Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

Skalap said:
They tested and keep testing everybody in South Korea because they were at a early stage of spreading. It's too late for countries where there are already thousands of cases. Tests at a larger scale in "infected countries" is a waste of time and people. People should just stay home and avoid any contact, that's how they can help hospitals to deal with serious cases. Honestly I don't need to be tested. I am at home 24h a day, I only go out to buy some food and that's it. I am very careful, don't touch nor talk to anybody and wash my hands the minute I come home. I am not saying I won't have it but I am reducing the possibility.

I might be wrong, I am not an expert, but the "real problem" with the Covid-19 is not the virus itself. The real issue is that it's very contagious and a lot of people need medical assistance at the same time. The information we have from medias is that "only" 1 to 2% are dying due to the virus and most were already facing other health problems. Thing is that it's easy to an hospital to deal with 10 infected people, not so easy when you have hundreds of them.
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Yes the West missed an important window. This is why we are all in lockdown - it's simply impossible to test everyone with symptoms quick enough and do the tracing quick enough to isolate those that need to be. Part of the problem is also that we're too stupid to follow instructions and stay home. We always think these things happen in movies or elsewhere.

Now, in case it's not clear nobody is talking about massive testing of everyone. Even South Korea didn't do that. But we still didn't ramp it up fast enough so now you isolate everyone to allow time to catch-up. Still doesn't mean people with symptoms should not be tested. And you need to increase the criteria pool for testing as much as the testing capacity makes it possible. It's far from a waste of time. They absolutely need to know if and when the measures result in a plateau of new cases. Once the number of new cases is squashed (you only know this from testing), you can relax measures but at that point you have to start massive testing any time someone has symptoms, and do serious tracing and isolation so infections don't spike again. The tracing and compliance is super important at that point. A single douchebag not complying can cause another spike.

You are correct that the problem is the infectiousness of the virus. But it's not that alone. Measles is 10X more infectious and just as dangerous. The issue is nobody has immunity (until they have caught it and won, symptoms or not) - there is therefore no "walls" to stop it from spreading. That "herd immunity" if you will (with Measles, the "wall" are created by all those that are vaccinated). The sheer numbers of people getting it at the same time is the issue as you point out. The hospitals being able to cope vs not is being estimated as 0.5-1% fatality vs. 5-7% if the system collapses. In the current situation without therapies.

As I mentioned above, the antibody test will be very important. This is what you use to see if someone has had covid and recovered. There are so many variations in the mild symptoms and many asymptomatics. You can start administering that to the general population starting with essential service people. Those with antibodies are safe (cannot get it, cannot spread it) and will be invaluable to society.

Also, all those you tested and found as positive which recovered are in that "safe" pool. So you already have that data if you massively tested.

Bottom line is that not ramping up testing and not implementing strong case tracing = isolation until October (according to experts) unless therapies are found. It's far from useless.
 
Rumors are flying that our governor is shutting down Michigan at 11 am today. The cowboy mentality of many at my workplace is that they don't want to be told what to do by our Democrat governor. That's great.
The way I want to gently explain it to them is that right now we should consider the government in a spot similar to a referee. Yes, we know how to play the game, but sometimes people can't help but break the rules. This means the ref has to step in and oversee that we are doing what we should. I mean, this is all meant to HELP EACH OTHER.

Anyway...
 
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Turbo said:
This is why we are all in lockdown
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But not everyone is in a lockdown and that's the problem. Here in Canada, we were asked to practice social distancing and self isolate, which unfortunately not everybody has been doing. We need more stringent measures in place to ensure that everyone abides by the same rules. Our PM needs to evoque the Emergencies Act in order to thwart COVID-19.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Both Canada and Australia have confirmed that they will not be sending any athletes to the Olympic games this summer in Japan.
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It's big news up here. Apparently we're the first ones to have made the decision. It was made because the COC was unhappy with the decision of the Olympic Committee to just keep athletes in limbo another month. Most of them are not able to train right now anyway. Australia made the call shortly after. Note that we only said we wouldn't go if they occur this summer. If they get delayed, we'd reassess.

Both Canada and Australia are big players in the games. There's a big chance we just pushed the Olympic committee in making a faster decision. There's no question the lack of decision is because the big money players want to wait (essentially US networks). At this point, these people need to be saved from themselves.
 
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Hollywood said:
But not everyone is in a lockdown and that's the problem. Here in Canada, we were asked to practice social distancing and self isolate, which unfortunately not everybody has been doing. We need more stringent measures in place to ensure that everyone abides by the same rules. Our PM needs to evoque the Emergencies Act in order to thwart COVID-19.
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You're right. It would have been great if people were listening but too many are not so things will get more stringent. It's gotten pretty tight here in Quebec though. No gatherings of any number of people anymore (with the exceptions you expect) -but no visiting or playing in groups. Police have been breaking up all kinds of gatherings (dinner parties, kids playing soccer, etc). No tickets yet but they can do that if people don't comply. It seems like a lot of citizens are taking it seriously though, because it's their calls to the cops that result in the interventions.

Malls are now closed here until May 1.
Hairdressers too (I don't know why that was not closed yet). Restaurant dining rooms as well.
School is also officially out until May 1.

Stores with a door to the outside can be open if they are not part of the restrictions, so grocery stores and pharmacies. It seems a few supply stores like Canadian Tire, Home Depot, Rona, Walmart and Costco are still going. The SAQ as well because I guess people need to drown their sorrows. Office work can continue via telework with a skeleton crew on site. But bottom line is anywhere you go, you have to keep a 2m distance and they are limiting the number of people going in. Many grocery stores have also started installing plexy glass for the cashiers and put stickers on the floor to show the 2m distancing.

I think the National Emergencies Act is coming soon though. It's inevitable.
 
Yep, Michigan lockdown commences at midnight for three weeks. My bosses are looking for loopholes to deem us essential. Not sure if we'll have a meeting (we don't have meetings of any sort here) or just wander out at 4 pm and then show up tomorrow.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Sighs,

Trump needs to listen to the experts.

Trump says we are doing an amazing job at handling the 'Chinese virus' and is hinting at it may be time to start loosening up those social distancing measures.
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And all the experts are saying what is being done isn't enough. We need a nationwide 3 week lockdown.


All it shows is that it's the money...not people's lives.
 
LeeVing said:
And all the experts are saying what is being done isn't enough. We need a nationwide 3 week lockdown.


All it shows is that it's the money...not people's lives.
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Exactly.

Trumps National Emergency and gave guidance for social distancing a little over week ago for 2 weeks. That two weeks it up this Friday.

Trumps gut feeling is that 2 weeks of social isolation is enough to flatten the curve. The other argument is that "well, at some point people have to get back to work".

One huge issue is most states have not been practicing stay at home. And many states that are either just entered over the weekend or go into effect tomorrow like MA.

Trump's 2 week timeline makes no sense because we have not been practicing the same social distancing across the board. If we lift restrictions this Friday it will be too soon and the curve will begin increasing exponentially again.
 
Quebec just went from 221 cases to 628 in a single day. This is mainly due to adding capacity in testing and catching up the backlog. But yikes!
 
I'm getting amusement watching people argue over the curve. Specifically acceleration and velocity in relation to the phrase things are getting better.

People are saying things are getting better. The rate of increase is slowing down. While others are arguing that no, that's not true. Things are still getting worse, just at a slower rate. Things are not getting better until the rate of increase reverses.

Both sides say the other side is dead wrong.
 
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