OT: Corona virus

[MakeeLearn]

About 10 years I had a talk with a banker from Ohio who had just spent several years in China. One of the things he told me was how wars would be waged in the future. This goes right along with what is happening now.

[MakeeLearn]

COVID-19: Spain surpasses China’s death toll
Over last 24-hours, country reported 738 deaths, raising death toll to 3,434, confirmed nearly 8,000 new cases
25.03.2020

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/covid-1 ... ll/1778871


"With 3,434 deaths, Spain overtook China in terms of the number of mortal victims from COVID-19, according to official data released by the country's Health Ministry on Wednesday.

In a 24-hour period, 738 people died and the total number of confirmed cases surged by nearly 8,000, hitting 47,610.

Spain also has one of the highest proportion of healthcare workers affected by coronavirus, with over 5,400 confirmed cases, according to data from Tuesday."

[RFalvo69]

A timelapse tour through the streets of Rome under quarantine: https://twitter.com/i/status/1242774656630882304

[MakeeLearn]

Countries are starting to hoard food, threatening global trade
3.25.20

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... li=BBnb7Kz

"It’s not just grocery shoppers who are hoarding pantry staples. Some governments are moving to secure domestic food supplies during the conoravirus pandemic.

To be perfectly clear, there have been just a handful of moves and no sure signs that much more is on the horizon. Still, what’s been happening has raised a question: Is this the start of a wave of food nationalism that will further disrupt supply chains and trade flows?"

[Cap Mandrake]

Some stuff the public health people don't tell you:

"pre-existing condition" includes not just the obvious stuff like CHF and COPD and diabetes...but also hyperlipidemia and hypertension, both of which are extremely prevalent in middle aged adults. Then there is smoking and drinking. You know those friends who start to get red noses and cheeks as they age? Well, that is often microvascular disease from yeast shit. It's not just on the face either. It's in the lungs and it causes "shunting" which destroys the efficiency of gas exchange.

You use an inhaler twice a year? You have a mild form of chronic lung disease. Smoked for 10 years as a kid? Still got some lung disease. The point is if you start including everything as a pre-existing condition a large number of those over 40 have one. It is a trick the public health people use to avoid causing panic.

Do what you can to avoid this thing. Try to delay getting sick until there is a possible window of less transmissibility in the summer or there is a good prophylactic or therapeutic treatment or, even better, a vaccine. You need to lasso in everyone in your house and get your parents or grandparents to a very safe place with few people in the residence, no kids and almost no visitors. Over age 80 the rate of sever disease is truly shocking.

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

Some stuff the public health people don't tell you:

"pre-existing condition" includes not just the obvious stuff like CHF and COPD and diabetes...but also hyperlipidemia and hypertension, both of which are extremely prevalent in middle aged adults. Then there is smoking and drinking. You know those friends who start to get red noses and cheeks as they age? Well, that is often microvascular disease from yeast shit. It's not just on the face either. It's in the lungs and it causes "shunting" which destroys the efficiency of gas exchange.

You use an inhaler twice a year? You have a mild form of chronic lung disease. Smoked for 10 years as a kid? Still got some lung disease. The point is if you start including everything as a pre-existing condition a large number of those over 40 have one. It is a trick the public health people use to avoid causing panic.

Do what you can to avoid this thing. Try to delay getting sick until there is a possible window of less transmissibility in the summer or there is a good prophylactic or therapeutic treatment or, even better, a vaccine. You need to lasso in everyone in your house and get your parents or grandparents to a very safe place with few people in the residence, no kids and almost no visitors. Over age 80 the rate of sever disease is truly shocking.

The young people vaping, those e-cigarette things, the popcorn lungs . . .

[witpqs]

I saw this article last night positing a reason for the situation in Italy.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/24/the-italian-connection/

The author's theory is that the virus got into Italy's health care system as mild cases not recognized at the time, and has wound up hitting those elderly and vulnerable people whom we know have been hardest hit. The small updates at the end add new info that seems to mitigate in favor of his theory.

