victor809
6 years ago
So the idea that we're undercounting the number of coronavirus infected has been circulating. It's real, and because it's real some news organizations have latched on to it, because they can use it to defend the position that we should be opening up the country etc.... As I have stated earlier, this is missing the undercounting of deaths. I ran across these articles recently and thought I'd post them here.

This is an example of how we are still struggling to get a handle on COVID deaths, and will only really get a good estimate much later on, after this is over.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52278825 
The important part of this story is NOT the headline. The headline is talking about the 3,475 deaths a week directly attributed to COVID in England/Wales. What the story mentions is that the death toll that week of 16,000 is 6,000 people more than normal. The implication there is that the British are only able to track about 60% of the COVID deaths at this point.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain/spains-coronavirus-deaths-pass-14500-but-real-toll-may-be-bigger-idUSKBN21Q19O 
Same story in Spain, where in Madrid the death toll for the month of March is significantly above that of prior years + the counted coronavirus .

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-tally/italy-coronavirus-death-rate-slows-but-studies-suggest-true-tally-higher-idUSKBN21J677 
Same issue in italy.

We know the same thing is happening in our cities, we just don't know the rate yet.
View All Posts by User
HockeyDad
6 years ago
San Mateo County Health Officer Scott Morrow informed residents on Monday night he believes the county has identified less than five percent of the total COVID-19 infections since the outbreak began.
"I hesitate to give you the following numbers, because first of all they are a guess, and secondly because some will think they are too low to take action," he wrote. "My best guess is that approximately 2-3% of the SMC population are currently infected or have recovered from the infection. That’s around 15-25,000 people and they are all over the county and in every community. I don’t believe this number is off by a factor of 10, but it could be off by a factor of 2 to 3. Without the [shelter-in-place order], it could have well been over 50-75,000 by now, and that would have overwhelmed our healthcare system."

The county has just 699 confirmed cases of the virus; if Morrow's numbers are correct, that would mean the county has identified just 2.7-4.5 percent of its total cases.

"This virus appears to be wildly transmissible especially within households or congregate settings," he wrote. "Your risk from contracting the infection from any human you encounter in San Mateo County and outside your immediate household continues to be substantial unless you take all the recommended actions to protect yourself."

However, if his numbers hold, that would place the mortality rate for the virus somewhere between .08 percent and .14 percent, well below the county's current figure of 3.14 percent. There have been 21 total recorded deaths in the county to this point.
View All Posts by User
tailgater
6 years ago
But is the higher death rate due to the virus itself, or to circumstances created by the virus over-reaction?

NYC screwed the pooch, so now all big cities are over compensating. Hospitals are rearranging staff and beds and makeshift areas are usurping supplies at an alarming pace. If you go into the hospital with a heart attack you might die due to lack of attention or equipment or qualified personnel. We cry about flattening the curve, but we're creating individual peaks because we're simply not prepared to see the whole picture.
Every extra effort is focused on the Coronavirus. Nobody dares mention the other day to day activities that keep us alive.



View All Posts by User
victor809
6 years ago

San Mateo County Health Officer Scott Morrow informed residents on Monday night he believes the county has identified less than five percent of the total COVID-19 infections since the outbreak began.
"I hesitate to give you the following numbers, because first of all they are a guess, and secondly because some will think they are too low to take action," he wrote. "My best guess is that approximately 2-3% of the SMC population are currently infected or have recovered from the infection. That’s around 15-25,000 people and they are all over the county and in every community. I don’t believe this number is off by a factor of 10, but it could be off by a factor of 2 to 3. Without the [shelter-in-place order], it could have well been over 50-75,000 by now, and that would have overwhelmed our healthcare system."

The county has just 699 confirmed cases of the virus; if Morrow's numbers are correct, that would mean the county has identified just 2.7-4.5 percent of its total cases.

