[ghevshoo]

The situation in Stockholm, Sweden right now is:

“You who have symptoms similar to coronavirus will not be tested in the future. This applies regardless of whether you have been in the areas that were previously exposed to infection or had close contact with someone you know is ill in covid-19.”

There are no test kits. Hospitals have run out of face masks. And it’s only just getting started here.

[refurb]

In order to determine who to test, you need to base it on what your actions will be with a positive or negative result.

If someone is showing mild Corona virus symptoms and can safely quarantine themselves, then there isn't a lot of value in testing. The result isn't going to change what you do.

Where it's useful is controlling transmission. When you identify a patient, find out who they came in contact with and confirm whether or not they have it.

[rezendi]

Your point is taken, but positive tests imply future immunity (based on what we currently know, for those who survive...) and that may become valuable information. For instance interactions with nursing homes, seniors' facilities, most of southwest Florida, etc., could be limited to people who had tested positive and recovered.

[wideasleep1]

'Controlling transmission' is only useful before it becomes 'community-spread'. I'm unconvinced the testing is any more useful than stats in a future wiki article. At the end of the day, folks needing hospitalization/respiratory support will exist in spite of any given test result.

[Nursie]

There are test kits in the UK, but the same policy applies.

Why?

Because it no longer matters, the containment effort for individual cases is now over. Now we move on to more mass actions to delay and slow the peak of the epidemic - anyone with symptoms to self isolate for a week, regardless of positive test.

[earthtourist]

"the containment effort for individual cases is now over"

Most countries didn't even attempt containment, as far as I can tell. Leaders seem to have surrendered to mass infection at the opening of the battle.

It seems pathetic and criminally negligent. It's an intentional trade of hundreds of thousands of lives (potentially millions) in exchange for some unpredictable economic gain. This could conceivably make sense if an uncontained financial crisis would lead to even more human suffering than an uncontained infection.

But it seems that we're likely to end up paying in a massive number of lives and a massive amount of money. When an aggressive containment strategy might have cost us primarily in terms of money.

[stefan_]

I had a tweet from Flightradar24 show up on my timeline earlier:

https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1238102765081186306...

It kinda hit me immediately why this whole containment thing wasn't really working out. And this was March 12! How on earth do we tell people to not go outside, but months after it all started there are still thousands of airplanes flying.

Honorary mention for the countries that sent military transport airplanes to rescue 100 citizens from China like an asteroid was about to hit it and kept them in barracks for weeks, but have this kind of air traffic streaming in.

[earthtourist]

Yeah, it explains why the testing isn't happening as well. Why bother doing surveillance testing if you've already surrendered to a 70% infection rate?

There's no point. Better to just let people come to the hospital if they absolutely need to, rather than risk people coming to the ER just because they tested positive.

It is possible that Italy has made a mistake in doing as many tests as they have. I'm not sure what the numbers are but it could be that the addition of infected-but-not-seriously-ill patients is a major problem.

So maybe this anti-surveillance testing approach does make sense once you've conceded the battle to contain the infection.

[jpster]

Following your line of thought, giving people easy ways to self-diagnose as quickly as possible is critical. Can we at least deliver flu & cold medicine to as many people as humanly possible? For free? So that they can, themselves, eliminate Covid19 as a possible cause.

That will help flatten the curve.

In concert, universal healthcare at point of service is a must.

As is propping up the people via direct material aid. Food. Rent money. Paid sick leave.

I thought I heard Trump say that interest on federal student loans would be “waived”. Did he mean forgive or defer? I don’t know if it’s at all true because he is a compulsive liar.

If it is true, great. But insufficient.

What we also need is a debt jubilee and infra & public investments that are truly net-positive for the neediest.

This will lead to inflation. Which by the way will be sorely needed. And by every affected country. I’m curious about the MMT community‘s point of view on this.

[s-]

Keep in mind a lot of those flights are flying empty due to use it or loose it rules.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/coronavirus-some-airlines-ar...

[indecisive_user]

>anyone with symptoms to self isolate for a week, regardless of positive test.

In an ideal world we would already be doing this. I know that some people have to show up to work even if they're sick, but even at my job where we have unlimited sick leave, and are encouraged to use it, people still show up coughing and sniffling.

I don't get it.

If your employer encourages you to work from home when you're sick, and you're actually sick, please work from home! No one wants to catch your disease, whether it's Coronavirus or "just" the common cold.

[cc81]

This is a special case of course and I work for a company where we are told to work from home right now regardless of symptoms or not.

