|OT| Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) news & discussion - No, it's not just a flu

Pommes

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Jun 4, 2019
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I want to get out of the USA.

I think I'm done. My wife too.

She's looking for jobs related to Ford in Germany and England right now.

It's not like other countries do not have racism, but white supremacy is god here. I gotta Get Out.
As a (white) German I can tell you that the situation in Germany may be different but sadly white supremacy is definitely big here.
 
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Phoenix RISING

A phoenix always RISES!
Apr 23, 2019
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I'm sorry. I posted what I posted here because I fully believe that the root of why COVID-19 is running rampant here is because the country couldn't stand a black man as POTUS so they turned around and elected a bonafide Klansman who only knows how to Klan.

And 150k had to die. Nobody is talking about that enough. Just a statistic as flippant as if you owed $150 electric bill or something. It hurts, but you pay it and move on. Because this president is so trashcan that we've got another fire to put out. School has begun and states are despereate to keep students there for reasons that only God himself knows.
 
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Swenhir

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I'm sorry. I posted what I posted here because I fully believe that the root of why COVID-19 is running rampant here is because the country couldn't stand a black man as POTUS so they turned around and elected a bonafide Klansman who only knows how to Klan.

And 150k had to die. Nobody is talking about that enough. Just a statistic as flippant as if you owed $150 electric bill or something. It hurts, but you pay it and move on. Because this president is so trashcan that we've got another fire to put out. School has begun and states are despereate to keep students there for reasons that only God himself knows.
Their reasoning is probably that sooner or later there'll be a vaccine and thus the toll in deaths is meaningless compared to the damage of the economy grinding to a halt. A 1 or 2% mortality rate out of the whole population, often from the most impoverished, doesn't matter as much to them as not entering a recession. They don't care about the potential exponential growth and are willing to take a bet on it because the alternative ruins their short-term interests.

It's heinous, dehumanizing bullshit but I can see the logic.
 

Phoenix RISING

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Their reasoning is probably that sooner or later there'll be a vaccine and thus the toll in deaths is meaningless compared to the damage of the economy grinding to a halt. A 1 or 2% mortality rate out of the whole population, often from the most impoverished, doesn't matter as much to them as not entering a recession. They don't care about the potential exponential growth and are willing to take a bet on it because the alternative ruins their short-term interests.

It's heinous, dehumanizing bullshit but I can see the logic.

Man FUCK THE ECONOMY

And that's me putting it nicely.

But that does make sense. Gotta offer burnt sacrifices of human flesh to the Almighty Dollar.

But it's ass-backwards logic, because they could have shut down all organized like and reopened like other countries are doing. But no.

I was reading a Tweet that we are approaching a 1/1,000 death rate in the US.
 

Swenhir

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Man FUCK THE ECONOMY
I wish I could say that but with all intellectual honesty, the economy is necessary. The damage to a country with a destroyed economy is way, way beyond a pandemic. I wouldn't say we can spare it from a general and theoretical standpoint.

The problem is that is doesn't have to be sacrificed. It's all so dumb. Today, the economy is barely functioning as it should. It obeys blind, short-term driven goals and has no ingrained rules forbidding wealth inequality. I think the economy should work just fine, if it wasn't the same .01% skimming from the top for the past hundred years or so.

I think a normal economy should be able to withstand the pandemic, and a normal economy would also probably have had financed fundamental research so that the work to find a vaccine had begun before it hit, not after.

I guess what I'm saying is that if it's a shitty choice at the best of times and that saving taking a short hit to the economy right now to contain it is something that's both the best action to take from a life-driven standpoint and also minimizes the damage in the long term.

Problem is, they really don't give a fuck about people dying.
 

Wok

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Problem is, they really don't give a fuck about people dying.
To be fair, there is a lot of people who don't care about people dying. It is not just the government. Even if the US government cared about healthcare, I cannot imagine American people accepting a lockdown, I feel like there would be people with automatic rifles in the street.

