fartlekpa wrote:
Would you rather sell a stock a day too early or a day too late?
Corona virus has everything you need to take EARLY, MAXIMUM precautions:
1. Long incubation period
2. Transmission during incubation period before you know you're sick
3. Mild initial symptoms
Add to that the fact that Chinese gov't is almost definitely under reporting their numbers and even despite that they've employed some pretty significant restrictions--all likely far too late to contain this.
Further--keep in mind infection rates this early are major projections and should not be relied upon. You can pretty much disregard the R0. Systems are far too complex to make any real predictions about where this virus is going.
People who talk about influenza deaths are straight up idiots who need to a lesson in basic probability, precaution principles, and complex systems (includes CDC, WHO, etc).
Above is the first post I wrote on January 30th in response to the complete idiot who continues to stick his head in the sand. I rarely use Letsrun anymore but was curious as to what people were saying. At the time I was watching videos from China that included mass lock downs, coordinated spraying of streets and buildings with disinfectant, overnight erecting makeshift hospitals, burning bodies, and some very alarming footage leaked from inside their hospitals. I knew enough to know that it's not what people/countries say (ie. reported stats) but what they do that matters.
It's now 2 months later. I work in a major hospital in the northeast (not NY). 3 of our ICUs are at 100% capacity with only COVID patients. 4 other ICUs are about half filled with only COVID patients. Our Cardiac ICU doesn't have a single non-covid cardiac patient (though has several COVID positives in cardiogenic shock on VA ECMO). Many of our hospitals staff are out as a result of positive tests. Currently we increase by 10 ICU COVID patients every 24 hours (on average). Our institution is moving towards becoming almost entirely ICU based---meaning we are actively converting general medical wards to ICUs. We're planning on turning conference rooms and the chapel into either triage areas or rooms for patients. People are exhausted, and already signs of burnout exist. Patients range from 30-80 years old with a few outliers. Many are otherwise very healthy. My team and I are making due with the resources we have but it sucks knowing you are constantly exposed and putting your family at risk.
I'm somewhat incredulous at the people who are still playing this down. I'm not sure what else they need (and I gave up trying a week or two ago when it was clear my energies were needed in real life). I'm also dumbfounded by the people who maintain some bizarre level of optimism that things are getting better. Please don't do that. First of all, it's the default position--we're all hoping things get better. But your irrational insistence that things are better is just embarrassing. It's like calling yourself an anti-fascist. It's not impressive to proudly stand behind the default setting in life.
I got home tonight and after taking my daily sterilizing shower, washing my clothes, and wiping down everything I touched--just so I could hug and kiss my family I decided to unwind online and saw someone had bumped this thread, which I believe was the first to address the crisis (as "not serious"). I spent 5-10 minutes looking thru my posts from Jan/Feb and I can say I stand by every one. It really sucks we are where we are and I really wish people spent a little more time understanding how fragile our world really is.