Corona Virus

[Tommy T.]

10 minutes ago, hk blues said:

We are better placed now to manage them.

I have several comments regarding that, but biting my tongue and will not. Use your imagination...

[Heeb]

14 minutes ago, hk blues said:

I think most governments are out of their depth in terms of managing this, and are simply reverting to what seems to make sense. The Swedish approach, which the UK gov was kinda thinking of going with, is counter intuitive so too controversial for many to follow. Get it wrong and hundreds of thousands die, rather than tens of thousands. It's a gamble.

We are existing to some extent at the moment but they are working flat out on a vaccine so we just hunker down and wait.

Yes, we may resove this and then another pops up but that's nothing new - we have had epidemics and even pandemics since time began. We are better placed now to manage them.

But despite the risks we sill get in our death machines and drive (including my geriatric parents) we eat fast food (diabetes, heart disease, cancer), we go out in the sun (skin cancer) we ride motorcycles, why? because it's living. I remember two movies that I've watched in the past but can't remember the names, one is a sci-fi flick about a future population that lives indoors in environmentally controlled spaces, all food is delivered by robots or something, if they go outside they will die because they have no immunity to anything anymore, then the system start to breakdown, the grid fails and they are forced to go out, I don't remember the ending it was so long ago. The other movie was I think Norwegian, a man dies and is transported back to his home city in a bus where he soon realizes he is immortal because he can no longer die (sort of like ground hog day) and at first he thinks he's entered heaven, the problem is he no longer can taste or smell food which makes eating an apple pie no fun, also since he can no longer die he gets no thrill out of riding a motorcycle or jumping off a cliff, he starts to realize he's actually in hell not heaven because most of the things that make life worth living like an apple pie loaded with sugars and fat no longer make him feel any emotion.

[Tommy T.]

7 minutes ago, Heeb said:

The other movie was I think Norwegian, a man dies and is transported back to his home city in a bus where he soon realizes he is immortal because he can no longer die (sort of like ground hog day) and at first he thinks he's entered heaven, the problem is he no longer can taste or smell food which makes eating an apple pie no fun, also since he can no longer die he gets no thrill out of riding a motorcycle or jumping off a cliff, he starts to realize he's actually in hell not heaven because most of the things that make life worth living like an apple pie loaded with sugars and fat no longer make him feel any emotion.

The second movie sounds somewhat like the Sarte play called "No Exit." Whatever... very frightening either way...

I did not recognize my "mortality" until I turned 40. But then I continued to risk it... Why? I have no answer to that. But glad that I survived to this point. Now I see every day when I wake up to be a victory! And I continue to wake up to this daymare! I hate this!

[Heeb]

9 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

The second movie sounds somewhat like the Sarte play called "No Exit." Whatever... very frightening either way...

I did not recognize my "mortality" until I turned 40. But then I continued to risk it... Why? I have no answer to that. But glad that I survived to this point. Now I see every day when I wake up to be a victory! And I continue to wake up to this daymare! I hate this!

I should be more suited for dealing with this since I was in the Navy, the thing is I didn't feel alone when deployed in the navy, I had my friends, I know this sounds bad but I feel like I'm on an island alone even with filipinas in the house here, and I don't have the things around me to stay occupied like back home, I have more choices for TV, I have my shop to tinker in, I would still be allowed to go out and walk or ride my bike if it's warm enough.

[Tommy T.]

9 minutes ago, Heeb said:

I should be more suited for dealing with this since I was in the Navy, the thing is I didn't feel alone when deployed in the navy, I had my friends, I know this sounds bad but I feel like I'm on an island alone even with filipinas in the house here, and I don't have the things around me to stay occupied like back home, I have more choices for TV, I have my shop to tinker in, I would still be allowed to go out and walk or ride my bike if it's warm enough.

This entire experience is causing so many - like you and me and the others - introspections. Life has changed and none of us like it - at least I think no one likes it?

Perhaps I could suggest you dwell more on what you have now rather than what you do not have? I am terrible about trying to do that... you should ask L... But that's what I am trying to do every day...

But I am happy to still be alive at this point and I guess eating myself to death and watching endless, mindless movies could be worse?

There's still some Tanduay in the larder... for a while longer. I still love my partner, L (more than ever) and she loves me. I guess that's life today? Whenever we all eventually die, that will last for a very long time...so...

Edited April 5, 2020 by Tommy T.

