Coronavirus Thread

[Techster]

Speaking of running things properly or not.....not a good look for Sweden since early June.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

I talked about this earlier in the thread.

The one saving grace (TIC) for Sweden is that they are a nation of 10.2 million. The density of Stockholm (their capital) is 13000/sq mile. Overall density is 64/sq mile.

You compare that to the United States with a population of 330+ million, with many dense cities either just as dense or more dense than Stockholm. We have cities almost as big as the entirety of Sweden. Overall we have a population density of 94/sq mile, but keep in mind that accounts for wide swaths of lands in the middle of the country that is barely inhabited or developed. The vast majority of our population is centered around major cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density

As bad as Sweden has let things go on, the United States has a de facto "herd immunity" exercise going on...so you shudder to think of the ramifications of that applied to the ginormous cities we have across the country, and a population of 330+ million.

 

[GT_EE78]

> there's way too much panic porn from media about the chinese virus that lacks perspective
>people not wearing masks when appropriate is frustrating-i see it here, still need to keep some things in proper perspective
Almost half of US COVID-19 deaths are linked to nursing homes
Nursing homes are tied to nearly half of the 124,000 fatalities from the coronavirus in the US, according to a troubling new analysis of data from 12,000 senior facilities.Eleven percent of people killed by the virus died in nursing homes or long-term-care centers, but the facilities are linked to many more COVID-19 fatalities — more than 54,000, or 43 percent of the national toll when accounting for workers who contracted the disease at the facilities.In at least 24 states, the majority of deaths were nursing-home-related. New Hampshire recorded the largest percentage of nursing-home COVID-19 deaths, with 80 percent.
https://nypost.com/2020/06/27/almost-half-of-us-covid-19-deaths-are-linked-to-nursing-homes/

 

[Deleted member 2897]

> there's way too much panic porn from media about the chinese virus that lacks perspective
>people not wearing masks when appropriate is frustrating-i see it here, still need to keep some things in proper perspective
Almost half of US COVID-19 deaths are linked to nursing homes
Nursing homes are tied to nearly half of the 124,000 fatalities from the coronavirus in the US, according to a troubling new analysis of data from 12,000 senior facilities.Eleven percent of people killed by the virus died in nursing homes or long-term-care centers, but the facilities are linked to many more COVID-19 fatalities — more than 54,000, or 43 percent of the national toll when accounting for workers who contracted the disease at the facilities.In at least 24 states, the majority of deaths were nursing-home-related. New Hampshire recorded the largest percentage of nursing-home COVID-19 deaths, with 80 percent.
https://nypost.com/2020/06/27/almost-half-of-us-covid-19-deaths-are-linked-to-nursing-homes/

Pretty much the only happy people over the last few months are pension and Medicare actuaries.

 

[Jim Prather]

Plexiglass makers are pretty happy these days as well

 

[GoldZ]

I talked about this earlier in the thread.

The one saving grace (TIC) for Sweden is that they are a nation of 10.2 million. The density of Stockholm (their capital) is 13000/sq mile. Overall density is 64/sq mile.

You compare that to the United States with a population of 330+ million, with many dense cities either just as dense or more dense than Stockholm. We have cities almost as big as the entirety of Sweden. Overall we have a population density of 94/sq mile, but keep in mind that accounts for wide swaths of lands in the middle of the country that is barely inhabited or developed. The vast majority of our population is centered around major cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density

As bad as Sweden has let things go on, the United States has a de facto "herd immunity" exercise going on...so you shudder to think of the ramifications of that applied to the ginormous cities we have across the country, and a population of 330+ million.

Yeah, especially since the herd immunity approach in Sweden so far, is a Dud.

 

[RamblinRed]

In terms of masks I saw an article this morning that said just a solid cloth mask will do as it will stop most of the droplets (obviously an N95 is the best you can do, but if the majority of people are just wearing solid cloth masks that will stop most transmission). The article also went on to say that you should not use one of the fancy masks with the one way valve's in them because they actually let a higher percentage of droplets out.