Here in Europe, in places where wearing a mask is mandatory, there are people who won't wear one because they do not give a crap, or who will wear it under their chin to show their disapproval of the government's attempt to restrict their freedom. They are of all ages and backgrounds, and I am sure they all have their personal (idiotic) motivation for doing so. Authorities cannot be everywhere, and education is preferred anyway, so there is no consequence for these people, whom I see every day (these are different people in public transportation). Nobody from the public would make a comment, because everyone hates being that guy, and some people have been beaten down for doing so, including a bus driver who died.
 
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Swenhir

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To be fair, there is a lot of people who don't care about people dying. It is not just the government. Even if the US government cared about healthcare, I cannot imagine American people accepting a lockdown, I feel like there would be people with automatic rifles in the street.

Here in Europe, In places where wearing a mask is mandatory, there are people who won't wear one because they do not give a crap, or who will wear it under their chin to show their disapproval of the government's attempt to restrict their freedom. They are of all ages and backgrounds, and I am sure they all have their personal (idiotic) motivation for doing so. Authorities cannot be everywhere, and education is preferred anyway, so there is no consequence for these people, whom I see every day.
I just met with a friend who laughed at my wearing a mask and refusing to shake hands, and he's in a research field. I feel this. You're completely right and it's some kind of social, embarrassment-shy bravado bullshit of the highest order.
 

Wok

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:thinking:

The lockdown was necessary, but it looks like its effect will have been a delay before we come back to square one. The vaccine cannot come soon enough.
 
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EdwardTivrusky

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Dec 8, 2018
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Here in the UK we're gearing up for a propaganda push on "Back to work, Drones!" messaging in the next week or so i reckon.
Even though Corona cases are rising among office workers in europe who have returned to work apparently. My manager thinks our place will go for a work-from-home/work-from-office a few days a week for Staff that can do that. Our estates team have wanted to cut down the rents we pay and drop on-site staff numbers and as people have mainly been productive WFH it's the perfect time to do it.

Of course being a University town it'll be interesting to see if we get a spike in infection numbers around November/December when the students have been back for a while and have started partying and mingling again etc.
 

Swenhir

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We are doing it again. :face-with-medical-mask:



Meanwhile in the USA: 50k new cases per day.



Or India: 75k new cases per day.

Adjusting for population, France has four times fewer cases per person than the US, and India as well.

I'm a bit scared though, didn't France have a huge lockdown and they're just back at those levels again? What is the plan?
 

Wok

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I'm a bit scared though, didn't France have a huge lockdown and they're just back at those levels again? What is the plan?
The plan is to wear masks to avoid another lockdown.

Fortunately, it should not be so bad for France, because we have lots of tests now compared to before the lockdown. So, it seems that we reach the same levels as before, but it is an illusion: it must have been much much worse before the lockdown, and we did not have the means to know it. Back then, only people with symptoms were tested. These days, people who are at risk of being positive, even if they do not have any symptom, can be tested.

These days, hospitals seem to manage the situation, and there is not a huge afflux of people there.
 

Swenhir

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The plan is to wear masks to avoid another lockdown.

Fortunately, it should not be so bad for France, because we have lots of tests now compared to before the lockdown. So, it seems that we reach the same levels as before, but it is an illusion: it must have been much much worse before the lockdown, and we did not have the means to know it. Back then, only people with symptoms were tested. These days, people who are at risk of being positive, even if they do not have any symptom, can be tested.

These days, hospitals seem to manage the situation, and there is not a huge afflux of people there.
That sounds much better, thank you.
 

Wok

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During the past two days, there have been 8500-9000 new cases per day.



Yet hospitals are still okay, with about 300 serious cases (in total), and 20 new deaths per day.



I wonder what the true numbers would have been back then if we had had enough testing. We could only see the tip of the iceberg. We had the same 7-day moving average of daily deaths on March 16th, which is the day before the lockdown. Yet at that time, we had a 7-day moving average of ~750 new daily cases, compared to ~6500 today.

And the spread of the virus was exponential back then, which might not be the case today (but I am not sure about that, I cannot see the log).
It is so weird not to be able to compare the two time-points. Hopefully, we do not reach that point again.

 
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Swenhir

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During the past two days, there have been 8500-9000 new cases per day.



