Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[SirVicSmasher]

JFC, my mom has a dry cough, sore throat, headache, and low grade (~99F) fever. Long distance worrying, checking in.

Sorry to hear. Hope she gets better

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[BmillsSkier]

So, are we allowed to say fuck these bat eating shits in Wuhan for all this or is that not socially acceptable?

Yet?

[east or bust]

That Bill Burr podcast is hilarious, yet so true.

Local grocery store completely ransacked. JHC people are stupid, and apparently hate Alfredo sauce.

[skaredshtles]

That Bill Burr podcast is hilarious, yet so true.

Local grocery store completely ransacked. JHC people are stupid, and apparently hate Alfredo sauce.

Have you ever tried that jarred alfredo sauce? It's an abomination.

[BmillsSkier]

As noted, they also hate bucatini, the best long pasta there has ever been, which is fine by me.

[splat]

NYT

March 16, 2020
Updated 4:31 p.m. ET

ROME — At around midnight on Wednesday, Renzo Carlo Testa, 85, died from the coronavirus in a hospital in the northern Italian town of Bergamo. Five days later, his body was still sitting in a coffin, one of scores lined head-to-toe in the church of the local cemetery, which is itself closed to the public.

His wife of 50 years, Franca Stefanelli, would like to give him a proper funeral. But traditional funeral services are illegal throughout Italy now, part of the national restrictions against gatherings and going out that have been put in place to try to stem the spread of Europe’s worst outbreak of the coronavirus. In any case, she and her sons could not attend anyway, because they are themselves sick and in quarantine.

“It’s a strange thing,” Ms. Stefanelli, 70, said, struggling to explain what she was going through. “It’s not anger. It’s impotence in the face of this virus.”

..........

Mr. Testa’s death notice appeared on Friday in a local paper, L’Eco di Bergamo. The paper usually has a single page of death notices. On Friday there were 10 pages, and the rest was dedicated to the virus devastating Bergamo.

“For us, it’s a trauma, an emotional trauma,” said Alberto Ceresoli, who edits the paper. “These are people who die alone and who are buried alone. They didn’t have someone hold their hand and the funerals have to be tiny, with a quick prayer from the priest. Many of the close relatives are in quarantine.”

Giorgio Valoti, the mayor of nearby Cene, died last Friday. He was 70. His son, Alessandro, said that 90 people died the same day in Bergamo’s main hospital. The virus “is massacring this valley, every family is losing someone dear to them,” he said. “In Bergamo, so many bodies are piling up they don’t know what to do with them.”

[MultiVerse]

I'm not a COVID skeptic. I'm not an expert and I defer to the experts who say we have a problem. But the measures we are taking to contain the virus are causing enormous damage and it would be foolish to ignore the skeptics. We should be asking over and over again--are we doing too much, are we doing the right thing, or is there more we should be doing. We should be ready to change course if and when the facts change. Shoot me if you want, but one of the questions we should be asking is what damage are we doing to the lives of young people in order to protect the elderly. I don't have an answer but the question has to be asked, and asked publicly.

Re the accuracy of the tests. I don't know what the accuracy is. The tests are new, the disease is new, and there isn't an easily checked gold standard like a biopsy that confirm a positive test in a living patient. As the article Spats posted says, if you take a test with a significant false positive rate and test a large group of people few of whom have the disease, most of your positives will be false, with a significant impact on people's lives and at significant expense. Testing should be focused, not widespread screening of low risk people, even if we had the means to do it. I don't know the actual numbers for this particular disease and test, but I understand the reasoning. Tests can do harm. The accuracy of tests and who should get one is a constant problem in medicine.

Some counterpoints:

- People can spread the disease with no or mild symptoms

- Exponential growth is staggering when it takes over. If you test earlier, slow the spread earlier, the value of stopping one infection today, just one, means 2,400 fewer cases a month later

- In other words yesterday is better than today, which is better than tomorrow. Waiting and assessing to see how things progress means it's already too late if you are wrong

- Based on data from China, for every known case there were probably 10 undetected infections before they implemented the lockdown

- Estimates of unobserved SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States as of Mar 12 are likely in the tens of thousands

- It is politically untenable to let the SARS2 virus spread unchecked throughout the population. It just is. Trump in American and Boris J in the U.K. signaled that was the plan and markets crashed, the population freaked out

- The economic fallout is already baked in. The best we can hope for is a fast "V" shaped recovery and that means getting this under control


That's why the testing issues here are such a big deal. Spats posted a chart some number of pages ago showing U.S. testing go from essentially nothing to a little over a four thousand/day which looks impressive on a chart but that's hardly significant in country with 320 million people. We know from countries like China, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea (capable of ~7000 tests/hr) that wide spread testing and social distancing is the most effective way to bring this under control.

[Vt-Freeheel]

Have you ever tried that jarred alfredo sauce? It's an abomination.

It's like whoever comes up with the recipe has never tasted alfredo in their lives and were given a 6 word description of it and put an ingredients list together.

[Lone Star]

So, are we allowed to say fuck these bat eating shits in Wuhan for all this or is that not socially acceptable?

Yet?

That's debatable, but your ignorance is undeniable.

[The AD]

Yeah, the reality doesn’t match the hysteria. If this was 30 years ago before 24/7 media, there would not be this reaction to shutdown the world and kill the economy.

