Coronavirus Part III - 9 cases across the Island - 503 errors abound!! *read OP*

Funsterdelux

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Speaking in my capacity as an armchair epidemiologist - i'm going to predict this will be a whole load of nothing.

Every year we get one of these and they practically always amount to scaremongering. Swine flu was going to kill us, bird flu, sars, mers (or whatever it was called).

This will come, this will go - it will maybe leave 50 corpses behind it and 45 of those probably would have died of something else in that time anyway!

Do you only count in leap years?

bb12

have been following this since january and wuhan...feeling a bit disheartened this morning after looking at our media and listening to the radio stations. there seems to be a concerted effort to play everything down eg the virus can only last 9 hours on a surface according to pat kenny this morning, where i've read actual studies where its sister viruses can survive up to 9 days easily and up to 28 days in some cases...also other people denying it can be spread in the air when researchers in wuhan are saying that it can be spread through the air...

i'm prepared, stocked up over the last month or so. am definitely avoiding crowds of people as best i can. trying not to touch door handles with my hands, standing back from people when talking etc. might as well get into the established habit now before all hell breaks loose. actually have hand gel cos i heeded the warnings and bought it before it all ran out.

but listening to all that is going on around me and how the media and government are currently presenting it to the people is making me feel pessimistic on how this virus will play out in this country. and i worry about the panic that will ensue when people actually realise how serious the situation actually is. mob mentality and all that.

quokula

China is 3 months in, has an infection rate of 0.005%, and is seeing the numbers starting to drop.

South Korea are at 0.01% and Italy is at 0.004% - almost every other country on the planet have absolutely tiny figures.

Projecting 60% of the world within a year and ten times as many deaths in Ireland as the whole of China is pretty fantastical.

gozunda

TomSweeney wrote: »

Have to be very careful with what I read and believe.

"Doctor" (Nurse) John was saying in a video yesterday that at least 60% of the global pop. will be infected within one year.
and overall 1% death rate.

thats 7.5B * 0.6 * 0.01 = 45 Million people die globally , In ireland this will be approx 4.5M * 0.6 * 0.01 = 27,000 deaths!!!

So far there is 3,200 deaths globally - 90% of those in China which was hit worst and is now stabilising - outside Wuhan not much deaths ...
I fail to see where these 44.97 Million deaths are gonna come from, 27K of that in Ireland alone.


HE'S TALKING SHIT!!! He's a scaremonger!!

Incorrect. He is referencing other expert opinion. I somehow seriously doubt you are even qualified in 'SHIT'!!!

Prof. Gabriel Leung 

Expert on coronavirus epidemics 
Chair of Public Health Medicine 
Hong Kong University

It could infect 60% of global population if unchecked

Prof. Marc Lipsitch

Prof. of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health
Head, Harvard Ctr. Communicable Disease Dynamics

I think it is likely we will see a global pandemic. If a pandemic happens, 40% to 70% of people world-wide are likely to be infected in the coming year.

https://www.worldometers.info/corona...pert-opinions/

He has a PhD.

A PhD is the highest academic qualification possible. It means that a person is considered an expert in their field of study and is the necessary qualification for degree level lecturing and academic research.

hblock21

https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/fbt49e/the_who_sent_25_international_experts_to_china/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

The most informative summary/report I have read to date.

The WHO has sent a team of international experts to China to investigate the situation, including Clifford Lane, Clinical Director at the US National Institutes of Health. Here is the press conference on Youtube and the final report of the commission as PDF after they visited Beijing, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Chengdu. Here are some interesting facts about Covid that I have not yet read in the media:

When a cluster of several infected people occurred in China, it was most often (78-85%) caused by an infection within the family by droplets and other carriers of infection in close contact with an infected person. Transmission by fine aerosols in the air over long distances is not one of the main causes of spread. Most of the 2,055 infected hospital workers were either infected at home or in the early phase of the outbreak in Wuhan when hospital safeguards were not raised yet.

5% of people who are diagnosed with Covid require artificial respiration. Another 15% need to breathe in highly concentrated oxygen - and not just for a few days. The duration from the beginning of the disease until recovery is 3 to 6 weeks on average for these severe and critical patients (compared to only 2 weeks for the mildly ill). The mass and duration of the treatments overburdened the existing health care system in Wuhan many times over. The province of Hubei, whose capital is Wuhan, had 65,596 infected persons so far. A total of 40,000 employees were sent to Hubei from other provinces to help fight the epidemic. 45 hospitals in Wuhan are caring for Covid patients, 6 of which are for patients in critical condition and 39 are caring for seriously ill patients and for infected people over the age of 65. Two makeshift hospitals with 2,600 beds were built within a short time. 80% of the infected have mild disease, ten temporary hospitals were set up in gymnasiums and exhibition halls for those.

