Coronavirus Outbreak

[Tigerboy]

The link includes highly distressing SkyNews film of a hospital in Lombardy, Northern Italy. In short, the numbers who die and those who recover are roughly equal. The specialist becomes agitated when the commentator suggests it is like the flu, stating no it is pneumonia. He warns the commentator of what Britain is about to face.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/coronavirus-updates-live-covid-19-cases-hit-245-000-worldwide-uk-advisors-says-social-distancing-may-last-for-a-year-20200320-p54cfl.html

Precisely what I was worried about way back when we only had a handful of cases and the outbreak in Italy exploded. I doubted the CCP figures and questioned whether or not this was in fact as benign as was being reported (reports based on Chinese information).

A few weeks ago this would have been labelled alarmist.


It (the journalism in the video, not you or pawsandclaws) is incredibly alarmist and horribly misleading. You realise that they are suggesting a 50% mortality rate? 50%!!!! Its not 50% its around 1%. This is the very definition of alarmist.

To be fair the mortality rate in Italy is going to be much higher than 1%, but you are right it is alarmist and even Italy will come in much below the 50%


Agreed that it will be higher than 1% but how much higher is a reflection of the availability of medical care, not the mortality of the virus.

Think you’ll find the Virus is a reflection of itself and also as humans, our immune response!

Hence why more people died before it even became a pandemic than has ever been seen.

 

[Tiger5150]

The link includes highly distressing SkyNews film of a hospital in Lombardy, Northern Italy. In short, the numbers who die and those who recover are roughly equal. The specialist becomes agitated when the commentator suggests it is like the flu, stating no it is pneumonia. He warns the commentator of what Britain is about to face.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/coronavirus-updates-live-covid-19-cases-hit-245-000-worldwide-uk-advisors-says-social-distancing-may-last-for-a-year-20200320-p54cfl.html

Precisely what I was worried about way back when we only had a handful of cases and the outbreak in Italy exploded. I doubted the CCP figures and questioned whether or not this was in fact as benign as was being reported (reports based on Chinese information).

A few weeks ago this would have been labelled alarmist.


It (the journalism in the video, not you or pawsandclaws) is incredibly alarmist and horribly misleading. You realise that they are suggesting a 50% mortality rate? 50%!!!! Its not 50% its around 1%. This is the very definition of alarmist.

To be fair the mortality rate in Italy is going to be much higher than 1%, but you are right it is alarmist and even Italy will come in much below the 50%


Agreed that it will be higher than 1% but how much higher is a reflection of the availability of medical care, not the mortality of the virus.

Think you’ll find the Virus is a reflection of itself and also as humans, our immune response!

Hence why more people died before it even became a pandemic than has ever been seen.

Totally (respectfully) disagree with you Tigerboy. The mortality rate is not a reflection of the mortality of the virus.

If we were all still cavemen, hunter gatherers and this new virus escaped it would have a mortailty rate of x%. Due to the nature of the virus, our intrinsic immune systems as humans and effectiveness of the immune system to deal with a new virus, x% of all humans who got it would die and then the mortality rate would reflect the mortality of the virus.

If we lived in some form of Bernie Sanders utopia with unlimited funds, unlimited beds in hospitals with unlimited resources, the mortality rate would be MUCH less and would result in a smaller number x-y%.

The actual mortality rate will be somewhere between the two and I think the trick is obviously to have it as close to x-y% as possible. So far I think Australia is doing a reasonable job of doing that and seems to be in a reasonable position to do it.

 

[Tigerboy]

The link includes highly distressing SkyNews film of a hospital in Lombardy, Northern Italy. In short, the numbers who die and those who recover are roughly equal. The specialist becomes agitated when the commentator suggests it is like the flu, stating no it is pneumonia. He warns the commentator of what Britain is about to face.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/coronavirus-updates-live-covid-19-cases-hit-245-000-worldwide-uk-advisors-says-social-distancing-may-last-for-a-year-20200320-p54cfl.html

Precisely what I was worried about way back when we only had a handful of cases and the outbreak in Italy exploded. I doubted the CCP figures and questioned whether or not this was in fact as benign as was being reported (reports based on Chinese information).

A few weeks ago this would have been labelled alarmist.


