Damn Coronavirus!

[UWSkier]

Interesting modeling at this site. Also, yikes. https://www.covidactnow.org/

[eleeski]

The terror of exponential growth drives doomsday scenarios. But Malthus and Erlich were not right. Note, I knew Paul Erlich and went to school with his daughter as a close friend, my dad was a close friend and we had many dinner table discussions. Time proved him wrong. Real life has a way of interfering with nice theoretical curves. The exponential Population Bomb did not explode.

 

Stan was just in Hawaii. The Pathogen Star (or whatever the name of the ship that discharged its Covid19 victims in Oakland over a week ago) stopped in Hilo and interacted with the locals 2 weeks ago on its way to Oakland. Zero transmission traced to that. Norway is exponentially overwhelmed by a handful of known vectors (snow skiers at a specific bar). It's a real crisis in Europe. There are so many variables we don't understand.

 

One thing that is known is the effect on workers in the tourist industry. I was stuck in Tahoe. Ski resorts were abruptly shut down on Sunday. Best snow of the year! Enough to last well into spring. Nope, no employment and no money in the economy. And no warning. Real human tragedies going on right now.

 

Nobody (including me) knows where this is going. If it goes away, the draconian measures fans will claim the measures worked - regardless of the other factors. If not, it's the fault of the horrible people who cheated the lockdown. Hmmm.

 

We don't know enough. One thing we are certain of is that a huge fraction of the population has been hurt severely economically. While an extremely small percentage of the population has become Ill.

 

People in the medical profession are (justly) terrified. Not only are they at massive risk of the infection, they will be forced to make the tough life and death triage decisions.

 

California is on lockdown.

 

I am terrified by the response to the crisis. My Canadian ski buddy took his fancy motorhome and self deported. I was miserably stuck in bad weather in Tahoe (would have been awesome if the lifts were spinning) until the hoarded rice and TP ran out. I live off rent - but nobody will be paying rent now. I still have to pay properly tax though.

 

I'm a pariah because I look at the long term welfare of society and I'm willing to let people die and have hospitals overwhelmed to make (preserve) a better world. Is flattening the curve of this one disease really worth the damage to the people who can't work or get the enjoyment from playing or being with friends (mental health matters too!)?

 

The Italians that are dying average age is around 80 years old. That's older than the average age in Italy (or the US). Old people die. It happens. Usually by pneumonia of some sorts (like this). Sad but inevitable.

 

My mom had a 94th birthday bash planned. She was going to see most of her family. Now she's isolated and no one can visit. Something will get her soon. But she is denied one of her late in life pleasurable experiences. She says the protection from Covid19 isn't worth what she's missing while she could still enjoy it.

 

I'm old enough that I won't have too many more chances to ski 3 feet of light powder again. That was taken away from me by the abrupt closing of all skiing last Sunday. If Worlds are cancelled, my arthritic body is unlikely to hold up for another chance. Putting life on lockdown has the strongest adverse effect on the very demographic that it's trying to save.

 

The cops chased everyone off the beach in San Diego today. Walks for exercise are probably the best thing to improve immune response - but not allowed by our government. The security guards (who we used to have a great friendly relationship with) hassled our tenant in Hawaii for walking on the beach - not sure if they called the cops on him but it's scary how weird people are getting over this. Some kids were playing volleyball on the beach last night. This morning the nets had been ripped off - not weird, flat out scary. Locking up people who have done nothing wrong, destroying the economy and forcing people out of their jobs is destroying the fabric of our society.

 

We drove past Manzanar (WW2 Japanese internment camp) on our way back from Tahoe. People, even Americans, are capable of awful things. George Orwell got the date wrong by 36 years (I have to reread 1984 since I'm not allowed to do anything else).

 

Sorry for the long rant.

 

Eric

[liquid d]

@UWSkier your modeling website uses insane numbers to create fear. 1/2 million in florida Hospitals in a month, when 95% of the people who get it have mild or no symptoms at all. It's a fearmongers website.

What i think will happen, is the 98% of those that will not require hospitals will start to revolt at about 4 weeks into lockdown. We in the ski community are mostly one percenters and can stand several months of lost income. Most of the country/world cannot.

