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

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

'sigh'

They never make these things clear. Pence said a million and a half test kits went out and 4 million will go out at the end of next week.

Yes, and he lied.

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

This is addressed by Dr. Aylward:

 

I dunno. First off the guy got his stats wrong (according to other sources) about the 1918 'flu, it killed 2.5% of the world's population, not 2.5% of infected. The case fatality rate for 1918 'flu was more like 10%. Lots of other dispassionate and credible sources are still saying 80% mild cases for this disease, and most people with mild illness don't seek medical attention. 

We might be seeing a pyramid rather than an iceberg, but's a pyramid that probably has a few basement levels. The disease has no positive diagnoses other than the lab test. Dr's can't diagnose it clinically because all the symptoms for people who don't need admission to a hospital are like 'flu or a bad cold. And the hospital cases are probably like a bad 'flu. I think he's underestimating the undetected cases if he thinks the pyramid is showing us 90% of all people who have been infected so far.

[Fragile Bird]

16 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Yes, and he lied.

Well, I just looked at the news reports and they say more than a million test kits have been shipped. 
 

And now I see the Gates Foundation will soon be distributing home test kits that will have a two-day turnaround period, do that’s good news.

[Isis]

Here's a summary of a study on what happened on the Princess Diamond cruise ship. Lessons to be learned.

What should we do with plague ships?

[Ran]

4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I dunno. First off the guy got his stats wrong

The "guy" in this case is the interviewer, not Dr. Aylward. He was either citing the outdated CFR that appears on wikipedia or he misspoke.

 

Quote

 

We might be seeing a pyramid rather than an iceberg, but's a pyramid that probably has a few basement levels. The disease has no positive diagnoses other than the lab test. Dr's can't diagnose it clinically because all the symptoms for people who don't need admission to a hospital are like 'flu or a bad cold.

In China they have been testing widely, hence the 320,000 figure from Guangdong which were reanalyzed and whose evidence of coronavirus matches the 1500 people who are confirmed to have coronavirus. This means that  they've found no evidence of asymptomatic carriers in Guangdong.

Obviously, Wuhan had a situation where people had increasingly severe symptoms but didn't realize anything was worse than a bad cold and were shedding virus all over. This is not the same as this apparent fantasy of zombie asymptomatic people.

Quote

And the hospital cases are probably like a bad 'flu. I think he's underestimating the undetected cases

He's literally offering up a body of massive samples which even after re-testing did not actually show there to be undetected cases due to asymptomatic people. He allows that later data may change this, but the evidence in China that they have successfully contained the outbreak seems like pretty obvious evidence that there aren't asymptomatic people running around. If you get it, you will be symptomatic within a day or two, but those symptoms may be mild. But if you now know that a persistent cough can be COVID-19 and not just a mild coronavirus, you know what to do when you're in China and hence the falling numbers of new infections.

 

[Mudguard]

17 hours ago, Platypus Rex said:

Did I not already mention, in the post you are quoting and in previous quotes, the articles of Amy Qin in the New York Times?  I've got more, including some links to official Chinese sources for some of the things I mentioned, but I guess you are not interested.  Maybe if you tell me what exactly I have said that you doubt or challenge, I could give you more.

But the bottom line is that I don't think information released by oppressive dictatorships is reliable.  Now that the virus has spread internationally, I think we should be paying more attention to the data from relatively open societies, where it is actually possible for citizens to check the claims of the government. 

And I was disagreeing with the claim that the data from relatively open societies confirms the data from the oppressive dictatorship.  There has been no such confirmation, for all the reasons I gave.

Of course there has been a fair amount of information leaking out of China suggesting that the situation is not as China claims it is.  But of course, none of this information is "official" or "reputable" or "established" or "verifiable".   The Chinese government makes sure of that.  In many cases, the people releasing such information have been made to disappear by the Chinese government. 

Also, calling me a "conspiracy theorist" is never an argument.  It is merely an insult.  Why does my doubt of the self-serving claims of an oppressive dictatorship make you so angry, anyway?

