COVID-19 Thread

[FVBrewerFan]

And you’re certain that every case other than the ones he saw online are like a virus spreading machine? People are in those voting areas for seconds or minutes, and every single one of them had coronavirus on their mind.

 

If this is like every other “coronavirus,” it’s on it’s way out the door shortly, and will be back next winter. Half+ the country will likely be immune by then.

 

I just have the observation of experts to go off of:

 

UW Health official: "Nearly impossible' to maintain social distancing at polls

 

Jeff Pothof, chief quality and safety officer for UW Health in Madison, viewed photographs taken at polling places around the state and was left with two strong, very different impressions.

 

"Boy, I'm somewhat inspired by the people who despite the risks are going out and voting," he said. "However, it's nearly impossible to maintain social distancing throughout the process of going to the polls and voting. You can see some people quite close to each other, some wearing masks, some not.

 

https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/04/07/wisconsin-election-news-live-updates-state-news/2960278001/

 

Yea, that expert was looking at the same video, he doesn't know anything more than I do. Yes, some people were close to each other. They're called families. Likely as not theyre together all the time already. Milw only had 5 polling places open. I saw two of them, and everyone was keeping their distance. Still more risk than staying home? Sure. But it's not like the virus hit yesterday, send in a ballot like millions of others did if you were concerned with getting infected.

[PeaveyFury]

he doesn't know anything more than I do.

 

You have the same medical training, COVID-19 response training, etc.?

 

Milw only had 5 polling places open. I saw two of them, and everyone was keeping their distance.

 

SAW two of them, or saw PICTURES of two of them, capturing one brief moment in a long day?

 

But it's not like the virus hit yesterday, send in a ballot like millions of others did if you were concerned with getting infected.

 

Rampant reports of ballot mailing and delivery issues likely made that problematic for a lot of people and not nearly as simple as you make it out to be. Add in two conflicting court rulings that invalidated lots of absentee ballots, and it's an irresponsible mess in the middle of a pandemic that likely caused some amount of exposure that was completely preventable. How is that debatable, or a hill you want to die on? If any exposure took place yesterday, wasn't it too much? And completely unacceptable?

[homer]

Proof will be in 10-14 days.

[3and2Fastball]

I continue to believe there is way more widespread herd immunity than is being reported. A lot of us have already had this, dating back to early February and likely as far back as December as reported in California. Thousands of Americans were commuting back and forth to China during that time period.

 

Until everyone can be tested for antibodies, we won’t know for certain, and shelter in place is the best thing we can do at this time.

[igor67]

Sorry to be that guy, but this is a time to make sure we are using the terms correctly. Herd immunity is a condition that exists when enough people have resistance to a disease that it cannot meaningfully spread. Measles outbreaks the last few years help illustrate what it looks like when you start to flirt with that critical percentage, especially when undervaccinated groups congregate socially. Basically you start to see flare-ups, but it dies down quickly.

 

It's best in this case to just refer to people as having acquired immunity to clarify.

 

Certainly it is reasonable to anticipate a fair amount of undercounting, but the death rate spikes would have also shown up sooner if you were to assume too many earlier cases. I don't have the tools for a complete sophisticated analysis, but rough and ready works reasonably well. Last week they had revised the percentages of silent spreaders upwards to 25-50%. I would guess that 50% partially bakes in some of what we are seeing for evidence of earlier transmission already, but even if it doesn't we can apply some generous estimates and see what happens. Let's say that between earlier transmissions and current undercounting we can double the current US total to 900,000 have had the disease with symptoms. We then double again to account for the silent spreaders and get 1.8million. We round up to 2million. Which if you look at my earlier calculations means true herd immunity requires more than 100 times that many infections yet. I don't have enough experience with the equations to give a top notch estimate, but you are going to need a substantial fraction of total herd immunity to have a noticeable impact on the rate of spread.

[Fear The Chorizo]

Proof will be in 10-14 days.

 

Only if there was an accurate projection for number of cases/deaths estimated of people who would normally contract Covid-19 and potentially die from it had there not been in-person voting, and it could be compared to actual data 10-14 days from now. Since all the models aren't being utilized/viewed to be reasonably accurate in projecting actual data 1 week to 10 days from now anyways, there won't be any proof - just opinions, unfortunately. That's not slamming the models, it's just the reality of not enough data being available for them to reasonably forecast those type of variations at a level as local as a state-wide primary election at this point.

 

Something that will eventually be brought into focus, particularly for cases that unfortunately result in deaths, is what the remaining life expectancy for those individuals would have been had they never gotten infected by the disease. The one absolute with everyone's life is that it unfortunately will come to an end one day - as more data pours in while the response to Covid-19 evolves, determining on average how many years of life it took away from its victims will be critical to assessing whether the initial global response was the appropriate approach after it gets compared to longterm damage done to the lives (health, economic, etc) of everyone who lives through this pandemic - which by the way is shaping up to be 99+% of the world's current and ever-growing population, much of which lives in parts of the world without significant medical or economic resources to severely restrict everyday life to try and slow down a virus from spreading.

