Jump to content
trystan

Coronavirus Discussion

Recommended Posts

3 minutes ago, Astreya said:

 

 

 

@StormBirdRising

Well, I know whom I'd believe - and that's not the person who is on record spreading lies about everyone and everything all the time.

 

There is an American politics thread if you don't have anything to say about COVID 19 and you want to talk American politics

Share this post


Link to post

@StormBirdRising

Naw, I would get too upset there, I guess.

 

But I really hope for you that the blunders of the current USgov won't lead to the Covid-19 epidemic in the states turn much more catastrophic than it could have been when going about it. Here's a timeline what went wrong with the US approach to Covid-19: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-testing-problems-timeline-2020-3?r=DE&IR=T

Share this post


Link to post
3 hours ago, StormBirdRising said:

It is just a load of crap. First German news said that Trump tried to STEAL the formula for the vaccine for the COVID 19 virus (there is no vaccine)

German news said no such thing. I've been watching and reading news all over the weekend, and I certainly didn't hear anything about a try to "steal" a non-existing vaccine. Don't claim to know what's in German news if you don't follow them yourself. The "fact" you just stated is most definitely an alternative fact. Or, in other words, fake news.

 

3 hours ago, StormBirdRising said:

they said that Trump tried to buy a German pharmaceutical company, really, how do you buy a pharmaceutical company from another country, give me a break.

With lots of money and maybe some additional incentives would be my guess. Just how Bayer bought Monsanto (albeit it's less pharma and more crap).

 

3 hours ago, StormBirdRising said:

And they are working on finding a vaccine for everyone, since it is a global disease and it wouldn't even make any sense for one country to keep it to themselves, the chances of reinfection from outside their country would be too great.

Not really. Not if the country has herd immunity. Although, considering how many anti-vaxxers there are in the US, I wouldn't be surprised if a re-infection actually occurred. But that's neither here nor there.

 

3 hours ago, StormBirdRising said:

Merck, which is an American company since 1917 that Germany still claims that the US stole from them. Good Grief. How do you steal a pharmaceutical company?

Spoils of WWII. Simple as that. It was an American branch of a German company that the US claimed as their own during the war. (That, btw, is also the reason why Merck has to go by Merck Sharp & Dohme outside the US. Because they don't have the rights to the name Merck anywhere else.)

 

20 minutes ago, Astreya said:

 

@StormBirdRising

Well, I know whom I'd believe - and that's not the person who is on record spreading lies about everyone and everything all the time.

Agreed. But whenever some news outlet prints/sends something that is less than praise for him, it's always "fake news". And if someone or a group tries to hold him responsible for misdemeanors, it's - quite naturally - a witch hunt. After all, Trump is perfect, amazing and the self-coined "best president of all time".

 

@Astreya I don't think we have a lot of room to talk about what went wrong. Karneval went wrong in Germany, it should have been cancelled. Period. But no, like the Bundesliga, it's one of our national "holy cows". And the whole lockdown thing should have happened a week or two ago.

Edited by olympe

Share this post


Link to post
3 minutes ago, Astreya said:

@StormBirdRising

Naw, I would get too upset there, I guess.

 

But I really hope for you that the blunders of the current USgov won't lead to the Covid-19 epidemic in the states turn much more catastrophic than it could have been when going about it. Here's a timeline what went wrong with the US approach to Covid-19: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-testing-problems-timeline-2020-3?r=DE&IR=T

 

Thank you for concern. I am very touched that you are always worrying about me, and Donald Trump, and the US regarding the coronoavirus. And that you are always sending me alerts so the I can read them right away.

 

In a press conference today Donald Trump acknowledged that they have tested a COVID 19 vaccine and are awaiting the results.

Share this post


Link to post
28 minutes ago, Astreya said:

@Confused Cat

Heh. I'm using the Vulcan salute a lot, too - particularly among other geeks. With "normal" people I prefer to go for the Namaste greeting.

I'd forgotten about Namaste.

Jazz hands works, too. Pretend you're a fire gem dragon. XD

 

Well, that's one house sit cancelled. I still don't have a confirmation on the one that's supposed to start today.

