Coronavirus

[mockbee]

Anyone's see any future prediction? Where are we in three months, six months? That's what I'd like to know.

This is a really good site for projection statistics. Put out by IHME, a reasearch group based out of the University of Washington.

It breaks down for US or specific states, updated daily.


https://covid19.healthdata.org/

[mockbee]

Yeah, news and any sort of predictions is crazy now.

I've essentially just checked out and skim it once a day. No way to make sense of this. My plan has been to get hyper into my own projects and check back with a more deep dive each week with events.

Been working so far, yesterday was fantastic....


Its nuts for the people on the frontlines and for millions out of work and the sick....crazy that this will be/is bigger than 9/11, 2008 financial, etc......

[Hokahey]

Yeah, news and any sort of predictions is crazy now.

I've essentially just checked out and skim it once a day. No way to make sense of this. My plan has been to get hyper into my own projects and check back with a more deep dive each week with events.

Been working so far, yesterday was fantastic....


Its nuts for the people on the frontlines and for millions out of work and the sick....crazy that this will be/is bigger than 9/11, 2008 financial, etc......

A number of top/respected economists believe we will see a rapid recovery. Of course some disagree with them, but keep in mind that the economy didn't collapse. It closed parts due to outside influences. Very different than a normal recession.

We are seeing positive numbers out of NYC. We're now seeing official estimates out of other major cities where projections are better than the original best case scenarios. As a result, the market opened up almost 1000 points.

Healthy businesses will re-open, and they will want their employees back. And there will be pent-up demand to go out and spend.

Now, this may all be more muted than some projections, but as someone that works in finance and housing, everything I see (anecdotally) and hear from the experts remains pretty positive all things considered.

So no, it won't be like 2008. It will appear far worse (already) but will feature a much faster recovery. The economy was booming prior to the forced closure. Once the doors re-open we'll get back to it.

[Bandit72]

Doesn't sound good at all...

Boris Johnson has been moved to intensive care after his condition worsened, Downing Street has said.

The prime minister has asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to deputise for him "where necessary".

A Number 10 spokesman said: "Over the course of this afternoon, the condition of the prime minister has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the intensive care unit at the hospital.

"The prime minister has asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is the First Secretary of State, to deputise for him where necessary.

"The prime minister is receiving excellent care, and thanks all NHS staff for their hard work and dedication."

More follows...

[Matz]

nevermind. About 5% of Danes have now been infected, we need to get to 60-70% because at that point there's a chance that the virus will die off. People are going to be led out in groups, starting with kids. It's hard to say how long it will take to get to 70.

It's not that difficult. Epidemiologists have a clear methodology for predicting this. Take the R0 value of 2.2-2.5 (each person infected infects 2-3 people) and the average incubation time (which appears to be about 14 days) and you can pretty quickly get a good estimate of when it will hit 70% of any given population. Without calculating it properly, it's something like 6-8 months from the first infection, depending on mitigation factors and things like population density and movement.

Right. But it turns out I was given the wrong information, we've had some conflicting statements. Our PM held a speech tonight, it turns out that the governments strategy is to continue to flatten the curve and then wait for a vaccine or medicine to come and save us, the strategy is not to make a large part of the population immune to the virus. The Danes are behind this in large part, I don't know where to stand, tough choice

[Matz]

Anyone's see any future prediction? Where are we in three months, six months? That's what I'd like to know.

This is a really good site for projection statistics. Put out by IHME, a reasearch group based out of the University of Washington.

It breaks down for US or specific states, updated daily.


https://covid19.healthdata.org/

yeah, it is, thanks

[mockbee]

Once the doors re-open we'll get back to it.

In a year from now....... if we're lucky.
Look at Italy......they are lost, yeah they were more dependant on the State than us, but there are 20% of US population now that need massive help. They are not going back to work in the next couple/several months......




Maybe somebody knows something about economics that I don't.

And Trump seems to be raiding the $2 Trillion "recovery" package


Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

[Hype]

I think it's much too soon to tell what the after-effects of this will be. There are too many op-eds / analyses that contract each other right now, and a lot of that is just click-bait to feed into people's anxieties/hopes, etc.

[Artemis]

[Hokahey]

Once the doors re-open we'll get back to it.

In a year from now....... if we're lucky.
Look at Italy......they are lost, yeah they were more dependant on the State than us, but there are 20% of US population now that need massive help. They are not going back to work in the next couple/several months......




Maybe somebody knows something about economics that I don't.

