Covid 19 virus

[Zero999]

Zero999: "That's a huge increase. Imagine if the death rate increased at that rate for the next 10 days. We're dealing with exponentials and numbers get big, very quickly."

That's the point. You can imagine anything you want. You're assuming we're dealing with exponentials in every case, and that today's results predict the future. Today China reported its second day with no new cases. That's not exponential. The country where it started is reporting no new cases. Now you're free to dismiss China's numbers as propaganda, and you may be right. But then why would they report so many cases prior to this, or even mention it at all?

The WHO reports that the Western Pacific region has been declining in cases since early February.

And if you consider that most countries have locked everything down recently, at some point it seems reasonable to expect that to have a positive impact.

Or, as some seem to want to believe, the world is ending tomorrow. Take your pick.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

See the graph for total fatalities. Nice exponential growth. Do you expect this curve to just flatten out over night?

Just keep in mind that it's pretty much guaranteed that the total number of deaths in the US will increase in the near term (I'm guessing on the order of weeks). So any graph of total deaths will show a constantly increasing curve. And you can always say "OMG, it's getting worse !!!". 

But IMO what's more important is whether there is a slowing trend, which means the rate of new deaths is trending lower. That's what happened with SARS. The isolation measures worked, and it died out. But assuming exponential for the future IMPLIES that everyone will get it very soon and we'll all die.

I don't think that's rational. It might end up that we all die, but I think there's a reasonable case to be made, based on the results of SARS and MERS, etc., that these protective measures might end up working.

Or, we'll all die tomorrow.   

That's because it's not a true exponential, but a logistic function and it doesn't kill everyone who gets it. The number of new cases has only stopped in China because of the extreme restrictions imposed by the authorities over there. The rest of the world need to do the same to stop it, but most governments aren't authoritarian, like China's.

It's common sense really. Imagine someone unknowingly has the virus. They will pass it on to lots of others, as they walk around feeling fine. In the process the other people they infect, will also infect others.

As mentioned above, SARS and MERS were very different beasts because they didn't have such a long incubation period and were more deadly.

[Siwastaja]

In Finland, we have some very interesting times going on: as of today, opposite to what every other country is doing, the government is now lifting some restrictions, and opening schools again, all 1st to 3rd graders are free to go back if their parents so wish.

We mostly don't get news about Italy and Spain now in the mass media anymore, because the news are too bad. Most of the information from our Government from now is echo chambering how well they think they are handling the situation, and how Finland has definitely enough resources in the healthcare (as the only country in the world!)

So the sane people here are in the survival mode, practically we are expecting a war-like situation, not only against the virus, but against the government which we have lost all trust, and which is now endangering the lives of tens of thousands.

Those who only follow local mainstream media, are reassured that nothing bad will happen. We only have "recommendations" that you "should" limit the social connections "a bit".

Our president is, luckily, a somewhat sane person, so we hope he will overdrive most of the madness going on, but we'll see. He actually had to force the government and the PM to declare the state of emergency against their will; but after that was done, very little actual emergency laws have taken place, limitation to drug hoarding being one of the actual actions taken.

The police has reported that they will do absolutely nothing to enforce the limititations of >10 person social activities, because there is no law to permit them to take any action.

It's important to get international publicity to these actions; negative international response typically makes Finnish politicians change their views because we are very afraid about what everybody else thinks about us (refer to the elephant joke as expressed by Nominal Animal earlier).

Very interesting times!

[engrguy42]

I guess I'm not too concerned about companies going under. Maybe I'm naive, but businesses exist, buyers exist, demand will never go away, buildings and/or websites exist, and it seems like if they shut down for, say, a month or something none of that changes.

In fact I thought that in Europe many businesses shut down for a month or so every year as standard practice for some holiday or something? Or maybe I'm mis-remembering.

Universities take long, multi-month summer breaks every year. Amazon will thrive, as will its suppliers and all the associated manufacturers and delivery companies. Sounds like the US government will be sending checks to all taxpayers, businesses are still paying employees, there will be more government hand-outs to businesses, etc.

Some businesses will do fine (probably Walmart and grocery stores). And just imagine all the suppliers who can find ways to continue their business while maintaining protective measures. They'll do fine.

So yeah, definitely it will be tough. But what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. 

[engrguy42]

We mostly don't get news about Italy and Spain now in the mass media anymore, because the news are too bad. Most of the information from our Government from now is echo chambering how well they think they are handling the situation, and how Finland has definitely enough resources in the healthcare (as the only country in the world!)

Yeah, according to WHO today Italy is doing the worst of all, with 473 new deaths in the last day, compared to 42 in US and 11 in China. Spain is at 107.

By the way, WOW, Finland has NO DEATHS at all from COVID19. Bravo.

