The Coronavirus Thread

[pErvinalia]

. 65,000 deaths world wide is a good reason to sacrifice all freedoms?

How many times does this need to be explained to you? This isn't for 65,000 deaths. It's for all the deaths that would have occured if these actions weren't taken. And this thing is far from over. Possibly a couple of hundred thousand deaths in the US. And that figure will be dwarfed by India. I'm sorry to say this but you are thick as shit. So sick of trying to explain simple things to you.

[Brian Peacock]

World population? 71,000,000,000

Deaths:
64,580 (presumed Corona)

Please.

71 billion eh? Woops! If you compared the number of dead to the number of galaxies in the visible universe you'd still be missing the point.

By entertaining the premise of the following question in good faith I hope you'll be able to articulate your view on why any of those 60,000+ deaths isn't really important. Ready?

If the death of anyone is preventable should effort be made to prevent it?

To put it in perspective 8,3 deaths per 1,000,000.
Since when do we bother about people dying? We dont prevent many deaths which are readily preventable so please stop being hypocritical.

Slack judgements about my character and motivation aside, how exactly am I a hypocrite if "we" don't prevent many preventable deaths? How much control do I have personally over the conditions of anybody else's existence? What abilities or skills do I possess but which I fail to apply to prevent deaths? What double standards am I operating to? Do I forego my rights to a moral outlook on preventable deaths as long as even a single preventable death remains unprevented?

It's seems to me that my supposed hypocrisy is found in being bothered by preventable deaths not being prevented when "we" don't bother about people dying. I am bothered by preventable deaths not being prevented, but I think you've just used "we" there to me you - you're not bothered so why should anyone else be? At least you don't seem particularly bothered. Am I right?

Reduce the speed limit on roads to 50 kph or ban all high powered vehicles and you would save far more lives. Have the rich pay their proper share of taxes would save far more. Bring in UHC for everyone on the planet would save millions of lives. Carrying on like this about a virus is lunacy.

We see and hear this argument from conservatives all the time: How dare you say you're concerned or #OUTRAGED by a, b, or c when you don't even give a shit about x, y, and z. That falls foul of the red herring, avoiding the issue, and shifting the burden fallacies. But let me address your point directly anyway...

If the deaths of certain people in particular circumstances are to be categorised in a hierarchy, where the circumstances and causes of more important and/or significant deaths must be addressed before those which are considered less important, then who gets to decide what goes on the list and what order those items should be dealt with? Who is to say that, for example, only when people are not dying in road traffic incidents should we be making effort to prevent Covid-19 deaths? Or perhaps, only when mercury miners in Peru have enough personal protective equipment should we make sure that health care workers treating Covid-19 patients get the same?

So my view is that setting up these kinds of competing dichotomies, why A when B, are just a way to avoid addressing either A or B. Why, for example again, can "we" not do something about road deaths and Covid-19 deaths, or why can't we improve both the conditions of mercury miners and health care staff? You're point implies that we should put one case before the other, and as we are doing nothing about the latter then we should do nothing about the former.

Strangely the one country that has been given as an example of how cope is the one country where its people have no freedom and have sacrificed all their civil liberties. 65,000 deaths world wide is a good reason to sacrifice all freedoms? Sorry. Where are the 1% in all this? Never hear them moaning.

Do you think South Korea will return back to where it was?

No. But I don't think any country will return back to where it was before. There will be no 'business as usual' after this because we have all been made aware of the way the structure of our economies (social, political, and financial) fail to meet the challenge of a pandemic. Personal, social, national, and international relations have changed forever and to try and return to our previous state of general ignorance, particularly if it's simply to serve the interests of the global financialised economy, will and would be an act of gross stupidity detrimental to the well-being of millions, perhaps billions of people- the !% included. But then again, we've known all along that the global economy is detrimental to the well-being of everyone and everything on the planet already haven't we? This just makes it more real and more personal - and consequently a lot of people are getting a bit cross.

OK, so the upshot is you didn't want to, or couldn't, entertain the question in good faith. I can't say I'm surprised. Ethical judgements are often difficult and it's usually far easier to simply declare that our opinions represent the real reality of a situation than to justify those opinions when asked. So it goes I guess... so it goes...

Now wash your hands!

[Brian Peacock]

. 65,000 deaths world wide is a good reason to sacrifice all freedoms?

How many times does this need to be explained to you? This isn't for 65,000 deaths. It's for all the deaths that would have occured if these actions weren't taken. And this thing is far from over. Possibly a couple of hundred thousand deaths in the US. And that figure will be dwarfed by India. I'm sorry to say this but you are thick as shit. So sick of trying to explain simple things to you.

But even 5 million deaths is only 0.01% of 71 billion.

[Faithfree]

World population? 71,000,000,000

One zero too many methinks

[Tero]

Medical therapy
So far there are insufficient data available for specific antiviral therapy. There are therapy attempts with a number of substances (hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir / ritonavir, camostat, remdesivir etc.). Under certain circumstances, an assignment can be considered as a case-by-case decision after a benefit-risk assessment. Therapy attempts should, if possible, be carried out as part of “compassionate use” programs or study protocols [ 10 ]. The University of Liverpool has published a list of probable PK interactions with experimental therapies for COVID-19 [ 11 ].

