Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic

[Aleh]

Being incredibly blunt for a minute? Not so much an issue with this disease. The number of dead working adults we'd get if everyone caught this disease would be negligible.

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... hahahahahaha. No. As I've repeatedly mentioned before, it doesn't work that way.

Stop thinking of death and recovery as a binary thing. A significant portion of the people who survive have -- and will have -- long-term problems as a result. Here: a virologist talking about his experience with COVID... and just what "survival" means. And then there's shit like this.

The economic damage in the case you're talking about would be horrific.

 

[TanaNari]

A significant portion of the people who survive

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Less than a fragment of a percent, thus far, most of whom are already on the older side. Admittedly, that's going to total in the thousands by the time this is over.

And then there's shit like this.

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Yeah... so significant that your own article isn't even willing to say conclusively that it's COVID-related at this point.

 

[OverMaster]

... hahahahahaha. No. As I've repeatedly mentioned before, it doesn't work that way.

Stop thinking of death and recovery as a binary thing. A significant portion of the people who survive have -- and will have -- long-term problems as a result. Here: a virologist talking about his experience with COVID... and just what "survival" means. And then there's shit like this.

The economic damage in the case you're talking about would be horrific.

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... well. We'd better hope the 'significant portion' is not so 'significant' after all, because remember, odds are most of us will catch this sooner or later. Again, for the most part the objective of the lockdowns is to stall and slow down the contagion, not to stop it. With a vaccine a year or two away at best, in the really long term 'never getting it at all' may not be a choice for most people.

If a really wide chunk of those who contract this now or months from now display that amount of longterm damage, that might bring unpredictable amounts of damage to mankind all across the globe.

The Commission is strongly committed to supporting the development of a vaccine. Let's be clear: Without a coronavirus vaccine, we will never be able to live normally again. The only real exit strategy from this crisis is a vaccine that can be rolled out worldwide. That means producing billions of doses of it, which, in itself, is a huge challenge in terms of manufacturing logistics. And despite the efforts, it is still not even certain that developing a COVID-19 vaccine is possible.

(...)

Anyway, I remain a born optimist. And now that I have faced death, my tolerance levels for nonsense and bullshit have gone down even more than before. So, I continue calmly and enthusiastically, although more selectively than before my illness."

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This is a fucking weird kind of 'optimist'.

What the fuck does he expect us to do if a vaccine is never found then?

 

[MadGreenSon]

... well. We'd better hope the 'significant portion' is not so 'significant' after all, because remember, odds are most of us will catch this sooner or later. Again, for the most part the objective of the lockdowns is to stall and slow down the contagion, not to stop it. With a vaccine a year or two away at best, in the really long term 'never getting it at all' may not be a choice for most people.

If a really wide chunk of those who contract this now or months from now display that amount of longterm damage, that might bring unpredictable amounts of damage to mankind all across the globe.



This is a fucking weird kind of 'optimist'.

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Hope for the best, even if "the best" is kinda weird and prepare for the worst, right?

 

[TanaNari]

With a vaccine a year or two away at best, in the really long term 'never getting it at all' may not be a choice for most people.

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Oxford has already begun a trial run of its vaccine (which is already proven effective in animals) with its first 500 human recipients.

The advantage to this disease over most others is that this is a SARS variant, and the vast majority of the research was completed years ago. We could have had this vaccine in 2015 if people learned their fucking lesson after the last three SARS outbreaks.

Oh well, nothing can be done about that, now... all the biotech researchers have to do now is finish the last couple steps and hope nobody complains too much about it being a half decade overdue.

 

[Germtheory3Z]

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The meme is amusing, but to the point I'm really not impressed by the history of rushed government reactions to anything.

What you're giving here is what I like to call a "lying fact" because, while technically true, it completely misleads everyone looking in that general direction who are too stupid to use their brains.

