COVID-19 Chat Thread

[buck85]

Interesting bit of information

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandso ... arent-rare

[Ever]

What I've been noticing from my admittedly weaker researching abilities than most other posters in this thread, is the differences in mortality rates being reported on our A &B flu this year and COVID-19.

Do correct me and or update me if I'm missing the mark here.

Our seasonal flu seems to be reporting a mortality rate of around .095% to .097% at this time. Right? And COVID-19 is being reported, at this time, at 2% mortality rate isn't it?

Those percentages are significantly different in mortality Numbers. Isn't that, like, four to five times higher?

I am also seeing the second wave of our seasonal flu in my area at this time so 'those' numbers may change with this second round I guess.

[raptor]

The seasonal flu mortality rate varies a lot. This is due to the fact this tends ro be different strain each year. The norm is between .1% all the way up to 2.5 for the 1918 strain.

But yes! This year the flu mortality rate is well above the norm of .5%

[darmstrong]

Our seasonal flu seems to be reporting a mortality rate of around .095% to .097% at this time. Right? And COVID-19 is being reported, at this time, at 2% mortality rate isn't it?

As of yesterday's number the mortality rate was 2.9%. This is to be expected based upon the large increase in numbers of infection That said, it looks like the death rate is significantly lower outside of China.

[Elusive Despot]

Undercover Call to Funeral Home Reveals Manipulation of Number of Deaths

This video needs to go viral. If true it proves what many of us have suspected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYYV1B1lRKY

[flybynight]

Interesting gif

https://imgur.com/gallery/RfBPqAz

[flybynight]

In South Korea, Singapore and Iran, clusters of infections are leading to a jump in cases of the new viral illness outside China. But it’s not the numbers that are worrying experts: It's that increasingly they can't trace where the clusters started.
World Health Organization officials said China's crackdown on parts of the country bought time for the rest of the world to prepare for the new virus. But as hot spots emerge around the globe, trouble finding each source — the first patient who sparks every new cluster — might signal the disease has begun spreading too widely for tried-and-true public health steps to stamp it out.
“A number of spot fires, occurring around the world is a sign that things are ticking along, and what we are going to have here is probably a pandemic,” said Ian Mackay, who studies viruses at Australia's University of Queensland.




https://news.yahoo.com/health-officials ... 53506.html

[max v]

Interesting gif

https://imgur.com/gallery/RfBPqAz

Looks quite exponential. And quite terrifying if true.

[Elusive Despot]

In a media briefing with reporters, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters Friday that the U.S. is “preparing as if this were the next pandemic, but we are hopeful still that this is not and will not be the case. She warned that the “day may come” here where we have to shut down schools and businesses as China has done.”

https://youtu.be/mYWqo-LnArU

[MPMalloy]

Use a healthy amount of skepticism:


Simply cool:

[MPMalloy]

Latest from Dr. Alton:

[alicetyhomp]

I am currently in Italy, Turin, schools are closed and companies work from home, musea are closed and some public places too.
It's still pretty much alive here, but Milan is going in lockdown tonight, so are many other villages upnorth.
They're currently talking about 7 deaths in Italy, which 5 of them over a span of 2 days.

[majorhavoc]

Global stocks plunge amid fears of widening economic impact of Coronavirus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/busi ... e=Homepage

[the_alias]

There's this meme going around that people are saying "it's just the flu" and clearly it isn't "just the flu"

BUT

I was poking around because our CDC has dropped the ball.

Here are some weekly death stats for Pneumonia from last year:



Here are the ones from this year



I'm not saying to not be prepared for everything BUT two things

1) Using this as a resource https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html whilst we wait for the CDC to pick up testing seems sensible

2) Pneumonia kills a lot of people every week in the US. Around 2500+ even outside of flu season.

[MPMalloy]

Global stocks plunge amid fears of widening economic impact of Coronavirus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/busi ... e=Homepage

LIVE - CBOE Volatility Index

[absinthe beginner]

Locked-in Wuhan residents scramble to find food

https://asiatimes.com/2020/02/locked-in ... find-food/

[raptor]

Yep...& there is a vaccine that reduces the risk from pneumonia. generally it is the elderly and those with impaired immune systems (i.e. AIS, cancer, etc.).

2) Pneumonia kills a lot of people every week in the US. Around 2500+ even outside of flu season.

Preaching to the choir here I know but....

This is why we preach having basic preps & PPE on hand to deal with reasonable and foreseeable events.

