We Need Better Data Before Trusting Most Things Anyone Says About Wuhan Virus

[TBoneTX 46,426]

Readable and sensible.  Comments?

Quote

We Need Better Data Before Trusting Most Things Anyone Says About Wuhan Virus

by Vik Khanna - March 23, 2020

 

[...] Many of the claims being made about how the Wuhan virus is the plague for our times are founded on remarkably weak data sets that are intentionally manipulated to foment fear. [...]

 

Continues here: https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/23/we-need-better-data-before-trusting-most-things-anyone-says-about-wuhan-virus/  

 

[Steeleballz 7,550]

 

     The problem is all the people who want to wait for a better data set probably also expect that they will have access to medical care when their lungs fill with fluid and they lose the ability to breathe. However that wont be the case. Perhaps if everyone who thinks waiting for a better data set is a good idea would also agree to waive any medical treatment until the data set is complete, then sure we could wait.

 

 

   

[TBoneTX 46,426]

But isn't that still more reasonable than shutting down All Life and running around like Chicken Little?

[Steeleballz 7,550]

4 minutes ago, TBoneTX said:

But isn't that still more reasonable than shutting down All Life and running around like Chicken Little?

 

     Depends on your risk tolerance I guess. You OK with not getting medical treatment if you need it? 

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

12 minutes ago, Steeleballz said:

 

     Depends on your risk tolerance I guess. You OK with not getting medical treatment if you need it? 

A large portion of covid-19 patients will not require medical treatment, I believe the data is showing.  A small portion will never even know they have it.  

 

There are idiots out there who will take chemicals not designed for humans (but that is nothing new, been happening since the dawn of mankind), idiots who will expose themselves unnecessarily (recent spring-breakers come to mind), and idiots who proclaim it's the worst thing to ever happen to us.  All three are only making things worse for everyone.

 

3,700 people die daily in auto accidents the world over.  That's roughly 1.3 million per year, and we don't have car bans, nor have we shut down businesses, beaches, nor any other aspect of life because of it.  

 

To put that into perspective, more people will die in auto crashes between now and Friday than have died from CV-19 since November.  Yes, there is most definitely a "chicken little" aspect to this, and it's pretty clear why it is happening.

[Steeleballz 7,550]

17 minutes ago, Voice of Reason said:

A large portion of covid-19 patients will not require medical treatment, I believe the data is showing. 

 

     That's nice if you are one of them. No way to tell for sure in advance really. A lot of younger people in ICU. Actually a disproportionate amount relative to what the statistics would say there should be. Perhaps it's because they are the ones going out and feeling invincible, getting exposed, while older people are staying home. IDK really, but I saw a lot of positives back this weekend, and I was surprised at the age demographics.

 

   I don't know how many times it needs to be repeated. Roughly 20% of people will need hospital care. Those people in ICU right now have a good chance of surviving with the right treatment. More than three quarters of them will recover. When hospital beds fill up and they cant get that treatment, they will die. It won't just be older people either. This is America. History says we won't prioritize health care by outcome when we can give it to someone who can pay.  

[Dashinka 24,980]

2 hours ago, Steeleballz said:

 

     That's nice if you are one of them. No way to tell for sure in advance really. A lot of younger people in ICU. Actually a disproportionate amount relative to what the statistics would say there should be. Perhaps it's because they are the ones going out and feeling invincible, getting exposed, while older people are staying home. IDK really, but I saw a lot of positives back this weekend, and I was surprised at the age demographics.

 

   I don't know how many times it needs to be repeated. Roughly 20% of people will need hospital care. Those people in ICU right now have a good chance of surviving with the right treatment. More than three quarters of them will recover. When hospital beds fill up and they cant get that treatment, they will die. It won't just be older people either. This is America. History says we won't prioritize health care by outcome when we can give it to someone who can pay.  

What did we do when the H1N1 pandemic hit?

[Lemonslice 5,004]

1 hour ago, Dashinka said:

What did we do when the H1N1 pandemic hit?

