Face Masks, Gel etc

[reader]

The public is now being advised to only wear face masks if they are (1) caring for someone believed to have the virus or (2) If you are coughing or sneezing.

The graphic below appears in an article that also describes the Thai government’s new investigation into the availability of masks in the country.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1871804/mask-shortage-sparks-supply-chain-

 

[reader]

From Khaosod English 

ARRESTED VENDOR SAYS SHE SELLS 200,000 REUSED MASKS

SARABURI — The owner of a shop in Saraburi province where workers were caught repackaging and reselling used face masks were charged with fraud, police said Wednesday.

Saraburi police chief Chaiwat Aranwat said shop’s owner Jintana Manwichai, 47, confessed that she had sold up to 200,000 pieces of recycled masks at the price of three baht each on Facebook.

She and her accomplices were charged with selling falsely labeled goods and frauds, Maj. Gen. Chaiwat said. They were also charged with selling antiques without a license; second hand materials count as antiques under Thai laws.

Police said the suspects will be brought to a court today for a remand hearing. 

Head of Medical Services Department Somsak Akkslip told Thairath sharing face masks with others is extremely unhygienic.

The incident came a day before the government took full control of the distribution of face masks in the country.

https://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/crimecourtscalamity/2020/03/04/arrested-vendor-says-she-sells-200000-reused-masks/

[Jasper]

Bangkok shopping mall EmQuartier installed Auto Sanitizing Gate that spray mist.

 

[10tazione]

Is it real?

Anti-COVID19
Nano spray against viruses
Whats written in this line? Tested & certified by LCDC?
Caution: May cause allergies to sensitive skin

I love it when the indications about side effects are well hidden.
They forgot: "Please remove face mask before walking through"
What is LCDC?

[Jasper]

  

ECDC.  European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

 

Desperate measures for desperate time. 
Shopping malls are desperate to attract customers. I have noticed both MBK and IconSiam now have a staff just for pressing floor buttons by listening customers request to the self operating elevators.

[spoon]

Fancy equipment for a disease that is only slightly worse than normal flu

[DivineMadman]

2 hours ago, spoon said:

Fancy equipment for a disease that is only slightly worse than normal flu

yeah....but..... WHO just said fatality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4%.  According to the LA Times, the fatality for regular seasonal flu last year was .15% in the U.S. (so possibly higher in some parts of the world??).  Even if regular flu has fatality rate of 1%, COVID-19 would by one measure - fatality rate - be quite a lot worse than the normal flu  Same LA Times article said that Spanish Flu fatality rate was 2.5%.  And I think people thought the Spanish Flu was really bad.  

Maybe the WHO number will come down.  It does seem that with testing being so inconsistent the "denominator" in the fatality fraction can't be that reliable.  We can hope.  https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-05/flu-killed-more-people-coronavirus-covid-19

When you play out the percentages into large populations, they become numbers of real human beings and it does seem that this is an area where we would rather avoid the deaths.  

I had a professor once who pointed out that in the U.S. if you really wanted to save lives, lower the speed limit.  Statistically it saves lives.  But no one cares about that.  Sometimes we care.  Sometimes we don't.

[Guest]

An increase in the WHO declared fatality rate is long overdue.      It's been obvious that deaths/cases has been above 2% for weeks, even with many new cases every day, where the outcome had not been decided.     

I agree there is some doubt over the denominator, but don't see that getting resolved soon.

A death rate of 3.4% is a LOT worse than normal flu, at around 0.1%.   

The overall effect will be difficult to compare, since the key result is death rate x number of cases and of course, special measures are being taken to prevent the transmission of COVID.

COVID is probably additional to normal flu.   Furthermore, I believe there are 4 main types of virus causing normal flu and variations of these circulate.  Now COVID has escaped containment, some experts suggest we will have 5 main types of virus causing regular flu.

 

The US professor's comments on speed limits are nonsense.    The USA has painfully slow traffic, yet the death rate per 100,000 vehicles is much higher than the UK or Germany, where speeds are much faster.    The safest roads tend to be motorways, where speeds are high.    Of course, there is a role for 20 mph limits in the most densly populated areas and next to schools, but generally other factors are more significant.  

