Covid Your Mouth When You Sneeze (Corona Virus/Covid-19 # 2)

[Maithanet]

In three shopping trips the supermarket has had low, but not empty, stocks of many essentials. The only exception is Clorox wipes (and similar), that shelf is always completely bare.

[Zorral]

Why delayed and so few virus tests in the USA -- incompetence at all levels beginning in the White House's oval office:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/what-went-wrong-with-the-coronavirus-tests/2020/03/07/915f5dea-5d82-11ea-b29b-9db42f7803a7_story.html

Thus the US is far behind where it should be in the effort to identify and contain.

Nor is it helping that the White House keeps repeating lie after lie about what is going on and even what it is.

The global economic shock is going to be felt for years though, with a very good possibility it will make 2008's catastrophe look small by comparison, or so worry the experts on the economic programs on NPR. Kai Ryssdel, yesterday evening, on his Marketplace program, came across as depressed, particularly since the supply tankers' shipments had already begun slowing by the end of 2019, and by now, parts of our major ports that handle the big container ships are essentially empty.

The fall out from the crash of the travel industry, starting with airlines and ending with the little guys selling trinkets in Battery Park, is major and global. Though doubtless the big guys like the airlines will get bailed out.  Though probably not Amtrak's Acella; their non-stop between NYC and D.C. has been suspended until the end of May as of today, due to reduced ridership.  The Rethugs are totally hostile to public transportation of any kind that particularly serves the East Coast. They really hate AmTrak. Besides, anyone who wants decently priced, convenient regular transport on that route should do what everybody else does: do it in private plane and / or helicopter.

[williamjm]

6 hours ago, Jeor said:

There's also a lot of delay built into the system. The Atlantic (limited clicks) is reporting that only 1895 people have been tested in the USA so far. That's pretty mind-boggling considering a nation like South Korea has, according to Bloomberg news, apparently tested (limited clicks) 140,000 people already. Pretty big misstep by the American health system and it means it's only going to get worse.

It does seem bizarre that the UK has tested more than 10 times as many people as the US despite being a much smaller country and having fewer cases.

[Fragile Bird]

8 minutes ago, williamjm said:

It does seem bizarre that the UK has tested more than 10 times as many people as the US despite being a much smaller country and having fewer cases.

Canada has tested at least as many if not more and we are 1/10th the size. But we have labs in BC, neighbor to Washington state, that can test 1,000 a day, and Washington does not. Ontario has labs like that, and the federal lab in Winnipeg does as well. I think Quebec has a lab too. And the turn around is now just 6 hours for results.

eta: the difference between Canada and the US: Canada adopted the WHO guideline of concentrating testing on people who travelled to countries associated with Covid-19, but at the same time allowed health departments to test anyone they wanted if they suspected there might be an exposure. That’s how we noticed Iranians were testing positive before Iran fessed up.

[Platypus Rex]

@rotting sea cow

I want to respond to your post from this past Monday (prior thread) where you followed up to my response the opinions of your friends, the biologist/enterologist couple, who had "nothing but praise for China" and its "draconian methods" which "bought time" for the rest of the world.  In your followup post, you made the following remarkable statement, in support of your opinion that western figures somehow prove that China cannot be falsifying its data:

It doesn't matter if they had ~90k cases and 3k deaths or 10x as much. If they want to keep face, they still need to report them in a consistent way otherwise we should already know the real virulence based in our own data.

I find it remarkable that you think 27,000 extra Chinese deaths would not matter.  I would guess, however, that President Xi agrees with you on some level.  He certainly has other piorities, anyhow.  But all you have really done here is admit that China could indeed be falsifying its data.   All they need is a little guile.

All China need do, to "save face" is present a "representative" subset of that caseload that (if they get sick) will receive adequate hospital care.  Such a sample might indeed show a death rate vaguely similar to what we now see now emerging in Western nations.  And if it ends up being even better (when all the data is in), well, that will be only be used by China advocates like yourself and your two friends, to extol the virtues and superiority of the Communist authoritarian system.

And certainly many Chinese citizens have been told (according to reporting in the New York Times) that they cannot have hospital treatment without an official diagnosis for the new virus. 

Naturally, the "plausible" sample of cases, that China has chosen to give the world will not be, representative of the death toll among those who are welded into their homes and left to possibly die there.  Nor will it be representative of those infected people who are rounded up and sent to mass quarantine camps where they are surrounded by countless other sick people, and where they receive little to no medical care, and inadequate food.

