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On October 07 2020 16:03 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2020 14:33 Artisreal wrote:On October 07 2020 08:34 BlackJack wrote:On October 07 2020 06:31 Artisreal wrote:On October 06 2020 14:10 BlackJack wrote:On October 06 2020 09:08 LegalLord wrote:On October 06 2020 09:04 BlackJack wrote:
I'm a native Floridian and people have been saying "the sky is falling" about Florida for so many months now. First it was in the early months of the shutdown when spring breakers were packing the beaches, then when they started to reopen "too early," then when they reopened the schools, and now they are reopening businesses to 100% capacity. Every step along the way there have been people predicting chaos and disaster for Florida and Florida has just been chugging along and pushing ahead. So how much death and illness are you looking for before it can be considered a problem? That's an excellent question. Clearly there is some number that we have decided is an acceptable amount of death and some number that isn't. We could shut down every year for flu season and thousands of lives would be saved but we don't because obviously the thousand of lives that would be saved would not be worth the damage to the economy. Is 200k dead a lot? There are 300+ million people in my country and 80 years from now most of them will be dead plus many more that aren't even born yet. Compared to 350 million dead over 80 years, 200k over 8 months doesn't really seem that much. I think it's a problem when hospitals are overrun and patients aren't getting seen in the emergency room and floor nurses are taking care of ICU patients. I think ideally you want open things up as much as possible to get as close to that mark as possible without going over it. I would say by that metric Florida has been doing remarkably well. 200k/8 months is 300k a year is 24 million in 80 years is about 7 % of 350 million in 80 yrs. Think of 10 friends. 3 will die because you don't wear a mask. You can't choose who will. (Not you personally) Absolutely none of this makes sense. You can't just extrapolate the same numbers year after year until the end of time. After COVID-19 kills off the vulnerable it will fewer people to kill. But even if you could, it still doesn't explain how you made that leap to 3 out of 10 of my friends will die from a virus that kills off roughly 1% of the people it infects. 1% and 30% are way different numbers. This is the type of misunderstanding that leads to confusion and fear. this makes exactly as much sense as the post I quoted. What part of my post doesn't make sense to you?
If you are trying to compare something which is on a different magnitude of scale, the usual way to do it is through normalization or bring them to equal scale.
Is 200k dead a lot? There are 300+ million people in my country and 80 years from now most of them will be dead plus many more that aren't even born yet. Compared to 350 million dead over 80 years , 200k over 8 months doesn't really seem that much.
Artisreal made them both to the same scale, so you can actually compare them. You cannot compare it otherwise (with exception of normalization or graphical representations).
A related question to this is, how big standard deviation of death per year would be acceptable to you?
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not to speak of that unless we do shit against the pandemic, vanilla flu season starts and even more people are ill, possibly clogging hospitals.
200k dead in 8 months linearly is 300k in 12 months.
But this isn't necessarily how reality works. It might be 250k or even 400k. Suddenly it's not 24 mill but 32 mill over 80 yrs and not even counting those dying due to resources being diverted to Billionaires fight covid thus lacking in other places. In the UK you couldn't even go to the dentist unless it was a severe condition. People can't or don't go to screenings.
On a related note I remember this latter argument being used by opponents of lockdown measures. Now we're at a point in time where if we do nothing this'll exacerbate even further.
People dying because they can't afford healthcare is normal in the USA, how bad must it be this flu season?
I don't think shit has properly hit the fan in the USA.
Due to the rambled reasons above I think your post @BlackJack is purely hypothetical in an incredibly simplified cause and action setting, simply detached from the complexities of reality.
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A question: How long after the infection can be coronawirus deteced (in case someone wants to know if he already had it) ??
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On October 07 2020 20:20 Silvanel wrote:
A question: How long after the infection can be coronawirus deteced (in case someone wants to know if he already had it) ??
Unknown. You can test for virus specific antibodies afaik but knowing exactly how long they persist would answer the question of how long you remain immune (which is a hot topic atm). It's possible there may be some other indicator I'm unaware of, but afaik that's what they use now to detect past infection.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-overview.html
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On October 07 2020 20:20 Silvanel wrote:
A question: How long after the infection can be coronawirus deteced (in case someone wants to know if he already had it) ??
Depends on the amount of virus that entered your system, but probably not before 48h. It's hard to say, as symptoms can come as early as 48h after infection (and in that case, already easily detectable).
Depending on the country, pcr tests have a demultiplying machine that increases the virus concentration X-fold and can detect very low amounts (leading sometimes to false positives depending of the level of multiplication). My words are probably incorrect in english, but you get the meaning.
