Corona Virus

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begreen said:
A stat in the WHO report that intrigues me is that the mortality rate of 3.4% which confirms what I had been seeing. Broken down, it said that the average rate was about double for men than for women, something like 4.6 vs 2.8% IIRC. That really got me wondering what was up. My hypothesis was that this is because the men were mostly smokers and the women were not. Had to look it up, but sure enough, about 50% of Chinese men smoke and less than 3% Chinese women smoke. If this is true then once we look back it would be good to investigate if this is a trend across populations. I am wondering if the elevated mortality rate in Italy might confirm my hypothesis if most were smokers.
www.statista.com

China: share of smoking adults by gender 2000-2020 | Statista

The statistic shows the share of adult population who smoke in China in selected years from 2000 to 2020, broken down by gender.
www.statista.com www.statista.com
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When I lived in Italy in 03/04 everyone smoked. I last visited in 2007 and still people smoking.
 
SpaceBus said:
When I lived in Italy in 03/04 everyone smoked. I last visited in 2007 and still people smoking.
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We were there in 2009. They had just instituted laws banning smoking in restaurants, bars, etc. Needless to say it was a drastic change for them and some were having a hard time adjusting.
 
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My wife and I met when we both worked for a German company. We thought a lot of them smoked until my wife went to work for a Swiss company. :)
 
PaulOinMA said:
My wife and I met when we both worked for a German company. We thought a lot of them smoked until my wife went to work for a Swiss company. :)
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It's hard for me to imagine a coffee shop or cafe in Amsterdam smoke-free.
 
I think panic and hysteria is starting to gain a foothold, the local Costco is sold out of paper towel and toilet paper and running low on bottled water. Pharmacies are placing restrictions on how much over the counter drugs people can buy to prevent hoarding.
 
ABMax24 said:
I think panic and hysteria is starting to gain a foothold, the local Costco is sold out of paper towel and toilet paper and running low on bottled water. Pharmacies are placing restrictions on how much over the counter drugs people can buy to prevent hoarding.
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And this has just begun.
 
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begreen said:
And this has just begun.
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And then there's the issue of the supply chain implication due to area lockdowns. Our suppliers at work have already told us to prepare for shortages of pipe and fittings from China and forgings from Italy.
 
The woman sitting behind me in church this morning just told me her brother is infected. He lives in FL.
 
begreen said:
We were there in 2009. They had just instituted laws banning smoking in restaurants, bars, etc. Needless to say it was a drastic change for them and some were having a hard time adjusting.
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There were still cigarette vending machines in Germany last time I was there in 2013.
 
Jan Pijpelink said:
Was in our local supermarket this afternoon. No empty shelves, not a single sign of hoarding supplies. Then I quickly went back home to go in our underground nuclear bunker. Better be safe.
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Hooray, a pocket of sanity. I have a friend that lives in a suburb of Phoenix AZ. He says the madness has hit there.
 
begreen said:
Hooray, a pocket of sanity. I have a friend that lives in a suburb of Phoenix AZ. He says the madness has hit there.
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All that was new was that there is hand sanitizer at the entrance. Everything else is business as usual. Nobody was buying lots of Lysol, toilet paper, cleaning sprays or anything like that.
 
Ashful said:
The woman sitting behind me in church this morning just told me her brother is infected. He lives in FL.
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Amazing. What are the odds of that with only a dozen cases in FL?
 
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It may be possible the 3% death rate is way off due to not many people being tested. And only tested when they have symptoms. Could be way more people out there who actually are walking around spreading this who dont have any symptoms at all. That would put the death rate much closer to a regular flu. Just throwing that out there. They also reported almost half of those who tested positive have already recovered. Like 49 k out of 100k
 
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Seasoned Oak said:
It may be possible the 3% death rate is way off due to not many people being tested. And only tested when they have symptoms. Could be way more people out there who actually are walking around spreading this who dont have any symptoms at all. That would put the death rate much closer to a regular flu. Just throwing that out there. They also reported almost half of those who tested positive have already recovered. Like 49 k out of 100k
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I'm also thinking of this the other way, there are a lot of people currently infected that don't have a determined outcome yet as they are still fighting the virus. According to this the death rate is 6% for those with determined outcomes.

www.worldometers.info

Coronavirus Update (Live): 107,957,657 Cases and 2,367,471 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer

Live statistics and coronavirus news tracking the number of confirmed cases, recovered patients, tests, and death toll due to the COVID-19 coronavirus from Wuhan, China. Coronavirus counter with new cases, deaths, and number of tests per 1 Million population. Historical data and info. Daily...
www.worldometers.info www.worldometers.info
 
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According to some reports 85% of those who get this have no or mild symptoms. If they only test those with certain serious symptoms they could be missing a huge block of people not yet tested but positive nonetheless. If thats the case these numbers are way off. Also when dealing with nursing home patients death rates are high without any external help.
 