[Kull]

The Italian country-level rate of increase appears to have plateaued again, but actually most provinces continue to show a reduction in the rate of increase. There is one in particular - Piedmont - that has never been able to fall below double-digit increases, and actually rose to 13.4% on 3/24. If that single province had kept new cases at 400 (the number from the day before) instead of rising to 700, the country rate would have dropped to 7.8% instead of rising to 8.2%.

The best news came from the Aosta Valley where the rate of increase fell to 1.8% (only 7 new cases). A small place without many cases, but the rate of increase was consistently in double digits, yet dropped precipitously over the past two days. It would be nice to see that elsewhere.

Lastly, it's worth looking at a statistical oddity in the Veneto. Although it's among the hardest hit Italian provinces in terms of cases, the death rate has consistently been right around 3.3%, which is 1/3 of the Italian rate as a whole, and 4x less than neighboring Lombardy. No idea why.

Pertinent links:

1) Daily Italian Stats by province here

2) Original post with regional map of Italy here

3) The last post on this topic here

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: witpqs
The trouble with anti-body testing (AFAIK) is that it does not confirm when a person was infected or developed the anti-bodies, so by the time that could be done it still might do nothing to confirm this theory.

A single serologic antibody survey is like a snapshot: it tells you what was happening at the time the blood was drawn. For a time study, one can perform paired samples: acute and convalescent serologic surveys. Check antibodies at time 0 and time 0+ down the line.

I think we can assume that there was no seroconversion to COVID-19 in GB prior to September 2019. So you can use some stored public serum for your t=0 snapshot. Then compare to whenever (e.g., now) you want your next snapshot.

If the authors of that theory are serious, then they need to provide some baseline evidence of seroconversion in the UK populace prior to, or in January 2020. Why don't they get some National Health / blood bank stored serum from there to buttress their computer model? My jaundiced worldview says its because they're some computer modeling wankers that are out of touch with reality, but I could be wrong.

I get that, but - if I understand the science & technology wrong please tell me - that process would still only tell you if each person got it (developed the antibodies) between the two tests. And since there is no way to apply an adequate number of antibody tests basically right now, we will still be left with how things are right now being uncertain. If we get an adequate number of test results later on which show a much lower infection rate then we would know his theory is wrong, but if we later get test results which show the claimed rate of infection we still would not know if he was right because many persons could have been infected later.

[Cap Mandrake]

As for Japan, I suspect it's not "pneumonia" vaccine programs. The vaccine is specific for pneumococcus. The CT findings of COVID pneumonia are very distinctive (peripheral disease and "ground glass" densities. Plus, sick patients usually ARE treated with antibiotics and it doesn't seem to work very well.

possible explanations:

1) A very large number of the initial cases in Japan were from the SS Princess Coronavirus. They knew ahead of time who had the disease with a high level of certainty. These patients were all carefully isolated

2) The Chinese don't very much like the Japanese and I think it's mutual. Last time a large number of Chinese tried to visit Japan the "divine wind" came along and killed them all. I don't think there is very much of a Chinese expat community in Japan like there is in Hawaii and SF and LA and Vancouver and NY and Singapore for eg.

3) Japan has a 100% water frontier.

4) The Japanese public respects seniors and those in authority and they culturally understand the value in social order. They don't go to freaking Spring Break and drink from common beer bongs. In the US, the Surgeon General had to ask the Kardashians for help.

5) Japanese seniors are MUCH healthier than almost any other population. Essentially everyone over about 78 in Japan grew up in wartime deprivation. It turns out if Curtis LeMay didn't drop incendiaries or a nuke on your head, living on calorie restriction in childhood confers longevity. Of course, it does make for lousy basketball teams.

6) Excellent cadre of skilled health providers in Japan and advanced technology

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake
The CT findings of COVID pneumonia are very distinctive (peripheral disease and "ground glass" densities.

I read a paper by two human Chinese radiologists on their use of CT compared to RT-PCR for interpretational diagnostics. They claimed 97% sensitivity, but repeatedly glossed over specificity. That's only about 70%-from their 'official data'.

