Coronavirus

Warhawk

The cake is a lie.
Staff member
We've come a long way from a medical standpoint since the Spanish Flu though. Medical Care was absolutely horrid back then. They had a shortage of everything. Hell, even their quarantine ability was probably abysmal back then. If the Spanish Flu happened today, the mortality rate would probably be closer to 1%
At least in the US, we can't test people to see who is even sick. Now. Today. Good luck fighting a virus that transmits so easily when even Sacramento County no longer is pushing a quarantine for folks that may be sick. They figure it is beyond trying to contain already, so why bother.

Transmission back then was much slower due to travel methods. No international flights to speak of, much lower population densities, no interstate highways, etc. Yes, health care and communication and science are more advanced. But so are means and methods of transmittal and, for various reasons, we can't seem to even figure out how to make a test to see who is sick in any kind of reasonable time frame.
 
They have been trying to make one since it was discovered. It's not like they have stopped trying.
Depends what you mean by "trying". The whole point is that because it had died out, nobody was keen on putting big funding behind it, doing human testing etc. That's the reason more than it being that they couldn't find a cure.
 
At least in the US, we can't test people to see who is even sick. Now. Today. Good luck fighting a virus that transmits so easily when even Sacramento County no longer is pushing a quarantine for folks that may be sick. They figure it is beyond trying to contain already, so why bother.

Transmission back then was much slower due to travel methods. No international flights to speak of, much lower population densities, no interstate highways, etc. Yes, health care and communication and science are more advanced. But so are means and methods of transmittal and, for various reasons, we can't seem to even figure out how to make a test to see who is sick in any kind of reasonable time frame.
Heck, for all I know, I could have had it, and I don't even know it......and I think that's probably the same for thousands of other people already, which is why I think the death rate is 1% or less...
 
At least in the US, we can't test people to see who is even sick. Now. Today. Good luck fighting a virus that transmits so easily when even Sacramento County no longer is pushing a quarantine for folks that may be sick. They figure it is beyond trying to contain already, so why bother.

Transmission back then was much slower due to travel methods. No international flights to speak of, much lower population densities, no interstate highways, etc. Yes, health care and communication and science are more advanced. But so are means and methods of transmittal and, for various reasons, we can't seem to even figure out how to make a test to see who is sick in any kind of reasonable time frame.

China has it under control, so they are doing something right....
 
AGAIN, if everybody does what the NBA is doing then everybody needs to go to their cave, preferably in the Yukon, and stay there indefinitely. If you "think" that you "might" have been "remotely" in the "proximity" of someone who "might" have corona, then you and everybody you work with and go to school with and live with should isolate in their separate caves, according to the NBA.
If we could do that, we could wipe out a lot of diseases! (I advise against taking an Alaskan cruise though)

The current plan is less ambitious, and less draconian; we're not looking to wipe it out, we're looking to slow it down. Those organizations that can, are instituting work from home policies, others are cancelling large events. The more the better, but not everybody has to coordinate a response exactly at once in order to make a substantial contribution to blunting the pandemic.
 
Out here in Sonics territory, it is really scary right now. Washington had 99 new cases today, 101 the day before that, but hundreds of other infected people still untested. Also, it's in *ten* nursing facilities in the Seattle area now. We figure we have one to two weeks before our health care system is overwhelmed, at which point it will become a much deadlier disease, as it has in Italy. I suggest you buckle up.
 
Umm you're not wrong, but I mean you would have persistent symptoms.. it's not like you would be completely unaware.

Actually if you listen to some of the doctors, they said that with many people the effects are so mild that they will come and go without the person knowing, or maybe they just thought they had a mild cold. I mean, how many people ever go to the doctor if they think they have a slight fever associated with a mild cold? Most just let it run it's course....
 
