Coronavirus

[L K]

It doesn?t hurt to speak about the possibility of it as being a potential bio weapon. 

It doesn't help, and that's more important.

If it doesn't help, don't spread it.

I would love a ?like? function purely for this post.

Anywho in other news, the U.K. government looks a bit silly for a change

https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/alexwickham/coronavirus-uk-strategy-deaths

The UK approach to generate herd immunity really would work.  You just have to accepting of mass casualties in the process.  If this was a condition that we could guarantee that COVID-19 will be an annual disease there is maybe some argument for having these kinds of ethical heavy discussions but their approach has been pitiful to say the least.

 

[L K]

Working today and here is my list of gripes so far:

1 - Employers still demanding sick notes

*snip

Just a little context here...I have spent most of the day discussing with local business owners and lawyers on exactly how people can claim for EI while self-isolating, and the feds have yet to update even their own MP's on this.

The suggestion from Ford (province) was that the sick note was not necessary for you to stay home and keep your job.  Cool, we employers don't have any problem with this.

The problem is the feds still require some documentation be kept by people in order to claim sick leave to get EI.  They've waived the 1 week waiting period, but that's it.  Hence, people are still trying to get sick notes.

At this point, the consensus from the lawyers suggests that we simply generate the ROE (record of employment) and have employees claim "sick leave" even without a doctor's note.

Just giving you a little background on that problem, LK.  You've got your hands full, for sure, so stay safe!

No its a fair account and I do understand it in principle.  It was more the nature of the individuals who were sent in.  I have been pretty hard line with the tone on my stock note I have handed out and had a heated discussion with one employer who was more concerned about people taking advantage of him.  That was really where my gripe came from.  If there is any fault in this I think it really does lie in the Ford Government not having legislation ready to go to clarify this stuff as soon as they declared the degree of restrictions.  This wasn't a plan that came out of nowhere.  They dragged their feet to implement social isolation and quarantines so they had plenty of time to navigate things for a smoother transition.

 

[Frank E]

Working today and here is my list of gripes so far:

1 - Employers still demanding sick notes

*snip

Just a little context here...I have spent most of the day discussing with local business owners and lawyers on exactly how people can claim for EI while self-isolating, and the feds have yet to update even their own MP's on this.

The suggestion from Ford (province) was that the sick note was not necessary for you to stay home and keep your job.  Cool, we employers don't have any problem with this.

The problem is the feds still require some documentation be kept by people in order to claim sick leave to get EI.  They've waived the 1 week waiting period, but that's it.  Hence, people are still trying to get sick notes.

At this point, the consensus from the lawyers suggests that we simply generate the ROE (record of employment) and have employees claim "sick leave" even without a doctor's note.

Just giving you a little background on that problem, LK.  You've got your hands full, for sure, so stay safe!

No its a fair account and I do understand it in principle.  It was more the nature of the individuals who were sent in.  I have been pretty hard line with the tone on my stock note I have handed out and had a heated discussion with one employer who was more concerned about people taking advantage of him.  That was really where my gripe came from.  If there is any fault in this I think it really does lie in the Ford Government not having legislation ready to go to clarify this stuff as soon as they declared the degree of restrictions.  This wasn't a plan that came out of nowhere.  They dragged their feet to implement social isolation and quarantines so they had plenty of time to navigate things for a smoother transition.

Love you brother, and really you all on the front lines of this deserve to be recognized...but EI is a federal thing, and although I believe that Trudeau is exhibiting a very calm response to this, they haven't clarified some of this stuff for employers, and you're therefore not getting the relief from this sort of crap that you most certainly need.

I'm no Ford guy, but given these unprecedented circumstances, political affiliations have no place. 

The federal government needs to assure everyone that they can stay home under certain circumstances, and not worry about getting the government assistance that we all pay into.  The province can help, but they don't administrate EI.

Many employers are really just trying to stay in business over the next little while, we have a responsibility to ensure that all employees will have a job to come back to.  Everyone please understand our stresses as well. We really do care about the people we work with everyday...at least most of do.

 

[Stebro]

I think that honestly no one knows what the best strategy is. Now The UK and Sweden differs from the rest of the EU. The intention is try to have a controlled spread of the virus, which is why the two countries do things later than the rest, the strategy is to try to protect the risk groups while trying to make sure that the healthcare get more cases early on in the spread to make sure you don't get a lot at a very short time, while trying to build up immunity. There is a risk with not building up immunity now.

