Why?

[DisTXMom]

Our family is young & healthy and we are not afraid of what the virus would do to us. We do not have a bunker of food & supplies. We are taking “extreme measures” through social distancing to do our part so our community-particularly the elderly- are not at risk. We don’t want to hear that our elderly sick people did not receive medical care because we are far above capacity at healthcare centers- we don’t want to deal with the hard choices Italy has had. Given the rapid spread of the virus, if we wait until our local area is heavily infected, it will be too late to change our trajectory. So, it’s not a “big deal” now, but we want to do our part to make sure it doesn’t become unmanageable.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Communal living accelerates the rate of transmission and illness, so it makes sense to not have students living that way; it increases the infection rate, and there is no way to control where they go, what they do, etc. when they aren't in class, so who knows what they will really be exposed to?

I really think the timing of spring break came into play. At the university where I teach, break started yesterday so we sent the students home and told them not to come back. The concern is that we don't know where the students are going, with whom they'll be in contact, and therefore what they might be bringing back to our small community. Epidemiology studies and stats have shown that living in a dorm is like being on a cruise ship... and we all know how that's going at the moment. The University is leaving the dorms and a dining hall open during break for students whose parents couldn't drop everything to come get them yesterday (free- hard to imagine, but no charge for anyone staying this week, and room/board for the remainder of the semester will be prorated/refunded), but the goal is to have no students living in very large, closed-quarters groups, nobody sitting literally beside someone in a 300-person lecture, etc. Plans are in the works for managing those students who can't go home, but the qualifications for staying are stringent. There is a plan in place for housing those students, including limiting the number of rooms on a floor that can be occupied, nobody is being assigned roommates, communal study areas are shut down, there is discussion of meals being available on a take-out basis only (instead of in a dining hall or commons).

I know that none of the Universities made this decision lightly, and as faculty we are busting our butts during break to have everything ready for the students to continue their education. However, I think this is "social distancing" at its peak, and is the best way to contain and "flatten the curve."

Absolutely communal living can but so does sending 30K students out into the U.S. all at once X that by however many Universities are doing this and these students are going to be taking transit like planes, trains, being in a car would help reduce but isn't feasible for all. Instead of having a more limited area you now have spread all those people out, some of which may be carriers and not be symptomatic. Some of these places asking the landlords for off campus students to implore the students to go to their parents. My apartment when I was living in one while in college was my home...

I'm 100% for remote learning. I'm just not for closing the school and kicking everyone out and having them go to their parents. My alma mater is going remote but leaving the campus open, dorm halls open and dining halls open, for now at least. Should they opt to close it all up I would have the same opinion especially as my alma mater has a decent amount of students that come from my metro.

There are ways to limit exposures even in communal living such as in dining halls switching or at least giving the options to have brown bag style meals (we had that when I was in college and I used it a lot when I was working and couldn't make it to the dining hall for dinner) and limiting the given number of people within the dining halls, some students will likely choose the brown bag style in the interest of not being surrounded by everyone, you can limit gatherings in the dorms halls in the common area. The city/town the college is in can have their rules on the number of people in a given area at a time.

Closing campus, kicking everyone out and sending everyone to the four corners of the U.S. is an extreme reaction one that I think just swaps one problem with another. Hopefully it helps but there's a very real possibility that one of the students who is being sent home is a carrier who has now infected other people in their parent's area, who now spreads to their community, etc. Will that happen? No one can predict but it is a possibility.

I totally agree spring break is a factor. Timing is something I've mentioned in multiple threads. It's a double edged sword as it's a high travel time.

I don't think any University made any decision lightly either. In the interest though of flattening the curve some entities I think got tunnel vision on what that means-purely my opinion though.

