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

silverharp

Midnight Sundance wrote: »

What exactly are the general symptoms of Corona? Hubby sent home cos he has a sore throat n runny nose. I've checked his temp, it's normal. We haven't travelled anywhere foreign or more than 10 miles from home. No confirmed cases in our part of country..yet.. but who's to say that half the country have it now n dont know about it?
I've heard symptoms can be mild. Chances r hes a little head cold he caught from our son but of course now my mind is going Into overdrive.
I'm pregnant n starting to worry.

Runny nose is not meant to be one of the symptoms , so probably a good sign its something else

JDD

God, the stories coming out of Italy are absolutely terrifying.

I'm so glad I've finished having kids. Being pregnant, especially in the early stages, must be so stressful right now. I'm not saying that there is any proof at all that catching the virus while pregnant would do your baby any harm, but you worry about anything and everything at that stage of pregnancy and having this on you would have you absolutely at your wits end.

I think if I was in the first few months of pregnancy, I'd be asking to work from home (if that was possible) right now.

Hamsterchops

is_that_so wrote: »

South Korea - 35 cases today. Going the right way.

Just to explain what this post is about ^

....More than 7,300 coronavirus infections have been confirmed throughout South Korea, killing more than 50. It is one of the largest outbreaks outside mainland China, where the deadly virus was first identified. However, the number of new daily infections in South Korea has declined in recent days.

Cork Boy 53

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Just seen the Easter holidays (15 days off) are not until April 3rd so if the government are hoping to hold off schools closures I think they'll fail.

Maybe close the schools this week and make up for lost classes by teaching online as much as possible and/or shortening the summer holidays which are probably too long anyway when compared to the UK for example. Assuming the virus outbreak has subsided by the summer of course.

Drumpot

Deleted User wrote: »

Tobacco / cigarettes. It stated that men were more likely to have contracted coronavirus than women in China, and on average a lot more men smoke than women.

I think I remember that news conference from Dr Aylward and he said they couldn’t find a direct link to smoking and severe cases. Now smoking will automatically increase your chances of dieing regardless of virus but I think what he was saying that they weren’t sure smoking explained the higer male issues. Around the world you have different levels of smokers and it seems to still equate to higher male patients.

Mic 1972

billybonkers wrote: »

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

Thanks for sharing yor analysis. A lot of people are afraid of numbers in here. It took 6 threads to finally accept the correct Death rate calculation. And theree are still some quoting the infamous 2 %
Without lock down extreme measures we are looking at billions of infected and a much higher death rate because critical people wont be able to get a bed in hospital so they are more likely to die

niallo27

JDD wrote: »

God, the stories coming out of Italy are absolutely terrifying.

I'm so glad I've finished having kids. Being pregnant, especially in the early stages, must be so stressful right now. I'm not saying that there is any proof at all that catching the virus while pregnant would do your baby any harm, but you worry about anything and everything at that stage of pregnancy and having this on you would have you absolutely at your wits end.

I think if I was in the first few months of pregnancy, I'd be asking to work from home (if that was possible) right now.

Are they terrifying though, it's bad yes, but nobody is starving and people have to do the right thing and stay at home. It's scary yes but until I see dead on the street and people rioting it's not terrifying for me yet.

Micky 32

Tacitus Kilgore wrote: »

Heard? Where? Source?

It reminds me of Boyle Co Roscommon. There was supposed to be a comfirmed case there. The person was even identified and named. Turned out to be b*****x

Talisman

laurah591 wrote: »

for my school really that's only 2.5 weeks (13 days) as schools are out for 2 weeks during Easter, paddys day is off and our sch has a training day so it's not completely implausible and if we pushed summer holidays out by 2 weeks the time will be made up

But yes I think fake news .... I suspect this will be considered when we enter phase 2 and they will wait for as long as possible before implementing these measures. What are we ... any 10 days behind our European colleagues in terms of numbers

At my daughter's secondary school they were told at assembly on Friday that the school was investing in an online system. They expect the system to be ready next week and the principal expects that when the decision is made, the school will be closed until at least mid-May.

In DCU, the lecturers have been instructed to prepare to be able to deliver lectures online from next week. Our lecturer yesterday said that they expect the shutdown to be for a minimum of 7 weeks which brings us up to the end of the term. No decision has yet been made regarding the exams.

Purely speculation on my part but it would seem a bit coordinated given that the time scales are pretty close (8 weeks time is May).

Monkeynut

Drumpot wrote: »

I think I remember that news conference from Dr Aylward and he said they couldn’t find a direct link to smoking and severe cases. Now smoking will automatically increase your chances of dieing regardless of virus but I think what he was saying that they weren’t sure smoking explained the higer male issues. Around the world you have different levels of smokers and it seems to still equate to higher male patients.

I read before about women which have babies, it makes their immune system a bit better than males.

tobefrank321

If the trends are like other countries, UK could have 100 new cases today, and Ireland 3 or 4.

Phil.x

Signs gone up in work saying, "prepare to work remotely" .......gulp.....keep calm.

facehugger99

Cork Boy 53 wrote: »

Maybe close the schools this week and make up for lost classes by shortening the summer holidays which are probably too long anyway. Assuming the virus outbreak has subsided by then of course.

Shorten the summer holidays? - with the unionised teachers we have - not a chance.

They'll just end up with a couple of weeks extra holidays - fully paid of course.

05eaftqbrs9jlh

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Tobacco / cigarettes. It stated that men were more likely to have contracted coronavirus than women in China, and on average a lot more men smoke than women.

