COVID-19 Mega thread

[Meclazine for Israel]

This thing has been blown 10,000 X out of proportion by the media.

The number of deaths is 213.

The number of cases is 10,000.

Can people now see where 2.13% comes from before I blow a woofle valve.

The number of social media and forum posts with no intellectual or scientific basis is 12,800,000,000

It's more damaging as a digital pandemic on people's mind to be honest.

[Smeulders]

Doing so means you are leaving out all of the people that have not yet recovered, but will do so in time.

True, but you are also leaving out all of the people that have not yet died, but will do so in time. Since we have no idea what the numbers are for either statistic, it makes no sense to include them in numbers; any such inclusion will necessarily be speculative.

Which is exactly why you can not calculate the CFR accurately until after ALL patients in your "study" have either died or recovered. By including them, you miss later deaths. By not including them, you are implicitly making the assumption that people will die at equal rates at every stage of the disease and your estimate is still wrong.

You can only calculate the CFR of a group of patients after they have all either died or recovered.

Well that is precisely my point, my fellow! That is just what I do. Your definition of CFR is perfect, and by adhering to it as I do, you arrive at the statistics I have posted.

You are not. Unless you define your group of patients as the group of patients that died or recovered on day X. The CFR for that group is completely uninformative overall unless, again, you make the assumption that death is equally likely at every day post infection and additionally assume that recovery is equally likely at every day post infection.

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.)

Certainly, but absent a statistically randomized study, we don't have any representative data. Thus any attempt to suggest what they would be is speculative and is essentially an exercise in making up data.

We do not have the exact numbers no. What we do have is the knowledge that looking at hospitalised cases is an overestimation. Because we can not quantify exactly by how much this is an overestimation doesn't mean we can completely ignore that and pretend our overestimation is correct.

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?

Well yes actually, this disease has a high mutation rate, and even several days ago, a Wuhan nurse reported that prior to mutation they were able to treat the virus, but post-mutation they cannot. Thus looking at the daily CFR can help us pick up trends, but given its very high volatility (~35% to ~86%) I may switch to a 3-day moving average. Since the Death:Recovery ratio of 81:52 approximately four days ago, according to JHU about 91 have died and 81 recovered, the CFR is about 53%.

I can find no information whatsoever either in WHO reports, or the scientific literature, saying anything about mutation rates. In fact, an article published today on the site of Nature (I can not include links, the title is "Coronavirus outbreak: what’s next?", you should be able to google it.) discusses the possibility of mutation and it's possible impact on lethality. It basically dismisses that as a serious concern. If this had already happened, I would expect the article to mention that. If you have any serious sources supporting the "mutation rate" please link them. The Wuhan nurse story is not that. With all due respect for her work, but there is no reasonable way she could know which of her patients are infected with which strain. It is simply much more likely that her hospital is facing increasingly severe cases as the epidemic spreads and less severe cases are not hospitalised anymore.

As a final interesting bit of information, this is in the latest WHO press conference transcript.

We know that many people are experiencing a minor form of illness, but still 20%
of reported cases are reported as severe

Can you reconcile 20% of reported cases being severe with 50% of infected patients dying? Or maybe you should consider that either your methodology or data is faulty.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Goldman Sachs expects coronavirus outbreak to weigh on US economic growth this quarter

Goldman Sachs believes the fast-spreading outbreak of China’s coronavirus will act as a drag on U.S. economic growth during the first three months of the year.

Barring a significant change in the news flow around the virus itself, analysts at the U.S. investment bank said late Thursday that they anticipate a 0.4 percentage point slowdown of U.S. annualized growth in the first quarter.

This will likely be followed by a subsequent rebound in the second quarter, “boosting” annualized growth by 0.3-0.4 percentage points.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Goldman Sachs expects coronavirus outbreak to weigh on US economic growth this quarter

Goldman Sachs believes the fast-spreading outbreak of China’s coronavirus will act as a drag on U.S. economic growth during the first three months of the year.

Barring a significant change in the news flow around the virus itself, analysts at the U.S. investment bank said late Thursday that they anticipate a 0.4 percentage point slowdown of U.S. annualized growth in the first quarter.

This will likely be followed by a subsequent rebound in the second quarter, “boosting” annualized growth by 0.3-0.4 percentage points.

If this occurs, Trump will claim credit for it.

[Torrain]

First two cases of coronavirus confirmed in the UK. Turns out the Yorkshire alert I posted about yesterday (below) was real, and a married Chinese couple have tested positive.