Nor will it include people with other illnesses, who die, after being denied hospital treatment, or being welded in their homes, or after being herded into quarantine camps.  These will include many, many people who might otherwise have survived.  They too, are part of the human cost of this disease in China.

You mention Italy as confirming the Chinese death rate.  But again, the death rate is irrelevant unless we know the actual case totals.  Only then can we have some vague idea of the actual human cost in lives lost. 

But never mind.  Let's discuss Italy's case fatality rate (CFR), so far, and compare it to that of China's death rate, so far:

As of today:

Italy's CFR is only 4.2% (197 deaths divided by a case total of 4,636);

China's CFR is 3.8% (3,070 deaths divided by a case total of 80,652).

So it looks like China's figures are actually better than those of Italy, even though Italy is generally considered to be an advanced Western nation.  Go China!  Co Communism!  Hurray for President Xi!

But wait!  We may actually be underselling the remarkable achievements of President Xi and his Chinese Communist party.  For various reasons, the above death rates may not be comparable.

Italy is still early in its crisis.  It's case totals include far fewer resolved cases.  By "resolved" cases, I mean those where the patient has either died or recovered.  Fewer resolved cases means more active cases.  More active cases means a greater potential for the CFR to increase as more cases resolve.  Italy's resolved cases now are only ~16% of their case totals (720/4,636).  China's resolved cases are now about ~73% of their case totals (58,591/80,652).

If I recall correctly correctly, China, at an equivalent state of its crisis, when the % of resolved cases was still relatively low, had a CFR somewhere in the range of 1.5% to 2.2%.

Wow, so it's almost like China is doing almost TWICE as well as Italy in terms of its death rate, and doing so at a time when reports leaking out of China (since sternly suppressed) suggested that China's hospital system was being completely overwhelmed, to an extent that Italy has not yet experienced. 

And what will happen after cases continue to rise, and Italy's hospital system IS overwhelmed.

So no.  Italy's figures do not confirm China's figures.  They show that China is, or was, doing MUCH BETTER than Italy, at an analogous stage of the crisis.  Go China!  Go Communist Party!  Go President Xi!

Or maybe, just maybe, this dictatorial regime is falsifying its data, as I suggested it might be doing, and as dictatorial regimes have always done.

 

[Fragile Bird]

You know what? At this moment in time I don’t give a flying fuck about what the overall fatality rate is in China versus the rest of the world. As I said above, the breakdown by age group is far more important at this stage.

I see Dr. Peter Hotez testified before Congress yesterday and called coronavirus like “the Angel of Death” for the elderly. 
Look at the nursing home in Washington state - 11 deaths among about 100 patients. And who knows if more will die.

That’s the important number right now.

[Isis]

1 hour ago, williamjm said:

It does seem bizarre that the UK has tested more than 10 times as many people as the US despite being a much smaller country and having fewer cases.

Let's hear it for PHE and for my fellow Biomedical Scientists who are responsible for doing all of the testing. 

[Platypus Rex]

42 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

You know what? At this moment in time I don’t give a flying fuck about what the overall fatality rate is in China versus the rest of the world. As I said above, the breakdown by age group is far more important at this stage.

I see Dr. Peter Hotez testified before Congress yesterday and called coronavirus like “the Angel of Death” for the elderly. 
Look at the nursing home in Washington state - 11 deaths among about 100 patients. And who knows if more will die.

That’s the important number right now.

Yes, but, with all due respect, I was talking to @rotting sea cow, and not to you.  Nothing either of us said denied the relevance of age, sex, smoking, immune system health, respiratory health, or any other factor.  And no law says you have to be interested in what we were saying.

But yes, it is nice that relatively few young people will die.  I like young people, even though I am young no longer.  Better me than them, I say.

[Fragile Bird]

7 minutes ago, Platypus Rex said:

Yes, but, with all due respect, I was talking to @rotting sea cow, and not to you.  Nothing either of us said denied the relevance of age, sex, smoking, immune system health, respiratory health, or any other factor.  And no law says you have to be interested in what we were saying.

But yes, it is nice that relatively few young people will die.  I like young people, even though I am young no longer.  Better me than them, I say.

If you don’t want comments about your posts, stop posting here. Otherwise, stop whining. If you don’t want comments, pm people, that’s private. Otherwise this is a public forum.

