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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
It should also be pointed out that our current selective factors are heavily biased towards breeding less deadly forms of the disease. If a bunch of people start dying in a given area, it draws a ton of of attention and widespread containment measures occur. But mild cases that spread without anyone noticing that they're not just another seasonal flu are what seed these new pockets.
What matters are facts and if we look at global numbers the amount of currently active cases are going down. That matters.
Countries that are overwhelmed and not prepared may see in their small region an exponential growth like we have seen it in China but China has shown that you can get this under control too. Its like TESLAQ showing us numbers from one country to prove Teslas don't sell any more globally.
People make the mistake that they believe exponential growth of cases is a problem. Its not an issue as long as you can isolate it what China indeed did.
The impact on the economy is in this cases are often happening based on FUD and people freeze and don't buy anything any more. FUD is the true enemy and the Virus although bad just a normal incident the world has see hundreds if not thousands of times.
I'm anything but an alarmist, and often end up arguing with the alarmists. But unfortunately, "global cases" is a terrible measure; these aren't car sales. "Cases" isn't actually the number of people infected; it's the number of people you've caught. And people you've caught aren't the problem; it's the people you haven't caught that are the problem. And location absolutely does matter. When it's concentrated in specific areas, you can lock down those locations and ban travel to them. When there's outbreak centres forming around the whole world, you can't. We cannot shut down the whole planet because of the disease.
Absolute case numbers declined because cases in "locked off" areas (namely Wuhan) have finally come down. But the disease is now spreading in far more epidemic centres. At least one of these - Iran - is trying to pretend like it's not heavily infected, which means that the disease is still breeding exponentially there (estimates nearly a week ago were ~18k latent cases, it's surely much more now). They should be hitting Wuhan-at-its-peak levels soon, but not as concentrated in a single city - e.g. much harder to contain. People have been confirmed carrying it from Iran to all over the Middle East and North Africa. Again, these "cases we've caught" are not the problem; they're symptomatic of "cases we haven't caught". And many of the places they've been transferring it to have terrible, unprepared medical systems - as well as do several of Iran's neighbors, and some of the places under threat (Syria, Yemen) are outright war zones (breeding grounds for disease).
The problem is far more serious than it used to be, and I'm far less optimistic about containment. Right now, the goal seems to be to be about putting out fires as best we can in order to buy time. Because time means warmer/brighter conditions (in most of the world), more time for antivirals to be approved (that's fairly close), more time for vaccines (probably no sooner than late summer), and more time for quarantine pressures to select for less deadly strains of the virus that don't draw as much medical attention.
(This is, BTW, why one should never rely on that terrible ArcGIS page. At first it was making people paranoid when the disease was actually facing good odds of being controlled. Now it's making people complacent when it's becoming much more difficult to control)
Note: the disease "going pandemic" does not mean "billions of people will die". It means that we'll have a bad flu going around this year. But that too has its own economic expenses, in terms of medical care, lost time from work, cancelled vacations, etc.
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It's more than just schools. My friend, who's an analyst at Fidelity in Tokyo, shared on Instagram today that they're all being forced to work from home.
Some businesses are still embarrassingly behind the times when it comes to allowing employees to work from home or have conference calls in place of face to face meetings. I’m glad to hear these precautions are being taken.
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engle
Member
Recall that as an immediate response to 9/11/2001, the entire US commercial air traffic system was shut down and all planes were grounded for a time.
I'm just brainstorming at 7:01 am PST so this might be stupid, but IMHO it would slow the international pandemic spread if it was done:
Day 1:
Of course, it totally wipes out the international tourism industry for the duration. However, if world governments do something major like this, it might reduce F.U.D. which is already having a major negative impact on world GDP.
Of course, international cargo flights will continue as normal.
Thoughts?
IMHO, the Internet industry will surely benefit from this CV-19 pandemic at the expense of the commercial real estate industry. Many conservative companies forced to allow all their "white collar" employees to work from home will discover productivity is the same or increases without the commute. Some will relax their telecommuting policies, leading to more team collaboration over the Internet and less need for commercial real estate to house the humans whose productive time they own.
Late adopters that haven't tried home delivery before will do so out of necessity to avoid physically going to a store. I predict if the pandemic spreads in the USA, AMZN will waive two-day shipping as a goodwill gesture and their larger competitors will follow suit.
I'm just brainstorming at 7:01 am PST so this might be stupid, but IMHO it would slow the international pandemic spread if it was done:
Day 1:
- All foreign nationals who want to return to their home countries have two weeks to do so. Mostly tourists and business travelers (not ex-pats) would do this.
- If they flew from an area that has an active outbreak, they must self-quarantine at home for 3 weeks, to be monitored by local law enforcement. Perhaps an app could monitor their cell phone GPS? Most people in the 1st world don't go anywhere without it. I don't know anything about the 2nd-3rd world.
