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Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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1 minute ago, iodeac said:

Guys please talk me out of going to my favorite bottle shop that's closing in an hour until God knows when. Official order in NC is that all bars and restaurants close at 5pm today

Go and drink up.  The alcohol will kill any of the coronavirus.

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2 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

You reduce the number of people flooding the hospitals at once. You're not stopping the spread at all, you are slowing the spread. You slow down the amount of hospital cases, allowing the hospitals to treat people, instead of being overwhelmed and triaging people aka if you are over 60, you are relegated to die. 

Yeah, and I am on your side if I was in Cali or NYC. However, the spread in Austin has barely just begun. If you close now for 3 weeks and then have business as usual, all you have done is wasted your one bullet. Not even Brisket can afford to be closed for 2 months unless he cuts his staff loose now.

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Just now, South Austin said:

Go and drink up.  The alcohol will kill any of the coronavirus.

the rest of us are already on NO RESTAURANT NO BAR hiatus for the time being

 

if they close liquor stores in TX though?

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15 minutes ago, Skipper said:

3.  Potentially get us to warmer weather which we hope slows down transmission over the summer (early data is promising ).

Link?

It's hot and sunny here near the tip of America's dong.   Doesn't really seem to be slowing transmission down, but we don't have any good data to know if that's true...  which is why I ask for a link to a reputable source that has real data.   I am not on team #itsmagicallygoingtodisappear

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6 minutes ago, Loco said:

Link?

It's hot and sunny here near the tip of America's dong.   Doesn't really seem to be slowing transmission down, but we don't have any good data to know if that's true...  which is why I ask for a link to a reputable source that has real data.   I am not on team #itsmagicallygoingtodisappear

There's no peer reviewed details.  Just some anecdotal evidence because all the major outbreaks have been in the same temperature zone.

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3 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

There was something I read where they said if everyone wore a mask in public, it would provide near perfect prevention. Basically, there are public health policies which need to be undertaken to prevent transmission. But I'm not sure there is a plan. This wasn't planned for. 

I'm not huge on "new hospitals", but more ICU's and vent beds will go a long way. I also think they get a vaccine sooner than later, but not in time before we have to release from quarantine obviously.

There was a second, larger spike in the fall after the Spanish Flu first happened. I think that is what we should expect here. At least, until someone figures out how to stop it.

Masks and social distancing seemed to be extremely effective in HK, Singapore, and SK.  Unfortunately, we dont even have enough masks for our medical community, so that option is out.  

Agreed, we dont need "new hospitals", we need surge capacity.  I hope youre right, but my money is on 12 months minimum based on what Fauci has been saying all along.  

 

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20 minutes ago, utee94 said:

Right.  The delaying of the next wave by 6 weeks IS the flattening of the curve.  It gives the medical community time to process the current batch of infected, move them through the system, and then gear up for the next wave.

There's nothing that's going to actually stop the spread of this, at least not in the next 12-18 months until a vaccine is widely available.  In the meantime, it's all about controlling the rate of infection and slowing it down to a manageable curve.

 

I think over the next 6 weeks or so we’re also going to see an emerging medical consensus on best recommendations and practices for preventing and managing acute cases.  Specifically I expect significant progress in determining when and how to use various med cocktails.  This also should involve international data and results sharing.

If we can blunt the morbidity and mortality significantly, then preventing infection doesn’t have to necessitate crippling societal closures and distancing.  There will be a trend towards a compromise similar to the one we have with influenza.

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A friend's wife is a social media influencer...  she tested got tested the other day after getting a call from her salon that a person who had the chair/stylist before her had tested positive.  She lives in SF and went through the ringer to get tested (no results yet).   I jokingly txted them that I was going to send them a care package of TP & Ramen.   Her response was "Please send TP!!!!"   Now I need to figure out if she was serious.

