[pescetom]

Today's statistics in Italy: positive 28710 (+10%), dead 2978 (+19%), no longer infected 4025 (+7%). Intensive care 2257 (+10%). Fatality rate 9.4%.
So another moderate drop in growth rate, starting to look like a trend at last.

The fatality rate has a trend all of it's own, however.

[Winstonm]

Cyberyeti, on 2020-March-18, 12:41, said:

But that means it's not that useful as the very early stages are when you need to pick this up to avoid the spread. Hopefully the antibody test for people who've had the virus will come onstream soon for both measurement and control purposes.

https://edition.cnn....witz/index.html was the SK/Italy one.

Yes, but spreading information that the test us unreliable is being disingenuous. The test - like any - has limits. Calling it unreliable is the kind of borderline disinformation that prevents people from testing.

Just like it is O.K. to not be perfect, it is O.K. to tell people the limits on testing. And testing still has been the most effective method of control, judging by South Korea.

[Cyberyeti]

Winstonm, on 2020-March-18, 13:33, said:

Yes, but spreading information that the test us unreliable is being disingenuous. The test - like any - has limits. Calling it unreliable is the kind of borderline disinformation that prevents people from testing.

Just like it is O.K. to not be perfect, it is O.K. to tell people the limits on testing. And testing still has been the most effective method of control, judging by South Korea.

I'm sorry, which part of it giving a sizable proportion of false negatives is incompatible with saying it's unreliable. It doesn't mean it's not useful (it doesn't AFAIK give false positives), just that you can't rely on it, and can't use it for one of the most critical functions you would want to (health worker with a cough, is it this virus, or can I go back to work as I would if it wasn't), you have to assume it is the virus.

Also SK put in place MUCH more draconian measures much earlier in the outbreak than many other places (the streets of some big cities were already deserted well into February) so this would have majorly contributed to the control of the outbreak as well as the testing.

[FelicityR]

The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is among the world's oldest, most prestigious, and best known general medical journals. This is what the editor-in-chief had to say about how the UK handled the covid-19 outbreak today.

https://www.msn.com/...ocid=spartandhp

I suppose what will happen next is that the people who have been hospitalised, and the relatives of the dead, will seek legal redress against the government.

[Winstonm]

Cyberyeti, on 2020-March-18, 14:09, said:

I'm sorry, which part of it giving a sizable proportion of false negatives is incompatible with saying it's unreliable. It doesn't mean it's not useful (it doesn't AFAIK give false positives), just that you can't rely on it, and can't use it for one of the most critical functions you would want to (health worker with a cough, is it this virus, or can I go back to work as I would if it wasn't), you have to assume it is the virus.

Also SK put in place MUCH more draconian measures much earlier in the outbreak than many other places (the streets of some big cities were already deserted well into February) so this would have majorly contributed to the control of the outbreak as well as the testing.

South Korea is not a draconian state. It is a democratic republic.

[Cyberyeti]

Winstonm, on 2020-March-18, 16:53, said:

South Korea is not a draconian state. It is a democratic republic.

Sorry Winston, you're losing it, you don't have to be a draconian state to have a few draconian laws, some could say the UK gun laws were.

Compulsory testing and movement restrictions very early in the outbreak were the sort of thing I was talking about. It also helps that their people were much better at taking some of the advice that went with the restrictions.

[cherdano]

pescetom, on 2020-March-18, 13:00, said:

Today's statistics in Italy: positive 28710 (+10%), dead 2978 (+19%), no longer infected 4025 (+7%). Intensive care 2257 (+10%). Fatality rate 9.4%.
So another moderate drop in growth rate, starting to look like a trend at last.

The fatality rate has a trend all of it's own, however.

Are there numbers on how many tests Italy is doing?

[mythdoc]

FelicityR, on 2020-March-18, 16:15, said:

The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is among the world's oldest, most prestigious, and best known general medical journals. This is what the editor-in-chief had to say about how the UK handled the covid-19 outbreak today.

https://www.msn.com/...ocid=spartandhp

I suppose what will happen next is that the people who have been hospitalised, and the relatives of the dead, will seek legal redress against the government.

Is this allowed in the U.K., suing the government?

In any case, it is another blot on the face of the do-nothing, know-nothing political parties around the world, and the media that support them.

