Pandemic Thread (CoronaVirus etc.)

[Godson]

This fucking guy is insane

[G'day Mate]

So what's going on in Europe? New cases are again higher (per million) in the UK, and set to be for the EU soon too

[G'day Mate]

On a brighter note, new cases seem to be dropping in India

[Crazed_Insanity]

On a darker note:

In a few days, more people in Trump’s orbit tested positive for coronavirus than in all of Taiwan

[sandydandy]

Sorry for bringing this thread back up to the top of the page, it almost escaped to page 2.

So yeah, this is insane. Our second wave is going strong and there's no end in sight. America has to be on its third wave by now, and the numbers are outrageous. It's nice to see India is finally showing signs of slowing down. What's happening in Belgium is outright mind-blowing. They went from an average of 1,500 daily cases in their first wave to a whopping 15,000 daily cases now. Five month gap in between. I was reading there are a lot of really dumb people in that country who are refusing to cooperate. Hey-Zeus, 15,000 daily cases. If that happened here people would be losing their shit all over the place.

I try to stay optimistic. It's reassuring to hear Dr. Fauci talk about a potential vaccine coming in December. From him it's believable.

[Tom Servo]

From what I gather the conventional wisdom is that we're still in our first wave, never really brought it down enough in between to make them count as separate waves. Which is very reassuring.

My favorite thing lately is Trump criticizing Fauci for incorrect information early on in the pandemic and then almost immediately pivoting to talk about how much we've learned about it and how that changes the way we should tackle it.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Trump is really something...

Anyway, when it comes to new cases, it does look like we are seeing 3 peaks each getting bigger than the previous one(red curve below), but when it comes to death rate, the peaks are dwindling(gray curve). I wonder if that's due to virus getting weaker or perhaps our doctors getting better. Hopefully this thing will eventually become just like another flu...

Covid in the U.S.jpg

I heard that even with our masks and face coverings, we're probably still getting a low dosage of the coronavirus... and that may help our immune system build up some sort of defense? It's possible that perhaps we are already slowly developing immunity...

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-...iral-dose.html

Anyway, just glad to see death rate dropping..., whatever the cause might be.

[Tom Servo]

There's no doubt treatment's getting better, part of that whole learning things as we go. I've read a lot of theories and have a feeling it's a combination of a bunch of them. One was that people wearing masks are likely being exposed to small viral loads on the regular which is helping the body build up defenses for when a big enough viral load hits to start an infection. Similarly, that the amount of viral load you end up getting appears to have a lot to do with how severe the disease is, and wearing a mask lessens that. Another is that it's mostly younger people who are being infected these days with things like college campuses opening up, so infection rates are way up amongst people who are less vulnerable. Another is that the virus has already killed off a lot of the vulnerable, so there are just fewer potential victims out there. We did have a lot of assisting living facilities with outbreaks back then, I'm assuming they've gotten better at protecting their residents now.

There's also some truth to the idea that case numbers are much higher now because there is more testing being done, though that likely means that that first peak of infections should probably be massively higher than it is on that chart and more closely follow the death rate. Back in April, you were asked not to go get tested unless you were symptomatic or knew you'd been exposed, now you can pretty much go get tested whenever you please.

It'll be interesting to see how all these things shake out in the end, assuming I survive to see it.

[Rare White Ape]

Victoria has come out of lockdown after knocking its second wave in the head.

Premier Dan Andrews celebrated by eating a donut, as it represents the number 0, after 0 new cases were recorded earlier this week.

[Crazed_Insanity]

... assuming I survive to see it.

Yes, hope we'll survive...

Sooner or later, this virus, social unrest and other disasters will end and hopefully we will actually learn something and not repeat our mistakes in the future...