Yet hospitals are still okay, with about 300 serious cases (in total), and 20 new deaths per day.



I wonder what the true numbers would have been back then if we had had enough testing. We could only see the tip of the iceberg. We had the same 7-day moving average of daily deaths on March 16th, which is the day before the lockdown. Yet at that time, we had a 7-day moving average of ~750 new daily cases, compared to ~6500 today.

And the spread of the virus was exponential back then, which might not be the case today (but I am not sure about that, I cannot see the log).
It is so weird not to be able to compare the two time-points. Hopefully, we do not reach that point again.

So it would appear to have more widespread detection of new cases while the amount of cases necessitating hospitalizations is still proportionally small enough that the healthcare system isn't overloaded? And probably throw in a growing set of treatment methods that mean recovery is faster, and more likely?
 

Wok

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The current pace is a doubling of the number of active cases every 3 weeks.
Yesterday, we had the record of ~10k new cases in the past day. At this rate, we are going to reach 400k active cases by the end of the month.
In some places (to the South of France where there is the biggest spread of the virus these days), some hospitals are a bit too crowded.



One can see on the log graph of total cases that the exponential growth is slowly coming back.

 

Swenhir

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The current pace is a doubling of the number of active cases every 3 weeks.

Yesterday, we had the record of ~10k new cases in the past day. At this rate, we are going to reach 400k active cases by the end of the month.

Yet the daily deaths, if the country is France, seem to be astonishingly low.

This is still pretty scary if you consider that the virus may leave people with lasting pulmonary and cardiovascular damage. This is looking full-on exponential.
 
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Wok

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Yet the daily deaths, if the country is France, seem to be astonishingly low.
True. However, we have had a few recent days with 30-40 deaths, which is a bit higher than the usual number of 15-20 deaths per day since the end of the lockdown. So, the signal is still low, but might be there. And with more and more cases, vulnerable people will end up infected at some point. It won't always be the young people.

It is likely that the situation in France will be similar to the one currently in Spain. So, something like this:






It might not be as bad as in March-April. It is hard to know.

We are not doing that much better than the USA if we take into account the population. In terms of total I mean. The daily situation in the USA is pretty intense.
 
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Swenhir

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True. However, we have had a few recent days with 30-40 deaths, which is a bit higher than the usual number of 15-20 deaths per day since the end of the lockdown. So, the signal is still low, but might be there. And with more and more cases, vulnerable people will end up infected at some point. It won't always be the young people.

It is likely that the situation in France will be similar to the one currently in Spain. So, something like this:






It might not be as bad as in March-April. It is hard to know.

We are not doing that much better than the USA if we take into account the population.
Spain seems close to that particular country, though even if the death rate has gotten orders of magnitude lower than before, it's still a terrifying prospect combined with this kind of pace of growth. Even a very low death rate is going to end up taking a huge toll from a booming infected population.
 

Trisolarian

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US surpassed 200,000 cases this weekend.

We're #1.
200k dead, 7 million cases, according to world meter.


We suck.

I'm not ready for a legitimate second wave here in NJ. Not at all prepared mentally.

However our state decides to respond, keep the parks open. 2020 has been cruel enough.
 

Trisolarian

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1 million dead world wide.

Second waves are making themselves known around the world.

The most populous hemisphere (90% of the world's population) approaches the winter months.

Keeping a nervous eye on happening in my state, county and town. During the summer, in NJ there was a brief period of, not relaxation but of some normality and a reduction of 'plague paranoia'. The kind of paranoia that keeps you from going to the store when needed, opting for delivery, meeting family from distances of 6 feet plus and wearing the mask on while outdoors in a town.

The paranoia is starting to creep in again.
 

Le Pertti

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So, Donald Trump and Melania Trump tested positive today.
Guess we'll see how that goes. I don't wish ill on anyone, but I cannot muster much pity in his case.
Think him dying would actually be a good thing for the US. I think that would be the only thing that made everyone in America take the virus seriously once and for all.

He probably is just faking it to be able to say "look its nothing, I came out strong".
 

ISee

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I remember reading that Trump is eating Remdesivir preemptively for months now.

