|
|
Post by 00hmh on May 10, 2020 21:02:40 GMT -6
Sweden got through the initial part of the curve without crashing their hospital system and without sending their economy into a depression. The key fact to remember in "flattening the curve" is the area under the curve remains the same. Do you want a slow drip, drip, drip of deaths or get over with it as quickly as possible? The total number of people dying remains the same. You are wrong about the area under the curve IF we develop a vaccine. The math says a herd immunity strategy with Covid takes about 70% of the population infected. IF we allow the curve to go very high that occurs in the first year and we have very high death toll. (area under curve)
If we flatten the curve in the first year, we suffer many fewer deaths that year, and then a vaccine INSTEAD of infection and resulting deaths reaches the herd immunity threshold. (area under curve first year ONLY is the relevant area if we can get the vaccine)
So we buy time and suffer fewer total deaths. We don't need a lockdown for the whole year, but we do need to calculate how long to go for the first wave and use that time to develop treatment and plan for a second wave, likely fall. Again, we may need to have social distancing after wave #1 and be ready to lockdown much earlier in wave #2 than we did dithering around the first time. A shorter lockdown results and we are through that first year with ONLY a hundred thousand dead if we are lucky.
The Swedish model produces 250-275 million people in the USA infected in the first year with one very large wave. That would likely mean over a million dead Americans.
So far so good in Sweden in terms of hospitals, but they start out with some different demographics, including more hospital beds per capita and a country that is pretty good at social distancing. They have closed schools and have much of the population unlike ours in term of urban concentration.
Sweden's death toll — over 2,900 on Thursday — is higher than countries with more restrictive measures. Per capita, its rate is almost six times higher than in Norway and more than three times higher than in Denmark. Plus this is relatively early days in the Swedish strategy since they have not flattened the curve but have had impact on its slope up. A lot of death to come. See the article above.
|
|
|
|
Post by 00hmh on May 10, 2020 21:29:56 GMT -6
Economic issues discussed.
Compares Sweden and USA on several counts.
No free lunch in Sweden.
|
|
|
|
Post by bsutrack on May 10, 2020 21:37:08 GMT -6
I wouldn't be holding your breath waiting for a vaccine. In all of human history there never has been a vaccine developed to work against a Coronavirus. nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/will-there-be-a-coronavirus-vaccine-maybe-not.htmlwww.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus-vaccine-ian-frazer/12146616Can we learn to live with it as we do with influenza? Probably. It spreads a lot easier than influenza; something on the order of 10X. It's more deadly than influenza, but not nearly as deadly as it's being portrayed. Once you take out all the deaths due to pneumonia, heart disease, diabetes etc. that are being added to inflate the numerator and then adjust the denominator to 17 to 35 million (actual 5 to 10% of the US population who have been infected) and you get something like a 0.2 to 0.3% death rate as compared to 0.1% for influenza. |
|
|
|
Post by chirpchirpcards on May 10, 2020 23:08:57 GMT -6
I wouldn't be holding your breath waiting for a vaccine. In all of human history there never has been a vaccine developed to work against a Coronavirus. nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/will-there-be-a-coronavirus-vaccine-maybe-not.htmlwww.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus-vaccine-ian-frazer/12146616Can we learn to live with it as we do with influenza? Probably. It spreads a lot easier than influenza; something on the order of 10X. It's more deadly than influenza, but not nearly as deadly as it's being portrayed. Once you take out all the deaths due to pneumonia, heart disease, diabetes etc. that are being added to inflate the numerator and then adjust the denominator to 17 to 35 million (actual 5 to 10% of the US population who have been infected) and you get something like a 0.2 to 0.3% death rate as compared to 0.1% for influenza. While true, this is also misleading. In all of human history we have also not had the same amount of technology available to us that we do today. In all of human history we have not had the entire world coming together and working toward a vaccine for a Coronavirus. The reason a vaccine wasn't developed for MERS or SARS was because the outbreak petered out relatively quickly, unlike this one. Does that mean a vaccine will be developed? I have no idea, there's a possibility that you're right a vaccine will never be created, but to say that just because one hasn't been that one will never be made is disingenuous. |
|
|
|
Post by 00hmh on May 11, 2020 7:00:48 GMT -6
These articles correctly say it is hard to build a vaccine. Which is why we need time leaving us as the only alternative to mitigate and use social distance to slow the spread for a year or so.
|
|
|
|
Post by 00hmh on May 11, 2020 7:56:02 GMT -6
Can we learn to live with it as we do with influenza? Probably. The only way to "learn to live with it" is to accept a lot of death up front. It spreads a lot easier than influenza; something on the order of 10X. It's more deadly than influenza, but not nearly as deadly as it's being portrayed. Once you take out all the deaths due to pneumonia, heart disease, diabetes etc. that are being added to inflate the numerator and then adjust the denominator to 17 to 35 million (actual 5 to 10% of the US population who have been infected) and you get something like a 0.2 to 0.3% death rate as compared to 0.1% for influenza. 10X more transmissions and more deadly is true.
Your argument that it is not as deadly as portrayed is a semantic one which the medical profession and public health officials don't buy.
