Coronavirus is seriously dangerous

[MacCruiskeen]

Yes, yam, what this board urgently needs more of is your rich unction and sterling morals.

Back on-topic: Which hospital? It is a desperate public emergency, right? So where should medical students and nursing students report to, to supply emergency help?

Very seriously, which hospital? Where exactly in northern Ca.?

[Joe Hillshoist]

I am a nurse working in the San Francisco Bay Area, currently one of the hardest hit areas in America. I can tell you from personal observation that hospitals will soon be completely overwhelmed if the current trajectory of the epidemic does not change.

You mean the US "healthcare" system is a disgrace to any nation, especially the world's richest.

The entire world knows that already.

(And given the incredibly inept response from Team Trump, there is no reason to expect things to get better in the near future.)

Right. Maybe Cuba can help? Try asking them.

The shortage of vital medical supplies is very real.

Of course it is. You are in the USA, the Homeland of Terror, the prime killer of humans both abroad and at home. Ask Cuba for help, if you are serious and for real and truly as desperate to help as you say you are. They will help, immediately and without question and unconditionally, if ur wunnerful gubmint finally allows them to do so.

My facility started rationing out PPE a week ago.e I am not part of a conspiracy of hundreds of thousands of other healthcare workers collectively working to deceive you. This virus is not a hoax. It is a very fast spreading disease with a much, much higher mortality rate than the flu, to which ignorant people are comparing it.

Oh really. So how many people have died, exactly? How old were they, exactly? How sick had they been beforehand, exactly? Give us some useful information about who is most at risk. Give numbers.

How poor are they? How much will they be charged?

Ffs.

Stay the fuck home

.

No. How dare you? Will you shoot us if we disobey?

Wash your hands

.

Shut the fuck up. We all wash our hands already.

And, as the vanguard of the Internet conspiracy community,

You are no vanguard of anything except panicmongering.

I implore you to vote down and argue against these misleading posts when you see them online.

Which posts? How are they misleading? Specify.

You clearly have tons of time on your hands.

Stop being a cunt.

Your selfish attitude could get people like him killed.

[identity]

Thanks for posting OK. Here where I live, our top health officer has said that it's important to get out into the sunshine and fresh air, but keep six feet between yourself and other people as much as possible. I certainly think it's better for my health to go out for a long bike ride (without coming near other people) than to stay cooped up inside.

Like probably most people here, I am not exclusively subscribing to any single take on this virus. On the one hand, I think reports/speculations that it is an engineered bioweapon that escaped from – or was deliberately leaked out of – the bsl-4 lab in Wuhan are credible, and therefore certainly something to take seriously.

On the other hand, we read stuff like this:

The mortality profile remains puzzling from a virological point of view because, in contrast to influenza viruses, children are spared and men are affected about twice as often as women. On the other hand, this profile corresponds to natural mortality, which is close to zero for children and almost twice as high for 75-year-old men as for women of the same age.
...
A report in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera points out that Italian intensive care units already collapsed under the marked flu wave in 2017/2018. They had to postpone operations, call nurses back from holiday and ran out of blood donations.
...
The Japan Times asks: 'Japan was expecting a coronavirus explosion. Where is it?' Despite being one of the first countries getting positive test results and having imposed no lockdown, Japan is one of the least-affected nations. Quote: "Even if Japan may not be counting all those infected, hospitals aren’t being stretched thin and there has been no spike in pneumonia cases.“
...
Italian researchers argue that the extreme smog in Northern Italy, the worst in Europe, may be playing a causative role in the current pneumonia outbreak there, as in Wuhan before.
...
In a new interview, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, a world renowned expert in medical microbiology, says blaming the new coronavirus alone for deaths is "wrong“ and "dangerously misleading“, as there are other more important factors at play, notably pre-existing health conditions and poor air quality in Chinese and Northern Italian cities. Professor Bhakdi describes the currently discussed or imposed measures as "grotesque“, "useless“, "self-destructive“ and a "collective suicide“ that will shorten the lifespan of the elderly and should not be accepted by society.
...
An Italian study of August 2019 found that flu deaths in Italy were between 7,000 and 25,000 in recent years. This value is higher than in most other European countries due to the large elderly population in Italy, and much higher than anything attributed to Covid-19 so far.
...
In a new fact sheet, the World Health Organization WHO reports that Covid-19 is in fact spreading slower, not faster, than influenza by a factor of about 50%. Moreover, pre-symptomatic transmission appears to be much lower with Covid-19 than with influenza.
...
A leading Italian doctor reports that "strange cases of pneumonia“ were seen in the Lombardy region already in November 2019, raising again the question if they were caused by the new virus (which officially only appeared in Italy in February 2020), or by other factors, such as the dangerously high smog levels in Northern Italy.
...
Danish researcher Peter Gøtzsche, founder of the renowned Cochrane Medical Collaboration, writes that Corona is "an epidemic of mass panic“ and "logic was one of the first victims.“

