Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]

Because of the speed of its propagation. Even if the numbers are "low", if all the severe cases happen in a very short period of time, most NHS can't handle their treatment properly, as we're already seeing.

 

That is just it, Trump never ever said get advice from your doctor. He just started talking about this drug as a promising way to treat COVID-19.

 

Cause it’s novel, and will prolly kill more than each of those listed diseases.
70,000 should be hit quite soon, ones it gets into Brazil (helped by their president) and Southern Asia (Bangladesh excepted, due to then currying flavour with the gods)

 

What's the prognosis for some of the listed ones? 450 million cases seems like a lot, but is it "fine" because not all require hospitalization?

 

This and if COVID-19 spreads unchecked it will infect 6 billion people. And even if you count the lowest range where about 0.2 percent of healthy people die you will be talking about 12,000,000 deaths. In a case where health care is overwhelmed you can probably double or triple, in third world countries it might be an order of magnitude greater.

(Worse cases suggest 80%)

 

That's the trickiest part. Hospitalization. And not only this: if there's a sudden avalanche of severe cases, nurses, etc. won't be able to treat other patients who may be severe, as well (even if it's not because of covid).

 

Don't mean to be alarmist, but if we run out of capacity for ventilators, beds, hospitals, doctors, nurses,... the amount of dead can sharply increase. And this exponential spread makes the worst case really bad. It would probably be scarring experience for society to have to agree to not care for big amount of people. What would those people whose loved ones died due to not getting care feel towards society and could they ever trust the system again? And probably people would die alone due to risk of spreading virus making this situation that much more worse for sick people and their loved ones.

 

Yes, but he also didn't say go eating any that has 'chloroquine' in the ingredients.

His actual words were clearly saying that 1) he personally thinks this drug will work but it might not and it still isn't FDA tested for Covid19, and 2) you can get it on prescription already, meaning acceptance for use with Covid19 will likely be quick because it's not a new medication. Acting on that information to take the drug (especially when not even in human-drug form!) is a violation of common sense that the advice giver shouldn't be held accountable for. If Trump had said, "go out, find this drug wherever you can, and take it; it'll save your life," he'd have been at fault. Anything less than that, as happened in reality, becomes individual responsibility to look after themselves. Rudimentary intelligence should see normal people not taking fish-cleaner as self medication.

 

I watched the press conference. It was not a responsible way for someone in authority to present information.

Not everyone listening is a stable genius like him.

 

Because no medical system in the world is capable of handling the load this kind of sudden new pandemic causes, see Italy for what happens when you run out of capacity to treat them.

 

Tuberculosis infects tens of millions of people each year, cryptococcosis kills 2/3 of infected people, pneumonia and seasonal influenza require hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations each year, so I don't buy the "speed of propagation" and the "NHS overload" arguments when the covid-19 numbers still seem to be somewhat unreliable (as supported by others in this thread) and still tiny compared to lots of other diseases that require hospitalization.

A lot of the "speed of propagation" argument is based on the novelty of the disease.
If you start from zero then you have an incredible growth rate, but it doesn't mean that it will kill more than each of those listed diseases (it won't).
And people aren't worried about those diseases, but are scared to death about covid-19.

 

Not incredible growth; exponential. On the 7th March, the UK had 200 cases and I forecast 40,000 by the end of the month. We're now at 8,000, meaning an average 26% growth each day. Thus, worse than my prediction two weeks ago, if unabated, that means 50,000 by the end of March, and something like the entire UK population by the end of April. If 5% need hospitalisation or they die (but will recover with hospitalisation), that's roughly 5% of 65 million == 3.25 million people dead by the end of June simply because care can't be provided to get them through it. In the UK alone. Extrapolating to the whole world, that'll be 325 million dead by about September. A more optimistic prediction is only 1% will need hospitalisation to recover...and that'll thus only be 6.5 million dead worldwide.

And then you have everyone else, like those with pneumonia or cancer or needing surgery, also not getting adequate treatment and dying or having their lives impacted massively.

Compare that to your other diseases and see why every single scientific advisory board in every single country is giving the advice they are, and why every nation is looking at lock down to stop the disease progressing so fast.

 

Bill Gates says we can’t restart the economy soon and simply “ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner”
Gates rebuked the proposal of leaders like Donald Trump.

Bill Gates rebuked proposals, floated over the last two days by leaders like Donald Trump, to reopen the global economy despite the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak, saying that this approach would be “very irresponsible.”

