Sometime today, there will be more active, reported coronavirus cases outside of China than inside. The cat is out of the bag for sure. I think at this point, it's only a matter of time till a good portion of us catch the disease, barring a vaccine in the next few months. Good luck to you and your loved ones.
Moving on, this appears to me to be a real world test of various countries' public health systems, with such things as how accurate the above reports are, or how many people are infected or die due to this coronavirus.
Reply to: Healthcare
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @04:05PM
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday March 08 2020, @04:05PM (#968192)
People overestimate the value of healthcare systems.
For a viral infection - such as the corona virus is, there's not a whole heck of a lot that a hospital can do. They can keep you hydrated, give you decongestants, and keep your fever down - mostly using the exact same centuries old drugs you can buy for a few bucks at any pharmacy. If you reach the point of being too weak to consume liquids on your own then they can give you an IV and intravenous drugs, but if you reach that point - you already stand a good chance of dying regardless of whether you're at a state of the art facility being treated by the best money can buy, or at a bodunk improvised treatment clinic. And whether you get there or not is not dependent on some ultra expensive state of the art treatment or whatever - but basically whether or not your immune system is functioning well.
Similar for hopes of a vaccine. There was a "vaccine" developed for SARS. Not only did it not work especially well, but if you took the vaccine and then later caught SARS it was vastly more nasty than usual.
99% of our most effective treatments are many decades old at this point. The trillions spent since then have been mostly to try to move the decimal place a spot or two with, at best, mixed results. Although pharmaceutical companies have become stupidly rich in the process of making everybody ("everybody" mostly meaning the US - one of only two developed nations in the world where direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising is legal) think otherwise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @04:05PM
People overestimate the value of healthcare systems.
For a viral infection - such as the corona virus is, there's not a whole heck of a lot that a hospital can do. They can keep you hydrated, give you decongestants, and keep your fever down - mostly using the exact same centuries old drugs you can buy for a few bucks at any pharmacy. If you reach the point of being too weak to consume liquids on your own then they can give you an IV and intravenous drugs, but if you reach that point - you already stand a good chance of dying regardless of whether you're at a state of the art facility being treated by the best money can buy, or at a bodunk improvised treatment clinic. And whether you get there or not is not dependent on some ultra expensive state of the art treatment or whatever - but basically whether or not your immune system is functioning well.
Similar for hopes of a vaccine. There was a "vaccine" developed for SARS. Not only did it not work especially well, but if you took the vaccine and then later caught SARS it was vastly more nasty than usual.
99% of our most effective treatments are many decades old at this point. The trillions spent since then have been mostly to try to move the decimal place a spot or two with, at best, mixed results. Although pharmaceutical companies have become stupidly rich in the process of making everybody ("everybody" mostly meaning the US - one of only two developed nations in the world where direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising is legal) think otherwise.