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From the New York Times:
Coronavirus Slowdown in Seattle Suggests Restrictions Are Working
Officials in Washington State worry that their gains are precarious, but they see evidence that containment strategies have lowered the rate of virus transmission.
By Mike Baker
March 29, 2020SEATTLE — The Seattle area, home of the first known coronavirus case in the United States and the place where the virus claimed 37 of its first 50 victims, is now seeing evidence that strict containment strategies, imposed in the earliest days of the outbreak, are beginning to pay off — at least for now.
Deaths are not rising as fast as they are in other states. Dramatic declines in street traffic show that people are staying home. Hospitals have so far not been overwhelmed. And preliminary statistical models provided to public officials in Washington State suggest that the spread of the virus has slowed in the Seattle area in recent days.
While each infected person was spreading the virus to an average of 2.7 other people earlier in March, that number appears to have dropped, with one projection suggesting that it was now down to 1.4. …
The problem is that 1.4 is still bad: a typical flu has an R0 of about 1.3, and flus spread rapidly. As I pointed out 3 weeks ago, we need to crush the curve below 1.0.
The progress is precarious, and the data, which was still being analyzed and has yet to be published, is uncertain. Officials said that expansive social distancing policies will remain a key part of daily life for weeks to come.
But the findings offer a measure of hope that the emergency measures that have disrupted life in much of the nation can be effective in slowing the spread of the disease. …
President Trump said on Sunday that the federal government’s guidelines for social distancing would remain in place until April 30, backing down from his previous comments that he hoped the country could go back to work by Easter. …
While the restrictions have apparently helped slow the virus, they have devastated businesses, in particular restaurants and hotels.
… Washington state, which enacted some of the nation’s earliest and most stringent containment policies, has continued to see its death toll climb: The state recorded 23 deaths on Friday, the most in a single day since the outbreak began; 16 were in King County, which includes Seattle. …
The death toll has been doubling about every eight days in Washington, compared with every two or three days in New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Louisiana.
Doubling every eight days is still really bad, but it’s progress.
According to what I’ve heard, hospitals are also seeing lower rates of patients coming in with pneumonia and flu, which is the sort of by-effect you’d get if all contagious diseases are having their transmission reduced.
How on earth have they been able to determine the 2.7 and 1.4 numbers from the very limited data they had?
Birx says that even in the New York City area only 1 in 1000 are infected.
The number of New Yorkers infected us closer to 1% not 1 in 1000 but 1 in 100 today.
Birx is referencing the 36,000 who have Tested positive for Coronavirus .... but everyone must realize the actual number of New Yorkers infected is over 400,000 today, unless the death rate is much higher than 1%. How else can we explain the 800 deaths this week in the NY Metro area? Death takes 21 days after being infected.....so the 800 victims contracted the virus 3 weeks ago.....the 200,000 who contracted the virus two weeks ago will start succumbing to it in next week when deaths will be more than double this weeks deaths...
This stuff is spreading quicker than VD at Blanche Devereaux gangbang!
(Sorry, for some reason I’ve been watching Golden Girls clips and channeling Sophia).
Corona-chan’s enforcement of social isolation is causing the overall death rate to plummet in 2020:
COVID-19 Is Saving Lives
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/covid-19-saving-lives
https://twitter.com/SidSanghi/status/1244268782341799938
Corona-chan might not be such a bad waifu after all…
Unfortunately, even flattening the curve to zero won’t work as long as Covid-19 can be reintroduced to this country from another infected country. This means from almost every direction since just about every country on the planet has it by now.
I suspect that in a few weeks, most countries will adopt the measures of the Chinese. Just not talk about Covid-19 anymore why scooping up and disposing of the bodies for several months afterwards.
More like adopt the measures by Jared Kushner, medical genius. Great i-Steve content here.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/storage.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/27135425/2020-3-27-WH-Counsel-letter-PRA-FACA.pdf
Without widespread, accurate stochastic testing to determine the prevalence of asymptomatic infection among the public, isn’t flattening the curve kind of pointless, unless the people of Seattle are planning to shelter-in-place indefinitely?
If this thing is contagious in people for five days before they show symptoms, can’t one infected person start this entire circus up again after the restrictions are loosened? Or we going to wait until there are no positive cases, plus another three weeks or so? Because the herd immunity strategy and the flatten-the-curve strategy are mutually exclusive, right? What am I missing?
I’m not anti-containment—who knows how dangerous this thing will end up being?—but is anyone talking about the endgame? What’s the plan for getting out of social distancing, etc.?
I understand there are potential treatments to make carriers less contagious that might help tide us over.
Too long to reproduce here beyond an excerpt, but well worth reading.Professor Snowden clearly enjoys the protections of tenure.
However, our leaders have decided that flattening the curve would result in several million deaths and that this was unacceptable.
So we switched to what Wuhan did and are now trying "suppression", driving the transmission to near zero so the disease disappears long before a significant part of the population have it.
How we deal with re-infection and the entire circus starting again is "we'll cross the bridge when we get to it (but hey we just printed $2T dollars and we can do that every month so what are you worried about anyway and also old people LOVE being locked up in their houses and nursing homes with nobody visiting them so we're giving them more of what they want). Also shut up stop asking questions and do what you're told."
Elect a Democratic president and congress this November.
We'll declare a state of emergency every even-numbered year until we achieve our goal, at which point the annual flu will be ignored as usual.
Love,
The Democratic National Committee
This virus replicates mostly in the lung cells. How easily can it infect other people without the help of a cough or a sneeze?
But before massive roll out of those medicines can be done we need trials, to figure out how to administer then, and to whom, and at which part of the infection. These take time.
So repress until the numbers become acceptably low and *some* idea of treatment settles. Then test, test, test and trace,trace, trace. That way we can unlock again.
Yes, let’s all get very worked up over saving White liberals! OMG OMG!
Gotta nuke that curve!
I mean, the Really Smart People near the Canadian border have been so awesome to the rest of us.
(Note the Charles Murray types get their feelings hurt because the Fashionable Set – like this folks – don’t pat them on the head). But he’d be embarrassed to be seen with a regular White person.
Don’t look now, but Cuck Island is now a Protectorate of Hindustan:
OT, John Prine is in critical condition with Wuhan virus in Nashville per the Daily Mail.
Oh, and Prine was born in October, 1946.
Does America love the term “crack down” btw?
It is particulary ridiculous when applied in this context.
Nazis “crack down” on Jews. Police may possibly “crack down” on ghetto denizens. But the state should not “crack down” on visitors and businesses.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=new+york+cracks+down&ia=news
Besides asymptomatic carrier problem, there is also the possibility that the virus may go dormant and reactivate later, like Varicella Zoster (Chickenpox/shingles virus).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8163761/Chinese-markets-selling-bats.html
Deporting of every white male from US UK CAN AUS NZ from china cannot come fast enough, small brains from these countries are no help to the chinese,
It’s also a lagging indicator. A number i saw was 17 days from infection (or maybe even symptoms?) to death.
So the estimate of 1.4–if made from death rate–is what the measures/compliance on March 12 yielded. There is stricter isolation and more compliance now.
I’d really be surprised if the average infected person now is infecting >1 other person.
Note there is an additional delay here. The first person infected in a household will usually infect the other people in their household. But after that? Very unlikely everyone in that household is able to infect even one other person.
So what you may see a pattern like
— Day 0 — Measures put in place
— Day 15 — Death rate starts to react measures
— Day 16-20 Continues to do so but not dramatically
— Day 20-27 Some other people in households with previously infected are still trickling in
— Day 28-35 Death rate growth drops more dramatically, all the deaths from pre-measures infections and deaths from people in their households (whom the social isolation could not save) have rolled through and we are into the new regime.
Obviously there have been additional measures in steps and steps in compliance and of course “noise” from differing course of individual’s infections and differing household sizes. But the point is once a measure is in place it is still 15-20 days for that measure to start altering the death rate and a month–after compliance!–before the “before new measure” cases in infected households have all been counted.
I think in another few weeks you’ll see dramatic leveling of the death rate as the social isolation measures eventual work through these delays and manifest themselves.
That is sad.
I didn’t know John Prine had one of his lungs removed a few years ago as treatment for cancer. That was his second cancer diagnosis.
Birx says that even in the New York City area only 1 in 1000 are infected.
