Corona Virus/COVID19: Local Impact

[aljaklaw]

... and just like that, today I got an email saying they're closing from tomorrow until the 16th of April. Leaving the food part open though. I guess it doesn't matter if people pass off COVID-19 tainted food, but it's too dangerous to walk around outside in the open air hitting a ball around the grass.

shut up and be miserable locked inside your house like the rest of us!

There are news reports that some companies are planning to reduce employeee’s pay by the amount they receive from the government stimulus program.

This strikes me as an extremely bold move because I expect most people are going to be PO’d about this. These companies could face a consumer backlash.

Also, not sure how it is legal for an employer to do this. I suppose employment at will means an emplayer can do whatever they want???

Those people affected like that should reconsider who they work for.

 

[OGputtnfool]

shut up and be miserable locked inside your house like the rest of us!

I will not be staying inside for the duration no matter what. I needed a good reason and some motivation to start running again anyway.

 

[Golfever]

I'm good with 2k for all nurses regardless of the known threat. What a great thing to do.

They can feel free to go to 150% of the wages of people stocking shelves at grocery stores while they are at it, at least for a month.

My thoughts were that this could have been the first thing Congress could have done in a Stand alone bill. But they had to play politics with it

 

[JB]

There are news reports that some companies are planning to reduce employeee’s pay by the amount they receive from the government stimulus program.

This strikes me as an extremely bold move because I expect most people are going to be PO’d about this. These companies could face a consumer backlash.

Also, not sure how it is legal for an employer to do this. I suppose employment at will means an emplayer can do whatever they want???

The administration was pretty clear about the shenanigans, combined with the consumer backlash would be a bad move.

 

[buckeyewalt]

Income, compensation, and all forms of payment that reward productivity should never be taxed. That goes for dividends, interest, and capital gains, too.

OK, so you're for ZERO tax of any kind, right?

 

[mpeterson]

This is a really good question! I will tell you that I'm not a MD, but I do work for an biotech company where our backbone is in antiviral therapies. The drugs used to treat SARS outbreak fell into a couple of drug classifications, nucleoside analogues or protease inhibitors. These classes of drugs were used separately and in combination to 'treat' SARS patients but had limited successes. Ribavirin is a broad spectrum nucleoside analogue and was widely given, but had little effect on the virus or the severe respirator symptoms. The protease inhibitors, which I can't remember names were also given and did reduce some of the severe symptoms but were not broadly efficacious if memory serves me.

I know that these classes of drugs have vastly improved over the past 15ish years, Remdesivir is a nucleoside analogue which is being used broadly now (among some others, but this is what my company is working on) in hopes that its a better version. These drugs work by blocking the RNA pathway for the virus to replicate.

I also think corticosteriods were used in the treatment of SARS to reduce cytokine response to the infections, (sort of an over response by the immune system), but I need to go back and look. I've not heard these being used to treat COVID19 symptoms.

I know there are a few THPers that are MDs . Maybe they can weigh in on what and why treatments are what they are now....

I've been working on a project at work where we're dusting off some machine learning/natural language processing work we did last year to summarize out what people are trying for SARS/MERS treatment w/ clinical trials and other published research. People are throwing the kitchen sink at it to see what works, but some of the research is looking at some of the SARS drugs - I know there are trials w/ Ribavarin, I think in combo with other antivirals.

 

[Stemmy66]

On the opposite side, a lot more people have or have recovered from Covid 19 than testing shows. My buddies son tested positive after returning from Spain 16 days ago and getting very sick. My buddy and his wife came down with the classic high fever and cough about 5 days later and their doctor refused them testing and told them to stay home and assume they had it. There 17 year old daughter had almost no symptoms but likely had it as well according to their doctors. They show up officially as 1 case of Covid 19 but were actually 4 and all have recovered. Another 50% or more never show symptoms so it’s likely that Covid exposure is five or ten times the official numbers, maybe more as we haven’t yet begun random testing in the U.S. and have only tested about 0.2% of the population. Iceland is they only country that has done any random testing are also the only country that has tested more than 3% of their population. They are seeing a 6.4% positive rate which would indicate the number infected and infected and recovered is way higher than the lack of testing in other countries is currently showing. 50% or more show zero symptoms and obviously have some ability to spread the virus so it is certainly possible that 5 or 10 million Americans have the virus or have recovered from it. We likely won’t know for another 6 months or more.

I’m sure next time a virus hits like this one(maybe again next flu season) we will be much better prepared for it.