One other item I saw yesterday, the average age of death in the US is younger than in Europe. 50% of US deaths are 80+, but over 60% of deaths in Europe are 80+ and percentage of US deaths occurring in the age ranges 40-49, 50-59, 60-69 are almost double what they are ub Europe, leading to the US having a younger avg age of death. This is seen a being caused by the confluence of 2 factors, first, the avg age in Europe is older than the US, and second, US citizens in general are less healthy than their European counterparts.

 

[slugboy]

As a reminder, here is what our health professionals said a few months ago:

This is one of those times where you’d really like the Surgeon General to be front and center and give solid guidance. Instead of saying “we really need surgical and N95 masks for our hospital and health care workers, but you can make your own masks at home”, he essentially said “masks work for nurses and doctors in hospitals, but not for the general public”.
That message could have been handled better.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[RamblinRed]

Yeah, especially since the herd immunity approach in Sweden so far, is a Dud.

Keep in mind that reaching 'herd immunity' in Sweden wasn't really the goal. The goal was to ask Swedish citizens to take mitigation measures on their own (not be mandated by the government) and keep susceptible populations from getting infected and not have to shut down the economy as much. In that it failed completely as a high percentage of deaths in Sweden occurred in its older population and in senior care facilities and politicians there are now promising commissions and debating what went wrong. That caused the Swedish Health Minister to apologize and say if they knew what they know today they would have had more restrictions "between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world did". Also, their economy has largely shrunk along with other European nations.

Sweden is going to pass Italy's per capita death rate during July and will likely pass Spain during August. Fortuantely for them Britain has the same basic daily per capita death rate right now as Sweden (as does the US), so it won't catch Britain and will have to settle for the 3rd highest per capita death rate.

Sweden is also a warning sign for the 'just keep the susceptible safe' strategy. No country has really been able to do that. Given the high presymptomatic spread it is almost impossible to keep out of those populations, eventually it gets through somewhere and then takes off like wildfire one it gets in.

Also, note that Sweden largely does not try to save those over 80, they just give them pallitive care - but that is why keeping it out was such a huge failure.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

In terms of masks I saw an article this morning that said just a solid cloth mask will do as it will stop most of the droplets (obviously an N95 is the best you can do, but if the majority of people are just wearing solid cloth masks that will stop most transmission). The article also went on to say that you should not use one of the fancy masks with the one way valve's in them because they actually let a higher percentage of droplets out.

One other item I saw yesterday, the average age of death in the US is younger than in Europe. 50% of US deaths are 80+, but over 60% of deaths in Europe are 80+ and percentage of US deaths occurring in the age ranges 40-49, 50-59, 60-69 are almost double what they are ub Europe, leading to the US having a younger avg age of death. This is seen a being caused by the confluence of 2 factors, first, the avg age in Europe is older than the US, and second, US citizens in general are less healthy than their European counterparts.

Yea we are a bunch of fat asses here. A major risk factor in all kinds of things. It also costs us something like 50% more in our entire healthcare system.

 

[RamblinRed]

The shutdown didn't really have to be long if it was done thoroughly. I know we can't shut down forever. That's why it had to be done right the first time and as a country we failed to do that.

The US strategy to 'flatten the curve' ended up being a failure. The stay at home orders that were issued by many states had so many cut outs for essential workers and activities that they were basically swiss cheese and not much stronger than Sweden who didn't make mandatory orders (if you look at the mobility reports from Sweden and the US at the time Sweden's mobility was only about 10% greater than the US's).

In hindsight, Flatten the curve was the wrong strategy - in all likelihood we needed more of a 'crush the curve' strategy. Needed to get it down alot more while more quickly ramping up our testing and tracing capabilities so when we started to go back to something closer to normal we could more easily handle the outbreaks.

