Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

Discussion in 'Epidemics (including Covid-19, not Long Covid)' started by Patient4Life, Jan 20, 2020.

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  1. Cheshire

    Cheshire Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I don't know for other countries, but for France, that is true and a lot of people are aware that this is an important problem as more and more retirement homes are affected by the virus.
     
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  2. ME/CFS Skeptic

    ME/CFS Skeptic Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    That's weird. I thought the WHO and John Hopkins simply summarized what national governments report. I mean; given that this is a crisis situation, the German government should have more reliable information on COVID-19 cases and deaths than some team working from afar at John Hopkins and who's trying to get data from all other countries at the same time. I wonder what sources John Hopkins uses that the German federal government doesn't know of. Although I don't know much more about this, I would trust the data from the RKI more than the data from John Hopkins.
     
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  3. TiredSam

    TiredSam Committee Member

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    I don't know much about it, it was just explained on the news recently, why the Johns Hopkins figures are higher than the Robert Koch figures, and the JH figures are the ones they lead with.

    Given the report on ME the Robert Koch institute produced a few years ago, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them.
     
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  4. TiredSam

    TiredSam Committee Member

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  5. Mithriel

    Mithriel Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Yes, it is strange that no one is reporting this much. The BBC is making a big thing this morning about NHS England starting to test NHS staff so that they can get back to work if they are negative but Scotland has been using drive through testing stations since last Monday.

    My daughter is a nurse in the covid-19 ward. She developed a cough and tightness in her chest so she had to self isolate and not go to work on Thursday. Friday she was tested, by driving to a station and having swabs taken by a technician in protective gear. This morning, Saturday, she was told she was negative - it is her hay fever starting with the spring - and she starts a 12 hour night shift at 7.00 tonight.

    We have 3 drive through centres and if you feel you have symptoms you will be sent there to be tested. If you are not well enough to get there a paramedic will come to you.
     
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  6. FMMM1

    FMMM1 Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Bit like the response to coronavirus --- test, trace.

    So if you measure the outcome and then review the policy --- can't trust people to self isolate --- what do the Chinese Government do --- hold you for 14 days?
     
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  7. Roy S

    Roy S Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    it is now two weeks later. The crowds were caused by a misunderstood travel ban deadline put out by the White House. It didn't have to happen.

    Illinois has been under a stay at home order for a week.

    3026 cases have been confirmed and there have been 34 deaths.

    The US still has nowhere near adequate testing!
     
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  8. spinoza577

    spinoza577 Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    This did the Italians as well.

    That the death rate in Germany is that low, may depend on two parameteres, 1. younger people may be infected, 2. on the quite huge amount of testing which is done, so not only the already obviously sick ones like in Italy are tested, though still only people who are guessed to possibly have the virus.

    In Germany it now has been decided that the the decision of who will be tried to be rescued - when the ICU´s will fall short - shall depend on the diseases the patients already have, e.g. cancer. This of course has the implication that in the near future less people will die, and to a certain time one might cancel these deaths out of the relevant statistic.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2020
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  9. spinoza577

    spinoza577 Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    The Robert-Koch-Institute said - a bit unclear maybe - that they give the numbers which they get reported by official offices in the different "states" (so to say), and that this may be a slower reporting than the sources the John Hopkins University had made up (I think hospitals and others can report there).
     
  10. ME/CFS Skeptic

    ME/CFS Skeptic Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Germany has a larger population than Italy but the former has only about 300-400 reported COVID-19 deaths while the latter has 9000. So I think it's not so much about the ratio of how many people are being tested.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2020
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  11. Leila

    Leila Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I don't think the German case fatality rate is accurate but it might not be that wrong either.

    When an "abnormal" amount of people is passing very quickly in one area, that can't go unnoticed by other tertiary involved places and parties like morgues, funeral homes, crematories etc. They would be overwhelmed, too and that would be reported on, like it sadly now is in Spain.

    Our government keeps on stressing though that we are at the beginning still. Since the ICUs are not overrun yet, people thankfully can be kept alive for a long time, too. Edit: So there might be a long lag still between current numbers and later deaths. That can of course change.

    Edit: Regarding ICU beds: Yes, we have a lot of them (around 28.000) but that doesn't help that much because we dont have enough of the highly specialized health care workers to work on these beds and machines. That has been a problem even before Corona.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2020
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  12. Hoopoe

    Hoopoe Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    It sounds like New York is now in a similar situation as Italy. Hospitals filled with covid-19 patients and doctors having to decide to who to keep alive.

    And I think this pandemic is going to result in healthcare reforms in the US because of stories like this:

    https://twitter.com/user/status/1243547467993530369
     
  13. Saz94

    Saz94 Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Is it true that the UK death statistics is only counting people whose families gave permission for them to be included in the statistics?

    If so, how far out do you think the UK death statistics are? We're currently supposedly at 759 deaths.
     
  14. Barry

    Barry Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Where did you hear that? Sounds like a rumour to me, but I don't know either way.
     
  15. spinoza577

    spinoza577 Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    The implication is that Germany is far behind Italy.

    So basically the situation would be the same, and only differ in time.

    But there might be an additional hope for Germany. Because Germany has tested very early on (though still only when Italy had obvious problems) and had isolated the cases, and because it might have been young people who mainly spread the virus, the virus might have spread in a different manner. And maybe, there is already some immunity. Then less people - at least these ones who are not already very ill anyway - would need to be rescued. Admittedly this might not turn out to be true.
     
  16. Saz94

    Saz94 Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    See above in this thread
     
  17. lunarainbows

    lunarainbows Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  18. Arnie Pye

    Arnie Pye Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    This kind of story is what we in the UK are led to believe happens in the USA every single day thousands of times per day, no matter what the disease or injury, or who has the health problem.

    1) No insurance = no treatment
    OR
    2) No insurance = treatment + bankruptcy (or at least massive life destroying bills)
    OR
    3) Insurance companies refusing treatment leads to no treatment and death OR treatment + bankruptcy.

    This was why the stories from a few years ago of Americans being told that the "socialist" NHS holds "death panels" to decide who lives and who dies were so bizarre to us. The death panels idea appears to have been made up by US politicians and journalists using a deliberate distortion of what the responsibilities of NICE are.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_for_Health_and_Care_Excellence
     
  19. Barry

    Barry Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Someone just asked me this and I don't know the answer, especially as I gather the corona virus can survive intact for some time on all sorts of surfaces.

    Could birds transport the virus from one bird table to another, and so to people, given people will obviously be touching the bird tables and food matter? The question is whether people should be feeding birds at this time, especially as their own food sources are becoming available at this time?
     
  20. Barry

    Barry Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 21, 2020
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