And the good news is Washington State's curve is definitely beginning to flatten. Yesterday, the increase was only 7% compared to 14% just a week ago. King County (Seattle area) is doing very well. Most of the increase yesterday was on the east side of the state. Social Distancing is working.
Ah, the red-state side. Right now it's mostly blue states fighting with this. When it finally hits the red states, then attitudes among the Trumperati may change.
I don't own a chainsaw but rented one when one of our trees fell in the front yard. It fell on the powerline, and we called the power company and they cut it and fixed the line, but we still had a ton of tree on our yard. So I rented a chainsaw and chunked it up, and put it in a pile by the curb with a "free" sign on it (we don't have a working fireplace). It was gone in a day.
yeah, renting large power tools is a great thing. We got an auger for LL's Eagle Scout project. No need to keep such a thing permanently, but sure is useful when you've got to dig lots of holes in heavy ground.
So now, the White House is saying possibly 100,000 dead.
That's the absolute lowest number. Best case scenario is actually between 100,000 and 240,000 dead - Washington Post. That's with mitigation, which is not happening throughout the whole country.
The truth is no one knows what the best case scenario is. If China managed to limit total infections to under 100K, The US could manage to keep deaths under that. Granted, they may not. China has a level of control that the US is not employing and won't until things are much worse. It is not encouraging that the rate of infection remains constant.
It is not encouraging that the rate of infection remains constant.
What I find exasperating is that this figure is so hard to find (although I admit to having given up looking). All the headlines say is things like "death toll in [place X] continues to rise". This is not news. Do they expect the grand total to go down?
I would have thought that China and Korea offer evidence that a lockdown suppresses the virus. But as usual, it seems that all the critiques omit the nature of exponential growth. If you let it rip, it will rip big time.
The problem is that absent any other measures, this is still likely to be true when the lockdown ends, and you have wrecked the economy in the meantime.
(Disclaimer: I'm in favour of lockdown. But in my view the arguments are not as straightforward as anti-right wing critics would have you believe).
Well, if the advice from scientists was an endless series of lockdowns, or waves of the virus, we would be im Stuck. However, I think there is some light at the end of the tunnel, e.g., vaccine, the virus burning out, anti-viral meds. I'm not sure what the right wingers are advocating; do nothing has a horrible mathematical consequence.
What are the right wingers advocating? The only thing that sort of makes sense to me is that they think that as they can afford to stay home, they're safe behind the walls of their mansions so long as the workers in their shops, offices and factories keep making money for them. Then when someone develops a vaccine or the virus burns itself out they can emerge from their mansions to resume their lives of privilege with no harm done except a reduction in the pool of potential staff they can exploit to make more money. The lives of the poor are mere commodities that are expendable in their quest for greater personal wealth.
You seem to be saying that 'right winger' is equivalent to 'rich person'. Who voted for Brexit?
Pensioners, mostly. Home owners in south east England. Most working age people voted Remain.
I would have thought that China and Korea offer evidence that a lockdown suppresses the virus. But as usual, it seems that all the critiques omit the nature of exponential growth. If you let it rip, it will rip big time.
The problem is that absent any other measures, this is still likely to be true when the lockdown ends, and you have wrecked the economy in the meantime.
(Disclaimer: I'm in favour of lockdown. But in my view the arguments are not as straightforward as anti-right wing critics would have you believe).
Well, if the advice from scientists was an endless series of lockdowns, or waves of the virus, we would be im Stuck. However, I think there is some light at the end of the tunnel, e.g., vaccine, the virus burning out, anti-viral meds. I'm not sure what the right wingers are advocating; do nothing has a horrible mathematical consequence.
What are the right wingers advocating? The only thing that sort of makes sense to me is that they think that as they can afford to stay home, they're safe behind the walls of their mansions so long as the workers in their shops, offices and factories keep making money for them. Then when someone develops a vaccine or the virus burns itself out they can emerge from their mansions to resume their lives of privilege with no harm done except a reduction in the pool of potential staff they can exploit to make more money. The lives of the poor are mere commodities that are expendable in their quest for greater personal wealth.
You seem to be saying that 'right winger' is equivalent to 'rich person'. Who voted for Brexit?
Pensioners, mostly. Home owners in south east England. Most working age people voted Remain.
