Coronavirus

[sundaymorning]

There's a panic going on right now around here. I went to Costco because I wanted to buy normal food and the place was absolutely raided. I was there only 30 minutes before closing, the employees said that it was a madhouse during the day. I've never seen Costco that low on everything before. They were out of bottled water and toilet paper, the two important things you need during the apocalypse. You need water to survive, and you need to wipe your behind. That doesn't even make sense. I don't understand the toilet paper thing at all but people were going nuts buying whole shopping carts full of it.

costco stocks alone will carry the economy 1st quarter.

 

[Singuy]

Sadly, we may end up losing 10% of the patients at the nursing home. Very scary situation!

Coronavirus is more fatal in men than women, major study suggests

Very scary indeed considering a nursing home has an average mortality rate of 32%...

Mortality in nursing home residents: A longitudinal study over three years

Man it's hilarious watching westerners scared shitless. Parents just called Beijing, no one is in a panic, everything is in orderly conduct and plenty of food at the grocery store.

Oh I just got report, old people dies all the time..I heard it's part of life.

Oh yeah I bet you more life time smokers who are old dies from this virus (as in..more men dies in China where 50% of men smokes)..call me shock faced.

 

[KSilver2000]

There's a panic going on right now around here. I went to Costco because I wanted to buy normal food and the place was absolutely raided. I was there only 30 minutes before closing, the employees said that it was a madhouse during the day. I've never seen Costco that low on everything before. They were out of bottled water and toilet paper, the two important things you need during the apocalypse. You need water to survive, and you need to wipe your behind. That doesn't even make sense. I don't understand the toilet paper thing at all but people were going nuts buying whole shopping carts full of it.

I went to Costco during lunch time today and the ENTIRE, again want to emphasize ENTIRE, sections of paper products, water, and hand cleansers were void. Worse than when there were lengthy power outages during the NorCal wildfire crises.

Walnut Creek is 35 mies from Fremont by road. Let's get real.

Just want to point out a geographical reference. The Tesla headquarter is in Santa Clara County, where all the recent Bay Area cases have been occurring. And the Tesla factory is only 5-10 minutes from the closer part of Santa Clara County.

 

[Vinny809]

Walnut Creek is 35 mies from Fremont by road. Let's get real.

Do you even live in the Bay Area? She lives closer to Fremont than Walnut Creek.

 

[avoigt]

Thats not true. The virus gets dispersed in droplets when the infected person coughs/sneezes. The droplet can land on a surface - and someone else can touch the surface a day later - and then touch their face and they can get the infection.

I am not sure if you understood what I wrote , so let me try to explain again.

There are viruses that can go though air without drop infection. Those are the most dangerous ones. The corona virus cannot do that. Dropled infection is what happens with corona but not over the air.

This has been in an interview stated from one of the best experts we have in Germany and I believe we can believe him!

 

[avoigt]

Another positive day for active cases globally down below 40k and in China down below 30k.

Other countries like Iran seem to have a problem and I am not sure if their data is correct. This is more a rumor than knowing though but the regime was in the past never good telling the truth.

Its still early here in Europe and data over time will show a more differentiated picture but Chinas infections seem to have been cut in half again now down to "only" 126

Don't feel offended if you life in a region where the development is different this is just a high level view

 

[Causalien]

Very scary indeed considering a nursing home has an average mortality rate of 32%...

Mortality in nursing home residents: A longitudinal study over three years

Man it's hilarious watching westerners scared shitless. Parents just called Beijing, no one is in a panic, everything is in orderly conduct and plenty of food at the grocery store.

Oh I just got report, old people dies all the time..I heard it's part of life.

Oh yeah I bet you more life time smokers who are old dies from this virus (as in..more men dies in China where 50% of men smokes)..call me shock faced.

You have a screw loose. Nothing about people dying should be hilarious to a normal person.

 

[Singuy]

You have a screw loose. Nothing about people dying should be hilarious to a normal person.

Didn't say death is hilarious, saying westerners panicking is hilarious. It's truly on a whole new level. I deal with this yearly during hurricane season. The panic results in every grocery story with no food and people stock on on ammo as if the apocalypse is coming. This virus is the new panic.