[mythdoc]

thepossum, on 2020-March-18, 19:37, said:

Just as one hypothetical question. If you had to make the choice between saving one person from a virus but it required throwing 7.5 billion people into total poverty and destitution what would you do.

The question is so exaggerated it seems like a rhetorical question. One person is all we get for throwing the entire world into TOTAL poverty and destitution? Back in the real world...

What if it was, saving say 20 million people, and the consequence was that the entire world would have to learn a different mode of living than rampant consumption, instant gratification-seeking and expenditure?

[Winstonm]

Cyberyeti, on 2020-March-18, 17:07, said:

Sorry Winston, you're losing it, you don't have to be a draconian state to have a few draconian laws, some could say the UK gun laws were.

Compulsory testing and movement restrictions very early in the outbreak were the sort of thing I was talking about. It also helps that their people were much better at taking some of the advice that went with the restrictions.

You're confusing China's response and saying it was South Korea. Wrong. https://www.scmp.com...osite-china-and

Quote

Whereas China, where the virus originated, and more recently Italy have placed millions of their citizens on lockdown, South Korea has not restricted people’s movements – not even in Daegu, the southeastern city at the centre of the country’s outbreak.
Instead, authorities have focused mandatory quarantine on infected patients and those with whom they have come into close contact, while advising the public to stay indoors, avoid public events, wear masks and practise good hygiene.

Please note that the "mandatory quarantine" was on infected patients - meaning they had been tested, and the tests were valid.

There is also this from Huffington Post:

Quote

March 18, SEOUL - In late January, South Korean health officials summoned representatives from more than 20 medical companies from their lunar New Year celebrations to a conference room tucked inside Seoul’s busy train station.

One of the country’s top infectious disease officials delivered an urgent message: South Korea needed an effective test immediately to detect the novel coronavirus, then running rampant in China. He promised the companies swift regulatory approval.

Though there were only four known cases in South Korea at that point, “we were very nervous. We believed that it could develop into a pandemic,” one attendee, Lee Sang-won, an infectious diseases expert at the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters.

“We acted like an army,” he said.

A week after the Jan. 27 meeting, South Korea’s CDC approved one company’s diagnostic test. Another company soon followed. By the end of February, South Korea was making headlines around the world for its drive-through screening centers and ability to test thousands of people daily.

[thepossum]

mythdoc, on 2020-March-18, 19:52, said:

The question is so exaggerated it seems like a rhetorical question. One person is all we get for throwing the entire world into TOTAL poverty and destitution? Back in the real world...

What if it was, saving say 20 million people, and the consequence was that the entire world would have to learn a different mode of living than rampant consumption, instant gratification-seeking and expenditure?

Sorry mythdoc. I deleted my post but hadnt realised you answered. It wasnt so much expecting a response as just trying to communicate the issue to some who maybe dont understand what has to be balanced by those in positions of power
, and by all of us really

It was indeed rhetorical

And I will also add the other part of my deleted post is that are many killers in this world other than one new virus and many of those could be much worse after the pandemic response. That is not expressing an opinion on the response, just a point of view on something that is a known and unquestionnable fact about poverty and its impacts

PS I'm not interested in debating my rhetorical since it is an impossible debate and would get us nowhere at all. It was simply something for people to ponder if they care about my posts

But I will address your point nd hope that its the end of your desire for an argument. If my question was extreme with 1 versus the whole world then tell me your acceptable equation of deaths from one virus to devastation to millions around the world. You clearly have some easily caluclated equation and figure in your head how to do that calculus

But its also clear from your attempt to answer my question that you have some other agenda such as imposing a radical oppressive new structure on the world and would like to take this opportunity to prosecute that case. Despite the fact that your view is held by a minority and countless people are losing everything. The billions of people whose lives you would seemingly happily and cruelly destroy earn what little they have through honest hard work in whatever capacity. Yet you slander them all implicity as corrupt, greedy etc

Yoou do realise that already countless people in many countries around the world, including the poorest of the poor are losing the ability to earn enough even to fulfil their basic daily needs for themselves and family - as a result of the lockdown. I imagine you are not one of those people who lives like that day by day

So much of this ideaological agenda and argument comes from people in positions of extreme privilege who wish to impose some radical agenda on people who do not wish to have their agenda imposed - especially not under the pretence of measures allegedly brought in to care for their well-being.