Steroids should never be given routinely in ARDS; administration appears to delay viral clearance and promote fungal growth [ 12 ]. Studies in SARS and influenza have shown adverse effects. An exception is the low-dose hydrocortisone therapy for septic shock without response to fluid and vasopressor therapy for more than an hour [ 13 ].

https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 20-00674-3

link 10 goes to
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 20-05955-1
In another study of 52 critically ill adult patients, the mean age was 60 years, with 40% of patients had at least one chronic illness. Of these patients, 67% developed ARDS, 29% acute kidney injury, 23% cardiac injury and 29% liver dysfunction. Invasive or noninvasive mechanical ventilation was required in 71% of patients. By day 28, 62% of patients died [16]. The majority of the severely ill cases have been in adults, with very limited data on pediatric infections with severe illness thus far.

[Tero]

The Liverpool guidance document
https://www.covid19-druginteractions.org/
in particular hydroxychloroquin has a number of interactions with other drugs

[Scot Dutchy]

Brian
I did not say you were a hypocrite now did I. I said this whole thing about preventable deaths is always quietly forgotten about when it does not suit. Like the example of traffic conditions. Reduction off speed on highways to 50 kph would in Europe add that much time onto your journey but it would save thousands of lives daily but we dont do it. We allow the production of massively overpowered vehicles. Why? To satisfy egos. We dont demand that every country has UHC which would save millions but we demand the crashing of economies and destroying the social cohesion for what?

65,000 is not many but plenty of governments are misusing it to cover up many failings and the media has not helped. Every day when the 'figures' are released the circus begins. It does not report the positives just the negatives. You would think people are dropping in the street. The data is not trustworthy but you would think it came down from Mount Sinai on stone tablets.

[Sean Hayden]

The point may actually be a good one Scot, however the numbers don't seem to support it.

Over 1,000 people died from the virus yesterday in the US. By comparison ~100 will have died in traffic accidents, and that will hold true for most days of the year.

There are other problems with the comparison but that's a good place to start.

[Tero]

How many will die from a toddler shooting you?

[Sean Hayden]

If I don't die? --at least two

[Brian Peacock]

Brian
I did not say you were a hypocrite now did I.

Hmm.

Since when do we bother about people dying? We dont prevent many deaths which are readily preventable so please stop being hypocritical.

I think the distinction between calling someone a hypocrite and telling them to stop being hypocritical, because you can only stop being hypocritical if you're, you know, being a hypocrite, doesn't bear much scrutiny. Neither does the remainder of your reply...

[laklak]

Bunch of Christians whining on FB because Easter. Waaaaaaaaa! I can't go to church! One guy is putting a bunch of palm leaves in his front garden so anyone can get one. I just can't literally even.

[Brian Peacock]

From The Economist. It's paywalled but here's the gist without the data and the graphs....

Covid-19’s death toll appears higher than official figures suggest

Official death tolls for covid-19 may exclude people who died before they could be tested. They also ignore people who succumbed to other causes, perhaps because hospitals had no room to treat them. The latter group has been large in other disasters. For example, when Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, America recorded only 64 deaths. A study later found that the surge in total deaths was close to 3,000. Many occurred in hospitals that lost power.

Such analysis is not yet possible for nations battling covid-19. The only European country whose total death rate (as calculated by Euromomo, a research group) had spiked by March 20th was Italy. This estimate is based on a group of cities. Unfortunately, Italy does not break down covid-19 deaths by city, precluding a comparison of covid-19 and total deaths in the same area.

However, journalists and scholars have crunched their own numbers. L’Eco di Bergamo, a newspaper, has obtained data from 82 localities in Italy’s Bergamo province. In March these places had 2,420 more deaths than in March 2019. Just 1,140, less than half of the increase, were attributed to covid-19. “The data is the tip of the iceberg,” Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo’s capital, told L’Eco. “Too many victims are not included in the reports because they die at home.”

Comparable figures can be found across Europe. In Spain El País, a newspaper, has published the results of a study by the government’s health research centre, showing that “excess” deaths in the Castile-La Mancha region were double the number attributed to covid-19. Jean-Marc Manach, a French reporter, has found a similar disparity in the department of Haut-Rhin.

These differences may shrink over time. Official counts of covid-19 fatalities could be updated to include people who have already died, because confirming the cause sometimes takes several days. The toll from other types of death might fall soon: lockdowns could reduce accidents and violence, and many frail covid-19 victims were already likely to die of other causes. And mortality data are noisy in smaller regions—especially hard-hit ones that may not be representative of entire countries.

Still, the official covid-19 count will always seem too low in places like Nembro, a Bergamasque town of 11,000 people. It suffered 152 deaths in March, with only 39 attributed to the virus so far. “Almost all the old people got it,” says Luca Foresti, a researcher. “And therefore they died, a lot.”

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... es-suggest

[Scot Dutchy]

Like I said: "pick a number, any number". The reverse is also true.

[Sean Hayden]

Bunch of Christians whining on FB because Easter. Waaaaaaaaa! I can't go to church! One guy is putting a bunch of palm leaves in his front garden so anyone can get one. I just can't literally even.

It's the guy that's too loud when you're hiding, that stands still when you're supposed to run, talks too much...

It really ought to be in the DSM.