Covid-19 Outbreak of new SARS-like coronavirus (Covid-19)

[What 23]

I work alongside the medical industry, as a courier of products that are used, and in the past week facilities have been trying to enforce certain procedures to stop the potential spread of the virus. It's harder for me to make my deliveries. It has got me thinking; Not that it's such an easy task, but considering Italy's nearly complete-shutdown(?), couldn't something like this be done in other well-developed places, at least? Like, shut everything down, schools, non-essential services, entertainment, fast-food, make it illegal to be out except in case of emergencies.

Certain people would be allowed to go to work, like those in grocery stores, for instance, or like-things. Maybe certain restaurants, as well. But make it so food would be delivered. Hire lots of people. Coordinate with courier companies, the "government" (if that's possible)- Have them bring on a lot of new people for this burst in manpower that they would need. Basically control things, and reduce the number people out, transmitting, for about one month. In about one month, the virus should die down. It may seem like overkill, but it's better than it becoming "another flu" that we'll get from year to year(?), as it ebbs and flows around the globe/seasons. Choke the virus out. I have personally fasted for 5 days, not a lot, but I felt great- I don't think people need to have access to all the "necessities" all times, if somehow they couldn't get groceries delivered to their door by the army of people that would be brought on to do so (hell, National Guard...). Toilet paper is not that big of a deal. Use a washrag and wash it. The water will stay flowing. The electricity will continue.

Also make for this month or so, everything socialized- Basically tap the "money" that's not there but is magically there for bombs when we need it... Make it so nobody is afraid, that they won't get money by not working and can't pay the bills. Freeze the economy/freeze everything like that. Netflix, Cable companies, make their services free. Movies that were in the theater, or would be, make them available for streaming. They could do this. It could be like a long snow-day. These are just details, of what could be. For short term, the giants could do something.

Food would also be rationed (they couldn't order tons of wine and caviar, unless with their own money, or something)- But people would get enough. All expenses would be paid out of some emergency funding.

Sparked by this idea, I considered that other, yearly or other interval "die-down periods" could happen (We're taxed enough...). This could reduce the viral load of the population(s), overall. Colds, flu, could be theoretically, at least temporarily wiped out(?). Perhaps even permanently, since they require a host, and for that host to pass it on, and if the host can't pass it on to anyone else, then it dies. With current technology, I don't see why with proper organization, this couldn't be, and what would we have to do for it? Hunker down for a month or so. That's it. Ride off of what we've got, for a lot of part (but make sure we can get right back to it/work/production, plan to).

Just some coronavirus-inspired thoughts..

Along with this, if everyone just waited to get married to have sex... goodbye STDs. Bye cervical cancer (a lot of them).

 

[Xorkoth]

Waiting until marriage to have sex seems like an awful idea, why would you commit your entire life to someone if you don't even know if you're sexually compatible?

 

[novaveritas]

I work alongside the medical industry, as a courier of products that are used, and in the past week facilities have been trying to enforce certain procedures to stop the potential spread of the virus. It's harder for me to make my deliveries. It has got me thinking; Not that it's such an easy task, but considering Italy's nearly complete-shutdown(?), couldn't something like this be done in other well-developed places, at least? Like, shut everything down, schools, non-essential services, entertainment, fast-food, make it illegal to be out except in case of emergencies.

Certain people would be allowed to go to work, like those in grocery stores, for instance, or like-things. Maybe certain restaurants, as well. But make it so food would be delivered. Hire lots of people. Coordinate with courier companies, the "government" (if that's possible)- Have them bring on a lot of new people for this burst in manpower that they would need. Basically control things, and reduce the number people out, transmitting, for about one month. In about one month, the virus should die down. It may seem like overkill, but it's better than it becoming "another flu" that we'll get from year to year(?), as it ebbs and flows around the globe/seasons. Choke the virus out. I have personally fasted for 5 days, not a lot, but I felt great- I don't think people need to have access to all the "necessities" all times, if somehow they couldn't get groceries delivered to their door by the army of people that would be brought on to do so (hell, National Guard...). Toilet paper is not that big of a deal. Use a washrag and wash it. The water will stay flowing. The electricity will continue.

