COVID-19 Mega thread

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

https://apnews.com/a980aeb44b3840341c674a6e67c19da6
Cases of new virus in China top its total for SARS

BEIJING (AP) — China, with 5,974 cases of a new virus, has more infections than it did in with SARS, though the death toll is still lower. China had 5,327 cases of SARS in the 2002-2003 outbreak.

China reported another large jump in cases Wednesday and a rise in the death toll to 132. That compares to 348 people killed in China during SARS. Severe acute respiratory syndrome killed nearly 800 people worldwide.

Scientists say there are still many critical questions to be answered about the new virus, including just how transmissible and severe it is. More than 50 cases have been reported outside China.

Nice geotracker from Bloomberg>>>

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-wuhan-novel-coronavirus-outbreak/
Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak Across the World

[emailking]

Why are people in the West doing better? Genetics? Medical care? Too small a sample size?

[Torrain]

Why are people in the West doing better? Genetics? Medical care? Too small a sample size?

Medical care, prioritising a far smaller number of patients, with resources spent on effective isolation and treatment.

Also, more time to plan.

Anecdotally, Ill miss a cancelled virology lecture at Glasgow Uni this week, as the guest speaker is part of a Scottish virology initiative and is snowed under with work. There’s a significant  volume of diagnostic work being done, sample testing, and preparation for the arrival of infected Britons.

When UK healthcare workers infected with Ebola were airlifted back to Britain, teams of epidemiologists and virologists were set up in multiple different UK regions to ensure a sterile environment would be ready to receive patients in at least 2-3 different sites, typically military bases, or secure hospitals.

We got that system set up for less than 5 total patients. We’ve still got time to prepare, so we might as well make the best of it.

[Tintrlvr]

Why are people in the West doing better? Genetics? Medical care? Too small a sample size?

Well, there are over 6,000 cases in China and just 133 deaths. At that ratio, you might expect around 2 deaths outside of China given the number of cases outside of China (the total non-China cases is about 100 right now), but, given that the international spread is relatively more recent, it's not shocking that there haven't been any and statistically in line with what's happened in China.

Plus, people are being diagnosed and treated immediately outside of China. Before the sense of crisis set in in China, people were not being treated quickly after showing symptoms. That has changed now, although people are scared so are still not showing up to hospitals immediately, etc.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

So I've been discussing this with a friend of mine in Canada.  Supposedly last summer the RCMP arrested two Chinese scientists, a husband and his wife, who were stealing data from an infectious disease lab and sending it to an institute in Wuhan.  His career was marked by studies of E. Coli, Mad Cow disease, and SARS; hers by the fact that she helped develop the Ebola treatment when West Africa got hit with it in 2014.

My friend sent me this translated bit of text:

"It is understood that Zhou Peng is the pioneer of global bat immune system research. "Bats carry viruses but do not get sick. They have not been researched by scientists before, and certainly have specificity different from other species, but this is like you know the beginning and Ending without knowing how the story happened. " After more than 10 years of research, Zhou Peng discovered that an antiviral immune channel called "interferon gene-stimulating protein-interferon" in the bat's body was inhibited, so that the bat could just resist the disease without triggering a strong immune response. The results were published in Cells, Hosts and Microorganisms, which aroused the attention of the academic community.

Zhou Peng, a student of undergraduate bioengineering, experienced SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in his junior year, which made him interested in the virus: "A small virus makes the world mess." He was admitted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at the postgraduate level, and studied under Shi Zhengli, a bat expert. Focusing on the virus carried by the bat, then I was wondering if the bat's immune system is special."

Wuhan and the fish market in particular where this all sprung up is within 20 miles of several virology labs and related science institutes.  Given that this is China, and the fact that food safety standards in the country are notoriously bad, he suspects this was likely a biological weapon breach.

I don't claim to have any special knowledge about what's going on, but I thought I would pass this on to people who are better in the know...

