tests 258 positive cases. Testing went up, positives went down. With the recoveries (I hope they still follow up by telephone atleast to make sure people have no symptoms and feel fine for x number of days) net decrease in active cases.

Lowest number of absolute cases added since March. March 31st reporting March 30th we added 260 cases.

March 29th reporting (March 28th) was the last time we had fewer positives at 211 doing 10,000 less tests.
 
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Sens of Anarchy

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Jul 9, 2013
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17,000 tests 258 positive cases. Testing went up, positives went down. With the recoveries (I hope they still follow up by telephone atleast to make sure people have no symptoms and feel fine for x number of days) net decrease in active cases.

Lowest number of absolute cases added since March. March 31st reporting March 30th we added 260 cases.

March 29th reporting (March 28th) was the last time we had fewer positives at 211 doing 10,000 less tests.

Definitely going in the right direction. Still a scary fn virus imo.
 

Upgrayedd

Earn'em and Burn'em
Oct 14, 2010
5,306
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Ottawa
Glad to see the roll out of opening things back up, also glad we took the precautions we did but it was clearly overkill in retrospect. Hopefully we can modify our procedures and tendencies as people for when the next one hits, thankfully this one wasn't bad, who knows about what's up next!

Banking on a vaccine to open things further is not a viable option, takes a long time to establish and test them etc... I assume the next step will be to advise the sick and elderly to self quarantine going forward and, hopefully we all take this opportunity to better our cleaning habits and strengthen our immune systems and health in general.
 

Speatleysson

Registered User
Jul 2, 2009
3,618
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Ottawa, Ontario
A vaccine is the only way we'll get immunity. This 'herd immunity' through infection thing is a bunch of BS.

And what do you know? Are you an expert in infectious diseases?

Herd immunity is why we have overcome many other viruses/illnesses. It's why one year after SARS you had nobody giving a **** anymore about safety precautions, even the long term care homes.

SARS2, just like SARS, is never going to fully go away. Another risk in life, add it on to the pile of others.
 

Knave

Registered User
Mar 6, 2007
21,627
2,226
Ottawa
And what do you know? Are you an expert in infectious diseases?

Herd immunity is why we have overcome many other viruses/illnesses. It's why one year after SARS you had nobody giving a **** anymore about safety precautions, even the long term care homes.

SARS2, just like SARS, is never going to fully go away. Another risk in life, add it on to the pile of others.

Name one highly infectious disease with a reasonable incubation time eradicated by natural herd immunity.

Did we get here immunity to smallpox? How about measles? How about the flu? How about hpv? How about polio?

I'm naming some viruses that lasted centuries in that list.

And before we get to the Spanish flu lets remember that's essentially just a flu virus strain that once again - has been around for centuries. The Spanish flu was so bad that when a similar type of flu appeared in 2009 we shoved billions of dollars into developing a vaccine for it (swine flu) and what do you know? Millions of people DIDNT die.

But sure what do I know, what does everyone else but the head of Sweden's pandemic plan seem to know, what does every scientist and researcher know, what does history know.

We can just get natural herd immunity despite all evidence to the contrary. The science says we will despite it not saying that at all.

Edit: And I just want to be clear Anders Tagnell or whatever the head of the COVID19 pandemic in Sweden epidemiologist talking about herd immunity did so cautiously with "it would be a nice bonus" to their strategy and stuff like that. No definitive statement because he knows the history of viruses does not support herd immunity protecting a society.

I mean maybe it works and they get herd immunity. But maybe the CERN produces dragons when two atoms collide.
 
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Masked

(Super/star)
Apr 16, 2017
6,339
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Parts unknown
Not to mention there was a woman in California who has been hospitalized twice with COVID-19. There's no guarantee that you are immune if you have had it.
 

thinkwild

Veni Vidi Toga
Jul 29, 2003
10,815
1,468
Ottawa
So the World Health Organization said today that we should assume that COVID-19 will be endemic - in other words, it will never be fully eradicated, and like AIDS, the seasonal flu, etc., we'll just need to learn to live with it and manage it.

This is what many have suspected all along, and in an odd way this is good news. We can all stop waiting for a vaccine or miracle treatment and get on with living our lives, knowing that this virus, while no picnic, is not a serious threat to most people. It is, of course, a threat to the elderly or immune compromised, just as flu, food poisoning, etc. is. (My wife takes a medication that suppresses her immune system a bit, so we know the drill.)

Going forward, this will be a risk management exercise, both for people at risk and businesses who want to make the public feel more safe. It is definitely not an insurmountable hill to climb. Let's get on with re-opening our economy and society and start tackling that risk management task...

I'm just not there yet that I think we should just blindly go back. We cant tackle the risk management task until we have the tools to properly manage it. And I don’t think we are there yet.

And if we are to edge back a bit, and there is certainly room to try some things, I think it is important to put the gating criteria up front. At what point do you say- things have got out of hand and snap back to a total shutdown?

We have created a trillion dollar debt fighting this. All that work for nothing if we just go back blindly? An infectious virus that will double the number of cases every couple of days and quickly create a quarter to half million Canadian preventable deaths?

Some had declared this a wartime effort. Don’t give up before the job is done after so much work thinking its easier to just sacrifice mostly the older and sicker but also a non insignificant portion of the rest.

We can get to a point where we can risk manage with enough tools to give the majority enough confidence to allow it to work and keep fatalities way down. Lets do the job properly.
 

Micklebot

Moderator
Apr 27, 2010
53,145
30,365
And what do you know? Are you an expert in infectious diseases?

Herd immunity is why we have overcome many other viruses/illnesses. It's why one year after SARS you had nobody giving a **** anymore about safety precautions, even the long term care homes.

SARS2, just like SARS, is never going to fully go away. Another risk in life, add it on to the pile of others.

SARS didn't go away because of herd immunity, it only infected about 8000 people worldwide. Herd immunity would require a much higher % of the population to get infected, likely in the 70% range. Some studies currently think the infection % in new York is 20 to 25%, so if you want herd immunity there they need to go through what they already did another 2 to 3 times. Unlike covid 19, contact tracing for SARS was far easier because there weren't the high % of asymptomatic carriers and symptoms showed up in 3 days rather than 2 weeks. It more likely went away because of containment measures bringing the r naught down below 1.
 

AchtzehnBaby

Global Matador
Mar 28, 2013
15,022
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And so it begins...

Hackers working for the Chinese government are trying to steal valuable research on coronavirus vaccines and treatments from U.S. health care, pharmaceutical and research organizations, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned Wednesday.

From a report:"China's efforts to target these sectors pose a significant threat to our nation's response to COVID-19," the Federal Bureau of Investigation and DHS's Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency said in a joint statement. The agencies said "the potential theft of this information jeopardizes the delivery of secure, effective and efficient treatment options.
 

Upgrayedd

Earn'em and Burn'em
Oct 14, 2010
5,306
1,610
Ottawa
How can it be clearly overkill?

The demographic of the deaths and the rate itself, compared to the subsequent economic impact and probable vast covid related mental issues was not worth it imo, I'm not saying this could be predicted nor were the actions taken unjustified, it is what it is.
 

Do Make Say Think

& Yet & Yet
Jun 26, 2007
51,157
9,904
The demographic of the deaths and the rate itself, compared to the subsequent economic impact and probable vast covid related mental issues was not worth it imo, I'm not saying this could be predicted nor were the actions taken unjustified, it is what it is.

We don't know that to be the case yet.

We are going to find out how bad it gets next winter. All signs point to a disastrous second wave and that lockdowns have been very effective at limiting the spread.
 
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