Coronavirus (No Politics)

I'm in California, and while there is a "shelter in place" order, my business has been deemed "essential" so I'm off to work as usual.

I'm kinda torn on this. I'm happy that for me (unlike most) my life goes on pretty much as usual. My finances and health coverage, at least for now, remain the same. If anything, the traffic situation has really improved.

But I'd much rather be at home. I do have health concerns, and while I'm currently not a germophobe at all, this whole thing has me trending that direction - another phobia is something I certainly dont need!

I'm kinda surprised Ohio is at the forefront of what states should be doing. The South is going to get decimated by this virus. Florida and Texas are about to get swamped just like Louisiana. There are some Governors out there that are morons and will have blood on their hands.

You're assuming they care.

Edit:
On a more-positive note, I'm happy to report the stores appear to be reaching an equilibrium. Not so much where I live yet, but I'm on the road for work again, and the state I traveled to appears to be normalizing, of a sort. In the absence of political leadership, Walmart shall lead the way. There were actually some household paper products on the shelves, and limits were placed on popular items, which everyone was calmly observing awash the soothing recorded messages about washing your hands.

What's the situation in south America? Anyone is from there?

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
A knowledge not put to use: the virus discriminates according to age.

No it doesn't. The virus infects everybody equally. Everybody is infected when getting in touch with the virus and they can infect others, regardless of age. The impact of the infection is different though, but I haven't read that there is any data of the virus not infecting anyone based on the age. Children in general just don't get sick, but they can get the virus (unless they are very young then they do get sick more often). But even some teenagers end up in the hospital.

Although the general constitution of a person appears to be relevant there are still cases that do not explain why the virus has the effect on certain individuals that it does.

I think Germany can be a good indicator for what to expect. Still some weeks away before statistics become clear.
https://www.worldometers.info/corona…untry/germany/

Well, depends on what you want to compare. Italy seems to be ahead of Germany. And the death rates in Germany are uniquely low for some reason, maybe because of more testing than in other areas. I think France and Spain are equally good, depending on what you want to look at.

If you want to look ahead in time, you'd like to look at asia, Taiwan, Korea and ofc China. All countries, have their own biases in some regard. So far none of them have an extremely bad health care system afaik. I am not familiar with Italy, but apparently the north, where the virus started, was rather good regarding that (compared to south). So really depends what you want to compare with what.

*bing* *boop* *bing*

Welcome, valued customers. We at Walmart would like to remind you the United States is not nearly done with its outbreak yet. Please refer all questions regarding this matter to your elected Congressman.

*bing* *boop* *bing*

Was that too political?

The math behind corona:

Originally Posted by TomRon
Perhaps, but what happens when the lockdown ends? The virus doesn't disappear even if we lock down the entire society? Once people start to move around again it will reappear. Should the country get back in quarantine every time a new case is found?

While getting the infection rate down with lockdowns, you also get your ability to test cranked way up. Once you get it up to a high enough level, you can cut everyone loose (or at least more loose than now). Anyone that manifests symptoms gets tested. If they have COVID 19, they go under quarantine. Also, everyone they've had contact with over the past 2 weeks gets tested immediately (which is probably going to be a few hundred folks) and, if any come up positive, you quarantine those as well and look for the people they've been in contact with.

Under that model, infections will still keep happening but you should be able to keep the rate down to something sane because you'll catch all those people in the early stages before they have a chance to infect many people. You'll still want to avoid the places with a seriously highly spread rate (subways, huge gatherings) and you should probably do a test before going into an assisted living area or prison, but the economy should be in far better shape.

If you get your testing up high enough, you might even be able to start testing everyone every week or two.

Here in the USA, we're nowhere close to that level.

The trouble is, most of our countries have too many infections now, and in order for that strategy to work, you'd need a hard lockdown - a Chinese style house arrest for most of the population, shutting down all ports, etc. That could allow for what you're describing - a sort of reboot for the country, which then reopens, and implements a highly-resourced test and trace program as new cases emerge.

The problem is, most countries are only implementing soft lockdowns, which are highly unlikely to achieve that. Their main aim at this stage is just to flatten the curve, and get hospitals as prepared as possible. In order to keep that curve suppressed, that's likely to have to be an ongoing or recurring policy, potentially for months.

I'm a bit more optimistic, at least for some countries, that it can work without a hard lockdown. Some countries are increasing the number of tests performed consistently. With enough testing, you can focus on specific groups of people rather than full isolation of everyone.

Originally Posted by Cacheperl
I'm a bit more optimistic, at least for some countries, that it can work without a hard lockdown. Some countries are increasing the number of tests performed consistently. With enough testing, you can focus on specific groups of people rather than full isolation of everyone.

Hrm, I don't think that can work in our modern work anymore.
You always have people coming in from other countries to transport wares.
And as you can have and spread the virus without having any symptoms at all, it would be extremely unlikely that you can keep it under control for a long time.
Ofc in a country where each village is hundreds of miles apart and has no contact to other people but the occasional mailman, it might work. Greenland or Alaska might not need a whole lockdown probably.

Perhaps for some countries. But I think many are past the point of no return. Soft lockdowns slow the rate of infection, but the absolute number is likely to continue to rise. With too many cases, it's likely to be infeasible to get back to a point where test-trace-quarantine will control the situation.

Not sure if this true but some people have been saying that 70% or more corona deaths are men. Is this true and if yes any reasons given as to why?

Originally Posted by lostforever
Not sure if this true but some people have been saying that 70% or more corona deaths are men. Is this true and if yes any reasons given as to why?

That does appear to be true. It doesn't seem to be well understood why this should be the case. In China, it was suspected that the much greater percentage of male smokers was a factor, but it seems to be following a similar pattern in other places.

Originally Posted by Winterfart
What's the situation in south America? Anyone is from there?

Im from Venezuela, here the situations its very calm where i am and most of the people are obeying the authorities. But we have officially 103 infected until yesterday.

What we fear is that here in venezuela we dont have a good health system, and most of the medicine are very expensive and its hard to find it.

We are taken preventions and more but here the goverment always hide us the truth and we know that we have corona virus since before the official announcement. And we know that people here are already dead because of the covid-19.

but they will never recognized.

The percentage of male smokers is higher nearly everywhere.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Hrm, I don't think that can work in our modern work anymore.
You always have people coming in from other countries to transport wares.
And as you can have and spread the virus without having any symptoms at all, it would be extremely unlikely that you can keep it under control for a long time.
Ofc in a country where each village is hundreds of miles apart and has no contact to other people but the occasional mailman, it might work. Greenland or Alaska might not need a whole lockdown probably.

Of course you can't eradicate the virus with soft lockdown and diligent testing, at least not until either a large percentage caught it and is immune, or otherwise receives vaccination.

Even a hard lock down would not achieve that, unless it's so strict that it will inevitably either lead to wide spread revolt or everyone starving to death in their homes.