"This virus appears to be wildly transmissible especially within households or congregate settings," he wrote. "Your risk from contracting the infection from any human you encounter in San Mateo County and outside your immediate household continues to be substantial unless you take all the recommended actions to protect yourself."

However, if his numbers hold, that would place the mortality rate for the virus somewhere between .08 percent and .14 percent, well below the county's current figure of 3.14 percent. There have been 21 total recorded deaths in the county to this point.

HockeyDad wrote:



Both sides are being undercounted. The numerator and denominator. I'm not saying what the death rate is.... It'll be what it's gonna be. And we'll get a better estimate after everyone's done dying. :)

There's a specific part of the media which seems to suddenly (past few days) been really really concerned about the fact that our total infectious rate is being undercounted. They seem to want that death rate to come down for some reason.

My only point is if we're gonna be super concerned about "unskewing" one side of the equation, we should be equally concerned about the other. Otherwise you're just creating different false numbers.
View All Posts by User
DrafterX
6 years ago
I heard if have the CV and die in a car wreck the death certificate says death by CV...😟
View All Posts by User
teedubbya
6 years ago
over reaction is the new talking point.
View All Posts by User
HockeyDad
6 years ago

Both sides are being undercounted. The numerator and denominator. I'm not saying what the death rate is.... It'll be what it's gonna be. And we'll get a better estimate after everyone's done dying. :)

There's a specific part of the media which seems to suddenly (past few days) been really really concerned about the fact that our total infectious rate is being undercounted. They seem to want that death rate to come down for some reason.

My only point is if we're gonna be super concerned about "unskewing" one side of the equation, we should be equally concerned about the other. Otherwise you're just creating different false numbers.

victor809 wrote:





When you're San Mateo County and you have 21 deaths it pretty hard to undercount deaths. Unless they stuffed one in a broom closet and forgot. As for UK, Italy, and Spain where they have had a lot more deaths.....well screw them I'm not shutting down Idaho for that.

Politicians do what they do. Some want the death count to go up and lockdown to continue through the elections, some want to lift lockdown to restart the economy before the elections. All of them are in bunkers underneath their mansions.

None of the politicians who have weaponized this virus are standing in a line at a food bank. The lawsuits are starting and the riots are coming. All the politicians know this.
View All Posts by User
teedubbya
6 years ago
I hope you are wrong about some politicians wanting this lockdown to continue through the election for anything other than public health reasons but my cynical side knows there are probably some.... and others that just want things opened up regardless consequences.

View All Posts by User
victor809
6 years ago

When you're San Mateo County and you have 21 deaths it pretty hard to undercount deaths. Unless they stuffed one in a broom closet and forgot. As for UK, Italy, and Spain where they have had a lot more deaths.....well screw them I'm not shutting down Idaho for that.

Politicians do what they do. Some want the death count to go up and lockdown to continue through the elections, some want to lift lockdown to restart the economy before the elections. All of them are in bunkers underneath their mansions.

None of the politicians who have weaponized this virus are standing in a line at a food bank. The lawsuits are starting and the riots are coming. All the politicians know this.

HockeyDad wrote:



I mean.... "lockdown" is a pretty weak term. If we did a real and true lockdown we could have solved this much quicker. But it's still spreading, because we simply cannot do a full lockdown. And that's fine... I'm not really upset either way. I've been watching this the same way I watched the last superbowl... sometimes I cheer for the virus, sometimes I cheer for humans... sometimes I cheer for economic destruction. No matter what happens, I'll be amused.

Most amusingly, it'll probably spread pretty well through lines at the food bank too.

We half-assed testing... as well as quarantine response to initial positive cases...
As such, it got a hold in multiple cities.

We half-assed lockdown... so it's still spreading a bit and moving from urban areas to suburban and rural.

Now we're at a position where the virus is still active and in our population. If we do a full stop on lockdown, it will spread from those existing infected people the same way it did at the beginning. We'll see a slightly reduced spike (because people are likely being more careful) but it will still come back.

