Is the global reaction to COVID-19 similar to that of the 2009 Mexican swine flu? Or has it been significantly more aggressive?

I admit, I had forgotten how big the swine flu was. Once it finally started rolling the world wide death tally went up like a rocket.

cone said:

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more info seems to be seeping out today:

- not airborne or not a major factor in spread

- fomite and droplet spread. and the thing that makes this so damn pesky is that it lasts longer on surfaces than you think

- this is good because it means hand washing and social distancing and mitigation practices can work and would not necessary crater the economy. i think demand will still go low out of paranoia and businesses will have to show that they are disinfecting their surfaces daily.

- it's not as infectious as we once thought (coming out of Wuhan). the R0 might be sub 2.0

- the attack on close contacts was much less in casual settings and only 10% in family settings over two weeks

- my read on this is that population density and mass transit and general hygiene without early mitigation actions is what drives this thing to outbreak

- large gatherings and events will absolutely need to be cancelled

i hope i'm not being too upbeat. effectively, this is like a cross between the stomach flu and the regular flu that is +10x more likely to kill you and +10x more likely to send you to the hospital for pneumonia

so it's still bad and we're going to spend a long time untangling this knot, but it's potentially less catastrophic if we treat it with respect.

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This goes against almost everything I have read and heard today? What source is this?

This is a long but nice discussion today with an ID doc @ BCOM.

https://www.facebook.com/ZDoggMD/videos/197556921466456/UzpfSTE1NzcwMjQ0ODk6MTAyMTkyNjQ2NzY3NTkxNzI/

aggiepanic95 said:

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Nuclear Scramjet said:

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And that would be.......?

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Dogs and cats living together.

ok, so this R0 can be controlled. Now I feel like a dumbass because I thought it was a more useful datapoint. If it can be controlled/modified via means such as hygiene and level of care, that means that value has different values for different regions... instead of communicating its raw transmissability, which could be useful in comparing things in a general sense. To me, this makes this particular datapoint useless when communicating with the general public, so why the **** is it plastered everywhere when it can be so very easily misconstrued? That's frustrating as someone legitimately trying to understand the situation with a level head outside the medical community.

i posted some links before

singapore minister of health says its mostly fomites that last for a long while

there's a study that suggested the first people that came over with the virus didn't transmit it as effectively to close contacts as would be estimated if it was airborne

also the WHO (yes you can discount them i generally do) is saying things about the R0 being lower

anyways, take your silver linings where you can get them. i do generally trust the Singapore officials. if they lied, they'd be risking a lot of reputation.

because at the start of an outbreak, it won't be controlled

so it's better to know what you have to do to bend that number down

if it's airborne, that's going to be really really hard

ntxVOL said:

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Rapier108 said:

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VaultingChemist said:

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The cruise ship seems like it was a safer place than that nursing home.

Thankfully all of the first responders who might have been exposed have been isolated for a while.

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It is crazy to me how this thing just pops up in seemingly random places. Next thing you know, we will have 700 cases tied to this one place.

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I have been an Industrial Safety Manager in the metals industry for over 20 years.

I am also a volunteer EMT in my hometown. My son is currently enrolled in an EMT class and was just recently released to start his hands-on ride along training with other EMTs.

It was out of concern for his safety as well as mine that I originally started searching for information related to this disease and how it spreads.

When I first saw the news report photo's yesterday of EMS providers responding to the Kirkland nursing home I told a coworker... "they are going to get sick... they are not wearing the correct PPE and not following proper disease prevent protocols... I did not think that I would see affirmation of what I said this quickly.

Two take away's and a question regarding this post...

1) As to the seriousness of this situation... elsewhere I read that 2 of the people that have been admitted into the hospital in Washington state are both 20 year old patients and were admitted in serious condition. A lot of our first responders fall into the 20-30 year old demographic....

I know that due to their age and the statistics of this disease that people in this age group will likely be able to fight off the disease... but seriously... 20 years old and admitted in serious condition... let that sink in...

