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Coronavirus (Read 33261 times)
Morphy
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #150 - Apr 11th, 2020 at 7:10pm
 
Kick wrote on Apr 9th, 2020 at 4:09pm:
Please don't joke... One of my Facebook friends, when coronavirus really started hitting, started posting about "vitamin supplements" that "boost immunity". They were vague enough to not come out and say straight "These random pills will cure coronavirus" but if someone is selling water during a house fire, you can be fairly sure it isn't for drinking... I shared a Tweet that was calling people out that do that as being scum effectively which was then liked by a number of mutual friends so they must have seen it. They stopped posting about vitamins pretty soon after. Oh yeah, this friend is also a nurse and we studied together. Terrifying. They're a nice person, but they have a bullshit magnet on their forehead. Either a magnet or the word "Sucker".


Since Covid-19 is not caused by a vitamin deficiency its amazing to me that anyone could think taking vitamins would cure it. But to each there own. As you know probably as well as anyone you can’t save a person from themselves if they are determined to stupid. Don’t let my poor attempt at satire push any your buttons. It was aimed at the people you are calling out.  Wink
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Kick
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #151 - Apr 12th, 2020 at 3:36am
 
Morphy wrote on Apr 11th, 2020 at 7:10pm:
Don’t let my poor attempt at satire push any your buttons. It was aimed at the people you are calling out.

The best comedy comes from tragedy Cheesy

We have a resident that is really pretty "with it" and is basically only physically disabled and she often goes to the nearby shop in a wheelchair (or someone else goes because there's a pandemic...). She buys all sorts of sweets and crisps (chips for the Americans) and coke and loads of cheese. She'll then not eat any of the food we provide and just eat all the junk and keep putting on weight. One of my colleagues asked her straight "Do you realise this stuff is really bad for you?" and she just said "Yes" and went right back to eating. She has the right to do it, but it's not nice to see. As you said, you ca't save some people from themselves.
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You are a great guy Kick but also slightly scary at times. - Morphy
"Nothing matters, but it’s perhaps more comfortable to keep calm and not interfere with other people." - H.P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Frank Belknap Long, 7 October, 1923
 
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Morphy
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #152 - Apr 12th, 2020 at 7:22am
 
For me the worst are the coke addicts. I can’t tell you how many people in their late 30’s early 40’s I’ve seen with CHF and strokes. That drug is just evil. It blows your cardiovascular system all to hell. I was offered it once by a surgeon who was performing nasal surgery on me. I said, HELL NO. Not interested doc. I have all the sympathy in the world for people who get addicted. I’m not calling anyone out, hell I’ve done more than my share of psychedelics and tend towards an addictive personality if Im not careful. (Coffee right now being my biggest advesary.) But I wish I could just show these people the end result of heavy cocaine use. Its so ugly. Nothing glamorous about it.

Anyways!! Back to the far more (?) glamourous Coronavirus, or at least those very sexy doctors and nurses putting their lives on the line for us meat-bag virus factories.
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Kick
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #153 - Apr 12th, 2020 at 8:34am
 
I meant coca cola but you're not wrong Cheesy
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You are a great guy Kick but also slightly scary at times. - Morphy
"Nothing matters, but it’s perhaps more comfortable to keep calm and not interfere with other people." - H.P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Frank Belknap Long, 7 October, 1923
 
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Curious Aardvark
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #154 - Apr 12th, 2020 at 9:38am
 
The interesting thing about vitamin c is that numerous medical tests and surveys agree that taking a decent does every day will help with a number of conditions - diabetes among them.

I've been on a 1000mg vit c supplement for a number of years.
Not saying it's why I'm still alive and the dr's were gobsmacked that this was the case last year.
But it can't hurt Smiley

There is no current anti covid miracle drug, but keeping general health and immunity as strong as possible has to help.
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Do All things with Honour and Generosity: Regret Nothing, Envy None, Apologise Seldom and Bow your head to No One  - works for me Smiley
 
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Rat Man
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #155 - Apr 13th, 2020 at 9:20am
 
    Curious Aardvark wrote on Apr 12th, 2020 at 9:38am:
The interesting thing about vitamin c is that numerous medical tests and surveys agree that taking a decent does every day will help with a number of conditions - diabetes among them.

I've been on a 1000mg vit c supplement for a number of years.
Not saying it's why I'm still alive and the dr's were gobsmacked that this was the case last year.
But it can't hurt Smiley

There is no current anti covid miracle drug, but keeping general health and immunity as strong as possible has to help.


