[News] Coronavirus

A place to discuss the now-global coronavirus outbreak.

BadKen wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:
Stengah wrote:

Given his first three points, why does he think far far fewer people will die from covid-19 than the flu this year?

My guess is that it has to do with how long the virus has been around. From a John Hopkins article comparting COVID-19 to the flu:

Infections
COVID-19: Approximately 90,279 cases worldwide; 100 cases in the U.S. as of Mar. 2, 2020.
Flu: Estimated 1 billion cases worldwide; 9.3 million to 45 million cases in the U.S. per year.
-
Deaths
COVID-19: Approximately 3,085 deaths reported worldwide; 6 deaths in the U.S., as of Mar. 2, 2020.
Flu: 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year.

How can anyone cite statistics for the US when we don't have testing deployed? Those US numbers are completely brown.

To be fair, the last line in Hayes' post is that the lack of testing means we don't have a true scale for how big this is. The failure of the administration is exceeding Katrina, in terms of responding to a disaster that affects human lives. And this administration is continuing to make matters worse. It's not over.

Part of complacency is that you get used to the government just handling it. And then act like it was never a big deal. It's hard to account for such large scale malfeasance when predicting how well a virus will be contained. But we should get used to it.

I saw a report from a Iran that when the government made announcements about coronavirus, it was just waved away as more government propaganda. We now have at least a third of our country that will feel it is unpatriotic to plan for COVID-19.

Gremlin wrote:

I assume because in the US 32 million people have already had the flu this season and at least 18,000 people have died from it. Worldwide, it causes 290,000 to 650,000 deaths each year.

COVID-19 is currently at 6 dead in the US and an unknown number of people infected. Globally, there are only 92,312 confirmed cases and 3131 deaths, so it's currently a tiny fraction of the spread of influenza.

The US probably has thousands of people infected with COVID-19 at this point, but it's still a drop in the bucket in comparison.

That's a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, though. The CDC hasn't confirmed that 32 million people got the flu and 18,000 have died. That's just what the model they use estimates. Comparing that estimate to only confirmed COVID-19 infections is misleading.

Another point is that that the current flu season has been going on since early October. So in five months we've gone from zero to 32 million infected. We've only been aware of COVID-19 for about nine weeks.

COVID-19s going to be at least as infectious as the flu and possibly more so since they think it might be airborne and there's at least one incident where someone who was asymptomatic infected five of their family members. The number of infected--confirmed or not--is going to explode in the coming weeks. We could easily be looking at more than 32 million sick. If the 2% mortality rate holds, that would put the US deaths at 640,000.

WHO estimates coronavirus death rate at 3.4 percent – higher than earlier estimates

The top official of the World Health Organization said Tuesday that the disease caused by the new coronavirus has killed about 3.4 percent of those diagnosed with the illness globally — higher than what has previously been estimated.

By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1 percent of those infected, said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Earlier estimates had put the coronavirus death rate in a range of about 2 percent, but officials have been hamstrung by the difficulty in getting an accurate count of those who may have had mild illnesses and not sought treatment.

Boy that half point off the interest rate is making a huge difference already. DJIA is only down 900 points today, instead of 1000!

+1 what OG said.

Its so early. The spread is/will be geometric. There have to be tons of unknown cases in the US right now and that lack of containment means those carriers are each infecting new people every day. This is where headlines like 'you will likely get Coronavirus' come from.

There's no containing it at this point, that ship has sailed.

I am unclear about the legality of the governor just saying "you have to pay for this" to an insurance company.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/DIO6wpq.jpg)

Yeah we are all going to be exposed to this.

Well this is depressing

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/j6lUr7K.jpg)

But then I see articles like this on CNN and well....I don't really think we deserve to keep going

Bentley unveils $2 million roofless car with trim made from 5,000 year-old wood

OG_slinger wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

I assume because in the US 32 million people have already had the flu this season and at least 18,000 people have died from it. Worldwide, it causes 290,000 to 650,000 deaths each year.

COVID-19 is currently at 6 dead in the US and an unknown number of people infected. Globally, there are only 92,312 confirmed cases and 3131 deaths, so it's currently a tiny fraction of the spread of influenza.

The US probably has thousands of people infected with COVID-19 at this point, but it's still a drop in the bucket in comparison.

