Coronavirus Part V - 34 cases in ROI, 16 in NI (as of 10 March) *Read warnings in OP*

dougm1970

caveat emptor wrote: »

Hearing first hand some measures being implemented in Italy this morning and what the ban means. Sounds similar to wuhan but with an Italian flavour more documentation / less action and more watered down.

Posting as may prove useful as a comparison if / when it comes here.

• If you have to go to work you have to sign a disclaimer of some description.
• Covers your route to work and approved by local government.
• Only allowed outside for work and shopping
• Only one family member can get shopping

is it only certain types of work...or anyone with a job thats unaffected ?......like, are they closing down businesses temporarily ?...hairdressers, gyms, hotels etc ?........also, i wonder how the mail system is affected.

Christy42

Steve F wrote: »

Please explain the difference?

They help stop you from spreading the disease (obviously not 100%).

So everyone else's mask protects you and your mask protects others. If you don't have it it is worthless. Course in this case it can asymptomatic so who knows if you have it. Hence the wearing if masks in a high risk region.

Masks get worn by medical professionals as they are at high risk of getting the disease and because they may be dealing with people with open wounds etc. Don't want to be giving them anything at all. Corona or not. Hence why they are used in surgery.

is_that_so

Bob24 wrote: »

Yep that’s what I was thinking. Their stupid government has been forcing them to wear them while it clearly hasn’t worked to contain the epidemic there.

That's top dog Xi in the photo BTW( or a body double!)

JDD

Fics wrote: »

New procedures in work, all non essential inter-department meetings/socialising banned any that have to go ahead must last less then ten mins and where possible keep more then a meter apart. Big changes to how we work.

Anyone else have company policies introduced?

Wow, that's forward thinking of them.

The only thing that has changed here is international travel has to be signed off by a senior director. Domestic travel is still allowed. Not sure how they'd impose the meter apart rule in here as we're packed in like chickens as it is.

Kermit.de.frog

caveat emptor wrote: »

Hearing first hand some measures being implemented in Italy this morning and what the ban means. Sounds similar to wuhan but with an Italian flavour more documentation / less action and more watered down.

Posting as may prove useful as a comparison if / when it comes here.

• If you have to go to work you have to sign a disclaimer of some description.
• Covers your route to work and approved by local government.
• Only allowed outside for work and shopping
• Only one family member can get shopping

I'm giggling furiously at the notion that Italy either could or is going to enforce any of that

ThePopehimself

Graces7 wrote: »

There was a news item recently about a disused mental disability centre now being adapted for isolation; I think it was Cork? and there are others being worked on.

Here it is:

Builders have been on-site at the St Mary's health campus in Gurranabraher (Cork) all weekend, working to refurbish the idle Grove House into a spillover unit for patients.

CONTRACTORS are working around-the-clock to convert a disused building on the northside of the city into an isolation unit for coronavirus patients.

https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/Coronavirus-latest-Builders-working-around-the-clock-to-create-northside-isolation-unit-e61d7e76-99f8-40b0-8db9-1d23e148f5c2-ds

Mic 1972

Death rate up from 5.79% to 5.91%
The trend changed from negative to positive on Sunday when we hit the lowest death rate figure since the beginning at 5.62%

Kaisr Sose

00benski wrote: »

Oh for f*** sake. Can people please stop posting stuff up here without confirmation. Its adding to the hysteria and it's plain wrong.

Its already way too late for that. In some cases its like people want to see panic and chaos, just so they can come in here to complain about it.

gabeeg

fits wrote: »

Big time, I wonder if this will swing support towards Sanders who is advocating universal healthcare.

Sobering news about hospitals in Italy not taking over 65s. Thats truly terrible.

What?

josip

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Funeral directors have been advised that any person who dies of coronavirus should be immediately cremated or buried without a funeral service

https://m.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/coronavirus-victims-to-be-immediately-buried-without-funeral-service-39031428.html

ChikiChiki wrote: »

I believe this is the strongest message yet and the one which will resonate the most.

"it's nearly time we had a little less respect for the dead, an' a little more regard for the living." – Juno Boyle

Scotty #

Mic 1972 wrote: »

Death rate up from 5.79% to 5.91%
The trend changed from negative to positive on Sunday when we hit the lowest death rate figure since the beginning at 5.62%

??? Who is doing the math?

Confirmed cases - 114,544
Deaths - 4,026

(4026/114544)*100 = 3.51%

Am I missing something?

Considering there must be thousands who have had it and not gone to GP the real death rate must be even lower. How are they coming up with over 5%?

Or rather... who is coming up with >5%?

gabeeg

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

I'm giggling furiously at the notion that Italy either could or is going to enforce any of that

I woke this morning to the sound of my girlfriend roaring
down the phone in Italian to her mother, who was planning on meeting her friend for a coffee before doing some shopping.