800 people in the New York Metro area have died from COVID-19 this week……if the death rate is 1% then there were 80,000 New Yorkers infected 3 weeks ago….must be 400,000 New Yorkers infected today which is much more than the 35,900 reported cases.
The number of New Yorkers infected us closer to 1% not 1 in 1000 but 1 in 100 today.
Birx is referencing the 36,000 who have Tested positive for Coronavirus …. but everyone must realize the actual number of New Yorkers infected is over 400,000 today, unless the death rate is much higher than 1%. How else can we explain the 800 deaths this week in the NY Metro area? Death takes 21 days after being infected…..so the 800 victims contracted the virus 3 weeks ago…..the 200,000 who contracted the virus two weeks ago will start succumbing to it in next week when deaths will be more than double this weeks deaths…
The French released a follow-up study about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. They say it’s still working well. After looking at the data, their patients are mostly middle-aged. I’m not sure this would work for the nursing home crowd.
https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/COVID-IHU-2-1.pdf
I’m in Seattle. Governor Inslee was catching a lot of flak waiting a week after California to order the shelter in place. Bars and restaurants were already closed. It took one last weekend of people going to parks and beaches before the hammer came down.
Half the workforce here, it feels like, was already told to go home before the stay home order. All the IT businesses (Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Expedia, etc.) seemed to have already done that. The last shoe to drop was Boeing. When they shut down, there was no reason for Inslee not to shut. down. everything.
The weather has been relatively crappy this weekend (windy and light rain), which has probably helped keep people relatively indoors. The first sunny days in the spring bring everybody out here.
It definitely is a bit like The Walking Dead. I’ve never seen the streets and freeways more clear. A lot of commercial businesses have their windows boarded up. Supposedly there is a rash of commercial burglaries going on, and signs saying “no money or valuables” are starting to appear on the front of closed businesses. I saw a bunch of kids at a skate park yesterday. Compliance and enforcement aren’t universal. The cops do though seem to be throwing a lot of bodies at whatever problems do crop up. Homeless and vagrants and prostitutes seem to still be skulking around doing whatever it is they do. I was at a medical clinic for something yesterday, and they didn’t seem to be swamped, though the full mask and hand sanitizer routine for everyone was in effect.
I’ve been hearing in Eastern Washington and elsewhere, nobody gets what all the fuss is about. It seems a million miles away to them, and they’re irritated about getting shut down too. Typical Eastern/Western Washington divide.
https://komonews.com/news/local/man-facing-charges-after-high-speed-chase-on-i-5-with-pit-bull-in-drivers-seat
John Prine is a folk singer who hates the kind of White people who have flag decals. He’s in his 70s, had cancer, and other health problems before. I’d assume any bug would cause him trouble.
Notice, that is the kind of White creep the boomer HBD crowd swoons over. They’d love a pat on the head from him.
Of course they are working. Restrictions always work. The issue in each particular case is “how well do they work?”
Just to be entirely clear here: Seattle gets R0 from maybe (big maybe!) of 2.7 to maybe (big maybe!) of 1.4. Good stuff! Alas, while there is no doubt that Seattle got R0 down, it is important to have 100% clarity that 1) the degree of suppression is still unclear, and 2) the suppression’s effects on daily life in the coming months remains very uncertain.
A lot of doctors in Washington state (and the rest of the country) jumped on the Didier Raoult treatment train seconds after the word hydroxychloroquine came out of Donald Trump’s mouth at the Thursday press briefing ten days ago.
Raoult’s treatment crams down the viral load of the patient so they are much less contagious and contagious for a shorter period…
Read the damn Mar 26 letter from Craig Smith head surgeon of Columbia he describes a nationwide hysteria among doctors to hoard the “Trump meds”…..
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUEPRf6WsAE5ZDw?format=jpg
The end of this war began when Trump spoke The Word.
Huge week ahead. Massive turn in momentum against the witch Corona triggered by the HCQ+ZPACK+ZINC regimen. The MSM will try to claim it’s all due to social distancing but it won’t work.
Big Pharma hardest hit.
On the day before that (March 28), we had 525 deaths.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
I wonder why that happened.
I wonder if this made a difference.
https://twitter.com/AdamMilstein/status/1244327792524677120
https://twitter.com/TeamTrump/status/1244384934623686656
If this thing is contagious in people for five days before they show symptoms, can’t one infected person start this entire circus up again after the restrictions are loosened? Or we going to wait until there are no positive cases, plus another three weeks or so? Because the herd immunity strategy and the flatten-the-curve strategy are mutually exclusive, right? What am I missing?
I’m not anti-containment—who knows how dangerous this thing will end up being?—but is anyone talking about the endgame? What’s the plan for getting out of social distancing, etc.?
A vaccine. In about 18 months.
I understand there are potential treatments to make carriers less contagious that might help tide us over.
Lighten up, Francis. People are fucking dying.
Grow up Denise. Not all people are the same. This jerk John Prine spent his career spitting on White people in flyover country.
Where was he and the rest of his worthless generation while White children were having their future destroyed by “diversity” and mass 3rd world immigration? He was cheerleading for those who pushed anti-White policies.
If he wanted to remembered well, his kind shouldn’t have stabbed his people in the back.
From BÖC’s “Lawn Gisland”– don’t fear the reaper:
Long Island overtakes South Korea in rate of COVID-19 testing
Perhaps Derb won’t suffolkate in his garret after all. I wonder how it compares to Steve’s basement closet.
Key element of Didier Raoult treatment program is to start meds asap immediately after symptoms appear. This triggers a virtuous cycle by making each patient less contagious and the overall infection rate drops.
Trump’s first public mention of the word hydroxychloroquine sent shockwaves through the medical community in the USA and a lot of other countries. But the shockwave happened under the radar because of the FDA (who hadn’t changed course yet) and the Primary Directive among urban professionals of denying Trump reelection.
If this thing is contagious in people for five days before they show symptoms, can’t one infected person start this entire circus up again after the restrictions are loosened? Or we going to wait until there are no positive cases, plus another three weeks or so? Because the herd immunity strategy and the flatten-the-curve strategy are mutually exclusive, right? What am I missing?
I’m not anti-containment—who knows how dangerous this thing will end up being?—but is anyone talking about the endgame? What’s the plan for getting out of social distancing, etc.?
Does hope count as a plan? Long before we could smash the pandemic in the terms you describe, the entire world economy would be a burnt cinder, and tens to hundreds of millions or more would die from the knock-on effects of that alone.
From the Wall Street Journal, 27 March.
Too long to reproduce here beyond an excerpt, but well worth reading.
Professor Snowden clearly enjoys the protections of tenure.
Japan has had a very low flu season, anomalously so and it is taken as evidence of individual Japanese taking measures in response to news out of China well before any cases were detected in Japan or government action taken.
(Sorry, for some reason I've been watching Golden Girls clips and channeling Sophia).
If you are familiar with the Mary Tyler Moore show and Maude, you have noticed that Betty White and Rue McClanahan swapped personalities for The Golden Girls. This was intentional.
I understand there are potential treatments to make carriers less contagious that might help tide us over.
That can’t possibly be the plan. Surely no one expects shelter-in-place to be stable for longer than a few weeks.
Aren’t young people going to realize that this disease doesn’t seem to pose a serious threat to them, and then say to hell with it and start going out again? The legitimate concerns of the young—meeting each other, falling in love, etc.—can’t be (and shouldn’t be) put on hold indefinitely.
What about blacks? If the video Steve posted a few minutes ago is representative, many of them are not going to accept confinement with typical African-American meekness. Heck, some of them (the ones that aren’t literally confined already, that is) might even abandon their principles and start busting into stores or otherwise causing problems.
The black kids in my city appear to be ignoring the rules entirely and playing basketball all day; everyone is afraid to break up their parties.
Seriously, haven't you been paying attention? You're like the girlfriend who keeps asking to have the plot of the movie explained every ten minutes. "Sweetheart, we're not supposed to know that yet".
There are treatments being developed to tide us over and lessen contagion. The summer break will cause it to lapse ("it's the flu", after all) and it'll come back next season.
We don't "shelter in place" the whole time.
Yes, kids will be awful. Blacks worse. I'm getting less and less fond of both.
Remind me never to take you to war. We'll leave you behind with the women. Covid will preserve their chastity.
Huge typo in the Daily Mail:
There are two Fs in Kristofferson!
Oh, and Prine was born in October, 1946.