Actually there are a whole bunch of countries with no deaths at all. Israel, Vietnam, Iceland, much of Southeast Asia (eg, India region), etc.

[mzzj]

In Finland, we have some very interesting times going on: opposite to what every other country is doing, the government is now lifting some restrictions, and opening schools again, all 1st to 3rd graders are free to go back if their parents so wish.

We mostly don't get news about Italy and Spain now in the mass media anymore, because the news are too bad. Most of the information from our Government from now is echo chambering how well they think they are handling the situation, and how Finland has definitely enough resources in the healthcare (as the only country in the world!)

So the sane people here are in the survival mode, practically we are expecting a war-like situation, not only against the virus, but against the government which we have lost all trust, and which is now endangering the lives of tens of thousands.

Those who only follow local mainstream media, are reassured that nothing bad will happen.

Our president is, luckily, a somewhat sane person, so we hope he will overdrive most of the madness going on, but we'll see. Very interesting times!

On the other hand they are closing down the skiing centres in Lapland (but too slow IMO)

Maybe virus spread looked too slow on the models and they have excess capacity on ICU units? Why bother slowing down if strategy is anyways to infect almost everyone eventually? 
1-2 week lag and little testing makes it "interesting" to adjust the infection rate  to suitable level.   

[Siwastaja]

By the way, WOW, Finland has NO DEATHS at all from COVID19. Bravo.

And only 5 in ICU. We are one of the last countries, we are approximately one week behind Sweden in the curve. So we had best chances to react properly, but no, we failed.

The decision point was approximately one week ago. This was when the government came out to say that the situation is critical, and that they could do many things, but they won't yet - literally. Opposition required actions, to no avail. After this point, we have had some actions, but always too little, too late. And, they have also took steps back, like stopping most testing, and reopening schools.

It's more or less equally bad elsewhere, I know, but coming late into the party, we had the best chances of learning from the mistakes of the others, and do it properly.

[mzzj]

By the way, WOW, Finland has NO DEATHS at all from COVID19. Bravo.

I suspect that its a failure in testing or slowness of reporting. Norway and Sweden have both over 10 cases, I don't see why situation in here would be different.
Or it's just a luck so far, ie nobody with the virus visiting in nursing home.

[iMo]

By the way, WOW, Finland has NO DEATHS at all from COVID19. Bravo.

I suspect that its a failure in testing or slowness of reporting. Norway and Sweden have both over 10 cases, I don't see why situation in here would be different.
Or it's just a luck so far, ie nobody with the virus visiting in nursing home.

You guys spend too much time in the sauna, it could be the virus does not like temperatures higher than 80degC.. 

[SilverSolder]

By the way, WOW, Finland has NO DEATHS at all from COVID19. Bravo.

I suspect that its a failure in testing or slowness of reporting. Norway and Sweden have both over 10 cases, I don't see why situation in here would be different.
Or it's just a luck so far, ie nobody with the virus visiting in nursing home.

Or, maybe Finns are just tough as old boots! 

[mzzj]

You guys spend too much time in the sauna, it could be the virus does not like temperatures higher than 80degC.. 

Would match with the Swedish sauna habits where they go to lukewarm sauna below 80degC 

[vodka]

We mostly don't get news about Italy and Spain now in the mass media anymore, because the news are too bad. Most of the information from our Government from now is echo chambering how well they think they are handling the situation, and how Finland has definitely enough resources in the healthcare (as the only country in the world!)

Yeah, according to WHO today Italy is doing the worst of all, with 473 new deaths in the last day, compared to 42 in US and 11 in China. Spain is at 107.

By the way, WOW, Finland has NO DEATHS at all from COVID19. Bravo.

Actually there are a whole bunch of countries with no deaths at all. Israel, Vietnam, Iceland, much of Southeast Asia (eg, India region), etc.

What the fuck? At the morning 8am we were 833 deaths. Now , when i am writing the message are almost 4pm in Spain, we are 1102 deaths. Almost 300 deaths more than this morning.


Cifras totales: 19.980 casos diagnosticados, 1002 muertos (Today 12pm)

7.165 en Madrid (628 muertos)
3.270 en Cataluña (82 muertos)
1.465 en País Vasco (71 muertos)
1.105 en la Comunidad Valenciana (33 muertos)
1.287 en Andalucía (30 muertos)
1.044 en Castilla-La Mancha (62 muertos)
1.147 en Castilla y León (43 muertos)
497 en La Rioja (7 muertos)
554 en Navarra(5 muertos)
578 en Galicia (5 muertos)
360 en Aragón (17 muertos)
344 en Asturias (2 muertos)
297 en Extremadura (10 muertos)
287 en Canarias (4 muertos)
203 en Baleares (2 muertos)
204 en Murcia
144 en Cantabria (1 muerto)
24 en Melilla
5 en Ceuta
Se han curado 1.588 personas

Lack  the upgrading date deaths in the Cataluña , that the m..fk publish each day to 8pm.

