Coronavirus is at my job

[Clistenes]

Holy ****! If the virus can reach Angela ****ing Merkel, who is safe anymore? How can I feel safe buying groceries?

[Aedilred]

Spoiler: I was expecting...

Show

Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; The Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Oh and Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's got big tits.

(src from wikiquote, so ought to be ok)

rather than an well crafted description

I did consider it. And bearing in mind that Yes, Prime Minister is over 30 years old, the above is still remarkably apt - albeit the Morning Star hasn't been seen in a while.

[Elkad]

Prediction.

When this is done, we'll look back at the death rate for the first half of 2020 and see that deaths due to "old age" and/or "communicable disease" are below average.

It looking to be less-deadly than the flu (just more contagious), and by actually washing our hands, we are preventing the spread of both.

All the other measures are just kabuki theater.

[Iruka]

Prediction.

When this is done, we'll look back at the death rate for the first half of 2020 and see that deaths due to "old age" and/or "communicable disease" are below average.

It looking to be less-deadly than the flu (just more contagious), and by actually washing our hands, we are preventing the spread of both.

All the other measures are just kabuki theater.

Tell that to Italy.

[factotum]

It looking to be less-deadly than the flu (just more contagious), and by actually washing our hands, we are preventing the spread of both.

Sorry, where are you getting this information from? The overall fatality rate for people infected with Covid-19 is around 3-4%. This is around 30 times higher than regular flu. The only reason we haven't had as many deaths from Covid-19 as yet is simply because the infection isn't yet as widespread, but without the drastic measures currently being taken that would soon not be the case.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Prediction.

When this is done, we'll look back at the death rate for the first half of 2020 and see that deaths due to "old age" and/or "communicable disease" are below average.

It looking to be less-deadly than the flu (just more contagious), and by actually washing our hands, we are preventing the spread of both.

All the other measures are just kabuki theater.

Prediction.

The above post will age really badly.

Grey Wolf

[Chen]

If there were infinite hospital resources the virus may have a lower fatality rate than the flu. But the fact theres no vaccine and it transmits easily means if it is left unchecked you end up with a much higher fatality rate because you don’t have the resources to handle all who need it and thus you get “preventable” deaths adding to your total.

[tyckspoon]

Sorry, where are you getting this information from? The overall fatality rate for people infected with Covid-19 is around 3-4%. This is around 30 times higher than regular flu. The only reason we haven't had as many deaths from Covid-19 as yet is simply because the infection isn't yet as widespread, but without the drastic measures currently being taken that would soon not be the case.

Depends on how many unidentified cases you think there are, doesn't it? I don't think anybody can honestly say that the known cases/deaths are an accurate reflection of the viruses' real spread; it could certainly turn out to be less lethal for the average case than the flu, while still having a vastly higher death count by dint of infecting an order of magnitude or two more people.

[Sermil]

Prediction.

The above post will age really badly.

Grey Wolf

Totally agree, but it is an interesting -- if morbid -- intellectual exercise to consider how the pandemic will affect all the other sources of death.

I actually wrote up a pretty long post here, listing different sources and speculating about whether they would be up or down... and then decided the whole thing was too depressing and deleted it.

[Chen]

Totally agree, but it is an interesting -- if morbid -- intellectual exercise to consider how the pandemic will affect all the other sources of death.

I actually wrote up a pretty long post here, listing different sources and speculating about whether they would be up or down... and then decided the whole thing was too depressing and deleted it.

The one to really wonder about is the yearly flu deaths. Is this going to out compete it? Or are all the social distancing going to reduce flu deaths this year?

[Sermil]

The one to really wonder about is the yearly flu deaths. Is this going to out compete it? Or are all the social distancing going to reduce flu deaths this year?

Yes, the various rules will decrease the number of people getting the flu a bit. But a greater % of people with the flu will probably die because hospitals are overloaded and health care workers are exhausted, stressed, and will make mistakes. (They're human. Tired, stressed, overworked humans make mistakes.)

In any case, the delta in flu deaths is going to be completely swamped by the delta in deaths from other side effects, both good and bad. (Good = lower traffic deaths, bad = overwhelmed medical systems that can't treat all the other illnesses. Plus all the effects of a recession, which are generally bad.) My guess is that even ignoring the direct deaths from COVID-19, the pandemic will cause a net higher # of deaths. But as I said, writing it all out just depressed me so I'm going to stop there.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The one to really wonder about is the yearly flu deaths. Is this going to out compete it? Or are all the social distancing going to reduce flu deaths this year?

I'm not going to try to predict that - it is so not my area of expertise, and like Sermil says, it's both morbid and depressing - but there is one thing that we have to consider: many, many diseases are opportunistic, and the flu is at the top of the list. By which I mean, they are diseases that only have a decent chance to kill when the immune system of the individual is already lowered by a different disease.