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

[LAKISYLVANIA]

i have the exact same symptoms of the coronavirus right now, but it's probably influenza or bronchitis.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

This thing has been blown 10,000 X out of proportion by the media.

The number of deaths is 213.

The number of cases is 10,000.

Can people now see where 2.13% comes from before I blow a woofle valve.

The number of social media and forum posts with no intellectual or scientific basis is 12,800,000,000

It's more damaging as a digital pandemic on people's mind to be honest.

to be fair some of the sick still have to die... so the 2,13% is likely higher. As there were a lot of new cases in latest days, that number isn't to be underestimated. It's now how it works. Better to be overblown and take precautions, than to do nothing at all.

[It’s so Joever]

Remember when Trump attacked Obama for not shutting down flights from West Africa over Ebola?
Where the **** is he now?

[Crumpets]

Remember when Trump attacked Obama for not shutting down flights from West Africa over Ebola?
Where the **** is he now?

Also note the ebola epidemic was going down right before the 2014 midterms. All those fearmongering Republican candidates are now up for reelection and we can finally see how they actually respond to a global health crisis.

[MaxQue]

This thing has been blown 10,000 X out of proportion by the media.

The number of deaths is 213.

The number of cases is 10,000.

Can people now see where 2.13% comes from before I blow a woofle valve.

The number of social media and forum posts with no intellectual or scientific basis is 12,800,000,000

It's more damaging as a digital pandemic on people's mind to be honest.

to be fair some of the sick still have to die... so the 2,13% is likely higher. As there were a lot of new cases in latest days, that number isn't to be underestimated. It's now how it works. Better to be overblown and take precautions, than to do nothing at all.

No, 2.13% is an overestimation, as it doesn't take in account all the people sick at home and who are not sick enough to go to the hospital.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

This thing has been blown 10,000 X out of proportion by the media.

The number of deaths is 213.

The number of cases is 10,000.

Can people now see where 2.13% comes from before I blow a woofle valve.

The number of social media and forum posts with no intellectual or scientific basis is 12,800,000,000

It's more damaging as a digital pandemic on people's mind to be honest.

to be fair some of the sick still have to die... so the 2,13% is likely higher. As there were a lot of new cases in latest days, that number isn't to be underestimated. It's now how it works. Better to be overblown and take precautions, than to do nothing at all.

No, 2.13% is an overestimation, as it doesn't take in account all the people sick at home and who are not sick enough to go to the hospital.

A Wuhan pastor specifically said that anyone who was not severely ill was being told to stay home because the hospitals were full, so it definitely is undercounting mild illness.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

https://twitter.com/biancoresearch/status/1223125925748887552https://twitter.com/biancoresearch/status/1223153793241620480

[Florida Man for Crime]

First two cases of coronavirus confirmed in the UK. Turns out the Yorkshire alert I posted about yesterday (below) was real, and a married Chinese couple have tested positive.

Viral outbreak on the same day as Brexit. Fabulous timing.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response
As it improvises its way through a public health crisis, the United States has never been less prepared for a pandemic.

For the United States, the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is—not just for the public but for the government itself, which largely finds itself in the dark.

When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014, President Barack Obama recognized that responding to the outbreak overseas, while also protecting Americans at home, involved multiple U.S. government departments and agencies, none of which were speaking to one another. Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was an enormous orchestra full of talented, egotistical players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and demanding higher salaries—all without a conductor. To bring order and harmony to the chaos, rein in the agency egos, and create a coherent multiagency response overseas and on the homefront, Obama anointed a former vice presidential staffer, Ronald Klain, as a sort of “epidemic czar” inside the White House, clearly stipulated the roles and budgets of various agencies, and placed incident commanders in charge in each Ebola-hit country and inside the United States. The orchestra may have still had its off-key instruments, but it played the same tune.

...

In the spring of 2018, the White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Under fire from both sides of the aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later. But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.

...

In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent, the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced.

...