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Just now, Penelope said:

I closed my bar yesterday. Moved my inventory today, and boarded up my windows. Now I’m fighting with my ex because he believes we should stay open as long as possible. And that I’m overreacting and jumping the gun. He’s an Aggie so… 

Damn, best of luck through all that 

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58 minutes ago, clapclapclap said:

More Osterholm on the China Originated Virus Is Deadly-#19:

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/a-coronavirus-winter-michael-t-osterholm-on-the-road-ahead

  Reveal hidden contents

An interview on the state of the pandemic with the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy

We spoke with Michael T. Osterholm, professor of environmental health sciences and chair in public health at the University of Minnesota, author of Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs, and a former Science Envoy for Health Security at the U.S. Department of State.

In the Q&A below, Osterholm tells us about the coming “coronavirus winter,” why looking at the pandemic as a single rolling wave is not helpful, his concerns over “mitigation fatigue” from the public, and why the most important goal of increased testing in the United States is to move away from “monolithic recommendations” and toward a more targeted approach.

Osterholm has also written about the coronavirus pandemic for the New York Times and has previously appeared as an interview subject in The New Atlantis (“The Ebola Gamble,” Spring 2015). This interview was conducted by phone yesterday, March 16, and has been condensed and edited for clarity.

 

The New Atlantis: How serious is this situation? Are we locking things down too early or too late?

Michael Osterholm: This is a very serious situation. We will overwhelm the American health care system. It won’t be equally distributed around the country — some places will get hit much harder than others. We will run out of critical personal protective equipment for health care workers, which will ultimately result in infections that they will acquire on the job.

We will continue to see, I’m afraid, certain political responses which will lead people to challenge public health recommendations on ideological as opposed to scientific grounds.

And we don’t have a sense of how this is going to play out relative to time. I tell people we’re responding to this just like we’re responding to a Minneapolis blizzard, where we’re going to lock down for a couple of days and everything will go back to normal — as opposed to the fact that this is going to be a coronavirus winter and we’re just in the first week or two of a long season. This could last for months.

There doesn’t seem to be a wave hitting yet. In the U.S. we’re not yet seeing the kinds of things we’re seeing in Italy. Is it about to hit?

MO: First of all, it’s not Italy, it’s the Lombardy region. This is not an unusual situation with respiratory pathogens, where we see a rolling set of epidemics that occur in some cases simultaneously, sometimes sequentially, but they over time merge into one big epidemic. We can see seasonal flu where we’ll have hot spots in the U.S. for several weeks in some places, and in other places no activity at all. So I think looking at this as a wave is not helpful, because it’s a collection of smaller, yet very significant outbreaks, that make up that total amount.

It probably takes at least 6 to 8 [transmission] generations before you have enough serious cases that people really pick it up. And we have been right on track with this in terms of number of cases.

In Wuhan, what data we have suggests the virus arrived around the middle of November. Yet it didn’t show up in a measurable way until around Christmastime because of the background of other respiratory illnesses, like influenza. In Seattle, the case came back from Wuhan in the middle of January, and then suddenly in the last week of February, Seattle blows.

20200317_FinancialTimescovidcasesMarch16.jpg

Have you seen the Financial Times graph of the growth of case counts in different countries, which shows that the growth rate in the U.S. is similar to Italy and Spain?

MO: I think a lot of those data are meaningless. It doesn’t really tell you about what’s happening, it tells you about what’s being detected. When you have small numbers, to triple and quadruple them is nothing. It’s all within the margin of testing error, meaning who’s getting tested and who’s not. We have a lot more cases in the United States than our testing would give us the ability to show.

So given that the testing in the United States is still so inadequate, what do we actually look at then, what are the indicators of the progress of the disease?

MO: I think that we will begin to catch up with hospitalizations and intensive care. I think that is really the tip of the iceberg that is exposing what is underneath it. So as goes intensive care bed needs, so goes the epidemic in that area. And deaths also, but deaths are more difficult because it’s almost three weeks of illness before the average patient dies. So you’re going to expect to see the number of fatal cases delayed relative to the actual number of new cases by onset.

Everybody is looking at stats on the number of cases, and for the reasons that you outlined, that seems like an inadequate way to understand the situation.

MO: It is, but it’s the best we have. But we need it to be better. The reason is that the decisions we need to make about mitigation need to be based on just picking up that curve as it starts to spin upwards.