It (the journalism in the video, not you or pawsandclaws) is incredibly alarmist and horribly misleading. You realise that they are suggesting a 50% mortality rate? 50%!!!! Its not 50% its around 1%. This is the very definition of alarmist.

To be fair the mortality rate in Italy is going to be much higher than 1%, but you are right it is alarmist and even Italy will come in much below the 50%


Agreed that it will be higher than 1% but how much higher is a reflection of the availability of medical care, not the mortality of the virus.

Think you’ll find the Virus is a reflection of itself and also as humans, our immune response!

Hence why more people died before it even became a pandemic than has ever been seen.


Totally (respectfully) disagree with you Tigerboy. The mortality rate is not a reflection of the mortality of the virus.

If we were all still cavemen, hunter gatherers and this new virus escaped it would have a mortailty rate of x%. Due to the nature of the virus, our intrinsic immune systems as humans and effectiveness of the immune system to deal with a new virus, x% of all humans who got it would die and then the mortality rate would reflect the mortality of the virus.

If we lived in some form of Bernie Sanders utopia with unlimited funds, unlimited beds in hospitals with unlimited resources, the mortality rate would be MUCH less and would result in a smaller number x-y%.

The actual mortality rate will be somewhere between the two and I think the trick is obviously to have it as close to x-y% as possible. So far I think Australia is doing a reasonable job of doing that and seems to be in a reasonable position to do it.

We’re in agreement, then. Was speaking with a well respected biological development (sciences) about the nature of this virus and that it has in fact developed specifically on a course to do the most destructive and widespread damage to the (newly strengthened) human immune systems.

Besides my only worry is the economy - which I’ve previously posted is clearly doing a decent job with govt. policy ATM and balancing the need for nationwide emergency healthcare.

Clearly, we can limit this thing and the funny thing is the first key piece of information regarding social isolating and ‘hoarding’ supplies came from the outbreak epicentre.

You just cannot discount the current mortality rates in other areas because we’ve definitely not had our hardest hit areas reported on yet. If we even come close to 10% mortality rate on our Island Nation then that would be unacceptable - probably the only thing pertaining to healthcare.

Virus is and will be the #1 issue for months!

 

[Tiger5150]

Here is just another point of view, perhaps a different prism that we can view this situation through.

Currently, after about a month Italy has soared to 47000 cases and 4000 deaths.

As a reference point, this link is to a scientific article (peer reviewed) from the International Journal of Infectious Diseases which outlines that over 4 years 5,290,000 caught influenza, averaging at 1,322,500 per year with deaths of 68,000 over that period, averaging 17,000 per year, 25,000 people died in 2016.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971219303285

Im not saying COVID is just the flu or nothing to worry about, but if we followed the normal flu like this we would all panic constantly.

EDIT: forgot to add the link.

 

[Tiger5150]

Here is a fun game we can all play whilst we wait for the end of the world. There is going to be MUCH discussion here and elsewhere regarding how well Australia has dealt with this crisis.

Lets keep track on a relative basis, based on this data. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Currently Australia is 22nd in terms of total cases confirmed and 57th in terms of cases per 1M population. Lets see if we go up or down these tables.

 

[weststigers]

The link includes highly distressing SkyNews film of a hospital in Lombardy, Northern Italy. In short, the numbers who die and those who recover are roughly equal. The specialist becomes agitated when the commentator suggests it is like the flu, stating no it is pneumonia. He warns the commentator of what Britain is about to face.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/coronavirus-updates-live-covid-19-cases-hit-245-000-worldwide-uk-advisors-says-social-distancing-may-last-for-a-year-20200320-p54cfl.html

Precisely what I was worried about way back when we only had a handful of cases and the outbreak in Italy exploded. I doubted the CCP figures and questioned whether or not this was in fact as benign as was being reported (reports based on Chinese information).

A few weeks ago this would have been labelled alarmist.


It (the journalism in the video, not you or pawsandclaws) is incredibly alarmist and horribly misleading. You realise that they are suggesting a 50% mortality rate? 50%!!!! Its not 50% its around 1%. This is the very definition of alarmist.

As members of a rugby league forum, we all know how statistics can be manipulated to tell a story. It seems that figure is based on "Closed Case" data solely out of Italy - the figure today is closer to 40%.

