Nalod wrote:

Marv wrote:

smackeddog wrote:

Marv wrote:

martin wrote:Marv, how goes for the both of you? What’s your health like?

About the same for her. Low to mid-range fever. She basically feels sickly, but blood oxygen good, no cough, no trouble breathing. If it stays at this level she'll be ok. I’m still symptom-free.

Fingers crossed- hope it continues to be mild and you both develop immunity, should hopefully make the next few months a bit less scary if you do

thanks man. that’s the hoped-for scenario. i think i developed it too yesterday. suddenly became tired, listless, feverish, achy, just wanted to sit on couch (not hungover btw 😉), stomach ache. I’m a 10,000-step a day guy and took 500 yesterday. just giving detail for baseline reporting. I couldn’t get tested when my gf did because of not having symptoms yet. would love for us to go through mild versions of it. reading some conflicting reports on how sure you can be you’re immune after that though and won’t be transmitting it.

I thank you for sharing what you going thru. I did get an oximeter thingy in the event it darkens me or family in the area.
I Hope its mild and your over it with good results. Weird how fast the tone of all this turns so dire. Just days away we were repulsed by Spike Lees injustice and now we stand in the face of death for some and social upheaval. If we can blame Mills for 20 years of knick failure, we can certainly blame Asians, African Americans, Mexican decent, and eventually the Jewish conspiracy for our problems.
None of this is Trumps fault but he will be judged as have all leaders when faced with a crisis. Some leaders are better than others when it comes to the job at hand.
We don’t know each other well but the few hours we spend some 10 years ago left with with the impression your a healthy intelligent person who I’m confident will prevail thru your affliction. Best wishes for a healthy outcome! Scary times.

thanks brother. that was so long ago that we met up that i remember us psychoanalyzing bonn over drinks

ramtour420 wrote:If anyone is interested I'd like to share how Russia is handling it. First of the official numbers , 367 confirmed cases, zero deaths. Now the actual situation. In a video from the Doctors Assosiation of Russia: doctors are told to record all cases of symptoms as pneumonia, they are denied personal protection and are told to make masks from gause and wash them at home. Those not willing to comply are told that they are free to quit their jobs. Public gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited , schools are to be attended on voluntary basis. The rest of it is business as usual. Everyone is working as usual, very few are working from home.
Our family is self quarantined at home, I am the only one who goes outside. Staying calm, trying to anyway. Good luck everyone and stay safe

In Russia, as always was, the Mother-State is all that matters and the people are just a bricks in the wall.
So survival is a personal matter not the business of the State. People understand this and mind their own business.
Good luck and continue with what you doing.

smackeddog wrote:

Germany's low coronavirus mortality rate intrigues experts

Germany’s relatively low mortality rate continues to intrigue experts as Covid-19 spreads across Europe, with some questioning the methodology behind its data gathering while others argue the country’s high testing rates allow a more accurate approximation of the threat posed by the novel coronavirus.

While the pandemic has hit Germany with full force, with Johns Hopkins University noting 22,364 confirmed infections by Sunday morning, only 84 people are so far reported to have died.

This means Germany currently has the lowest mortality rate of the 10 countries most severely hit by the pandemic: 0.3% compared with 9% in Italy and 4.6% in the UK.

The contrast with Italy is especially surprising because the two countries have the highest percentage of citizens aged 65 or over in Europe. If anything, the Bloomberg Global Health Index would suggest Italians have a healthier lifestyle than Germans.

German politicians and senior health officials have been reluctant to comment on the low mortality rate while the situation is developing so rapidly. Lothar Wieler, the president of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the government’s central public health body, has said he does not expect there to be a significant difference in mortality rates between Italy and Germany in the long run.

“It’s too early to say whether Germany is better medically prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic than other countries,” said Marylyn Addo, who heads the infectiology department at Hamburg’s University Medical Centre.

One likely explanation for the discrepancy in figures, Addo suggested, was that while northern Italy’s hospitals are being overrun with new patients, Germany’s are not yet at full capacity and have had more time to clear beds, stock up on equipment and redistribute personnel.