Edit : antibodies test are something else and don't detect an infection per se.
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On October 07 2020 21:48 Nouar wrote:
Depends on the amount of virus that entered your system, but probably not before 48h. It's hard to say, as symptoms can come as early as 48h after infection (and in that case, already easily detectable).
Depending on the country, pcr tests have a demultiplying machine that increases the virus concentration X-fold and can detect very low amounts (leading sometimes to false positives depending of the level of multiplication). My words are probably incorrect in english, but you get the meaning.
Edit : antibodies test are something else and don't detect an infection per se.
Correct, the antibody tests detect the immune response to a prior infection which is I believe what the poster was asking
On October 07 2020 20:20 Silvanel wrote:
(in case someone wants to know if he already had it) ??
The PCR tests are, as you say, to detect specific molecular sequences (in this case probably viral RNA?).
Edit: Clarity
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opterown
Australia54784 Posts
On October 07 2020 20:20 Silvanel wrote:
A question: How long after the infection can be coronawirus deteced (in case someone wants to know if he already had it) ??
PCR is the main test used to diagnose COVID-19. It detects viral RNA from a swab. RNA can be detected from ~48hr prior to symptoms to up to a few months afterwards, but those are extremes. Usually it's detectable from about day -1 to day 14ish, depending on how severe your disease is.
Antibody testing is not useful in the acute setting, but can show whether you've been exposed or not. It's a blood test. The test is usually positive 7-14 days after onset of symptoms. The antibodies remain detectable for many weeks, but in some people the antibodies can become undetectable after a few weeks-months.
It would depend on your suspected time frame of infection, but antibody testing is probably more useful for you.
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Thank You @opterown this is precisely what i looked for.
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On October 07 2020 22:40 opterown wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2020 20:20 Silvanel wrote:
A question: How long after the infection can be coronawirus deteced (in case someone wants to know if he already had it) ?? PCR is the main test used to diagnose COVID-19. It detects viral RNA from a swab. RNA can be detected from ~48hr prior to symptoms to up to a few months afterwards, but those are extremes. Usually it's detectable from about day -1 to day 14ish, depending on how severe your disease is. Antibody testing is not useful in the acute setting, but can show whether you've been exposed or not. It's a blood test. The test is usually positive 7-14 days after onset of symptoms. The antibodies remain detectable for many weeks, but in some people the antibodies can become undetectable after a few weeks-months. It would depend on your suspected time frame of infection, but antibody testing is probably more useful for you.
One thing I would like to add, just so people don't get confused: Antibodies not being detected does not mean you are no longer immune. Your body doesn't want to make antibodies for everything all the time, so it keeps a record and then makes them when necessary. As antibodies stop being needed, they slowly fade away. I am sure you already know that, but just specifying for people who use this thread for information.
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On October 07 2020 18:39 Artisreal wrote:
not to speak of that unless we do shit against the pandemic, vanilla flu season starts and even more people are ill, possibly clogging hospitals.
200k dead in 8 months linearly is 300k in 12 months.
But this isn't necessarily how reality works. It might be 250k or even 400k. Suddenly it's not 24 mill but 32 mill over 80 yrs and not even counting those dying due to resources being diverted to Billionaires fight covid thus lacking in other places. In the UK you couldn't even go to the dentist unless it was a severe condition. People can't or don't go to screenings.
On a related note I remember this latter argument being used by opponents of lockdown measures. Now we're at a point in time where if we do nothing this'll exacerbate even further.
People dying because they can't afford healthcare is normal in the USA, how bad must it be this flu season?
I don't think shit has properly hit the fan in the USA.
Due to the rambled reasons above I think your post @BlackJack is purely hypothetical in an incredibly simplified cause and action setting, simply detached from the complexities of reality.
If that happens it will be the ultimate indictment of lockdowns.
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On October 06 2020 14:10 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On October 06 2020 09:08 LegalLord wrote:On October 06 2020 09:04 BlackJack wrote:
I'm a native Floridian and people have been saying "the sky is falling" about Florida for so many months now. First it was in the early months of the shutdown when spring breakers were packing the beaches, then when they started to reopen "too early," then when they reopened the schools, and now they are reopening businesses to 100% capacity. Every step along the way there have been people predicting chaos and disaster for Florida and Florida has just been chugging along and pushing ahead. So how much death and illness are you looking for before it can be considered a problem? That's an excellent question. Clearly there is some number that we have decided is an acceptable amount of death and some number that isn't. We could shut down every year for flu season and thousands of lives would be saved but we don't because obviously the thousand of lives that would be saved would not be worth the damage to the economy. Is 200k dead a lot? There are 300+ million people in my country and 80 years from now most of them will be dead plus many more that aren't even born yet. Compared to 350 million dead over 80 years, 200k over 8 months doesn't really seem that much. I think it's a problem when hospitals are overrun and patients aren't getting seen in the emergency room and floor nurses are taking care of ICU patients. I think ideally you want open things up as much as possible to get as close to that mark as possible without going over it. I would say by that metric Florida has been doing remarkably well.
