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

Bob24 wrote: »

Yes - although Italy probably should be excluded from the above reasoning from now on as their healthcare system is now clearly not fully coping anymore.

Yes, Italy illustrates why this pandemic is to be feared if it gets out of hand and overwhelms hospitals.

Blueshoe wrote: »

At this stage if Ireland doesn't actually get a meaningful outbreak I think some might feel a little robbed.

One 3 over the weekend despite some expecting cases to double day on day. I'd say it'll be grand

In Italy it doubles every 6 days roughly. Assume we have 20 cases now.

So by the 14th it’ll be 40 cases
By the 20th it’ll be 80
By the 26th it’ll be 160
On the 1st April it’ll be 320.

It will double 5 more times in April and go from roughly 300 to 10,000 cases.
In may it could go to 300,000 and then hit roughly 2 million by the end of June. This is why they’re graduating the new doctors early, to have them available for May and June when. If we don’t curtail the spread massively, this could really turn ugly.

At 2500 active cases and 10% needing ventilators we will need 250 ventilators and there’ll be no ventilators free by mid-April. There’ll be a bit of wriggle room because by that stage about 50 ventilators will be freed up by people dying but this is just to give a general sense of how quickly this could escalate.

In the last half of April we could have 7,500 new cases and no ventilator capacity. Without ventilators up to 10% of these patients could die, that’s 750 dead in a fortnight.

So, potentially 50 dead in the first two months of this and then 750 in two weeks with death rates accelerating every week after that, in a worst case scenario.

THIS is why it is so important we stop the RATE of spread. The really important figure of the 1.9 million infected wasn’t the 1.9 million it was that half of them might fall sick within about 4 weeks of each other. 950,000 fall sick in 4 weeks. Let’s assume that they need to be ventilated for 1 week to recover if severely ill ( this is very optimistic) So we can ventilate 1000 that month.

950,000 ill with 10% requiring ventilation/high level support would mean 95,000 need ventilators and we can ventilate 1000. The other 94,000 would be out of luck and a great number of them would die.

So we need to do much,much more to slow down the spread so that even if 1.9 million get it they don’t get it in a short space of time - that way the health service can keep more of the very sick alive.

Everything we can do to slow the spread, even if the same number of people end up getting it, will save lives. So, be responsible, social distance, handwash, stay indoors if at all possible. If you’re young it won’t save your life - cause you’re not really in danger - but it could save aunts, uncles, grandparents etc.

Whether you think it is the end of the world or it’ll be grand just be sensible and take the precautions above. It WILL save lives.

Darc19 wrote: »

Singapore introduced very tough rules with severe penalties on people and have been implementing them strongly

One guy left his house before the 14 day period ended and had his residency rescinded immediately and permanently

In Singapore he’s lucky he wasn’t just shot ;-). The do not mess around. They’re going to come out of this very, very well.

China’s doing well too but I expect when they open the factories again they’ll get more infections but, crucially, now they know what works so long as they keep the rate of new infections to only ten times more than what they can ventilate they’ll keep a low death rate relatively speaking while keeping their economy humming along. I bet that’s precisely what they’ll aim for.

If a province gets out of hand again they’ll just wuhan it and lock it down for a month till things settle. Impressive really.

ChikiChiki wrote: »

From the language of the unions today, the whole thing is on a knife edge.

If we got to Italian levels I'm not entirely sure we would have a health system.

Some won’t go in to work for sure but most would, especially when once exposed it is safer for your family for you just to stay in work than to go home and see them.

The ones who don’t come in will be ostracised by the survivors later. I certainly would view it as a bar to their promotion if I survive and am in a position to have input.

wadacrack wrote: »

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1236766228129210368

This is so important. Even for the same number of infected in total following the green line (lots of social isolation, good hand washing etc) or even the blue line ( a la China) will result in far fewer dead.

fritzelly wrote: »

Current doubling time in Italy is 3 days

But at the end of the day it's a meaningless number in the case of a virus - something peddled by market players.

You reach a point where you cannot infect any more people, either because you are not in contact anymore with people or those people already have it.

The infection rate does not keep on doubling and will either plateau or start decreasing. If we were to believe your post then everyone in the world would catch flu every year when in reality about 20% do.

With any viral infection the numbers will keep increasing, exponentionally, in the initial outbreak

So stop peddling your scaremongering crap again

So I’m scaremongering and yet picking a conservative non-scaremongering doubling time double yours. Interesting how the facts don’t match your accusation. Your doubling time would result in the virus spreading 32 times faster than the one I chose - now who is the scaremonger? ;-)

Their doubling time has fallen but I believe that’s an artefact of better reporting and more testing. Still, if you want we can use your doubling time which makes this all much more rapid and thus deadly ;-)... and yet I’m the scaremonger. I think you can find statistics and understand them superficially and throw insults but don’t actually understand epidemiology properly.

