As well as population density in cities/towns there’s also vastly differing living conditions. European homes are much smaller with more people per square metre than the CA average. A lot of rooms are in houses built hundreds of years ago when cramped conditions were normal, giving a virus near ideal conditions to spread in.
Germany escapes this by being a) much wealthier and less cramped and b) having a well-thought out response to the pandemic, reducing its Ro.
When it comes down to an exponential spread, even reducing the initial Ro from, say, 3 to 2.5 is going to make a large difference in outcomes by the time quarantines take place.
Czech Republic processed 8,802 tests yesterday, more than any previous day, and found just 99 positive tests. At 1.19%, that’s the lowest ratio detected since March 4th which was just 3 days after the disease was found in the country (they ran 5 tests that day with 0 positives).
They began the antibodies test at 8 AM today and there was a line over an hour before then in all parts of the country with social distancing and mask-wearing being practiced throughout. They won’t be able to test everybody on the lines today due to the sheer number of volunteers.
The number of recoveries continues to rise far faster than the number of new cases with 28% of patients recovered. Currently, there are 401 people hospitalized in the country due to covid19 which is about 10% lower than the peak of 446. 76 of those 401 are on ventilators which is over 25% lower than April’s peak of 103.
Almost half of deaths were people in care facilities - WHO
Almost half of all people who have died with coronavirus in Europe were residents in care facilities, the World Health Organisation’s regional director for Europe has said.
Dr Hans Kluge told a press conference on Thursday there was a “deeply concerning picture” emerging regarding those in long-term care.
He said: “According to estimates from countries in the European region, up to half of those who have died from Covid-19 were resident in long-term care facilities. This is an unimaginable human tragedy.”
I think it’s specifically nicotine, with smoking itself still being very very bad for your prospects (lights another smoke). Even weed and vaping and so on, very bad apparently. Might be worth buying a few patches or some of that disgusting gum.
I’m scratching my head about how the Netherlands and especially Belgium have been hit drastically harder than Germany. They’re both rich countries like Germany, and their people are probably as healthy or healthier. Going along with the strains explanation, Belgium is especially closely connected with France; the Netherlands is a mixed bag connected with all of Europe.
I think there might be something to the virus strains thing, but it’s not like a game of risk here. All the strains are everywhere. Also, California had deaths and community transmission in February, but I’m guessing NYC did too, and probably to a greater degree. That people died in Feb isn’t necessarily shocking.
Rant: One of the most idiotic mistakes the US made–and it was a complete wtf moment in real time–was restricting early testing to people with recent travel to Asia in late Feb. It was obvious to any non-deplorable with a pulse that community transmission was happening in the US. But we were still in idiot Trump’s burying-head-in-the-sand phase, so 2-3 weeks went by with no ramp up in testing because they were only focused on testing a trickle of people still coming in from Asia. Meanwhile the really critical part of the curve, where small outbreaks of the virus was replicating in hotspots and getting distributed all over the country, was obviously already in progress.
Yup. That’s exactly the case here. Over 90% of those who died from covid19 in the Czech Republic were older than 60. It spread a lot in care homes because a lot of the PPE went to hospitals and not enough was given to care homes. The people taking care of the elderly there aren’t as skilled as those in hospitals so they weren’t as well-trained or prepared for this and they definitely suffered the most.
Politics are definitely taking precedence over science. The same thing is occurring in the Czech Republic.
Once people see things decline, they immediately want to get back to things. A majority of Czechs now want to get back to work and open their businesses. Babiš has to balance his political standing and the science behind his decisions. After seeing the decline, he’s now pushing to accelerate the scheduled openings after previously wanting to slow it down by extending the state of emergency.
The reality is that changes in public health policy take a lot more time to affect society than the people are willing to wait. The plan that was initially proposed appeared really sensible but speeding it up by two weeks is just not smart. He’s spiking the football before scoring the touchdown.
putting on my Dad hat, my own father got at least an extra 30! years of quality life when he quit at 50-2 packs a day of unfiltered Pall Malls-You kids quit smoking/vaping/chewing/etc when you are the sole survivors of the covid apocalypse.
I’ve tried to type this question out a couple times and it came off as seemingly heartless, but I’ll try anyhow.
Will there be any way in the after analysis to account for COVID-19 deaths in the elderly to determine what amount of these individuals would have died anyway during this event?
I have to assume that the absolutely most vulnerable and weakest folks in nursing homes/hospitals make up a large portion of the deaths, and I’d assume that over a few month period many of these folks would have expired from other causes.
Not trying to minimize, and I know that we’re all on death’s door depending on the time scale you are looking at.
Damn that’s rough, I thought my dad was bad. Do you know if that’s being pushed by Fox or is it some facebook chainletter shit?
Workers came and set up yesterday, and as @microbet said they put plastic up everywhere with zippers to get in and out. Both our bedrooms zippered off, kitchen and living room as well. I feel like I’m in some weird horror film where I’m going to see an aliens shadow through the plastic heh.
I talked to the supervisor to get the plan etc, and told him that my mom is super high risk and asked very politely if they could take as many precautions as possible such as wearing their masks at all time, wearing booties whenever they come into the house. He seemed cool and understanding and agreed.
Set up the laptop for my mom with netflix/prime/hulu and downloaded her some audiobooks and ebooks. She wasn’t interested in playing animal crossing though
Seems like it would be as simple as comparing 2020 deaths to a recent average. You could probably safely assume a big portion of the difference was Covid-19. You could then compare that to the reported covid-19 numbers.
In my year of delivering Amazon flex, i have NEVER received a tip… until Tuesday, when a lady met me at end of her drive , and tipped me a roll of toilet paper…i shit u not
Black swans are surprising and unpredictable events, so that rules Trump out.
I keep pointing out that foreign observers have been saying for decades that the US in the shape of the GOP has been sliding inexorably into something truly awful, ever since Nixon/Kissinger/Reagan/Bush (both). It’s much easier to see from afar than when you’re in the thick of it.
A number of prominent 22 politics posters lost small (or maybe large) fortunes betting against Trump in '16, describing it as free money. Some haven’t been seen there since, I think.
This has been my white whale about 10 days ago. I was trying to find FL and GA typical deaths per week vs 2020.
I’m going to wait for some enterprising soul or intrepid reporter makes it easy for me. Occasionally there are news articles references but nothing I can data dive.
As for the deniers, my strong supposition is that
Drop in typical deaths from no car accidents and less non-covid diseases
>
Collateral deaths from lack of care due to impacts of covid on the healthcare capacity. Maybe some NYC.
So I am comfortable that total Covid deaths=
Total deaths-typical deaths. At least as a good estimate.
That level of incompetence and total narcism is the black swan. Not that he’s an ideologue (see Reagan). Reagan and BushII at least had people capable people carrying out most things (noted exception Brown during Katrina)
The bottom line of his response is a complete lack of empathy.
We had at least a 90% chance of a better response. You’d have to go back to Buchanan.
But yeah mostly calling Trump the black swan is just another way to slam him.
The pandemic was not as unexpected as many think. Ask Obama and Bush II.