China can now produce 1.6 million test kits for the novel coronavirus per week. The test delivers a result on the same day. Across the country, anyone who goes to the doctor with a fever is screened for the virus: In Guangdong province, far from Wuhan, 320,000 people have been tested, and 0.14% of those were positive for the virus.

The vast majority of those infected sooner or later develop symptoms. Cases of people in whom the virus has been detected and who do not have symptoms at that time are rare - and most of them fall ill in the next few days.

The most common symptoms are fever (88%) and dry cough (68%). Exhaustion (38%), expectoration of mucus when coughing (33%), shortness of breath (18%), sore throat (14%), headaches (14%), muscle aches (14%), chills (11%) are also common. Less frequent are nausea and vomiting (5%), stuffy nose (5%) and diarrhoea (4%). Running nose is not a symptom of Covid.

An examination of 44,672 infected people in China showed a fatality rate of 3.4%. Fatality is strongly influenced by age, pre-existing conditions, gender, and especially the response of the health care system. All fatality figures reflect the state of affairs in China up to 17 February, and everything could be quite different in the future elsewhere.

Healthcare system: 20% of infected people in China needed hospital treatment for weeks. China has hospital beds to treat 0.4% of the population at the same time - other developed countries have between 0.1% and 1.3% and most of these beds are already occupied with people who have other diseases. The most important thing is firstly to aggressively contain the spread of the virus in order to keep the number of seriously ill Covid patients low and secondly to increase the number of beds (including material and personnel) until there is enough for the seriously ill. China also tested various treatment methods for the unknown disease and the most successful ones were implemented nationwide. Thanks to this response, the fatality rate in China is now lower than a month ago.

Pre-existing conditions: The fatality rate for those infected with pre-existing cardiovascular disease in China was 13.2%. It was 9.2% for those infected with high blood sugar levels (uncontrolled diabetes), 8.4% for high blood pressure, 8% for chronic respiratory diseases and 7.6% for cancer. Infected persons without a relevant previous illness died in 1.4% of cases.

Age: The younger you are, the less likely you are to be infected and the less likely you are to fall seriously ill if you do get infected:

Age % of population % of infected Fatality
0-9 12.0% 0,9% 0 as of now
10-19 11.6% 1.2% 0.1%
20-29 13.5% 8.1% 0.2%
30-39 15.6% 17.0% 0.2%
40-49 15.6% 19.2% 0.4%
50-59 15.0% 22.4% 1.3%
60-69 10.4% 19.2% 3.6%
70-79 4.7% 8.8% 8.0%
80+ 1.8% 3.2% 14.8%
Read: Out of all people who live in China, 13.5% are between 20 and 29 years old. Out of those who were infected in China, 8.1% were in this age group (this does not mean that 8.1% of people between 20 and 29 become infected). This means that the likelihood of someone at this age to catch the infection is somewhat lower compared to the average. And of those who caught the infection in this age group, 0.2% died.

Gender: Women catch the disease just as often as men. But only 2.8% of Chinese women who were infected died from the disease, while 4.7% of the infected men died. The disease appears to be not more severe in pregnant women than in others. In 9 examined births of infected women, the children were born by caesarean section and healthy without being infected themselves. The women were infected in the last trimester of pregnancy. What effect an infection in the first or second trimester has on embryos is currently unclear as these children are still unborn.

The new virus is genetically 96% identical to a known coronavirus in bats and 86-92% identical to a coronavirus in pangolin. Therefore, the transmission of a mutated virus from animals to humans is the most likely cause of the appearance of the new virus.

Since the end of January, the number of new coronavirus diagnoses in China has been steadily declining (shown here as a graph) with now only 329 new diagnoses within the last day - one month ago it was around 3,000 a day. "This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real," the report says. The authors conclude this from their own experience on site, declining hospital visits in the affected regions, the increasing number of unoccupied hospital beds, and the problems of Chinese scientists to recruit enough newly infected for the clinical studies of the numerous drug trials. Here is the relevant part of the press conference about the decline assessment.