Or, we can continue the half-assed lockdown... that will take a really long time to finally go away... and cost tons of money.

This is an excellent example of damned if you do/damned if you don't. But we're in this situation because we failed to act appropriately at the beginning, when it could have been managed.

I'll even agree that I didn't take this virus seriously at the beginning. I definitely underestimated it. I still don't think it's a terrible catastrophe, but it's at least a magnitude of bad worse than I thought when it first popped up.
View All Posts by User
HockeyDad
6 years ago
In an hour California governor Gavin Newsom is supposed to be announcing plans to reopen. Should be interesting.

This could up the pressure on Trump today unless it’s really wimpy.
View All Posts by User
victor809
6 years ago

In an hour California governor Gavin Newsom is supposed to be announcing plans to reopen. Should be interesting.

This could up the pressure on Trump today unless it’s really wimpy.

HockeyDad wrote:



Wooohooo! A turnaround for team virus! Ladies and gentlemen! This is unprecedented! Opening up MILLIONS of new hosts for viral replication can really mean a turnaround for a team that looked like it was on... the.... ropes....






**** man... we may as well ride this out, it's gonna be amazing either way.
View All Posts by User
KingoftheCove
6 years ago
It’s Gavin’s secret solution to the homeless problem.
But, he is underestimating just how tough a vast majority of those homeless are, eating out of trash cans and living on the streets for years.
They have robust immune systems and no wimpy, mutated Covid19 gonna take them down!
View All Posts by User
ZRX1200
6 years ago
Careful, I told sugarpus about the numbers and he got angry....


Y’all gonna get him posting again.
View All Posts by User
tailgater
6 years ago

I mean.... "lockdown" is a pretty weak term. If we did a real and true lockdown we could have solved this much quicker. But it's still spreading, because we simply cannot do a full lockdown. And that's fine... I'm not really upset either way. I've been watching this the same way I watched the last superbowl... sometimes I cheer for the virus, sometimes I cheer for humans... sometimes I cheer for economic destruction. No matter what happens, I'll be amused.

Most amusingly, it'll probably spread pretty well through lines at the food bank too.

We half-assed testing... as well as quarantine response to initial positive cases...
As such, it got a hold in multiple cities.

We half-assed lockdown... so it's still spreading a bit and moving from urban areas to suburban and rural.

Now we're at a position where the virus is still active and in our population. If we do a full stop on lockdown, it will spread from those existing infected people the same way it did at the beginning. We'll see a slightly reduced spike (because people are likely being more careful) but it will still come back.

Or, we can continue the half-assed lockdown... that will take a really long time to finally go away... and cost tons of money.

This is an excellent example of damned if you do/damned if you don't. But we're in this situation because we failed to act appropriately at the beginning, when it could have been managed.

I'll even agree that I didn't take this virus seriously at the beginning. I definitely underestimated it. I still don't think it's a terrible catastrophe, but it's at least a magnitude of bad worse than I thought when it first popped up.

victor809 wrote:




A full stop lock down will require a working vaccine to be effective. Otherwise we're just delaying things.

View All Posts by User
victor809
6 years ago

A full stop lock down will require a working vaccine to be effective. Otherwise we're just delaying things.

tailgater wrote:



That's simply not true.

If you are infected and I put you in a box for 2 weeks or 3 weeks or however long it takes for your body to beat the disease, you are not going to reinfect anyone. You are not carrying it at that point.

If you were to isolate everyone, and not allow the infection to jump from infected people to non-infected people, you would within 2 to 3 weeks, no longer have infected people to spread it when you release lockdown. At that point you no longer need a vaccine (unless you open up your country to travel).

Of course, this level of draconian isolation is impractical. Medical care workers move from sick people to healthy people, prison guards move from sick people to healthy people, delivery people risk interacting with sick people and healthy people... and then idiots who simply don't want to follow procedures also occasionally move from sick person to healthy person. Each time one of these interactions results in an infection of a healthy person, the clock resets itself on this process being 100% effective.

