midtskogen wrote:A-L-E-X wrote:Source of the post Did you see how he mentioned (on Earth Day) how the highest rates of it are in highly polluted areas, where the asthma rates are 3x worse? Very much on point and exactly why we need tougher regulations.
The correlation may simply be that both pollution and virus spread are correlated with population density. It means that the regulations need to be local. There are many places where the toughest regulations will be pointless.Watsisname wrote:Source of the post Norway went more heavily toward total societal shutdown, while Sweden leaned towards keeping things open and trying to protect the more vulnerable. How well did it work? Well, their growth curves for cases started out at around the same time and for a while looked fairly similar, with the typical exponential growth that eventually flattens out toward something more linear. But now that more time has gone by we see the differences quite clearly. Norway's rate of new cases has been dropping -- now down to about 100 per day from a peak of about 300 per day around March 27. Sweden however has only just plateaued, at around 500 per day. It appears that Norway's strategy has proved more effective at flattening the curve.
Sweden has played a more dangerous game. Protecting the vulnerable has not been very successful with many deaths in the >80 years group. Their other goal, achieving herd immunity without collapsing healthcare, is yet to be judged. If it turns out that herd immunity is hard to achieve for this virus, then the strategy is a big failure. That remains to be seen. The number of new cases in Norway and Sweden, even if you correct for roughly double the population in Sweden, is difficult to compare as the testing is different and many are asymptomatic. It may well be possible that the cases in Sweden has passed the million mark, whereas in Norway it's just in the tens of thousand range. In that case deaths in Sweden will drop, whereas Norway will simply slowly catch up with all the pain of strict regulations. I think we need to look at the death numbers when this is over and all data are in to judge who where right. Sweden does have a much higher number of deaths per million than Norway, but Norway may simply have postponed the problems. Currently Norway has 125 people hospitalised with Covid-19, 33 of which getting breathing aid. Many are above 80 who would not have received this kind of attention for similar symptoms in a normal situation, which raises some ethical questions concerning how elderly are treated. The capacity is higher, and a lot of other appointments have been postponed to free up resources in case Covid-19 gets really nasty. This is also bad, and premature deaths due to this are likely not counted.
Schools will partially reopen here on Monday.
EDIT 2020-04-24: Today the first deaths of anyone under 50 years were reported in Norway. The current breakdown is:
40-49: 2
50-59: 6
60-69: 13
70-79: 44
80-89: 70
90+: 56
The average age is 83. Life expectancy in Norway is also 83.
Watsisname wrote:midtskogen wrote:Source of the post You leave out one important factor: Of all infected a small percentage get seriously ill and their survival highly depends on whether they get good treatment. That's the whole point of the flatten the curve mantra. Healthcare in Sweden is very good and hospitals have not been seriously overwhelmed.
The flood on the health care system in NY has been very high. Even now, on the decline of the curve, about 1300 new COVID-19 patients still come in to hospitals statewide every day. But with the expansions of capacity and coordinating patient and equipment movement across all hospitals in the region, they managed to avoid being overwhelmed. Patients who required it have been put on oxygen, and those that continue to decline have been put on ventilators. So I do not think many deaths can be attributed to insufficient care, except for those who died at home, which we have not counted yet. Maybe another explanation is perhaps there is more use of effective antiviral remedies in Sweden than NY? Offhand I don't have good info about that besides this page for NYC hospitals.
How strong could the effect be from the age distribution? Earlier we looked at South Korea and Italy, and found the difference in their population pyramids could account for about a 40% difference in mortality rate. For New York, the data from the antibody study as well as from hospitalizations do not suggest this would be very important. The former is a fairly uniform sampling by age, and it shows that for those interacting in society, the infection rate is also fairly uniform by age (within factor of 2). The latter shows that mortalities by age follow a consistent trend as what we expected.
Comorbidities can certainly be important. In NYC 34% of adults are overweight and 22% are obese. Asthma and diabetes factor in, too. I think that will surely change the calculus, but... will it change it by a factor of more than 2? That would really surprise me.
And of course the biggest caveat is this: These are preliminary data. The study is ongoing, so the data could change. Still, it's a sample size of 3000, which is a lot of data already and I think we can draw useful conclusions from them.
Anecdotally I have heard people in the US speculate that the true number of infected is so much higher than the reported cases that if we had all the numbers it'd turn out that this was no worse than a typical flu, or that some places have already hit or are very close to herd immunity, which if true would change the discussion about responses and reopenings. But these data do not show that to be true. The number of infections is higher, but not that much higher. I suspect that will be the case for most other countries so far, as well. I hope we can find out for sure by having similar antibody studies conducted elsewhere. The nice thing is it could soon be possible to do that in a more widespread manner -- we don't need to wait for the pandemic to play out to get those facts.
A-L-E-X wrote:Source of the post Wat and others..... Cuomo's press conference from yesterday was highly interesting and very informative....I hope you and others get to see the video of it. He mentioned that we are getting 600 new cases every day even with the shut downs in place.
Watsisname wrote:Source of the post their response will be critical just as the shutdowns in the big cities were.
A-L-E-X wrote:Source of the post based on research from Columbia that UV-C light kills bacteria and viruses
A-L-E-X wrote:Source of the post (but doesn't harm humans)
Watsisname wrote:Source of the post It's not like nuclear radiation which may make things radioactive.
Watsisname wrote:A-L-E-X wrote:Source of the post based on research from Columbia that UV-C light kills bacteria and viruses
That's really not a new piece of science. The sterilizing effects of shortwave ultraviolet light have been known for a very long time. Photons in the UV-C range have high enough energy to be considered ionizing radiation, because they can knock electrons free from atoms and even photodissociate some molecules. UV-C is an important part of the Sun's spectrum that splits apart oxygen molecules to form ozone in the stratosphere.A-L-E-X wrote:Source of the post (but doesn't harm humans)
It surely does harm humans. This is the same part of the EM spectrum that gives you sunburn and increased risk of skin cancer from long exposure, and it's not a healthy wavelength of light to look at with your eyes, either. So you would not want to be standing around without protection while one of these devices is being used to sterilize an area. After it has been used, though, there's no danger from being in that area. It's not like nuclear radiation which may make things radioactive.