Also make for this month or so, everything socialized- Basically tap the "money" that's not there but is magically there for bombs when we need it... Make it so nobody is afraid, that they won't get money by not working and can't pay the bills. Freeze the economy/freeze everything like that. Netflix, Cable companies, make their services free. Movies that were in the theater, or would be, make them available for streaming. They could do this. It could be like a long snow-day. These are just details, of what could be. For short term, the giants could do something.

Food would also be rationed (they couldn't order tons of wine and caviar, unless with their own money, or something)- But people would get enough. All expenses would be paid out of some emergency funding.

Sparked by this idea, I considered that other, yearly or other interval "die-down periods" could happen (We're taxed enough...). This could reduce the viral load of the population(s), overall. Colds, flu, could be theoretically, at least temporarily wiped out(?). Perhaps even permanently, since they require a host, and for that host to pass it on, and if the host can't pass it on to anyone else, then it dies. With current technology, I don't see why with proper organization, this couldn't be, and what would we have to do for it? Hunker down for a month or so. That's it. Ride off of what we've got, for a lot of part (but make sure we can get right back to it/work/production, plan to).

Just some coronavirus-inspired thoughts..

Along with this, if everyone just waited to get married to have sex... goodbye STDs. Bye cervical cancer (a lot of them).

never let a crisis go to waste...
none of your ideas will work even if you forbid traveling outside for 1 month flu or corona will find enough hosts to still be around when you lift your curfew.
just a bunch of statist power grabbing nonsense.

coronavirus version ncov SARS 2 covid19 or whatever you want to call it will simply mutate and become one of the circulating coronaviruses, there are already plenty. it already spread widely before anybody really started to notice, current over reactions now are shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, the only sound basis of the current strategy is to try and stretch out the initial wave so not to overwhelm medical services. but it will have unintended consequences.

 

[LandsUnknown]

Honestly, I'm not losing any sleep over this. I think the media is hyping it up big time. It still isn't that common. In China, around 100,000 people got coronavirus since this all started back in December. And cases over there are declining. How many people live in China you may wonder? Around 1.4 billion. In other words, around 100,000 out of 1,400,000,000 people in China where this outbreak actually got coronavirus. In other words, only 1 in 10,000 people in China got coronavirus between when this all started in now. And the cases are now starting to drop. In northwest Italy, around 7,000 people have gotten it. And there are more than 10 million people who live there. It has been up and down over the last week or so in terms of the number of cases, and it's pretty high currently.

Even if it went on at this rate there for a few years, it'd still be less than 5% of the population contracting it. Also, it's not like ebola today or the black death back in the middle ages where a majority of people who get the disease don't make it. More than 95% of the few people who actually get coronavirus do survive the illness. Even people who are over 80 still survive it 85% of the time. So, you're still talking about less than a 1% chance of dying of this even over the course of years most likely. Overall, any individual is vastly more likely to die of something other than coronavirus (e.g. the risks that we all face every day) than you are to actually get coronavirus and die of it. Just putting this in perspective since the media is acting like this is fucking 28 days later. The degree to which the media is blowing this out of proportion for ratings/viewership pisses me the fuck off honestly.

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[Hylight]

It seems to be very isolated.
like the crash of '07.

 

[JGrimez]

Fuck, Tom Hanks has corona-chan in my state, I kinda predicted this when an infected chinese guy flew here and was staying at the same hotel as Hanks, but this was months ago.

Also they've suspended the NBA season "until further notice" as Rudy Golbert of the Utah Jazz has tested positive.

And Trump has suspended all travel from Europe to the US (excluding UK) for 30 days.

I still don't think this will be a super bad pandemic with millions dying - but shit is getting real.

 

[JessFR]

Fuck, Tom Hanks has corona-chan in my state, I kinda predicted this when an infected chinese guy flew here and was staying at the same hotel as Hanks, but this was months ago.

