COVID-19 Mega thread

[Beet]

Death rate.

Three days ago officially 1,525 died, 8,158 recovered. Today officially 1,872 died, 12,592 recovered. The case fatality rate in the past 3 days is 7%.

A new large government statistical study published here:
https://github.com/cmrivers/ncov/blob/master/COVID-19.pdf

CFR here starts low but rises towards 15.6% among cases that onset Jan 1-10. Troubling. Risk seems to increase substantially with age.

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Disturbing details about so-called "recovered" cases in the U.S.:

'It’s been two weeks since Santa Clara County health officials announced the first Bay Area case of the potentially deadly novel coronavirus, but while they say the patient is in good condition, he hasn’t been cleared to leave home.

In fact, it is not evident that any of the 15 people in the U.S. confirmed to have come down with the virus has been deemed to have recovered enough to return to work and resume normal life. They remain in isolation, either at hospitals or at home, where local officials keeping tabs on them have told them to stay put.

Their plight raises questions about how long it might take for people suffering even mild symptoms from the new disease, now officially called COVID-19, to fully recover, and for health officials monitoring them to feel confident they can safely send them back into their communities.'

[Beet]

South Korea has announced 15 (!) new cases. Holy crap. 13 are in the city of Daegu, the 4th largest city in South Korea. Now that Singapore, Japan, and South Korea have over 40 cases each, which just happen to be the Asian countries with the most advanced detection technology, this is troubling. That suggests the detection in those locations is not because the virus is gathering there but because they are more likely to be detected there. Suggests more cases in less developed parts of Asia. I would not be surprised if Taiwan reported a big jump in cases soon.

Also, Scott Gottlieb has confirmed on CNBC that the below numbers are based on not testing people without epidemiological links to Wuhan. That means community transmission in China outside Wuhan will not be picked up. This is very bad news.

Death rate.

3 days ago, officially 1,669 died and 9,475 recovered. Today officially 2,008 died and 14,417 recovered. The case fatality rate in the past 3 days is 6%.

Whistleblower: ZERO infection control specialists managing the 'Diamond Princess'. All bureaucrats. Infection control procedures were not followed.

[Beet]

South Korea HAS NOW REPORTED 50 (!!) CASES in the past 24 hours!!! And some in Seoul. This is a catastrophe. Soon it will be like China. Cases are surging in Japan as well.

Death rate.*

3 days ago officially 1,773 died and 10,900 recovered. Today officially 2,125 died and 16,322 recovered. The case fatality rate of the past 3 days is 6%.

* China keeps changing the statistics back and forth, back and forth. Since there is no way to really go back and revise back data with the constantly changing criteria, and the numbers are only a very rough estimate anyway, I am just going to post whatever the official numbers are at the time.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Hubei Province: 62,031
Outside Hubei, China: 12,542
Outside China: 1,095

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There has been some talk going around that the virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China's only BSL-4 lab. I have not mentioned this so far although the talk has been going on for several weeks, as at first I thought it was a ridiculous rumor, however the situation is very curious. It is confirmed that across the whole genome, SARS-Cov2 is most similar to a virus found in the Yunnan horseshoe bat with a 96% match. The Malayan pangolin virus is not a higher genetic match than the Yunnan horseshoe bat when considering the whole genome. This horseshoe bat virus is known only to exist in the caves of Yunnan... except for a sample that was transported to the Wuhan Institute of Virology several years ago for study.

Further, it is revealed that the virus shows a highly unusual pattern of Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE), where antibodies developed upon 1st infection actually make it worse the second time around. There is some speculation this is why the case fatality rate in Wuhan is higher than elsewhere (Btw, this would also mean that most estimates of the fatality rate are far too low, as non-Hubei cases are only taking into account first infection). ADE triggering virus is so rare that its existence was not even established until literally a few years ago. The only naturally occurring virus that creates ADE is dengue fever. Thus the odds are quite small that a random virus will trigger ADE. However, a scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology just happened to publish a paper in December 2019 where they artificially replicated an ADE antibody. Now, this does not mean they created a virus that triggers ADE, only that they created an antibody. However, it is curious. The paper was published in early December 2019.

Finally it is confirmed that "patient zero" is a senile man in his seventies in poor health and some sort of stroke, who was staying in all day. And he lived four or five bus stops from the Wuhan Seafood Market. The Wuhan doctor interviewed by BBC believes that there were multiple cases of direct infection from animals that were not traced to the Wuhan Seafood Market. This is all very curious. I will say, if this thing does end up offing tens or hundreds of millions of people and it turns out to be some hi-tech industrial accident, the stakes are very high for people who are deemed to be responsible.

[Beet]

The virus is really taking off right now. South Korea has reported ANOTHER 100 cases since I last posted!! In 2 days they have gone from around 30 cases to 156 cases.