Actually if you listen to some of the doctors, they said that with many people the effects are so mild that they will come and go without the person knowing, or maybe they just thought they had a mild cold. I mean, how many people ever go to the doctor if they think they have a slight fever associated with a mild cold? Most just let it run it's course....
Fair enough, but then these cases also wouldn't be counted as confirmed cases and so your mortality rate wouldn't be that much lower; or rather, the mortality rate would be lower but the spread would be much greater and I don't see how that necessarily changes the concern
 
At least part of the asymptomatic carrier problem isn't that they never show symptoms, but that 10% of those infected only show symptoms two weeks later. 10-20 percent of people infected will require hospitalization. Kids under age 8 seem to be shrugging it off pretty well, but most older people will not have such an easy time of it. Early cases were usually misdiagnosed as flu, and there weren't tests available to tell anyone otherwise.

It does start off spreading quietly and unnoticed, but it grows exponentially, so one day everything seems fine, and a few weeks later it's horrible.
 
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Fair enough, but then these cases also wouldn't be counted as confirmed cases and so your mortality rate wouldn't be that much lower; or rather, the mortality rate would be lower but the spread would be much greater and I don't see how that necessarily changes the concern

I guess what I'm saying is that the reason the mortality rate could be lower is because you can't really get an accurate % rate unless you have an idea of how many people truly have it, otherwise the date will be skewed... I mean, 38 deaths out of 1,500 confirmed cases for example would give a higher fatality rate than 38 deaths out of 5,000 confirmed cases...

I think that's why some countries have less of a fatality rate than other countries. For example, Denmark has 516 cases with no deaths so far and Germany has over 2,000 cases with only 3 deaths so far.... And so it's hard to know the true mortality rate at this time.

Then to complicate it further, you have China where they were saying 60% of adults smoke, and if that's the case, no wonder why the mortality rate is higher there.

And to complicate matters further, In the USA, 19 of the USA deaths occurred as the virus ripped through a nursing home, where people were already really sick....

Had the virus not hit the nursing home, the death rate would currently be much lower in the US at 1.43%
 
I guess what I'm saying is that the reason the mortality rate could be lower is because you can't really get an accurate % rate unless you have an idea of how many people truly have it, otherwise the date will be skewed... I mean, 38 deaths out of 1,500 confirmed cases for example would give a higher fatality rate than 38 deaths out of 5,000 confirmed cases...

I think that's why some countries have less of a fatality rate than other countries. For example, Denmark has 516 cases with no deaths so far and Germany has over 2,000 cases with only 3 deaths so far.... And so it's hard to know the true mortality rate at this time.

Then to complicate it further, you have China where they were saying 60% of adults smoke, and if that's the case, no wonder why the mortality rate is higher there.

And to complicate matters further, In the USA, 19 of the USA deaths occurred as the virus ripped through a nursing home, where people were already really sick....

Had the virus not hit the nursing home, the death rate would currently be much lower in the US at 1.43%
Don't forget the poor air quality from pollution too.
 
There is an issue with volume, not just fatality rate.
I think I'd much rather have a higher volume than a higher fatality rate though............
What you don't want is a high volume all at once to overwhelm the hospitals and hopefully with the extreme large awareness level, it will slow down the spread...
I already have about 3 months worth of dried goods at my house to keep me from going to the grocery store as frequently, and I only plan shop at night when stores have much less people. I've got to do my part as I don't watch to catch it and spread it to my ailing parents....
 

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
At least in the US, we can't test people to see who is even sick. Now. Today. Good luck fighting a virus that transmits so easily when even Sacramento County no longer is pushing a quarantine for folks that may be sick. They figure it is beyond trying to contain already, so why bother.

Transmission back then was much slower due to travel methods. No international flights to speak of, much lower population densities, no interstate highways, etc. Yes, health care and communication and science are more advanced. But so are means and methods of transmittal and, for various reasons, we can't seem to even figure out how to make a test to see who is sick in any kind of reasonable time frame.
Not just a US thing though. Japan with its lauded healthcare system has been refusing to test people (hell they refused to test me and told me to just self-quarantine if I felt like it).