OT: Corona virus

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ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Nobody's making firm predictions, Erik.

But the trends visible suggest bell-shaped-curves with less than a month - usually a lot less - to reach the peak (and usually around a month for the main rise and fall). That was the case in some Asian countries. Will it hold true in Europe/North America/etc? We don't know yet, but as we keep saying, Italy should provide the first indication.

My instincts here are contrary to the vast majority of reporting. I'm aware of that. My reputation is important, so it feels strange to swim contrary to the flow and to very publicly give opinions that seem to be outliers. This past Saturday, the enormity really hit home. But taking fresh looks at all the underlying data, I remain pretty comfortable with the conclusions and estimates stated here - even going back to the early days of this thread.

The USA is a big place. Some parts are already experiencing full-blown exponential increases; others are just getting started. But I'm confident (not positive, but confident) that most or all locales in the continental US will be at or past peak within a month, and some probably by the end of this month. More so for Western Europe.

ORIGINAL: obvert

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

People are panicking because the stream of news is currently 100% negative.

As soon as some positive news comes in, the panic will settle down. Then it will gradually fade, as the situation stabilizes or improves in Italy, the rest of Europe and then the USA.

We're not going to be in lock down for months.

All recent studies suggest this will take more than a few months to get to the peak and past back to a sense of normalcy. It may not get normal at all if warmth doesn't slow it down until there is "herd immunity." Then we'll also have the economic and possibly the social unrest to deal with too.

I'll again be very happy if you're right, but right now the situation is too fluid to know, so such firm predictions just aren't possible.

Sure, and your optimism, as I've said before, is much appreciated.

This report form Imperial College, London, by leading epidemiologists, seems to indicate that the curves will be long depending on mitigation attempts and severity, but the best case of a full quarantine still shows some difficult times ahead, and seemingly for quite some time. There is hope, but vaccine is the golden ticket here, and everything else is just trying to save lives in the meantime.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperi ... 3-2020.pdf

This part is in the discussion section and really got me thinking.

[font="Trebuchet MS"]Disentangling the relative effectiveness of different interventions from the experience of countries to date is challenging because many have implemented multiple (or all) of these measures with varying degrees of success. Through the hospitalisation of all cases (not just those requiring hospital care), China in effect initiated a form of case isolation, reducing onward transmission from cases in the household and in other settings. At the same time, by implementing population-wide social distancing, the opportunity for onward transmission in all locations was rapidly reduced. Several studies have estimated that these interventions reduced R to below 1.15. In recent days, these measures have begun to be relaxed. Close monitoring of the situation in China in the coming weeks will therefore help to inform strategies in other countries.

Overall, our results suggest that population-wide social distancing applied to the population as a whole would have the largest impact; and in combination with other interventions – notably home isolation of cases and school and university closure – has the potential to suppress transmission below the threshold of R=1 required to rapidly reduce case incidence. A minimum policy for effective suppression is therefore population-wide social distancing combined with home isolation of cases and school and university closure.

To avoid a rebound in transmission, these policies will need to be maintained until large stocks of vaccine are available to immunise the population – which could be 18 months or more. Adaptive hospital surveillance-based triggers for switching on and off population-wide social distancing and school closure offer greater robustness to uncertainty than fixed duration interventions and can be adapted for regional use (e.g. at the state level in the US). Given local epidemics are not perfectly synchronised, local policies are also more efficient and can achieve comparable levels of suppression to national policies while being in force for a slightly smaller proportion of the time. However, we estimate that for a national GB policy, social distancing would need to be in force for at least 2/3 of the time (for R0=2.4, see Table 4) until a vaccine was available.[/font]

[Canoerebel]

Italy really is crucial in understanding all this. Crucial.

If Italy blows up, then all bets are off. If its experience doesn't in any way compare to China's, then it'll be a long time before we know what we're dealing with. If it's bell-shaped curve is radically different, then we just don't know for a much longer time.

If Italy begins to taper off, especially soon, then we'll have a much clearer picture.

