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“Ohio's experts believe that already 1 percent, or 117,000, of Ohio's 11.7 million residents are infected by COVID-19.”
If that’s what the “Experts” believe , and we also know as fact , there have been ZERO deaths in Ohio , correct?
This is all guesswork until we determine the denominator. The denominator would be positive coronavirus test results for the 11.7 million people in Ohio. That is the only way to determine how deadly the virus is.
How many people knew that 80,000 people in America died from the flu last year? And how come St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t canceled last year? Just saying .. coronavirus seems hyped up to me for some reason.
“Ohio's experts believe that already 1 percent, or 117,000, of Ohio's 11.7 million residents are infected by COVID-19.”
If that’s what the “Experts” believe , and we also know as fact , there have been ZERO deaths in Ohio , correct?
This is all guesswork until we determine the denominator. The denominator would be positive coronavirus test results for the 11.7 million people in Ohio. That is the only way to determine how deadly the virus is.
How many people knew that 80,000 people in America died from the flu last year? And how come St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t canceled last year? Just saying .. coronavirus seems hyped up to me for some reason.
1. It's an estimate. They're barely testing anyone.
2. A large portion of cases are asymptomatic while contagious. Depending on how long it's been in Ohio, that could mean that a lot of people are about to become sick. Even if the number is far too high, it's spreading through the population, which still means a lot of people are going to become sick.
3. It's real. Iran is digging mass graves. Italy is falling apart with hospitals overwhelmed, and most of Europe is a week or so behind them. China had to lock down 700 million people with incredibly strict protocols just to get it under control, and yet most people believe it was and is far worse than officially reported.
I believe this virus is a real and significant threat, just so we have that clear before the point I'm about to make.
The "100,000+ infected" number from the State of Ohio is bogus, period. It's based on a simple (and inadvertent, I believe) reasoning error.
The quote from Melanie Amato in this article (https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/...ng-coronavirus) is absurd, when you think about it for a minute. If I were to find two cases in, say, Lakewood (pop. 50,000), and it's confirmed that each of these two resulted from community spread, I don't conclude that 500 people in Lakewood are infected, and 117,000 people in Ohio are infected (since the two cases are also "part of the Ohio community"), and ~3.27 million people in the U.S. are infected (since the two cases are also "part of the American community"). This would be absurd reasoning.
This virologist in Washington state (who has been consistently providing great information about COVID-19) explains here why it's practically impossible for Ohio to have that many infections: https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1238290215178887169
And a response to the above Twitter thread (by a Michigan sportswriter, go figure) also shows the extreme error of the State of Ohio's number by comparing our situation to that of Lombardy, which is about the same population: https://twitter.com/stareagle/status...15521612951553
Not only do we have no deaths, but I'm not even noticing anyone coughing around here (near west side of Cleveland near downtown).
I'll close by reiterating that I do take the threat seriously. I quit traveling more than two weeks ago and have no intention of going anywhere anytime soon. I applaud the closings and cancellations we've seen in the last couple days. We do not want to go down Italy's path, period.
Last edited by tribecavsbrowns; 03-13-2020 at 01:56 AM..
As documented near the end of this post, absent a vaccine, we likely need to reach a 50 percent COVID-19 infection rate in order to confer a substantial degree of "herd immunity." So, as explained by Gov. DeWine but not perhaps understood, the goal of his social distancing mandates is to slow the spread of the virus in order to prevent the overwhelming of our medical institutions. Experts will be watching outcomes in China, and eventually Italy, to understand the impact of rolling back social distancing restrictions at some point after passing the peak infection rate.
The key question in Greater Cleveland, where most confirmed COVID-19 cases in Ohio are located, and in Ohio in general is at what level of COVID-19 patient admissions would our intensive care/ventilator capacity be overwhelmed. I haven't seen this vital analysis anywhere.
Also, it's likely (as with polio when the oldest of us were young children before the availability of the polio vaccine) that Americans will impose self-distancing even after mandatory restrictions are lifted, at least for many months or until a vaccine is approved. This may be a brutal year for MLB attendance (was the Indians ownership/management very astute in slashing its 2020 payroll?); even attendance at eventual opening days this season may be very problematic.
We won't know the infection rate in Ohio at least until we actually have mass testing capability, if then, as many persons are asymptomatic. Sadly, northeast Ohio may be a small hotbed of COVID-19 contagion, perhaps reflecting the failure of local officials to impose aggressive social distancing when COVID-19 cases first were detected. E.g., Cleveland's popular Playhouse Square shut down only yesterday and only on orders to limit mass meetings issued by Gov. Mike DeWine. While some Ohio churches have voluntarily canceled in-person services, a state-wide ban on religious services has not yet been enacted.
