COVID-19 | Effects on Skoolies - No Politics please.

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Native said:
The numbers will be the numbers. I am not sure anyone knows how to interpret them.
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The media reports "the number today is bigger than the number yesterday" with no analysis. What number is too big? How fast is it growing? If it continues to grow at this rate, how long until we have too many cases? Is 500 cases a day a lot? 5,000 cases a day? 50,000 cases a day? Folks have been screaming that the sky is falling for 6 months and it hasn't fallen yet.

I can do "beer math" and come up with a ballpark estimate, but I can't find experts going on record anywhere. I'm pretty sure the sky is going to fall in Florida and Arizona in late July through mid August, but I'm just some guy who likes to read the news.

The government wants to control the narrative, so only certain people are allowed to speak and only on the approved script. The folks that know won't say publicly...
 
Native said:
The numbers will be the numbers. I am not sure anyone knows how to interpret them.
Click to expand...

Math is not my things so please correct me if I am wrong.

Pandemic math 101- Exponential growth

Viruses double every so often as of now in the US Covid19 is 2.4 million cases(recorded) It has doubled in 50 days. If it grows at this same speed.

50 days 1.2 million
100- 2.4
150- 4.8
200- 9.6
250- 19.2
300- 38.4
350-days 76.8- about 25% of the population will be infected with the virus
400 153.6 50% of the population
450-days 307 million- Basically everyone will have the virus

Lots of factors make these numbers unrealistically low. Unrecorded cases, poor management, no Fed$ to keep people staying home, the likely hood it will gain speed, etc.

Basically we are all getting this in the next year.

Biscuitsjam said:
The government wants to control the narrative, so only certain people are allowed to speak and only on the approved script. The folks that know won't say publicly...
Click to expand...

I feel like their is a climate where medical professionals feel like their careers will get destroyed if they speak out. Ones that are speaking are getting paid so they talk what they get paid to talk.
 
Biscuitsjam said:
The media reports "the number today is bigger than the number yesterday" with no analysis. What number is too big? How fast is it growing? If it continues to grow at this rate, how long until we have too many cases? Is 500 cases a day a lot? 5,000 cases a day? 50,000 cases a day? Folks have been screaming that the sky is falling for 6 months and it hasn't fallen yet.

I can do "beer math" and come up with a ballpark estimate, but I can't find experts going on record anywhere. I'm pretty sure the sky is going to fall in Florida and Arizona in late July through mid August, but I'm just some guy who likes to read the news.

The government wants to control the narrative, so only certain people are allowed to speak and only on the approved script. The folks that know won't say publicly...
Click to expand...

I'd say the unhappy metric of how many cases are filling your ICU's is a very valuable one.

There won't be any deniability if an area gets into a situation like northern Italy had -- too many patients and not enough beds...
Yes, the US has resources to respond to that type of crisis, but you can't do it without the public noticing...

And in FL's case with the current spike in #'s the demographic has shifted to a younger population -- it will be interesting to see (I don't mean to sound callous) how the mortality and ICU occupancy rate goes in two weeks...
 
Thank you, Charlie! We have decided to hunker down once again ... like it is 03-17-2020 once again. :)
 
Aw, c'mon guys. This really isn't that difficult. All the bickering about who's telling who what to do is such a big, unhelpful distraction.

Wear a mask indoors and on public transit. The mask is for others, not for you. If you're concerned or compromised, use an N95 mask for yourself. Wear it outdoors if you like, but its a lot less critical, especially when you:

Stay away from each other. 1.5m minimum. Don't run behind others, even outside. Try not to touch your eyes and mouth. Wash your hands often.

That's about it. Easy. Get the curve flattened out, and most everyone can go about their business. Doing any less is seriously counterproductive.

If they can do it in Senegal and Indonesia, surely Americans could put all this macho red/blue get-off-my-lawn nonsense aside and just get with the program.

Or maybe not. Its hard to watch, TBH...
 
TomA said:
Aw, c'mon guys. This really isn't that difficult. All the bickering about who's telling who what to do is such a big, unhelpful distraction.

Wear a mask indoors and on public transit. The mask is for others, not for you. If you're concerned or compromised, use an N95 mask for yourself. Wear it outdoors if you like, but its a lot less critical, especially when you:

Stay away from each other. 1.5m minimum. Don't run behind others, even outside. Try not to touch your eyes and mouth. Wash your hands often.

