COVID-19 ... how we cope :)

[Tom O'Donnell]

The economy is about human lives. Without it most every single person reading this would be dead in short order.

[Brad Thomson]

The economy is about human lives. Without it most every single person reading this would be dead in short order.

True, with no economy at all. We need to continue to produce food, shelter and clothing, and other basic needs. And we need policing and other essential services. But we do not need bars, movies, theme parks, concerts, sporting events, air travel and so forth. These mankind should take a pass on until the pandemic ends. But do not worry Tom, mankind will listen to you before they listen to me. :)

[Garland Best]

Yes, that does play into the stats as well. You have to ask, then, why is such a lower % of US cases resolved? In large part it's because the younger generations in the U.S. are much less responsible than the same group in Canada and are congregating in dense groups without regard to the virus. So the new cases there are largely in the younger generations and they are much less likely to be in an ICU.

Garland, you seem to imply that Canada's serious cases have been serious for a very long time ("(cases) where the patient became seriously ill to begin with). I haven't seen any stats as to how long seriously patients survive and remain in the hospital, do you think that in Canada they survive longer than those in the U.S. and are in hospital longer? It could be the case.

It's well known that the disease affects some more strongly than others. My assumption is that those with severe cases are more likely to have longer cases. Therefore as an example if 1000 people are affected on the same day, and 10 have severe cases, then you initially have 1% with severe cases. Three weeks later, 90% of those 1000 people are symptom free leaving only 100 people ill, but only 10% of those people with severe reactions have recovered. Therefore after 3 weeks you have 100 cases still active, and of those 9 people have severe symptoms. Your percentage of active cases with severe symptoms is now 9% instead of 1%.

In Canada the new case rate is roughly 25% that of it's peak in May. In the US, they are currently at their highest infection rates, greater than May. This will skew the data, so that a larger percentage of Canada's active cases will be more severe long term ones, as opposed to the USA active cases.

That said, age is a known factor tied to mortality, and by inference severity, so the age of persons diagnosed with Covid-19 will be a factor. Haven't looked up those statistics yet.

[Garland Best]

My biggest fear is what will happen when all the kids go back to school, Those of us who have spent lots of time with kids' chess know that they pass the common cold around very prolifically, irrespective of whether or not they show much in the way of symptoms themselves. If this happens with COVID-19, then short of a complete lock-down for a very extended period of time, we are in huge trouble. And we do not seem likely to lock-down.

Brad, I understand your fear, but at some point we need as a society to say that sort of rate can we accept. With the measures implemented so far Canada has done relatively well. Our case rate over the past 2 months has been relatively static. We have flattened the curve, if everyone remembers that flattening the curve means reducing infection rates to levels our medical system can deal with. Hence the gradual relaxing of restrictions while continuously monitoring case rates.

Opening schools is the next case in that reopening. At some point we HAVE to open schools. So we open schools, watch the case rates closely, and if things start to go wrong, we will have to at least partially or completely close the schools again.

There is at least some evidence that this can be done safely. South Korea opened their schools again in June of this year, and cases rates have been relatively constant since then at about 50 cases daily.

So far our governments in Canada have done a relatively good job managing the situation. I'm willing to follow their lead on the schools, and see how this goes in the fall.

[Brad Thomson]

Brad, I understand your fear, but at some point we need as a society to say that sort of rate can we accept.

Thanks Garland, but I respectfully disagree. NO deaths are acceptable. But as I said to Tom, no need to worry for no one will listen to me. We will not err on the side of caution, we will go down in a blaze of glory.

[Aris Marghetis]

Here's a recent opinion piece from The Globe and Mail. First a link, and then because sometimes that link asks for sign-up etc, I've also cut'n'pasted the actual text from the whole thing.

I think it is an insightfully valuable piece, and written in language that has the potential of resonating with everyone across the COVID education/intelligence/political-multi/spectrums (lol)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opin...-an-emergency/

Repeat after me: This is an emergency
JILLIAN HORTON
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED 2 DAYS AGO
UPDATED AUGUST 7, 2020
Jillian Horton is a Canadian internist and writer. Her memoirs, We Are All Perfectly Fine, will be published next year.

As the COVID-19 crisis deepens around the world, I’ve noticed some graphics and dashboards using a subheading: situational awareness. The term has visceral significance to anyone who works in health care or the airline industry, because situational awareness can mean the difference between life and death.

Those of us who are interested in metacognition – how we think – tend to conceive of situational awareness as a learned ability to notice and interpret what is happening around us so we are prepared for what might happen next. Critically, it also allows us to anticipate and navigate common thinking and behaviour traps. The latter is especially important because our situational awareness in emergencies can be unduly influenced by the behaviour – including the under-reactivity – of those around us.