You may have heard that different countries have different standards of when to consider a death one caused by covid-19. SOme are trying to make this into some grand conspiracy where this or that region is "hiding" covid-19 deaths by marking them as deaths by other causes. The reality is that it is not that simple. Someone that has covid-19 is not magically immune to everything else - quite the opposite: our immune systems are an army, and any army that is fighting a battle and gets ambushed by a second force is going to fare badly.

We can count deaths, but assigning blame for them? That is very tricky. Different protocols will assign cause of death for the same scenario differently, and I don't think one can be said to be more accurate than another.

That reminds me that I was once told by a medical student friend of mine that every cause of death is, ultimately, cardiovascular - i.e. what kills you is that your heart stops working. Because of that, in their particular country, death certificates had two separate causes of death - cardiovascular crisis, and whatever caused the cardiovascular crisis. With covid-19, it'll be something similar. I can imagine that a lot of cases, if tested, might show that the person had both covid and the flu and probably a half-dozen other things. Which one killed them in the end? Heck, probably all of them, ganging up on them. But the death certificate only has one spot, so one needs to be blamed. This year? Covid will probably be the one taking the headlines, I suspect. But which one "really" killed? All of them.

Grey Wolf

[veti]

Depends on how many unidentified cases you think there are, doesn't it? I don't think anybody can honestly say that the known cases/deaths are an accurate reflection of the viruses' real spread; it could certainly turn out to be less lethal for the average case than the flu, while still having a vastly higher death count by dint of infecting an order of magnitude or two more people.

If there were as many undiagnosed, presumably asymptomatic, cases as that hypothesis suggests, we would have noticed it by now simply from spot testing.

We had a case a couple of weeks ago where a school was shut down for 48 hours and every pupil tested. If the virus had been rife in the population then, it beggars belief that you could test several hundred kids and their teachers, and not find a single positive result.

[Chen]

If there were as many undiagnosed, presumably asymptomatic, cases as that hypothesis suggests, we would have noticed it by now simply from spot testing.

We had a case a couple of weeks ago where a school was shut down for 48 hours and every pupil tested. If the virus had been rife in the population then, it beggars belief that you could test several hundred kids and their teachers, and not find a single positive result.

How much spot testing is actually happening though? My understanding is that either lack of tests or testing capacity at the labs is limiting that. I know here in Quebec there are still relatively high criteria needed before you can be tested.

[Lemmy]

I'm here just to plea with you guys...

Please, support your local shops, small business and community.

Amazon, McDonald's, Wall-Mart and other giant corporations will survive the quarantine. Freelance workers and small businesses might not.

They really can't afford to stay so long without work. Many of them have no choice to keep going to work every day, whether or not they are in an at-risk group.

My sister told her cleaning lady not to come to work this week but still paid her. Which is nice and all, but not everyone is able to do it... My uncle is a small business owner, and he simply can't afford to pay his employees if he doesn't open shop. If this quarantine goes for much longer, he might not have any business at all by the end of it.

So, if possible... Buy stuff from local shops and businesses, rather than from industry giants.

[Chen]

Canadian government had promised a 75% wage subsidy for small and medium businesses. The workers at larger businesses are the ones who will likely be getting screwed here (the large businesses themselves will be fine for the most part I imagine).

[Frontispiece]

Thanks for being in the frontlines. Though we really can't do anything other than to stay home to at least decrease the rate of infections. I hope you have enough ppe to use.

[Ibrinar]

About the undiagnosed numbers and deadliness compared to flu, I think the Shincheonji of South Korea might be a decent indicator. 5066 cases in SK (more than half of all known SK cases), part of a 230000 member cult that is under close scrunity in SK. (Note link is data from the 24th because I couldn't be bothered to look for the equivalent for yesterday.) They don't say directly how many of the death were among the Shincheonji, but 4383 Shincheonji cases in Daegu alone making it the majority of cases in Daegu, and Daegu CFR matches the rest of the country so it probably isn't that the Shinchonji just have more of their cases known. Anyway with about 1.4% CFR (though SKs CFR has grown a bit more the last days) to get it down to flu deadliness (<0.1% I think?) would require there to be 14*5000=70000 in the cult of 230000, that would be a rather massive testing failure on SK's part. (Also the church isn't just in daegu so 4300 cases there change the numbers further. But I can't find data on how many of the cult are in Daegu.)

SK's data is a huge part of why I doubt the more extreme unknown case numbers/low IFR suggestions. We don't know the true rate yet but I doubt it will be flu level. (Honestly the best numbers will probably in a year or so when we compare this year to other years.)

[Ibrinar]

Though the iceland data on the other hand is reason to optimism for a low ICR, but it is still so early that I wouldn't calculate much from it and wait a week at least.

