outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

This is the friend of someone I know here in Cardiff. Sounds absolutely horrible but as an update, almost six months later, she was finally able to go for a run yesterday (although only for a minute)

https://sarra43.wixsite.com/saracovid19blog

Wow. I don't get why people are so blasé about it, I'm constantly seeing "well you only have a 0.001% chance of dying" or whatever they reckon it is. For many families even one person getting it badly would screw up jobs, childcare, dependants, let alone the toll on mental health and longterm physical health.

"well you only have a 0.001% chance of dying"

This is just the usual binary thinking trap that people put their foot into time and time again. For those without firsthand experience, the dominant idea is that you either die or recover and dying is bad, but recovery is good. All other details tend to get overlooked. The fact that this disease is so new also means that its long term health effects aren't really identified and familiar, yet, so people haven't learned to fear them.

tbf I'm not sure many people are being blase, per se, so much as taking calculated risks, just like every time we get in a car. and those risks are different for different people. and people are just different, too. for example, I know low risk people taking more precautions than some higher risk people I know.

yeah it's insane that people think that way and again I feel like our poisonous political environment & media coverage has something to do with it. if you're pro-Trump you can point to the death toll as the only "bad" outcome and then say "well we all know these numbers are bogus, right?" and if you're anti-Trump you can point to it and say "holy shit all these people are dying because of our idiot president" and either way you kind of oversimplify the total effect of this thing

do we know how likely "long term health effects" are to manifest? you'd think that after 9 months we'd have some idea

There are so many numbers I don't know after all this time. for example, not how many people get it, but how many people are hospitalized with serious conditions, what percentage. I dunno.

Yeah I guess I meant people being blase in what they say to people who are likely to already have it/be at high risk from it (eg healthcare workers). People's own actions vs risk is a whole other thing, and likewise I've seen the full range. Age is the biggest single risk factor I believe, so that's why I find it sobering when 26-year-olds are really struck down by it. A relative thinks they've had it for 100+ days and they were the one venturing to the shops to protect the asthmatic partner!

well, let's bust out the good ol envelope and turn it around to the back, where the work must be done

https://covidtracking.com/data/national

mortality rate
6,941,911 confirmed cases
194,852 deaths (confirmed + probable)

194,852 / 6,941,911 = 0.0280

converting that to a percentage, that's a 2.80% mortality rate.

hospitalization rate
6,941,911 confirmed cases
400,840 cumulative hospitalizations

400,840 / 6,941,911 = 0.0577

converting that to a percentage, that's a 5.77% hospitalization rate.

(all figures for the US only)

so basically, in the US at least, about 5% of the cases end up going to the hospital, but of those, almost half die.

(unless my envelope got really messed up. a lot of pushing going on lately)

although actually, i guess it's not always true that one goes to a hospital for covid19 before dying. so i suppose the likelihood of dying after hospitalization is lower than "almost half", sorry.

Hi, y'all https://www.miamiherald.com/news/article246005375.html

^

The governor’s announcement Friday allows restaurants across the state to immediately reopen at full capacity — and prevents cities and counties from ordering restaurants to close or operate at less than half-capacity...

missionaccomplished.jpg

florida wins!

What's kept us sane since March -- I've said so here many times -- are local mask ordinances; they've been required since late March in MDC and enforced with fines since July. DeSantis' order says nothing about public spaces, so I hope counties still have this flexibility.

10% of all US cases, if I read that right. And ~7% of all deaths.

The governor said he would stop cities and counties from collecting fines on people who don't wear face masks, virtually nullifying local mask ordinances.

“As an act of executive grace, all fines and penalties that have been applied against individuals are suspended," the governor said.

Madness

Florida: Global Warming is Too Lingering a Death For Our Tastes.

Is it hyperbolic to call that an act of genocide?

local reporter:

I'm told @GovRonDeSantis and @MayorGimenez are on the phone presently, trying to decide what this means for Miami-Dade. https://t.co/vGLg7H4vey

— Carlos Frías (@Carlos_Frias) September 25, 2020

Nice of the governor to announce the plan before figuring out what it means for the largest city. Some very good public administration procedures there

Who would think that the anti-governance party would elect incompetent governors

Not to mention Gimenez is running for a House seat in a tightly contested district (i.e. mine).

Not to mention there's a Heat game tonight.

well, let's bust out the good ol envelope and turn it around to the back, where the work must be done

these numbers are kinda useless though if you don't know how many unreported cases there are, and the estimates on that vary wildly. has there ever been a randomized antibody test done anywhere?

that's a 2.80% mortality rate

kinda useless though if you don't know how many unreported cases there are

yes, karl's number, if accurate, would make covid19 about 28x more deadly than influenza. but even if you assume known cases only represent a third of actual cases the mortality rate would still be about 10x that of influenza. so, it is a particularly deadly disease by anyone's standard.

my county never enforced fines against masks so that part doesn't hurt here locally, but statewide, it's idiotic af.

I wasn't eating at restaurants anyway, other than once or twice masked with my best friend at a half capacity place. won't be going to any now.

at least relieved that I think I got the vaccine in my Covid trial so that I have some protection but not going to live as such.

in other words...the same ole "sitting in my room listening to death metal records and feeling very alone!"

i'm just fucking tired rn

Jason Leitch, Scotland's national clinical director, said the other day that they were estimating 4% hospitalisation and 1% deaths so far but that both numbers were decreasing across the UK as the infected population was now generally younger.