Also they've suspended the NBA season "until further notice" as Rudy Golbert of the Utah Jazz has tested positive.

And Trump has suspended all travel from Europe to the US (excluding UK) for 30 days.

I still don't think this will be a super bad pandemic with millions dying - but shit is getting real.

And you'll almost with complete certainly be wrong. Millions will die. There's just no way here that that doesn't happen.

 

[Deleted member 521610]

Most american colleges have shut down aswell til the end of their semesters which is a huge over reaction by i guess those old bastard academics dont want to catch it and die while the students would be fine.

 

[JGrimez]

And you'll almost with complete certainly be wrong. Millions will die. There's just no way here that that doesn't happen.

OK Mrs Doomsday, we'll see I guess.
What's the current global death toll? 4,633.
That means for million(s) to die we need to see another 1,995,367 deaths.
Would you like to make a bet?

I predict something massive is about to devastate our civilization but it won't be via corona-chan.
Look at this like a "trailer".

 

[JessFR]

OK Mrs Doomsday, we'll see I guess.
What's the current global death toll? 4,633.
That means for million(s) to die we need to see another 1,995,367 deaths.
Would you like to make a bet?

I predict something massive is about to devastate our civilization but it won't be via corona-chan.
Look at this like a "trailer".

No I don't want to make a bet. I want you to be right. This isn't the end of the world, society will continue as it has in the past eventually, I never said otherwise.

I said millions will probably die.

And saying "oh but there's only x amount right now" is a joke. I assume you know what exponential growth is.

It's what gets you from 1 infected person to hundreds of millions shockingly fast.

 

[Xorkoth]

I'm not saying it's inevitable, but the Spanish flu, the last major global pandemic, had a Spring wave that was relatively mild, and then in the Fall/Winter of 1918/1919, a second wave came that was devastating. I think there is undue panic in the media, but we also shouldn't trivialize the potential for this to be a very major event by the time it plays out. I hope it just turned out to be minor, I very much do. But I don't think it's a foregone conclusion at all.

 

[Shady's Fox]

Okay. So this is bad.

I saw this video, on my wife, social media. I'm shocked, I didn't actually expect to be that bad. I for the life out of me, i've googled and 50% of ppl are isolated. God fuckin dammit. From laughing about this, it got me thinking. Plus I travel... tssssssk I went to doctor, I'm fine but.. we need to make money, man. We can't the whole planet to sit still because this shit appeared, it's fuckin wrong. Anubis heard this one, though.

 

[JessFR]

Okay. So this is bad.

I saw this video, on my wife, social media. I'm shocked, I didn't actually expect to be that bad. I for the life out of me, i've googled and 50% of ppl are isolated. God fuckin dammit. From laughing about this, it got me thinking. Plus I travel... tssssssk I went to doctor, I'm fine but.. we need to make money, man. We can't the whole planet to sit still because this shit appeared, it's fuckin wrong. Anubis heard this one, though.

It's pretty bad. I can't deny that I'm a bit scared at the moment. I think it'd be hard not to be right now even if a lot of us are trying not to show it.

Probably everyone's hoping they'll be one of those people who don't even realize they have it. The lucky bastards.

I suspect a lot of other people like me are as much or more worried about older relatives. I'm worried for my mother.

It's pretty surreal how this has changed the whole world so fast. The only other time like this I've lived through was 9/11, and I was like 12 then.

I think it was probably around 06 when I would probably have been about 17 during that h5n1 scare that I learned that a flu pandemic like 1918 would eventually happen again. H5n1 as it turned out just couldn't make the jump and reduce in mortality enough to be a problem. But since then it's always been in the back of my mind that I'd probably live to see one.

We've had a bunch of scares since then, but it's looking like this will be the one. Maybe people in the 22nd century will talk about the 20-21 corona virus pandemic like we talk about the 18-19 influenza one.

So yea, kinda surreal.

