Will those 10 serious/critical cases from the Diamond Princess ever recover, or are they simple forgotten? There are another 82 active cases left. The ship was quarantined on Februari 4th, over 2 months ago today. I'm wondering if I should get a DNR just in case, after a couple months on a ventilator, is there even a way back from that? Not a fun conversation with the wife, but perhaps smart to have before it's too late.

Fow now I'm still confident the outbreak won't reach us, numbers are starting to head downwards already, nothing showed up in our town so far and we've been avoiding contact and no shopping for almost 3 weeks now. Yet who knows if it's going to flare up again.

1.5 million confirmed cases and 90,000 deaths.
Mild/asymptomatic cases make up 80% of the cases and are unknown cases.
The criteria to have tests are based on moderate or severe cases where symptoms are present.

Actual cases is unknown. Multiplying the confirmed cases by 5 or 10, factors in the majority of asymptomatic/mild cases that are undetected. When dividing deaths by confirmed cases it gives the impression that there is a higher death rate.

Last edited by Phoenix20 - on 08 April 2020

John2290 said: Jack Dorsey put one billion in funds towards Covid relief and Jeff Bezos goes in at 100m. What the fuck, these billionaires should realize we are on a sinking ship, their money won't be worth anything if they don't start bailing put the people and injecting thr economy, For Bezos a lot of it will come back to him if he doesn't who the fuck will be buying on Amazon with delivery costs in 6 months time or a year, very few. I see a lot of them adding to organizations and relief funds but it'd be so much more valuable to get the money directly to people who are laid off or at least what dorsey is doing to a universal income fund, it'll at the very least patch a few holes in the haul of thr ship we are all sinking on, including the billionaires. Mad respect to Dorsey and hope more follow him and Bates, Dorsey gave one fifth of his wealth and stocks. That's like taking 200 out of your thousand quid savings and putting it in a charity box, The man is now a legend without question.

Well it's not like Bezos or others can't give more as time goes on. In fact, it wouldn't be a surprise for a bunch of billionaires to wait until things are just starting to die down before dropping a giant amount. That way it's more likely to make headlines and will be what get's remembered, which should also lead to better sales sooner than later. For those who remember all the donations over time, it will certainly look less humanitarian and more sleazy for those who waited to give, or give more, but from their point of view, they didn't have to give any if they didn't want to in the first place.

I'm not backing Bezos here btw, I'm just pointing out that there's no guarantee more isn't coming. Not that it would change your outlook on Bezos anyway, if the late donations are done with future business heavily in mind. Waiting till the end certainly wouldn't help as much.

John2290 said: EricHiggin said: Well it's not like Bezos or others can't give more as time goes on. In fact, it wouldn't be a surprise for a bunch of billionaires to wait until things are just starting to die down before dropping a giant amount. That way it's more likely to make headlines and will be what get's remembered, which should also lead to better sales sooner than later. For those who remember all the donations over time, it will certainly look less humanitarian and more sleazy for those who waited to give, or give more, but from their point of view, they didn't have to give any if they didn't want to in the first place. I'm not backing Bezos here btw, I'm just pointing out that there's no guarantee more isn't coming. Not that it would change your outlook on Bezos anyway, if the late donations are done with future business heavily in mind. Waiting till the end certainly wouldn't help as much. You have a point and perhaps injecting the money too early would be detrimental as people would be less likely to spend it now, it may be too soon over all. Btw, I'm not against Bezos at all, I'm just trying to figure out why he can't see that his company won't exist without people with money to buy the products and currencies that aren't as good as worthless to do so, it devalues his wealth also when we all go under. I hope it isn't ego and he is thinking ahead but with what he done to his work force, I don't know, I have little faith. I'd gladly praise the man if he helped to a degree that would buy us time as I have done with Dorsey, whom I thought was an egocentric billionaire before he donated one third of his his worth and stocks.

I'd bet there's a lot more to it. It's possible he's just insanely greedy and has a heart of stone, but as a businessman, tossing out a billion right now wouldn't be the smartest idea as far as I'm concerned. Not only can the money be put to better use over time, but as you said, the more needy people are, the more that money will actually matter to them, and many will soon forget the generous early birds.

