China quarantines city of 18 million to try to contain virus

Toast

Toast

Well-known member
KnifeySpoony said:
There's a difference between "there is a shortage" and "there could be a shortage if it gets bad enough".
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That's usually how shortages work, they said they will not have enough if there is a significant surge of new cases. Which if the rest of the world is a good indicator, is going to happen.
 
byke

byke

Well-known member
Kinda hard to blame the US for going a bit soft, because you're intentionally trading a relatively unknown situation for a known situation (unemployment, recession, lost retirement, etc.) and those aren't easy decisions to make. It would be very easy to do more harm than good. Everyone from private businesses to the state to the fed are all boosting efforts at what I think is the right time, which is to do it a little early, but not unsubstantiated tinfoil early.
 
bojangle

bojangle

FN # 40
Staff member
Blankpage said:
You figuring the US has a handle on this thing and its peaked already?
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I think it's still tip of the iceberg time. Just wait...

Hopefully the measures we're taking right now will slow this thing down enough to avoid completely overwhelming our medical system and to avoid any breakdowns to society. Slow change is a lot easier to manage than fast change.
 
K

KnifeySpoony

_______________________
Toast said:
That's usually how shortages work, they said they will not have enough if there is a significant surge of new cases. Which if the rest of the world is a good indicator, is going to happen.
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Blankpage said:
You figuring the US has a handle on this thing and its peaked already?
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Well, in order to say "there is a shortage", there has to be one. If you want to say "there WILL be a shortage" then you need to know how many vents we have and how many we will need. I'm not seeing numbers. And there is no way to know how many we will need. If you want to say "there MAY be a ventilator shortage", then I suppose I have no argument. It's certainly possible.
 
Blankpage

Blankpage

alien
Sharxfan said:
Not sure about running out of ventilators but that is only for severe cases. how many mild cases have there been that we have not caught the same thing happens for the flu. you get mild symptoms you stay home to ride it out and you are fine.
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I don't recall ever hearing of a flu season requiring a tripling of supply.

From the Financial Times

Italy, the country at the epicentre of the European outbreak, told the country’s only ventilator manufacturer to quadruple monthly production, even deploying members of the armed forces to help meet the new quota.

Germany has ordered an additional 10,000 ventilators from a domestic supplier and France is conducting a study into its own stocks including outside the public health system to determine the adequate level or needs to order further supplies.

https://www.ft.com/content/5a2ffc78-6550-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea68b5
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Blankpage

Blankpage

alien
KnifeySpoony said:
Well, in order to say "there is a shortage", there has to be one. If you want to say "there WILL be a shortage" then you need to know how many vents we have and how many we will need. I'm not seeing numbers. And there is no way to know how many we will need. If you want to say "there MAY be a ventilator shortage", then I suppose I have no argument. It's certainly possible.
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You win this time. Lets play again in a month from now.
 
bojangle

bojangle

FN # 40
Staff member
ctwo said:
He said Xi <Insert Beavis & Butt-Head laugh>... :laughing
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Oh...I think of politics as US politics.

Speaking of Beavis...

d10.jpg
 
Snaggy

Snaggy

Well-known member
.


http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/events/2018_clade_x_exercise/pdfs/Clade-X-ventilator-availability-fact-sheet.pdf


We are in deep, deep shit on ventilators, no, deep, deep, deep shit.

Virtually every COVID death is going to be a vent candidate, at least before brutal triage screening out the old and sick. Mechanical ventilation may save three fourths of the people placed on it. Time on vents in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome may be days, even weeks, in severe cases.

Other options, like BiPap, present severe aerosol risk an aren't as effective. ICU workers will be in FULL PPE gear their whole shifts, very fatiguing. Assuming there are enough PAPR's, N95's, gowns and gloves. ECMO, which is something like the bypass machines used in heart surgery, adds oxygen to blood as it circulates outside the body. The uber rich and powerful will have access to the small number of units available.

The US has about 20 vents per 100,000 people, 200,000 or so, at most. That's enough for 0.02 percent of the population. The US is FAR better off than other countries with socialized medicine. A number of them have less than half as many vents as the US.

Caveat, vents are worthless without beds and nurses and doctors, we will probably be hurting there too.


.
 
bojangle

bojangle

FN # 40
Staff member
Snaggy said:
.


http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/events/2018_clade_x_exercise/pdfs/Clade-X-ventilator-availability-fact-sheet.pdf


We are in deep, deep shit on ventilators, no, deep, deep, deep shit.

Virtually every COVID death is going to be a vent candidate, at least before brutal triage screening out the old and sick. Mechanical ventilation may save three fourths of the people placed on it. Time on vents in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome may be days, even weeks, in severe cases.