 

[novaveritas]

It's pretty bad. I can't deny that I'm a bit scared at the moment. I think it'd be hard not to be right now even if a lot of us are trying not to show it.

So yea, kinda surreal.

Monty Python does Outbreak....

If by bad you mean the very very slim chance of dying or someone you care about dying due to nCOV, then you have a pretty low bar for things being pretty bad. Life itself is a terminal condition. The biggest danger is Governments and Health Experts and other people doing stupid shit to appear to be doing something. Protect the vulnerable and let it rip. It is going to anyway. More importantly It already has according to the strain phylogenetic analysis.

 

[JessFR]

Monty Python does Outbreak....

If by bad you mean the very very slim chance of dying or someone you care about dying due to nCOV, then you have a pretty low bar for things being pretty bad. Life itself is a terminal condition. The biggest danger is Governments and Health Experts and other people doing stupid shit to appear to be doing something. Protect the vulnerable and let it rip. It is going to anyway. More importantly It already has according to the strain phylogenetic analysis.

Exactly how is it a very low chance?

Yeah life is a terminal condition, but that's not gonna be much comfort to the potentially millions that could die.

Tell me, how exactly do you see this playing out if we just "let it rip"? And on what do you base it?

Honestly at this point I think you're sticking your head in the sand.

 

[JessFR]

Something I keep thinking is that health organizations are shooting themselves in the foot by continually using percentages.

Your average scientifically ignorant member of the public probably hears 2% and stops worrying.

They probably don't worry at 2.77% either.

But do you know what 2.77% is? It's the same odds as having the same number come up twice in a row if you roll a size sided dice twice.

Don't tell them 2%, tell them that.

 

[novaveritas]

Exactly how is it a very low chance?

Yeah life is a terminal condition, but that's not gonna be much comfort to the potentially millions that could die.

Tell me, how exactly do you see this playing out if we just "let it rip"? And on what do you base it?

Honestly at this point I think you're sticking your head in the sand.

sticking my head in the sand as opposed to doing what exactly?

Wailing and gnashing teeth? If it is coming for you it is coming for you. You personally based on a couple of guesses as to who you are and your lifestyle have at most a 1 in 4000 chance of it killing you, that is a rounding error in the great scheme of things. You may calculate your personal risk at a higher level, maybe you are correct. My personal risk of dying from this is thousands to one against, I wouldn't take those odds on a horse so why get too bothered by it.

R0 is about 1.5 to perhaps 2 based on confirmed cases, so once 20-40% has been exposed, the rate of increase disease will completely die down of those 40% give or take 90% will have mild or no symptoms, so at most 4% of the population will have a problem, which is going to happen sooner or later no matter what governments or people do. Messing around trying to do extend and pretend is not helpful and selects for more virulent strains with higher morbidity and probably mortality rather than lower morbidity strains which community transmission favors. So the correct strategy is protect the vulnerable and let the fit and healthy get exposed, to allow passaging and attenuation.

Modern medicine has its limits and public health does too, and it cannot beat 29 829 base pairs of of self replicating RNA.

 

[tired of crap]

After Ontario’s premier said kids who travelled with their family’s for march break would be allowed to return to school. It was just announced that schools will be closed for 2 weeks following the break.

To me this has more to do with the teacher strikes than safety... I mean if they’d really wanted to protect ppl and stop the spread why not stop international travel?

 

[JessFR]

sticking my head in the sand as opposed to doing what exactly?

Wailing and gnashing teeth? If it is coming for you it is coming for you. You personally based on a couple of guesses as to who you are and your lifestyle have at most a 1 in 4000 chance of it killing you, that is a rounding error in the great scheme of things. You may calculate your personal risk at a higher level, maybe you are correct. My personal risk of dying from this is thousands to one against, I wouldn't take those odds on a horse so why get too bothered by it.