 

[hobbes]

I can’t speak for other countries but as of Monday the UK government has begun levelling with the public and softening them up for the likelihood that targeted containment is close to failing and a Chinese style shutdown may be necessary before very long. I am pleased they did and only wish they had done so earlier..

Good on them. In Germany it seems the must urgent aim is not to cause panic, resulting in less media coverage and quarantines . Anecdotal for our region, but IMHO they are thinking to much short term.

 

[adiggs]

hmmmm

FARK.

I was hoping the US response will be good. As I model Canadian response will be something similar to yours but more botched because we are still at the stage where mentioning of Coronavirus is racist. But if you guys botched it up, it will be a disaster here.

Are you testing for the virus, or keeping the tests under strict control? i.e. a person needs to have pneumonia and a travel history? If you're testing more readily and in higher volume, then you're already ahead of the US in your response. That'd be the "don't test, don't tell" virus response strategy

 

[Causalien]

Are you testing for the virus, or keeping the tests under strict control? i.e. a person needs to have pneumonia and a travel history? If you're testing more readily and in higher volume, then you're already ahead of the US in your response. That'd be the "don't test, don't tell" virus response strategy

I am more talking about how the first responders are going to treat this. If they remain cocky and believe this is the flu, or are too afraid to even mention it by name for fear of racism (yes we are THAT politically correct), they will not take the proper precautions.

 

[Causalien]

I can’t speak for other countries but as of Monday the UK government has begun levelling with the public and softening them up for the likelihood that targeted containment is close to failing and a Chinese style shutdown may be necessary before very long. I am pleased they did and only wish they had done so earlier.

A “reasonable worst case” of 80% infected if no action taken to delay. Do your own calculation of how many this hospitalises and kills out of 70 million. Chop that number in half or half again if you like. It’s still just as depressing.

“Widespread infection is now likely”. Mood music about moving to the next phase of the plan, away from Containment to Delay. The hope that since targeted Containment is failing, they can stem the numbers until summer, which then buys time to regroup and hopefully gets you closer to a treatment.

Front page reassurances that supermarket groups will swing behind a centralised state plan to ensure sufficient nutrition is available for the nation, by focusing only on core foodstuffs. Emergency powers to close whole towns. Admission that they may need not just retired health workers willing to serve but even members of the public, to help with triage.

Meanwhile Washington State is showing horrific signs reminiscent of early Wuhan and hardly anyone seems to have noticed. Super f**** Tuesday apparently takes precedence.

Look on social media for videos of what’s happening in Iran if this is allowed to get out of control. The videos are heartbreaking and terrifying in equal measure. When Wuhan cracked, China drew on its 2 million person army to build army prefab hospitals and ensure a medic to patient ratio of 0.7x. There is no such fallback in Iran and the government are most likely more concentrated on saving themselves, given how many senior figures are reported to have already been infected. No one seems to be talking about it but the fall of the Ayatollahs could be a further black swan on top of everything.

This is sadly heading in a worse direction than I feared even 2 days ago. Then I was worried about an economic catastrophe. Now I think it runs the risk of becoming a human and social one in many places. And those places may well not just be limited to remote places on the world map. The signs in the USA are not promising. In a couple of weeks we could be looking back at Bush and Hurricane Katrina as a time of relative innocence.

Not that it matters but the stock market is reflecting the underlying psychology of its participants. An assumption that things go according to prior experience. A refusal to countenance truly terrible things. And the smart room fallacy - the mistaken belief it’ll all be ok, because someone somewhere has things under control.

I expect this won’t be a popular post. And I understand why. But this is sadly where I judge things might be headed, especially so given the complacent leadership in the US.

The S.Korea experience where CFR is 0.4% is IF your healthcare system is functioning. China reached the same CFR with draconian measures. How many western countries can do the same thing? And now S.Korea's heath care system is showing sign of cracking. We will see what happens next, they can always redistribute the patient away from Daegu, but I expect protests from the health population of other cities.

