Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)

skersfan said:
Both sides are correct.  The disease/virus is terrible if you actually get it.  It certainly can kill you and quickly.  Some young people have died no question.  But hiding under a rock is not the answer.

Personally if they play it will be fine with me.  If they don't pretty much the same.  Far more important things going on with this, than football.

I deal with it daily, 6 days a week unfortunately.  Wife is on the front line.  CNO with a far different opinion of doctors after this event.  ER doctors are gods in her eyes, the rest could go piss up a rope. Most are useless and terrified of the virus.  

The terror from this disease is so overblown it is beyond belief.  What we have done is like killing and ant with a bulldozer.  Makes no sense at all.  Our community has had two deaths at her hospital from Covid.  Both in their 80's and waited far to long to show up at the hospital.  Why?  Doctors are not taking calls, patients are terrified to go to the hospital or the Doctors office because of the continuous media claims they will die if they go out side.  People are dying in our community of heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, drug overdose, spousal abuse, and just about everything else under the sun because of the continuous terror program thrown on this country. by the news media.  Many are not having surgeries that are needed because the surgery is considered non essential.  The hospitals are going broke because of this.  We should have attacked the source and protected the weak.  Easy to say now in hindsight.  But when the medical field can control something they will jump at the chance to do it. 

I offered a different opinion from a Chair head at Stanford.  He has a completely different opinion of what is going on.  He says the virus has been here since late October early November.  A lot of people here think they have had it.  Me for one, was never so sick in my life as I was in early November.  But not allowed to take the antibody test yet.  I think when that is allowed in California we will find out if Dr. Atlas is correct.

I am out every single day, and have been since this all started.  I work in communications and spend most of my time on mountain tops. If not there I ride my bicycle 25 to 30 miles a day.  I am a high risk individual.  73 years young. Two heart attacks and other problems, but still face every day as an opportunity to improve my self physically.  A Jar Head thing.  It just never goes away. lol

All of us want this thing to end, but we have to be smart about it.  There  isn't a need for LA to be locked down until we have a vaccine. California has lost close to 3000 people out of 45 million.  3000 is not a satisfactory number by any means, but this lock down here will end up killing more people than the virus, is my guess.
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I agree with most of this, but I think the jury is still out on a lot of things, including whether the media has overblown the fear. In the early going, the media probably underplayed the danger of COVID because Americans weren't dying in number yet. Then New York, Italy and Spain started having legitimate nightmare scenarios. The scientists were smart enough to consider multiple scenarios, because good case and horrible case scenarios were and are still valid. I think you have to report that. Not a lot of easy answers in the mere two months of spotty Shelter in Place directives, and anyone predicting 90,000 U.S. deaths in the two months since March 19 would have been called an alarmist. When we look back on the story, almost everyone will have gotten something wrong. 

There are differences between the 1918 influenza pandemic and COVID-19, but there are enough similarities to require vigilance. Things are in fact re-opening -- rather quickly -- and I hope we don't dismiss the scientists, the media, or facemasks if things get inconvenient. 

Re: football season. MLB appears ready to move forward with an abbreviated baseball season starting early June. No spectators. I think every other sport will be watching closely. The chances of a football season are better than they were a couple weeks ago. 

 
I have some anecdotal evidence of underestimating the total cases.

Someone I work with lives with someone who tested positive for covid. They then tested another family member who doesn't have any symptoms (to see if he can go in to work) and he tested positive. The co-worker then developed symptoms. Since she works from home she doesn't need to get tested in order to work, however she asked if she should get tested and they (whoever administers the test) told her she didn't need to get tested since she has symptoms and lives with other people who tested positive. So while there's probably above a 95% chance she has it, she won't be counted in the numbers unless she ends up getting really sick.

This clearly isn't a purposeful way to under report, but it's another example of how underestimating can occur.

 
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Moiraine said:
I have some anecdotal evidence of underestimating the total cases.

Someone I work with lives with someone who tested positive for covid. They then tested another family member who doesn't have any symptoms (to see if he can go in to work) and he tested positive. The co-worker then developed symptoms. Since she works from home she doesn't need to get tested in order to work, however she asked if she should get tested and they (whoever administers the test) told her she didn't need to get tested since she has symptoms and lives with other people who tested positive. So while there's probably above a 95% chance she has it, she won't be counted in the numbers unless she ends up getting really sick.

This clearly isn't a purposeful way to under report, but it's another example of how underestimating can occur.
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Most definitely. My next door neighbor had it and gave it to his wife. His wife was hospitalized, tested and I assume reported as a positive. But her husband wasn't ever tested and he was just told to stay home when he began exhibiting symptoms. I'm sure very similar scenarios are playing out with almost every positive case. I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine that positive cases may be being reported in the neighborhood of half of real positives.

 
Mavric said:
And - by extension - how the fatality rate is over-estimated.
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That's likely true. However I think of the important variables right now, fatality rate is the least important among them. I don't think whether it's 0.5% or 4% or somewhere in between is a very important variable right now - we won't really know until months later anyway. The most important imo are the rate of increase in cases, case volume and hospitalization rate, and hospitals' capacity to handle that volume.

We can't handle 5% of the population getting hospitalized in a short period of time, even if the death rate is only 0.5% or whatever it is. If hospitals are overwhelmed then fatalities and fatality rate increase (for multiple causes of death).

 
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EYkMndrWkAACpto


 
After two solid months of the economic shutdown the best one can say is the spread of the virus has been slowed somewhat and even that is unproven.  The spread continues unabated.  The numbers of cases is still climbing and recent guesstimates suggest another few million more will get the virus in coming months.  

Studies by many different professional orgs give contradictory results and recommendations as to what should be done.  

Apparently the experts don't agree on much of anything basically.  

Absent a miracle vaccine soon (within a few months), the infected will probably outnumber the non-infected.  Chances of a vaccine are less than 10% in that time frame and based on the experts’ predictions likely less than 50% in twelve months.  A year from now the spread will be nearly universal.  

The basic question which ought to be answered is how many have already been infected and can be determined easily with random sample testing.  If as many as 15 to 40 million have had the virus without serious health issues, then the panic and massive over reaction will be exposed as the biggest public health and economic policy blunder in history!  Thus the likely reason we don’t have the question answered. 

There is no apparent rationale to continue the shutdowns if they

are not stopping the spread or ultimately saving lives in big numbers (hundreds of thousands).  We know there are public health and economic harms from current shutdown policies.  

 
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