Coronavirus

[scottf200]

Montgomery, Alabama

May 25, 2020 at 6:31 PM CDT - Updated May 26 at 10:26 AM
Doctor: ER handling overflow of patients as Montgomery ICU beds fill

“We’ve really seen an influx of patients with COVID-19 over the past two to three weeks,” said Dr. Lisa Williams, a Pulmonary Critical Care Specialist at hospitals in Montgomery. “Our ICU beds are full. We’ve been having a lot of overflow in the ICU.”

“I’ve been in Montgomery practicing pulmonary critical care medicine for 14 years and this is the highest census we’ve ever had to take care of,” said Williams. “It is overwhelming. We are taking care of just tons of ventilators.”

“I’m used to seeing death in the ICU, but the volume of death and not being able to help my patients is just heartbreaking,” said Williams. “To be honest with you every day I am on the brink of tears wanting to know when this is going to end because it’s tough and I don’t think people realize taking care of people that are dying that you can’t help.”

“I do pulmonary and critical care medicine,” Williams said. “I have patients that are on life support machines ranging from ages of 26 up to in the 90s and unfortunately when you get to that point on mechanical ventilation, life support, your life expectancy is very bad regardless of what medicine I give you.”

“We do have access to plasma, Remdesivir, Actemra, all the medicines that are being used to treat this disease, however, especially later in the diseases, it’s not working,” Williams said. “It’s hard to take care of patients dying when I have no treatment to offer them except supportive care.”

Above from Montgomery, Alabama.

 

[renim]

For what its worth,
My kids are back at school as are most in this state. I know a teacher who i consider at risk, but honestly, they are more likely to catch it from another teacher than a kid.

The biggest risk is that one kid catches the train, but its opposite to commuter flow, so has greater physical spacing.

 

[TespaceX]

Kids under 17 have a very very difficult time contracting this coronavirus. When they do it's generally quite mild, chance of death approaches zero, and they don't seem to transmit it very easily either.

As the governor of Arkansas put it, Im certain those high school kids at the pool party last week also thought they were invincible because, as you say, it is “very very difficult” for teenagers to contract the virus. And these infected teenagers’ families must be relieved because they don’t “transmit it very easily either.”

I wish AR would release the case counts from that party but they’re keeping it hidden from the public.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

As the governor of Arkansas put it, Im certain those high school kids at the pool party last week also thought they were invincible because, as you say, it is “very very difficult” for teenagers to contract the virus. And these infected teenagers’ families must be relieved because they don’t “transmit it very easily either.”

I wish AR would release the case counts from that party but they’re keeping it hidden from the public.

Yeah, don't have high school pool(sucking face) parties.

Let me know when we get any actual case information. In the mean time, millions of documented cases have provided ample statistics to draw conclusions on infection and mortality for school aged kids.

 

[TespaceX]

Test, track, trace, isolate. Same story since February.

BTW, I absolutely agree on this one.

Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen and read over the past couple months, it’s just not going to happen effectively in the US. I’ll put money on this not happening.

As I’ve said before, it needs to be mandatory for it to work (like in Korea). Not only is it inefficient to manually contact all exposed for every case, it’s going to be very difficult to get participation from many.

Problem for Americans is that an effective program requires so called “invasion of privacy and freedom.” This country can’t even get people from both parties to wear a mask in the first place. You have those nutty “My Body, My Choice” people and the misinformed “This is against the Constitution”.

Then you have the ACLU putting this on their website: “We will remain vigilant moving forward to make sure any contact tracing app remains voluntary and decentralized.”

 

[renim]

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe...m-coronavirus-quarantine-20200523-p54vp7.html

'Australia's former ambassador to the UK, Mike Rann, noted Britain's border system will be implemented about 85 days after Australia and New Zealand banned the entry of non-citizens'

Border controls should be the first action taken and the last action rescinded. Without border controls, everything else is just spitting into wind. Global peak covid19 wave 1 has not yet occurred, so better late than never.

 

[SVMike]

There is a key difference, and where your analogy fails:
With traffic deaths there are possibly other ways to mitigate and reduce the risk (reduce speed limits, improve car safety, etc. etc.).

First, I didn't say it was a perfect analogy...I just said that even trying to have such a discussion results in immediate polarization.

We "could" reduce speed limits...but most likely can't happen. If you recall we did it in the 1970s to save gas.

