Coronavirus

[Coburgtiger]

Refute my numbers with numbers, not news items.

Your numbers are irrelevant and intentionally misleading.

Firstly you claim influenza spreads faster because, "The maths says you might pass COVID onto twice as many people as the flu, but you will pass the flu on more than twice as fast which is why influenza spreads more quickly." most importantly this is irrelevant. Next, that's just bad maths.

The infectious period for seasonal influenza is about week, and in that week, one person is likely to infect 1.4 people, on average. Let's compare that to covid 19 with an infectious period of three weeks and in that period, one person infects 3 other people. This even accounts for the period of infection being three times slower than the flu, not two as you said.

After thirty weeks, the flu would have infected 24,000 people, while covid 19 would have infected 59,000. So yeah, wrong. But again, this is irrelevant.

As has been said to you before, those rates are unimportant as a comparison because :

1. There is no vaccine for covid 19. Vulnerable people can not be protected. This is not true for influenza.
2. There are no antivirals against Covid 19. Sick people are harder to treat. This is not true for influenza.
3. Current numbers are suggesting there's somewhere around 7 to 10 percent of covid 19 cases requiring hospitalisation. It's much less for influenza (less than 1%).

And even then, the seasonal flu still causes hospitals to be stretched. By the way, despite all this we are not actually talking about covid or flu, we are talking about covid and flu.

The world is running out of PPE for hospitals. In places were this hits hard doctors are choosing which people get to have access to the life saving equipment and not die. I have a family member right now who is plumbing shipping containers for hospitals to use as makeshift morgues. You think you're being helpful trying to convince people this is no more than a flu season? There are legitimate discussions to have about how to balance supporting healthcare with supporting the economy. Those discussions cannot start with your head in the sand about what you are potentially sacrificing.

Please stop posting garbage. Your misleading comments may kill people.

 

[DavidSSS]

The virus might not be political, but the way health systems are organised and run is, the response is, the balancing of health and economic impacts is clearly political, and the long term impact will be.

Politics is about power, who wields it, how it is wielded etc.

is right that we, as a human community, debate this and not avoid it.

DS

 

[DavidSSS]

3. Current numbers are suggesting there's somewhere around 7 to 10 percent of covid 19 cases requiring hospitalisation. It's much less for influenza (less than 1%).

This is critical.

As Northern Suburbs Tiger says, we have the expectation that flu will impact the hospital system as it always does. Then you get a virus with such a high hospitalisation rate on top of that, you get overstretched hospitals and they won't be able to cope.

The only way the health system will be able to cope is if we either prevent a large proportion of the population from getting the virus, or, if that proves impossible, we spread the infections over a long period of time.

The latter is more possible and is why we need to take drastic measures like working from home which limit the opportunity for infection to happen.

DS

 

[snags]

He ordered General Motors to make ventilators last week.

Sorry mate I missed that I only saw the tweets of him bagging them.

 

[Baloo]

If I was a cynic I'd say Trumps tweet was a calculated ploy to be able to stand up and claim that it was all he's doing that GM started making ventilators.

Trump Orders GM To Make Ventilators—10 Days After Company Says It Started Making Them

 

[tigersnake]

As a health professional I'm far from $%^*$$^& naive especially in regard to this topic as I'm on the front line dealing with it can I ask the same of yourself?

I'm just getting tired as are many I'm sure of the politicking on seemingly every second thread on here these days.

And it most certainly is possible to have discussion without everything being a left/right political argument.

like I said, naïve. I have no idea what you're expecting. Your ideas aren't political? whatevs. get back on your high horse.

 

[craig]

like I said, naïve. I have no idea what you're expecting. Your ideas aren't political? whatevs. get back on your high horse.

Ive got plenty of ideas on politics I just don't have the need to inject the into everything.

As for my high horse . If you aint out there dodging the bullets then STFU with the attacks on those who are.

 

[tigersnake]

Ive got plenty of ideas on politics I just don't have the need to inject the into everything.

As for my high horse, I'm out there dealing with this **** in the front line every day again what are you doing mate except making snide comments.

If you aint out there dodging the bullets then STFU with the attacks on those who are.

well, you must know all about me? jesus. a global pandemic is as political as it gets, who lives who dies, who gets resources who doesn't, who controls the messages. The very notion that any discussion about it can be apolitical is bewildering and naïve. What are you proposing? you do know what politics is?

 

[KnightersRevenge]

IT doesn't spread to more people, thats exactly the point. The flu infects about a billion people a year. How many COVID cases are there, we haven't reached a million yet. Its been in the wild for three months and is already in 140 countries. If it spreads faster to people like you say, why hasn't it?