Speed gets picked on, because it's easy to measure and easy to fine people for.     Where I live, the police are particularly good at finding a "silly" 30 or 40mph speed limit on a wide open road and setting up a speed trap, rather than parking outside a school and really throwing the book at someone driving dangerously.

However, the main opportunities for reducing road deaths are improving driving skill & attitude, stopping mobile phone use, ensuring the road design is safe and ensuring road users use their safety equipment properly (seatbelts, helmets etc).   In Europe, I suggest a heavy focus on stopping mobile phone use is needed.   In SE Asia, ALL of the items I listed are big opportunities.

Probably one for a different thread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[spoon]

Yup, it is still too early to get a reasonable fatality rate, especialy it takes few weeks to a month from first testes positive to resolved case (recovered or death). I dont recall the scare is this huge during sars or mers though. H1N1 scare in the beginning was a bit similar but again, it turns out all that scare is for nothing really. 

Another insight to the mortality rate is to view it by age group.

[Guest]

Clearly some members need to take more care than others, based on age and existing health status.

Incidentally, I believe that's data from a Chinese paper published 2~3 weeks ago.   The same paper showed the death rate in Hubei was way higher than other provinces.  I'm not sure why, possibly they had the more severe strain of COVID, or the healthcare system couldn't cope.   However, as far as I could tell, their death v age stats included Hubei with it's much higher death rate.

 

Another topic of interest to certain members:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51176409


 

 

[reader]

59 minutes ago, z909 said:

 The US professor's comments on speed limits are nonsense.    The USA has painfully slow traffic, yet the death rate per 100,000 vehicles is much higher than the UK or Germany, where speeds are much faster.    The safest roads tend to be motorways, where speeds are high.   

Painfully slow traffic? Major highways are 70 mph. 
 

Yes, motorways have fewer total  deaths but that’s because you don’t have pedestrians crossing streets to deal with. Motorways are limited access roads. It’s not the speed factor that’s responsible.
 

 

[DivineMadman]

1 hour ago, z909 said:

The US professor's comments on speed limits are nonsense.   

 

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety disagrees.  And they have numbers to back it up in the U.S. because speed limits were reduced to conserve oil but then allowed to rise again -- and fatalities increased.  

"An IIHS study examined longer-term changes. During 1993-2017, a 5 mph increase in the maximum state speed limit was associated with an 8 percent increase in fatality rates on interstates and freeways and a 3 percent increase on other roads (Farmer, 2019). In total, there were an estimated 37,000 more traffic fatalities during these years than would have been expected if maximum speed limits in 1993 had remained in place. In 2017 alone, there were more than 1,900 additional deaths."

https://www.iihs.org/topics/speed#by-the-numbers

[anddy]

3 hours ago, reader said:

Painfully slow traffic? Major highways are 70 mph. 

That's indeed painfully slow. That's 112 kmh, which I consider excruciatingly slow on a motorway. Especially in a gigantic country like the US with sometimes highways straight as an arrow for tens or even hundreds of miles.
In European countries the motorway speed limit typically ranges from 120 to 140. 120 is still slow, 140 is more decent, but kinda rare afaik (Italy). Of course, the limit will be lower in areas that are more dangerous, such as very curvy and/or hilly stretches. Doesn't have to be a uniform one size fits all.

[reader]

I suppose it’s all relative to your home country experience. At my age, 70 is my comfort level. When I want to faster I fly to Bangkok. 

[Guest]

In the UK, the speed limit is 70 mph, but it's not strictly enforced and people frequently drive at 80 or 90 mph.  Safely.    With a lower death rate than the US.

I've moderated my motorway speed from about 90 down to about 85mph and in 35 years, have never been stopped for speeding on the motorway.    The only thing to watch out for is the variable limits, which are switched on when traffic is heavy.   Then the cameras go on.    

 

My only experience in the US was on some fairly open sparsely populated highway linking a couple of US cities.   The speed limit was about 55mph.    This was excruciating and there is no way European traffic would move at that speed.  

[reader]

22 minutes ago, z909 said:

In the UK, the speed limit is 70 mph, but it's not strictly enforced and people frequently drive at 80 or 90 mph.  Safely.    With a lower death rate than the US.