 

[LSUmiss]

Already there is a hospital in Seattle down to a 4 day supply of gloves. And, in Italy, they are triaging patients and giving beds ONLY to people likely to survive. Older and sicker people are being left to die. Read the Atlantic article. THAT is reality for Italy. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-hospital-bed/607807/ And, if you think our medical system could handle it any better, you are smoking something funny. That is what we are trying to avoid. And, if we do manage to "flatten the curve" on this, and our medical system isn't overwhelmed, lots of people are going to say "see, it wasn't a problem...no big deal." I hope that is what we are saying 3 weeks from now, and not "I can't believe my grandmother cannot even get a bed in a hospital, and was left to die."

Also, it's worth noting that Japan has now recorded it's first case of "re-infection." That is, a person had the virus, recovered (no virus) and is now infected again. Does that make you feel fantastic? Nope. Sure doesn't.

The numbers are small now, but that is in part because we are NOT testing as broadly as we should. We really have no idea. I got on a plane last Friday. There were about 100 diagnosed cases in the US. We are well over 1400 now. That kind of doubling rate is very high. At that rate, we will have hundreds of thousands of cases by the end of the month. China was able to cap it's rate of infection by extreme measures that Americans are just not gonna allow. And, look at all the carping and complaining here about the limited measures we've put in place. That's why our rate of infection is going to look more like Italy than China.

And, it frankly makes me nauseous when people say "hey most of us will survive" as if those who are older and with pre-existing conditions who WILL die simply don't matter. Ok then. If that works for you, fine. It doesn't work for me.

This is sad & scary. My sister is an ER nurse at the VA & they are short on masks.

 

[RamblingMad]

This is a good overview that I'm sharing now. It's less intimidating than the medcram videos I have been sharing.

 

[LSUmiss]

The first death in our state was a man in his 70s in a long term care facility with underlying cardiac issues. He passed away in the hospital but a test was done after his death and he was positive for COVID-19. 5 of the firefighters who helped transport him are now under self-isolation to err on the side of caution.

It's considered our first community spread as he had not traveled. They are looking into how he may have gotten it. In the midst of the investigation it was found that the long term care facility he was in is connected to the same long term care facility that had multiple deaths in Seattle. Whether that contributed, by failures on the long term care facility or some other means, isn't yet confirmed.

In any case the man was high risk of course but it does show that had that test not been done he would have not been a known case at all (of course we all know there are many unknown cases).

That’s what is scary about our numbers here. We are number 9 on the list in the country and almost all of our cases are believed to be community spread so that’s why things are shut down here now.

 

[Farro]

I just don't think everyone yelling "this isn't the normal flu, it's worse" is going to resonate with a lot of people who are just looking at numbers.

But perhaps saying, yes, maybe in the end it will be like the flu but at this moment it's so new and much easier to spread/catch because there are no vaccines/immunity. All of that can possibly overwhelm our hospitals if we don't slow it down. I think that's much easier for people to rationalize.

 

[Hrhpd]

Social distancing is first and foremost being done to flatten out the curve of transmission. This gives our hospitals, doctors, and researchers a fighting chance to get on top of this. As mentioned, Italy is so slammed with cases that they have to decide who is going to live or die. There are not enough beds, not enough respirators, not enough doctors and nurses to treat everyone. Slowing it down will give everyone a fighting chance. It also gives researchers more time to come up with anti-viral treatments like tamiflu for the flu and eventually a vaccine.

Another reason that has not been brought up here is the rapid mutating this virus has been doing. I was talking to a PhD Epidemiologist who works with SARS viruses, and he said to remember that this is a novel virus. It has the whole world as virgin hosts. This first round may not be that dangerous but after it mutates a few times, it can become much more dangerous. He said that they are already seeing a secondary wave after 30 days in Asia that is far more deadly because your body does not recognize that it is the same virus and that your immune system is already overwhelmed.

If you are asked to do social distancing by staying home, please do it. It is a pain in the butt, but it is imperative to slow this thing down to give our researchers and 1st responders some breathing room.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

That’s what is scary about our numbers here. We are number 9 on the list in the country and almost all of our cases are believed to be community spread so that’s why things are shut down here now.