Or: The Greatest Generation...Of Liars?Quite obviously the hyper-patriotic Prine was able to enlist by lying about the date of his birth (like so many others before him) and also by (in his haste to reach a recruiting office) exceeding the speed of light*.* See John Derbyshire's 3-10-2020 VDARE column:"The bartender says: 'We don't serve your kind in here.'Two tachyons walk into a bar."
From NY Post:
Scientists have identified at least eight strains of coronavirus. More than 2,000 genetic sequences of the virus have been submitted from labs to the open database NextStrain, which shows it mutating on maps in realtime, according to the site.
Researchers said the data, which includes samples every continent except Antarctica, revealed the virus is mutating on average every 15 days.
But Nextstrain cofounder Trevor Bedford said the mutations are so small that there is no strain of the virus that is more harmful.
“These mutations are completely benign and useful as a puzzle piece to uncover how the virus is spreading,” Bedford told the outlet.
He said the various strains allow researchers to see whether community transmission is widespread throughout a region, which can inform whether lockdown measures have been effective.
“We’ll be able to tell how much less transmission we’re seeing and answer the question, ‘Can we take our foot off the gas?’” Bedford said.
Most of the cases on the West Coast are linked to a strain first identified in Washington state, which is only three mutations away from the first known strain, the outlet reported.
Meanwhile, on the East Coast, the virus appeared to have come from China to Europe and then to New York and other states.
“Nextstrain is an open-source project to harness the scientific and public health potential of pathogen genome data. We provide a continually-updated view of publicly available data alongside powerful analytic and visualization tools for use by the community. Our goal is to aid epidemiological understanding and improve outbreak response.”
https://nextstrain.org/
Graphic visualization tool (link below) takes about 20 seconds to load. Initial play is global transmission, but map can be reset for specific countries using upper left drop down menu “phylogeny” “Country” or even to specific regions or US states using filtering list at bottom of page.
https://nextstrain.org/ncov
Half the workforce here, it feels like, was already told to go home before the stay home order. All the IT businesses (Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Expedia, etc.) seemed to have already done that. The last shoe to drop was Boeing. When they shut down, there was no reason for Inslee not to shut. down. everything.
The weather has been relatively crappy this weekend (windy and light rain), which has probably helped keep people relatively indoors. The first sunny days in the spring bring everybody out here.
It definitely is a bit like The Walking Dead. I've never seen the streets and freeways more clear. A lot of commercial businesses have their windows boarded up. Supposedly there is a rash of commercial burglaries going on, and signs saying "no money or valuables" are starting to appear on the front of closed businesses. I saw a bunch of kids at a skate park yesterday. Compliance and enforcement aren't universal. The cops do though seem to be throwing a lot of bodies at whatever problems do crop up. Homeless and vagrants and prostitutes seem to still be skulking around doing whatever it is they do. I was at a medical clinic for something yesterday, and they didn't seem to be swamped, though the full mask and hand sanitizer routine for everyone was in effect.
I've been hearing in Eastern Washington and elsewhere, nobody gets what all the fuss is about. It seems a million miles away to them, and they're irritated about getting shut down too. Typical Eastern/Western Washington divide.
No better time to teach your pit bull how to drive then…
https://komonews.com/news/local/man-facing-charges-after-high-speed-chase-on-i-5-with-pit-bull-in-drivers-seat
Ah, Lakewood. The jewel of South Sound (and home of “$1 Chinese Food”).
On a related note, my garbage can was tipped over and dumped out last night. At first, I thought it might’ve been some angry neighbor cooped up too long. But tonight I see that one of my neighbors’ cans has been ransacked too, so I assume it’s some animal that’s mustered up the courage to go scavenging now that all the people are gone.
At least in the short term all you'll need is a .22 or a bow, and a recipe for raccoon stew.
Raoult's treatment crams down the viral load of the patient so they are much less contagious and contagious for a shorter period...
Read the damn Mar 26 letter from Craig Smith head surgeon of Columbia he describes a nationwide hysteria among doctors to hoard the "Trump meds".....
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUEPRf6WsAE5ZDw?format=jpg
The end of this war began when Trump spoke The Word.
Huge week ahead. Massive turn in momentum against the witch Corona triggered by the HCQ+ZPACK+ZINC regimen. The MSM will try to claim it's all due to social distancing but it won't work.
Big Pharma hardest hit.
#417, everything I have heard tells me you’re right. And I’m guessing Mylan, Teva, & Amneal aren’t producing a boatload of pills just because they love Trump:
Unless a patient has an compromised ticker, that three drug cocktail is, a least one of, the winners.
If this thing is contagious in people for five days before they show symptoms, can’t one infected person start this entire circus up again after the restrictions are loosened? Or we going to wait until there are no positive cases, plus another three weeks or so? Because the herd immunity strategy and the flatten-the-curve strategy are mutually exclusive, right? What am I missing?
I’m not anti-containment—who knows how dangerous this thing will end up being?—but is anyone talking about the endgame? What’s the plan for getting out of social distancing, etc.?
“Flatten the curve” and herd immunity are not mutually exclusive. Flatten the curve was originally a path to getting to herd immunity while not exceeding medical system capacity.
However, our leaders have decided that flattening the curve would result in several million deaths and that this was unacceptable.
So we switched to what Wuhan did and are now trying “suppression”, driving the transmission to near zero so the disease disappears long before a significant part of the population have it.
How we deal with re-infection and the entire circus starting again is “we’ll cross the bridge when we get to it (but hey we just printed $2T dollars and we can do that every month so what are you worried about anyway and also old people LOVE being locked up in their houses and nursing homes with nobody visiting them so we’re giving them more of what they want). Also shut up stop asking questions and do what you’re told.”
I've read in some places that the virus will be seasonal and come back every year in different forms. How likely do you think that is? It'd seem horrendous if we have to deal with this every year.What's your view on that?
Raoult's treatment crams down the viral load of the patient so they are much less contagious and contagious for a shorter period...
Read the damn Mar 26 letter from Craig Smith head surgeon of Columbia he describes a nationwide hysteria among doctors to hoard the "Trump meds".....
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUEPRf6WsAE5ZDw?format=jpg
The end of this war began when Trump spoke The Word.
Huge week ahead. Massive turn in momentum against the witch Corona triggered by the HCQ+ZPACK+ZINC regimen. The MSM will try to claim it's all due to social distancing but it won't work.
Big Pharma hardest hit.
America had 264 deaths yesterday (March 29).
On the day before that (March 28), we had 525 deaths.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
I wonder why that happened.
I wonder if this made a difference.
Long Island overtakes South Korea in rate of COVID-19 testing
Perhaps Derb won't suffolkate in his garret after all. I wonder how it compares to Steve's basement closet.
Waiting for people to claim they’re a “Veteran of the Pysch-Ops Wars” myself.
Oh, and Prine was born in October, 1946.
Prine* Obsession?
Or: The Greatest Generation…Of Liars?
Quite obviously the hyper-patriotic Prine was able to enlist by lying about the date of his birth (like so many others before him) and also by (in his haste to reach a recruiting office) exceeding the speed of light*.
* See John Derbyshire’s 3-10-2020 VDARE column:
“The bartender says: ‘We don’t serve your kind in here.’
Two tachyons walk into a bar.”
what is the danger from a recombinant corona vaccine? That is, a vaccine that is constructed from the genetic code of the virus and not from a killed live virus.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/coronavirus-vaccine-when-will-it-be-ready
How could a one time injection of a DNA derived chemical be harmful? Sure, the vaccine likely does not work. But why go slow on the trials?
However, our leaders have decided that flattening the curve would result in several million deaths and that this was unacceptable.
So we switched to what Wuhan did and are now trying "suppression", driving the transmission to near zero so the disease disappears long before a significant part of the population have it.
How we deal with re-infection and the entire circus starting again is "we'll cross the bridge when we get to it (but hey we just printed $2T dollars and we can do that every month so what are you worried about anyway and also old people LOVE being locked up in their houses and nursing homes with nobody visiting them so we're giving them more of what they want). Also shut up stop asking questions and do what you're told."
Here are a couple question.
I’ve read in some places that the virus will be seasonal and come back every year in different forms. How likely do you think that is? It’d seem horrendous if we have to deal with this every year.
What’s your view on that?
1) My biggest hope is that either remdesivir (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/03/28/experimental-coronavirus-drug-remdesivir-trump-lauded-again-available/2934583001/ )
or the French dude's drug combo (though i'm not a fan of prophylactic antibiotic usage...)
or maybe both in combination are at least enough to knock down the ICU and death rate by 5x or so.