[UWSkier]

@liquid d they define their model including assumptions, variables, etc on the site. It's not my site. Does it err on the high side? Probably. The fact remains that if appropriate actions aren't taken, the hospital system will, as an absolute mathematical fact, be overwhelmed.

 

Florida is boomer central, and the boomers don't seem to be taking this seriously. Three weeks from now, Florida could easily look a lot like northern Italy.

[The_MS]

@UWSkier it boomer central everywhere.

 

[Than_Bogan]

There's a lot of people throwing the word "math" around, perhaps without understanding the limitations thereof. In math, an exponential curve continues to grow at a larger and larger rate forever. In the real world, that has never happened. I can state with confidence that this has never happened, because exponential growth will take over the entire universe in a fairly short amount of time if it continues.

 

Starting from 1 instance, something that doubles every day will hit 8 billion (the number of people on earth) in 33 days.

 

200 days after that it will exceed the number of atoms in the known universe.

 

Modeling things in the real world is #@&%ing difficult, but pure exponential growth forever is certainly not correct.

 

[LoopSki]

I feel bad for all the out of work strippers

[elr]

Deleted.

 

[Bruce_Butterfield]

Nice to see this is staying non-political.......

[UWSkier]

@elr I'm with you. My younger sister is a critical care (ICU) doc in Wisconsin. It infuriates me how nonchalant and dismissive much of the public is being about this.

 

In Italy alone, 23 physicians have died from COVID-19, 19 of whom were working in the region @Luzz has been referring to.

[Stevie Boy]

Restrictions in the UK have pretty much put a end to any skiing for the present, you are allowed out to exercise but only with members of your family, no more than two people at a time, unless you are going for medical supplies or food that's it, all other retails units will be closed.

I have almost written 2020 off , skiing wise, our season is short and restrictions will be in place for sometime.

[DW]

Appears the data in this chart is pretty current, sheds some light on the work the medical profession in this country is doing: https://www.cebm.net/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/

[pregom]

If you are curious to see stats in Italy by region instead of in aggregate at the country level like other sites I've seen (some cited here), take a look at the map in this link. It's in Italian, but the numbers don't need translation.

[slow]

I’m in Washington State. A physician friend of mine came back positive 10 days ago and was only tested because he had a mild fever and dry cough but was in the medical community. His entire family of 6 is assumed positive and have been in quarantine their house together with the same symptoms. Their symptoms are are improving. When they are symptom-free for seven days they can be released. The state only counts that as one positive. Is it doubtfull he would’ve ever been tested if he wasn’t a doctor.

[DangerBoy]

This site is in English and it gives you the up-to-date stats for each country plus charts for the world stats.

 

https://worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

The stats for Italy and Spain are staggering. I fear they could be even worse for the USA. With the lack of testing that has been done or that was being done, I fear the numbers reported here for existing cases in the USA are way under-reported. I don't want to be perceived as bragging or anything because I'm very concerned about what will happen on our continent and on our planet but comparatively speaking, Canada has done a much better job of testing and handling the crisis and keeping the numbers of cases down. As of today, USA has roughly 22 times the total number of cases and a little more than 24 times the number of deaths Canada has had. US population is only 10 times Canada's so on a per-capita basis, the USA is a little more than twice as hard hit as Canada when it comes to total number of cases and number of deaths from COVID-19. Factor in the fact that the USA has tens of millions of people without health insurance and you've got a potential recipe for a disaster brewing there. Let's hope not. :s

 

If you look at the charts showing the total number of cases and total number of deaths for the world you'll see the curve is following that of exponential growth. If you click on the country's names in the table, you will get to a page where you can see a time graph of the number of cases in that country. Shockingly, USA's and Canada's curves are steeper than either Italy's or Spain's right now. If the numbers keep trending the way they are, things could get right out of hand really fast in both Canada and the US. Time will tell if all of the extra testing and earlier measures we took in Canada will make much of a difference in the end. It may just be that this virus is going to go through the entire population before we can develop a vaccine to stop it. I guess the object then is to extend the period of time all those infections take place over (Flatten the curve) and keep the total level of active cases going at any one time below the level which would overwhelm the health care system. Maybe that's just the best we can do. :s

 

 

 

 

[skialex]

The numbers are from people tested positive, the head epidemiologist here says that their models estimate that there are 8-10 times more people infected and can infect others even if they have no symptoms themselves.

