A warning from South Korea: the ‘fantasy’ of returning to normal life

“Coronavirus is constantly attacking society’s vulnerable classes and spaces,” says Park Won-soon, the mayor of Seoul. “We must shake off the fantasy that we can go back to the past we were accustomed to.”


https://www.ft.com/content/d68d6292-...=pocket-newtab

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Originally Posted by dan_bgblue

“Coronavirus is constantly attacking society’s vulnerable classes and spaces,” says Park Won-soon, the mayor of Seoul. “We must shake off the fantasy that we can go back to the past we were accustomed to.”


https://www.ft.com/content/d68d6292-...=pocket-newtab

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that is why, in many ways, it is setting up a false expectation that we can truly mitigate this virus. The best we can do is prepare for those that will be most negatively effected.

BTW, I assmume most of the world population will be exposed and have this virus. There is really nothing that can be done about it.

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Originally Posted by VirginiaCat

BTW, I assmume most of the world population will be exposed and have this virus. There is really nothing that can be done about it.

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In the end, this. We can slow it enough to not overwhelm our health care facilities, but I imagine vaccine or no that it will pass through the population just like the flu, and we will all end up having had it at some point except for those for whom a vaccine worked.

If we reach a 75 percent effectiveness with a vaccine by the end of the year we are good and many who are the most susceptible will never have the virus. Throwing hands up at this point is not an option for a civilized society.

Then again, our society has yet to prove itself.

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Originally Posted by CitizenBBN

In the end, this. We can slow it enough to not overwhelm our health care facilities, but I imagine vaccine or no that it will pass through the population just like the flu, and we will all end up having had it at some point except for those for whom a vaccine worked.

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Yep. The “new normal” crowd act like this thing will last into perpetuity. The shutdowns only caused the curve to be stretched. Eventually everyone Or at least enough will have been exposed for herd immunity to take effect.

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Originally Posted by KeithKSR

Yep. The “new normal” crowd act like this thing will last into perpetuity. The shutdowns only caused the curve to be stretched. Eventually everyone Or at least enough will have been exposed for herd immunity to take effect.

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I can't help shake the feeling this is like the old days when a kid would get chicken pox or measles or whatever and parents would intentionally infect their kids so they could just get it all over with at once. lol.

We're delaying it, and that's good b/c then our hospitals aren't blown up, but right now it's still just a delay.

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Originally Posted by KeithKSR

Yep. The “new normal” crowd act like this thing will last into perpetuity. The shutdowns only caused the curve to be stretched. Eventually everyone Or at least enough will have been exposed for herd immunity to take effect.

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The shutdowns prevented our hospitals from being overwhelmed. It worked very well. The curve needed to be stretched otherwise a LOT more people would have died already because doctors would have to choose who was the most likely to survive.

Depending on the location, some areas are have significant second waves starting, which are starting to be reflected in % hospital usage. We have a county here in Washington state with over 6900 confirmed positive cases, they only have 96,400 residents. The county is around 75-85% ICU usage and is having to ship some of their patients to King County (Seattle metro-area). King County is also taking patients from the eastern part of the state. These regions are notably more rural and notably more red which out here means a higher percentage of anti-mask. I am not sure why out here the combination of boomer-age, Republican, and white means a high prevalence of anti-mask considering many on this board fit that demographic and are reasonably minded. Either way, at this time the more metro areas are able to absorb the overflow from these more rural regions but if the metro area starts to tick up the that won't be the case anymore.

It's not a false expectation that we can mitigate this. Far from it. It's reality. Not only CAN we mitigate this, we have already mitigated this.

* We have migrated from thinking hydroxychloroquine was the best treatment, to the new-fangled drug on the market, remdesivir, to now seeing a plain, cheap and widely available steroid, dexamethasone, may be the best drug available to prevent fatalities. That's progress, and we may save thousands of lives over time from this development. I read last week Yale scientists believe a cancer drug may be the best at treating it. I'm all for better and better drugs, and I have a lot of faith in our physicians and research scientists, which has been my position from Day 1. We'll beat it; it won't beat us. But it obviously is taking a toll on us in the meantime.

Better drugs = better outcomes for patients. That's like, extreme mitigation.

