COVID-19 Mega thread

[Beet]

Death rate.

Officially 3,285 died and 53,255 recovered. The case fatality rate dropped to 5.8%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 95,411
Hubei Province: 67,466 (+134)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,943 (+8)
South Korea: 5,328 (+438)
Italy: 3,089 (+587)
Iran: 2,336 (+586)
Japan: 293 (+38)
France: 285 (+81)
Germany: 262 (new over 250)

[Beet]

Very bad news today. The headline speaks for itself: Coronavirus: ‘recovered’ patient dies as China reports discharged cases falling ill again

A healthy, 36-year old man suddenly fell ill and died within a day, five days after being discharged from the hospital. The Paper also reported that Fangcang Hospital – one of Wuhan’s makeshift facilities – issued an emergency notice on Wednesday that said more discharged patients had been readmitted after falling ill again. The hospital will begin conducting antibody tests on all patients before discharge from Thursday, to ensure they are fully recovered.

I am not really sure how this counts in the 'recovered' statistics below. Does it add 1 to both deaths and recoveries? I cannot really adjust my data with the information I have right now, only report based on what the national tabulating authorities decide to do. Which, of course, is what we are at the mercy of in any case.

https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1235668717154992130

Death rate.

Officially 3,349 died and 53,827 recovered. The case fatality rate has ticked up to 5.9%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 98,041
Hubei Province: 67,466 (+0)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,960 (+17)
South Korea: 6,088 (+760)
Italy: 3,089 (+769)
Iran: 3,513 (+342)

[Beet]

It's crazy that just three days ago I was calling a sub-1,000 surge "insane" and before that expressing shock at much smaller rises.

Death rate.

Officially 3,491 died and 57,389 recovered. The case fatality rate dropped to 5.7%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 102,186 (+4,145)
Hubei Province: 67,666 (+200)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,985 (+25)
South Korea: 6,088 (+760)
Iran: 4,747 (+1,234)
Italy: 4,636 (+1,547)

[Beet]

A study that claims "to certain extent, temperature could significant change COVID-19 transmission, and there might be a best temperature for the viral transmission", although I am not really sure what they are claiming that temperature to be. It appears to be about 46 F. If so, that explains why it has spread more slowly in the tropics and the southern hemisphere so far. Another study, however, disputes this.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20025791v1.full.pdf+html

Death rate.

Officially 3,592 died and 59,922 recovered. The case fatality rate is steady at 5.7%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 106,027 (+3,841)
Hubei Province: 67,707 (+40)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,989 (+4)
South Korea: 7,134 (+367)
Italy: 5,883 (+1,247)
Iran: 5,823 (+1,076)

[Beet]

Lot of videos on Twitter claiming that the situation in Iran is being underreported by the government.

Death rate.

Officially 3,825 died and 61,977 recovered. The case fatality rate rose to 5.8%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 110,034 (+4,011)
Hubei Province: 67,707 (+36)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,992 (+3)
South Korea: 7,382 (+284)
Italy: 7,375 (+1,492)
Iran: 6,566 (+743)
France: 1,209 (new over 1,000)
Germany: 1,040 (new over 1,000)

[Beet]

Death rate.

Officially 3,996 died and 62,517 recovered. The case fatality rate rose to 6%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 113,585 (+3,551)
Hubei Province: 67,743 (no update)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,992 (no update)
Italy: 9,172 (+1,797)
South Korea: 7,478 (+96)
Iran: 7,161 (+595)
France: 1,209 (no update)
Germany: 1,176 (+136)
Spain: 1,073 (new over 1,000)

[Beet]

Death rate.

Officially 4,262 died and 64,404 recovered. The case fatality rate rose to 6.2%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 118,582 (+4,997)
Hubei Province: 67,760 (+17)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,997 (+5)
Italy: 10,149 (+977)
Iran: 8,042 (+881)
South Korea: 7,513 (+35)
France: 1,784 (+575)
Spain: 1,695 (+622)
Germany: 1,457 (+281)

[Beet]

The Seattle lab discovered its first case of community transmission after testing a sample without CDC's permission.