     Agreed.  I have my vitamin regimen. Every day it's a multi, fish oil, E, D, calcium, and glucosamine. Unless you are an expert on nutrition  and make it and obsession it is next to impossible to get every vitamin and mineral your body needs from your diet.  At best taking supplements, even if it's just a multi, will help you to ward off many ills.  At worst it does no harm.
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Kick
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #156 - Apr 13th, 2020 at 11:37am
 
All true about vitamins, but those people that are using this current situation and often prey on people with complex, dangerous illnesses for profit disgust me. Hocking vitamins as cure-all's...

There was a girl that I went to high school with whose whole family were into homeopathy, antivax, "natural" cures and distrusted doctors. The mother of the family died of advanced ovarian cancer because she had refused to go to a doctor for months. Whilst the tumours grew, she was drinking infinitesimally small amounts of wolfsbane or some such nonsense and getting healing energy crystals waved over her. She only went to a hospital when she was blacking out and it was too late. Left behind her husband and 6 kids. At least the homeopathy healer she was going to made a packet before she died...
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You are a great guy Kick but also slightly scary at times. - Morphy
"Nothing matters, but it’s perhaps more comfortable to keep calm and not interfere with other people." - H.P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Frank Belknap Long, 7 October, 1923
 
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Rat Man
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #157 - Apr 13th, 2020 at 5:13pm
 
   Also taking too many vitamins will do you no good.  Your body can only absorb so much.  Beyond that you're just burning out your kidneys.
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Morphy
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #158 - Apr 15th, 2020 at 4:16pm
 
There is something I find strange about how the numbers are being reported. The current national policy for reporting Covid deaths is based not on whether the patient has died of Covid but whether the patient actually has Covid.

The vast majority of patients with this disease either have no symptoms or very mild symptoms. The majority of those with severe symptoms don’t die as well further increasing the amount of people that survive. We are likely massively overstating the amount of deaths here in the States at least.

Now some might say this is ok because the ends justify the means. Overstating the danger is safer than understating it.  That is true. But this is not good science.  It’s not good medicine. Truth matters. Facts matter. We don’t record deaths this way in any other illness that I know of.  It makes no sense from a medical point of view to record numbers this way. It does make good political sense but I won’t go there.


Anyways I’m not saying anyone should take this lightly. I just don’t agree with standards as they are. If anyone knows a good reason to actually do it this way please feel free to enlighten me.
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Rat Man
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #159 - Apr 15th, 2020 at 10:33pm
 
   There's somewhat of a gray area there, Morphy.  Just to use an example that I'm familiar with, lets say I've just done year one of my battle with Lyme Disease.  My immune system is shot from it and I catch Covid19 and die.  If I didn't have Lyme Disease I probably would have recovered from the Covid19 so was it the Lyme Disease that killed me?  If I didn't catch the Covid19 then I eventually recover from the Lyme Disease and live happily ever after. 
     Or we'll use another example I'm familiar with... my late wife's cancer.  Let's say that she's in the first year of her cancer.  Her immune system is already severely compromised. Then she gets Covid19 and dies from it.  Was it the cancer or the Covid19.  If she doesn't get Covid19 she lives for another eight years. 
    Can you see my point?  Maybe the reporting isn't all that bogus.
    In any case, if the authorities are overstating the problem that may be a good thing.  Even with all of the warnings and edicts you still have idiot Spring Breakers partying like mad, people flocking to the beaches in California, people attending religions services, etc..  Imagine if we understated the danger. 
     Anyway, I can't wait until this poopy is over.  Though I'm still fairly strong and healthy, I'm fat and old with asthma.  I imagine I'd recover but who really knows.  Roomy Mike works in a hospital.  He takes all due precautions but just the same this at least partially minimizes the effectiveness of my self quarantine so there's that.   And as pathetic as this sounds bowling was pretty much my social life.  I miss it.  If not for the dogs I'd probably really be climbing the walls.
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walter
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #160 - Apr 16th, 2020 at 12:28am
 
In AZ, the state and counties are reporting confirmed cases of covid and deaths resulting from covid. Not included are the thousands? that recover at home without reporting their illness. If not reported, how do the authorities know this?
In this county there are five confirmed cases from a poulation of approx 54000. That is 0.0009259% of our population. I have a better chance of winning the lotto. But, how many have not been reported. Bugging out @ a reported 5% Undecided
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Teg
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #161 - Apr 16th, 2020 at 4:31am
 
Morphy wrote on Apr 15th, 2020 at 4:16pm:
It makes no sense from a medical point of view to record numbers this way.


