Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

Hi, I'm just suggesting that in the Italian hospital featured in the program, they managed to find a workaround i.e. to avoid people dying without any family members being present. I think it may have been a small annex to the intensive care "ward" and they had sufficient protective wear available to provide some to 1/2 family members. The Doctor emphasised that it was very difficult for medical staff i.e. in cases where people were dying without family members being present.
All the best.

 

Thought this was interesting. I have no idea how accurate it is but it seems legit.

https://tommorris.org/posts/2020/thats-not-what-the-law-says/

 

I found this article from the middle of March:

https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/...-it-will-save-lives-immediately-a4391816.html

 

Sounds worrying. Typhoid Mary was an asymptomatic carrier. Perhaps coronavirus is similar i.e. you can be a long term carrier but you yourself are well. Testing and contact tracing should pick up cases where the person is an asymptomatic carrier.

Potentially it could mean longer term lockdown for some people; however, it's not clear that this is the case.

 

After saying yesterday it would be inappropriate to release the number of deaths of NHS workers, he has said it today:

(However this does not as far as I’m aware, include staff in social care):

https://twitter.com/user/status/1248873058946908161

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1248872155661688832

 

Robert Koch institute update from yesterday, in English:

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ...chte/2020-04-10-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

I expect continuous udates will be available here:

https://www.rki.de/EN/Home/homepage...=ABC7F49E030B386AD8BE5DD2B8F9D1BD.internet062

(Can click on "English" top right)

 

And we have a jazzy dashboard:

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/478220a4c454480e823b17327b2bf1d4

 

Yes this. When calculating the economic cost of maintaining vs. loosening lockdowns, people need to factor in the cost of long term care for those who don't die from the virus, but who develop chronic conditions.

Add to this the strain on the hospital from the possible increase in acute cases, the loss of more health care workers, the list goes on. And of course the huge whammy of coming out too early, ending up with a major second wave, and having to lock down again to regain control, perhaps for even longer next time.

Some of the stuff people are saying here, especially from the UK, blows my mind. Like construction work being classed as "essential"

 

I'd like them to count the number of deaths of all key workers by sector, including the lowest paid. I'd hope this would lead to a long term (as opposed to time limited) change in how we as a society value these individuals - including how we financially reward them.

 

In the UK we already have a massive shortage of care workers and community social care as a system is completely broken (it's been underfunded for decades, but now local councils are unable to meet their statutory obligations to those legally eligible for social care).

 

That doesn't look bad, especially with half of ICU beds still being empty.

It's also interesting that the percentage of people needing hospital admission and therefore from what I understand fall into the "severe or critically" ill category is around the same that has been reported from China (15%).

Of course there is bias because a lot of the mild cases (=no hospital admission) aren't diagnosed, so the real percentage of this category might be a lot lower.

It would be interesting to know though how long people of this category need to stay in hospital care for, how much support they need etc.

Because the number of people outside of ICU also has to be taken into account to estimate the limits of hospitals, right?

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1240689981569417217

 

https://bylinetimes.com/2020/04/10/coronavirus-we-must-resist-this-exercise-in-hypernormalisation/

 

They use to be. The institute though is not that brilliantly dealing with possibilites, in my view. To have proper facts as much as possible:

Streeck et al presented their preliminary results with already a sample size of 509 in a high hit area. 500, I think, is already two times as high as the WHO considers to be needed for a proper evaluation.

PCR (reflecting acute infection) - 2%
antibody test* (reflecting past infection) - 14%
case fatality - 0.37%
mortality - 0.06%

They didn´t explain how they evaluated the mortality, wether from excess mortality in this very area (as usually done with flu mortality) evaluating local empirical data, or from their other results. The latter is more likely, I would think. In this case the mortality should turn out to be even lower, because for a case that has died counts probably Anyone who tested positive and has died, regardless of other risks and causes which uses to lead to death someday and maybe this month.

Yesterday in Dutch TV the news said that there is a higher mortality observed in the last month, presumably coming from corona deaths "which havn´t been diagnosed and died at home". Unfortunately they didn´t give any percentage.

---
*Gold standard to the antibody test is probably the PCR test (which hopefully is accurate enough). There is no principal problem to use an antibody test (in an epidemiological study). The average of other coronaviruses in acute infection is 7-15%, so there shouldn´t be that much of inaccuracy possible anyway (so mainly mistakes coming from a range of 8%). - If one finds it worth one could even estimate the inaccuracy of the antibody test for each village, town or country newly, and/or for each time of investigation. A PCR is not expensive and not too difficult to do (one only needs to wait until the known positives from the PCR tests shall show antibodies).

(@Snow Leopard, it took me some time to relearn this, and better deleted two other posts)

 

https://www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opi...hs-staff-report-dangerously-low-levels-of-ppe

 

“We saw right at the start of this pandemic that the two countries that brought in the most draconian international travel restrictions, the United States and Italy, both of them have now got serious problems themselves so I think the science we followed on international travel has been borne out by events.”

The idiocy of this is remarkable.
"We noticed that the two people who bolted the stable door had done so after the horse had bolted. So the science tells us that bolting stable doors does not keep horses inside, even if we can see the horse in there eating hay."

 

The nearest way I can begin to empathise with NHS workers, is that I now take additional precautions to try and avoid any hospital stay from a recurring condition that has put me there previously. This is both for unselfish and selfish reasons: The NHS is over burdened as it is, my wife does not need the extra worry, and the very last last thing I want is go into hospital and risk catching Covid 19 - very scary.

And yet our NHS staff are doing this every day, knowing that without the right PPE available to them, the risks to them are a great deal higher than for most people. Not only is the probability of catching Covid 19 very high for NHS staff working with Covid 19 patients, if they lack the proper PPE, but there seems to be suggestions that the severity of an infection is related to duration and intensity of exposure. So our NHS staff have the odds stacked against them.

Hopefully recent events and experiences will encourage much more earnest endeavours to set things straight for our NHS staff, and the NHS itself.

 

I would hope so, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening

NHS staff are still being forbidden from speaking out: https://theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/09/nhs-staff-forbidden-speaking-out-publicly-about-coronavirus?

Then we have Matt Hancock’s comments yesterday about NHS staff using too much PPE

edited to add a different link (same video)-

https://twitter.com/user/status/1248862284371447808