However when it comes to the common cold that is something that will be going of for weeks and return several times for some people, just the light symptoms. No fever but some coughing and sneezing.

For some job roles and in some companies with good culture it works great to work home but for a lot you cannot really be home for like 6 weeks every winter because you are missing out too much or are not effective enough.

[indecisive_user]

I disagree that the solution to "missing out too much" when you're sick is to go to work anyway and risk infecting co-workers.

According to the CDC, the average adult gets the common cold 2-3 times per year with symptoms lasting 7-10 days[1]. So it's more like 2-4 weeks per year, but I would imagine that number would decrease if you didn't have people coming into work sick in the first place (again, I recognize not every job will allow for this). Hong Kong's flu season apparently ended early this year due to the self isolation of sick people[2].

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/features/rhinoviruses/index.html

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/ad7ae6b4-5eab-11ea-b0ab-339c2307b...

[Barrin92]

> know that some people have to show up to work even if they're sick, but even at my job where we have unlimited sick leave, and are encouraged to use it, people still show up coughing and sniffling.

yes, the 'overzealous hero employee' archetype is very real. The Coronavirus aside I just wish this would generally become socially unacceptable. Not just during a pandemic but in general sacrificing health or sleep or some reasonable balance of life for work should not be celebrated.

[jpster]

I agree but there are millions who literally cannot afford to stay home — or they risk making rent and buying food. We must solve this problem at once. Pandemics aren’t gonna go anyway.

[elihu]

I suppose limitations on testing are going to make the official numbers less useful going forward, not that they were taken as anything but a very rough lower bound so far.

I mean, the Johns Hopkins map shows 13 infections in Ohio, and you have the director of the Ohio Department of Health saying it's 100,000. How do we know if either are anywhere close to right?

Presumably when things get bad it'll be impossible to hide it, as the hospitals will be over capacity. That's already happened in Wuhan and China, and probably Iran and some other places as well.

It would be nice if we had some sort of indication of where a particular region is on the scale from "hardly anyone has this yet" to "we're experiencing rampant community spread" that's more trustworthy/accurate than the official numbers.

[jpster]

>It would be nice [...]

Here is data where “Total” is meant to represent the number tested. Ideally we would see this also represented as a percentage of the local population.

https://covidtracking.com/notes/

[apabepa]

I agree with this comment. I see it as pragmatic thinking not to test people at this point. It is a special situation, if you show any symptom of sickness just stay at home, it should be a no-brainer. What if you cough in public? Will you shout "IT IS JUST A COMMON COLD" and people will feel safe? Actually people who "just have a bit of a cold" should stay at home in normal circumstances too in my opinion. It might be OK for you to have a runny nose but some other poor guy might catch your cold and get it worse because of bad immune system. Its comes down to individualistic vs collectivist thinking and now might be the time to think about the greater good.

[2snakes]

OTOH this will likely have 60-80% penetration so we should all get used to people coughing, and be kind while distancing.

[chvid]

Here in Denmark we have just shut our borders. You can no longer enter as Swede.

We as nation put on extreme measures but there is no visibility.

What is the true number of infected in Denmark? There is no sampling or systematic measurement going on.

We probably know less than you guys in Sweden yet we choose the most extreme actions.

We just had our PM go on national TV and call on all Danes to return to Denmark as she shut down the border.

[adventured]

Given the massive explosion in cases in Denmark, going from 514 to 1573 in two days, closing the borders is probably wise. For a country with just 5.9 million people, that's a recipe for collapsing your healthcare system if the cases continue to increase like that for much longer.

There are not many medical systems on the planet that could handle that per capita case load increase in such a short amount of time (specifically the intensive care patients that will go with it in the coming days and weeks).

[chvid]

Depends on why the increase in cases? Just because succesfully traced and identified a group of cases, it doesn't tell you anything about the growth in the true number of infected.

There are 10 people in hospitals in Denmark for COVID19. None dead.

By the publicised numbers Sweden is hit about the same as Denmark; yet they choose a much more moderate approach.

[Lewton]

It’s amazing that anyone can still be in doubt about drastic measures being necessary when we have Italy as an example of what can happen

[ceejayoz]

Still seeing lots of "this is just the media blowing things out of proportion" posts on local news Facebook pages.

As if China can be explained that way.

[chvid]

Just to be clear.

I have no opinion on whether this is blown out of proportion.

I can just see that my own country is choosing the most extreme measures (packaged in nationalistic rhetorics) where as our neighbours are not.

