Topic: Corona Virus Panic/Discussion Thread

Do we even have a worldwide standard to record deaths? Here in Italy the numbers are made by those who died WITH Covid-19 plus those who died BECAUSE of Covid-19, but other countries count them differently...
BTW my small town got its second field hospital few days ago. Quite impressing having a popolation of just 40.000...

@LieutenantFatman If someone with flu is suffering from breathing difficulties and needs ventilator support they will be provided with it in hospital in exactly the same way as someone with coronavirus who is suffering from breathing difficulties. I’m pretty sure our hospitals are suffering worse right now and they were during the peak of last winters flu.

@Heavyarms55
Trust me, I understand your point very well. I think you may have read too much into a short sentence. I have no intention of downplaying a pandemic of this magnitude. I was suggesting a theoretical first wave might have been a weaker strain of the virus and thus gone unnoticed, not that I've seen any evidence of that, it was just conversation on the possibilities. All evidence suggests otherwise, my apologies if my comments upset you.

@Ryall
"I’m pretty sure our hospitals are suffering worse right now and they were during the peak of last winters flu."

I wouldn't dispute that for a second, I'm not sure who would. I think maybe the point I was trying to convey has been lost so it's best I leave it there.

The thing is, we have no reason to assume that this is ''the second wave''. Everything we know so far goes against it. And it behaves exactly like how you would expect a pandemic to behave if it started in Wuhan.

@LieutenantFatman If it was a ''weaker'' strain that occured before, people would be immune to that, and not the current SARS-CoV-2 strain. People aren't ''immune'' to this virus as far as I know. Some may not develop symptoms, but that's different from being immune. They are still contagious, meaning the virus is doing it's job, and it's not being eradicated any sooner by the immune system.

@Octane
Yes, I agree that's the most logical conclusion in the circumstances. There was a suggestion that there are two strains in circulation but they're still investigating that. All sorts of possibilities going forward, I can see a few newspapers panicking people with worst case scenarios.

I’m not an expert, but I do know that they say COVID-19 is a new strain of an old virus. Pretty sure Coronoviruses have been around for ages, and passed off as colds when we get them. We never test for them because they are common and usually not deadly. At what point this mutated or evolved into COVID-19 no one knows, I suspect. Chances are it wasn’t more than a year ago because we would have noticed a blip or surge in deaths somewhere. That blip was finally noticed in Wuhan last November. However, as @andreoni79 suggests, cause of death is sometimes nebulous. I’m not sure when someone dies from “Flu” that it’s always accurately diagnosed. It would usually be - a person with a lot of chronic problems gets flu and then everything shuts down and collapses and they die from any number of combinations of problems centered around that illness. So with COVID-19, everyone is now keenly aware of it and so I assume all critical patients are tested for it, so when they are on life support and complete shut down, we know know it’s COVID-19, and not just “pneumonia” as it could have been labeled as a year ago.
Still, I agree that a first wave of this exact virus surely would have made the medical community take notice and say “Why so much flu and pneumonia all of a sudden?” I haven’t researched it, but I’m assuming that’s what Wuhan doctors asked themselves 5 months ago and finally discovered this new strain. But could there have been deaths from “pneumonia” or “flu” before that which were actually COVID-19? Probably. In fact, even now, it is probably being mislabeled in some people. So the experts who track this stuff are probably going bonkers about how to truly produce accurate numbers.

@Th3solution COVID-19 is the disease (COrona VIrus Disease 2019). The strain is SARS-CoV-2, and a similar strain has been around before; the 2003 SARS outbreak. The term coronavirus is very broad and can refer to other related viruses as well. They can all cause severe respiratory diseases, so I think people would've noticed them. And (I hope) that when you get severe pneumonia, doctors will test you, and find the culprit, because pneumonia is always caused by an infection.

The flu, or influenza A, is completely different by the way. They're not even closely related. So this isn't even some kind of killer flu, or whatever people have been suggesting. The flu didn't mutate into SARS-CoV-2.

@Octane
Easy enough to make the assumption when the two are compared so frequently.
Speaking of assuming, I see a lot of young people assuming that if they catch this their symptoms will be mild or nothing at all despite news to the contrary.

@Octane Thanks for the clarification. So SARS 2003 was a Coronavirus too? I didn’t realize that.

And I do realize “the flu” is a unique virus “Influenza” and is completely unrelated to Coronavirus. I guess I wasn’t clear and didn’t mean to imply influenza morphed into this Coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. I guess the point was that issue exactly — that we often say “I have the flu” or “He’s down with the flu” in a general way when in fact, it’s unlikely to truly be an “Influenza A” infection. In fact it could be a Coronavirus or other virus or something else but we throw around the term “Flu” incorrectly, if I’m understanding things correctly. Having “the flu” wouldn’t really mean you have a confirmed case of “Influenza A” if people are never tested for it and stay home from work several days, take Advil and get better after a while and move on.

I do believe there are various and sundry types of pneumonia too. Including fungal types. Whether checking for SARS-CoV-2 was even part of the usual work up when people had pneumonia before November 2019, I’m not sure. If I understand correctly, it could not have been tested for because we didn’t know it existed in that form yet.

