This is my last day of work until life returns to normal. The measures taken to prevent the spread of coronavirus have made it impossible for me to visit my elderly clients and take them places. Two are in a building for older people and only residents can enter. All their activities have been canceled. They are pretty restricted to living alone in their very small apartments. I think this is a huge mistake! And I am wondering what in blazes I will do with all the time I have I will have?

Thank goodness for the internet and this forum, and the gardening I can do. A good side is there is much less traffic and I can enjoy driving again. :grin: I don't worry about walking through stores because so few people are in them. It is almost like I have the whole world to myself. :lol:

Estimates are updated every day, often more than once per day. The source for this estimate reports: “As of 9am on 17 March 2020, 50,442 people have been tested in the UK, of which 48,492 were confirmed negative and 1,950 were confirmed as positive.”

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing-source-data

The UK has been doing a deal of testing, and it looks therefore as though there are not huge numbers of undetected cases. So the numbers here are probably fairly reliable:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

However, it is early days. The 1% serious or critical figure looks fairly reassuring until you look at the death to recovery ratio. 2 deaths for every recovery. One hopes the latter ratio will improve as mild cases are declared recovered, but the 1% is likely to increase as some of the new cases deteriorate.

“As many as 80% of the population are expected to be infected with Covid-19 in the next 12 months, and up to 15% (7.9 million people) may require hospitalization” a secret Public Health England (PHE) briefing for senior NHS officials, seen by the Guardian, reveals

If the 1% increases to 15%, though, then I fear there will be almost no treatment for most of that 7.9 million and very many will die.

I have not seen any data that would have ever led me to the response I see now — Hanover

Have you been looking at all?

The US doesn't have any decent data, but look at the UK data and think on. (Hint. 15% of 80% of the US population is about 39 million)

I have not seen any data that would have ever led me to the response I see now, but what I instead see is an illness that is mild in the vast (>90%) number of cases and is fatal only among the already very compromised. The cure we've arrived at, to the extent it at all represents a cure, is far worse than the disease. — Hanover

The simple fact is that now in the 21st Century we simply don't tolerate vast amounts of people to die in epidemics. We take preventive steps even if there is just the possibility of vast amounts of people to die. That's it. Earlier we tolerated that people die from epidemic diseases. And you be the judge what is "vast amounts of people".

This "safety-culture" is quite universal and is present everywhere, it's not only that technology and science has improved, but also our attitudes have changed.

As I've said, if we could forecast earthquakes, we wouldn't tolerate people dying in earthquakes. Same thing. Polticians would have to do the utmost to save people from earthquakes. Even if you Hanover and NOS4A2 wouldn't want to leave your home and would be just fine to face the incoming earthquake estimated being 8 on the richter scale, many people would leave and not call it an "infraction of their rights".

Or just think about the response to 9/11. All the increased security and everything. Assume what would have happened if things would have been left totally the same, if Americans would have truly thought that "Terrorist attacks are unfortunate, but limiting personal freedoms would be worse". They didn't do that. And things would have been as before starting from security at domestic flights being a joke (that they were)? Well, just a few more strikes would have been successful and perhaps only some hundreds more of Americans would have died. So what's the big deal there?

It's not a flu. Different strain of virus. But I suppose your job demands you to parrot Trump.

:pray:

It's not a flu. Different strain of virus. But I suppose your job demands you to parrot Trump. — Benkei

Disregarding your beef with NOS4A2, do you not see hope in this possible treatment option?

what I instead see is an illness that is mild in the vast (>90%) — Hanover

"Mild" cases include having holes punched in your lungs and permanently reduced capacity. You go out and go viral if you want. I like my organs just the way they are. Anyway, now that even Republicans have embraced socialism, the "liberty" argument has lost. You're pissing into the wind.