Iran and China in the beginning shows CFR of ~10%. This is what happens if you let the virus run its normal course without intervention and allow all the viruses to cross contaminate each other. I do not think that being young and healthy in this situation will make much difference. This is what we are trying to prevent.

The most worrying thing for me is that 14% of the recovered victims shows reinfection. Let's hope that this is due to getting reinfected by a new strain, because the other logical conclusion is that this stays in your system like shingles. I'd watch these cases with great interest to see if their reinfection leads to another round in the severe pneumonia phase.

If your government is half assing their response, time to call up your political representatives.

 

[Fact Checking]

I am not sure if you understood what I wrote , so let me try to explain again.

There are viruses that can go though air without drop infection. Those are the most dangerous ones. The corona virus cannot do that. Dropled infection is what happens with corona but not over the air.

This has been in an interview stated from one of the best experts we have in Germany and I believe we can believe him!

Yes, the first one are called "airborne viruses" - which can hang in the air by themselves and survive, and will stay there almost indefinitely and will be carried by the wind to long distances. (I believe some of the most dangerous biological warfare agents are such.)

The other is "droplet transmission" - which includes many viruses, including the flu and the coronavirus as well. These will be transmitted through water droplets with viruses inside them. These droplets will drop to the ground in relatively short amount of time and can thus not be carried by the wind too far away, nor will they hang around for a long time in the air after the infected person left that volume of air.

Nevertheless even droplet transmission is highly contagious - which is why China implemented rather thorough containment measures.

 

[Fact Checking]

The S.Korea experience where CFR is 0.4% is IF your healthcare system is functioning.

New cases in South Korea seem to have stabilized at around the ~800 daily infections level, so unless there's other outbreak nodes or there's a bottleneck in testing capacity, it appears to be near peaking, at least judging by the daily numbers.

BTW., 0.4% case fatality rate is 3x-4x the CFR of the regular flu (0.1-0.2%).

And now S.Korea's heath care system is showing sign of cracking.

They have 5,200 cases currently and I'd say at this rate, if the containment measures hold, they'll probably peak below 10,000 cases.

 

[malcolm]

Apparently it's Woz.

Steve Wozniak on Twitter

Interesting career move...

 

[KarenRei]

Apparently it's Woz.

Steve Wozniak on Twitter

Interesting career move...

Leander Kahney on Twitter

People shouldn't report "<some person> went to China and now has a cough" as if it's major news :Þ

 

[AlexS]

Wire and Tube Messe in Düsseldorf postponed. Actually a good thing, as too many Italian tube and wire equipment producers are from northern Italy from heavily affected area.

 

[Causalien]

New cases in South Korea seem to have stabilized at around the ~800 daily infections level, so unless there's other outbreak nodes or there's a bottleneck in testing capacity, it appears to be near peaking, at least judging by the daily numbers.

BTW., 0.4% case fatality rate is 3x-4x the CFR of the regular flu (0.1-0.2%).



They have 5,200 cases currently and I'd say at this rate, if the containment measures hold, they'll probably peak below 10,000 cases.

Let's really hope so. But a sustained 800 per day will just tax the system more. Hopefully new cases will drop off significantly as they've finally finished tracing that cult.

S. Korea was supposed to be a bastion. In my initial calculation. Them and IRAN were huge surprise upsets. But south east asia balanced it out by performing surprinsingly well. If they hold out, then the theory that the sun will halt the advance during summer shall become true. Watching thailand closely as their jump in normal pneumonia cases is worriesome.

 

[X Fan]

US is starting to see cases in many states, East, West & South.

I’m now thinking now it won’t be contained here (fwiw: there should have been a complete short term travel block to/from China, Korea and Italy).

 

[uselesslogin]

US is starting to see cases in many states, East, West & South.

I’m now thinking now it won’t be contained here (fwiw: there should have been a complete short term travel block to/from China, Korea and Italy).

There should be testing here! Also it came from China presumably before any large scale breakouts there. But we have no idea how bad it is in the US because the CDC didn’t get their act together and secure tests.