Yes, the large majority put on ventilators die. Because they only put the most critical of patients on ventilators- really, the question isn't 'how many died on ventilators', it is 'how many MORE would die if they weren't on ventilators'. And the answer to that question is 'almost all of them'.

Not unlike saying that more people die in emergency rooms than any other part of the hospital, and therefor emergency rooms kill people and we should get rid of them. Or that the majority of patients on chemotherapy die a slow and painful death (or used to at any rate- the tech's improving at remarkable rates), ergo it doesn't fight cancer. A true statement to justify an utterly unsupportable conclusion... like most conspiracy theories.

It's asinine and it should be legal to punch people who say such stupid shit. Right up there with anti-vaxxers.

That being said... yes, ventilators are fucking dangerous. They're delicate machines being used to run one of the most delicate parts of the human body, so there is the real possibility of accidental harm... and then there are those that are simply too far gone for a ventilator to help (not all of whom are obvious).

That is why they only use the things when they're desperate and have exhausted all other possibilities. Much like the emergency room or chemotherapy, the ideal situation is you'll never need one.

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On principle I'd agree it's plausible that lacking other known safe treatments for something could push a ~40% effective treatment down to 10%, but anyone pointing to something that only saves one in ten of the people they use it on isn't going to have much help convincing me to go along with that. Witch doctors could have 10% of people survive after doing whatever the fuck they do and claim it's a wild success. IIRC ventilators are high pressure things that damage the lungs by default and people are switching to gentler sleep apnea devices already.

That said- I do encourage VitD use. I doubt it'll mean much against Wuhan Flu, but even a 1% improvement in survivability will save hundreds of lives in the long run. I'm more focused on the fact that it reduces the risk of everything from osteoporosis to cancer to forgetting where your house is and wandering into the woods in the middle of January. Any other benefits beyond "helps prevent cancer" are ancillary where I'm sitting.

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Fair enough, tell your friends and relatives. Most stores sell something of varying quality and you can order some good stuff online.

Germtheory3Z had continued on their trend of totally and utterly

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I use He/Him pronouns, no need to hedge like this is SV.

utterly ignoring all evidence that proves their previous batshit claims wrong, and just moving only new bullshit. Although sadly I was too late since people have already proven their latest nonsense totally incorrect,

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For whatever it's worth to you I do read the links, eventually. If it's a hundred page total in one day it's not happening right away but I'll try to at least scan everything and find the abstracts, methods and conclusions if I don't have the time for a proper reading.

My general objection is that a lot, if not most, of the people who rise up in academia and who're arguing here turn their intelligence to finding reasons to agree with the existing consensus. I find that unimpressive, because obviously there were a lot of very smart people who agreed witches should be burned and read up on reasons in the bible, but that's not a reason they're wrong about everything. Broken clocks are right once a day and when they are it's so much easier to go along with them than to keep trying to convince them they're wrong.

 

[evildice]

My general objection is that a lot, if not most, of the people who rise up in academia and who're arguing here turn their intelligence to finding reasons to agree with the existing consensus.

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The consensus is that plagues like this can be deadly and disruptive if not handled correctly.

The thing is, if we handle it correctly, then it won't seem like a big deal.

As an adult, you need to be able to figure out how to prevent bad things which you personally haven't experienced.

Teenagers take what seem to be obviously dumb risks because they lack that capability.

Don't behave like a dumb teenager. Behave like a responsible adult in a civilization which has seen many plagues.

obviously there were a lot of very smart people who agreed witches should be burned and read up on reasons in the bible

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Witch trails seem like a great example of mob mentality, not usually associated with "very smart people" nor academics. They would be their time's equivalent of conspiracy theorists.

The other figures behind witch trials were powerful political opportunists who misdirected angry mobs into murdering innocent people so the powerful opportunist could confiscate the victim's possessions. Most times you see a demagogue stirring you up to get angry, that's what your signing up for. It's not a good look.

Broken clocks are right once a day and when they are it's so much easier to go along with them than to keep trying to convince them they're wrong.