That's a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, though. The CDC hasn't confirmed that 32 million people got the flu and 18,000 have died. That's just what the model they use estimates. Comparing that estimate to only confirmed COVID-19 infections is misleading.

Another point is that that the current flu season has been going on since early October. So in five months we've gone from zero to 32 million infected. We've only been aware of COVID-19 for about nine weeks.

COVID-19s going to be at least as infectious as the flu and possibly more so since they think it might be airborne and there's at least one incident where someone who was asymptomatic infected five of their family members. The number of infected--confirmed or not--is going to explode in the coming weeks. We could easily be looking at more than 32 million sick. If the 2% mortality rate holds, that would put the US deaths at 640,000.

I don't understand this math.

China (Population 1.3 billion as of 2017) - ~ 80,000 infections and the rate of new cases decreasing. So even if I give a very generous tripling of cases before transmission stops (which isn't how any agent or vector based transmission model works, but that's going off into the epidemiological woods) and say 300,000 infected this year, that works out to 0.0231% of the total population.

United States (Population 327 million as of 2018) - Using the generous number from China's total estimated cases would put the United States at just over 75,000 cases.

32 million cases would mean America's response and Healthcare system is 433x worse than China's.

Yes, it's not great. Yes, if you have existing co-factors, please take extra precautions. But the level of hysteria around COVID-19 is frankly dumbfounding.

farley3k wrote:

But then I see articles like this on CNN and well....I don't really think we deserve to keep going

Bentley unveils $2 million roofless car with trim made from 5,000 year-old wood

The headline is deceptive. That wood fell 5,000 years ago, it's not from 5,000 year old trees that Bentley decided to cut down. As far as I'm concerned, the rich can have all the deliciously fancy cars they want.

And we can have all the deliciously rich we want.
IMAGE(https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QqvfSFxx5rI/TCuE03cf1GI/AAAAAAAAXho/wRHqSsHtJBw/s1600/the-silence-of-the-lambs-anthony-hopkins1.jpg)

staygold wrote:

China (Population 1.3 billion as of 2017) - ~ 80,000 infections and the rate of new cases decreasing. So even if I give a very generous tripling of cases before transmission stops (which isn't how any agent or vector based transmission model works, but that's going off into the epidemiological woods) and say 300,000 infected this year, that works out to 0.0231% of the total population.

United States (Population 327 million as of 2018) - Using the generous number from China's total estimated cases would put the United States at just over 75,000 cases.

32 million cases would mean America's response and Healthcare system is 433x worse than China's.

You're not comparing apples to apples. China made mistakes but acted definitively to quarantine the outbreak hotspot. You can't suppose that China's total population has anything to do with the situation.
The US is failing to contain anything, which threatens the entire population.

China's numbers have only slowed because they've enacted "perhaps the most ambitious, agile, and aggressive disease containment effort in history."
They've forcibly quarantined 50 million people for over a month, and utilized an extremely pervasive surveillance and tracking system.
Given the keystone cops response we've had in the US, there's no way we'll be anywhere near that successful.

staygold wrote:

China (Population 1.3 billion as of 2017) - ~ 80,000 infections and the rate of new cases decreasing. So even if I give a very generous tripling of cases before transmission stops (which isn't how any agent or vector based transmission model works, but that's going off into the epidemiological woods) and say 300,000 infected this year, that works out to 0.0231% of the total population.

Seems a bit early to call that. Even if it might be slowing down in China, since it is spreading faster outside of China, it might easily reemerge from new sources travelling to China later. We are only like 9 weeks in. Great if the spread starts to slow down, but it doesn't exactly seem like it yet.

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/0QDFbt65/World-Map-12.png)

More seriously, 9 dead from Coronavirus in Washington now. 7 were in one senior care facility.

Stengah wrote:

China's numbers have only slowed because they've enacted "perhaps the most ambitious, agile, and aggressive disease containment effort in history."
They've forcibly quarantined 50 million people for over a month, and utilized an extremely pervasive surveillance and tracking system.
Given the keystone cops response we've had in the US, there's no way we'll be anywhere near that successful.

It turns out that one unexpected benefit of an oppressive authoritarian police state is better contagion control.

And one unexpected detriment to an incompetent wannabe authoritarian police state is terrible contagion control.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Stengah wrote:

China's numbers have only slowed because they've enacted "perhaps the most ambitious, agile, and aggressive disease containment effort in history."
They've forcibly quarantined 50 million people for over a month, and utilized an extremely pervasive surveillance and tracking system.
Given the keystone cops response we've had in the US, there's no way we'll be anywhere near that successful.