Well, it's definitely an opinion that some folks have that the amount of deaths isn't much. For all the things Florida did wrong, on a per capita basis it's only slightly worse than Sweden on death, and folks in Sweden seem to be beside themselves with joy as to how successful their government's handling of the virus was. And of course Florida has many factors that make it more vulnerable than Sweden.
I've heard "it's only 6k" in regards to Sweden before, and "it's only 15k" in regards to Florida isn't far from that. Harder to say that 200k national deaths isn't much, because no matter what percentage it is it's a lot of people overall.
Overall, you'll be hard-pressed to find a general consensus that the deaths so far is an acceptable amount, and the potential for death is probably about 10x the number of people who died to date. The entire "the sky is falling" take on Florida is clearly not far from the truth, since there are plenty of reports of overloaded hospitals and the death rates are not very good. The question is whether or not you find the consequences of failing to take preventative measures to be acceptable, and that's basically your call. Maybe 15k deaths isn't bad enough to matter; how many dead do you need over the course of the next year before it's actually bad?
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On October 08 2020 01:36 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2020 18:39 Artisreal wrote:
not to speak of that unless we do shit against the pandemic, vanilla flu season starts and even more people are ill, possibly clogging hospitals.
200k dead in 8 months linearly is 300k in 12 months.
But this isn't necessarily how reality works. It might be 250k or even 400k. Suddenly it's not 24 mill but 32 mill over 80 yrs and not even counting those dying due to resources being diverted to Billionaires fight covid thus lacking in other places. In the UK you couldn't even go to the dentist unless it was a severe condition. People can't or don't go to screenings.
On a related note I remember this latter argument being used by opponents of lockdown measures. Now we're at a point in time where if we do nothing this'll exacerbate even further.
People dying because they can't afford healthcare is normal in the USA, how bad must it be this flu season?
I don't think shit has properly hit the fan in the USA.
Due to the rambled reasons above I think your post @BlackJack is purely hypothetical in an incredibly simplified cause and action setting, simply detached from the complexities of reality. If that happens it will be the ultimate indictment of lockdowns.
I mean if you look at the UK, people can't / don't go to screenings and non essential operations are on hold, creating a huge backlog of procedures that will ultimately delay a part of them resulting in the condition worsening.
The difficult thing though is weighing up restrictions vs health costs.
Imagine the knowhow dying due to covid. Imagine the suffering and associated long term costs for debilitating long term conditions due to covid.
It's not a simple this or that decision. Which is why it's so complicated to communicate and decide what are the best options according to current understanding of the Virus.
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To me, the measure of "a lot" vs "not many" deaths is how many could have been prevented. If a perfect performance by a government would have only led to 500 deaths, 1000 deaths would be 500 people dying due to performance issues.
Different countries have a wide range of different dynamics that make it difficult to judge. However, we have a lot of information about what sorts of measures help or don't.
Deaths per capita from state to state varies a lot within the US. To me, that indicates that freedoms afforded to states have led to differences in performance. So long as performance is causing death, those deaths are a tragedy. If a doctor kills someone through negligence, it is only 1 person, but if another doctor had done the surgery, that person would still be alive. That is tragic.
We don't benefit from trying to pretend preventable deaths are ok because they are only a fraction of our population. Deaths from alcohol, drunk driving, domestic violence and other preventable mechanisms are no less tragic just because they aren't a high % of the total population. We ought to have more ambition than that.
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On October 08 2020 02:42 Mohdoo wrote:
To me, the measure of "a lot" vs "not many" deaths is how many could have been prevented. If a perfect performance by a government would have only led to 500 deaths, 1000 deaths would be 500 people dying due to performance issues.
Different countries have a wide range of different dynamics that make it difficult to judge. However, we have a lot of information about what sorts of measures help or don't.
Deaths per capita from state to state varies a lot within the US. To me, that indicates that freedoms afforded to states have led to differences in performance. So long as performance is causing death, those deaths are a tragedy. If a doctor kills someone through negligence, it is only 1 person, but if another doctor had done the surgery, that person would still be alive. That is tragic.