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Gosh, if only we had some method which could be used to sort out the truth value of claims.

If only someone would find that method and make a science of it.

Oh, lots of educated academics know about it?

Not your YouTube cult guru?

Gosh, how odd.

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[MadGreenSon]

I think the one about Japan's suicide rate is very sad.

 

[mishie]

For whatever it's worth to you I do read the links, eventually. If it's a hundred page total in one day it's not happening right away but I'll try to at least scan everything and find the abstracts, methods and conclusions if I don't have the time for a proper reading.

My general objection is that a lot, if not most, of the people who rise up in academia and who're arguing here turn their intelligence to finding reasons to agree with the existing consensus. I find that unimpressive, because obviously there were a lot of very smart people who agreed witches should be burned and read up on reasons in the bible, but that's not a reason they're wrong about everything. Broken clocks are right once a day and when they are it's so much easier to go along with them than to keep trying to convince them they're wrong.

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Holy shit you're actually dumb enough to go with an argument stupid enough to be on Always Sunny, so just to save everyone else some time, I'll just post the rest of it:



What a truly amazing argument against all things Scientific, that because some random people did stupid shit in the past, you're now free to totally just ignore any and all evidence (but obviously not the random articles that you find). Amazing.

 

[evildice]

totally just ignore any and all evidence (but obviously not the random articles that you find).

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The articles he finds aren't random, though.

They're fed to him by an algorithm, which was programmed by its creator through Intelligent Design.

 

[OverMaster]

The important thing to keep in mind is, all scientific thought is fallible, no matter how well reasoned it may look at the time a postulate is formulated.

I don't think any side has a fully solid claim to 'correct handling' of this crisis since we still know far too little about the virus' capacity to affect us in a long term, and in a war of attrition against contemporary societies, the virus' capacity to stay around far outdoes that of the human species to adjust to a model of living that is impossible to keep in a long run, especially for the less economically blessed countries where most of the planet's population resides.

The virus is, frankly, more adaptable than us. With that in mind, I don't think any side should throw too much weight on the other where it comes to strategy development-- catastrophe may be lurking, one way or another, behind every door and along every path, maybe all of them at once but in different degrees. We have no real way of knowing which path would end up being the most disastrous in the long run.

 

[mishie]

The important thing to keep in mind is, all scientific thought is fallible, no matter how well reasoned it may look at the time a postulate is formulated.

I don't think any side has a fully solid claim to 'correct handling' of this crisis since we still know far too little about the virus' capacity to affect us in a long term, and in a war of attrition against contemporary societies, the virus' capacity to stay around far outdoes that of the human species to adjust to a model of living that is impossible to keep in a long run, especially for the less economically blessed countries where most of the planet's population resides.

The virus is, frankly, more adaptable than us. With that in mind, I don't think any side should throw too much weight on the other where it comes to strategy development-- catastrophe may be lurking, one way or another, behind every door and along every path, maybe all of them at once but in different degrees. We have no real way of knowing which path would end up being the most disastrous in the long run.

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Yeah you're right, nobody knows what the 'correct handling' is, even though multiple countries like Australia and New Zealand reacted quickly and have pretty much totally beaten it. Truly an impossible conundrum.

 

[TanaNari]

even though multiple countries like Australia and New Zealand reacted quickly and have pretty much totally beaten it.

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Antarctica beat the Wuhan Flu so thoroughly that it still hasn't seen even a single case of infection, for the same reasons taken to the furthest possible extreme.

Countries with very low population density and pretty much the worst weather coronavirus can still spread in are obviously going to have a much easier time of winning the battle... nature handed them the victory on a platter and all they had to do was not fuck it up.


Most parts of the world aren't that lucky.

 

[mishie]

Antarctica beat the Wuhan Flu so thoroughly that it still hasn't seen even a single case of infection, for the same reasons taken to the furthest possible extreme.

