COVID-19 Mega thread

[Dr. Arch]

A case has been confirmed at UW-Madison. 

[Florida Man for Crime]

Also how fast can a vaccine/effective antiviral regimen (Thailand apparently found something promising) be developed and how fast can it be scaled?

Regarding the availability of relevant drugs (whether antivirals or potential future vaccines), a lot of the manufacturing capacity for intermediate requirements for producing drugs is in China. The US government ought to be taking measures NOW to ensure that sufficient supplies of those (as well as other things like surgical masks) can be produced quickly in large quantities in the USA if need be.

The funny thing is that one would think that that would be exactly the sort of thing that Trump would want to to do. And in this case, there is actually a very good national security/health security reason to actually do it. There has been no sign of this so far, however.

More broadly, there is a strong argument for government intervention to ensure supplies of various essential inputs that bear on security and directly relate to the ability to protect American lives in all manner of potential future crises are/can be produced in the USA, and I would hope that this would be a wake-up call to do something about that.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Thursday 6 Feb 2020

Cases: 27,664
99.5% of today's new cases were located in China (3,098)

Deaths: 564

Mortality Rate: 2.04%

Wednesday (2.06%)
Tuesday (2.07%)
Monday (2.08%)
Sunday (2.09%)
Saturday (2.17%)
Friday (2.13%)

Graph from Wednesday 6 Feb 2020



Looks to be solely a China-centric virus. Excellent quarantine procedures outside China.

17 new international cases yesterday. 17 international recoveries yesterday. Net increase = 0.

Total US cases = 12 (out of 27,664).

[Skill and Chance]

Also how fast can a vaccine/effective antiviral regimen (Thailand apparently found something promising) be developed and how fast can it be scaled?

Regarding the availability of relevant drugs (whether antivirals or potential future vaccines), a lot of the manufacturing capacity for intermediate requirements for producing drugs is in China. The US government ought to be taking measures NOW to ensure that sufficient supplies of those (as well as other things like surgical masks) can be produced quickly in large quantities in the USA if need be.

The funny thing is that one would think that that would be exactly the sort of thing that Trump would want to to do. And in this case, there is actually a very good national security/health security reason to actually do it. There has been no sign of this so far, however.

More broadly, there is a strong argument for government intervention to ensure supplies of various essential inputs that bear on security and directly relate to the ability to protect American lives in all manner of potential future crises are/can be produced in the USA, and I would hope that this would be a wake-up call to do something about that.

To clarify, while Thai doctors applied multiple existing antivirals in a way that appears to have saved at least one patient's life, they have not developed new antiviral drugs or a vaccine. 

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Also how fast can a vaccine/effective antiviral regimen (Thailand apparently found something promising) be developed and how fast can it be scaled?

Regarding the availability of relevant drugs (whether antivirals or potential future vaccines), a lot of the manufacturing capacity for intermediate requirements for producing drugs is in China. The US government ought to be taking measures NOW to ensure that sufficient supplies of those (as well as other things like surgical masks) can be produced quickly in large quantities in the USA if need be.

The funny thing is that one would think that that would be exactly the sort of thing that Trump would want to to do. And in this case, there is actually a very good national security/health security reason to actually do it. There has been no sign of this so far, however.

This would involve a degree of competence, something that Trump and his Banana Republicans are utterly incapable of.


Also, remember, Mr. Trump "thinks" (insofar as the mass of human-derived orange protoplasm worshipped by the modern GOP is capable of thought) that his "genius" administration has successfully "shut down" the coronavirus outbreak in the US. Perhaps we'll get lucky, he'll forget that he already solved it, and we and won't end up with a situation where Americans are dying on the street of a pandemic the administration refuses to acknowledge.


Remember, this is still the same bunch of incompetent light-switch flippers who fired the entire pandemic response chain of command two years ago.

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.