 

One food store had no parking. The other wasn't too busy but most people had overfull carts which made checking out slow. Everyone was super-polite, especially when passing in the aisles and making room for people to pass which made a refrehing change from the usual food store bumpers cars.

Share this post


Link to post

@StormBirdRising I read that, too. But testing a new, completely untested vaccine on humans that quickly looks like cutting corners to me. Not to mention that experts still expect the vaccine to take about 12 to 18 months to fully develop.

Edited by olympe

Share this post


Link to post

@StormBirdRising

I'm not worrying about the US as much as I'm worrying about the rest of the world. If the US gets the number of infections that are estimated by the virologists and thus the economy breaks down, it will take most other countries down with them.

 

@olympe

Absolutely agreed, the reaction in Germany was a bit too sluggish, too. The Heinsberg outbreak pretty much messed up the whole of NRW as quite some of the carnival people who were infected by that patient zero couple went out to infect others of course.  Add to that that our health system is multilayered, a comprehensive response is always tricky.

Edited by Astreya

Share this post


Link to post

I live in Iowa (USA) and work in the county (Johnson) which has the highest number of confirmed cases in the state. Today, my church cancelled all services until further notice. I am trying to practice "social distancing", but that's hard when my workplace has over 300 employees on my shift and we are to report to work unless ill. Even my two bowling leagues fail to practice social distancing as everyone but me, apparently, still gives high fives and fist bumps. I give thumbs up.

The Corona virus is very concerning to me. My elderly parents are in a nursing home and during the outbreak no visitors are allowed. I wonder if I'll have a chance to see them while they are both still alive.

Edited by casprrr
Typo

Share this post


Link to post

For us in Germany, all congregations of all faiths have been cancelled. Visits to nursing homes and hospitals are not quite forbidden from way up high, but we're told to avoid them if possible. And keep them short. Only one person visiting at a time. And, of course, some nursing homes or hospitals made up their own rules about "no visits whatsoever".

Share this post


Link to post

Italy, very hard hit by COVID 19, had a press release and stated that they waited too long to address the virus. They estimate that mainland Europe is about 7 to 8 days behind the trajectory of the spread of the disease and the US and the UK are 13 to 16 days behind, which means they are anticipating that those of us in those countries will be hit just as hard within those time frames. So, hold tight everyone. I hope they are wrong.

 

Northern California - 7 million civilians are on lockdown and must remain in their homes except for emergencies and state mandated emergency travel.

Share this post


Link to post

Unfortunately, it looks ot me like the Italians are right. It certainly looks like it.

 

That being said, is it just my imagination, or are current numbers for infected and/or death tolls are harder to come by than they used to be? (They used to be pretty much everywhere - and while they're still available in some places, they're not quite as common.) Also, updates seem to have slowed down. It might be because of a change in the system for counting those, but, well, I'm not 100% convinced. Also, radio news hardly ever mentioned the spread of Corona in our area today - at least the ones I heard.

Share this post


Link to post

@olympe this is a very efficient site:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The Bahamas' first case was added within /minutes/ of being announced.

 

And no, I will not be house sitting. The people have (understandably) decided not to travel. I'm not surprised, but I will miss the extra income for the month.

Share this post


Link to post

@Lagie Thanks a bunch. Official numbers were from 3 PM, so this... is much, much worse. By 1,200 or so cases.

Share this post


Link to post

I just saw a live news feed from Italy, there were ten (10) pages of obituaries. 😥

 

May they rest in peace, in the arms of the angels.

Share this post


Link to post

Everything is stopped in past few weeks in this place. Seems like some university are doing lecture online now.

Share this post


Link to post

By the way, for the people who wonder why there are no general Covid-19 testing numbers for Germany (only verified cases), it might be interesting to explain how the health system deals with the pandemic here.

