Covid-19 pandemic

[Patrick Thistle]

Antepli Ejderha
The Doncaster trip that wasn't a pub crawl honest has a new spokesperson who I'm going to charitably describe as someone who wouldn't be talked out of going on the telly

https://twitter.com/BBCWalesNews/status/1306578940044210177?s=19

[Balderdasha]

Spain now reporting over 11,000 new cases and hundreds of new deaths per day.

[Balderdasha]

Brazil's first wave seems to have peaked with numbers of people currently infected with Covid-19 dropping from about 815,000 to about 567,000. Still a huge outbreak and not really under control, but better than it was five weeks ago.

[Balderdasha]

In the USA daily new cases have dropped from a high of over 75,000 new cases a day to between 30-40,000 new cases a day, though deaths are remaining stubbornly high at over 1,000 per day on average.

[Balderdasha]

Active cases in the USA have not seen the same drop as in Brazil. There is still an estimated 2.5 million+ people who are currently infected with Covid-19 in the USA.

[Balderdasha]

Active cases in India have reached over one million for the first time.

[Balderdasha]

Mexico has reached 680,000+ cases. It has the world's fourth highest total death toll, of nearly 72,000, and is running at a death rate of 557 deaths per million population, which is higher than France, but lower than the UK, USA and Brazil.

[diggedy derek]

"But it's not resulting in a rise in hospitalisations..."

That's driven me mad, that. You can mentally suffix it with a "yet", at least until the inevitable news story/press conference about "we are now unfortunately seeing a rise in admissions" blah blah.

NS, best healing vibes to you.

[Jimski]

Did anyone seriously say that?

Not on here, no - well not so's I've noticed - but plenty of people have been saying it elsewhere.

[S. aureus]

Do people just not pay any attention to the rest of the world? Or dismiss what's happening there for, um , reasons?

[Balderdasha]

Namibia, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo now all have more than 10,000 cases each.

[Lang Spoon]

Do people just not pay any attention to the rest of the world? Or dismiss what's happening there for, um , reasons?

Same wankers in Ireland. Some of them write for the Irish Times.

[Nocturnal Submission]

That's driven me mad, that. You can mentally suffix it with a "yet", at least until the inevitable news story/press conference about "we are now unfortunately seeing a rise in admissions" blah blah.

NS, best healing vibes to you.

Cheers, DD. It's my son and heir who's ailing but I'll thank you on his behalf.

[ursus arctos]

You've disowned your daughter?

[Fussbudget]

The thing as well is that loads of people don't follow the news very closely or just hear things reported third-hand, so stuff like that floats around for ages before the new information filters down and you're guaranteed to still hear some doyles saying "yes but hospitalisations and deaths are not going up!" for at least two or three weeks until they realise that it's bullshit.

The same way that there were still people going on about how Sweden had the right idea weeks after it became obvious that their death rate was something like 20 times as high as Norway's (I'm not talking about the more recent was-Sweden's-strategy-slightly-less-awful-than-it-originally-looked reimagining here.)

Just today I had a mate tell me that yes cases are shooting up in France and Spain but hospital admissions there haven't increased at all, which, well, bloody hell man.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Same wankers in Ireland. Some of them write for the Irish Times.

That guy who wrote that article has had to step down from pretty much everything he was involved in as a doctor.

[Hot Pepsi]

Am I right that “hospitalizations” means the number of people who are admitted to the hospital as opposed to the number of people currently in the hospital? Because to me, the latter number is actually more important. If they can get people in and out with no increase or, hopefully, a decrease in the mortality rate, then that’s a sign of real progress. There’ve been a zillion studies on how to treat the disease in hospital. That has to bear fruit eventually.

[Nocturnal Submission]

You've disowned your daughter?

I don't like the way she keeps on innocently asking me what my care home preferences would be.

[Fussbudget]

Am I right that “hospitalizations” means the number of people who are admitted to the hospital as opposed to the number of people currently in the hospital?

Yes that's correct but both are going up (as is the number of patients on ventilators.)

[Satchmo Distel]

I don't like the way she keeps on innocently asking me what my care home preferences would be.

Wait until she takes you shopping for coffins.

[S. aureus]

Am I right that “hospitalizations” means the number of people who are admitted to the hospital as opposed to the number of people currently in the hospital? Because to me, the latter number is actually more important. If they can get people in and out with no increase or, hopefully, a decrease in the mortality rate, then that’s a sign of real progress. There’ve been a zillion studies on how to treat the disease in hospital. That has to bear fruit eventually.

I think that it's already bearing fruit, in that the death rate is lower now than it was back in March. Still too high, though.

[Fussbudget]

Because to me, the latter number is actually more important. If they can get people in and out with no increase or, hopefully, a decrease in the mortality rate, then that’s a sign of real progress. There’ve been a zillion studies on how to treat the disease in hospital. That has to bear fruit eventually.

Another thought about this, I might have the completely wrong end of the stick but I seem to remember that the steroid treatments reduce the death rate significantly in critically ill patients, but they still need a fair bit of hospital care as we're talking people who are already on oxygen or a ventilator by that point. So if anything, now having those treatments as an option presumably increases the number of people in hospital, as you keep treating for longer people who previously wouldn't have survived. Someone please correct me if I'm talking out of my arse on this.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Wait until she takes you shopping for coffins.

Oh, my funeral preferences have cropped up in conversation a few times.

[Hot Pepsi]

Another thought about this, I might have the completely wrong end of the stick but I seem to remember that the steroid treatments reduce the death rate significantly in critically ill patients, but they still need a fair bit of hospital care as we're talking people who are already on oxygen or a ventilator by that point. So if anything, now having those treatments as an option presumably increases the number of people in hospital, as you keep treating for longer people who previously wouldn't have survived. Someone please correct me if I'm talking out of my arse on this.

That may be right.

It’s been a few weeks since I reported on C19.

[Lang Spoon]

That guy who wrote that article has had to step down from pretty much everything he was involved in as a doctor.

He didn't write it, the initial article quoted him and another crank uncritically. Also the siren voices of Mark fucking Paul and McDowell, even Ferriter was talking shite on Covid at the weekend. Almost enough to seem like someone in an editorial role has had just about enough of the bloody nannyIng.