COVID-19 #13 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Disease

[JoannaL]

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Lots more statements being made about proof the virus came from the Wuhan Lab albeit the virus has a natural origin. What's the implication here? The lab was studying this specific virus and it leaked out somehow? The lab was not studying this specific virus but it was incidentally present in animals in the lab? The virus was known about for months (if the lab was studying the virus), or perhaps a year or more before the outbreak? The lab deliberately infected people to see if it affected humans? If the virus was naturally occurring then it is possible the lab had it / was studying it and at the same time the source of the outbreak was not the lab but the natural cycling of the virus in wild and domestic animals that came into contact with people. After all, if the lab found the virus out in the wild it means it was prevalent enough in the wild animal / bat population(s) for scientists to find this particular virus as opposed to any of the other hundreds of coronaviruses that cycles through the wild. Was the lab studying this virus specifically because it originally found the virus in people who had picked it up naturally?

Lets look at the facts:

- in Wuhan is an institute of virology.

- it is the only institute in China with the highest safety grade (P4), which means it studies the really dangerous stuff

- it is known that it studied SARS related coronaviruses from bats (which means it isolated such viruses out of bats) and had them in ther labs

All of that makes the theory of a non-intentional leak possible.

On the other hand, there is no proof, it could still be the bat - other animal - human transmission out of the wet markets.

Since we don't know it, an independent investigation would be really necessary to understand what happened and make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Unfortunately I do not believe that such an independent investigation will be possible. And for this China is to blame.

 

[Which Tyler]

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

despite there being no change to the official position my train was at least twice as busy as it has been.  its still really quiet and social distancing isn't a problem, but clearly people are starting to drift back to work. 

The roads are definitely getting busier. I’ve seen it myself twking daughter to nursery, and also heard same observation from family in other parts of Scotland.

A local drycleaner had a sign up saying they’re reopening today (wtf? Is there a big demand for suits and formal wear to get cleaned lately?)

Wotherspoons pub chain is of the opinion they’ll be fine to re-open in June. /eyeroll

If they do, I hope the cops sit outside and fine everyone going in.

[Heartofice]

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

despite there being no change to the official position my train was at least twice as busy as it has been.  its still really quiet and social distancing isn't a problem, but clearly people are starting to drift back to work. 

I’ve been getting this sense for at least a week that people are bored of the virus now and that maybe it’s not even that scary.

Roads are definitely busier, parks were busy yesterday and on Saturday. Social distancing is happening but you can feel that standards are being loosened.

I can’t see the country sticking to the lockdown for months at a time unfortunately 

[RhaenysBee]

From today on, businesses are open again in rural municipalities. There are limitations and restrictions, restaurants may only admit customers to patio/terrace/garden areas, zoos and outdoor swimming pools may also open with restrictions that include max capacity limitations, shorter opening hours, not admitting elderly customers, 2 meters distance, disinfection, etc. Professional sportsmen are also allowed to return to training though only when testing negative for covid antibodies. 

In the capital and the surrounding municipality former restrictions remain in place until further notice, though many cafés opened for takeaway or outdoor service and large department stores for limited hours and with limited capacity. On the individual side, however, the restrictions about no unnecessary outings (there's a list of things you are officially allowed to do) stayed in effect, so basically these cafés are counting on people's breaking these restrictions of individual behaviour. No surprise there, we are undisciplined scum. 

Our numbers aren't actually showing a downward tendency, we have been stagnating around the 50-100 new cases per day increase rate for over two weeks now. However it seems that the health care system is a bit more prepared and self-assured with open facilities and free beds to admit covid patients if necessary. We also initiated a nation-wide representative testing that aims to have 18.000 randomly selected citizens tested to see a national pattern and base further restrictions or lift of in the upcoming weeks.

This is what I gather from the media and governmental covid press releases and publications. Some of the info may be inaccurate because I'm only human. So again: just a personal assessment and not facts. 

[Impmk2]

I still think the lab release theory is unlikely. There's just no evidence for it. The genetic analysis of the virus show it hasn't been manipulated, and US intelligence agencies reject the idea.

I think it's extremely important to track the origin of the virus, but frankly were I the Chinese authorities I wouldn't agree to an international investigation either. At this point it's entirely predicated on pinning blame on the Chinese government for Trump's domestic political advantage. Which is why he's pushing conspiracy theories with very slim evidence.