I remember wide vaccination campaign?

 

Also, the numbers on flu and car accidents deaths are annual totals. If all the accidents happened in a shorter period of time, in the same areas, there would probably be more deaths since the traumatology centers would be overloaded.

 

Edited March 24, 2020 by Lemonslice

[yuna628 9,758]

2 hours ago, Dashinka said:

What did we do when the H1N1 pandemic hit?

Well what did we do? I was fairly confident at the time that our medical system could handle it, and they did. That is not to say that we lost people, mostly children - which caused a lot of people complaining why schools weren't shut to slow the spread. MD did actually close some for 14 days and we moved very quickly on everything else. Later on schools across the country did also close, though probably not nearly enough. We did have some medication pushed through via the stockpile, but of course that relied on the patient obtaining it fast enough. We also pushed out stockpiles of other things like medical supplies to hospitals - but we were very confident that there would not be such a demand to overwhelm the system. H1N1 was not the same disease.

 

In my case I waited too long. I cannot recall in which month I was infected somewhere between May to June perhaps. It was the worst flu I could ever recall. But when my cough started having that kind of signature sound I went to my clinic, received H1N1 and flu tests very quickly, waited for results right there, and then immediately received a chest xray. Based on those results I would have been moved to the ER or sent home with medication. My lungs were good, but I needed medication to help me with breathing and coughing. I recovered at home. By then it was spreading through my whole family and their symptoms were nothing more than a tiny sniffle for a few days. It took me months to get better. The vaccination came to MD around October (and that was with a lot of complaining because that was slow). Hospitals did struggle a little, but it was nothing like now. By much later in the year we had a couple cases of Tamiflu resistant H1N1 and we began multiple and very aggressive vaccination programs. The main problem was getting people to believe the vaccine worked and wasn't a government conspiracy to kill them. You also had parents having 'swine flu parties'. The vaccination program and the ability to have rapid testing worked to isolate and treat people. Having Tamiflu helped early cases. We have none of these for this new disease. Yes, we lost people. Every death was a sad anguish for parents - but we knew a lot how the disease worked and that was one of the reasons why the vaccine got pushed out fairly quickly.

 

I want people to stop comparing the flu, H1N1, and COVID19. They are not the same disease. I would gladly take H1N1 a million times over if it would stop the agonizing deaths people have and will suffer from this.

[Dashinka 24,980]

8 minutes ago, yuna628 said:

Well what did we do? I was fairly confident at the time that our medical system could handle it, and they did. That is not to say that we lost people, mostly children - which caused a lot of people complaining why schools weren't shut to slow the spread. MD did actually close some for 14 days and we moved very quickly on everything else. Later on schools across the country did also close, though probably not nearly enough. We did have some medication pushed through via the stockpile, but of course that relied on the patient obtaining it fast enough. We also pushed out stockpiles of other things like medical supplies to hospitals - but we were very confident that there would not be such a demand to overwhelm the system. H1N1 was not the same disease.

 

In my case I waited too long. I cannot recall in which month I was infected somewhere between May to June perhaps. It was the worst flu I could ever recall. But when my cough started having that kind of signature sound I went to my clinic, received H1N1 and flu tests very quickly, waited for results right there, and then immediately received a chest xray. Based on those results I would have been moved to the ER or sent home with medication. My lungs were good, but I needed medication to help me with breathing and coughing. I recovered at home. By then it was spreading through my whole family and their symptoms were nothing more than a tiny sniffle for a few days. It took me months to get better. The vaccination came to MD around October (and that was with a lot of complaining because that was slow). Hospitals did struggle a little, but it was nothing like now. By much later in the year we had a couple cases of Tamiflu resistant H1N1 and we began multiple and very aggressive vaccination programs. The main problem was getting people to believe the vaccine worked and wasn't a government conspiracy to kill them. You also had parents having 'swine flu parties'. The vaccination program and the ability to have rapid testing worked to isolate and treat people. Having Tamiflu helped early cases. We have none of these for this new disease. Yes, we lost people. Every death was a sad anguish for parents - but we knew a lot how the disease worked and that was one of the reasons why the vaccine got pushed out fairly quickly.