We don't benefit from trying to pretend preventable deaths are ok because they are only a fraction of our population. Deaths from alcohol, drunk driving, domestic violence and other preventable mechanisms are no less tragic just because they aren't a high % of the total population. We ought to have more ambition than that.
Yes well said. I hate to see people excusing irresponsible behavior with the argument that a small % of the population has died. Perhaps that callousness is related to our comfort with high homicide rates and gun violence.
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On October 08 2020 02:42 Mohdoo wrote:
To me, the measure of "a lot" vs "not many" deaths is how many could have been prevented. If a perfect performance by a government would have only led to 500 deaths, 1000 deaths would be 500 people dying due to performance issues.
Different countries have a wide range of different dynamics that make it difficult to judge. However, we have a lot of information about what sorts of measures help or don't.
Deaths per capita from state to state varies a lot within the US. To me, that indicates that freedoms afforded to states have led to differences in performance. So long as performance is causing death, those deaths are a tragedy. If a doctor kills someone through negligence, it is only 1 person, but if another doctor had done the surgery, that person would still be alive. That is tragic.
We don't benefit from trying to pretend preventable deaths are ok because they are only a fraction of our population. Deaths from alcohol, drunk driving, domestic violence and other preventable mechanisms are no less tragic just because they aren't a high % of the total population. We ought to have more ambition than that.
Again, who decides which deaths are preventable? Clearly we can prevent more deaths with harsher lockdowns. Maybe get the National Guard involved to patrol the streets and make sure nobody leaves their houses unless it's for absolutely essential reasons. Are you saying this would be a better performance? Is this the "more ambition" that you are advocating for?
It should be plainly evident to anyone that opening the economy back up leads to more deaths. It's a sliding scale with 0 deaths on one side and 4 million deaths on the other side and the fewer restrictions in place the more it slides towards the 4 million deaths. Everyone seems to have an opinion on exactly where the line should be drawn. As George Carlin once said, "You ever realize that everyone driving slower that you is a moron and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac?"
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Agreed JimmiC, masks are a simple and effective tool that should be utilized regardless. I hope there aren't any antimaskers here. From the viral videos I've seen they don't seem like the type of people that would be on a gaming forum.
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On October 08 2020 04:49 JimmiC wrote:
And for all the people who keep crying about the economy, guess what, the service industry was boned lockdowns or not. When they are lifted not that many people go because no one wants to be served by a bunch of sick people or get sick.
I agree, and I feel there's a popular perception, especially among the anti-lockdown crowd, that if we took no lockdown (or lockdown-style) actions, then the state of the world would be "many deaths but healthy economy", and that we're talking about a tradeoff here between healthy people and healthy economy. The thing is, from the historical record of previous epidemics like the spanish flu, there is no "many deaths but healthy economy" scenario. If too few actions are taken and the pandemic goes wild, the economy is fucked reguardless.
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On October 08 2020 02:42 Mohdoo wrote:
To me, the measure of "a lot" vs "not many" deaths is how many could have been prevented. If a perfect performance by a government would have only led to 500 deaths, 1000 deaths would be 500 people dying due to performance issues.
Different countries have a wide range of different dynamics that make it difficult to judge. However, we have a lot of information about what sorts of measures help or don't.
Deaths per capita from state to state varies a lot within the US. To me, that indicates that freedoms afforded to states have led to differences in performance. So long as performance is causing death, those deaths are a tragedy. If a doctor kills someone through negligence, it is only 1 person, but if another doctor had done the surgery, that person would still be alive. That is tragic.
We don't benefit from trying to pretend preventable deaths are ok because they are only a fraction of our population. Deaths from alcohol, drunk driving, domestic violence and other preventable mechanisms are no less tragic just because they aren't a high % of the total population. We ought to have more ambition than that.
The problem is that I don't think there is such a thing as a "perfect performance" in this case. States make strategic medical decisions all the time when it comes to public health. Free screening for all men over 60 for prostate cancer? That costs x million dollars and saves y thousand lives per year. Statisticians can predict with eerily good accuracy how many people would be saved and to what cost.
When you look at a public health issue (it's the same for the regular flu or for smoking or obesity) you have to weigh different things against each other: the increase in average life expectancy, monetary costs, loss of personal freedom of the citizens etc. That's a very hard equation. And obviously it is much more difficult for a new, deadly virus. But to me it seems reasonable to assume that this virus will be around for a long time and rather than shutting down everything to save every single individual, it's imperative to find reasonable measures and try to find a durable strategy for society as a whole.
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EPT