The professionals at the CDC are doing their best to respond, but they don't seem to be getting any actual help from the White House thus far. (Post updates if you have any, please.)

[Florida Man for Crime]

To clarify, while Thai doctors applied multiple existing antivirals in a way that appears to have saved at least one patient's life, they have not developed new antiviral drugs or a vaccine. 

Yeah, there have been other cases of that. In the US they gave the patient in Washington State antivirals that seemed anecdotally to maybe help, and likewise in other places (with clinincal trials being conducted in China).

[Florida Man for Crime]

Looks to be solely a China-centric virus. Excellent quarantine procedures outside China

You can't really conclude that for a few reasons:

1) Because that is not how exponential growth works.
2) Because if there are more cases internationally, they are less likely to be immediately detected, because screening in many countries (for example the USA) is only limited to people who have been to China recently (or in some cases to Wuhan recently, depending on country). For example, if someone from Japan brought the virus to the US, they wouldn't even be tested for it currently. Hence if and when human to human transmission starts in the rest of the world, it is likely that a fair amount of it will end up going undetected for a while until suddenly a noticeable increase in the # of patients with pneumonia pops up in a certain geographical location and they finally test it there.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Looks to be solely a China-centric virus. Excellent quarantine procedures outside China

You can't really conclude that for a few reasons:

1) Because that is not how exponential growth works.
2) Because if there are more cases internationally, they are less likely to be immediately detected, because screening in many countries (for example the USA) is only limited to people who have been to China recently (or in some cases to Wuhan recently, depending on country).

Excellent analysis as always. I am limiting my analysis and opinions until I see a mathematical fit to the curves.

The key stage now that I am working on is putting together an interpretable dataset which makes sense. Don't rely on the media for any reasonable analysis.



The case graph is not exponential just yet. It is trending towards a flat line on a logarithmic plot.

And you are right in this and your previous analysis on the 'missing' unreported cases. Once that is added to the dataset, then the mortality rate decreases significantly. It really depends on the "undetected" rate.

6 Feb Thursday 2.04%
5 Feb Wednesday (2.06%)
4 Feb Tuesday (2.07%)
3 Feb Monday (2.08%)
2 Feb Sunday (2.09%)
1 Feb Saturday (2.17%)
31 Jan Friday (2.13%)

The mortality rate shows a time based relationship that is holding up.

[Beet]

I have never seen top American health officials so negative about a virus.

"It almost certainly is going to be a pandemic," says Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"A pandemic seems inevitable," writes FDA commisioner & chief scientist Scott Gottlieb & Luciana Borio.

"We’re basically at a pandemic now," says Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic's vaccine research group.

"It's increasingly unlikely that the virus can be contained," says Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control.

Gottlieb and Borio particularly, expect that there are already more unknown than confirmed cases running around in the U.S. undetected. They make the sensible recommendation that local health centers instead of the CDC only, should be equipped to test anyone with unexplained pneumonia (and test negative for bacterial pneumonia or known viruses) via PCR testing. They expect local clusters of unexplained pneumonia to start showing up within communities soon, which will be the first sign. However, they are hopeful that warmer spring and summer weather will slow the transmission of the virus.

Stock market rise.

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.

Death rate.

Three days ago, 362 died, 487 recovered. Today, 565 died, 1,171 recovered. The average death rate since then is 23%.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Gonna just copy this over from Reddit -



Neil Ferguson (one of researchers from original Imperial paper) -- up to 50k infections per day in China

youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALQTdCYGISw&feature=youtu.be

tweet with clip: https://twitter.com/MRC_Outbreak/status/1225146256558870531

update # 1

Summary --

- surveillance picking up in China, right now 10% or less infections being detected

- overseas, we may be detecting only a quarter of current infections

- estimate up to 50k occurring in China

- most efficient interventions -- mentions lack of vaccine, testing of anti-virals, identifying as many cases as possible as early as possible - whether such measures will be effective in this case remains to be seen

