shepherdless

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Posts by shepherdless

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  75

  Coronavirus Positive

  by snare&racket in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  hey all,.

  i'm day six of isolation, confirmed to have coronavirus.

  i have been seeing very sick cv positive patients over the last month in my a&e role (emergency physician) it was inevitable i would contract it.. just wanted to give some symptom and treatment advice, it's anecdotal but may help.. started as sore throat and headache, then croaky voice, then dry cough, then episodic transient fevers, all this over the first few days.

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  shepherdless

  Dear Snare&Racket

  I hope you are recovering well. Thankyou for the care you are taking of others, and thanks for the excellent info.

  (Late response; I didn’t see this thread, until now.)
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  36

  China where it started ,83,000 / USA now <400,000 How come ?

  by smiddy3 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  am i missing something here ?

  how is it that where this covid 19 started , in wuhan china, china has only ,reportedly 83,000 for the whole country ?

  whereas in the united states of america the figure is just under 400,000 ?.

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  shepherdless

  As someone who has been following this closely right from the start (my work colleagues could testify to my scaremongering since mid January) I will throw in my 2c worth.

  China lied in the early stages about what was going on. Lies were exposed and obvious to anyone taking notice, by mid-January.

  W.H.O. were too politically correct in some of their statements for the second half of January, but the detail of the message was pretty clear. They warned what was coming about EVERYTHING, apart from the toilet paper fetish.

  USA, Australia and others shutting their borders to travellers to China on 1 Feb was an intelligent move, and one that the politically correct progressives would have struggled with, but possibly a few days overdue, given the information available at the time.

  For what it is worth, I give credit to Trump for giving the okay to that decision, at the time.

  Perhaps this is not quite politically correct to say, but figures for both USA and China (and for a number of other countries) are dubious, at the moment.

  This will probably draw a lot of criticism to say this, but since that one good decision by Trump, the USA response appears to have been utterly shambolic. How can you fight a disease if you don’t test who has it? Why give mixed and contradictory messages? That only stops people taking it seriously. Why say it will fade by summer (without any evidence that that may be the case)? Why tell people they might be back in churches by Easter when any statistician looking at the data could see that that was delusional. Why make it all so political, so only 41% of Republicans (compared to 71% of Democrats) think they are at risk? Just a crazy mess, in my view. And it gets worse, NY Gov Cuomo (a Democrat) thinks they are near or on an “apex”. The data doesn’t seem to suggest that at all. On current trends, I would predict USA will be approaching 1 million cases within about a fortnight, but I would be happy ( even ecstatic) to be wrong.
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  32

  How Do You Get Most Of Your News?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i read a lot on online.

  i regularly read fox news, the drudge report the new york post and local newspapers and local newscasts.

  where do you get most of your news from?.

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  shepherdless

  For Australia, I mostly just read news on the ABC website. I know it is slightly leftist/progressive (similar to BBC) but it is fairly comprehensive. If there is anything controversial, political, etc, I would check other news sites, or I would hear by word of mouth.

  For international business news; CNBC and Bloomberg.

  For other international news, generally BBC website, or sometimes I happen to see CNN. I am fully aware that they have a slightly leftist/progressive agenda but for 90% of issues, that doesn’t matter. For USA news, I might go to USA Today, or some site like that. I have watched Fox News on live stream, but I find it painful; lots of adverts that are irrelevant to me, and lots of commentators trying to tell me what to think.

  For controversial international news, I prefer to go to newsnow.co.uk That is not a news site in itself, but points you to whatever Reuters etc are writing in relation to a particular event, and will also link to whatever important news articles written for media in countries such as Russia, Iran etc relating to such events, all in English. Often the news story itself is not as important as what other people think about it or what other people think has happened. It can be really eye-opening at times. It also shows you where some western media lazily copy their articles from, sometimes.
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  10

  Why is the rate of CONVID-19 in Canada only 20-25% of the US ?

  by RubaDub in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  any thoughts?

  i would expect vancouver and toronto to be huge epicenters with the rate of international travel there.

  with vancouver highly asian and toronto a mixture of everywhere, they are either just behind in the cycle or doing something that makes more sense than what is happening here.. rub a dub.

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  shepherdless

  I was referring to per capita infections and deaths, since you can't really compare the two countries using absolute numbers when the US has 7 times more people.

  I see. Actually, where the number of cases is small compared to the overall population, mathematically the respective sizes of the populations are irrelevant. Given USA had 3 times as many cases on 1 March, if the exponential increase in both countries was the same, there should still be only 3 times as many in USA.

