Are we delivering viruses to ourselves? (1 Viewer)

[The moose]

Now that we have data that coronavirus can survive on boxes and hard surfaces for days is it being spread to us by delivery services?

Ups or FedEx sorting centers and quick delivery they provide could be passing the virus to us.

This article is pretty good. If you get a package delivery just think about it.

UPS Workers Report That UPS' Coronavirus Preparations Are Woefully Inadequate Or Nonexistent UPDATED

It’s safe to say that, thanks to the COVID-19 Coronavirus, most of you are reading this at home, having willingly separated yourself from other people, from the activities you enjoy, from regular showers and companionship and work and so many other things because you know it’s the right thing to...

jalopnik.com

 

[SystemShock]

What do you think the death rate is of Coronavirus? How deadly do you think it is being made out to be? The seasonal flu death rate is about 0.1%. This virus is often reported to have about a 2 to 3% death rate, but it is higher everywhere so far, except South Korea. The only country that seems to be nearing as low as a 1% death rate is South Korea, but Italy is closer to 40%. So the best result seen anywhere is still 10 times worse than a seasonal flu. So to me it seems like this is being made out to be LESS deadly than it seems to be. Also, it is much more contagious than the seasonal flu, so if we treated it like the seasonal flu, then more than twice as many people would get it compared to the seasonal flu. If the death rate is as low as 1%, we would have at about 20 times more deaths than a normal flu, and if the death rate is closer to 5%, then possibly more than 100 times as many deaths.

So, first, let's forget about the flu. I just compared the covid-19 death rate with the death rate of bullets, which is 61% with 8,625 deaths so far this year, and we are not shutting down the country because of bullets.

What I think the actual death rate of covid-19 is?

You have to take into account, the death rate is based on the known number of deaths vis a vis the known number of exposures.

One of the issues at the onset of any new disease, (and even long after it's come and gone) you can tell the number of deaths from that disease more or less accurately, but you have no idea how many are exposed. The WHO and CDC have complex statistical models to predict global rates of infection, but even for events that occurred years ago, the range of exposure estimates is very wide.

Right now, for covid-19, the counter in the U.S. stands at 26,825 with 345 deaths. As testing becomes more widespread, the exposure to death ratio continues to drop. This is very much the trend since January. If we take the link about contagiousness you posted as barometer, and knowing the testing shortcomings in the U.S., I don't think is unreasonable to think many, many more people than just 26,825 have been exposed in the U.S.

How many? I don't know, you don't know, the CDC doesn't know... but certainly, many, many more than 26,825. And we just started to shut down like a week ago.

keep in mind that the first case arrived in the U.S. on 20 JAN,

Correction. That's the first reported case. We don't know if it was here before that.

 

[Goatman saint]

So, first, let's forget about the flu. I just compared the covid-19 death rate with the death rate of bullets, which is 61% with 8,625 deaths so far this year, and we are not shutting down the country because of bullets.

What I think the actual death rate of covid-19 is?

You have to take into account, the death rate is based on the known number of deaths vis a vis the known number of exposures.

One of the issues at the onset of any new disease, (and even long after it's come and gone) you can tell the number of deaths from that disease more or less accurately, but you have no idea how many are exposed. The WHO and CDC have complex statistical models to predict global rates of infection, but even for events that occurred years ago, the range of exposure estimates is very wide.

Right now, for covid-19, the counter in the U.S. stands at 26,825 with 345 deaths. As testing becomes more widespread, the exposure to death ratio continues to drop. This is very much the trend since January. If we take the link about contagiousness you posted as barometer, and knowing the testing shortcomings in the U.S., I don't think is unreasonable to think many, many more people than just 26,825 have been exposed in the U.S.

How many? I don't know, you don't know, the CDC doesn't know... but certainly, many, many more than 26,825. And we just started to shut down like a week ago.


Correction. That's the first reported case. We don't know if it was here before that.

