COVID-19

[7Wannabe5]

Contracting Covid 19, give or take a bit, quadruples your odds of dying this year, no matter what your age. So, for instance, if you consider all the 19 year old kids who will die this year from accidental death, it will be like 3 other kids were in the car with them when they got drunk and hit the tree.

So, it’s not just end of lifers, it will be all age groups in approximately that proportion to previous actuarial risk. Somewhat worse for late middle-aged folks like Pence and me. Somewhat better for children under 10.

[7Wannabe5]

Yeah, I think it’s insensitive too, but that’s because I am having flashbacks to the many times I found myself in an oxygen tent after contracting strep as a child. They didn’t have as good meds back then, so I would have to be propped up with a pillow, drinking black tea with sugar, wheezing in the middle of the night, reading my set of child encyclopedias to keep me calm.

Gasping for air is not a good way to go.

[AnalyticalEngine]

7W5 has a good point that covid19 deaths don't replace other deaths. They're in addition to them.

When are you all going into personal isolation, if you are?

[Fish]

When are you all going into personal isolation, if you are?

The Fish household is already 2 weeks into isolation. We made the decision after first suspected community spread in the US. Everyone thought we were crazy for pulling the kids out of school. The future is a little more evenly distributed now.

[Bankai]

No plans for self-isolation unless we develop symptoms. We are both <40 with no health conditions, although DW had asthma as a kid. My company came up with this 'great' idea of half of the people working from home each week. Not sure what this is supposed to achieve but I expect them to move on to full-time work from home soon. It's likely that DW's company will do the same. Other than that, business as usual for us.

[theanimal]

My stepdad has been very sick for the past week and a half. Fever with alternating hot and cold, no energy and sometimes breathless. At first my mom and he thought it might have been a reaction to new heart medicine he started taking as he usually gets most side effects. However, they stopped the medicine early last week and the illness and symptoms have not subsided. As stated elsewhere, you can't get a test almost anywhere in the US without having traveled to China or Italy in the past 14 days so that was ruled out. My mom talked with an infectious disease doctor at the U of Chicago who suggested getting a respiratory panel. They did those in Wuhan and were found to be very predictive. If positive, likely no covid. If not, it's very possible. The hospital won't give the test without the doctors approval so he went in to his doctor yesterday and was denied... So my mom has been treating it as covid19 which very likely may be the case. They have been sleeping in separate rooms starting last weekend and my mom has been cleaning surfaces religiously. He's 60+ and has a heart condition so I'm really hoping for the best and that my mom doesn't become infected as well. The lack of action on behalf of the government in regards to testing becomes even more maddening once it involves people you love.

[Bankai]

Contracting Covid 19, give or take a bit, quadruples your odds of dying this year, no matter what your age.

Data doesn't support that. At my age (37) I have a 0.2% chance of dying each year, whereas COVID-19 for 30-40 age brackets is also 0.2% from Chinese data and likely much less considering all the undetected cases. The table Ego posted on the previous page had no deaths below 40 yo. Also, it's likely that 0.2% are people with underlying health issues so for a healthy person it's less still. It's not until the 50-80 when the virus actually doubles the risk of dying (and more for 80+ people).

[theanimal]

@bankai
Yes but you're not at the same risk of dying from coronavirus in other years. It'd be more comparable to the flu (which is 0.1% if infected for your age bracket) instead of deaths as a whole. So in that sense, in that category alone your risk is doubled.

[Ego]

Social distancing, no mass gatherings, work/school closures, travel shutdowns, is all being done to flatten the curve and lessen the burden on the healthcare system. Let's say for the sake of argument we succeed. The curve falls below our ability to treat and as a result fewer people die. Would we be willing to do the same next year for regular flu?

[Ego]

Those who test positive for Covid-19 by age for South Korea (red) where they are testing across the board and Italy (green) where they only test those with symptoms.

