Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ChairmanPoo]

Amputation is a last resort, not the first thing you do because you have a cut and it might get infected with gangrene which can kill you and then say "oh well turns out that was overkill. Sorry."

This is not a last resort here. Thats the approach every western european nation took, and we are all struggling now. The latter you do it, the worse it is.

The problem with epidemic prevention is that if it works it always looks excessive. Because it worked.

Social distancing does work, yes, but we've gone way beyond social distancing to forced isolation.  Can we not see the difference there?  In some places the force has been with physical force, but even worse are the places now where the forcing is "cultural" where people are shaming each other for trying to live somewhat normally.

It's a collective threat. Anyone breaking ranks is being utterly irresponsible. Threatening the lives of thousands.

PREVIEW: Where the heck do you get that it is inevitable that this will kill twice as many people per year (in the UK) as WWII?  Is this a real projection or a worst-case projection?

It's not inevitable. It's what happens if you let the disease run it's course.
It's not just another flu. Noone has immunity. It might be mild for most of us, maybe even the vast majority of us.  But it doesn't stop  or get delayed because there is no herd immunity.

But it can be avoided, IF we do lockdowns.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We're doing just fine here in Sweden

Though most of continental Europe had regained control of civil society by mid-summer, the Scandinavian nations and most notably Sweden remained in a state of unrest due to lower temperatures, allowing the virus to thrive year-round. Although the hastily formed EU Army attempted to restore order, lack of experience and extreme hostility from a formerly peaceful society ultimately lead to the semi-acciental Burning of Stockholm and the abandonment of the region to statelessness as the winter returned, and with it the newly-mutated SARS-Cov-3.

[scriver]

Burning Stockholm would benefit all parties. It's been five hundred years, I say let the purge come!

[Zangi]

If 1 million people gets Covid19 and 5% of that 1 million needs to be hospitalized.  That is 50k people taking up hospital bed space.

It gets worse as more people get Covid19.  The actual % of people that need to be hospitalized might be in the ball park of 20%.

[Dostoevsky]

If 1 million people gets Covid19 and 5% of that 1 million needs to be hospitalized.  That is 50k people taking up hospital bed space.

It gets worse as more people get Covid19.  The actual % of people that need to be hospitalized might be in the ball park of 20%.

And, to put that in context, in my local region (in a major US metropolitan area, I should add) that has well over a million people we have less than a thousand ICUs in capacity. ICU is more intensive than just a hospital bed, yes, but the ICU rate for this virus is not low.

Edit: To get a bit at the Imperial College study, by my read one of the major causes of death is lack of capacity - people who need intensive care / hospital care unable to get it, and thus die at frightening rates. Their projection for total US deaths if we all do proper isolation is 'only' in the thousands, but that isolation would need to be done until we get a vaccine - which could be over a year.

[martinuzz]

475 new dead in Italy in one day.

[ChairmanPoo]

I dont think the idea is to hold isolation until a vaccine. I think the idea is to hold isolation until most infections die down and then monitor closely to restart it if it peaks again.

Realistically speaking I dont think we have the xapacity to sustain a lockdown for a year. It will hurt to do it for a couple of months. In fact I think we'll have to figure out something fast to try to avoid future lockdowns

[Dostoevsky]

I dont think the idea is to hold isolation until a vaccine. I think the idea is to hold isolation until most infections die down and then monitor closely to restart it if it peaks again.

Realistically speaking I dont think we have the xapacity to sustain a lockdown for a year. It will hurt to do it for a couple of months. In fact I think we'll have to figure out something fast to try to avoid future lockdowns

Yeah, I agree with all that. (That said, I work in politics and the environment, not medicine, so take my word with a grain of salt.) The paper does express some evidence/hope of a middle ground of managed periods out of isolation, but neither seems at all realistic to do at a national scale for over a year.

Speaking of which, things are definitely weird in the halls of U.S. Congress.

[Naturegirl1999]

I dont think the idea is to hold isolation until a vaccine. I think the idea is to hold isolation until most infections die down and then monitor closely to restart it if it peaks again.

Realistically speaking I dont think we have the xapacity to sustain a lockdown for a year. It will hurt to do it for a couple of months. In fact I think we'll have to figure out something fast to try to avoid future lockdowns

Yeah, I agree with all that. (That said, I work in politics and the environment, not medicine, so take my word with a grain of salt.) The paper does express some evidence/hope of a middle ground of managed periods out of isolation, but neither seems at all realistic to do at a national scale for over a year.

Speaking of which, things are definitely weird in the halls of U.S. Congress.

weird how?

[McTraveller]

Noone has immunity.

Honest academic question: Aren't there "natural" immunities that may be expected in some portion of the population?  I mean even if exposed, with no vaccine or whatever, is it physically possible to have 100% infection rate?

[Dostoevsky]

weird how?

Usual politics upended, at least for the short term. All the assumptions about the upcoming next 6-18 months are being entirely replaced with an extremely different world, and even that changes by the day.

As a small example (at least briefly, before 'clarifying' remarks) some of the most conservative Senators touted very leftward ideas. Few people seem to have a really strong hold on what to do.

That said, there is certainly some level of normalcy - everybody wants a ride on the upcoming stimulus train, of course.

[martinuzz]

I dont think the idea is to hold isolation until a vaccine. I think the idea is to hold isolation until most infections die down and then monitor closely to restart it if it peaks again.

Realistically speaking I dont think we have the xapacity to sustain a lockdown for a year. It will hurt to do it for a couple of months. In fact I think we'll have to figure out something fast to try to avoid future lockdowns

Build more ICUs and train more existing medical staff to operate them would be a good start.
I hope our governments don't spend all their funds on compensating company losses, but invest in majorly expanding disease control capacity as well.
And general access to healthcare for those countries who don't have that like the US.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Noone has immunity.

Honest academic question: Aren't there "natural" immunities that may be expected in some portion of the population?  I mean even if exposed, with no vaccine or whatever, is it physically possible to have 100% infection rate?

This does happen sometimes, but the two big examples are the anti-Black Death gene which also happens to confer resistance to HIV and sickle cell disorder conveying resistance to malaria. As you can see, both these cases are long term adaptations to long term human diseases - even including a trait that is actively detrimental, just not more detrimental than malaria.

For a novel disease, its going to be a much smaller segment of the population if any segment at all which has a process mutation that happens to screw Covid's reproductive cycle somehow. Evolution would do the work eventually, but unless we find such a case and it's something we can induce in people, it's of no use.

[scriver]

Crisis over everybody! Absolute Vodka to save humanity with Absolute Alco-Gel

[andrea]

Regarding the potential for death of this virus compared to other causes found in western societies:

I'd like to remind people that in the most affected areas in Italy, mortuaries and funeral homes are collapsing just as much as hospitals.