Moderator notice: Please do not ask for medical advice in this forum!
- If you are interested in Crafting, maybe try ordering a craft kit online (something substantial that would take time would be best, like a Latch hook kit
(and crochet hook if you don’t have one), a potholder loom and cotton loops, or cross stitch kit), to work on.
- learn something physical, like an instrument, how to sew or knit, etc
- a lot of museums and zoos and the like are doing virtual tours or free online classes, so keep an eye out for that as well.
- do a giant puzzle
- Join an online bookclub
- Take an online class
While the outbreak started around New Year's Day (12/31), it's picking up steam around the Asia-Pacific region especially since Mainland Chinese people tend to travel a lot.
For reference, the BNO Newsroom twitter has a special feed for any info on the coronavirus:
https://twitter.com/bnodesk?lang=en
The WHO has page about COVID-19 and any other concerns people may have. I suggest peeps go to the Q&A page to check for official details.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
Edited by nombretomado on Jun 3rd 2020 at 3:21:48 AM
The total number of people infected in both United States and Italy is going to surpass the number of people infected in China. I have start to question China's infection and death rates, seeing that they are unusually low for a country with 1.6 billion and United States is getting close to China's numbers within the new few hours or days.
Figure of Hourai
No doomsaying.
Avatar Source
Or...they'll take one look at the shitshow the UK is head towards at the end of the year and do the exact opposite.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Some tidbits from the "countdown to Italy" website:
- Switzerland is less than a week/day behind Italy depending on whether you count fatalities/infections.
- Lombardy and Italy might be close to peaking, but the USA and Spain aren't even close.
- Death rate is subject to less "testing bias", but it can spike when healthcare systems get overwhelmed, it and its trends are a few weeks behind infections and in some places (Italy) there are concerns that the official death toll is undercounting.
- Germany has an unduly low proportion of fatalities/cases.
- Nordic countries have had a 35% increase initially but now are down to 16-20%. That includes Sweden, which hasn't shut down anything yet.
- Most of Europe is one-two weeks behind Italy.
- Eastern Europe is up to a month behind Italy (that's Russia) but in some places steep increases are underway. On average 22%.
- In the UK there are regional differences, with London farther ahead. The rate appears to be decreasing from 35% to 22%.
- Iran is rising at about 10% which may indicate peaking, or an exhaustion of testing capacity.
- Singapore is seeing an increase that indicates either a) more imported cases or b) control measures losing effectiveness.
- In the USA numbers are increasing steeply at a rate of 35% for most of the country. California is the only exception where it's 22%. Most states are two-three weeks behind Italy but they are closing in owing to the steep rises. In terms of mortality USA is about 20 days behind Italy.
- Same story in Israel, Chile, New Zealand, Pakistan as in the USA albeit one weeks behind the US.
- Latin America is about three-four weeks behind Italy and rising at 35% daily except Argentina where it's 22%.
- South-East Asia is speeding up too.
- In some warm countries the rate of increase is about 14% but it's hard to tell any climate effects given the small number of countries. Also...
- Brazil is increasing steeply, at a rate of 35%.
- In Australia the rate is increasing (season change?) from 14% to 25% increase per day.
According to BBC, some hospitals in London are beginning to max out.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Redmess
March 25, 2020
A Narrow Window to Avoid the Worst?
The US health system, and New York City’s in particular, is bracing for impact: At The New Yorker, Lizzie Widdicombe chronicles city emergency rooms experiencing the first swell of COVID-19 patients, with mild cases worsening, protective equipment running low, and the influx more than doubling every day in one ER, according to a doctor who noted a “feeling of impending doom.”
With public officials expecting an onslaught, the doctor, health policy expert, and biomedical ethicist Ezekiel Emanuel writes for The New York Times that the country has little time to act: “The window to win this war is about seven to 14 days,” as Emanuel sees it. “If the United States intervenes immediately on the scale that China did, our death toll could be under 100,000. Within three to four months we might be able to begin a return to more normal lives.” Emanuel calls for the entire country to shelter in place, federal coordination of equipment distribution, recruitment of the unemployed to set up testing facilities, and strict adherence to social distancing—otherwise, “recovery may take a decade or more with extraordinary levels of death and dislocation.”