Please don't take this as me coming at you.....
but, your statement about Iceland is unequivocally false. South Korea is testing broadly across all demographics, sick or otherwise.... they're even using 'drive thru' testing.... literally drive up in your car, roll your window down and be administered the test, which is paid by the Govt. and they continue to test broadly even though they've flattened the curve of virus. The first case in Korea occurred on the same day the first case was diagnosed in US....Korea is getting back to normal in most regions (yeah, 1/7th US population, but....) In addition, the Iceland comparison is way, way skewed..... the population of Iceland is ~370K?? and talk about isolated.... For the most part all of these numbers no matter how they are cut up have significant holes...

Where I 100% agree, we will not know true representative numbers until after the fact.....but this too is skewed by several facts: so many people are isolating which in theory has pushed down the numbers of infections and testing is paltry at best... and this can only be considered comparative data where similarities are drawn, not necessarily conclusions, IMO.

Stay healthy!

 

[McLovin]

There are news reports that some companies are planning to reduce employeee’s pay by the amount they receive from the government stimulus program.

This strikes me as an extremely bold move because I expect most people are going to be PO’d about this. These companies could face a consumer backlash.

Also, not sure how it is legal for an employer to do this. I suppose employment at will means an emplayer can do whatever they want???

the payroll protection plan allows for a 25% decrease in wages. anything below that, and you jeopardize the full forgiveness. but also know that payments made are forgiveable dollar-for-dollar against the loan proceeds. backing into that, if you pay less than you received, you'll have to pay the excess back though at a decent rate and over no more than 10 years. i'm just saying, it's not like they're pocketing the excess and getting a handout to go buy a jet ski or something.

 

[Stemmy66]

I've been working on a project at work where we're dusting off some machine learning/natural language processing work we did last year to summarize out what people are trying for SARS/MERS treatment w/ clinical trials and other published research. People are throwing the kitchen sink at it to see what works, but some of the research is looking at some of the SARS drugs - I know there are trials w/ Ribavarin, I think in combo with other antivirals.

Yeah, there were trials, but these had limited numbers of subjects and data would need do use some meta-analysis or pooled data..... I don't understand how this machine learning si&% works but get those things cooking......let Watson tell us how to fix this.... I'm good with that!

 

[mpeterson]

Yeah, there were trials, but these had limited numbers of subjects and data would need do use some meta-analysis or pooled data..... I don't understand how this machine learning si&% works but get those things cooking......let Watson tell us how to fix this.... I'm good with that!

I don't envy the folks who are trying to get through the literature on this - there are something like 130 records in clinicaltrials.gov and tens of papers are being published daily.

Off topic for this thread, but based on the "success" of Watson for cancer... maybe we don't want that.

In good news, even with (relatively) wider testing here in the US, increases in cases (country-wide) seem to be slowing down a bit. I'm guessing the picture isn't as rosy for some metros. But I'll take a silver lining when I can find it.

 

[Canadan]

My thoughts were that this could have been the first thing Congress could have done in a Stand alone bill. But they had to play politics with it

Yeah. A new era of congress.

call it the “one bipartisan thing at a time” era. Might even become a golden age of politics hahahaha

 

[tahoebum]

Please don't take this as me coming at you.....
but, your statement about Iceland is unequivocally false. South Korea is testing broadly across all demographics, sick or otherwise.... they're even using 'drive thru' testing.... literally drive up in your car, roll your window down and be administered the test, which is paid by the Govt. and they continue to test broadly even though they've flattened the curve of virus. The first case in Korea occurred on the same day the first case was diagnosed in US....Korea is getting back to normal in most regions (yeah, 1/7th US population, but....) In addition, the Iceland comparison is way, way skewed..... the population of Iceland is ~370K?? and talk about isolated.... For the most part all of these numbers no matter how they are cut up have significant holes...

Where I 100% agree, we will not know true representative numbers until after the fact.....but this too is skewed by several facts: so many people are isolating which in theory has pushed down the numbers of infections and testing is paltry at best... and this can only be considered comparative data where similarities are drawn, not necessarily conclusions, IMO.

Stay healthy!

South Korea ramped up testing way better than the U.S. and many other countries but haven’t tested nearly as many per capita as Iceland has. Iceland is unique for testing in that it is small in population and more isolated as an island but that doesn’t make there stats not relevant. They are the only country I’m aware of that has tested all incoming visitors since February and the only one that has been doing truly random sampling for the last 4 weeks. South Korea was only testing those that were high risk or showing symptoms initially and I can’t find information if and when that changed. I also don’t know how much of SK testing, if any, has been random sampling so it’s very difficult to know with reasonable accuracy, as we do in Iceland, how prevalent Covid 19 is in the general population.