My take on it is this:

Now, Italy still has patchy data coming through because of the overload, and the majority of their cases are still active so we can't really conclude 50% given other countries are not experiencing similar results. 50% is totally skewed. Agree with that.

1% sounds awfully low too. Each country has wildly differing rates, but when averaged across the total number of cases worldwide, the figures are higher than 1%. Even China, who has a vested interest in keeping the number reported as low as possible is reporting 4.1%. I'm basing my numbers off this : https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Some people are looking at the total number of cases (current and closed)
Others are looking at only closed cases

Depending on which one you think is more important:

TOTAL CASES: 275, 952 (91,912 Recovered, 184,040 active)
TOTAL DEATHS: 11,399
Avg. Death Rate = 4.13%

If we only look at closed cases, it moves to a death rate of 11%. Of course Italy skews these numbers massively as they have the highest death toll from the virus now.

Now, what's clear, and Italy is the best example, is the danger seems to come from the viruses propensity to put people into hospital. The subsequent overload on a country's health system contributes to a higher death rate (on the surface at least) - do other factors play a part? I'm not sure.

Data from the CDC in the US indicates that about 14%-20% of people aged between 20-44 were hospitalised based on their sample size.

***"For younger people, the CDC found between 14% and 20% of adults between the ages of 20 and 44 were hospitalized for coronavirus. About .1 to .2% died from the virus."***
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article241321151.html

It seems to support people of all ages are hospitalised at high rates. It also seems to support much lower death rates in younger adults. However, this should come as no surprise as almost all older people die at higher rates regardless of ailment. A study of death rates where the hospital system is not overloaded, is helpful to countries where this is the case. However, we should also look at data out of overloaded countries to assess the health risk to people in an overloaded health system. Potentially, we should report these figures separately?

As we've both said in the past; the issue isn't the death rate. It is the hospitalisation rate and whether we have enough resources to nurse people back to health if they all need care at the same moment in time. I think Italy is the extreme example of what can happen to death rates if our hospitals are overloaded. I.e. the virus becomes more dangerous to public health as capacity in the health system decreases.

The point of my post was highlighting the aggressiveness of the virus and the lies we were told about it being as benign as a mild cold. My Dad lives in China for most of the year due to business - he is there now and they are still telling people it does nothing to you unless you are old. The people repeat this as if it's fact. We swallowed the same garbage and trusted the CCP information at the critical early stages. A monumental error in the scheme of things.

Apologies for the long post. With no work coming in, I've got too much time on my hands, but it helps to stem the boredom.

 

[weststigers]

If anyone wants a job call center operators will be a flurry next few weeks.

India started their lockdown and big companies are in panic mode on how to support

Might be good opportunity to at least get some cash if anyone needs it

This is true. A big bank I work with advised their Filipino call centre was locked down, so they are taking the same action.

 

[Geo]

The criteria for even getting a test corrupts the figures also..it is true that it was brought in from overseas or had contact with someone who returned from OS tested positive ...Once the 1st case of internal transmission occurred..tests should have been available to all

Unless you meet the criteria you can't even get a test..


Geo that isnt a policy decision, it has been a factor of how many physical test kits exist and can be obtained.

I did read somewhere (I can trawl for it if I have to) that Australia has one of the highest numbers of testing in the world. I read yesterday that we had done around 80000 tests which is small compared to the population but not small compared to the numbers of positives and I assume the number of people who are sick and tick the boxes.

I would be a LOT more concerned if I was in the US. 1 week ago Australia and US had both the same amounts of tests completed at 8500.

Oh cool..doesn't really help those that may have contracted the virus that can't be tested..or their loved one's

 

[weststigers]

The link includes highly distressing SkyNews film of a hospital in Lombardy, Northern Italy. In short, the numbers who die and those who recover are roughly equal. The specialist becomes agitated when the commentator suggests it is like the flu, stating no it is pneumonia. He warns the commentator of what Britain is about to face.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/coronavirus-updates-live-covid-19-cases-hit-245-000-worldwide-uk-advisors-says-social-distancing-may-last-for-a-year-20200320-p54cfl.html

Precisely what I was worried about way back when we only had a handful of cases and the outbreak in Italy exploded. I doubted the CCP figures and questioned whether or not this was in fact as benign as was being reported (reports based on Chinese information).