Other first world countries are looking at us right now in disbelief - especially since almost all the recommendations they followed came from US scientists and health care professionals. Last year the US was ranked as having the best health care system in the world for handling a pandemic. Unfortunately issues other than the health care system made it less effective than how most other countries responded - primarily a lack of good leadership at all levels of government. Most first world countries struggled to deal with the ongoing pandemic, it's just the US struggled worse.

it is likely to have long term impacts for the US and its economy if we don't rectify this. Basically US citizens are not going to be allowed to travel to most first world countries - and their citizens are not going to be allowed to travel to the US unless they are willing to quarantine for 2 weeks when they come back. The US is the 3rd most popular international travel destination in the world (behind France and Spain and ahead of China and Italy) - so that is going to hurt us in trying to recover. It is also likely to cause some trade issues with some countries as they may look to trade more with other nations than with the US. (China in particular is trying to take advantage of this right now). And maybe most importantly, the government's and citizen's of other first world countries don't see the US as a World Leader the same way they used to which is going to decrease our ability to influence other nations to do things we would like them to do from a geopolitical standpoint that would be beneficial to us.

 

[GT_EE78]

Yea we are a bunch of fat asses here. A major risk factor in all kinds of things. It also costs us something like 50% more in our entire healthcare system.

So shouldn't it be true that a primary guidance for avoiding serious virus infection would be to "diet and exercise" to avoid obesity?

 

[Deleted member 2897]

The US strategy to 'flatten the curve' ended up being a failure. The stay at home orders that were issued by many states had so many cut outs for essential workers and activities that they were basically swiss cheese and not much stronger than Sweden who didn't make mandatory orders (if you look at the mobility reports from Sweden and the US at the time Sweden's mobility was only about 10% greater than the US's).

In hindsight, Flatten the curve was the wrong strategy - in all likelihood we needed more of a 'crush the curve' strategy. Needed to get it down alot more while more quickly ramping up our testing and tracing capabilities so when we started to go back to something closer to normal we could more easily handle the outbreaks.

Other first world countries are looking at us right now in disbelief - especially since almost all the recommendations they followed came from US scientists and health care professionals. Last year the US was ranked as having the best health care system in the world for handling a pandemic. Unfortunately issues other than the health care system made it less effective than how most other countries responded - primarily a lack of good leadership at all levels of government. Most first world countries struggled to deal with the ongoing pandemic, it's just the US struggled worse.

it is likely to have long term impacts for the US and its economy if we don't rectify this. Basically US citizens are not going to be allowed to travel to most first world countries - and their citizens are not going to be allowed to travel to the US unless they are willing to quarantine for 2 weeks when they come back. The US is the 3rd most popular international travel destination in the world (behind France and Spain and ahead of China and Italy) - so that is going to hurt us in trying to recover. It is also likely to cause some trade issues with some countries as they may look to trade more with other nations than with the US. (China in particular is trying to take advantage of this right now). And maybe most importantly, the government's and citizen's of other first world countries don't see the US as a World Leader the same way they used to which is going to decrease our ability to influence other nations to do things we would like them to do from a geopolitical standpoint that would be beneficial to us.

I vehemently disagree with every single bit of this.

Our mask wearing and distancing behavior are awful. But the only way to get our cases down like Europe would have to New York City our entire country. Should we have done what the U.K., Italy, Spain, and others did and let the virus ravage their country so that cases would have been much lower on the other side? I’m not sure that would have been a fun strategy looking at at that their life and New York City’s life looked like. We want as many non-vulnerable people to get it as possible without flooding the hospital system. That’s how you move beyond the virus and minimize deaths.

 

[GT_EE78]

Other first world countries are looking at us right now in disbelief -.

Nonsense
Deaths/1M population (data from worldometers)
.
Belgium.........840
UK.................641
France...........456
Spain.............606
Italy...............574
sweden..........523
USA...............387

 

[Techster]

it is likely to have long term impacts for the US and its economy if we don't rectify this. Basically US citizens are not going to be allowed to travel to most first world countries - and their citizens are not going to be allowed to travel to the US unless they are willing to quarantine for 2 weeks when they come back. The US is the 3rd most popular international travel destination in the world (behind France and Spain and ahead of China and Italy) - so that is going to hurt us in trying to recover. It is also likely to cause some trade issues with some countries as they may look to trade more with other nations than with the US. (China in particular is trying to take advantage of this right now). And maybe most importantly, the government's and citizen's of other first world countries don't see the US as a World Leader the same way they used to which is going to decrease our ability to influence other nations to do things we would like them to do from a geopolitical standpoint that would be beneficial to us.