That'll convincingly put it in "just like the flu" category (in terms of severity) and it'll make it really hard to justify the containment measures.
2) That testing that showed nobody had anti-bodies in Telluride... now that it's up and running and demonstrated hopefully in a month or two they can do some randomized testing in other communities to really figure out how widely spread this is. I still have some hope that it HAS spread quite widely and the actual death rate (IFR ) is already similar to the flu. In which case again... we can loosen things up and then in a few months be done with it as there is a reasonable amount of herd immunity that the number of people who get it every year don't overwhelm the system.
3) Maybe we start wearing masks during the new flu/corona-chan season in the US. Perhaps dipped in that Canadian Prof's salt solution. Maybe that and more hand sanitizer are enough to keep things in check and make it like the flu.
4) Once we get the "do you have it now" testing up and running, which finally seems like it's about to happen "this week" (just like the past 3 weeks, but for real this time), and the turnaround times of the tests are < 1 day instead of the current ~10+ days, we can figure out who has it and just have people who have the thing stay home or perhaps at designated Chez Corona-chan Motels.
5) something something vaccine something. idk if it'll happen but it's so far off that things will change before then.
---
Honestly, even if only the testing in #4 happens i think that'll be enough that the Governors and mayors won't be able maintain these unconscionable stay at home orders. I think the Courts wouldn't allow it. (at least i hope they wouldn't)
And i have to stop thinking about this because my annoyance at finding out that the western world has been police states all along is probably hurting my immune system :-)
I mentioned in another post that it is likely we see our own boomerang effect — Mexico picks up Coronavirus from the US, which is brought back in by border crossers, legal and otherwise.
Stronger border enforcement might seem like a good idea to more people.
Now coronavirus is a different virus than influenza and maybe you get no immunity from surviving it (highly doubtful) or it mutates to an equally or more deadly form against which no one has any immunity (also highly doubtful) but chances are it will behave like every other virus in history.
Plus now we have the tools of modern medicine in our hands. Eventually they will figure out effective drug combinations or get a vaccine.
Maybe it becomes something like the flu, which goes around every winter but people accept it as a fact of life without shutting down all economic activity. Flu sickens 9 to 45 MILLION and kills between 12,000 and 60,000 (mostly older) Americans every winter and most people can't even be bothered to get a flu shot. We could also prevent those 60,000 deaths by locking everyone in their home each year from October to April but up until now it never occurred to anyone to do this.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
If this thing is contagious in people for five days before they show symptoms, can’t one infected person start this entire circus up again after the restrictions are loosened? Or we going to wait until there are no positive cases, plus another three weeks or so? Because the herd immunity strategy and the flatten-the-curve strategy are mutually exclusive, right? What am I missing?
I’m not anti-containment—who knows how dangerous this thing will end up being?—but is anyone talking about the endgame? What’s the plan for getting out of social distancing, etc.?
“What’s the plan for getting out of social distancing, etc.?”
Elect a Democratic president and congress this November.
We’ll declare a state of emergency every even-numbered year until we achieve our goal, at which point the annual flu will be ignored as usual.
Love,
The Democratic National Committee
If the Dems retake the WH we'll never hear about Covid-19 again.
Somewhat OT:
From the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-news.html#link-1db28fa
I've read in some places that the virus will be seasonal and come back every year in different forms. How likely do you think that is? It'd seem horrendous if we have to deal with this every year.What's your view on that?
“I’ve read in some places that the virus will be seasonal and come back every year in different forms. How likely do you think that is? It’d seem horrendous if we have to deal with this every year.”
Nah, it’ll be fun. Unlike the hilarious panic buying of TP we saw with CoronaHoax 1.0, we will get our CoronaHoax 2.0 shopping done early – no later than Valentine’s Day – so we can Netflix, chill, and enjoy our UBI payments. It’ll be a novel extended national holiday tradition.
We ❤ you CoronaHoax!
Applying your standards to another culture is racist, all cultures are equal
“The problem is that 1.4 is still bad: a typical flu has an R0 of about 1.3, and flus spread rapidly. As I pointed out 3 weeks ago, we need to crush the curve below 1.0.”
It’s a good start though, Steve. I’m sure NY/NYC would give anything to have an R0 of about 1.4 right at this time.
Synairgen is doing trials here in Britain on coronavirus patients, don’t own any but their share price has spiked with some reputable investors buying in.
His most recent album has some really beautiful stuff on it. Summer’s End is a gem.
Oh, and Prine was born in October, 1946.
I just saw the headline, didn’t read the article. I’m sure I’d disagree with him on just about everything except the fact that the American worker has been hard done by. He sure can write a song though.
I've read in some places that the virus will be seasonal and come back every year in different forms. How likely do you think that is? It'd seem horrendous if we have to deal with this every year.What's your view on that?
I have no special insight.
1) My biggest hope is that either remdesivir (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/03/28/experimental-coronavirus-drug-remdesivir-trump-lauded-again-available/2934583001/ )
or the French dude’s drug combo (though i’m not a fan of prophylactic antibiotic usage…)
or maybe both in combination are at least enough to knock down the ICU and death rate by 5x or so.
That’ll convincingly put it in “just like the flu” category (in terms of severity) and it’ll make it really hard to justify the containment measures.
2) That testing that showed nobody had anti-bodies in Telluride… now that it’s up and running and demonstrated hopefully in a month or two they can do some randomized testing in other communities to really figure out how widely spread this is. I still have some hope that it HAS spread quite widely and the actual death rate (IFR ) is already similar to the flu. In which case again… we can loosen things up and then in a few months be done with it as there is a reasonable amount of herd immunity that the number of people who get it every year don’t overwhelm the system.
3) Maybe we start wearing masks during the new flu/corona-chan season in the US. Perhaps dipped in that Canadian Prof’s salt solution. Maybe that and more hand sanitizer are enough to keep things in check and make it like the flu.
4) Once we get the “do you have it now” testing up and running, which finally seems like it’s about to happen “this week” (just like the past 3 weeks, but for real this time), and the turnaround times of the tests are < 1 day instead of the current ~10+ days, we can figure out who has it and just have people who have the thing stay home or perhaps at designated Chez Corona-chan Motels.
5) something something vaccine something. idk if it'll happen but it's so far off that things will change before then.
—
Honestly, even if only the testing in #4 happens i think that'll be enough that the Governors and mayors won't be able maintain these unconscionable stay at home orders. I think the Courts wouldn't allow it. (at least i hope they wouldn't)
And i have to stop thinking about this because my annoyance at finding out that the western world has been police states all along is probably hurting my immune system 🙂
On the day before that (March 28), we had 525 deaths.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
I wonder why that happened.
I wonder if this made a difference.
https://twitter.com/AdamMilstein/status/1244327792524677120
https://twitter.com/TeamTrump/status/1244384934623686656
Deaths were also down in Italy, Spain, France, and the UK, up slightly in Germany (but still low). New cases were down in Italy, Spain, France, the UK, Germany, and the USA. Best day re coronavirus in some time.
I've read in some places that the virus will be seasonal and come back every year in different forms. How likely do you think that is? It'd seem horrendous if we have to deal with this every year.What's your view on that?
China and HK are seeing cases being brought in from overseas. A boomerang effect.
I mentioned in another post that it is likely we see our own boomerang effect — Mexico picks up Coronavirus from the US, which is brought back in by border crossers, legal and otherwise.
Stronger border enforcement might seem like a good idea to more people.
Trump--if he has any sense--should fight the election on exactly that issue:
Globalization==exposure and epidemic.
Nationalism==protection and a healthy future.
Half the workforce here, it feels like, was already told to go home before the stay home order. All the IT businesses (Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Expedia, etc.) seemed to have already done that. The last shoe to drop was Boeing. When they shut down, there was no reason for Inslee not to shut. down. everything.
The weather has been relatively crappy this weekend (windy and light rain), which has probably helped keep people relatively indoors. The first sunny days in the spring bring everybody out here.
It definitely is a bit like The Walking Dead. I've never seen the streets and freeways more clear. A lot of commercial businesses have their windows boarded up. Supposedly there is a rash of commercial burglaries going on, and signs saying "no money or valuables" are starting to appear on the front of closed businesses. I saw a bunch of kids at a skate park yesterday. Compliance and enforcement aren't universal. The cops do though seem to be throwing a lot of bodies at whatever problems do crop up. Homeless and vagrants and prostitutes seem to still be skulking around doing whatever it is they do. I was at a medical clinic for something yesterday, and they didn't seem to be swamped, though the full mask and hand sanitizer routine for everyone was in effect.