 

I want people to stop comparing the flu, H1N1, and COVID19. They are not the same disease. I would gladly take H1N1 a million times over if it would stop the agonizing deaths people have and will suffer from this.

I am not comparing the two from a disease standpoint, but rather from a pandemic standpoint, and the response to it.  I don’t know about you, but if I had a mild case of Covid19 vs a severe case of H1N1, I would take the first one.  My point though is the US did not shut down for H1N1 even though it infected nearly 60 million in the US, hospitalized nearly 300000 and caused the deaths of over 12000.  Sure, there were some therapeutics available if it was diagnosed early enough, but it was severe as well.  Covid19 has moe unknowns at the moment, but those will become learned which is why I don’t have a problem with doing what we are doing right now, but if the data does show this pandemic is lessening in the next few weeks or months, or therapeutics are developed we need to reopen.

[yuna628 9,758]

3 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

I am not comparing the two from a disease standpoint, but rather from a pandemic standpoint, and the response to it.  I don’t know about you, but if I had a mild case of Covid19 vs a severe case of H1N1, I would take the first one.  My point though is the US did not shut down for H1N1 even though it infected nearly 60 million in the US, hospitalized nearly 300000 and caused the deaths of over 12000.  Sure, there were some therapeutics available if it was diagnosed early enough, but it was severe as well.  Covid19 has moe unknowns at the moment, but those will become learned which is why I don’t have a problem with doing what we are doing right now, but if the data does show this pandemic is lessening in the next few weeks or months, or therapeutics are developed we need to reopen.

I think it would be understandable that some reopenings could happen if a working treatment is developed, but ultimately that will not help fully unless we can isolate via mass testing. The risk of continuing extreme pressure and failure on the medical system is too great. We need to accept that pandemics have big consequences not just to loss of life but on our entire medical system and economy. H1N1's effect was greatest on children and younger people and resulted in school closures. That was the largest disruption it caused. Not the same in this case unfortunately. I hope when this is all over that we start stockpiling and upgrading our hospital infrastructure, and pay particularly close attention to poor rural care and the lack thereof. This won't be the last pandemic... there's even worse bugs out there that would likely destroy us greater than it has now.

[Dashinka 24,980]

20 minutes ago, yuna628 said:

I think it would be understandable that some reopenings could happen if a working treatment is developed, but ultimately that will not help fully unless we can isolate via mass testing. The risk of continuing extreme pressure and failure on the medical system is too great. We need to accept that pandemics have big consequences not just to loss of life but on our entire medical system and economy. H1N1's effect was greatest on children and younger people and resulted in school closures. That was the largest disruption it caused. Not the same in this case unfortunately. I hope when this is all over that we start stockpiling and upgrading our hospital infrastructure, and pay particularly close attention to poor rural care and the lack thereof. This won't be the last pandemic... there's even worse bugs out there that would likely destroy us greater than it has now.

I thought NY was starting a fairly large trial today with both potentials?  We do need to keep up the work on a vaccine, not sure why the SARS or MERS vaccine work was abandoned.  I do agree that more has to be done to prepare for the next pandemic.  Too bad we did not learn much from the last one.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Dashinka

[90DayFinancier 910]

7 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

But isn't that still more reasonable than shutting down All Life and running around like Chicken Little?

Have you been seeing the news in Italy?  They saying, learn from our mistakes.

[Dashinka 24,980]

16 minutes ago, 90DayFinancier said:

Have you been seeing the news in Italy?  They saying, learn from our mistakes.

Why is everything compared to Italy and Europe instead of South Korea?

[Steeleballz 7,550]

4 hours ago, Dashinka said:

What did we do when the H1N1 pandemic hit?

 

   H1N1 didn't overwhelm the health care system, nor did it have a higher fatality rate or rate of complications than normal flu. We waited for a vaccination and hoped not to get it.