Gates did not mention Trump by name, but the American president has said that he may decide to relax some of the country’s “social distancing” in order to jumpstart the country’s shut-down economy. Gates, the country’s leading philanthropist, has been among the most active tech leaders in using his resources to try and contain the virus.

“There really is no middle ground, and it’s very tough to say to people, ‘Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner. We want you to keep spending because there’s maybe a politician who thinks GDP growth is all that counts,’” Gates said in an interview with TED Tuesday. “It’s very irresponsible for somebody to suggest that we can have the best of both worlds.”

Trump has suggested that this middle ground would indeed be possible — by letting some healthy people return to work, for instance, while keeping more vulnerable workers in their homes. Experts have said that drastic and widespread social distancing is required to keep the pandemic from spreading further. Trump has said he would make a decision at the end of the month but has said that he believes the “cure” could be worse than the “problem itself.”

Asked what he would do if he were president, Gates returned to his concerns about reopening the economy.

“The economic effect of this is really dramatic. Nothing like this has ever happened to the economy in our lifetimes,” Gates said. “But bringing the economy back ... that’s more of a reversible thing than bringing people back to life. So we’re going to take the pain in the economic dimension — huge pain — in order to minimize the pain in the diseases-and-death dimension.”
​

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/24/21192638/coronavirus-bill-gates-trump-reopen-business

 

Ohio's numbers today, confirmed: 564 (up from 442), Cuyahoga County: 167 (up from 149), Hospitalized: 145 (up from 104), and 8 Deaths (up from 6) from Cuyahoga (2), Erie (1), Franklin (2), Gallia (1), Lucas (1), Stark (1)

 

NHS overload because of many infected people at the same time and unreliable numbers are two different things. I know that the numbers are not right and that the death rate is much much lower (I've been saying it a few times in this very thread).

Again, it's all about how many severe cases you have at the same time. I don't think those higher numbers related to pneumonia or other illnesses happen at the same time, right? In this case we're talking about just a few weeks, while the other numbers you mentioned are totals PER YEAR. Surely you can "buy" that some NHS are ALREADY saturated because of covid, can't you?

I think we all know that this virus is not as mortal as many people think, in fact I said that many of us may have been infected without even noticing, BUT the numbers are the numbers, and even a small percentage of the population can collapse NHS, because this tiny percentage can still be thousands or even millions of patients.

 

What are the requirements for someone entering the NHS? Anyone who falls in the potentially susceptible group? Anyone who has severe symptoms? Any person who is found positive? That plays a significant role in how fast the capacity is overloaded

 

You're asking some questions that I can't answer because I don't know how things are done in every single hospital and country. I just know that some intensive care unities are saturated and there are not enough ventilators for everybody in different places. I even know that people with severe symptoms are not even taken to the hospital when they call and explain what's happening to them. These things can't happen just because of massive hysteria, we're facing a real issue here.

Yes, I also wonder how the issue is addressed everywhere and I even question the numbers (is covid the real culprit of all the accounted deaths, for instance?), but that doesn't mean that we don't have a problem.

 

I have read a very interesting article today. The association of German lung clinics (Verband Pneumoliogischer Kliniken) suggests that some covid-19 patients who develop viral pneumonia may end up dead because they are get intubated too early and with much too much oxygen. This can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The problem is that ICUs are usually run by anesthetists, who are not aware of this and are usually very quick to intubate when patients develop respiratory problems.

 

Everyone's already in the NHS.

Treatment will be for those who need it. The vast majority of people testing positive will be sent home to recuperate. Others may be kept in for observation based on a risk assessment. Those who develop pneumonia will be treated, and those who go on to develop ARDS will be put into ICU if possible. Patients not with Covid19 who need treatment may be refused a hospital place to prevent the disease spread (I know two people with aborted operations because of this). There'll also be pressure on the ICUs from non-Covid patients. Consider these beds are 80% occupied most of the time. That's cancer patients, accident patients, etc. on recovery.

In the case that there aren't enough facilities to treat people, triage will be practised as the only means to manage the medical staff's finite resources. Expect priority care to be given to the young or those with a better prognosis. The weakest and eldest will have to be left to fend for themselves, with only comfort-care (pain easement drugs, possible immune-system support medication, hydration, etc) until they die or manage to recover on their own.

 

I meant being admitted to the hospital