Chinese dropping like flies

[Graham]

Theres an interesting video interview Sky with the head doctor in that region, I'll take a look for it, but the article itself is histrionic and not well equipped to persuade our skeptics.

[awkwardcustomer]

Click in the link to watch the video inside the hospital. It's about 5 minutes long.

Coronavirus: Italy's hardest-hit city wants you to see how COVID-19 is affecting its hospitals

The sheer numbers of people succumbing to the coronavirus is overwhelming every hospital in northern Italy.

In Sky News.



Staff frantically wave us out of the way, pushing gurneys carrying men and women on mobile respirators - it's not chaos, but it is hectic. They rush past wards already rammed with beds all filled with people in terrible distress - gasping for air, clutching at their chests and at tubes pumping oxygen into their oxygen-starved lungs. I'm in the main hospital in Bergamo, the hardest-hit hospital in Italy in the hardest-hit town in the hardest-hit province, Lombardy - and it's just plain scary.

Masked, gloved and in a hazmat suit, my team and I are led through corridors full of gasping people who look terribly ill.

I ask what ward I am in.

"This isn't really a ward, it's a waiting room, we just have to use every bit of space," my guide, Vanna Toninelli, head of the hospital press office tells me.

The medical teams are fighting a war here and they are losing. The sheer numbers of people succumbing to the coronavirus is overwhelming every hospital in northern Italy - and it could easily overwhelm the rest of the country as well. The staff are working flat out trying to keep their patients from deteriorating further. They are trying to stop them from dying. In groups they crowd around the latest patients. Attaching monitors, drips and most importantly respirators. Without them the patients will simply go downhill fast. Really fast. Deadly fast.

It looks like an intensive care unit (ICU), but it is actually just an emergency arrivals ward. The ICU is full. The people being treated are new arrivals, but they look far worse than that. Anywhere else in the world they would be intensive care cases but here, to qualify, you are actually on the point of death, not just gravely ill. In this pandemic, gravely ill is considered a reasonable position. It really is that bad. The arrival of people here is an absolute constant. This killer pandemic is virtually out of control. We have all heard what has been going on here, but no journalist has been allowed in here to see it, until now. The city of Bergamo invited us in to show everyone what a catastrophic emergency, that nobody has ever experienced before, looks like. They want you to see it. They want the world's population to question their own governments' responses. Because there can be no excuse anymore that nobody knew. Italy did not. Now everyone else does.

Through plastic bubbles that fit over the heads of the most ill, staff struggle to communicate with patients. The weak can barely speak and above the noise of the ward and the constant bleep of heart monitors and breathing pumps, it's almost impossible to make out what they are saying. The bubbles are attempting to equalise the air pressure in the lungs. Nobody expected this, nobody even imagined they would be treating so many so quickly.

And for the record, it is NOT like flu, it is more often than not chronic pneumonia and it is killing hundreds here each day. The head of emergency care, Dr Roberto Cosentini, says they have never seen anything like it, and he and his staff are warning other countries, especially the UK, that they will see it soon.

"It's a very severe pneumonia, and so it's a massive strain for every health system, because we see every day 50 to 60 patients who come to our emergency department with pneumonia, and most of them are so severe they need very high volumes of oxygen. And so we had to reorganise our emergency room and our hospital [to] three levels of intensive care."

The Papa Giovanni XXII hospital is one of the most advanced in Europe, but even this gleaming mega hospital is on its knees. Bergamo is the absolute centre of this epidemic and the hospital is attempting to deal with a crisis that was never imagined. Many of the medical staff have worked or trained in the UK. Dr Lorenzo Grazioli worked in Leicester for a year. He says his friends have been ringing him constantly to get a sense of what it is like. He told me they are bracing themselves for the same and are very worried.

He, like every other doctor and nurse I spoke to, urged the UK to follow the example of China and Italy, and lock down everything straight away. It is, they say, the only way to slow the virus down: not beat it, slow it. "I have never felt so stressed in my life, I'm an intensivist, and I am quite used to intense moments, and the choices, and people are critical and die without any treatment, and you [usually] make the difference," he told me. But when you are at this point you realise that you are not enough. We are 100 anaesthetists, we are doing our best, but maybe it's not enough."