And Trump seems to be raiding the $2 Trillion "recovery" package


Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Stop comparing Italy to anywhere else. They are always a major outlier in the realm of infectious diseases.

People will be back to work soon enough. The recovery will be quick. Watch.

[Hokahey]

I think it's much too soon to tell what the after-effects of this will be. There are too many op-eds / analyses that contract each other right now, and a lot of that is just click-bait to feed into people's anxieties/hopes, etc.

I disagree. If you read what actual economists are saying, there is a growing consensus on a V shaped recovery. And yes, while some are contradicting others, many more (especially ones I highly respect) are coming around to the recovery being a quick one. And more importantly, the market is agreeing with them.

[Hype]

I think it's much too soon to tell what the after-effects of this will be. There are too many op-eds / analyses that contract each other right now, and a lot of that is just click-bait to feed into people's anxieties/hopes, etc.

I disagree. If you read what actual economists are saying, there is a growing consensus on a V shaped recovery. And yes, while some are contradicting others, many more (especially ones I highly respect) are coming around to the recovery being a quick one. And more importantly, the market is agreeing with them.

Economists are notoriously bad at predicting things. I'm also not specifically concerned about economic outcomes. For one thing, it's not clear what this is going to do to all the students who were pulled out of (or otherwise disrupted by switching to online classes for) their last term/semester this year. It's also not clear what happens to the ones who graduate this year, and go on the job market. It's not clear what rolling lockdowns/distancing for up to two years will do for society more broadly.

I don't think the changes will ultimately be as radical as many have predicted, but I also don't think things are as simple as reading the DJIA and guessing that things will be okay.

Let me just clarify that I don't think the doomsaying is any more likely to turn out correctly than the more optimistic predictions. But I do think it's too easy right now to just pick some subset of the data, or pick some subset of voices to listen to, and come away with whatever outcome suits you.

E.g., here's the IMF, yesterday: https://blogs.imf.org/2020/04/06/an-ear ... -5-charts/

The economic consequences of the pandemic are already impacting the United States with unprecedented speed and severity. In the last two weeks in March almost 10 million people applied for unemployment benefits. Such a sharp and staggering increase has never been seen before, not even at the peak of the global financial crisis in 2009.

[...]

The recovery in China, albeit limited, is encouraging, suggesting that containment measures can succeed in controlling the epidemic and pave the way for a resumption of economic activity. But there is huge uncertainty about the future path of the pandemic and a resurgence of its spread in China and other countries cannot be ruled out.

[mockbee]

I agree, nobody knows......

What are facts on the ground now:

1) 20 million Americans are digging into "savings" or don't know what the fuck they are going to do the next month or two to pay the rent.

2) Most all the fine arts programs (dance/art schools/industrial arts/etc) that I know of (many in the Bay Area/NYC/NW) are folding/have already folded. They can't pay the bills and Spring is prime fund raising drive time. None of that is happening/happened.

3) Long time independent business' have folded.

And the shit hasn't even really hit the fan yet.....

This is/will be serious......

[Hype]

It's not clear to me that travel within or between countries will resume any time soon, and that's a huge driver of economies in tourist-heavy regions.

Also, omg, I just noticed the ridiculous typo in my post above. I must have written it on my phone, so somehow it autocorrected to 'contract' when I meant 'contradict'.

[Hype]

I'm not happy with the way police (even in Canada) have been taking advantage of this situation to push things in a fascist direction. Uganda is a bad place for gay people and women already. This situation is probably going to make it much worse for them.

Some of the comments on that tweet are insane. Like:

Lucy Ferr
@LucyFerr3
·
3h
Follow the law and get on the train!! Don’t question “authority” no matter how absurd their demands are!!

Some people are letting their fear turn into crazed support for authoritarianism... this is a very, very bad sign.

[Hokahey]

The economic consequences of the pandemic are already impacting the United States with unprecedented speed and severity. In the last two weeks in March almost 10 million people applied for unemployment benefits. Such a sharp and staggering increase has never been seen before, not even at the peak of the global financial crisis in 2009.

Breaking news! We closed the economy and people are filing for temporary unemployment! We know we shut down businesses. This is not new news.

This says nothing!

I was given shit when I said the projections were too high. They were.

I was given shit for saying people were being hysterical. They were.

The economy will rebound quickly.

You can say "economists are unreliable", but what does that eve mean? Based on what? You sound like a climate change denier that then makes a post saying "it's snowing!"

Yes, it's snowing. We all know. But what is the macro view?