[Wayne]

This was disheartening to read last night but it is exactly the reason people need to take this seriously. This article was passed on to me by some one in TN who has a child with spinal muscular atrophy (ALS neuromuscular type of disorder). She was told if her kid needed intervention it’s probably not going to be a priority. There are links in the article to protocols in NY and a few other places.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/opinion/coronavirus-ventilators-triage-disability.html

 

 

[Than_Bogan]

@skialex I have heard similar information. In fact, through an indirect contact with a Stanford epidemiology group, I have heard they have preliminary evidence that it could even be 100x more infected than confirmed, and that basically the only thing that is dictating how many confirmed positives we have is how many tests we've managed to administer.

 

For a moment, this may sound terrible, but it's quite the opposite. IF TRUE (and I emphasize it may not be!!) then it means the mortality rate of this thing is waaaaay less than we thought. We'd still have a major issue in the short term due to lack of hospital resources to treat the acute cases, but in the long-term it could be a fairly ordinary threat. Cross fingers for THAT future to be real! :)

[6balls]

the worldometers site is cool. I would suggest rather than dumping straight into U.S. as in the link above go to:

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

 

Then scroll down and look at world stuff. Look at the graphs of cases and deaths. Also when you get to the list of countries on the top you can toggle yesterday and now (so far today). So you could see that yesterday Spain and Italy racked up nearly 1200 deaths together, for example.

 

You can also then click on USA and see what's going on here, yesterday and today. If you scroll down on the US page you can see a narrative. A number of days back cases and deaths seemed steady, but then doubled for the last few days compared to those two days.

 

At least if anything it's a data site, not a spin site.

 

The economic carnage is undeniable. The ethics are very interesting there will be university courses taught on this issue in the future.

 

Do nothing, live life, if you are meeting criteria "x,y,z" meaning you are of frail health due to age or condition...stay home we are not going to save you. If you meet criteria "x,y,z" meaning you are healthy or have long expectancy we have a ventilator for you. This likely doesn't overwhelm the system, and a mighty lot of people less sturdy die at home. We have NEVER rationed care in the U.S., and it is impossible to imagine the emotional toll on families.

 

Alternatively, we will save all we can with the resources we have. We will try NOT to overwhelm the system by having an immediate spike(flattening the curve), and there will be significant economic consequences.

 

Bizarre times. I'm not claiming to know the answer but in an ethics or philosophy class you could argue lots of things here.

[BraceMaker]

@Than_Bogan my concern there is that when your local health group reports their first Death how many days PAST the exposure was that. We had an elderly man locally no travel history, no real exposure history, had a few hospital visits for the typical stuff and then dead. Which means he is indicating a reservoir of infection locally.

[UWSkier]

Doesn't show recoveries and is only US and Canada, but I like how this site breaks things down to the county level. Click the little triangle next to your state name to see things broken down by county. https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/#stat

 

Really though, we don't have a GOOD idea yet of the scope of the infection. Assessing the situation is basic Six Sigma, and we've done a pretty poor job of that in the US.

[6balls]

From MN dept of health in the coming wave they expect us to have as many as 500 serious and 250 critical patients in our COUNTY. We have one hospital in the county with 28 beds, a number of those are geriatric psych beds. We have two ventilators.

[UWSkier]

This projection is about a week old, but it shows hospital saturation models based on percentage infected over time. @6balls it sounds like the MN dept of health is predicting one of the more aggressive scenarios. :(

 

https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/covid-hospitals?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[DangerBoy]

Here's something else you all need to know. This comes from my ex-wife who is a 25 year experienced Respiratory Therapist in one of my city's major hospitals. She works right on the front line and directly with patients with respiratory issues. RTs are the ones in the hospital who run the ventilators and manage the patients' respiration in conjunction with the Doctors. They also work as part of the team in managing patients' treatment while in the wards post-ICU and then after they go home and receive long-term at-home management.