In the absence of a formal structure, the government has resorted to improvisation. In practical terms, the U.S. government’s public health effort is led by Daniel Jernigan, the incident commander for the Wuhan coronavirus response at the CDC. Jernigan is responsible for convening meetings of the nation’s state health commissioners and briefing CDC Director Robert Redfield and his boss, Azar. Meanwhile, state-level health leaders told me that they have been sharing information with one another and deciding how best to prepare their medical and public health workers without waiting for instructions from federal leadership. The most important federal program for  local medical worker and hospital epidemic training, however, will run out of money in May, as Congress has failed to vote on its funding. The HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) is the bulwark between hospitals and health departments versus pandemic threats; last year HHS requested $2.58 billion, but Congress did not act.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/01/31/trump-weighs-tighter-china-travel-restrictions-response-coronavirus/
Trump weighs tighter China travel restrictions in response to coronavirus
Announcement could come as soon as Friday amid growing calls from GOP senators to restrict travel to and from China

The White House could announce even tighter travel restrictions to and from China as soon as Friday in response to the growing threat posed by the coronavirus, three senior administration officials said.

Tighter restrictions, or even an outright ban on all China travel, could formalize and broaden individual announcements that multiple airlines have already made. A number of lawmakers have been pressing the White House to make an announcement immediately.

The announcement could come by President Trump as soon as Friday afternoon, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to reveal internal deliberations. The officials stressed that no final decisions had been made and that restricting travel is one among a series of options under consideration for how to respond.

In an interview late Thursday with Fox News Channel, Trump said: “We’re dealing very closely with China. We’ll be making certain announcements over the next 24 hours and 48 hours. And we are in great shape. China is not in great shape right now, unfortunately. But they’re working very hard. We’ll see what happens. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries.”

[GeorgiaModerate]

American Airlines and Delta have suspended all flights between the U.S. and mainland China.  United has suspended all but one daily flight between Hong Kong and San Francisco.

[It’s so Joever]

So far outside of China, there are currently 0 foreign deaths but 130 cases.
This makes me believe one of these two scenarios is occurring.
1. The mortality rate is greatly overinflated due to the fact that China can’t properly screen patients with mild symptoms/they aren’t showing up to hospitals.
2. The disease takes a while to become severe, but eventually does get progressively worse.

I hope 1 is the case, but we may have to wait and see (as sh**tty as it is)

[Florida Man for Crime]

Article by Obama's former Ebola Czar:

Coronavirus Is Coming—And Trump Isn’t Ready

In order to combat the disease, the president will have to trust the kind of government experts he has disdained and dismissed.

The U.S. government has the tools, talent, and team to help fight the coronavirus abroad and minimize its impact at home. But the combination of Trump’s paranoia toward experienced government officials (who lack “loyalty” to him), inattention to detail, opinionated rejection of science and evidence, and isolationist instincts may prove toxic when it comes to managing a global-health security challenge. To succeed, Trump will have to trust the kind of government experts he has disdained to date, set aside his own terrible instincts, lead from the White House, and work closely with foreign leaders and global institutions—all things he has failed to do in his first 1,200 days in office.

...

Azar’s own comments contained an interesting example of the costs of that absence of White House leadership. Azar said that the CDC had offered to send experts to China, to no avail. Not a surprising reaction to a request from the CDC to Chinese public-health officials. But why wasn’t this proposal made at a higher level, pressed in a call from Trump’s national-security adviser to his Chinese counterpart? Or perhaps even in a call from Trump himself to China’s President Xi Jinping?

Ultimately, the question may never be called on the coronavirus, which could be less of a threat than early indications suggest. But if so, that will be the virus’s choice, not Trump’s. If the crisis escalates, there will be no keeping it from the Oval Office and Trump’s direct intervention, for better or worse.

Five presidents—liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans—have looked to Tony Fauci for advice; it is not impossible to imagine Trump being the first to angrily dismiss the counsel he offers if it does not fit with his own poor instincts. A president who calls generals “babies and cowards” will have to sit face to face with experienced global-health-security professionals, and listen. He will have to put his isolationist biases and anti-science mind-set aside, and let expertise—not his personal inclinations or the political whims of his base—guide U.S. policy. He will have to trust bureaucrats, diplomats, career staff, and agency appointees who are not on Team MAGA.

[Meclazine for Israel]

So far outside of China, there are currently 0 foreign deaths but 130 cases.
This makes me believe one of these two scenarios is occurring.
1. The mortality rate is greatly overinflated due to the fact that China can’t properly screen patients with mild symptoms/they aren’t showing up to hospitals.
2. The disease takes a while to become severe, but eventually does get progressively worse.

I hope 1 is the case, but we may have to wait and see (as sh**tty as it is)

Despite having a mortality rate of 9%, the only victims of SARS were from China and Hong Kong.

No deaths in the Western World.