As for infection rates falling off as the number of non-infected falls. Sure but this also means most of the population has it by then and with a 2% death rate that implies a huge number of dead. So while you point this out to argue against scaremongering it actually implies a huge number of dead. It is like saying the ultimate cure for pain is just to shoot people in pain dead. It isn’t untrue but really Fing misses the point.


As to my post implying everyone in the world would catch flu. No, this again shows you don’t understand epidemiology. Flu has a R0 of about 2. This seems to be over 3, maybe even 4. There’s a huge difference between a disease with a R0 of 2 and a R0 of 3.4 to 4 plus R0 is about how many people the average sufferer infects. Far, far more goes into determining how widely something spreads than the R0. So my post makes no such implication. You state an untruth so you can then attack the post for something it didn’t say.

Lastly, you say I said the infection rate doubled. No I did not. The infection rate, R0 would stay constant. I spoke of the number of days it would take for the NUMBER OF CASES to double. That is a completely different thing than the infection rate doubling. With the same R0 numbers would double every 6 days. If the R0 doubled we’d see a doubling of cases every three days instead. Again, you appear to be knowing enough to give a facade of knowing this stuff and being able to counter things but you clearly don’t know enough to truly grasp it.

This doesn’t mean you can’t disagree. Feel free to. But please don’t misquote, misrepresent and twist what I say until it no longer resembles what I said and meant.

As for doubling time being meaningless in the study of disease spread and impact you are dangerously wrong. Halve the doubling time and you drastically reduce the amount of time the health service has to get ready to treat a certain number of patients. If you start with 1 patient and have a doubling time of 6 days you end up with roughly 128,000 infected in 108 days. If you halve the doubling time you end up with 128,000 infected in 54 days.

As a doctor I’d much rather have twice the time to prepare, maybe figure out which antiviral work, ramp up production of masks, maybe even get an experimental vaccine ready to test on a small scale. So for you to say it is meaningless shows you don’t understand medicine and disease spread. I don’t normally react this strongly to dunderheaded comments on the internet but many of yours are so incorrect as to be dangerously misleading.

Disagree if you want but please don’t simply make things up. I would hope that’s beneath us.

Obviously the more hand washing and social distancing we do the better the outcome we get so let’s focus on promoting that rather than lying in order to make this situation appear less serious than it really is.

Deleted User wrote: »

Also, have you heard of thalidomide????

Yeah, it’s great for treating leprosy. What? Too soon?

_Whimsical_ wrote: »

Mine too, its made me feel a little ill all day. The tiny capacity coupled with the knowledge that it's very early days and already 173 med staff are home self isolating. What will be left of the health service.

The same dr said on tonights news that "difficult decisions will have to be made in terms of prioritising patients for treatment". They won't prioritise older people, which I understand though find the prospect of devastating.
Who do you prioritise with such little capacity though ?
People with children ?People with a career that is valuable in this crisis should they recover? Who is "expendable"?
There are "sensible" lines to be drawn, but the prospect is frankly horrific.

To think it could have been prevented is really beyond galling.

There’s much less social engineering than people think when Consultants make these kinds of decisions. I care about who is most likely to survive first and foremost.

One factor that then comes into play is how much life is left. If there’s one ventilator and two people need it and both have an equal chance of recovering then, yeah, the 20 year old will get it before the 80 year old. That’s just the way it works when doing greater good calculations.

To be clear NO Consultant thinks anyone is expendable BUT we DO have to use our VERY limited resources to do the greatest good for society as a whole. Usually there are enough resources so this isn’t as starkly obvious to everyone as it has become now but every week when I decide who needs to be prioritised for treatment and who needs to wait due to lack of resources I know I am condemning those who have to wait to prolonged pain, suffering and greater risk of dying. That’s what makes it a tough draining profession sometimes.

So, if you get sick no-one will be viewed as expendable whether old, young, intellectually or physically disabled ( or differently abled if you prefer that terminology) but we will try to do the greatest good for society as a whole In the face of overwhelming numbers of ill people. Prioritising some means not having resources for others. That’s simply the way medicine has always worked at a population level.

The best thing to do is socially isolate and hand wash so you don’t end up in hospital at all but certainly not during the peak month when things will be at their absolute worst.

ceadaoin. wrote: »

Apparently there is yet another princess cruise ship that is being quarantined. Ffs people, stop going on cruises.

Actually, when this is over if I’m still around I might go on one. They’ll actually be dirt cheap cause of the fear factor, really, and friends have said they can be amazing. It’ll take many months for people to overcome their fear afterwards so prices for holidays will have to fall until cheapness overcomes fear.