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


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39 minutes ago, Somnio said:

My new projection is 2.5 billion infected, with 20% needing hospitalization.

Obviously there are not enough hospitals in the world for 500 million patients.

Unfortunately this will cause the death rate to rise substantially higher, though the virus itself will not inherently be anymore dangerous.  Our health care system will simply be unable to cope.

So, I believe the total deaths will end up being around 100 million worldwide.

These numbers would mean it infected the same percentage of the world's population as Spanish Flu (1/3), but have a substantially lower death rate (4% vs 10%).

Who the fuck am I to make such projections?  Nobody.

But I believe we are at the beginning of a very dark time, and the numbers I posted while shocking are very fucking possible.

Hopefully I'm full of shit, and it just disappears any day now like a miracle.

2.5 billion infected seems pretty high.  Is it backcountry folks or just lucky people who miss out at that point?

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I'm with @Brisketexan in that I don't think anyone can accurately predict the magnitude of the virus' impact here in the US, but -- and it is a big old Sir Mixalot but -- we've seen the healthcare system of the world's 2nd largest economy get overwhelmed by the coronavirus in about two months.  It is now in every continent, and we are seeing the early patterns from China starting to repeat elsewhere, including in first world Italy.  And we've seen what is likely the first known case of local person-to-person transmission recently here in the US.

While I certainly hope it plays out differently, I think it is foolish to think there is no way we could experience a disruption of goods and services that results in more death than the actual disease associated with the virus.

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1 hour ago, triplehorn said:

Keep an eye on the ‘case hospitalization rate’ which could be an order of magnitude higher than case death rate.  That’s the metric that could overwhelm our system.  It would also affect many others needing urgent treatment for the full array of non-covid medical needs.

This is the problem.  Even if Austin only gets 20,000 - 40,000 cases, even a low-end of 10% hospitalization rate could strain, even overwhelm our hospitals, especially since that 10% is most likely going to be in the hospital for 2-3 weeks.   There’s no way we have the PPE gear to handle even 500 patients for 2-3 weeks.   

Back in December, Austin Regional Clinic alone diagnosed 3,000 cases of flu.   That’s just one network in Austin.   Now we have something that spreads even more easily than the flu, and you can spread it without symptoms.  

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1 minute ago, Goredho said:

It is now in every continent, and we are seeing the early patterns from China starting to repeat elsewhere, including in first world Italy

Some of the Italian hospitals are having to shuffle patients to other towns, because they can’t handle it.  Italy is a good one to watch for what could happen here.  What happens if a city in Texas gets hit hard, shifts patients to other cities, and then those cities get it.  

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Just something to consider: this morning the topic of of the corona virus came up in our morning safety meeting with the hourly guys. After the meeting, one of the salary folks says off handily that his cousin just came back from China where she is a teacher. He went on to say that not long after she got back, she became ill. Not long after that, her family became ill as well.
I looked at him like this:
4bfb0bdd3e8282fe4b616f6d42b83e3a.jpg
He finally realized what the potential implications were and that she might have brought the corona virus back with her. These are people who most likely did not go to the doctor or if they did they would not have mentioned that their relative just got back from China and became ill. At this point the shit is here and we will only hear about the extremely ill/dead.

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11 minutes ago, EE2B said:

Just something to consider: this morning the topic of of the corona virus came up in our morning safety meeting with the hourly guys. After the meeting, one of the salary folks says off handily that his cousin just came back from China where she is a teacher. He went on to say that not long after she got back, she became ill. Not long after that, her family became ill as well.
I looked at him like this:
4bfb0bdd3e8282fe4b616f6d42b83e3a.jpg
He finally realized what the potential implications were and that she might have brought the corona virus back with her. These are people who most likely did not go to the doctor or if they did they would not have mentioned that their relative just got back from China and became ill. At this point the shit is here and we will only hear about the extremely ill/dead.

Clearly you’ll be dead by Monday.

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20 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

This is the problem.  Even if Austin only gets 20,000 - 40,000 cases, even a low-end of 10% hospitalization rate could strain, even overwhelm our hospitals, especially since that 10% is most likely going to be in the hospital for 2-3 weeks.   There’s no way we have the PPE gear to handle even 500 patients for 2-3 weeks.   

Back in December, Austin Regional Clinic alone diagnosed 3,000 cases of flu.   That’s just one network in Austin.   Now we have something that spreads even more easily than the flu, and you can spread it without symptoms.  

I don’t think you can just say that 10% is a ‘low end’ number just because. Change it to 1% and all of a sudden it’s not nearly as big of a deal. 
 

I don’t think there’s currently anything to indicate 10% versus any other number so I don’t disagree with the analysis, but the ‘low-end’ part makes it sound like it’s somehow more realistic than it is. 

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3 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

You know why I miss print newspapers?  Because now that these early reports are all online, we won't have the cool visual of post-apocalyptic deserted streets, with newspaper blowing through them, and the camera focuses on one old front page, blown up against a tree, with a headline of something like "Government officials urge population to stay calm, as the new super-bug virus is fully contained," or "New mystery virus appears to be spreading: second local man diagnosed with illness."

Instead, we'll just see an abandoned coffee shop with a dead laptop on a table.  That's boring.

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52 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 Italy is a good one to watch for what could happen here.  