* We understand how the disease attacks the body and organs better. It attacks multiple organs, and physicians have become better at balancing treating lungs, kidneys, and other organs, as sometimes some drug or treatment that helps one organ hurts another. We didn't know that initially; we do now. We understand now that alternative means to being intubated, while still providing 100% oxygen, is as good or better than the ventilator, without the corresponding adverse effects of intubation.

Better treatment = better outcomes for patients. All doctors and health care workers are treating their patients today differently than they were four months ago. Even slight adjustments help.

* We understand basic principles better, like layers of protection -- you wear a mask, I wear a mask, we socially distance from each other, we wash hands and hand sanitize better, etc. All of these layers of protection can improve and prevent infection, even if the disease is highly contagious.

That's mitigation in itself because a Covid-19 infection today receives better health treatment than one infected in March and has a better chance of survival.

* "Little" things like health care workers are better protected today with the full implementation of PPE, negative pressure rooms, pre-screening, etc. are making a difference in keeping fewer health care workers from being infected. Some of them are exposed to massive amounts of Covid-19 infection because of the nature of their work, hour after hour, day after day. Keeping them healthy ought to be a priority, too. And of course, we know that health care workers are like anybody else. They have families, boyfriends, girlfriends, whatever that they are around and expose to whatever they have. So the improvements in their PPE advance protection and other measures taken has helped to reduce their own exposure.

More mitigation. (With children as health care workers, I had to put "little" in quotation marks, of course. Forgive me for that indulgence.)

I hope none of my family ever gets infected. But if we do, I feel better on June 29, 2020 about their treatment than I would have on February 29, 2020. Don't you? Not great, but better.

If you do, there's your answer about mitigation. If you don't, I don't have a response. Everybody should.

Now, let me talk for a minute about another aspect of mitigation, and one that is mostly ignored because people treat this like an "on/off" switch--you either die, or you don't, from the disease.

There's a whole lot of things in between that as well. The disease attacks your lungs. Your heart. Your kidneys. It's a multi-organ attacking virus, and one that we simply don't know that much about.

Herpes, HIV, chicken pox, other viruses remain with you for life even after you "recover." Covid-19, even in the short time we've seen it, has shown a propensity in the most severe cases to cause strokes, blood clots, possible permanent lung damage, liver damage, kidney damage, you name it. I read a story today about MLB that discussed how the athletes will need to be (or should be) monitored carefully for heart issues after Covid-19 infections as they may look and appear fine, and have heart issues that resonate afterward even if they "recover 100%," or never were that sick to begin with.

I know the infectious disease physicians at a local hospital are advising discharged patients that they just don't know if they will recover fully, or when they will (if ever). They're not dumb. They're just truthful, based on what we know of the disease today.

I know that a hospital in another state that treats children is seeing multi-system inflammatory system (MIS-C) in their Covid-19 infected young patients, where their heart, lungs, kidneys, brain and other organs are becoming inflamed. Way more of it than you're reading about in the media (if you're reading about this at all.)

It's serious business.

Age is definitely one of the strongest factors for the most severe. But race is, blood type, BMI > 30.0 (only 40% of the U.S. population falls in that category), and others. And sometimes it's just friggin random.

Hey, life is random. I get that part, too. A person can walk in front of a bus tomorrow and die more readily than a healthy, 20-something year old should die from Covid-19 infection.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to protect the young person from death or even infection. Reducing the number of people who "get it," even if they are a success story and don't die, is mitigating the disease and some possible severe non-fatal aspects of Covid-19 infections.

Will everybody get it?

It's a contagious disease. It's one that (depending on who you believe), 10 million people have been infected with, out of 8 billion.

That's 0.00125 of world population.

In the U.S., depending on who you believe, on the low side, 2.63 million have been infected out of 328 million population. That's the "official" number, which may be way off, but let's look at it anyway.

That's 0.00802. Small percentage.

CDC says that up to 20 million may have actually been infected instead. If that's the case, we're up to 0.061.

A significant percentage, but with "layers" in place, maybe we need to slow our roll and suggesting everybody is going to be infected anyway, unless you believe we'll never figure out how to make an even partially effective vaccine.

I hope herd immunity works. It may. Between being infected once and hopefully gaining lifetime or significant immunity, and a possible vaccine, we may see what we need, and maybe sooner rather than later.

But for goodness sake, herd immunity isn't guaranteed. Remember, it's a novel coronavirus. By definition, we're still learning and we don't know, and we don't even know what we don't know.

