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[Quarque]

There are not enough tests available for lack of materials. 

This might have something to do with China ramping up it's testing capacity to 1.5 million a day a few weeks ago, using up all global supplies.

Is it fair to blame China for lack of testing materials? Or are Western countries to blame themselves for not ramping up production in time? In South-Korea they somehow managed what the West could not: to test every person who sneezes.

[martinuzz]

We have no production of testing materials (main shortages are in lysis fluids, test tube racks, plastic microplatforms to isolate RNA, pipette tips and waddings) and over here, testing materials are an import product.
Hard to ramp up production if you don't have the factories that make them in the first place.
They're also very specific and specialized goods. You can't just easily retool a factory to make them, that takes weeks if not months.

[wierd]

South Korea has a functioning healthcare system that is not saturated with blood sucking leeches, nor a shitload of old fuck politicians chanting in unison while plugging their fucking ears asserting that a proper healthcare system is just not feasible nor affordable (OR-- worse yet, chanting denials that there are problems with the US healthcare model.)

So, basically, SK succeeds where we in the US fails, because they have their fucking act together, and we don't. Amazing how that works.

Meanwhile, we have old people refusing to stay home, thinking rules do not apply to them, that they are magical, that the disease will not get them, that they cannot be spreading it unknowingly, et al--- and people getting infected in fucking droves.

GO TEAM WESTERN CULTURE. HURRAH.
/s

[martinuzz]

Also I am not blaming China, I am just acknowledging a fact.
By the time the virus started hitting the western world, China had ramped up testing so much that rescources were already scarce..

Can't blame them for that, but we hardly can blame ourselves either, because the scale of this pandemic has not been seen before in history.
So saying 'this is how we should have done it' is just silly. It has never been an option.

[wierd]

No, it has.

1918 spanish flu.


We just did not have testing equipment, nor as advanced medicine then.  similar fatality rates though.  We just have a freaking shitload more total people, and so total deaths are higher.  Proportional percentages, the estimated fatality rates are similar. (~2%)



Some key datapoints

Spanish Flu:
    Key symptoms: fever, nausea, aches, diarrhea
    First detection: March 1918
    Global cases: 500 million
    Global deaths: over 50 million (675,000 in the United States); the death rate was around 2 percent
    Transmission: spread through respiratory droplets
    Most affected groups: otherwise healthy adults ages 20 to 40
    Treatments available: none; antibiotics or antivirals did not yet exist
    Vaccines available: none
    End of pandemic: summer 1919; mostly due to deaths and higher immunity levels


Novel COVID 19
    Key symptoms: cough, fever, shortness of breath; 80 percent of cases are mild
    First detection: December 2019 in Wuhan, China
    Global cases to date: Over 127,000 cases
    Global deaths to date: Over 4,700; the global death rate is estimated at 3.4 percentTrusted Source, but certain areas are seeing a death rate of just 0.4 percent
    Transmission: spreads through respiratory droplets along with feces and other bodily secretions; each person passes it to 2.2 others which will likely fall as containment and quarantine efforts increase
    Most affected groups: adults over 65 with underlying health conditions; children seem to be spared and are experiencing milder symptoms (in China, children account for just 2.4 percent of cases)
    Treatments available: none; supportive care is provided, pain relievers and fever reducers can alleviate symptoms, and antibiotics can help treat secondary bacterial pneumonia and antivirals used with other viruses are being administered to help with recovery
    Vaccines available: none yet; a vaccine will likely be ready in about one year

[martinuzz]

Okay, okay, the worst pandemic any of us have ever seen.
There aren't many people from 1918 around these days, let alone anyone old enough in that time to have experienced it.
Yesterday I saw someone in the supermarket wearing a face mask. Actually the first person I ever saw irl wearing such a thing. I was tempted to hit him in the face and tell him to donate it to the hospital, but I let it pass.

[martinuzz]

Don't hold your breath for a vaccine being ready in about a year.
There might never be a vaccine.
There's still no vaccines for many other corona virusses, like the ones responsible for common cold.

[Quarque]

Don't hold your breath for a vaccine being ready in about a year.

Holding your breath is not advisable in any case.

(sorry, could not resist making bad joke)

In any case, what you're saying about China buying up supplies sounds plausible, but I am hesitant to believe that this is the real reason for the current lack of tests without more evidence. Do you have a link, maybe?