Before that man we had 1 woman who traveled from New England and 3 cases from the same conference in FL. However, a 6th case, the first outside our metro though, is also a man in his 70s but recently traveled on a cruise to Western Caribbean. It's frequently changing I can hardly keep up with the news to be honest.

I expect the community spread to start being the issue here though but so far it's just the 1 person. I really hope whoever he got it from hasn't spread it to others and it's so hard because you could have it and not know it. The whole metro here though is preparing with state of emergencies both at state, county and city level so the community spread risk may be a tad lower who knows. For my county for a period of 7 days starting yesterday public gatherings of 250 people or more are not allowed. They may opt to extend that of course.

 

[Farro]

Another reason that has not been brought up here is the rapid mutating this virus has been doing. I was talking to a PhD Epidemiologist who works with SARS viruses, and he said to remember that this is a novel virus. It has the whole world as virgin hosts. This first round may not be that dangerous but after it mutates a few times, it can become much more dangerous. He said that they are already seeing a secondary wave after 30 days in Asia that is far more deadly because your body does not recognize that it is the same virus and that your immune system is already overwhelmed.

Where is the source for that?

 

[Christine]

In this thread, the statement was made that "the incubation period is AT LEAST 14 days". That's flat out not true. I do some research and post a link where the incubation period, while it can be as long as 14 days, the average is around 5 days. Does the person who made that claim so "oops, I was wrong"? No. It's "well, it could be 14 days".

Yes, you're talking about me. As I've read a bit on this, I know the incubation period can be up to 14 days. Per usual in my "internet typing" over coffee, I screwed it up and put at least. It's not at least, it's up to, and I've gone back and fixed that now.

 

[LSUmiss]

You're just going to need to accept it because that's the way it is and always will be. People will instinctively value young healthy lives or elderly or sick people.

I say this at 46 where I know people would rather save a child than me. (hey, I've got a lot left to give people! )

But I think you are dead wrong that the world isn't taking this seriously. They are and they are trying to protect our sick and elderly. It's new and people are making mistakes. It will happen and then we learn.

I think that’s mostly b/c parents themselves are the ones who would go on hyper alert. Admittedly, while it is tragic for me to lose any loved one, the thought of something happening to DS is unbearable to me. I would have grief if something happened to another loved one but would recover. I am not sure I could ever recover from losing DS. I think it would literally kill me. I think many parents feel the same way.

 

[Christine]

Sweet!! But you have had a cold at some point, right? I guess I should have said “at some point” rather than “every year”. I don’t think it invalidated the point though.

I got what you meant and I agree with comparison of this to the cold rather than the flu. I haven't had a cold since 2014. I remember it well. Part of the reason is that as you age, you have had many of the 200 circulating cold virus so you chances of having one diminish. Since none of us have ever experienced this particular novel virus there is little chance of warding it off if you have an exposure.

 

[DisneyOma]

Sweet!! But you have had a cold at some point, right? I guess I should have said “at some point” rather than “every year”. I don’t think it invalidated the point though.

A fallacy in a hypothesis does invalidate the statement though. There's so much fake news, fake data, opinion and just all-out nonsense circulating right now that it's a wonder people haven't started jumping out of skyscraper windows. We don't need to feed the beast!

 

[esmee1sttip]

Please forgive any typos, misspelling and grammar errors as I am using my phone.

OK, I'm sorry, I don't get it. Why is corona virus so scary? Scary enough to close schools, Disney, various businesses, sporting events, travel bans, "social distancing", etc.

It is “so scary” because of the unknowns about the virus and because of overwhelming amount of information and misinformation (as well as the click bait headlines) that is filling up email, on our tv, computers and smart phones. Some of the responses you have seen from businesses are a response to the panic by the public.

I get it. The mortality rate *IF* you get it is much higher than the flu. BUT, most of the deaths are those who have underlying medical issues. Shouldn't they be used to taking extra precautions at this time of year so they don't get the flu anyway? Sure, there's a vaccine for the flu, but that doesn't mean you won't catch it. The vaccine isn't always for the correct strain.

