re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

Good question.

I had seen a statistic that up to 66% of the deaths in Italy would have died anyways within 6 months.

Which tells me at least for that oldest age bracket, they were one illness away regardless.

Right below them and so on (65-80 or whatever) I'd imagine COVID is a real difference maker vs other illnesses.

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I had seen a statistic that up to 66% of the deaths in Italy would have died anyways within 6 months.

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Speaking of statistics, I got curious based off of Knoxville reporting 9 suicides in 48hrs, what the suicide increase was during the 2008 financial crisis.

Data estimated an additional 5k US citizens committed suicide due to the financial downfall. I’m interested as to what the fallout will be from this

It's sad. I recently heard of a suicide and my first thought way if it was related to perceived financial stress from this event though I imagine other reasons will be the vast majority.

People are on a continuum regarding how much they can take with whatever baggage they brought into this.

Not an MD but I’m pretty sure it’s a different type/different looking pneumonia that “normal” viral pneumonia (gotbthat from reading posts here from MDs).

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We are noticing a high number of russian, asian and latino infections. Only one caucasian is intubated and we have not seen one admission that is african american. Not sure if that is everywhere or just here? I wonder if our numbers are better because of the early shelter order or because people are in better shape out here (on average no offense). I can't wait to read the literature a year from now

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I would guess ethic disparities likely just due to community self-segregation. New Orleans area data definitely does not indicate an immunity among those of sub-Saharan African or European DNA.

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hats 20% dog--not 2

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Math much?

3,000 additional deaths out of 150,000 is 2%

20% would be 30,000, FTR

May want to recheck those figures on that 20% raise you think got during your last annual review. ;)

Let's do a little analysis. Italy today reported 4053 new cases, almost the same as the 4050 that they reported yesterday. Both of these are the lowest since March 17 and considerably down from the 6203 reported on Thursday. And Italy is testing more people every day, so the drop in cases isn't the result of fewer tests.

Italy's epidemic began in Lombardy (Milan), and over 40% of the country's cases are from that one region. Lombardy was shut down on March 9th. Yesterday, the total number of people in Lombardy who are currently infected (positives minus recoveries and deaths) declined for the first time. Today, the total number of people in intensive care in Lombardy dropped for the first time, from 1330 to 1324. These are stable trends -- I've gone over Italy's data for the last ten days.

So, let us say that the time in Lombardy from shut down to peak ICU is 22 days. The rest of Italy isn't far behind, and we can now see that Spain is flattening its curve as well.

How will the curve in Italy compare to our own in Louisiana? Italy's shutdown was harder than ours, with penalties for leaving home. On the other hand, over 40,000 Italian were cited for disobedience in the first week of the lockdown. Lombardy's curve undoubtedly was extended by the fact that overcrowded hospitals and lack of PPE turned hospitals into significant vectors of viral transmission.

In Louisiana, we have our own disobedience with the governor's order, and our shutdown isn't as extreme, but we've also been testing a much higher percentage at our stage than Italy was at its. We're more obese, while they smoke more and have an older population. I'd guess that it about balances out.

Louisiana received a stay-at-home order on March 22, so it's been nine days. If our curve were similar to Lombardy's, our peak ICU date would be April 13th. The current modeled projection is April 8th, which is not far from that number. But, if our curve follows Lombardy, then this model might be a little bit too optimistic. LINK

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India is currently looking good

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India is also barely testing. Of course they’ll look good if they don’t test. Last I saw they were testing at a rate of 10 people per every 1 million. They’re mostly testing people that are coming into the country not the massive, incredibly cramped, and extremely unsanitary/non-hygienic slums and other poor areas.

And this applies to many extremely populated countries.

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when we can go out?

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Dr. Scott Gottlieb was the lead author of a big paper that came out on Sunday about that. Gottlieb, you may know, was FDA Director from 2017 to last year, and he's in tight with Fauci, Birx, and the rest of the medical people in the Trump Administration, so this paper will carry a lot of weight.

He said that we can reopen restaurants when we have:

* 14 days of declining new cases
* The ability to test anyone with a fever or other possible symptoms and get results in less than 30 minutes
* Can quickly effectively trace and test those associated with any new positive case.
* Established that people need to wear masks around town
* Are running regular serological tests to screen the population to understand the spread of the virus and see new infection hotspots before they get bad

So, the 14 days is the key thing. The rest is all achievable, and we're actually making progress towards the rest of those goals. If we peak before Easter, as I expect, then May 1st would make sense, and that's why President Trump's guidelines extend to that date, and why Governor Edwards kept Louisiana's stay-at-home order in effect until that date.