Except that Italy actually had at least some ability to test at a relative scale.  We STILL don't.  For all we know we're already further along than Italy and it's masking as ordinary flu all over the country.  We should have been "surveillance screening" at scale 2+ weeks ago in several major cities (i.e., anyone with a fever at multiple major hospitals is tested).  Instead, our government completely fucked up the test (they apparently for some reason decided to develop independently instead of in concert with the WHO) and we have no fucking idea of the extent of the spread.  Hopefully we got lucky and it's relatively low at the moment, but there I'll lay odds as soon as tests are actually up and running we see a lot of cases. It's inexcusable to not know the answer though.  You expect this shit when dealing with morons at the DMV but not the CDC.

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FWIW, my companies 401K manager called today just to check in for obvious reasons. I'm not flustered by the market and moat of my guys aren't remotely aware of it, so I thanked him for checking in but said he probably had plenty of freakouts to deal with and and I wouldn't hold him up. One thing he did mention offhand is one of their clients is the CEO of a testing company making tests for the virus. Their projection was 10,000 cases in the US, over the next two months, tapering off into Spring.

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10 minutes ago, G650 said:

FWIW, my companies 401K manager called today just to check in for obvious reasons. I'm not flustered by the market and moat of my guys aren't remotely aware of it, so I thanked him for checking in but said he probably had plenty of freakouts to deal with and and I wouldn't hold him up. One thing he did mention offhand is one of their clients is the CEO of a testing company making tests for the virus. Their projection was 10,000 cases in the US, over the next two months, tapering off into Spring.

That seems really low.

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10 minutes ago, G650 said:

FWIW, my companies 401K manager called today just to check in for obvious reasons. I'm not flustered by the market and moat of my guys aren't remotely aware of it, so I thanked him for checking in but said he probably had plenty of freakouts to deal with and and I wouldn't hold him up. One thing he did mention offhand is one of their clients is the CEO of a testing company making tests for the virus. Their projection was 10,000 cases in the US, over the next two months, tapering off into Spring.

Now, is the “tapering off into spring” based on actual evidence or just wishful thinking?

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The epedimiologists at work have looked pale and dead eyed all week. I wonder if it is exhaustion or the knowledge of impending doom. Their floor is so quiet all you hear is the tapping of keyboards and an occasional "fuuuuuuu".

If they are all gone when I come into work one day, thats when its time to shag ass.

Edited by MissingInAction
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23 minutes ago, Skipper said:

Except that Italy actually had at least some ability to test at a relative scale.  We STILL don't.  For all we know we're already further along than Italy and it's masking as ordinary flu all over the country.  We should have been "surveillance screening" at scale 2+ weeks ago in several major cities (i.e., anyone with a fever at multiple major hospitals is tested).  Instead, our government completely fucked up the test (they apparently for some reason decided to develop independently instead of in concert with the WHO) and we have no fucking idea of the extent of the spread.  Hopefully we got lucky and it's relatively low at the moment, but there I'll lay odds as soon as tests are actually up and running we see a lot of cases. It's inexcusable to not know the answer though.  You expect this shit when dealing with morons at the DMV but not the CDC.

A response to this best belongs on the Coronavirus thread in the Politics section really, because the CDC was hamstrung from the beginning.

 

One topic that has come up is the affect upon children does not seem to be as great as the elderly. I've been wondering about the pregnant women who contract the virus, given some of the ways it behaves and its greater incidence of severity in males.

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FWIW, my companies 401K manager called today just to check in for obvious reasons. I'm not flustered by the market and moat of my guys aren't remotely aware of it, so I thanked him for checking in but said he probably had plenty of freakouts to deal with and and I wouldn't hold him up. One thing he did mention offhand is one of their clients is the CEO of a testing company making tests for the virus. Their projection was 10,000 cases in the US, over the next two months, tapering off into Spring.

Great. Wtf am I going to do with 250 n95 masks
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FWIW, my companies 401K manager called today just to check in for obvious reasons. I'm not flustered by the market and moat of my guys aren't remotely aware of it, so I thanked him for checking in but said he probably had plenty of freakouts to deal with and and I wouldn't hold him up. One thing he did mention offhand is one of their clients is the CEO of a testing company making tests for the virus. Their projection was 10,000 cases in the US, over the next two months, tapering off into Spring.
I'd take that. Can we get that in writing?
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1 hour ago, MissingInAction said:

I want to know about anyone who has been in the middle of an outbreak and didn't catch it. If such people exist we need to find them and develop a vaccine from their blood.

 

 

Edited by Txzen
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Another less pessimistic projection phrased differently still with many millions of deaths:

This is all a bunch of overhyped bullshit.

The vast majority of people won't even catch it!

Even if they do it's not even serious for all but a small percentage!

And even if you do catch it, and it turns into a serious case, you're more than likely not going to die!

It really is not a big deal!

 

Now let's rehash that....

 

The vast majority of people won't even catch it!

(80% won't catch it!  That means "only" 1.5 Billion cases)

 

Even if they do it's not even serious for all but a small percentage!

(It's really not any worse than the flu for 90%!  That means "only" 150 Million need to be in the hospital.)

 

And even if you do catch it, and it turns into a serious case, you're more than likely not going to die!

(99 out of 100 of those infected live to see another day!  This is hardly even worse than the flu!  Stop panicking!  That means "only" 15 Million deaths.)

 

 

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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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