DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... COVID-19: The World Killer

That would be me. I've always refused to go to the doctor for the flu. The last time I had it was bad though. It lasted for 2 weeks, I called off work for a week and a half straight and was in complete misery.

They knew I was in bad shape because I never call in sick, ever really. That was 10 years ago, looking back I should have just went to the doctor and it would have been much easier on myself. After all this, I will definitely go, my thoughts have changed.

You can read it here. https://thevillagereporter.com/ohsaa-ann...RtK1TgeYesLHSdE

Don't kiss your pets, you won't get the flu.

I stopped kissing my dogs head years ago and haven't had the flu since.

Rish, to me it seems that the ones impacted the most are the elderly and more specifically, the elderly with already compromised health issues.

I am not aware of any serious or confirmed cases of children that have been confirmed in the U.S.

I have younger children as well and am not terribly concerned, but aware and remind them to practice good hygiene habits.

My parents (both remarried are early/mid- sixties) do not seem all that alarmed. All are healthy without underlying issues, including step-mom and step-dad.

Mom and step-dad are currently traveling in FL and Dad and step-mom are flying out to Jackson Hole to visit friends for a trip next week.

Personally, I'll remain aware, continue to practice good hygeine, wash my hands a little more, but go on about my daily life. I have several trips upcoming that are work related and am not really concerned. I think some of this is unnecessary panic. Runs on toilet paper (pun intended) are absurd.

Rant: Our country is eating themselves to death, has an absurd rate of heart disease, drinks to excess and now all of a sudden everyone is hyper-concerned about their health.

I think the word panic is being substituted for awareness by some folks.

Also, I think most people prefer to choose their life style rather than to be conflicted by things beyond their control.

I am 63, but I bet I am in better shape than most folks on here. I work out daily. Both cardiovascular and weight training.

I don't understand why some folks are upset that others are becoming more aware of the situation?

I can't imagine anyone being upset by people being "more aware." I haven't seen this take place.

Keep up the cardio! Good vascular health is important.

My ears are becoming allergic to the word "Coronavirus"

Can life please go back to normal?

Unfortunately, that's probably not going to happen, at least for the next two years. We all better get used to the craziness. I'm hoping we can figure some stuff out to get the economy moving again soon, for everyone's sake. This virus is bad, but a stalled global economy will probably kill more people than the virus.

I have an autoimmune disease, so I may not be so lucky. So if y'all don't see any posts from me, you know what happened. I work from home and don't go out much (grocery store, shooting and the gym), so I may be able to buy some extra time before I get exposed to it. Just gotta hope I can beat it.

Don't believe the hype.

I have an autoimmune disease also.

BUT I do take my vitamins and eat healthy.

I live a healthy lifestyle.

Other than a bit of drinking.

I have no fear of this dumb CV.

We all need to not buy into the fear.

Only for the elders do we need to worry. <3

I'm not concerned about the flu.
World governments aren't generally concerned about the flu.
The generally unflappable Chinese who avoid at all costs showing the world anything that might paint them negatively, don't care about the flu - and didn't react like this when they had the SARS outbreak.


Alarm bells go off in my head over this because governments simply do not expend this much effort - and piss away this much revenue - simply due to over-worry. It's one thing, although still extreme, when a society like China puts its citizens in lockdown. It is entirely another,to me, when Italy does it.


I absolutely know that there are a lot more cases out there, but I do not think there are so many as to dilute the mortality rates to where it fits people's hopes that this is less lethal than the flu. If that were the case - if ANYONE AT ALL in the know thought that was the case - you wouldn't be witnessing the entire world enacting containment protocols to the degree they are..... they'd just treat it like the flu.



That said, people need to relax. It gonna go around. Lots of people are gonna get sick, most will not. Control what you can, that's all you can do, anyway.

I fully plan to continue daily as normal. I will be flying next month (unless I can't get a better fare), and again in July. Life goes on.
I also plan to be sensible and do the things I can do to limit my exposure so that I can help limit the exposure for my parents.... but, beyond that, I'm going to continue normally. There isn't anything else to do.