Meanwhile there are reports of a strange outbreak among Iran among people who have never traveled - some never even out of their own province. What is strange is that almost immediately after an outbreak was reported we got confirmation of several fatalities. Which suggests that either the authorities thought it was pneumonia for a long time and didn't know it was/suspect Covid-19, or that they were covering something up.

California and Italy also reported cases.

Death rate.

Three days ago officially 1,872 died and 12,592 recovered. Today officially 2,247 died and 18,404 recovered. The case fatality rate in the past 3 days is 6%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Hubei Province: 62,442 (+401) --> These numbers are artificially low as a statistical method was reverted back, clinical only cases are no longer counted again, and a number of them were subtracted from the total.
Outside Hubei, China: 12,573 (+32)
Outside China: 1,200 (+105)

[Beet]

Oops. Accidentally edited away this post, and whatever was here. 2,360 died and 20,795 recovered on this day.

[Beet]

Holy MOTHER of ******. The number of cases in South Korea nearly than TRIPLED since my last update yesterday to 556, from 200 or so! I can't even express this. Is thing is literally exploding. Time to ban all travel from South Korea. They are f--ed. Meanwhile it's going nuts in Italy too, going from 18 to 79 in a single  day. Japan is confirming cases all over the place at 122 now.

Death rate.

Three days ago officially officially 2,125 died and 16,322 recovered. Today officially 2,460 died and 23,032 recovered. The case fatality rate in the last 3 days is 5%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Hubei Province: 64,084 (+630)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,852 (+18)
Outside China: 1,694 (+323)

[Beet]

Disturbing new allegations reported by dissident media New Tang Dynasty.

"A social media user named Wu Xiaohua, with a Ph.D. in biological related fields according to his WeChat profile...disclosed that some biolabs in China are very poorly regulated.

For instance, some researchers in these labs kept the laboratory dogs as pets; some disposed of animal carcasses casually because following the biosafety rules and cremating them costs a lot of money. Some cut up the laboratory pigs and took the meat home to eat. I know this happened at Beijing 301 Hospital’s spine surgery lab. Worst of all, some laboratory animals were sold to wet markets as wild-caught animals for profit,” he wrote.

Xu Bo, a well-known IT magnate and billionaire in China, cited reports and articles to support Wu’s statements.

In his blog, Xu cited a news report about a lawsuit against biologist Li Ning.Li is an academician of China Engineering Academy, and a former professor at China Agricultural University. The judgment in Li’s case, which came out on Jan. 2 this year, stated that between 2008 and 2012, Li’s lab sold experimental pigs, cows, and milk to local markets. These animal and animal products were bought using research funds; but Li and his fellow colleagues pocketed the money, a total of 10,179,201 yuan ($1,460,304), from the sale of these animals and animal products.

Li was sentenced to 12 years in prison for embezzlement.

According to a 2016 report from the China Experimental Animal Information Network, Chinese researchers use tens of millions of laboratory animals every year. The Experimental Animal Research Center of Hubei Province alone handles about 300,000 animals a year, either for bioresearch experiments inside the center, or to be sold and distributed to other labs in Hubei Province."

https://www.ntd.com/the-origin-of-the-coronavirus-report_431784.html

If the virus was engineered to go from bats to pangolins, and then some researcher at the lab, not knowing that the particular virus these animals carried had been engineered to allow zoonosis, to earn extra money, took the pangolins to the Seafood Market, where unexpected zoonosis occurred, that would explain a lot. I hope it's not true, but...

[Beet]

Something weird is going on at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. On February 1, a mere week after Wuhan was locked down due to a COVID-19 outbreak, the Trump administration announced a drastic 80% cut in all funding to preventing epidemics and diseases.

Then, the CDC sent faulty test to local health centers that had to be returned, and is not either saying why the test were faulty or when hospitals will be getting new onses.

https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1231503887816892416

[Beet]

South Korea continues to surge with 763 cases. Italy now has more cases than Japan. In Japan, a woman in her 20s is said to be in critical condition. This would be the first time we have heard of an individual case (not in a statistical study) of someone in their 20s in serious condition who is not a health care worker (although there are rumors that a 15 year old Iranian died, this cannot be confirmed). This is troubling.

Also, China has been forced to open up a new category of "tentatively recovered." Previously, the criteria for release was two negative PCR swabs on two days, no fever for 10 days, and significant improvement on chest scans. This is a pretty strict criteria but unfortunately some cases of people who relapsed within 14 days, and at least one case of a person re-admitted to the hospitals, presumably because they failed to develop antibodies. Therefore the so called "recovered" patients are now going into another 14 day quarantine.

Dow futures are down 400. This could cause a global recession easily.

Death rate.