It turns out that one unexpected benefit of an oppressive authoritarian police state is better contagion control.

And one unexpected detriment to an incompetent wannabe authoritarian police state is terrible contagion control.

Yup. See Iran's containment for a more likely US outcome.

I imagine it going something like this:

China: Aiieee, this COVID-19 thing is awful, this is the worst outbreak we've seen in a hundred years!
United States: Pshaw, hold my beer.

To be fair to Donald, I was able to liquidate a third of my share portfolio yesterday at pretty good levels thanks to him.

I heard on a podcast (I think The Daily or Science Friday) that part of the reason China's new reported cases were decreasing was they started only reporting lab diagnosed results and stopped reporting clinically diagnosed cases.

farley3k wrote:

I am unclear about the legality of the governor just saying "you have to pay for this" to an insurance company.

I think most states, if not all of them, have an insurance commission that regulates the industry. They set the rules under which insurance companies can do business in that state. The insurance commissioner is often appointed by the governor, and even if it's an elected position, they probably take cues from the governor. They can pretty much say "X is a requirement for doing business in this state". The insurance companies can either do it, pack up and leave, or maybe take it to court.

Under the circumstances, I think most of them would probably do it. The alternative would be a lot of bad publicity, and they can always sue the state later.

Trying to protect dear leader from looking like an idiot again, asking about flu vaccines.

Note that 32 million is the low side of the CDC flu estimate.

One reason why Washington knows about the problem is that the Seattle Flu Study detected COVID-19 as part of their research, rather than any diagnostic test.

I think that COVID-19 is going to get bad. I don't think we're prepared for how bad it is going to be, and I think that we've already got thousands of cases nationwide. We just know about Washington because they detected it, there are probably multiple cities with similar levels of infection.

I don't think we're going to see millions of people infected...this flu season. If it remains a year-round thing and keeps growing, on the other hand, then I think it'll be catastrophic. Barring runaway spread, though, I think the unknowns and uncertainty will probably cause more damage than the actual disease.

And the case confirmed in NC is linked to that same Seattle nursing home.

The new patient is from Wake County, home to Raleigh and 1.1 million people. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said the person was exposed at a center in Washington where there is a Covid-19 outbreak while on a trip.

That facility is the Life Care Center in Kirkland, northeast of Seattle, where county and federal officials are trying to determine how the disease got there and watching many of the more than 200 people who lived or worked there for signs of coronavirus.

Four Life Care residents died at a hospital and one died at a residence, officials said Tuesday.

The North Carolina resident's positive test has not been confirmed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

"The person is doing well and is in isolation at home," Cooper said. "I know people are worried about this virus, and I want to assure you that the state of North Carolina is prepared."

...

Health officials are tracing the person's travel from Washington, Dr. Mandy Cohen, the state's secretary of health and human services, said. The investigation is just beginning, she said.

Wake County public health officials said the person traveled through Raleigh-Durham International Airport on February 22. The passenger "was not experiencing symptoms when they traveled through ... Based on CDC guidance, there was no identifiable risk from this case to other travelers," a state health department official said.

Bold by me for horrible things 90 minutes away.

It is a bit worrying for me to see the spread of cases in tropical areas. We’re definitely hoping that summer will slow the spread here.

As a pessimistic Canadian, I'm interested in the American health industry response. From where I see it, this is going to be Wall Street and the auto bailout all over again. Regular people can't pay for tests or health care received. Health care providers don't get paid for the care they give to thousands. Government steps in with untold billions given directly to private hospitals, insurance groups, and pharma companies to socialize their losses while individuals have savings wiped out trying to pay what they can. Looks like you may get a public health care system after all.

NH’s 1st Coronavirus Patient, Told to Stay Isolated, Went to Event Instead

State health officials said that the first coronavirus patient "attended an invitation-only private event on Friday" despite being told to stay isolated. That person has now been ordered to remain isolated and all others who came into "close contact" with them at the event were asked to stay isolated for 14 days.

It is wrong to hope it was a high level republican event?

I thought the whole reason to live in New Hampshire was to isolate yourself?

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

I thought the whole reason to live in New Hampshire was to isolate yourself?

It's the Solaria of US states!