This could take a while

retro:electro

After all my givinouh about The Government last week, I was massively impressed with Simon Coveney last night on Claire Byrne. He was measured and calm but still managed to relay the seriousness of the situation, and he seemed confident despite acknowledging its not clear yet what they could potentially be dealing with. He’s a great speaker. I’d rather listen to him any day than Harris. I’m impressed with what’s being done so far.

wylo

Mic 1972 wrote: »

Death rate up from 5.79% to 5.91%
The trend changed from negative to positive on Sunday when we hit the lowest death rate figure since the beginning at 5.62%

There should nearly be a seperate thread on death rates at this stage.


There are a million ways to read it, some scientists are pointing to South Koreas model of .6% as the most accurate because they performed so many tests.

igCorcaigh

Scotty # wrote: »

??? Who is doing the math?

Confirmed cases - 114,544
Deaths - 4,026

(4026/114544)*100 = 3.51%

Am I missing something?

Considering there must be thousands who have had it and not gone to GP the real death rate must be even lower. How are they coming up with over 5%?

Might be using closed case count.

ldy4mxonucwsq6

Scotty # wrote: »

??? Who is doing the math?

Confirmed cases - 114544
Deaths - 4026

(4026/114544)*100 = 3.51%

Yes based on China's figures as a sample (which is the largest we have) the 3.51% figure is closer to the mark.

Also consider that the 80k+ cases in China are only those who tested positive, I'd imagine there are many many more who have been infected but not tested which will lower that rate again once everything has concluded.

I'd bet the CFR would be closer to 2% once all is said and done.

Mic 1972

Scotty # wrote: »

??? Who is doing the math?

Confirmed cases - 114,544
Deaths - 4,026

(4026/114544)*100 = 3.51%

Am I missing something?

Considering there must be thousands who have had it and not gone to GP the real death rate must be even lower. How are they coming up with over 5%?

you are including unresolved cases in your calculation

gabeeg

retro:electro wrote: »

After all my givinouh about The Government last week, I was massively impressed with Simon Coveney last night on Claire Byrne. He was measured and calm but still managed to relay the seriousness of the situation, and he seemed confident despite acknowledging its not clear yet what they could potentially be dealing with. He’s a great speaker. I’d rather listen to him any day than Harris. I’m impressed with what’s being done so far.

It's good that they've had the bejaysius scared out of them, but they've wasted a couple of really valuable weeks.

Utter Consternation

Funsterdelux wrote: »

Just saw a guy buying a large box of dust masks in my local CO-OP.

still plenty on the shelves mind, though the dog food was scarce

Fcuk!!! Dog food is scarce?? I'm going to head out and buy twenty pallets of it.

We don't even have a dog.

boetstark

pad199207 wrote: »

Completely unconfirmed but I’m hearing schools may be closing next Wednesday for a month

Very possible, two schools in Limerick have advised students to empty lockers and bring books etc home.

igCorcaigh

https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1237318781430611969?s=19

Scotty #

Mic 1972 wrote: »

you are including unresolved cases in your calculation

That must be it, though going on latest figures that would give 6.2%

billybonkers

I think most people aren’t aware of the risk of systemic healthcare failure due to #COVID19 because they simply haven’t run the numbers yet. Let’s talk math. 1/n

Let’s conservatively assume that there are 2,000 current cases in the US today, March 6th. This is about 8x the number of confirmed (lab-diagnosed) cases. We know there is substantial under-Dx due to lack of test kits; I’ll address implications later of under-/over-estimate. 2/n

We can expect that we’ll continue to see a doubling of cases every 6 days (this is a typical doubling time across several epidemiological studies). Here I mean *actual* cases. Confirmed cases may appear to rise faster in the short term due to new test kit rollouts. 3/n

We’re looking at about 1M US cases by the end of April, 2M by ~May 5, 4M by ~May 11, and so on. Exponentials are hard to grasp, but this is how they go. 4/n

As the healthcare system begins to saturate under this case load, it will become increasingly hard to detect, track, and contain new transmission chains. In absence of extreme interventions, this likely won’t slow significantly until hitting >>1% of susceptible population. 5/n

What does a case load of this size mean for healthcare system? We’ll examine just two factors — hospital beds and masks — among many, many other things that will be impacted. 6/n

The US has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1000 people. With a population of 330M, this is ~1M beds. At any given time, 65% of those beds are already occupied. That leaves about 330k beds available nationwide (perhaps a bit fewer this time of year with regular flu season, etc). 7/n

Let’s trust Italy’s numbers and assume that about 10% of cases are serious enough to require hospitalization. (Keep in mind that for many patients, hospitalization lasts for *weeks* — in other words, turnover will be *very* slow as beds fill with COVID19 patients). 8/n