 

She told me that some patients that survive the virus go home with significant damage to their respiratory functions that are likely permanent. She recently had a previously healthy 52 year old patient with no co-morbidities (e.g. not a smoker, no asthma or other respiratory issues) go home on a portable O2 tank and with severely damaged lungs. It's currently unknown if the patient will ever recover enough to where he/she will ever not need the portable O2 tank. Her best guess is the patient's outcome won't improve much over time but this is all new territory. :#

 

Be vigalent, stay home, and be careful to not become infected.

[UWSkier]

@DangerBoy yeah, there was news out of China and Hong Kong showing lost lung function a few weeks ago. Some on here dismissed it as fear mongering.

 

Nasty disease. :(

[Stevie Boy]

Professional Soccer Player has recovered from this disease, he stated that he was unable to breathe on his own, his lungs just packed up, he required a ventilator.

How fit was he, so what chance for some of us that are getting on a bit.

[UWSkier]

@Stevie Boy is there a link to an interview with this player? Would be interested to read first-hand testimony from a young, athletic person who got hit with this.

[swc5150]

Jim Fixx died jogging. Anecdotal incidents, while intriguing, perhaps shouldn't lead to added fear.

[Jody_Seal]

Having grown up with fear mongering from the time since I started grade school.

1962-67 duck and cover. Most of you wont know what that is. Cold war was at its highest level ever. We would have air raid drills in school where we had to get down on our knees under our desks, cover our heads with our hands. My dad had seen and had been apart of the atomic testing in the nevada desert in those years. He would asked me what I did in school that day I said duck and cover.... he would laugh take a pull off his cigarette and say they were teaching you how to kiss our asses goodbye!

 

Since then we have had many many fearmongering episodes and nasty social items that our politicians expound upon.

For me duck and cover, social riots of the 60's and 70's, Vietnam. Shit I remember waking up one morning to find mt saint Helens had laid 3 inches of ash all over western montana and our local politicians went berserk.

Oct 10 2018 hurricane Michael ripped through the pan handle of florida and layed a swath 60 miles wide and 250 miles into the south killing 41 people that they know of, some account say near 1000 people are still missing! Having lived through having everything you own spread out in 4 or 5 county's I realized that none of that stuff matters, it can be replaced but what does matter is that large number of our fellow humans are unaccounted for.

My family came out unscathed physically however we all carry a bit of PTSD because of it..

This current shit scares us and humans are very unpredictable when scared.

Fearmongering does not help the situation but creates more fear. This is and can be scary if one does not heed and maintain distance from others.

Our little part of the state has relatively little covid 19 in comparison to the south.

We actually closed up shop early in the process. Knock on wood and prayers that our trends do not fire up like down south.

 

If we stick with the program prescribed this will go away a lot faster then if we continue to not! Roll with it do what is asked of you.

 

We did have a local politician came on and said use a hair dryer to blow hot air up your nose and it will kill the virus!

 

I'll leave it at that!

 

 

[Stevie Boy]

@UWSkier here is the link https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-8141051/Lee-Duffy-reveals-coronavirus-left-fearing-life.html

[liquid d]

@Jody_Seal I saw on the internet that snorting cocaine will kill that stuff too!

[Rednucleus]

Hope this comes through ok - not a pro at posting pics

Just doing my part to inform my clients

[DangerBoy]

@liquid d And if the cocaine doesn't kill it you'll be high and won't care so it works either way. (At least until the cocaine wears off) ;)

[Than_Bogan]

The aforementioned Stanford epidemiologists have just gone public with some of their observations and questions. Unfortunately you need a WSJ subscription to read this opinion piece, but you can get one for 2 months for $1 -- if you remember to cancel it later!!

 

Stanford epidemiologist WSJ Opinion

 

As with any real science, this piece has way more questions than answers. But perhaps it will help to prioritize getting the answer to some of the ones that impact policy decisions most greatly, notably the true mortality rate.