It's an interesting finding, if true. But the RSNA (Radiologic Society of North America) is still not recommending CT as a screening tool-probably because you have a grossly contaminated CT suite that is not amenable to decontamination between patients.

https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020200843

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake
The CT findings of COVID pneumonia are very distinctive (peripheral disease and "ground glass" densities.

I read a paper by two human Chinese radiologists on their use of CT compared to RT-PCR for interpretational diagnostics. They claimed 97% sensitivity, but repeatedly glossed over specificity. That's only about 70%-from their 'official data'.

It's an interesting finding, if true. But the RSNA (Radiologic Society of North America) is still not recommending CT as a screening tool-probably because you have a grossly contaminated CT suite that is not amenable to decontamination between patients.

https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020200843

Ouch.

[Cap Mandrake]

The Chicoms actually accepted lung CT as diagnostic for inclusion into the COVID-19 numbers. They also didn't have enough test kits either at the start. Plus, you can estimate the amount of COPD as well and it was probably useful to tell who would need a vent soon.

I suspect by the time this is over you just throw away your worn out $1M CT machine and don't bother with disinfecting the thing

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: MakeeLearn

COVID-19: Spain surpasses China’s death toll
Over last 24-hours, country reported 738 deaths, raising death toll to 3,434, confirmed nearly 8,000 new cases

Before all this is over, I have a bad feeling that Spain will make Italy look like a model country. If anyone wants to follow this more closely, you can easily create a per-province daily tracking spreadsheet using the data from here (see attached screenshot).

I first posted on this using March 20th data (only 4 days earlier), and their case numbers have doubled in that time. Deaths have almost tripled. Ominously, unlike Italy where you have a clear dichotomy between a few northern provinces and the rest of the country, there are two large nodes (Madrid and Catalonia), and five others at around 3K each. That doesn't auger well for Spain's ability to offload patients into regions with excess capacity - there won't be any.

It also appears the government is lying about testing, so it's hard to know exactly where they are on the infection curve. Ugly and likely to get much uglier.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

The Chicoms actually accepted lung CT as diagnostic for inclusion into the COVID-19 numbers. They also didn't have enough test kits either at the start. Plus, you can estimate the amount of COPD as well and it was probably useful to tell who would need a vent soon.

I suspect by the time this is over you just throw away your worn out $1M CT machine and don't bother with disinfecting the thing

So if you don't have it but get scanned for it - you get it? [:'(]

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

I saw this article last night positing a reason for the situation in Italy.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/24/the-italian-connection/

The author's theory is that the virus got into Italy's health care system as mild cases not recognized at the time, and has wound up hitting those elderly and vulnerable people whom we know have been hardest hit. The small updates at the end add new info that seems to mitigate in favor of his theory.

While this may be true, the author lists no evidence to support his claim other than the already known age related and co-morbidity numbers. I don't know that those would be terribly different elsewhere. He also doesn't mention that many younger people are hospitalised and need ICUs, etc, which in a triage system likely means those with less chance to survive treatment (age and co-morbidity) are not given the ICU beds. I'd say this as much as anything might be why higher numbers of older people have died. I have no official evidence either, though I have heard this form several first hand accounts of Italian hospitals right now, unfortunately.

It's been widely reported here that one should avoid the Emergency section of any hospital right now in London, as you're likely to come into contact with multiple cases of Covid. I'm sure whether it spreads early or later, those in hospital already were indeed very vulnerable to those who were treating them, visiting them and didn't know they were passing the virus.

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

As for Japan, I suspect it's not "pneumonia" vaccine programs. The vaccine is specific for pneumococcus. The CT findings of COVID pneumonia are very distinctive (peripheral disease and "ground glass" densities. Plus, sick patients usually ARE treated with antibiotics and it doesn't seem to work very well.

possible explanations:

1) A very large number of the initial cases in Japan were from the SS Princess Coronavirus. They knew ahead of time who had the disease with a high level of certainty. These patients were all carefully isolated

2) The Chinese don't very much like the Japanese and I think it's mutual. Last time a large number of Chinese tried to visit Japan the "divine wind" came along and killed them all. I don't think there is very much of a Chinese expat community in Japan like there is in Hawaii and SF and LA and Vancouver and NY and Singapore for eg.