Countries with very low population density and pretty much the worst weather coronavirus can still spread in are obviously going to have a much easier time of winning the battle... nature handed them the victory on a platter and all they had to do was not fuck it up.


Most parts of the world aren't that lucky.

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Yeah I've already gone over all that bullshit earlier, Australia is a country which has almost all of it's population in less that ten cities, we have constant traffic and tourism from China and other Asian countries, and to top it all off we had a complete fuckup of the handling of a cruise ship full of infected people arriving right at the start. And as for weather, are you honestly trying to say that there's no other countries that are in the southern hemisphere like Australia and New Zealand which had similar weather? Because that's the sort of ignorance I'd expect from germtheory.

 

[TanaNari]

re you honestly trying to say that there's no other countries that are in the southern hemisphere like Australia and New Zealand which had similar weather?

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"Like Australia and New Zealand?" No... no there are no other comparable countries due to the fact that the bulk of the southern hemisphere are basically Third World nations... they can't even get rid of the goddamn measles.

But if you look at the trackers, Africa is also doing pretty well in terms of its numbers. Africa... which, it deserves to be noted, has fifty times the population of Australia (as well as around 4 times the land, but only 3 count since the Sahara desert is nigh uninhabitable and bigger than Australia) and I'm not even gonna guess how much worse poverty, healthcare services, government corruption/incompetence, several ongoing civil wars, and all the other things I forgot which make Africa an utter shithole. Most of which make it easy for diseases to spread unchecked.

https://www.bing.com/covid/local/southafrica?form=C19ANS

For a continent that has *nothing* resembling a plan for *anything*, Africa's numbers are exceedingly low. Especially Madagascar, which might wind up being the first country in the world to be able to (honestly) claim it has eliminated all cases.

The only explanations are either that African cultures are exceedingly enochlophobic, they have some magical advantage due to all the other plagues training their immune systems, or that the climate is saving their collective asses. No points for guessing which one.

Now... South America (which is more comparable to Africa than Australia in terms of social and economic conditions) is getting pretty thoroughly hammered. Probably because, while it's a very warm climate (which coronaviruses don't do all that well in), it is also a very wet climate (which coronaviruses thrive in).

The cooler and wetter climates of Western Europe and the parts of the USA with large populations are where cornaviruses usually do best for themselves... and all current empirical evidence supports this one being no different in that regard.

 

[mishie]

"Like Australia and New Zealand?" No... no there are no other comparable countries due to the fact that the bulk of the southern hemisphere are basically Third World nations... they can't even get rid of the goddamn measles.

But if you look at the trackers, Africa is also doing pretty well in terms of its numbers. Africa... which, it deserves to be noted, has fifty times the population of Australia (as well as around 4 times the land, but only 3 count since the Sahara desert is nigh uninhabitable and bigger than Australia) and I'm not even gonna guess how much worse poverty, healthcare services, government corruption/incompetence, several ongoing civil wars, and all the other things I forgot which make Africa an utter shithole. Most of which make it easy for diseases to spread unchecked.

https://www.bing.com/covid/local/southafrica?form=C19ANS

For a continent that has *nothing* resembling a plan for *anything*, Africa's numbers are exceedingly low. Especially Madagascar, which might wind up being the first country in the world to be able to (honestly) claim it has eliminated all cases.

The only explanations are either that African cultures are exceedingly enochlophobic, they have some magical advantage due to all the other plagues training their immune systems, or that the climate is saving their collective asses. No points for guessing which one.

Now... South America (which is more comparable to Africa than Australia in terms of social and economic conditions) is getting pretty thoroughly hammered. Probably because, while it's a very warm climate (which coronaviruses don't do all that well in), it is also a very wet climate (which coronaviruses thrive in).

The cooler and wetter climates of Western Europe and the parts of the USA with large populations are where cornaviruses usually do best for themselves... and all current empirical evidence supports this one being no different in that regard.