[Buckwheat]

Many other businesses have opened today, including hairdressers, cosmetic salons, shops up to a certain size, outdoor pub/restaurant areas. I went cycling to the city centre yesterday and there were plenty of people walking and biking on the streets, it was a sunny day, so it was almost like any other nice Sunday, only the cafés were still closed.

Schools are staying closed until the middle of May, and then regular classes only begin for final grades of secondary schools, as well as final grades of primary schools and the first three grades. Meanwhile, 4th to 8th primary schools and 1st to 3rd secondary schools stay at home until September. The groups are supposed to be split up so that the sizes of classes are smaller. I have no clue how that is going to work at all. I sympathise with these students who are not going to see their peers for half a year.

1 hour ago, RhaenysBee said:

We also initiated a nation-wide representative testing that aims to have 18.000 randomly selected citizens tested to see a national pattern and base further restrictions or lift of in the upcoming weeks.

They attempted to do that here. Sadly, people are stupid and less than a half of people selected for the study want to participate.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

despite there being no change to the official position my train was at least twice as busy as it has been.  its still really quiet and social distancing isn't a problem, but clearly people are starting to drift back to work. 

The rich need the plebs to make them coins, after all.

[The Anti-Targ]

29 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

I still think the lab release theory is unlikely. There's just no evidence for it. The genetic analysis of the virus show it hasn't been manipulated, and US intelligence agencies reject the idea.

I think it's extremely important to track the origin of the virus, but frankly were I the Chinese authorities I wouldn't agree to an international investigation either. At this point it's entirely predicated on pinning blame on the Chinese government for Trump's domestic political advantage. Which is why he's pushing conspiracy theories with very slim evidence.

Both things can be true, it can be a totally naturally occurring virus and the outbreak can have originated from the lab. Hell it could have been a lab worker who got accidentally exposed and took it home with them and no one at the lab even new of the exposure. I can imagine a bit of a culture of fear around making mistakes in facilities like this.

Also it's not like high security labs having unintended biosecurity breaches haven't caused disease outbreaks in even in Western Europe in the past. This is exactly what caused the most recent Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in the UK in 2007. The source of the outbreak was the effluent pipes from either the Institute for Animal Health or the similar vaccine researching and producing Merial Animal Health laboratory near to Pirbtight. Most people don't know or care about it because it's just an livestock disease and it was confined to the UK and there is an effective surveillance system to try to detect FMD early in an outbreak to prevent it from going wide. But nonetheless it was still a lab biosecurity breach. An eminent scientist Dr King, a former head of molecular biology was quoted as saying "As far as I am concerned the authorities have failed to find any chink in the armoury of the establishment’s bio-security. What you are left with is human movement, which is not a matter for the institute, it’s a police matter. It’s very, very unlikely that it could be spread by accident. People do not spread the disease easily." The final report into the outbreak concluded "A report into the epidemic was released on 5 September. It reported that traces of the virus were found in a pipe at the Pirbright institute running from Merial to the government's treatment plant. It is thought that tree roots damaged the pipe allowing the virus to the surface. The report hypothesises that site workmen conveyed the virus to the Normandy farm en route home from work."

The thing is even if the Chinese govt knows it came from a completely innocent lab accident either the world won't believe China (and certainly parts of the world will be convinced it was deliberate release of a genetically engineered virus no matter what the truth of it is) or the world will want to blame China and make it pay in some way regardless of if it was an innocent accident initially. Of course China needs to account for itself in terms of its initial response being to cover up and sweep under the carpet until it couldn't hide the severity of it any more. I am totally willing to personally cut China some slack over a lab accident. But lots of people in powerful positions with political motives won't be. So I can also understand China's reluctance to allow any kind of independent investigation or to allow any possibility of a definitive finding that it cam from a lab. Which is a shame because there are always lessons to learn about lab safety when breaches like this happen.

 

[A True Kaniggit]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The rich need the plebs to make them coins, after all.

Only if the plebs gets their hands cut off if they’re caught trying to pocket a coin. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Only if the plebs gets their hands cut off if they’re caught trying to pocket a coin. 