What is situational awareness? Often, it’s more helpful to begin by describing what happens when it is absent. Here’s a tragic example. A healthy child is admitted to a hospital for an elective procedure. The child stops producing urine and soon his blood pressure is unmeasurable. The staff insist he is fine and that the machines are all malfunctioning. Instead of giving large volumes of fluid and sending him to intensive care, they scour the hospital for “working” blood pressure machines. While they are looking, the child suffers a cardiac arrest due to shock, and dies.

Or here’s an example from the aviation world. A pair of commercial pilots are nearing the last leg of flight. They talk nonchalantly about ice on the wings, a potential sign of serious trouble. As they prepare to land, the aircraft experiences an aerodynamic stall. Two pieces of safety equipment activate, but both pilots respond incorrectly to the automated cues. All 49 passengers are killed when the plane slams into the ground.

Why did that young boy and those passengers die? Because the people in charge lacked situational awareness. They did not recognize or label their experiences as an emergency and, as a result, were unprepared for the consequences.

Sadly, when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders around the world are falling into this same trap – and so are citizens.

Why are our brains so vulnerable to this phenomenon? Some of the answer is rooted in our wiring. Our behavioural responses are both learned and dependent on our environment, and when we encounter unfamiliar situations we often revert to a default setting: looking at what others are doing. This concept is known as social proof. We’re aware of the pandemic, but because people around us aren’t wearing masks, we’re tricked into thinking that what they’re doing must be right.

This problem is compounded by the fact that our perceptions can also be heavily influenced by what we want to be true – a cognitive misstep known as affective error. It’s less psychologically disturbing to conceive of a broken blood pressure machine than a child who is critically ill, or a bit of ice on the wings as a meaningless nuisance instead of a potentially life-threatening development. When I’m teaching medical learners about situational awareness, my focus is often on helping them realize how easily influenced our perceptions are by both of these things: how others behave and what we want to be true.

But here’s one of the hardest things about situational awareness: It requires vigilance, and vigilance takes energy. We’re all tired of the constant psychological assault on our sense of safety right now. So it’s tempting to downgrade our original assessments of the threat, perhaps even to question the experts who are telling us to be worried.

This ability to recognize our knowledge limits is another aspect of situational awareness, by the way, so we don’t waste precious time challenging those who best understand what is likely to happen next.

A recent study showed that even though our numbers haven’t worsened dramatically, Canadians are more worried about catching COVID-19 than we were in the middle of April. Initially, this made me hopeful that we were developing more situational awareness about the pandemic in general. But recent clusters of cases in many provinces have me worried that we are losing that awareness, a shift that may cost us dearly.

In my clinical life, it’s not uncommon that I meet a patient for the first time and have to tell them that they have widespread, incurable cancer. They say to me, incredulous: How did this happen so quickly? My sorrowful answer is always the same: This did not happen quickly. It started with a mutation in a single cell. That cell doubled, and then those cells doubled. Eventually, that patient had symptoms – warning signs – that they often didn’t recognize or ignored out of fear or denial or an inability to access care. And then there came a tipping point – but it was never all at once. That’s why one of my axioms as a clinician is: Most disasters happen slowly.

I don’t want us to be tricked into the false belief that the situation in Canada isn’t critical, because it could deteriorate in the blink of an eye. So I want to teach you four behaviour-altering words that can activate the skills that ultimately allow doctors, nurses and pilots to override the false messages our brains send us, allowing us to save lives.

And here they are: This is an emergency.

[Brad Thomson]

Thanks Aris! "This is an emergency." Yup. Unless we as a species soon start to accept it, nothing more than scattered pockets of cave men and women will exist in two or three years time. We need to wake the hell up, and fast.

Not to worry though, Donald Trump will come to the rescue.

[Brad Thomson]

Here is a quote from the article Aris provided. I hope everyone reads it.

"Why did that young boy and those passengers die? Because the people in charge lacked situational awareness. They did not recognize or label their experiences as an emergency and, as a result, were unprepared for the consequences."

Eric Dolphy was an absolute genius. An African-American jazz musician who specialized in playing the rarely heard bass clarinet, he was playing in Berlin and went into a diabetic coma. The doctors assumed that the "black jazz musician from America" must have passed out due to a drug overdose, possibly heroin, and decided to leave him to sleep it off. Dolphy neither smoked, drank, nor did drugs. A quick and simple test and the appropriate insulin reaction would have saved Dolphy's life. Why not err on the side of precaution rather than assume everything will be fine in the morning? Because the "doctors" were idiots. But now the scenario is different, for we ourselves are the patient. And the "doctors".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8scSwaKbE64

[Brad Thomson]

Take the time to listen to this. Maybe there is hope after all...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOH6qk6Rz8

[Aris Marghetis]

Thanks Aris! "This is an emergency." Yup. Unless we as a species soon start to accept it, nothing more than scattered pockets of cave men and women will exist in two or three years time. We need to wake the hell up, and fast.

