OT: Corona virus

[Ian R]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

How is pushing the buttons on the key pad to input your PIN when using your debit card any less risky for transmission of disease than handling paper money?

And what about ATM touch screens?

We can't disinfect the entire world and make it sterile.

It can live more than 48hrs on a surface; this is what makes it such a threat.

The advice I have seen is that you can at least disinfect your own hands , before you touch your face or any food; the advice is make sure you clean your thumbs, and in between your fingers. Hot soap and water will do.

Get in the habit of doing it, get some handwash that kills viruses (not just bacteria - hospital grade chemical warfare required) and keep it at your desk to wipe your hands down every time someone comes near you. Stalinist paranoia is the prudent attitude. Everyone is a potential carrier.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

How is pushing the buttons on the key pad to input your PIN when using your debit card any less risky for transmission of disease than handling paper money?

And what about ATM touch screens?

We can't disinfect the entire world and make it sterile.

Agreed. My point was about the half-hearted and ineffective show of decontaminating for propaganda reasons. Just don't do it at all if it cannot contribute to actual reduction of spread.

[Scott_USN]

Or the voting for 8 billion that will just disappear over the next few months like the money for Ebola, Ziki(sp) etc. I mean we already spend billions a year to fund stopping these things then they want more.

[Ian R]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Yes, something's really wrong with the analysis here.

I don't think this will become a true pandemic, given the figures I've seen and how this is playing out to this point.

Also, credible sources are putting mortality at 0.2% to 0.4%, about a ninth of that WHO estimate. Something's really off there, but the raw data supports the lower number not the higher one.

...

This is starting to remind me of the now well known tendency of the CIA and other information gathering/analysis agencies to heavily over estimate the military clout of the 1970s/80s Soviet/Warsaw pact war "juggernaut". Nobody thinks they were so stupid, or the Soviets so clever at maskirovka (notwithstanding the 6th Gds Airborne Division joke the latter pulled off) that they were actually just wrong; and there were dissenting voices, which were later proven correct. It seems obvious in hindsight that being over-cautious and presenting the worse case was a good way to get increased tax payer funding. It also happened to fit with the way the political wind was blowing at the time.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)killed about 800 people worldwide. Obviously Covid-19 is worse at this point. WHO is hardly going to talk this down, when they want funding thrown at it. There are many things about the democratic capitalist system which are (much) superior to a central command economy, but this issue of provision of immediate funding is not one of them.

[Ian R]

Here is a Bloomberg article questioning the WHO 3.4% figure. 1% has more traction.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... -ebola-flu

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Ian R

Here is a Bloomberg article questioning the WHO 3.4% figure. 1% has more traction.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... -ebola-flu

Great article.

This is the single most reasonable and important paragraph I've yet read about the disease, because it compares it to the seasonal influenza rates of contraction, hospitalisation and mortality.

[font="Trebuchet MS"]The 61,099 flu-related deaths in the U.S. during the severe flu season of 2017-2018 amounted to 0.14% of the estimated 44.8 million cases of influenza-like illness. There were also an estimated flu-related 808,129 hospitalizations, for a rate of 1.8%. Assume a Covid-19 outbreak of similar size in the U.S., multiply the death and hospitalization estimates by five or 10, and you get some really scary numbers: 300,000 to 600,000 deaths, and 4 million to 8 million hospitalizations in a country that has 924,107 staffed hospital beds. Multiply by 40 and, well, forget about it. Also, death rates would go higher if the hospital system is overwhelmed, as happened in the Chinese province of Hubei where Covid-19’s spread began and seems to be happening in Iran now. That’s one reason that slowing the spread is important even if it turns out the disease can’t be stopped.[/font]

Statistics are hard to comprehend at the best of times, but when faced with difficult and contradictory data, it's best to base predictions on some well know quantifiable relationships. If this is a slightly worse flu, any methods to slow the spread and the money required for them are essential to reduce cases, or at the least extend them to reduce the overwhelming effect on the medical system.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

How is pushing the buttons on the key pad to input your PIN when using your debit card any less risky for transmission of disease than handling paper money?

And what about ATM touch screens?

We can't disinfect the entire world and make it sterile.

Agreed. My point was about the half-hearted and ineffective show of decontaminating for propaganda reasons. Just don't do it at all if it cannot contribute to actual reduction of spread.

Understood, and my point was that going to extremes in attempts to avoid exposure may only be trading one form of risk for another and providing nothing more than a false sense of security.