That's one way to stop the spread, btw.

How do we get them to stop breathing on things though?

[A True Kaniggit]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

That's one way to stop the spread, btw.

How do we get them to stop breathing on things though?

You ever watch The Handmaid's Tale ?

In the latest season they had a fairly brutal way of making the lower ends of their social ladder keep their mouths shut.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

22 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

You ever watch The Handmaid's Tale ?

In the latest season they had a fairly brutal way of making the lower ends of their social ladder keep their mouths shut.

Sadly I bought the book, but have yet to read it. 

I do have access to Hulu now though. 

[Impmk2]

2 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Both things can be true, it can be a totally naturally occurring virus and the outbreak can have originated from the lab. Hell it could have been a lab worker who got accidentally exposed and took it home with them and no one at the lab even new of the exposure. I can imagine a bit of a culture of fear around making mistakes in facilities like this.

...

 

As I work in a level 2 facility, and have done animal work in the past I'm well aware that breaches can, rarely happen. Though in a level 4 facility the preventative measures are extreme.

What I struggle with is what they'd be doing to cause this particular outbreak. Everything I've read suggests it's almost certainly a crossover event between coronavirus in a couple separate animal hosts, likely bat and pangolin. For that to happen you'd need a breach between animal containment areas (unless they were deliberately looking at these interactions), and then have someone walk the thing out too. And it's SARS we're talking about. People tend not to mess around handling that stuff.

In the absence of other evidence I simply think it's far more likely to have occurred in a area with endemic coronavirus in an environment where live wild animals are kept in close proximity with poor hygiene practices. Ie a Wuhan market.

As an impartial investigation at this point is impossible, I think it's best to stick to the most likely logical explanation. A few western leaders disagree, but that's pretty nakedly politically motivated.

[Werthead]

18 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Do you think these are realistic expectations? 

For any rational adult human being, yes. Alas, the last few years and this crisis in particular have lowered expectations significantly.

The Scottish government outlined their plan this morning for ending the lockdown, and it is the South Korean/Chinese model of large-scale testing and firm contact testing, and they are putting in place the infrastructure towards that, although they don't expect that to be ready until the end of the month at the earliest. It sounds like the Scottish model's trickiest feature will be people theoretically having to lock down multiple times for 14 days at a time if they come into contact with infected people say at work, then go back to work and then another coworker tests positive.

The UK government is putting out its ideas in the next couple of days, which I suspect will be similar. A contact tracing approach in Scotland alone is meaningless unless the rest of the country does it as well. We'll also need the two-week quarantine for arrivals outside from the UK which has apparently been developed behind closed doors (some indications this is primarily to stop reinfection from the United States and a few other countries like Brazil where things are out of control, but it'll be universal so as not to piss off Trump, i.e. the Israeli model).

As far as I can tell the UK situation is still precarious and we could suffer very badly from a second wave (possibly rising to the worst-affected country in the world), so the government are being extremely cautious in how we move forwards, but there are also some good signs that we may be on the back curve of the epidemic (although still not far below the peak) and the NHS has weathered things better than the worst-case scenarios (although worse than the best-case ones).

[Paxter]

5 hours ago, Loge said:

On that paper being written by an oceanographer, that's not necessarily a bad thing if he knows his math. The model he used seems to have been picked randomly, though, so it's all BS. Still, from what I found on Wikipedia, modelling an epidemic is just solving ordinary differential equations, and they are similar to what's used in chemistry. Hardly witchcraft. 

As for Italy and Spain, looking at the daily case numbers I wouldn't say they are doing poorly. I'd rather worry about the US, Canada and the UK. I don't really see any decline at all. Canada is even still growing. And then there's Russia and Brazil, which are climbing up the leaderboard fast. Not much to be smug about for Mr. Putin. And let's not forget India. If they don't manage to contain the virus things will get really ugly. Africa and the rest of Latin America don't get much attention either but the virus is definitely spreading there. 

RE: Canada, I wouldn’t put it in the same category as the US and UK. Daily fatalities are growing very slowly now and daily new cases have been stable for a while despite a large increase in testing. Moreover, most of the outbreak is concentrated in a single province (Quebec), meaning that other provinces on the west and east coast can relax restrictions sooner.

