News COVID-19 pandemic

[Frilock]

US just extended its guidelines until April 30 now.

 

[Fabri91]

And Moscow is finally on a full quarantine.
Apparently they didn't like that people went out doing barbecue once the vacation week was announced instead of staying at home.

Was it a case of "There's no such thing as an epidemic in Russia. In completely unrelated news, one week of vacation for everyone!"?

 

[Notebook]

Some good news:

Coronavirus: Mercedes F1 to make breathing aid

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52087002

 

[Urwumpe]

Bad news from Wolfsburg, we had to close our hospital to new patients because too many employees got tested positive for COVID-19. The hospital is now the second big hotspot here. Only a few special departments remain open. The remaining patients are now separated into single bed rooms and employees have to work in full protective gear.

All 15 COVID-19 deaths in Wolfsburg lived in the same nursing home, the Hanns-Lilje-Heim. It is a special home for demented people, half of the inhabitants are tested positive. The outlook for the infected is highly negative, it is expected that most of the 72 infected inhabitants will not survive the infection. In total, its 122 positive tested cases in Wolfsburg.

https://www.wolfsburg.de/corona

https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/ges...vid-19-a-b51db33b-b8ab-44f0-8d98-2bf624f6c634

A big problem with those retirement homes is, that they are currently not getting much priority for testing the people and they are also not considered high priority for getting protective masks and other gear to prevent infecting the elder people except the usual procurement processes.

The Hanns-Lilje-Heim is right next door to the hospital of Wolfsburg - and both near my apartment in Wolfsburg. I now evacuated to rural Westerwald, after spending a week in full isolation at home.

 

[Notebook]

The practicalities are starting to hit home now.
I look after my 90 year old mother who has dementia, like millions of people round the world. She needs 4 visits by 2 carers every day as she is immobile.

she's having ongoing problems with a catheter and yesterday after various health worker visits I had to go and get some anti-biotics from a pharmacy.
Organising care cover(who are over-stretched) took some time, one in one out at the pharmacy, 2m standing places at the queue, hand sanatisers everywhere.

Very few cars on the road, few people about mostly dog-walkers.

What is usually a very simple everyday task becomes strange. A trip to the chemist to pick up a prescription. Haven't been out the house for a week, I nearly felt guilty!

 

[Notebook]

Coronavirus: EasyJet grounds entire fleet of planes due to virus

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52084003

 

[Linguofreak]

Growth in case numbers in the US has been linear for three days now. It remains to be seen if this is actual progress or just that test availability is growing linearly.

 

[Urwumpe]

German growth numbers are low again, but this time, the numbers from Saxony-Anhalt did not arrive properly and had not been counted.

Yes, our administration is already at their limits doing once per day, what O-F does about 50 times per second.

 

[4throck]

Seems to be a general problem.
I guess on some cases it's hard to determine the cause of death.
The test results might only be available days(?) after the death is declared.
And that's if they test such cases - don't know how's the equipment/testing situation in Germany.

 

[tl8]

There seems to be some progress here on both the economic and health fronts. Still early days, but the news is not horrible.

 

[barrygolden]

The virus here in the US seems to be spreading like wildfire but I think we're just able to test more here. Yes NY and LA are in a mess and now NO is being covered. These cities and states were not prepared as most of us were not but they did waste tax payer funds on stupid stuff now yell at us to save them. We will but quit yelling we're doing all we can do to save you.

 

[Urwumpe]

And that's if they test such cases - don't know how's the equipment/testing situation in Germany.

Well, generally, the equipment and processes are more optimized for quality than quantity here. The last number I had was a capacity for 500,000 tests per week. That is a lot compared to other countries, but a lot of this test capacity is also needed for medical employees, repeated tests of infected people, etc.


A doctor in Diez used his new building with parking garage to set up a mobile testing station for people who showed some Corona symptoms, in contrast to the much stricter official rules. 10% of the tested persons had SARS-CoV-2 in this test, much more than suggested by the official numbers for the region, even if you include a large number of false positives, this is an alarming number.

 

[insanity]

Epidemic of coronavirus

The virus here in the US seems to be spreading like wildfire but I think we're just able to test more here. Yes NY and LA are in a mess and now NO is being covered. These cities and states were not prepared as most of us were not but they did waste tax payer funds on stupid stuff now yell at us to save them. We will but quit yelling we're doing all we can do to save you.

What stupid stuff did we waste taxpayer funds on? CA has a budget surplus. NY has a budget deficit because the cost of Medicaid went up significantly. NY is a net contributor to the federal government meaning they give more in taxes than they get. CA is essentially net even.