“One advantage Germany has is that we started doing professional contact tracing when the first cases were reported,” Addo said. “It bought us some time to prepare our clinics for the coming storm.”

Crucially, Germany started testing people even with milder symptoms relatively early on, meaning the total number of confirmed cases may give a more accurate picture of the virus’s spread than in other states.

According to Germany’s National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, the country has capacity for about 12,000 Covid-19 tests per day, while Wieler has claimed it has capacity for 160,000 tests per week.

The age profile of those affected in the first few weeks has also been younger than in other countries, many of them fit and healthy people returning from skiing resorts in Austria or Italy, which would also help explain the low mortality rate.

“I assume that many young Italians are or were infected without ever being detected,” Christian Drosten, a virologist at Berlin’s Charité hospital, told the newspaper Die Zeit. “This also explains the virus’s supposedly higher mortality rate

there.”

Drosten, who has been advising the German health ministry, has also warned that Germany’s mortality rate is likely to rise in the coming weeks as high-risk areas become harder to identify and testing capacity becomes stretched.

“It will appear that the virus has become more dangerous, but this will be a statistical artefact, a distortion. It will simply reflect what’s already starting to happen: we’re missing more and more infections.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/22/germany-low-coronavirus-mortality-rate-puzzles-experts

The statistical sample size is still too small to make any conclusions.
But for now it looks like the mortality rate and severity of coronavirus is significantly less in northern countries.
This can have something to do with stronger immune effect for the virus for people exposed to negative temperatures.
When millions will be infected this will be more clear if there is something to it.

Juliano wrote:So far, the only democracy to have tackled the epidemic with success is South Korea, due to not having underestimated it from the beginning, aggressively tracked down positive cases and tested their relatives and people who had been in contact with them. Their leaders had learnt the lessons of 2003.

Yes. Reading the steps they have taken is awe inspiring.

Juliano wrote:

martin wrote:
Yes. Reading the steps they have taken is awe inspiring.

It is, really. I have a feeling that when all is done and dusted, this will be regarded as the moment when the leadership switched from the US towards Asia, much as WWI being the moment that began the end of Europe's domination and the beginning of US hegemony. There are many signs going this way, the number of patents being licensed (US still leading but if you add up Korea, Japan and China Asia is far ahead), the manga culture taking over, K-Pop, Psy, an oscar for a Korean movie, Bangkok n°1 touristic destination, etc.

Agreed

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/godfrey91844844/status/1241772957715910660

martin wrote:

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1241899228022145028

Thing is they shouldn't have to be heroes had this been anticipated and considered serious the way Korea did. Out of the western countries, only Germany seems to be equiped to deal with it, they have 6 ICU bed per 1000, Japan has almost 8 and Korea 7. France has something like 3, about the same as Italy or Spain. It is even less for the US and the UK from what I've read, and Italy has a 2 weeks head start on most. This is why the death percentages increase with each passing day (and explodes in Italy's case, they're almost at 10%) : once hospitals reach full capacity and even are overrun, doctors have to chose who has the better chance of living and give up on the oldest/weakest to free up beds, it is absolutely terrible. Hospitals in north eastern France - where Frank grew up, and one of the biggest epidemic clusters over here - are getting to this point, they've just been setting up an army hospital with tents on the car park of Mulhouse's to add 30 ICU beds. Problem is also that when medical staff catch the virus, they have to be quarantined themseleves and the workforce to treat people decreases. We've just had our first emergency doctor to die from Covid-19, a retired man who came back to help his colleagues.

The hope is that treatments will be found that will allow people to recover fast enough not to be cured, but just to get better enough so that they don't need a ventilator anymore and the medical team can use it for somebody else. There's been a bit of a controversy here in France with a hospital director in Marseille claiming that a mix of hydrochloroxine with an antibiotic against pneumonia cured 90% of his patients, but the sample is too small (24 patients, non randomized) and his character (he seems a bit megalomaniac, he chose to announce his results through youtube instead of sharing with his fellow doctors through the Health Govt Agency) had made all this to be taken with a pinch of salt. Still, some hospitals in France have said they will try his protocol, let's hope it bear results as it could allow countries that have a head start not to be swamped by this thing. Fingers crossed.