  In relation to Vancouver, my guess is that it is not the number of Asians that counts, so much as how many of them travelled to Hubei province in January.
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  10

  Why is the rate of CONVID-19 in Canada only 20-25% of the US ?

  by RubaDub in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  any thoughts?

  i would expect vancouver and toronto to be huge epicenters with the rate of international travel there.

  with vancouver highly asian and toronto a mixture of everywhere, they are either just behind in the cycle or doing something that makes more sense than what is happening here.. rub a dub.

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  shepherdless

  I am not sure what the reference to “20-25%” is in your question, but broadly there are 2 reasons there are far fewer cases in Canada.
  

  
  

  The minor reason is that Canada had fewer cases early on. For example, on 1st March 2020, USA had 75 cases and Canada 24.

  
  

  You can pick up all the data by clicking on USA or Canada or for any of the other major countries and get the official count, for any date, at this site:

  
  

  https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

  
  

  
  

  The major reason can also be seen from the same data. The above site has a tab for each country that plots the no of cases (and also the no of deaths) with the vertical axis on a logarithmic scale. The graphs for both countries show a worrying straight line. (Maths students may remember that a straight line plotted on semi-log paper indicates an exponential function.). However, as can be seen from the graphs, Canada is increasing the number of cases tenfold each 9 to 10 days, whereas USA is 8 to 9 days. That may not sound like much of a difference, but such is the power of the exponential function that this slightly better success means Canada has to date only 5655 cases compared to USA 123,781.

  
  

  But before Canadians pat themselves on the back, or note their good fortune, if you look at the charts for other western countries, you will note that many other countries have been able to make the logarithmic line curve down, or at least make the straight line less steep (and hence are having more success controlling the spread (at least now) than Canada.
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  49

  The Coronavirus Is Trump’s Fault!

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  yes, it’s donald trump’s problem and he has no idea of how to take care of this!

  and he gets his vp mike pence to oversee this situation.

  donald trump doesn’t care about who could get this virus.

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  shepherdless

  Silentbudda, I doubt that China has deliberately not reported detected cases, at least after late January. If anything, it was initially the other way around; they had been under reporting deaths in the early stages, labelling them as pneumonia or heart failure.
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  49

  The Coronavirus Is Trump’s Fault!

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  yes, it’s donald trump’s problem and he has no idea of how to take care of this!

  and he gets his vp mike pence to oversee this situation.

  donald trump doesn’t care about who could get this virus.

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  shepherdless

  A couple of quick comments in relation to death rate (percentage). It is actually a complicated topic.

  Let’s assume the official data is correct. (Probably isn’t, but...) So far, there are 85,691 cases, and 2933 deaths. You may say, that indicates a death rate of 3.4%.

  However, the majority of those cases are still in hospital, and thousands are still in a serious or critical condition. If you compare deaths to those fully recovered (39,766 people), you get a death rate of about 7%. This number has been steadily improving. A couple of weeks ago it implied a death rate of about 18% or so. I suspect (but don’t know) that what happened was that when a massive number of cases came in, in China, they just didn’t have enough mechanical ventilators to keep all the more serious cases alive.

  I suspect the death rate will end up being in the 2 to 3% range, and better than that if the number of new cases are kept low.

  The death rate also dramatically changes with age. If you are below 40, it is not much more dangerous than the flu. At least until recently, there has not been a single death of anyone under 10. It seems that if you have any heart or respiratory condition, it is a very dangerous virus. There is some anecdotal evidence (not yet substantiated) that smokers are twice as likely to die. From what I have read, I wonder if people getting their aerobic fitness up a little (say eg by doing a 5km walk once a week) might make them more resistant to the virus. (Disclaimer: I have no medical qualification whatsoever.)
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  18

  Corona beer sales vs coronavirus ?

  by smiddy3 in

  1. social
  2. current

  i`m just curious as to whether the corona beer sales have plummeted since this coronavirus has spread in different parts of the world .. it wouldn`t surprise me if sales had a nose dive since this outbreak and just wondered if anybody has any information concerning this ?.

  word association plays a big part in many peoples lives..

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  shepherdless

  I believe they are trialling a name change to get around the negative connotation:

  
  
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  34

  They Are Already Talking About Impeaching Trump Again!

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  because he voiced his opinion on roger stone’s recommended sentencing as being grossly unfair, the democrats are talking about impeachment.. do they really think that impeaching him will mean that a democrat will get into the white house??.

  it is crazy!!

  !.

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  shepherdless

  In Australia, if a politician made a Twitter like that about a person facing a court sentence, that politician would most likely have to defend criminal contempt of court charges.

  It is baffling to me that it can be allowed in another first world country.
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  19

  IRAN - An inevitable clash of civilizations just up ahead (1953-1979)

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  satan peeks over the horizon in qatar :).

  arbitrary borders on a map of the middle east, post wwi.. .

  civilizations were uprooted.. .

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  shepherdless

  PS: I an not saying the Iranian Govt are good guys. Far from it. Just trying to explain the dynamics.