[Platypus Rex]

On 3/4/2020 at 6:04 PM, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Useless data.  The denominator is WAAAAAYYYYY low.  The numerator is WAAAAYYY high.  Guessing it will setting back down to the just under 1% that seems to be the more realistic number (and it may be even lower than that because testing resources aren't going to be universally deployed).

Uh ... no.  1% MIGHT be somewhat close to a realistic CFR if (and only if) testing resources ARE universally deployed.

Take the current numbers from those diagnosed while on the Diamond Princess (where virtually everyone was tested, even if unsymptomatic):

696 cases.

6 deaths (or 7? - I counted 7 but maybe someone got reported twice).

445 cases are still listed as "active" (not yet recovered)

of these 32 are still listed in "serious/critical" condition.

So it is possible that people in this "everyone tested" sample may still die, and the final CFR will be higher than 1%.

But the Diamond Princess is an unusual situation.  Typically, one does not become a "case" until one gets sick and consults a doctor.   Those who are merely exposed to the disease, and shrug it off, will rarely be counted as cases, for this disease or any other.  The only reason we are counting them in THIS case (when we can find them), is because of the concern about people possibly spreading the disease while asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic.

[Platypus Rex]

6 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

If you don’t want comments about your posts, stop posting here. Otherwise, stop whining. If you don’t want comments, pm people, that’s private. Otherwise this is a public forum.

Wow!  That's pretty hostile.

Listen my friend.  I did not say I did not want comments about my post.

Also, I was not whining. 

I was merely pointing out that your lack of interest in what @rotting sea cow and I were discussing, is not an objection to to what rotting sea cow and I were discussing.

It you are not interested in what we were discussing, that's fine.  Move on.  Feel free to respond to other posts that interest you more.

If you are interested, then by all means chime in. 

[Fragile Bird]

2 minutes ago, Platypus Rex said:

Wow!  That's pretty hostile.

Listen my friend.  I did not say I did not want comments about my post.

Also, I was not whining. 

I was merely pointing out that your lack of interest in what @rotting sea cow and I were discussing, is not an objection to to what rotting sea cow and I were discussing.

It you are not interested in what we were discussing, that's fine.  Move on.  Feel free to respond to other posts that interest you more.

If you are interested, then by all means chime in. 

DON’T POST HERE IF YOU CAN’T HANDLE COMMENTS.

Can I make it any clearer?

[Platypus Rex]

Just now, Fragile Bird said:

DON’T POST HERE IF YOU CAN’T HANDLE COMMENTS.

Can I make it any clearer?

I'm perfectly fine.  Are YOU okay?

[Fragile Bird]

4 minutes ago, Platypus Rex said:

I'm perfectly fine.  Are YOU okay?

DON’T POST HERE IF YOU CAN’T HANDLE COMMENTS.

Did you hear me now?

[Platypus Rex]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

DON’T POST HERE IF YOU CAN’T HANDLE COMMENTS.

Did you hear me now?

I heard you the first time.  Relax.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, williamjm said:

It does seem bizarre that the UK has tested more than 10 times as many people as the US despite being a much smaller country and having fewer cases.

Nigeria has tested more people than the US, by far.

What is bizarre is that the US own government is responsible because it is behaving like a klepto tyranny for the teeny few of an what used to be African and South American 'republics.'

That the government of the US deliberately sabotaged the CDC and all the other agencies that handle these matters and put us into prep for them upon international and WHO information.  Then somehow couldn't manage to figure out HOW test people, and couldn't make functioning test kits and couldn't even figure out how to find labs to process the tests ... all of this is on the squatter in the oval office and his minion henches. 

It is part of the ongoing, deliberate destruction of everything that keeps anyone not fabulously illegally wealthy safe.

 

[Platypus Rex]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Nigeria has tested more people than the US, by far.

My understanding is that Nigeria claims to have tested 21 or 22 people so far.  But I could be wrong.  What have I missed?

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Isis said:

Let's hear it for PHE and for my fellow Biomedical Scientists who are responsible for doing all of the testing. 

I'm sure there's a lot of hard work going on behind the scenes. They seem to have been doing a great job so far.

[BigFatCoward]

I really want to witness a toilet roll fight now. It might be the funniest thing I've seen all year on youtube. 

[Darth Richard II]

No you don’t. I’ve seen that kind of shit when I worked retail and it’s not as fun as you’d thing.