2.8% is much too high but so what? It's a really bad disease. There is no one answer to "what proportion of people who get COVID die" -- huge variation in age is the most obvious thing but e.g. there is variation time (fewer people die now because we've learned more about treating it, which was one big motivation for slowing down case growth in March/April), and there seems to be big variation between regions too for reasons I think people don't really understand.

Do we have any stats yet on what percentage of people who caught it early on still have significant fatigue/breathing/nervous/heart complications 6 months later?

At this rate I fully expect the hospitals to be overwhelmed by West Nile virus.

So there seems to be another anti-lockdown demo in Trafalgar Square today. Central London's turned into a no-go area on weekends now hasn't it? Thousands of credulous racists who believe the pandemic that's happing isn't actually happening, coming in from all over the country and wandering around without masks on. Throw the lot of 'em into gaol say I.

Do we have any stats yet on what percentage of people who caught it early on still have significant fatigue/breathing/nervous/heart complications 6 months later?

― Fetchboy,

I think this will be forthcoming. My duties as a contact tracer in my county now involve trying to reach people that had the virus between April and July and asking them about any persistent symptoms, or any new neurological/mental/physical developments. We fill out a questionnaire that gets sent in to some database

If you manually fill out too many questionnaires do you get... tracer hand?

strongly do not recommend becoming tracer hand, it’s debilitating

Matt#2, we were in Chinatown two weekends ago, and wandered to Trafalgar Square because the nieces wanted to see the lions, and it was totally fine, there was a small group with signs about police brutality in South America, but it was like 15 people, who were also dancing. I suspect there's a day a month where you want to avoid the normal areas where demos are, but Central London definitely isn't a no-go area on weekends in general.

Central London is a no-go area cos it's shit lol

It’s great right now because very few commuter morons are in it. *blows kiss*

I shouldn’t be shocked, but I look around and like, football is just... happening, all over the country? With crowds and stuff? God this fucking terrible country.

We officially passed a million confirmed deaths worldwide today:(

A quarter of those were in UK and US.

Washington Post article reporting how rare spread seems to be among students and within schools in Europe that have opened:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/coronavirus-outbreaks-schools-europe/2020/09/27/0dd19bf6-ff48-11ea-b0e4-350e4e60cc91_story.html

That is not how things are going in France.

Avec 285 foyers de contamination en cours d’investigation, le milieu scolaire et universitaire devient la première « collectivité » de circulation du virus, devant les entreprises, selon le dernier bulletin hebdomadaire de Santé publique France.

https://www.lemonde.fr/education/article/2020/09/26/covid-19-un-tiers-des-clusters-concerne-l-ecole-et-l-universite_6053758_1473685.html

Combining schools and universities is misleading though, isn't it? We're already seeing significant spreading in Scotland's universities but the schools seem to have settled down after an initial panic with seasonal snuffles when they opened.

Yes, I thought that too, but in the article they separate the two categories. It's not good in either. My two younger children's school (which is composed of both a middle school and a high school), of about 2000 students, has had a few more than 20 positive cases among students since the start of September.

looking at the US numbers today. get ready folks.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0MrEUR9Cy8M/VDhkUiRqkAI/AAAAAAAAIr4/rAqgy0gJUww/s1600/tumblr_ncy76nQdtG1r87tiqo1_500.gif

nuh uh. get with the magical thinking, it's much better. it's not happening again. it's going to go away

curious though, what makes you say that about today?

https://i.imgur.com/E56yZSB.png

looking at that, i see a rebound in new cases in the last few weeks, but also increased testing after a couple months of undulating/plateau. hospitalizations, as well, are at relatively low levels (only 30,000 people currently hospitalized, we're doing great!!)

spike in brooklyn is adjacent to my neighborhood and headed my way
i am highly concerned for myself and others that we are gonna get caught sleeping after six months of "hey if i didn't get it by now i'm sure it'll be fine" leading to a major winter deathtoll. i am back indoors (with ventilation). I jog (distanced) with a mask off. I'm no longer obsessively handwashing. I can't imagine i'm alone.

i'm putting a lot of stock in everything i've heard/read about outdoors socializing being exponentially safer than indoors. the past three Sundays I've gone to bars to watch football but I've always sat outside and of course put on a mask if I had to go inside to use the bathroom or something. of course each time I've gone inside there have been copious dumbasses just sitting inside housing their chicken wings, which was especially disturbing in week 1 because it was pretty hot that day and so the bar had its doors closed.

definitely going to suck tremendously when it gets too cold to congregate out of doors though at least here in the South that might not be until January.

yeah, i'm putting in volunteer work at a ceramics studio and have made it clear to the owners that i am expecting the front door to stay open until there's snow.

I'm getting nervous myself around here, mostly because I've heard friends and acquaintances (who have thus far been really diligent and sage) already start saying stuff like, "well I can't imagine not being able to socialize at all winter, so I'm going to have to take a few more risks". So if even the well meaning folks are hitting this point already, I fear we are doomed.