6 ms·

One of my classmates came back from Africa to Europe this March without any symptoms. 10 days later she got high fever, dizziness, and unfortunately she could n

• bsanr2 6y ago
  Where in Africa?
  • HappyDreamer 6y ago
    And is it okay if I ask how old was she? / are you? I feel sad to hear
• grawprog 6y ago
  Makes you wonder how many people have actually died so far this way. Being told to stay home and not spread covid, meanwhile something else is actually terribly wrong.
  • freedomben 6y ago
    It's terrifying. A friend of a friend of my wife just lost her baby. It was something that would have been easily seen in a routine screening, but because of COVID the OB/GYN wasn't having patients come to the office. It's heart breaking.
    • wolco 6y ago
      Are you saying she wouldn't have lost the baby if she had a routine screen or it would have given her the ability to deal with the issue a litle bit easier by planning a dnc? I've been part of many miscarriages and doctors can tell you something is wrong but rarely can they fix anything before 12 weeks.
      • freedomben 6y ago
        I honestly don't know, I'm several hops away from the source, but when my wife told me it sounded like they could have saved the baby had they known.
  • djsumdog 6y ago
    There was an Oncologist who was talking about how the number of women coming in for regular exams was non-existent for two months. A few months is enough time for breast cancer to go from stage 1 to stage 2, and for 5 year survival rates to drop by a third[0]. There are going to be a ton of secondary effects due to prematurely closing or clearing out hospitals and clinics, and many people have already died from completely preventable illnesses, with some clinics telling people to not come in when they should have. [0]: https://unherd.com/thepost/professor-karol-sikora-fear-is-more-dangerous-than-the-virus/ https://unherd.com/thepost/professor-karol-sikora-fear-is-mo...
    • lutorm 6y ago
      A few months is enough time for breast cancer to go from stage 1 to stage 2 ... Do women normally have breast exams every few months?
      • lazyasciiart 6y ago
        No. It varies by age or location but it'd be once a year at max - unless perhaps you had already had it or for some other reason were extraordinarily high risk.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
      • perl4ever 6y ago
        I don't understand where you'd get that implication. Some presumably fairly predictable fraction would have an exam scheduled during the beginning of the epidemic, and a certain fraction of them would have undiagnosed cancer. It seems reasonable to assume significant negative consequences for those people.
        • richard_todd 6y ago
          Presumably some women would have had an exam in February but developed enough cancer to be visible in March, so delaying a couple of months had a huge positive impact on their outcome. How can we measure the net result of all these variables?
  • wutbrodo 6y ago
    The ex-Covid death rate in New York is significantly above its baseline. Part of this may be undiagnosed covid deaths, but with less people out doing dangerous things, a lot of it is probably people avoiding hospitals.
    • rrmm 6y ago
      ex-Covid rate is more likely due to undiagnosed covid. Especially when you look at the excess death rate compared to previous annual rates. (at least last time I looked at the graphs). But regardless none of it is any good for anyone.
      • wutbrodo 6y ago
        The excess death rate (ex covid) is relative to previous annual rates. I don't think you can disambiguate between "deaths due to undiagnosed covid" and "deaths due to untreated illness due to avoiding hospitals"
        • rrmm 6y ago
          You're right. But if the excess mirrors the diagnosed rate (rise and fall) one might reasonably infer that it is driven by covid. Compared to deaths resulting from/driven by people staying away from hospitals which would depend on when lockdowns were announced, when behaviors changed, etc. Although both mechanisms would bear some relation, it looked to me more like it was driven by spread of the infection rather than changes to behavior. The point that you can't really separate them completely is well-taken though. EDIT: I'm clearly all over the place with terminology. Something along the lines of looking at the (all_cause_mortality - covid_deaths - historic_avg) residual and seeing how closely it mirrors say alpha*covid_deaths where alpha is some constant. If it mirrored it well (or for example preceded it and the lock downs in the manner that would be expected of infection) one might infer that those deaths were probably covid. If on the other hand they were strictly related to the time the news broke and lock downs and changes to hospital admittance rates, then it might be better explained as resulting from lockdown issues.