As discovered in Italy, given the several day incubation period of COVID-19 and its highly contagious nature, COVID-19 infection rates and cases requiring hospitalization can mushroom from a few cases to a dire epidemic in just a few weeks. Discrediting efforts of Ohio health officials to estimate the current rate of infection in Ohio's population are counter-productive at best, and meaningless given the reality that a large percentage of infection is necessary to confer herd mentality.
What is sobering is that the first case of a COVID-19 patient in Italy was reported only on Feb. 20, just 3 weeks ago. Hopefully, the Italian experience won't play out in Ohio or elsewhere in the U.S.
Does this sound familiar? Consider that Ohio and U.S. COVID-19 testing capacity has been much lower than in Italy, which also lags far behind the testing rate in South Korea.
<<
Officially it began [in Italy] in Feb. 20, when a 38-year-old man checked himself into a local hospital in the town of Codogno in Lombardy. He tested positive with the virus, becoming the first recorded patient with the COVID-19 virus in Italy.
Yet some health officials believe that the virus arrived in Italy long before the first case was discovered. “The virus had probably been circulating for quite some time,” Flavia Riccardo, a researcher in the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Italian National Institute of Health tells TIME. “This happened right when we were having our peak of influenza and people were presenting with influenza symptoms.”
Before the first case was reported, there was an unusually high number of pneumonia cases recorded at a hospital in Codogno in northern Italy, the head of the emergency ward Stefano Paglia told the newspaper La Repubblica, suggesting it is possible patients with the virus were treated as if they had a seasonal flu. Health facilities hosting these patients could have become sites for infection, helping proliferate the spread of the virus....
Some officials also believe Italy, which has already tested over 42, 000 people, may have a higher number of cases as a result of performing more rigorous tests than their European counterparts.>>
Pray that we dodge the COVID-19 bullet that has hit Italy and that the aggressive social distancing measures imposed by the DeWine administration :
<<
With the bulk of Italy's residents on coronavirus lockdown, a top infectious disease expert cautioned Thursday that the country is likely still two weeks away from seeing the deadly disease reach its peak.
Dr. Massimo Galli, head of the infectious disease unit at the overwhelmed Sacco Hospital in Milan, told ABC News that the hospital is receiving new patients every five minutes and that the facility is reaching a point of "complete saturation."
"I think patients will increase for another week or two," Galli said, adding that the country could see infections spread for up to four more weeks....
Italian officials say the number of people with confirmed cases of coronavirus, officially referred to as COVID-19, is at least 12,462 with more than 1,016 deaths as of Thursday afternoon.>>
Mass testing capacity in Ohio is weeks away, and by the time it is available, the indicated infection rate likely will be well above 1 percent. The goal in Ohio is to keep our limited hospital intensive care room and ventilator capacity above water given that much capacity already is used by non-COVID-19 patients.
The important reality is that COVID-19 is highly contagious. Absent vaccines and proven anti-COVID-19 drugs, social distancing is the only effective means to prevent a contagion that overwhelms our medical capabilities. As aggressive as Gov. Mike DeWine has been compared to other states, we still may face a painful medical crisis in Ohio and elsewhere in the U.S. Barring a ban on internal travel and non-essential retail activity and industrial activity, there is little left for Ohio to do to mitigate this crisis. Closing schools for three weeks will enable our health officials to monitor the expected large increase in confirmed infection rates and hospitalizations and to project peak infection and hospitalizations.
Here are the comments of a Harvard expert who has closely analyzed the spread of COVID-19 in China.
<<With COVID-19 cases thought to double every five to seven days, their spread can occur rapidly, and it is critical that steps taken so far — canceling business meetings, working from home when possible, moving college classes online, postponing conferences — become more widespread, before circumstances become critical.
“The situation we should be worrying about is the situation four weeks from now, not the situation now,” Lipsitch said. “That’s hard for people to get their heads around, but it’s really important.”
He cited the recent local meeting of 175 people at the biotech firm Biogen, which has resulted in 70 COVID-19 cases so far....>>
The last paragraph shows how contagious COVID-19 is once the virus is present in a population.
Thankfully, Ohio's large hospitals now are unleashing COVID-19 self-testing capacity. The Cleveland Clinic will be ramping up from 500 tests per day with results available within 8 hours.
<<
The Cleveland Clinic announced it began testing patients internally on Thursday.
It has the capacity to test about 500 samples per day and that is expected to double by late next week, according to Chairman of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Dr. Brian Rubin. Capacity could increase with additional equipment and testing automation....
Rubin said the tests provide results in about eight hours, compared with a three to four-day wait for results from outside labs, such as LabCorp....
As of Thursday, the Ohio Department of Health reports only 87 people have been tested for coronavirus statewide, including 29 through the Cleveland Clinic and about a dozen from [Cleveland's] University Hospitals.>>
Here is perhaps the most important observation made by Lipsitch. In the absence of a vaccine, Lipsitch estimates we need to reach a 50 percent infection rate in order to curb herd mentality.
