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[TamerVirus]

We’re trying to flatten the curve in the US, but flattening the curve doesn’t work if you infect and incapacitate all the frontline medical staff through lack of protective equipment or lack of guidelines or having them still think ‘It’s just the flu, bro’ and not take the threat seriously.

[Il Palazzo]

or lack of guidelines

Why do you say that?

[McTraveller]

See Italy. The main fear is that within week or two many people at the same time will need medical attention, more than is available.

And if it's really this "everywhere", it does not mean that everyone is ill. But it soon may happen (OK, not everyone but say 50% of population).

Is it possible (or reasonable) to extrapolate Italy (or any country) as a general case, rather than due to a specific cause?  Or is Italy some kind of special outlier?

I work professionally in a field that has to understand the difference between common-cause (those that effect a population purely randomly) and special-cause (effects are non-random) events.  So naturally I try to understand both sampling biases and attempts to categorize things as truly random versus non-random.  Note that non-random doesn't mean "not probabilistic" of course...

Yes Italy does seem to represent "worst case" at the moment.  But what is the likelihood that any particular geography will be at (or exceed) the current worst case?  Even in the US, it's likely to be very different per urban area.  When every urban area thinks they are going to be the worst, that's not reasonable...

I guess in my mind there's a difference in having a plan in case things are worst case versus assuming that the worst case is inevitable.  The former is prudence, the latter leads to hysteria.  I just want peace!

[Quarque]

Martinuzz, as I'm from Holland too, can you believe the response from our government?

The way I see it, they're botching it horribly.

- Almost no one is being tested anymore. There are not nearly enough testing materials. Wait, wasn´t that why people were bashing Trump?
- We officially gave up on containment and try to mitigate instead, against WHO advice.
- Mitigation rules are soft too. Schools not closed, no enforcing, just advice to stay home "if you feel sick". Employers can still demand that you keep working if you have, say, a cough.
- Oh, and our Intensive Care capacity per capita is among the lowest in Europe.

In 2-3 weeks, we're going to make Italy look like a great place to be. 

[Frumple]

I guess in my mind there's a difference in having a plan in case things are worst case versus assuming that the worst case is inevitable.  The former is prudence, the latter leads to hysteria.  I just want peace!

Dude, you're not going to get peace when something that's best case multiple times as deadly as the flu is gearing up to scythe its way through the country's elderly lol

[McTraveller]

By peace I mean something like this quote from a 20th-century prophet.  You can make the appropriate substitutions.

On Living in an Atomic Age (1948)
If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They might break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

[mko]

See Italy. The main fear is that within week or two many people at the same time will need medical attention, more than is available.

And if it's really this "everywhere", it does not mean that everyone is ill. But it soon may happen (OK, not everyone but say 50% of population).

Is it possible (or reasonable) to extrapolate Italy (or any country) as a general case, rather than due to a specific cause?  Or is Italy some kind of special outlier?

AFAIK there are no indicators that Italy is very unusually susceptible. More of old people, more smokers is making situation worse, but it is not going to be "just flu" elsewhere (and flu kills 300k-600k people per year https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1213-flu-death-estimate.html ).

Official confirmed case number is not worth much, but growth appears to be quite similar in different countries. It seems to indicate that infection rate may be similar.

Yes Italy does seem to represent "worst case" at the moment.  But what is the likelihood that any particular geography will be at (or exceed) the current worst case?  Even in the US, it's likely to be very different per urban area.  When every urban area thinks they are going to be the worst, that's not reasonable...

Even something similar to Italy would be bad.

Number of recorded cases is growing, on average by 17% per day (note, it indicates also growing test capacity). They reached 1400 confirmed deaths, not sure what is current expected death count. (for comparison - each year 3300 die in Italy in traffic accidents, 650 000 die in total, so even with extreme reaction that was delayed we can expect noticeable increase in death rate).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy#Vital_statistics_since_1900[36][37][38]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Italy

I guess in my mind there's a difference in having a plan in case things are worst case versus assuming that the worst case is inevitable.  The former is prudence, the latter leads to hysteria.  I just want peace!