Juliano wrote:

martin wrote:

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1241899228022145028

Thing is they shouldn't have to be heroes had this been anticipated and considered serious the way Korea did. Out of the western countries, only Germany seems to be equiped to deal with it, they have 6 ICU bed per 1000, Japan has almost 8 and Korea 7. France has something like 3, about the same as Italy or Spain. It is even less for the US and the UK from what I've read, and Italy has a 2 weeks head start on most. This is why the death percentages increase with each passing day (and explodes in Italy's case, they're almost at 10%) : once hospitals reach full capacity and even are overrun, doctors have to chose who has the better chance of living and give up on the oldest/weakest to free up beds, it is absolutely terrible. Hospitals in north eastern France - where Frank grew up, and one of the biggest epidemic clusters over here - are getting to this point, they've just been setting up an army hospital with tents on the car park of Mulhouse's to add 30 ICU beds. Problem is also that when medical staff catch the virus, they have to be quarantined themseleves and the workforce to treat people decreases. We've just had our first emergency doctor to die from Covid-19, a retired man who came back to help his colleagues.

The hope is that treatments will be found that will allow people to recover fast enough not to be cured, but just to get better enough so that they don't need a ventilator anymore and the medical team can use it for somebody else. There's been a bit of a controversy here in France with a hospital director in Marseille claiming that a mix of hydrochloroxine with an antibiotic against pneumonia cured 90% of his patients, but the sample is too small (24 patients, non randomized) and his character (he seems a bit megalomaniac, he chose to announce his results through youtube instead of sharing with his fellow doctors through the Health Govt Agency) had made all this to be taken with a pinch of salt. Still, some hospitals in France have said they will try his protocol, let's hope it bear results as it could allow countries that have a head start not to be swamped by this thing. Fingers crossed.

This is such a perfect storm of disaster- years of state roll back and organizational capacity, health care cuts, most countries are in the worst position to tackle this. Exactly the same foolishness as climate change: scientists warn of potential disaster, and we all decide "nah, think we'll all just not bother doing anything". No contingency planning, nothing.

Losing sense of smell associated with coronavirus infection

More now on the association between a loss of sense of smell and coronavirus infection.

Ear, nose and throat surgeons say losing your sense of smell could be used as a key clinical indicator in otherwise symptom-free carriers of Covid-19.

“It is these silent carriers who may remain undetected by current screening procedures, which may explain why the disease has progressed so rapidly in so many countries around the world,” professor at Australia’s Flinders University and ENT specialist Simon Carney told AAP.

“While further research is required, loss of smell, or anosmia, has been reported in as many as one in three patients in South Korea and in Germany, this figure was as high as one in two.”

An ENT professor in London also reported a dramatic increase in patients with anosmia as their only symptom of Covid-19 infection.

He said doctors and COVID-19 detection centres could use the subtle sign as part of their testing criteria and patients should also consider calling their GP if they notice this symptom.

Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert, who recently tested positive for Covid-19, says his experience backs this up:

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/rudygobert27/status/1241811796891066368

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/23/coronavirus-live-updates-uk-us-italy-germany-europe-outbreak-cases-meetings-bans-update-latest-news?page=with:block-5e7847f38f08e0999e6b8510#liveblog-navigation

smackeddog wrote:This is such a perfect storm of disaster- years of state roll back and organizational capacity, health care cuts, most countries are in the worst position to tackle this. Exactly the same foolishness as climate change: scientists warn of potential disaster, and we all decide "nah, think we'll all just not bother doing anything". No contingency planning, nothing.

Exactly. Our health system works about fine in normal time but decreasing fundings left it very vulnerable and not able to cope with critical situtations, but hey who cares, those are unlikely to happen. Except they aren't, there are almost 8 billion human beings on earth, making us the best and more efficient vector for a virus to spread. Plus we've been destroying bio diversity, harvesting the same varieties of crops, using chemicals to make them more resilient or even antibiotics for cattle and salmon farms. This in turn makes people less respondant to antibiotics treatments, devil's circle. Let's hope this will help the guys in charge that a change is needed, but I'm not holding my breath.