Worrying that drastic measures could damage society, Dr. David Katz argues in another Times op-ed for a more muted strategy, keeping the most vulnerable (the elderly and immunocompromised) from exposure while letting the rest of the population live relatively unrestricted.
To Shut Down, or Not to Shut Down?
While President Trump hopes the US will be open for business by Easter—even as his top health advisers have sounded much more cautious notes—the Times and The Wall Street Journal argue the case in dueling editorials.
As the Journal puts it, on Monday the White House-recommended, 15-day period of social distancing will end, marking a time for recalibration. A national strategy henceforth must strike “a balance between protecting against the virus and resuming commerce and business that is crucial to getting people back to work.” A deep recession, the paper argues, would pose its own health risks.
The Times sees it differently, writing that a nationwide shelter-in-place order, prompted by Trump and issued by governors, is the only way. The US “has passed the point where aggressive, targeted efforts at tracking and containment, like those pursued by South Korea, have a realistic chance of success. And calls for voluntary social distancing have had mixed results, as the photos of spring breakers crammed together on the Florida beaches last week made clear,” the paper writes, concluding that although the country has wasted time, it still has a chance to learn from China and Italy.
Does Democracy Stop for a Pandemic?
The pandemic has seen governments employ restrictions not seen in generations, and at The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum writes that authoritarian power grabs are unfolding amid the chaos.
Applebaum nods to Israel and notes that in Poland (from whence she writes), officials check in to make sure no one has left her household. Hungary stands as a stark example—Applebaum points out that under an emergency bill, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán can ignore laws at will, and the spread of false information has been banned, with no clear understanding of who will define truth and falsity—and she wonders if, across the globe, “new powers ceded to the authorities during the crisis will ever be given back.”
How the Virus Will Remake the Global Order
When the pandemic is over, we may awake to find the global order has shifted, Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi suggest in a Foreign Affairs essay. The US has typically led in global crises, but as the coronavirus spreads, China “is moving quickly and adeptly to take advantage of the opening created by U.S. mistakes, filling the vacuum to position itself as the global leader in pandemic response,” they write. While Europe declined to help Italy, China committed to sending “1,000 ventilators, two million masks, 100,000 respirators, 20,000 protective suits, and 50,000 test kits,” sending medical teams and masks to Iran, too.
US abdication is China’s best weapon in seizing global leadership, Campbell and Doshi write, and the virus is providing ample opportunity. Europe, meanwhile, has seen its own fissures emerge, as Italy’s ambassador to the EU blasted Europe, in a Politico op-ed, for failing to help his country, while Carnegie’s Judy Dempsey writes that the pandemic has seen the EU fail to respond coherently as a bloc, resorting instead to inward-looking national reactions.
Echoes of 1918
Experts have pointed to the 1918 influenza pandemic as the most apt corollary to COVID-19, and in a New York Review of Books essay last week, Mark Honigsbaum offered some historical context and comparison.
The scale of the toll was chilling: Between the flu’s arrival in May 1918 and its exit in the spring of 1919, “a third of the world’s population had been infected and at least 50 million people were dead. That is 40 million more than perished on the killing fields of Flanders and northern France (and elsewhere in Europe), and 10 million more than have died from AIDS in the forty years since the syndrome was first recognized in the 1980s.”
Comparing the two illnesses, Honigsbaum finds good news and bad. On one hand, the 1918 flu spread more easily and uncannily affected the young and middle aged. On the other, it was an influenza strain, so those who had previously contracted similar viruses had an immunological leg up. “The result was that the Spanish flu infected only a third of the world’s population. By contrast, no one has any immunity to the new coronavirus—hence the estimates that as much as 80 percent of the world’s population could have been infected by the time the pandemic will have run its course.” Disturbingly, he writes that by some estimates, the coronavirus could have a mortality rate of around 2%, roughly the same as the killer virus of 102 years ago.
Edited by Redmess on Mar 26th 2020 at 10:04:23 AM
Optimism is a duty.
The United States have officially surpassed China and Italy for the most number of people infected. Yeah, I was right that United States will handle the epidemic much worse than China and Italy, and the numbers show.
Well with Trump dragging his feet and the Governors of Texas and Florida being nuts... that was a given from the start.
13k in one day though... and no one is doing anything, they are just worried about freaken money.