My employer, who is an architect, not a medical professional, was telling me that he understood that the modern flu viruses like the one that hit us so hard in 2017-18 are all remnant descendants of the Spanish Flu that killed so many in the early 1900s and that the coronavirus will just as likely be with us for hundreds of years in some derivative form.

There simply may be no means of escaping or avoiding exposure.

[MakeeLearn]

Senate approves $8.3 billion emergency coronavirus package

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/0 ... age-122266

"The Senate rapidly cleared an $8.3 billion emergency funding bill Thursday to aid the fight against the coronavirus, as U.S. deaths from the illness reached double digits and more than 160 people tested positive across more than a dozen states."


LOL

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: Ian R

It can live more than 48hrs on a surface; this is what makes it such a threat.

Where did you get that information? The coronavirus family has different survival rates, and the media is using the extreme ones to flog their panic narrative, but I've yet to see any data specific to Covid 19.

The advice I have seen is that you can at least disinfect your own hands , before you touch your face or any food; the advice is make sure you clean your thumbs, and in between your fingers. Hot soap and water will do.

Get in the habit of doing it, get some handwash that kills viruses (not just bacteria - hospital grade chemical warfare required) and keep it at your desk to wipe your hands down every time someone comes near you. Stalinist paranoia is the prudent attitude. Everyone is a potential carrier.

Totally agree, except on the "paranoia" bit. There are lots of illnesses out there, and good personal hygiene is an easy way to reduce your chance of getting many of them. Make it a habit and eventually you'll do it without even thinking. The single biggest though, is to be aware of people who are actively coughing and avoid them..."like the plague". [;)]

Per the CDC, that is THE primary means of transmission.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

There simply may be no means of escaping or avoiding exposure.

Don't go to an emergency room for one thing. If I'm a betting man, that's where 90% of the Covid-19 transmission in Hubei stemmed from. People arrived with the flu, sat next to a coughing covid-carrier, and acquired it that way. What made it so bad in China at the start is that people didn't know what they were dealing with, so herd behavior helped it disseminate rapidly.

Accordingly, people panicking and flocking to doctor's waiting rooms and ERs in the US (and everywhere else) is what's going to drive the spread. They aren't going to get it from shopping cart handles at Wal-Mart.

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Kull

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

There simply may be no means of escaping or avoiding exposure.

Don't go to an emergency room for one thing. If I'm a betting man, that's where 90% of the Covid-19 transmission in Hubei stemmed from. People arrived with the flu, sat next to a coughing covid-carrier, and acquired it that way. What made it so bad in China at the start is that people didn't know what they were dealing with, so herd behavior helped it disseminate rapidly.

Accordingly, people panicking and flocking to doctor's waiting rooms and ERs in the US (and everywhere else) is what's going to drive the spread. They aren't going to get it from shopping cart handles at Wal-Mart.

People are going to get it anywhere there are other people! [;)]

Transmission before symptoms is being seen as the major factor that is still unknown in Covid-19 transmission, and as the Bloomberg article laid out, it may be less than the influenza rate.

[font="Trebuchet MS"]... the proportion of transmission occurring prior to symptoms. For SARS, this was less than 11%, probably much less. For influenza, it is between 30% and 50%, making it far harder to control the disease’s spread.

With Covid-19, “it seems that it can transmit quite a bit before symptoms occur,” Buckee says. How much is still up in the air. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been arguing this week that pre-symptomatic transmission appears to be low enough that Covid-19 can be controlled in ways that the flu cannot. “If this was an influenza epidemic, we would have expected to see widespread community transmission across the globe by now,” he said Monday, “and efforts to slow it down or contain it would not be feasible.”[/font]

Avoiding hospitals is always a good idea, but it's actually still good to be sending out the message people need to change behaviour to reduce the chances of a worst-case scenario with this disease. Extensive testing and self-isolating with symptoms will go a long way to keeping it from transmitting, especially if asymptomatic transmission is lower.

[Kull]

I just lost a long post and have no desire to re-do it. The highlights:

- The CDC (forget interpreters like Bloomberg - go right to the source) says you get it from walking through the six foot cloud hacked up by a symptomatic carrier (see my earlier posts for links). There is no proof that any other form of transmission has happened.

