International COVID-19 Megathread

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

China mobilizing to build a hospital in under a week (they did that during SARS):

Chinese city 'orders workers to build a dedicated coronavirus hospital in SIX DAYS' in a desperate bid to tackle the deadly outbreak

A Chinese city ravaged by a new deadly virus is planning to build a dedicated hospital in six days in a desperate bid to stop an outbreak of the life-threatening infection, it has been revealed.

The government of Wuhan, a major city by the Yangtze River with a population of 11million, has ordered a state-run construction company to design and build the emergency facility in Caidian District, according to Chinese media.

The institution will reportedly be modelled on a six-acre temporary treatment centre, which was built in Beijing in seven days to tackle SARS in 2003 and had 1,000 beds.

https://twitter.com/sotiridi/status/1220469185542807552

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

This doesn't sound good - one of the hopes was apparently that while it might spread once (or maybe twice) from a patient who was directly infected via animals, that it wouldn't spread beyond that. But 4 generations of spread now are apparently confirmed:

https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/1220481782866489351

As for how contagious it is (this is the estimated # of people infected by each person who contracts the virus):

https://twitter.com/maiamajumder/status/1220501403057229824

Earlier today in the WHO statement the WHO said they thought it was between 1.4 and 2.5

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1220820373261832193

Thanks to open sharing by @CDCgov, we now have the genome of the #nCoV2019 virus from the case in Washington State. https://nextstrain.org/ncov  has been updated with this data (shown here in red). 1/2



We see that the WA state case shares two mutations with cases isolated in Shenzhen, indicating shared transmission history. However, travel history for these cases suggests this is shared within Wuhan. 2/3



The accumulation of shared mutations in disparate cases with no known epi link is further strong evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission. 3/3

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

New coronavirus can cause infections with no symptoms and sicken otherwise healthy people, studies show

One child with the virus did not show any symptoms. Health authorities have said that people with the virus have shown a range of symptoms, from very mild to very severe. But an asymptomatic infection raises the question of whether people have to be showing signs of the disease to pass it to people, a question that experts are rushing to answer.

“Because asymptomatic infection appears possible, controlling the epidemic will also rely on isolating patients, tracing and quarantining contacts as early as possible, educating the public on both food and personal hygiene, and ensuring health care workers comply with infection control,” Dr. Kwok-Yung Yuen from the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital, who led the research, said in a statement.

In this case, one has to wonder how effective (not very?) quarantine measures and travel restrictions are likely to be if they let through people that are not showing symptoms. Particularly given that there is also a fairly long incubation period... for any travel restrictions to be effective, it is probably not a safe bet to let people through just because they are not showing symptoms. However, that seems to be what has been happening in airports etc - they screen people, but only checking for fever/symptoms. Which may not be enough.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

5 million residents left Wuhan before lockdown, mayor reveals, as 1,000 new confirmed cases expected in city

About 5 million residents left Wuhan before the lockdown because of the deadly coronavirus epidemic and the Spring Festival holiday, mayor Zhou Xianwang revealed on Sunday, as health officials ­warned the virus’ ­ability to spread was ­getting ­stronger.

There were about 9 million people remaining in the city after the lockdown, Zhou told a press conference.

...

Ma Xiaowei, the minister in charge of China’s National Health Commission (NHC), told a press conference that battling the outbreak was complicated, particularly as it had been discovered that the new virus could be transmitted even during incubation period, which did not happen with Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

“From observations, the virus is capable of transmission even during incubation period,” Ma said, adding that the incubation period lasted from one to 14 days.

“Some patients have normal temperatures and there are many milder cases. There are hidden carriers,” he said.

If 5 million people left Wuhan, then it is pretty hard to see how the cat isn't out of the bag, especially given that it apparently is transmissible even during the incubation period, and given that the incubation period is pretty long, and given that at least some people who carry the virus have had no symptoms.

So how does this not spread basically everywhere, eventually, in that case?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

LOL @ the mayor of Wuhan.

He doesn't even know how many people are in his city.

Wuhan has 11 million people, not 14 million.

This presumably depends on what outlying areas/suburbs one counts or doesn't count. According to wikipedia, the broader metro area has up to 19 million people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

This is horrible. This can turn into a pandemic the WHO should be proactive with this.