Maybe everyone needs to learn more about the real world (you used those words) and get out of their privileged little bubbles for once in a while

[Winstonm]

There are a lot of sick individuals in this world - some even have Covid-19.

[FelicityR]

mythdoc, on 2020-March-18, 18:39, said:

Is this allowed in the U.K., suing the government?

In any case, it is another blot on the face of the do-nothing, know-nothing political parties around the world, and the media that support them.

That would be a difficult one to judge given the timeframe. Whilst Britain formally left the EU on 31st January 2020, the virus outbreak started late last year. I would guess - and this is only a guess - that the British government could still be taken to the European Court.

As far I am aware, in the UK the time limit to sue for medical negligence is still three years I believe, and that you can sue either an individual or an institution (National Health Service).

Given the potential large sum compensation claims, most lawyers probably work on a no-win no-fee basis, especially if they represent 100s of people at a time with the same or a similar grievance.

[Cyberyeti]

Winstonm, on 2020-March-18, 19:56, said:

[size="3"]
You're confusing China's response and saying it was South Korea. Wrong. https://www.scmp.com...osite-china-and

Actually I'm not, I got my post from an article that said the exact opposite.

https://www.pharmace...easures-impact/

2 quotes, my emphasis

"People residing in the Daegu and Gyeongbuk regions have been asked to refrain from attending public gatherings and restrictions have been imposed on their movement. "

"The South Korean cabinet passed new medical laws on 04 March allowing it to prosecute coronavirus-suspected people who don’t co-operate to get tested for the nCoV. "

[y66]

From Kent Sepkowitz MD at Memorial Sloane Kettering via The Daily Beast:

https://www.thedaily...-out?ref=author

Quote

Despite the dazzling ineptitude of America’s initial response to the novel 2019 coronavirus pandemic, it is likely that the COVID-19 outbreak will subside in the next two or three—or four or five—months. All outbreaks, even the Black Death, do end eventually, though sometimes only after exhausting the supply of susceptible human beings in their path.

To be sure, there remain unimaginable illness and misery, disruption of society, and near-collapse of the health care system ahead. But movement restrictions will be loosened, and the hallmarks of American life, from sports to dinner out, will slowly start to come back into focus.

Yet in that shining city on a future, disease-ridden hill, we will encounter a new version of another uniquely American problem: burnout.

Doctors and nurses and everyone who help patients will be burnt to a crisp. Fried. Wiped out. Brains gone. Emotions in some distant deep freeze. Adrenalin spent. Too sleepy to fall asleep. Reading any of a number of reports from running-on-empty Italian practitioners shows just how bad it is and will become.

After months of fear, drama, panic (and excitement), health care workers will be asked to return to the chores of daily activities of keeping people healthy. That means writing notes in triplicate—one for the chart, one for your referring doctor, and one the insurance company. Asking you if you took your blood pressure pill. Making sure the new smartphone works everywhere throughout the hospital. And feeling bored and tired.

Which will come at a bad time in American medicine. What many initially thought was simply a millennial self-pity party, burnout in general and in health care is a real and real large problem, whether measured by economic (billions of dollars a year) or humanistic perspectives. For example, a pre-pandemic survey of American physicians found that 78 percent (a.k.a. everyone) had burnout and were therefore potentially endangering both their patients and themselves with short-tempered or exhausted or brain-semi-dead decisions.

There are differences, of course, in the types of burnout at play here. The recent American survey is about chronic frustration and dissatisfaction over many years, whereas the Italian doctors are delivering an urgent, primal scream of fear and fatigue.

Each path to burnout creates similar problems for patients and providers. But the coming wave of post-apocalypse zombie health care providers creates an additional problem. Many may become addicted to life on the high-wire—may need it to feel fulfilled once again, as irrational as that may be. This may cause more restlessness, then more mistakes, and more existential crisis.

Add to this an inevitable consequence for all who have done something brave and generous: feeling heroic but neglected.

Please note—this is some scary sh!t right now. Health care workers are at risk for acquiring COVID-19 and dying, as happened to some of the first doctors and nurses treating the disease in China. I worry about my friends and colleagues… and myself. All of us have some risk we have decided to take on. Some U.S. doctors and nurses will die. Yet they (we) are showing up for work, leaning in to their societal responsibility and—let’s be immodest here—sort of saving the day.

