10 ms·

China's Red Cross supposedly advised Italy yesterday that 'total economic shutdown'[1] is the only way to contain the COVID-19 situation in the country now. It

• nostromo 7y ago
  > total economic shutdown seems to be the only option left That's quite the overreaction. Italy found that among fatalities the median age is over 80 (older than the average lifespan of an Italian man). 99% of fatalities were among people with a prior illness. About 50% of the deaths were people suffering from at least three other illnesses. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho... To put it another way: most of the folks dying from COVID-19 were already dying. This disease is the straw that broke the camel's back. Should we just give up on them? No! But instead of quarantining everyone, and sending us back to the stone age, we should work to quarantine these folks while the rest of us return to normalcy and build up our antibodies and herd immunity.
  • airstrike 7y ago
    > 99% of fatalities were among people with a prior illness. About 50% of the deaths were people suffering from at least three other illnesses. So far... wait until you get the number of critical cases above the number of ICU beds and you'll see 18 year olds dying from this
    • timr 7y ago
      You won't, because we triage patients.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • supdatecron 7y ago
        Triage isn’t a cure
        • ballenf 7y ago
          No, but it's something every software developer understands is necessary in every system every day.
      • will_walker 7y ago
        Ventilators are first come first serve. Once someone is on a ventilator it’s not like you can unhook them for a younger patient.
        • ballenf 7y ago
          And there are always ventilators becoming available and patients getting triaged for their order in line (if there is a line).
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
        • ken 7y ago
          Not any more: "With demand outpacing supply of beds and respirators, medical workers are told to prioritize younger patients." "The principle of "first come, first served" has been abandoned, said Mario Riccio, an anesthesiologist who works at a hospital in Cremona." - https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-italy-doctors-tough-calls-survival/ https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-italy-doctors-to...
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • 40four 7y ago
    I wish I could upvote this about 50 more times.
  • asdff 7y ago
    It's not just old people though. Infants. Immunocompromised individuals. People with asthma. People undergoing chemotherapy. The narrative that this disease only affects the economically unproductive is dangerous at best, and inhumane at worst.
    • giantDinosaur 7y ago
      Honestly, what do you think is going to happen to these people if the economy totally shuts down? it's going to be easy to have a chronic & serious health condition? The same? My feeling is that I'd rather be chronically sick in a good economy than in a depression. What happens when medicine becomes unavailable due to supply chains being cut off?
      • asdff 7y ago
        The ultimate purpose of the shutdown is to not overwhelm healthcare providers, so people who need treatment actually receive it rather than die waiting in an overcrowded ER. So yes, they would fare better in a shutdown with lessened spread of the virus and fewer people putting strain on healthcare.
        • giantDinosaur 7y ago
          Why didn't you respond to the actual point? What do you think is going to happen to people with chronic health conditions in a depression, or when supply chains stop functioning? What happens when (random example) e.g. anti-HIV medicine shipments can't be made and we start to get new mutations in those diseases? Do you just assume we'll treat chronic health issues as a priority in a depression? I'd like to think we do as well, but the point is that things may well just stop working.
          • asdff 7y ago
            People with chronic health conditions outside of the coronavirus aren't going to get much care in a crammed ER run on triage and therefore serving acute cases rather than chronic if we don't attempt to limit the spread. The staff shortage is worse than any supply shortage. In a healthy economy free of pandemic, CA is short on doctors and nurses.
  • Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
    WHO director specifically mentioned in his briefing yesterday that 'Young people are not invincible and that data from many countries show number of cases below age <50 getting admitted to hospitals make up a significant proportion of patients'.[1] It's not just fatalities, hospitalisation i.e. exhausting healthcare facilities is the primary concern with COVID-19. There is no guarantee that young people wouldn't make up high mortality list in a poor country with high younger population, rich countries should get their acts together to stop that from happening in vulnerable countries. [1]https://youtu.be/6BOKgSCPD4E?t=32 https://youtu.be/6BOKgSCPD4E?t=32
    • marvin 7y ago
      Not to mention complications. Little is known yet, but there are indications that some surviving patients get permanent lung damage. Especially when intensive care is not available. Imagine having 30 million 40-year-olds who will be short of breath for the rest of their lives.
      • AntonStratiev 7y ago
        There is no need to imagine, we have the forecasts from the Imperial College report: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s... There are 40 million 40-somethings in the USA, you're proposing that 100% of them will have lung damage. Let's imagine that 80% of the population is infected, that 80% of cases are symptomatic, and that 80% of the 4.90% of hospitalised cases (this 4.90 is direct from the report) get damaged lungs. This is one million 40-somethings, not the entire population. 1 million sounds like a lot, but its only 2.5% of the population at that age range, and assume worst-case. You know what causes reduced lung functionality in adults? Asthma, driven by air pollution from vehicles and coal power plants. 7.7% of adults have Asthma. Where is the war-scale drive to eliminate fossil-fueled vehicles and power generation?
        • bamboozled 7y ago
          So true, I can't understand why climate change hasn't been given the same considerations in the past :(
  • richardw 7y ago
    We haven’t built herd immunity to the flu despite millennia of trying. This thing has evolved three strains with only a couple hundred thousand cases. A couple billion turns it into a shit show.
