Coronavirus

[EVNow]

Do you expect life to be like a movie? Bring the Calvary and put her in a bubble? She has a 99% chance of surviving a job that she either gets paid to do or has volunteered to do. Is someone putting a gun to her head and making her volunteer? As a professional I would expect that she has self quarantined and not announce to the world/social media that she has the virus. This is no different that a soldier or a POW, it’s part of life. And I trust she’s either smart enough to quarantine or get some help. The expectation for a disease with less than 1% death rate is quite over the top.

She has been caring for other patients - so its important to know whether she got infected and check patients she was caring for.

I'm not sure you are thinking through what you have been writing about.

ps : There seems to be large contingent of "don't test, don't tell". What is driving this behavior ? What do you guys have against testing ?

 

[bkp_duke]

Yes - this is the real problem now. Everyone is flying blind because US wasted 2 months of advance notice to do exactly nothing.

BTW, I don't know how many of you saw this ... CDC didn't want to test a nurse who is ill after taking care of a known covid patient saying since she was wearing recommended protective equipment, she won't have the corona virus !

Just for the record - this is why you don't want government in charge of your health care. I'm NOT defending the current system in the US, it has large, well-known flaws. But what is worse than a bean-counter at an insurance company making the decision for testing and treatment? A bean-counter bureaucrat at the government making that decision.

 

[EVNow]

The nurse is an idiot.

Testing her now will not make any difference to her quarantine or her health course. However, if testing her now results in not testing a patient with severe disease the effects can be severe. The reason this is so is that most hospitals have a very limited supply of negative pressure, intensive care rooms.

By the time her quarantine ends there will be enough test kits to be sure she is non-infectious for CV prior to returning to work.

I could call you the same, but I'm better than that

You need to test because you don't want to put someone though this kind of uncertainty. Obviously she will have her family - and it causes a lot of problems if someone has to quarantine. Test them !

 

[bkp_duke]

She has been caring for other patients - so its important to know whether she got infected and check patients she was caring for.

I'm not sure you are thinking through what you have been writing about.

ps : There seems to be large contingent of "don't test, don't tell". What is driving this behavior ? What do you guys have against testing ?

What's driving this behavior? The fact there is:
1) No treatment
2) No vaccine
3) In uncomplicated cases, it's a mild condition.

It's not an unwarranted proposition.

 

[EVNow]

Just for the record - this is why you don't want government in charge of your health care. I'm NOT defending the current system in the US, it has large, well-known flaws. But what is worse than a bean-counter at an insurance company making the decision for testing and treatment? A bean-counter bureaucrat at the government making that decision.

That's a very poor inference. South Kore is testing hundreds of thousands. And they have single payer.

Infact having people responsible for public health in charge of this makes it better. The reason we have this issue is because the current administration is joke and they don't take their responsibilities seriously.

 

[SageBrush]

You need to test because you don't want to put someone though this kind of uncertainty.

No, she should be tested now (test kit availability presumed) for epidemiological purposes.

 

[Silicon Desert]

Never ceases to amaze me that some Tesla owners are experts on EVERYTHING

 

[EVNow]

What's driving this behavior? The fact there is:
1) No treatment
2) No vaccine
3) In uncomplicated cases, it's a mild condition.

It's not an unwarranted proposition.

We have been through this. WHO is saying we should test more - so is everyone who is in anyway connected to this. Only people who don't want to test more are you and others who want to hide the extent of the problem for some unknown reasons.

You have to test because
- that can help slow down the spread
- slowing down is immensely important to take care of people who get seriously ill
- if we can't take care of people who get seriously ill, the fatality rate will increase
- so testing saves lives

 

[bkp_duke]

That's a very poor inference. South Kore is testing hundreds of thousands. And they have single payer.

Infact having people responsible for public health in charge of this makes it better. The reason we have this issue is because the current administration is joke and they don't take their responsibilities seriously.