Three days ago officially officially 2,247 died and 18,404 recovered. Today officially 2,619 died and 24,963 recovered. The case fatality rate in the past 3 days is 5%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Hubei Province: 64,287 (+203)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,863 (+11)
Outside China: 2,210 (+516)

[Beet]

Very bad news today. A new meta-analysis out analyzing a huge sample of cases (50,000) finds that 15% had Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). This syndrome requires hospital treatment and major medical intervention. It also finds a fatality rate so far of 5%, which tracks closely to what I have found with my heavily criticized, but data-based methodology.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.18.20024539v1.full.pdf+html

Death rate.

Three days ago officially 2,360 died and 20,795 recovered. Today officially 2,669 died and 27,563 recovered. The case fatality rate in the past 3 days is 4%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Hubei Province: 64,786 (+499)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,872 (+9)
Outside China: 2,488 (+278)

[Beet]

Technically that puts the mortality rate over the past day as over 100%, making my previous post an underestimation, but that is a statistically anomaly, however. In the last 24 hours, latest update, 20 more died, no recovered which is 100%, up from 83.3% yesterday. Again, I have been proven correct with my statement yesterday.

Edit: See the update below. The CFR for 1/27 is 86%, not 100%.

It also finds a fatality rate so far of 5%, which tracks closely to what I have found with my heavily criticized, but data-based methodology.

I see that the "case fatality rate (sic)" has declined from 86% to 4% over the course of the last month. Tremendous progress!

4% going forward would still be awful, and significantly worse than most mainstream estimates at the moment.

[Beet]

Man, can you imagine the consequences if the virus spreads to our gerontocratic government?

Yes, I pointed this out a while ago. We could be in for a "culling" of the Senate, for one thing.

Running the 2020 election is likely to be a significant problem - states need to switch to 100% vote by mail ASAP. IMO Congress should immediately start working on legislation to mandate/organize and fund this. It is a good policy in any case, regardless of pandemic fears.

It is? After what happened in North Carolina 9th district, I would not trust my ballot to be in the mail and opened by a third party. Paper balloting at the booth where there is a precinct captain from each party is the safe way to vote.

[Beet]

Cases now continue to grow in South Korea and Italy, with over 1,146 and 322 cases, respectively. However, these countries are doing better than others in testing. The U.S. in particular lags behind in this area, to the extent that local health agencies are asking permission to bypass the CDC and use their own tests, tests from private companies, or even Japanese tests. The regulatory barriers are frustrating here.

Death rate.

Three days ago officially 2,460 died and 23,032 recovered. Today officially 2,760 died and 30,001 recovered. The case fatality rate in the past 3 days is 4%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Hubei Province: 65,187 (+401)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,877 (+5)
Outside China: 2,930 (+442)

[Beet]

Cases continue to explode in South Korea, which has 1,595 cases. Italy has 453 cases, whereas Japan has 189.

Death rate.

Three days ago officially 2,619 died and 24,963 recovered. Today 2,799 died and 32,814 recovered. The case fatality rate in the past 3 days has dropped to 2.2%, substantially lower than before, although still about as bad as the Influenza outbreak of 1918.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Hubei Province: 65,596 (+409)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,863 (+27)
Outside China: 3,666 (+736)

[Beet]

So I am hearing that the genome of the virus' S protein is 99% similar to one found in pangolins, but the overall genome only matches the pangolin virus 85%-92%, whereas it matches the bat virus 96%. Can someone explain how this is possible? Could there be some natural environment where the entire S protein of some virus that came from bats was imported from a different virus which is found on pangolins? Why does this not point to an obvious lab substitution?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00548-w

[Beet]

Trump's inability to reassure the markets last night is in stark contrast to election night 2016. Then, Dow futures initially plummeted as it became apparent he was going to be elected, but surged into big gains after he gave his victory speech.

[Beet]

Very bad news today. It has been confirmed that a healthy 23 year old female soccer player has died of coronavirus in Iran. This also confirms a video that was circulating in recent days of a male nurse saying he had seen eight deaths in one night. An unusually large number of high ranking government officials are also getting this in Iran. There is also an unusually high ratio of deaths to confirmed cases. This suggests that there are a large number of cases going undetected.

[Beet]

"The New York Times is reporting that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has told associates that he has received directions from the White House “not to say anything else without clearance” about the potential coronavirus pandemic."

https://www.mediaite.com/trump/white-house-reportedly-ordered-infectious-disease-chief-not-to-say-anything-about-coronavirus-without-clearance/

Note that Obama never did this during the Ebola outbreak.