/off soapbox/

Now, after I step off my large soap box, assuming I don't break my ankles when I do so, here's Dictator Darrell's "Solution."

Yes, as much as I hate this term, adopt a "new normal." Social distancing and mask requirements allow us to get back to work, to get back to school, and to enjoy some aspects of "new normal" life.

We have to assume some risk. Everything in life is a risk. Dying or being severely impacted by Covid-19 is just one of them. You address it with reasonable precautions, and move forward.

If you can afford to huddle in a basement shelter, fine, do it. Most of us can't. So we'll get onto the real world, with the "new normal." It's the only practical solution in my view.

Yes, that's the 'new normal', and I support it personally and in the business. We have to function, but we also have to distance, wear masks, etc.

But it's all the same thing it's been from the start, simply slowing the advance to buy time so we don't overwhelm hospitals, maybe can get a vaccine, better treatments, etc. And that's all very wise no doubt, I'm all for it.

But I do think maybe the total lockdowns were not terribly useful versus just moving to this "new normal" for mitigation. First b/c we can't stay shut down for 18 months to get a vaccine, and once we do adopt some balance then the disease will surely spread, albeit hopefully slower than otherwise.

Second, the psychology has somewhat backfired. Coop people up for 3 months then open the door and they tend to run out versus walk. I wonder if we'd get more compliance had we been more Swedish. Maybe just the exact opposite, I don't know, but clearly most of this span will be this "new normal" where we operate with distance and masks.

Lastly, our early message was very muddled b/c even guys like Fauci were saying, for non-medical reasons, that we shouldn't wear masks. The reason was b/c we didn't have enough for everyone, which is fine, but they didn't say that part. They said it was medically not useful, then did a 180. That can't have helped sell the need for them.

But I will say this has an inevitable feel to it. I'm sure we can slow the advance, certainly enough to not crush hospitals, but enough to keep so few from getting it until we get a vaccine? I don't know.

It's a crappy situation regardless. I'm fortunate, people need my services regardless, and we've spent years building a strong online presence that has paid off, but I don't know how long even the 'new normal' can work economically, and I know lockdowns won't work without another 10 trillion in debt.

So we're about where I thought we were when this started, trying to find a balance between the rate of infection and the economic and psychological need to not be welded in our homes for a year. We do know more, maybe we can make improved decisions because of that knowledge, but the basic decision hasn't changed.

My daughter just texted me earlier this morning about this.
Her hospital, Orlando Regional Medical Center, has seen a serious spike in COVID-19 cases. She said the average ages have now become the 40 year olds. More people on ventilators, the ICU is almost full of COVID-19 patients. Her hospital has 8 units full of COVID-19 patients, and that's not counting the units outside of those.
And they're so short staffed that they are hiring traveling nurses to shore up the shortages of personnel.

And now I'm hearing that China is seeing the beginning stages of a new swine flu that could possibly become a pandemic as well. In addition to all of the problems that COVID-19 is causing there.

Thanks, China! 😠

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Originally Posted by suncat05

And now I'm hearing that China is seeing the beginning stages of a new swine flu that could possibly become a pandemic as well. In addition to all of the problems that COVID-19 is causing there.

Thanks, China! ��

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The swine flu reports are notably overblown at THIS TIME. They saw infections in two people for a novel strain, neither of which could spread from human-to-human. This happens a lot more than people realize and often doesn't lead anywhere. That being said, in the rare times where it does lead somewhere it can be nasty. According to the PNAS (yes pronounced like you think, the child in me always chuckles when I see it) article people previously exposed to H1N1 do not show immunity G4 recombinant H1N1. While this could be true, it could be a limit of sample size, or it could be that the mutations needed to spread from human-to-human are the same ones to which our body responds. Considering people from the H1N1 outbreak in the 70s showed SOME response to the 09 H1N1 outbreak, I wouldn't be surprised if the truth is more nuanced. That being said, even if fully true, the fact we know about it now before it becomes a threat is due to the early warning systems in place in China. At least we have a warning and can start looking at what preemptive measures need to be taken (vaccines for H1N1, more frequent monitoring of swine populations, etc.)

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Originally Posted by VirginiaCat

that is why, in many ways, it is setting up a false expectation that we can truly mitigate this virus. The best we can do is prepare for those that will be most negatively effected.

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Could not agree more.