which suggests that whatever increased danger COVID-19 seems to present to people under, say, 70, is mainly if not entirely due to selective focus, ignorance of historical trends, etc.

But then there are the stories we read in forums, in the news, of the – apparently healthy – person in their 40s in England who suddenly dropped dead, of the dentist (here where I live) in his 60s with no known health issues who picked up COVID-19 at a dental conference a few weeks ago and is now dead, etc. I don't think these stories are fabricated.

It would be nice to know if you are seeing previously healthy people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s coming in and ending up in critical care where they are close to dying (if not actually ending up dead).

Anyway, thanks to all those out there – like yourself – who are putting themselves (as well as their loved ones) at risk to keep things going!

[Joe Hillshoist]

Thanks for posting OK. Here where I live, our top health officer has said that it's important to get out into the sunshine and fresh air, but keep six feet between yourself and other people as much as possible. I certainly think it's better for my health to go out for a long bike ride (without coming near other people) than to stay cooped up inside.

Like probably most people here, I am not exclusively subscribing to any single take on this virus. On the one hand, I think reports/speculations that it is an engineered bioweapon that escaped from – or was deliberately leaked out of – the bsl-4 lab in Wuhan are credible, and therefore certainly something to take seriously.

On the other hand, we read stuff like this:

The mortality profile remains puzzling from a virological point of view because, in contrast to influenza viruses, children are spared and men are affected about twice as often as women. On the other hand, this profile corresponds to natural mortality, which is close to zero for children and almost twice as high for 75-year-old men as for women of the same age.
...
A report in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera points out that Italian intensive care units already collapsed under the marked flu wave in 2017/2018. They had to postpone operations, call nurses back from holiday and ran out of blood donations.
...
The Japan Times asks: 'Japan was expecting a coronavirus explosion. Where is it?' Despite being one of the first countries getting positive test results and having imposed no lockdown, Japan is one of the least-affected nations. Quote: "Even if Japan may not be counting all those infected, hospitals aren’t being stretched thin and there has been no spike in pneumonia cases.“
...
Italian researchers argue that the extreme smog in Northern Italy, the worst in Europe, may be playing a causative role in the current pneumonia outbreak there, as in Wuhan before.
...
In a new interview, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, a world renowned expert in medical microbiology, says blaming the new coronavirus alone for deaths is "wrong“ and "dangerously misleading“, as there are other more important factors at play, notably pre-existing health conditions and poor air quality in Chinese and Northern Italian cities. Professor Bhakdi describes the currently discussed or imposed measures as "grotesque“, "useless“, "self-destructive“ and a "collective suicide“ that will shorten the lifespan of the elderly and should not be accepted by society.
...
An Italian study of August 2019 found that flu deaths in Italy were between 7,000 and 25,000 in recent years. This value is higher than in most other European countries due to the large elderly population in Italy, and much higher than anything attributed to Covid-19 so far.
...
In a new fact sheet, the World Health Organization WHO reports that Covid-19 is in fact spreading slower, not faster, than influenza by a factor of about 50%. Moreover, pre-symptomatic transmission appears to be much lower with Covid-19 than with influenza.
...
A leading Italian doctor reports that "strange cases of pneumonia“ were seen in the Lombardy region already in November 2019, raising again the question if they were caused by the new virus (which officially only appeared in Italy in February 2020), or by other factors, such as the dangerously high smog levels in Northern Italy.
...
Danish researcher Peter Gøtzsche, founder of the renowned Cochrane Medical Collaboration, writes that Corona is "an epidemic of mass panic“ and "logic was one of the first victims.“

which suggests that whatever increased danger COVID-19 seems to present to people under, say, 70, is mainly if not entirely due to selective focus, ignorance of historical trends, etc.