A few weeks ago this would have been labelled alarmist.


It (the journalism in the video, not you or pawsandclaws) is incredibly alarmist and horribly misleading. You realise that they are suggesting a 50% mortality rate? 50%!!!! Its not 50% its around 1%. This is the very definition of alarmist.

To be fair the mortality rate in Italy is going to be much higher than 1%, but you are right it is alarmist and even Italy will come in much below the 50%


Agreed that it will be higher than 1% but how much higher is a reflection of the availability of medical care, not the mortality of the virus.

Agreed. Perhaps it's useful to report these numbers separately?

Coronavirus aside, I think people need to understand that any illness is more dangerous without access to medical care. A small problem can become become a big problem very quickly depending on the characteristics of the virus and how transmissible it is. Seems we have the perfect storm with COVID-19.

 

[Tigerboy]

The link includes highly distressing SkyNews film of a hospital in Lombardy, Northern Italy. In short, the numbers who die and those who recover are roughly equal. The specialist becomes agitated when the commentator suggests it is like the flu, stating no it is pneumonia. He warns the commentator of what Britain is about to face.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/coronavirus-updates-live-covid-19-cases-hit-245-000-worldwide-uk-advisors-says-social-distancing-may-last-for-a-year-20200320-p54cfl.html

Precisely what I was worried about way back when we only had a handful of cases and the outbreak in Italy exploded. I doubted the CCP figures and questioned whether or not this was in fact as benign as was being reported (reports based on Chinese information).

A few weeks ago this would have been labelled alarmist.


It (the journalism in the video, not you or pawsandclaws) is incredibly alarmist and horribly misleading. You realise that they are suggesting a 50% mortality rate? 50%!!!! Its not 50% its around 1%. This is the very definition of alarmist.

To be fair the mortality rate in Italy is going to be much higher than 1%, but you are right it is alarmist and even Italy will come in much below the 50%


Agreed that it will be higher than 1% but how much higher is a reflection of the availability of medical care, not the mortality of the virus.

Agreed. Perhaps it's useful to report these numbers separately?

Coronavirus aside, I think people need to understand that any illness is more dangerous without access to medical care. A small problem can become become a big problem very quickly depending on the characteristics of the virus and how transmissible it is. Seems we have the perfect storm with COVID-19.

Cytokine storms Also not being reported as a MAJOR symptom... says to me this is one really bloody smart piece of evolution/crap

Depending on a positive or negative approach, but the truth is that nobody knows.

Someone’s been posting about int lockdown?

 

[Cultured_Bogan]

With Scotty threatening to close down areas of Sydney it is only fair that he set an example and blockade the Shire --except Engadine Maccas of course.

Remember ya don't need no dunny paper there!

You don't need dunnies there either!

 

[Cultured_Bogan]

Just a little different perspective about the Chinese panic buying.

I had an interesting conversation with a Chinese student today. English definitely was not his first language. He was telling me that in China when a disaster happens the Chinese go out and stock up. They do this because they don’t know when they are going to get food again. He was very concerned and was going to do the same. I let him know that Australia is not going to run out of food. That we are a Primary Producer who exports food which we now cannot do. We have 3 times as much food as we need and we are definitely not going to run out.

I swear I almost saw a lightbulb moment on his face.

While Australia definitely produces enough food, globalisation has destroyed a lot of our capacity for processing it (e.g canneries etc). So some food is grown here, exported for various forms of processing or value-adding, and then imported back. Still though, there shouldn't be much of a problem.

Are people really unable to cook with fresh ingredients?

 

[TheDaBoss]

Bondi shut

 

[cochise]

Bondi shut

Had to happen due to the stupidity of Australians!

 

[pawsandclaws1]

With Scotty threatening to close down areas of Sydney it is only fair that he set an example and blockade the Shire --except Engadine Maccas of course.

Remember ya don't need no dunny paper there!

You don't need dunnies there either!

🙂

 

[Tigerboy]

Bondi shut

Had to happen due to the stupidity of Australians!

