I'm so sorry for this, and everyone has my best wishes. It's easy to say "the odds are in their favour!", but I know that's not much comfort when a disease is right there in the home.Originally Posted by RevolverRob
That's one of the worst things about a pandemic like this...the very bonds that hold people together make everyone a danger to each other.
Any and all numbers out of China should be viewed with a mixture of suspicion and skepticism, not only in this but really in all things. The government has been using several different methods of reporting cases, picking and choosing as it suits them, so even if they are now saying "We never counted X", what they really mean is "Previous reports contain some of X, but not all or always".
One thing that has been interesting in China's numbers is that the ratios and proportions have been surprisingly in line with countries outside of China with large numbers of cases and at least moderately extensive testing programmes. For example, China-wide rates for positivity, case fatality, R0, etc. seem to be fairly consistent with those from Korea, etc. If you compare just the overwhelmed areas (Wuhan metro and Lombardia until its near-collapse, for example), they also track fairly closely across their similar, higher rates. This lends some substance to something that I've been thinking for a while, based partly of these consistencies and partly on what I know about their monitoring and surveillance focused on the disease...namely, that China is doing an impressive job of actually measuring and gathering information on the status and characteristics of the epidemic there within official circles, while not actually reporting authentic numbers publicly. Simply put, they know pretty well what is going on, better than might have been thought, but they are cynically using that information to craft a favourable narrative, rather than behave with any transparency.
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Italy's death rate is around 11%. US death rate is around 1%. Soon to change in the US I would guess.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
The death rate is per confirmed cases right now only. I'd guess the testing in Italy is way insufficient and they are only testing very sick people. Nobody knows right now what the actual death rate is. Judging by South Korea's data, where the rate is 1.38%, I'd guess the actual death rate is closer to 1% than 11%.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/
Even more: Oxford Study: Coronavirus May Have Already Infected Half of U.K. Population - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020...lf-of-u-k.html
If this is true then the death rate is actually on a par with a flu
"As coronavirus outbreaks surge worldwide, research teams are racing to understand a crucial epidemiological puzzle — what proportion of infected people have mild or no symptoms and might be passing the virus on to others. Some of the first detailed estimates of these covert cases suggest that they could represent some 60% of all infections."
JMFC. Since, well, roughly the end of January for members here at least, we’ve been running under an official mantra of "fever, cough, breathing issues" as a yardstick for implementation of pretty much every protection protocol we have. That—along with *known* exposure—is still the yardstick, as of me typing this.
If it’s true that 60 percent of carriers can be asymptomatic, and still highly infectious, that would go a loooong way towards explaining the crisis in several countries right now.
Going further, at chez sidheshooter, we’ve had conversations with neurologist offices and PT centers alike that went (roughly) like this: "we are both feeling under the weather, is it still a good idea to come in for the appointment?"
"Cough or fever?"
"No."
"Runny nose, or difficulty breathing?"
"No."
"Abdominal cramping or diarrhea?"
"No, just a ton of fatigue and feeling like we’re coming down with something."
"We will be taking temperatures/come on in..."
The idea that we could be carriers gives me the willies, even if we pass every in-ear thermometer test and get a little sticker on our sleeves to gain access to the building.
In other news, I found out through the grapevine last weekend that a friend of mine was in and out of the hospital all of February; serious stomach issues, needing oxygen, etc. Turns out that he asked to be tested for C19, but they wouldn’t do it at that early stage, because he "had no international travel or interaction with known cases."
He did, however, go to the NAMM show late-mid January—the largest trade show of its kind, with 80K people crammed assholes-to-elbows into the Anaheim convention center, from pretty much every country outside of Yemen—especially China.
I am going to be very interested to see what comes of any readily available antibody test down the road.
”But in the end all of these ideas just manufacture new criminals when the problem isn't a lack of criminals.” -JRB
This from someone I know in her first year of residency:
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Another unfortunate result of the coronavirus is there is a massive nationwide blood shortage. Blood drives aren't being run as they usually are. My co-residents and I joked just the other day that we have given our patients our sweat and tears, and that next the administration will ask us to give them our blood. Well folks, this morning we got an e-mail saying there will be a blood drive from employees next week - we are having trouble getting the blood our patients need any other way! Those of us who still feel well will try to donate. It will be interesting to think that the next time I order blood from the bank for one of my patients, it very well could be my own!
...
Finally, if you are in good health, call your local Red Cross and ask how to donate blood products. We are in dire need. And the demand has not stopped. Trauma, cancer, and COVID patients alike will continue to need blood for months to come, and our supply is already critically low.
I hope that we’re further along in this thing than this than we think.
ETA: I think that a lot of covid cases like you mentioned were dismissed as the flu or unknown viral infections for a while.
This has been my guess re: Vancouver for a long time. It's a guess and nothing more, but it seems likely to me that people fleeing Wuhan would have come here on our completely unfettered, unscreened, frequent flights which only began to become restricted as the airlines stepped in. We have a huge population of mainland Chinese in Vancouver, something close to 400,000 I believe, on any given day. Presumably most are not from Wuhan, but I would think some must be and it's normal for people with some connection to Vancouver to come back here during times of unrest.
In fact we also have a large population of 1st generation Iranians who came here, got citizenship, and then went back to Iran, who we regularly have to repatriate as things go south in the middle east; this comes up every couple of years when suddenly a whole bunch of Canadian citizens are reported as stranded in Iran, and flights are mobilized to rescue them. In many now cases this causes outrage because lots of these people haven't been in Canada for years, and were only in Canada long enough to get citizenship at a time when it was pretty easy. They're often referred to as "Canadians of convenience". If I were one of these people and in Iran, I'd be hitting the eject button myself right now so I can only assume they're at least as cagey as me, and came back to Canada as their epidemic began to surge.
I would therefore presume that cases began arriving earlier than we recognized, in greater numbers than we acknowledge, and circulated to a greater extent than we know, and that it wasn't until it hit a vulnerable population (in our instance, a care home with a connection to an Iranian case) that it generated a dramatic enough response to result in testing and the resultant public health actions.
Our testing is directed at people with a clear connection to Wuhan, Iran, or Italy, so given that we all but exclude community transmission in the testing protocols, it's quite possible that there is a parallel epidemic going on with mild symptoms and less visible impact.
Certainly some provinces - notably Alberta, which also has the highest per capita testing in the country - are now saying that the majority of their cases are community transmission and I can hardly believe that a much more crowded place like Vancouver would have an opposite result.
Therefore, I would guess that many people in this region currently sick with mild symptoms, such as, for example, me, are moderately likely to have C19. That is certainly my hope, at least.
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