There's also the fact that we don't know exactly how this is going to play out. Will we get lucky and see this illness dissipate quicker than anticipated? Why throw out billions now when less may be what's truly necessary? Will it get worse and go on for a year? Might as well spread out the wealth over time then. Maybe something else comes up on top of this, so no point in blowing your wad all at once.

Could be a bunch of reasons, but I wouldn't fret just yet. People like Bezos aren't stupid. Even if they are that greedy, eventually they'll cave if the time comes. You can bet they'll get even greedier afterwards to make it all back asap though.

Is there stats that show how many tests done in the US. I'm curious to know if were at the pea or if were just capped by the number of tests.

jason1637 said: Is there stats that show how many tests done in the US. I'm curious to know if were at the pea or if were just capped by the number of tests.

https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily ~150k a day for the past week. The week before that it was roughly 100k. Last edited by Barozi - on 09 April 2020

@SpokenTruth

Nope, not good enough because you read way too much into what I said. I should've been more explicit. I should also mention that I talk very much from a perspective of a German citizen. I can't and I won't recommend this measure to any other country unless they're sure they have the right tools to handle it.

1). Vaccination is the most proven and cost effective method.
- Being immune via vaccination or via exposure is virtually the same. The only difference being vaccination being able to tackle multiple strains if necessary. Let's assume it's not. Let's also assume we have sufficient and precise immunity testing.

2). If we're trying to reach heard immunity of 60%, that's ~200 million tests that must be conducted, analyzed and certificates issued. We've only tested 2.2 million people so far.
- Nobody said anything about herd immunity. Nobody who has not been proven as being immune will be allowed outside.

3). If it mutates beyond heard immunity, hey...~200 millions tests again. But first you have to re-quarantine everybody.
- Again, said nothing about herd immunity. And the case you're describing will happen exactly the same if we immunize via vaccines. It'll end up even worse because people trust vaccines more, which means they'll be more reckless.

4). The tests we do have are not an immunity check to begin with. We'd need a whole new damn test.
- Of course we won't issue immunity certificates without knowing that someone is immune, duh?

5). Is 60% heard immunity even good enough? This isn't something we can just do a live test trial with.
- see above

6). Are you even considering the social implications of splitting society into 2 categories? Immune and Carrier.
- You mean the same thing we'd have when we vaccinate? A process that will take several weeks if not months to reach everyone. Also, that would only be a very temporary scenario. At some point the virus will be dealt with, either by going away or becoming endemic, but manageable. Are you treating people who are not vaccinated against other diseases as 2nd class humans?

7). Viral exposure level factors into level of anti-body development. Barely get exposed, barely make anti-bodies, barely pass immunity test...get exposed again next week by a higher concentration...boom, you have it and don't know it. A vaccination is a known, consistent level of exposure.
- I guess we'll have to use a more precise immunity test then? I mean why would I let anyone out who is not proven beyond doubt to be sufficiently immune?

8). How do you enforce immunity certificate rules? Do police start making random DUI-style certificate checks? Who has enforcement jurisdiction? Civil or criminal punishment?
- We already have police checking people, sending them home and giving out fines or even jailing them. How about we do that? Do not forget, this is just a very temporary measure to bridge the time until we have a vaccine.

9). Are the certificates physical or digital? If physical, a paper copy, badge, bracelet, ink stamp? If digital, how do you ensure everybody can access their certificate at all times? Can they be easily forged?
- Do you know what a vaccination card is? How about we use that crazy technology we already have?

10). How are they assigned to an individual? Driver's license, Social Security card, fingerprint, retinal scan?
- See above

11). Who is the certifying authority? Federal government, each state, local? If the latter two, how are they verified and accepted across county/state lines?
- It's obviously federal because leaving country wide issues up to local governments is beyond moronic, not just for health issues. But that's another topic.