Every single day I see data from the mortgage industry, the housing industry, and the federal reserve. People well connected to economic data that drives the overall economy. This is NOT a typical recession. This is not difficult to understand. All of these jobs are not gone. Think about it like an extended end of business day closure. The economy did not collapse. We hit pause.

People seem to get off on disaster numbers. I saw a headline the other day that was comparing coronavirus deaths to wartime deaths. Why don't we do this with every virus? Why don't we show the number of people that die from the flu each year compared to the number of people that have died in wars? This is asinine. So many people are buying into this being some apocalyptic scenario. It's not. Stop it.

It's bad. It sucks. Some areas are hard hit. These are facts. But already we're seeing a drastic reduction in estimates of hospitalized/dead. We're seeing the market improve (do Canadians not understand the importance of the financial markets? Because they matter).

I know people sick from this virus.

I have friends in hospitals on the front lines.

This IS serious.

But as I've said all along, cut the hysterics. We'll get through this. The economy will be ok. This is not the apocalypse.

Hype, I know you almost need this to be as much of a catastrophe as possible to justify a lot of what you've said, but be happy that the worldwide epicenter of this is starting to plateau. We're turning the corner on this.

[Hype]

I saw a headline the other day that was comparing coronavirus deaths to wartime deaths. Why don't we do this with every virus?

Because the US President declared himself a "Wartime President" because of this event. And because this coronavirus is not like every virus. It is a *novel* virus that spread across the entire planet in 3 months, that causes viral pneumonia at extraordinarily high rates, and has a death rate several times higher than the flu. Because we don't have a treatment that actually works. Because this is a once-a-century pandemic.

It's not hysterics to look at the facts honestly. I don't *need* it to be the worst case scenario to justify anything I've said. What I've said is already justified by what has already happened across the world, including in the United States.

[Larry B.]

In Santiago, one of the 6 communes that were quarantined was ‘released.’ Not mine. So, another qeek at home.

[Hokahey]

I saw a headline the other day that was comparing coronavirus deaths to wartime deaths. Why don't we do this with every virus?

Because the US President declared himself a "Wartime President" because of this event. And because this coronavirus is not like every virus. It is a *novel* virus that spread across the entire planet in 3 months, that causes viral pneumonia at extraordinarily high rates, and has a death rate several times higher than the flu. Because we don't have a treatment that actually works. Because this is a once-a-century pandemic.

It's not hysterics to look at the facts honestly. I don't *need* it to be the worst case scenario to justify anything I've said. What I've said is already justified by what has already happened across the world, including in the United States.

Hey Hype. It might be the beer talking. But you're a good dude. I debate you a good bit, but it's only because you're super smart. I don't think you're always right, but more often then not you are. I appreciate your contributions over the years and I've learned a lot from you. I hope you and yours are staying safe.

[Hype]

Ditto. Cheers, and let's hope you're right and everything goes back to something like normal sooner rather than later, and with as little death as possible (though there has already been too much).

[Larry B.]

I don’t even drink, but I’ll join you. I really, truly hope you’ll all be alright.

[mockbee]

Thought this was really interesting....

Where Have All the Heart Attacks Gone?
Except for treating Covid-19, many hospitals seem to be eerily quiet.


Credit...Stuart Bradford
By Harlan M. Krumholz, M.D.
April 6, 2020

396
The hospitals are eerily quiet, except for Covid-19.

I have heard this sentiment from fellow doctors across the United States and in many other countries. We are all asking: Where are all the patients with heart attacks and stroke? They are missing from our hospitals.

Yale New Haven Hospital, where I work, has almost 300 people stricken with Covid-19, and the numbers keep rising — and yet we are not yet at capacity because of a marked decline in our usual types of patients. In more normal times, we never have so many empty beds.

Our hospital is usually so full that patients wait in gurneys along the walls of the emergency department for a bed to become available on the general wards or even in the intensive care unit. We send people home from the hospital as soon as possible so we can free up beds for those who are waiting. But the pandemic has caused a previously unimaginable shift in the demand for hospital services.

Some of the excess capacity is indeed by design. We canceled elective procedures, though many of those patients never needed hospitalization. We are now providing care at home through telemedicine, but those services are for stable outpatients, not for those who are acutely ill.


What is striking is that many of the emergencies have disappeared. Heart attack and stroke teams, always poised to rush in and save lives, are mostly idle. This is not just at my hospital. My fellow cardiologists have shared with me that their cardiology consultations have shrunk, except those related to Covid-19. In an informal Twitter poll by @angioplastyorg, an online community of cardiologists, almost half of the respondents reported that they are seeing a 40 percent to 60 percent reduction in admissions for heart attacks; about 20 percent reported more than a 60 percent reduction.

