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#1: Web Paint-By-Number Robot (webpbn) on Apr 22, 2020

Unpublished by mootpoint

New version published by mootpoint.

My fear is that there'll be a second wave of the virus, since folks don't want to quarantine properly.

Since nobody know anything about nothing, it's better to be safe than sorry.

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Interesting approach to the virus:
Sweden could reach 'herd immunity' in weeks, top doctor says
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/494113-sweden-could-reach-herd-immunity-in-weeks-top

My brother-in-law flew to NYC yesterday to begin working in a COVID-19 hospital. I hope he stays healthy. He's on the FEMA short-list so he ends up working on a "disaster" every few years.

@5: I liked that comic. I love how the one was stuck on, "And they have lots of pasta."

In Sweden: “Unfortunately the mortality rate is high due to the introduction in elderly care homes and we are investigating the cause of that,” Tegnell told CNBC.
The cause is people with the disease. We know that there are asymptomatic infected.

Sweden is at 12.25% mortality rate (of infected people). Globally, it's 7%. That is not the profile of a successful strategy.[*1]

In the US it's 5.65%. That sounds good, but the US has seen 52,400 deaths from this in basically two months.[*1] TWO MONTHS. And that's WITH the lockdown. The mortality of the flu varies widely, but it peaks at around 60000. Over the last nine years it has ranged from 12,000-61,000 with an average of ~34,500. PER YEAR.[*2]

The US's infection line is still heading up in an unbroken straight line. At least it has stopped accelerating, but still, in the 24hr period from April 23rd to April 24th over 35,000 more cases were confirmed. [*1]

And those are just the *confirmed* numbers. Due to a severe lack of testing, only the worst cases are being tested. In order to understand this disease we need to test a huge portion of the US to find out HOW MANY asymptomatic and barely-symptomatic infected there are.

This is a new virus. Full stop. We cannot compare it to the flu (a completely different virus). It seems to be more infections than the flu[*3] while also being much more deadly[*4]. Nor can we compare it to it's closest relative, SARS. It is much more infectious than SARS[*5], and also much less deadly[*4]. That is the profile of a wide-spreading disease. (If a disease is tooooo deadly, it kills the hosts before spreading widely. Think Ebola.)

We do not know enough about this disease. We don't even know if we gain immunity from re-infection. (While some viruses confer long-lasting immunity like measles and chicken-pox, influenza gives only 6 months before tapering off[*6], and SARS gave only two years.[*7] But, again, this virus is not much like either of those, so we have no idea. There are reports of people getting almost immediately reinfected, but there is uncertainty.[*8] Even if they are not just an artifact of the testing, they could have to do with being reinfected before the immune response is up to speed -- it takes 3-4 weeks to finish its defense.[*9]

With all the uncertainty it does not make sense to loosen controls too quickly. We do know that our numbers are rising faster than everywhere else in the world. More than one third of new cases are in the US.[*1] We need to understand this disease before we can craft a rational policy to combat it with the least repercussions.


Notes:
*1 Numbers from https://www.bing.com/covid on 25 April 2020 (about 4am EDT) (This is a naive calculation using numbers of confirmed infected compared to those confirmed with covid-19 who died.)
*2 https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
*3 Flu has an R-value of approx 1.28 https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2334-14-480
while Covid-19 has one of approx 2[*4] to 5.7 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article
(R is the number of people that each infected person then spreads it to.)
*4 Death rate of flu is 2 per 100,000 (which is 0.002%) https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/flu.htm
Death rate of Covid 19 is currently estimated to be 3-4% (which is 3,000 to 4,000 per 100,000) https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-similarities-and-differences-covid-19-and-influenza
Death rate of SARS was 11% (or 11,000 per 100,000) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15018127
*5 SARS had a R-value of approx. 0.49 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3323341/
*6 https://www.immunize.org/askexperts/experts_inf.asp
*7 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851497/
*8 https://www.ft.com/content/44a40fcf-d641-46b2-a69e-46420ffb4933
*9 https://www.virology.ws/2009/12/28/reinfection-with-2009-influenza-h1n1/

Even if you don't read footnotes, you should read #3 and #4.

Would you rather get flu or covid-19? You'd be 1500 times more likely to die of covid.

But unfortunately, Covid-19 spreads much faster. Someone sick with Covid who walks around normally would infect 2 to 6 people while they're infectious. Someone with the flu would only infect 1.25 more people.

Given that the flu strikes an average of 28,600,000 people a year[*2 above], imagine what covid would do unchecked.

You're the man Joe!

Very good research, Joe. It's easy to get complacent and figure it's OK to back off a little when you don't know anyone who has the virus. But we need to resist the temptation to let our guard down.

Thanks for good info and wise words, Joe.

How long SHOULD we stay home? I just happened to have this window up on my screen just now - NPR report on state-by-state projections in the US:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/25/844088634/when-is-it-safe-to-ease-social-distancing-heres-what-one-model-says-for-each-sta

Thank you so much for saying what you said, Joe. I preach that all the time...not as eloquently as you, nor with all the information organized so well.

The televised updates have been very hard to watch because they have contained either no information or misinformation. Governor Cuomo's updates have been great, however.

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2023!

...And just this morning I read that it has exploded again in China ... :(((((

#18 ugh

The problem is that covid is related to the common cold (the corona virus) which mutates so fast that there is no use to making a vaccine. Covid is also a fast mutater, but much deadlier, which is why they tried for a vaccine. They got one, but not one that *prevents* infection -- their purpose for the vaccine was to *prevent severe symptoms*, and it is quite good at that.

However, that means people are still getting infected, and the virus is still mutating. Because it is still spreading.

But don't worry, the pandemic is over! </sarcasm>

My brother went to Sweden a couple of weeks ago, and came home with the 'Rona. Nice souvenir, eh?

Haven't heard of a single case in my circles for quite some time now. How bout you all?

I got latest vaccinations for both covid and flu back in early September 2024 because I knew I was traveling in October. A few days later I got sick and tested positive for covid. I must have been exposed before I even got vaccinated. The case was mild and I got over it in less than a week.

One of my son's caregivers had Covid last week. I hear regularly about people who I know who have it.

Brian, I am glad that you are okay!

I'm in a group that has frequent weekend events, and an unlucky few seem to get it all the time! I *may* have it now, but I'm just wearing a mask when I'm around people, so I don't spread my ick (of whatever sort)

My boss got it over christmas, (and luckily I was off while he was contagious). I have a internet friend who got it for the third time 3 months ago. She'd already been suffering from long covid, and she is just now getting a little better from the latest one.
It is not really gone, but since most people have vaccinations, the hospitalization and death rate has gone down. This is of no help to people who can't for health reasons get the vaccine. It is even deadlier now to them than at the start.
My son-in-law has a broken immune system due to a genetic disease. The memory cells of his immune system are deficient, and even if he got the vaccine, his body would not store the information so it would be useless.
This means that I am still wearing a mask in public situations, because (as much as sometimes I would like to strangle him) I do not really want to be the cause of his death.
This is because even with the vaccine you are still able to both catch and transmit covid. You are more likely to be symptomless when vaccinated, but that is even worse if you have someone who is unprotected

Oh, wow; thanks for all your stories. I guess I shouldn't let my guard down too far just yet then.

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