2) My original impressions stand... when you see China locking down cities with millions of people in them, when you see Chinese health care providers working in Level A or Level C hazmat gear... you better make sure you understand exactly what you are dealing with before you go in to the situation....

My question concerning this article... it stated that one fire fighter had already been released from quarantine already... how long have they known that this was going on in the nursing home... i was under the impression it was just discovered yesterday or the day before?


For my son and myself ... I have decided that I will not be putting ourselves in danger until we are provided with the proper PPE required to deal with a situation of this magnitude.

i've been a pretty bad doomer on all this, so watch my brief grasp at optimism get upended by tomorrow morning

it seems like it's bad news bad news bad news bad news maybe not so bad bad news bad news bad news

I do hope the new info about fomites is true! Early reports out of China were saying even droplet ppe was ineffective. That's like one extreme to another.

cone said:

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paraphrasing couple of things I heard here:

"Virus remains alive on surfaces and is transmissible from those surfaces for days"

"airborne droplets can transmit the virus"

"No need to be concerned if an infected person is in the immediate area (eg a fellow patron at a mall)"

does not compute. first point seems to indicate an infected person leaves a two-day trail of infection behind them wherever they go. am I supposed to believe the 'surface theory' doesn't apply to shopping malls...only the droplet theory does?

If you're standing 6 ft from a person at the mall low worry

if you put your hand on the same chair at the food court and touch your face before washing high worry

one remedy is for us to become anti social germaphobes. I'm way ahead of that duty right now.

our paranoia will save lives.

Tanya 93 said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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Would you let your child be first in line to test any drug? No? So what is your point exactly?

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That perhaps our President should let the people who know this better than him do what they do.

This isn't a CEO pushing employees to make sprockets faster.

It's a vaccine or a drug.
It can't be pushed.

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Everything that has a human component can be pushed and rushed. The absolute best thing that a politician can do is pressure the experts to work more quickly and efficiently, and give them the resources they need to do so.

That is exactly what you want from your leadership; that's the role they can play in what is essentially a scientific exercise. Instead it gets turned into a ridiculous talking point by people who don't know how things get done in the real world.

VaultingChemist said:

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Idiots are everywhere.

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Well, if there were enough facemasks for hospital workers this wouldn't have happened.

See what you preppers did???

2020, the year without crowds at sporting events

VaultingChemist said:

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Idiots are everywhere.

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This is why I'm not necessarily faulting the CDC anymore. Their goal right now is to to soften the panic. If it means incomplete information, fine, so be it. Let people believe it's just the flu. They're trying to get this to a state where it's just another part of our lives, and there's a very small chance it may kill you.

There's two ways you control a pandemic - medicine and isolating people. China can weld doors shut. We can't unless there's Martial Law. The later is a really, really bad look, and it will be a last resort. Without Martial Law, you're going to have idiots like this and that jackass comedian from Oregon running around, and there's no way to stop them.

So, the best the CDC can do is to buy time until the medicine is ready. If that means underreporting and telling half truths, so be it. Whatever it takes to not get people to panic and destroy the economy.

Sorry guys I've been busy and haven't checked in for a while. Can someone give me a brief summary of the new understanding of the virus and how perception has changed?

Sid Farkas said:

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cone said:

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paraphrasing couple of things I heard here:

"Virus remains alive on surfaces and is transmissible from those surfaces for days"

"airborne droplets can transmit the virus"

"No need to be concerned if an infected person is in the immediate area (eg a fellow patron at a mall)"

does not compute. first point seems to indicate an infected person leaves a two-day trail of infection behind them wherever they go. am I supposed to believe the 'surface theory' doesn't apply to shopping malls...only the droplet theory does?

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The way it sounds to me is

Airborne=droplets meaning it does not appear to travel long distances before dropping out of the air

Those same droplets land on various surfaces and depending on the conditions and type of surface, the virus might remain alive for days.