That's about it. Easy. Get the curve flattened out, and most everyone can go about their business. Doing any less is seriously counterproductive.

If they can do it in Senegal and Indonesia, surely Americans could put all this macho red/blue get-off-my-lawn nonsense aside and just get with the program.

Or maybe not. Its hard to watch, TBH...
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:thumb::Thanx:
 
Economic shutdown 2.0 is coming in August. Not everywhere, and some places will fight it until they can't deny reality any longer, but it's coming. Some 2nd order effects:
1. We'll probably get another round of stimulus checks
2. We'll add a massive amount of new government debt
3. Lots of economic damage to both individuals and businesses
4. Sports will be disrupted. Professional sports are possible with restrictions, but high school and college sports aren't happening.
5. School will be distance learning again in big cities and many other communities will modify it somehow (alternating days?)
6. The Republican National Convention in Florida isn't going to go so well.
7. This will all happen just prior to the election with impact on the results, but ALSO means that politicians are more likely to infight to help their own individual election prospects.
8. Panic buying will come again.

What is so disappointing is that Shutdown 1.0 was so badly mishandled as to be worthless in most states. And, Shutdown 2.0 could have been avoided if people were responsible neighbors. We're doing this to ourselves.
 
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banman said:
I'd say the unhappy metric of how many cases are filling your ICU's is a very valuable one.

There won't be any deniability if an area gets into a situation like northern Italy had -- too many patients and not enough beds...
Yes, the US has resources to respond to that type of crisis, but you can't do it without the public noticing...

And in FL's case with the current spike in #'s the demographic has shifted to a younger population -- it will be interesting to see (I don't mean to sound callous) how the mortality and ICU occupancy rate goes in two weeks...
Click to expand...

IMO the ICU capacity is the only number that matters. Once they start trending up the reins need pulled back. I don't know what the magic % occupancy number is, but in order to avoid an "italy" crisis, that's the number that needs to be monitored.

I feel with texas at 90% capacity, that point has come and gone, they're now likely in freefall mode and the bodies will sadly start to stack.

IMO the number of new cases per day is unimportant when a large number of people have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic. I don't think it really matters if the healthy population of the planet gets this. They'll be fine and that is actually a part of the herd immunity plan that's being passed around.

Granted, the # of new cases per day will probably have a direct correlation to the # of new critical patients in ICU beds. So maybe find the % between the two and vary your lockdown level to keep that in check.

Prevention is long gone. The only possibility we had for that came and went back in January. That's when the first cases were happening and nobody had a clue as to what was going on.

I feel that our current goal should be to vary the level of lockdown based off of regional ICU capacity. At 75%+ icu capacity it should be essential employee travel only. 50% would be a level 1, 25% level 2, and 10% level 3. If I was a governor, that's what my plan would be. We don't need a national mandate for this when every part of the nation is in a different situation.
 
Pretty sure FL is heading for freefall. They're changing the way icu capacity is reported here. That's a real bad sign. They basically ONLY want ppl on ventilators to be counted as "icu", not the actual number of beds occupied.
 
Booyah45828 said:
IMO the ICU capacity is the only number that matters. Once they start trending up the reins need pulled back. I don't know what the magic % occupancy number is, but in order to avoid an "italy" crisis, that's the number that needs to be monitored.
Click to expand...

In the US we have about 100,000 ICU beds, they are usually kept at around 90% capacity in normal times. It varies by region and by the hospital CEOs who mange them.
In April when the virus was doubling every 5-days many states went into scramble mode cut elective surgeries and scaled up. Many did a great job of it also. The virus slowed due to the lock down and much of the scale up was not needed and criticized.

Now we are in a different game the numbers are bigger, we realistically might see many ICU scale ups tested to the limits in the next few months.

We have infrastructure to deal with this. DOD has channels of building and distribution that are sitting abandoned. Poor disaster management, incompetence and greed.
 
Sadly, the number of ICU beds and ventilators has never been the actual rate-producing step...

My sister is a supervisor in a major hospital in Michigan. The real crisis is the staff tending those beds and vents. They are not machines, but the precious and increasingly scarce people who are serving the casualties of this human failure. Ramping their numbers up and down isn't really the truth of it; its just the same people doing more, or double, or triple the sad, hopeless work in more wards and so many more beds.