[Beet]

More very bad news today. It is reported that a Japanese woman who had "recovered" in early February reported to the hospital with symptoms again and tested positive. This is not merely a case of the virus still being present in her system non-infectious. This is a resurgence of infection including symptoms. Further, testing showed that 14% of people in Guangdong province who "recovered" have already tested positive again. This is very, very bad. If people who are so-called "recovered" are still infectious, then 40%-70% of the world population won't get the virus. It will be more like 99.99%. You can quarantine as long as you want, once you come out and start interacting with people you'll get it. And once you get it, you could have it for life, and it could continue to return to attack you with increasing frequency until you die.

Death rate.

I have discovered a methodological problem with how I have been calculating the death rate. I have been using a 3-day moving average, the proportion of recent deaths as a share of recently resolved cases. However, while an indicator such as this is good for a snapshot in time, for an overall epidemic distribution it is inadequate because all data prior to the last 3 days is thrown away. For example, on the final three days of an epidemic, 5 people may recover and no one may die, thus the case fatality rate by my method is trending towards 0%, but prior to this let's say 500 out of 10,000 died.

Thus I will switch to calculating the case fatality rate by looking at official total deaths as a percentage of the official total resolved cases thus far. By the old method, the case fatality rate in the past 3 days is 2.1% (2,856 deaths; 36,472 recoveries), however under the new method, the case fatality rate is 7.2%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Hubei Province: 65,914 (+318)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,910 (+47)
Outside China: 4,518 (+852)
Of these:
 - South Korea: 2,022
 - Italy: 655
 - Iran: 245
 - Japan: 214

[Beet]

Notable surge continues in South Korea. Since the Trump press conference, after no locally transmitted cases since the outbreak of the epidemic approximately six weeks ago, all of a sudden three locally transmitted cases, all unrelated to each other, all at least 100 miles apart, have suddenly been reported in Oregon and California. Fascinating timing.

Death rate.

Officially 2,924 died and 39,485 recovered. The case fatality rate dropped to 6.9%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 85,182
Hubei Province: 66,337 (+423)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,914 (+4)
South Korea: 2,931 (+909)
Italy: 889 (+234)
Iran: 388 (+143)
Japan: 234 (+20)

[Beet]

Death rate.

Officially 2,977 died and 42,126 recovered. The case fatality rate dropped to 6.6%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 86,960
Hubei Province: 66,907 (+570)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,915 (+1)
South Korea: 3,526 (+595)
Italy: 1,128 (+239)
Iran: 593 (+205)
Japan: 241 (+7)

[Beet]

Death rate.

Officially 3,044 died and 45,064 recovered. The case fatality rate dropped to 6.3%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 89,073
Hubei Province: 67,103 (+196)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,923 (+8)
South Korea: 4,212 (+686)
Italy: 1,694 (+566)
Iran: 978 (+385)
Japan: 256 (+15)

[Beet]

What's going on with the Trump administration? Here are some headlines I'm seeing today-

NYC ER doctor: I have to ‘plead to test people’ for coronavirus

CDC abruptly postpones coronavirus press briefing, won't say when it will be rescheduled, and deletes testing statistics from its website.

At least 21 exposed as coronavirus patient went to hospital, hotel and North Star Mall after positive CDC patient was released in San Antonio.

[Beet]

- It has pretty much been confirmed that the virus, besides attacking the respiratory system and the digestive system, also attacks the central nervous system (CNS). This could explain some of the sudden collapses we see-- it's not a heart attack, as you don't see people clutching their chest, they just fall down. It points to sudden loss of motor control. Critically, this is also a cause of mortality, as some people have strong lungs but their nervous system cannot move those lungs.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20026500v1.full.pdf

- Study on the possible effectiveness of "Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)" for severe cases. I am not sure what that is, if someone who is specialized in biology wants to comment please do. You will have to put this into Google Translate.

http://www.chinaxiv.org/abs/202002.00080

- Huge surge of cases in Iran. It has also affected an unusual number of high ranking government officials there, suggesting that the case count is underreported. There are also rather frightening videos emerging from Qom that are similar to what we have seen in Wuhan.

Death rate.

Officially 3,117 died and 47,945 recovered. The case fatality rate dropped to 6.1%. Overall we are in a stage where more than half of the official cases have now recovered, which means that the first "wave" is slowing, however, it is likely that there will be more "waves" coming. How bad these are remains to be determined.  

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 90,428
Hubei Province: 67,217 (+114)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,927 (+4)
South Korea: 4,335 (+123)
Italy: 2,036 (+342)
Iran: 1,501 (+523)
Japan: 274 (+18)

[Beet]

The surge in South Korea and Iran are f'ing insane.

Death rate.

Officially 3,198 died and 50,675 recovered. The case fatality rate dropped to 5.9%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 93,123
Hubei Province: 67,332 (+115)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,935 (+8)
South Korea: 5,328 (+993)
Italy: 2,502 (+466)
Iran: 2,336 (+835)
Japan: 293 (+19)
France: 204 (new over 200)