Best Posts in Thread: Dumaguete has zero covid for a month now

so dear GZ. may i offer a different perspective please. you and i are composed of about one hundred trillion cells. we are each host to around one hundred trillion (much smaller) bacteria and also to around one thousand trillion (even smaller) viruses. some bacteria live on our surface, some inside, some are symbiotic, some just want in out of the rain. a virus is sort of the transexual in this microsopic world (do they or don't they, can they or not)

we have all developed together over a million plus years. "modern" scientific medicine has existed barely more than a hundred years. can we really be so impressed with the human brain to think that after a million plus years we have developed the ability to understand nature and even more the ability to manipulate it?

i agree that we have learned to head off some threats for the benefit of that/those individual(s), but what does that have to do with the adaptive nature of our species? nothing except perhaps in some teeny tiny way to marginalize it a bit

go outside tonight and count the stars. each is a sun, many with their own planets. the biggest contribution of the hubble telescope was to quadruple the number of known stars. the universe just goes on and on. we are less than one virus on the body of the universe.

the apparent fact that so many people will submit their lives to the opinions of "scientist" dr fauci is as laughable to me as submitting to stumpy the pig farmer. its ludicris. if you want to vaccinate and try to live a little longer, fine. just remember that the universe does not even know you exist.

your own body is the miracle here. your body has processes to deal with bacteria and virus(es?) and yeast and falling trees. let it do its work. if i die its not a tragedy. someone else will replace my drivel here! collectively our adaptations provide the greatist protection for us all, and more importantly for the future of our species.

 

I'd like to add my vote to the "Dumaguete's been lucky" group. We seemed to have avoided the clusters that ran rampant in Cebu, Manila, i think even Bacolod got hit. Everybody (or enuf) that was infected got caught early, even quarantined. Masks/SocDis/Wash, hardly perfect, has worked well enough to prevent clusters. If we stop now, it easily can explode again. I have a feeling that once an area reaches a critical cluster, that cases shoot up.

And only an opinion, but i also believe that if the world had really stayed at home for 4 weeks, this thing would have been beaten quick and economies reopened.

 

If a person never shows any signs/symptoms of the disease but has been infected with the virus (as an antibody test might show) then that person is asymptomatic. But if that person shows no symptoms at the time of examination but has antibodies (possibly) and later does develop the disease then he/she is pre-symptomatic. Very confusing as an asymptomatic could get a second infection and become a pre-symptomatic or a symptomatic and antibodies may or may not be detectable.

Best to think of us all as 'symps' (covering all three above) and take personal care on that assumption.

 

The mayor is right.
As I've said before we have been lucky so far in and around Dumaguete, but even elsewhere on Negros things are still looking rather bleak. Since viruses don't care where Occidental ends and Oriental begins, we better hope not too many people decide to "avoid the checkpoints" and travel there/here anyway.
However, the thing to look out for is not so much how many new cases will occur, but how many of those stay in the "no idea how they got infected" category, because that would hint strongly at "local transmission", in other words, people walking around not knowing they are infected and spreading the virus.
If and when that happens we will hopefully have enough "instant tests" to make contact tracing more than a futile endeavour.

 

The problem with this pandemic is there are way too many unknowns. Here's what I think is the stuff we do know.
We know that viruses mutate and that this one has done so also. We don't know for sure whether some of the mutated strains are more transmissible (although that seems likely). Less lethal strains have a better chance to spread, for obvious reasons.
We know that more recently far less infected people end up in intensive care or on intubators (probably because of better treatment in the early stages and/or because vulnerable people are generally being more careful).
We know that once patients do get intubated their chances are not good, and that in these cases especially being above 70 and/or obese poses a big risk.
We also know that even in places where it seemed the situation was "under control" earlier, the virus has re-emerged and second waves of infection have occurred or are underway. Example: Iceland had one of the worst early outbreaks, but got things under control by early May. Then until mid July, so for 2 1/2 months, they had very very few new cases. Since then they've been struggling with a second wave, not quite as bad as the first, but still.
Why? We don't know.
We know that relaxing rules too soon (or people getting complacent) is a recipe for disaster. Israel is an example of that (with really bad results). They relaxed rules in May already, and now have the worst rate of new infections of all countries (close to 0.5% of the population in the last week only).

 

It never was the case that everybody who got it died from the beginning. China developed tests and tested everyone on a mass scale along the spread route. Plenty of people had no symptoms, or mild symptoms and they had a CFR of 3.5%. They published maps of the virus spread. A Malay Doctor friend looked at them chose one map distant from the epicenter as representative of the IFR and it was .32%. I had no idea. The CDC calculation now is .65% for the IFR, probably using 40% of infections as asymptomatic. The virus hasn't weakened, it morphed in Europe, got more spikes, and became more transmissible, but not more lethal... so far. Our luck seems to be that we are less densely populated, plus luck. Bacolod and IloIlo have breakouts, but are also cities with 400,000 plus, and have dense poor areas. There also is speculation that maybe Filipinos have been exposed to more and have some cross immunity. Who knows? The Manila area has an 85% mild symptom rate, the Cebu area has 90-95% asymptomatic, with no explanation for the difference. A large study in India just found 5% of the cases produce 80% of the infections, and children are definitely carriers, but tend to infect other kids. I think we've had effective contact tracing, and missed contacts don't infect, the RO falls below one, and transmission stops. But that's a guess. I'll take luck any day.

 

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

 

Immunity—yes, I agree. Just get out there, with all health protocols on hand, and let our body adapt to the new normal. The virus is here to stay. I am for accepting this fact but in a non-complacent way.