Instead, WHO has been delaying declaring an international health emergency for several days now (possibly out of concern for the economy and because of pressure from China, rather than concern for health). If it is indeed correct (as was reported) that the Coronavirus strain can be transmitted by asymptomatic patients, that seems to me to be grossly irresponsible, because in that case it is basically a certainty that it will spread significantly more internationally, because it makes it basically impossible to screen people for the virus effectively/reliably. In any case, the economic cost of a weak/delayed response will end up being greater than the cost of a quick and on-the-ball response.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

It seems like this is pretty transmissible and either very difficult and perhaps impossible to contain, so it seems to me that the next point of concern is what is the actual case fatality rate (CFR)?

Reported deaths have been consistently at around 3% of reported cases (but up to 14% or so of the first 41 cases, which have had more time to develop). However, a lot of cases are presumably unreported/unconfirmed, so that would make the true number lower (but there is no reliable telling of just how much lower).

On the flip side though, reported deaths are growing faster than reported cases where someone recovered and released from hospital, so it is unknown how many of the people who are not currently dead might still die from it prior to any recovery/release from hospital.

While 80 people have died, only 59 have actually recovered and been released from hospital according to the statistics. Even if the statistics are not necessarily entirely accurate, it is pretty disturbing to me that the # recovered is not higher, and that it is not even higher than the deaths. This seems to me like the biggest/most worrisome additional unknown at this point - how much will the recoveries of hospitalized cases start growing, and will they start exceeding deaths, or will more of the patients that haven't been released gradually succumb also?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

While 80 people have died, only 59 have actually recovered and been released from hospital according to the statistics.

Here is a take on this from the flutrackers forum:

Now 2500+ confirmed cases in China with 80 deaths....and 51 discharges. 51. Really? That doesn't even seem possible. How could they have had so few discharges? It becomes even worse when you consider that 28 of the first 41 cases have been discharged, so only 23 other people have recovered from this virus in all of China? I can think of a few possibilities:

1. This virus is much more severe than reported. This seems unlikely, given that Nepal has discharged its case, Japan has discharged at least one, and Thailand has discharged 5 of 8. This wouldn't be happening if this virus really had anywhere near the 60% CFR that is computed using only cases that have resolved.
2. China is keeping most recovered patients in the hospital as a precaution because they're not really sure that they're not carrying the virus.
3. The case definition or the testing regime in China are so fouled up that in order to be confirmed, you have to be so sick that you really have a 60% chance of dying. If this is true, it means that 1500 people are going to die from this virus in the next week. I think this is probably unlikely as well, but possible.
4. China is massaging the numbers to under report the total case count by replacing each discharge with a new case, keeping the total number hospitalized correct, but not having to report the new case. The problem with this explanation is that if there are only 23 of these other recoveries in China, at some point someone would find 24+ survivors of the virus (on Weibo?) and severely damage China's credibility.
5. A slightly more severe version of #4: So many people are ill that authorities cannot keep track of which patients are confirmed and which are not, so they can't accurately report the discharge of confirmed cases.
6. You can't discharge a case if you never hospitalize it. Late in the 2003 SARS outbreak, when the number of actual confirmed ill cases worldwide had dropped to a few dozen, the USA count of ill suspected cases began to exceed the actual number of confirmed cases worldwide. The CDC was reporting about 75 suspected cases with only about 30 discharges. It took a few weeks to determine that the US was only reporting a case as discharged if it had actually been hospitalized. Cases that were so mild that they didn't need to be hospitalized (in this case, because they weren't SARS) had been excluded from the discharge count. The CDC in 2003 made a sudden adjustment once this was detected, and the US discharge count jumped up from 30 to about 70, bringing its numbers in line with the world. Perhaps China's nCoV discharge count will make a similar jump in coming days.

Personally, I'm guessing #2, followed closely behind by #4 or #5. Right now, this anomaly is worsening by the day and prevents any attempt to calculate a CFR for this virus.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

It's probably going across the globe and, even if mortality rate is low, keep us busy for several months or even years. I don't think this will fade away quickly.

I think that is pretty clearly correct. I am not in any way an epidemiologist, but from what I can see it looks to me like the best case scenario is it ends up similar to the 2009-2010 H1N1 "Swine Flu" that spread everywhere and infected a significant share of the world population, but which fortunately had a low fatality rate. To whatever degree the fatality rate might be higher though, it seems like it could be worse than that.