I've been hearing in Eastern Washington and elsewhere, nobody gets what all the fuss is about. It seems a million miles away to them, and they're irritated about getting shut down too. Typical Eastern/Western Washington divide.
Same thing in New York, only Upstate vs Downstate/NYC. We are all hogtied to that shi!hole. And to Benito Cuomo.
1) My biggest hope is that either remdesivir (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/03/28/experimental-coronavirus-drug-remdesivir-trump-lauded-again-available/2934583001/ )
or the French dude's drug combo (though i'm not a fan of prophylactic antibiotic usage...)
or maybe both in combination are at least enough to knock down the ICU and death rate by 5x or so.
That'll convincingly put it in "just like the flu" category (in terms of severity) and it'll make it really hard to justify the containment measures.
2) That testing that showed nobody had anti-bodies in Telluride... now that it's up and running and demonstrated hopefully in a month or two they can do some randomized testing in other communities to really figure out how widely spread this is. I still have some hope that it HAS spread quite widely and the actual death rate (IFR ) is already similar to the flu. In which case again... we can loosen things up and then in a few months be done with it as there is a reasonable amount of herd immunity that the number of people who get it every year don't overwhelm the system.
3) Maybe we start wearing masks during the new flu/corona-chan season in the US. Perhaps dipped in that Canadian Prof's salt solution. Maybe that and more hand sanitizer are enough to keep things in check and make it like the flu.
4) Once we get the "do you have it now" testing up and running, which finally seems like it's about to happen "this week" (just like the past 3 weeks, but for real this time), and the turnaround times of the tests are < 1 day instead of the current ~10+ days, we can figure out who has it and just have people who have the thing stay home or perhaps at designated Chez Corona-chan Motels.
5) something something vaccine something. idk if it'll happen but it's so far off that things will change before then.
---
Honestly, even if only the testing in #4 happens i think that'll be enough that the Governors and mayors won't be able maintain these unconscionable stay at home orders. I think the Courts wouldn't allow it. (at least i hope they wouldn't)
And i have to stop thinking about this because my annoyance at finding out that the western world has been police states all along is probably hurting my immune system :-)
I think it’ll be a combination of 1 & 2. We’ll find a treatment that is good enough that the fear subsides, and widespread testing will show that the original hysteria was a bit unjustified.
Maybe car accidents victims are lower as well with less people out and about.
A statistics guy who was looking at the data says Italy is getting their outbreak under control, but Iran has lost all control.
Maybe not your cup of tea, but country singer Joe Diffie just passed from COVID-19 complications. He was 61. Had a reasonably successful career in the 80’s/90’s singing old-style (lyrics-wise) David Allen Coe-type country songs. Can’t provide a YT link ’cause where I’m at YT is shut off for the duration to prioritize b/w for mission essential comms; but go to YT and look up “Prop Me Up Beside the Jukebox”, “Pickup Man”, “John Deer Green” to get a flavor.
Stay in the closest Steve! I'll get my check in the mail.
I understand there are potential treatments to make carriers less contagious that might help tide us over.
I’m not gonna last 18months paying rent out of my savings.
Government reactions to #coronahoax aren’t tied to reality. 35K deaths don’t justify imprisoning 3 billion.
In Covid-19: Unintended Consequences:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2y2gvh2q7axdzz2/COVID-19_UnintendedConsequences.pdf?dl=0
The authors argue:
A similar effect seems to be present in Europe:
from here: https://www.euromomo.eu/index.html
Curious.
On a related note, my garbage can was tipped over and dumped out last night. At first, I thought it might've been some angry neighbor cooped up too long. But tonight I see that one of my neighbors' cans has been ransacked too, so I assume it's some animal that's mustered up the courage to go scavenging now that all the people are gone.
What they don’t show in the post-apocalyptic movies–with a guy wandering through empty streets–is that nature will quickly reclaim.
At least in the short term all you’ll need is a .22 or a bow, and a recipe for raccoon stew.
Uh, oh! Joe’s a week younger than Steve.
Stay in the closest Steve! I’ll get my check in the mail.
I mentioned in another post that it is likely we see our own boomerang effect — Mexico picks up Coronavirus from the US, which is brought back in by border crossers, legal and otherwise.
Stronger border enforcement might seem like a good idea to more people.
Indeed. But it’s an anathema to the “vegan liberals.”
Trump–if he has any sense–should fight the election on exactly that issue:
Globalization==exposure and epidemic.
Nationalism==protection and a healthy future.
For some strange reason, I’m reminded of the old joke, “You should invest in Ireland, where the capital is Dublin every day.”
The TFR for the US was roughly 1.7 in 2019, and I would imagine it might be lower for Seattle, so even at a R0 of 1.4, Seattle is well on its way to depopulation.
I tried to find reported deaths due to flu in NY for the 2019-2020 year and 2018-2019 year. I saw in their flu surveillance report that adult flu deaths are not nationally required to be reported so NY doesn’t put them in their report. My state does. any one know where to find NYS flu deaths?
There’s no question that at least a few younger people who were in perfect health beforehand are going to die, including some celebrities. Mostly though, people of any age who die from this were not in perfect health beforehand (but there are a lot of Americans who are not in perfect health).
Thanks, Wuhan CPC. There’s an article in the NY Times today that says that after SARS the public health authorities in Beijing set up an elaborate and sensitive reporting system in order to prevent similar future outbreaks (Wuhan Virus is really SARS #2). But the local authorities in Wuhan subverted the reporting system because no one in China wants to be the bearer of bad news to Beijing. They thought that they could stamp it out without anyone in Beijing every finding out but their efforts to stamp it out were completely ineffective (largely owing to their efforts to keep it secret at the same time) and by the time the news leaked to Beijing (outside the official reporting system) it was too late.
This being China, a bullet to the back of the head of the Wuhan CPC leaders would not be inappropriate – by the time this is done they are going to have the blood of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people on their hands. Maybe this would encourage the others not to try the same tricks in the future.
The US government has its own dysfunctionality, but it is nothing like China’s dysfunctionality. The needs of the dictatorship to maintain control of information down to the lowest level creates unique opportunities for disaster.
I've read in some places that the virus will be seasonal and come back every year in different forms. How likely do you think that is? It'd seem horrendous if we have to deal with this every year.What's your view on that?
You know that the Spanish Flu never really went away. There were aftershock epidemics each winter in the next few years after 1918 and in some sense it is still around, though mutated to a less deadly form. But eventually the most vulnerable people died and those that survived had immunity so it hasn’t been 1918 over again every year since then.
Now coronavirus is a different virus than influenza and maybe you get no immunity from surviving it (highly doubtful) or it mutates to an equally or more deadly form against which no one has any immunity (also highly doubtful) but chances are it will behave like every other virus in history.
Plus now we have the tools of modern medicine in our hands. Eventually they will figure out effective drug combinations or get a vaccine.
Maybe it becomes something like the flu, which goes around every winter but people accept it as a fact of life without shutting down all economic activity. Flu sickens 9 to 45 MILLION and kills between 12,000 and 60,000 (mostly older) Americans every winter and most people can’t even be bothered to get a flu shot. We could also prevent those 60,000 deaths by locking everyone in their home each year from October to April but up until now it never occurred to anyone to do this.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
Trump--if he has any sense--should fight the election on exactly that issue:
Globalization==exposure and epidemic.
Nationalism==protection and a healthy future.
Sigh.
I am a Democrat, and the opposite of a Trump supporter.
But I swear, watching Trump against the Democratic Party is often like watching a Roadrunner cartoon.
I can see what is going to happen. Democrats all over can see what is going to happen. But the Wiley Coyote geniuses do it anyway.
Imagine a caravan coming up through Mexico, with a number of sick people looking for free American hospital visits. What is the worst way the Democrats can handle the situation? That, I am honestly sad to say, is what the Democratic Party will do. Abolishing ICE, letting everyone in and tearing down what wall we already have will, to their astonishment, be an unpopular opinion.
They will blame waycism and xenophobia for the inevitable loss.
You can never be anti-Wacist enough, even if you have to cut off various bits of your anatomy to prove how anti-Wacist you are. It's all good!