Other options, like BiPap, present severe aerosol risk an aren't as effective. ICU workers will be in FULL PPE gear their whole shifts, very fatiguing. Assuming there are enough PAPR's, N95's, gowns and gloves. ECMO, which is something like the bypass machines used in heart surgery, adds oxygen to blood as it circulates outside the body. The uber rich and powerful will have access to the small number of units available.

The US has about 20 vents per 100,000 people, 200,000 or so, at most. That's enough for 0.02 percent of the population. The US is FAR better off than other countries with socialized medicine. A number of them have less than half as many vents as the US.

Caveat, vents are worthless without beds and nurses and doctors, we will probably be hurting there too.


.
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Huh! Imagine that.
 
Blankpage

Blankpage

alien
bojangle said:
Huh! Imagine that.
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The fight against this virus is testing and quarantine which are happening on a very small scale in the US. While the US has more ventilators per 100K people they will likely be even more shorthanded than countries with less as the virus spreads more rapidly.

South Korea is testing 20,000 per day. The US healthcare bureaucracy has tested 13,000 total for the nation while fighting over who's going to pay for it.

Don't be too quick to scoff at socialized medicine.
 
clutchslip

clutchslip

Not as fast as I look.
Blankpage said:
The fight against this virus is testing and quarantine which are happening on a very small scale in the US. While the US has more ventilators per 100K people they will likely be even more shorthanded than countries with less as the virus spreads more rapidly.

South Korea is testing 20,000 per day. The US healthcare bureaucracy has tested 13,000 total for the nation while fighting over who's going to pay for it.

Don't be too quick to scoff at socialized medicine.
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There is no vaccine for the coronavirus, so free medicine wouldn't make any difference. The test is already free. Now, the U.S. is going to cover all the other costs. The vaccine is being developed by capitalists, by the way.

The majority of people do not get very sick and don't need to even see a doctor. Isolate and get better, just like a flu. More government control of medicine wouldn't do anything. Has government medicine made a difference in any country? Isn't China about as socialist as it gets?
 
Climber

Climber

Well-known member
clutchslip said:
There is no vaccine for the coronavirus, so free medicine wouldn't make any difference. The test is already free. Now, the U.S. is going to cover all the other costs. The vaccine is being developed by capitalists, by the way.

The majority of people do not get very sick and don't need to even see a doctor. Isolate and get better, just like a flu. More government control of medicine wouldn't do anything. Has government medicine made a difference in any country? Isn't China about as socialist as it gets?
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It's not 'free', just paid for in a different way that cuts out the middlemen who take a big chunk while providing zero medical service.
 
Blankpage

Blankpage

alien
clutchslip said:
There is no vaccine for the coronavirus, so free medicine wouldn't make any difference. The test is already free. Now, the U.S. is going to cover all the other costs. The vaccine is being developed by capitalists, by the way.

The majority of people do not get very sick and don't need to even see a doctor. Isolate and get better, just like a flu. More government control of medicine wouldn't do anything. Has government medicine made a difference in any country? Isn't China about as socialist as it gets?
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Until testing is done its just promises. The majority of people not needing to see a Dr is meaningless if those who do need to see a Dr overwhelm the healthcare system.

Believe what you want to believe. Underestimating the enemy has never been a winning strategy.
 
Snaggy

Snaggy

Well-known member
Blankpage said:
The fight against this virus is testing and quarantine which are happening on a very small scale in the US. While the US has more ventilators per 100K people they will likely be even more shorthanded than countries with less as the virus spreads more rapidly.

South Korea is testing 20,000 per day. The US healthcare bureaucracy has tested 13,000 total for the nation while fighting over who's going to pay for it.

Don't be too quick to scoff at socialized medicine.
Click to expand...

I believe South Korea had something like a 6% positive rate on their testing. That’s a lot of resources used for modest return, when the best you can do with the information is tell people to go home and self quarantine, go to the ER if you can’t breathe. Testing diverts healthcare workers from other roles and puts them at risk for infection. As the cases propagate exponentionally, the value of testing for quarantine purposes diminishes rapidly. A handful of cases in my county will completely exhaust all public health personnel resources.

Travel restrictions are much more efficient in slowing the rate of epidemic progression when you’re trying to protect a population.

The US is a Pacific Rim nation, yet we have not YET seen the numbers elsewhere.


Partial Edit for political content.

When the story gets written, testing will be put in perspective, by experts anyway. More testing may have slowed things somewhat, though travel restrictions were also very important. Going forward, self quarantine and travel avoidance, voluntary or not, will be our best weapon. Our extra 125,000 vents will save as many lives, or a lot anyway.
 
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