<<Absent a vaccine, COVID-19 is likely to remain a part of the nation’s health landscape until enough people have been infected — Lipsitch estimates half of the population — that their immunity interferes with transmission and curtails its natural spread.>>
“Ohio's experts believe that already 1 percent, or 117,000, of Ohio's 11.7 million residents are infected by COVID-19.”
If that’s what the “Experts” believe , and we also know as fact , there have been ZERO deaths in Ohio , correct?
This is all guesswork until we determine the denominator. The denominator would be positive coronavirus test results for the 11.7 million people in Ohio. That is the only way to determine how deadly the virus is.
How many people knew that 80,000 people in America died from the flu last year? And how come St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t canceled last year? Just saying .. coronavirus seems hyped up to me for some reason.
As documented in post 14 above, absent social distancing, COVID-19 rapidly can turn into a deadly epidemic overwhelming hospital capacity. This has happened in Italy despite social distancing measures much more draconian than those we've just implemented in Ohio.
The seasonal flu has never overwhelmed our intensive care/ventilator capacity in my memory. Do you disagree? When have our medical professionals been forced to triage flu patients, selecting those most likely to survive for the limited medical resources available, as is occurring now in Italy? Do you propose running the risk, if not certainty, of reaching an Italian level crisis in Ohio???
IF Gov. DeWine's mandated social distancing policies are sufficiently effective, we'll experience a much more limited surge of COVID-19 patients and one within the capacity of our hospitals to fully treat all patients. IMO, the fewer COVID-19 hospitalizations, the better.
Unlike with flu, we lack an effective vaccine and our population has very little herd immunity. With the flu, we have several proven anti-viral drugs. We are currently TESTING only one drug possibly effective against COVID-19.
<<Antiviral medications are an important adjunct to flu vaccine in the control of influenza. Almost all (>99%) of the influenza viruses tested this season are susceptible to the four FDA-approved influenza antiviral medications recommended for use in the U.S. this season.>>
Flu is NOT in competition with COVID-19. They both are deadly diseases, but COVID-19 both is a relatively unknown enemy and one for which we possess virtually no defenses compared to the flu.
I haven't seen anyone mention this, but Ohio's social distancing policies also greatly should reduce flu hospitalizations, freeing up bed space for any COVID-19 patients.
Hopefully, DeWine's social distancing policies will be effective, COVID-19 hospitalizations will be limited as a greater percentage of our population is infected with COVID-19 as we develop herd immunity, and critics such as yourself will mock susequently the efforts that succeeded in preventing an Italian-like crisis.
At some point, once we actually have spare COVID-19 testing capacity, we should undertake random testing, both in Ohio and nationally, to produce a statistically valid study of the percentage of the population that actually possesses COVID-19 antibodies. I don't know if that would require a separate test from the test used to detect the presence of an active virus. If social distancing policies are effective, the frequency of COVID-19 antibodies among the elderly should be much less than among younger Americans. So careful monitoring for COVID-19 will remain necessary until we have effective vaccines and anti-viral drugs with which to counter COVID-19 infections.
Consider that the death rate among hospitalized COVID-19 patients is at least 10-15 times greater than with the flu. And, again, with COVID-19 we have no vaccine, no anti-viral drugs, and only minimal herd immunity.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the renown director of the NIH National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, told Congress this week that COVID-19 is ten times more deadly than the flu.
Hopefully the majority of Americans still trust the "EXPERTS" over those who believe that their relatively ignorant opinions are equal, superior, or in any way worthy of consideration compared to those of the trained and experienced experts.
I would say that even worse than the disease is the reaction to it, I was in Walmart last night and it looked like a scene out of Venezuela. Many of the shelves were stripped bare, no bread, canned food, paper towels or toilet paper, no cleaning products or bottled water. I would say that the only thing in my area that is not in short supply is morally bankrupt people who only think of themselves.
Pray that we dodge the COVID-19 bullet that has hit Italy and that the aggressive social distancing measures imposed by the DeWine administration :
Completing the above sentence:
Pray that we dodge the COVID-19 bullet that has hit Italy and that the aggressive social distancing measures imposed by the DeWine administration work well to limit COVID-19 hospitalizations to manageable levels:
I stumbled across this CNBC story this morning, and am shocked that these warnings are not being prominently conveyed to the American public. I've watched many local Cleveland TV news programs about COVID-19, and did a search of Cleveland.com, and I found none of the information conveyed below. Nor have I seen these warnings mentioned during the many hours of COVID-19 coverage that I've watched on the major news networks. cable news, or PBS news programs.
Has anybody seen these warnings on local news media, or elsewhere? If so, please provide links, especially for local news media.