IMO the best thing to hope for at this point is not that it will be contained (doesn't seem realistically possible at this point, though it can be slowed down), but that the fatality rate turns out to be low. In order for the fatality rate to be as low as possible, we have to hope that there are as large a # as possible of cases that have light symptoms and don't require hospitalization, so that the fatality rate out of total cases turns out to be low. So personally I am hoping that the Chinese statistics are under-reporting true cases not just by a little, but by a LOT at this point. The more the better.

Also we can hope that things will be streamlined and that maybe a vaccine can be developed in less than a year's time or so.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

For anyone who wants to actually do something to help with scientific research which could result in treatments for COVID-19, you now can!

I personally have used BOINC for a while now to use my computer's spare/idle processing for a variety of scientific projects, so I can vouch for it - it is pretty easy to set up and sort of fun to accumulate "credits."

https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/f5as77/distributed_computing_project_rosettahome_is/

Distributed computing project, Rosetta@Home, is using the BOINC infrastructure to model covid-19 proteins that may be drug targets. You can help by donating your computer's idle processing power.

TL;DR

The BOINC project Rosetta@Home is currently working in collaboration with NIH and SSGCID to model covid-19 proteins that may be drug targets. You can help by donating your computing power to the project. It is fairly simple to set up.

To volunteer your computing power visit:

https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

You can also use BOINC to run calculations for other scientific projects, although Rosetta is one of the best ones - particularly I would say now that they are working on COVID-19.

This is a small little thing that you can do, but if a lot of people set it up and help run calculations, this may result in effective treatments/vaccines being developed more quickly and more rapid progress in understanding the virus.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Do you think that it's going towards a Germany\France\Spain level or is Britain still safer?

Everywhere in the world that doesn't declare an all-out Chinese style total war to stop the spread is going toward a Germany\France\Spain level and well beyond.

The West in general, and especially the USA, is being painfully slow to react.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Apparently Italy is going full Hubei. Good. Much of the rest of the world should follow suit. It will be easier to slow down now than if we dilly-daddle for another few weeks until things get worse. Epidemics do not get better on their own. --- correction, actually they do get better on their own... after a large % of the population has been infected...

https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1236374825175834624

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

My god, Italy adds 1,492 new cases and 133 new deaths all in one single report.

That is a 9% deaths from those marginal added cases. Brings the overall crudely calculated fatality rate in Italy up to 5% (366 deaths / 7,375 cases). Not a good sign at all, especially for countries with older populations (like basically all of Europe and USA) especially if the medical system gets overwhelmed like seems to be happening in Lombardy.

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Report from a doctor in Italy (translated via twitter):

https://twitter.com/V2019N/status/1236678678538383361

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11rJiaY7856DChpqY8_360OQaMeUIsndS/view

We publish the speech on the social networks of Daniele Macchini, a doctor at the Humanitas
Gavazzeni Clinics. An important testimony on the real extent of the coronavirus and on the doctors
in the trenches to face the emergency.

"In one of the constant emails that I receive from my health department on a more than daily basis
now these days, there was also a paragraph entitled" doing social responsibly ", with some
recommendations that can only be supported. After thinking for a long time if and what to write
about what is happening to us, I felt that the silence was not at all responsible. I will therefore try to
convey to people "not involved in the work" and more distant from our reality, what we are
experiencing in Bergamo during these pandemic days from Covid-19. I understand the need not to
create panic, but when the message of the danger of what is happening does not reach people, and I
still feel who cares about the recommendations and people who gather together complaining about
not being able to go to the gym or to be able to play tournaments. soccer, I shiver. I also understand
the economic damage and I am also worried about that. After the epidemic, the tragedy will start
again.