[peterfe]

1 hour ago, Old55 said:

Peter, the link you provided was a pay to view only. No offense but I deleted it. If you would care to copy or paraphrase it here for us that would be helpful.

I haven't paid The Australian anything. It was ok first time I read it, but going back to the page, they said I had to subscribe. Fortunately I managed to copy the whole article before that message came up  Here it is:

I thought of my father, terminally ill with pulmonary fibrosis, when I heard of another victim of coronavirus this week.

He’s confined to his house, alone since my mother died four years ago. He relies on family and friends to shop for him; they wave through the window and leave him food on the doorstep.

I spoke to him as news came in of a 90-odd-year-old woman dying in a nursing home. He’s sick of the isolation and doesn’t want the time left to him to be spent in solitary confinement. His first great-grandchild was born six months ago and he fears he will never see the boy again.

“Look, son, I’m 88 in August,” he said, cheerfully. “I’ve had a good run. Whatever happens to me from now on, it’s not a f..king national tragedy.”

My father’s attitude is, he believes, not uncommon among his contemporaries, who understand the tough reality of old age. As he put it, with his winning sarcasm, “These people in nursing homes aren’t exactly snatched away in the prime of their lives, are they? Half of them don’t know they’re there, don’t even recognise their children when they visit.”

It’s brutal, but I’m sure he’s right. If you’re in an aged-care facility you’re not waiting to be discharged and sent home in a few weeks. You’re on your way out, and the exit’s probably not that far away. Coronavirus is speeding up the process, and it must feel overwhelming to the medical staff on the frontline. Which is precisely why they shouldn’t be making the decisions.

The health of a nation is not the sum of the health of its citizens. We require doctors and nurses to focus on their patients, but politicians need to take a broader view of the myriad components of a functioning, worthwhile society.

Sarcasm aside, when did life move from being precious to priceless? We lost 20 people to the disease in March. In the same month we lost another 13,000 or so to other ailments and accidents, but let’s not worry about them.

As more facts emerge about the virus, it looks as though it does most harm to the chronically sick or the elderly, as do most respiratory diseases. And when old age is combined with a pre-existing serious illness, you’re in real danger. So the high-risk group would be wise to take all precautions, withdraw from society if they wish, and resurface when there’s a vaccine. We could devote enormous resources to looking after them.

Instead, we are asking the healthy, most of whom will be no more than inconvenienced by this latest strain of flu, to sacrifice or cripple themselves, their livelihoods, their children’s future, to preserve people whose own future is already precarious and limited. Has anyone checked with the elderly, who tend to have a more sanguine outlook, to see if this eco­nomic suicide is what they want?

As individuals it’s excruciating to assign a value to human life, and happily few of us are obliged to do so; but as a society we make those calculations all the time. Our highway speed limit is 110km/h; we could reduce that to 20km/h and watch the fatalities tumble, but the inconvenience would be intolerable. We let people swim and surf (at least we used to) from wild, unpatrolled beaches, and sadly accept some of them will drown, measuring the pleasure of millions against the misfortune of a few.

We are always managing risk, but suddenly in this panic no risk, to anyone, is acceptable.

Even news organisations have adopted this position, their HR departments issuing earnest communiques that declare “the health and wellbeing of our employees is our paramount priority”. Sorry, since when? As part of my job I have been sent, and sent others, to war zones — yes, with bombs and bullets — to bring our readers the news. That’s what I thought our priority was as journalists. Now half my colleagues in the media have emerged as trembling amateur epidemiologists, scouring the online world to find the youngest and healthiest victim to ramp up the terror and prove this disease attacks anyone, not just the old and sick, when that’s manifestly not the case.

As Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford, said last week, “people with no comorbidities can relax; you may feel funny but the mortality is incredibly low. The wider question is how we best manage people with comorbidities and keep them safe and out of hospital.” So far our leaders’ answer is to paralyse the country and the prospects of everyone in it.

In Sweden, never thought of as a nation of daredevils (they’re so safe they gave us ABBA and Volvos), the vulnerable are sequestered and cared for. They might have to sit things out until a vaccine is developed, while the rest of the people are visiting restaurants and bars, more or less as usual. So far it seems to be working.

No such luck here, though. Our reckless, hysterical governments tumble over each other to impose ever more ridiculous constraints on our liberty, supported by police forces that interpret their authority in a fashion sinister and absurd at the same time. And they have the audacity to quote “the Anzac spirit” as they order fit young men to cower in their trenches.