 

Specifically in the US, for example, I believe the overall average age of death of people confirmed to have gotten Covid-19 is around 80 years old. Who knows where that number will settle, but I doubt it slides anywhere close to 70. In most cases where people who were younger than 80 passed away, underlying health issues that modern medicine has helped to manage outside of Covid-19 and otherwise prolong their lives also played a role in their immune system's inability to survive. MN just had its highest one-day total of additional deaths of people who were confirmed to have the disease, 11...that brings its total to 50 souls. What was surprising to me is even with nearly a 30% spike in total deaths after a single day, the state's average age of death with this virus increased to 87.

 

Not comparing the two specific viruses from a medical/infectious sense, but the 2009-2010 swine flu pandemic had an average US age of death in the low 40s - it impacted children and younger adults with developing/otherwise healthy immune systems much more drastically than Covid-19 has. Aside from issuing a bunch of hand-washing placards in airports, little else was done in terms of economic/way of life -hindering actions across the globe, including in the US. IMO the main reason more wasn't done to prevent H1N1's spread was the outbreak took place immediately after the developed world narrowly missed another depression economically due to the 2008-2009 financial collapse, and there just wasn't the economic buffer to even think of attempting similar measures that have largely been enacted recently. The 2009 H1N1 outbreak wasn't nearly as infectious as Covid-19, but the people it killed on average were decades younger and generally healthier than what we are seeing now. Just think of where the world would be right now if coronavirus was as lethal on children/healthy adults closer to their physical primes as H1N1 was during its initial outbreak...

[3and2Fastball]

Igor67 : what you said makes sense. I would say in January, February and early March there were many Americans dying from what was called “upper respiratory illness” or “flu like symptoms”, especially the elderly and those with other health issues. From most accounts, it was a particularly bad flu season this past winter across the USA. There was zero testing for Covid during that time

 

I’m not saying this as some sort of excuse to open up the country right now. I do think it is extremely naive to think that “Patient 0” in the USA was in Washington state in March. As contagious as this virus is, exactly zero percent of people brought it back from China during the months of December, January, & February? The likelihood of that is well beyond any sort of mathematical possibility. Thousands & thousands of Americans were going back and forth to China during that time.

[jerichoholicninja]

Igor67 : what you said makes sense. I would say in January, February and early March there were many Americans dying from what was called “upper respiratory illness” or “flu like symptoms”, especially the elderly and those with other health issues. From most accounts, it was a particularly bad flu season this past winter across the USA. There was zero testing for Covid during that time

 

Wasn't the flu that was going around at the time affecting the young and children at higher than usual rates? I seem to remember reading that, which goes totally against what COVID is doing. I'm sure COVID has been here a lot longer than has been assumed though. Considering all the people going back and forth to China I would guess it was here within weeks of it appearing in Wuhan.

[igor67]

I've seen 2 reports on different genetic approaches to virus tracking that push the circulation worldwide back about a month or so. One had was focused just on New York and I think they had identified a strain that made it to New York late Jan/early Feb.

 

The last flu numbers I had seen for yearly totals did not look unusually high. This years vaccine was generally doing quite well, but there was some oddness in that there were 2 flu strains distinct enough from each other that were circulating, so a person could actually get hit twice.

[owbc]

They know who patient zero is in the Seattle area, he came back from Wuhan on January 15 and went to the hospital on January 19. It sounds like the NY cases can be genetically traced back to Europe for the most part.

 

My wife and I had the flu over the New Year's holiday--it was a nasty respiratory infection and I'm sure if we had gotten it a couple weeks later we would have thought it was COVID. I can see how the two could be mixed up.

[superfly]

Igor67 : what you said makes sense. I would say in January, February and early March there were many Americans dying from what was called “upper respiratory illness” or “flu like symptoms”, especially the elderly and those with other health issues. From most accounts, it was a particularly bad flu season this past winter across the USA. There was zero testing for Covid during that time

 

I’m not saying this as some sort of excuse to open up the country right now. I do think it is extremely naive to think that “Patient 0” in the USA was in Washington state in March. As contagious as this virus is, exactly zero percent of people brought it back from China during the months of December, January, & February? The likelihood of that is well beyond any sort of mathematical possibility. Thousands & thousands of Americans were going back and forth to China during that time.

 

I have friends who had nasty dry cough/respiratory/flu/fever symptoms around Thanksgiving. Georgia as well as up here.