Id be stunned if it wasn’t here before that. With the large numbers of Chinese visitors in the US and how the vast majority of the cases are relatively mild, I’d say it’s been here, and been churning in the background for a while. All through February in California there was a rash of the flu, but not flu going around. My wife for one sat here for a few days with the hardest dry cough and slight temperature for a few days and was just worn out. Never thought anything about it, but now that we look back it makes us both wonder as our sense of smell was screwed up, both of us had mild chest congestion, headaches, and she had the cough and temp. She spent a bunch of time in the Bay Area at conferences right before this. Also pneumonia cases were rising here well before this came out. I think we are lucky that the vast amount of people don’t show many symptoms. If they showed up as bad as some progress this would be an apocalypse

 

[SystemShock]

Id be stunned if it wasn’t here before that. With the large numbers of Chinese visitors in the US and how the vast majority of the cases are relatively mild, I’d say it’s been here, and been churning in the background for a while. All through February in California there was a rash of the flu, but not flu going around. My wife for one sat here for a few days with the hardest dry cough and slight temperature for a few days and was just worn out. Never thought anything about it, but now that we look back it makes us both wonder as our sense of smell was screwed up, both of us had mild chest congestion, headaches, and she had the cough and temp. She spent a bunch of time in the Bay Area at conferences right before this. Also pneumonia cases were rising here well before this came out. I think we are lucky that the vast amount of people don’t show many symptoms. If they showed up as bad as some progress this would be an apocalypse

Come to think of it, obviously it may be coincidence, but up until January, my wife worked in adoptions; late last year, out of the blue, she got pneumonia, and she just happened to work with 2 families who adopted from China, and where in China Sep-Oct.

 

[efil4]

And just to pour more fuel into the fire... because, hey, it's me...

United States COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

United States Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

As of today, number of deaths in the U.S. for the virus are at 288, out of 22,738 confirmed cases. If we assume that the dead, the recovered cases, and the current patients in serious and critical condition all had hospitals stays, that puts the number of people who (I think is obvious) were hospitalized at 523 hospitalizations. I don't think people with mild to none symptoms would have been hospitalized.

In contrast, as of today, there have been 8,560 deaths to gun violence, plus 5562 injuries.

Gun Violence Archive

www.gunviolencearchive.org

Not that I am afraid to die, or afraid of guns, but it there was such a thing, I guess I am higher in the afraid scale of a bullet taking me out than covid-19, which originated in Wuhan, China.

I suspect you do what you can to avoid putting yourself in the front of the barrel of a gun, right?

 

[SystemShock]

I suspect you do what you can to avoid putting yourself in the front of the barrel of a gun, right?

Yes, just like most everyone else. Why do you ask?

 

[Lapaz]

Yes, just like most everyone else. Why do you ask?

Because you said this is being made out to be worse than it is. You responded to me that none of us know the true death rate. You never answered how it is being made out to be worse than it is. I agree that we don’t know how bad it is, but indications are that it is at least 10 times more deadly than the seasonal flu. It’s strange to compare preventative measures to gun deaths, but I bet you wouldn’t want to take the precautions needed to reduce those deaths. This thread isn’t about gun violence, so let’s drop that. Now if we don’t take proper precautions with Covid-19, it could kill over 1 million people. It may do that next Fall, but we need to get the medical system vastly better prepared for the Fall Covid-19 season, then maybe we won’t have to shut down the economy.

 

[lurk]

Come to think of it, obviously it may be coincidence, but up until January, my wife worked in adoptions; late last year, out of the blue, she got pneumonia, and she just happened to work with 2 families who adopted from China, and where in China Sep-Oct.

If your wife had pneumonia, then she would have had a scan done to diagnose it. If she had a scan done to diagnose it, they would have discovered that the pattern in her lungs looked nothing like what pneumonia looks like and would have remarked on it, which likely would have ended up with her getting a barrage of new tests in an attempt to discover which esoteric condition she had developed that IS capable of producing said pattern. In case I'm not being clear enough, she wouldn't have been diagnosed with pneumonia and sent on her way, because this does not appear like pneumonia on a scan. At all. The damage it does is much different visually, much more severe, and much more permanent.

It's not an unreasonable thought that this was here earlier, but the reality is that it was not because the radiology community would have talked quite loudly about it if everyone's pneumonia suddenly looked nothing like pneumonia...