  • yread 7y ago
    Stop spreading this. Median hospitalization age is 65. 40% of patients on icu are under 50. With the rates of hospitalization in 30-39 year olds no country would have enough icu beds even for them
    • MikeAmelung 7y ago
      Gonna need to see some actual data. Median hospitalization age of 65 and then 40% of patients in the ICU being under 50 already doesn't even make any sense.
      • reissbaker 7y ago
        Sure it does. 40% under 50 years old means 60% are 50+ years old. The median is by definition the 50th percentile; aka, at least 50 years old and likely somewhat older, since more than half of all cases are in people who are 50+ years old. Median age being 65 aligns pretty well with that, given that 65 is somewhat above 50.
      • HenryBemis 7y ago
        Maybe a moot question/point, but do we take into account patients in ICU that are unrelated to COVID? E.g. traffic accidents, workplace accidents, heart attacks, etc. I am not trying to spoil the discussion, and I do understand that medical services try to save all lives irrespective of age. So someone who's 80 and is down with COVID and someone who is 25 and fell from his Kawasaki doing 200km/h will each occupy a unit in ICU. That would skew the data. (my bad, it's not easy to go through the slides on a phone) Edit: by "skew" I imply mix the two categories COVID Vs "all other causes" and will give false average if we are trying to focus only on the COVID cases.
    • laegooose 7y ago
      This looks correct. Here's the data https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm?s_cid=mm6912e2_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm?s_cid=mm... Scroll down for TABLE. Hospitalization, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, and case–fatality percentages for reported COVID–19 cases, by age group —United States, February 12–March 16, 2020
  • lordnacho 7y ago
    > Italy found that among fatalities the median age is over 80 (older than the average lifespan of an Italian man). > 99% of fatalities were among people with a prior illness. About 50% of the deaths were people suffering from at least three other illnesses. This is true, but what about the overcrowded hospitals this causes? People who weren't gonna die will now die. And what do we do about the doctors and nurses who are pleading with everyone to act? Perhaps something along the lines of strict contact tracing could have been done, but now it seems like it's out of hand.
  • afpx 7y ago
    Death rate is still pretty high for young people, too 0.5 - 1%. I wouldn’t take that risk.
  • apatters 7y ago
    You will get tarred and feathered for your comment but you are correct. Here is why you'll get tarred and feathered, because right now the media is covering the health costs of the virus extensively, but it's not covering the economic costs, which are already unfolding now in the form of businesses dropping vendors and announcing layoffs because their anticipated revenue until further notice is zero. I've seen so many bros on my feeds who puffed out their chests a month or two ago and said, this virus is not a big deal. Then there were cases in their state and the media was reporting the deluge of new cases in the US and they said oh I was wrong, we need to be on total lockdown, and they're hiding in their apartments. What will happen next is the jobless claims will come in, which we can clearly predict based on current business activity, and they will break records. I saw one estimate of around 1.5 million jobless claims this week, which is a record. I guess the bros will start squawking about the economic damage in 2-3 weeks once the media has covered this widely and people they know are out of work. Small businesses (and some large ones too) typically don't have large cash reserves like Google. They also don't know whether this will last for one month or six. So they are in the process today of shutting down and telling everyone to go home without pay, they have to do this until they know what the long-term outlook is. Nothing changes, most people are sheep, they parrot whatever's in their feed, they are poor at prognostication and self-examination, their attention is occupied by whatever narrative is being shouted most loudly. Nothing you can do.
    • jdance 7y ago
      I noticed yesterday for the first time that there is starting to be some discussion about the damage caused by the lockdowns. Before that I was amazed that no one was interested in even discussing it. So there seems to be a trend of people waking up to it. Thanks for your brave comment. Bros are slow ;)
    • sjg007 7y ago
      Take a pause for 2-4 weeks and reevaluate. Everyone has a 6 month buffer right..? :)
  • totalZero 7y ago
    Quarantine doesn't send anyone to the stone age. The economic shock will be devastating. But there is no long-term, sustained growth without occasional pruning. Also... You make the error of assuming that (A) high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease mean that a person is "already dying," and (B) people who survive don't become debilitatingly sick.
    • marvin 7y ago
      Some of this economic damage is also the result of toppling imbalances that have been artificially propped up since before 2008. The virus is just a convenient excuse; a crisis would have hit at the first sign of trouble.
      • Zach_the_Lizard 7y ago
        > The virus is just a convenient excuse; a crisis would have hit at the first sign of trouble. Sure, the market was seeming to be overheated and due for a correction. Without the virus, maybe it's 2008. With the virus, it's starting to feel like 1929 again. Huge numbers of people are unemployed right now that wouldn't be in a normal recession. Wait till the unemployment numbers come out.
  • ken 7y ago
    > Italy found that among fatalities the median age is over 80 (older than the average lifespan of an Italian man). Selection bias. They're so overwhelmed they're using age as a primary factor to triage patients. Clearly, if you put your medical resources towards saving the younger patients, the younger people are going to have a better survival rate. Lack of a ventilator, when you have a severe lung disease, is a massive risk factor at any age. > 99% of fatalities were among people with a prior illness. About 50% of the deaths were people suffering from at least three other illnesses. Again, if you look at the oldest people, you're probably going to find more diseases there. This could easily be just another consequence of age-based triage.
  • imtringued 7y ago
    I dislike this hyperbole. I still have electricity, running water, heating. Where is this stone age? Where is my cave?