One of the important reasons for containing the outbreak is that China is interviewing all infected people nationwide about their contact persons and then tests those. There are 1,800 teams in Wuhan to do this, each with at least 5 people. But the effort outside of Wuhan is also big. In Shenzhen, for example, the infected named 2,842 contact persons, all of whom were found, testing is now completed for 2,240, and 2.8% of those had contracted the virus. In Sichuan province, 25,493 contact persons were named, 25,347 (99%) were found, 23,178 have already been examined and 0.9% of them were infected. In the province of Guangdong, 9,939 contacts were named, all found, 7,765 are already examined and 4.8% of them were infected. That means: If you have direct personal contact with an infected person, the probability of infection is between 1% and 5%.

Finally, a few direct quotes from the report:

"China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic. In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history. China’s uncompromising and rigorous use of non-pharmaceutical measures to contain transmission of the COVID-19 virus in multiple settings provides vital lessons for the global response. This rather unique and unprecedented public health response in China reversed the escalating cases in both Hubei, where there has been widespread community transmission, and in the importation provinces, where family clusters appear to have driven the outbreak."

"Much of the global community is not yet ready, in mindset and materially, to implement the measures that have been employed to contain COVID-19 in China. These are the only measures that are currently proven to interrupt or minimize transmission chains in humans. Fundamental to these measures is extremely proactive surveillance to immediately detect cases, very rapid diagnosis and immediate case isolation, rigorous tracking and quarantine of close contacts, and an exceptionally high degree of population understanding and acceptance of these measures."

"COVID-19 is spreading with astonishing speed; COVID-19 outbreaks in any setting have very serious consequences; and there is now strong evidence that non-pharmaceutical interventions can reduce and even interrupt transmission. Concerningly, global and national preparedness planning is often ambivalent about such interventions. However, to reduce COVID-19 illness and death, near-term readiness planning must embrace the large-scale implementation of high-quality, non-pharmaceutical public health measures. These measures must fully incorporate immediate case detection and isolation, rigorous close contact tracing and monitoring/quarantine, and direct population/community engagement."

iguana

banie01 wrote: »

Controlling the spread of infection will reduce the number of deaths, but will it affect the actual mortality rate amongst infected?
Doubtful IMO.

I think it will. Because the less people who become critically ill, the more hospital resources that can be directed to each individual critical and serious case. If every critically and seriously ill person can have a hospital bed and adequate ICU care, they have a better chance of survival. If 100s of seriously ill people are at home waiting for a bed or on a trolley in a corridor or some sort of makeshift hospital, their odds surely go down.

DrumSteve

Cfr dropped to 5.8% overnight. Less than 40000 active cases worldwide.

Good news.

I have a feeling that SK is gonna jump up though by a massive amount in the next day or two due to that church.

Interesting what Aylward is saying about China, both in that they are not really seeing asymptomatic transmission... In a roundabout way, hes saying you can only catch this from people who are obviously sick.

Also, I'm presuming China is gonna share these techniques for treating it?

I actually have confidence in what the government are doing, we are at the tail end of this so following best practice is the right idea. Paddy's day should be knocked on the head though.

BTW, whoever is going to the Script, just go, they are really good live. You can't lock yourself away, but make sure you wash your hands.

gmisk

Aerlingus still won't refund flights to northern Italy despite DFA changing travel advisory....useless shower

sbsquarepants

Funsterdelux wrote: »

Do you only count in leap years?

They're the only ones i could remember off the top of my head, it's like storm warnings - they just blend into one pointless stream of crap.

We don't need 2 storm warnings a week for the whole winter - it's just weather, we all know it gets a bit blowy in the winter!

Same with these virus panics every year - every single year, let's maybe forget about them and just get one with things, maybe only go into overdrive if something really nasty comes along.

I'm all panicked out at this stage.

The real danger of this virus is economic - it has a very real chance of kicking off a global recession i think.

Loafing Oaf

quokula wrote: »

China is 3 months in, has an infection rate of 0.005%, and is seeing the numbers starting to drop.

Are they really?

Bob24

banie01 wrote: »

The WHO have announced it as 3.4%, while the UK for some reason announced it as under 1%?
On the totality of the numbers available to date, the UK is wrong and I'll lean into the WHO being more accurate in this instance.

Keep in mind that the U.K. has tested almost as many people as Italy (and 10 times more than France or Germany) even though they clearly have much less cases. They also have a much lower rate of positive results: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/

This means the U.K. is doing a lot more proactive testing than most other countries (I believe they intend to test anyone with flue symptoms) and thus they probably have much fewer unreported cases. This could explain their lower mortality rate which is essentially the number of deaths divided by the number of reported cases (if you are better at reporting all cases the mortality figure drops).

