International COVID-19 Megathread

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

LOL @ the mayor of Wuhan.

He doesn't even know how many people are in his city.

Wuhan has 11 million people, not 14 million.

Wikipedia is blocked in China. He simply lacked info.

[PSOL]

Death toll rises to 81 as the Trump Administration offers aide to the Chinese efforts at containing the impact

Here are some national responses that involve evacuating people out of China

[100% pro-life no matter what]

While 80 people have died, only 59 have actually recovered and been released from hospital according to the statistics.

Here is a take on this from the flutrackers forum:

Now 2500+ confirmed cases in China with 80 deaths....and 51 discharges. 51. Really? That doesn't even seem possible. How could they have had so few discharges? It becomes even worse when you consider that 28 of the first 41 cases have been discharged, so only 23 other people have recovered from this virus in all of China? I can think of a few possibilities:

1. This virus is much more severe than reported. This seems unlikely, given that Nepal has discharged its case, Japan has discharged at least one, and Thailand has discharged 5 of 8. This wouldn't be happening if this virus really had anywhere near the 60% CFR that is computed using only cases that have resolved.
2. China is keeping most recovered patients in the hospital as a precaution because they're not really sure that they're not carrying the virus.
3. The case definition or the testing regime in China are so fouled up that in order to be confirmed, you have to be so sick that you really have a 60% chance of dying. If this is true, it means that 1500 people are going to die from this virus in the next week. I think this is probably unlikely as well, but possible.
4. China is massaging the numbers to under report the total case count by replacing each discharge with a new case, keeping the total number hospitalized correct, but not having to report the new case. The problem with this explanation is that if there are only 23 of these other recoveries in China, at some point someone would find 24+ survivors of the virus (on Weibo?) and severely damage China's credibility.
5. A slightly more severe version of #4: So many people are ill that authorities cannot keep track of which patients are confirmed and which are not, so they can't accurately report the discharge of confirmed cases.
6. You can't discharge a case if you never hospitalize it. Late in the 2003 SARS outbreak, when the number of actual confirmed ill cases worldwide had dropped to a few dozen, the USA count of ill suspected cases began to exceed the actual number of confirmed cases worldwide. The CDC was reporting about 75 suspected cases with only about 30 discharges. It took a few weeks to determine that the US was only reporting a case as discharged if it had actually been hospitalized. Cases that were so mild that they didn't need to be hospitalized (in this case, because they weren't SARS) had been excluded from the discharge count. The CDC in 2003 made a sudden adjustment once this was detected, and the US discharge count jumped up from 30 to about 70, bringing its numbers in line with the world. Perhaps China's nCoV discharge count will make a similar jump in coming days.

Personally, I'm guessing #2, followed closely behind by #4 or #5. Right now, this anomaly is worsening by the day and prevents any attempt to calculate a CFR for this virus.

There could be one other option:

-The illness peaks quickly, and death (if fatal) comes relatively early in the course of the illness, but it takes survivors a while to fully recover.  Maybe different countries are using different standards of what is no longer "sick".

[urutzizu]

First Case in Germany. Man in the Munich Suburb of Starnberg. He has been quarantined. This was likely only a matter of time. Am not to concerned though, the Virus does not seem to spread well in European conditions (Climate/Pop. Density/Differences in Hygiene esp. regarding Food); after the 3 Cases in France there have been no further reports of Infections despite numerous tests, although of course the Virus could spread dormant. Being Asian in Germany, my excitement for even more Virus jokes everytime I sneeze Tomorrow can barely be contained.

https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/erster-coronavirus-fall-in-deutschland-bestaetigt-in-starnberg,Rop54ft

[urutzizu]

Four Cases in Germany now. All employees of Webasto, a German company with Operations in China. The Spreader was a Chinese Colleague from visiting from Shanghai (with parents from Wuhan), who at the time did not feel sick or carry any symptoms and has only shown them since returning. This is pretty concerning because it means that multiple human-to-human transmissions during the Incubation stage in a European environment have taken place, and contradicts my hypothesis from earlier.

Heat screening and other detection methods at Airports are therefore pretty useless. The only way to actually be able to stop the Virus it seems, would be to suspend Travel with China completely, although that is an unlikely and disproportionate step. Hong Kong and Taiwan have gone in that Direction, though not completely.

https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/coronavirus-drei-weitere-infizierte-in-bayern,Roto17s

[President Johnson]

It's probably going across the globe and, even if mortality rate is low, keep us busy for several months or even years. I don't think this will fade away quickly.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

It's probably going across the globe and, even if mortality rate is low, keep us busy for several months or even years. I don't think this will fade away quickly.

I think that is pretty clearly correct. I am not in any way an epidemiologist, but from what I can see it looks to me like the best case scenario is it ends up similar to the 2009-2010 H1N1 "Swine Flu" that spread everywhere and infected a significant share of the world population, but which fortunately had a low fatality rate. To whatever degree the fatality rate might be higher though, it seems like it could be worse than that.