As Italy goes, so may go the world.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Italy really is crucial in understanding all this. Crucial.

If Italy blows up, then all bets are off. If its experience doesn't in any way compare to China's, then it'll be a long time before we know what we're dealing with. If it's bell-shaped curve is radically different, then we just don't know for a much longer time.

If Italy begins to taper off, especially soon, then we'll have a much clearer picture.

As Italy goes, so may go the world.

We can get statistics per province from here (I posted charts earlier). And we do need that level of granularity, because it's quite possible that a leveling off in the north could be masked by growth elsewhere. There is just a hint of that in this table I put together in order to track that. Admittedly we're only looking at one day, but that's all I've got.

[alanschu]

Sounds like younger people are getting more impacted in Europe.

Though doctor quotes it as being a natural phenomenon.

https://inews.co.uk/news/health/more-yo ... es-2451319

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: alanschu

Sounds like younger people are getting more impacted in Europe.

Though doctor quotes it as being a natural phenomenon.

https://inews.co.uk/news/health/more-yo ... es-2451319

"Younger" being relative: 12% under age 50, 52% between 51 & 70, the rest 71+

[RangerJoe]

Somebody posted something earlier that the message from France is not to take NSAIDs.

[alanschu]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Somebody posted something earlier that the message from France is not to take NSAIDs.

I've heard mixed things about whether or not this impacts things, which doesn't help people feeling anxious of course.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: alanschu

Not having a cough from a flu doesn't mean that people never cough as well. I can have a coughing fit because of random dumb luck because some saliva went down into my esophagus and my involuntary reaction to that is to cough. I also live in a dry atmosphere and can casually cough throughout the day just from the dryness. It's just not a coughing fit nor chronic all day. I've obviously not really done empirical studies in my personal life, but I find it interesting how *common* coughing is now that I'm additionally anxious about it.

There was a study done with children that found that healthy kids tended to have coughing episodes about 11 times per day, ranging from 1 to 34. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8758131

This would exclude things like sneezing or blowing one's nose (normal numbers for a health person seem to be about 4 times per day). And there's a lot of difficult habits people have as well. I definitely picked up on one my teachers all did: wetting a finger tip to flip through a stack of papers.

This was a good post, and you are absolutely right. Just listen to any of us older folks in the morning and between the throat clearing and random coughs, there's a veritable symphony of forced exhalation going on!

Combine that with all the other random coughs and sneezes going on throughout the day, and it actually makes a pretty compelling argument that the "masks are only good for sick people" policy needs to be reconsidered. Yes, masks of all sorts are in short supply, but even a cloth bandanna would contain a cough or a sneeze.

That might be part of the South Korean success story. As Capt Beefheart told us, masks are required simply to enter the door of most businesses.

Edit: To clarify, if masks only go to "obviously sick" people, you've missed a week or more of stopping the coughs/sneezes from the asymptomatic.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Italy really is crucial in understanding all this. Crucial.

If Italy blows up, then all bets are off. If its experience doesn't in any way compare to China's, then it'll be a long time before we know what we're dealing with. If it's bell-shaped curve is radically different, then we just don't know for a much longer time.

If Italy begins to taper off, especially soon, then we'll have a much clearer picture.

As Italy goes, so may go the world.

I am not sure if Italy's example will translate exactly to other western nations because of cultural reasons. I have the impression that Italians are not used to following government instructions - having a strong independent streak that says "Don't tell me what to do!". I have this impression because of things like the government not being able to collect the taxes it is due because Italians routinely hide their financial info and under-report income. Traffic laws seem to be a suggestion to many drivers. And having a mistress is expected behaviour for men, even though they take the usual marriage vows.

I don't think Italians are ignoring the government at the moment, but they probably did before the epidemic became impossible to ignore, and they may not tolerate the restrictions as well as other countries will. OTOH, South Koreans, Singaporeans and Japanese citizens have a great sense of community responsibility and will likely follow directions closely for as long as they are required to. I put most other nations somewhere in between in following quarantines and isolation. All just musing on my part, but something that may influence the curve shapes (if we can ever get really good data from testing).