12). What about the dangers of people intentionally trying to get infected, hoping to live to get an immunity certificate and either end up dying themselves or unintentionally giving it to others and them dying?
- I guess that's a moral issue that I can't really answer. For those things it would of course be important to have a secure social net, so that people will not feel the need to get infected just so they can work again. So this solution would only work for countries who don't hate their own citizens, like Germany.


I think you're assuming way too much negligence here. Nobody is going to gamble on another outbreak. I would of course only support this measure if the slight issues have been ironed out. It's nothing but a possible tool to mitigate economic and social collapse. We should definitely try to use any measures we have at our disposal to prevent further damage. Downright rejecting such a measure because of a few small issues is silly. That's like opposing lockdowns because it could hurt people, which it does. We will just continue to do the things that are necessary to keep things running and immunity certificates are just one more useful tool. It's certainly better than just easing restrictions for everyone for no reason.

Last edited by vivster - on 09 April 2020

jason1637 said: Is there stats that show how many tests done in the US. I'm curious to know if were at the peak or if were just capped by the number of tests.

New York, might have "peaked" or is just at it. Something like 18,000 hospitalised (at once), and 4700 in ICU beds (in use). A far cry from the 110,000 hospitalised, and 30,000 ventilators, they where predicting as a worst case situation. Also alot of people, that are just "borderline" needing to be hospitalised, but they get a "air tank" and are being sent home. (again this points to maybe things arnt as serious, as they expected them to be)

It's kinda crazy how Sweden keeps breaking Norway's total death-toll daily. 105 dead total in Norway so far, 106 new deaths in Sweden today

So as I said a couple days ago, here in The Netherlands the government releases a meaty pdf each day with new 'corona numbers'. This document consists of tables, graphs, chartz and maps with updated numbers of cases, deaths, hospital admissions and ICU cases. There's even info on deceased patient's other health issues, and age and gender distribution in there.

I'll share the most important graphs (today, because I feel like doing it, I'm not intending on doing this every day), if it works, because the Rich Text Editor is broken, but we'll see.

The data works as follows, in purple is data that has been known and registered up until yesterday, in yellow is newly confirmed data, distributed across the days to which they apply. For example, a death which was registered yesterday that actually occurred two days before is added to 6 April instead of 8 April. So tomorrow there will be new data that may or may not add another death to 6 April for example. In the ICU graphs the green means 'likely incomplete', basically the same as the yellow;
"gerapporteerde meldingen" = reported cases
"nieuw" = new
"t/m gisteren" = until yesterday
"waarschijnlijk onvolledig" = likely incomplete
"GGD meldingsdatum" = date of notification to GGD (the GGD is the abbreviation of what's called in Dutch 'municipal health service')
"datum" = date
"datum van overlijden" = date of death

New confirmed cases;

These seem to be stable week over week for a while now. In actuality though, this means the actual number of new cases is dropping because they've been doing more and more tests.

Deaths;

A mild decline, even if daily reports seem to indicate not much movement (today they added 148 deaths), but distributed across their actual date of occurrence there's a mild trend visible. What's interesting is that new reports can go back quite a while, for example a new death was added for 26 March.

New hospital admissions;

This has been sharply declining for a while now, pretty much as fast as it rose. This is good obviously, I'd say this is the most important gauge of the actual situation in The Netherlands.

New ICU;

Also sharply declining, a natural consequence of there being less people that need to be hospitalised.

Total in ICU;

The government doesn't register the number of recoveries, but they do keep an eye on how many people there are in total in ICU. In regular times, there's 1150-ish ICU beds available of which there were a couple hundred in use. For this crisis this was raised in steps to 2400 now. Which was pretty much the absolute max, if that would've been too little we would've entered what they call the "Dark Phase", where choices on who lives and who dies would have to have been made. Now, because of the decline in ICU needs for corona patients, the total number of patients in ICU is actually dropping. The graph excludes non-corona ICU patients, but it seems 2400 beds is more than ample (this graph would probably have to stay under 2000-ish). There's also about 50 Dutch patient in German ICUs.

Last edited by S.Peelman - on 09 April 2020