By this estimate, by about May 8th, all open hospital beds in the US will be filled. (This says nothing, of course, about whether these beds are suitable for isolation of patients with a highly infectious virus.) 9/n

If we’re wrong by a factor of two regarding the fraction of severe cases, that only changes the timeline of bed saturation by 6 days in either direction. If 20% of cases require hospitalization, we run out of beds by ~May 2nd. 10/n

If only 5% of cases require it, we can make it until ~May 14th. 2.5% gets us to May 20th. This, of course, assumes that there is no uptick in demand for beds from *other* (non-COVID19) causes, which seems like a dubious assumption. 11/n

As healthcare system becomes increasingly burdened, Rx shortages, etc, people w/ chronic conditions that are normally well-managed may find themselves slipping into severe states of medical distress requiring intensive care & hospitalization. But let’s ignore that for now. 12/n

Alright, so that’s beds. Now masks. Feds say we have a national stockpile of 12M N95 masks and 30M surgical masks (which are not ideal, but better than nothing). 13/n

There are about 18M healthcare workers in the US. Let’s assume only 6M HCW are working on any given day. (This is likely an underestimate as most people work most days of the week, but again, I’m playing conservative at every turn.) 14/n

As COVID19 cases saturate virtually every state and county, which seems likely to happen any day now, it will soon be irresponsible for all HCWs to not wear a mask. These HCWs would burn through N95 stockpile in 2 days if each HCW only got ONE mask per day. 15/n

One per day would be neither sanitary nor pragmatic, though this is indeed what we saw in Wuhan, with HCWs collapsing on their shift from dehydration because they were trying to avoid changing their PPE suits as they cannot be reused. 16/n

How quickly could we ramp up production of new masks? Not very fast at all. The vast majority are manufactured overseas, almost all in China. Even when manufactured here in US, the raw materials are predominantly from overseas... again, predominantly from China. 17/n

Keep in mind that all countries globally will be going through the exact same crises and shortages simultaneously. We can’t force trade in our favor. 18/n

Now consider how these 2 factors – bed and mask shortages – compound each other’s severity. Full hospitals + few masks + HCWs running around between beds without proper PPE = very bad mix. 19/n

HCWs are already getting infected even w/ access to full PPE. In the face of PPE limitations this severe, it’s only a matter of time. HCWs will start dropping from the workforce for weeks at a time, leading to a shortage of HCWs that then further compounds both issues above. 20/n

We could go on and on about thousands of factors – # of ventilators, or even simple things like saline drip bags. You see where this is going. 21/n

Importantly, I cannot stress this enough: even if I’m wrong – even VERY wrong – about core assumptions like % of severe cases or current case #, it only changes the timeline by days or weeks. This is how exponential growth in an immunologically naïve population works. 22/n

Undeserved panic does no one any good. But neither does ill-informed complacency. It’s wrong to assuage the public by saying “only 2% will die.” People aren’t adequately grasping the national and global systemic burden wrought by this swift-moving of a disease. 23/n

I’m an engineer. This is what my mind does all day: I run back-of-the-envelope calculations to try to estimate order-of-magnitude impacts. I’ve been on high alarm about this disease since ~Jan 19 after reading clinical indicators in the first papers emerging from Wuhan. 24/n

Nothing in the last 6 weeks has dampened my alarm in the slightest. To the contrary, we’re seeing abject refusal of many countries to adequately respond or prepare. Of course some of these estimates will be wrong, even substantially wrong. 25/n

But I have no reason to think they’ll be orders-of-magnitude wrong. Even if your personal risk of death is very, very low, don’t mock decisions like canceling events or closing workplaces as undue “panic”. 26/n

These measures are the bare minimum we should be doing to try to shift the peak – to slow the rise in cases so that healthcare systems are less overwhelmed. Each day that we can delay an extra case is a big win for the HC system. 27/n

And yes, you really should prepare to buckle down for a bit. All services and supply chains will be impacted. Why risk the stress of being ill-prepared? 28/n

Worst case, I’m massively wrong and you now have a huge bag of rice and black beans to burn through over the next few months and enough Robitussin to trip out. 29/n

One more thought: you’ve probably seen multiple respected epidemiologists have estimated that 20-70% of world will be infected within the next year. If you use 6-day doubling rate I mentioned above, we land at ~2-6 billion infected by sometime in July of this year. 30/n

Obviously I think the doubling time will start to slow once a sizeable fraction of the population has been infected, simply because of herd immunity and a smaller susceptible population. 31/n

But take the scenarios above (full beds, no PPE, etc, at just 1% of the US population infected) and stretch them out over just a couple extra months. 32/n

That timeline roughly fits with consensus end-game numbers from these highly esteemed epidemiologists. Again, we’re talking about discrepancies of mere days or weeks one direction or another, but not disagreements in the overall magnitude of the challenge. 33/n

This is not some hypothetical, fear-mongering, worst-case scenario. This is reality, as far as anyone can tell with the current available data. 34/n
That’s all for now. Standard disclaimers apply: I’m a PhD biologist but *not* an epidemiologist. Thoughts my own. Yadda yadda. Stay safe out there.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236095180459003909.html

Drumpot

Mic 1972 wrote: »

Death rate up from 5.79% to 5.91%
The trend changed from negative to positive on Sunday when we hit the lowest death rate figure since the beginning at 5.62%

I think this is a big part of what people aren’t getting. The CFR rate goes up the more healthcare resources are stretched. The more medical attention that can be given to individuals the greater their chance of recovery.