- "Extensive testing" is not required, and any testing could cause worse problems depending on how it's administered. Also, just because the test says you don't have it today, that doesn't mean you won't get it tomorrow, and the "I'm clean" thought process could lead to all sorts of bad behaviors. Testing has a role, but it's NOT the one the media and politicians have been flogging.

[Canoerebel]

The "pandemic" appears to be rapidly coming to an end in China, where 2/3rds are now "recovered" in Hubei province. In other provinces, including Shanghai, recovery is at 90% or better.

I think the "pandemic" is beginning to level of in the next countries that had large outbreaks, including Italy and Iran. The growth rate in those places seems to be slowing considerably.

Then there are the third "levels," where the virus is just getting started. This includes the USA, where numbers (though still comparatively small) are growing pretty rapidly.

Is there any reason to think the US and it's healthcare system will manage more poorly than Europe or China? Is our population more vulnerable? I'm confident the answer in both questions is a resounding, "No."

In each area I've checked, it seems like the outbreak grows exponentially for about a month, then levels off.

I'm reading all the comments in here. From what I've seen, I disagree with the 1% mortality rate. It was higher than that in China, which throws everything off. It's higher than that in Iran and Italy, which seemed to be caught off guard early. It's much lower than that in Shanghai province, South Korea, and Germany, among others.

My hunch is that it will be much less than 1% in the USA.*

*The first suspected case from my little town in Northwest Georgia is being evaluated by the CDC right now. So my thoughts aren't shared flippantly.

[witpqs]

Dan,

I'm curious why you keep putting the word pandemic in quotation marks. It is a pandemic by the technical definitions. How bad it gets is a different matter, especially in various places with differing political, social, and health care situations.

It is politicians and movie-makers who equate "pandemic" with "end of the world", not the professionals who use the term descriptively. IMO, minimizing the risks is as dangerous as panicking.

[8D]

[Canoerebel]

Two reasons: (1) I'm a layman unfamiliar with precise lingo, and (2) to this point, it's so much less serious than regular yearly influenza, which we don't describe each year as a pandemic.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Two reasons: (1) I'm a layman unfamiliar with precise lingo, and (2) to this point, it's so much less serious than regular yearly influenza, which we don't describe each year as a pandemic.

Got it.

[Canoerebel]

Alanshu, thank you for sharing this yesterday. It gave an important new perspective and also taught me how to use the Johns Hopkins website more fully.

ORIGINAL: alanschu

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The yellow line on the Johns Hopkins graph excludes cases in China and looks nothing like the graph you just posted, Erik.

And look at daily new cases (the Johns Hopkins detail I posted, just above). Nearly all new cases are non-China now, but the number of new cases per day has been steady during March, mainly around 2,400.

How can we have a logarithmic increase without exponential growth?

That does not make mathematical sense.

If you fullscreen and filter out the other ones, Erik's graph is correct.

This screengrab is from 5:14pm MST right from the site.

EDIT: I had no idea embedding the picture would do what it did. SOrry!

[HansBolter]

So January 20th is the date of occurrence of the first know case?

Back at the turn of the year, I suffered a bout of the worst case of flu I have ever had in my entire life.
It had me bedridden for three days, struggling to breathe and out of work for a week and took a good week and a half to get over.

Is it possible I already had the coronavirus and survived it?

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Dan,

I'm curious why you keep putting the word pandemic in quotation marks. It is a pandemic by the technical definitions. How bad it gets is a different matter, especially in various places with differing political, social, and health care situations.

It is politicians and movie-makers who equate "pandemic" with "end of the world", not the professionals who use the term descriptively. IMO, minimizing the risks is as dangerous as panicking.

[8D]

Is it currently a pandemic? Not according to WHO:

Given that the virus has now spread to over 30 countries and across multiple continents, many experts believe the situation satisfies the WHO’s definition of a pandemic. But the UN agency has repeatedly insisted that we are "not there yet", suggesting we are instead fighting a series of epidemics.

"For the moment, we are not witnessing the uncontained global spread of this virus and we are not witnessing large-scale severe disease or deaths," Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said.

"Does this virus have pandemic potential? Absolutely it has. Are we there yet from our assessment? Not yet."

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

So January 20th is the date of occurrence of the first know case?

Back at the turn of the year, I suffered a bout of the worst case of flu I have ever had in my entire life.
It had me bedridden for three days, struggling to breathe and out of work for a week and took a good week and a half to get over.

Is it possible I already had the coronavirus and survived it?

It was first reported on December 31st, but presumably arose earlier. Read the WHO report here.