Posted on 02/28/2020 9:20:28 PM PST by NoLibZone
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — While admitting we need more information about the COVID-19 coronavirus from China that's spreading worldwide, a local emergency-room doctor believes it eventually will be determined that it is 10 times less deadly than this year's flu strains.
"The influenza virus is actually about 10 times more serious than the coronavirus that we have around here," said Physicians Premier Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lonnie Schwirtlich.
That's right. The Coastal Bend has seen coronaviruses before. Questions remain, however, over how severe this new COVID-19 strain is.
That could change soon.
"What the coronavirus that's coming out of China is and what's its capabilities, we're not quite sure," said Dr. Schwirtlich. "But we're going to find out more now that there's a lot of it in (South Korea), because there we have more ability to find out the information that China is reluctant to let us know about."
His relatively low concern level about COVID-19 coronavirus does not ease the minds of some people who are visiting Corpus Christi.
"I'm concerned because I have -- my immune system is not good for me; myself," said Floren Lopez, who is visiting from San Francisco. "So it concerns me that I'm susceptible."
"I'm very concerned about it, and I don't really know what to do about it yet," said John Larsen, who's visiting from Kansas City. "I'm hoping we get some direction on what we can do, individually, to kind-of protect ourselves if it starts flaring out of control here or in our community."
Other visitors think they know what to do to prevent catching COVID-19 coronavirus, and they're not as concerned.
"If you don't want to have coronavirus is like saying you don't want to have the flu," said Genevieve Aspillaga, who was visiting the seawall from Toronto. "So just keep yourself clean and healthy."
Dr. Schwirtlich agrees with her.
"It's just like any infection out there," he said. "You need to try and avoid it if you can. You do that by avoiding people who are sick and washing your hands frequently."
Is China still treating patients with such things as rhino horn powder and herbs? Maybe that’s part of the problem. When visiting China I don’t recall seeing any major medical centers but a lot of mom and pop herbal concoctions being sold as medicines.
More like common sense for current conditions...less than 100K world-wide cases of coronavirus with surprise start and zero vaccines....while the Flu, which has a set of vaccines, infects over 30 million Americans every year...coronaviruse has to infect 350-400 times as many folks world-wide, compared to what it already has, to catch up with the number of Americans the Flu infects each and every year - and that’s with the low-end of what the Flu infects...
Doc supported Romney for prez.
LONNIE DR. SCHWIRTLICH (SELF-EMPLOYED/PHYSICIAN), (Zip code: 78418) $500 to ROMNEY FOR PRESIDENT INC. (ROMNEY, MITT / RYAN, PAUL D. ) on 06/13/2012
Explains a lot.
LOL.
“Seen corona virus before”.
Yeah the common cold is a corona virus.
But not this corona virus.
We will know much much more in 3 weeks.
Stand by.
“I guess they are expendable. I wonder if he took the R0 into account and the much higher ICU rates needed - which could overwhelm the system? What happens then? “
WE have just under 100,000 ICU beds in the US.
During flu season there is basically no excess capacity. It’s common to end up holding ICU admissions in the ED for a day or days waiting for a bed to open. Surgeries are cancelled.
It won’t take much at all to completely overwhelm the system.
.
——During flu season there is basically no excess capacity. ——
The patients occupying the ICU beds are in effect isolated to prevent the spread of their pneumonia. Deaths mostly result from pneumonia rather than flu. Flu is the precursor
Children under 15 don’t get it. Now that is a bit strange.
If you believe WHO’s stats, China smokes at about twice the rate the US does. That’s a lot of ciggies and abused lungs.
Yes up until the mid eighties, all hospitals in the US had excess capacity.
There would always be extra beds on each unit.
It was part of the Civil defense plan to have those beds.
they were part of the protections the government had put in place to protect its citizens.
like highways that were wide enough to land planes in case of war,
like bomb shelters to house and protect the populations
Like stored food and water and necessities cached around the country.
like the plan that large fast food outlets would assist in feeding the populace.
and civil defense sirens to warn the population of war.
All these things were once considered mandatory care-taking by our government.
then the seventies and eighties happened, and MBAs and leftists really got their clutches into the heart of policy making in America.
No they aren’t. No way to account for those that get it that are asymptomatic or have only a mild reaction, requiring no treatment.
Those are not facts. They are guesses based on flawed & incomplete data.
A % death rate is calculated by divide cases by deaths. Many of the cases of the current coronoa virus are undetected, just a mild illness like a cold or sub-clinical. The seasonal flu testing kits are in abundance and the calculations are based on Nations where people are going to doctors & being tested. Only the most severe corona virus cases are presenting to medical attention and that skews the presumed death rate by excluding all the mild cases except those where screening was performed a very small%.
We don’t put patient in ICU beds to isolate them.
We put people in ICU beds because they need critical care.
Most do end up with a secondary bacterial pneumonia, but some have viral pneumonia or some other complication from the flu.
The point is there is no excess capacity for a novel infection if significant numbers of people get infected and need ICU care to survive.
“This virus kills between 2 to 3 percent of those who get it. The flu kills less than 1%.”
This virus kills between 2 to 3 percent of those who get it in China. I suspect it may be lower in first world countries. Not enough data yet.
Finally the voice of reason.
“In any case, an excessive response is a lot less dangerous than an insufficient one”
agreed .... BUT deliberately creating ignorant panic, which too many in the media (and at FR) seem hell bent on, does NOT help at all, and in fact is extremely counter-productive ... such panic creates so much static that any actual truth or facts can’t penetrate ...
one of the worst things i’ve seen posted here is the fake daily mail article where they declared there was a food panic in the U.S. and “proved” it by showing pictures of some empty homemade shelves in a bunch of low-rent street bodegas ...
Flu quarantine.
I'll bet that changes in a week...if not sooner.
Well, that was quick. Just got an alert that the first US citizen has died in Washington State.
Saw some interesting stats on FNC earlier today..
There’ve apparently been 18,000 or so flu deaths globally out of 32,000,000 infected. That’s around a .05% mortality rate.
CV has a mortality rate of ~3.5% IF you believe the numbers out of China, which no thinking person does. And, since they have every possible motivation to understate the numbers, the mortality rate is likely HIGHER than 3.5%.
That is something to be very concerned about. So, it really tweaks me off to see people keep downplaying this. We’re in the early stages of spread in the US. Can it be contained? Possibly, but idiotic politics and wide open borders, plus tens of thousands of people traveling daily do not give me hope that it will be. And IF it does spread widely here, everyone downplaying this compared to the flu is going to look very foolish..
China has a surface layer of modern medical facilities, particularly in its shiny cities. Their infrastructure is very shallow (BernieCare) with lots of traditional medicine, especially outside of their “modern” areas.
So outside of Wuhan the modern medical facilities are able to handle the relatively light case load (apparently and so far) so death rates have been relatively low, while inside Wuhan I expect cases are now just being tossed in their death camps (the fake hospitals they built) so nobody is going for treatment. They’d rather die among family and along with family. Thus the “low” new case numbers from Wuhan.
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