I don't think that's likely. The increased testing will catch more asymptomatic and mild cases. But I don't believe hospitals will admit inpatients without a certain level of severity, especially looking at the increase in Covid19 ICU occupancy. Also there has been a very noticeable decrease in number of tests performed in the Houston area coupled with increased positivity rate.
Word on the street is that jumping from the 8th floor of the hospital solves your (and Putin's) covid-19 troubles.
The second part of my statement is critical...willingness to go to a hospital. People are more mobile now. People were scared to go to hospitals because they were afraid to get COVID-19.
So you think the increase in hospitalization/ICU is due to the people whose covid19 symptoms is bad enough to be admitted to the hospital but who would have just try to tough it out at home a month ago? That's certainly plausible, and I would agree with that if the graph was showing an increase in overall hospitalization for all diseases, but I am doubtful that population of people who would've tough it out is large. But I don't know for sure. Either way, it's definitely interesting data and I'll pay close attention to it.
It isn't a big upward trend, and is one solution that would make sense with the death data. The death data should lag behind behind the ICU data, but instead they show no correlation. It makes me think something about human behavior is affecting the ICU data inversely proportional to the death data, recently.
The flipside of it is that a month ago, Covid seems to have a potentially higher mortality rate. People might be more willing to tough it out now because they don't think it's as deadly, whereas a month ago, people might have been more panicked if they had Covid symptoms.
This might mean in 6-12 months, we can revert to our old dirty ass selves. The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday. “In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,” said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy’s coronavirus contagion. “The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago,” he told RAI television. Italy has the third highest death toll in the world from COVID-19, with 33,415 people dying since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21. It has the sixth highest global tally of cases at 233,019. However new infections and fatalities have fallen steadily in May and the country is unwinding some of the most rigid lockdown restrictions introduced anywhere on the continent. Zangrillo said some experts were too alarmist about the prospect of a second wave of infections and politicians needed to take into account the new reality. “We’ve got to get back to being a normal country,” he said. “Someone has to take responsibility for terrorizing the country.” The government urged caution, saying it was far too soon to claim victory. “Pending scientific evidence to support the thesis that the virus has disappeared ... I would invite those who say they are sure of it not to confuse Italians,” Sandra Zampa, an undersecretary at the health ministry, said in a statement. “We should instead invite Italians to maintain the maximum caution, maintain physical distancing, avoid large groups, to frequently wash their hands and to wear masks.” A second doctor from northern Italy told the national ANSA news agency that he was also seeing the coronavirus weaken. “The strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today,” said Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at the San Martino hospital in the city of Genoa. “It is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different.”
My unscientific guess from reading random news like this is that it's mutating itself into a weaker strain over time. There's also unproven rumors that some groups who didn't get hospitalized while carrying it in the West Coast likely were infected with weaker coronastrains pre-Feb and developed immunity from coronaviruses in general. If that's the case, studies from previous coronaviruses show that immunity lasted 1-3 years for those patients. Months later and scientists still don't have a concensus with covid-19 , so take all this w/ a grain of optimistic salt. Italy probably wants its economy back as bad or worse than we do...
Agree. Have seen a lot of criticism of that Italian doctor's assumption about the viral load only being due to the virus weakening. I mean, I would love for that to be true. Even then, not clear the virus would mutate (and it doesn't mutate as much as many other viruses) the same in all the different places.
I haven’t heard about covid in a few days. That said deaths are dropping rapidly. I’m curious where things go from here.
Dallas would disagree https://www.dallasnews.com/news/pub...s-record-number-of-new-covid-19-cases-deaths/
avoid gatherings of 5/10 or more. lets just do tens of thousands all across the world. see ya aka real life experiment
Virus mutate into less deadly strains, it makes no sense for it to stay very virulent and kill the host, decreasing its own spread. The kind that can survive in the host will stay in the population
Deaths are down in Harris County while ICUs are having a slow uptick. One would expect deaths to skyrocket and ICU usage to lower in that scenario. The ICU data matched well with first peak in deaths, but completely whiffs on the second peak. It could be treatments are getting better, the most vulnerable already bit the bucket early. Though, I'm guessing the reason for the differences in the ICU data and the death data is more on human decisions/actions than on the virus.
Or the economics. Hospitals were cautious filling up the ICU's in fear they would be overwhelmed and face triage. Now hospitals are hurting for money and empty ICU beds arent fillling the coffers.
I haven’t looked at hospitalization and ICU data for awhile because it was very unreliable to start. Does anyone know how current ICU and hospitalization rates compare to what would be considered normal level?
