Coronavirus discussion thread - NO POLITICS, or "POLITICS by PROXY"

[Stewie26]

My biggest concern is my sister-in-law works at Disneyland as a silhouette artist and is exposed to thousands of tourist each week. She then gets together with my wife every week on their days off. So there is no way my wife and I can avoid exposure. My wife's best friend is her sister so there is no way she we stop seeing here on a weekly basis. I guess I just have to keep my fingers crossed.

 

[Picton]

My biggest concern is my sister-in-law works at Disneyland as a silhouette artist and is exposed to thousands of tourist each week. She then gets together with my wife every week on their days off. So there is no way my wife and I can avoid exposure. My wife's best friend is her sister so there is no way she we stop seeing here on a weekly basis. I guess I just have to keep my fingers crossed.

Yesterday I was in a LEGO store with my kids pawing through the bins full of minifigures. Along with everyone else's kids.

There's no way to truly avoid this.

 

[tzohn]

SARS is not the same thing as COVID-19.

There are more than just one coronavirus then. Here is the link

WHO | SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)

 

[Kro]

There are more than just one coronavirus then. Here is the link

WHO | SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)

Yes that is correct. Coronavirus aren't new, that's why they referred to this as a novel coronavirus before specifically designating it COVID-19

 

[Kro]

This is just the beginning. In our new altered climatic state, we'll be dealing with a lot of stuff we didn't have to before.

I'm not sure of the link here, but in general science seems to indicate you're not wrong. Unfortunately if I say more than that it risks devolving into a political discussion given how politicized climate change has become.

 

[LBS-bass]

There are more than just one coronavirus then. Here is the link

WHO | SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)

That is correct. There are many coronaviruses. This particular one happens to be nastier than most in humans.

 

[tzohn]

Yes that is correct. Coronavirus aren't new, that's why they referred to this as a novel coronavirus before specifically designating it COVID-19

That is correct. There are many coronaviruses. This particular one happens to be nastier than most in humans.

I didn't know, sorry.

 

[fig]

I didn't know, sorry.

No need to be sorry at all. We're all learning things each day.

Now go wash your hands LOL.

 

[Alkali Ike]

Assuming you can still find the ingredients (I had to visit several stores), you can make your own hand sanitizer.

• 3 parts 91% or 99% isopropyl alcohol
• 1 part aloe vera gel

Yesterday someone broke open all the hand sanitizer dispensers at the local county health department and stole the bags of sanitizer.

 

[buldog5151bass]

Meh, just use 145 proof vodka.

 

[fdeck]

I'm not an epidemiologist or medical expert. But Johns Hopkins University maintains a public database of COVID-19 cases worldwide. I took the data for confirmed cases in the US and added them up to get the total confirmed cases by day. Then I performed a regression fit using a simple exponential growth model. Here are my results.

People are saying the virus is "just" this or "just" that. One person said: "We stopped it dead in its tracks." Other people say there will be tens of thousands of cases in a few weeks. Comparing it to the flu doesn't make sense, because the flu is pretty much static, and COVID-19 is a rapidly changing situation. Saying we can't do anything about it doesn't make sense because China was able to slow the growth of the disease by taking swift and decisive action after an initial phase of official denial.

 

[Stumbo]

Yesterday I was in a LEGO store with my kids pawing through the bins full of minifigures. Along with everyone else's kids.

There's no way to truly avoid this.

Stay home, buy online?

 

[catcauphonic]

China was able to slow the growth of the disease by taking swift and decisive action after an initial phase of official denial.

I read somewhere that humidity of 50% or more cuts the ability of the virus to remain on surfaces waiting to be touched in half. The southern provinces of China are entering their summertime now, so that is likely playing a role.

 

[fdeck]

I read somewhere that humidity of 50% or more cuts the ability of the virus to remain on surfaces waiting to be touched in half. The southern provinces of China are entering their summertime now, so that is likely playing a role.

China began turning around in the second week of February. We know that the virus will slow down. For one thing, there are only so many people on earth. What we don't know is how or why it slowed down in China. Was it the weather? The biology of COVID-19 itself? Luck? Social / government response? I put weather and luck in the same category at this point. Also, most US buildings are humidified year-round.

 

[buldog5151bass]

I'm not an epidemiologist or medical expert. But Johns Hopkins University maintains a public database of COVID-19 cases worldwide. I took the data for confirmed cases in the US and added them up to get the total confirmed cases by day. Then I performed a regression fit using a simple exponential growth model. Here are my results.