The panic purchases that have resulted in the lack of personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer, soap, etc. have left those who are taking extra precautions even more vulnerable. The senior communities in my state have restricted entry to essential staff and are limiting visitors (if they are even allowing them at all). Yet there will still be infection in this population (and probably a higher rate of death related to this virus). This is particularly “scary” for those healthcare staff caring for these residents and the families.

So the flu regularly KILLS more people every year than the number of corona virus cases.
H1N1 killed more people than there are corona cases. Yes, obviously the number of corona cases will increase. But why was there no panic in 2009?
Is this being blown out of proportion?

In 2009, there was panic but not anywhere close to the panic we see today. H1N1 did not impact those over 60 years (I remember that if you were born before a certain year you most likely had immunity from an outbreak during some time in their youth). In the healthcare sector we were inundated with with those who were ill (a lot of children and usually healthy adults). The information on H1N1 was not coming at you from every direction 2009. *Bonus recollection * I also remember that there was an increase in the number of people who received the flu shot and H1N1 vaccination as soon as it came available. Prior to H1N1, not as many people were interested in being vaccinated for flu.

 

[hopemax]

Do you believe in compound interest?

Do you believe that a person who starts maxing out their retirement funds, beginning with their first paycheck will have thousands or millions more dollars than a person who doesn't start investing until they are 40?

Do you believe the financial investment graphs that show what you do at the beginning of the lifecycle can greatly affect what happens at the end?

Virus growth and compound interest are both examples of exponential growth. The specific math may be different, but the concept works the same.

Unless steps are taken, all viruses spread like a person investing in their retirement funds on day 1. The total when they "reach the end" depends on the size of the initial deposits, in this case the R0 number. So the flu, is sort of like someone starting investing with $100 per pay check, while this one is 10 times worse. So $1000 per pay period. At retirement age, which person has more money? In this case, infections.

The problem with looking at China is that they "minimized their investment" earlier and in more draconian ways than we will. We all have to wait until this goes through the world. China has the outbreak in Hubei under control, but their risk now is that they can reimport the virus from somewhere else in the world and create a new cluster of spreading in a different population center. The risk for this may be low, because China continues to test and is continuing their travel bans and draconian steps when they find an infected person. South Korea actually had this happen, there was a start of a second outbreak in Seoul, but because they test, test, test they were able to identify it early.

But the important part to remember, is that China is probably only "age 40" in the retirement fund scenario. NOT retirement age. Most of the rest of the world is 35 or younger. If you look at the total, it doesn't seem like it's that much. It's harder to visualize the potential for badness. Just like it's hard for young investors, when they are still young to believe that it will make that much difference in the end.

The deaths are dependent on where the infected cluster. In Seattle, we see the Life Care center, and that's bad. 1 person responsible for 20+ deaths and still counting. Unknown number of infections because the employees can't even get tested. That's part of why we need to social distance, to keep it out of the vulnerable populations. Imagine a location with 20 infected Life Care Centers? Is their enough hospital space, is there enough equipment? What about the normal deaths from heart attacks and car accidents? Will more of those people die because they can't get the same amount of attention that they would have otherwise, because the emergency health care system is stretched so thin?

So to answer the question, why is this so bad? Math. We are not very far down the X-axis (time) yet. The rest are specifics.

 

[Heather07438]

OK, I'm sorry, I don't get it. Why is corona virus so scary? Scary enough to close schools, Disney, various businesses, sporting events, travel bans, "social distancing", etc.

I get it. The mortality rate *IF* you get it is much higher than the flu. BUT, most of the deaths are those who have underlying medical issues. Shouldn't they be used to taking extra precautions at this time of year so they don't get the flu anyway? Sure, there's a vaccine for the flu, but that doesn't mean you won't catch it. The vaccine isn't always for the correct strain.