The main point I was making is that the total costs we have incurred is very large. I don't even know how to calculate it and I'm sure some economists will come up with a range of numbers eventually. The first bill was almost $3T and Congress is talking about another $3T. Maybe you add in the hit to GDP or maybe that is double counting. How do you account for all the businesses that will never reopen? Or all the families that end up having to move, etc. I don't know but the number is going to be large.

And how do you estimate the number of lives saved? Again, this is a large number, but you can't just use some model that was based on no mitigation.

Right now, we have no vaccine, until recently we had no treatments that would reduce the death rate for sick patients (and the one we have is only marginal). Social distancing is literally the only weapon we have.

Agreed. But social distancing doesn't mean an infinite distance. Businesses with low risk should have been able to develop plans to re-open sooner, IMO. An illustrative example would be gardeners. A neighbor observed our local Sheriff stopping a gardener and sending him home (unclear if he was cited) around week 3 or 4. One guy mowing lawns! Note that I do not use a service so it makes no difference to me...I was allowed to mow my own lawn.
No science to this...just blanket rules. There is no reason to go through 50 different professions but the well paying jobs tended to be able to work from home more than many lower paying jobs

 

[Tiger]

man, I've been reading too much on particle physics; that curve sure looks like the probability wave of an electron.

Maybe the conundrum of COVID can be solved by means of quantum physics only

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Kids under 17 have a very very difficult time contracting this coronavirus. When they do it's generally quite mild, chance of death approaches zero, and they don't seem to transmit it very easily either.

Source? I agree that the mortality rate is quite low amongst children, but I've had a very hard time getting definitive information on the ease of contracting (don't confuse confirmed cases with infections!) in children, and the ease of transmission (if it's transmitted to other children it would be hard to detect because the children would be hard to confirm!).

In NYC, they make up about 20% of the population, and about 2.5% of the confirmed cases, from what I can tell. But that doesn't say how many children have actually had it (they haven't been included in serology studies so far in NYC?).

But anyway, would be good to have an actual source for your claim. Just please do not confuse cases with infections. It is important!

The main point I was making is that the total costs we have incurred is very large.

Yeah, it has been huge. That’s why we should eliminate the virus, which is much cheaper. Drawing the analogy with car safety, we have spent a lot of money to make cars safer. In the case of COVID-19, the solution payoff (cost/benefit) is way better than the auto safety improvements - so we should do it! I think at most it is $100 billion or so to eliminate the virus from the US with test/trace/treat/isolate/quarantine/support. The best part is: the money we put into those efforts actually is additive to GDP! It’s part of the economy!

We should definitely do that! There’s no other reason why we closed the economy except to allow that precision tool to be developed. Time to get things going again, and eliminate the virus like the cool kids.

 

[RobStark]

No-lockdown Sweden balks at the possibility it could be excluded as Nordics reopen borders

 

[RobStark]

CEO of Iceland genetics company says children with COVID-19 less likely to spread virus to adults

“Children under 10 are less likely to get infected than adults and if they get infected, they are less likely to get seriously ill,” Stefansson said in an interview with Highfield later posted to the Science Museum Group's website. “What is interesting is that even if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents.”

 

[SageBrush]

Option 3: Bring it to a level where mitigation can be incrementally and effectively replaced by test & trace.

You have not thought through TTQ. Try a daily reading of the kcdc to learn what is involved and ask yourself if the USA has a chance in hell of duplicating it.

For one recent example of a cluster Korea style, ONE superspreader went to nightclubs in May and has so far lead to ~ 225 test positives despite the best TTQ in the world.

 

[SageBrush]

CEO of Iceland genetics company says children with COVID-19 less likely to spread virus to adults

“Children under 10 are less likely to get infected than adults and if they get infected, they are less likely to get seriously ill,” Stefansson said in an interview with Highfield later posted to the Science Museum Group's website. “What is interesting is that even if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents.”

Children infect children, but children do not infect adults ?

It ain't gonna be that simple

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Children infect children, but children do not infect adults ?

It ain't gonna be that simple

The deniers are rampant here.

 

[golfcart]

Couldn't a place like Hawaii just test everyone coming in?

I guess they could, but that would not be 100% due to false negatives or people that have been exposed already but don't yet test positive (what if they caught it on the flight?). They typically get in the ballpark of 10,000,000 visitors per year. That is a hell of a lot of test and trace going on. We had planned to go and stay with family this winter but I wouldn't go as things currently stand. I don't want to risk catching it on the airplane and I definitely don't want to fly all the way out there just to be cooped up in the house for the entire trip.