And this is not a phenomenon specific to the United States. Investigators from Spain reported a 40 percent reduction in emergency procedures for heart attacks during the last week of March compared with the period just before the pandemic hit.

And it may not just be heart attacks and strokes. Colleagues on Twitter report a decline in many other emergencies, including acute appendicitis and acute gall bladder disease.

The most concerning possible explanation is that people stay home and suffer rather than risk coming to the hospital and getting infected with coronavirus. This theory suggests that Covid-19 has instilled fear of face-to-face medical care. As a result, many people with urgent health problems may be opting to remain at home rather than call for help. And when they do finally seek medical attention, it is often only after their condition has worsened. Doctors from Hong Kong reported an increase in patients coming to the hospital late in the course of their heart attack, when treatment is less likely to be lifesaving.

There are other possible explanations for the missing patients. In this time of social distancing, our meals, social interactions and physical activity patterns tend to be very different. Maybe we have removed some of the triggers for heart attacks and strokes, like excessive eating and drinking or abrupt periods of physical exertion. This theory merits research but seems unlikely to explain the dramatic changes we’re observing.

We actually expected to see more heart attacks during this time. Respiratory infections typically increase the risk of heart attacks. Studies suggest that recent respiratory infections can double the risk of a heart attack or stroke. The risk seems to begin soon after the respiratory infection develops, so any rise in heart attacks or strokes should be evident by now. We urge people to get flu vaccines every year, in part, to protect their hearts.

Also, times of stress increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Depression, anxiety and frustration, feelings that the pandemic might exacerbate, are all associated with a doubling or more of heart attack risks. Work and life stress, which also may be higher with the acute disruptions we’ve all been going through, can markedly increase the risk of a heart attack. Moreover, events like earthquakes or terrorist attacks or war, in which an entire society is exposed to a stressor, are risk factors for heart attacks. Finally, Covid-19 can actually affect the heart, which should be increasing the number of patients with heart problems.

Experts are bringing together data to confirm these patterns. We hope to gain a greater understanding of their causes and consequences

Meanwhile, the immediate message to patients is clear: Don’t delay needed treatment. If fear of the pandemic leads people to delay or avoid care, then the death rate will extend far beyond those directly infected by the virus. Time to treatment dictates the outcomes for people with heart attacks and strokes. These deaths may not be labeled Covid-19 deaths, but surely, they are collateral damage.

The public needs to know that hospitals are equipped not only to care for people with Covid-19 but also those who have other life-threatening health problems. Yes, we in health care are working to keep people out of the hospital if we can, but we can safely provide care for those people who are not sick from Covid-19. Masks and protective gear for health care workers and patients go a long way to ensure a safe environment. Also, people with chronic conditions need to know that avoidance of needed care could ultimately be as big a threat as the virus itself.

As we fight coronavirus, we need to combat perceptions that everyone else must stay away from the hospital. The pandemic toll will be much worse if it leads people to avoid care for life-threatening, yet treatable, conditions like heart attacks and strokes.

Harlan Krumholz, M.D., is professor of medicine at Yale and director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation.

I have always believed that heart attacks are fueled by the things we eat, how much salty food we consume , what a big meal loaded with sugar and salt does to the system. Monday is usually heart attack day in the USA, after a weekend of binge eating. When we are at work we usually make wrong food choices. Eating fast food salt burgers, drinking soda, liquid sugar. Right now most people are eating better and eating less. Plus there is an internal instinct at play, we know there are no hospitals right now, for whatever reason they allowed every hospital to be coronared, they could have left two or three for regular medical emergencies, but they didn’t , just one of many, many mistakes here in New York City, knowing that , we are eating right and trying to stay fit, nobody wants to go to a hospital right now, it’s full of Corona.
Your task wear a mask

Teleradiologist here. I read for 200 hospitals. Almost no appendicitis, choleycystitis, bowel obstruction, bowel perforation, abscess etc at work for me the past four weeks. People are dying at home or will come in septic after waiting for too long with these problems. Nothing else makes sense and I have a significant sample size...this is happening.

As other have pointed out, the drop in emergency room visits could be due to less stress from commuting, less pollution, and more sleep. What about less exposure to illness? While staying at home with two kids for almost a month, no one’s even had the sniffles, which used to be a near constant with a preschooler. Measures to avoid COVID could have the effect of avoiding other contagious illnesses as well.

