General > General Technical Chat
Covid 19 virus
Simon:
It's now quite widespread around the world. We got to this stage because we all went on holiday. I have a colleague that still expects to go to Austria at the end of the month |O
edy:
--- Quote from: Cerebus on March 11, 2020, 05:39:09 pm ---I'm being pernickety precisely because the word 'pandemic' makes people use 18pt type, exclamation marks and start running around in circles panicking. By definition, all of you (unless we have some 11 year old members) lived through the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, and you're still here.
--- End quote ---
Yes agreed. My understanding is that the classification change also affects how governments treat the outbreak, how funding is distributed, how they mobilize their health systems. It can change their policies toward travel, focusing their help internationally or bunkering down domestically, and so on. So now as we shift towards pandemic-management there will be different strategies employed, none of which involve stockpiling of toilet paper (I hope). :-DD
All reports seem to indicate that like H1N1, it will probably end up infecting 70% of the population and that the vast majority (80%) of people will experience mild to moderate cold-like symptoms which eventually they recover from, with the remaining 20% having severe symptoms possibly requiring hospitalization. In this smaller subset of people, mostly immunologically fragile or breathing-compromised, we will see the possibly 2-3% of pneumonia-related deaths. While H1N1 had a purported death rate of 0.5%, most countries are already experiencing near-capacity health-care system utilization with many under-funded... so it will breach capacity unless things are slowed down.
So no need to panic but this is going to stress out hospitals for sure. Being in Canada and seeing how stressed to the brink our government-run health care system already is, and having quite a number of doctor and nurse friends, I am hearing from them what nightmare we might expect in the coming months if things keep "tragectorying" the way they have been so far. Nothing to do but wait and watch. :popcorn:
Simon:
The Uk will do badly once it spreads. accident and emmergency are always on the backfoot.
not1xor1:
--- Quote from: Simon on March 09, 2020, 05:30:11 pm ---Well N10 have used war like language but the actual action has not been that forthcoming. It would appear that they are still hedging their bets that it won't happen but that will make it happen. My sister is due to have a baby in May, I am not happy, last thing she needs is a Covid-19 ridden hospital to give birth in because we lost control of it.
--- End quote ---
Both young women and babies (10 years and less) are low risk categories and by May it the virus should be much weaker.
COVID-19 is just a (one of the largest) bunch of RNA code enclosed in a protein shell.
It requires the host cell machinery to reproduce and doesn't live long outside a host. The hotter and wetter (RH) is the air the shorter is its life (in the air or on various surfaces).
not1xor1:
--- Quote from: metrologist on March 09, 2020, 11:46:39 pm ---
--- Quote from: thinkfat on March 07, 2020, 06:39:01 pm ---I expect to see acceleration in China in the next few days while people start migrating again.
--- End quote ---
China continues to report unrealistically low numbers of new daily cases. Just 4 today.
--- End quote ---
given the harsh measures taken those are not unrealistic
I rather expect lots of unreported cases in the US (and even worse in Russia)
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