- Nobody is allowed to fly outside their home country without special permission, such as to care for a sick family member or be with a dying relative.
- Almost all international commercial passenger air travel ceases. Perhaps 3%(?) of flights would continue for official government travel (e.g. US CDC) and medical evacuations of nationals back to their home countries for isolation and treatment.
Of course, it totally wipes out the international tourism industry for the duration. However, if world governments do something major like this, it might reduce F.U.D. which is already having a major negative impact on world GDP.
Of course, international cargo flights will continue as normal.
Thoughts?
IMHO, the Internet industry will surely benefit from this CV-19 pandemic at the expense of the commercial real estate industry. Many conservative companies forced to allow all their "white collar" employees to work from home will discover productivity is the same or increases without the commute. Some will relax their telecommuting policies, leading to more team collaboration over the Internet and less need for commercial real estate to house the humans whose productive time they own.
Late adopters that haven't tried home delivery before will do so out of necessity to avoid physically going to a store. I predict if the pandemic spreads in the USA, AMZN will waive two-day shipping as a goodwill gesture and their larger competitors will follow suit.
Causalien
Prime 8 ball Oracle
Because I now believe that there is at least one mutared strain that is also actively spreading.
But like a lot of early intel. Need more facts to corroborate and confirm.
The W.H.O is disinformation? ok.
Additionally, we know that China has a history of underreporting, so maybe the death toll is higher
When you state that you believe there is at least one mutated strain, are you talking about a different virus fingerprint, or are you talking about just a benign change in a nucleotide? If the latter, you don’t have to wonder anymore. It happens from host to host.
My concern also is that the virus will transmit undetected during the abnormally long incubation period or through asymptotic patients in less developed or less prepared countries. And we’re slowly seeing first confirmed cases in new countries daily.
And regarding vaccines, there are investigational vaccines already produced. But, it won’t be ready for medical use for quite a while, far past late summer. The first vaccines just went into phase 1 trials this week. That means we won’t have confirmed results from the couple dozen participants until at earliest late summer. Then it needs to go into the next phase. But, it’s definitely being fast tracked. We still likely won’t have vaccines for the general public until next year.
There is not an abnormally long incubation period** (mean 5 days, range 2-14 days, a couple dubious outliers), and WHO strongly disagrees that asymptomatic transmission is responsible for any meaningful fraction of cases. And "new cases in countries" is an irrelevant metric. The problem right now is not enough cases in certain locations where you know they should be catching far more people.
** A typical flu or cold has a 2-3 day incubation period, so it's longer than average, but again, I wouldn't use the phrase "abnormally long".
What do you guys think about warmer weather slowing this virus down? So far all of the major outbreaks have been in cold weather areas (China/S.Korea/Japan/Iran/Italy). Hot weather areas have so far appeared to contain this (Singapore/Taiwan/S.E Asia)
I understand your concern and am far away from considering this something that should not be taken seriously.
Some countries are unknowns and in early status but it needs to get completely out of control in them and other countries on a level larger that what we have seen in China to get more desirous versus what current predictions show. Will that 'out of control scenario happen?', maybe but definitely not in all of them and there is a WHO which has been founded to help in that situations.
All countries outside China putting a few outliers aside show modest growth and more control over time. That outliers can for sure make a difference but only within restricted areas. The virus will IMO without any doubt spread everywhere or to almost all countries but thats no a reason to predict infection rates and death tool will be high everywhere.
If you don't like total number which I actually do because they give you a very good statistical relevant overview while the outliers have not enough data to make a decent judgement, without putting aside that some active infection heard outside of China may grow very fast, take the numbers just from outside china and look at that growth rate.
The picture may change in the future but right now the data simply does not support a widespread infection rate increase as we have seen it in China.
Time will tell how it develops but I believe we should look at the data we have right now and try to interpret it accordingly.
Its a positive to see many measures from countries are taken now I would be worried if it would not happen. In a few weeks we are all smarter but my 2 cents are we will look back and say its been an overreaction from most.
DanCar
Active Member
I hope your right, but I don't think so. Too many countries not testing. The disease spreads too easily. Young people spread the disease while being somewhat without symptoms. The long term affect of this disease is unknown. For example some speculation that it is mutating slightly, making it possible to reinfect. Best to remain paranoid in my opinion, better to over react than under react. Of course being in the middle between over react and under react is the right place.
Singer3000
Member
Away from the “Catch the Falling Knife Thread”, thought I’d share this from UK Chief Medical Officer here to prevent the mods from overzealously deleting it.
Statement is largely as some of us have been saying for weeks. Don’t panic unduly from a personal health perspective, take precautions but BEWARE the economic fallout.
