COVID-19 - General discussion

[Warin]

So each time you take a risk in the bush it is now taking a risk with other people’s lives.

That risk only occurs if there is an accident, not a forgone conclusion. Accidents occur elsewhere too and those place the responders at some risk.

[Walk_fat boy_walk]

So each time you take a risk in the bush it is now taking a risk with other people’s lives.

That risk only occurs if there is an accident, not a forgone conclusion. Accidents occur elsewhere too and those place the responders at some risk.

Facepalm

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[Walk_fat boy_walk]

Have I offended someone or just entered some strange eddy in the space/time continuum? There are half a dozen threads I replied to this morning - including this one - but my comments are nowhere to be seen.

You have encountered an eddy in the space-time continuum and you are now doomed to repeating the last 3 weeks for eternity and beyond. Actually a couple of my own comments seem to have got lost also, perhaps a small packet loss in the eatherium

Weird. More likely an issue at the server end?

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[slparker]

So each time you take a risk in the bush it is now taking a risk with other people’s lives.

That risk only occurs if there is an accident, not a forgone conclusion. Accidents occur elsewhere too and those place the responders at some risk.

Of course it isn't a foregone conclusion, that is why I wrote risk and not certainty.

But, now first responders have the risk of attending a scene plus the risk of having a virus transmitted to them.

Normally we don't consider the risk to first responders as part of our risk calculus as that risk is assumed by the first responder as a consequence of hteir profession, or volunteer status.

My point is that this is no longer the case. they have the normal risks of their profession plus the dangers of working in close proximity to others. When we take risks the risk increases to others.

i am not saying don't go for a walk I am saying that the risks to others of our decisions becomes greater.

[peregrinator]

And I am saying you have summed it up beautifully. Thank you and goodnight.

[Warin]

But, now first responders have the risk of attending a scene plus the risk of having a virus transmitted to them.

Always a risk to responders (not only first but also ER etc) to getting a virus from a patient, e.g. Hep C has no anti virus inoculation. This virus adds yet one more hazard.

[crollsurf]

I'll be glad when it's over. Trashed my knee skiing in December. Been walking not a problem. A couple of days Gardening and it's giving me grief!

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[andrewa]

My risk going to work each day and getting CV (as a GP) is infinitely higher than the risk of me requiring emergency services in the bush ( never needed in 40yrs of bushwalking), and the risk of any emergency service worker catching CV from me, if I’m in the bush and needing rescuing, is absolutely f... all. Just saying.

I’m hoping to go bushwalking with daughter #3 in the next month or so. She’s a paramedic. Unless we get shut down geographically, we will probably still go. We’ll see how things pan out.

A

[slparker]

But, now first responders have the risk of attending a scene plus the risk of having a virus transmitted to them.

Always a risk to responders (not only first but also ER etc) to getting a virus from a patient, e.g. Hep C has no anti virus inoculation. This virus adds yet one more hazard.

I saw volunteers exposing themselves to risk because a walker needed rescuing. If the walker had not been injured the risk to the volunteers would have been far less.

The risk was not just from the patient it was from working closely to each other.
This virus is highly transmissible.
In Italy and the US clinicians are being infected and dying even with access to PPE. It is glib to state that the risk should be assumed by first responders.

[Neo]

Just made a possibly controversial topic, lets see!

[Heremeahappy1]

..
just entered some strange eddy...

Please observe physical distancing advice...

[Ms_Mudd]

Thank you Zapruda for your mod input.

Yes, stay home, stay home etc as Moondog also said.

If you don't live in the mountains, don't walk in them.

I posted a week or so ago in another thread- I live in a small town in the foothills of the Barrington Tops and have been so disappointed to see people traveling up here for recreation and tapping into our limited resources for our largely elderly population as well as just the act of traveling outside their own areas of residence against the current guidelines. Stay put. Stop the spread.

I am getting so frustrated by people not understanding what we are staring down. Each person's actions can positively or tragically impact the rate of transmission.

Yes, it is difficult to stay home, but it isn't much to ask to save lives is it? Find new ways to occupy yourself and maintain fitness and mental health, we all have to dig deep and do our bit for the benefit of all.

[Aardvark]

Whilst i agree people should be staying isolated, going outside which would include going bush is not necessarily going to spread the virus. You are more likely to spread he virus by going to the shops or supermarket and touching things which others may also touch.
The reason authorities are limiting travel and not wanting people to go remote is because if they need help (rescue) or develop symptoms they can become a problem for emergency services and the health system.
This is why NZ has just banned tramping along with other potentially risky activities.
AND as we all know, people will be people and if one can do it then certain people will assume all can do it. So it has to be banned for everyone.
No one is more frustrated about this than me.
We should be careful how we express that frustration and what words we use.

[CBee]

Ok parks closed, but New Farm Farmer's Market with hundreds of people crammed in a small place?

[Neo]

Yep almost gives me the willies. The capital cities are the breeding grounds.