Let's say that we lock everything down now, fewer might get the virus, but fewer will develop immunity, and if a second wave of the virus hits in the autumn, then you may have to start all over with locking everything down and isolating a lot of people again, and no one knows how long it will take to develop the vaccine. No matter what I hope that every country get out of this with as few deaths as possible. There are too many unknown factors in this situation, so it's difficult to know what's right and what's wrong. Just to put this in some context, the regular flu kill about 300.000 people per year worldwide.

 

[Bender]

*Edit: Also just to clarify, I agree people shouldn't "run" to hospitals and should call and see if they can get tested offsite, but I don't think a 3% kill rate is "mass hysteria caused by the media." This is entirely on individuals who should do their damn due diligence and call their GP and ask what they should do and if it makes sense to get tested, and hopefully the test is offsite from a hospital.

If that turns out to be the true mortality rate, then, no, it's not hysteria at all - not with how easy it can spread. The problem is we may not know the true mortality rate for some time - if ever - as a significant number of people who may have contracted the virus will/were never be tested. For a lot of the population, COVID-19 can present similar to a normal cold. There could be thousands of unreported cases out there, which would significantly drive down the mortality rate.

There's lots we really don't know. There were reports coming out of Wuhan back in February that huge numbers of people had died. I saw videos with bodies laying in the streets. There were videos from hospitals with patients lined up through the corridors barely able to breath, with dead bodies on the floor, some in body bags. Reports that crematoriums were unable to keep up. Many think the true death toll in Wuhan was at least 10x what was reported, maybe even more than that. China shut down all those reports by "disappearing" people who were sending out that info. Of course, the true number of minor or asymptomatic cases might be much higher than we think.

I believe South Korea will give us the best info about the overall severity of the virus. They've done vast amounts of testing and presumably identified many more cases, covering a broad range of severity, compared to other countries. Right now their death rate looks very low but it will probably creep up since the disease course is often several weeks. They've identified 7500 case but only about 250 are listed as "recovered" versus 58 deaths. We'll see where that goes.

This is also highly dependant on public policy and social custom and a number of variables. How else do you explain Italy's high rate and Korea's low one? I don't think you can use one country in isolation in analysing this.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/asiatimes.com/2020/03/why-are-koreas-covid-19-death-rates-so-low/

Supposedly the virus is doing much better in cold climates than warm ones. I don't know why but my wife has been immersed in this stuff and she has heard this more than once.

Wuhan & Tehran aren't cold though. I don't know how we have enough information to extrapolate that yet.

[EDIT:  Ok, reading further, a bunch of other people said the same thing .... sorry ...]

I have an epidemiologist friend who is posting lots on Facebook.  Most coronaviruses have this property of doing better in cold, dry air than in warm, humid air.  However, I don't think it is quite clear yet how closely this one follows that trend.

It's not clear yet because it's a "novel" coronavirus. We're learning on the fly right now.

 

[Bender]

I think that honestly no one knows what the best strategy is. Now The UK and Sweden differs from the rest of the EU. The intention is try to have a controlled spread of the virus, which is why the two countries do things later than the rest, the strategy is to try to protect the risk groups while trying to make sure that the healthcare get more cases early on in the spread to make sure you don't get a lot at a very short time, while trying to build up immunity. There is a risk with not building up immunity now.

Let's say that we lock everything down now, fewer might get the virus, but fewer will develop immunity, and if a second wave of the virus hits in the autumn, then you may have to start all over with locking everything down and isolating a lot of people again, and no one knows how long it will take to develop the vaccine. No matter what I hope that every country get out of this with as few deaths as possible. There are too many unknown factors in this situation, so it's difficult to know what's right and what's wrong. Just to put this in some context, the regular flu kill about 300.000 people per year worldwide.

I think it takes a massive amount of hubris to believe you can selectively control an epidemic.

 

[Bender]

It doesn?t hurt to speak about the possibility of it as being a potential bio weapon. 

It doesn't help, and that's more important.

If it doesn't help, don't spread it.

I would love a ?like? function purely for this post.

Anywho in other news, the U.K. government looks a bit silly for a change

https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/alexwickham/coronavirus-uk-strategy-deaths

The UK approach to generate herd immunity really would work.  You just have to accepting of mass casualties in the process.  If this was a condition that we could guarantee that COVID-19 will be an annual disease there is maybe some argument for having these kinds of ethical heavy discussions but their approach has been pitiful to say the least.