[Florida Man for Crime]

Regarding the conspiracy theory that it is a bio-weapon:

https://twitter.com/EBKania/status/1222621133163433985

As @NarangVipin has highlighted, a good bioweapon “in theory has high lethality but low, not [high], communicability.”

Whereas the virus likely doesn't have those characteristics (if anything probably in the opposite directions on both counts).

[Crumpets]

It's refreshing to have an epidemic where the only two inhabited continents to not have any confirmed cases are Africa and South America.

[Florida Man for Crime]

It's refreshing to have an epidemic where the only two inhabited continents to not have any confirmed cases are Africa and South America.

That is not on pace to last very long, so enjoy it while it lasts.

[Cinemark]

I thought Brazil and the Ivory Coast both had suspected cases?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I thought Brazil and the Ivory Coast both had suspected cases?

The vast majority of suspected cases have turned out to be negative, because people with ordinary colds or flus who have been to China are often considered "suspected cases".

[Meclazine for Israel]

Nothing in Africa or South America yet.

Very similar spread to SARS in many ways.

https://www.geographyrealm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/coronavirus-map.png

[Beet]

More bad news:

On the 29th, according to the Health and Health Committee of Anyang City, Henan Province, China, his father (45 years old) and two aunts were infected by Lu Mou who returned home from Wuhan, Hubei. Later, Lu Mou's father was transmitted to Lu Mou's mother Zhou Mou and Lu Mou's another aunt (3rd infection). Ms. Lu is a confirmed patient, but after she returned from Wuhan on the 10th, the incubation period (up to 14 days) has passed, and the symptoms have not yet appeared

https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/-2019-ncov-new-coronavirus/china-2019-ncov/824791-china-2019ncov-cases-outbreak-news-and-information-week-5-january-26-february-1-2020/page19

Basically, a person who never had any symptoms even after 14 days infected three people. This means that it cannot be controlled simply by isolating people for 14 days; the only alternative left is direct testing.

----

As JHU is not providing real time updates, according to BNO Newsroom the death to recovery ratio is now 170:124, which means since yesterday the case fatality rate has jumped back up to 38/(38+14) or 73%. Yikes.

[It’s so Joever]

Is it time to panic now?

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Is it time to panic now?

Panicking has never solved anything.

[ON Progressive]

the death to recovery ratio is now 170:124, which means since yesterday the case fatality rate has jumped back up to 38/(38+14) or 73%. Yikes.

This is not how you calculate CFR.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Japan confirms infections without symptoms

Japan's health ministry officials have confirmed the first two cases of coronavirus infection without any symptoms in the country. They say the cases without signs of infection are the first to be made public outside of China.

...

A man in his 40s and a woman in her 50s do not have any signs of infection, but they have tested positive.

Another man in his 50s reported pain in his throat and later developed a fever before testing positive.

[GoTfan]

Is this it?

[Smeulders]

the death to recovery ratio is now 170:124, which means since yesterday the case fatality rate has jumped back up to 38/(38+14) or 73%. Yikes.

This is not how you calculate CFR.

Just to clarify this a bit, and so hopefully we stop seeing these wrong calculations, there are at least 3 reasons Beet's calculation of CFR is wrong. Let's start by looking at the definition of CFR

In epidemiology, a case fatality rate (CFR) – or case fatality risk, case fatality ratio or just fatality rate – is the proportion of deaths within a designated population of "cases" (people with a medical condition) over the course of the disease.

The bolding is mine. It is important, because it means you can not just look at deaths and recoveries on a given day to calculate the CFR. Doing so means you are leaving out all of the people that have not yet recovered, but will do so in time. You can only calculate the CFR of a group of patients after they have all either died or recovered.

What Beet is basically doing is saying a bus crash has a 100% fatality rate, because 1 person has died at the scene and the other 50 passengers are still in the hospital getting their bruises and broken bones treated.