I’ve been very concerned — you know, we know that mitigation fatigue is a big problem. We saw that in 2009 [the swine flu pandemic], people will wear masks or respirators for a couple of weeks, and people just get used to it, and they don’t comply. What I’m concerned about is having one monolithic recommendation in the United States, because we’re in this series of rolling epidemics. And if I say here in Minnesota, “Do this now” and then nothing happens for three weeks, people are going to say, “Wait a minute, what did you make us do?”

On the other hand, you don’t want to get in when your emergency rooms and intensive care units are overwhelmed. You want to be able to get in early and interrupt that. So testing really helps, because you really need to be picking up early cases. Then you really come forward with forcible recommendations, and explain why.

So the main purpose of the testing right now is to figure out where to target the most heavy mitigation measures?

MO: Yeah, yeah. It’s a combination. You want to look at influenza-like illness, and know is it flu or not flu, COVID-19 or not COVID-19. Then next you want to test people who are not anybody’s idea of at-risk. That’s where you’re going to pick up all the totally unsuspecting cases that have had contact with someone that no one knows about.

Then the other piece you want, of course, is the hospital setting. You want to know for sure how many people requiring medical care are infected. You also want to curb any potential sources that could cause transmission in the hospital to health care workers and others. That’s what’s happened on multiple occasions, with MERS and SARS.

What do you make of the uncertainties about re-infection? The UK right now is pursuing a herd immunity strategy, which assumes that people will become immune.

MO: That probably is right. I don’t think we have any evidence that this won’t produce some immunity. At least in the short term, for the next month [after recovery], you’re likely to be immune. I can’t say that with certainty, but when you look at the vigorous immune response we’ve seen, it’s probably there. But this is clearly one of the major questions we have to answer.

The more people we can put into labs who have been infected and recovered and have had natural immunization — that’s going to be really important. The other thing that does is provide the ideal worker. If you’ve already had it and fully recovered, you’re the one that can work in the hospital, health care settings, grocery stores, care for aging parents and not worry about being a source. So we really need to figure out how to deal with recovered individuals, who can really play an important role in responding to this epidemic.

 

Bumping because this is a good source. Osterholm.

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5 minutes ago, Penelope said:

I closed my bar yesterday. Moved my inventory today, and boarded up my windows. Now I’m fighting with my ex because he believes we should stay open as long as possible. And that I’m overreacting and jumping the gun. He’s an Aggie so… 

For good?

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40 minutes ago, Liquor and Poker said:

 

So on a whim I tried Instacart for the very same HEB last night.  Got a 3 pm delivery time today.  The ability to know when the person is shopping, chat with them in real time as they go down the aisles and pick substitutes myself is amazing.  Got everything on my list but frozen mixed vegetables, which suck anyway.  Delivery was an hour early, too.

And shopper/delivery woman was about 25 and more than reasonably attractive.

Yet the pics aren't showing up.  Please re-upload or prepare for neg fusillade. 

Edited by Beau Vine
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53 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

I understand perfectly. I am saying that all we did was shift it to the right. Have we established herd immunity? How is the virus less dangerous in six weeks as compared to now? 

The US has 4,661 people infected. Even if it's 466,100, that still leaves 99% of the population to infect. You didn't flatten anything.

Look, you're in shock and denial right now.

Quit being a little bitch, grow up and do what's right so we all don't die.

Okay?

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We closed down Natural Bridge Caverns yesterday. Laid off 20 seasonal employees we just hired to help out with the spring school group season, too. We are going to pay full-timers as long as we can, and we plan on getting some projects around the park done over the next couple of weeks. We are set up pretty well financially but nothing will last forever.

My daughter is a high school senior who is starting to realize that her senior year might be over. I don't have the heart to confirm that. With everything going on and the benefit of some age under my belt, I know that not having prom is not really a big deal. But for her, no prom, no graduation ceremony or party, no more soccer, no soccer playoffs, no chance to say goodbye to teachers and friends... it's gonna be a lot. Time for her and my son to gain some perspective on things, I suppose.

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A friend's wife is a social media influencer...  she tested got tested the other day after getting a call from her salon that a person who had the chair/stylist before her had tested positive.  She lives in SF and went through the ringer to get tested (no results yet).   I jokingly txted them that I was going to send them a care package of TP & Ramen.   Her response was "Please send TP!!!!"   Now I need to figure out if she was serious.