Funsterdelux

sbsquarepants wrote: »

They're the only ones i could remember off the top of my head, it's like storm warnings - they just blend into one pointless stream of crap.

We don't need 2 storm warnings a week for the whole winter - it's just weather, we all know it gets a bit blowy in the winter!

Same with these virus panics every year - every single year, let's maybe forget about them and just get one with things, maybe only go into overdrive if something really nasty comes along.

I'm all panicked out at this stage.

The real danger of this virus is economic - it has a very real chance of kicking off a global recession i think.

No one remembers the boring stormless and pandemicless winters! But dont get started on the storm warnings, theres plenty of stormy debate in other threads about it.

Drumpot

quokula wrote: »

China is 3 months in, has an infection rate of 0.005%, and is seeing the numbers starting to drop.

South Korea are at 0.01% and Italy is at 0.004% - almost every other country on the planet have absolutely tiny figures.

Projecting 60% of the world within a year and ten times as many deaths in Ireland as the whole of China is pretty fantastical.

2 months ago there were none.

We don’t know what the actual numbers are in these countries for numerous reasons, not least because many people who are infected and won’t be tested because they will get mild symptoms. The reason they are telling us to wash our hands is to minimize risk and reduce the spread.

I don’t know how many people are going to be infected and I wouldn’t confidently predict a high or a low figure. Maybe we need a bit of fear now to be more careful which will help reduce whatever the final figures end up. Complacency is probably more dangerous then seeing some scary potential stats. Unfortunately as a species we don’t really react to things that don’t worry us.

Cee-Jay-Cee

frillyleaf wrote: »

China shut down cities of millions to contain it. They built hospitals with thousands of beds in under two weeks. Imagine us trying to do that!

Can you imagine...1st of all they'd have to put together a 'working group' to discuss it. They would set to work and give themselves 6 months to come up with a report which would be delayed by 9 months as there was some sort of internal squabble about expenses. The report would eventually be published 22 months later however wouldn't be published for a further 6 months as it had to be reviewed. Once the report was finalised and rubber stamped, the tender process for the hospital would be started and left open for 3 months however extended for a further 6 months because of EU competition BS. The winning tender would be given 12 months to complete the project however it would be a further 36 months before the project started due to red tape. The hospital would be completed in the 3rd quarter of 2029 however wouldn't open for a further 3 years because there was no money for equipment. Once it finally opened no one would be able to remember what it was built for in the 1st place. It would be converted into a direct provision centre at huge cost however would never open due to large scale protests by locals. It would eventually be bulldozed to make a town park.

Dyr

banie01 wrote: »

Barring a sudden improvement in the survival rate of known infected patients.
Yes, the numbers dying are very much predicated on the number of infected bit the mortality rate is known.

The WHO have announced it as 3.4%, while the UK for some reason announced it as under 1%?
On the totality of the numbers available to date, the UK is wrong and I'll lean into the WHO being more accurate in this instance.

Controlling the spread of infection will reduce the number of deaths, but will it affect the actual mortality rate amongst infected?
Doubtful IMO.

Recovery rate of 54% doesnt bode well...

MD1990

https://twitter.com/lookner/status/1234952959051673602

my guess is Italy have at least 10,000 cases.

They are infecting so many other countries

MrMusician18

gozunda wrote: »

Incorrect. He is referencing expert opinion. I somehow seriously doubt you are even qualified in 'SHIT'!!!

Prof. Gabriel Leung 

Expert on coronavirus epidemics 
Chair of Public Health Medicine 
Hong Kong University



Prof. Marc Lipsitch

Prof. of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health
Head, Harvard Ctr. Communicable Disease Dynamics



https://www.worldometers.info/corona...pert-opinions/

A PhD is the highest academic qualification possible. It means that a person is considered an expert in their field of study and is the necessary qualification for degree level lecturing and academic research.

Point of order. It doesn't make them an expert beyond the niche in which they studied in order to obtain their PhD.

gabeeg

quokula wrote: »

China is 3 months in, has an infection rate of 0.005%, and is seeing the numbers starting to drop.

South Korea are at 0.01% and Italy is at 0.004% - almost every other country on the planet have absolutely tiny figures.

Projecting 60% of the world within a year and ten times as many deaths in Ireland as the whole of China is pretty fantastical.

That's because you're thinking in linear terms. The growth is exponential.