Reason 2a, let's look at the designated population part. The numbers are for patients that have been positively diagnosed with the virus. These are a subset of the total infected population. In particular, this is a subset that (for the most part) had such severe symptoms that they went to hospitals. They are likely not representative for the total infected population. (On the other side, if you agree with this paragraph, you do have to admit that the total number of infected is higher than the number of people officially diagnosed.)

Reason 2b again has to do with the designated population. The 73% is reached by picking only hospitalized patients that died or recovered in the last day. Did the disease suddenly become more deadly, or is picking small subsamples a bad way to do statistics?

[T'Chenka]

Come a little closer, huh, will ya, huh?
Close enough to infect my eyes, Carona
Keeping it a mystery, it gets to me
Rash all down the length of my thighs, Carona

Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty cough
My temperature is up, from the touch of an Asian one
My, my, my, eye-eyes, whew!

M-m-m-my Carona
M-m-m-my Carona

[Torrain]

New research indicates that airport screening of infected patients is failing to detect up to 63% of cases:

“We find that airport screening for initial symptoms, via thermal scanners or similar, on either exit or entry is unlikely to detect a sufficient proportion of 2019-nCoV infected travellers in order to avoid entry of infected travellers and therefore the potential for seeding of local transmission.

(Quilty et al, 2020)

https://cmmid.github.io/ncov/airport_screening_report/airport_screening_preprint_2020_01_28.pdf

Obviously it would be nice to wait for peer approval and replication of these results, but if true, then there may be some serious containment issues at hand.

[GoTfan]

It feels like this is the megavirus that could kill millions.

[Meclazine for Israel]

It feels like this is the megavirus that could kill millions.

Not with a low infection rate and low mortality rate of 2%, it wont.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Coronavirus cases: 7,900 => 170 deaths. (Beet, this is for you - CFR = 2.4%)

In the 2018/19 season, Flu cases: 43 Million => 61,200 deaths.

We need to put this in perspective. No one outside China has died yet. The pandemic is mainly in people's minds from hysteria created by the media.

For SARS, no one in Australia or the USA died. This is not the biblical disease to cleanse the sinners from the Earth.

Meanwhile, Australia will take Australian citizens (mainly Chinese born) out of Wuhan for a fee of $1,000 and house them in the offshore detention centre at Christmas Island.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-30/wuhan-coronavirus-australian-families-christmas-island/11913304

Takers from Wuhan so far: ZERO.

So the virus must not be that bad on the ground. It's like a strong version of the flu mainly affecting the elderly and people with weak immune systems.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Australian scientists have had success replicating the virus in a laboratory.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-29/wuhan-coronavirus-created-in-australian-lab-outside-of-china/11906390

Australian scientists are now busy looking at cures for the Coronavirus.


Australian scientists investigating cures for the Coronavirus.

[Torrain]

Seems like other countries are starting to take more drastic steps.

• Russia has closed its border with China.
• British Airways (the company, not all UK flights) has suspended all direct flights to China for the next month.

Starting to get a little concerned about the Britons in Hubei. China is dragging their feet, delaying today's evacuation flight. They seem to be refusing to release the appropriate documentation to let dual UK-Chinese citizens to leave, which is concerning to say the least.

[Torrain]

A hotel in Yorkshire, England has been locked down, with a Chinese national and two travelling companions being escorted by paramedics to an as-of-yet unknown NHS facility.

The man seems to be exhibiting the expected flu-like symptoms, but no determination can be made yet.

The UK has tested around 130 individuals for coronavirus so far, with no positive cases identified yet. There is a growing feeling that it may only be a matter of time though.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/jan/30/coronavirus-live-updates-china-death-toll-wuhan-evacuation-foreign-nationals-citizens-latest-news

Edit: the Department of Health has released testing numbers for today. Unless the Yorkshire sample is still being processed, it appears that the Yorkshire case was a false alarm. Apologies for the alarm.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/wuhan-novel-coronavirus-information-for-the-public