Also, a lot of people who also usually vote Conservative - an overlap with those listed above. Yes, usually well-off, the people who don't expect to need to apply for Universal Credit, who's biggest concerns in life are whether they can retire early (if not already retired) and have sufficient pension to pay for a cruise every year and whether the value of their house has increased enough that there's a small profit there should they choose to sell. Or, those who aspire to such wealth.
There's also a large number of people who voted for Brexit (or, even voted Tory) because they fell for the lies told to them by the right-wing media and politicians. Con-men prey on anyone.
Certainly in the UK the majority are wealthy (wealth being more than just monetary value). We're learning the hard way that a lot of that wealth is a mirage. We ('cos I count myself well and truly in that wealthy category) had what we thought were largely secure jobs, knowing that if something went wrong and we lost that job a) there would be a decent redundancy package to tide us over and b) we have the skills and experience that makes finding another job relatively easy, plus we know there's decent sick-pay should we need it. Thinking of ourselves as valued employees, esteemed and respected by our managers and business owners. Now many people find that those jobs aren't secure, they're out of work (technically not sacked, so no redundancy, but told to take unpaid leave) and relying on the UC system ... finding that they're not valued but merely cogs in a money making machine for business owners, a machine that's simply turned off when it stops making money. Fundamentally, many businesses treating their long-term employees little better than zero-hour contractors with no real security.
The Brexit thing is more complicated than that. In my town the wealthiest ward voted Remain, the more 'mixed' ward was well, mixed - about 50/50 and the least well-off ward (our town has overlaps but pretty much neatly divided into three demographically) voted Leave.
I was strongly Remain but all this blaming of people in south-east England doesn't cut it. It doesn't explain Wales largely voting Leave nor large sections of the 'red wall' in the English Midlands and North.
London and large metropolitan areas such as Leeds - big student population - voted Remain. The 'red wall' voted Leave, leaving Labour Remainers to blame the right-wing press - which yes, was a factor - but there are others - and questions that all of us who would consider ourselves to be on the left or fairly centrist have to ask ourselves.
Meanwhile, @Alan Cresswell, it may come as something of a shock, but not everyone lives in your street.
In Wales, there was some discussion about the vote slanting towards Leave because of English retirees in Pembrokeshire - but areas like Merthyr Tydfil, which actually benefitted from a lot of European money, also voted Leave.
My leave-voting relatives are working class people from poor council estates in Luton, and a world apart from my middle class remain-voting friends here in wealthy Cambridge (though, admittedly, Cambridge is very left wing).
The only people I know personally who admit to voting leave are older and wealthier. But of course anecdote is not data.
Could it be that you are living in a bubble? First we have Alan Cresswell failing to appreciate that arboreal conditions may differ across the country let alone across the world and now ...
The only people I know personally who admit to voting leave are older and wealthier. But of course anecdote is not data.
Could it be that you are living in a bubble? First we have Alan Cresswell failing to appreciate that arboreal conditions may differ across the country let alone across the world and now ...
Whoops ... Must drop the tangent ...
Living in Scotland is part of it. The proportion of leavers is much lower. And most of the folk I know down south are middle class graduates and/or lefties of one stripe or another.
They were prioritising use of scarce resources on patients. Now they are delegating the priority decisions, which I think they should have done the start. Local pressures vary a lot.
This thread has been going sideways a lot. Chainsaws, Brexit. I will contribute to the sideways movement too. Yesterday here in the Great Pacific Northwest we had a very weird day. March went out like a lion. Snow over much of the area. A tornado spotted near Richland, WA, no damage that I know of. And an earthquake centered in central Idaho at 6.5 magnitude. It was felt from BC to Montana to Nevada to Eastern Washington. Nothing like terra firma shaking under your feet to turn the focus off Coronavirus to something else. Fortunately, it happened in a very remote part of Idaho. There were rock slides on a road near the epicenter and things fell off shelves in nearby communities.
Now, back to Covid-19. The curve in Washington State continues to flatten. Down to 4.4 yesterday compared to 7 just the day before. @mousethief: I think one reason why Eastern WA is still a little behind the curve is our testing still has yet to catch up. One advantage of people on the Eastside is that once people have been identified has contagion the local health districts have been very quick to do tracing and followup.
30% rise in deaths, (UK). I hesitate to project this forward, but it's gonna be a lot.