Your last paragraph is what I touched on some in this thread. Covid isn't just about infections/hospitalizations/deaths...there's a lot of run way for Covid's impact. You listed some of the international impacts we'll face, but domestically, some of the impacts of our high infection rate is starting to come home to roost. Tyson foods had to shut down multiple processing plants because too many workers are getting sick, Microsoft is permanently closing all of its retail locations, Apple is temporarily closing down stores and locations of closings are rising every week, and we haven't even started with states rolling back opening up their local economy because hospitals are getting dangerously swamped. This is with as estimated 2+ million infected...you move that up to 5-10+ million infected and the fallout could be crippling.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Nonsense
Deaths/1M population (data from worldometers)
.
Belgium.........840
UK.................641
France...........456
Spain.............606
Italy...............574
sweden..........523
USA...............387

And that’s with those countries in Europe acknowledging that they have many thousands and thousands of uncounted deaths due to overloaded hospitals - many older folks and people in bad condition just stayed home to die. It’s likely their actual deaths are 30%-40% higher if what their health officials say is roughly correct.

 

[WreckinGT]

Nonsense
Deaths/1M population (data from worldometers)
.
Belgium.........840
UK.................641
France...........456
Spain.............606
Italy...............574
sweden..........523
USA...............387

By this metric Hawaii, Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming have handled the pandemic better than any other states in the US.

 

[Dpjacket]

The shutdown didn't really have to be long if it was done thoroughly. I know we can't shut down forever. That's why it had to be done right the first time and as a country we failed to do that.

But Bobongo, while in theory this makes sense really the only POSSIBLE way it would work would be to literally have every single 330M citizens quarantine for 14 days. And nobody is let inside the country .. period. But obviously there is zero chance of either happening .. ever. So the notion of a shutdown is really a failed policy idea. Much like the mask subject I have going on parallel here — it’s all a foolish and empty promise just like a Hope and Change slogan.

 

[bobongo]

But Bobongo, while in theory this makes sense really the only POSSIBLE way it would work would be to literally have every single 330M citizens quarantine for 14 days. And nobody is let inside the country .. period. But obviously there is zero chance of either happening .. ever. So the notion of a shutdown is really a failed policy idea. Much like the mask subject I have going on parallel here — it’s all a foolish and empty promise just like a Hope and Change slogan.

You're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. My point is it could have been a lot more effective if it were done a lot more thoroughly than it was done. You're setting up a straw man argument whereby the shutdown is a failure if one single person out of 330,000,000 violates it, which is an absurdity.

And you "hope and change" rhetoric is inappropriate for this thread and belongs in the political section. You can't keep politics entirely out of a coronavirus thread, but you don't have to actually go that far out of the way to make reference to it.

 

[Dpjacket]

To give @bwelbo an assist here, this is a good rundown of why you should wear one - https://www.erinbromage.com/post/what-s-the-deal-with-masks
Basically (he says it in there) - my mask protects you, your mask protects me. Unless you're wearing N95 or better, then it works both ways.

Well — again — no one here needs to be reminded again of biology and how the virus can be spread. And that was never my question.

To your point — and it’s precisely my whole point of this — unless you’re wearing N95 it’s not making much, if any, difference.

What we have now is most of society walking around with a false sense of security of having a mask — because of the predictable media and social affirmation that “you’re a good person and those not wearing masks are ignorant and selfish”, when in fact most of these mask-wearing people are just as likely spreading Covid because the masks are a sieve for the virus. Couple this with false confidence and flaunting social interactions, see: Protesters.

 

[Dpjacket]

I'm curious about that too, but you can't tell from the outside what filter material one could be using. I have no plans to stop wearing my N-95 any time soon.I'm astounded that there's no questions from media to the "so-called" experts as to when shelves will be restocked so that everyone can purchase a good quality medical mask as they have a right to do.

Thank you! That’s exactly my point (and I’m not surprised it came from you vs the regular social justice warriors): when the media and social constructs insist of the proper masks.

Or, as Milwaukee has indicated: when will those who are of greatest risk take personal responsibility and appropriate precautions. And the rest will get it and overcome it as able and the community immunity will have a chance to develop.