Coronavirus Discussion Thread

silver said:
Is it more scattered and inconsistent than other epidemiological data though? I don't do epi, but have read enough to say that the argument that its quite the opposite can be made.

Edit:
That being said, everything comes down to local data at this point as a way of implementing targeted public health interventions. However, that requires competent government.
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I certainly think it's reasonable to say that it's been more scattered.. First, there wasn't testing for several weeks, if I'm remembering right, China wouldn't even help produce the virus so that testing could be developed.. Coupled with this brand new virus, symptoms have been evolving from day one, compared to the flu which has a pretty set standard of "this is what the flu generally looks like, these are the folks you should test/track"..
 
The alarmist leftist in my FB feed (also, the head of a local EMS agency) just declared that this second spike will be worst than the first. Also, stated that the area hospitals are "at capacity" (they are, uh, very much not).

Given the politicisation in the initial phase, I'm awfully dubious that further waves will be anything near whatever it was the first was, whatever that was.
 
chriscemt said:
The alarmist leftist in my FB feed (also, the head of a local EMS agency) just declared that this second spike will be worst than the first. Also, stated that the area hospitals are "at capacity" (they are, uh, very much not).

Given the politicisation in the initial phase, I'm awfully dubious that further waves will be anything near whatever it was the first was, whatever that was.
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I share your concern about politicizing the virus, and think we should be past the point of characterizing concern about the virus as "alarmist." Not too many months ago, I would have been considered an alarmist by some if I'd suggested the virus would kill over 100,000 people in the U.S.
 
Had China been more open, we could have had the sequencing at least 1 week earlier sourced from them, possibly 2 weeks earlier if they'd shared samples. They only shared when they did because an independent group had isolated the virus and sequenced then released it on the internet.

If they hadn't hidden the severity of the outbreak, suppressed information, attacked countries who prepared, and strong-armed the WHO to downplay the issue, the world would have acted more severely and swiftly several weeks earlier, possibly preventing worldwide spread.

China set the world up for pandemic failure... again...
 
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Summit said:
Had China been more open, we could have had the sequencing at least 1 week earlier sourced from them, possibly 2 weeks earlier if they'd shared samples. They only shared when they did because an independent group had isolated the virus and sequenced then released it on the internet.

If they hadn't hidden the severity of the outbreak, suppressed information, attacked countries who prepared, and strong-armed the WHO to downplay the issue, the world would have acted more severely and swiftly several weeks earlier, possibly preventing worldwide spread.

China set the world up for pandemic failure... again...
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That's racist..
 
mgr22 said:
I share your concern about politicizing the virus, and think we should be past the point of characterizing concern about the virus as "alarmist." Not too many months ago, I would have been considered an alarmist by some if I'd suggested the virus would kill over 100,000 people in the U.S.
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Just to be clear, I am not and would not equate concern about the virus as alarmist. I am referring to someone specifically as such. There are ranges of outcomes, with given percent probabilities. Taking the worst possible case scenario (being shot into the sun by an alien slingshot, for instance) isn't reasonable. It's alarmist.
 
Were still sitting good in indiana. 3.7% of vents are tied to covid patients. A little over 9 percent are non covid, leaving over 80% of vents available.

Only about 30% of ICU beds available but usually at least 20% of ICU patients could be on a floor.
 
Summit said:
Had China been more open, we could have had the sequencing at least 1 week earlier sourced from them, possibly 2 weeks earlier if they'd shared samples. They only shared when they did because an independent group had isolated the virus and sequenced then released it on the internet.

If they hadn't hidden the severity of the outbreak, suppressed information, attacked countries who prepared, and strong-armed the WHO to downplay the issue, the world would have acted more severely and swiftly several weeks earlier, possibly preventing worldwide spread.

China set the world up for pandemic failure... again...
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There's plenty of blame to go around. I don't expect much from the PRK, but we should from our own federal agencies. Yet they also screwed us pretty hard by delaying the roll out of testing developed by private labs so that the CDC could fart around and try to re-invent the wheel. Once the CDC was finally forced to admit its utter incompetence (they couldn't get a test right after several tries) and gave the go-ahead to use the privately-developed tests, then the FDA stepped in and said "Whoa hold on there, now…..there's an approval process you have to go through". All this also added about two weeks to the roll out of the tests at a time when two weeks of testing and contact tracing could probably have made a massive difference.
 
Carlos Danger said:
All this also added about two weeks to the roll out of the tests at a time when two weeks of testing and contact tracing could probably have made a massive difference.
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This is a bit hyperbolic. We're, what, 4 months out from when the virus really took hold in the states and we still don't have effective contact tracing in place. I highly, highly doubt earlier testing would have done anything other than give us a more accurate numbers of hospitalized patients and deaths with Covid. The early private testing kits were not widely available at the outset and were usually restricted to hospitalized patients suspected of Covid only, not for everyone out in the community.
 
We still don’t even have accurate testing procedures. I had a patient last week who tested positive at the sending facility and then tested negative 3 hours later at the receiving facility.
 
FiremanMike said:
I certainly think it's reasonable to say that it's been more scattered.. First, there wasn't testing for several weeks, if I'm remembering right, China wouldn't even help produce the virus so that testing could be developed.. Coupled with this brand new virus, symptoms have been evolving from day one, compared to the flu which has a pretty set standard of "this is what the flu generally looks like, these are the folks you should test/track"..
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In contrast look how the flu gets tracked. Mostly via voluntary registries, which then estimate totals off of swab sensitivity and prior years cases, and automated coding of death certificates.
 
DesertMedic66 said:
We still don’t even have accurate testing procedures. I had a patient last week who tested positive at the sending facility and then tested negative 3 hours later at the receiving facility.
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The second PCR was probably collected with poor technique in this situation. That is definitely a positive. Why the hell did the receiving waste a test when there was a positive in the system?
 
Summit said:
The second PCR was probably collected with poor technique in this situation. That is definitely a positive. Why the hell did the receiving waste a test when there was a positive in the system?
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Hospital’s policy for all patients. They want to do their own test on all patients who enter their system even if another facility has already tested them. Quite a few of our hospitals are doing this now.
 
MonkeyArrow said:
This is a bit hyperbolic. We're, what, 4 months out from when the virus really took hold in the states and we still don't have effective contact tracing in place. I highly, highly doubt earlier testing would have done anything other than give us a more accurate numbers of hospitalized patients and deaths with Covid. The early private testing kits were not widely available at the outset and were usually restricted to hospitalized patients suspected of Covid only, not for everyone out in the community.
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I would concede that without proper deployment of the tests and response to the results (contact tracing), earlier availability of tests would likely have had little impact.

if anything though, rather than supporting any accusation of “hyperbole” here, the fact that several months into this thing we still don’t have a cogent testing and tracing strategy simply means that the CDC’s later failures obviated their earlier failures.

My main point is that the PRC’s deception means little when our own response to Important Information is so impotent.

The PRC cannot be trusted, but our own CDC is beyond worthless.
 
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No concern, nothing to see here.
 
Do you feel like your agency and its providers are remaining vigilant when it comes to PPE and and cleaning? I've noticed we are starting to slip a little bit with wearing gowns and N95s when needed or not thoroughly cleaning reusable equipment. Of course everyone is a bit fatigued of all this, but I fear that in the closed confines of the ambulance we are really setting ourselves up for an exposure and subsequent cross contamination of other patients and our stations.

I don't want to nag and I'm tired too, but I don't think Colorado is going to stay immune from second outbreaks forever.
 
VERY, VERY relaxed here in my area.
 
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