 

The problem is that we have some hundred laboratories doing the testing in Germany, and the Infektionsschutzgesetz (law about protection from infectious diseases) only requires that positive tests have to be reported (it is the same for numerous other notifiable infectious diseases, particularly certain kinds of bacteria and viruses etc). The various laboratories give an invoice to the health insurance companies (in Germany all people are required to have either a public or private health insurance - kids are usually insured via their parents and in case of jobless people, the state takes care of them) about all tests they do, so the exact data can only be obtained when the health insurances give out their data.

 

In Germany the health system is set up in various layers - particularly it's that "Gesundheit is Ländersache", that is, health is solely the matter of the states (Germany has 16 states that have autonomy about quite some things, among them health and education). The health minister in the federal government (which currently is Jens Spahn of the CDU) can only give suggestions to the governments of the Länder (states) which then have to decide whether and/or how they enact things.

 

Additionally we have some hundred Gesundheitsämter (local health offices) that also have quite some autonomy. The advantage is that the local response time can be pretty fast, e.g. the Gesundheitsamt of my home town already set things into motion when the Land NRW was still debating things (we had 130 Covids-19 tests conducted by March 12 for a city with a population of 211 000 - unfortunately the number of overall tests hasn't been updated so far). On the negative side that means it is difficult to put together a comprehensive action that is identical in the whole of Germany.

 

Since the start of the pandemic, there have been publicly televised daily briefings about the proceedings and suggested rules of conduct given out by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI, the German federal government agency and research institute responsible for disease control and prevention).

 

While in other Countries with a more centralised government, there are frequent briefings by the head of the state/government, in Germany much of the original response was only directed by the health minister in concert with numerous scientists from RKI, Charité (one of Germany's most research-intensive medical institutions that is located in Berlin) and the Paul-Ehrlich Institute (German federal institute for vaccines and biomedicines) as in the end it is the governments of the sixteen Länder (states) that are the ones that have to take action and act on the guidance given by the Federal government.

 

That's why for example Bavaria which is lead by CSU politician Markus Söder (Bavaria has the second most cases of Covid-19 in Germany) already officially declared the Katastrophenfall (state of emergency), while Northrhine-Westfalia (NRW) which is lead by Armin Laschet (CDU) didn't declare a state of emergency (yet) even though we have the most cases of Covid-19 here.

 

I hope I didn't bore you with my essay, but I would be interested how exactly the response to Covid-19 is set up by other contries, too.

 

Everybody please stay safe and healthy!

 

Edited by Astreya

Share this post


Link to post

The US states are all over the place.  Our governor in Kentucky just shut down inside eating in restaurants.  What are all those workers supposed to do?  But then we have to try to keep this virus in check.

 

They have talked about building emergency hospitals, but where are they going to get the doctors and nurses?  We have a critical shortage of nurses in The States.  I'm a retired nurse and can see me being asked to come back to work.  The problem with that is my bad knee and bad back so I couldn't do patient care where the need will be greatest.  I could do insurance work or psych.  More psychiatric admissions will also probably happen.  I can see them turning psych hospitals into medical hospitals, but then what would you do with suicidal folks?  

 

Edited by Classycal

Share this post


Link to post

Offering a view on this whole thing from someone at the Asian side of the world:

 

My country finally went on lockdown. It’s about time it did, too. Work from home setups took forever to approve, especially in my line of work (I work as email support for a telco company based in Singapore) and if it wasn’t for the lockdown measures our government threw out at the last minute, well I’d still be going to work tomorrow, which is two cities away from where I live.

 

Thankfully the lockdown is working, but some people are blowing it out of proportion…

 

…hilariously enough where I live only alcohol has been wiped out there’s like an entire aisle full of TP in the local supermarkets! We have different ways of sanitizing here, we believe in the ‘tabo’ (dipper for those in the West, if you know what a ‘tabo’ is then you know where I’m located) so we’re good with water + soap. Thank goodness there are limits placed on how much soap one person can buy…

Share this post


Link to post
7 hours ago, olympe said:

That being said, is it just my imagination, or are current numbers for infected and/or death tolls are harder to come by than they used to be?

