OT: Corona virus

[Canoerebel]

So, China has tons of unreported cases running around? We probably will too.

China has had 80k case and roughly 3k deaths. More than 43k recoveries in China, now.

Unless there's wonkiness with the numbers, I cannot foresee how this turns out radically worse in the USA. We have 20% of China's population. I don't know about China's healthcare, but I have a high degree of confidence in ours. I think ours has a flexibility and adaptability that few other countries have, because it's still more or less privately controlled.

It will be a statistical anomaly if this turns out 10x USA vs. China. The only reason I can foresee that happening in the USA is if the virus morphs in some way to make it much more virulent. No sign of that happening, thus far.

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Chickenboy posted several pages back about one key reason we'll see a bump in positives in the coming week.

If the data coming from China is true, why would we have more than 1,000,000 cases when China has about 80,000, to this point?

As I noted a page or two back, the epidemic grew quickly in China for about a month, then dramatically leveled out and has remained there. IE, only a few hundred new cases per day.

If we follow that general curve, we should see an increase for about three more weeks, then a leveling out.

I can't envision how we'd have 10 times as many cases as China, or anything close.

I just don't see this happening.

How is the situation in China similar to what any other country is doing to battle this outbreak?

They didn’t shut events, they shut entire provinces down, and NO ONE could leave their homes. At all. Dozens of millions of people. So they did get the RO below 1, but those people also have no immunity to the disease and are now back at work and going about business as normal. When will the next phase begin and cases again spike there?

Europe and the US especially will never do what China did, and the strain we now have spreading may even be different than the one that began there. More transmittable but less virulent hopefully.

I hope this strain is also less transmittable in the warmer weather of spring. The seasonal change could help us more than anything. Fingers crossed.

[Canoerebel]

China was caught off-guard. We weren't. We have a big advantage there. And I suspect our healthcare system will prove better at coping with this.

I realize China imposed draconian (and arguably necessary) lockdown measures that won't be replicated in the good ol' USA. But we have the advantage of two months of knowledge about this and an excellent healthcare system.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: obvert

How is the situation in China similar to what any other country is doing to battle this outbreak?

They didn’t shut events, they shut entire provinces down, and NO ONE could leave their homes. At all. Dozens of millions of people. So they did get the RO below 1, but those people also have no immunity to the disease and are now back at work and going about business as normal. When will the next phase begin and cases again spike there?

Europe and the US especially will never do what China did, and the strain we now have spreading may even be different than the one that began there. More transmittable but less virulent hopefully.

But they did NOT do that at the beginning. It took about a month, and by then 100's of thousands of people had passed through the infected areas and moved all across the country. It doesn't matter how draconian your response is - give the flu a 1-month head start and "containment" is laughable. But somehow, it worked in China....why is that? The infection rate. It takes time for this thing to spread. It is not exponential. 1 person doesn't infect 50, more like 3 or 5.

That's the silver lining here. The rate of transmission is low enough that even if you fail to contain it completely, the growth of cases in each area should still be slow enough that the medical system can keep pace.

[JohnDillworth]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

So, China has tons of unreported cases running around? We probably will too.

China has had 80k case and roughly 3k deaths. More than 43k recoveries in China, now.

Unless there's wonkiness with the numbers, I cannot foresee how this turns out radically worse in the USA. We have 20% of China's population. I don't know about China's healthcare, but I have a high degree of confidence in ours. I think ours has a flexibility and adaptability that few other countries have, because it's still more or less privately controlled.

It will be a statistical anomaly if this turns out 10x USA vs. China. The only reason I can foresee that happening in the USA is if the virus morphs in some way to make it much more virulent. No sign of that happening, thus far.

So, China has tons of unreported cases running around? We probably will too.

China has had 80k case and roughly 3k deaths. More than 43k recoveries in China, now.

Unless there's wonkiness with the numbers, I cannot foresee how this turns out radically worse in the USA. We have 20% of China's population. I don't know about China's healthcare, but I have a high degree of confidence in ours. I think ours has a flexibility and adaptability that few other countries have, because it's still more or less privately controlled.

It will be a statistical anomaly if this turns out 10x USA vs. China. The only reason I can foresee that happening in the USA is if the virus morphs in some way to make it much more virulent. No sign of that happening, thus far.

first off I don't believe China's numbers. They had a number of advantages. It started in one place, they knew about it early, they practice this stuff (they fired all the party members for the substandard SARS response and replaced them with people that were trained to deal with similar outbreaks), and they have a form of government that can quarantine 30 million people over night and build hospitals in 10 days, they make most of the stuff they need to deal with this. The United States has multiple hot spots so this is breaking out in many locations at the same time. The centralized response, so far, has been transparent to me. Italy's cases are doubling every 2.6 days. That rate has held steady for 2 weeks. Last Friday we had 1 or two confirmed cases. Today we have over 400 cases with only 2,000 people tested. 20% of adjacent people tested are testing positive. 20%. What do you think is going to happen if we test a million? Not sure what flexibility and adaptability you are talking about. We only have enough beds, respirators and hospitals to meet immediate business demand with a slight reserve. We are short of masks, tests, respirators, critical care beds. Where is the centralized response? Close schools? Stadiums? Events? Travel? Who is deciding these things? Local government but usually these are business decisions. There is no central government response. I know we don't do politics here but to call the Governor of a state begging for help a snake and then go golfing the next day is not inspiring a lot of confidence. The federal government needs to step it up and lead in a big, big way and I see little evidence of it. What is the plan?