I live in Holland, too. I have long been sceptical about the severity of this virus, because I got my information from the RIVM. I get the impression they have underestimated the problem. Or perhaps they weren't effective in getting politicians to get to act in time, I'm not sure. But looking at the response from the West as a whole reminds me of this scene from Yes, Minister:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak

edit, for those who don't like clicking links, the conversation:

Sir Richard Wharton: “In stage one, we say nothing is going to happen.”
Sir Humphrey Appleby: “Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.”
Sir Richard Wharton: “In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do.”
Sir Humphrey Appleby: “Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.”

[itisnotlogical]

Okay, okay, the worst pandemic any of us have ever seen.
There aren't many people from 1918 around these days, let alone anyone old enough in that time to have experienced it.
Yesterday I saw someone in the supermarket wearing a face mask. Actually the first person I ever saw irl wearing such a thing. I was tempted to hit him in the face and tell him to donate it to the hospital, but I let it pass.

I mean, he could be immunocompromised. Unless there's a miraculous change in my labs tomorrow, it's so bad that I basically only leave the house for doctor's appointments or if it's on fire. On the outside I look healthy but I am extremely at risk, not just from coronavirus. I'm lucky that I have people around to go outside for me, the person you mention may not be.

[delphonso]

Vaccines rely on mutation. Some other coronaviruses mutate too quickly to vaccinate for. The flu (not a coronavirus) is just on the edge of being a candidate for vaccine. Covid19 looks to be pretty stable, meaning a vaccine is possible by what we know now. It also puts pressure to develop one, since if it mutates to be a quick mutator, then vaccines aren't an option any more.

[martinuzz]

In any case, what you're saying about China buying up supplies sounds plausible, but I am hesitant to believe that this is the real reason for the current lack of tests without more evidence. Do you have a link, maybe?

De Volkskrant reported two - three weeks ago that China had ramped up testing capacity to 1.5 million per day.
China didn't need to buy up the supplies, they produce them. They just stopped export.
Right now they are exporting some materials again, but by far not enough to cope with demand.
In Europe, Germany also has some production capacity, but not enough for sharing more than a 'druppel op een gloeiende plaat'.
As it stands, we have just enough tests to test medical staff with mild symptoms, and patients with severe symptoms. Nowhere near enough to start testing the general population in any case.

[Reelya]

Australia's government has outright ordered a whole range of types of business to close down now: pubs, clubs, gyms, cinemas etc.

Meanwhile in the USA, over 9000 new cases in a day, hitting 33546, so the saturday slowdown was just a temporary hiccup on the shoot for the moon for cases. USA is now a fairly solid #3 for cases, behind only China and Italy. USA should shoot past China this week.

So, uh ... I was saying 10,000 by the weekend, but that was way off: it's gonna be around 40-45000.

If the same exponential growth rate continues from the past 2 week period, then I have to point out that you'll be hitting 2 million confirmed cases two Saturdays from now, and basically half the country in a month. But that would really only be constrained by the number of tests you can administer.

BTW I've heard news about Americans who've dropped dead from the virus in their own homes waiting for the test results. That's good, I guess: saves a hospital bed. After all, home healthcare is the best healthcare!

[ChairmanPoo]

This probably has been listed here already

How to make your own facemask. This thing was made by Shenzen's university

https://youtu.be/aNjpH5lBZ8w

My take is that every bit helps. So if you don't have one, even a DIY hack might lessen your odds.
And if you already have it and dont know it, it will halt spread


By the way: remember: in hospitals what they need are FFP2 and 3 masks. Don't freak out at people with regular masks. For that matter dont freak out at the odd one who was lucky enough to get a FFP3 mask, as a single one doesnt change anything, what are needed are regular shipments

[wierd]

Thats like hardware store grade.

(wonders if hardware store grade would work..)

[TamerVirus]

Meanwhile in the USA, over 9000 new cases in a day

Most of the case numbers are coming from New York. Out of about 35,000 total cases in the US 16,900 cases are New York cases. In second place is Washington state, with about 2,000 cases.
The state has been more on the ball with testing folk then other states, so the numbers reflect that.
So does the sheer density of Manhattan+ being an international travel hub.
All nonessential are at 100% workplace work from home mandate as of last night but there were still swaths of people congregating in parks like nothing was happening.
Meanwhile, the Army Corp of Engineers are turning the Javits convention center (Comic Con and the Auto Show were held here) into a thousand bed field hospital .