And at the risk of coming across as Sally Sunshine, I’d like to offer some true thanks and appreciation to all those on the “front lines” so to speak, like @LaJettatura who are out there facing this thing everyday. The healthcare workers who put themselves and their families at risk while we all debate whether we should go to the store or go out for a walk. Meanwhile they go out everyday into known exposure settings and do so willingly because they feel the duty to do so. Even in the face of knowing that when healthcare providers get COVID, the research is suggesting they get it worse than the average person. Props to our health care providers and other essential service workers.

Heck, I’m maybe even more impressed with our grocery store workers! Those people not only go into the lions den of COVID-19 every day, but they deal with crazy people hoarding supplies and being general idiots. And all without protective equipment! At least healthcare workers are geared up for exposure. Those poor people working the grocery are out there on their own!

Anyways, just to put a positive spin, thanks to anyone out there who’s working to keep the rest of us safe, fed, and happy. There is still much good in the world, and many people who do the right things and sacrifice in times of need.

@LieutenantFatman Scientists are currently tracking 8 strains of the virus. With that said, the virus apparently mutates slowly, so all of the mutations are fundamentally pretty similar. They're not expecting it to change significantly in this first wave. So speculating about what it might turn into is pointless at this stage.

With that said:
A) This disease is far more infectious than the flu.
B) Nobody is vaccinated for this.
C) The disease's known mortality rate is far higher than the flu.
D) This disease overloads hospitals in every country it pops up in within a matter of weeks or months, which will lead to a lot of deaths which likely could have been avoided.

Add all of this together, and you're looking at a death total far north of what you'd get in a bad flu season.

@Th3solution As Ryall said, we absolutely would have noticed this disease sooner had it popped up in another country first. Everywhere it goes causes significant disruption to normal social activity, and we've been seeing overburdened medical systems worldwide.

Considering the amount of international travel throughout the world and the long incubation period, though, I'm sure it was probably here and in other countries weeks before we really noticed.

@LaJettatura Following Th3solution's lead, I'd also like to thank you for your service. This is a dangerous time for the world, but people like you who willingly put yourselves at risk to help keep the basic functions of a society running are helping to make it livable for those of us can only cower in our homes out of fear of contracting and spreading the virus further.

Just... take care of yourself. We're not doing nearly enough to protect healthcare workers in this country.

@Th3solution I posted an independent report by 4 of the best specialists a couple of weeks ago. The new coronavirus - Covid 19 came about due to zoonotic exchange from bat's via pangolins. Covid 19 shares 96% of its makeup with a known bat coronavirus.

Wet markets need to go. We have let too many animals into the food chain, keeping 50-100 varieties of live animals in cages at room temperature both dead and alive should be a crime.

The school I work at has remained open but with the limited number of students we only had one teacher per year group actually going in.

So if you hadn't already sussed it out by me being online on the PS4 in the middle of the day I've been at home (Mostly... I've gone shopping a few times) and not going into work.

I've been assisting my partner for planning her classes in the evening and been helping my fellow year two teacher with planning for his classes too (Not to mention a weekly staff meeting)

However... my co-worker and fellow year two teacher started to develop flu like symptoms today. Naturally he was sent home as a precaution and now has gone into self isolation.

So as of Monday I'll be back at work teaching about fifteen students.

@Th3solution Yeah, the virus responsible for the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak is called SARS-CoV, or now also SARS-CoV-1. Except I believe it was less contagious, so it never managed to spread as much as the current one does.

Yeah, various things cause pneumonia, but if you want to treat it you need to know its origin, and whether to administer antibiotics, anti-fungal, and a vaccine in the case of a virus (if it's available). At least, when it gets as bad as COVID-19; and if someone dies from it (and it's an unknown cause), I'm certain they'll send tissue samples to the lab.

@themcnoisy You wish those wet markets in central/south China were at room temp

@Th3solution Unfortunately here in Italy we already had 73 deaths among the healthcare workers...

Seems to be a lot of conflicting information out there as to whether there's any real benefit to wearing a mask when out and about. What are everyone's thoughts regarding that? I've read there are potentially more disadvantages than advantages if you're not a professional health care worker following a strict protocol when using them.

@LieutenantFatman I think any evidence for wearing them out and about is weak at best. They’re needed in hospital because staff need to get within 2m of the patient. Respect that distance when you go out and do the rest of the normal precautions and hopefully you’ll be fine.

The stereotypical image of Japanese people wearing them is because they don’t want to spread their own germs, not that they want to prevent themselves catching them.

It is crazy that the demand is so high for the gear while production is so low. Most place are having to clean and re-use goggles rather than use them once as recommended. Government guidance has finally been for healthcare workers to wear pretty much full gear every time now rather than just some of the time which was a crazy recommendation.

@LieutenantFatman
The benefit of masks is that they can prevent you from being infected by airborne droplets.

The disadvantage of masks is that they can cause you to touch your face unnecessarily potentially transferring infections from your hand to your face.

If you have the self-discipline to put the mask on with clean hands and then not touch your face until you’ve washed your hands again then they are of benefit. If you don’t they aren’t.

@LieutenantFatman The italian equivalent of NHS says that masks must be used only by those having symptoms of respiratory disease or by those working in public with people at risk. Even FFP3 masks are basically useless since the filters won't stop the virus: what any kind of masks can do is to stop saliva and mucus which convey the virus, but nothing more.
I see a lot of people wearing surgical, FFP1 and FFP2 masks, but I'm sure nobody uses masks only once, transforming them in some kind of filthy sponges...