3) Japan has a 100% water frontier.

4) The Japanese public respects seniors and those in authority and they culturally understand the value in social order. They don't go to freaking Spring Break and drink from common beer bongs. In the US, the Surgeon General had to ask the Kardashians for help.

5) Japanese seniors are MUCH healthier than almost any other population. Essentially everyone over about 78 in Japan grew up in wartime deprivation. It turns out if Curtis LeMay didn't drop incendiaries or a nuke on your head, living on calorie restriction in childhood confers longevity. Of course, it does make for lousy basketball teams.

6) Excellent cadre of skilled health providers in Japan and advanced technology

Not sure if you read the article, but in addition to these very valid points, they're essentially not counting possible cases as Covid, not testing much at all, telling people who have symptoms to stay home, and only those with severe pneumonia are getting the very good and aggressive treatments.

So it's some of all of that, but they'e still partying. The Japanese and British have something in common; they lighten up and ease their formality after a pints/bottles of sake. I think there are a lot of cases there now, and the Japanese don't want anyone, including their populace, to know that.

[Cap Mandrake]

LA Times article about mathematically predicting the peak of Chinese COVID-19.

A total braniac dude who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for using mathematical techniques to examine molecular systems takes the Chinese data...sees an inflection point and realizes they are turning the corner..derives a function matching the data..first derivative..solves for zero..presto change-o...he predicts the date and the maximum number of cases to astounding precision.

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2 ... l-laureate

We need to get this guy in here to explain Japanese production

[Cap Mandrake]

ORIGINAL: obvert

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

As for Japan, I suspect it's not "pneumonia" vaccine programs. The vaccine is specific for pneumococcus. The CT findings of COVID pneumonia are very distinctive (peripheral disease and "ground glass" densities. Plus, sick patients usually ARE treated with antibiotics and it doesn't seem to work very well.

possible explanations:

1) A very large number of the initial cases in Japan were from the SS Princess Coronavirus. They knew ahead of time who had the disease with a high level of certainty. These patients were all carefully isolated

2) The Chinese don't very much like the Japanese and I think it's mutual. Last time a large number of Chinese tried to visit Japan the "divine wind" came along and killed them all. I don't think there is very much of a Chinese expat community in Japan like there is in Hawaii and SF and LA and Vancouver and NY and Singapore for eg.

3) Japan has a 100% water frontier.

4) The Japanese public respects seniors and those in authority and they culturally understand the value in social order. They don't go to freaking Spring Break and drink from common beer bongs. In the US, the Surgeon General had to ask the Kardashians for help.

5) Japanese seniors are MUCH healthier than almost any other population. Essentially everyone over about 78 in Japan grew up in wartime deprivation. It turns out if Curtis LeMay didn't drop incendiaries or a nuke on your head, living on calorie restriction in childhood confers longevity. Of course, it does make for lousy basketball teams.

6) Excellent cadre of skilled health providers in Japan and advanced technology

Not sure if you read the article, but in addition to these very valid points, they're essentially not counting possible cases as Covid, not testing much at all, telling people who have symptoms to stay home, and only those with severe pneumonia are getting the very good and aggressive treatments.

So it's some of all of that, but they'e still partying. The Japanese and British have something in common; they lighten up and ease their formality after a pints/bottles of sake. I think there are a lot of cases there now, and the Japanese don't want anyone, including their populace, to know that.

Don't try the Japanese approach in the UK. Not sure British seniors are as healthy. [:)]

[Zorch]

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

LA Times article about mathematically predicting the peak of Chinese COVID-19.

A total braniac dude who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for using mathematical techniques to examine molecular systems takes the Chinese data...sees an inflection point and realizes they are turning the corner..derives a function matching the data..first derivative..solves for zero..presto change-o...he predicts the date and the maximum number of cases to astounding precision.

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2 ... l-laureate

We need to get this guy in here to explain Japanese production

How many HI does it take to create a unit of Corona virus?