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And then you've also got Iran, which whilst being a hot and dry country was one of the first to start digging mass graves. So yes, I do agree that climate can have a minor effect on spread, there's a far larger effect on it by having a population and government that react quickly and react well to it.

 

[aquinas]

Or, South Africa has a comparatively functional medical establishment as compared to say Nigeria, and is implementing something resembling a testing regime as the most modern state in the region, instead of speed burying the bodies as soon as the patients' hearts stop?

As I read in the Sunday news this morning -_-

Edit: here's a link

 

[TanaNari]

And then you've also got Iran, which whilst being a hot and dry country

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It... really isn't... yes, there are certainly parts of Iran that are terribly arid (and more than a few frigid mountainous wastelands), the bulk of the people live in areas with comfortable mild weather along the Mediterranean and Caspian seas, with climate more comparable to Spain than Africa. Which is *also* where the bulk of the Iran cases have been cropping up... the numbers are much lower inland, where the climate becomes hell.

https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/iran

At least, up to this point in the year. Now... once July and August roll around, the region gets a whole lot less comfortable, but during the spring, it's basically an ideal breeding ground for Coronavirus.

The worst environment for the Coronavirus in that region is probably Afghanistan, which is a rocky and comparatively dry region. Numbers in that country are pretty damn low, all considered.

 

[evildice]

Which is *also* where the bulk of the Iran cases have been cropping up... the numbers are much lower inland, where the climate becomes hell.

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I feel like it's sensible to compare urban population area climate vs. urban population area climate.

For NZ, it'd be most informative to look at Auckland, which is quite temperate all year round.

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

I feel like it's sensible to compare urban population area climate vs. urban population area climate.

For NZ, it'd be most informative to look at Auckland, which is quite temperate all year round.

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Also, while our population density is relatively low a full third of our entire country does still live there.

 

[OverMaster]

Yeah you're right, nobody knows what the 'correct handling' is, even though multiple countries like Australia and New Zealand reacted quickly and have pretty much totally beaten it. Truly an impossible conundrum.

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That's the short run, Smarty. It remains to be seen how long they truly can keep that up. I wouldn't bet on anything.

 

[mishie]

That's the short run, Smarty. It remains to be seen how long they truly can keep that up. I wouldn't bet on anything.

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Oh that's totally true, we could end up having a bad second wave, but the fact is the initial reaction has not only proven that people are able to react quickly and change their lives to adapt to having to distance, but it's also allowed us to significantly over-prepare for the amount of cases that we did have. We've spent the past few months practicing and training for worst case scenarios and coming up with measures to ensure that we'd be able to continue working safely that we never needed to use. So when the second wave does hit, we'll be ready for it.

 

[Drak4806]

Unless you no longer have international travel you haven't beaten anything. All it takes is one person to spread it.

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

Unless you no longer have international travel you haven't beaten anything. All it takes is one person to spread it.

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Oh, gosh. Would you look at that. Borders closed, except possibly to each other since we both wiped out the virus.

 

[mishie]

Unless you no longer have international travel you haven't beaten anything. All it takes is one person to spread it.

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Thing is though, we've already got significant contact tracing in place, to the point where we know exactly where the vast majority of our positive cases came from. And when ypu add in the fact that we can easily test and isolate at risk people from dangerous countries like the US, then that makes it even easier to be ready for a second wave.

 

[Aleh]

Less than a fragment of a percent, thus far, most of whom are already on the older side. Admittedly, that's going to total in the thousands by the time this is over.

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... yeeeah, no. We don't have the numbers to say that. Getting them is at least four to ten months out.

Of course, given the next bit...

Yeah... so significant that your own article isn't even willing to say conclusively that it's COVID-related at this point.

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... which falls under the category of "evidence that you don't understand how medical science, and particularly epidemiology, works," I suppose I shouldn't exactly be surprised.