- next few weeks will tell us about likelihood of control measures working

update # 2

MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis says that details relating to the video will be published soon and to keep an eye on their Twitter (@MRC_Outbreak) and this page: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/news--wuhan-coronavirus/

If the Chinese cases being 10% of the actual total and the international ones being 25% of the actual total are in roughly the right ballpark, that is good news in terms of the fatality rate (lowers it) but bad news in terms in terms of the transmissability and the possibility of containing it. Given that I haven't thought it could be contained for a while now, I will hope that the detection rate is at least that low (hopefully lower) and hope that gives us a lower fatality rate.

[Beet]

Gonna just copy this over from Reddit -



Neil Ferguson (one of researchers from original Imperial paper) -- up to 50k infections per day in China

youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALQTdCYGISw&feature=youtu.be

tweet with clip: https://twitter.com/MRC_Outbreak/status/1225146256558870531

update # 1

Summary --

- surveillance picking up in China, right now 10% or less infections being detected

- overseas, we may be detecting only a quarter of current infections

- estimate up to 50k occurring in China

- most efficient interventions -- mentions lack of vaccine, testing of anti-virals, identifying as many cases as possible as early as possible - whether such measures will be effective in this case remains to be seen

- next few weeks will tell us about likelihood of control measures working

update # 2

MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis says that details relating to the video will be published soon and to keep an eye on their Twitter (@MRC_Outbreak) and this page: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/news--wuhan-coronavirus/

If the Chinese cases being 10% of the actual total and the international ones being 25% of the actual total are in roughly the right ballpark, that is good news in terms of the fatality rate (lowers it) but bad news in terms in terms of the transmissability and the possibility of containing it. Given that I haven't thought it could be contained for a while now, I will hope that the detection rate is at least that low (hopefully lower) and hope that gives us a lower fatality rate.

Ehh not necessarily it could just mean there are a lot of people lying dead in their homes that haven't been discovered.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Just to provide a little perspective to all this, here's some info from the CDC on this year's flu season:

CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 19 million flu illnesses, 180,000 hospitalizations and 10,000 deaths from flu. Flu vaccine effectiveness estimates are not available yet this season, but vaccination is always the best way to prevent flu and its potentially serious complications.

[Grassroots]

I'm a little uninformed on this. Does anyone know the fatality rate? Age a factor? Etc.

[Skill and Chance]

Just to provide a little perspective to all this, here's some info from the CDC on this year's flu season:

CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 19 million flu illnesses, 180,000 hospitalizations and 10,000 deaths from flu. Flu vaccine effectiveness estimates are not available yet this season, but vaccination is always the best way to prevent flu and its potentially serious complications.

This is true.  But there is a vaccine for the flu, and it's easily available to just about everyone in the US at little or no cost. 

Also, the flu is one of the most dangerous contagious diseases commonly encountered in developed countries, dangerous enough that getting a flu shot every year meaningfully increases your life expectancy.  Apples and oranges.  There's no vaccine for this virus yet and it appears to be substantially deadlier than the flu once someone gets sick. 

[Skill and Chance]

I'm a little uninformed on this. Does anyone know the fatality rate? Age a factor? Etc.

Approx. 2% fatality rate in the official data, advanced age appears to be a major factor, and possibly sex as well, as fatalities appear to be >2/3rds male.

There is reason to take the data coming out of mainland China with a huge grain of salt.  We are starting to see a significant number of cases in countries that are not authoritarian now, so we should soon have a sense of how accurate the data out of China is based on how those patients fare.  So far no patient has died in a wealthy democracy.   

Important Edit: There have been no fatalities in wealthy democracies.  A prior version incorrectly said "all" where it now says "no".  I meant to write "all patients have survived."

[Gass3268]

A case has been confirmed at UW-Madison. 

They allowed the person to go home, so they aren't too worried.