[Wuffer]

I hate to disagree, Kull, but a closer look at the comfirmed cases in France, Italy and Gerrmany strongly suggest otherwise: It really looks exponential. The numbers completely exploded in the last 48h. There is no time left as soon as it spreads in the community, every single case now and every day decides over a pandemic event. :-/
Let's exclude China - we could agree their figures might strongly censured and insofar not really hard data.

And prepare for look downs, I think think they will happen - in fact, just now Italy seemed to shut down all Lombardia and Venice?!`? Source: Reuters, BBC etc. Sry for bad news.

Let me add one personal observation: While having a medical background, I was never really concerned about SARS, MERS, Ebola etc. But this thing might really be different.
And every gouverment whattried to downplay this get really punished, take Iran for example. At least 2-3 MPs are allready dead. France also has infected MP.

[durnedwolf]

ORIGINAL: obvert

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Chickenboy posted several pages back about one key reason we'll see a bump in positives in the coming week.

If the data coming from China is true, why would we have more than 1,000,000 cases when China has about 80,000, to this point?

As I noted a page or two back, the epidemic grew quickly in China for about a month, then dramatically leveled out and has remained there. IE, only a few hundred new cases per day.

If we follow that general curve, we should see an increase for about three more weeks, then a leveling out.

I can't envision how we'd have 10 times as many cases as China, or anything close.

I just don't see this happening.

How is the situation in China similar to what any other country is doing to battle this outbreak?

They didn’t shut events, they shut entire provinces down, and NO ONE could leave their homes. At all. Dozens of millions of people. So they did get the RO below 1, but those people also have no immunity to the disease and are now back at work and going about business as normal. When will the next phase begin and cases again spike there?

Europe and the US especially will never do what China did, and the strain we now have spreading may even be different than the one that began there. More transmittable but less virulent hopefully.

I hope this strain is also less transmittable in the warmer weather of spring. The seasonal change could help us more than anything. Fingers crossed.

I didn't realize there were already multiple strains of the virus out. Does the same test kit catch all of the different strains?

[Canoerebel]

I wouldn't think of ignoring China. That's the only country's that's been most of the way through this thing. To this point, Johns Hopkins and basically every other reporting service I've seen accepts China's numbers. Those numbers are very instructive, IMO. If those numbers are called into question, I'll take due notice. That would be bad. But China's numbers offer the single biggest point of optimism, at this point.

[Wuffer]

ORIGINAL: durnedwolf

ORIGINAL: obvert

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Chickenboy posted several pages back about one key reason we'll see a bump in positives in the coming week.

If the data coming from China is true, why would we have more than 1,000,000 cases when China has about 80,000, to this point?

As I noted a page or two back, the epidemic grew quickly in China for about a month, then dramatically leveled out and has remained there. IE, only a few hundred new cases per day.

If we follow that general curve, we should see an increase for about three more weeks, then a leveling out.

I can't envision how we'd have 10 times as many cases as China, or anything close.

I just don't see this happening.

How is the situation in China similar to what any other country is doing to battle this outbreak?

They didn’t shut events, they shut entire provinces down, and NO ONE could leave their homes. At all. Dozens of millions of people. So they did get the RO below 1, but those people also have no immunity to the disease and are now back at work and going about business as normal. When will the next phase begin and cases again spike there?

Europe and the US especially will never do what China did, and the strain we now have spreading may even be different than the one that began there. More transmittable but less virulent hopefully.

I hope this strain is also less transmittable in the warmer weather of spring. The seasonal change could help us more than anything. Fingers crossed.

I didn't realize there were already multiple strains of the virus out. Does the same test kit catch all of the different strains?

Probably yes, but who knows?
Depending on the kits, there were allready lots of false negative results reported.

[JohnDillworth]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I wouldn't think of ignoring China. That's the only country's that's been most of the way through this thing. To this point, Johns Hopkins and basically every other reporting service I've seen accepts China's numbers. Those numbers are very instructive, IMO. If those numbers are called into question, I'll take due notice. That would be bad. But China's numbers offer the single biggest point of optimism, at this point.

This is one of the reports I've seen. The Australian Broadcasting company has made similar reports. https://theweek.com/speedreads/900488/c ... ents-claim

[Wuffer]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I wouldn't think of ignoring China. That's the only country's that's been most of the way through this thing. To this point, Johns Hopkins and basically every other reporting service I've seen accepts China's numbers. Those numbers are very instructive, IMO. If those numbers are called into question, I'll take due notice. That would be bad. But China's numbers offer the single biggest point of optimism, at this point.

Fair deal.