[Bonecrusher Doc]

My job campus is going to have one building full of people with COVID who are not so sick to be hospitalized, but are homeless and therefore have nowhere to self-quarantine. I also heard that employees will be able to stay in that building if they don't want to make their families sick at home.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Prediction.

When this is done, we'll look back at the death rate for the first half of 2020 and see that deaths due to "old age" and/or "communicable disease" are below average.

It looking to be less-deadly than the flu (just more contagious), and by actually washing our hands, we are preventing the spread of both.

All the other measures are just kabuki theater.

Prediction.

The above post will age really badly.

Follow up: here is a bunch of graphics by country (and NYC) comparing expected deaths, deaths associated to COVID and all others

https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...sgraphicdetail

Suffice to say, it is patently obvious that the death rate for the first quarter of 2020 due to "old age" and/or "communicable disease" are not "below average".

And since that neatly dispenses with the suggestion that COVID deaths are hiding deaths by other causes, here is a graph showing that COVID is not "less-deadly than the flu".

https://www.businessinsider.com/char...week-in-2018-1

Grey Wolf

[Klorox]

Just an update: our hospital in NJ was completely converted to a coronavirus hospital.

I work in a department that was totally not made for this. A department that has 10 patient bays, not rooms, no doors between people, no walls, only curtains.

There was no where else for these people to go. Basically, walking into my department was like walking into a patients room, all day.

We have N95 masks, sure, but the people sent from other departments to help had the full hazmat suits with internal air supplies.

We’re coding about an average of patient a day, and none came back.

I think it’s only a matter of time until much of my staff starts getting sick.

I haven’t seen my daughter for 6 weeks now.

The second wave will come, especially with these nuts wanting to go out and getting stir crazy.

[Sermil]

Just an update: our hospital in NJ was completely converted to a coronavirus hospital.

I work in a department that was totally not made for this. A department that has 10 patient bays, not rooms, no doors between people, no walls, only curtains.

There was no where else for these people to go. Basically, walking into my department was like walking into a patients room, all day.

We have N95 masks, sure, but the people sent from other departments to help had the full hazmat suits with internal air supplies.

We’re coding about an average of patient a day, and none came back.

I think it’s only a matter of time until much of my staff starts getting sick.

I haven’t seen my daughter for 6 weeks now.

Not much to say except... Wow, that sounds bad. Sympathy.

The second wave will come, especially with these nuts wanting to go out and getting stir crazy.

Ya.

[Ibrinar]

Follow up: here is a bunch of graphics by country (and NYC) comparing expected deaths, deaths associated to COVID and all others

https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...sgraphicdetail

Suffice to say, it is patently obvious that the death rate for the first quarter of 2020 due to "old age" and/or "communicable disease" are not "below average".

And since that neatly dispenses with the suggestion that COVID deaths are hiding deaths by other causes, here is a graph showing that COVID is not "less-deadly than the flu".

https://www.businessinsider.com/char...week-in-2018-1

Grey Wolf

https://www.businessinsider.com/coro...20-4?r=DE&IR=T has a few extra excess death graph and helpfully annotates the excess sum and percent increase.

[Eldan]

I've noticed something new and highly annoying: when wearing a mask, I can't see my legs. Now I stumble all the time. Like, today, on my first day of enforced mask wearing, I stumbled going up the stairs twice and bashed my shins into three things so far.

[Tarmor]

Make sure that the mask completely covers your nose and mouth. It shouldn't cover your eyes!

[Chen]

I've noticed something new and highly annoying: when wearing a mask, I can't see my legs. Now I stumble all the time. Like, today, on my first day of enforced mask wearing, I stumbled going up the stairs twice and bashed my shins into three things so far.

How is the mask blocking your vision?

[Eldan]

The masks they gave us are pretty massive. Like, a centimeter or two in front of my nose and mouth, they block a lot more angle downwards than I thought.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I've noticed something new and highly annoying: when wearing a mask, I can't see my legs.

When I wear a mask, my breath is channeled upwards around my nose, completely fogging my glasses with every breath. Which means I can breathe, or I can see, but not both at the same time.

Fun times.

Grey Wolf

[Sermil]

When I wear a mask, my breath is channeled upwards around my nose, completely fogging my glasses with every breath. Which means I can breathe, or I can see, but not both at the same time.

Fun times.

Grey Wolf

Ya, I have the exact same problem. It got so bad on one walk that I just took off my glasses, and I have like 20/200 vision.

What I've read is that if your glasses are fogging "You're doing it wrong" -- the breath is supposed to be going through the mask, not around the mask, otherwise much of the point of the mask (filtering particles from your breath) is lost. I've never been able to reach that ideal, though.