[Roger]

So far, Okeeheelee is still open though I expect them to close the park anytime. The club has posted signs to observe social distancing and to have only the driver and skier per boat (no observers). Personally, I use a hand wash after driving anyone else's boat and my own boat if anyone else has driven it. I saw generally good social distancing from the people who were in the park today walking or riding bikes. Also, as someone else mentioned earlier in the thread, I'm not shortening the line yet though my target for doing so was March. No point risking it when tournaments have been pushed back anyway.

[6balls]

@UWSkier if MN dept of health grossly blew it and estimated 200 critrical, and we only get 100 critical instead in our county...we have 28 beds, 2 ventilators, and other sick people to deal with, and emergency surgeries, and obstetrical deliveries. Feels like calm before the storm. Spent my day doing a community disaster plan for physician services to cover ER/OB/clinic/inpatient.

[Andre]

@6balls

2 ventilators for how many peoples???

[liquid d]

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

 

Not to get off track, but what needs to be done to stop 25,000 to 50,000 people from dying from Flu every year in the USA? Is it ventilators, beds, ? Maybe you medical guys can shed some light...

[UWSkier]

Flu is less transmissible which distributes the illness over a much broader time horizon. It's a flatter curve by nature of its transmissibility.

[6balls]

@Andre 2 ventilators, perhaps 200 critical in our county by estimates will come. If we get even 50% of the estimate at 100 critical...we have 28 beds and 2 vents. New York not to peak for another few weeks...we may not get hit for another 4-8 weeks out here in rural MN.

The other interesting thing is that the elderly most affected, if they survive the ventilator, are going to be nothing like they were before afterward...and on a tough and expensive healthcare course moving forward toward a predictable end. Look up how many older than 80 who fracture their hip are alive 6 and 12 months later...and how many recover to their pre-fracture level of function or independence. This isn't a hip fracture, it's something much worse.

All of this is really tough to conceptualize...the ethics/philosophy/population issues are interesting. I dont' have the answers...and I usually don't but I do like intelligent discussion.

[The_MS]

It’s a flatter curve so I guess 25-50k is an OK number

[klindy]

@The_MS I wouldn’t say 25-50k is “OK”. But it is far more manageable than 250-500k.

[The_MS]

I agree but what is the cut off number of what is acceptable and what isn’t? In other words, how may Americans can die before we decide to force a depression into the country? How many people would die just from the depression alone not even counting the ones that get it from what ever the latest new virus is? People in poverty would be the ones that die in a severe depression. Estimates that I have seen say the number would be far greater then the virus itself.

I don’t have the answers and I’m not at all saying to get on with life but all things need to be considered.

 

[MattP]

I have 5 friends under 30 that have it. 2 are ski friends. Wash ya hands its real.

[Bulldog]

And it also does some permanent damage to your lungs. Even if you survive it there is a very good chance your life will not be the same. This thing is real....

[liquid d]

my guess is quarantine works for about another 3 weeks, and then the healthy people who can't afford to be out of work, revolt before losing everything they have.

[elr]

People don't die from the flu because of a lack of medical resources.

People will only get back to work and the economy start to recover when they know that the person they are in close proximity to is not their Death Angel. That starts with universal, on demand testing, with quick results that takes place away from medical facilities to offload some of the burden from our hospital staff.

[dthate]

People die from the flu, viruses, outbreaks, pandemics, in general because they are sick, worn down, compromised immune systems, from "food" that is dead, zero nutrition, way too many pharmaceuticals, way to many lethal vaccines, spiritual apathy and an over electrified environment, the latest being 5G.

The latest bio-weapon being used is called covid19 and has several patents, as does Ebola and several others, owned by our tech, financial and health hero's. Every time we have a crisis we lose more of our freedoms, trading liberty for security.

We are in the fight for our lives...

[liquid d]

HELL YEAH @dthate GOT ME SOME MORE AMMO!

[jcamp]

@The_MS "Estimates that I have seen say the number would be far greater then the virus itself."

 

Please share those sources if you don't mind. Would be interesting to see.