Those in a critical condition were only smokers if they had the associated comorbid conditions (COPD, lung and heart problems). They're more likely to have contracted it, according to Bruce Aylward, because they're putting their hands to their mouths and they're inhaling air and exhaling their virus onto each other.

Smokers without comorbid conditions often recovered fine.

is_that_so

Hamsterchops wrote: »

Just to explain what this post is about ^

....More than 7,300 coronavirus infections have been confirmed throughout South Korea, killing more than 50. It is one of the largest outbreaks outside mainland China, where the deadly virus was first identified. However, the number of new daily infections in South Korea has declined in recent days.

No it's just a number, reported number of new cases. You seem to be a glass barely covering the bottom type of individual I see. That the numbers of new cases is reducing is IMO a very positive thing but each to their own.

eviltimeban

Midnight Sundance wrote: »

What exactly are the general symptoms of Corona? Hubby sent home cos he has a sore throat n runny nose. I've checked his temp, it's normal. We haven't travelled anywhere foreign or more than 10 miles from home. No confirmed cases in our part of country..yet.. but who's to say that half the country have it now n dont know about it?
I've heard symptoms can be mild. Chances r hes a little head cold he caught from our son but of course now my mind is going Into overdrive.
I'm pregnant n starting to worry.

If you haven't been abroad, or in the company of someone obviously sick, then he just has a cold. My wife is currently in bed with a heavy cold, but it's all in her nose / head - no fever, no cough. Therefore, no cause for alarm. She said everyone in the office had a cold - typical for this time of the year really.

Just take precautions, stay indoors when you can, wash hands, limit social contact, don't go to gigs or sports events, and for god's sake don't panic.

Utter Consternation

Phil.x wrote: »

Signs gone up in work saying, "prepare to work remotely" .......gulp.....keep calm.

nthclare

Self sufiency again.
I went out there the other evening to a fishing spot which I don't publicise , caught plenty of whiting, cod and have them cleaned out frozen and hopefully I'll catch a few bass over the next few days.

Only one bass a day within size per person, but flounders are plentiful enough.

tigger123

Phil.x wrote: »

Signs gone up in work saying, "prepare to work remotely" .......gulp.....keep calm.

Where do you work? What sector?

deise08

Monkeynut wrote: »

I went down to the river and collected hundreds of doc leaves, I brought them home and stuck them in the freezer.


If anyone needs to go, pop a couple in the microwave at defrost for 16 seconds.


Ahh nice and leafy on the backside. Just as nature intended.

Maybe invest in a plunger, would they not block the toilet?

deise08

Monkeynut wrote: »

I went down to the river and collected hundreds of doc leaves, I brought them home and stuck them in the freezer.


If anyone needs to go, pop a couple in the microwave at defrost for 16 seconds.


Ahh nice and leafy on the backside. Just as nature intended.

Maybe invest in a plunger, would they not block the toilet?

is_that_so

Phil.x wrote: »

Signs gone up in work saying, "prepare to work remotely" .......gulp.....keep calm.

Know of a number of companies who have been planning this for weeks, some of them have done test runs but all still in their offices. It's just contingency planning.

Drumpot

niallo27 wrote: »

Are they terrifying though, it's bad yes, but nobody is starving and people have to do the right thing and stay at home. It's scary yes but until I see dead on the street and people rioting it's not terrifying for me yet.

I’m sorry but this is such a stupid thing to take from it. We don’t have to panic to prepare and start taking action that may be an inconvenience but could make our outbreak less severe.

Italy might be our future, do you understand that? This is real. This isn’t like watching a war in Syria or some African country that won’t affect us, this is here and there is a moderate to severe chance (our governments words) that we will suffer a similar fate to Italy if we don’t take it seriously NOW, not when bodies are piling up.

joe40

Ikozma wrote: »

Not a hope for 5 wks

It would only be 2 1/2 weeks in reality. when you take easter hols into account

New Home

Murple wrote: »

This has really upset me, far more than any fear of the virus itself. To not be able to say goodbye to a loved one as you wish is so sad.

Another thing people don't get is that people who catch this and are in ICU and are dying, will likely die without a dear one near them. So it's not only the funeral that's the issue.

Monkeynut

deise08 wrote: »

Maybe invest in a plunger, would they not block the toilet?

I throw them into the garden afterwards. In a pit of course.

Funsterdelux

Just a note on schools

My 2 kids primary and pre school(rural Nth Cork) had to the hand sanitizer provided before they entered the school.

My partner works in a primary school in Cork city and they have no measures what so ever.

If there isnt going to be a consistant approach especially in schools(germ factories) then they need to close, now!

Rumour/gossip alert:

<SNIP>

otnomart

New measure in France:
Ramped up security for Macron
https://www.bfmtv.com/politique/coronavirus-l-elysee-renforce-la-protection-autour-de-macron-1872415.html

facehugger99

The UKs Deputy Chief Medical Officer has noted that cancelling large outdoor events will have fcuk all effect on the spread of the coronavirus, noting that most outdoor events will be quite safe.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51812326

Nice to see a bit of non-hysterical reporting.

No doubt the armchair experts of Boards know better though.

niallo27

Drumpot wrote: »

I’m sorry but this is such a stupid thing to take from it. We don’t have to panic to prepare and start taking action that may be an inconvenience but could make our outbreak less severe.

Italy might be our future, do you understand that? This is real. This isn’t like watching a war in Syria or some African country that won’t affect us, this is here and there is a moderate to severe chance (our governments) words that we will suffer a similar fate to Italy if we don’t take it seriously NOW, not when bodies are piling up.

That's fair enough but I responded to the post that said it was terrifying in italy right now, I believe it will get a lot worse and it's no where near terrifying yet.