But in the happy future where the emphasis will on returning to normal, to the glib and ironic, to the shrug, to the HBO series COVID starring Someone Handsome, it is pretty unlikely that anyone will want to hear much about what we went through, at least after the first few weeks of calm and cautious celebration. It will become akin to hearing Uncle Maury go on about life as a soldier in the jungles of Vietnam. Haven’t we heard that story 100 times before? Like the last zillion Thanksgiving dinners?

Members of the military and first-responders knows well the speed with which society becomes disinterested after crisis has passed. By chance, institutions built for other purposes have provided a group therapy opportunity for them; for example, VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) halls throughout the country allow survivors to swap stories and recall old friends and cry a little. Ditto, the Veteran’s Administration (VA) hospital system in the U.S., which provides sick and disabled American veterans a place to be with the only people who can possibly understand and appreciate just exactly what they went through—and continue to go through.

[pescetom]

Today's statistics in Italy: positive 33190 (+16%), dead 3405 (+14%), no longer infected 4440 (+37%). Intensive care 2498 (+11%). Fatality rate 9.3%.
So growth rate seems to be stabilising around 15% rather than the previous 20%.

cherdano, on 2020-March-18, 17:08, said:

Are there numbers on how many tests Italy is doing?

182,277 tests so far, with a disproportionate number early on (in Veneto and to a lesser extent Lombardy) before WHO policy was adopted.
So 4.4 tests per case.
0.30% of total population tested, almost all with symptoms.

[Winstonm]

Cyberyeti, on 2020-March-19, 03:24, said:

Actually I'm not, I got my post from an article that said the exact opposite.

https://www.pharmace...easures-impact/

2 quotes, my emphasis

"People residing in the Daegu and Gyeongbuk regions have been asked to refrain from attending public gatherings and restrictions have been imposed on their movement. "

"The South Korean cabinet passed new medical laws on 04 March allowing it to prosecute coronavirus-suspected people who don’t co-operate to get tested for the nCoV. "

Let me point you to a couple of important phrases in the quotes you posted: 1) have been asked and 2) passed new medical laws

This is what democratic republics do. 1) They do not force their citizens against their will (asked), and 2) they follow the rule of law (passed new medical laws). You are using quotes that show how genuine democratic republics respond to a national crises to try to prove that the testing done was somehow invalid? You might want to pick better examples.

PS: How would you have handled it?

[shyams]

Let's hope the US administration knows how best to control the spread within the country. According to the worldometer website (link), the number of cases recorded is growing at an alarming 40+% per day.

I believe the typical trend elsewhere was that cases doubled every 5 days; if the USA is showing a trend of doubling every 2 or 2.5 days, this is going to get out of hand very very fast.

[hrothgar]

shyams, on 2020-March-19, 16:12, said:

Let's hope the US administration knows how best to control the spread within the country. According to the worldometer website (link), the number of cases recorded is growing at an alarming 40+% per day.

I believe the typical trend elsewhere was that cases doubled every 5 days; if the USA is showing a trend of doubling every 2 or 2.5 days, this is going to get out of hand very very fast.

The US trends are going to be difficult to evaluate in the short term because the number of tests being administered is increasing (though nowhere near as quickly as they should)

It will be interesting to see what happens in Seattle on Sunday and Monday
This is when things are expected to start getting really ugly

[Cyberyeti]

Winstonm, on 2020-March-19, 12:16, said:

Let me point you to a couple of important phrases in the quotes you posted: 1) have been asked and 2) passed new medical laws

This is what democratic republics do. 1) They do not force their citizens against their will (asked), and 2) they follow the rule of law (passed new medical laws). You are using quotes that show how genuine democratic republics respond to a national crises to try to prove that the testing done was somehow invalid? You might want to pick better examples.

PS: How would you have handled it?

Can you actually try reading - the second part of the sentence said "restrictions have been IMPOSED on their movement". Also a democratically passed law can still be Draconian, ask black people in the US in the 60s, Draconian just means excessively severe, whether it's democratic or not is irrelevant. They also confined the entire army to barracks which apparently had quite a large effect.