Governors and pundits talk only about the equipment, like so much industrial capacity, or available assembly lines to make tanks for last century's war. It is asinine. People are taking care of patients who are dying at an unprecedented rate and under the worst possible circumstances, and no one is making any more of those people any time soon. These hospital workers are easing the terrified and alone into death. They cannot do it non-stop indefinitely. We are burning them out doing a heartbreaking, impossible, thankless job none of them signed up for.

This is what is NOT happening anywhere else in the world. So many are so exhausted and emotionally devastated that I wonder how many can hold on for the additional months the COVID coaster will whip them. This fantasy that we can push a quarter of a million bodies through the intensive care services of this country and have that be OK or in any sense "workable" seems like craven nonsense to me.

We shall see...
 
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Hospitals and morgues are both "for profit" business in this country -- profitable business means you don't have extra capacity sitting around not making money... and we don't...

There is still much unknown about the virus.

Not all younger or healthier people getting the virus don't end up having some shitty lasting health effects -- it seems kinda like Lyme disease, some folks get over it, some take months to get over it, some take years or never fully recover... we don't know yet...

So far testing is showing only 2 to 3 months of immunity after getting it once. That's not gonna lead to herd immunity...

Stay Safe!
 
banman said:
Hospitals and morgues are both "for profit" business in this country -- profitable business means you don't have extra capacity sitting around not making money... and we don't...

There is still much unknown about the virus.

Not all younger or healthier people getting the virus don't end up having some shitty lasting health effects -- it seems kinda like Lyme disease, some folks get over it, some take months to get over it, some take years or never fully recover... we don't know yet...

So far testing is showing only 2 to 3 months of immunity after getting it once. That's not gonna lead to herd immunity...

Stay Safe!
Click to expand...

Sweden has shown no signs at all of any "herd immunity".

YEah I saw an article about a lady who's gotten covid twice in 4 months. :nonono:
 
Booyah45828 said:
IMO the ICU capacity is the only number that matters. Once they start trending up the reins need pulled back. I don't know what the magic % occupancy number is, but in order to avoid an "italy" crisis, that's the number that needs to be monitored.

I feel with texas at 90% capacity, that point has come and gone, they're now likely in freefall mode and the bodies will sadly start to stack.

IMO the number of new cases per day is unimportant when a large number of people have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic. I don't think it really matters if the healthy population of the planet gets this. They'll be fine and that is actually a part of the herd immunity plan that's being passed around.

Granted, the # of new cases per day will probably have a direct correlation to the # of new critical patients in ICU beds. So maybe find the % between the two and vary your lockdown level to keep that in check.

Prevention is long gone. The only possibility we had for that came and went back in January. That's when the first cases were happening and nobody had a clue as to what was going on.

I feel that our current goal should be to vary the level of lockdown based off of regional ICU capacity. At 75%+ icu capacity it should be essential employee travel only. 50% would be a level 1, 25% level 2, and 10% level 3. If I was a governor, that's what my plan would be. We don't need a national mandate for this when every part of the nation is in a different situation.
Click to expand...
It's 3 or 4 weeks between when you have an explosion of cases and your ICU fills up. All the actions need to be anticipatory. If you wait until it's full and take action, you'll see another 3-4 weeks of increasing patients before it levels off.

The other problem with measuring ICU capacity is that the data doesn't really tell you what you think it does. Some ICU patients are in the ICU because they need more frequent nurse checkups or because the hospital wants to isolate them better. Moving them to a regular bed is possible, but it would lower survival rate at least a little. There are also elective surgeries that could be postponed, further lowering numbers of ICU patients.Also, some regular beds can be converted to ICU beds, increasing the total quantity available.

End result? A hospital with 97% ICU capacity might be able to handle another 20% or 30% or 100% increase in patients. Of course, this comes at the cost of provider exhaustion, reduced level of care, or both.

I think we have some untapped medical capacity in this country, with specialty clinics and specialized doctors that could provide Covid treatment. Ultimately, though, there is a limit to how much we can shift medical resources around until it is simply not enough.

And, I still like cases per day because the number is easily accessible and one of the earliest predictors we have of what's coming next.
 
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