PhineasC

Are those ICUs full? If not, it was just another overreaction same as ventilator need.

I can understand that, but ICU admissions are dropping rapidly so that will change soon. The hospitals outside NYC in the rest of the state have plenty of capacity. It seems clear to me we can survive this with plenty of hospital space left.

They have always been a death sentence if you are 80+ with major illnesses and stay on them for over a week. Which is why I was a little confused by the drive to use them in that way.

And now they are saying the hospital ships are sending the staff off the ships into nursing homes to augment... The concern over ventilators and hospital capacity ended up being unwarranted. This virus will tear through nursing homes. That's the target victim group for COVID. Also just heard at least 5k+ of the deaths so far are in nursing homes. That's crazy and puts the overall numbers into new perspective.

I understand if you are in that huge range it causes fear. Most who died in Italy had at least three major underlying comorbidities, such as diabetes, heart failure, kidney failure, or lung disease. The difference between 69 years old with heart disease and obesity and 40 with a clean bill of health is still stark. And these numbers will continue to change as we grow the denominator (total infected). There are estimates that millions of people had this virus and didn't get tested. If you make that the denominator these death rates drop a lot. It's pretty clear to me the death rate for those under 40 will end up around swine flu territory at worst when this is all said and done. Folks really should be using percentages and trends right now versus absolute numbers.

The NY data is not useful without having more data about the total number of infected; we will not know that for a year+. Italy has done more serological testing than us and has a better handle on that. Same for Germany. Death rates for young people will be very skewed for now because many of them are walking around with mild or no symptoms and will never be tested. It's often impossible for them to be tested and the only ones we hear about are deathly ill in the hospital already. Here is a review of the data available in Europe: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20061721v1 This clearly shows that the death rate for 0-20 will be vanishingly low. Flu is deadlier for small children and teenagers than COVID-19. Yes, the US is unhealthier (in some ways -- Europeans smoke more). We will need to see how much that changes in our numbers. I could see the average age for deaths being closer to 75 than 80 as it is in Europe. I don't see how you can say this doesn't target one particular demographic more strongly; it very clearly does and the data all shows that and it's becoming even more stark as the data is adjusted.

IMO once we open we stay open. If it goes bad we will just bury the stats.

You still have weed and mushroom access in your area?

People here are saying we are far away from opening and saying we need very broad testing and basically no new deaths. That will take months to achieve. If you all agree with the Ohio/NY style plans we have no disagreement.

There is no political will to pay everyone’s salary indefinitely. People will start to go hungry and kill themselves from depression.

Even in overwhelmed Italy barely anyone under 50 died from this. Look up the stats. They are actually kind of crazy. Even nurses getting hammered with viral load survived.

LOL of course it does. Plenty of industries making a killing on this shutdown.

Keeping everything tightly locked down is basically trading lives, dude. You are destroying the lives of healthy 30 year olds to save some percentage of obese 80 year olds with heart failure and diabetes and give them a bit longer. That’s the reality of the stats. Young people don’t die from this basically ever.

Fear is driving this all right now. Most Americans are not sick from this and it appears it will stay that way. We are really good at compartmentalizing death stats and learning to ignore them. Look at what we do for mass shootings. Aka nothing.

You calling for hundreds of thousands of deaths in those states?

I think you will be shocked by how many people will resume their normal routine the minute they can. Most Americans are done hiding in their basements, IMO.

When the government does something like that it is never temporary. You know that. Same thing happened after 9/11 with surveillance, security, etc.

It's coming. The dam will break once one state opens, others will follow. I suspect the numbers will just be massaged as needed, they won't close again. Not a chance, IMO.

You can't use those kind of raw extrapolations. You have to factor in that not everyone moves around and interacts with everyone else in real-time and we can selectively close off hotspots as we go. We can also isolate the vulnerable populations that drive up the death rates. But frankly 600k deaths would be a small toll as global pandemics have gone in history... I do not support global unfettered reopening. I can say I personally will not be in any restaurant, movie theater, or other major public space through the summer. But we can allow people to go back to work so they can put food on the table and pay bills.

This post actually argues we need to focus on getting herd immunity, IMO. Hiding in your basement praying for a vaccine that may or may not work in 18 months is not feasible. I know you will accuse me of being a "know it all" or whatever, but it's also possible for this to end up only a degree or two deadlier than a bad flu in the end but bring all the deaths in 2-3 months versus 6-9. That actually makes sense if the IFR is similar but the disease is far more infectious and we have zero herd immunity. The virus will ramp up very fast but burn out just as fast as it runs out of people to infect. All of these diseases are self-limiting (unless this particular coronavirus is somehow very different from all the others).

May 15th is very positive considering NY is the epicenter and way beyond any other regions in terms of cases and deaths. Hopefully they are in shape to open a little on that date.

Some good news in the NY update from Cuomo. ICU admissions and hospitalizations are dropping pretty fast from what I saw.

OK, seems manageable so far.

Is that 2,451 number the number hospitalized now or total since this all started?

You have to follow up with these stories. There have been a few where it turned out the person actually didn't have COVID-19 or had a major undiagnosed underlying disease and bad luck on timing. But PPE for healthcare workers is of the utmost importance. They are impacted by the high viral load much more than anyone else.