Seeing the world "in flames" and the damage happening to markets and economies everywhere... who wants to be that, somehow, the guy getting freaky with the lizard in that Chinese market was named Carl.


#whenyouarethereasonforthemondaysafetybrief



(some of you will get this)

Or they are taking up the initiative on their own?

I think it is a manifestation of companies/institutions taking reasonable precautionary measures in the absence of clear leadership from the absolute top.



Here at home, My Bunch hasn't cancelled our upcoming weekend joint(s), but tix sales for our next joint(s) are flatlined... after 3-4 consecutive weeks of SRO (or near sellout) numbers- but we were informed tonight that we'll move on to other performance/attendance standards if circumstances dictate.

I don't blame folks for this week's depressed tix sales numbers. People, businesses, and institutions are now self-regulating, amid the absence of a coherent message from Our Executive Administration. 'States Rights' philosophy is now being extended to its ultimate (regional/local) incarnation, yo.... and everyday people are taking matters into their own hands.

If it's deemed necessary that we suspend events/stream them online at a discounted rate, the socialist ('small s,' mind you-) in me is OK with that policy decision. Far better for me to take a temporary sales hit and hang onto my audience, than to have them drop off due to ignorance and (preventable) epidemiology.

___________________


We'll soldier on this week, and work the circumstances as they play out.

I'm a "hand-washin'/regular sanitizin' mf at present, yo....


Life goes on.
Until it stops.

Not to mention all the sneezing going on.

I would suggest reading up directly from the CDC and WHO, not CNN or Fox.

For people in their 60's with health conditions, this is especially bad. Right now, I believe the mortality rate is around 15% for that group of people, WAYYYYY more deadly than the flu.

In general, its about 30X more deadly than the flu as far as the mortality rate goes as well.

We are over a year away from any vaccines
We don't really know much about it
We don't know if this is going to fizzle out, or come back each year
We have a good idea how it travels, but then there is Iran which is a mystery as to how it got there.

For those trying to paint this as a "Media Frenzy" I offer this point:

Communist China, which basically has a US media blackout, and serves its people propaganda and cherry picked information, who do not have access to CNN, Fox, and even GOOGLE limits what they are allowed to search based on the governments wishes - literally SHUT DOWN their country, costing them BILLIONS in their economy to try to stop this.

That should tell you a lot as to how serious this thing is.

I wouldn't be worried about it much if I hadn't just had my ass kicked by influenza A. I was hospitalized twice with that crap over the holidays, ruined my xmas. I have COPD, Diabetes, and Heart Disease... that's 3 of the at risk groups. smh

I am fairly well insulated myself with limited public exposure, but my wife works with about 100 people and goes to a fairly big church being exposed to hundreds (up to a couple thousand) twice a week. There is no way to prevent her exposure in those circumstances. So I'm feeling pretty much screwed too and just doing what I can to stay healthy while trying not to get freaked out. The only good thing is that I already have all the respiratory meds they're using to fight this on hand. So I'll be ahead of the curve a little if I contract it.

THIS!

My employee yesterday was saying this (mind you shes +50). She said something like "well its just old people that die from it anyway, everyone just needs to go to work. When its your time its your time".

I kindly stated "I think you should realize that your mother is in her 90's I recall, so what your saying is that if your mother gets the virus, you wont need me to approve any time off for you then, since 'shes only an old person' and 'its her time'".

The numbers are more than likely a lot worse than people think.

For one, we still have states that DO NOT even have test kits yet.

We also have states that even thought they have them, they were faulty when they received them.

We also have states that were sent maybe a few hundred test kits, instead of the thousands upon thousands needed.

(not getting political, just pointing out the facts as to why those numbers are not true)

We also know that the Gov of Washington state has already declared that he believes the virus has been there for over 6 weeks now, we just were unaware.

California has stated they have something like 8K people (which I am sure has grown) they were monitoring for the virus, but had no way to test them. They received like 200 kits.