I sincerely hope this thing doesn't become an annual virus. RE: Quick herd immunity, I'd rather wait it out and hope for a vaccine or at least a decent anti-viral treatment to stop from getting pneumonia.

 

[L K]

I think that honestly no one knows what the best strategy is. Now The UK and Sweden differs from the rest of the EU. The intention is try to have a controlled spread of the virus, which is why the two countries do things later than the rest, the strategy is to try to protect the risk groups while trying to make sure that the healthcare get more cases early on in the spread to make sure you don't get a lot at a very short time, while trying to build up immunity. There is a risk with not building up immunity now.

Let's say that we lock everything down now, fewer might get the virus, but fewer will develop immunity, and if a second wave of the virus hits in the autumn, then you may have to start all over with locking everything down and isolating a lot of people again, and no one knows how long it will take to develop the vaccine. No matter what I hope that every country get out of this with as few deaths as possible. There are too many unknown factors in this situation, so it's difficult to know what's right and what's wrong. Just to put this in some context, the regular flu kill about 300.000 people per year worldwide.

I think it takes a massive amount of hubris to believe you can selectively control an epidemic.

What we can say is that by not quarantining now, hundreds and thousands of people WILL die.  We buy time to avoid overrun ICUs and hospitals.  Coming into this week my local hospital was running at 126% capacity.  This is before the quarantine recommendations.  This is before we have really started getting legitimate cases requiring ICU stays.  My closest referral centre is also running at over 100% capacity and does this routinely.  We are desperately trying to get patients stuck in hospital beds awaiting LTC facility out of the hospital and into open community beds with little relief. 

Protection isn't going to advance a herd immunity but it will save lives today and give us an opportunity to prevent an overrun healthcare system where not only COVID cases face potential mortality but all of the other influenza, heart failure, MI, pneumonia and conventional sick patients to still have an ICU bed to potentially be admitted to.

Goals of having a vaccine around in August or September are optimistic, but we honestly don't know if we will see a second wave of Corona this fall, or whether we will get reprieve from it between now and then.  We do know that the potential for profound morbidity is a reality today however. 

 

[L K]

Working today and here is my list of gripes so far:

1 - Employers still demanding sick notes

*snip

Just a little context here...I have spent most of the day discussing with local business owners and lawyers on exactly how people can claim for EI while self-isolating, and the feds have yet to update even their own MP's on this.

The suggestion from Ford (province) was that the sick note was not necessary for you to stay home and keep your job.  Cool, we employers don't have any problem with this.

The problem is the feds still require some documentation be kept by people in order to claim sick leave to get EI.  They've waived the 1 week waiting period, but that's it.  Hence, people are still trying to get sick notes.

At this point, the consensus from the lawyers suggests that we simply generate the ROE (record of employment) and have employees claim "sick leave" even without a doctor's note.

Just giving you a little background on that problem, LK.  You've got your hands full, for sure, so stay safe!

No its a fair account and I do understand it in principle.  It was more the nature of the individuals who were sent in.  I have been pretty hard line with the tone on my stock note I have handed out and had a heated discussion with one employer who was more concerned about people taking advantage of him.  That was really where my gripe came from.  If there is any fault in this I think it really does lie in the Ford Government not having legislation ready to go to clarify this stuff as soon as they declared the degree of restrictions.  This wasn't a plan that came out of nowhere.  They dragged their feet to implement social isolation and quarantines so they had plenty of time to navigate things for a smoother transition.

Love you brother, and really you all on the front lines of this deserve to be recognized...but EI is a federal thing, and although I believe that Trudeau is exhibiting a very calm response to this, they haven't clarified some of this stuff for employers, and you're therefore not getting the relief from this sort of crap that you most certainly need.

I'm no Ford guy, but given these unprecedented circumstances, political affiliations have no place. 

The federal government needs to assure everyone that they can stay home under certain circumstances, and not worry about getting the government assistance that we all pay into.  The province can help, but they don't administrate EI.

Many employers are really just trying to stay in business over the next little while, we have a responsibility to ensure that all employees will have a job to come back to.  Everyone please understand our stresses as well. We really do care about the people we work with everyday...at least most of do.

Nope you are right.  I haven't targeted my disdain at Trudeau's handling of this much either.  It's a Federal and Provincial failure for not being better mobilized in dealing with this.  The profound inconsistency within provincial health agencies, the lack of guidance for employers and employees on what to do.  Ford getting up and guaranteeing people who stay home will still have a job. It's just an impossible goal.  Trudeau sat on his hands weeks ago when preparations could have been made and did nothing.