Will you also call me a "conspiracy theorist" if I doubt the claim of North Korea that they have yet to see a single case of the novel coronavirus?

I have a subscription to the New York Times and after looking skimming through the titles of her articles, I see nothing that remotely suggests that China is fabricating data regarding the coronavirus outbreak.

Again, please provide the links from reputable sources which you now claim you have that support your claim that China is fabricating the data.  Also, please provide links to the Amy Qin articles that support your claim, or if you do not have an online subscription, please provide me with the title of her articles.

My ask for links was very clear, and instead of providing links, you typed out a long reply with zero links, yet claimed to have the links.  If you don't provide any links in your next reply, I'm going to have to assume that you are just making this up.

[Ran]

Here is what Amy Qin RTed recently:

 

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

How does the spread of and society’s reaction to the coronavirus compare to the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009? I was school-age at the time and didn’t have much awareness of how the world was dealing with it, though I think I would have remembered quarantines on the scale of what we see in China and Italy.

[Fragile Bird]

22 minutes ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

How does the spread of and society’s reaction to the coronavirus compare to the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009? I was school-age at the time and didn’t have much awareness of how the world was dealing with it, though I think I would have remembered quarantines on the scale of what we see in China and Italy.

While people were worried, the WHO was criticized for being too scary about it. The official death toll was quite low, but that reflects proven cases. The estimate is that more than 500,000 people died, if you factor in almost 300,000 deaths in third world countries where very little testing was done. It was also an unusual flu because every age group got sick and died. Usually the flu kills the old and weak. It was an H1N1 flu, like the deadly Spanish flu, noted for killing the young and the strong.

Back in 2009 China was just ramping up exports to the world, and there weren’t mass quarantines like we’ve seen now. But as has been noted many times, people have the attitude of ‘it’s just the flu’.

[Maithanet]

A good friend of mine is a journalist who has been covering covid-19 pretty obsessively, so she started a free newsletter.  If you're interested, I think that she is well informed and has some talk about the big picture and personal side of things that mainstream outlets aren't really covering. 

Quote

Here in Washington, D.C., we had our first confirmed case of COVID-19, and it seems to be community transmission -- meaning the patient hadn’t traveled internationally, and he hadn’t come into contact with another known case.

The man is a reverend at the Christ Church Georgetown, where he presided over services and a retreat for the past two weeks. He first developed symptoms on Feb. 23, but he was diagnosed with the flu first before later being tested for COVID-19.

This case tells us two things:

1.     It’s possible that people who are showing up at their doctor’s office or local hospital with symptoms similar both to the flu and to COVID-19 are first tested for influenza. If it’s positive, it seems that’s the end of it -- the patient is sent home with a flu diagnosis.

Yet it’s possible to be infected with both at the same time, so it’s possible the flu season is masking the true extent of COVID-19 spread. Since this has been a particularly brutal flu season, I wonder if we might see some flu cases retroactively added to the COVID-19 count.

This idea first began to worry me when I read a story about a Miami man who went to the hospital after traveling to China in January and then developing symptoms. The hospital staff gave him a flu test, which was positive, and sent him home with a hefty bill. But could he have had COVID-19 as well? It’s not out of the question.

2.     There is community spread of COVID-19 here in DC -- and it may have been going on for several weeks.

Let’s do a little math. Say this man developed symptoms two to fourteen days after he came into contact with it. That means he was exposed to the virus sometime between Feb. 9 and Feb. 21. If that exposure happened here in DC, and not on the business trip to Louisville that he took the day before symptoms appeared, that means the virus has been circulating in DC for at least two weeks. Also, regardless of where he first got it, for the past two weeks the man has had symptoms of COVID-19 -- meaning he was able to transmit it to others.

I focus on DC first because it’s where I live (if perhaps a little less excitedly now) but secondly because there’s nothing about this case that makes it unique to DC. It could have happened anywhere -- which tells me that it could be happening everywhere.