We don't know how long its been here.
We don't know how many people have already had the virus
We don't know how many people have already died from the virus
So all estimates, taking the above information into account, are definitely going to be on the LOW side of things.

Which is why you see business' and government taking such strong steps they are now. They know this.

For starters, don't assume what I've read and not read. Let's have a civil discussion.

Secondly, wouldn't it stand to make more sense that if the numbers are incomplete and there are many more infections that we don't know about, then the overall numbers would look better in terms of mortality rates? I mentioned this before - it seems like it would be easier to hide infections and recoveries than deaths.

No. it wouldn't. We are literally NOT testing for it. The rates we are seeing are based mostly of china, Italy, and other countries.

We have no idea how many people have died from it here, because we literally have not tested for it.

You can most certainly guarantee there’s been a safety brief in a few units over not eating things that shouldn’t be eaten.

Same argument on the flip side. We have no idea how many people have gotten it and recovered.

I still think, and this is just my opinion, that if people were dying unexpectedly after experiencing respiratory issues, we would be hearing about it...even if they hadn't been tested. I could be wrong on that, but it seems to be logical especially in light of the events going on.

No we don't, but we have good idea of the mortality rates because we have 100K cases worldwide giving us that rate. We can also use the rates we are seeing here, etc. and we get a good idea.

I would advise to check out the old thread in the first few pages, Purp does a job detailing the numbers of cases, mortality rate, etc.

In the first page or two, you will find I posted the SAME exact question you did. After researching it, looking at what the .gov is NOT telling us, seeing how they are doing everything they can to prop up the market, and then seeing the reactions of countries like China and Italy (who have fought things like this before and didn't react like this), its concerning.

Based on the videos I posted above, the infectious disease expert said SARS was "easy" to control because a person would display symptoms for a few days BEFORE becoming contagious. Meaning, you find people showing symptoms and get them in quarantine before exposure to other people.

This COVID-19 is the opposite. You can be contagious BEFORE showing symptoms. There's a 4-day incubation period with this one, so for 4 days, you can be contagious and not know it.

Essentially, until there's a vaccine, which is 18+ months away from happening, we have to hope we can avoid breathing contaminated air. So, avoid public spaces, keep your distance with people and the washing of hands thing (though that's not as big of a deal as the air issue).

I think the panic is mostly real. This is a "perfect storm" kind of virus. While the death rates aren't 30-40% scary, the fear is real and our economy is based on people having jobs, shopping, traveling and having confidence in the immediate and long term future. All of those are taking a massive hit right now. As I said above, the economy stalls for a few months, more people are going to die or have their lives ruined than from the virus (and the virus will still be going strong).

There are a few hundred medications that keep people alive in the US....they are only sourced from China. That supply chain has shut down. We are all living off a just-in-time delivery system for just about everything. This could get very messy.

I don't think all humans are going to die, even 50%, but to think this is just going to blow over in a few days or weeks is happy talk. This will be a major event, our grand kids will learn about it in history class and huge changes will be made across the world to not be so self-reliant on other countries.

Can you expand on what the government is hiding? Not a snarky question. It's sincere. I want to understand that better.

I may only speak for myself, but speaking about the older population wasn't because I don't care. One of the things about COVID-19 has been the higher percentage of cases resulting in death. That's scary, but an important thing to consider about that is it seems the majority of those deaths are happening to people with compromised immune systems. That could include a number of different things, but older folks tend to slot into that category.

I didn't mean to say they don't matter, and I didn't read any other posts that way... it was only another way to look at the few facts/numbers we have to try to understand what's going on.

There is a thread about that in the political forum if you are interested.

Didn't take it that way.

I changed my post, I don't want it in this thread, I will PM you my answer.

Across the board, the mortality rate is about 3 to 3.5% I have seen.

The older population the rate in the teens. But younger aged healthy people are dying too from it.