Both states have been aggressively enacting social distancing and trying to get the federal government to provide services and supplies to their state that the models say they need.

Personally, I find it really offensive that you think the cities are a mess that need saving but we should stop yelling. People are dying. The federal government is simply not moving fast enough to save them. People are getting more infected and the President is talking about his TV ratings. In NY they are throwing dead bodies in the backs of refrigerated trucks after they die alone because we can’t save them. Healthcare workers are being asked to reuse PPE because they don’t have enough. If we don’t yell at the government now when are we supposed to?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Urwumpe]

If we don’t yell at the government now when are we supposed to?

This is one of the most democratic statements I have read in a while.

 

[fred18]

Well, generally, the equipment and processes are more optimized for quality than quantity here. The last number I had was a capacity for 500,000 tests per week. That is a lot compared to other countries, but a lot of this test capacity is also needed for medical employees, repeated tests of infected people, etc.


A doctor in Diez used his new building with parking garage to set up a mobile testing station for people who showed some Corona symptoms, in contrast to the much stricter official rules. 10% of the tested persons had SARS-CoV-2 in this test, much more than suggested by the official numbers for the region, even if you include a large number of false positives, this is an alarming number.

I made couple of estimations on the numbers here in italy, and surprisingly enough just after I finished my calculations an official istitution came out wiht a similar study with a comparable result. It seems to be reasonable to think that in italy around half a milion people is infected. Of course much more here in lombardy region. I estimated some 4% of population here, and it would also more or less match with the people I know that start to get affected, or at least a parent, or a relative... I a small town called VO, they were able to test all the population and found out that the registered cases were just 25%, because 75% were without symptoms... So real numbers are probably huge...

 

[insanity]

I made couple of estimations on the numbers here in italy, and surprisingly enough just after I finished my calculations an official istitution came out wiht a similar study with a comparable result. It seems to be reasonable to think that in italy around half a milion people is infected. Of course much more here in lombardy region. I estimated some 4% of population here, and it would also more or less match with the people I know that start to get affected, or at least a parent, or a relative... I a small town called VO, they were able to test all the population and found out that the registered cases were just 25%, because 75% were without symptoms... So real numbers are probably huge...

First off, wishing you the best luck and best health right now.

Secondly, the Iceland study that shows fully half of the infected population shows no symptoms (at the time of the study). Knowing what we know about the time it takes for symptom onset after infection we can guess that some portion of the asymptomatic cohort becomes symptomatic. Given what I've read, I'd buy that anywhere between 14% to 33% of the population never develop symptoms. We also know that of diagnosed cases, some 80% require little to no medical intervention so those cases also go largely unreported.

It becomes near impossible to accurately guess the number of infected and we essentially lose the ability to calculate R0 if so many people are quietly transmitting the disease and we have no way of knowing what dispositions cause an individual to become symptomatic. We just can calculate growth rates of symptomatic individuals in a population.

Sadly, we are left with only one real solution to this: mass and (likely) repeated testing of as many people as possible. Perhaps even just random samples of populations if we can't do comprehensive testing. Then contact tracing positive results.

 

[Frilock]

Florida Coronavirus Update: Gov. Ron DeSantis Issues ‘Safer At Home’ For Southeast Florida

Might have been a bit more helpful weeks ago.

 

[Linguofreak]

Yes NY and LA are in a mess and now NO is being covered. These cities and states were not prepared as most of us were not but they did waste tax payer funds on stupid stuff now yell at us to save them.

NYC and Los Angeles are simply densely populated cities that are connected to just about everywhere else, both in the US and abroad. As convenient as it would be to my political views to blame this on their policies, they're simply the type of place that would get hit early and hard in this situation even if they voted 100% GOP.

 

[insanity]

NYC and Los Angeles are simply densely populated cities that are connected to just about everywhere else, both in the US and abroad. As convenient as it would be to my political views to blame this on their policies, they're simply the type of place that would get hit early and hard in this situation even if they voted 100% GOP.

I just really want to commend you here for expressing the above.
While we disagree on politics in many of Basement threads in the past, I've always found you to be very thoughtful and open to engaging honestly which is a trait I admire most especially among those with whom I disagree.

This pandemic is inherently apolitical in that it doesn't care about your voting preferences. The political dynamic is in how we respond as a people to it which makes spread potentially faster or slower but we should not forget that real people are dying and many more are suffering.

I hope you are feeling better. To everyone, please keep staying safe and healthy.

 

[Notebook]

Coronavirus: Goats take over empty streets of seaside town

I thought they'd be the first to cause trouble. Especially after they brought out their own simulator.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-52103967