THIS!

I took my 89 year old mother out of a nursing/rehabilitation facility a month ago as the pandemic was beginning. They had just shut the facility to visitors. It was only tolerable because I’d been able to visit every day to make sure she was ok and bring her what she needed. She was recovering from a brain bleed and a broken leg. But once I couldn’t go in, I knew her care would go downhill. She’s home and while physically diminished is doing as well as can be expected. But she’s now almost completely senile. We have made the decision to keep her at home as she continues to have more little strokes, which seem to be occurring more often. At her age there is no fix for it. We are in effect doing home hospice and planning (hoping?) she will die peacefully at home. If something else major happened she would have to go into the ER alone with a DNR and most likely die there alone and unable to understand where she was or why. So no, she won’t be going to the ER again. We will take care of her they way people have cared for their elders for most of our history on this planet. Dying alone is not an option.

[mockbee]

Anyone's see any future prediction? Where are we in three months, six months? That's what I'd like to know.

This is a really good site for projection statistics. Put out by IHME, a reasearch group based out of the University of Washington.

It breaks down for US or specific states, updated daily.


https://covid19.healthdata.org/

I didn't realize, this breaks down for several European countries as well....

It is really good.......

Much better than reading the blizzard of conflicting articles regarding statistics and projections. I've found that articles are only good for some anecdotal experiences, and limited at that....




Looks like we are really close to projected peak!

[Matz]

If I understand things correctly they're saying that Denmark is going to have an ICU bed shortage tomorrow. Not true at all, unless something fucks up completely during the next 24 hours

[Hype]

If I understand things correctly they're saying that Denmark is going to have an ICU bed shortage tomorrow. Not true at all, unless something fucks up completely during the next 24 hours

Are you sure? Denmark appears to have had an issue with this for quite a while, before COVID-19. E.g., back in 2006, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4092805/

Since most admissions to intensive care are acute, patient flow in the ICU can hardly be controlled. Furthermore, ICU beds are costly. Consequently, a shortage of ICU beds is a common occurrence. However, there is a lack of precise figures describing the magnitude of this problem. We therefore conducted a survey to investigate the available ICU resources in Denmark. The survey consisted of two parts. The first part was a questionnaire sent to the directors of all ICUs in Denmark. This questionnaire described the staffing and resources of the ICUs and the perceived magnitude of the 'ICU full' problem. In the second part, bed availability and occupancy in all Danish ICUs was measured twice daily in two separate weeks. Furthermore all transfer of patients due to lack of resources (beds) was recorded.

The total number of ICU beds was 386 during workdays and 354 during weekends, corresponding to 2.1% and 2.0% of the total number of hospital beds in Denmark. As Denmark has a population of around 5,500,000, this is about 7 (6.4) ICU beds/100,000 inhabitants. With 49 ICUs in Denmark there were 1386 measuring points in the second part of the investigation. In 418 instances (30%) the ICUs were reported to be full, and during these 2 weeks there was a total of 32 patients who were transferred to other ICUs because of bed shortage, corresponding to 834 transferrals per year.

*edit* I found more up-to-date data for Denmark's ICU capacity: http://www.dasaim.dk/forskning/capacity ... are-units/

RESULTS: The number of ICU departments decreased from 50 to 39, the number of accessible ICU beds increased from 401 to 441. The number of high dependency beds in 2014 is 101 – the historical evolution of the number of HDU beds is insecure. The average occupancy rate is 82% – highest in Level 3 departments (87%). The number of ICU beds to total number of somatic beds is 3.3%.

CONCLUSION: The number of accessible ICU beds in Denmark is 441 in 2014 – a 10% increase compared to 2004. The occupancy rate is still high in Level 3 units; the average discharge rate of patients from ICU departments due to lack of capacity is 2%, well below national standards. Level of education of nurses and doctors and the managerial attention to workflows has increased significantly.

So, that's hopefully a good sign. But it still might imply regional shortages. This is a big problem across the world, where small rural hospitals can become easily overwhelmed by a single outbreak.

Here's the current Danish data: https://www.sst.dk/da/corona/tal-og-overvaagning

I can't easily read Danish, but running that through Google Translate, this is the current intensive care patients:


The COVID site doesn't list the number of ICU beds available vs used, but based on the old 2006 data from the first link, There *were* only 386 ICU beds for the whole country, and there are currently 127 COVID patients in ICU as of today. The question is: how many ICU beds are occupied by NON-COVID patients right now, and specifically, are there regional shortages requiring transfer of critically ill patients?