How would you like to have the numbers reported instead?
The number of healthy people which died without any other causes? But that also does not reflect reality, because a large part of the population has preexisting causes.

Testing everyone everyday is a) not feasible b) also not a solution because then we run into a world of trouble with false positives etc.

You could look at comorbity numbers if you want. The values I have available say about 1% probability to die without any preexisting condition. With a preexisting one it is much higher. Then we can also factor age in etc. to make it even more complex.

The reality is: We have no perfect numbers and there exists no single number to capture it all. Any reported number is, by the very nature of the problem, not what is happening in reality. Its an estimate, with an error. Knowing what this error is, is as much worth as knowing the number. 
And we don't know this error, but we can estimate it. And so on...
Which number would you like? The one which is likely too high, or the one which is likely too low?
One of the issues is, that accurately measuring this pandemic is very difficult.
What I like to do is just to compare all different countries, with all the different reporting standards, demographics etc. , take the lowest number, take the highest number, and reality might be somewhere in between. Or not. Thus, my guess is: probability to die once infected, averaged over quite everything, might be in the range 0.5%  to 5%. Thus, an uncertainty on the order of a factor 10x. Which is still oversimplifying the problem considerably.

The overall effect of the pandemic in Switzerland is sometimes measured in "Übersterblichkeit", translated as excess mortality / extramortality. This is the number of deaths occuring at the moment versus the average expected number of deaths usually occuring at this time of the year.
It is spiking, faster than in a year with a heavy flu epidemic. Strongly for old people, very slightly for the younger ones. The only conclusion from that is: we currently have a problem and it seems to be worse than a heavy flu year, where no countermeasures were taken. For how much worse it will get, please consult your crystal ball, your gut feeling, or any educated guess from any modeling you can do  Cheesy.

PS: I take the modeling, please. The result is probably not accurate. But if the other ones are correct, it's sheer luck.
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Morphy
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #162 - Apr 16th, 2020 at 5:51am
 
Teg wrote on Apr 16th, 2020 at 4:31am:
Morphy wrote on Apr 15th, 2020 at 4:16pm:
It makes no sense from a medical point of view to record numbers this way.


How would you like to have the numbers reported instead?


Why I’m glad you asked my good man!  Cheesy

Comorbidities are fine. For example, Patient has Covid and develops pneumonia and dies. That’s a Covid death.

RM’s example is another good one. Patient has cancer which weakens the immune system allowing patient to die from Covid when they might have shrugged it off. Also fine. The key here is the cancer weakened them but the Covid actually killed them.

Two examples that are not acceptable

1. Patient is morbidly obese, has an itchy throat but nothing else but presents to the ED with an acute myocardial infarction. Doc begins treating the AMI and learns the patient has an itchy throat so decides to run a Covid test. Patient returns a positive Covid test although nearly asymptomatic. Patient then throws a clot and dies of a massive coronary. That patient according to current guidelines is a Covid death. When the news mentions a man died of Covid in X hospital people think that poor bastard, he must have suffered an agonizing death. In fact he died within minutes of a massive coronary.

More extreme example:
Patient gets in a MVC. His car is wrecked, so is his body. He’s brought into the ED and the doc learns from his daughter that his wife has Covid. The patient had no symptoms whatsoever but to know which unit to place him in he runs a Covid test. The test comes back positive and the patient bleeds out due to his injuries shortly thereafter. Viola, another Covid death.

This is happening. These are not pie in the sky examples. My mom is regional director of a large hospice corporation. All of their patients are terminal, many are getting ready to die any day. If they return a positive Covid test, regardless if it has ANY effect on their actual death, they are Covid deaths. That’s a huge a problem.
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Morphy
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #163 - Apr 16th, 2020 at 5:58am
 
To elaborate just a bit more- Why is that a huge problem?

Well, one of many reasons is the severity of the situation is shaping policy. This policy is drastically affecting our economy. If our economy crashed in a big way (which is not  an unlikely scenario if this keeps going on) Many, many people could die from it. Not in as straightforward a way as a pandemic, but in a myriad of different ways that have been laid out by those more educated than I and I won’t go into here though it is worth looking into for those who have not.
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Teg
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Re: Coronavirus
Reply #164 - Apr 16th, 2020 at 7:02am
 
Ah, I see which line of thought you are going down. Thanks for the elaboration. Yes, in view of this, a more detailed reporting is useful.  Which is done in Switzerland.

That's why I like the excess mortality, as it takes care of these effects.

MVC: Motor vehicle crash? (non-native speaker over here.)


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