There's not likely to be medicine any time soon. You're right about panic - but they also need to draw out the spread, so that even if the eventual total number infected is the same, the peak load is manageable.

I get that, but when it comes someone like me who appreciate statistics and meaningful coefficients, it makes it difficult to trust when these values end up being so misconstrued and taken out of context and ultimately so different by the end of the crisis. To me, it would make more sense to have 2 coefficients... 1 representing transmisability without medical intervention (the what if noone knew it was there value) and the a 2nd value representing the controlled with medical intervention. Does that make sense? It would go a long way in convincing the public these instances aren't overreactions if they really aren't overreactions.

I think they do make that distinction. Maybe basic vs effective R0. Not sure though.

Can anyone with medical experience verify this?

VaultingChemist said:

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Can anyone with medical experience verify this?

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This is consistent with what doctors in Wuhan have said all along. Around the two week mark is when things either get better or move to "severe."

Sure is odd that in all the photos/videos of it happening it was to the young people but not the olds that it killed...

k2aggie07 said:

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I think they do make that distinction. Maybe basic vs effective R0. Not sure though.

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i'll look into that and I hope you're right. But the underlying problem I think still exists. The value propagated by the media starts out high, then dwindles... and given the highlight the value is given, its decrease could be misunderstood as an initial overreaction rather than accomplished/modified by the miracle of modern medicine and proper handling. Make sense?

$9.8B USD

UncoverAg00 said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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I think they do make that distinction. Maybe basic vs effective R0. Not sure though.

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i'll look into that and I hope you're right. But the underlying problem I think still exists. The value propagated by the media starts out high, then dwindles... and given the highlight the value is given, its decrease could be misunderstood as an initial overreaction rather than accomplished/modified by the miracle of modern medicine and proper handling. Make sense?

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I think the problem is that infection isn't just a function of biology. There are environmental and behavioral factors that can heavily impact the transmission within a group. A quantitative assessment of transmission capacity, with all contributing factors baked in, is likely more useful from a medical management perspective. The difference between with and without treatment modalities will take more time because currently there's only mostly without treatment, likely indicative of worst case scenarios.

It seems like what you are looking for is more of a physiological property that is intrinsic to the virus itself. Something like a binding coefficient against a receptor? That probably needs more time to study and I'm not sure that kind of thing is tremendously useful for managing patient care.

Truth be told, I don't know what I want. Right now I'm just frustrated with myself for misunderstanding the R0 value so very horribly leading to a misunderstanding on how to interpret the danger outside of medical personnel weighing in (WHO, CDC) which I have trouble trusting. I'm really just venting trying to find something numerical that I can learn to interpret to get back to a sense of not being just another mouth breather completely unaware and only capable of feeding myself. Living in the dark sucks.

viruses are mindless particles that will kill you

humans in comparison can reason, communicate, prepare, possibly even use discipline, experiment with treatments, diagnose, and use all in combination to slow the particle spread down

none of these elements were present in Wuhan at the outset. you can't really blame them. they underestimated the infectiousness big time it seems.

I don't think it's going to be a mass death event, but we're going to pay for it

IrishTxAggie said:

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Sure is odd that in all the photos/videos of it happening it was to the young people but not the olds that it killed...

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And as was mentioned much earlier in this thread when similar tweets were posted, why are these people who are sick out roaming around?

Yes, I know the explanation is "they're feeling fine and then BAM!" but I find it hard to believe that one goes from feeling almost completely normal to on the ground in a split second. Sure there can be the random case where something unusual happens, but it just doesn't add up.

And many of the videos from China were later found to have been faked, were old, had no way to verify the content, or were of people who were suffering from other ailments such as cancer. One that I remember seeing here was a man spitting up blood on either a bus or train. People later found the video was over a year old and the man had terminal liver cancer.

https://instagr.am/p/B9SD70AlMPm

Risk and Safety professional ensuring that all of F16 remain risk adverse to COVID 19. You're welcome!