IMO the best thing to hope for at this point is not that it will be contained (doesn't seem realistically possible at this point, though it can be slowed down), but that the fatality rate turns out to be low. In order for the fatality rate to be as low as possible, we have to hope that there are as large a # as possible of cases that have light symptoms and don't require hospitalization, so that the fatality rate out of total cases turns out to be low. So personally I am hoping that the Chinese statistics are under-reporting true cases not just by a little, but by a LOT at this point. The more the better.

Also we can hope that things will be streamlined and that maybe a vaccine can be developed in less than a year's time or so.

[super6646]

https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/1222293526232412160

Time to panic?

[StateBoiler]

https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/1222293526232412160

Time to panic?

I don't understand why the WHO didn't declare this a global emergency a week ago unless it was political to not piss off the Chinese. This thing is global at this point at least in terms of cases if not deaths (for those I think it's just too early, there's a case in France that's reported to be intensive care). For global the case of the 4 Germans that got infected by their co-worker from Wuhan is just damning, not in the sense of people should've known but it demonstrates they aren't going to be able to put a lid on this. The quarantines were too late to work. 3 out of the 206 people the Japanese extracted of their nationals they confirmed had coronavirus, and 2 were showing no symptoms.

Here in the U.S. we got a Super Bowl this weekend. It's going to involve a lot of transnational travel from people all over the country. I'm sure one person there conversing with everyone else has had close contact with a person from Wuhan: it's a small very interconnected world nowadays.

Putting aside the virus aspects, the trailing economic (mostly bad) and climate (good, due to part of the world transportation system getting shut down for a period of time) effects of this crisis will make interesting case studies.

[Tender Branson]

4 suspected cases in Austria so far, all 4 tested negative.

Meanwhile 1 confirmed case in Finland, 4 in Bavaria and 4 in France.

[Middle-aged Europe]

In popular culture, Steven Soderbergh's (somewhat average) pandemic thriller Contagion from 2011 has a late resurgence on iTunes:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jan/30/what-can-we-learn-about-coronavirus-from-watching-contagion

[Tender Branson]

In popular culture, Steven Soderbergh's (somewhat average) pandemic thriller Contagion from 2011 has a late resurgence on iTunes:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jan/30/what-can-we-learn-about-coronavirus-from-watching-contagion

The 1995 movie "Outbreak" is also pretty good - but it's more like an Ebola-style virus hitting the USA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreak_(film)

[StateBoiler]

The case in Chicago passed on coronavirus to the spouse. So first case here of a person that had not been to China.

[It’s so Joever]

I think the only piece of “good” news left is that no one outside of China has died, and even that is likely to change soon. The next few months will suck for everyone.

[super6646]

WHO declares global emergency. Probably like a week too f***ing late, but that is always the UN's MO.

[StateBoiler]

WHO declares global emergency. Probably like a week too f***ing late, but that is always the UN's MO.

The Chinese must've silently vetoed it a week ago by how the WHO Director-General phrased the statement:

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, announced the decision after a meeting of its Emergency Committee, an independent panel of experts, amid mounting evidence of the virus spreading to some 18 countries.

Tedros told a news conference in Geneva that recent weeks have witnessed an unprecedented outbreak which has been met by an unprecedented response.

"Let me be clear, this declaration is not a vote of no confidence in China," he said.

"Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems," he added.

Why would declaring this a global emergency be a vote of no confidence in China?

[PSOL]

StateBoiler, it be best if you link that article

[StateBoiler]

Why would declaring this a global emergency be a vote of no confidence in China?

Because declaring it a global emergency means that China cannot contain it within their own borders. Which means their government is incapable, etc etc

Don't really view it that way. First, it was shown a week ago it wasn't contained inside their borders. Second, the fact a new virus no one has seen before has spread rapidly is hardly the fault of the government (trading in wild animals at a market which created this is something else entirely).

[PSOL]

200 dead in China as the US advises against travel

Outbreaks of xenophobia in west as coronavirus spreads

first human transmission in Thailand as Russia and UK confirm cases

[Tender Branson]

3 new suspected cases here in Salzburg (an elderly woman who visited Beijing and 2 younger Chinese tourists).

1 suspected case in Carinthia.

[Woody]

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/31/economy/china-economy-coronavirus/index.html

China may have to cut taxes, boost spending and slash interest rates to prevent the coronavirus outbreak wreaking havoc on an already fragile economy.

The economic impact of the virus is still impossible to determine, but one state media outlet and some economists have said that China's growth rate could drop two percentage points this quarter because of the outbreak, which has brought large parts of the country to a standstill. A decline on that scale could mean $62 billion in lost growth.

China can ill afford that kind of hit. Growth last year was already the country's weakest in nearly three decades, as China contended with rising debt and the fallout from its trade war with the United States.

[Tender Branson]

Good.

Hopefully it also leads to civil unrest and the destruction of the dictatorial regime.

[Tender Branson]

According to the Green Health Ministry, there are already 30 suspected cases in Austria - of which all were tested negative so far.

Currently, 5 additional cases are awaiting test results.

https://kurier.at/chronik/oesterreich/coronavirus-erster-verdachtsfall-in-vorarlberg/400742868

[super6646]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51338899

Do something Canada...

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I'm temporarily sticking it.