Seriously... we went to Cronulla yesterday

Lifeguards even seemed stress although no clear directives on isolation measures/an inability to enforce it and so I say let the people decide?

It really is up to us just how bad this gets, but by the same token, what’s next?

FED police posted on all major outdoor settings

I think it must be very serious as Bondi is also a huge tourist destination and to basically flip the bird to anybody who travelled over before this started and just as summer ends about whatever their plans regarding the virus were? There’ll be absolutely no REAL spending now so why not go the full monte or *at least* shut down the CBD and public transport entirely for few weeks. You seem to be almost excessively rational right now!

 

[Tiger5150]

The criteria for even getting a test corrupts the figures also..it is true that it was brought in from overseas or had contact with someone who returned from OS tested positive ...Once the 1st case of internal transmission occurred..tests should have been available to all

Unless you meet the criteria you can't even get a test..


Geo that isnt a policy decision, it has been a factor of how many physical test kits exist and can be obtained.

I did read somewhere (I can trawl for it if I have to) that Australia has one of the highest numbers of testing in the world. I read yesterday that we had done around 80000 tests which is small compared to the population but not small compared to the numbers of positives and I assume the number of people who are sick and tick the boxes.

I would be a LOT more concerned if I was in the US. 1 week ago Australia and US had both the same amounts of tests completed at 8500.

Oh cool..doesn't really help those that may have contracted the virus that can't be tested..or their loved one's

As a former Tigers great once said “it is what it is”. I’m pretty sure anyone sick enough to arrive at hospital get tested.

 

[Tigerboy]

The criteria for even getting a test corrupts the figures also..it is true that it was brought in from overseas or had contact with someone who returned from OS tested positive ...Once the 1st case of internal transmission occurred..tests should have been available to all

Unless you meet the criteria you can't even get a test..


Geo that isnt a policy decision, it has been a factor of how many physical test kits exist and can be obtained.

I did read somewhere (I can trawl for it if I have to) that Australia has one of the highest numbers of testing in the world. I read yesterday that we had done around 80000 tests which is small compared to the population but not small compared to the numbers of positives and I assume the number of people who are sick and tick the boxes.

I would be a LOT more concerned if I was in the US. 1 week ago Australia and US had both the same amounts of tests completed at 8500.

Oh cool..doesn't really help those that may have contracted the virus that can't be tested..or their loved one's

As a former Tigers great once said “it is what it is”. I’m pretty sure anyone sick enough to arrive at hospital get tested.

That’s 1 thing that I don’t think you or @cochise realise... we’ve probably (all three of us) has family members or loved ones already exposed and not tested due to this international instability regarding truthful info/supply & demand

 

[cochise]

Bondi shut

Had to happen due to the stupidity of Australians!

Seriously... we went to Cronulla yesterday

Lifeguards even seemed stress although no clear directives on isolation measures/an inability to enforce it and so I say let the people decide?

It really is up to us just how bad this gets, but by the same token, what’s next?

FED police posted on all major outdoor settings

I think it must be very serious as Bondi is also a huge tourist destination and to basically flip the bird to anybody who travelled over before this started and just as summer ends about whatever their plans regarding the virus were? There’ll be absolutely no REAL spending now so why not go the full monte or *at least* shut down the CBD and public transport entirely for few weeks. You seem to be almost excessively rational right now!

Being irrational achieves nothing, I am extremely rational as panicking achieves nothing! I will follow the advice of the experts, which is no one on here, I will stay calm and keep my family calm. As of right now I will continue to act as normally as possible while maintaining the hygiene, health and social distancing guidelines that have been presented by the experts. I am confident we have the scientists and health experts to guide our politicians through this crisis. If I am told to go into lockdown and stop sending my daughter to school than that is what I will do.

What is being irrational going to achieve apart from worrying my family and making the situation worse? I am an educated person who is not prone to panic behaviour, even in the worst of situations.

 

[Tiger5150]

The link includes highly distressing SkyNews film of a hospital in Lombardy, Northern Italy. In short, the numbers who die and those who recover are roughly equal. The specialist becomes agitated when the commentator suggests it is like the flu, stating no it is pneumonia. He warns the commentator of what Britain is about to face.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/coronavirus-updates-live-covid-19-cases-hit-245-000-worldwide-uk-advisors-says-social-distancing-may-last-for-a-year-20200320-p54cfl.html

Precisely what I was worried about way back when we only had a handful of cases and the outbreak in Italy exploded. I doubted the CCP figures and questioned whether or not this was in fact as benign as was being reported (reports based on Chinese information).