CDC estimates 36M - 55M in the US alone will come down with the flu, resulting in 22k-55k deaths. Source
There have been 146K corona cases WORLDWIDE resulting in 5K deaths. Source
The flu kills 291k-646K worldwide each year. Source
Over 150K died world wide from H1N1 in 2009. Source

So the flu regularly KILLS more people every year than the number of corona virus cases.
H1N1 killed more people than there are corona cases. Yes, obviously the number of corona cases will increase. But why was there no panic in 2009?
Is this being blown out of proportion?

I'm sure I'll get blasted for asking the question

Right now Italy shows a 14% mortality rate*. That's 1 in 7 people. That's what happens when the healthcare system has to choose who gets help and who they have to let die. Italy has set up a guideline for who to treat and who unfortunately will be foresaken. That is 140 times deadlier than the flu. Italy started with a better ratio of care beds to population than the US. It's true the US has decent healthcare but the notion that it is 'far superior' than abroad is not.

It doesn't have to turn out that bad if we work together and utilize the knowledge we've gained. S Korea has lead the way and proven that measures can be effective. They have experience in this area, both in the 70s with hantavirus and more recently with SARS.

Maybe this scenario explains it best: Say 5000 people in your community present with Covid19 over 2 weeks. 20% will have severe symptoms, 1000 people. Normally if all these people were able to get treatment, maybe 100 still succumb but without treatment maybe 700 die. 600 of those could've been helped to recovery but there weren't enough resources to treat them all at the same time. Multiply those excess deaths to every community over many weeks. Not a pretty picture. It won't only be the 75yo with underlying issues, it will also be people you know of various ages. To exacerbate the situation, your 27yo daughter is in a bad car accident and cannot get the care she needs to survive because the machines, procedures and manpower to do that are already being used.

That's what we're trying to avoid by spreading out the severe cases so those people get a shot at recovery.

* https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/americas/coronavirus-us-italy-south-korea-lessons-intl/index.html

Also check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_release_syndrome

 

[wgeo]

So Italy - which started shutting down areas of their country last Sunday, I believe, just reported their latest 24 hour numbers.

Italy reports 3,497 new cases of coronavirus and 175 new deaths, raising total to 21,157 cases and 1,441 dead

 

[ChrisFL]

I always love the "I don't understand it, therefore it's wrong" arguments

 

[Wendy31]

I have so many people in my Facebook feed who are still doing the “it’s not that bad” & “it’s just the flu” & “this is all hype” thing.

Then there are the people still claiming it’s some big political conspiracy thing,

And, there are people who are just using the school closures as a chance for more free time to get together.

It’s all driving me crazy.

Even w/ all the closures & cancellations, COVID-19 is going to spread like mad throughout the United States because people just refuse to listen - out of ignorance or just plain “I’m going to do whatever I want to” attitude.

I was talking to someone the other day who said one reason why the virus is not spreading so rapidly through some countries is because the citizens have been taught, from birth, the community is greater than the self. It’s why people in Asian countries wear masks when they’re sick - to protect others in the communities. So, in these countries, when the government officials tell you stay home, for the greater good of your community, you stay home.

It’s not like that in America.

I’m glad & thankful for our freedoms & liberties & would never want to live under a communist or socialist rule, but I wish the typical American mentality was not quite so selfish & me-driven.

EDITED TO ADD: And, because the H1N1 epidemic in 2009 involved children (& we had 3 - one young girl, one little boy w/ asthma, & one baby), I was absolutely crazy w/ anxiety & worry.

If this current virus was effecting children the same way it is effecting the older population, as worried as I am now, I’d be even more worried.

 

[Searc]

That’s what is scary about our numbers here. We are number 9 on the list in the country and almost all of our cases are believed to be community spread so that’s why things are shut down here now.

Our state has no "community spread" cases, so far. They've all been directly exposed while traveling. I do expect that to change, but the first case in our state from a couple weeks ago who self-quarantined has recovered. The other 18 confirmed cases are still in the middle of the virus and appropriate steps are being taken for quarantining. Our state is also expecting 37 passengers from the stranded cruise ship in Oakland after their 14 day quarantine. They will finally be able to come home.