But then there are the stories we read in forums, in the news, of the – apparently healthy – person in their 40s in England who suddenly dropped dead, of the dentist (here where I live) in his 60s with no known health issues who picked up COVID-19 at a dental conference a few weeks ago and is now dead, etc. I don't think these stories are fabricated.

It would be nice to know if you are seeing previously healthy people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s coming in and ending up in critical care where they are close to dying (if not actually ending up dead).

Anyway, thanks to all those out there – like yourself – who are putting themselves (as well as their loved ones) at risk to keep things going!

Your adaptive immune response - your bodies ability to deal with new infections not previously seen (ie novel ones) declines with age and is affected by testosterone release (but I'm not sure how) so the older you are the less likely you are to be able to respond to this virus and fight it off. And older men are particularly at risk.

Especially if your immune system is compromised.

That's why this mirrors mortality rates anyway.

In the end it's the failure of the adaptive immune response that will get most of us, if we live long enough.

[MacCruiskeen]

^^Right, old people are old and tend to get ill.

So which hospital does operator kos need help at? He tells it's urgent. No one can help till they know where to go.

Where?

[Joe Hillshoist]

I'm coming out of lurker mode to post on this topic due to a disturbing trend I'm seeing on Facebook and places like r/conspiracy. Multiple times a day now I'm seeing posts proclaiming that media reports about the dangers of coronavirus are wildly overblown and the government is just trying to scare us into surrendering our civil liberties. Let me be clear: these sorts of statements are dangerous misinformation that will literally get people killed.

I am a nurse working in the San Francisco Bay Area, currently one of the hardest hit areas in America. I can tell you from personal observation that hospitals will soon be completely overwhelmed if the current trajectory of the epidemic does not change. (And given the incredibly inept response from Team Trump, there is no reason to expect things to get better in the near future.) The shortage of vital medical supplies is very real. My facility started rationing out PPE a week ago. I am not part of a conspiracy of hundreds of thousands of other healthcare workers collectively working to deceive you. This virus is not a hoax. It is a very fast spreading disease with a much, much higher mortality rate than the flu, to which ignorant people are comparing it.

Stay the fuck home.

Wash your hands.

And, as the vanguard of the Internet conspiracy community, I implore you to vote down and argue against these misleading posts when you see them online.

What you are doing is unreal. I'm sorry your country's leadership is so poxy. Youse deserve better.

Good luck mate.

Take care, stay safe and know we're thinking of you.

[MacCruiskeen]

It is bullying bullshit and panicmongering propaganda. It tells nobody anything useful. On the contrary.

[Joe Hillshoist]

He is a nurse in a health system that's about to be overwhelmed yeah. Not a member of the illuminati. You're hassling him about things beyond his control and ignoring what he is saying about his immediate experience right now.

I have a friend in this position. They are worried and they are also potentially at risk from this, over 60 with heart disease and compromised lung function. If it all goes to shit their chances of dying are very real. We've fought fires together for 20 years, seen scary shit and I've never seen her this ... Sober in the face of anything.

There is all sorts of dodgy authoritarian shit that could, no will come with this but that doesn't mean it's fake news.

It only takes a tiny percentage of people to need ICU and the system will break. Then the rate of death will increase and the most experienced medical staff will start to die in increasing numbers cos they are the oldest.

If that happens then ordinary people will screaming for the government to take control and micromanage their lives and ours with it.

[Joe Hillshoist]

^^Right, old people are old and tend to get ill.

So which hospital does operator kos need help at? He tells it's urgent. No one can help till they know where to go.

Where?

What are you gonna do to help? Can you operate a ventilator? Can you assess whether people's medical history means their chances of surviving this, even with a tube down their throat are so slim it's not worth bothering trying to help them.