 

[#1PilarFan]

I came here hoping for a touch more optimism LK.

 

[Zee]

Official state of emergency declared in Ontario.  All bars/restaurants/theaters mandated to stay closed until March 31.  No gatherings over 50 people.

 

[Kin]

I really hope direct and immediate assistance can go out to some of these affected businesses. The margins in the restaurant industry are thin at the best of times, losing a month of business could put a lot of them under.

There are going to be a lot of people who need food delivered, a lot of restaurants that need business. I really would hope we could figure out a way to, for the time being, bring those two things together via public planning.

 

[Stebro]

Just to clarify the strategy here in Sweden is not to have full immunity, the strategy is to flatten the curve. I think that one reason why it seems that different countries are not trying hard enough etc is because they are at different stages, we are going into a more intensive stage now and more decisions are being made, here's a short summary of what it's like here right now:

*People over 70 are recommended to isolate
*Cinemas, gyms, sporting events etc are not taking place
*The strategy of the authorities is to protect the health care and risk groups at all costs
*Authorities have worked together with different companies here to try to increase the output of a lot of the equipment we need that we can manufacture here, we also have an active dialog with Italy to quickly try to send more respirators over there, but it's difficult because the companies must increase the capacity quickly and educate staff
*Students both in Sweden and abroad will get all their financial aid whether they study or not, so they don't have to worry about it
*The state is paying for all sick leave starting with the first day. Usually you pay for the first one yourself but that is no longer the case
*All people who feel sick, even if just a little should stay home, no exceptions
*Starting from tomorrow all high schools and universities will be shut down. A change in the law is needed to do something about pre-school etc, the law is expected to go through on thursday, and then all schools can get shut down. All schools have been prepared for education over the internet instead.
*The government announced a package of 300 billion swedish kronor (roughly 30 billion us dollars) to help companies out. Different deals have been proposed for example workers may go down from 100% to 60% or so but get 90% pay, and the government will pay for the difference between 60% and 90%, this is just temporarly though. Exact models have not been decided yet though.
*The central bank here can loan around 500 billion swedish kronor to companies in need
*Different type of taxes related to staff can be delayed to protect the companies
*Tents for testing have been put up around big hospitals, the healthcare is increasing their capacity as much as they can for intensive care patients
*We do not have enough test kits right now, and the tests we have are being focused on those who work within the healthcare, risk groups as well as the ones who come into the emergency room
*People who can work from home are recommended to do so
*The government have promised to help banks out if it is needed, banks have also been advised to be very generous with mortages etc if people get into payment issues due to this situation
*The government also announced that they will make funding available to Scandinavian Airlines as a loan.
*Sweden in shutting down the borders completely

At the moment we are doing "ok", but the intensity is expected to increase by a lot within a few weeks. Some calculations have been made and if it goes as "expected" we may be out of hospital beds by the mid/end of April for intensive care, and then the healthcare have to decide who lives and who doesn't basically. So a lot of the focus here is on increasing the capacity.

Since people in general have been hoarding it's created issues for the health care with certain items. In general I think that a lot of swedes stay home whether they belong to a risk group or not. One big question now is also how to take care of the kids of parents who work in the healthcare without risking old people if we were to shut down all schools. We have 8 deaths so far, all of them have been old people with other diseases as well.

Stockholm is pretty much quiet, people are avoiding shopping centres etc to a very big degree, it almost looks like a ghost town, not a lot of people are commuting either. What bothers me is some people who frankly just are ignorant or dumb. I follow a lot of big papers here, and there are still some people who ask if they should stay home from work if they have a fever etc.

 

[Stebro]

I think that honestly no one knows what the best strategy is. Now The UK and Sweden differs from the rest of the EU. The intention is try to have a controlled spread of the virus, which is why the two countries do things later than the rest, the strategy is to try to protect the risk groups while trying to make sure that the healthcare get more cases early on in the spread to make sure you don't get a lot at a very short time, while trying to build up immunity. There is a risk with not building up immunity now.

Let's say that we lock everything down now, fewer might get the virus, but fewer will develop immunity, and if a second wave of the virus hits in the autumn, then you may have to start all over with locking everything down and isolating a lot of people again, and no one knows how long it will take to develop the vaccine. No matter what I hope that every country get out of this with as few deaths as possible. There are too many unknown factors in this situation, so it's difficult to know what's right and what's wrong. Just to put this in some context, the regular flu kill about 300.000 people per year worldwide.

