that's just overhyped

So has it been debunked outright yet by any testing? Or just that it could be debunked?

(Note that I am not saying people should believe this or anything without proof[and should not treat such as gospel or base their choices off of such].....but also I think nothing that could be a ray of hope should be tossed aside without being checked first by the right people)

I'm not here to tie your shoelaces. By all means consider me a (liar/unreliable source) or learn stats and look into that research yourself to discover the same thing.

Also - why the hell is it a ray of hope that blood type A is more vulnerable? It does nothing because if you're blood type O and it turns out you are vulnerable you're still going to catch it.

I didn't say that, I just asked if what you meant(if it had been debunked or could be debunked) to clarify that a bit. Sorry if it came out as such, btw.

I meant for those with other blood types.....I assumed that meant those with other blood types were more safe(family is mostly all non-a blood types).

Also in general I think we need any bit of hope we can get(although people shouldn't do dumb things because of such info that might make them or others sick, and should weigh all such info carefully, as always).

In fact, I should get back to 25th february, one of our eminent epidemiologist (E.Caumes) was still saying in media (from memory and trying to translate with my poor english level) :
"Well, it's like a flu, maybe a little more lethal, and if chinese numbers are correct, there shouldn't be any problems in France" (can't remember if he talked about rest of the world, journalist may have cut this part if it exists, or didn't ask him)

4th march : conference in sorbonne university (IIRC) with the same + virologist + another specialist : 1 hour
- "it's fast, it's serious, but we can face it if everybody - including doctors - do the right things : wash your hands, put masks on ill people, +protection of the doctors and nurses. Figures are high, but 50-80% are asymptomatic. No fear."

10th march : two heads of reanimation services in Paris and Strasbourg (where nearly all the more ill were sent) in visio conference for other hospital specialists
- we are already exhausted. It's a tsunami coming among us. In Paris and Strasbourg we are nearly already overwhelmed. This is NOT like a flu. The health system is about to collapse. You, in other services : prepare yourselves for the nighmare, prepare your teams, here is what we know / have tried to protect ouservelves. We will have weeks or even month of non-stop work. Be kind with your troops, you need to be strong. The catastrophe is among us and you'll soon be on it. The next 2-3 weeks are crucial (strict confinement measures are to be done, but even with confinement there will be tears and cries."
(I'm summing up, and translating badly, it was a lot more frightening to listen to them for an hour)
French government was in fact aware since beginning of january too that it was going to be overwhelming.

We still don't have enough masks (FFP2 needed) for the doctors and nurses (you can just imagine for the rest of the health system or the population)

Many doctors/nurse got the illness and then must not work for 2 weeks (when they only got the less symptoms), stressing more the system.

We are already calling in 3rd years students, retired doctors...

I don't know how many dead there will be, that may still be less than a big flu, or car accidents in a year (Italy example makes me fear that it will be way more than that) .
But the truth is that its already collapsing our health system. And that's not good news for Covid victims and other illness/accidents.

I remember, it was at the beginning of february, in one of our "serious" newspaper (very capitalist oriented, only them know what's right and good for people, rich are good, poor and idiots... Ccommunism is bad and wrong everytime, that kind of newspaper) : "Chinese are stupid to stop their economy, look at those dumb asses using dictatorship to put people at home, here in France we are so much better, never it will happen to us, and even so, we are strong, we know how to handle that kind of things without a breeze on our entreprises, f** that stupid chinese virus."

I then said : Chinese made powder, paper, nuclear bomb nearly alone, they wrote the art of war...
Never underestimate them. If they are willing to nearly kill all economy in a whole province, shutting down exportations... This is serious, very serious.

Thanks, that was very interesting. The situation with protective masks also seems to be very bad in Germany, there aren't nearly enough for hospital staff, so it's probably going to get pretty ugly in the health care system in the coming weeks.
Agree with you about European arrogance regarding China, too many people think that China is still a backward 3rd world country. According to the WHO fact-finding mission China actually used some pretty advanced methods for dealing with the epidemic (also on the level of individual treatment, e.g. "extracorporeal membrane oxygenation"...which already sounds super-advanced!), which might not be easily replicated on the same scale in Europe...so it will probably be worse here than in China.

A somewhat good post, but could I ask one thing of you if it's not asking too much?

If so, please try to avoid focusing(negatively OR positively) on any system(capitalism or any other system).....it doesn't really help things, and it's more people's actions that are to blame than what system they follow/like.

Agreed
================================

They also held people essentially at gunpoint and did a couple(actual and alleged) other unsavory things to get this under control.

Sure, I'm no fan of the CCP. But after the start of the crisis when they tried to cover everything up they showed at least enough competence to deal efficiently with the problem. Western elites (who have a strong authoritarian streak themselves on certain matters, so imo it isn't a simple dichotomy of Western freedom - Chinese tyranny) have yet to prove that they can do that. So far their performance hasn't been impressive.

This is true for a good number of them...heck, even now our govt wants to send checks/etc to a bunch people, but instead of just DOING IT they "have to" do the "song and dance" and get stuff for their side/people in congress first. :\

In cases like infection rates, you have to look at populations not as individuals, but as a certain amount of numbers instead (just for the sake of statistics). What I mean is that I'm sure that people who're still outside because of their political leaning and because they're against certain rules would amount to significant spread of the virus, and that amount should be around 5-7% of the general population (more or less, but I'm certain its not the wrong amount of people). Note that I've packed those people in the same camp for simplicity even if they're not wholly affiliated with a certain political leaning.