Do you have the skills or training?

The best thing people is stay away, don't get this virus and don't become a vector for transmission.

[MacCruiskeen]

So the US health system is an utter disgrace and an embarrassment to the entire human race in the 21st century and everyone in the world has known that for decades, and now we're supposed to bow down in awe before some rando anon who informs us how terrible it's gonna become once this carefully media-induced panic overwhelms the loathsome moneygrabbing amerikkkan health-destruction system, and therefore it is a good thing that I and my family in 3 european countries are all currently under total fascist lockdown, and instructs us de haut en bas that we should all be happy with this and obey and conform and "stay the fuck home" (sic) and question nothing and take inspiration from taylor swift's brave and stunning example, because reasons.

[Joe Hillshoist]

How many people have died in Italy because of this? What about Spain?

Are they just normal numbers?

I read what you wrote in that other great, the manufactured contagion one, about the poor andthe effects on them and I agree with that actually. But weeks ago the Italian gov asked people to voluntarily stay home. People didn't and the number of cases skyrocketed.

People will be fascist about things like this if they think their loved ones or they themselves will die cos Joe up the road decided to go out partying after being exposed to the virus.

Which is what happened less than a month ago.

[Sounder]

Mac, operator kos is no anon or shady presenter.

This thing can be both a 'Manufactured contagion' and dangerous.

My neighbor that we get eggs from told of a friend, with other issues, was told by her doctor to go to a testing station in Detroit. She waited in her car for seven hours. When the doc got to her she was informed that they were only testing a very limited group and should go to the ER or go home. He had told her the minute before to not go to the ER to avoid spreading. That was a week ago and she is not yet getting better. My daughter's family, from the same area as the prior case, are symptomatic, not bad, they will be fine I assume, but I am struck by the feeling that each one of us are on our own if the bug actually bites.

[MacCruiskeen]

Our trusted Leaders are creating a gigantic global health crisis under the guise of fighting a gigantic global health crisis. They are creating Hikikomoro World. Ofc hospitals will be struggling, with more and more cases of people suffering panic attacks, drinking themselves senseless, trying to commit suicide, battering their wives and kids, suffering vitamin D depletion & contracting bronchitis and pneumonia because they're tanning their lungs with cigarettes and staring red-eyed into their tv sets & dumbphones instead of moving freely in the spring sunshine & laughing with their loved ones.


If you are lucky enough to live in a rural area in US or Aus or anywhere, then ask yourself (while enjoying a stroll in the sunshine) what this global Fearporn Lockdown is gonna do/is already doing to the *billions* of people who live in cities, esp tower blocks -- young familes, people who live alone, old lonely widows & widowers, atomised young workers who are now forbidden to work or socialise, young members of football teams & cricket teams and choirs & hiking clubs and etc., etc., etc. who are all now cooped up their hi-rise hi-rent boxes glued to their laptops & tablets & tvs going slowly or quickly nuts.

[alloneword]

The shortage of vital medical supplies is very real.

Hi Kos, thanks for posting your experiences.

Can you be a little more specific regarding which 'vital medical supplies' are in short supply? You mentioned PPE, what else?

We're all trying to sift the facts and reality from a sea of lurid fear-mongering tabloid headlines, misrepresentations of statistics and personal anecdote - hopefully you can help with that.

[Iamwhomiam]

alloneword, all across the US there is a tremendous shortage of acute care / intensive care beds as well as necessary staff. Most important of all are ventilators. We need tens of thousands of these just in NYS and even that number that will still not be adequate to meet peak demand, which is now expected in mid August.

Emergency facilities are being constructed to house the influx of patients at NYC's Javits Center and other locations around the state.

Just a reminder: I've been educated to become a nurse, though I chose not to. I was then already an EMT at the time. I've also served as an advisor to our Roman Catholic Diocese, a recipient of a $2 Mil grant from Robert Woods Johnson, to help organize their diocese wide eldercare wellness program, which addressed every conceivable situation our isolated elderly could be confronted with. But I am neither a Nurse nor a Doctor, though we've now heard from one of each of those, both being longtime and well respected RI members.