Later that day, the investigators and Seattle health officials gathered with representatives of the CDC and the FDA to discuss what happened. The message from the federal government was blunt. “What they said on that phone call very clearly was cease and desist to Helen Chu,” Lindquist remembered. “Stop testing.”

https://www.boston.com/news/health/2020/03/11/coronavirus-testing-delays

[Beet]

Death rate.

Officially 4,615 died and 67,003 recovered. The case fatality rate rose to 6.4%. This is the 3rd day in a row the case fatality rate has risen. I believe this is due to the fact that the total # under treatment is growing rapidly again, and deaths seem to happen quicker than recoveries.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 125,865 (+7,283)
Hubei Province: 67,773 (+13)
Outside Hubei, China:  13,148 (+151)
Italy: 12,462 (+2,313)
Iran: 9,000 (+958)
South Korea: 7,755 (+242)
France: 2,284 (+500)
Spain: 2,277 (+582)
Germany: 1,908 (+451)
U.S.: 1,281 (new over 1,000)

[Beet]

The Dow has gained about 1,000 points this week and has essentially regained its pre-coronavirus peak, suggesting that the big money does not yet think we are looking at an armageddon sort of situation. Even Hong Kong's Hang Seng has gained about 1,000 points lately. My view is that the big money is dumb money -- it represents largely institutional investors who are not experts or epidemiologists, and is slow to react. Now is a good chance to sell. However that is my opinion.

There are disturbing reports of large burial trenches in Iran.

"Hospitals and doctors indicate the cause of death on their reports but a coroner appointed by the Judiciary has to examine every single body. The cause of death which appears on the official death certificate reflects his view, not what the hospital has announced," he said and added that coroners on many cases put "respiratory failure, pneumonia, or flu" on death certificates to keep the real coronavirus death toll down.

https://en.radiofarda.com/a/how-iran-reduces-official-toll-of-coronavirus-deaths/30472252.html

Also, the Johns Hopkins website has not updated tonight so I am switching to https://ncov2019.live/data.

Death rate.

Officially 4,967 died and 68,346 recovered. The case fatality rate rose to 6.8%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 135,781 (+9,916)
China: 80,793 (+2)
Italy: 15,113 (+2,651)
Iran: 10,075 (+1,075)
South Korea: 7,869 (+114)
Spain: 3,059 (+782)
France: 2,876 (+592)
Germany: 2,512 (+604)
U.S.: 1,336 (+55)

[Beet]

I think it's going to be a paradigm shift where security experts and those in many other fields suddenly have a lot more respect for the biological sciences and how vulnerable societies are to viruses or other biological agents. Since the conquest of disease in the late 20th century this is the second great blow to confidence-- the first being, of course, the discovery of the AIDS retrovirus. The late 20th century was the golden age of virology-- the discovery of cell culture in 1949, the structure of the DNA double helix in 1953, of RNA, the plaque assay, the Northern blot test, PCR, genome sequencing, and X-ray crystallography. Viruses can be turned to good as well as evil. One day we will be able to use them to track down criminals [Give person X a harmless virus, and you can track if they met person Y and Z], to do micro-manufacturing, to better understand inheritance, and much more.

Another thing you are seeing with this outbreak is the public engaging more directly with scientific journals. Normally you would have a lengthy process of peer review, publication in a journal with no one reads except colleagues, and if it gets to the public, mediated via a reporter or journalist who may have a poor education or severely dumb down the message. Now you are seeing many preprints being directly consumed and commented on publicly. You have many scientists commenting directly on social media instead of being mediated through journalists. I am not sure if this is going to last- partly yes, partly no. It has both positives and negatives.

[Beet]

Some potential good news-- paper claims "One degree Celsius increase in temperature and one percent increase in relative humidity lower R by 0.0383 and 0.0224, respectively."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767

Again, this is all unconfirmed. There is an early paper out promoted by Marc Lipsitch disputing the weather theory, which may be correct. His analysis here.