Let that sink in.



https://medium.com/@andreasbackhausab/c ... 200a15a7bf

[Jin+Guice]

@ertyu: Thanks for clarifying how China has been so successful with reduction.

@theanimal: That really sucks, sorry to hear about your folks. I hope everything turns out for the best. I'm very worried about my parents as well. The situation with testing in the U.S. is frustrating.


I'm slightly concerned I've contracted the disease. I am definitely slightly sick, but the progression has been weird. Wed/ Thurs evenings I was feeling a little weird and felt a slight tickle in my throat. It was very slight and I thought it might be in my head. Yesterday evening I realized that I was definitely sick but only slightly so (a bit of a sore throat, fatigued, a slight cough, some mild congestion). Today the mild symptoms persist. I was able to run several miles today without a problem.

I'd say I'm pretty high risk to be have contracted it, though odds anyone in the U.S. has it are low. I work in a hospital, we have an air bnb (our last booking is next weekend and we decided not to cancel any) and we had a friend of my girlfriend's visit from Oregon last week who was visibly sick and kind of an asshole about it (claiming that COVID-19 was "no big deal" and not covering their mouth while coughing... visit did not go particularly well). I have been taking precautions such as social distancing, washing my hands a lot and trying not to touch my face (this is really hard!). I've also been avoiding old people since I started feeling bad.

Since I'm feeling off I've been only going to the grocery store because 1) I don't want to spread the disease if I have it and 2) If I'm fighting a different disease I don't want to expose myself to C-19. I have also been taking walks, which I think are safe? (Easy to stay a few feet away from people on the street where I live).

Today walking around I realized how much quarantining is going to suck. I really want to hit up my friends to hang out tonight. I'm pretty mad that I am sick otherwise I'd probably wait another week to stop seeing friends under 50. If I had any risk factors (over 50 or underlying condition) I would've started isolating already. My boss is the type of dude who is going to be really proud of how unserious he is taking this, so I'm probably stuck working until the hospital cancels elective surgeries. I would threaten to quit if I had any underlying conditions, although surgery is actually a pretty good place to not get sick because of all the precautions taken.

[jacob]

Someone smarter than me arrived at the 500,000 currently infected (US) number as well.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/marty-ma ... 58545.html

[George the original one]

United States: Is this progressing as expected? I guess I thought there'd be more death/ hospitalization by now since the assumption has been that it's been running rampant and undetected for a few weeks. Does this imply that either the death rate is lower than thought or that it was not as widely spread in the U.S. as originally believed?

Remember, only only severe cases and contacts are being tested/monitored because the USA does not have adequate testing. My estimate for Oregon, based on 80% minor and 20% severe cases from China data, is that we're missing 3 cases for every 2 reported. Even so, the spread of reported cases has remained exponential.

On the positive side, the exponent may be smaller than expected because people are more aware and generally following precautions. Many people were ahead of the curve and stocked up last week as opposed to waiting for this week's announcement.

[black_son_of_gray]

When are you all going into personal isolation, if you are?

Today is Day 1 for me. We have plenty of everything for at least a few months (I think!). Our household is: my SO, her elderly mother, and myself. I fully expect that if one of us gets it, we'll all get it. I'd prefer not to gamble with dying/going to the hospital/getting pneumonia, even if the risk is small. For SO's mother, it's literally playing Russian roulette, so I'm doing everything I can to avoid getting it for everyone's sake. [Bonus, I won't be spreading it in the community either. You're welcome! ]

Here is what personal isolation means for me: I will not go to any place where there are people that I must interact with <10ft unless I absolutely must (e.g. a hospital for my own health or my family members). That means no shopping unless I am starving* and can't get food anywhere else but the store. Normally, I'd pop into grocery stores/farmers markets once or twice a week and drop by the library a couple times a week too, and that was most of my activity, so this won't be a huge burden for me (boring, I know). Importantly, that doesn't mean I plan to be cooped up all day. I'll still do yard work, take daily walks and do a decent amount of forest bathing/hiking in local parks. I rarely pass by anyone when doing this, despite being in a pretty dense urban area, and it's pretty easy to give people wide berth.