  • eganist 6y ago
    The problem is that SARS-CoV-2 is so capable of infecting and disrupting a broad variety of cells that many multi-organ symptoms might manifest, so it wouldn't be a surprise if that's what's presumed to be the cause of an ailment at first considering its reproduction number.
  • samcheng 6y ago
    According to this New York Times article from the beginning of May, excess deaths in the United States outpaced official Coronavirus reporting by 33%. This obviously varies significantly by country. Certainly many more people are dying at home than previous years. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-death-toll-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronaviru... The key phrase if you want to learn more is "excess deaths"
    • ZitchDog 6y ago
      My understanding is that excess deaths statistic would also COVID deaths. You'd need to subtract COVID deaths from excess deaths. (and be certain that all COVID deaths are reported as such...)
      • samcheng 6y ago
        Right - so ~25% of excess deaths in April in the United States were not directly caused by COVID-19, but were almost certainly indirectly caused by the virus, either via the 'medical care chilling effect' mentioned above, or through misattribution, or through other mechanisms like the increase in suicide. This excess death mechanism has the potential to be very severe in very poor countries, where famine is likely to follow this plague. It's really quite sad.
      • rurban 6y ago
        Not really COVID deaths, you have to seperate them from the lockdown deaths.
  • rb808 6y ago
    150,000 people typically get diagnosed with cancer each month in the US. With hospitals shut that isn't happening. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics
    • 77pt77 6y ago
      The indirect fallout from this will be huge. From delayed diagnostics, to "elective" surgeries that can't take place, to suicides. It's going to be on the order of the direct deaths at least. The only real measurable indirect improvement is a lot less people dead in traffic accidents.
      • ithkuil 6y ago
        > It's going to be on the order of the direct deaths at least. Possibly. And many will interpret this as the cure being "worse of (or as bad as) the disease". But what we should really be comparing this to is the number of deaths we'd have if we didn't do anything to reduce the spread. Anybody has good simulation data that takes into account what we learned so far?
        • rrmm 6y ago
          On top of that, it wouldn't be like the hospitals would be business as usual if the lockdown didn't occur. Models mostly showed they would have had their hands full with covid cases (and therefore still not handling normal cases and elective stuff). Additionally many people going to hospitals for whatever reason would likely end up exposed to COVID.
• refurb 6y ago
  I had a friend who was attending Stanford. He did a class trip to Africa, then back to the US. He also started to feel ill (but not too bad), so decided to fly home for winter break. He died of malaria on the flight to London. He was only 32 years old.
  • igotsideas 6y ago
    I’m sorry to hear about your friend. That’s terrible.
  • philliphaydon 6y ago
    Sorry to hear. I wonder if this sort of thing is due to people not using travel agencies anymore? Before I started buying my own tickets I would go to the travel agency (in NZ) and depending on where I flew they always had a list of recommendation vaccines and such that I should take before going. I don't know if travel agencies act similar outside of NZ.
  • nashequilibrium 6y ago
    "class trip to Africa"- Its strange they didn't require him to get a shot before going to a country in Africa that is a Malaria risk. I know a lot UCLA and Michigan students who did exchange programs to African countries and got shots before leaving.
    • xchaotic 6y ago
      Shots of what, vodka? There’s no good vaccine for Malaria that’s approved in the US
      • cko 6y ago
        Not shots, but pre exposure prophylaxis of atovaquone/proguanil or mefloquine.
        • tincholio 6y ago
          Malaria prophylaxis is pretty rough in and of itself, and it's not really recommended unless you're going to be in high-risk areas (source, tried to get it myself when going into Mozambique from South Africa, was told there that unless I was planning to stay "in the bush" for a few weeks, it was a bad idea)
• m0zg 6y ago
  Hydroxychloroquine would have helped, ironically.
• nautilus12 6y ago
  Wonder what the 2nd order death toll for covid due to things like this (not poverty starvation) is and how it stacks up to covid deaths
• newyankee 6y ago
  How old ? Is there any correlation with age ? mortality rate i mean