Redmess
Note in Fareed's briefing above, that 100.000 deaths for the US is the optimistic estimate. That is when everything goes right for the next few weeks.
Optimism is a duty.
How the Virus Will Remake the Global Order
Called it.
It's no surprise that China is rising in its international standing when they're the ones helping people and we're sabotaging vital international co-operation because of racist rhetoric.
It turns out that repeatedly shouting "China!" while enflaming racism is no substitute for actual meaningful action, the Trump administration is an embarrassment and disgrace.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
100,000 deaths being the most optimistic guess is still pretty high (much higher than the supposed Chinese numbers), considering the bad healthcare infrastructure and the lack of social safety protections for unemployed and poor Americans (thanks to the GOP), I highly doubt we would be lucky to have 100,000 deaths. It's very likely the actual numbers right now is actually higher because several Americans are being denied testing and the initial testing in February was flawed.
That being said, the current infections and deaths in China is now beginning to be more questionable as we speak since the number of people infected in America now surpasses China roughly a week after the lockdowns have started (not to mention that China has a larger population than United States). Considering the current rate right now, we probably may end up with roughly half the population infected and about 480-600k deaths at worst case scenario by the end of April (and this is worst case scenario).
Edited by DarkPaladinX on Mar 26th 2020 at 2:42:58 AM
I would not be surprised if they're specifically off but this comparison doesn't really work, the US has had absolutely zero meaningful national effort against it and much of the decent responses have been local and ad-hoc. We know that China, by comparison, locked down an entire province.
It makes sense that they would be doing better than we are.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
The US's stuff is just 'recomendations', while Mardi Gras and Spring break still happened.
The US bungled this completely from the word go and has not stopped bungling it with the Idiot In Chief still dragging his feet.
Welp, what is having insiders' knowledge.
Both my parents are doctors so they have been receiving info from their colleages about the situation in Cancun. They had knowledge of the official first death here early in the morning (local government made it official a hour ago), but what's more concerning is that they've been receiving multiple cases of atypical pneumonia. As meanwhile doctors insist that these patients should take the test, authorities are outright refusing to do so. And since they aren't "officially infected" they aren't put into the same procedures as those who are.
Yeah, this is a bomb waiting to explode. I imagine the situation is the same in all of Mexico. Friends of my parents in other smaller cities are being "drafted" to help on hospitals, so now I'm worried that my folks might get dragged too if the situation here gets ugly.
Turns out there's a high price to pay for "fReEdOm!!!11!11!"
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Mar 26th 2020 at 5:50:20 AM
Italian article, but there are concerns about widespread undercounting of COVID-19 fatalities in Northern Italy. In Bergamo some people are sent home with oxygen bottles
It makes sense that they would be doing better than we are.
And that, is why I feel that the outbreak in America will be much worse than Italy and China and the number are showing. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of deaths will skyrocket into tens of thousands a week later, hospitals being overcapacity, medical supplies running out with even more deaths because of overcapacity of hospitals and lack of supplies. And then you have the GOP leadership that wants to reopen businesses by Easter and downplaying the viral outbreak. Combined with misinformation spread by far-right media like Fox News Noise and a privatized health care, you have a recipe for disaster in America.
The USA is no. 1 in the virus now.
Dammit.
Edit:
![[nja]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/user_ninja_2074.png "[nja]"){kind=small}
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 26th 2020 at 3:00:02 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
That's been pretty much inevitable for at least a couple of weeks.
Well, it seems we got shit on China for coverups.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
In the name of being honest
Scenes from a funeral home in Wuhan as people were finally allowed to pick up their relatives' ashes after the long lockdown. One truck driver interviewed said that he'd transported 2,500 urns (on a single truck, to a single funeral home). Seems well beyond doubt that there's a vast undercount of the fatalities at this point.
The Wanderer
Friend of mine said a nursing home that the nursing home they work for works closely with has someone who contracted COVID-19, so I'm not surprised.
Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
I guess part of the reasoning might be to avoid a rush of panicked families trying to evacuate their elderly and inadvertently spreading the virus even more. Which wouldn't be an issue if we had sufficient test kits.
To me the true good news in that report is that people develop a strong immune response after infection. I think we already suspected that, but a confirmation is good.
Edited by Heatth on Mar 26th 2020 at 3:31:20 PM