I think that current attempts is planning to avoid or reduce worst case. Even UK in their substandard "plan" that got scrapped almost immediately was trying to avoid the worst.


----

(removed some posts.  three of you should refamiliarize yourself with the forum guidelines.)

Thanks! (hopefully none was mine)

[ChairmanPoo]

I've already before. The reason why Italy is much more "severe" is because they don't have corrupt institutions (atleast relatively) like the CCP and even Iran. They aren't hiding the death count/fibbing numbers to save face. Whats happening in Italy happened in Wuhan already. We should've heeded what was happening in China since the beginning. I feel very scared for Italy. They should've never been caught up in all this. 

In Spain we don't have the same severity rate, either. Testing policy is the same as Italy.
Numbers dont fit but I dont want to make big assumptions about doctored numbers just yet.

  On the other hand since we've been lied to by everyone about everything so far I'd not be too surprised either. Yesterday news made me think of North Korean propaganda reels.

[TamerVirus]

or lack of guidelines

Why do you say that?

Nurses have come out on social media and on the news complaining about a lack of protocol in treating Covid19 patients such as what protective measures to take, isolation set up and general confusion.

https://www.nytimes.com./2020/03/05/us/coronavirus-nurses.html
https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/survey-nations-frontline-registered-nurses-shows-hospitals-unprepared-covid-19

But this is the US, so different hospitals have different levels of preparation

[ChairmanPoo]

Re: different levels of preparation is true from everywhere. In Spain the hospitals are not the same in the north and the south. For that matter neither are they in Italy. Lombardy used to be state of the art.

People *are* the same though. Despite all that has happened in the last 48 hours you still see people out partying or jogging.

[ChairmanPoo]

Another thing: in some regions in Spain, particularily Madrid which is the worst hit, they're not testing people anymore. Instead anyone with compatible symptoms will be regarded as a case.

Two problems with this:
- if we do this, then you might list other diseases (milder or more severe) as covid. We wont know how accurate severity reports are.

- what about treatment? Even if you disregard specific agents showing up, there *are* things you can try. Are we going to treat anyone with severe pneumonia as if it was covid?

[martinuzz]

Doctors in my region warned today that '50% of all corona patients that need ICU admission are below the age of 50. Do not believe that this virus is only dangerous to the elderly and sickly.'

[Footkerchief]

I've already before. The reason why Italy is much more "severe" is because they don't have corrupt institutions (atleast relatively) like the CCP and even Iran. They aren't hiding the death count/fibbing numbers to save face. Whats happening in Italy happened in Wuhan already. We should've heeded what was happening in China since the beginning. I feel very scared for Italy. They should've never been caught up in all this. 

The reason Italy has higher death counts than China is that China built hospitals overnight, while Italy ran out of hospital beds and is now forced to leave at-risk patients to die.

[ChairmanPoo]

There´s so much FUD that it´s not even funny. The problem is that most official reports were FUD too.

I think I´m losing the grip TBH.

The reason Italy has higher death counts than China is that China built hospitals overnight and Italy did not.

THat´s what everyone assumed. But it doesn´t seem to be the case. It´s not just that their system is completelly bust by now. It´s that, at least going by the data, they have more severe cases than anywhere else.  Nobody knows why.

Of course it *could* be that everyone else is fudging their numbers. But when there is one odd man out I think it´s not unlikely there´s something unusual we´re not noticing about what goes on in ITaly

[ChairmanPoo]

I was actually discussing this stuff with a friend the other day. Sometimes you see odd population quirks in how people react to certain things. For instance: in my experience steroid induced mania was more of an anecdote than a real problem, when I was working in Spain. In Ireland however they did have odd reactions to them, every now and then. I dont know why, best guess is that since it could be driven by the number of steroid receptors in the amygdala, there is some  weird population drift thing at play.  There´s probably a PhD for someone concerning this.

Likewise, it could be that in Italy there´s some weird overexpression of the virus receptor. WHo knows.

I guess we´ll find out.