In Madrid have the crematories working 24 hours per day , burning the fallings . There are three hospitals COLLAPSED and other 4 almost full. Besides there are protocols for leaving to die elder people that have  hope of life less of the 2 years

[Simon]

Can we all calm down.

[Nominal Animal]

Finnish Ministry of Health has also given directions as to what information can be divulged, so it is unlikely that we'd know even if there had already been covid-19 deaths here.  If we look at how they failed to inform the public of the Tsernobyl meltdown here, it would certainly be typical.  The decision to stop testing except for health personnel and politically privileged individuals in Helsinki-Uusimaa region was certainly just to control the appearance of the severity of the situation; purely political.

I suspect the Finnish government has realized that they missed the time window to successfully apply harder quarantine measures, and that if they tried to apply them now, they'd lose the support of their own voter base, so they're betting everything on the herd immunity chance, with older folks voluntarily isolating themselves.

[drussell]

So yeah, definitely it will be tough. But what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. 

Tell that to someone who "recovers" from this coronavirus with permanent lung damage.

Tell that to the tens of thousands of people who have already lost their jobs here in the past week, or the hundreds of thousands that will be out of work soon as this drags on for months and leaves closures and bankrupcies in its wake...

This is likely to really, really suck... 
(Mostly from the follow-on consequences more than the actual virus,...)

[Cerebus]

How about we talk more about wearing a face shield.

Now, if an incubator sneezes in her direction, her nose, eyes and mouth are protected. Is that plastic going to actually work? Yeah, pretty well https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24467190 at least for 8.5 μm aerosols but less so for 3.4 μm and as the large particles settle and the smaller particles are dispersing, their effectiveness goes down because the little devils are working their way around. Although, just keeping your distance (72") helps a lot and it goes back up.

Short of a real respirator, I would choose a face shield over a face mask. At least that is my thinking right now.

Corollary:

When operating on any patient surgical teams wear face masks to protect the patient from them.

When operating on patients who present an infection risk to the operating team, the operating team wear face shields to protect them from the patient.

[mzzj]

The decision to stop testing except for health personnel and politically privileged individuals in Helsinki-Uusimaa region was certainly just to control the appearance of the severity of the situation; purely political.

IMO the decision to limit testing to severely ill and healthcare personnel was right at the moment. Besides in here they are testing at about rate of 1200 tests per day. We are still miles ahead of US considering total population.
Do you have any idea how many Finns currently have coronavirus-like symptoms from the dozen of other viruses in the circulation?

Testing 5% or 20% people with symptoms doesn't make difference other than feeding social porn need of people and press. Strategy in here is same as rest of the european countries: slow the process and infect nearly everyone eventually.

[Cerebus]

In fact I thought that in Europe many businesses shut down for a month or so every year as standard practice for some holiday or something? Or maybe I'm mis-remembering.

Not so much nowadays, but it was commonplace when we had heavy industries with continuous production processes that needed to stop to provide time for maintenance. For example, the annual "potter's holiday" where the whole of Stoke-on-Trent went on holiday - they had to let kilns completely cool down before they could go in and do repair work.

[Nominal Animal]

IMO the decision to limit testing to severely ill and healthcare personnel was right at the moment. Besides in here they are testing at about rate of 1200 tests per day. We are still miles ahead of US considering total population.
Do you have any idea how many Finns currently have coronavirus-like symptoms from the dozen of other viruses in the circulation?

Do you realize that Juha Sarkio (director-general of the public governance department of the Finnish ministry of finance) would not have been able to get tested, if he was just an ordinary citizen?  His exposure was under the THL requirements for getting tested; the only reason he got tested was his connections.

Testing 5% or 20% people with symptoms doesn't make difference other than feeding social porn need of people and press.

What you call "social porn" is what I call "understanding the severity of the situation".  Because the numbers are kept artificially low (just look at the nice, linear curve for the last six days at korona.kans.io), people are not taking things seriously.

Because of this, I predict Helsinki-Uusimaa will have a sudden step in the number of dead, as the virus takes its course.  (I would have given some kind of an estimate on the timeframe, but I cannot find any statistics on the duration from infection till death.  The early stages of the spread in Helsinki-Uusimaa region, till March 14, are well known; but after that, the numbers are pure fiction.  If I knew the detailed statistics from elsewhere, a numerical simulation based on the initial onset statistics, would show pretty well what will happen here.  I do believe you too will then say "but nobody could predict this", even when these predictions have been offered for months now.  That also happened with Nokia, btw.  I'm sure you disagree there too.  Feel free; I am only offering my observations here.)