In labs, staff are continuously testing for the virus and attempting to find something that can beat it. They say it's a long way off. The problem facing health services across the world is that when the infection curve goes up it rockets, and all resources, all testing, all supplies are used up instantly. Multiple hospitals all making the same demands at the same time. It's crippling - here they call it the apocalypse. Bergamo wanted us to see this, as I have said, and they want to send a simple message: "Get ready."

Your typical NHS hospital in the UK looks worse than this.

What does this picture prove?  Nothing more than the sad fact that hospitals aren't like the movies.

[Vetus Ordo]

Theres an interesting video interview Sky with the head doctor in that region, I'll take a look for it, but the article itself is histrionic and not well equipped to persuade our skeptics.

Yes, the tone of the article is too apocalyptic.

But the video itself is interesting, especially because it interviews a couple of doctors in the hospital there.

[awkwardcustomer]

Thank you for a histrionic article and a fairly ordinary hospital picture.

[Vetus Ordo]

What does this picture prove?  Nothing more than the sad fact that hospitals aren't like the movies.

There's an actual video with a news piece inside the hospital, if you care to click the link.

The video only proves that they're experiencing a logistical and humanitarian nightmare. This is something you'd like to avoid in the US, I'd suspect.

[awkwardcustomer]

What does this picture prove?  Nothing more than the sad fact that hospitals aren't like the movies.

There's an actual video with a news piece inside the hospital, if you care to click the link.

The video only proves that they're experiencing a logistical and humanitarian nightmare. This is something you'd like to avoid in the US, I'd suspect.

Sky News????

The video doesn't prove anything.

If you separate the commentary from the images, what do you see?  A hospital in a country which has the highest winter flu death rate in Europe?  Now imagine watching the film with a different which explained just that, and giving the reasons. 

Would you be equally convinced?  Given how clever the media is, I'm betting you would.

[Graham]

Do Brits have a problem with Sky news? They seemed to have better coverage of Brexit than, say, the BBC.

[awkwardcustomer]

Do Brits have a problem with Sky news? They seemed to have better coverage of Brexit than, say, the BBC.

They're as bad as the BBC.

[Graham]

Do Brits have a problem with Sky news? They seemed to have better coverage of Brexit than, say, the BBC.

They're as bad as the BBC.

Are there any outlets that conservatives there prefer?

[Vetus Ordo]

Coronavirus Report that Prompted Stronger U.S. Action: 1M Deaths Even with Extreme Prevention Steps

The novel coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. will last at least 18 months and "could include multiple waves of illness," prompting "significant shortages" for consumers and overwhelming the healthcare system, a federal government contingency plan leaked to the media this week warned.

In Breitbart.



President Donald Trump's anti-coronavirus plan, dated March 13 and delivered to policymakers, echoed the findings of a March 16 report by the U.K.'s Imperial College, which also found that the outbreak could "potentially" last "18 month or more" in the U.S. and strain the healthcare system "many times over." The Imperial College's epidemiology report reportedly helped push the Trump administration to escalate its efforts to combat the deadly and highly contagious disease, the New York Times reported Tuesday, citing unnamed American officials. Jeremy Young, an assistant professor at Utah's Dixie State University, broke down the Imperial College team's findings on Twitter:

We can now read the Imperial College report on COVID-19 that led to the extreme measures we've seen in the US this week. Read it; it's terrifying. I'll offer a summary in this thread; please correct me if I've gotten it wrong.https://t.co/AwE2cHIbeJ — Jeremy C. Young (@jeremycyoung) March 17, 2020

While Trump's anti-coronavirus plan does not provide any information on infection fatalities, the Imperial College team predicted that the more intensive and socially disruptive the intervention measures are, the fewer people will die. The Imperial College team was able to make its predictions by entering coronavirus infection and death rates from China, South Korea, and Italy into epidemic modeling software and running simulations of what can happen in the United States. Even with three months of a combination of social distancing of people over 70, the isolation of suspect cases, and having their families quarantined — described as the mitigation strategy — there would be "1.1-1.2 million" deaths in the United States, and the health system would be "overwhelmed many times over," Imperial College found. Mitigation would slow but not necessarily stop the spread of the virus, "reducing peak healthcare demand while protecting those most at risk of severe disease from infection," the researchers explained in the report.