I trust honestly more the data of Germany and there's optimism too, most cases are more or less asymptotic and only found during routine scans. In a lot of hospitals nearly everyone is tested now, as fellow students of me confirmed, even those without the standard symptoms (mainly for insurance reasons).

[Canoerebel]

John, did you read that story?

I saw it a few days ago and read it. It doesn't question the disease numbers (active, deaths, recovered). It questions claims that Chinese business is back up and running.

[RangerJoe]

I think that the claims of China's businesses being back up and running is partly so other businesses don't start getting different suppliers, possibly local ones at that. China can't really afford to lose all of that international business.

I just saw where this one school kept the public out for games other than reporters. So it was the teams, officials, and reporters. So it may be happening.

As far as hospital beds, equipment, and staffing goes, I think that the military could be called upon in an emergency. State officials could activate National Guard units or just certain personel if not otherwise deployed.

[spence]

Apparently the first case of COVID-19 was found in southern Washington (Clark County) last night. The person and all who were in contact with him are in quarantine now but the CCPHS article doesn't really indicate how this particular person became infected. Seattle is 3 hours away though.

[Kull]

Alright, so according to at least some we can't believe China or Iran and Italy is...well...Italy, so whose data can we trust? How about South Korea? Second highest reported total, and there shouldn't be any question regarding government transparency or ability to test or the fact that it's definitely NOT an authoritarian society capable of ultra-draconian means. Four days ago, here's what one of our forum members told us about the situation in South Korea:

ORIGINAL: CaptBeefheart

Korea is #2, so on the surface it seems we're screwed, blued and tattoo'd, and you'd better keep all Korean residents (like me) from entering your country.

Below the surface, this is probably the most-tested, most-transparent country regarding this disease. They have drive-through testing stations. You can call a four-digit phone number, find out the closest station, pull up in your car, get a temperature check, answer a few questions, and if they think you're at risk, they'll do a nasal swab (from what I understand), and you'll get the results six hours later. Do you see that anywhere else? Everyone in the 200,000-plus member Shincheonji cult is getting tested, which is why the number of victims jumps about 500 a day here and will for the next week or so as their test results come in. Some buildings require you to wear a mask before entry, so I keep one in my pocket at all times.

My wife's hospital picked up 80 patients from Daegu over the weekend. They cleared out two wings for them. We're still not doing badly in Seoul in terms of numbers, although they've shut down the schools nationwide until March 23. There goes summer vacation. Church services are also being done virtually. We are on half-staffing in the office, which may go to zero percent staffing if we have to.

It's real easy to get a taxi and attendance is down at restaurants and bars, but my local marts have fully stocked shelves. Hoarding is not an issue.

Good luck, y'all.

Cheers,
CB

Clearly South Korea seems to have a good approach, including wide availability of testing. And the response clearly doesn't involve locking everybody in their houses and shutting down all businesses and travel. But as good as this system appears, it is NOT going to stop exponential growth. If 20% or more of all contacts get this disease, then almost 3 weeks in, the disease should be rampant. I found a government site in South Korea which has the results from each day of the outbreak (for example, here is the link to 2/28), so this is reliable. Keep in mind (as CaptBeefheart emphasized), that some of the spikes are due to delays in testing or receiving results. That said, here are the daily numbers showing the increase in total diagnosed infections:

2/18 - 31
2/19 - 58
2/20 - 111
2/21 - 209
2/22 - 436
2/23 - 602
2/24 - 833
2/25 - 893
2/26 - 1261
2/27 - 1766
2/28 - 2022
2/29 - 3150
3/1 - 3526
3/2 - 4212
3/3 - 4812
3/4 - 5328
3/5 - 6088
3/6 - 6593
3/7 - 7134

And here's the daily increase, as a percent of the total. Given over 1000 cases 10 days ago, if Covid-19 grows exponentially, we should see it in the numbers:

2/19 - 87%
2/20 - 91%
2/21 - 88%
2/22 - 109%
2/23 - 38%
2/24 - 38%
2/25 - 7%
2/26 - 41%
2/27 - 40%
2/28 - 14%
2/29 - 56%
3/1 - 12%
3/2 - 19%
3/3 - 14%
3/4 - 11%
3/5 - 14%
3/6 - 8%
3/7 - 8%

And we don't. The case load is growing, sure, but the rate of spread is clearly slowing.

[Canoerebel]

That's good information. It'll be instructive to keep tabs on South Korea's situation.

[Canoerebel]

Meanwhile: "Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to say the coronavirus poses an imminent threat to the United States, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this week."

[spence]

The % increase may be slowing per Kull's data but the increase is still 500 odd per day over the last week.

The US government has been anything but candid about the threat posed by COVID-19. Our "natural expert" has only himself to blame for that situation.

[Canoerebel]

Lack of information doesn't seem to be an issue. I suppose folks see it different ways, just as we in here are perceiving it in different ways.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Meanwhile: "Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to say the coronavirus poses an imminent threat to the United States, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this week."

So much for trying to deal with facts rather than pure conjecture or emotions.