Thank you for making my point for me. If an administration can sway in a few days / weeks how a bureaucratic system (like universal healthcare) is run, then that is a systematic failure in the design of that system.

 

[EVNow]

No, she should be tested now (test kit availability presumed) for epidemiological purposes.

So we shouldn't care about people ? Thats a new one.

 

[EVNow]

Thank you for making my point for me. If an administration can sway in a few days / weeks how a bureaucratic system (like universal healthcare) is run, then that is a systematic failure in the design of that system.

No - it means we shouldn't have people not interesting in governing in the government.

 

[bkp_duke]

We have been through this. WHO is saying we should test more - so is everyone who is in anyway connected to this. Only people who don't want to test more are you and others who want to hide the extent of the problem for some unknown reasons.

You have to test because
- that can help slow down the spread
- slowing down is immensely important to take care of people who get seriously ill
- if we can't take care of people who get seriously ill, the fatality rate will increase
- so testing saves lives

And I've repeatedly said you are NOT going to slow the spread of this. Case in point the Nurse you referred to was in full PPE and trained to use it (by her account), and yet STILL got it. You literally will spend tens of billions on testing and all you will have is a pretty dataset. It won't slow the spread of this thing.

I've said it before, I'll say it again - in the history of mankind we have never been able to abate the spread of an infectious airborne / droplet virus on a mass scale when that virus had sufficient infectivity. SARS and MERS, while deadly, were so infectious that they literally burned themselves out. COVID-19 sits in the sweet spot - it's not lethal enough to burn itself out.

 

[addictedtocars]

I am right in its epicenter in Washington. We suspect our family might have already had mild cases a few weeks ago. We have definitely been repeatedly exposed. We know a lot of people who are very sick from it, some for as long as 2 weeks now. It has turned our lives upside down. My kid's school just got canceled for two weeks last night. Unless we get lucky with the coming of spring, or the virus naturally weakening, this is going to be a huge human tragedy, and have a huge effect on the stock market.

Just cancelled a trip there to see my son who is now working from home and hates it. I worked the last 11 years of my career from home and loved it. Go figure.

 

[sundaymorning]

She has been caring for other patients - so its important to know whether she got infected and check patients she was caring for.

I'm not sure you are thinking through what you have been writing about.

ps : There seems to be large contingent of "don't test, don't tell". What is driving this behavior ? What do you guys have against testing ?

If I was the guy in charge I would do exactly what Trump is doing (and Im a Democrat), his job is to keep the economy healthy and let the professionals (WHO) do their jobs, let the scientist discover their vaccines and pump as much money as he can into fast tracking this vaccine while encouraging people to be careful. If this was Ebola spreading with a 90% death rate then yes hit the panic button by all means. I’m very pleased with the billions he got working hand in hand with pharmaceuticals so quickly.

Hitting the panic button on a disease that seems to be under control and nitpicking the cases that fail does little to help people’s optimism, you can do that behind close doors away from the public eye. Declaring that a disease with a 1% death rate to be some sort of Armageddon will make you look like rookies/foolish. What is he suppose to do, declare EVERY case? As far as I know WHO is doing a good job, China has done a marvelous job and Korea is a champ! Just keep cool and focus on the economy so that everyone has food on their table and bills get paid.

Kudlow went on TV to encourage people to go to work this morning, and I applaud that. Telling people of your sob stories does little good. We expect the media to be kinder to a company like Tesla, but it isn’t, and that’s life. That’s the way things roll with a disease with less than 1% death rate and this is the way the media will treat Tesla who has captured less than 1% of the market share. Welcome to reality, everything will work itself out.

'America should stay at work,' despite coronavirus, Larry Kudlow says

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow claims coronavirus is 'contained,' says Americans should 'stay at work'

 

[jerry33]

Just cancelled a trip there to see my son who is now working from home and hates it. I worked the last 11 years of my career from home and loved it. Go figure.

