Coronavirus

[KarenRei]

In a preliminary analysis, NASA researchers compared NO2 values detected by OMI in 2020 with the average amounts detected at this time of year from 2005-2019

I'll repeat: the Lunar New Year holiday was extended for a week. So no duh it's lower than in past years. That has no bearing on the current level of production.

For example to take one micro example, almost all lead and a good portion of silver in China is smelted and refined in Henan and Hunan, which border Hubei

And? There's almost no cases in Henan and Hunan these days. Almost all cases are in Hubei, overwhelmingly in Wuhan specifically. And even some industries in Wuhan have started going to work. Hubei represents 4,4% of China's GDP, and Wuhan is 1,6% of China's GDP.

Why on Earth pick out a couple random industries? China's economy is way more than "lead and silver produced in provinces that happen to be adjacent to a province that contains a city with a big health problem". And for the record, Wuhan to Changsha (Hunan) is 359km (nearly the distance from DC to Pittsburgh), and Wuhan to Zhengzhou (Henan) is 514km (distance from DC to Cleveland).

 

[KarenRei]

Daily graphs:

• Replaced Kuwait and Bahrain with the more interesting France and Germany.
• The disease keeps resisting eradication in Wuhan, but remains near-irrelevant outside Wuhan in China.
• South Korea is down (and yes, I waited for the evening case reports). But it could just be a blip down. Or yesterday could have been a blip up. No way to know how it's trending there.
• Iran keeps trending up, and can be expected to keep trending up for a long, long time.
• Italy is leveling off.
• France is rising; Germany is declining. They're still just offshoots of Italy, but there is some local transmission component.

View attachment 516644

 

[ReddyLeaf]

Very interesting (and sobering) 2017 Smithsonian article about the Spanish Flu.

How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America | History | Smithsonian Magazine

Eerie similarities to our current situation, including the delayed/dishonest governmental response. I would not suggest reading this if you tend toward paranoia - you may not want to leave the house.

My father-in-law was 1yo and lived through this. His father died and everyone in the household got it. Because of this, and my parents experience with the 1957 flu, I have always been hyper vigilant about sickness. I’ve recently started polling younger friends about their thoughts on Covid-19 and the 1918 flu. It’s interesting/astonishing how nonchalant and unworried they are. “Going viral” will soon have its original meaning back.

 

[eevee-fan]

My father-in-law was 1yo and lived through this. His father died and everyone in the household got it. Because of this, and my parents experience with the 1957 flu, I have always been hyper vigilant about sickness. I’ve recently started polling younger friends about their thoughts on Covid-19 and the 1918 flu. It’s interesting/astonishing how nonchalant and unworried they are. “Going viral” will soon have its original meaning back.

Dear Leader says it's a hoax so don't worry about it.

 

[KSilver2000]

My father-in-law was 1yo and lived through this. His father died and everyone in the household got it. Because of this, and my parents experience with the 1957 flu, I have always been hyper vigilant about sickness. I’ve recently started polling younger friends about their thoughts on Covid-19 and the 1918 flu. It’s interesting/astonishing how nonchalant and unworried they are. “Going viral” will soon have its original meaning back.

My kids love seeing their grandparents and my own grandma. If there’s even a chance possible exposure to my kids, then that would mean less time spent with extended family for their sake. Not that the usual flu is not of concern around them as well. Today’s nursing home incident in Washington is another example of how vulnerable certain populations are.

Among the young, just as with any other aspect of life, it’s influenced by peers. My young medical and scientific peers are definitely not nonchalant.

 

[Singer3000]

I'll repeat: the Lunar New Year holiday was extended for a week. So no duh it's lower than in past years. That has no bearing on the current level of production.



And? There's almost no cases in Henan and Hunan these days. Almost all cases are in Hubei, overwhelmingly in Wuhan specifically. And even some industries in Wuhan have started going to work. Hubei represents 4,4% of China's GDP, and Wuhan is 1,6% of China's GDP.

Why on Earth pick out a couple random industries? China's economy is way more than "lead and silver produced in provinces that happen to be adjacent to a province that contains a city with a big health problem". And for the record, Wuhan to Changsha (Hunan) is 359km (nearly the distance from DC to Pittsburgh), and Wuhan to Zhengzhou (Henan) is 514km (distance from DC to Cleveland).

Sorry you’re completely right. China’s economy is fine. The world economy is fine. Everything is completely fine.

There are other forums I read where people not only foresaw the market crash three weeks ago but made public the positions they were taking in anticipation.

All we’ve had on TMC is whataboutery and arguing over fine details while the bigger picture has been completely missed.

This has been a great forum for providing insight into Tesla’s disruption of the energy and auto industries but it’s been found wanting over this event, with group think drowning out any dissenting voice.

 

[cwerdna]

I listened to this story.
As New Coronavirus Cases Slow In China, Factories Start Reopening

BTW, besides the two things I quoted earlier, I guess I should've mentioned or quoted one more thing:

MICHAEL CHEN: (Through interpreter) We've been stockpiling our Japanese and Korean components in case they close the factories there and we can't import parts into China anymore.