*Through a completely unrelated-to-COVID-19 personal interest in foraging, I know exactly where to find tons of edible greens in multiple locations within a 1 mile walk from my front door, so no worries about scurvy! And no, I don't think it will come to that.

I'm super blessed to be able to do this without making any real sacrifices, so that's what I'm doing. SO has a handful of small meetings she'll have to attend here and there for the next few months, otherwise she's the same. SO's mother may be the wild card, as I'm not sure exactly how stir-crazy she'll get (she's a bit more compulsive and headstrong). I don't blame any of them if they've determined a calculated risk is worth it, and it isn't a moral failing for anyone if they become infected. It's about doing your best and being kind.

[George the original one]

But after the invention of motor vehicles and telephones, it was possible to distribute things more.

Mechanization of farming has caused labor to be moved to population centers.

[7Wannabe5]

@bankai:

Right, but the underlying death rate for 10-19 is only .1% and the covid rate is .2%. So, tripled. My bad for claiming quadrupled. Even doubling risk of death for those in 30s is not insignificant. Obviously, many young people on this forum claim to alter their behavior on the basis of risks that would only double their risk of dying of a specific disease in their 60s or 70s, so this seems like a no brainer in terms of quality of life years risked/gained.

@Ego:

Those percentages must be mainly reflective of differing age demographics or they make no sense.

[steveo73]

The views of the elderly as not full people have been one of the most interesting aspects of this virus. It's used as a justification for not really taking action on your own or a society as a whole as a major rebuttal until recently. After all "it's just old people." It is somewhat reminiscent of 19th century times when black people were considered 3/5th a person.

I'm not relating this to the treatment of black people or any form of racism however it doesn't sit right for me at all.

[George the original one]

When are you all going into personal isolation, if you are?

Holding off as long as I can, for the simple reason that we already live a fairly isolated life. Groceries & errands once a week, autocross on weekends... national-level autocrosses I was planning to attend have been canceled by the organizers and local ones have temporarily stopped allowing passengers. I'll continue watching the number of cases in an area to determine if I'll attend an event. I didn't attend this weekend's autocross because of the weather and there's a week of statistics before I have to make a decision on the next one (where I'd be working outdoors as a volunteer). Local autocross organizers are following social distance rules, too.

[CS]

@theanimal Sorry to hear about your father. I hope he feels better.

@Jin+Juice take care of yourself.

Isolation for me started on Monday (I last made a store run on Sunday). I had a low fever for part of the week, and some gastro weirdness, plus losing my voice. Seems to be gone. Most likely not it, but if it was, it was not bad.
Am still getting deliveries but treating them all as contaminated, ditto for the mail.

[Bankai]

Even doubling risk of death for those in 30s is not insignificant. Obviously, many young people on this forum claim to alter their behavior on the basis of risks that would only double their risk of dying of a specific disease in their 60s or 70s, so this seems like a no brainer in terms of quality of life years risked/gained.

Doubling risk of death from 0.1% to 0.2% (and in reality, it's probably much less) from a one-time event doesn't sound particularly scary to me. On the other hand, lifestyle changes reducing lifetime risk of the likes of cancer or diabetes make total sense since the risk is both higher and cumulative.

Compare this to smoking which kills 50% of smokers and all that's required to reduce that risk to zero is one simple lifestyle change. With COVID-19, you'd need to stop interacting with humans until the vaccine is available, which could be forever. So the benefit is couple orders of magnitude smaller and the cost is massively higher. Obviously, if you don't build any immunity and can get the virus multiple times, it makes more sense to try avoiding it as your lifetime risk grows with each new infection.

For someone below 40 getting in shape and fixing diet/sleep/stress might be much better investment than trying to avoid this thing.