“AUSTRALIAN COWARDS WW2 BROUGHT DOWN THE BRITISH EMPIRE” Cheers whitoh belly australians
Deporting of every white male from US UK CAN AUS NZ from china cannot come fast enough, small brains from these countries are no help to the chinese,
Although everyone is goggling at New York, it’s death rate is 1.7% as of today. Louisiana, by contrast, has a 4.2% death rate. Michigan has a 2.4% death rate. The fatality numbers in the latter two states may be small enough that they’re not yet statistically significant, but they’re beginning to point in one important direction.
Most of Michigan’s deaths are from Detroit. Most of Louisiana’s deaths are from New Orleans. Both these places have a large black community. Maryland just reported a big jump in cases today, and a map says these are appearing in the more heavily black areas around the DC square. Milwaukee reported a few days ago that the majority of their deaths were middle-aged black males. It appears other cities are beginning to duplicate this. Blacks have been showing poor compliance with social distancing.
II. Are they overcounting due to comorbidities?
Yes but…from some Americans teaching in Hangzhou.
[[Starting in late January] Schools and businesses closed. People were to wear a mask in public. Infrared thermometers checked everyone for a fever, everywhere. Roads into the city were closed. The railway, and the city’s electric public transportation system, closed.
[For two weeks, there was a total lockdown. Only one person from each residence could go outside their apartment complex only two days per week, two hours at a time.
[“It was like Men’s Night Out,” Mike Henry said. Men were chosen because they could haul more stuff. In his case, it is a mile walk to the large grocery store, where the shelves stayed full, and customers were admitted after having their temperature checked and recorded.
[Movement was regulated at the apartment-complex level. Mike Henry said each apartment management would document when residents left and when they returned, and the data collection quickly moved online. People used a popular wallet app on their smart phones that had enough information for them to be assigned a national color-coded QR code on health. Green means you can move about. Yellow means you must quarantine for a week. Red means you are to be quarantined for 14 days.
[Thousands of doctors and nurses were moved to areas they would be needed.
[When we talked by phone last week, the Henrys said there had been only one coronavirus death in their province of 25 million people.
[They say the Chinese people took the threat seriously from the outset.
[“People here are much more compliant,” Mike Henry said. “It’s just the way it is. They were told to stay inside, and they did. They were raised to obey authority.”
That won’t happen here.
Read more here: https://www.islandpacket.com/news/coronavirus/article241530681.html#storylink=cpy
If this thing is contagious in people for five days before they show symptoms, can’t one infected person start this entire circus up again after the restrictions are loosened? Or we going to wait until there are no positive cases, plus another three weeks or so? Because the herd immunity strategy and the flatten-the-curve strategy are mutually exclusive, right? What am I missing?
I’m not anti-containment—who knows how dangerous this thing will end up being?—but is anyone talking about the endgame? What’s the plan for getting out of social distancing, etc.?
Where does this assumption come from that asymptomatic people are significantly contagious?
This virus replicates mostly in the lung cells. How easily can it infect other people without the help of a cough or a sneeze?
In the HBO series “Chernobyl” it was apparent that the default response of pretty much everybody except a few was “cover your ass; public health be damned” Not that that would never happen here, but probably worse in China.
Elect a Democratic president and congress this November.
We'll declare a state of emergency every even-numbered year until we achieve our goal, at which point the annual flu will be ignored as usual.
Love,
The Democratic National Committee
Yup.
If the Dems retake the WH we’ll never hear about Covid-19 again.
Ok then. We’re all going to die.
Seriously, haven’t you been paying attention? You’re like the girlfriend who keeps asking to have the plot of the movie explained every ten minutes. “Sweetheart, we’re not supposed to know that yet”.
There are treatments being developed to tide us over and lessen contagion. The summer break will cause it to lapse (“it’s the flu”, after all) and it’ll come back next season.
We don’t “shelter in place” the whole time.
Yes, kids will be awful. Blacks worse. I’m getting less and less fond of both.
Remind me never to take you to war. We’ll leave you behind with the women. Covid will preserve their chastity.
This is typical central government propaganda of the kind Chinese imperial authorities have been issuing for thousands of years to deflect attention from their personal culpability. What’s more likely is that senior Wuhan officials, who are non-natives (of Hubei, let alone Wuhan, Hubei’s premier city) appointed by the imperial authorities in Beijing, sent up all the information they gleaned to Beijing, upon which it was censored to avoid causing a panic and a mad stampede out of Wuhan and Hubei. These non-natives can’t even be described as carpetbaggers, since they are rotated out of the province before they can go native (i.e. develop a local power base, potentially becoming either a coup or separatist threat). They are ticket-punchers at best, tourists at worst. But most of all, they are in thrall to the imperial authorities in Beijing, rather than particularly interested in the welfare of the random strangers they have been assigned to ride herd over, far away from their own hometowns.
And then there were the Party hacks that you mention in Wuhan who stopped the doctors in Wuhan from doing their job and reporting the way that they were supposed to. Now whether the big Party bosses in Beijing already knew from their buddies in Wuhan what was up and were the ones who told them to shut up the doctors, the public health authorities in Beijing didn't (or if they did, they were also told to shut up by the Party).
But, I still can believe the original version that the Wuhan guys were trying to cover this up. The path to promotion is not thru giving your bosses lots of bad news in any organization. Ideally, you want to deal with the problem by saying, "Boss, there was a little trash can fire in the break room but I took care of it, so there's nothing for you to do" and the boss is glad - #1 you've shown initiative and produced successful results and #2 there's nothing for him to do - he has enough on his plate. It's when the trash can fire goes to 3 alarms that this strategy backfires.
Seriously, haven't you been paying attention? You're like the girlfriend who keeps asking to have the plot of the movie explained every ten minutes. "Sweetheart, we're not supposed to know that yet".
There are treatments being developed to tide us over and lessen contagion. The summer break will cause it to lapse ("it's the flu", after all) and it'll come back next season.
We don't "shelter in place" the whole time.
Yes, kids will be awful. Blacks worse. I'm getting less and less fond of both.
Remind me never to take you to war. We'll leave you behind with the women. Covid will preserve their chastity.
Aren’t you too old to go?
I suspect that in a few weeks, most countries will adopt the measures of the Chinese. Just not talk about Covid-19 anymore why scooping up and disposing of the bodies for several months afterwards.
“I suspect that in a few weeks, most countries will adopt the measures of the Chinese.”
More like adopt the measures by Jared Kushner, medical genius. Great i-Steve content here.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/storage.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/27135425/2020-3-27-WH-Counsel-letter-PRA-FACA.pdf
The TFR for the US was roughly 1.7 in 2019, and I would imagine it might be lower for Seattle, so even at a R0 of 1.4, Seattle is well on its way to depopulation.
Can anyone explain what these sentences mean?
Don’t.
The sickest covid sufferer isn’t as sick as that burn bro! Genius!
1) My biggest hope is that either remdesivir (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/03/28/experimental-coronavirus-drug-remdesivir-trump-lauded-again-available/2934583001/ )
or the French dude's drug combo (though i'm not a fan of prophylactic antibiotic usage...)
or maybe both in combination are at least enough to knock down the ICU and death rate by 5x or so.
That'll convincingly put it in "just like the flu" category (in terms of severity) and it'll make it really hard to justify the containment measures.
2) That testing that showed nobody had anti-bodies in Telluride... now that it's up and running and demonstrated hopefully in a month or two they can do some randomized testing in other communities to really figure out how widely spread this is. I still have some hope that it HAS spread quite widely and the actual death rate (IFR ) is already similar to the flu. In which case again... we can loosen things up and then in a few months be done with it as there is a reasonable amount of herd immunity that the number of people who get it every year don't overwhelm the system.
3) Maybe we start wearing masks during the new flu/corona-chan season in the US. Perhaps dipped in that Canadian Prof's salt solution. Maybe that and more hand sanitizer are enough to keep things in check and make it like the flu.
4) Once we get the "do you have it now" testing up and running, which finally seems like it's about to happen "this week" (just like the past 3 weeks, but for real this time), and the turnaround times of the tests are < 1 day instead of the current ~10+ days, we can figure out who has it and just have people who have the thing stay home or perhaps at designated Chez Corona-chan Motels.
5) something something vaccine something. idk if it'll happen but it's so far off that things will change before then.
