Coronavirus - International stories and thoughts

I don’t post here for my edification. I try to learn about important topics and pass along what I learn and also learn from others. We have doctors and scientists here who get good information and explain things. For example, the concept of viral load. Apparently, disease spread and seriousness can be caused by the amount of the virus that someone invests somehow. I did not realize that. So I have been trying to learn about that. I have never out anyone on ignore.

 

Spain’s coronavirus death toll rises by 838 overnight to 6,528

 

New cases are certainly leveling in Italy. I know we'd all like to see them decline more, but at least the exponential growth seen up to 3/21 stopped.



Deaths are predictably lagging, but have similarly ceased exponential growth:



Italy went into lockdown on 3/9. We're still social distancing. Kind of.

 

Italy: coronavirus deaths by age group 2020 | Statista

 

Wuhan COVID-19 Deaths May Be in Tens of Thousands, Data on Cremations Show

 

No lockdown here: Sweden defends its more relaxed coronavirus strategy

Yet, despite the relaxed rules, Sweden is doing better than their neighboring nations who have done that. It's weird to read the article and picture that being an article from the US not from Sweden.

 

Turns out I'm one of the fortunate few that now won't be.

I'm turning my hand to raising a little cheer and a little money for charity in the meantime on my justgiving page by having my head shaved entirely by my family! : )

 

Veel patiënten op IC met overgewicht, 'maar ga nu niet te streng diëten'

you'll need to translate the article. Basically 80% of ICU patients in the Netherlands are overweight

 

France has topped 3000 deaths.

That only counts hospital deaths, they expect the number to double when they count nursing home deaths

 

sweden has 36 deaths today, if that were the US that would be around 1200 deaths a day, and they haven’t begun to decline yet, today was their second highest day. I don’t think they are winning with their strategy.

 

they were down to 4000 or so today, so it’s dropping, only hope it’s because it’s really dropping and not because they are just beleaguered and have stopped testing. Watch the deaths for the real answer, still over 800 today. Will know in a few days.

 

Not really. At 14 deaths per million they're way higher than Norway (6/mil) and Finland (2/mil), countries with comparable population density and climate. We know it spreads easier in denser population, and it probably liks 45-50 degree relatively dry weather the best. Sweden is just about entering that phase of weather, and as someone mentioned above, their daily deaths per capita is actually pretty high already and rapidly growing right now.

 

So dumb.

 

I don't know, it actually seems reasonable in a way. It's kind of like the originally ill conceived British "herd immunity" plan, except less murderous. So long as the people of "low risk" fully isolate until they are no longer infectious and stay away from people of high risk, in theory, it's not a terrible idea to build up immunity in that way.

Though the flaw of the plan is "low risk" doesn't mean "no risk"... what happens if one of the "low risk" people dies? Esp one of their top drivers. You could say the same for any of the sports. For the most part they are all very low risk, but odds are if you intentionally seek out infections (or just "let the games go on" regardless of infection) and you are talking 1000 people, you might end up with 1 or 2 fatalities even among elite athletes.

 

Only way it would make sense, to me, is if everyone is guaranteed to get the virus before a vaccine is developed. Can you or the Red Bull chief say that is going to happen (unintentionally)?

 

China zeroes in on coronavirus patients with no symptoms as new infections rise

 

We are talking about the same thing. It's dumb to just assume that since all of your drivers are young and healthy that it will be mild for them and everything will be fine. More and more reports are coming out that young people are being hospitalized and ending up with reduced lung capacity. That said if these drivers are fine with risking it then yeah, infect them and keep them completely quarantined until they test negative twice.

 

Why? So they can have a race with no fans?

Too risky imo.

This is the information people read and decide to do the same. Especially if they do it and no one gets sick enough to die.

Hey everyone, Red Bull did it. So can we.