You are correct. And more people would have died.

[iceman]

Well a lot of people die in 30 years.

[BmillsSkier]

That's debatable, but your ignorance is undeniable.

Are you white-knighting a general geographic source of the outbreak?

Bold play.

[muted]

I have some Norwegian relatives... They live well outside of Oslo...on an island not too far from Stavenger... And it is not at all burdensome to travel there... And while food in a decent restaurant isn't cheap... The government is MANY times better for the average citizen in Norway compared to the USA....

Apparently deebased judges a country if they have a Little Caesers chain or not.

[old goat]

Everything multiverse is true. I'm not saying we shouldn't test people. I'm saying we need to decide who to test based on the accuracy of the test, the prevalence of the disease in the population, and individual risk factors. We also have to remember that a negative test is only good until the next time the test subject encounters another human being and is potentially exposed. We have to assume that every human being we encounter is infected.

Currently the CDC is only recommending testing of symptomatic people. My non expert opinion is that all symptomatic people be tested, regardless of exposure history. Asymptomatic close contacts of a patient should probably be tested if they are no longer going to be in contact with the patient; no point in testing if they're going to continue to be exposed.

[splat]

[iceman]

It was clear to me that Doc was only recommending clear thinking and good science.

[Mokomahonah]

Continue to panic in place. I for one broke myself and cant go out anyway. I'm sure glad the news cycle is more entertaining than two weeks ago!

The economic fallout is quite worrying for a young ski bum working seasonal construction industry jobs. Personnaly I'll be ok (this season), but it will definatly be even harder to keep up with my peers who will just work tec jobs remotely. And let's not forget the less fortunate people, ski buns and otherwise who are living paycheck to paycheck. Unemployment only pays 50% that ain't gonna pay the bills for a lot of people. Even if this is only lasts a couple months - we're fucked...



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[funkendrenchman]

This has happened to a number of people I’ve talked to. And my daughter did have the flu (tested) about 5 weeks ago and then had some fever/sore throat/cough about 3 weeks ago...we were saying the same thing yesterday. Maybe it has been running through the population for awhile.

I still think we need to overact and just be apart for awhile.

I had an illness in January. It started with an awful dry cough. Tested negative for the flu. Then it went away for a day. Came back with a 102 fever, chills, and aches. It went around my entire office in a few days. Who knows what it was.

[BmillsSkier]

Kentucky Derby, see you in September.

[The AD]

I have some Norwegian relatives... They live well outside of Oslo...on an island not too far from Stavenger... And it is not at all burdensome to travel there...

I was in Norway last summer and was blown away by the infrastructure when you consider it's a nation of five million people. We drove through a tunnel near the Hardangerfjord that had a roundabout in it, for fuck's sake!

[BobMc]

July, August... Said our president today, and it’s probably closest to the most truthful thing he’s said about this whole affair. That type of timeline will be devastating to small businesses. There will be paradigm shifts in how businesses will operate, it’s already happening in the restaurant industry.

I’m writing up new policies tonight for my small business, we’re going to a non human interaction. Keys/fobs, steering wheels, and shifters disinfected before and after, any interior work disinfected beforehand and after. Payments over phone, all interaction kept to a minimum. The last few days I’ve been torn, worried about my business and even more worried about my staff. I’d be horrified if one of my guys got sick or a member of the public because I felt the need to keep my business afloat.

I hope my changes keep my team safe and keep us from infecting anyone else. I think we’re going to see a whole lot of different changes as this goes on. I’ve been in a funk watching bad news all day yesterday instead of my usual skiing and watching today’s numbers climb didn‘t help matters. Seeing San Fran go on all non essential lockdown and auto repair was on the essential list kinda snapped me out of it.

Stay safe my friends.

[old goat]

It was clear to me that Doc was only recommending clear thinking and good science.

And keeping an open mind towards contrarian opinions (but not Devon Nunes.) Every scientific theory we believe someone once thought was ridiculous.

And oh btw, California Dental Association told its member they should only treat emergencies The notice from my dentist said through end of March. Hopefully the shutdown will last only long enough for dentists to get more protective gear and train staff. That will be longer than 2 weeks I'm sure. If they wait for the virus to be gone we're all going to be gumming our food.

[iceman]

That would be part of "clear thinking", Doc.

[skaredshtles]

I was in Norway last summer and was blown away by the infrastructure when you consider it's a nation of five million people. We drove through a tunnel near the Hardangerfjord that had a roundabout in it, for fuck's sake!

This. We visited in '99 for 10 days and saw a shit-ton of the country by train and boat.

[LeeLau]

And keeping an open mind towards contrarian opinions (but not Devon Nunes.) Every scientific theory we believe someone once thought was ridiculous.

And oh btw, California Dental Association told its member they should only treat emergencies The notice from my dentist said through end of March. Hopefully the shutdown will last only long enough for dentists to get more protective gear and train staff. That will be longer than 2 weeks I'm sure. If they wait for the virus to be gone we're all going to be gumming our food.

Approximately 90% of dental staff attend the Pacific Dental Conference in Vancouver March 5 - 7th. 3 new cases have been traced to one COVID attendee at the conference. All attendees have been asked to quarantine

Applying the 20% growth rate to these numbers (cases doubling every 5 days) in 45 days the probability of cases among attendees hits 800