[Meclazine for Israel]

I'm a little uninformed on this. Does anyone know the fatality rate? Age a factor? Etc.

Yes.

71% of cases are male.
75% of all fatalities have been in Wuhan.

Fatality rate of active cases:

Wuhan 4.9%
Hubei Province: 3.1%
Rest of China 0.16%
Rest of the World: Not enough population stats to form a meaningful number.

Average age of victims is 57.

It would appear that this virus does not kill the victim. It simply weakens the immune system dramatically when it gets into the lungs, whereby vulnerable people are then susceptible to viral pneumonia. People of old age, diabetes, weakened immune response etc.

Growth rate of international cases yesterday was zero. The number of people who recovered (17) matched the number of new cases (17).

But Hubei province in China had over 3,000 new cases.

[Skill and Chance]

I'm a little uninformed on this. Does anyone know the fatality rate? Age a factor? Etc.

Yes.

71% of cases are male.

Fatality rate:

Wuhan 4.9%
Hubei Province: 3.1%
Rest of China 0.16%
Rest of the World: Not enough population stats to form a meaningful number.

Average age of victims is 57.

It would appear that this virus does not kill the victim. It simply weakens the immune system dramatically when it gets into the lungs, whereby vulnerable people are then susceptible to viral pneumonia. People of old age, diabetes, weakened immune response etc.

Growth rate of international cases yesterday was zero. The number of people who recovered (17) matched the number of new cases (17).

But Hubei province in China had over 3,000 new cases.

That could be about quality of/stress on the health care system.  Do we know if most of the international cases are still sick today?

[Meclazine for Israel]

I'm a little uninformed on this. Does anyone know the fatality rate? Age a factor? Etc.

Yes.

71% of cases are male.

Fatality rate:

Wuhan 4.9%
Hubei Province: 3.1%
Rest of China 0.16%
Rest of the World: Not enough population stats to form a meaningful number.

Average age of victims is 57.

It would appear that this virus does not kill the victim. It simply weakens the immune system dramatically when it gets into the lungs, whereby vulnerable people are then susceptible to viral pneumonia. People of old age, diabetes, weakened immune response etc.

Growth rate of international cases yesterday was zero. The number of people who recovered (17) matched the number of new cases (17).

But Hubei province in China had over 3,000 new cases.

That could be about quality of/stress on the health care system.  Do we know if most of the international cases are still sick today?

You probably have a point. I simply dont know.

The Chinese population density might also be a factor.

But the spread overseas will, according to my predictions, actually decrease in cases shortly.

[Dr. Arch]

A case has been confirmed at UW-Madison. 

They allowed the person to go home, so they aren't too worried.

They allowed the person to go home BEFORE knowing it was corona (while they waited for test results). It was insanely irresponsible. Let's hope the patient followed through and stayed home.

[Meclazine for Israel]

People in Australia profiteering from Corona-virus.



Disappointing that a box of these is normally $50. Now on eBay at $3,500.00 with a message that actually says

"COMPLETE COVER FROM ALL KINDS OF VIRUSES GET YOURS BEFORE IT RUNS OUT"

 

[dead0man]

one person is TRYING to make an extreme profit.  I just checked Amazon for Australia, they don't have any masks available at any price (which I assume means there aren't any available at local stores either).  And the ones that will be available next week/month are stupid expensive (though not $3500 for 50).

cite

[Beet]

Dr. Li Wenliang, who originally reported coronavirus in December 2019, is reported dead of the virus. This is the most bizarre and unusual news yet to come out of this entire story thus far. Consider that earlier this month, China told the WHO (or it was reported elsewhere):

• The death rate is 2% (Also commonly cited by authorities and mainstream outlets)
• 80% of deaths are over age 60
• 75% had underlying diseases
• Thailand, Washington State & Chinese doctors all found medicines that supposedly helped dramatically