For comparison with the US: Michigan state (population = 10m) has more fatalities than Canada (population = 37m).

ETA: The bump in new case numbers yesterday was due to a “computer error” in Quebec.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

33 minutes ago, Werthead said:

For any rational adult human being, yes. Alas, the last few years and this crisis in particular have lowered expectations significantly.

Sweet summer child. I know you're actually a bit older than me, but you're smart. How could you not have seen this coming? 

People.

Are.

Fucking.

Dumb.

As.

Shit.

Dude, most people are not equipped to handle this. I had to put disinfectant all over my office because everyone was touching things without cleaning up after themselves, then, as the youngest person on my department's team, repeatedly remind them they need to clean shit up.

I work at a hospital, mind you.

Even the doctors have been lazy and gross. 

Quote

The Scottish government outlined their plan this morning for ending the lockdown, and it is the South Korean/Chinese model of large-scale testing and firm contact testing, and they are putting in place the infrastructure towards that, although they don't expect that to be ready until the end of the month at the earliest. It sounds like the Scottish model's trickiest feature will be people theoretically having to lock down multiple times for 14 days at a time if they come into contact with infected people say at work, then go back to work and then another coworker tests positive.

The UK government is putting out its ideas in the next couple of days, which I suspect will be similar. A contact tracing approach in Scotland alone is meaningless unless the rest of the country does it as well. We'll also need the two-week quarantine for arrivals outside from the UK which has apparently been developed behind closed doors (some indications this is primarily to stop reinfection from the United States and a few other countries like Brazil where things are out of control, but it'll be universal so as not to piss off Trump, i.e. the Israeli model).

As far as I can tell the UK situation is still precarious and we could suffer very badly from a second wave (possibly rising to the worst-affected country in the world), so the government are being extremely cautious in how we move forwards, but there are also some good signs that we may be on the back curve of the epidemic (although still not far below the peak) and the NHS has weathered things better than the worst-case scenarios (although worse than the best-case ones).

Does this not scare you? Seems like big brother is only getting bigger because it's so inept.

[Werthead]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Does this not scare you? Seems like big brother is only getting bigger because it's so inept.

It is concerning, but the alternative is that we all stay home for 2 years+, some for 5 years as the vaccine is distributed, which are both unworkable, or we let tens of millions of people die, which is also unworkable. Or we all move to New Zealand, which is also unworkable.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It is concerning, but the alternative is that we all stay home for 2 years+, some for 5 years as the vaccine is distributed, which are both unworkable, or we let tens of millions of people die, which is also unworkable. Or we all move to New Zealand, which is also unworkable.

We're not staying home for two months, let alone two years, but I agree and have argued that a vaccine is likely much further away then people think. And tens of millions may die anyways. They just won't be accurately counted, with many governments in the developing world trying to downplay their numbers, especially those that rely on tourism as a major industry. 

I think you need to accept that this will run its course, and that many people will die. There is no containing it until we have better treatment methods. And even then, only wealthier nations will benefit from them. Go look up the number of ventilators is Africa. The numbers, per country, should alarm you.

[JoannaL]

2 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

I still think the lab release theory is unlikely. There's just no evidence for it. The genetic analysis of the virus show it hasn't been manipulated, and US intelligence agencies reject the idea.

I think it's extremely important to track the origin of the virus, but frankly were I the Chinese authorities I wouldn't agree to an international investigation either. At this point it's entirely predicated on pinning blame on the Chinese government for Trump's domestic political advantage. Which is why he's pushing conspiracy theories with very slim evidence.

The virus isn't manipulated, and this is what the US intelligence agencies also confirm. That does not prove or disprove that this is a natural virus which was investigated in the Wuhan lab and escaped accidentally. IIRC the US intelligence agencies think that that is what happened.

As you said it is extremely important to track the origin of the virus. This is why an international investigation is necessary. We need to learn what went wrong to prevent the next pandemic. I do not trust the Chinese authorities in this, and it is their right to also not trust the US. But what about WHO scientists? Or Swiss or swedish or whatever? Why do you think that they would all lie and blame it falsely on China? Would it not be even better for China to have their results which then could be trusted by everyone? This investigation is important for the future of us all and I am very disappointed that China is blocking it.