Anyway. How long does everyone think the population will comply with the current stay-home directive? For April May and June?

[CBee]

With low numbers of infections (especially outside NSW), is still easy with aggressive tracing/quarantine and safe distance to keep the numbers at the current level and suppress pockets and clusters (according to what I'm reading from medical experts). With even more aggressive measures and the cooperation of everyone, Australia could become a virus free Country before a vaccine is in place. Unfortunately, I know plenty of people who don't believe in the risks posed by this epidemic and don't bother with safe distancing etc. I personally am in favor of super strict measures to get rid of this situation, rather than 6 month or more in lockdown.

[andrewa]

Ok. I’ve flapped around in my bucket, like a fish, but now accept that we just need to stay at home. Even if we personally can spend time in the outdoors without risk to others, there are a whole lot more who won’t.

Had my first CV19 patient the other day....despite trying to phone triage to reduce exposure, she slipped through. If there are idiots like her out there, we just need to deal with no outdoor activities atm.

She didn’t recognise that she had a cough or a fever and had been self isolating with a friend who had arrived from Germany 3 weeks ago........she presented with “tiredness following diarrhoea” to my practice...

No hope for anyone else...

A

[ILUVSWTAS]

We're just buying time. Time for the makeshift hospitals to be built and time for the respirators to arrive. A mass outbreak is inevitable we just need the authorities to be as ready as they possibly can.

[GPSGuided]

We're just buying time. Time for the makeshift hospitals to be built and time for the respirators to arrive. A mass outbreak is inevitable we just need the authorities to be as ready as they possibly can.

We missed the opportunity to contain while the numbers are just a tiny trickle. There’s no political will nor in community due to ignorance. Now we will face big numbers and blow the system. For the 150+ untraceable cases just in NSW, there’ll be 5-10x hidden in the community. The only way to eradicate is to aggressively contact trace and mass test. They are still dragging and being reactive, and constantly trying to match with Singapore than China. Guess what, Singapore has just upgraded the response and closed all schools and businesses, their prior response didn’t have enough power against this nasty virus. Only China has effectively pushed the virus to near zero, running multiple days of no new cases. Now they are gunning for all the asymptomatic positive cases in society (significance in infectiousness remains unclear).

Quarantine: No human rights.
No quarantine: No life left.

[CraigVIC]

A bit of humour

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_HrIVWziJ ... e=youtu.be

[north-north-west]

We're just buying time. Time for the makeshift hospitals to be built and time for the respirators to arrive. A mass outbreak is inevitable we just need the authorities to be as ready as they possibly can.

Yep. If this goes the way the big post-war one did just over a century ago, things will settle down for a while and then it will come back bigger and nastier. The current situation is just the overture.

[slparker]

Yeah, the spanish flu was interesting. there were around three waves of the disease, largely distributed by troopships. This disease won't manifest the same pattern as re-distribution post-lockdown (should it occur) will be immediate due to air travel and also testing was not available for influenza in 1919.

The latest coronacast on ABC has a very good explanation of the likely pattern of Covid-19, should the curve continue to remain flattened and the disease be controlled. By the time that lockdowns ease, the hope is that the disease will have settled into a manageable pattern in Australia by aggressive testing and isolation of contacts. But this means that the disease will be present for some time, bubbling under the surface with periodic outbreaks - like the pattern we saw in measles before vaccination.

There is also some evidence that suggests that these types of diseases become less virulent in populations over time, not more.

[Tortoise]

A bit of humour

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_HrIVWziJ ... e=youtu.be

It did make me chuckle. Thanks for posting, Craig.

[ofuros]

A bit of humour

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_HrIVWziJ ... e=youtu.be

Very creative...

[johnf]

I don't think the ordinary person can grasp the evaluation of risk for rare events.
At this point in time I would say the risk of being burnt alive cooped up in your home, far far exceeds the chances of spreading COVID-19 to a rescuer in a bushwalking situation.
At present with the level of testing and contact tracing that has been done, they chance of someone having COVID in Australia is probably less than 1 in 10000. The chance of needing rescue might be 1 in 100,000.
The chance of both happening would be less than 1 in a billion.

Still I get the Govt't can't have a million rules and exceptions. You can't allow say, for an experienced bushwalker who had done walks by themselves or one other person, doesn't stop for fuel or food on the way, even if the risk is minimal as the rules need to be simple for people to follow.
I intend to follow the rules for now, hopefully the govt comes up with a sensible policy after about another month and allows more activities. Sensible policy to me is, isolate or quarantine all those at high risk (over 65 etc), mandate wearing of masks (homemade to not waste medical use ones) in public areas, mandate sterilising hands before entering shops, preferably temperature checking everywhere if there is the equipment.
Otherwise allow people to get on with their lives, working leisure as normal. No guarantee of a vaccine in a reasonable period, so need a balanced realistic approach.