I'm no health expert, nor a mathematician. But I am certain 3 is more than 1.4. This is a "novel" coronavirus so this is it taking its first shot at the human population. It is travelling around the world and wreaking havoc as it goes. Influenza is a family of viruses that has been with us for centuries. If/when it gets to as many people as flu it will have killed an order of magnitude more. The only current way to control that is to isolate.

 

[KnightersRevenge]

He ordered General Motors to make ventilators last week.

WARNING! WARNING! Politically charged story to follow:

Well, he kinda did. In that very Trump way he managed to make a meal of it. He chose to call out the female CEO in one of his addresses when GM were already working on a project to ramp up production by collaborating with a current smaller manufacturer:

"Trump Orders GM To Make Ventilators—10 Days After Company Says It Started Making Them"

Trump Orders GM To Make Ventilators—10 Days After Company Says It Started Making Them

“You can’t get much faster than that.”

www.forbes.com

There is more politically damning version of the story in the failing "New York Times"

"Inside G.M.’s Race to Build Ventilators, Before Trump’s Attack"

Inside G.M.’s Race to Build Ventilators, Before Trump’s Attack (Published 2020)

The automaker and its partner, Ventec, had spent more than a week figuring out how to make thousands of the lifesaving devices when the White House said G.M. was “wasting time.”

www.nytimes.com

 

[Giardiasis]

I’m sure governments will give up this power once they have it....

US government 'in talks with Facebook and Google' to track coronavirus

The US government wants to see if private-sector companies could compile the data in a way that would allow them to map the spread of the deadly virus.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[Sintiger]

The WHO has already said explicitly that COVID does not spread as fast as the flu. Directly from the WHO situation update on 6th March.

View attachment 9696


Yes the RO for COVID is about double the flu, which means you can pass it on to twice as many people.

BUT

The incubation period is longer, which means it takes longer before you can pass it on,

and

Pre-symptomatic transmission of the flu is likley, whereas pre-symptomatic (and asymptomatic) cases are not seen as major drivers of transmission of COVID

and

Socially mobile children who are important links in flu transmission do not appear to important in COVID transmission.

The maths says you might pass COVID onto twice as many people as the flu, but you will pass the flu on more than twice as fast which is why the WHO can confidently and explicitly say

"This means that influenza can spread faster than COVID 19".

They are not the same thing. Spreading faster is not the same as infecting more people . The issue is the number of people who get it because the reinfection rate is higher than a normal flu. COVID-19 takes longer to spread through a community than many flus but the chances of spread are much greater.
The reinfection rate is not certain at this stage. Governments are modelling in anywhere between 2 and 3.5. WHO is now saying 2.25 to 2.5

 

[LeeToRainesToRoach]

Case count excluding China (updated 11:30pm)

795,190 cases
40,221 deaths (5.06%)
33,232 severe (4%)
613,010 mild (77%)
108,727 recovered (14%)

 

[Tigers of Old]

Case count excluding China (updated 9:30am)

776,220 cases
38,719 deaths (4.99%)
31,752 severe (4%)
604,893 mild (78%)
100,856 recovered (13%)

The alleged Chinese figures will be a drop in the ocean in no time.
Appreciate these updates L2R.

 

[waiting]

The alleged Chinese figures will be a drop in the ocean in no time.
Appreciate these updates L2R.

Also like many I’ve spoken to and some contacts I have here & overseas those figures of China’s are fabricated.

They have been hit the hardest but haven’t disclosed their true death rates.

 

[waiting]

Enough to make my blood & temperature go up even more.

Read below !

border protection allerted to medical supplurs being shipped to china - Google Search

 

[Ian4]

The virus might not be political, but the way health systems are organised and run is, the response is, the balancing of health and economic impacts is clearly political, and the long term impact will be.

Politics is about power, who wields it, how it is wielded etc.

is right that we, as a human community, debate this and not avoid it.

DS

correct. I have long debated that governments should never, ever cut health funding under any circumstances. i don't think you need to guess which side of politics is more likely to do this.

then you have the hypocrisy of a government who banged on for 13 years that Rudd should never have released a stimulus package, only for the same people to provide what must be the biggest stimulus package this country has ever seen. but of course, they don't call it a stimulus package.

 

[mrposhman]

Looks like Trump has finally been swung by the advisors.

Now saying between 100k and 240k americans will die, what happened to him being a scientific genius, that this wasn't a big issue and was a democratic attempt to sully his great name.

 

[eZyT]

. If you aint out there dodging the bullets then STFU with the attacks on those who are.

no doubt youre worn out mate,

but I thought the whole point of a global pandemic

was that we are all dodging bullets?

 

[Baloo]

Just noticed that the US has just over 20% of the world's total Coronavirus infected. When you factor in the lack of testing available, I struggle to comprehend how this is going to end up.