However, apart from the fact that we are literally also devastating our national health system from
an economic point of view, I allow myself to raise the importance of the health damage that is likely
throughout the country and I find it nothing short of "chilling" for example that a red zone already
requested by the Region has not yet been established for the municipalities of Alzano Lombardo and
Nembro (I would like to clarify that this is purely personal opinion). I myself looked with some
amazement at the reorganizations of the entire hospital in the previous week, when our current
enemy was still in the shadows: the wards slowly "emptied", the elective activities interrupted, the
intensive therapies freed to create as many beds as possible. Containers arriving in front of the
emergency room to create diversified routes and avoid any infections. All this rapid transformation
brought in the corridors of the hospital an atmosphere of surreal silence and emptiness that we still
did not understand, waiting for a war that was yet to begin and that many (including me) were not
so sure would never come with such ferocity (I open a parenthesis: all this in silence and without
publicity, while several newspapers had the courage to say that private health care was not doing
anything).

I still remember my night guard a week ago passed unnecessarily without turning a blind eye,
waiting for a call from the microbiology of the Sack. I was waiting for the outcome of a swab on the
first suspected patient in our hospital, thinking about what consequences it would have for us and
the clinic. If I think about it, my agitation for one possible case seems almost ridiculous and
unjustified, now that I have seen what is happening. Well, the situation is now nothing short of
dramatic. No other words come to mind. The war has literally exploded and the battles are
uninterrupted day and night. One after the other, the unfortunate poor come to the emergency
room. They have anything but the complications of a flu. Let's stop saying it's a bad flu. In these two
years I have learned that the people of Bergamo do not come to the emergency room at all. They did
well this time too. They followed all the indications given: a week or ten days at home with a fever

without going out and risking contagion, but now they can't take it anymore. They don't breathe
enough, they need oxygen. Drug therapies for this virus are few.
The course mainly depends on our organism. We can only support it when it can't take it anymore. It
is mainly hoped that our body will eradicate the virus on its own, let's face it. Antiviral therapies are
experimental on this virus and we learn its behaviour day after day. Staying at home until the
symptoms worsen does not change the prognosis of the disease. Now, however, that need for beds
in all its drama has arrived. One after the other, the departments that had been emptied are filling
up at an impressive rate. The display boards with the names of the patients, in different colours
depending on the operating unit they belong to, are now all red and instead of the surgical operation
there is the diagnosis, which is always the same damn: bilateral interstitial pneumonia. Now, tell me
which flu virus causes such a rapid tragedy.

Because that's the difference (now I'm going down a bit in the technical field): in classical flu, apart
from infecting much less population over several months, cases can be complicated less frequently,
only when the virus destroys the protective barriers of our airways allowing bacteria normally
resident in the upper airways to invade the bronchi and lungs, causing more severe cases. Covid 19
causes a banal influence in many young people, but in many elderly people (and not only) a real Sars
because it arrives directly in the alveoli of the lungs and infects them making them unable to
perform their function. The resulting respiratory failure is often serious and after a few days of
hospitalization, the simple oxygen that can be administered in a ward may not be enough. Sorry, but
to me as a doctor it doesn't reassure you that the most serious are mainly elderly people with other
pathologies. The elderly population is the most represented in our country and it is difficult to find
someone who, above 65 years of age, does not take at least one tablet for blood pressure or
diabetes.

I also assure you that when you see young people who end up in intubated intensive care, pronated
or worse in Ecmo (a machine for the worst cases, which extracts the blood, re-oxygenates it and
returns it to the body, waiting for the organism, hopefully, heal your lungs), all this tranquillity for
your young age passes there. And while there are still people on social networks who pride
themselves on not being afraid by ignoring the indications, protesting that their normal lifestyle
habits are "temporarily" in crisis, the epidemiological disaster is taking place. And there are no more
surgeons, urologists, orthopaedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team
to face this tsunami that has overwhelmed us.

The cases multiply, we arrive at the rate of 15-20 hospitalizations a day all for the same reason. The
results of the swabs now arrive one after the other: positive, positive, positive. Suddenly the
emergency room is collapsing. Emergency provisions are issued: help is needed in the emergency
room. A quick meeting to learn how the first aid management software works and a few minutes
later they are already downstairs, next to the warriors on the war front. The screen of the PC with
the reasons for access is always the same: fever and difficulty breathing, fever and cough,