As I noted previously, any measures implemented now (social distancing, hand washing, rules against gatherings, etc.) are not going to show results for about two weeks. Those infections are already "baked in" and those people have already been exposed. They just don't know it yet.
Hey, you know those clickbait articles? The ones that promise to reveal one (or a couple) simple/weird thing(s) you can do to [lower your cholesterol / lose weight / make money / attract the opposite sex / whatever]? Well, here's the SARS-CoV-2 version.
The virus pulled from bats in 2013 [ RaTG13 ] could not infect humans. SARS-CoV-2 can. Why?
It appears that two tiny tweaks to the virus’ genetic code have made a huge difference.
CoV-2 wants to do two things: bind to a human cell and then get inside it. The virus binds to a cellular receptor – think of them as little antennae that stick off the side of human cells – called ACE2.
ACE2 receptors are designed to listen for signals that change our blood pressure. Fine adjustments to blood pressure are really important in our lungs, so our lung cells are covered in ACE2 receptors.
SARS was able to bind to ACE2. But small genetic changes mean CoV-2 binds almost perfectly, at least 10 times more tightly than SARS. “It’s beautifully adapted to do that,” says Holmes.
But that’s not enough. Once CoV-2 is stuck on a cell, it needs to get in. That’s where the second tweak comes in.
CoV-2 is covered in spikes. They act like tiny harpoons. The virus needs to stick to the cell and then fire a harpoon. The harpoon pulls the surface of the cell and the virus together, allowing them to fuse. That’s how the virus gets inside.
“But you don’t want the harpoon firing off randomly,” says Professor Stephen Turner, head of microbiology at Monash University. “You only want it to fire when it’s ready to infect the cell. If it’s going off too early or too late, the virus would not be able to infect us.”
To trigger the harpoon at just the right time, viruses rely on human enzymes, little proteins in our blood. Some enzymes trigger the harpoon too early, others trigger it too late. Among the best enzyme triggers – the one that fires the harpoon at exactly the right time – is an enzyme called furin. Our bodies produce heaps of furin.
“Basically, you can work out if a virus is going to be highly pathogenic or not if it is activated by furin,” says Turner.
Bird flu is triggered by furin. We got lucky, though, because it wasn’t very good at sticking to our cells. CoV-2 is great at sticking to our cells. And it’s triggered by furin, among the best triggers a virus can have.
“The combination is what makes it so infectious,” says Turner.
That's the main answer, but the rest of the article is worth a read as well.
There is some concern that the Chinese have suppressed information about the seriousness of the epidemic. And I guess that the failed states with massive refugee populations in crowded conditions may not have the capability of monitoring what happens.
After another bad day, the official global total of those infected looks like passing a million during the next couple of days and the official global death total will rise above 50,000. And these are early days. I guess there is a need to brace ourselves.
The only people I know personally who admit to voting leave are older and wealthier. But of course anecdote is not data.
Could it be that you are living in a bubble? First we have Alan Cresswell failing to appreciate that arboreal conditions may differ across the country let alone across the world and now ...
Whoops ... Must drop the tangent ...
Living in Scotland is part of it. The proportion of leavers is much lower. And most of the folk I know down south are middle class graduates and/or lefties of one stripe or another.
Sure. I get that and can see how that can happen. Apologies for the value judgement earlier.
The US Navy is pulling sailors off the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier hit hard by the coronavirus and forced into port in Guam.
Almost 1,000 sailors have already gone ashore. That number is expected to rise to 2,700 within the next couple of days, acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly said at the Pentagon Wednesday.
Rear Adm. John Menoni, the Navy Joint Region Marianas commander, said at an earlier press briefing that "the plan is to remove as many people off the Teddy Roosevelt as we can." At the same event, Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said that she has "agreed to allow the restricted housing of sailors who have tested negative for COVID-19" in vacant hotels.
Modly told CNN Tuesday that the Navy has been trying to get sailors off the ship but was having difficulties finding enough beds for sailors taken ashore. He explained that the Navy is "having to talk to the government there to see if we can get some hotel space or create some tent-type facilities there."
Navy sailors who are housed in local hotels will be in quarantine for two weeks. The quarantine will be enforced by military security.
Begs the question of where sailors who test positive will be kept.
Or is it a case of all of Idaho being remote but some parts being more remote than others?
