Well, it appears clearly that all this was possible due to the way travel has gotten people to move around and bring back illnesses.
So I suppose one way of making sure this won´t happen again is to stop that. For good. For ever.
I reckon many of the airliners around here will never fly again or be converted to freighters… which is halfways safe a way to do business. I reckon many people now realize that business trips are not necessary, nor are meetings and other waste of time, when things can be done online. And I also reckon that a lot of tourists will have learnt their lesson as well and will not venture beyond where they can drive in a day or two.
The great thing about science is that people can disagree and discuss freely. That’s how it should be.
Oddly enough, that’s a concept many people don’t understand. It’s like science and engineering. The largest difference is engineers have to take decisions. What will work, what won’t. What will sell, what won’t and so on. Right or wrong has very little to do with it. It’s like when I did RC planes as a boy. With enough engine power, anything will fly, making a fool of every and all aerodynamic theories 
I can only guess the same is true in medicine. There is a whole bunch of theories and scientific research. But, at the end of the day, someone has to decide what to do, and actually do it.
LeSving wrote:
I can only guess the same is true in medicine. There is a whole bunch of theories and scientific research. But, at the end of the day, someone has to decide what to do, and actually do it
True. We doctors do this every single day, actually. A lot of medical research is contradictory, so as an individual doctor you always have to have a good knowledge of the current scientific evidence and, more importantly, wheter that really applies to the individual patient in front if you (because many studies use “ideal” patients who rarely occur in real, everyday medicine).
I think the time for being sceptical about Covid-19 is over. It is real and it is killing real people, of all age groups, worldwide and as we speak. The debate about “excess mortality” etc. is pointless. It is important to keep asking questions and be sceptical about things that are presented as “absolute truths”, but it is also important to know when to accept something as a given fact.
The head of virology at the Charité, who is advising the federal German government, reckoned at a press conference today that the main reason why Germany has such a low mortality rate is that we test a lot, currently about 500.000 people per week, so our numbers (current mortality around 0,4%) more accurately reflect the real characteristics of this disease. It also needs to be said that many patients die after two to three weeks, so a lot of those who are infected now will probably be added to the death toll later.
hmng wrote:
It doesn’t take much to overload a Hospital, Italy had it before
It’s the second time you write this. I’m italian and my gf is a GP but we never heard ot that. Can you remember us when it happened ?
Just how much more brain-dead can humans get?
That would not last 5 minutes against an FOIA application. Hopefully some civil service d1ck is going to get kicked out.
MedEwok wrote:
True. We doctors do this every single day, actually. A lot of medical research is contradictory, so as an individual doctor you always have to have a good knowledge of the current scientific evidence and, more importantly, wheter that really applies to the individual patient in front if you (because many studies use “ideal” patients who rarely occur in real, everyday medicine).
I remember reading years ago that science is trying to understand the laws of nature. Engineering takes those laws and tries to apply them to solve practical problems, build machines, solve people’s needs. Now Medicine, like engineering, also uses nature’s laws and scientific discoveries and apply them to people’s health. But it is not engineering. And the proof is that, if it was, it would become cheaper and cheaper as time goes by :-)
(And because I got into trouble before for repeating this ‘joke’, I personally am not referring to doctor’s salaries. I understand that those in relative terms have probably gone down in recent times)
MedEwok wrote:
I think the time for being sceptical about Covid-19 is over. It is real and it is killing real people, of all age groups, worldwide and as we speak. The debate about “excess mortality” etc. is pointless. It is important to keep asking questions and be sceptical about things that are presented as “absolute truths”, but it is also important to know when to accept something as a given fact.
Being totally respectfully, but are you sure you are not presenting those facts a bit dogmatically?
Having said that, hope all goes well in your hospital, and that your team will be able to cope.
Impressive numbers for testing in Germany! It does show that the mortality rate is way below the scare numbers repeated ad nauseam.
ormazad wrote:
It’s the second time you write this. I’m italian and my gf is a GP but we never heard ot that. Can you remember us when it happened ?
I can not find something for Portugal, only my memory of years past where authorities were pleading for people to avoid going to Hospitals as much as possible as the number of people with respiratory issues were over burdening the services.
For Italy, there is this news item https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/18_gennaio_10/milano-terapie-intensive-collasso-l-influenza-gia-48-malati-gravi-molte-operazioni-rinviate-c9dc43a6-f5d1-11e7-9b06-fe054c3be5b2.shtml
You can of course look at it and say that the levels of overburdening where way bellow what happened now, but to my mind, the current panic would have made a bad situation become way worse.
Like how this Spanish doctor reports on her hospital https://twitter.com/NeurologaenSAS/status/1239498772570308609
And, of course Switzerland, Sweden and many others do not have that issue.
Peter wrote:
Constructed this simple UV steriliser
Nice. Some more info of a DIY makeshift sterilizer with petri dish tests of effectiveness: https://www.cupofinsanity.com/blog/2017/06/20/my-diy-uvc-light-sterilizer/
hmng wrote:
Impressive numbers for testing in Germany! It does show that the mortality rate is way below the scare numbers repeated ad nauseam.
They were for a long time at 0.2%, but have lately creeped up to 0.4%, and now 0.6%. So probably converging over time to values seen elsewhere in Nordic countries. Two calculators:
https://neherlab.org/covid19/
http://gabgoh.github.io/COVID/index.html
and curves for different regions:
https://www.bing.com/covid/
hmng wrote:
Impressive numbers for testing in Germany! It does show that the mortality rate is way below the scare numbers repeated ad nauseam.
I think Germany people & govt are clearly scared to death with 0.5% fatality rate on 70% population infection base, weeks ago, I personally went with what Angela Merkel (PhD in quantum chemistry) & her medical advisers think, at that time Boris Johnson & Cummings & Co were talking about doing nothing and herd immunity then completely change course…
I agree Italy 8k deaths don’t make sense and one can make whatever they like about them (reporting? half of country is infected? lies? old?), but even if you split that by 10-50 and follow the trends, one should be concerned, if you don’t get the lyrics try the tunes…
