A secret or just unknown? The UK implemented a policy of stopping testing in the community and only testing in hospitals about three or four weeks ago. As I understand it, most people who get it will self isolate at home and recover without featuring in any data. If someone gets ill enough to go to hospital they will then be tested and either die or recover and cliff be countable. If someone dies out of hospital my understand is that they will eventually be registered as dying of covid 19 of they had symptoms. So death stats can be collected by not stats for recoveries ) unless you state them as recoveries from hospital treatment.
Anyway sorry that was a long ramble really to say it’s not a secret, there’s just not testing in the UK
Probably the number is unknown. The recovery of mild cases isn’t recorded in all countries. Germany doesn’t track the recovery of mild cases either. In Germany, the number of recovered cases is basically the number of infected 2 weeks earlier.
How is the US getting numbers, also? I thought that in the US if you don’t have health cover you can’t go to the doctor, so how are the poor/unemployed numbers being found?
That’s not quite how it works in the US. Hospitals are required to treat you regardless of your ability to repay, and part of the legislation surrounding this crisis involves subsidizing care. That being said, I can guarantee you that the numbers here are vastly under-reported as well due to lack of testing availability. The interesting statistics will come from when the antibody tests are available at scale to see how many people had it, even if they’re not currently carrying the disease.
In short, poorly, which is like a lot of places where infections have drastically outpaced the ability to test. Even with coverage, it’s difficult to get tested in the USA, since the limited testing capacity is being prioritized for the most severe cases, most vulnerable, and medical workers and caregivers.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen the death to confirmed case ratio rise from 1.3% to about 4% in the USA, which is partly reflective of how we are falling behind in our ability to test. However, the actual death rate has most likely also gone up, due to our healthcare systems being overwhelmed.
The degree to which hospitals must treat uninsured people is very limited. In the USA, people without adequate health insurance (or the ability to otherwise raise the funds) are often left without access to essential (but “non-emergency”) medical care (like treatments for cancer or other chronic conditions) that could prevent so much death and suffering.
I haven’t really been following Australia too closely, but wow, they seem be doing a really good job of keeping control of it so far.
I can understand that people must be frustrated by the economic pain of the lockdown, but hopefully most are not taking for granted that it was to prevent a massive humanitarian disaster and the even worse economic damage that would come with it.
What do you think is the general public view of the situation in Australia? Are there a lot actually criticizing the prevention measures? Are they not watching the disaster unfold around the world and feeling appreciative that Australia has avoided such catastrophe?
Permit system for private and public transport was instituted from today. Giant lines at the metro entrances because police checks every single person, maybe not every person but enough to form these jams. Because of the sheer number of people properly distanced organized lines are probably impossible to form, and I bet most of the people aren’t even trying. These are basically hubs for coronavirus spread.
Generally, it feels to me that most people got on board and accepted what needed to be done.
A certain element of the public took a while to understand that it applied to them, and were seen on the beach on the weekends, before they got the message that this gathering was not OK.
There are also the inevitable concerns about whether the cure is worse than the problem, but for the most part acceptance.
The problem with avoiding catastrophes is that it is hard to appreciate that there was going to be one.
I always remember the relief in the first days of Jan 2000 when everything kept working, after all the SW development community effort to beY2K ready … and yet the overall sentiment of the public was “well, what was all that fuss about”?
Kinda the same here I suspect. There was no problem after all, so obviously we didn’t need to do all that prevention
As I understand it Covid-19 didn’t come to the US until the past month or so, no? At work I heard some people saying that maybe the flu-like thing that was going around Dec./Jan here in Michigan was Covid-19 or a variant of it, but is that possible with the timeline of its spread? I got something around then, took off work for 4 days, and got better. I threw up, so it wasn’t just a cold, but with all the talk of how serious covid-19 is, what I had seemed pretty mild: just a normal flu. On the other hand, at 23 years old, I’m probably close to the least susceptible to it, so is it plausible that I already have had it, or is it more probably just coincidence and I got an unrelated flu? I would find it so funny if after all the trouble our family has been going through to isolate me from them so I can continue working and not put my Mom at risk (who is at a higher risk due to an untimely medical condition), I turned out to have already gotten it (or something close enough to it to give immunity a la the first vaccine: give people cowpox, and they wouldn’t get smallpox).
You can do an antibody test when that becomes available so you’ll know if you had it or not. You aren’t guaranteed to have 100% immunity after getting it though.