I'm not angry or wish to antagonize you in any way, mzzj, but I do believe Finnish media suffers from the same affliction you do: you think that by keeping information from people, you are somehow helping them.  I simply disagree, based on past experience.

[Mr. Scram]

   Come back in six months and then you can tell if the fear was irrational or not.  I'm pretty certain that you have never been through an empidemic and have no idea what it's like. I've been through one it's not something that should ever be treated lightly.

That's not what he said. People need to stop interpreting the refusal to get caught up in the panic and fear as treating things lightly. Fear is useless. Preparation is not. The best thing to do is stay calm, take sensible precautions and monitor the situation. Endlessly repeating it's going to be horrible is useless and counter productive. Many people are going to die. We know this. Get ready.

[Mr. Scram]

NO - you wrote:

    It's good to remember that this 1% or whatever it turns out to be are almost exclusively people who would have died from the regular flu or any other sickness. They may very well have died this year unprovoked.

and I replied:

even lots of young and fit people would die without intensive care and expensive machinery to help them breath (and some is diying notwithstanding that)

there is no reference to a proportion, no percentage
healthy and fit people are dying now
without ICU would die even more
THIS IS NOT FLUE

it is completely false that they are

almost exclusively people who would have died from the regular flu or any other sickness

I showed that even some kids did need ICU in China
I never said a huge proportion of kids
it is you who used the term "almost exclusively"

You wrote "lots of young and fit people would die without intensive care and expensive machinery to help them breath" which simply isn't true. Some do, but those seem to be unfortunate exceptions.

[Simon]

The problem will be that if they become overwhelmed the few younger people that will struggle will have as much chance as the old ones.

[Siwastaja]

Deciding not to test isn't necessarily, fundamentally a bad idea; it's, however, the polar opposite of the WHO and expert advice, so to take such a fundamentally different approach than the others, is a human experiment.

Deciding not to test should go along with a stricter-than-usual limitations on social actions, and monitoring thereof. One expert analysis I remember reading about (sorry, no reference) is that one infected can infect 3000 more, if not quarantined. While this is a worst-case, I can easily believe real-world numbers are in hundreds. Wide testing reduces such incidents. I see this is clearly the strategy Germany and South Korea have taken.

Another possibility would be to basically put everybody - or at very least, everybody showing even the mildest symptoms (which isn't very effective because there is a symptomless yet infectious period) - in quarantine-like (or nearly so; for example, allowing one visit to a store per week, and nothing else) conditions. Without enforcing by brute force by police, it won't work. So in practice, this level of control happens only when the society is already collapsing, currently it seems we are at this point only in Italy and Spain.

So as long as people do continue to socialize, maybe just limiting it "by a little bit" as instructed by the officials and the media here (there are many conflicting instructions; people pick which suits them best, which is the "reducing socializing a little bit is enough" advice), the best way to work around this is to test, test, and again, test. When someone tests positive, then they most likely take the quarantine seriously, and it's easier to enforce for those very few who still won't.

[SiliconWizard]

Deciding not to test isn't necessarily, fundamentally a bad idea; it's, however, the polar opposite of the WHO and expert advice, so to take such a fundamentally different approach than the others, is a human experiment.

Indeed. I find this rather blunt to defend the opposite view now that the WHO has made the point clearly.
As I already said multiple times, the real point IMO in  many countries is that we just don't have the capacity to do more testing. So we just can't comply, and find reasons not to (so the populations don't panic and get back at their governments, which admittedly would just make things worse at the very moment.) Just MHO.

So as long as people do continue to socialize, maybe just limiting it "by a little bit" as instructed by the officials and the media here (there are many conflicting instructions; people pick which suits them best, which is the "reducing socializing a little bit is enough" advice), the best way to work around this is to test, test, and again, test. When someone tests positive, then they most likely take the quarantine seriously, and it's easier to enforce for those very few who still won't.

Agreed. Besides relentlessly working on a future vaccine, we should definitely work very hard on devising quick and cheap tests.

[not1xor1]

Me, not so much. I like facts, not fear.

just one fact: you only like wishful thinking and ignorance (outdated figures, not understanding how China stopped the contagion)

[not1xor1]

We mostly don't get news about Italy and Spain now in the mass media anymore, because the news are too bad. Most of the information from our Government from now is echo chambering how well they think they are handling the situation, and how Finland has definitely enough resources in the healthcare (as the only country in the world!)

Yeah, according to WHO today Italy is doing the worst of all, with 473 new deaths in the last day, compared to 42 in US and 11 in China. Spain is at 107.

By the way, WOW, Finland has NO DEATHS at all from COVID19. Bravo.

Actually there are a whole bunch of countries with no deaths at all. Israel, Vietnam, Iceland, much of Southeast Asia (eg, India region), etc.

you must be that kind of guy who thinks that (x - 50%) + 50% = x... 
you just do not know that you do not know