[MrTPlush]

The theory that tons of people had COVID-19 in November is incredibly unlikely and doesn’t make much sense. It just doesn’t add up. How did a bunch of people have it in November that didn’t go to China or even out of their state and then it doesn’t blow up until March?

 

Fauci and many other experts have already squashed the idea.

[igor67]

Just to clarify I am talking about low levels of circulation maybe early december in China and other places maybe early January again at fairly low levels probably being mistook for flu at first.

[FVBrewerFan]

The theory that tons of people had COVID-19 in November is incredibly unlikely and doesn’t make much sense. It just doesn’t add up. How did a bunch of people have it in November that didn’t go to China or even out of their state and then it doesn’t blow up until March?

 

Fauci and many other experts have already squashed the idea.

 

There is still way more unknown than what is known about this virus. Origin and timing included. There's a lot of varying evidence and expert opinions on all of it.

 

For example, experts from Stanford and Yale recently showed flaws in the models from the beginning. More recently Stanford research is showing CV19 MAY have been in CA since late last fall, and herd immunity may have kept it in check. Could also be the case that initially it wasn't as contagious and/or deadly.

 

Final random thought. As other countries have started to ease or eliminate restrictions we will have a lot to watch and learn from.

[MrTPlush]

A lot is unknown, but I think that theory is getting a bit far fetched.

 

I’m not saying this goes for all those people, but I think that theory is giving a lot of people false immunity. I know more than one person who jumped on that bandwagon and is not taking this as seriously now. I’m going out on a limb and betting their are flu-like illnesses that aren’t the flu or COVID-19. I’m also betting there are many reasons a flu test can come back negative and you have the flu. I’m guessing a huge amount of people think they have the flu every year and get a negative test. Now because of COVID-19 they are suddenly assuming that must have been it.

[dpapo]

I saw the following mentioned in a LA Times article about what has been going on in Singapore, Hong Kong and Wuhan which could be a preview of what is going to occur in the US.

 

"After initial success at containing the disease, Singapore clamped new restrictions this week on schools and nonessential businesses. Hong Kong also experienced a rebound after it relaxed controls, while the United States and Europe remain in earlier phases of the fight and have restrictions still in place. Wuhan has a new cluster of the cases, as well."

 

I worry that countries are going to loosen restrictions too soon and there will end up being a big second wave. I can see the US starting to loosen restrictions in certain areas as soon as the number of cases starts going down, even sooner then in Singapore, Hong Kong and Wuhan. I know people want things to get back to normal, but we may just have to accept that it's going to take a while to figure all of this out. We still can't say for sure how immune someone is once they get it once and for how long that immunity may last for. In time, we'll have a better idea about things, but can't really say for sure how long this will last and what the solution is at the moment.

[MrTPlush]

There is going to be a second wave, that’s just the reality. We are going to have to go back outside before a vaccine is ready. People aren’t going to sit inside like jail all summer. People can’t mentally afford it nor can the economy handle that. I’m not sure how long we can lock people down, but months on end is probably not going to work.

[PeaveyFury]

The problem is, though, that places like South Korea are clamping back down just weeks after relaxing their restrictions. How excited is everyone going to be about lifting the stay-at-home orders in May if we're locked back down by June?

[JackNicholson1974]

This is my concern. I keep seeing this charts with the flattened curve. Those are great, but, if on the backside of the curve, may 15 looks the same as March 15, and March 15 required us to basically go in to house arrest to prevent the spread, now in the heck is May 15 any different

 

I believe this shutdown has been effective and necessary. I also am worried that if we end it while there are still some cases out there that it will be all for not and cases will spike as feared in early March.

[MrTPlush]

No sure what the answer is, but keeping everyone inside for the next year+ isn't a viable option...it just isn't. We can't wait around for a vaccine. Stay at home orders aren't going to eradicate it. At some point we have to figure out a way to go back on with life the best we can without taxing the healthcare system too much.

 

Not saying we have to open up communities this month or even next month, but we can't sit at home waiting for something to magically end it forever.

[PeaveyFury]

No sure what the answer is, but keeping everyone inside for the next year+ isn't a viable option...it just isn't. We can't wait around for a vaccine. Stay at home orders aren't going to eradicate it. At some point we have to figure out a way to go back on with life the best we can without taxing the healthcare system too much.

 

Not saying we have to open up communities this month or even next month, but we can't sit at home waiting for something to magically end it forever.

 

Oh, I agree. But I think there's this odd feeling among a lot of people, especially the ones who want this to end right away, that the choice is to end the quarantine either next week otherwise it'll be 9 months from now with no options in between. I think the reality is, if we end it shortly, there's a much higher chance we'll have to go back in sometime in May or June, vs. waiting a bit longer than we might like right now so that we have less of a chance of a 2nd quarantine being necessary.