All of these COVID-19 policies are a bit of a balancing act between risk and reward but the stakes seem higher for Hawaii because they have essentially squashed the virus on the islands but at the same time are ridiculously dependent on tourism (mostly from the mainland U.S. and Japan) for their economy and imported items (food and other supplies) for their survival. Maybe this will be a catalyst for them to diversify the economy a bit and push to be more self-sustaining. I guess time will tell.

 

[golfcart]

Children infect children, but children do not infect adults ?

It ain't gonna be that simple

Where did it say that children infect children but not adults?

All that implies, to me, is that children are less likely to get it (from any source) and if they do get it they are less likely to spread it.

 

[dfwatt]

They have lost sense of context. The CDC doc speaks of multiple "planning scenarios", one of which the authors in their humbleness called "most likely". Not a proper study where you can look at the numbers (AFAIK). The CDC produces stuff of varying quality, it also counted about 60,000 deaths when everyone else was counting about 90,000.

If the IFR were 0.26%, as interpreted in the article, given about 100,000 deaths now, there would have to be more than 38 million infected, which is about 11.6% of the US population. No way. This is almost the infection level of New York State, which probably everyone considers exceptionally high, and which has 5 times the deaths per capita as the US average.

Personally, I consider this debunked.

We might consider it debunk'd and on this thread I would say people who have a healthy respect for covid-19 as a serious illness outnumber significantly the covid-19 deniers, on the sister thread next door (Tesla and investors Round Table) it's closer to 50/50. Which is really surprising.

 

[bkp_duke]

Agreed. But social distancing doesn't mean an infinite distance. Businesses with low risk should have been able to develop plans to re-open sooner, IMO. An illustrative example would be gardeners. A neighbor observed our local Sheriff stopping a gardener and sending him home (unclear if he was cited) around week 3 or 4. One guy mowing lawns! Note that I do not use a service so it makes no difference to me...I was allowed to mow my own lawn.
No science to this...just blanket rules. There is no reason to go through 50 different professions but the well paying jobs tended to be able to work from home more than many lower paying jobs

I concur, I have never advocated "infinite distancing". But I disagree with you that there is not science behind this. If you are a fan of history (which many of us need to be better at because as a society we keep repeating past mistakes), there is very good, rock solid data to support social distancing. This data is old, and comes from the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918, but the age of that data makes it no less valid.

This is also not the first time social distancing has been used since 1918, but if you go by the mainstream media you would think we are flying blind here.

These are good summary articles that cover these topics.
Social Distancing Sign
https://www.nationalacademies.org/n...istancing-and-what-it-means-for-everyday-life


I also agree that different businesses should have different sets of rules and that the implementation of social distancing, at least in the USA, should have been much better thought out. There could have been a better balance of precautions without the same level of economic impact.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

CEO of Iceland genetics company says children with COVID-19 less likely to spread virus to adults

“Children under 10 are less likely to get infected than adults and if they get infected, they are less likely to get seriously ill,” Stefansson said in an interview with Highfield later posted to the Science Museum Group's website. “What is interesting is that even if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents.”

This is an interesting datapoint. And I would not be surprised if children who do not show symptoms do not transmit as easily. And of course we know that they do not get as seriously ill, in general (though of course it is still risky and no one should want their child to contract the disease). However I do think we still need more data. My concerns with the Iceland dataset are:

1) Very small sample size
2) Many infections introduced by travel, not via community spread. So dynamics of school transmission (or lack thereof) not explored.
3) Somewhat unique population.

I think a study in New York State would be more interesting at this point. Seems like a high priority.

In any case, with any competence in the US, the transmission dynamics in children won’t really matter (will be academic only), since we will have eliminated the virus in the US by August. Otherwise we will be excluded from the world as far as travel and such is concerned. Not to mention further catastrophic economic consequences.

 

[golfcart]

We opened our beaches for Memorial Day weekend and the summer tourist season. I don't have any issue with how they did it.

Phase One :: VBgov.com - City of Virginia Beach

Enforcement will be done through the DOH not the police department. The governor caught a little flack for not being masked while out there but I thought it was overblown. If anyone really thinks people are going to wear masks, outdoors, on the beach, in the sun, on days when the heat index is over 90, I think they are being unrealistic..