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BBC: China pneumonia outbreak: COVID-19 Global Pandemic

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By China
in The Tailgate

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The Sisko

The Sisko

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58 minutes ago, visionary said:

And the whitehouse, and the State Department added a much more drastic warning.

 

As it relates to his stupid travel ban that he had the nerve to tout as though it actually did something, I haven't seen anyone point out that this does nothing at all to address the community spread infections. In other words, it's already here. Implementing a travel ban does nothing to address the cases already in the pipeline within the U.S. It sounds good to his base, so it's gotta work, right? I guess those cases don't count because 'Muricuh first and if I'm a-gonna get it, dammit, it'll be from another 'Muricun. God, what a maroon being mindlessly followed by other maroons.

 

Similarly, his payroll tax cut does nothing to address the issue that if you're sick and out of work, you're not getting a ****ing paycheck. Of course, I wouldn't expect someone who pulled himself up by his bootstraps with the assistance of millions from Daddy to understand a concept like that so it's probably unfair to hold him accountable for it. Idiot.🙄 FFS, how I long for the days when I thought W. was a dumb as someone could be and still be capable of being elected to the highest office in the land

 

1 hour ago, LadySkinsFan said:

I never trust Trump, especially with this kind of thing.

 

He wants to report low numbers because he thinks it makes him look good. He's doing the bare minimum to try and get a handle on this virus. 

 

Thank goodness the House is thinking about We the People. Trump will veto it if Moscow Mitch lets it out of the Senate.

 

When I talk with others about the election, this is why I always mention that the Senate is more important than POTUS. If we get the Senate, we can neuter Der 'Muricun Fuhrer until the next election. If we get POTUS and not the Senate, our POTUS isn't going to be able to do anything that can't be immediately reversed by the next Grand Oligarch's Party POTUS and Moscow Mitch will be able to just store up lower level judges and SCOTUS appointments until they get their person in office again. So Bernie Bros. don't show up to vote for Biden, show up to vote for Senate.

 

1 hour ago, DogofWar1 said:

It probably won't get THAT bad, but 1,000 is very wishful thinking.

 

So there are two things that make this thing deadly, it's R0 and it's mortality rate.  R0 is a measure of how many people are infected per infected person, so for example, a disease with an R0 of 2 means each infected person will on average infect 2 other people.  Average transmissability is important too, because there are things called "super spreaders" who infect a TON of people, while most cases are less or not infectious (SARS had this, some people were super infectious, others much less so, which helped limit spread because % of people spreading it was low).

 

Seasonal flu has an R0 of around 1.3.

 

Covid's is likely a bit north of 3.  I saw 3.8, but estimates range from 1.8 to 4ish.  But basically it's more transmisible than the flu.  It's also unlikely to be spread via super spreaders just given how worldwide it is; too many people are infectious for it to only a be small % of infected spreading it.

 

Then you have mortality rate.  Mortality rate of seasonal flu is around 0.1%.  So if a million people caught the flu, we'd expect about 1,000 deaths.

 

Covid's was pegged at 3.4%.  It might be lower, and probably is because cases inevitably slip through, but anything anywhere near 1% is scary.

 

Basically, while containment procedures aren't in place, we would expect the number of Covid cases to triple week to week.  That's what other countries have seen and we'll likely see it here too.

 

So the US has roughly 1,000 cases now, right (probably a lot more due to our crappy testing)?  If spread triples week to week, we'd have 3K next week, 9K in 2 weeks, 27K in 3 weeks, 81K in a month, 243K in 5 weeks, 729K in 6 weeks, and over 2.1M cases in 7 weeks.  If that keeps going, in under 3 months every person who could get it in the US likely would.

 

Mix that with even a 2% mortality rate, and you see why this is scary. 

 

If 10M get infected with 2% mortality, that 200,000 people dead.  If 25M are infected, that's the population of Wyoming, dead.

 

And it would take only about 9 and a half weeks to reach 25M infected from 1000 infected due to spread.

 

Further, if the total population mortality rate is 2% or so, imagine how high it is among elderly.  Would be like 7-10%.  Imagine 10% of the elderly in the USA just dying off in the next 3 months.  If we don't stop the spread, it's not impossible.

 

Hence why everyone is taking this deathly seriously.

To this I'll just add that it's not only about mortality. It's also about the people that are really sick who need ICU resources to survive. There will be a lot more of those if we don't flatten the curve to decrease those numbers, and in turn, mortality will increase. Another thing that may be lost in comparing the data from other countries dealing with the virus is that the U.S. system is based on a for-profit healthcare model. I'm not sure if this is something that applies to other countries, but many of our healthcare staff work at multiple hospitals. When I was a Respiratory Therapist, I routinely worked one full time gig and PRN gigs at two or more other hospitals to the tune of 50-60 hours per week, sometimes more. So what happens if a currently working clinician with a similar workload to mine gets sick or just doesn't show up to work? Mind you, most everyone I knew, from other RTs to nurses, XRay techs, etc. worked multiple gigs at multiple hospitals. It makes the problem of staffing even worse because not only is an indivudual not reporting to work at his full time hospital, s/he's also not reporting for PRN or part time work. So even if we do have beds, vents and other resources available, if we don't have staff, it doesn't mean a whole lot. The same holds true for the lack of excess beds and other capacity. Running things on the edge is all good...until something like this happens and we see the real costs of wringing every...single...excess...penny out of the healthcare system because insurance providers simply won't pay for anything extra. Yes, it's very efficient during normal times, but provides little "slack" when something big happens. So, how much is Meemaw's life worth? That's what we've been trading off in exchange for lower insurance premiums and higher compensation for insurance company execs.

 

Interestingly, the Feds pushed hard years ago for hospitals and other providers to implement plans for rationing during disasters. Without fail, every hospital in our state soft-peddled the issue in order to stay in compliance but not actually do anything to address how they'd ration vents, beds, staff, and other resources during an incident where it was necessary. In fact, in our internal discussions about it, the VP that managed the emergency preparedness section (two whole FTEs for an entire state) forbade us from even uttering the "R" word even during internal meetings. Because my employer was a membership organization, we had zero power to push them to do anything with this when it was obvious to all of us that if a big enough incident occurred, rationing would absolutely have to happen and without thinking it through ahead of time and being fully transparent, it wouldn't work out well for anyone. But, there was risk of community outrage so nobody was willing to touch it other than to do the bare minimum the Feds required to keep grant funding for that area of their preparedness funding. Some facilities weren't willing to bother with it at all, grant funding be damned. Well, we're staring down the gun barrel now. It'll be interesting to see how it works out if it comes to that.

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Llevron

Llevron

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4 hours ago, DogofWar1 said:

Holy cow, that "kill on demand" thing is terrifying.

 

I knew something terrible was going to happen to those people since we got the video of them lined up and naked but I never thought they would be harvesting their organs. I guess I tried not to think about what was happening to them. China is ****ed up. 

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