R0 is about 1.5 to perhaps 2 based on confirmed cases, so once 20-40% has been exposed, the rate of increase disease will completely die down of those 40% give or take 90% will have mild or no symptoms, so at most 4% of the population will have a problem, which is going to happen sooner or later no matter what governments or people do. Messing around trying to do extend and pretend is not helpful and selects for more virulent strains with higher morbidity and probably mortality rather than lower morbidity strains which community transmission favors. So the correct strategy is protect the vulnerable and let the fit and healthy get exposed, to allow passaging and attenuation.

Modern medicine has its limits and public health does too, and it cannot beat 29 829 base pairs of of self replicating RNA.

Where are you getting these numbers?

The estimated death rate for a 20-30 year old is 0.2% let's half that and say it's really 0.1%. That's 1 in 1000 not 1 in 4000.

And I dunno about you but I don't just care about myself. I have a mother who's age demographic puts her risk at currently over 3%. At 2% that's a 1 in 50 chance of death. She also has relevant existing health issues

But let's put all that aside too. Say 40% are infected, say 10% of them are sick enough to go to hospital. Not die, just hospital.

That's a sudden jump of 13 million people in a country like the US straining a health system that usually runs at just under capacity anyway.

And then there's the response, like people staying home, the economy tanking. Disruptions to health care.

What about people on dialysis, or insulin, or any of us here on methadone or bupe or people dependant on doctor prescribed benzos.

With so many sick, the entire health sector will have to be rediverted to handle it. Which means less for everything else. That in itself will kill more people still.

And as for the "well what can you do". There's lots you can do. You can stop exposing yourself to infection, you can prepare alternative options to deal with the loss of normal services.

And as for just protecting old people. How, exactly? Who's going to be looking after them? The young mostly. People who will carry it. You want to provide protection to ensure they don't get sick? How, we don't have enough PPE supplies for that.

Oh and if we just let it happen as fast as possible, that's all the shit I just mentioned happening in an even shorter amount of time. At least if we delay infection we reduce the strain on the health system.

So no, I don't think this is something worth brushing off at all.

I'm not telling anyone to panic. The world's not ending, we will survive. But this is VERY serious.

 

[novaveritas]

Where are you getting these numbers?

The estimated death rate for a 20-30 year old is 0.2% let's half that and say it's really 0.1%. That's 1 in 1000 not 1 in 4000.

And I dunno about you but I don't just care about myself. I have a mother who's age demographic puts her risk at currently over 3%. At 2% that's a 1 in 50 chance of death. She also has relevant existing health issues

yes but what you miss is the current death rate is inflated by lack of full counting of cryptic and asymptomatic infections. I estimate 1 in 1000 to 1 in 2000 mortality with the provisos mentioned.

Plus your chance of becoming infected is less than 100% so you have to multiply the chance of infection by a reasonable estimate of the mortality rate (not the case fatality rate) to get the absolute risk. I estimate the chance of become infected is no more than 25% at present in areas where there is extensive transmission. even if the chance was 50% the absolute risk is only 1 in 4000.
1/2000 * 0.5 = 1/4000

More people will probably die by extending the process and stopping other life saving interventions for an extended period of time that could actually save lives to spare resources for nCOV patients. Dragging this out stops the collapse of the health care system but it leaves a legacy of sicker people who were not treated for other conditions and that is serious.
Likewise closing schools or borders merely causes disruptions and unintended consequences, if schools are closed and the parents work who looks after the children? grandparents? congratulations you have just mixed a vulnerable group with a high velocity transmission vector. Close borders? people will leave sooner and spread things further, Like squezing a wet sponge squeeze in one place and the water comes out somewhere else.
so don't twist my words, I am not advocating doing nothing on a personal level, but deferring to the idiotic government to take responsibility is really dumb, the main thing to remember if someone says I am from the government and I'm here to help, shoot them right there and then.

I do care, but the law of unintended consequences is important. If I am wrong then I am dead and I won't care, if I am wrong about your risk, you will be dead and not caring either, if that happens you are welcome to haunt me til eternity if that makes you feel better.

Good luck to you and your mother, the odds are on your side.