If this is the case, if you get the disease, you supposedly have a 2% chance of dying. Of those 2% who die, four parts out of five are over 60, so if you are under 60 you would have to be one of those 1 part out of 5 to die. Further, if you are under 40, the chances must be even smaller. Further, if you have no underlying disease, the chance is smaller still. The chance of a 34 year old healthy man, who is a high profile figure sympathetically regarded nationally & surely by medical & judicial authorities, and receiving medical treatment, dying, is supposedly abjectly low, well below 1%. That leaves a number of possibilities:

1) He was very, very, very, very, very unlucky. While possible, this would be a remarkable coincidence, as he is only one of a handful of very high profile cases in the world. He is one of the few people in all of China whose death cannot be covered up.

2) The mortality rate is a lot higher than 2%. That would be in line with the 23% I posted yesterday.

3) The government deliberately killed him to somehow punish him for whistleblowing. While I heard some people (morbidly) hoping this to be true due to what it would imply about the CFR, what this implies about the government's intent & what else they are suppressing is perhaps even more terrifying.

4) He had an underlying disease that has not been reported. It is possible, but he looks quite healthy in photos. Plus, he was an active doctor.

One other thing is extremely strange about the official story of his case. He first noticed symptoms on January 10 and was in the hospital by January 13. Between then and now is 3 weeks. Current CFR that are lower than mine depend on an assumption about the time frame of death, that it occurs relatively quickly, whereas recovery takes longer. If this doctor was ill for 3 weeks and died at the end of this period, it suggests those assumptions are off.

There is yet another very bizarre and strange facet of this case. It is reported that he tested negative for the virus several times before finally testing positive around January 30. There was another case of a woman in Hong Kong who tested negative, then positive later. The same is true of a case in Canada. This could lead to the very disturbing possibility that the virus can live at such low traces that it cannot be picked up by current testing methods. People could be testing negative & then being released falsely.

The second, somewhat more reassuring possibility is that he originally simply had pneumonia, but caught coronavirus in the hospital. However the problem with this is that it contradicts the official story, which is quite specific: He got it from a woman he was treating for glaucoma. Further, if this was true it would be known because he would have tested positive for either bacteria infection or other known viral pneumonia.

In sum, the death of Dr. Li Wenliang raises a number of problems and for the first time I am afraid,

A) The government is not being nearly as straightforward as I had thought, and/or

B) The mortality rate is higher than thought, and/or

C) The virus is, unknown to us, undetectable even by existing common methods of nucleic acid testing

[atheist4thecause]

I really wish the fearmongering about the Novel Coronavirus would stop. We're up to what...like 12 cases now? The CDC has been well-prepared from the beginning. The virus doesn't even spread that easily. The main reason it did spread was because it started in such a population-dense area. The virus was unknown for awhile, the Chinese government covered it up for a bit, and so then the world was a little behind. But after that, strong measures were taken to stop the spread and while being seemingly more deadly than the common cold, it still isn't very deadly.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Friday 7 Feb 2020

Cases: 30,827
99.3% of today's new cases were located in China (2,533)

Deaths: 635

Mortality Rate: 2.06%

Thursday (2.04%)
Wednesday (2.06%)
Tuesday (2.07%)
Monday (2.08%)
Sunday (2.09%)
Saturday (2.17%)
Friday (2.13%)

Graph from Thursday 6 Feb 2020



80% of victims were aged above 60, and 75% of victims had pre-existing conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular issues, immune system issues.

The number of people cured outside China (21) is now greater than the number of new cases outside China (18).

But as the Impartial Spectator mentioned previously, exponential growth still exists within China as evidenced in the graphs.

Everything is as predicted and following the maths.

Statistically speaking, if you are in the Western World, you are more likely to die from these causes of death rather than Corona-virus:

1. Accidental contact with powered lawnmower;
2. Falls involving ice skates, skis or skateboards;
3. Falling from a tree;
4. Contact with agricultural machinery;
5. Heart attack during love making.