Have you seen up close the results of a high speed collision?

I did for many years. So spare me the crap about proudly breaking the speed limit and doing it safely. 
 

 

[spoon]

To add to the point that it is still too early to get the mortality rate, most people who do get tested, are either needing medical help, have travelled to china (in early stage) or other badly affected countries, or close contact to a confirmed case from contact tracing. We know some countries totally ignore this (indonesia, laos, cambodia for example), and most people who are asymptomatic or got a mild fever without travel history nor close contact to a confirmes cased dont even bother to go to clinic and probably just swallowed some paracetemol. Even amongst the confirmed cases, roughly 80% are having mild symptom without the need to be hospitalized, just needed to be isolated. 

I agree, this virus is something to be worried about, but it spreads similarly like flu, and unless you are in the high risk group, i do believe the scare is blown out of proportion. Id like to put another insight to the death rate, which is most who died have underlying medical condition. 

 

[DivineMadman]

28 minutes ago, spoon said:

To add to the point that it is still too early to get the mortality rate, most people who do get tested, are either needing medical help, have travelled to china (in early stage) or other badly affected countries, or close contact to a confirmed case from contact tracing. We know some countries totally ignore this (indonesia, laos, cambodia for example), and most people who are asymptomatic or got a mild fever without travel history nor close contact to a confirmes cased dont even bother to go to clinic and probably just swallowed some paracetemol. Even amongst the confirmed cases, roughly 80% are having mild symptom without the need to be hospitalized, just needed to be isolated.  

yes.  but still....

I do wonder if the WHO went out with that 3.4% just to try to scare governments into action.  I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say more likely that was the number their data showed, inflammatory or not, so they published it.  Some HKG scientists just put it more in the 1.4% range https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3074015/university-hong-kong-researchers-put-covid-19 and UMN has some data about 2.3%.  http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-72000-covid-19-patients-finds-23-death-rate.  (UMN.  hehehe)

So it does seem that the scientists involved, even if we put aside the actual percentage, do seem to be saying it's worse than the regular flu.  By multiples.  And spreads very very easily.  Not sure how much more we need to know.

And even if the 80% don't have it bad, that 20% (!!!) number requiring serious medical attention (including hospitalization) is a big, expensive number and puts strains national healthcare systems.  20%!!!  Plus of course their pain, suffering.  

28 minutes ago, spoon said:

I agree, this virus is something to be worried about, but it spreads similarly like flu, and unless you are in the high risk group, i do believe the scare is blown out of proportion. Id like to put another insight to the death rate, which is most who died have underlying medical condition. 

This is always a tricky one.  Yes that old or sick person was going to die - possibly in a year or two - anyway.  Still - ugh - does that make losing those last few months/years meaningless if it could be avoided through government/socitety action?  hmmm

The great miracle of COVID-19 is that it is reported to be particularly mild for young children.  

  

[anddy]

As it is, the REAL death rate is very much up in the air. Not only does it depend on the highly unreliable denominator, at this point it also varies dramatically between some of the countries with a relatively high number of cases. 

Country   cases     deaths     rate
Global    102,188    3,491    3.4%
China       80,651     3,070    3.8%
S. Korea     6,767          44    0.7%
Iran            4,747        124    2.6%
Italy           4,636         197    4.2%
Source of cases & deaths (as of writing this post): https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

It appears the WHO number is the unfiltered global number, not taking into account the uncertain denominator. 

As for Italy: it looks alarmingly high but at the same time it confirms the age thing, allowing younger folks to relax: 

Quote

The national health institute said the average age of those who have died was 81, with the majority suffering from underlying health problems. An estimated 72% of all those who have died were men.
source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51777049

The AVERAGE age was a whopping 81, so there must have been many many in their 90s.

[spoon]

Here is another dive into the death rate, further divided by region, even in china, the death rate is all over the place with wuhan is higher than the rest.