A few weeks ago this would have been labelled alarmist.


It (the journalism in the video, not you or pawsandclaws) is incredibly alarmist and horribly misleading. You realise that they are suggesting a 50% mortality rate? 50%!!!! Its not 50% its around 1%. This is the very definition of alarmist.

As members of a rugby league forum, we all know how statistics can be manipulated to tell a story. It seems that figure is based on "Closed Case" data solely out of Italy - the figure today is closer to 40%.

My take on it is this:

Now, Italy still has patchy data coming through because of the overload, and the majority of their cases are still active so we can't really conclude 50% given other countries are not experiencing similar results. 50% is totally skewed. Agree with that.

1% sounds awfully low too. Each country has wildly differing rates, but when averaged across the total number of cases worldwide, the figures are higher than 1%. Even China, who has a vested interest in keeping the number reported as low as possible is reporting 4.1%. I'm basing my numbers off this : https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Some people are looking at the total number of cases (current and closed)
Others are looking at only closed cases

Depending on which one you think is more important:

TOTAL CASES: 275, 952 (91,912 Recovered, 184,040 active)
TOTAL DEATHS: 11,399
Avg. Death Rate = 4.13%

If we only look at closed cases, it moves to a death rate of 11%. Of course Italy skews these numbers massively as they have the highest death toll from the virus now.

Now, what's clear, and Italy is the best example, is the danger seems to come from the viruses propensity to put people into hospital. The subsequent overload on a country's health system contributes to a higher death rate (on the surface at least) - do other factors play a part? I'm not sure.

Data from the CDC in the US indicates that about 14%-20% of people aged between 20-44 were hospitalised based on their sample size.

***"For younger people, the CDC found between 14% and 20% of adults between the ages of 20 and 44 were hospitalized for coronavirus. About .1 to .2% died from the virus."***
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article241321151.html

It seems to support people of all ages are hospitalised at high rates. It also seems to support much lower death rates in younger adults. However, this should come as no surprise as almost all older people die at higher rates regardless of ailment. A study of death rates where the hospital system is not overloaded, is helpful to countries where this is the case. However, we should also look at data out of overloaded countries to assess the health risk to people in an overloaded health system. Potentially, we should report these figures separately?

As we've both said in the past; the issue isn't the death rate. It is the hospitalisation rate and whether we have enough resources to nurse people back to health if they all need care at the same moment in time. I think Italy is the extreme example of what can happen to death rates if our hospitals are overloaded. I.e. the virus becomes more dangerous to public health as capacity in the health system decreases.

The point of my post was highlighting the aggressiveness of the virus and the lies we were told about it being as benign as a mild cold. My Dad lives in China for most of the year due to business - he is there now and they are still telling people it does nothing to you unless you are old. The people repeat this as if it's fact. We swallowed the same garbage and trusted the CCP information at the critical early stages. A monumental error in the scheme of things.

Apologies for the long post. With no work coming in, I've got too much time on my hands, but it helps to stem the boredom.

Long but good post.

The whole issue with “recovered” cases to me is weird. Almost universally they seem understated. Why I say understated is they don’t seem to make sense with regards to reports of symptom progression. Based on solid data, between 5-10% need hospitalisation and for everyone else they recover over a week or so. These numbers do not correlate to the “recovered” numbers

Personally, I’ve changed my POV. I think we should lockdown. HARD with cops and army involved. I’ve been watching our numbers mathematically and they are unbelievably rock solid. Not varying from the current existing exponential progression. It’s not as bad as Italy but without changing I think it will overcome the hospital system. If we push on with the current restrictions in place we are going to do two things, overload health system resulting in unnecessary deaths and screwing our economy for an extended long long long time.

My job is possibly not going to be impacted that much in current situation but obviously others will be smashed. If we are able to lock down properly for as long as it takes, 6-8weeks hopefully then we will ALL be belted but hopefully for the minimal time possible.