For Germany, one of the RKI guys said that in the beginning they updated the numbers manually several times daily, but when the number of cases rocketed up, they couldn't do it manually any more and had to implement an automatic counting system. Mind you, there is no one laboratory doing the testing, but numerous, and when they report their positive cases, it's not all at a time, but whenever they have the time. That's why the RKI decided to do only one update of the case numbers on the website per day, as they need their resources for more important things than updating their website for every case that freshly comes in.

Share this post


Link to post
20 hours ago, Astreya said:

@demonicvampiregirl

I really hope the numerous mistakes the USgov made so far will not lead to a real health catastrophe in the US. Trump also declined the WHO offer to give the US the WHO approved Covid-19 test that was originally developed in Germany several weeks ago as he (and/or the CDC) decided they would prefer to create their own test kit - with the result that the original CDC test kit was faulty and didn't return useful result, so the US testing regime is very far behind.

 

Does not surprise me. *sighs*

Share this post


Link to post

American President Donald Trump has been successful in his endeavor to fast track a vaccine for the COVID 19 virus which has gone global.

 

A Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating an investigational vaccine designed to protect against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) has begun at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute  in Seattle, Washington, USA. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is funding the trial. KPWHRI is part of NIAID’s Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Consortium.

 

The open-label trial will enroll 45 healthy adult volunteers ages 18 to 55 years over approximately 6 weeks. The first participant received the investigational vaccine today.

 

The study is evaluating different doses of the experimental vaccine for safety and its ability to induce an immune response in participants. This is the first of multiple steps in the clinical trial process for evaluating the potential benefit of the vaccine.

 

The vaccine is called mRNA-1273 and was developed by NIAID scientists and their collaborators at the biotechnology company Moderna, Inc., based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) supported the manufacturing of the vaccine candidate for the Phase 1 clinical trial.

 

As of March 15, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported 153,517 cases of COVID 19 and 5,735 deaths worldwide. More than 2,800 confirmed COVID 19 cases and 58 deaths have been reported in the United States as of March 15, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

 

Let's all hope that this vaccine is successful. As the pandemic continues to spread globally, this vaccine appears to be the world's last best hope to conquer the . COVID 19

 

Share this post


Link to post

Agreed. Without a working vaccine, things will look pretty bleak, particularly as recent findings showed that even people with mild Covid-19 disease could experience long time lung problems. So the best thing will be to stop people getting Covid-19 in the first place. 

Source: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3074988/coronavirus-some-recovered-patients-may-have

Edited by Astreya

Share this post


Link to post
21 hours ago, Astreya said:

 

I really hope the numerous mistakes the USgov made so far will not lead to a real health catastrophe in the US. Trump also declined the WHO offer to give the US the WHO approved Covid-19 test that was originally developed in Germany several weeks ago as he (and/or the CDC) decided they would prefer to create their own test kit - with the result that the original CDC test kit was faulty and didn't return useful result, so the US testing regime is very far behind.

 

  • The WHO never offered to sell test kits to the United States.

  •  

  • The CDC opted to develop its own coronavirus test and did not use the WHO’s protocol for the test. 

  •  

  • Other developed countries with advanced research capabilities developed their own tests.

  •  

  • The countries WHO helped are ones that lack the virology lab horsepower that exists across the United States. The outreach work by the Pan American Health Organization is a case in point.

    The group is WHO’s arm in the Americas. It conducted trainings and sent materials to conduct tests to 29 nations. The list included Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and many others.

     

  • The group said it focused most of its efforts on "countries with the weakest health systems."

     

  • "No discussions occurred between WHO and CDC about WHO providing COVID-19 tests to the United States," said WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris. "This is consistent with experience since the United States does not ordinarily rely on WHO for reagents or diagnostic tests because of sufficient domestic capacity."

Share this post


Link to post

@StormBirdRising

I concede that I was misinformed about the WHO offering the US the test kits. Although I found this on the site that reviewed this info:

"Germany released its protocol on Jan. 17, but the U.S. decided to have the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention develop its own. That protocol was published Jan. 28."

This still means that the US decided to take 11 days to develop their test from scratch which were consequently lost. Add to that that the first batch of the CDC tests gave inconclusive results, the US response was botched as they lost almost two weeks.

Share this post


Link to post


  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.