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Seasoned Oak said:
According to some reports 85% of those who get this have no or mild symptoms. If they only test those with certain serious symptoms they could be missing a huge block of people not yet tested but positive nonetheless. If thats the case these numbers are way off. Also when dealing with nursing home patients death rates are high without any external help.
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Agreed that definitely could also be the case. The problem is the most data should be coming out of China, but I'm not confident the Chinese are releasing the full story, assuming they even know what the full extent of the outbreak is.
 
Interesting read. More on the speed af the spread and if system can handle it.

https://www.baconsrebellion.com/wp/running-the-numbers-on-coronavirus-in-america/

another site picked up her tweets.https://dailyhodl.com/2020/03/08/ho...-math-as-16-million-are-quarantined-in-italy/


The essential math. In the 24th (!) tweet in her chain Dr. Specht writes, “I’m an engineer. This is what my mind does all day: I run back-of the-envelope calculations to try to estimate order-of-magnitude impacts.” I frequently find myself doing the same thing. Let’s look at Dr. Specht’s math.
  1. On March 6 there were approximately 250 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US.
  2. America’s lack of test kits means that there are far more cases than have been detected to date. Specht uses an 8X multiplier to get 2,000 actual cases as of March 6.
  3. Using epidemiological methods and models, Specht sees the number of cases doubling every six days. Confirmed cases may appear to rise even faster as more test kits are rolled out.
  4. This exponential progression calculates one million U.S. cases by the end of April, two million by May 5, four million by May 11, etc.
  5. The virus will continue to expand exponentially until it has infected more than 1% of the “susceptible population” at which time it may slow. Specht never defines “susceptible population,” but I assume all Americans are susceptible. That generates 3.3 million infections before the spread even slows.
  6. Using Italy as a guide, 10% of those infected will require hospitalization. That leaves us with a need for 330,000 hospital beds before the presumed pandemic even slows.
  7. America has about one million hospital beds; 65% are typically in use at any given time. That means 350,000 open beds although the “regular flu” this time of year might push utilization above 65%.
  8. Even if every open hospital bed in the U.S. is suitable for the isolation of patients with infectious diseases, the hospitals will be full by May 8th.
  9. As the hospitals fill, the demand for doctors and nurses will also increase. This brings up the question of protective masks for health care workers.
  10. There are 18 million healthcare workers in the U.S.. The U.S. has a “stockpile” of 12 million N-95 masks and 30 million surgical masks.
  11. Once the virus starts to spread in earnest, every working health care worker will need a mask. Using the conservative assumption of one third of health care workers treating patients each day and the more conservative assumption of using one mask per day the supply of masks will run out in two days. (Note: I cannot follow Dr. Specht’s math here: 42M masks / 6m health care workers on a given day = seven days of supply, not two.)
  12. Almost all masks used in the U.S. are manufactured overseas, mostly in China. Even the raw materials for masks come from outside the U.S., mostly from China.
 
begreen said:
Amazing. What are the odds of that with only a dozen cases in FL?
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I could calculate the odds tonight if you like. But it’s probably sufficient to say that, while the odds of me sitting near someone with a sibling having been diagnosed with corona are quite low, with so many people not this forum the odds of someone on this forum sitting next to someone with a close relative who has corona virus are probably not that remarkable. She’s retirement age, so that also skews the odds, as it seems damn near half of our local retirement age citizens head for Florida every winter.

I really fear for some of my older relatives, the odds for anyone over age 70 are really not very good, but I’m also thankful to see the numbers for younger folks are much lower.
 
begreen said:
A stat in the WHO report that intrigues me is that the mortality rate of 3.4% which confirms what I had been seeing. Broken down, it said that the average rate was about double for men than for women, something like 4.6 vs 2.8% IIRC. That really got me wondering what was up. My hypothesis was that this is because the men were mostly smokers and the women were not. Had to look it up, but sure enough, about 50% of Chinese men smoke and less than 3% Chinese women smoke. If this is true then once we look back it would be good to investigate if this is a trend across populations. I am wondering if the elevated mortality rate in Italy might confirm my hypothesis if most were smokers.
www.statista.com

China: share of smoking adults by gender 2000-2020 | Statista

The statistic shows the share of adult population who smoke in China in selected years from 2000 to 2020, broken down by gender.
www.statista.com www.statista.com
Click to expand...
According to the CDC about 13% of adult Americans smoke. If the smoking hypothesis holds then we should see a lower death rate in the U.S. as compared to China - maybe 0.88% based on the numbers above.
Of course, outbreaks within an at-risk population (e.g. senior care facility) rather than the general population can really skew the numbers.
 
Good luck to all, living with a critical care nurse scares the hell out of me.....I've asked her what she thinks about living at the hospital for the next 4-5 months. Here the health system is prepared fairly well. The problem is ventilators or the lack of them. Protocol is saying to put patients on a vent as soon as possible. They are passing a law here that allows doctors to determine who gets one and who will have to give there's up. First come first serve is not practical for the 50yr old who needs a vent when the 85yr old is using it. This city has about 150 vents. Scary stuff.
 
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