 

[Joe Okc]

Again... Our Paper Money is probably loaded.. With that said... Can you imagine how many fingers have been on that keypad pressing the "OK" button when the Credit Card machine says: "Is this amount ok?"

Scratching your butt with your finger ain't got shirt on what's going on now...

 

[MT15]

Well, as I finished my self-checkout at Sam’s Club this weekend, a worker was standing by with a towel and disinfectant to wipe down the touch screen as soon as I walked away. There was also a worker at the entrance wiping down each cart with disinfectant before all people took the carts in.

I think precautions are being taken.

As for testing, I haven’t found out exactly how specific these tests are, for sure. Sometimes tests are tweaked to give the maximum number of positive results, especially if the consequences of a false negative are far worse than the consequences of a false positive. which is exactly the scenario we have here. A false positive doesn’t hurt anything, while a false negative leads to spread of the virus. This could explain some of the people who test positive with no symptoms whatsoever. So it’s really way, way too early in this pandemic to say what the rate of transmission is or the fatality rate with anything other than an educated guess.

Also, keep in mind this. People who survive, but are seriously ill and possibly on vents, may very well have permanent lung damage due to their illness. I think sometimes people think that if they don’t die, they will be fine, they’ll make a full recovery. And they calculate the only true casualties are the people who die. We won’t know for years how many people will die years earlier than they would have if they didn’t get the disease.

If we overreact to this virus, we will never know for sure. If we under react, it will be devastatingly obvious.

 

[SystemShock]

Because you said this is being made out to be worse than it is.

I think it is.

You responded to me that none of us know the true death rate.

Which is a fact.

You never answered how it is being made out to be worse than it is.

Have you looked at the stock market, for one? The money businesses are losing? The people who are losing their jobs?

I agree that we don’t know how bad it is, but indications are that it is at least 10 times more deadly than the seasonal flu. It’s strange to compare preventative measures to gun deaths, but I bet you wouldn’t want to take the precautions needed to reduce those deaths.

I do. Take precautions, sure. Not run out to buy all the toliet paper I can and lock myself in my house.

This thread isn’t about gun violence, so let’s drop that.

No one said this thread was about gun violence. I was just drawing a parallel to something that has a substantially higher death rate, has no known direct cure, can affect you at any time without warning, and taxes healthcare systems in certain regions of the country; yet,we don't lock ourselves in our houses and build toilet paper castles.

Now if we don’t take proper precautions with Covid-19, it could kill over 1 million people.

That right there is making it worse than it is. Why stop at 1 million? Heck, I could kill 5 million. It could kill 10 million. It potentially could be more deadly than the Black Plague.

It may do that next Fall,

Highly doubt it.

but we need to get the medical system vastly better prepared for the Fall Covid-19 season, then maybe we won’t have to shut down the economy.

Our healthcare system is fine. It can take an extra 10-20 million people on, no issues.

 

[SystemShock]

If your wife had pneumonia, then she would have had a scan done to diagnose it.

Doctors know what pneumonia sounds like. I am not a doctor, but apparently, pneumonia has a very distinctive sound when you listen to someone's lungs through a stethoscope.

 

[lurk]

Doctors know what pneumonia sounds like. I am not a doctor, but apparently, pneumonia has a very distinctive sound when you listen to someone's lungs through a stethoscope.

I wish you knew even a tenth of the many things you're positively convinced you know. I really do.

 

[SystemShock]

I wish you knew even a tenth of the many things you're positively convinced you know. I really do.

Cute.

 

[Lapaz]

That right there is making it worse than it is. Why stop at 1 million? Heck, I could kill 5 million. It could kill 10 million. It potentially could be more deadly than the Black Plague.


Highly doubt it.


Our healthcare system is fine. It can take an extra 10-20 million people on, no issues.

I said over 1 million could die next Fall. That's predicated on not having a vaccine yet, it being endemic throughout the U.S., unlike this year which started with 1 case in the U.S., it being twice as contagious as the seasonal flu, and it having a mortality rate of at least 1%. We had 33M flu cases in the 2018-2019 flu season, and that's with almost half of all Americans getting vaccinated, which provided herd immunity. Without those vaccinations, we probably would have had at least twice as many flu cases. If Covid-19 is twice as infectious, we will easily exceed 100M cases next Fall. That isn't hyperbole. That is realistic, and we need to prepare for that. It could indeed kill more than 5M or even 10M, but China and South Korea's results suggest that it won't be that deadly, nor as deadly as the Black Plague which killed over 30% of people that it infected. We will have a much better idea of how deadly it will be when most cases are resolved. Hopefully we'll prepare equipment and develop new treatments and a vaccine before then.