This mitigation strategy is what you've seen a lot of people talking about when they say we should "flatten the curve": try to slow the spread of the disease to the people most likely to die from it, to avoid overwhelming hospitals. — Jeremy C. Young (@jeremycyoung) March 17, 2020

Reducing the case numbers to low levels or eliminating human-to-human transmission, described as the suppression strategy, would require social distancing of the entire population, combined with home isolation of cases and the quarantine of their family, as well as shutting down public gatherings and most work places in addition to school and university closures. The intervention measures required for suppression would have to remain in place until a vaccine becomes available in 12-18 months or more.

During those 18 months, things are going to be very difficult and very scary. Our economy and society will be disrupted in profound ways. And if suppression actually works, it will feel like we're doing all this for nothing, because infection and death rates will remain low. — Jeremy C. Young (@jeremycyoung) March 17, 2020

With the suppression strategy, fatalities would peak at a few thousand deaths, then go down. Imperial College warned that transmission would "quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed."

Suppression works! The death rate in the US peaks 3 weeks from now at a few thousand deaths, then goes down. We hit but don't exceed the number of available ventilators. The nightmarish death tolls from the rest of the study disappear. — Jeremy C. Young (@jeremycyoung) March 17, 2020

After the 1st suppression period ends in July, we could probably lift restrictions for a month, followed by 2 more months of suppression, in a repeating pattern without triggering an outbreak or overwhelming the ventilator supply. Staggering breaks by city could do a bit better. — Jeremy C. Young (@jeremycyoung) March 17, 2020

If nothing is done to break chains of transmission, coronavirus-related fatalities will reach "2.2 million in the US, not accounting for the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed on mortality," the Imperial College report said. About 80 percent of the population would also be infected by the virus absent any action, the report added.

Here's what would happen: 80% of Americans would get the disease. 0.9% of them would die. Between 4 and 8 percent of all Americans over the age of 70 would die. 2.2 million Americans would die from the virus itself. — Jeremy C. Young (@jeremycyoung) March 17, 2020

Asked when can Americans expect their lives to go back to normal during a press conference Thursday, Trump did not provide a specific time frame. "I hope very soon. We'll see. This is uncharted territory," he said. Echoing the Imperial College report while briefing reporters alongside Trump, Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, declared:

[Modeling studies show] that if you add these things [intervention measures] together, they have a bigger impact than separately. And so those are part of the decision-making. We had a whole group of modelers in yesterday. They're compositing all the data together to look at this carefully because everyone has those same questions of what the impact [of the intervention measures] will be and what pieces could essentially be removed, and you still have the same level of impact in decreasing the spread of the virus. The absolute key to this, though, is every single American looking at the President's guidelines and taking it seriously.

Birx noted that state and local governments will ultimately decide how long the intervention measures will be in place. Trump and Birx acknowledged that Americans are pulling together as a nation to combat the coronavirus and for the most part doing what they are supposed to be doing when it comes to following guidelines to hinder the spread of the virus. The U.S. public may have to resign itself to over one million deaths (mitigation strategy) given that reducing the number of cases to the least amount possible (suppression strategy) may be unrealistic because of the detrimental impact 18 months or more of intervention measures will have on the economy.

Imperial College acknowledged that imposing non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as social distancing and quarantines, for 18 months or more would be an unprecedented feat that would have a "profound" impact on society and the economy. "We emphasize that is not at all certain that suppression will succeed long term; no public health intervention with such disruptive effects on society has been previously attempted for such a long duration of time. How populations and societies will respond remains unclear," the report said. Nevertheless, it concluded that "epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time."