Obviously, COVID-19 cases have really been picking up in South Korea.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Twitter

I don't know how much of this is factual and how much is speculation, but if it's been quietly spreading for 6 weeks already we can forget about containment. That ship has sailed.

I need to go to Costco at some point. They are probably out of bottled water and rice already but I'm not going to live off rice for a month anyways. I'll probably buy a bunch of frozen food and stuff my freezer in case a quarantine is announced.

At least Washington's Governor is taking it seriously, he has already declared a state of emergency to activate emergency procedures.

 

[avoigt]

Since tonight we have more closed cases than open cases in total.
The daily trend we have globally since 11 days is that more cases are closed than new ones added. Thats extremely positive and the trend is our friend!

March 1st, 9:30 am CET
Active Cases: 41,663
Closed Cases: 45,330

If you have a wild spreading not well controlled epidemic situation it is the other way around and you would have more active cases than closed cases daily. That did so far not happen and we would need a sudden explosion of cases somewhere to change that trend.

I am not saying the virus is not dangerous and cases growing in some countries but we should put thinks into perspective and look at the real data and stop assuming and speculating.

All of this happened while +60 countries have been added which was for many the argument while an uncontrolled out-break with exponential growth will happen but the reality is until today cases did shrink in the last 11 days.

A Szenario for that to reverse would be that we would need a situation like we had at start in China but its hard for me to imagine where that should happen and with all the world has learned about the virus and is alarmed about isolating it we are better prepared to fight it than ever before.

Even if the cases I some countries are growing especially when the virus just arrived or has been detected, people feel its an uncontrolled break-out but what we have seen from most countries is that the total numbers are not growing that much and we have now even countries who don't have any active cases any more.

The ability of the world to control the virus will very likely get better from here not worse.

I hope that this data will help people to calm down and see the situation for the economy more realistic and balanced.

 

[avoigt]

Twitter

I don't know how much of this is factual and how much is speculation, but if it's been quietly spreading for 6 weeks already we can forget about containment. That ship has sailed.

I need to go to Costco at some point. They are probably out of bottled water and rice already but I'm not going to live off rice for a month anyways. I'll probably buy a bunch of frozen food and stuff my freezer in case a quarantine is announced.

At least Washington's Governor is taking it seriously, he has already declared a state of emergency to activate emergency procedures.

In Europe people don't do emergency buys and the authorities don't recommend it either while the virus is longer in Europe than the US. Do what you believe you need to but its not really a measure that is required unless you have catched the virus yourself and need to stay in isolation at home. In that case you should not do the errands anyway though but someone else.

 

[mrdoubleb]

So, way out of my depth here as I am not a biologist or virologist, but...

The US and Italian cases suggest to me, that this has been around for about 2 months or longer in these regions. While some interpret this as "OMG it was multiplying in the shadows and is everywhere now -> we are all dead men walking", I think it actually means something else.

1, For most people (i think 80%+, right?) it presents as "normal" seasonal cold or flu and they recover without maybe ever even going to the doctor. So early cases must have been under reported by several magnitudes. So all those graphs that show those huge jumps from e.g. 20 cases to 2000 in a few days are actually incorrect as we simply didn't know about the majority of early cases. If I would have gone to my family doctor in December or early January with symptoms of viral cold or flu, they would have "prescribed" bed rest, Vitamin C and hot tea unless my condition got worse. And I would have recovered in a few days/week and never gone through testing for exactly what virus I had. So those charts look very dramatic and scary to people, but later data, once they started testing masses for COVID-19 is much more indicative of the actual rate of how this spreads.

2, Since this thing has a normal incubation time of 5-14 days like the flu, it's not like it has been quietly infecting the global population for 3 months and now everyone has it like in a zombie movie. Also, while mortality rate is higher and especially in certain high risk groups, it wasn't high enough to ring the alarm bell for local medical professionals early on. If this had a mortality rate like Ebola and 9 out of 10 people going in to their doctor's office with normal cold would have died within a week, this would have been headline news back than.

Why am I saying this?

I think it is creating a false narrative when the sudden spike in new cases and deaths is reported as some explosion in the infection rate, thus creating hysteria. The virus has been spreading like a normal flu, yes with higher infection rate and yes with higher mortality rate, especially with the elderly and chronically sick, but this is not an end of days event. And if we end up with, say, 250k global cases and 4-5k deaths once the main part of this epidemic ends, then we can all ask ourselves and our news anchors and news portal editors if they will equally report on the e.g. up to 45 million infections and 60k deaths the normal flu causes in the US in a flu-season.

 

[aubreymcfato]

I must say that thread like this (I've not verified) do worry me:
Ali on Twitter

I worry much more about the collapse of a health and economic system than actual deaths.
In Italy we have the second in a row week of closed schools.
Some small businessdo struggle, and people are very worried about the tourist season from spring to summer.