Let's just say about 75% of Idaho is owned by the Federal Government. Most of that is remote. Grimes Creek, the epicenter of the quake, is between the town of Stanley (65 population) and Lowman (75 population) and is one of the most remote parts of Idaho. Some people claim to have seen Big Foot (Sasquatch) in the area in the past.
There is some concern that the Chinese have suppressed information about the seriousness of the epidemic. And I guess that the failed states with massive refugee populations in crowded conditions may not have the capability of monitoring what happens.
After another bad day, the official global total of those infected looks like passing a million during the next couple of days and the official global death total will rise above 50,000. And these are early days. I guess there is a need to brace ourselves.
It is possible that the Chinese have suppressed information, however South Korea is probably being honest and they seem to have lowered their rate of infection.
There is some concern that the Chinese have suppressed information about the seriousness of the epidemic. And I guess that the failed states with massive refugee populations in crowded conditions may not have the capability of monitoring what happens.
After another bad day, the official global total of those infected looks like passing a million during the next couple of days and the official global death total will rise above 50,000. And these are early days. I guess there is a need to brace ourselves.
It is possible that the Chinese have suppressed information, however South Korea is probably being honest and they seem to have lowered their rate of infection.
My reason for mentioning the possible of underreporting by the Chinese (for which there is some evidence) and the highly likely underreporting from failed states was to highlight that the global picture may very well be significantly worse than the official figures.
The comparative effectiveness of the different strategies in European countries (and the UK) still remain to be seen. Levels of infection in Germany now seem to be rising rapidly, though the death rate remains very low. The French figures also suggest rapid advancement and a rapidly climbing death total. The UK figures suggest the same.
Has there been underreporting in the UK? Certainly of the numbers infected but not I believe of the number who have been hospitalised or who have died.
The US death rate looks, according to the worldometer website, to have already crossed the 1,000 a day barrier and the evidence that its death rate is increasing looks pretty impressive. Coupled with the lack of federal coordination over ordering vital medical supplies, the low stock levels, and the low levels of testing, the US position looks very bad.
I think people are frightened enough here, get the need to be part of the solution, and the second significant blizzard this week all influence.
In the US there appears to be a divide along very red state / blue state lines as to who believes this is the real deal, and who thinks it's going to all blow over, and the media and the libtards are blowing it out of proportion. These same states have been seeing rural hospitals closing at an alarming rate, and when COVID-19 finally hits there, it's going to be ugly.
And they will craft conspiracy theories to avoid taking blame for their decision to not follow the advice of people who really know wtf they're talking about.
List of countries with at least 5,000 known COVID-19 cases.
United States - 215,300 (201,312 / 8,878 / 5,110)
Italy - 110,574 (80,572 / 16,847 / 13,155)
Spain - 104,118 (72,084 / 22,647 / 9,387)
China - 81,554 (2,004 / 76,238 / 3,312) 4.2%
Germany - 77,981 (58,350 / 18,700 / 931)
France - 56,989 (42,022 / 10,935 / 4,032)
Iran - 47,593 (29,084 / 15,473 / 3,036)
United Kingdom - 29,474 (26,987 / 135 / 2,352)
Switzerland - 17,768 (14,313 / 2,967 / 488)
Turkey - 15,679 (15,069 / 333 / 277)
Belgium - 13,964 (11,004 / 2,132 / 828)
Netherlands - 13,614 (12,191 / 250 / 1,173)
Austria - 10,711 (9,129 / 1,436 / 146)
South Korea - 9,976 (3,979 / 5,828 / 169)
Canada - 9,731 (7,866 / 1,736 / 129)
Portugal - 8,251 (8,021 / 43 / 187)
Brazil - 6,931 (6,560 / 127 / 244)
Israel - 6,092 (5,825 / 241 / 26)
Australia - 5,106 (4,738 / 345 / 23)
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1. Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries, ten of them (New York, New Jersey, California, Michigan, Florida, Massachusetts, Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Washington) would be on that list. New York would be ranked between Spain and China.
Australia has joined the list since the last compilation, joining the list no one wants to join.
Listened to the BBC’s Coronavirus newscast podcast - they had a palliative care specialist on. Which is not an encouraging sign in itself.
However, what she had to say was worth hearing - essentially information about the process of dying.
Saying that in this situation, medication is used to control the sensation of breathlessness - and effectively what happens is people feel more and more tired, sleep more and more often, and for longer, and eventually do not regain consciousness. Also, that if you are on a ventilator you would be sedated and unconscious - unaware of what is happening.