Man...sucks she didn’t have enough time during her incredibly busy days to get pack
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A bit about me: I’m a generally healthy, 44-year-old male, 153 lbs. (surely less now), 5’7”, no drugs , rarely drink, no health conditions other than exercise-induced asthma, which I manage with an inhaler. #COVID19 #coronavirus #LatsCovid19Journal
 
I completed the NYC Marathon twice - not the greatest times, but I did - and even now that I can’t run much (knees post-40), each week I still walk 25 miles and go to at least 3 high-intensity interval training classes at the gym. #LatsCovid19Journal #COVID19
 
In my current state, #LivingWithCovid, I am constantly weak and winded. I’m hooked up to oxygen 24/7. Even with oxygen, the simplest tasks are extremely difficult. #LatsCovid19Journal
 
This morning, this ex-marathoner could barely walk the five feet from the bed to the toilet - and I had to pee as quickly as possible, chest heaving with the labor of breathing, because I was going to collapse if I stood too long. #LatsCovid19Journal #covid19
 
I’m usually a fast eater (bad habit, I know). Today it took my 90 minutes to eat my lunch - because I kept getting winded. Who DOES that? I’m so weak, the fork wobbled each time I lifted it to my mouth. #LatsCovid19Journal #COVID19 #CoronavirusOutbreak
 
To be sure, #COVID19 hits different people differently #ymmv. I gave it to my husband, and for him it was a low-level flu that seems to have almost run its course after about a week. #coronavirus #CoronavirusOutbreak #LatsCovid19Journal
 
But for those who get severe cases, like me, it’s been hell. I’ve had 10 days & counting, with no real improvement, of fever, fatigue, joint aches, chills, cough, respiratory difficulty. I have never been this sick in my entire life. #LatsCovid19Journal
 
To paraphrase

, #COVID19 did not come to play with us hoes; it came to slay. Please keep me - and my very anxious family - in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you. #LatsCovid19Journal #CoronaVirusUpdates #Coronavirusnyc

 

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2 hours ago, stone oak said:

Yeah I'm taking PTO this week. My office here refused to shut down (O&G) and I can't work from home well without a huge workstation.

That makes me feel better re: allergies.

 

2 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

 I'm not taking any time off for anything if I can help it. Gotta show some value when the layoffs come for everyone.

I received word about an hour ago that I wouldn't be allowed to return to work until I had a doctors release after taking off today running a fever.  Apparently the main company has 4 employees in the Houston area that are causing concern.  I guess I'll have to find some place to get tested in Waco when the fever breaks.

Of all the damned places to get sick.

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4 minutes ago, Caver60 said:

We closed down Natural Bridge Caverns yesterday. Laid off 20 seasonal employees we just hired to help out with the spring school group season, too. We are going to pay full-timers as long as we can, and we plan on getting some projects around the park done over the next couple of weeks. We are set up pretty well financially but nothing will last forever.

My daughter is a high school senior who is starting to realize that her senior year might be over. I don't have the heart to confirm that. With everything going on and the benefit of some age under my belt, I know that not having prom is not really a big deal. But for her, no prom, no graduation ceremony or party, no more soccer, no soccer playoffs, no chance to say goodbye to teachers and friends... it's gonna be a lot. Time for her and my son to gain some perspective on things, I suppose.

She will need to grieve, seriously. It may not seem a big deal at our age but losing the spring of your senior year does indeed suck. And for a high school kid, it's a tremendous loss. You're doing the right thing in keeping perspective as the parent, but part of keeping perspective in this situation is going to be understanding that it's truly a loss that your daughter is suffering.

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1 minute ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:


Man...sucks she didn’t have enough time during her incredibly busy days to get pack

Yeah she texted back that they are fine.  I wasn't super worried, but they are under a lockdown and I consider them family.  Seems my friend is a bit of a closet prepper.

 

also add another one to the list

 

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2 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:


Potlucks are a mistake regardless.