---
Honestly, even if only the testing in #4 happens i think that'll be enough that the Governors and mayors won't be able maintain these unconscionable stay at home orders. I think the Courts wouldn't allow it. (at least i hope they wouldn't)
And i have to stop thinking about this because my annoyance at finding out that the western world has been police states all along is probably hurting my immune system :-)
“And i have to stop thinking about this because my annoyance at finding out that the western world has been police states all along is probably hurting my immune system”
Stole this.
Most of Michigan's deaths are from Detroit. Most of Louisiana's deaths are from New Orleans. Both these places have a large black community. Maryland just reported a big jump in cases today, and a map says these are appearing in the more heavily black areas around the DC square. Milwaukee reported a few days ago that the majority of their deaths were middle-aged black males. It appears other cities are beginning to duplicate this. Blacks have been showing poor compliance with social distancing.
I. What denominator are the using?
II. Are they overcounting due to comorbidities?
On a related note, my garbage can was tipped over and dumped out last night. At first, I thought it might've been some angry neighbor cooped up too long. But tonight I see that one of my neighbors' cans has been ransacked too, so I assume it's some animal that's mustered up the courage to go scavenging now that all the people are gone.
We will probably all emerge from lockdown to discover that the alley cats have mutated under the impact of their own virus into saber-tooth tigers 🙂
If this thing is contagious in people for five days before they show symptoms, can’t one infected person start this entire circus up again after the restrictions are loosened? Or we going to wait until there are no positive cases, plus another three weeks or so? Because the herd immunity strategy and the flatten-the-curve strategy are mutually exclusive, right? What am I missing?
I’m not anti-containment—who knows how dangerous this thing will end up being?—but is anyone talking about the endgame? What’s the plan for getting out of social distancing, etc.?
The thing is, there might be relieve earlier. There are several trials with promising medication. Not ideal, but at least some relieve. Tocilizumab is a immune repressing drug that has some good results, chloroquinine and antiviral treatment also.
But before massive roll out of those medicines can be done we need trials, to figure out how to administer then, and to whom, and at which part of the infection. These take time.
So repress until the numbers become acceptably low and *some* idea of treatment settles. Then test, test, test and trace,trace, trace. That way we can unlock again.
I’ve heard his name for over forty years now, but still haven’t (knowingly) heard one of them.
This guy’s not too bright. Johnny Chinaman has to obey or be crushed. Henry can return to his home country. A Celestial in the world’s largest Chinatown can’t exactly leave. When the order came down to close the city’s and the province’s borders, the citizens of Wuhan and Hubei defied it to the extent they could.
The issue, as usual, was where they would live once they departed their homes. China’s internal passport system meant they would be at a severe disadvantage outside of their hometowns, in terms of simply getting jobs. The consequence of the complete lack of a social safety net for able-bodied adults in China? No job = no food or shelter.
https://thediplomat.com/2019/11/hukous-being-illegal-in-ones-own-country/
Then there was the issue of where their children would go to school, since China has the equivalent of a nationwide Proposition 187 in force – outside of their home province, Chinese citizens have to pay extra for their kids’ education, et al.
The bright side: if mere social distancing can cut R0 in half, what can you do with a few extra tweaks like
(a) prophylactic use of hydrochloroquinone in public-facing workers
(b) mass testing and treatment of everyone found to have an active infection
(c) everyone masks up when out in public to minimize spread from the un-detected cases
I would not be the least bit surprised if R0 could be cut from 1.4 to 0.5 or less.
This is entirely possible. As is typical in a Communist country, there are two parallel chains of authority in China – the government and the Party (and the Party is the one that really runs things). There was a public health government bureaucracy in Wuhan consisting of doctors and other professionals reporting to the public health authorities in Beijing . These folks appeared to be reasonably honest and interested in carrying out their public health mission – they were the ones that created a reporting system after the SARs near-debacle.
And then there were the Party hacks that you mention in Wuhan who stopped the doctors in Wuhan from doing their job and reporting the way that they were supposed to. Now whether the big Party bosses in Beijing already knew from their buddies in Wuhan what was up and were the ones who told them to shut up the doctors, the public health authorities in Beijing didn’t (or if they did, they were also told to shut up by the Party).
But, I still can believe the original version that the Wuhan guys were trying to cover this up. The path to promotion is not thru giving your bosses lots of bad news in any organization. Ideally, you want to deal with the problem by saying, “Boss, there was a little trash can fire in the break room but I took care of it, so there’s nothing for you to do” and the boss is glad – #1 you’ve shown initiative and produced successful results and #2 there’s nothing for him to do – he has enough on his plate. It’s when the trash can fire goes to 3 alarms that this strategy backfires.
In recent years, we’ve had the impression that dictatorship is maybe a BETTER system than democracy – if the Chinese want to build a high speed railroad, they order it done and quick as a wink, there it is – you’re sipping your Tibetan spring water (the Chinese really love to rub it in) at 300 kph and the water is barely rippling in your glass (I’ve been on these trains and I’ve been on Amtrak where the speed limit on parts of the NE Corridor are 20 mph and you can’t help but feel envious). Meanwhile in America after 10 years they are still fighting the environmental lawsuits and the Indian tribes and god knows who else and billions of $ have been wasted on “studies” and not one mile of track has been laid.
But, the point is that dictatorships don’t only have strengths, they have strengths and weaknesses. One of the most vital prerequisites to correct decision making is information – if you are stumbling around in the dark you are liable to trip and fall or to walk off a cliff. And the Chinese dictatorship spends a huge amount of money and effort IMPEDING the free flow of information and keeping the Chinese people in the dark. This is not a long term recipe for success.
Prine’s wife says he’s stable.
And then there were the Party hacks that you mention in Wuhan who stopped the doctors in Wuhan from doing their job and reporting the way that they were supposed to. Now whether the big Party bosses in Beijing already knew from their buddies in Wuhan what was up and were the ones who told them to shut up the doctors, the public health authorities in Beijing didn't (or if they did, they were also told to shut up by the Party).
But, I still can believe the original version that the Wuhan guys were trying to cover this up. The path to promotion is not thru giving your bosses lots of bad news in any organization. Ideally, you want to deal with the problem by saying, "Boss, there was a little trash can fire in the break room but I took care of it, so there's nothing for you to do" and the boss is glad - #1 you've shown initiative and produced successful results and #2 there's nothing for him to do - he has enough on his plate. It's when the trash can fire goes to 3 alarms that this strategy backfires.
There’s also the fact that China is literally a police state. There are political officers (aka spies and informers) at every level of the bureaucracy that operate independently. During the time of de jure emperors rather than the de facto ones of today, these would have been imperial censors sent to nip impending coup or separatist attempts (most of which were preceded by the gathering of resources to fund private armies) in the bud. There is no way Xi Jinping did not know, from domestic wiretaps, the huge security apparatus in charge of analyzing and censoring text messages and the Ministry of State Security (China’s KGB), what was going on re the pandemic. He is playing 3 card monte with both the Chinese hoi polloi and a surprisingly credulous international audience. It’s funny how a foreign media that treats even obviously true Trump statements with incredulity swallows bare-faced lies from Xi Jinping’s minions unthinkingly.
Deporting of every white male from US UK CAN AUS NZ from china cannot come fast enough, small brains from these countries are no help to the chinese,
If this is accompanied by the deportation of all Chinese from white countries, I think we have the makings of a deal. Good fences make good neighbors and all that.
I saw John Prine in concert about three years ago. When he walked out on stage, he looked so frail I thought he might not make it through more than a few songs. Once he started to play, however, I realized there was nothing to worry about as I was in the hands of a master. He gave an awesome almost three hour performance to a rapt audience.
As the intro to “Grandpa was a Carpenter,” Prine told a wonderful story about his grandfather returning from work in his work overalls and boots, covered in dust and dirt. The old man would then go upstairs, bath and come down to dinner, every evening, in a suit and tie.
No there are 2 strategies :
R less than 1 is for suppression
R more than 1 but close to 1,3 is for mitigation
The problem with suppression is that you are very exposed to any imported case re-starting everything from scratch
The problem with mitigation is that you don’t know the hazard, the long term sequels, of having been infected.
