Just a comment on the Boston health official recommending the sun and the author of the essay lumping this in with the other quackery: exposure to the sun creates Vit D in the body, the only other way you acquire it is through supplements. Vit D has a powerful effect on the immune system, deficiency in the winter months is linked to many diseases. There are lots of studies on this. So I think getting out in the sun as much as possible is an excellent idea during this pandemic. At a good distance from others, of course!
perrywidhalm
4 years ago
Disagree with the author … get out into the sun and fresh air. Not only do you need the sun for your body to synthesize Vitamin D but daily exercise is vitally import for a healthy body, mind and soul.
J Cor
4 years ago
“Back then, women were less susceptible than men because they were more home-bound.” Same thing now even though women are highly non-homebound, it appears — men do not practice as good hygiene and are more likely to smoke and drink, which is causing them to die in far greater numbers. People have tried to come up with a dozen other more convoluted explanations that are not down to behavior, but that’s basically it.
And women have never been less susceptible because they were homebound. They have always taken care of children by the dozens and old people, and nursing homes and schools have always been germ factories. I think your presumption doesn’t hold water.
fjbernal
4 years ago
The delay in imposing the lockdown in the UK will have far-reaching consequences. A large number of unnecessary deaths will be the inevitable result of this government’s bungling, murderous handling of the crisis.
Here is a worked-out example for arithmetically-challenged ministers:
An early guess was that the size of a pool of Covid-19 infected people doubles in size every 4-5 days. Many people now suggest this was wildly optimistic and in a well-populated country without any containment measures, the pool may actually double every 3 days. (A German university estimates it’s only 2 days for the USA).
So starting with just 100 people, within 21 days, the size of the infected pool may grow to 12,800 of which at least 1.84% (236 people) may die. It seems simple: Deaths = (100 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x2) x 1.84% (Case Fatality Rate of detected infected people in South Korea).
But that is an incorrect calculation.
The real equation looks at the availability of intensive care units (ICU) and hospital beds. We know from China that the percentage of infected people requiring hospital treatment is 13.8% and an additional 4.7% require intensive care. We can safely say that sick people who do not get intensive care will die due to the nature of Covid-19, so let us focus on this first.
The survival rate of 1.84% for the 12,800 infected people was derived from South Korea which had enough medical resources for all degrees of illness. But if the number of ICUs for our example pool of infected people is limited to, say, 50 ICU beds (because they are normally rare in hospitals), then the equation changes dramatically, thus:
12,800 x 4.7% = 602 people requiring ICU
602 ““ 50 ICUs = 552 people therefore do not get ICU treatment
But that is not all. Let us limit the hospital beds as well, not just the ICU beds, and assume only 500 beds are available. Then the equation is also expanded as follows:
12,800 x 13.8% = 1,766 people requiring hospital beds
1,766 ““ 500 beds = 1,266 people without hospital beds
Assuming 50% of such patients can survive without hospital beds, we may get 633 new deaths.
So finally we can get to the real equation, which expresses the true death rate once medical resources finally run out. In the above example, it is:
(552 without ICU + 633 without hospital bed) / 12,800 + 1.84% = 11.1% death rate
And the above is exactly what is happening in Italy right now, because they have run out of medical resources. Also note the example over-estimates the numbers of beds and ICUs available in most countries ““ Italy actually has 3.2 combined hospital beds and ICUs per 1,000 of population, which is considerably more than the UK (2.54) and USA (2.77). Thanks for cutting funding to the NHS, folks.
Therefore, just 100 infected people who did not self-confine may be responsible for over a thousand avoidable deaths. And of course, we probably have hundreds of thousands of people who are unknowingly spreading this disease.
Perhaps this gives you an idea about how important self-confinement is, and why it is a necessity. The horror of a collapsed medical system in a pandemic is beyond words.
Just a comment on the Boston health official recommending the sun and the author of the essay lumping this in with the other quackery: exposure to the sun creates Vit D in the body, the only other way you acquire it is through supplements. Vit D has a powerful effect on the immune system, deficiency in the winter months is linked to many diseases. There are lots of studies on this. So I think getting out in the sun as much as possible is an excellent idea during this pandemic. At a good distance from others, of course!
Disagree with the author … get out into the sun and fresh air. Not only do you need the sun for your body to synthesize Vitamin D but daily exercise is vitally import for a healthy body, mind and soul.
“Back then, women were less susceptible than men because they were more home-bound.” Same thing now even though women are highly non-homebound, it appears — men do not practice as good hygiene and are more likely to smoke and drink, which is causing them to die in far greater numbers. People have tried to come up with a dozen other more convoluted explanations that are not down to behavior, but that’s basically it.
And women have never been less susceptible because they were homebound. They have always taken care of children by the dozens and old people, and nursing homes and schools have always been germ factories. I think your presumption doesn’t hold water.
The delay in imposing the lockdown in the UK will have far-reaching consequences. A large number of unnecessary deaths will be the inevitable result of this government’s bungling, murderous handling of the crisis.
Here is a worked-out example for arithmetically-challenged ministers:
An early guess was that the size of a pool of Covid-19 infected people doubles in size every 4-5 days. Many people now suggest this was wildly optimistic and in a well-populated country without any containment measures, the pool may actually double every 3 days. (A German university estimates it’s only 2 days for the USA).
So starting with just 100 people, within 21 days, the size of the infected pool may grow to 12,800 of which at least 1.84% (236 people) may die. It seems simple: Deaths = (100 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x2) x 1.84% (Case Fatality Rate of detected infected people in South Korea).
But that is an incorrect calculation.
The real equation looks at the availability of intensive care units (ICU) and hospital beds. We know from China that the percentage of infected people requiring hospital treatment is 13.8% and an additional 4.7% require intensive care. We can safely say that sick people who do not get intensive care will die due to the nature of Covid-19, so let us focus on this first.
The survival rate of 1.84% for the 12,800 infected people was derived from South Korea which had enough medical resources for all degrees of illness. But if the number of ICUs for our example pool of infected people is limited to, say, 50 ICU beds (because they are normally rare in hospitals), then the equation changes dramatically, thus:
12,800 x 4.7% = 602 people requiring ICU
602 ““ 50 ICUs = 552 people therefore do not get ICU treatment
But that is not all. Let us limit the hospital beds as well, not just the ICU beds, and assume only 500 beds are available. Then the equation is also expanded as follows:
12,800 x 13.8% = 1,766 people requiring hospital beds
1,766 ““ 500 beds = 1,266 people without hospital beds
Assuming 50% of such patients can survive without hospital beds, we may get 633 new deaths.
So finally we can get to the real equation, which expresses the true death rate once medical resources finally run out. In the above example, it is:
(552 without ICU + 633 without hospital bed) / 12,800 + 1.84% = 11.1% death rate
And the above is exactly what is happening in Italy right now, because they have run out of medical resources. Also note the example over-estimates the numbers of beds and ICUs available in most countries ““ Italy actually has 3.2 combined hospital beds and ICUs per 1,000 of population, which is considerably more than the UK (2.54) and USA (2.77). Thanks for cutting funding to the NHS, folks.
Therefore, just 100 infected people who did not self-confine may be responsible for over a thousand avoidable deaths. And of course, we probably have hundreds of thousands of people who are unknowingly spreading this disease.
Perhaps this gives you an idea about how important self-confinement is, and why it is a necessity. The horror of a collapsed medical system in a pandemic is beyond words.