These warnings may seem obvious given recent events, but nothing beats explicit, overt warnings.
<<The CDC is expanding its guidance for people at extreme risk of serious illness, like those over 60 or with underlying health conditions.
Those over the age of 60 should start stocking up on enough groceries and medications to have on hand, the CDC said.
Those at greatest risk of serious illness should stay home as much as possible if COVID-19 comes to their community, the CDC said. >>
The expanded explanations of these warnings in the article surprised me, and I've highlighted the points that most surprised me.
<<Many Americans will be exposed to COVID-19 over the next year or so with many people in the U.S. getting sick, a top CDC official said Monday, recommending that people over 60 and anyone with chronic medical conditions buckle down for a lengthy stay home.
Did the CDC actually warn many Americans to shelter in home even before contracting COVID-19? For the next year or so???
<<Most people won’t develop serious symptoms, but 15% to 20% of the people who are exposed to the virus get severely sick, she said. >>
We likely all will be exposed to the virus, unless we hide at a well-stocked, self-sustaining farm (with chickens, gardens, fruit tree, and plentiful canned goods and needed supplies on hand. So are 15-20 percent of destined become seriously ill in the coming months/year or more??? That's not an overall percentage that I've comprehended or even considered before today, and it implies a much, much higher percentage of severe illness risk for the at-risk and elderly populations.
<<Of the 70,000 cases WHO scientists looked at, only about 2% were in people younger than 19. The odds of developing COVID-19 increase with age, starting at age 60. It’s especially lethal for people over 80. >>
I've read that, but I'm not certain that most Americans understand this reality, and it should be frightening for those of us with healthy, functioning parents, grandparents, other friends and relatives in this age group.
<<The CDC is recommending people with underlying conditions or who are over 60 to stock up on medications, household items and groceries to stay at home “for a period of time,” she said.>>
I hadn't heard any warnings that any Americans should shelter in place, although I know that social distancing measures in China and Italy included such requirements. Even though it is not mandatory, if it is wise, urgent advice, shouldn't all impacted Americans be warned and urged to make arrangements to shelter in place for the next few months, especially as the infection rate ramps up and then peaks, and as herd immunity builds in the populace? Should the government be making arrangements to support those especially at risk as they shelter in place?
<<The CDC is recommending that people at higher risk avoid crowds, touching “high-touch” surfaces in public areas and close contact with people who are sick.
“These are the kind of recommendations that I’ve made to my parents ... other staff at CDC are doing the same,” she said. >>
I had heard the following story on MSNBC this morning, wondering if this was a common fear among the elderly in areas already with elevated levels of COVID-19 infections.
Now, after reading the CNBC story, I'm wondering if this might be me and my friends in a month or two. I'm going to head to Costco today and try to buy canned chicken to supplement my already ample supplies of canned goods (purchased during sales; bought Campbell Chunky soup at Meijers for $1/can about a month ago, and I doubt we'll see such prices again for many months).
Having done some research, it's likely that the CNBC story was based on the March 9 "CDC Media Telebriefing: Update on COVID-19." While the CDC has released transcripts for other telebriefings, including for March 3 and March 10, I was not able to find a transcript for the March 9 telebriefing.
The March 9 telebriefing clearly featured Nancy Messonnier, M.D., Director, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who was quoted extensively in the CNBC article.
We clearly should be asking what our communities are doing to help the elderly and other at risk individuals shelter in place until the worst of the COVID-19 has passed and it is relatively safe to venture forth in public. Should the Ohio and local health departments be issuing warnings urging the elderly and at risk individuals to shelter in place? Such warnings not only may protect the health of these individuals, but also greatly reduce the upcoming burden on our hospitals.
My goal this weekend is to prepare to spend much, much more time at home. When I have time, I will listen to the audio of the March 9 telebriefing available at the last link provided above.
Why are we not banning travel in and out of Ohio to keep us safe? Here's a perfect example of what we don't need happening in our lovely buckeye state:
Think DeWine... think. Stop worrying about if Tyler Bo wont be able to reconnect with Betty Lue because one is out of state. No one gives a damn. Protecting Ohioans who are currently in Ohio is what matters most. You see someone from Canada make their way onto Lake Erie shore, turn them right around. Sorry no travel by water either.
Why are we not banning travel in and out of Ohio to keep us safe? Here's a perfect example of what we don't need happening in our lovely buckeye state:
Think DeWine... think. Stop worrying about if Tyler Bo wont be able to reconnect with Betty Lue because one is out of state. No one gives a damn. Protecting Ohioans who are currently in Ohio is what matters most. You see someone from Canada make their way onto Lake Erie shore, turn them right around. Sorry no travel by water either.
Probably partly because we have a large number of Ohio residents who work in Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania (and vice versa).
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Correction to post 14