It looks like very few government want to chose a strategy. They are not always incompatible at certain moment but they are mutually exclusive for a longer period . They are opposite strategies
I did a crude calculation based on exponential growth y’ = ry so y = c e^(rt) c is the initial population i.e. sick people. The time to double is independent of the initial population. T time to double is T = ln(2)/r . First column is r; second column is days to double; third column is “time units” time unit was taken to be 15 days (I just picked this to sort of agree with a data point or two)
0.1 103.9720771 6.931471806
0.2 51.98603854 3.465735903
0.3 34.65735903 2.310490602
0.4 25.99301927 1.732867951
0.5 20.79441542 1.386294361
0.6 17.32867951 1.155245301
0.7 14.85315387 0.990210258
0.8 12.99650964 0.866433976
0.9 11.55245301 0.770163534
1 10.39720771 0.693147181
1.1 9.452007008 0.630133801
1.2 8.664339757 0.57762265
1.3 7.997852083 0.533190139
1.4 7.426576935 0.495105129
1.5 6.931471806 0.46209812
1.6 6.498254818 0.433216988
1.7 6.116004534 0.407733636
1.8 5.776226505 0.385081767
1.9 5.472214583 0.364814306
2 5.198603854 0.34657359
2.1 4.95105129 0.330070086
2.2 4.726003504 0.3150669
2.3 4.520525091 0.301368339
2.4 4.332169878 0.288811325
Now coronavirus is a different virus than influenza and maybe you get no immunity from surviving it (highly doubtful) or it mutates to an equally or more deadly form against which no one has any immunity (also highly doubtful) but chances are it will behave like every other virus in history.
Plus now we have the tools of modern medicine in our hands. Eventually they will figure out effective drug combinations or get a vaccine.
Maybe it becomes something like the flu, which goes around every winter but people accept it as a fact of life without shutting down all economic activity. Flu sickens 9 to 45 MILLION and kills between 12,000 and 60,000 (mostly older) Americans every winter and most people can't even be bothered to get a flu shot. We could also prevent those 60,000 deaths by locking everyone in their home each year from October to April but up until now it never occurred to anyone to do this.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
A senior health official here in Norway said today that ‘this virus is twice as contagious as the flu and five times as deadly’. I’m not looking forward to the days I acquire immunity for the herd. But so be it.
I’m a little baffled by the notion that the rather stringent restrictions placed on Seattle would reduce R0 by only about 50%.
Polls show that the vast majority of people across the US are complying with social distancing restrictions.
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/24/21192713/coronavirus-social-distancing-gallup-poll
Moreover, there’s no doubt that washing hands, hand sanitizer, keeping a 6 ft distance, is much more prevalent than before.
And of course a great many — a good majority? — are working from home if at all.
And with respect to Seattle, this sort of behavior should be only more pervasive, given the outbreak there.
So how does this amount only to a 50% reduction? The virus isn’t communicated by magic. It requires some sort of physical event to do so. How can it be that the measures in Seattle haven’t reduced such events far more than 50%?
I’m thinking that the estimate of only 50% reduction must be far off.
Of course, one area where the reduction would be low would be among members of the same household. But that is limited in domain. Perhaps, though, this is now distorting the numbers.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-incubation-period/
What is not yet known (because it is so new) is if it can remain dormant and reactivate. We will probably learn that next season.
This virus replicates mostly in the lung cells. How easily can it infect other people without the help of a cough or a sneeze?
“Where does this assumption come from that asymptomatic people are significantly contagious?”
The 80-year-old Japanese patient-zero who introduced the virus to the Diamond Princes did not show any symptoms until after he disembarked, and the whole ship was in lockdown a short while later.
The long period of asymptomatic transmission is one of the main reasons why this has not been easy to deal with.
How do you know that he infected everybody else?
How do you know he truly had no symptoms?
How reliable is his memory and, even if his memory were okay, how reliable would a statement from him that he “had no symptoms” be? Consider his incentives at the time.No it isn’t. The virus is perfectly capable of transmitting itself effectively through coughing and sneezing and through surface contact among people who live in close quarters.
Maybe. It would not shock me if he knew, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t. China is a vast country and the vast amount of intelligence that the CPC gathers down to the household level has to be filtered and filtered again and again before it ever makes it way to Xi’s desk or else he would drown in information. Hubei was not on anyone’s radar in December. Some fish mongers in Wuhan have an unexplained fever? Who cares. It’s not impossible that amidst all that filtering this bit of data got filtered out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuchang_Uprising
https://schoolhistory.co.uk/notes/xinhai-revolution/
It's also China's Chicago - a commercial crossroads for China and a center of manufacturing and heavy industry. Between its economic and historical significance, there's no way Xi's security apparatus wasn't watching Wuhan like a hawk. It has repeatedly, like a handful of China's major cities, been both a key battlefield, and a source of revolutionary activity spanning thousands of years.
I don’t think anyone is looking forward to it. But they’re not looking forward to cancer or heart disease or stroke or anything else. Disease (which until recently included contagious disease and still does in some places) is a fact of life and in the end, mortality is 100% – no one gets out alive. But up until now this did not make us all literally afraid to get out of bed. You pays your money and you takes your chances.
The answer may be large number of asymptomatic carriers before the first person had symptoms; so the community was being heavily infected. The time between infection and symptoms showing up has been thought of as 14 days; it need not be; some people may carry it for a month without symptoms. Viable virus was detected on ship’s hard surfaces after 27 days!
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-incubation-period/
What is not yet known (because it is so new) is if it can remain dormant and reactivate. We will probably learn that next season.
If you believe this happened other than possibly on rare occasions, you are very gullible.
Supermarkets are the big fail in my area of PA. No six foot separation, self checkout scanners are heavily used, etc.
Wuhan isn’t some Podunkville in the middle of nowhere. It was the scene of the Wuchang Uprising, the beginning of the armed revolt that ended the reign of China’s last de jure emperor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuchang_Uprising
https://schoolhistory.co.uk/notes/xinhai-revolution/
It’s also China’s Chicago – a commercial crossroads for China and a center of manufacturing and heavy industry. Between its economic and historical significance, there’s no way Xi’s security apparatus wasn’t watching Wuhan like a hawk. It has repeatedly, like a handful of China’s major cities, been both a key battlefield, and a source of revolutionary activity spanning thousands of years.
I mentioned in another post that it is likely we see our own boomerang effect — Mexico picks up Coronavirus from the US, which is brought back in by border crossers, legal and otherwise.
Stronger border enforcement might seem like a good idea to more people.
Yeah, but border enforcement is not who we are.
And yet, you’re still a Dem.
How do you know it was he who gave it to anyone else, rather than picking it up from another passenger or from someone at his destination?
How do you know that he infected everybody else?
How do you know he truly had no symptoms?
How reliable is his memory and, even if his memory were okay, how reliable would a statement from him that he “had no symptoms” be? Consider his incentives at the time.
No it isn’t. The virus is perfectly capable of transmitting itself effectively through coughing and sneezing and through surface contact among people who live in close quarters.
Never go full anti-Wacist is just bad advice.
You can never be anti-Wacist enough, even if you have to cut off various bits of your anatomy to prove how anti-Wacist you are. It’s all good!
I will live, as will everyone I care for, but it does put a strain on living.
Thank you for the reference to Millers Crossing. We’ll see this movie this morning.
How do you know that he infected everybody else?
How do you know he truly had no symptoms?
How reliable is his memory and, even if his memory were okay, how reliable would a statement from him that he “had no symptoms” be? Consider his incentives at the time.No it isn’t. The virus is perfectly capable of transmitting itself effectively through coughing and sneezing and through surface contact among people who live in close quarters.
“How do you know it was he who gave it to anyone else, rather than picking it up from another passenger or from someone at his destination?”
He showed symptoms right after disembarking so that gives you a range of days when he must have picked it up, and it was presumably before he came onboard. But maybe they found the person from whom he picked it up.
I suspect that rough estimate was already enough to say that he was patient zero (or at least one of the likely candidates), but in general, along with basic detective work and matching up symptom outbreaks with the implied infection dates, they can also do a genetic analysis on each person’s virus and come up with the best of odds of which person’s virus spawned the virus in some other person.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200221-coronavirus-the-harmful-hunt-for-covid-19s-patient-zero
Again, how reliable are reports from him or anyone else that he “showed no symptoms” while he was on the ship? Did anyone take the temperature of this stoic Japanese man while he was on board? Was he knowledgeable enough about the symptoms to remember and report them? Are we sure he didn’t have the beginnings of a cough? Would he remember sneezing? Are there incentives for him to downplay having had symptoms while on the ship?
That range of days also includes days he was onboard.
Was this done?
Okay zoomer. I see now. Some people are so bitter their own bile tastes sweet. You poor little bastard.