You are most welcome to discuss the pandemic here in any way you like, only I ask that any links that you share in this thread be to credible science and data.
Please use the other well-established thread (Coronavirus 2019) for links to stories about pastors who died of COVID-19 after stating publicly that Jesus would protect him, or tweets that may or may not show a crowded boardwalk from this morning, or TikTok videos that show asshat politicians in negative lights, and so on. Many thanks!
There have been a lot of numbers being thrown around for COVID-19 and how deadly (or not) it is. The true effect won’t be in the raw COVID-19 stats - cases and deaths - but the overall number of deaths for all causes, which we probably won’t know for some time to come.
But we can put the numbers we do have into better context. NYC had about 54,000 deaths recorded in 2017 - the latest year that NYC has published Vital Statistics for. That’s an average of 148 deaths each day, from all causes. Its been about that level for decades - more or less.
The flu that we keep comparing this to? 2000 people died from it in NYC across the entire year (2017 Vital statistics).
So lets turn to COVID. 88 people died on Wednesday from COVID related issues. Assuming most would be alive today otherwise, that’s a 60% jump in deaths. That’s not including people who have died because of a stressed medical system, and not directly from COVID-19.
So when you read numbers from NYC going forward, remember 148/day (all causes) and 2000/year (flu) as the contextual yardsticks for the real measure of this “just a flu”.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/health/covid-19-lung-damage-video/index.html
Areas marked in yellow on the video represent infected and inflamed parts of the lung, Mortman said. When the lungs encounter a viral infection, the organ will start to seal the virus off. From the scan, it is clear that the damage isn’t localized to a single area, but instead covers massive swaths of both lungs, showing how rapidly and aggressively the infection can take hold, even in younger patients. A patient with healthy lungs would have no yellow on the scan, he said.
Oh, so this is just the “ultra terrifying” covid-19 thread.
minor nit - people are more likely to die in the colder months than the warmer months so some kind of an adjustment should be done rather than a straight split.
The CDC says that the average number of deaths in January, February, and December are 8,478; 8,351; and 8,344, respectively. By contrast, the summer months of June, July, and August recorded 7,298; 7,157; and 7,158 average daily deaths, respectively. The other months had daily averages somewhere in between those extremes, but it is notable that the relatively cooler spring and fall also exhibited a greater number of deaths than the summer.
I guess this means that nationally we should expect around 283 deaths /day in the winter months across all causes in the US.
How about links to experts on twitter? I have found the following to be exceptionally helpful in understanding a lot. These are all noted experts in viruses, epidemiology, infectious diseases etc. You get the real deal following them.
https://twitter.com/mlipsitch?s=20
https://twitter.com/cmyeaton?s=20
Question from an idiot (me).
So we have 124k recovered so far. Do we have any evidence that someone who had Covid19 (mild or serious) is immune from getting it again?
All expectations [from virologists] are that the vast majority of people who recover will be immune for some time (unknown, 6-12 months, longer?) This has been shown with monkeys who were infected, recovered, and were “challenged” by a reinfection and resisted [small sample size]. There have been very few recorded cases of individuals who recovered from covid19 being reinfected, but if you’re immunocompromised all bets are off.
Likely we’ll get more data from front line doctors as we get serology work done on them to confirm they’ve recovered and have antibodies, then observe that they don’t get infected again despite working in extremely hostile territory.
Not sure if everyone saw this but this as an interactive graph where you can put in some inputs (length of lockdown, R-value, etc) and see what the modeled infection rate is over the next 6 months.
Here’s Dr John Campbell who does a daily update, if you want information from a frontline medical professional of 35+ years standing done in a factual, informative way he’s your man. Check out his videos from January to understand that he finds the current situation utterly predictable. He has medical contacts around the world who often email him about their situations locally. No agenda (other than saving lives)
I’ve read most of this. One of the authors is Federal Reserve Governor and the other two are reseachers at the Federal Reserve.
I was somewhat surprised that learn that taking dramatic action not only saves lives but helps the economy.
Will then it’s a good thing Republicans don’t believe in facts.
I really appreciate the participation already taking place in this thread. Thank you!
Very distressing news from Madrid if this doctors video is accurate (and I’ve no reason to assume it’s not)
That clip came up in the other P&R thread:
The guy is not a doctor and is affiliated to an extreme right wing party. The audio was doing the rounds several days ago and dismissed as fake by several news outlets.
While of course there’s very intensive triage, we are not at those levels yet.
This is the science and data thread. I would be VERY wary of any information that does not come through official sources.
Got some sources? Because this video is making the rounds quite a bit now.
Some links:
Now, those quotes from the health department saying there were still free ICU units were from some days ago (when the video started making the rounds. We are probably close to or at the limit in Madrid (but we are flying patients to other regions and the total number of patients in ICU in Spain is still below capacity).
And I am sure triage is being super strict and there’s way less therapeutic obstinacy these days, which could also be perceived, specially by family members, as letting a patient die, so it’s important even to take family member’s testimony with a grain of salt (note: this is a translation from a professional term used in Spanish, I don’t know the term in English, but it refers to treating terminal patients that are no longer viable nor conscious to increase their lifespan some days or months without any real hope for recovery. Doctors consider it a form of cruelty that they sometimes admit due to family pressure).
But that’s very different from these fake news about letting patients die so others can live. As far as we know, so far only patients where doctors consider there’s no hope are let go. Which is hard and terrible, but part of medical practice in normal times (but much less prevalent since there are much less patients in that condition).
Again, do not believe anything that is not from official sources. We are better than that in this forum.
And this is not real data or science, so I’m off to the other thread. I only replied because I was quoted and asked for sources.