Some of us are not surprised that our elected leaders and their unelected enforcers have been found wanting, but what really shakes your faith in society is how meekly their ludicrous commands have been obeyed. Did anyone real­ly think more than 500 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach represent a threat? And if so, why the same 500 limit around the corner at Tamarama’s beach, a fraction of the size? And why a zero limit now? Why can’t a solo sunbaker lie on the grass in a park without a police car moving him on? Why can’t a boat owner take a run up the coast? Why can I only buy “essential” goods? Will PC Plod soon be inspecting my shopping bags for truffles and Toblerone?

Save your comments; I know there will be plenty of people rushing to justify any extreme measure that “saves someone’s life”. The curtain-twitchers are busy in Britain, dobbing in neighbours who leave their houses twice a day or have their girlfriend over. They’ve adapted to their police state very comfortably. Fortunate, perhaps, that Churchill’s World War II promise that “we will fight them on the beaches” was never tested.

The driver of this madness is that the data we are working with, as has been pointed out by many epidemiologists, is fundamentally flawed. If we don’t know how many people have been infected, we don’t know the mortality rate. One of our panic-stricken pollies was on the radio on Monday warning people that even if they felt fine, they could be walking around spreading the disease. A disease with no symptoms that doesn’t make you ill? Terrifying.

But those symptom-free people will never be counted, just as all the people who have avoided burdening the hospital system with their minor coughs and sore throats will never be counted, so the mortality rate is inflated. So too in Italy and Spain, where everyone who dies with the disease is recorded as dying from it, no matter whether they have been wiping their feet on death’s doormat for months.

You don’t need to be good at maths or medically trained to realise all these numbers are wickedly inaccurate. If the infection can manifest itself with mild symptoms or none, how on earth can we declare how many are infected? How many run-of-the-mill flu infections go uncounted each year? I’ve never been sufficiently troubled by a cold or flu to go to the doctor, so I’ve never featured in any statistics. Perhaps I’m freakishly lucky, but I doubt it.

Instead we have a simple division sum, but one where the denominator may be out by a factor of a hundred, or a thousand. If one in every 12 people infected dies, that’s a nightmare. One in every 1200, with 99 per cent of them already gravely ill and of advanced age, it’s not so frightening. And are the millions thrown out of work a price worth paying?

John Ioannidis, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Stanford University in the US, believes if we hadn’t counted and tested this new COVID-19 separately from ordinary colds and flu (and the scary sci-fi name doesn’t help), “we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average”.

He may be wrong, but what is certain is that for many of our fellow citizens, this will be the year everything they’ve worked so hard for — their businesses, their savings, their jobs and dignity, their marriages, their sanity, their hopes and dreams and joy — evaporated.

One day we’ll emerge blinking into the economic wasteland we have wilfully created, but next year winter will come around again, and with it more flu, no doubt with another horror mutation.

So what will we do then? You can only kill yourself once.

 

[Tommy T.]

Fine... so I read that entire article... How would the author feel if he were 65 years old with asthma or diabetes 2? I think the focus changes with susceptibility? Let's just forget the old and sickly and move on?

Sorry for this response a bit. I am getting very cranky lately... probably a side effect of the virus even though I am sure I don't have it....yet...

Edited April 5, 2020 by Tommy T.

[intrepid]

19 minutes ago, peterfe said:

I haven't paid The Australian anything. It was ok first time I read it, but going back to the page, they said I had to subscribe. Fortunately I managed to copy the whole article before that message came up  Here it is:

I thought of my father, terminally ill with pulmonary fibrosis, when I heard of another victim of coronavirus this week.

Thanks for posting that.  Not that I agree with it all and have a different outlook but Interesting read nun the less.

[Dave Hounddriver]

8 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

Let's just forget the old and sickly and move on?

As I understand it, the old and sickly are the most vulnerable because the young and middle age can beat this in intensive care.  Open the floodgates and you flood the intensive care so the deaths rise tenfold and include lots of 30 and 40 somethings who cannot get care and ventilators.  At least that is how I see it in an oversimplied nutshell.  Thus I stay at home and encourage the rest of my family to do the same.

[Heeb]

17 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

Fine... so I read that entire article... How would the author feel if he were 65 years old with asthma or diabetes 2? I think the focus changes with susceptibility? Let's just forget the old and sickly and move on?

I would think that the 65 year old would be better positioned to self isolate, most likely they would be retired and not have to go to work, they can order food online or have family deliver food.

Edited April 5, 2020 by Heeb