respiratory failure etc ... Exams, radiology always with the same sentence: bilateral interstitial
pneumonia. All to be hospitalized. Someone already to intubate goes to intensive care. For others,
however, it is late. Intensive care becomes saturated, and where intensive care ends, more are
created. Each fan becomes like gold: those of the operating rooms that have now suspended their
non-urgent activity become places for intensive care that did not exist before. I found it incredible,
or at least I can speak for Humanitas Gavazzeni (where I work) how it was possible to implement in
such a short time a deployment and a reorganization of resources so finely designed to prepare for a
disaster of this magnitude. And every reorganization of beds, wards, staff, work shifts and tasks is
constantly reviewed day after day to try to give everything and even more. Those wards that
previously looked like ghosts are now saturated, ready to try to give their best for the sick, but
exhausted. The staff are exhausted. I saw fatigue on faces that didn't know what it was despite the
already gruelling workloads they had. I have seen people still stop beyond the times they used to
stop already, for overtime that was now habitual. I saw solidarity from all of us, who never failed to
go to our internist colleagues to ask "what can I do for you now?" or "leave alone that shelter that I
think of it." Doctors who move beds and transfer patients, who administer therapies instead of
nurses. Nurses with tears in their eyes because we are unable to save everyone and the vital signs of
several patients at the same time reveal a fate that has already been marked. There are no more
shifts, schedules.

Social life is suspended for us. I have been separated for a few months, and I assure you that I have
always done my best to constantly see my son even on the days of taking the night off, without
sleeping and putting off sleep until when I am without him, but for almost 2 weeks I have not
voluntarily I see neither my son nor my family members for fear of infecting them and in turn
infecting an elderly grandmother or relatives with other health problems. I'm happy with some
photos of my son that I regard between tears and a few video calls. So be patient too, you can't go
to the theater, museums or gym. Try to have mercy on that myriad of older people you could
exterminate. It is not your fault, I know, but of those who put it in your head that you are
exaggerating and even this testimony may seem just an exaggeration for those who are far from the
epidemic, but please, listen to us, try to leave the house only to indispensable things. Do not go en
masse to stock up in supermarkets: it is the worst thing because you concentrate and the risk of
contacts with infected people who do not know they are higher. You can go there as you usually do.
Maybe if you have a normal mask (even those that are used to do certain manual work) put it on.
Don't look for ffp2 or ffp3. Those should serve us and we are beginning to struggle to find them. By
now we have had to optimize their use only in certain circumstances, as the WHO recently suggested
in view of their almost ubiquitous impoverishment. Oh yes, thanks to the shortage of certain
devices, I and many other colleagues are certainly exposed despite all the means of protection we
have. Some of us have already become infected despite the protocols. Some infected colleagues
have in turn infected family members and some of their family members already struggle between
life and death. We are where your fears could make you stay away. Try to make sure you stay away.

Tell your family members who are elderly or with other illnesses to stay indoors. Bring him the
groceries please. We have no alternative. It's our job. In fact, what I do these days is not really the

job I'm used to, but I do it anyway and I will like it as long as it responds to the same principles: try to
make some sick people feel better and heal, or even just alleviate the suffering and the pain to those
who unfortunately cannot heal. I don't spend a lot of words about the people who define us heroes
these days and who until yesterday were ready to insult and report us. Both will return to insult and
report as soon as everything is over. People forget everything quickly. And we're not even heroes
these days. It is our job. We risked something bad every day before: when we put our hands in a
belly full of blood of someone we don't even know if he has HIV or hepatitis C; when we do it even if
we know that he has HIV or hepatitis C; when we sting with the one with HIV and take the drugs that
make us vomit from morning to night for a month. When we open with the usual anguish the results
of the tests at the various checks after an accidental puncture hoping not to be infected. We simply
earn our living with something that gives us emotions. It doesn't matter if they are beautiful or ugly,
just take them home. In the end we only try to make ourselves useful for everyone. Now try to do it
too though: with our actions we influence the life and death of a few dozen people. You with yours,
many more. Please share and share the message. We need to spread the word to prevent what is
happening here from happening all over Italy ».

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Public life gets gradually shut down here. I hope that I'll still be able to do things like going to the cinema in a week from now... but maybe not.

Don't go to the cinema at this time, by doing so you unfortunately put your fellow citizens at risk. Find a substitute like watching netflix instead. While you yourself or any specific individual at this point is unlikely to spread the virus at any particular event, if everyone behaves like that then the virus will spread, and the more it spreads the worse it gets, and the more people will die.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

So... North Korea still does not have any official cased despite bordering two of the worst-affected countries. Is there any pulse on what is happening there with COVID-19?

