Coronavirus: More than 80% of patients have mild disease and will recover

Started by dsanchez, February 23, 2020, 23:47:08

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Ulrich

China reports "no new cases" within their country (apparently the 35 new cases they have, were all people coming home from elsewhere), which is a shimmer of hope.

Our chancellor Merkel spoke on the telly last night. It was alright, she said each and everyone must now help to avoid a quick spreading etc.
(What I missed a bit, was a perspective, like "if things go well, we might take back extreme measures within a few weeks" or something like that.)
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Community transmission was confirmed yesterday to be happening now in Western Australia, so the bug is out of the bottle over here too.  We've also had the first confirmed case outside of the capital city, Perth; in the rural Southwest.  I expect it's already come to the South Coast too; there's a lag between that happening and people confirming it (few people get tested).
SueC is time travelling

BiscuityBoyle

Perth aka "the most isolated city in the world"...

By now there are even several cases in places like Mongolia and Kazakhstan, which are as remote and nomadic and you can get in 2020. Not community transmissions obviously but still...

Looks like it will get far worse before it gets better. Most of the world's largest countries (US, Russia, Brazil) are handling it poorly by the look of it (not that there is an ideal way to handle it, some golden mean between intrusive, authoritarian enforcement of regulations and a "laisser-faire" attitude).

SueC

Two interesting case studies for places currently dealing well with it:

India, at the moment:  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/india-is-containing-coronavirus-despite-dense-population/12059024

A little town at the epicentre of the outbreak in Italy - no new cases in over a week:  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-21/one-italian-town-is-bucking-the-countrys-coronavirus-curve/12075048

...that approach works, but would almost certainly be too expensive to do globally.

Here's a link to a useful clip on the current Australian situation, and discussing general strategies (both government policies, and personal actions) - by Dr Norman Swan, one of our most trusted public health communicators:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-18/dr-norman-swan-answers-some-of-your-questions/12068904
SueC is time travelling

BiscuityBoyle

I would love to be wrong but I suspect the piece on India is a bit too optimistic. It seems to be more about how the reporter feels than, say, the fact they don't do anywhere nearly enough testing.


https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-21/experts-fear-india-will-be-the-next-coronavirus-hotspot
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-india-51962813/india-must-prepare-for-a-tsunami-of-coronavirus-cases

I'm no expert to put it mildly, but given everything we know about India, it would come as a surprise if they weather this better than others.

BiscuityBoyle

Hmmm so not exactly like the flu...

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-medical-worker-describes--terrifying-lung-failure-from-covid19-even-in-his-young-patients

QuoteIn my experience, this severity of ARDS is usually more typical of someone who has a near drowning experience — they have a bunch of dirty water in their lungs — or people who inhale caustic gas. Especially for it to have such an acute onset like that. I've never seen a microorganism or an infectious process cause such acute damage to the lungs so rapidly.


Quote"It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy shit, this is not the flu. Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube and out of his mouth. The ventilator should have been doing the work of breathing but he was still gasping for air, moving his mouth, moving his body, struggling. We had to restrain him. With all the coronavirus patients, we've had to restrain them. They really hyperventilate, really struggle to breathe. When you're in that mindstate of struggling to breathe and delirious with fever, you don't know when someone is trying to help you, so you'll try to rip the breathing tube out because you feel it is choking you, but you are drowning.


Ulrich

Quote from: BiscuityBoyle on March 22, 2020, 03:56:25Hmmm so not exactly like the flu...

As far as I remember no-one ever said it was like the flu! First I heard they were talking about a "lung disease", later CoVid-19 - because it is not (like) the flu!
The holy city breathed like a dying man...



BiscuityBoyle

Thing is, there are lots and lots of people in their 40s who have high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes or other health conditions that make them as vulnerable as old people...

This thing is brutal.


SueC

Quote from: BiscuityBoyle on March 24, 2020, 03:29:52Thing is, there are lots and lots of people in their 40s who have high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes or other health conditions that make them as vulnerable as old people...