 

[arydolphin]

Some people just don’t get it. Apparently this is also happening in South Carolina near Charleston per a good friend.

 

[Canadan]

Some people just don’t get it. Apparently this is also happening in South Carolina near Charleston per a good friend.

Pure ignorance right there.

 

[JB]

Pure ignorance right there.

Effin tourists will just not stop. Our beaches are closed right now and for the most part people are doing the right thing.
But the amount of tourists here that have no care in the world and the thought of “I paid my money, i am going to do what I want” is mind blowing.

 

[Canadan]

Effin tourists will just not stop. Our beaches are closed right now and for the most part people are doing the right thing.
But the amount of tourists here that have no care in the world and the thought of “I paid my money, i am going to do what I want” is mind blowing.

I’d love to see a nationwide program that starts fining people for things like this.

with all proceeds going to the relief efforts on medical supplies etc.

 

[Tee/Ski]

Effin tourists will just not stop. Our beaches are closed right now and for the most part people are doing the right thing.
But the amount of tourists here that have no care in the world and the thought of “I paid my money, i am going to do what I want” is mind blowing.

I'm guessing they are New York Cidiots. It's a **** show in the city.

 

[JB]

I’d love to see a nationwide program that starts fining people for things like this.

with all proceeds going to the relief efforts on medical supplies etc.

I have come to realize the cluelessness that exists, is worse than I thought. Some examples of the last 48 hours.

“Why do I need to work, I am getting almost 2k a month from stimulus and unemployment.“ No you aren’t.
“I paid for this vacation, I already felt bad before and feel great now, so I’m good” WTF
“The flu didnt kill me, so who cares about this one” WTF
“This is going to last into October and November, my doctor told me”. Thats just as bad

 

[JB]

I'm guessing they are New York Cidiots. It's a **** show in the city.

Oh I know it is. Right now we have orders that everybody coming from Tri-State gets checked and quarantined, and check points up in spots because these ******* idiots think they DESERVE a vacation.

 

[TheDoctor]

Just seen the evening news here in the UK and there was an article about Russia and how things are going to crap over there

They interviewed a woman who said they were still going to church as it wasn't possible to get the virus in a holy place

This woman was a doctor!

The amount of ignorance and those saying it won't affect them (all over the world) is just unbelievable

 

[buckeyewalt]

Effin tourists will just not stop. Our beaches are closed right now and for the most part people are doing the right thing.
But the amount of tourists here that have no care in the world and the thought of “I paid my money, i am going to do what I want” is mind blowing.

We came home a week early because the beaches in Sarasota on down were closed along with most restaurants.!

 

[Stemmy66]

South Korea ramped up testing way better than the U.S. and many other countries but haven’t tested nearly as many per capita as Iceland has. Iceland is unique for testing in that it is small in population and more isolated as an island but that doesn’t make there stats not relevant. They are the only country I’m aware of that has tested all incoming visitors since February and the only one that has been doing truly random sampling for the last 4 weeks. South Korea was only testing those that were high risk or showing symptoms initially and I can’t find information if and when that changed. I also don’t know how much of SK testing, if any, has been random sampling so it’s very difficult to know with reasonable accuracy, as we do in Iceland, how prevalent Covid 19 is in the general population.

I don't have the figures to support, but part of my clinical team is based in Korea and they indicate that testing has been done broadly based on roaming areas of provinces and cities. Not sure that constitutes broadly, but its more than here...

 

[mpeterson]

For folks interested in numbers, etc: STAT has a good tracker that lets you drill down to state/county level in the US, in addition to worldwide numbers.

The Covid-19 Tracker

As the virus that causes Covid-19 spreads worldwide, this dashboard offers a snapshot of confirmed cases by geographic location. Click a country name to get a more detailed geographic breakdown at the state, province, or county level. Learn more.

www.statnews.com

 

[Stemmy66]

Since all the city parks and golf courses are still closed locally, while walking the dog just a bit ago, I gave it considerable thought to jump the fence (with at couple clubs in hand) that separates a walking path and the city muni course.... but I couldn't figure out how to get the dog safely on the other side....

 

[tahoebum]

Effin tourists will just not stop. Our beaches are closed right now and for the most part people are doing the right thing.
But the amount of tourists here that have no care in the world and the thought of “I paid my money, i am going to do what I want” is mind blowing.

Collier County decided not to shelter in place after announcing they would on Thursday. The beaches were scheduled to reopen on April 1st but I’m not sure if they’ve extended the closure. I’m sure they will be packed if they open them as people were still walking on them when they were closed.