And while cases are "mild" they are not all. people that are getting are still getting REALLY REALLY REALLY sick. Its not just a flu. Some have said it was WAY worse.

j/c:

I came across this headline today, it sounds like it's from theonion.com, but it isn't:

'Coronavirus conference canceled in New York because of coronavirus'

https://nypost.com/2020/03/11/coronavirus-conference-canceled-in-new-york-because-of-coronavirus/

P.S. I must admit it cracked me up a little bit.

You have a valid point, but just think through the math.

Mortality rate for the flu is 0.1% at the upper end of all estimations. Hell, double it and let's say it is 0.2%.

COVID-19 is running at 3.4%. That means that there would have to be literally 17x the number of cases WORLDWIDE for it to be diluted to the point of being even with your doubled flu rate, assuming no unknown deaths.

I sincerely do not believe that to be feasible, nor expectable.
Additionally, a large chunk of that statistic involves areas that DO have testing and it factors in asymptomatic cases.

Also, I would expect that there ARE deaths and perhaps even hospitalizations, but the cause went unknown. Perhaps simply written off as simple pneumonia, which again would counter any skewing due to unknown cases.


In the end, the number will very likely change (though, it changed upward in the last few weeks), but I do not expect to shift in the range of an order of magnitude.

You can't even make that up, lol!

A friend of my sister was in China during SARS. He was very clear about this one and what he was seeing from them: "They do NOT respond like that if they can hide it".

and, I agree. We are not "all gonna die!!!". Some of us might even come through wondering what the heck the big deal was, but I think many, many more will be affected either directly or by way of someone in their immediate family, and that is just speaking to infections and not factoring in the impact on society as far as supply chains or load on the health care system.

One thing I do believe will come of this, however: China will no longer be the world's manufacturing hub. ESPECIALLY if this ends up being a seasonal disease.

Things appear to be accelerating in Spain a bit. They've crossed the 2,000 cases mark (almost at 2,200) and surpassed Germany and France.

We, however, grew by ~450 cases yesterday. When I got out of bed yesterday morning, we were just over 600 cases. 609, I think. This morning we're sitting at 1,050.


The thing to be watching is transmissability in the southern hemisphere. I was talking with my CEO yesterday and he was saying he had just gotten off the phone with Brazil and they said they weren't seeing it spread there. That said, I was looking at news reports from Brazil last night and found that they DO have cases of community transmission, so it is still a waiting game there.

It does seem to be moving slower in Australia and other nations below the equator, but it still seems to be moving. Even slowing it would be fantastic for dropping the R0. Get R0 below one and it burns itself out, eventually.


Another to watch would be South Africa. Currently, only 13 cases, and most seem to have been contracted by people traveling within Italy and returning. Their four newest cases returned from Italy on March 3rd and the cases were announced yesterday. If we see a bump in cases there next week stemming from contact with these people, then we'll have a pretty decent idea of transmissability in the Southern Hemisphere and what to expect from things up here as summer rolls in.

What is the prognosis--in terms of time--of finding a vaccine?

Every report for vaccine has been estimated to be 18 months.

To piggyback on the Joe Rogan video....

link

I highly suggest this entire article for general reading on this. It is from The Atlantic back in late February and much of the information if coming from a Harvard professor of epidemiology.


"Overall, if all pieces fell into place, Hatchett guesses it would be 12 to 18 months before an initial product could be deemed safe and effective. That timeline represents “a vast acceleration compared with the history of vaccine development,” he told me. But it’s also unprecedentedly ambitious. “Even to propose such a timeline at this point must be regarded as hugely aspirational,” he added."

Thanks guys.

Lot's to think about right now.

Long before we get a vaccine, they will likely develop an anti-viral medication that mitigates the impact of the disease either by slowing its replication within the body or just aiding the body in speeding its development of antibodies.

We are seeing this now with the drug "remdesivir", which is the anti-viral developed in 2014 for ebola. They are now taking volunteers for human trials for treating the COVID-19 disease. It, apparently, has already been being used outside the US, too.

It will not prevent an infection from occurring, but the hope is that it may minimize the severity of the worst cases. IF that works, then this whole thing becomes just a sort of "super flu" that nobody worries about anymore. That is a colossally gigantic 'IF'.