Imagine our hospitals full of sick needing 24/7 emergency care. Then you start to tell people who need critical care to stay at home. People having heart attacks or strokes won’t get treated as quickly. Healthcare workers not get reasonable rest for weeks drains then, leaves them more susceptible to disease and means they can’t be as effective. I mean the actual compounded effects of a massive surge in cases is extremely difficult to fathom even when you try to think it through.

is_that_so

gabeeg wrote: »

It's good that they've had the bejaysius scared out of them, but they've wasted a couple of really valuable weeks.

Nah, they are responding, as they have been all along, to current data, with an eye on what's happening elsewhere. As Holohan said yesterday they have lots of possible measures, which they can deploy at the appropriate time. Latest communications are, IMO, aimed at preparing us for those possibilities.

caveat emptor

fits wrote: »

Big time, I wonder if this will swing support towards Sanders who is advocating universal healthcare.

Sobering news about hospitals in Italy not taking over 65s. Thats truly terrible.

But utterly predictable....

caveat emptor wrote: »

Could be. I don't know.


This will defo be a supply side problem though.


How many people have it? -> limiting factor how many tests do we have?
How many people are in hospital? -> How many beds do we have?
How many people in ICU? -> How many ICU beds do we have?
How many people will die? -> whatever is left over.

caveat emptor wrote: »

Really think we need to start taking it seriously. Anybody with a cursory understanding of statistics, probability and flight patterns could see cases being imported from Italy. On any given day there is on average ~10 direct flights from the affected regions in Italy. The cases we are seeking now are from last week. The number of cases in Italy has grown exponentially in the mean time. So the probability of more cases being imported has also increased and we will see more in coming days.

We are not being given a full picture for a very good reason. Panic is a bigger danger to society. That means some families will have to take the hit for the greater good. I don't want to be one of those families.

It's not the flu. Although look at the wikipedia page on 1918 Spanish flu for understanding of what happens during pandemic. If you are really arsed look at the sources referenced to dispel any thoughts that it's bull****.

In lombardy in Italy where first clusters recorded in Italy ~50% of those who tested positive ARE hospitalised. ~7% are in intensive care. They are testing like crazy. WHO said most western countries do not have the resources / training /will to mount a response like china did. We simply don't have enough mechanincal respirators to cope. Very soon Italy won't cope.

There is a lag on transmission that is lulling people in to false sense of security. There is also concerted effort to put business before health of nation.

Rob A. Bank

Treasure Grumpy Tie wrote: »

Yes based on China's figures as a sample (which is the largest we have) the 3.51% figure is closer to the mark.

Also consider that the 80k+ cases in China are only those who tested positive, I'd imagine there are many many more who have been infected but not tested which will lower that rate again once everything has concluded.

I'd bet the CFR would be closer to 2% once all is said and done.

The WHO Experts China group said there were very few undetected asymptomatic cases... as far as they could see, based on the largest cohort of patients to date.

They described the epidemic as being a 'Pyramid' rather than an 'Iceberg'

Gizit

There's an article in the Limerick Leader about someone being in contact with a confirmed case and getting tested and the hoops that had to be jumped through. I can't post the link as haven't posted on boards enough. Anyone who can should post the link in here. Should be able to find it from a Google search of Limerick Leader it was posted about 13 hours ago

wylo

Treasure Grumpy Tie wrote: »

Yes based on China's figures as a sample (which is the largest we have) the 3.51% figure is closer to the mark.

Also consider that the 80k+ cases in China are only those who tested positive, I'd imagine there are many many more who have been infected but not tested which will lower that rate again once everything has concluded.

I'd bet the CFR would be closer to 2% once all is said and done.

I would say it will be even lower but may never, I honestly think there are probably many in China who suspect they have it but are just laying low.

I actually think if I had it the only reason I would come forward is for the purpose of contact tracing, outside of that I would prefer just self isolate and do what I can to help myself and the spread of it.

Funsterdelux

Utter Consternation wrote: »

Fcuk!!! Dog food is scarce?? I'm going to head out and buy twenty pallets of it.

We don't even have a dog.

You know its the logical thing to do.

Ive a shed full of loo roll, but I never poop :rolleyes: