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March Banter 2020


George BM
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6 minutes ago, Cobalt said:

Italy is getting hammered by this thing. Wow, kinda hard to fathom... 

Yeah, the death rate there is astounding and much higher than anywhere else in the world.  I haven’t seen much information on the age range of these cases.  I would assume most, but obviously not all, are elderly.  

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Just now, jaydreb said:

Yeah, the death rate there is astounding and much higher than anywhere else in the world.  I haven’t seen much information on the age range of these cases.  I would assume most, but obviously not all, are elderly.  

Most likely yeah. I've heard of people of younger age groups dying simply because hospitals in Italy couldn't attempt to treat any more people due to lack of resources (and likely shows that China lied about their numbers but I'm not gonna get into that)

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Just now, Cobalt said:

Most likely yeah. I've heard of people of younger age groups dying simply because hospitals in Italy couldn't attempt to treat any more people due to lack of resources (and likely shows that China lied about their numbers but I'm not gonna get into that)

Yup. It's elderly people, until the vents are full, and then young people start to die too.

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says
 

99% of Italy’s deaths are underlying conditions. And an overwhelming majority of deaths are over 70 years old. Italy has an extremely old population. I can’t speak to why it has spread so fast there, but that is why there are so many deaths when there are only about 200 in the US with I think what 21,000 cases now 

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3 minutes ago, Baltimorewx said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says
 

99% of Italy’s deaths are underlying conditions. And an overwhelming majority of deaths are over 70 years old. Italy has an extremely old population. I can’t speak to why it has spread so fast there, but that is why there are so many deaths when there are only about 200 in the US with I think what 21,000 cases now 

Well, I think it has been pretty well established that those who are advanced in age and/or have underlying conditions are most at risk of dying from this virus. In Italy, the culture is very close knit- multiple generations of families spending more time together than other places in general. This would naturally increase the risk for older folks. Other factors include increased testing relative to other places, and specifically how they determine the cause of death.

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1 minute ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Well, I think it has been pretty well established that those who are advanced in age and/or have underlying conditions are most at risk of dying from this virus. In Italy, the culture is very close knit- multiple generations of families spending more time together than other places in general. This would naturally increase the risk for older folks. Other factors include increased testing relative to other places, and specifically how they determine the cause of death.

Unfortunately high blood pressure is considered a risk factor :-/ Lots of Americans have that.

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6 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Well, I think it has been pretty well established that those who are advanced in age and/or have underlying conditions are most at risk of dying from this virus. In Italy, the culture is very close knit- multiple generations of families spending more time together than other places in general. This would naturally increase the risk for older folks. Other factors include increased testing relative to other places, and specifically how they determine the cause of death.

I know, I’m just saying that’s why the deaths are so much higher there. Despite further spread, I doubt the US has anywhere near that number of deaths 

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The USA sadly still has a very large at-risk population. 39.6% of US adults are obese, and about 1/3 have either prediabetes or diabetes. Both major risk factors for a respiratory illness, as obesity can pose similar risks as if someone was a lifelong smoker. Seeing as the deaths are so low here, we can't compare to Italy yet. We're still 1-2 weeks behind Italy. One Saturday ago Italy had 1,000 deaths, now they're almost getting a thousand a day. I'm just hoping people take precaution to stay home. Even people like me who would otherwise be perfectly healthy with little to no risk, spreading it to those who are at risk is the biggest issue

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2 hours ago, Cobalt said:

Italy is getting hammered by this thing. Wow, kinda hard to fathom... 

 

2 hours ago, jaydreb said:

Yeah, the death rate there is astounding and much higher than anywhere else in the world.  I haven’t seen much information on the age range of these cases.  I would assume most, but obviously not all, are elderly.  

They have about 3 more weeks of this before any change from their social distancing can start showing up.

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4 hours ago, jaydreb said:

Yeah, the death rate there is astounding and much higher than anywhere else in the world.  I haven’t seen much information on the age range of these cases.  I would assume most, but obviously not all, are elderly.  

This is more or less normal.  As noted earlier a typical flu season in Italy kills around 15,000 people.  If you google "flu season" in google images, you will see several graphs that show a significant spike during the the late winter period.  The spike shows that the vast majority of cases occur over a period of 30-60 days.  So normally in Italy it wouldnt not be abnormal to see more than 10,000 people die in the late winter months.  

The difference this year is that the media is reporting it has it happens... 

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30 minutes ago, PDIII said:

 

This is more or less normal.  As noted earlier a typical flu season in Italy kills around 15,000 people.  If you google "flu season" in google images, you will see several graphs that show a significant spike during the the late winter period.  The spike shows that the vast majority of cases occur over a period of 30-60 days.  So normally in Italy it wouldnt not be abnormal to see more than 10,000 people die in the late winter months.  

The difference this year is that the media is reporting it has it happens... 

The flu has over an 8% death rate in Italy?

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3 hours ago, PDIII said:

 

This is more or less normal.  As noted earlier a typical flu season in Italy kills around 15,000 people.  If you google "flu season" in google images, you will see several graphs that show a significant spike during the the late winter period.  The spike shows that the vast majority of cases occur over a period of 30-60 days.  So normally in Italy it wouldnt not be abnormal to see more than 10,000 people die in the late winter months.  

The difference this year is that the media is reporting it has it happens... 

Dude, a typical flu season would never kill 800 people in a single day in Italy. That just wouldn't happen. Have you ever seen hospitals get as overwhelmed as they have from COVID-19? Ridiculous. 

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3 hours ago, PDIII said:

 

This is more or less normal.  As noted earlier a typical flu season in Italy kills around 15,000 people.  If you google "flu season" in google images, you will see several graphs that show a significant spike during the the late winter period.  The spike shows that the vast majority of cases occur over a period of 30-60 days.  So normally in Italy it wouldnt not be abnormal to see more than 10,000 people die in the late winter months.  

The difference this year is that the media is reporting it has it happens... 

No - this is not at all normal.  Not even close to it.  Italy does not nominally deploy army convoys in the middle of the night with police escort to carry away the caskets because the hospital morgues are overflowing.  And yes, I've spent a fair bit of time in Italy.  This is NOT normal.

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30 minutes ago, RDM said:

No - this is not at all normal.  Not even close to it.  Italy does not nominally deploy army convoys in the middle of the night with police escort to carry away the caskets because the hospital morgues are overflowing.  And yes, I've spent a fair bit of time in Italy.  This is NOT normal.

I think you are both right.  It is not abnormal for people in Italy to die from Flu and flu like diseases this time of year.  The reaction as you describe is not normal.

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4 minutes ago, SnowGolfBro said:

I think you are both right.  It is not abnormal for people in Italy to die from Flu and flu like diseases this time of year.  The reaction as you describe is not normal.

Yes, have a decent first hand perspective on Italy.  Mainly in the Northern alpine areas, but also Rome and Sardinia.  Lived in Germany two different times and spent a lot of time in the Alps.  

Part of the challenges in the norther part of Italy is the aging population as noted by others.  The alpine villages are typically densely populated and relatively isolated - ripe for infestation once infiltrated.  That appears to be a contributing factor in Switzerland too.  This hit at the height of spring ski season and vacationers from the low land and tourists from other countries brought COVID into the resorts (from the brother of my Swiss-sister who is a Doctor in Bern).  However, another mitigating factor in the data comparisons to the flu is that on an annual basis there are a lot of fatalities attributed to the flu as a pseudo catch-all.  The same takes place in the US. 

No doubt, some cases of the flu are confirmed as being attributed to the flu through flu strain specific testing, but many aren't. My older sister is a recent example.  She contracted flu like symptoms last week and was confirmed through flu tests to have "flu B", whichever one that is of the two flu strains she was tested for and which are dominate this year.  While many of her symptoms pointed to a COVID-19 potential, not all of her symptoms were consistent with COVID, so her doctor tested her for flu first as an initial measure.  When the tests confirmed flu-B, then that precluded further testing.  Assume this M/O is/was being followed in other cases around the country.  My sister-in-law is a PA and my daughter works for INOVA Urgent Care and this testing methodology is consistent with their testing MO, even though both work in facilities where COVID test kits are available.  