You want to say the complicating factors which may contribute mean the virus just doesn't count and isn't the cause of death.
The virus injures blood vessels and causes clotting which combined leads to heart attacks and other fatal organ damage unless the the person is very healthy. That counts. You want to say that if there is existing vessel damage and that is a factor it is the previous existing heart trouble alone. Virus doesn't count.
The virus directly injures the heart and other organs which don't function as well as the completely healthy individual. That plus other preexisting issues make organ damage too severe to handle. That counts as death due to virus. Suppose as often is the case the virus causes lung damage and while the body is fighting to heal that damage it requires a ventilator. If resulting intubation causes injury and an infection it may well mean the body cannot recover from the two adverse factors. That counts. It was not the intubation alone that caused the death...
If someone with those complications would not have ordinarily died this year, and they contract the virus and the virus has more serious consequences for them than it might with a perfectly healthy individual it is fair to say the virus caused their death. Young healthy people don't have heart attacks very often, that doesn't mean you ignore heart attacks in older people when counting heart attack as a leading killer.
Surviving the virus is possible, more so for the young and healthy. This does not mean it is not a deadly disease. Even the young and healthy suffer permanent damage to lungs and other organs. I guess when they eventually die from the flu later when that damage is a complication you will then count the covid virus as a cause of death?
|
|
|
|
Post by Lurkin McGurkin on May 11, 2020 8:25:32 GMT -6
I think we all can agree that having underlying issues puts you in a high risk group for a myriad of illnesses.
My question is, how does COVID compare with the flu when the flu is a contributing factor to death, instead of the primary cause?
In other words, how many people with heart disease, emphysema, etc., die when they get the flu (or other seasonal illnesses)... compared to people with those conditions when they contract COVID?
That might give a better perspective on the true danger of COVID.
Regardless, it's something we're going to have to learn to live (or die) with from now on.
|
|
|
|
Post by 00hmh on May 11, 2020 14:07:00 GMT -6
Flu causes death in a very similar way with sudden death related to lungs. Less often other organ damage like this virus. But it just isn't as deadly by any measure. Not just lower rate, but since flu effects many more children with no pre-existing condition at all in the deaths that count into the rate it has even fewer of deaths where there are adults with conditions. Also much lower rate considering vaccine availability and some limited immunity from past strains. We got lucky with the Spanish Flu which may be as deadly but fortunately evolved after a very deadly flu season. The flu virus is more complex apparently has different DNA structure which allows multiple sites where genetic drift can occur.
No real comparison in terms of mortality of current generation of the flu with current Covid is what we know.
|
|
|
|
Post by rmcalhoun on May 11, 2020 15:36:12 GMT -6
My grandmother always told me. "When its your time your going to go" We are all going to die
|
|
|
|
Post by lmills72 on May 11, 2020 16:11:18 GMT -6
Rob, I don't think we're all going to die when it's your time to go.
I think just you are going.
I be sticking around for a while.
|
|
|
|
Post by bsutrack on May 11, 2020 17:11:14 GMT -6
The math says a herd immunity strategy with Covid takes about 70% of the population infected. IF we allow the curve to go very high that occurs in the first year and we have very high death toll. (area under curve)
Here's is an article giving an explanation of why herd immunity was achieved earlier in Sweden: wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/11/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought/If you don't want to read the entire thing, a key passage from the article's conclusions: "Incorporating, in a reasonable manner, inhomogeneity in susceptibility and infectivity in a standard SEIR epidemiological model, rather than assuming a homogeneous population, causes a very major reduction in the herd immunity threshold, and also in the ultimate infection level if the epidemic thereafter follows an unconstrained path. Therefore, the number of fatalities involved in achieving herd immunity is much lower than it would otherwise be. In my view (the author's), the true herd immunity threshold (HIT) probably lies somewhere between the 7% and 24% implied by the cases illustrated in Figures 4 and 5. If it were around 17%, which evidence from Stockholm County suggests the resulting fatalities from infections prior to the HIT being reached should be a very low proportion of the population. The Stockholm infection fatality rate appears to be approximately 0.4%" Of course the author could be full of shit. Having a Phd. doesn't necessarily imply intelligence. Guess we will just need to watch what happens in Sweden over the next year. |
|
|
|
Post by 00hmh on May 11, 2020 17:13:07 GMT -6
My grandmother always told me. "When its your time your going to go" We are all going to die Does that mean we should not bother to be careful? Or does it mean we have to be very careful despite uncertainty so we can last until our preordained time? |
|
|
|
Post by rmcalhoun on May 11, 2020 19:53:09 GMT -6
I dont know what it means other than we are all going to die
|
|
|
|
Post by williamtsherman on May 11, 2020 21:33:38 GMT -6
I keep looking for pictures of this Swedish model, but can never find any. I'll bet she's f------ hot.
|
|
|
|
Post by lmills72 on May 12, 2020 17:25:53 GMT -6
I keep looking for pictures of this Swedish model, but can never find any. I'll bet she's f------ hot. She's soooo hot, she gives me fever. Fever in the morning Fever all through the night |
|