Whether we admit it or not, we permit a certain number of deaths in order to maintain a certain why of life, which includes allowing our economy to operate the way it does. The worst case scenarios in the US if we were to allow the virus free reign would be between 200,000 and 1.7 million deaths. The estimate should make clear they simply don't know, since there's such a large range. But, let us assume we should expect 1,000,000 deaths, then that would put us at 250,000 less deaths than than the 1.25 million annual car accident deaths we deal with annually. We really have to keep these things in perspective here before we allow the entire world's economy to collapse — Hanover

It's not just about the 1-3% who die from the disease. There are those who don't die but require hospitalization or other medical treatment. It's an additional burden on the health service that could lead to even more deaths (of other injuries and illnesses). Not to mention the financial burden on those who do require medical help (copayments, incomplete coverage, inability to work, etc.)

to treat the Chinese flu. — NOS4A2

Take your racism and shove it. Racists get banned. Final warning.

To everyone offended, I apologize for using that term. It wasn’t an indictment on a race (China is a multi-racial country), but was supposed to be an indictment on the government of China, who have censored and suppressed their own doctors, ultimately leading to the current world pandemic.

No, you were trying inject racism into the conversation.

Once the virus appeared in humans, it was destined to become global.

You think Chinese is a race? That’s racist. Either way, we should do our best to counteract the narrative of the CCP.

I'm not a fan of the CCP either. But it's not our job to get involved in a propaganda war between them and the US. Besides which, people of Chinese ethnicity (or of any of the multiple ethnicities in China to be more accurate) should not be stigmatized because we don't like their government.

The CCP is also saying the use of such terms is racist. We should be careful not to promote their propaganda in order to quell our own. But I will stick to the accepted terms.

Because a bad guy says A doesn't make A wrong. Genetic fallacy.

Doesn’t make them right either. But I’ll drop it nonetheless.

Right, move on.

is fatal only among the already very compromised — Hanover

Yeah, those sick old people had it coming - good riddance!

(I hear this "point" surprisingly often from people who argue that the threat has been blown out of proportion.)

Italy had 475 deaths yesterday. With population of 60.5 million and annual mortality rate of 10.2 per 1000, that's 25% increase of mortality rate (even if we allow that, say, 10% of those who died from coronavirus would have died from other causes within the same period).

For those of you that don't give a crap about the epidemiology, the FTSE100 has plunged down more than it did when the 2008 recession hit, and more quickly.

Time to invest.

For those of you that don't give a crap about the epidemiology, the FTSE100 has plunged down more than it did when the 2008 recession hit, and more quickly. — fdrake

It should recover, unless like a dying COVID-19 patient, it has an underlying disease.

It's old news so I didn't take any notice. This was reported in the news a month ago. Google translate this: Chloroquine

1,000 dead in two days in Italy. Jesus H. To any Italians reading, sii Forte, stay strong. :pray:

Chinese doctors are advising European doctors and sharing test results. The Chinese are donating face masks to Italy and the Netherlands that I know of.

They're not the bad guys with respect to this pandemic.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/japanese-flu-drug-clearly-effective-in-treating-coronavirus-says-china

Latest I've heard. In the Netherlands they're testing an existing vaccin (I forgot which one) for a different drug that tends to put people's immune system into hyperdrive, possibly allowing them to resist the disease themselves.

Jesus. That’s greater than China’s reported death toll.

Yes, just surpassed Chinese total.

They're not the bad guys with respect to this pandemic. — Benkei

Other than it being started there and the chinese government subsequently covering it up.

Mother of God.

I hypothesized a while ago that DNP (dinitrophenol) could make cancer cells self-destruct through accelerated metabolic pathways and energy being expended by heat production within the mitochondria.

My assumption here is that if caught earlier in the prodromal phase of the disease, then one can hypothetically "flush out" the diseased cells.

Enhance the immune system through some natural flavenoids or other drugs, and it just may be possible to prevent the lethality of the virus.

I'm serious, can someone forward the above to knowledgeable doctors or epidemiologists?