The idea that the population should be sampled so the exact extent of the spread can be measured (and so can the effect of the various policies) is not mine. Here is a Danish doctor calling for the same:

https://www.altinget.dk/artikel/overlaege-regeringens-corona...

In Danish. Headline: The Government's Corona-strategy misses focus on the engine of the epidemic

[aboodman]

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_D..., it's 23 in hospital vs 801 total identified cases. That a hospitalization rate of only 2.8%. I wonder what accounts for the massive discrepancy from other countries.

[Lewton]

Amount of people tested, age of people infected and time

So far the people infected skews fairly young

And the pandemic took hold around Tuesday and it takes about a week for hospitalization to be required in the severe cases

[ridewinter]

And I thought it was only here in the USA... Almost good to know that we're not alone in our incompetence.

At least next time around we should all be prepared like Taiwan was this time.

[elorant]

No, you're not. In Greece starting tomorrow all bars, restaurants, malls, hair salons and whatnot will be shut down. Schools are already closed for two weeks.

It's not just the inefficiency of central governments. The main problem, at least here, is that people seem reluctant to follow guidelines, and thus the state had to enforce stricter rules. The same happened in Italy and it's the reason incidents skyrocketed. Everyone was fucking around thinking that it's just another variant of the flu. And then reality hit them like a ton of bricks.

[rasz]

>We as nation put on extreme measures

sarcasm? or heard on TV to calm the population?

This is how extreme measures look like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXpHD9bjGe0

Denmark is negligent, as is rest of Europe.

[chvid]

I don't know what Denmark is but I am worried.

Three weeks ago our PM was busy playing petty political games with the opposition, today she is shutting down our borders preventing all foreigners entering the country.

[dharma1]

Same in the UK. You won't be tested any longer if you show symptoms. I called NHS 111 yesterday because my son has high fever and a cough. 2 hour wait time to speak to someone on the phone, which gives an indication of how many people are calling in with symptoms.

They said the symptoms sound like coronavirus, but it's not being tested anymore (it was still being tested at drive-throughs 2 days ago) as the government has moved from "contain" phase to "delay" phase - advised to stay at home for 7 days and call back if it gets worse.

I asked if his brother can continue going to school, given he is probably exposed - the advise was yes, as long as he isn't showing any symptoms.

They have given up trying to contain this and it's difficult to see how you can trust reported case numbers going forward since testing has stopped.

[nabla9]

Same in Finland, but there are exceptions. For example medical staff will be tested if they feel symptoms.

Otherwise healthy people should not go to hospital if they feel symptoms. For most people it's just a flu.

All events with more than 500 people are forbidden.

[alkonaut]

Sweden did pretty well to scale from zero to ten test labs in just a couple of weeks though.

I read thats more labs than can do the same in the US.

[rasz]

Are you suggesting Sweden had zero labs with PCR machines couple of weeks ago? Is that official propaganda in media right now?

[alkonaut]

No, that’s in no way what I’m suggesting.

[avip]

So... what's the course of action for medical staff?

[MaCorona]

One could built UV-Lightmasks.

A transparent hose, add UV-LEDS to sterilize the flowing air. Dry the air at the start with silica gel. All that is needed then is a battery.

The silica gel can be heated every once in a while to loose any moisture bound it and sterilize virus particles attached to it.

[steve_adams_86]

You'd need a specific wavelength (265nm seems to be the standard) and they get pretty expensive. A UV LED from adafruit or sparkfun will probably not be sufficient.

At a glance they sell LEDs around 400nm which from my cursory reading wouldn't be effective for what you're imagining.

Not to say this would never work. Just that you would need special parts that are less common and more expensive by orders of magnitude.

I've also read that sterilizing very fast moving air doesn't work well. It seems HVAC systems use extremely intense light order to be effective in these conditions, which a small LED (or a few) wouldn't accomplish.

[wwweston]

It seems more productive to hit the room with far UVC, and there are already some products that do that, not sure about scale though.

[numpad0]

Might as well make it a fully closed rebreather gear(note: CO2 removal is more important than adding oxygen)

[deepnotderp]

It would probably be easier to deploy far-uvc or resonant microwave anti microbial systems.

[lend000]

I hate to see creative ideas being down-voted by the mob.

While the length of UV exposure time required to kill viruses is probably impractical for a mask, certain UV bands could be instrumental for sanitizing public areas and hospitals. [0]

[0] https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20180212/can-uv-ligh...