This appears very similar, but the mortality rate is around 2%.

[GP270watch]

 Obama was savaged politically for the way he handled Ebola but he actually did the right thing by sending help and officials to contain it, as well as co-operating with other governments and health organizations.

 Trump's lizard brain and reactionary policy making could lead to a lot of problems.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Despite having a mortality rate of 9%, the only victims of SARS were from China and Hong Kong.

No deaths in the Western World.

This appears very similar, but the mortality rate is around 2%.

Not true, i.e. 43 deaths in Canada from SARS and a 17% fatality rate, higher than in China.

As for this virus, the mortality rate cannot yet be reliably known. It might be 2%. It might be less. It might also be higher than 2%, although I think this is less likely than that it is lower.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

https://twitter.com/EamonJavers/status/1223348128700682241

[It’s so Joever]

So far outside of China, there are currently 0 foreign deaths but 130 cases.
This makes me believe one of these two scenarios is occurring.
1. The mortality rate is greatly overinflated due to the fact that China can’t properly screen patients with mild symptoms/they aren’t showing up to hospitals.
2. The disease takes a while to become severe, but eventually does get progressively worse.

I hope 1 is the case, but we may have to wait and see (as sh**tty as it is)

Despite having a mortality rate of 9%, the only victims of SARS were from China and Hong Kong.

No deaths in the Western World.

This appears very similar, but the mortality rate is around 2%.

Well let’s hope this is the case, but it’s too early to tell.

[Skill and Chance]

So far outside of China, there are currently 0 foreign deaths but 130 cases.
This makes me believe one of these two scenarios is occurring.
1. The mortality rate is greatly overinflated due to the fact that China can’t properly screen patients with mild symptoms/they aren’t showing up to hospitals.
2. The disease takes a while to become severe, but eventually does get progressively worse.

I hope 1 is the case, but we may have to wait and see (as sh**tty as it is)

Despite having a mortality rate of 9%, the only victims of SARS were from China and Hong Kong.

No deaths in the Western World.

This appears very similar, but the mortality rate is around 2%.

Well let’s hope this is the case, but it’s too early to tell.

I think China is covering up the mortality rate to some degree.  For example, it would be very plausible the actual rate is 3-5%, comparable to the 1918 Spanish Flu.  However it also seems implausible that it's anything like the 30-50% of the famous classical plagues. 

[Beet]

You are not. Unless you define your group of patients as the group of patients that died or recovered on day X. The CFR for that group is completely uninformative overall unless, again, you make the assumption that death is equally likely at every day post infection and additionally assume that recovery is equally likely at every day post infection.

True, but that objection is a case for not having a CFR at all, not an alternative measure of CFR against mine. Since all alternative measures also assume things about the time distribution curve of likelihood of recovery. My assumption is the simplest. The real question is whether having flawed numbers is better than having none; I think partial numbers are marginally better as long as you know where it's coming from and that it's just a rough estimate snapshot at a given point in time.

We do not have the exact numbers no. What we do have is the knowledge that looking at hospitalised cases is an overestimation. Because we can not quantify exactly by how much this is an overestimation doesn't mean we can completely ignore that and pretend our overestimation is correct.

You are forgetting cases that have died but never recorded. Hence we don't really know if it's an overestimation or underestimation.

I can find no information whatsoever either in WHO reports, or the scientific literature, saying anything about mutation rates. In fact, an article published today on the site of Nature (I can not include links, the title is "Coronavirus outbreak: what’s next?", you should be able to google it.) discusses the possibility of mutation and it's possible impact on lethality. It basically dismisses that as a serious concern. If this had already happened, I would expect the article to mention that. If you have any serious sources supporting the "mutation rate" please link them.

Here is one (It seems that it mutates faster because its genetic information is stored in RNA):

Meanwhile, a senior researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was not involved in the new study, told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday that the new strain was an RNA virus, meaning that its mutation speed was 100 times faster than that of a DNA virus such as smallpox. RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecules are simpler than DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) molecules.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3047114/coronavirus-weaker-sars-may-share-link-bats-chinese-scientists

Can you reconcile 20% of reported cases being severe with 50% of infected patients dying? Or maybe you should consider that either your methodology or data is faulty.

Well the theory is that death takes time, and the patient gradually goes from mild to severe to death.
Edit: For instance, the number of serious to critical patients in Hubei Province, where Wuhan is located, has risen 42% in the past day alone.