Ah shit. Members of the Czech government are talking about relaxing the restrictions as a way to allow the virus to slowly spread through the community in a sort of controlled infestation. Still doing social distancing and wearing a mask but opening some businesses.
Basically it’s what the UK tried and failed miserably at doing at the beginning of this pandemic.
They used the analogy of the flu when discussing how it would impact healthy people without any comorbidity. Of course, they didn’t mention that coronavirus is at least 20 times more fatal than the seasonal flu. On top of that, it takes infecting anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of the population to obtain herd immunity. CR’s population is 10.6 million people. Even at the low end, you infect 5 million people and 2% die, that’s 100,000 people and that’s assuming that control of the virus is maintained. Could be easily talking 500,000 if they can’t.
This is a legitimately terrible idea. Either you quarantine and restrict the spread of the virus or you don’t. You can’t have it both ways. This is a shame too because things were actually looking good here and now it’s beginning to look like they’re about to go to shit.
I mean, if you make projections based on inadequate data, and the actual results are outside the error bars on the model because your data was inadequate, that is bad. Expect better!
If I were to consider an idea like this, I would lock down the entire country so that the spread is slowed enough that the medical system isn’t overwhelmed. Then, I would pick one small area and set up conditions to do a controlled spread. This area would be completely quarantined, with no contact with the rest of the country. I would bring in medical resources, in terms of both equipment and personnel, and concentrate them in that area, temporarily increasing the capacity of the medical system in that area. Once infections have peaked in that area and the curve is clearly on the downswing, I would consider slowly adding adjacent areas.
I don’t think that is a workable idea for several reasons, including how long it might take and not being sure of a fair method for deciding who goes first, but that’s how I would approach the idea of doing some sort of controlled spread to build herd immunity.
I have no idea what’s going on but the modeling site I’ve been following now has NH to peak in mid-April at 2 deaths per day and a cumulative total of only 32 deaths through August 4th, Seems overly optimistic to me, but I hope it’s correct. Bouncing around to some other states and the predictions are all way more positive now.
My wife’s friend from the historical society is our first personal death. He was in his 90s and was on a vent for 10 days. Hopefully he was well sedated.
It was an older group happy to have a “young” person volunteer. They were very kind to her (and I think non-creepy old man thrilled that a woman in her late 30s was paying them some attention).
Hoping that PA can still allow his immediate family a normal burial. I’m sure the society will have a memorial when this is all over.
The remote Italian village turned into a human laboratory
Could a tiny hilltop village in Italy help us solve some of the mysteries around coronavirus?
Last week, the village of Nerola was suddenly declared a red zone, after dozens of coronavirus cases were discovered.
It’s been sealed off by the army, and everyone who lives there put into quarantine. Now, medical researchers are testing the entire population, in the hope of learning more about the virus.
8,658 new cases in New York state yesterday, for total of 130,689
599 deaths yesterday, flat from 594 the day before
number of hospital admits, ICU admits, and intubations all down from previous day
(accidentally posted this in the wrong thread first)
I mean right now the medical system actually isn’t too bad here. Obviously it isn’t all sunshine and blowjobs but there hasn’t been the massive overrun of people being put on ventilators that has occurred in Spain, Italy, U.S. and U.K.
The basic reproduction rate is estimated at 1.1 in the country. It was about 2.5 before the lockdown started. I mean 1.1 is really good but it still shows that the virus is spreading, albeit slowly. But it’s gonna move way faster even with a very slow reduction in restrictions.
Plus, what restrictions will remain? They were never made clear. They made vague statements of mask wearing and social distancing but didn’t commit to it. The mask wearing is easy enough but social distancing not so much for small stores.
They do have something set up called smart quaranting where they (with the consent of the coronavirus carrier) track the GPS of where they’ve been and who they were around so that they can try and get in touch with those people. I guess they figure that this will replace a full-on lockdown based on a week long trial that they recently ran in a region of the country.
Thanks for this. I have someone coming to give me a quote for an outside project. He was all enthusiastic about getting out here to give me the quote when I spoke with him so I didn’t even think to ask him whether he felt comfortable about it or not based on his attitude over the phone. I certainly will now.
Also notice that they don’t have travel bans implemented yet. Not sure how big of a role that plays. I wonder if that 63k bed snapshot that’s been shared is from before one of those other restrictions was implemented. It conveniently doesn’t show the upper bar as far as what’s been implemented, nor does it show the date. I’m not going to trust some guy who clearly has an axe to grind when he asserts it was taken after restrictions were implemented.
Also as others have pointed out - their hospital bed model seems to be way off for some reason - but their deaths model has always been fairly accurate.
And finally at least some of the Javascript seems to calculate using the present day - so there’s a chance it could be wonky when running from the past on the internet archive severs.
Employees have been told to shutup about it and Disney has magically avoided all of the controversy that other docked disease ships faced. How convenient!
