We had to postpone one of our MS Academy foundation courses this week due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In its place, we are doing a series of webinars. The first one was held yesterday morning with an overview of COVID-19 and how it is forcing us to be creative in managing MS over the next few weeks and months.
The following is my presentation and you can download the slides from my DIY-SlideShare site. I am aware that the MS Academy will be uploading the webinar to YouTube in the next few weeks.
I also spent yesterday designing and populating a #MSCOVID19 microsite written and a beta version is live. It is a work in progress, but over the next few days and weeks, it will become more comprehensive. I will be answering questions and presenting cases studies on the site. I have already had 20+ questions posted via the site and will work on getting these answered an online today.
CoI: multiple
Why has a virus that killed 2% in China in its height in country where health care is far inferior to western countries like Italy. Yet in italy it has killed as many people as China at rate of 10%. Is this columbus meeting indians first time and spreading smallpox? Dare I ask is this a first use of a bio weapon?
Re: “Dare I ask is this a first use of a bio weapon?”
This a dangerous position to take without evidence. We don’t need conspiracy theories. We all live on planet earth and a pandemic of this nature has been predicted by most epidemiologists for decades. For example, the World Bank gave the odds of a coronavirus pandemic, from a SARS-like virus, at being higher than 1 in 20 over the next 10 years.
From an evolutionary perspective, we have exploited and abused the planet to such an extent that this could be viewed as planet earth’s or the biological world’s way of saying ‘Dear Humans, get your house in order!’.
Italy’s high mortality is driven by several factors:
(1) Aged population, Italy is second only to Japan in terms of average population age.
(2) Low level of population-based viral diagnostics, which means the denominator is people with severe disease admitted to hospital. This is the main factor. In South Korea with massive testing in the general population, the mortality is 0.2%. I suspect if the Italians had the capacity and will to what the Koreans have done the mortality will fall by an order of magnitude or more.
(3) An overwhelmed healthcare system with clinicians having to triage patients for ventilators; there are horror stories of patients over the age of 65 being left to die because of not enough ventilators. This is why it is becoming increasingly obvious that the UK needs to lock-down the whole country as soon as possible otherwise we will be in the same position as Italy in a few weeks.
(4) More comorbidities in Italians.
(5) Possibly viral factors, for example, a more virulent strain. This virus is mutating rapidly.
(6) Possible genetic factors, for example, Europeans may be more susceptible to severe infection.
Multi-generational families living in the same space is more common in Italy than in other European countries.
Yep troops on the streets very soon:-(
SARS also provides some immunity to COVID and also we do not know the extent of the infectionm the age of infections,etc etc.
So now the world realise that only China manufacturers stuff and globalisation comes at a price
All,
May I request a fun thread tomorrow? It’s been lots of difficult news, most of us are cooped up at home. Laughter is the best medicine.
Some questions: who is the most parsimonious when it is their turn to buy a round? I have recently secured a large shipment of chicken curry pies, need someone in the UK to hold them for safe keeping. Who would be best to hold these delicious goodies?
-Aidan
Can you just google fun threads -_______-
haha that me laugh