And while that is a stupid idea, the drug can make the infection a bit less serious. If it is being consumed early enough.
It's being used here in Germany for a couple of months now.
It's not a cure or guaranteed to work well. But it is helpful in treating serious cases before they go critical over here, unfortunately sucess rate is far from 100%.

With that in mind, I expect him to have a mild to heavy flu like condition. Which will make things even worse.
 

Wok

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A possible outcome is that Trump becomes wiser, a bit like what happened to Boris Johnson. People are always stupid when they have no skin in the game.
 
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Wok

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I mean, getting close to death and coming back is a life-changing experience. Everything is possible.
 

ISee

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I mean, getting close to death and coming back is a life-changing experience. Everything is possible.
They both understand that covid 19 is dangerous. Trump is testing himself daily, preemptively taking some serious drugs, I'm betting that he is scared as shit right now.

In shocking contrast to their followers, knowledge isn't the problem: They just don't care and do not value normal people and that won't change.
Trump is selfish scum, which has been proven repeatedly.

But his followers are behind him because he represents the idea of white supremacy, American exceptionalism, and some strange new age conspiracy shit. He is just a vessel for certain believes that long existed before he came into power and he won't give that up. No matter what.
 
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NarohDethan

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My leftist heart will always cling to the idea of reform. Otherwise what hope do we have?
My issue stems from the fact that he is literally the most powerful man on Earth, power to do good but has chosen to fuck up every opportunity he's had. He isn't a common Joe that occasionally lies or cheats on his wife. He's a Nazi with access to nuclear weapons.
 
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Le Pertti

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My issue stems from the fact that he is literally the most powerful man on Earth, power to do good but has chosen to fuck up every opportunity he's had. He isn't a common Joe that occasionally lies or cheats on his wife. He's a Nazi with access to nuclear weapons.
Yeah you are right. There is a difference between someone who can know better but choses not to, to someone indoctrinated and isn't exposed to another side.
 
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Myradeer

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I won't go up to wishing for death, but I do hope he becomes sick enough to become unfit to serve for lengthy period of time - otherwise I can imagine Trump and his supporters using quick recovery as a weapon to further reinforce their claim as COVID being an insignificant disease.
 

ISee

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Friendly reminder to get vaccinated going into fall.

The RKI (german CDC) recommends getting a flu and multi pneumococcal vaccination. The former is self-explanatory the latter is recommended because that type of bacteria often inflicts an additional bacterial pneumonia during heavy covid-19 cases. The pneumonia often leads to a deadly sepsis and organ failure.

My parents and in-laws got their shots yesterday, we are going this Friday.

Please do not sleep on it. It's important.
 

Le Pertti

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Friendly reminder to get vaccinated going into fall.

The RKI (german CDC) recommends getting a flu and multi pneumococcal vaccination. The former is self-explanatory the latter is recommended because that type of bacteria often inflicts an additional bacterial pneumonia during heavy covid-19 cases. The pneumonia often leads to a deadly sepsis and organ failure.

My parents and in-laws got their shots yesterday, we are going this Friday.

Please do not sleep on it. It's important.
Yeah I got a letter today to get flu shots for free so I will do it, it will be for the first one in my life haha. Usually I never get sick so never felt the need.
 
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ISee

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Yeah I got a letter today to get flu shots for free so I will do it, it will be for the first one in my life haha. Usually I never get sick so never felt the need.
Awesome!
Please don't forget to do so.

Vaccination is not just about preventing yourself from getting infected.
Even with the flu you may not feel sick or have noteworthy symptoms, but still spread it.
Vaccination can help to stop spreading diseases and protect people unable to get vaccinated. There are many of them out there. All they can do is rely on the rest of us to act in responsible ways. It's a bit like the herd immunity thing.
 
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Hektor

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The student i am sharing an office with was sent into quarantine because his teacher is confirmed infected.
Student went for tests and we're supposed hear back tomorrow if the student is infected as well or not.

If the student got it however, it is very likely i will as well because he was one of the few people it is impossible to striclty follow all rules with...

oooooffff