People are saying the virus is "just" this or "just" that. One person said: "We stopped it dead in its tracks." Other people say there will be tens of thousands of cases in a few weeks. Comparing it to the flu doesn't make sense, because the flu is pretty much static, and COVID-19 is a rapidly changing situation. Saying we can't do anything about it doesn't make sense because China was able to slow the growth of the disease by taking swift and decisive action after an initial phase of official denial.

View attachment 3735407

Kind of a red herring. Yes, it has spread. But we are also reporting more cases because we are testing more people.

 

[fdeck]

Kind of a red herring. Yes, it has spread. But we are also reporting more cases because we are testing more people.

While the data on reported cases is not a perfect picture, I believe it's still possible to hang some reasonable bounds on the number of actual cases. For one thing, cases are only tested if people become sick enough to seek treatment. On the other hand, the disease has a finite duration in each person, meaning that the number of reported cases can't grow without bound unless the number of actual cases is growing.

The number of actual cases certainly can't be fewer than the number of reported cases, so the data could be interpreted as a rising lower bound.

My approach is to make the best decisions I can make, based on the best data at my disposal, right now. And then, re-evaluate as new data emerge. If the virus has been contained, then more extensive testing will show a slowing of the growth curve as we gain a more accurate picture of the situation.

 

[buldog5151bass]

While the data on reported cases is not a perfect picture, I believe it's still possible to hang some reasonable bounds on the number of actual cases. For one thing, cases are only tested if people become sick enough to seek treatment. On the other hand, the disease has a finite duration in each person, meaning that the number of reported cases can't grow without bound unless the number of actual cases is growing.

The number of actual cases certainly can't be fewer than the number of reported cases, so the data could be interpreted as a rising lower bound.

My approach is to make the best decisions I can make, based on the best data at my disposal, right now. And then, re-evaluate as new data emerge. If the virus has been contained, then more extensive testing will show a slowing of the growth curve as we gain a more accurate picture of the situation.

My point is early on, they weren't testing many people, so naturally there weren't as many reported cases. As it goes on, they are testing larger groups of people - so even if it hadn't spread at all, you would have seen significantly more reported cases.

 

[Lagado]

I'm not sure of the link here, but in general science seems to indicate you're not wrong. Unfortunately if I say more than that it risks devolving into a political discussion given how politicized climate change has become.

Climate change does not affiliate itself to any political party. But it is a problem:

"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."

George Orwell.

And we have drifted so very far away...

 

[48thStreetCustom]

This is just the beginning. In our new altered climatic state, we'll be dealing with a lot of stuff we didn't have to before.

Naw, the Singularity will happen before then and the robots will either solve it or kill off humanity.

 

[hrodbert696]

I think there are a few things to bear in mind here:

Sure, news media hype... pretty much anything they report on, for the most part. That's the nature of the beast.

It does not follow that Covid-19 is NOT an epidemic to be concerned about. There can be a kind of herd mentality in reverse where a person acts as though identifying hype invalidates the claim being hyped, which is not the case.

Secondly, there's a difference between endemic and epidemic diseases. Sure, flu - and heart disease, and a number of other things - will kill more people this year than the latest epidemic. Those are endemic conditions, i.e. constants that are pretty much always there. But the emergence of an epidemic does mean that there are new and different risks to life and health, so one shouldn't just shrug them off. For instance, wars don't often kill more people than heart attacks either. Does that mean we should just shrug off a war? Or take measures to prevent or end one?

Thirdly, there's a complicated tangle of incomplete information and the statistical likelihood of possible outcomes. Let me use the metaphor of war again here. Most wars are relatively contained affairs that kill a relatively limited number of people. Every once in a while, though, you get a really massive, catastrophic conflict - WWII, WWI, the Napoleonic Wars, the conquests of Genghis Khan, etc. There's no fixed regularity with which these catastrophes occur, and in their early stages it can be impossible to foresee if this is going to be just another limited border clash or if it will spiral out into a massively lethal event.

In the same way, when a new epidemic contagion appears, it can be very difficult to tell what the eventual scope of the outbreak will be. Is this the next Spanish Flu, Black Death, Cholera? Or will it turn out to be a relatively limited epidemic like Swine Flu? How bad can things really get from Hitler bullying poor Poland a bit? So it's quite possible, though not necessarily likely, that Covid-19 could turn out to be a truly catastrophic pandemic. It may not, but it would be foolish not to prepare against the possibility and act decisively to prevent it becoming so if we can.

Either way, I don't think it's the end of the world, or of civilization. Even the Black Death left a world that picked up and carried on, albeit with fewer people in it.