[BBfanboy]

Here's an unexpected result of the pandemic - Brazil had 800-1000 prisoners "break out" because their "day privileges" were about to be cancelled for a lockdown of the prisons. Obviously the prisoners would not be among the most dangerous ones.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN21407O

[Canoerebel]

Look at it from the flip side.

What would we do if China was still growing exponentially? What if China had millions of positives now and hundreds of thousand of mortalities, with no end in sight?

And what if South Korea was still going ever upward?

In that case, we'd be scared out of our wits. We wouldn't know if we could stop this, when or how. Our only recourse would be to search for ways that China didn't try, not knowing if any would work or not.

But that didn't happen! China and South Korea (and others) are pretty much done with this.* They proved it can be stopped (or all but). They proved the virus is not in some way invincible. This thing is beatable, and probably in more and better ways than we now know. They showed a way that does not equal Spanish Flu 2.0 or other apocalyptic outcomes.

IE, China and South Korea gave us hope. Mankind, when armed with real hope, is hard to beat.

*Subject to new outbreaks later, but we'll deal with that when and if it happens, and most likely more effectively.

[Canoerebel]

BBfanboy, that's why Italy is such a tremendous bellwether. If things go sour there it may not be devastating news to other countries, for the reasons you mention. But if things turn there, and soon, despite the issues you describe, that will be truly encouraging.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

BBfanboy, that's why Italy is such a tremendous bellwether. If things go sour there it may not be devastating news to other countries, for the reasons you mention. But if things turn there, and soon, despite the issues you describe, that will be truly encouraging.

Good point! BTW, I am not pessimistic (in case it came across that way). I expect that by mid-May the worst will be over and the clamps will be removed one by one, region by region. There will be some resurgence, but we will have enough test kits and protocols in place to quickly contain those without widespread lockdowns.

The economy will take much longer, but agriculture (in our part of the world) will be a necessary industry and when it produces a good crop in the late summer and fall there will be a lot of employment to harvest and process and transport it. Other industries might not spool up as fast but travel within countries should - delayed visits to relatives and the like. And sports venues will find eager fans buying tickets in the fall.
But it will take years to recover the business losses and develop a boom economy again. I will do my part to spend my savings as if nothing happened! [:)]

[spence]

quote:

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Somebody posted something earlier that the message from France is not to take NSAIDs.



I've heard mixed things about whether or not this impacts things, which doesn't help people feeling anxious of course.

It may not have been Dr Fauci but I believe it was he that stated that the effects of NSAIDs are unknown. It seems that doctors in general prefer Acetaminophen to all NSAIDs because they are easier on the stomach. Also it works better along with opioid pain killers (I hear). For me personally Acetaminophen seems to have no effect at all on a headache. And it does have a bad effect on the liver if taken for a hangover (of course I've never had one but that's what I hear[;)]).

[RangerJoe]

NSAIDs apparently suppress the immune system.

[RangerJoe]

Australian researchers discover how body's immune system fights coronavirus COVID-19

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/ ... yPfGswqeNo

With so many things closing, expect a baby boom starting in 9 months . . .

[Scott_USN]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: Scott_USN

In a few weeks people will be like what?

I don't get the gist of your question. What aspect of people (very complex critters) are you thinking of? Medical condition? Emotional state? Mental state? Political opinion? Physical condition? Financial condition? Nutritional condition? etc.

The insanity over a virus that is less dangerous that the common flu? People hoarding like it is a zombie apocalypse? Is over hyped to me. Overall the hysteria.

[jdsrae]

I was in a meeting today that was dragging on a bit, then sneezed.
Boom, meeting closed, see you next week, maybe!

[Scott_USN]

ORIGINAL: jdsrae

I was in a meeting today that was dragging on a bit, then sneezed.
Boom, meeting closed, see you next week, maybe!

LOL that is a good idea!