Coronavirus - International stories and thoughts

Inside an Italian ICU

 

Maynard says "learn to swim".

 

I'm not sure if anyone else mentioned this, but the NBA just suspended its season after a Utah Jazz player came down with the virus.

https://www.usnews.com/news/nationa...11/nba-suspends-season-amid-coronavirus-fears

Also, a lot of schools, from kindergarten through college, are closing.

https://www.usnews.com/news/educati...virus-takes-toll-on-k-12-and-higher-education

 

Taiwan has so far been very successful in containing the virus, with less than 50 cases and only one death. That is impressive, considering that almost a million Taiwanese work in China and many of them return to Taiwan for Chinese New Year (also, Taiwan is a big tourist destination for mainland Chinese people).

They learned from the 2003 SARS epidemic, during which seven cases showed up at one hospital at the same time. Administrators decided to disperse the patients to different hospitals to prevent the illness from spreading throughout the one hospital. Unfortunately, it spread seven times faster in seven hospitals. Within a month, they had 364 cases and 34 deaths. The new Taiwanese V.P. is a epidemiologist with a doctorate from Johns Hopkins.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-co...-learned-from-taiwans-response-to-coronavirus

 

If only Taiwan’s Vice President was as qualified as Pence to handle an epidemic/pandemic response.

 

These numbers don’t make sense.

11,000 cases. How many require hospitalization? 2k? How many are serious? 700? So a thousand patients country wide overrun the medical system? That’s nuts.

 

10,590 are currently sick with 1,045 of the 12,462 having recovered..827 are dead. I am guessing if 827 are dead there must be like 2-5 times as many hospitalized? That's 2,000-4,000. Still seems like a smallish number to leave people to die in the hallway.

 

What is overrunning the system is the long term ICU care needed for each patient.

Say one hospital has 20 cases, all serious in need of a ventilator for more than a week. But you only have 5 machines total. At the same time 1-2 more cases arriving at regular intervals in need of ICU care. Who gets care? Who dies?
Multiply that out across the country.
It compounds on itself.
Add in the non dire cases that need hospital care but not machines to breath.

Your staff gets overwhelmed.

 

Add in limited staff for care.
Look at the video I posted a few posts up. 4-5 staff working on 1 patient in a room that had more than 5 patients in it.

 

I understand the rate of increase in the U.S. has yet to reach the exponential rate shown here (but seems about to get there) and the rate in China(~80,000 total infected) has slowed a bit due to strong governmental action and quarantining. However, this chart suggests a lot more people will be infected before Corona infection will subside.

see more
Coronavirus Update (Live): 128,122 Cases and 4,717 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Outbreak - Worldometer

 

Keep in mind the Italians and Chinese smoke like chimneys. Guarantee that makes a big difference in the severe respiratory issues they are having.

 

Is this stuff like the flu and starting in April wont spread as much as it would in the cooler months or does the flu only spread a bunch more in the winter months due to people being gathered indoors more? Anyone know the answer to this - just curious myself?

 

Also keep in mind that the USA is full of obese people which is just as bad for you as smoking. Diabetes, heart disease, etc will make this virus much worse for those people.

 

Experts do not believe this is the case. It's all over the world right now even in very hot climates.

 

Seasonality of SARS-CoV-2: Will COVID-19 go away on its own in warmer weather?

 

Luckily age seems to be the biggest factor combined with things like that. If it was nailing middle age people that smoke or that have diabetes as bad no telling what the death toll would be.

Just curious is it makes it harder on the virus to spread. We obviously know people don't get the flu in the same ballpark at all in the summertime though there are still cases of it. Just wondering if this would be the same in theory?

 

Yet the UK is still open to travel.

UK coronavirus cases rise 29% to 590 in a day, total of 10 dead

LONDON (Reuters) - British cases of coronavirus rose 29% to 590 over the past 24 hours and the death toll rose to 10, health authorities said.

 

China is letting officials claim the U.S. Army might have caused all this. I think they may already know it actually got loose from their testing labs in Wuhan.

 

Pornhub gives free premium access to Italy and donates other proceeds. (SFW)