What do you base your conclusion on that our healthcare system is fine? Are you not hearing about doctors coming out of retirement to supplement staffing shortages, having to use military facilities, and equipment shortages even with this minor case load that we currently have?

 

[JimEverett]

My wife got really sick a few days after returning from the Netherlands back January. She tested negative for the flu was diagnosed with pneumonia but never took an x-ray to confirm. had one scheduled but for some reason we ended up not going. She was prescribed some medicines but we almost went to ER one night cause she could not breathe. After that she improved.
Could have been coronavirus, I guess. If so, I wonder why none of us - her immediate family - got sick.

 

[Lapaz]

Well, as I finished my self-checkout at Sam’s Club this weekend, a worker was standing by with a towel and disinfectant to wipe down the touch screen as soon as I walked away. There was also a worker at the entrance wiping down each cart with disinfectant before all people took the carts in.

I think precautions are being taken.

As for testing, I haven’t found out exactly how specific these tests are, for sure. Sometimes tests are tweaked to give the maximum number of positive results, especially if the consequences of a false negative are far worse than the consequences of a false positive. which is exactly the scenario we have here. A false positive doesn’t hurt anything, while a false negative leads to spread of the virus. This could explain some of the people who test positive with no symptoms whatsoever. So it’s really way, way too early in this pandemic to say what the rate of transmission is or the fatality rate with anything other than an educated guess.

Also, keep in mind this. People who survive, but are seriously ill and possibly on vents, may very well have permanent lung damage due to their illness. I think sometimes people think that if they don’t die, they will be fine, they’ll make a full recovery. And they calculate the only true casualties are the people who die. We won’t know for years how many people will die years earlier than they would have if they didn’t get the disease.

If we overreact to this virus, we will never know for sure. If we under react, it will be devastatingly obvious.

I mostly agree with what you've said, however I heard in one of Trump's coronavirus news conferences that they didn't want to use the WHO test because it had too many false positives. When I heard that, I immediately thought about what you're saying that it is far less dangerous to get a false positive than a false negative, because you can re-administer the test to check. Of course you don't want a 50% false positive, because that would take too many re-tests to have high confidence (7 tests to get better than 99% chance of accuracy), but something like a 10% false positive would be fine. If you get 2 positive results with a test that only has a 10% false positive rate, then the odds are 99% that you have it. Since the measures are not that draconian, that's an acceptable false positive rate. I've read that the South Korean test is 10% false positive, and they get results in 45 minutes. I don't know if they're using the WHO test, but we ought to use the South Korean test. With that quick turnaround, we could even do the test 3 times to give people 99.9% assurance that they have the virus.

Note, my daughter's next door neighbor here in Alabama went to the hospital with flu symptoms. She tested negative for flu, and was sent home without a Covid-19 test. That's why Alabama is still only reporting about 167 cases. It's deception and a false sense of security.

 

[zztop]

Stuff like this just makes me sad

A 39-year-old otherwise healthy New Orleans woman who showed signs of the novel coronavirus died alone in her kitchen awaiting test results

"I don't want to be sick anymore," Natasha Ott, a 39-year-old social worker, texted days before her death. Her COVID-19 results are still unknown.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[Lapaz]

Stuff like this just makes me sad

A 39-year-old otherwise healthy New Orleans woman who showed signs of the novel coronavirus died alone in her kitchen awaiting test results

"I don't want to be sick anymore," Natasha Ott, a 39-year-old social worker, texted days before her death. Her COVID-19 results are still unknown.

www.businessinsider.com

I hope the boyfriend, Anderson, is being tested, since he was with her when she first complained about symptoms. Also, it is ridiculous that it takes 5 days to get results. Singapore has booths that produce test results in less than 10 minutes. We're like a 3rd world country because of the horrible leadership we currently have.