The Coronavirus Thread

[Sean Hayden]

New York’s metropolitan area, the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., posted its highest single-day death tolls this past week. But even as the death count climbs higher, other metrics such as hospitalizations, intensive-care check-ins and intubations started to flatten and seem to be “starting to turn the corner,” Fauci said.

Health experts like Fauci note that the number of deaths from the coronavirus will tend to lag behind the number of infections and hospitalizations, meaning that evidence of progress can be found even when the virus is at its peak of lethality.

“Once you turn that corner, hopefully we’ll see a very sharp decline,” Fauci said.

In other states with less severe outbreaks than New York, Fauci said that at the end of the month “we can look around and say, ‘OK, is there any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on?’ If so, do it. If not, then just continue to hunker down.”

The basis of my earlier post which had nothing whatsoever to do with any concern for our rank in the world, something that keeps coming up like we all simply must pay attention to it. It is an election year I guess...

[pErvinalia]

Do you think Boris Johnson will have a Road to Damascus moment about the NHS? Is that too much to hope for?

[Hermit]

Estimated deaths continue to decrease as do the number hospitalized.

"More dead in the US than anywhere!"

It's hard not to be a prick and to see the lopsided focus as the worst in us.

The USA is not the worst. On a deaths per million of its population basis it is 15th worst at 62. The global average is 14. Spain gets the silver medal with 355. San Marino wins gold with 32 deaths, making it 1032/million. Italy is in fourth place with 322 and the Netherlands in 8th with 154. Australia trails somewhat with 2/million, and New Zealand is among the real losers. It only manages 0.8.

Yes, there's a big error margin in the statistics, but approximate numbers are better than none at all.

Oh, and you can look up regularly updated statistics at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Given the hype about our capabilities the US response is surely a contender for worst.

I was more pointing out our usual shitty habit of getting off on the ugly.

As if 15th worst out of ~195 is something to be proud of?

If anything has spared us from the top spot, it's probably our relatively low population density. God knows Trump doesn't deserve any credit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... on_density

US: 34/km2
Italy: 200/km2
Spain: 93/km2
South Korea: 517/km2
China: 145/km2

And Canada comes in at 4/sq.km

And Australia at 3.3

I can't really see a correlation between population density and death rate, not even after adding the urbanisation urbanisation rate. Too many other factors involved, not to mention the unreliability of the death statistics (deaths per million population in the last column) themselves.

South Korea: 517/km², 81.5%, 4
Italy: 200/km², 70.4%, 329
China: 145/km², 60%, 2
Spain: 93/km², 80.3%, 368
US: 34/km², 82.3%, 67
Canada 4/km², 81.4%, 19
Australia 3/km², 86%, 2

[pErvinalia]

Population density is a flawed view particularly for Australia (and Canada? ), where the vast majority of people live in the capital cities at much higher population densities.

[JimC]

In Oz, it's not so much the average population density, but the fact of having a sea border for control purposes (although partly stuffed up by the Ruby Princess fiasco), plus our large population centres are a long way apart. Once they did the "close the state borders" thing, it would have had a significant dampening effect on the spread of the virus throughout the country...

[Cunt]

Yeahbut 50% of Canada is places in the middle of marsh and tarsands.

No, MUCH more of it is frozen tundra.

[pErvinalia]

Racist!

[DRSB]

This move will only fuel more conspiracy theories. My favourite one is the Chinese comsomol theory.
CNN:

Beijing tightens grip over coronavirus research, amid US-China row on virus origin

China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web.

Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts.
A medical expert in Hong Kong who collaborated with mainland researchers to publish a clinical analysis of Covid-19 cases in an international medical journal said his work did not undergo such vetting in February.
The increased scrutiny appears to be the latest effort by the Chinese government to control the narrative on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives and sickened 1.7 million people worldwide since it first broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December.

[Cunt]

This move will only fuel more conspiracy theories. My favourite one is the Chinese comsomol theory.

My favourite one is the conspiracy theory about the origin of the modern conspiracy theory.

[pErvinalia]

I think we need to have a conspiracy-off. See who's the bigger conspiracy theorist out of Cunt, Scot and Galaxian. Galaxian's long standing title could be under threat!

[JimC]

That's what they want you to think...

[Brian Peacock]

Do you think Boris Johnson will have a Road to Damascus moment about the NHS? Is that too much to hope for?

No. He'll cite it as a vindication of Tory privatisation policies. The opposition have been totally absent from this for well over a month at a time when they could be making a strong case to stop running the system at the desired 96% capacity, better resourcing the areas that the private sector won't touch like emergency, acute, and intensive care provision, and to give the fucking nurses and admin staff a pay hike that'll at least take them back to the level of wages before 2007/8 crash and the subsequent austerity. Their election policy of free basic broadband for every households looks a lot better now that everyone has discovered you can work productively from home without doing a 2 hour commute to the office just to be seen to be working. They could make a lot of headway with those ideas I think, but the Labour party now has a painfully-white image-conscious centre-right technocrat in charge, and really those idiots still think they have to dress themselves in the mantle of the 'Good Tory' to be a 'proper' politician.

[Brian Peacock]

Racist!

Factiod: The 1918 'Spanish flu' originated in America. Syphilis used to be called 'French disease' by the British, the 'German disease' by the French. and the 'English disease' by the Germans.

I think being #OUTRAGED by someone else's #OUTRAGE is basically #OUTRAGEOUS.

[NineBerry]

The local news had a reporter out asking people what they are doing outside. He met a couple who said "We are going to fuck. We're looking for a quiet spot in nature, then we're going to fuck there and filming us doing so". It's not illegal, but still awkward saying that on public television

[Hermit]

Racist!

In his eagerness to argue it is OK to keep the racist label of 'China virus' and therewith encourage racist behaviour by the rabble, Bill Maher clean forgot to list the advantages of retaining that label in favour of 'SARS-CoV-2' in terms of handling the pandemic.