Mortality Rate, as discussed by the National Health Commission (NHC) of China on Feb. 4

Asked at a press conference on February 4 what the current mortality rate (or case fatality rate, CFR) is, an official with China NHC said that ^[7]:

• The formula they are using is: cumulative current total deaths / current confirmed cases. Therefore, as of 24:00 on Feb. 3, the formula used was 425/20,438.
• Based on this figure, the national mortality rate to date was 2.1% of confirmed cases.
• There might be mild cases and other cases not reported.
• 97% of the country's total deaths (414) were in the Hubei Province.
• Mortality rate in Wuhan was 4.9%.
• Mortality rate in the Hubei Province was 3.1%.
• Mortality rate nationwide was 2.1%.
• Fatality rate in other provinces was 0.16%.
• Deaths in Wuhan were 313, accounting for 74% of China's total.
• Most of the cases were still mild cases, therefore there was no need to panic.
• Asked why Wuhan was so much higher than the national level, the NHC official replied that it was for lack of resources, citing as an example that there were only 110 critical care beds in the three designated hospitals where most of the cases were sent.
• National mortality rate was basically stable, as of Feb. 4 at 2.1%, and it was 2.3% at the beginning of the epidemic, which can be seen as a slight decline.
• Front the analysis of death cases, it emerged that the demographic profile was mainly male, accounting for 2/3, females accounting for 1/3, and is mainly elderly, more than 80% are elderly over 60 years old, and more than 75% had underlying diseases present such as cardiovascular and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and, in some cases, tumor.
• Elderly people with basic diseases, as long as they have pneumonia, were clinically a high-risk factor regardless of whether it is a coronavirus or not, and the case fatality rate was also very high, so it is not that the case fatality rate of pneumonia is high because of the infection with the new coronavirus. "This point must be explained to everyone," concluded the NHC official

 

There are more statistic about death rate on this website if anyone want to read further

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/

[Guest]

The Chinese report includes the death rate v age figures, which have been widely reported elsewhere since publication.

I presume the death rate v age stats include the Hubei province figures, which therefore would dramatically increase the reported rate. 

I'm not quite sure why the death rate is higher in Hubei, but the Chinese have recently reported two different strains of the virus.    There are plenty of other theories that also could explain that.

Incidentally, dividing deaths/cases, Italy is at 4.25%.      

[anddy]

15 minutes ago, z909 said:

The Chinese report includes the death rate v age figures, which have been widely reported elsewhere since publication.

I presume the death rate v age stats include the Hubei province figures, which therefore would dramatically increase the reported rate. 

I'm not quite sure why the death rate is higher in Hubei, but the Chinese have recently reported two different strains of the virus.    There are plenty of other theories that also could explain that.

Incidentally, dividing deaths/cases, Italy is at 4.25%.      

Italy: see my post above. 4.2%, the average age of which is 81.

Higher rate in Hubei: one explanation I read and that seemed plausible was that

• the disease was new and at first nobody knew what it was and how to deal with it
• hospitals got overwhelmed with these "mysterious pneumonia cases" (as it was dubbed then), thus leading to a shortage of appropriate ICU treatment (e.g. respirators) leading to otherwise avoidable deaths

Remember how they built emergency hospital(s) there in ONE WEEK, because they had to. So the second point above seems very plausible indeed.

 

Also interestingly, note that the rate in S. Korea is MUCH lower at only 0.7%. I just read in the current issue of The Economist that S. Korea is testing at a rate of 10,000 a day, so it is  unsurprising that they have more reported cases. Hence a lower death rate too. The US, on the other hand, according to the same Economist article as of March 1st has "indefensibly tested only 472 people" and thus only 159 reported cases.

[spoon]

In short it is still too early to know the exact death rate. To put things to perspective, WHO estimated SARS death rate at 3-4% and by the end of the outbreak, it was 9.6%.

[jason1975]

My personal take on this Covid-19 virus situation is that if a person leads a healthy lifestyle, he is less likely to catch the virus. Should take vitamin C every day. Washing hands frequently with soap helps too.

[vinapu]

12 hours ago, jason1975 said:

My personal take on this Covid-19 virus situation is that if a person leads a healthy lifestyle, he is less likely to catch the virus. Should take vitamin C every day. Washing hands frequently with soap helps too.

I's add shot of undiluted gin after ever meal