This thing is brutal.

Have you got friends and relatives at risk, @BiscuityBoyle, and do you have risk factors yourself?

...I suppose the first part of that will be a yes for the majority of people... and I suppose you're also feeling awful for people in general who are going to have bad outcomes, which I can relate to.

As always when faced with a horrible situation, we can only do the best we can personally, and what will be will be.  While it's obviously a good idea to know your enemy, there's also a lot of wisdom in mocking the devil.  Quite literally, because apart from being well informed about things you can do to reduce spread, being able to live well in spite of a bad situation and under constraints is the next best thing (or maybe even an equally useful thing) we can do both for ourselves and others.  As someone else put it to me, life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.

There's a separate thread here for sharing things that might be helping us both practically and in terms of staying in reasonable spirits:  http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=9316.0

This isn't meant in any way to minimise the seriousness of the situation; quite the opposite.  I have a friend with terminal cancer and have learnt a huge amount from her attitude.  She's not sitting there reading up on the many painful ways cancer can kill you; she's too busy appreciating and enjoying every day that's left to her, and the people she loves and love her, and the many beautiful things in this world, which little children and dying people seem to see most clearly.

In some ways we're all on death row from the time we are born, and all we can do is make the best of however many days we're going to get.

Best wishes to you, @BiscuityBoyle, and everyone here. 

And when you feel like it, keep that music coming!  :cool
SueC is time travelling

BiscuityBoyle

Thanks for the kind words, Sue. I don't think I'm particularly at risk - I'm in my mid 30s, I work out and am not aware of having any maladies - but, as you said, all of us probably know people whose age alone makes them vulnerable. Many of my favorite people in the world are in their 70s, including my mom.

Yes, one definitely could use adopting a more positive attitude since there's nothing one can do about it except staying at home.

SueC

You're most welcome, @BiscuityBoyle:cool  (Phew!  I thought, "How am I going to say this without sounding excessively like a hippie or Great-Aunt Matilda?" - and I'm not sure if I was able to avoid that very much, but I dived right in anyway and hoped for the best.  :-D )

And now, a super-hygienic cyberhug for anyone who could use one.




Here's an article I thought was worth sharing, covering basic immunity, and some ways to steward that:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-03-25/can-you-boost-your-immune-system-to-help-fight-coronavirus/12085036

I so hope we won't all forget these things when the pandemic is over; even "ordinary" infections aren't a barrel of laughs, nor is spreading "ordinary" stuff to others...
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Instead of looking too much at India, New York or wherever, maybe we should look more at South Korea:

QuoteNo matter how you look at the numbers, one country stands out from the rest: South Korea.

In late February and early March, the number of new coronavirus infections in the country exploded from a few dozen, to a few hundred, to several thousand.

At the peak, medical workers identified 909 new cases in a single day, Feb. 29, and the country of 50 million people appeared on the verge of being overwhelmed. But less than a week later, the number of new cases halved. Within four days, it halved again — and again the next day.

South Korea is one of only two countries with large outbreaks, alongside China, to flatten the curve of new infections. And it has done so without China's draconian restrictions on speech and movement, or economically damaging lockdowns like those in Europe and the United States.

South Korea has tested far more people for the coronavirus than any other country, enabling it to isolate and treat many people soon after they are infected.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/world/asia/coronavirus-south-korea-flatten-curve.html
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

BiscuityBoyle

QuoteInstead of looking too much at India, New York or wherever, maybe we should look more at South Korea


I'm assuming this is solid advice if you're a public health official or anyone with any say on coronavirus response. As for those of us who aren't public officials - I'm not sure what "looking too much at India, New York or wherever" even means. I don't want to read your words uncharitably as saying "we shouldn't pay too much attention to the suffering of our fellow human beings" but you see where I'm coming from...

Probably the most compelling piece of analysis I've read so far on the issue drives home precisely how interconnected everything in our world is.