It depends on how you're allowed to work from home. My last employer, when I started many years ago, had it set up so I was just as efficient. However, as the years passed it ended up being so restrictive and with such poor equipment that I could drive an hour to work, work for an hour, drive an hour back home and get more done than in eight hours working from home.

 

[Christine69420]

What's driving this behavior? The fact there is:
1) No treatment
2) No vaccine
3) In uncomplicated cases, it's a mild condition.

It's not an unwarranted proposition.

It's not that simple. Just letting people get ill is dangerous for those with pre-existing conditions.

So to avoid spreading the virus to people with pre-existing conditions you could quarantine her, her family and everyone else she's been seeing lately? Problem is if you quarantine enough people the loss of production from all these people will cost more than the test.

And where do you draw the line? Should people who have met her tell all they have met to quarantine too? Sounds to me a test potentially avoiding all this is a good idea. Being quarantined is probably boring to and best to be avoided.

The goal is not the impossible one of stopping the virus from spreading. It's to slow down the spreading so that hospitals can cope with the severe cases by stretching it out in time. To avoid everybody getting ill at the same time.

Edit: Not a doc.

 

[Causalien]

Trying to imagine the future. If the COVID19 is what we pictured it to be. Virus that mutates constantly so that a vaccine can only target one strain of it each year just like the flu.

10% to 20% chance of causing pneumonia each time. R0 of 4 to 6.

Assuming that the vaccine don't cause ADE.

I really do not look forward to having to play russian roulette each year. Also, the prolonged annual need to mask up and glove up during coronavirus season.

I believe an antiviral treatment is better and we really haven't explored much about this path. What prevent the antiviral treatment, if found, from losing its effectiveness against coronavirus if it mutates each year?

 

[bkp_duke]

It's not that simple. Just letting people get ill is dangerous for those with pre-existing conditions.

So to avoid spreading the virus to people with pre-existing conditions you could quarantine her, her family and everyone else she's been seeing lately? Problem is if you quarantine enough people the loss of production from all these people will cost more than the test.

And where do you draw the line? Should people who have met her tell all they have met to quarantine too? Sounds to me a test potentially avoiding all this is a good idea. Being quarantined is probably boring to and best to be avoided.

The goal is not the impossible one of stopping the virus from spreading. It's to slow down the spreading so that hospitals can cope with the severe cases by stretching it out in time. To avoid everybody getting ill at the same time.

Edit: Not a doc.

Yeah, you are putting words in my mouth and making inferences that I didn't.

This should be treated like a BAD FLU year. We test for flu because we can make a difference if caught early enough (Tamiflu, etc.), but before we had those treatments we always gave people warnings: if you are diabetic or have a heart condition then try to avoid sick contacts and call your Dr. if you develop symptoms, if you are on immune suppressing drugs follow these precautions, etc.

I'm not saying don't exercise prudence and caution, I'm saying that in the VAST MAJORITY of people, testing is pointless. A good argument could be made to test people with pre-existing conditions, if they have symptoms. But that's far from testing everyone.

 

[bkp_duke]

I believe an antiviral treatment is better and we really haven't explored much about this path. What prevent the antiviral treatment, if found, from losing its effectiveness against coronavirus if it mutates each year?

Most antivirals are small molecule inhibitors that are specifically designed to prevent the virus surface proteins from binding to receptor proteins on yours and my cells and facilitating entry into those cell. No entry into the cell, no ability to replicate the virus.

The problem is that as viruses mutate, the proteins that they express change and sometimes those small molecule inhibitors don't bind to the virus proteins and block their entry.

It's a game of cat and mouse, and mother nature has had millions upon millions of years to perfect this strategy.

 

[A.N. Gineer]

I hope you get yourself tested. It may turn out you do not have covid 19 which would of course be a relief. Or you may have something that has a more definitive treatment pathway.

That is really stupid advice.

Testing kits are in extremely short supply, like less than a thousand kits last time I read about it.

The last thing we need is every snowflake with a runny nose getting tested and jamming up the ER if they aren’t seriously ill.