Meh, free food for me in a normal time. Everyone brings enough food to feed at least 4 people, which means guess what? There's 4 times as much food as there needs to be. So I told my office manager that any time we have a potluck I will bring napkins to make sure there's less food waste. She actually agreed with me on the food waste so now I'm the designated napkin bringer.

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1 minute ago, Surly Bevo said:


Potlucks are a mistake regardless.

I had a team of folks here is S Florida...  We had everything from the receptionist who was a little old lady from Italy to professionals from All over S. America and the Caribbean.  Our potlucks were bangin'   I always had to make an appearance at most of those team building events, but I'd make room in my schedule for the potlucks.  So good...  

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2 hours ago, Loco said:

A friend's wife is a social media influencer...  she tested got tested the other day after getting a call from her salon that a person who had the chair/stylist before her had tested positive.  She lives in SF and went through the ringer to get tested (no results yet).   I jokingly txted them that I was going to send them a care package of TP & Ramen.   Her response was "Please send TP!!!!"   Now I need to figure out if she was serious.

Who did she influ? 

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13 minutes ago, Caver60 said:

We closed down Natural Bridge Caverns yesterday. Laid off 20 seasonal employees we just hired to help out with the spring school group season, too. We are going to pay full-timers as long as we can, and we plan on getting some projects around the park done over the next couple of weeks. We are set up pretty well financially but nothing will last forever.

My daughter is a high school senior who is starting to realize that her senior year might be over. I don't have the heart to confirm that. With everything going on and the benefit of some age under my belt, I know that not having prom is not really a big deal. But for her, no prom, no graduation ceremony or party, no more soccer, no soccer playoffs, no chance to say goodbye to teachers and friends... it's gonna be a lot. Time for her and my son to gain some perspective on things, I suppose.

That sucks, maybe you can apply for some of the short term business loans if needed?  I love that place

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https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/coronavirus-doctor-says-lung-scans-for-young-patients-were-nothing-short-of-terrifying/

Coronavirus doctor says lung scans for young patients were ‘nothing short of terrifying’

A Belgian doctor working to battle the coronavirus says he’s treated several seriously ill young patients — and their lung scans were “nothing short of terrifying,” according to reports.

Dr. Ignace Demeyer, who works at a hospital in Aalst, said an increasing number of people between the ages of 30 and 50 have presented with severe symptoms, despite having “blank medical records” that show no underlying conditions that would make them high-risk, the Brussels Times reported.

“They just walk in, but they are terribly affected by the virus,” Demeyer told the Belgian broadcaster VRT.

He said CT scans indicated they were suffering from severe lung damage.

“The images we took yesterday are nothing short of terrifying,” the doctor told the station.

“They are people who do not smoke, who have no other conditions such as diabetes or heart failure,” Demeyer added. (snip)

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7 minutes ago, Mikey4 said:

Holy shit, David used to have a poular law blog. I had no clue he had covid. That's scary as fuck.

 

 

no health conditions other than exercise-induced asthma, which I manage with an inhaler.

 

But then again:

 

NEW: Three of Dallas County’s new confirmed #Covid19 cases are currently hospitalized in critical condition. And two of those are young: one in their 20’s, another in their 30’s. The third critical patient is in their 60’s. No underlying health conditions. #WFAA #Coronavirus

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34 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

I think over the next 6 weeks or so we’re also going to see an emerging medical consensus on best recommendations and practices for preventing and managing acute cases.  Specifically I expect significant progress in determining when and how to use various med cocktails.  This also should involve international data and results sharing.

If we can blunt the morbidity and mortality significantly, then preventing infection doesn’t have to necessitate crippling societal closures and distancing.  There will be a trend towards a compromise similar to the one we have with influenza.

It is all but impossible to have any evidence-based best practices, no matter how many hospitalizations, in 6 weeks. 

Results sharing is extremely difficult across even county borders, much less state and international. 

I don't think we have a good chance of having any kind of solid protocols set up almost entirely in part due to the fact that the healthcare system is likely to be very close to capacity or over capacity in the next 6 weeks. Makes it very difficult to focus on tracking things and documenting results instead of focusing on keeping patients alive or focusing on keeping your PPE in place and not catching the virus. 

 

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  • hayden_horn changed the title to Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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