I think it takes a massive amount of hubris to believe you can selectively control an epidemic.

I don't think it's hubris, and it's a different strategy of tackling the curve, not to gain full immunity, I think it's just difficult decisions being made in difficult times. Let's say that you lock down the entire country and very few gets the virus, and you have no immunity, and it hits again in the autumn or winter when it will be worse for countries like Sweden and Canada due to the cold, then you may be worse off, because you will likely not have a vaccine, and then you will have to go over the exact same thing again. The only advantage is that you may have more time to prepare the healthcare for another round. But looking at stats from Italy and China, around 15-40% who get icu treatment still die, but yeah locking more things down might give us more time to understand the virus. Several experts have also gone out and said that the actions that several countries are taking are political and not scientific. I don't know what's the best thing to do now, I just hope that all of the planet do as well as possible.

 

[Bender]

Are they recommending everyone to socially distance themselves? 

 

[Stebro]

Are they recommending everyone to socially distance themselves?

in Sweden? If so, depends really, on buses and trains, they've recommended to keep a distance. They've recommended to not have large gatherings, parties or something similar. When i'm out I don't see any big groups, most people seem to keep away a bit, so based on what I see people in general seem to understand that they should keep away from eachother. I predict that all schools will be shut down this week, but i'm not sure. The one leading the "expert" authority here on the matter has been under a lot of fire not only in Sweden but abroad as well for not taking more aggressive actions, but he has also been praised by other countries for being more scientific and not giving into policy, which makes me a bit confused. One thing that makes it complicated here is that the authorities here in Sweden are independent, so the courts etc can not be controlled by the government. The government with the current laws can not decide to shut down all school for example.

 

[Bender]

Are they recommending everyone to socially distance themselves?

in Sweden? If so, depends really, on buses and trains, they've recommended to keep a distance. They've recommended to not have large gatherings, parties or something similar. When i'm out I don't see any big groups, most people seem to keep away a bit, so based on what I see people in general seem to understand that they should keep away from eachother. I predict that all schools will be shut down this week, but i'm not sure. The one leading the "expert" authority here on the matter has been under a lot of fire not only in Sweden but abroad as well for not taking more aggressive actions, but he has also been praised by other countries for being more scientific and not giving into policy, which makes me a bit confused. One thing that makes it complicated here is that the authorities here in Sweden are independent, so the courts etc can not be controlled by the government. The government with the current laws can not decide to shut down all school for example.

I find that so bizarre. Anyone working in epidemiology I've listened to thus far has said speed is of utmost importance and the perfect is the enemy of the good. We'll see what happens but this ain't no picnic for young people, and many young people like myself also have underlying conditions, which I think is missing from that equation.

 

[Stebro]

Are they recommending everyone to socially distance themselves?

in Sweden? If so, depends really, on buses and trains, they've recommended to keep a distance. They've recommended to not have large gatherings, parties or something similar. When i'm out I don't see any big groups, most people seem to keep away a bit, so based on what I see people in general seem to understand that they should keep away from eachother. I predict that all schools will be shut down this week, but i'm not sure. The one leading the "expert" authority here on the matter has been under a lot of fire not only in Sweden but abroad as well for not taking more aggressive actions, but he has also been praised by other countries for being more scientific and not giving into policy, which makes me a bit confused. One thing that makes it complicated here is that the authorities here in Sweden are independent, so the courts etc can not be controlled by the government. The government with the current laws can not decide to shut down all school for example.

I find that so bizarre. Anyone working in epidemiology I've listened to thus far has said speed is of utmost importance and the perfect is the enemy of the good. We'll see what happens but this ain't no picnic for young people, and many young people like myself also have underlying conditions, which I think is missing from that equation.

Rumour has it that they will vote on a law on thursday and shut down all schools starting from monday. There are things I can be critical of here, one thing is only talking about old people. My sister's daughter has a very serious condition and she is still in school, which makes me worried and my sister furious. They talk about protecting all risk groups, but haven't focused on the younger with underlying conditions, which I don't support. Personally I try to keep a distance to people, I feel fine but you never know and both of my parents are 70+ so I might have to do some grocery shopping, we talk on the phone every day just to be sure.

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/ikaveri/status/1239660248207589383
Did Skynet/Agent Smith/Ultron/Thanos have a point?

 

[OldTimeHockey]

First Death in Ontario Reported:

https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/canadian-press-newsalertontario-reports-first-death-linked-to-covid-19