Back to the topic of Italy, what we're seeing take place there over the last week is way beyond comparison to anything that is nominal for even an aggressive flu season.  Talked to some friends there, in Switzerland and Germany recently - they are all struggling to cope with this.  

On the flip side of the fatality rate is Germany.  While they also have a relatively high number of confirmed COVID cases.  Their documented fatality rate is significantly lower than Italy (on a percentage basis).  That's interesting, but far be it from me to conjure a guess as to why.  

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1 hour ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Y'all should stop engaging with PDIII about this.

He is still going to breakfast buffets.

yeah... Whole Foods finally caved under pressure and close their buffet on Friday... Thats actually a really good point.  I feel like I might be losing it.  I am gonna bring this up with my therapist this week.  I am finding myself listening to and reading conspiracy theories about this.  

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11 minutes ago, PDIII said:

yeah... Whole Foods finally caved under pressure and close their buffet on Friday... Thats actually a really good point.  I feel like I might be losing it.  I am gonna bring this up with my therapist this week.  I am finding myself listening to and reading conspiracy theories about this.  

I think a natural defense mechanism in uncontrollable situations is to try to find something to point at and say, “Oh, that’s why!” In reality, bad stuff happens everyday that we can’t control. How we choose to react to it though, we can control. 
 

Not trying to start anything political, but I find it ironic that in an era where when many have been trying to isolate our country from the rest of the world, that short of building a dome over our country, the world is woven as one. As bad as the situation is now, and as bad as I think it will be before it gets better, it’s my hope that many are realizing how small our world is and how dependent upon each other we are. Down the road when the virus has run it’s course and settles down, I believe that globally we will have learned something from this event and be better as a result.

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I’ll leave these two articles here as I found them both interesting:

Model War: GFS vs Euro lol

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-outcomes.html

 

Food for thought, from an epidemiologist at Stanford:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

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7 minutes ago, PrinceFrederickWx said:

I’ll leave these two articles here as I found them both interesting:

Model War: GFS vs Euro lol

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-outcomes.html

 

Food for thought, from an epidemiologist at Stanford:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

The Stanford piece is interesting.  

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I’ve been avoiding this mostly because it’s not our typical inconsequential banter and I don’t want to squabble when lives are at stake.   But one thing for the people minimizing this to consider when comparing this to typical flu statistics. With flu we do not take the drastic measures most of the world is with this. So yes the numbers in China might look comparable to a flu season except China had to go into lockdown to achieve that result. You are failing to take into account what the numbers would look like if we acted like this was just flu and let it run it’s course. Now exactly what they would be is debatable and if you want to throw your 2 cents around wrt that fine...but it’s intellectually dishonest to compare infectious disease numbers when drastic measures are taken to contain a virus to numbers over a longer period of time when almost no societal measures are taken to stop the spread. If we used that method we could argue Ebola isn’t as bad as flu since most times when it pops up we take serious measures to contain it before it spreads and kills tens of thousands. 

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8 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

I’ve been avoiding this mostly because it’s not our typical inconsequential banter and I don’t want to squabble when lives are at stake.   But one thing for the people minimizing this to consider when comparing this to typical flu statistics. With flu we do not take the drastic measures most of the world is with this. So yes the numbers in China might look comparable to a flu season except China had to go into lockdown to achieve that result. You are failing to take into account what the numbers would look like if we acted like this was just flu and let it run it’s course. Now exactly what they would be is debatable and if you want to throw your 2 cents around wrt that fine...but it’s intellectually dishonest to compare infectious disease numbers when drastic measures are taken to contain a virus to numbers over a longer period of time when almost no societal measures are taken to stop the spread. If we used that method we could argue Ebola isn’t as bad as flu since most times when it pops up we take serious measures to contain it before it spreads and kills tens of thousands. 

That’s right.  At the end of the day, if the most dire predictions don’t end up happening, people will complain that we overreacted.  But what they won’t understand is that the mitigation measures will have worked.

In other words, if the shutdowns work, it will end up looking like an overreaction.  

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