Comment by zepearl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zepearl | Hacker News Reader

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Right - but it isn't completely clear yet.

From https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200317175438.h... :

A new study calculates that the median incubation period for COVID-19 is just over 5 days and that 97.5% of people who develop symptoms will do so within 11.5 days of infection.

From https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19#Inkubationszeit :

...the incubation period can be up to 14 days. In addition, there are reports from Chinese researchers that extend the possible incubation period up to 24 days. An analysis of the first 425 cases reported in Wuhan shows an incubation period of 5.2 days on average and an average age of 59 years. ... A statistical analysis of several reports of infections in a household or in another narrow spatial limitation (so-called clusters) shows an incubation period of 5–6 days on average.

Anyway, as long as people don't keep distance between each other, the situation won't improve. Here in Switzerland the limit was shurunk within ~2 weeks from groups of people of max 1000 to 500 to 100 to 10 to 5 (today's new guidelines) => so far nothing improved.

The company I'm working for reacted early => many employees started staying at home (and working remotely) already 3 weeks ago, like myself => at the beginning it was ok for me, but now it's getting psychologically a bit "heavy". Luckily the government so far did not implement a total curfew, so from time to time we can still walk a bit in the parks/forests (but alone).

The progression to death is something like: (very rough, from memory)

Day 0: Infection

Day 5: First Symptoms

Day 11: Hospital admission/shortness of breath/oxygen

Day 14: Ventilator

Day 21: Death

If there's no ventilator on day 14, the process is tragically accelerated.

I wonder what percentage of people have been saved by ventilators vs. merely had their death delayed.

Curious as well.

I find that in the US, we have an understandable but sometimes costly attachment to 'treat at all costs'.

I lost a family member to cancer last year - and was pushed by providers to pursue treatment that would have bankrupted me and my family, while adding (maybe) a few months of (low quality) life to someone already in pain and confined to a hospital bed.

I was made to feel callous about balancing the collective 80+ years of my family's life going forward, against the 80 days or less of an elderly relative.

If we can't break out of that mindset, then the coming coronavirus storm is going to provide some very painful choices on us, as it already has in other countries such as Italy.

I’m sorry to hear that but you are spot on. Some decisions require cold-blood and we can only hope we chose the lesser evil.

Here are some stats about Italy: https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1593946/embed (extracted from here: https://lab24.ilsole24ore.com/coronavirus/ )

("Morti giornalieri = daily deaths | "Terapia intensiva" = total amount of people in intensive care on that day)

As people who need a ventilator are in intensive care (but I admit that that includes as well people that have other types of complications who might not need/be using a ventilator), an idea of that can maybe be extrapolated by comparing that number vs. the number of deaths (daily? total?)?

Thinking more about it, another complication with these numbers is that there are probably already now not enough ventilators, therefore the deaths might include people that died because of the lack of a ventilator... .

It appears 5-10% of people need ventilators, and "need a ventilator" basically means that you will die without one. So the difference between that 5-10% and the actual death rate of <1% should be your answer.

I guess it really comes down to whether or not someone actually needed it, which is a very difficult thing to determine.

Mortality rate of people who get put on a ventilator is in the ballpark of 40%.

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