There were rumors a while back that they were shooting people who were suspected to be infected.

More recently there were some rumors that some significant part of the NK Army that was stationed near the Chinese border had flu-like symptoms and were being quarantined or something.

As is always the case with NK though, it is pretty much all rumors.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Shockingly high 10% fatality rate for marginal cases continues for Italy.

2,547 new cases and 250 new deaths in Italy.

Of course that has biases due to time lags and likely under-reporting/under-testing of non-severe cases, but way too high for comfort.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Hidden in Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II has her private confidents updating her about the situation.

When informed that the public were plundering Supermarkets due to a shortage of Meat, Pasta and Bread, she replied:

"Let Them Eat Cake"

When I went to the supermarket on Friday, one of the only things that was left/not 99% ransacked was cake mixes.

There was also no regular flour whatsoever. But there was still cake flour.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Some quite bad news -

23:20: 79 new cases in Brazil.

That brings Brazil up to 200 cases, it was previously 121.

The fact that they suddenly found so many new cases and seem to be increasing rapidly now is very bad, because Brazil is in the Southern hemisphere... So if they keep finding new cases there, that (along with the exponential growth we have seen recently in Australia) would seem to make it much less likely that summer/heat will slow down the pandemic to any reasonable degree in the Northern Hemisphere as we enter Spring/Summer.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

156 cases in Chile now - the number doubled since yesterday

Between that and the rises in Brazil, Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand, it is looking less and less likely with every passing day that the onset of summer will materially slow this down in the Northern hemisphere, because the virus is clearly spreading just fine in the southern hemisphere and in warmer areas.

Looks like any remaining hopes that it would be significantly seasonal are shot, it was just a false correlation because countries in the southern hemisphere tend to be less connected to international travel, less developed, and have less testing capacity.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

A study from researchers in Iran suggests there may end up being up to 3.5 million deaths in Iran:

https://twitter.com/NegarMortazavi/status/1240095415413997569

https://www.dw.com/en/iran-faces-catastrophic-death-toll-from-coronavirus/a-52811895

Researchers at the respected Sharif University of Technology in Tehran have created a computer simulator to test different scenarios for the further spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, across Iran. They concluded that in a best-case scenario — in which the government quarantines all high-risk areas, people strictly obey quarantine rules, and access to sufficient medical supplies is guaranteed — the country would reach the peak of the epidemic in roughly one week, and the death toll would exceed 12,000.

Yet that scenario is unrealistic in all three instances: The government can't impose quarantine, people will not obey quarantine rules, and the medical supply situation is catastrophic thanks to US sanctions and chronic mismanagement.

Accounting for those realities, the researchers estimate Iran will not reach the peak of the epidemic until late May, and they estimate as many as 3.5 million people could die as a result.

F

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

The death toll in Italy apparently may be HIGHER than reported (which is already shockingly high). This is because apparently there is a surge of deaths in nursing homes, and they are not being tested.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-homes-insigh/uncounted-among-coronavirus-victims-deaths-sweep-through-italys-nursing-homes-idUSKBN2152V0?il=0

MILAN (Reuters) - As the official death toll from Italy’s coronavirus outbreak passes 2,500, a silent surge in fatalities in nursing homes, where dozens of patients a day are dying untested for the virus, suggests the real total may be higher.

...

While no detailed data is available, officials, nurses and relatives say there has been a spike in nursing home deaths in the worst affected regions of northern Italy since the virus emerged, and they are not showing up in coronavirus statistics.

“There are significant numbers of people who have died but whose death hasn’t been attributed to the coronavirus because they died at home or in a nursing home and so they weren’t swabbed,” said Giorgio Gori, mayor of the town of Bergamo.

Gori said there had been 164 deaths in his town in the first two weeks of March this year, of which 31 were attributed to the coronavirus. That compares with 56 deaths over the same period last year.

Even adding the 31 coronavirus deaths to that total would leave 77 additional deaths, an increase that suggests the virus may have caused significantly more deaths than officially recorded.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Step it up:

https://twitter.com/bopanc/status/1241063920296775681

Things are still quite lax across a lot of the developed western world.