I am holding on to all my Tesla shares in my retirement account but have pivoted further into gilts and gold elsewhere in that portfolio as I have enough equity risk already given TSLA’s growth and am quite concerned we’re looking at a 2020 global recession. If there’s no mass produced vaccine by the end of the year and a reservoir of the virus is still kicking around somewhere over the summer, the economic curtailment could all be coming back in the autumn even if the summer months are benign.
My non retirement acct I just dumped my entire holding of Tesla in the $730 range versus c.$250 average buy price. My circumstances are quite particular: I have in any case to divest for a 24hr period before April to avoid tax, I am newly unemployed and struggle to see where new hiring will come from, and I am in need of cash to buy a home but don’t yet know whether I can raise debt. I may well start to buy back in if we see prices in the $600 region and below but I have a lot of other moving parts in my life to contend with. If I lose out on $100 or so of upside in the meantime then so be it, a cost of personal life uncertainty simultaneously colliding with market uncertainty, and at least I still have the retirement fund.
Statement is largely as some of us have been saying for weeks. Don’t panic unduly from a personal health perspective, take precautions but BEWARE the economic fallout.
UK schools could shut for two months
England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, has said that there could be a "social cost" if the virus intensifies and leads to the reduction of mass gatherings and school closures for more than two months.
He said: "One of the things that's really clear with this virus, much more so than flu, is that anything we do we're going to have to do for quite a long period of time, probably more than two months.
"The implications of that are non-trivial, so we need to think that through carefully.
"This is something we face as really quite a serious problem for society potentially if this goes out of control. It may not but if it does globally then we may have to face that."
England's chief medical officer also added that while the coronavirus presents "some challenges", he does not think the world is facing anything on the level of the deadly Spanish flu in 1918.
Speaking to health professionals at the Nuffield Trust Summit in Windsor, Professor Chris Whitty said:
"Occasionally things come along which, no matter how good your strategic aim is, will knock you off course for a while.
"We are not heading into a H1N1 1918 flu pandemic situation, but the coronavirus does present some challenges for us. It definitely will for a period. How big remains to be seen."
England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, has said that there could be a "social cost" if the virus intensifies and leads to the reduction of mass gatherings and school closures for more than two months.
He said: "One of the things that's really clear with this virus, much more so than flu, is that anything we do we're going to have to do for quite a long period of time, probably more than two months.
"The implications of that are non-trivial, so we need to think that through carefully.
"This is something we face as really quite a serious problem for society potentially if this goes out of control. It may not but if it does globally then we may have to face that."
England's chief medical officer also added that while the coronavirus presents "some challenges", he does not think the world is facing anything on the level of the deadly Spanish flu in 1918.
Speaking to health professionals at the Nuffield Trust Summit in Windsor, Professor Chris Whitty said:
"Occasionally things come along which, no matter how good your strategic aim is, will knock you off course for a while.
"We are not heading into a H1N1 1918 flu pandemic situation, but the coronavirus does present some challenges for us. It definitely will for a period. How big remains to be seen."
I am holding on to all my Tesla shares in my retirement account but have pivoted further into gilts and gold elsewhere in that portfolio as I have enough equity risk already given TSLA’s growth and am quite concerned we’re looking at a 2020 global recession. If there’s no mass produced vaccine by the end of the year and a reservoir of the virus is still kicking around somewhere over the summer, the economic curtailment could all be coming back in the autumn even if the summer months are benign.
My non retirement acct I just dumped my entire holding of Tesla in the $730 range versus c.$250 average buy price. My circumstances are quite particular: I have in any case to divest for a 24hr period before April to avoid tax, I am newly unemployed and struggle to see where new hiring will come from, and I am in need of cash to buy a home but don’t yet know whether I can raise debt. I may well start to buy back in if we see prices in the $600 region and below but I have a lot of other moving parts in my life to contend with. If I lose out on $100 or so of upside in the meantime then so be it, a cost of personal life uncertainty simultaneously colliding with market uncertainty, and at least I still have the retirement fund.
It's hard to say this soon. Qom isn't exactly chilly this time of year. But the Iranian outbreak is more down to mismanagement than anything specific about the area.
As a general rule, though, coronaviruses spread easier in the winter. Whether this one will follow the trend, who knows.
That would be a pleasant surprise:
"For the past four years, a team of MIGAL scientists has been developing a vaccine against infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), which causes a bronchial disease .... The effectiveness of the vaccine has been proven in preclinical trials carried out at the Veterinary Institute."
Israeli scientists: 'In a few weeks, we will have coronavirus vaccine'
"For the past four years, a team of MIGAL scientists has been developing a vaccine against infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), which causes a bronchial disease .... The effectiveness of the vaccine has been proven in preclinical trials carried out at the Veterinary Institute."
Israeli scientists: 'In a few weeks, we will have coronavirus vaccine'
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