Yeah, medical capacity is a difficult question for many countries. I wonder why nobody creates haphazzard hospitals like the Chinese did. AFAIK they built a whole hospital for infected people within 9 days or so. Many countries had months to prepare as well, China is the only country that got hit without preparation.

Keep in mind that many of the things you've listed are not wholly necissary for someone to recover. They're for the most parts aids (or helpers) and most primarily tools to recover people faster.

We can't fully evaluate if such a worst case scenarios will be the case, I don't think it will be this significant or otherwise millions are on the verge of getting sick today. It could be that by the end of this year millions could be infected but if its natural and alright. If more than 500.000 people (or 475.000 people) are infected/sick in around the next 6 weeks or so the health systems worldwide are in deep trouble. The point of it is that the virus spreads gradually until we're (genically) equipt to deal with it, through its difficult considering how fast it spreads.

From the scale of things we might really be in trouble, but not if things slow down at first on a global scale. Which is why people should actually stay at home more often just to slow down the general probability of the rate people can be infected. Of course there are huge amounts of people who can't due to work, which is why just living your regular life with the least amount of people you can be around with is the best course of action. Its merely a slight suspension on social life.

There is always bias for and against something, people will always get angry about their government even if hypothetically they did everything right. Its more difficult to get rid of such behavior than this virus thats for sure. In times like these, stay calm and bitch about the government a few weeks after thiis is over instead :D!

Even if you're wholly knowledgeable to the subject matter the best thing you can do is to be cautious and careful and be prepared (not by buying too many things in advance but rather to inform yourself on the virus and how it spreads and act level headed accordingly). If you begin to panic then you've already lost, and your panic will virally affect others as well.

Yeah thats the usual hubris from any modern government. Just doing the easiest possible action all the time. Its a difficult subject for sure, because countries are always slow in decision making.

It also depends on how slow these beds are "filled up". If you've cured from covid-19 and left the bed 2 weeks after being sick, you can use that bed for another person. This entire issue is primarily about capacities on the verge of systemic medicalcollapse, should the system get overstrained for too long.

You can already see this in the hysteria. Tons of people are panicing for no reason, which in turn does already give a sense of such overstraining capacities. Perhaps you heard about the term placebo, that effect is similar but it goes the negative way instead. Besides the scientific records of infection and death rates, if everyone believes that the system and the population is doomed more people will die out due to the general negativity and panic. This snowball effect is basically unstopable once it is within its public concious. Its difficult to convince people that things aren't too grim when its about a subject not even scientists fully even understand yet.

Thats my point, the problem is not this pandemia, its this AND everything else, including the memetic infections (fake news and other misinformation that provoke histeria. Memes = pieces of information, not to be confused with internet jokes.)

Yes, those who work "at ground zero" are the real heroes. And you got it correct, the sooner people act, the more people can be saved. Its about statistical exponentiality (I usually try keeping subjects as dry as possible and in cases like these statistics are helpful. As an example, people predicted this pandemia due to statistics decades prior without guesswork or pessimism).

EDIT: Oof, sorry for the long post :3!

saw an article about this today:
Germany’s coronavirus anomaly: high infection rates but few deaths
basically:
- significantly more testing, catching a lot more cases who only suffer only mild or no symptoms, thus lowering the overall mortality statistics
- initial infections largely connected to young & fit people returning from skiing or similar activities
(so far 80% of the confirmed cases are younger than 60)

-> but most experts expect that the numbers will converge upwards in the next weeks to the figures we see in other countries

so, like you said, we are just a few days behind.
Which also means we still have some time here. For now the health care system can cope with the numbers quite well. Hopefully all the restrictions will start to show some effect next week.

//edit:
meh, seems the article vanished behind a paywall. was able to read it for free earlier

There's a time lag of up to 14 days due to the incubation period, and the restrictions (more like "recommendations") so far can't have been efficient, so its's probably already inevitable that the number of cases will be exploding over the next few weeks. I have a really bad feeling tbh, imo this won't turn out well at all in Germany.

hmm, I find it really hard to estimate honestly.
I mean, life outside certainly did change compared to ten days ago. Using the train when going to work almost feels lonely sometimes :).
but yeah, maybe you are right. Maybe it's not enough to significantly change the number of infections.
we'll see ...

the way things are going we will probably have a more strict lockdown coming.
( And I really wanted to get a haircut before that *sigh* )

Please define "democracy", if you would. Thanks.

Using "" already shows that you don't seem to have a high opinion on how the modern state/modern democracy functions. Its ok, many people seem to be fed up about it. I don't have much of an opinion about this but I don't really know much about political science.

So to make things short, democracy is a system where you can vote for people every couple of years that will sell you several ideas first that you really like and after you've voted for them so they're in power they will further lie and act against your own interests instead :>!

EDIT: This will be the only post slightly touching anything political as I'd like to refrain to talk about anything about the modern political zeitgeist but I also don't want to derail this thread.