The U.S. healthcare system will be overwhelmed even if the United States takes the less restrictive route to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Under the most optimistic mitigation strategy, the Imperial College noted, "The surge limits for both general ward and ICU [intensive care unit] beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold." The Trump administration issued its 100-page plan on Friday, the same day the president declared a national emergency.

Consistent with the Imperial College report, the plan presented a grim prognosis for the spread of the disease and highlighted a response that would require action from agencies across the U.S. government and possibly employing special presidential powers to mobilize the private sector. Trump has already announced that he would use the Defense Production Act of 1950 to address severe shortages of supplies needed for combating the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. The Cold War-era law forces the American industry to intensify the production of essential equipment and supplies — ventilators, respirators, and protective gear for healthcare workers. Besides a vaccine, the U.S. is also working on developing other medicinal therapies to combat coronavirus symptoms that could take a few months to disseminate, Trump's coronavirus task force indicated on Thursday.

[Vetus Ordo]

What does this picture prove?  Nothing more than the sad fact that hospitals aren't like the movies.

There's an actual video with a news piece inside the hospital, if you care to click the link.

The video only proves that they're experiencing a logistical and humanitarian nightmare. This is something you'd like to avoid in the US, I'd suspect.

Sky News????

The video doesn't prove anything.

If you separate the commentary from the images, what do you see?  A hospital in a country which has the highest winter flu death rate in Europe?  Now imagine watching the film with a different which explained just that, and giving the reasons. 

Would you be equally convinced? Given how clever the media is, I'm betting you would.

You realize that there are doctors inside the hospital in Bergamo being interviewed in the video, right? These are actual doctors, not paid actors.

They are the ones claiming they've never seen anything like this crisis. They're also the ones alerting to the fact that this virus is much more aggressive than the normal flu and that patients are over-flooding the ER and developping severe pneumonia. These are their testimonies, the reporter is merely echoing them.

[christulsa]

Work update.  Now all staff wearing N95 masks with each patient.   Uncomfortable fit, poorly ventilated. Vitals taken at door when arrive for work, standard corona questions.  No visitors allowed. Most patients stressed out about this, most about the hype, a few afraid of coming down with it.  Constant talk about the situation by staff ad nauseum.  Docs and nurses generally very worried this is going to turn out very bad.  And if staff have any contact with corona patient (or suspected), gotta stay home for two whopping weeks.  I probably spent 25 minutes today alone at the sink washing my hands before and after every patient.  Sing happy birthday song twice for correct wash time, wash between fingers and up wrists.  Avoiding close contact with staff.  Sit in corner documenting.  I expect the protocol will get tighter as this spreads.

[Prayerful]

Do Brits have a problem with Sky news? They seemed to have better coverage of Brexit than, say, the BBC.

They're as bad as the BBC.

Aussie Sky seems far better than UK Sky, which just seems like purest fake news.

[Kreuzritter]

Your typical NHS hospital in the UK looks worse than this.

What does this picture prove?  Nothing more than the sad fact that hospitals aren't like the movies.

it proves how gullible and un-analytic people like Vetus are, sheep to the slaughter whose perception of reality is not of the raw data of reality but the narrative through which they've been reared to frame it.

[Kreuzritter]

You realize that there are doctors inside the hospital in Bergamo being interviewed in the video, right? These are actual doctors, not paid actors.

That's not known.

They are the ones claiming they've never seen anything like this crisis.

Of course they haven't. Never before in their lifetimes have so many Italian people been convinced by government and media, rightly or wrongly, that they have contracted a novel and deadly virus that is sweeping the world and rushed on hospitals as a result. The result doesn't prove the contention that caused it.

They're also the ones alerting to the fact that this virus is much more aggressive than the normal flu and that patients are over-flooding the ER and developping severe pneumonia. These are their testimonies, the reporter is merely echoing them.[/quote]

Except "flu" can be aggressive enough to lead to pneumonia and death, especially in the very demographic that make up alleged "coronavirus" deaths. This anecdote is meaningless.