[ghosta]

I suspect there are many who will "follow the rules for now" and at some future stage will decide they are entitled to bend the rules because it "wont do any harm"..they havent listened to the explanation given by the authorities and have invented trivial reasons for restrictions (example-parks are closed because of added complications with rescues).

Thats when the second wave, far worse than the one we are seeing now will begin.
Probably inevitable..

[Moondog55]

I think the biggest problem we have is simply that we have become so used to "The Government & Politicians" lying to us that it is hard to believe them when they tell the truth or even half the truth.
Even tho half of me still thinks this is a beat-up I am staying home and self isolating just in case, because that is the socially responsible response to this type of problem

[Walk_fat boy_walk]

Thats when the second wave, far worse than the one we are seeing now will begin.
Probably inevitable..

Some pretty definitive comments on here from people who really don't know (I certainly don't, and even those who are in the know can't necessarily predict future trends with any certainty). Opinions and speculation are fine so long as they're caveated as such - definitive statements (eg. the "inevitability" of a much worse second wave, among many other things) IMO only add to the sort of fear-mongering present in social and wider media, which isn't helping anyone. I do agree that there'll be people who misinterpret any success of strict measures as evidence of over-reaction and, yeh, take a bit of an "I can relax the rules a bit coz I know what I'm doing" attitude. On a population-wide level one effect of this will be a prolonging of those measures. Public messaging will be important here but there'll always be people who think they know better.

[tom_brennan]

I don't think the ordinary person can grasp the evaluation of risk for rare events.
At this point in time I would say the risk of being burnt alive cooped up in your home, far far exceeds the chances of spreading COVID-19 to a rescuer in a bushwalking situation.
At present with the level of testing and contact tracing that has been done, they chance of someone having COVID in Australia is probably less than 1 in 10000. The chance of needing rescue might be 1 in 100,000.
The chance of both happening would be less than 1 in a billion.

Not sure you're thinking about the maths in the right way. You might be able to use the logic above for yourself (or another specific person), but you need to multiply it out across the entire community.

The risk is not just about the person being rescued, it's the fact that you have to bring rescue teams together, potentially putting them in close proximity. And there won't just be one rescue, there'll be many. Blue Mountains Police Rescue alone attended 900 jobs last year. I'm sure many of these were minor, but you get the idea. These factors compound quickly.

[slparker]

I don't think the ordinary person can grasp the evaluation of risk for rare events.
At this point in time I would say the risk of being burnt alive cooped up in your home, far far exceeds the chances of spreading COVID-19 to a rescuer in a bushwalking situation.
At present with the level of testing and contact tracing that has been done, they chance of someone having COVID in Australia is probably less than 1 in 10000. The chance of needing rescue might be 1 in 100,000.
The chance of both happening would be less than 1 in a billion.

Not sure you're thinking about the maths in the right way. You might be able to use the logic above for yourself (or another specific person), but you need to multiply it out across the entire community.

The risk is not just about the person being rescued, it's the fact that you have to bring rescue teams together, potentially putting them in close proximity. And there won't just be one rescue, there'll be many. Blue Mountains Police Rescue alone attended 900 jobs last year. I'm sure many of these were minor, but you get the idea. These factors compound quickly.

What John's maths have not taken into account is the lag between infection and symptoms and the exponential nature of infections. I have mentioned this before but it is worth repeating. The reasons not to leave your home to go bushwalking in a place distant from your home are:

1. You risk interacting with others (i.e petrol station supermarket etc) and this raises the risk of local transmission in a rural or regional area which has less resources to deal with the very sick.

2. you may start your trip being infected but asymptomatic, you may get sick on your walk and then end up in a regional hospital that has the potential to be overwhelmed. This means that you may not get treated and end up in the ward (or tent) awaiting a ventilator. If you were lucky enough to get the right treatment this would also mean that you have taken up a bed needlessly. These beds are finite. the modelling done at the start of the epidemic showed that some regional ICUs were expecting 5 times the number of critical patients than the capacity of their ICU every day. A patient on a ventilator could expect to be treated for a number of days which means that by the end of a week an 8 bed ICU could have 250+ severely ill patients in the hospital grounds awaiting treatment. Get the picture?
Some regional areas have no cases of Covid-19 at all and, thankfully, their regional ICUs can expect no surge. If one bushwalker was to travel to this area and infect one or more people this can rapidly change.

3. You may get injured on your walk and require retrieval, stretching resources committed to hospital transfer and exposing you , and your rescuers, to transmission as they must work in close proximity during evacuation. These rescuers may get sick which even if they survive (which is likely) takes them out of commission for two or more weeks. Rescuers are a finite resource, especially in rural areas where paramedics and volunteers don't grow on trees. Can an accident not happen to you? I have seen several experienced bushwalkers with non-serious injuries requiring extraction.

As of Apr 7 these risks are much lower as transmission rates have slowed. But, as a nurse in a regional area i ask you to consider others and to rethink the 'can't happen to me' attitude