The virus dies if it cannot be transmitted to an uninfected person. Our immune systems kill it 98 or 99% of the time. The other 1-2% of the time it kills the host, and then it dies. But the end result of every single infection is that the virus will die unless you allow it to be transmitted to an uninfected person.

View All Posts by User
victor809
6 years ago
So if we look at absolute draconian measures as being the ideal solution (by ideal I only mean most effective... I'm fine with no solution... as I've said elsewhere, I'm agnostic on this and am just enjoying the ride)... if we don't implement those measures, is there any effectiveness to this half-assed isolation?

I don't know. It's clearly slowing the infection rate.... we were really honestly skyrocketing when NYC started their isolation. I was really looking forward to it being absolutely insane. If you look at how much those numbers were increasing on a daily basis.... I don't know about you, but I was really impressed by the virus.

So, we're slowing the infection rate... but we're not stopping it. Mainly because we refuse to stop all interaction (for good reason, obviously more people would die of starvation... lack of water...etc if we stopped all functions of our society that involved 2 people interacting). If we slow it enough, is there a benefit? Yeah... if we slow the infection rate to lower than the recovery rate, we reduce the number of infected.... We'd have to probably have double our recovery rate to account for people who are asymptomatic....

but that would be a really long, hard trial for our country. It's taken weeks to get infection rate to stabilize at 25k.... and start trending down. Our active cases is still increasing, so we don't have enough people getting better yet. That will change in another week or 2 as those infected in the major spike will start to get better (assuming a 2-4 week recovery, I don't know if it's longer).... But then we have to make a very difficult decision as to when we think we have it under control enough that maintaining acceptable social distancing and hygiene will allow us to overcome the remaining infections. Because, honestly, my impression of this virus is that if we don't, it will spike back up in the cities. It's really good at being a virus.
View All Posts by User
HockeyDad
6 years ago
I don’t mind social distancing and hygiene. Bunch a filthy peasants.
View All Posts by User
danmdevries
6 years ago
I'm not directly involved in following discharged patients from ED or inpatient anymore but I occasionally check on the limited data I have access to.

As I said before, there's many discharged that turn up dead without testing or without results. They're not counted. I'd say at least a good 30% of our untested, suspected covid postmortem are not even counted in the state dept of health numbers and that's just of those that have come to the ED for symptoms.

We only test those admitted to covid suspect, covid ICU, and covid disaster units. Which is and has been 50% of the hospital population. The other half occasionally kicks a patient to our side which we then test and shockingly find a positive. So, it's in the "clean" side as well, spreading it to us and then to other patients that were clean on arrival.

But we don't test those marked for discharge or needing minimal support. If we can send you home with a few oxygen tanks to float you for a week, you don't get swabbed. We just assume positive, tell you to stay home unless you get worse. But a lot of them don't know when they get worse, because as oxygen levels drop, you don't always realize it. Then suddenly you're dead of "cardiac arrest" and not covid. Those that return for vents are usually brought in/called in by family members that notice a decline. Self reporting is pretty much nonexistent, they just die at home.
View All Posts by User
teedubbya
6 years ago
That is a concept many in here can’t grasp.
View All Posts by User
danmdevries
6 years ago
I've seen patients from mid 20s all the way to 100+ now.

The majority are from 55-75 but that's also the majority of patients at any given time.

Most are obese and diabetic. Again, the majority of patients at any given time.

But its killing without discretion. My youngest was an athletic 20 something who coached high school sports. No history, daily jogger, and zero reason to believe they would succumb to illness. The same week I had one over 90 with extensive medical history get off the vent and get discharged.
View All Posts by User
Users browsing this topic
Mobile! Terms | Privacy | Contact Us | Help | © 1998-2026, CigarBid.com