Not to worry though, Donald Trump will come to the rescue.

Well, I respectfully don't agree it's THAT big an emergency.

I was fascinated with MANY psychology points touched on.

[Dilip Panjwani]

Here's a recent opinion piece from The Globe and Mail. First a link, and then because sometimes that link asks for sign-up etc, I've also cut'n'pasted the actual text from the whole thing.

I think it is an insightfully valuable piece, and written in language that has the potential of resonating with everyone across the COVID education/intelligence/political-multi/spectrums (lol)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opin...-an-emergency/

Repeat after me: This is an emergency
JILLIAN HORTON
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED 2 DAYS AGO
UPDATED AUGUST 7, 2020
Jillian Horton is a Canadian internist and writer. Her memoirs, We Are All Perfectly Fine, will be published next year.

.

Of course we (our governments included) have to take action rather than just aimlessly talk... decisions have to be made on the basis of situational awareness and the outcomes of those decisions have then to be monitored... but nowhere does Dr. Horton say that our actions have to be drastic! Even inappropriate decisions taken by Sweden are better than no decisions taken by the US federal government....

[Brad Thomson]

Well, I respectfully don't agree it's THAT big an emergency.

It may not be, it could be worse even, extinction is possible. But why does mankind take the chance? This is my point. The planet is overpopulated, over-polluted and now overrun with a terrible disease. Yet we think we can "balance" money with acceptable death, then get over it in six months when we get that vaccine, and then we will populate and pollute more and more on a planet that does not grow in size as our stupidity does. We are at a crossroads, and the clock is ticking.

[Pargat Perrer]

Well, I respectfully don't agree it's THAT big an emergency.

I was fascinated with MANY psychology points touched on.

Could it possibly be an ALMOST INFINITE emergency? Is it contained within pi?

The points were interesting, but I agree with Brad if he is saying that it will all fall on deaf ears. Dr. Horton says she wants to teach us those 4 words, but we are now in a world thanks to Trump that does not hear the words of the wise. Instead we give credence to a bumbling boob who is famous for stiffing construction contractors and investors during 4 declared bankruptcies and said "I was smart" to do that, and now wants us to believe that he cares about American workers.

Donald Trump gave Americans their own indictment: he could shoot someone in broad daylight on 5th Avenue in New York City, and his backers would all still support him. Canadians are just as susceptible to this behavior, we just dont' have our own Trump (yet).

So now in the U.S. you have something like 30 million unemployed. They lost their jobs due to coronavirus, and yet... they still do not believe "This is an emergency". Why? Because Trump is telling them this virus will "disappear", Trump says schools can reopen, Trump holds rallies and doesn't wear a mask (only recently putting one on), Trump refutes science and says stick a UV light up your ass and you'll be disinfected.

Remember, the whole reason Donald changed from a Democrat to a Republican was that he realized Republicans would believe his bullshit en masse (and his approval ratings among Republicans shows he got at least that much "right").

[Pargat Perrer]

It may not be, it could be worse even, extinction is possible. But why does mankind take the chance? This is my point. The planet is overpopulated, over-polluted and now overrun with a terrible disease. Yet we think we can "balance" money with acceptable death, then get over it in six months when we get that vaccine, and then we will populate and pollute more and more on a planet that does not grow in size as our stupidity does. We are at a crossroads, and the clock is ticking.

Mars beckons!

Why does mankind take the chance? Because …. "NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

And on that Monty Python theme, we saw the stats about "Serious cases", are there any stats on "Silly cases"? :)

[Brad Thomson]

The points were interesting, but I agree with Brad if he is saying that it will all fall on deaf ears.

And there are none so blind as those that will not see. Trump is the worst possible person at the worst possible time. He is a dummy, he is too stupid to be evil, but the results of his actions will be no different than if he was. The world requires enlightened leadership at this point in history, but we get morons like Trump, petty-crooks like Trudeau, psychopaths like Putin, arrogant assholes like Johnson, and on and on. But suppose that we had instead a Jimmy Carter, a Pierre Trudeau, a Gorbachev and a Churchill. Would things be any different? Not likely. This disease will run its course, we are at its mercy, and all we can do is wait and see what happens. Of course we should do all we can to mitigate, but in this world money is more important than lives. So we all die. Our only hope is the possibility of this blind disease running out of gas at some point. But whether it will or not will have nothing to do with us, for we value our wallets more than our fellow humans. We are pigs.