Science is, in a very real sense, the systematic acknowledgement of the limitations of our knowledge. Scientists, especially good scientists, and particularly those in wishy-washy, complicated areas like medicine, epidemiology, and in vivo biology which are prone to things seeped in multifactoral and complex causation, are, by the standards of anyone who's not used to dealing with them, extremely reluctant to say anything conclusively.

So, yeah, what we're seeing is exactly what we'd expect to see from a post-COVID syndrome. It's also, by far, the most likely explanation.

I mentioned that it was too early for firm numbers, right? Well, the reasons for that are pretty much the same as why we won't have a vaccine for at least the latter amount of time despite the fact that we have candidates (the first of which just passed Phase 1 trials with promising results) already. Specifically, you detect things like that via a method called "followup studies..." or, more technically in the case of the aftereffects of the disease, case-control and longitudinal cohort studies. Again, without getting into the fiddly technical details, you have to observe people after recovery and follow up on them to see how (and if) they get better.

Thing is, SARS-CoV-2 spilled over back a bit before December -- the first documented case showed his first symptoms on December 1st and was admitted to the hospital on the 16th. The first cases outside China started in January... and things started to pick up around mid-March.

This means that the very first known case of SARS-CoV-2 would be about five months past recovery now. The people in the first real "wave" here in America have had less than two months since infection, and about a month and a half since recovery.

Thing is, people's situations in recovery tend to vary dramatically over time. Disregarding the issue the the disease reemerging in a new form (something that there's notable precedent for), someone who's had their major organs attacked in some way takes time to recover... and so we can't tell if it's going to happen until that time has passed.

For various reasons (again, this involves technical details that I don't have the time or spoons to get into here), the traditional follow-up times are, roughly, three, six, and twelve months, followed by multiples of years. Five-year follow-ups are common.

For reasons of statistical power and the sheer number of things we need to look for, getting said numbers will require samples at least in the thousands.

As such, at least here in the US, that means we'll be looking at the people who started getting infected in March. We should thus expect early numbers to maybe start coming out in June, with them firming up somewhat around September or so... while still remaining highly preliminary.

That's also around when we'll be able to get more definitive answers as to whether these syndromes we're seeing are COVID-related. In the meantime, I can simply say that there's substantial precedent for the answer being "yes."

 

[TanaNari]

getting said numbers will require samples at least in the thousands.

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Exactly. We don't have the numbers, yet you're acting as if your claims are facts.

And you have the nerve to claim I'm the one who doesn't comprehend science?

 

[Drak4806]

Oh, gosh. Would you look at that. Borders closed, except possibly to each other since we both wiped out the virus.

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Are you absolutely sure you wiped out the virus? And are your borders really locked down? And how long can you keep things locked down? Just think about how international trade and travel goes on during normal times. And how long can your economy last with the people locked in place and the borders shut?

Island countries have it easy unlike here in the US. We have long stretches of borders with Canada and Mexico that we have trouble securing not to mention the people who sneak in through boat or even rafts.

Two to three months of global lockdown where if you leave your house you get shot is the only way to defeat this but that's impossible to ever happen.

 

[evildice]

Island countries have it easy unlike here in the US. We have long stretches of borders with Canada and Mexico that we have trouble securing not to mention the people who sneak in through boat or even rafts.

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Our borders are honestly much less of a problem than our home-grown idiots.

Spoiler: Give us this day our daily memes

 

[zup]

Are you absolutely sure you wiped out the virus? And are your borders really locked down? And how long can you keep things locked down? Just think about how international trade and travel goes on during normal times. And how long can your economy last with the people locked in place and the borders shut?

Island countries have it easy unlike here in the US. We have long stretches of borders with Canada and Mexico that we have trouble securing not to mention the people who sneak in through boat or even rafts.

Two to three months of global lockdown where if you leave your house you get shot is the only way to defeat this but that's impossible to ever happen.

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Who is going to enforce that? If the soldiers or police are out of their homes, they are breaking the lockdown. Autonomous killbots?