I'm not giving a figure, but this can get out of hand really quickly

Cupatae

https://www.facebook.com/rhonda.m.burton.7/videos/2819662034783331/

the butcher

Can't wait to hear the EU response, "let's have a meeting about the previous meeting at the next meeting in 2 weeks time."

the butcher

https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1235152180274962432

What about the free movement of goods and services?!?!

schmoo2k

Bambi wrote: »

Recovery rate of 54% doesnt bode well...

That will go up - death is quicker than recovery

Downlinz

bb12 wrote: »

have been following this since january and wuhan...feeling a bit disheartened this morning after looking at our media and listening to the radio stations. there seems to be a concerted effort to play everything down eg the virus can only last 9 hours on a surface according to pat kenny this morning, where i've read actual studies where its sister viruses can survive up to 9 days easily and up to 28 days in some cases...also other people denying it can be spread in the air when researchers in wuhan are saying that it can be spread through the air...

i'm prepared, stocked up over the last month or so. am definitely avoiding crowds of people as best i can. trying not to touch door handles with my hands, standing back from people when talking etc. might as well get into the established habit now before all hell breaks loose. actually have hand gel cos i heeded the warnings and bought it before it all ran out.

but listening to all that is going on around me and how the media and government are currently presenting it to the people is making me feel pessimistic on how this virus will play out in this country. and i worry about the panic that will ensue when people actually realise how serious the situation actually is. mob mentality and all that.

The penny will drop for those people at some stage and it'll quickly turn to anger and distrust at medical experts and political leaders at feeling misled and who knows how that'll manifest but it seems like a recipe for disaster.

We should all be mentally preparing ourselves, not for some unlikely possibility but for what is currently happening in places like Italy and South Korea.

iguana

Bambi wrote: »

Recovery rate of 54% doesnt bode well...

No, it just means that a little less than half of all cases are still active. The recovery rate for closed cases (either recovered or dead) currently stands at 94.09% and is increasing little by little every day. When we get an accurate idea of what is and has happened in Iran, there is a good chance that the recovery rate will drop, but that isn't indicative of our overall odds, because the initial response there was fuçking batsh^t!

Conrad83

Aer Lingus not flying to Milan until after 10th April, full refunds available or waiving change fee. Confirmed by Aer Lingus this morning as we had flights to Milan booked on 17th March.

Drumpot

MrMusician18 wrote: »

Point of order. It doesn't make them an expert beyond the niche in which they studied in order to obtain their PhD.

That’s a fair point, I just wish when people dismiss what he says they could give a more extensive reason then just disagree with him and question his motives just because they don’t like the information . I’m sure we can find a person in the medical profession who are willing to state this is a storm in a teacup and vice versa.

Reminds me of the economic crisis in 2007 when you had most economists and people in the know saying there would be a soft correction.

I’m not saying things will be a disaster, I’m suggestion we don’t know how things are going to play out so none of us are in a position to confidently dismiss hypothetical projections from more informed authorities.

The UK are putting plans in place to deal with up to 80% infection (one fifth of workforce off at same time). It’s perfectly reasonable for somebody who understands this to discuss a lower (60%) potential figure, especially when a lot of countries in the world Won’t have the resources to put in place preventative measures like we can.

solidasarock

I have zero idea what the game plan is with the downplaying by the government and the Irish media.

This is not another ball that can be kicked down the road for the next generation like the hospital beds or housing.

If/When a widespread outbreak happens in Ireland it will be weeks away. Sensible preparation and messaging now could save lives.

Cupatae

gabeeg wrote: »

That's because you're thinking in linear terms. The growth is exponential.

I'm not giving a figure, but this can get out of hand really quickly

Your use of the word exponential has grown exponentially.:D

iguana

Downlinz wrote: »

We should all be mentally preparing ourselves, not for some unlikely possibility but for what is currently happening in places like Italy and South Korea.

You have to remember that a big part of the reason that Korea is having such a hard time is because a crowd of absolute headbangers spread the disease on purpose. Comparing what has happened there, to what could happen here is unlikely to be accurate in any way. Korea is a very, very unique case.

Tacitus Kilgore

solidasarock wrote: »

I have zero idea what the game plan is with the downplaying by the government and the Irish media.

This is not another ball that can be kicked down the road for the next generation like the hospital beds or housing.

If/When a widespread outbreak happens in Ireland it will be weeks away. Sensible preparation and messaging now could save lives.

What is the best way forward ?