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

A good friend of mine is a journalist who has been covering covid-19 pretty obsessively, so she started a free newsletter.  If you're interested, I think that she is well informed and has some talk about the big picture and personal side of things that mainstream outlets aren't really covering. 

 

Thanks, very helpful (and now I'm worrying about the flu diagnosis I had back at the beginning of Feb - thanks for that.)  It just reinforces my suspicion that this thing has been circulating in major metro areas for a while.....

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

A good friend of mine is a journalist who has been covering covid-19 pretty obsessively, so she started a free newsletter.  If you're interested, I think that she is well informed and has some talk about the big picture and personal side of things that mainstream outlets aren't really covering. 

 

The politics/sports take mole thief has finally revealed himself!!!

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

The politics/sports take mole thief has finally revealed himself!!!

She rarely writes about politics and never sports, so that does not seem likely. 

[Zorral]

12 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

'sigh'

They never make these things clear. Pence said a million and a half test kits went out and 4 million will go out at the end of next week.

Why do you still believe ANYTHING They say?  They lie with every breath they take, and the lies are exposed immediately.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Governor Cuomo says NY state is going to manufacture its own hand sanitizer, with (paid, such as payment is) prison labor (which I'm hoping, considering the crowded conditions, etc., will also in some way help contain the progress of the virus within the prisons too), and give it out to schools and everywhere else. He'll put it up for sale if the usual sellers keep price gouging and hoarding.

Part of the problem with these products is that people buy out stores' supplies and then re-sell at inflated prices over the internet, particularly to Asia.

Though the feds are still blocking, Gov Cuomo is determined to make our own test kits and have the tests conducted in local labs.

Today, going to Accuweather, a commercial came up, which was targeted at New York, informing us in the ways t's targeted New York health care and put New York in danger. I'm assuming it's something bloomb is funding, which is a good thing. He could do so much public good if he's just buy faux noose!

[Consigliere]

The number of confirmed cases in South Africa has risen to seven. All are part of the group who travelled to Italy. Out of the party of ten, nine had returned to the country while one travelled to the UK. 7 out of the 9 who returned have tested positive while test results for the other two are still pending.

[Fez]

Whoa. 

I think that probably is necessary (unless/until better and faster testing is available everywhere) to truly curb the spread of the virus when there's countries like the US that are fucking up so badly. But I'm surprised any country is willing to go this far already.

[Maithanet]

5 minutes ago, Fez said:

Whoa.

I think that probably is necessary (unless/until better and faster testing is available everywhere) to truly curb the spread of the virus when there's countries like the US that are fucking up so badly. But I'm surprised any country is willing to go this far already.

What does that mean?  Is international tourism in Israel completely cancelled?  I'm sure they've already taken a hit in that regard, but still, that is pretty big.

[Fez]

1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

What does that mean?  Is international tourism in Israel completely cancelled?  I'm sure they've already taken a hit in that regard, but still, that is pretty big.

Sounds like it. So far there's just been a statement from Bibi announcing it and the Interior Minister announcing it would effective immediately for all Israelis returning from abroad and all foreign citizens.

 

Between this, and the growing likelihood that Gantz will form the next Israeli government with support from the Arab Joint List parties, looks like even that part of World War Z is starting to take shape.

[Werthead]

I think we're at the point where the UK needs to take firmer action. Taking an Italy-level precautionary move now would dramatically slow or stop the virus spreading and would prevent us getting to Italy levels a few weeks from now. Carrying on as we will virtually ensure that that happens.

Unfortunately we have Boris in charge, to whom the terms "decisive leadership" are anathema, so I'm expecting a far weaker response.

[ljkeane]

19 minutes ago, Fez said:

I think that probably is necessary (unless/until better and faster testing is available everywhere) to truly curb the spread of the virus when there's countries like the US that are fucking up so badly. But I'm surprised any country is willing to go this far already.

I don't know how true or not this is but the Guardian in their live blog seem to think they're going this far because they've reached the conclusion that they have to restrict travel from the US but don't want to piss Trump off so they're restricting travel from everywhere.