Thousands of people queue to buy face masks in astonishing drone footage from South Korea as the country is gripped by coronavirus outbreak

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... Korea.html

[MPMalloy]

This is in Italy:

[flybynight]

This last weekend the number of confirmed cases in the States doubled to 35. Tonight the count went to 53

[boskone]

This last weekend the number of confirmed cases in the States doubled to 35. Tonight the count went to 53

Doesn't that 53 include the infectees from the cruise ship?

[Aeacus]

This last weekend the number of confirmed cases in the States doubled to 35. Tonight the count went to 53

Doesn't that 53 include the infectees from the cruise ship?

Yes, a big chunk of the cruise ship quarantine folks tested positive this weekend. Currently they are almost the only ones being tested, so 36 out of the 53 are from the ship. The others are almost all travel (china specifically) related. Given travel to Europe, SE Asia, or the Middle East can definitely put you at risk, the CDC needs to up the testing quite a bit. I'm sure some of these travelers that have come back to Canada or Europe and tested positive have infected at least a couple other people in the airports. That's where contract tracing goes to hell. Who know who sat in the airport restaurant or lounge right after you and where they were going...

[JayceSlayn]

My earlier posts in this thread had focused on not blowing COVID-19 out of proportion, and I would maintain that stance on this issue (or any other, for that matter). However, as it is always good practice to keep an eye on developing situations and re-evaluate often: things have continued to change in the last week and a half, and not in the direction we'd like to see.

Particularly: there are now significant outbreaks and case numbers outside of China, and specifically that those case numbers are not from groups which had already been quarantined from their arrival (e.g. the Diamond Princess, repatriated citizens, etc.). China was one of the only places in which a mass-quarantine had a narrow possibility of being effective (not an endorsement of authoritarian-style government, of course). It looks like COVID-19 has managed to slip that noose however, and that means we are now starting to enter mitigation territory (the step after containment fails).

Should SARS-CoV-2 make it into the general population, the goal of mitigation is to "flatten the curve" of infection, so that healthcare systems have time to mobilize and properly treat those who develop serious illness. We might not be able to prevent it from ultimately infecting a large portion of the population, but by making that take as long as possible, we can ensure that those who need to be treated are given the best care possible (hopefully reducing the serious complication and mortality rate), and maybe even stretch it long enough that vaccines are a possibility. That is still a very big ask for modern cities/economies, and no healthcare system is designed with capacity to properly treat pandemic-scale diseases with rates of complications as high as COVID-19. It will move from "something that Chinese people have to worry about" to something which impacts our daily lives and near-term plans heavily, but we'll all have a role to play in mitigation.

The latest reports that I've read suggest that COVID-19 is most likely to cause severe complications in those who are older and/or have preexisting chronic conditions, particularly of respiratory and cardiac function. It would be especially important for people at high-risk of severe complications to be proactive in social distancing and additional hygiene measures. There is also a large portion of mild or asymptomatic infection, which is bad from a containment viewpoint, but actually positive from a mitigation viewpoint. And a very small number of otherwise healthy people who experience a rapid deterioration, possibly because of immune overactivation.

Stay safe everyone!

[the_alias]

I shouldn't be surprised by part of me is.

CDC are now saying they may not have working kits for another 2 weeks?

Hawaii is asking for kits from Japan.

I predict this pandemic could have averse outcomes on the political processes in this country.

[Aeacus]

I shouldn't be surprised by part of me is.

CDC are now saying they may not have working kits for another 2 weeks?

Hawaii is asking for kits from Japan.

I predict this pandemic could have averse outcomes on the political processes in this country.

I'm growing more concerned about panic once the US detects an outbreak(or outbreaks). With the current lack of any kind of large scale testing, we're not going to catch anything small for the next few weeks, its going to be the Italy outbreak or larger. The CNBC video below talks about how looking for it statistically in flu and pneumonia will require cases in the thousands to be detected. I think the media coverage will flip into overdrive if a major US city has an outbreak on that level. Plus it will be really difficult to establish how big any outbreak actually is with our current test capacity. That poses a much larger risk for a panic/run on supplies especially since the government communication up to now has been to emphasize how low the risk is. When it hits near your backyard, the public is going to freak. With modern air travel, it could be in any major city right now.

The other interesting item in the video is the discussion of vaccines at the end. I think people are overestimating how fast we can come up with a vaccine for coronavirus. Vaccine candidates are relatively easy to produce but the testing process to determine whether they are safe and actually work is a long and hard process. Many vaccine candidates end up being ineffective and we know of at least one SARS vaccine that was stopped in animal trials because it actually made the symptoms of infection much worse. People in the media will be screaming for a cure after seeing all these press releases from biomedical companies about vaccine candidates when there is still a ton of work to be done.