D&D and the rising pandemic

[NotAYakk]

Testing rate probably doesn't matter now. Count the body bags in a few weeks.

That sadly works.

After 100s of Covid-19 deaths/day, you cannot count Covid-19 deaths even. Italy ran out of capacity to test people before they died (because they tested people in Hospital, and the backlog meant that many people died before they got to Hospital). So once you hit 100s of deaths/day, look at excess deaths compared to the previous year. (which I have read means that Italy, as bad as the numbers are, is undercounting Covid 19 deaths by 3x ish).

The downside to counting deaths is that it is a 2-4 week trailing indicator. You can make assumptions about how much it spreads and the fatality rate in order to turn that into a rough current infected number.

I think such projections are overstated.

The human race cannot, will not, and should not expect to remodel how it does things as a result of a particular crisis, to be in a state of perpetual readiness for such a crisis. There are a number of reasons for this, which largely boil down to: 1) We are psychologically ill-suited for it, 2) it is often wasteful, economically speaking - perpetual preparedness for crisis has a cost that is often greater than the cost needed to recover from a crisis, and 3) the changes needed to be prepared for Crisis A may leave you more vulnerable to Crisis B, which you cannot predict.

We could put up a bunch of hypothetical situations to demonstrate the principle, but it amounts to simply that you cannot always be prepared for everything, and trying to be so is incredibly costly.

We've had 50 years of globalization. In it, we've had 1 bad epidemic, and seen a large number that got close (and could have been worse).

This crisis is not unpredictable. Epidemiologists have been saying this was coming for multiple decades. It was even assumed it would be a respiratory illness, like Covid-19, because of how well they spread.

What we've been doing is building up an Epidemiological debt and now we are paying it off. Structurally you can actually arrange for such debt to not build up. It might require more than one plague.

USA Vice President Pence is advising those with COVID 19 to return to work but 'wear a mask'.

Well, that is the quickest path to 2-10 million dead.

Meanwhile places like Canada are demanding people to go into 14 day isolation if they even have a chance of being exposed including all people returning from outside the country. This includes not even making a stop to get groceries. It is likely there will soon be enforcement in the way of fines for breaking this mandate for isolation.

Yes. You should get someone to deliver it to you, not get it yourself.

There are caremongering groups pretty much everywhere (multiple ones in major cities by neighborhood) who will get you groceries for far less than "I am in self isolation" reasons.

 

[Zardnaar]

Talked to my neighbour yesterday. He's elderly above 60 from England.

Gave him m my phone number to ring me if he gets sick. I'll drop off water and cooked food for him assuming he doesn't need a hospital visit.

Think we're gonna have some trapped tourists where money will be a problem. If they only came here for a few weeks but are stuck for a month or more they're gonna need help.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yep. For example, here in Virginia the official numbers seem to be staying one day behind what they actually are, for at least some cases. For example, a newly confirmed case from yesterday may not be included in today's numbers, but will rather be added to tomorrow's numbers. And I have no idea what causes that one-day lag in adding them to the official numbers.

Alright, so I found why numbers in Virginia can be different between what news sites are reporting and what the dept of Health is reporting"

"These cases are “presumptively positive,” meaning they are pending confirmatory testing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "

The news is including "presumptively positive" in their numbers, which the dept of Health does not include them til they are confirmed. Other states probably do the same and can explain totals that do not match from day to day.

Virginia is testing a very small amount of people. They still haven't tested more than 4000 yet.

 

[Hussar]

Well I don't think people are gonna be to happy about another round of corporate bail outs for the second time in just over a decade.

So neo liberal trickle down theory I think will be on the way out. Won't be a massive fundamental swing in terms of capitalism but there's going to be more regulation and intervention.

Just a quibble. Trickle down theory is a neo-conservative theory, not liberal. It was spawned by Reagan in the 1980's.

Carry on.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Yeah, it's difficult to write much in here about the US without getting overly political.

But we're screwed.

The point of going to work in face masks is not political because the Democrat governor of New York said the same thing.

 

[Zardnaar]

Just a quibble. Trickle down theory is a neo-conservative theory, not liberal. It was spawned by Reagan in the 1980's.

Carry on.

It predates Reagan. The theory was around for a while, on it's modern form picked up steam in mid 70s.

Reagan was the harbinger of it's implementation.

 

[FrogReaver]

After 100s of Covid-19 deaths/day, you cannot count Covid-19 deaths even. Italy ran out of capacity to test people before they died (because they tested people in Hospital, and the backlog meant that many people died before they got to Hospital). So once you hit 100s of deaths/day, look at excess deaths compared to the previous year. (which I have read means that Italy, as bad as the numbers are, is undercounting Covid 19 deaths by 3x ish).

I've wondered if that might be the case there - but also in the U.S. when untested people die without going to the hospital - they won't be counted in covid-19 deaths initially. Curious where the source was for Italy numbers on that.

Also do you think that means Italy numbers are actually declining or they've just changed how they are testing?

 

[Lem23]

I mean nurses have stopped applying tests in Ontario because they aren't being supplied N95 masks and that leaves them vulnerable to getting infected by the virus. And they aren't being supplied, because the supply chain got broken and what little remains is being used on other procedures.

The way they're doing it on Ontario (or at least Toronto) is that if you go to the hospital for an emergency (non-emergencies aren't being dealt with, like routine surgery etc), you get tested before they admit you, and you have to wait while they get your results. I know, because I had to get tested then wait for most of the day (from 6am till about 4pm) before they'd admit me on saturday morning, then do emergency surgery on me sunday morning thanks to an infected kidney stone that was far too large to pass. The hospitals are allowing no visitors unless you have surgery, in which case you're allowed one visitor directly after surgery, and any single one of the checklist (with about a dozen points on it, not just fever / cough / foreign travel) stops you from getting allowed in. The nurses didn't have masks; this was pretty much the only way to protect them, and they were being put on smaller shift groups (3 nurses over night in urology as opposed to over half a dozen). They were combining some wards too so that they had a greater pool of nurses available for work if things go horribly wrong, and the fact that only emergency cases are being admitted helped keep down patient numbers so they have free beds if needed. If anything bad was about to happen, they had plans to move all of us to a different hospital for recovery to free the entre hospital up for CV cases only.

 

[Lem23]

Just a quibble. Trickle down theory is a neo-conservative theory, not liberal. It was spawned by Reagan in the 1980's.

Carry on.

Neo-liberalism is a conservative doctrine, not a liberal one (despite the name). The neo- prefix is the important part.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

When the government is telling everyone who might have it to stay at home and not get tested unless they are severe, that right there tells you that most of the cases aren't even being identified.

Yep.