[adambr2]

Fauci revised his U.S. death estimates from COVID-19 to 60,000 - if social distancing is maintained.

[Fear The Chorizo]

No sure what the answer is, but keeping everyone inside for the next year+ isn't a viable option...it just isn't. We can't wait around for a vaccine. Stay at home orders aren't going to eradicate it. At some point we have to figure out a way to go back on with life the best we can without taxing the healthcare system too much.

 

Not saying we have to open up communities this month or even next month, but we can't sit at home waiting for something to magically end it forever.

 

Oh, I agree. But I think there's this odd feeling among a lot of people, especially the ones who want this to end right away, that the choice is to end the quarantine either next week otherwise it'll be 9 months from now with no options in between. I think the reality is, if we end it shortly, there's a much higher chance we'll have to go back in sometime in May or June, vs. waiting a bit longer than we might like right now so that we have less of a chance of a 2nd quarantine being necessary.

 

To me it's all about assessing unintended consequences to these measures taken on what is mainly a one sized-fits all approach, and quickly realizing the long term cost far outweighs the short term benefit of not allowing coronavirus to naturally work its way through the majority of the population that isn't at significant risk. I'm not saying at this point we should open everything back up immediately for everyone, IMO the wrong approach was initially done based on unreliable data/fear and now we're stuck - what I think should have been done was to quarantine the elderly/immunocompromised as soon as it was apparent this disease put them most at risk. Buy them as much time as possible to avoid contracting this disease - try to extend the peak when they contract it into summer months, when elevated humidity levels would help to reduce how contagius it is (it's not necessarily higher temperatures in air, but more water content limits how far aerosol particles containing viruses migrate before being weighed down and dropping from breathing zones). That approach wouldn't be foolproof, but neither is this current approach and it would have focused on a much smaller portion of the overall population.

 

Then establish social distancing protocols across the board for everyone else without shuttering the economy - work from home when at all possible. Restrict the number of people/patrons inside restaurants, bars, stores, arenas/stadiums, etc. - but allow them to remain open. Avoid interactions with eldery/immunocompromised as much as possible - part of that which would be difficult to implement is having medical support staff at nursing homes/elderly care facilities and hospitals basically self-quarantine or potentially live separately from their own families to prevent community spread from reaching them. Right now as it stands it seems most of the community spread still occurring is between medical personnel and patients, then taking it back home with them. Then let the younger and working-aged populations carry on with daily life as best they can while they also build up immunity - that would still hamper the economy but it wouldn't crater it, and assistance dollars could be more focused on rapidly building up PPE and testing materials along with medical system assistance instead of just throwing it everywhere at limited amounts which ultimately won't help. This approach would have allowed a majority of the country to work itself through Covid-19 and build up the herd immunity necessary to actually get it in check by this fall - without collapsing the economy. What we are doing now is going to inevitably allow it to crop back up and potentially lead to powers that be shuttering everything again, or even worse scaring powers that be into continuing the current shutdown much too long.

 

Presently hospitals across the country are either furloughing or laying off staff because they are sitting empty. This even applies to facilities in rural New York. Makeshift hospitals thrown together by the military are being torn down in former Covid-19 hot spots after treating 0 patients. Assessing some of the few countries that didn't do widescale shutdowns or waited much longer than others to implement is starting to look like they fared equal to or even better than those that didn't - particularly in Europe.

 

My biggest beef is we keep extending these country-wide stay at home policies for the most part because "social distancing is working and the peak is getting pushed further back", but then it's obvious that doing so raises concerns of infectious disease experts to reopen things for fear of the eventual resurgence of the virus, because there are too many people who haven't yet contracted it - there's still no appetite for providing a date or even a set of criteria that need to be met in order for life to re-open for the vast majority of people who aren't a high risk of being killed by Covid-19, because IMO there is too much paralysis based on projections. Unfortunately, those initial projections that are proving to be quite flawed got us to this point with nationwide shutdowns, and now there really isn't a good option to try and reopen things that won't look like we acted too quickly.

[stoutdude04]

I agree with some of what you said, but it's easy for me to say those things when my decisions dont have a direct impact on people dying. The people making these decisions are making life and death decisions and I don't think I would be willing to put people's lives at risk if I made the wrong choice. The old better safe than sorry.

[3and2Fastball]

Waiting for a Vaccine seems futile. There may never be a Vaccine. Covid-19 is a Coronavirus, just like the common cold is a Coronavirus. Scientists have tried for decades to come up with Vaccines for the common cold. The solutions may end up being in treatment, medicine and herd immunity. In that scenario, it will be 18 months of waves of off and on quarantine and releasing restrictions.

 

What we need are 350 million tests, to see who has antibodies and who doesn’t. Until then it’s all just speculation.