So the catastrophic image we may have in our head, often unspoken, of dying whilst having a striving trauma of conscious suffocation akin to to drowning is highly unlikely to be the experience of death for those whose pass away from Covid-19.
Listened to the BBC’s Coronavirus newscast podcast - they had a palliative care specialist on. Which is not an encouraging sign in itself.
However, what she had to say was worth hearing - essentially information about the process of dying.
Saying that in this situation, medication is used to control the sensation of breathlessness - and effectively what happens is people feel more and more tired, sleep more and more often, and for longer, and eventually do not regain consciousness. Also, that if you are on a ventilator you would be sedated and unconscious - unaware of what is happening.
So the catastrophic image we may have in our head, often unspoken, of dying whilst having a striving trauma of conscious suffocation akin to to drowning is highly unlikely to be the experience of death for those whose pass away from Covid-19.
Yes, my Dad died of pneumonia. He didn’t suffer. We were all with him and listening to the sound of him drowning was awful, but he was comfortable.
The worst thing for the relatives is that they can’t be with their loved ones as they die, or even have proper funerals.
Listened to the BBC’s Coronavirus newscast podcast - they had a palliative care specialist on. Which is not an encouraging sign in itself.
However, what she had to say was worth hearing - essentially information about the process of dying.
Saying that in this situation, medication is used to control the sensation of breathlessness - and effectively what happens is people feel more and more tired, sleep more and more often, and for longer, and eventually do not regain consciousness. Also, that if you are on a ventilator you would be sedated and unconscious - unaware of what is happening.
So the catastrophic image we may have in our head, often unspoken, of dying whilst having a striving trauma of conscious suffocation akin to to drowning is highly unlikely to be the experience of death for those whose pass away from Covid-19.
Yes, my Dad died of pneumonia. He didn’t suffer. We were all with him and listening to the sound of him drowning was awful, but he was comfortable.
The worst thing for the relatives is that they can’t be with their loved ones as they die, or even have proper funerals.
Yes, I have a horrible image of dying alone in the Excel centre, unable to see anyone. But I guess I wouldn't be too aware.
Comments
Ah, the red-state side. Right now it's mostly blue states fighting with this. When it finally hits the red states, then attitudes among the Trumperati may change.
Pensioners, mostly. Home owners in south east England. Most working age people voted Remain.
There's also a large number of people who voted for Brexit (or, even voted Tory) because they fell for the lies told to them by the right-wing media and politicians. Con-men prey on anyone.
Certainly in the UK the majority are wealthy (wealth being more than just monetary value). We're learning the hard way that a lot of that wealth is a mirage. We ('cos I count myself well and truly in that wealthy category) had what we thought were largely secure jobs, knowing that if something went wrong and we lost that job a) there would be a decent redundancy package to tide us over and b) we have the skills and experience that makes finding another job relatively easy, plus we know there's decent sick-pay should we need it. Thinking of ourselves as valued employees, esteemed and respected by our managers and business owners. Now many people find that those jobs aren't secure, they're out of work (technically not sacked, so no redundancy, but told to take unpaid leave) and relying on the UC system ... finding that they're not valued but merely cogs in a money making machine for business owners, a machine that's simply turned off when it stops making money. Fundamentally, many businesses treating their long-term employees little better than zero-hour contractors with no real security.
I was strongly Remain but all this blaming of people in south-east England doesn't cut it. It doesn't explain Wales largely voting Leave nor large sections of the 'red wall' in the English Midlands and North.
London and large metropolitan areas such as Leeds - big student population - voted Remain. The 'red wall' voted Leave, leaving Labour Remainers to blame the right-wing press - which yes, was a factor - but there are others - and questions that all of us who would consider ourselves to be on the left or fairly centrist have to ask ourselves.
Meanwhile, @Alan Cresswell, it may come as something of a shock, but not everyone lives in your street.
Otherwise, fair points.
No, I don't understand it either.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
0 to do with coronavirus, of course...but it did bring out the Good Old True-Blue English way of rising to overcome a crisis/emergency.
I believe Committees were formed...
Humming Beans are ingenious Beans, and will come up with something sooner or later...
Could it be that you are living in a bubble? First we have Alan Cresswell failing to appreciate that arboreal conditions may differ across the country let alone across the world and now ...