 

[NicoV]

While # of people infected in Germany not surprisingly continue to increase it may be interesting to hear that in the TV news (not private but Government funded) the news about the Corona Virus comes in the meantime on rank # 8th.

On German websites its not a headline any more too its now just one news out of many.

That will of course change if new exciting developments appear but it does show that its not the #1 news any more.

People are calming down and I hope that to continue.

Same in Belgium on our (Flemish) national news: not the top news anymore.

 

[guidooo]

In Europe people don't do emergency buys and the authorities don't recommend it

Dutch government does recommend to always have some supplies ready, although no Corona specific advice has been given in this regard.
Noodpakketten | Crisis.nl

 

[traxila]

I must say that thread like this (I've not verified) do worry me:
Ali on Twitter

I worry much more about the collapse of a health and economic system than actual deaths.
In Italy we have the second in a row week of closed schools.
Some small businessdo struggle, and people are very worried about the tourist season from spring to summer.

This feed implies a much higher death rate than we have been seeing. Why the disparity? And why social and economic collapse from a very nasty flu that admittedly seems to kill a higher percentage of infected? The poster admits he is not a reporter and not in Iran. He is simply aggregating and reposting with conclusions. Hard to draw any hard conclusions outside of yes, Iran has an awful lot of cases and are mostly unprepared.

 

[Rogue Synapse]

The CDC is right that this will eventually prove uncontainable. But there will be a lull in the summer months that I’m worried will lead to a false sense of security. There’s a reason they call winter “flu season” - that’s when these diseases spike every year, due more to changes in human behavior rather than any changes in the environment itself. Transmission will fall in the warmer months just like it will for good ol’ influenza. When influenza picks up again in the late fall, so will COVID-19. By that time, Dear Leader will have claimed total and absolute victory the likes of which has never been seen before. Which will probably help his re-election chances among the uneducated sheeple that voted for him the first time. And our society’s response will have been hamstrung by a false sense of security.

 

[Christine69420]

This feed implies a much higher death rate than we have been seeing. Why the disparity? And why social and economic collapse from a very nasty flu that admittedly seems to kill a higher percentage of infected? The poster admits he is not a reporter and not in Iran. He is simply aggregating and reposting with conclusions. Hard to draw any hard conclusions outside of yes, Iran has an awful lot of cases and are mostly unprepared.

BBC reports on this:

But sources in the country's health system have told BBC Persian that the death toll currently stands at 210.​

Source: Coronavirus misinformation clouds over Iran

 

[Fact Checking]

2019-nCoV: preliminary estimates of the confirmed-case-fatality-ratio and infection-fatality-ratio, and initial pandemic risk assessment

Helpful for thinking about severity of this pandemic.

Note that this revision of the case fatality rate down to 0.94% is consistent with the non-Hubei CFR ratio calculated in the WHO's latest report:

https://www.who.int/docs/default-so...na-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf

"As of 20 February, 2114 of the 55,924 laboratory confirmed cases have died (crude fatality ratio[CFR2]3.8%)(note: at least some of whom were identified using a case definition that included pulmonary disease). The overall CFR varies by location and intensity of transmission (i.e. 5.8%in Wuhan vs. 0.7%in other areas in China). In China, the overall CFR was higher in the early stages of the outbreak (17.3% for cases with symptom onset from 1-10 January) and has reduced over time to 0.7% for patients with symptom onset after 1 February (Figure 4). The Joint Mission noted that the standard of care has evolved over the course of the outbreak."
​

(Emphasis added.)

This estimate is in line with the mortality rate estimates I gave in the investor thread before I saw this report, but maybe some people will believe me more if they see the same figure in a WHO report.

Note that the 0.7% estimate is subject to both downward and upward biases - but my guess would be that there's still a significant upward bias in the mortality rate, because it's in the very best interest of mild cases to attempt to sit it out at home instead of subjecting themselves to weeks of quarantine and potential negative social stigma.

At this point it appears likely that while the coronavirus is more serious than regular flu which has an average mortality rate of 0.13%, the 0.70% figure and the much lower hospitalization rates are certainly much better than early estimates.

There's of course no telling how the markets will react to this next week - they might continue freaking out, or they might get greedy at the Fed news and at the improving stats of the coronavirus.

 

[SageBrush]

First actions of a psychiatric basket case and religious zealot in charge of the US federal response to Covid-19, from arstechnica:

Last, reports this week raised concern of yet another weakness in the country’s preparedness—that information about the virus and the situation in the United States may be being censored by the Trump administration. According to a report Friday in The New York Times, all statements and appearances from federal officials regarding the coronavirus—including, it seems, those from CDC officials—must now be filtered through the office of Vice President Mike Pence, who President Trump appointed Wednesday to lead the coronavirus response.

Got it, folks ?
This is not a Health issue of national concern best handled by science; it is a political opportunity that requires 'proper' messaging.

 

[traxila]

The CDC is right that this will eventually prove uncontainable. But there will be a lull in the summer months that I’m worried will lead to a false sense of security.

Politics aside we should be so lucky. More than anything we need time here.