Whoops ... Must drop the tangent ...
Living in Scotland is part of it. The proportion of leavers is much lower. And most of the folk I know down south are middle class graduates and/or lefties of one stripe or another.
(See what I did there?
Now, back to Covid-19. The curve in Washington State continues to flatten. Down to 4.4 yesterday compared to 7 just the day before. @mousethief: I think one reason why Eastern WA is still a little behind the curve is our testing still has yet to catch up. One advantage of people on the Eastside is that once people have been identified has contagion the local health districts have been very quick to do tracing and followup.
As I noted previously, any measures implemented now (social distancing, hand washing, rules against gatherings, etc.) are not going to show results for about two weeks. Those infections are already "baked in" and those people have already been exposed. They just don't know it yet.
So yeah, it's going to get a lot worse.
Two gene tweaks that can make you a deadly human pandemic:
That's the main answer, but the rest of the article is worth a read as well.
After another bad day, the official global total of those infected looks like passing a million during the next couple of days and the official global death total will rise above 50,000. And these are early days. I guess there is a need to brace ourselves.
Or is it a case of all of Idaho being remote but some parts being more remote than others?
Sure. I get that and can see how that can happen. Apologies for the value judgement earlier.
Begs the question of where sailors who test positive will be kept.
Let's just say about 75% of Idaho is owned by the Federal Government. Most of that is remote. Grimes Creek, the epicenter of the quake, is between the town of Stanley (65 population) and Lowman (75 population) and is one of the most remote parts of Idaho. Some people claim to have seen Big Foot (Sasquatch) in the area in the past.
As did Taiwan. Meanwhile in the UK, but that's fine because the courtiers have informed us that it isn't supposed to be happening.
Russia requires a QR code in your phone in Moscow to leave home. New codes are twitter for every trip outside your home.
https://www.pravdareport.com/news/society/144443-moscow_covid/
Heavy handed. Probably effective.
I think people are frightened enough here, get the need to be part of the solution, and the second significant blizzard this week all influence.
The comparative effectiveness of the different strategies in European countries (and the UK) still remain to be seen. Levels of infection in Germany now seem to be rising rapidly, though the death rate remains very low. The French figures also suggest rapid advancement and a rapidly climbing death total. The UK figures suggest the same.
Has there been underreporting in the UK? Certainly of the numbers infected but not I believe of the number who have been hospitalised or who have died.
The US death rate looks, according to the worldometer website, to have already crossed the 1,000 a day barrier and the evidence that its death rate is increasing looks pretty impressive. Coupled with the lack of federal coordination over ordering vital medical supplies, the low stock levels, and the low levels of testing, the US position looks very bad.
In the US there appears to be a divide along very red state / blue state lines as to who believes this is the real deal, and who thinks it's going to all blow over, and the media and the libtards are blowing it out of proportion. These same states have been seeing rural hospitals closing at an alarming rate, and when COVID-19 finally hits there, it's going to be ugly.
And they will craft conspiracy theories to avoid taking blame for their decision to not follow the advice of people who really know wtf they're talking about.
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1. Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries, ten of them (New York, New Jersey, California, Michigan, Florida, Massachusetts, Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Washington) would be on that list. New York would be ranked between Spain and China.
Australia has joined the list since the last compilation, joining the list no one wants to join.
Listened to the BBC’s Coronavirus newscast podcast - they had a palliative care specialist on. Which is not an encouraging sign in itself.
However, what she had to say was worth hearing - essentially information about the process of dying.
Saying that in this situation, medication is used to control the sensation of breathlessness - and effectively what happens is people feel more and more tired, sleep more and more often, and for longer, and eventually do not regain consciousness. Also, that if you are on a ventilator you would be sedated and unconscious - unaware of what is happening.
So the catastrophic image we may have in our head, often unspoken, of dying whilst having a striving trauma of conscious suffocation akin to to drowning is highly unlikely to be the experience of death for those whose pass away from Covid-19.
Yes, my Dad died of pneumonia. He didn’t suffer. We were all with him and listening to the sound of him drowning was awful, but he was comfortable.
The worst thing for the relatives is that they can’t be with their loved ones as they die, or even have proper funerals.
Yes, I have a horrible image of dying alone in the Excel centre, unable to see anyone. But I guess I wouldn't be too aware.