WHO: COVID-19 in 29 countries last Monday, now 56(npr.org)
npr.org
WHO: COVID-19 in 29 countries last Monday, now 56
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/28/810452948/who-says-risk-of-covid-19-is-now-very-high-at-a-global-level
98 comments
Here's the actual WHO situation report: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...
The US is shown has having "local transmission". "Community transmission" is defined as "the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases, or by increasing positive tests through routine screening of sentinel samples".
Maybe this is just a terminology issue... "spreading freely in communities" could refer to "community transmission" defined above.
The US is shown has having "local transmission". "Community transmission" is defined as "the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases, or by increasing positive tests through routine screening of sentinel samples".
Maybe this is just a terminology issue... "spreading freely in communities" could refer to "community transmission" defined above.
Only 2 so far. I think there is a chance the us can avoid significant spread.
To the best of my knowledge (and not trying my to incite panic), there are only 200 test kits in the entire state of CA. The official numbers are meaningless given the inability to actually test. Why do you believe the US will be able to quarantine the entire Bay Area?
There are no concentrations of flu and respiratory problems according to hospital case managers. Clusters aren’t likely to stay hidden for very long, even without kits. I don’t think the goal is to quarantine entire regions, just to slow it down by limiting groups of people in affected areas.
On the question of use of tests, and detection in individuals much less clusters, this note is from /r/AskNYC this evening:
Hello,
Just giving a heads up to what I and my doctor both considered a very fucked up situation. I just spent a week in Japan, a country at high risk for COVID-19. I wore a mask and essentially tried to stay away from most touristy places (not my first time there), but trains and stations are still packed with people, so there's really not much you can do.
On arriving back to America (3 days ago), I developed a 102F fever, coughing, and aches. I went to a local hospital in Brooklyn's ER. I informed them of my travel, they provided me a mask, and redirected me to a private room and followed infection protocols (full face covers, gloves, aprons, etc.). I had a chest x-ray and testing for flu/cold/pneumonia/and about 25 other viruses. They all came back negative.
At this point, the hospital called the CDC requesting permission to perform the COVID-19 testing. The CDC denied the request on the ground that I did not have the most life-threatening symptoms: chest pain and shortness of breath. According to everything I read it's very likely not to have these symptoms if you're in your 30's and relatively healthy.
And... that was that. They discharged me, said I don't have Corona virus, since they didn't test me for it, and said I can ride the subway, return to work, do whatever I want.
Of course my doctor disagreed. She said I should treat myself as if I am infected. My partner is currently staying in a nearby hotel since we live in a studio apartment. I've performed a self-quarantine for 14 days. Fortunately I can work from home and my partner can deliver me groceries if I run out.
But I don't think that many people are aware of the fact that they're actively not testing people for COVID-19, even people who have travel history to high-risk places.
Do I still have symptoms? Yes, Fever is current 101.6 (as of a couple hours ago), aches, and a cough that is persistent. I'm taking Tylenol and drinking a lot of water.
Do I just have the flu? Well, not according to my screens I don't.
Is this real? It's as real as I said it is. I returned from Japan. I'm sick. The symptoms are similar to COVID19 and I was refused testing.
You can believe whatever you want, I don't care.
A channel NY1 reporter reached out to connect with the individual, so perhaps if validated, it won’t “stay hidden very long”. And to your point, it’s not a cluster. But how would you have a cluster if each given patient is handled this way?
The individual case is less interesting than the protocol.
EDIT: Now reported by media: https://abc7ny.com/5974999/
Hello,
Just giving a heads up to what I and my doctor both considered a very fucked up situation. I just spent a week in Japan, a country at high risk for COVID-19. I wore a mask and essentially tried to stay away from most touristy places (not my first time there), but trains and stations are still packed with people, so there's really not much you can do.
On arriving back to America (3 days ago), I developed a 102F fever, coughing, and aches. I went to a local hospital in Brooklyn's ER. I informed them of my travel, they provided me a mask, and redirected me to a private room and followed infection protocols (full face covers, gloves, aprons, etc.). I had a chest x-ray and testing for flu/cold/pneumonia/and about 25 other viruses. They all came back negative.
At this point, the hospital called the CDC requesting permission to perform the COVID-19 testing. The CDC denied the request on the ground that I did not have the most life-threatening symptoms: chest pain and shortness of breath. According to everything I read it's very likely not to have these symptoms if you're in your 30's and relatively healthy.
And... that was that. They discharged me, said I don't have Corona virus, since they didn't test me for it, and said I can ride the subway, return to work, do whatever I want.
Of course my doctor disagreed. She said I should treat myself as if I am infected. My partner is currently staying in a nearby hotel since we live in a studio apartment. I've performed a self-quarantine for 14 days. Fortunately I can work from home and my partner can deliver me groceries if I run out.
But I don't think that many people are aware of the fact that they're actively not testing people for COVID-19, even people who have travel history to high-risk places.
Do I still have symptoms? Yes, Fever is current 101.6 (as of a couple hours ago), aches, and a cough that is persistent. I'm taking Tylenol and drinking a lot of water.
Do I just have the flu? Well, not according to my screens I don't.
Is this real? It's as real as I said it is. I returned from Japan. I'm sick. The symptoms are similar to COVID19 and I was refused testing.
You can believe whatever you want, I don't care.
A channel NY1 reporter reached out to connect with the individual, so perhaps if validated, it won’t “stay hidden very long”. And to your point, it’s not a cluster. But how would you have a cluster if each given patient is handled this way?
The individual case is less interesting than the protocol.
EDIT: Now reported by media: https://abc7ny.com/5974999/
What would the point be of getting tested for COVID-19 if you already show the heaviest symptoms? You’d be getting treatment anyway.
You'd want to make a list of all contacts of the last days to test and quarantine those as well if they show symptoms of any kind. At least that's what other countries do.
We have Roche, Stanford can make kits from stock, etc. The new community case in El Camino hospital was tested locally and quickly.
That’s 7.0 miles from where I am, so of course I’m concerned.
That’s 7.0 miles from where I am, so of course I’m concerned.
Similar situation here. Nearest confirmed case is about 10 km from here, so I'm assuming that it is here already in one or more people.
Based on what exactly? This thing seems to surprise us daily with its ability to spread undetected. And the US is woefully unprepared to administer tests. I fully expect the numbers to sharply rise right along with our ability to test over the next few weeks.
The question is 2 out of how many tests? If this page https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html is to be believed, only about a dozen tests were done over the past two days because it was 445 tested on Wednesday and we have 2 hits.
The WHO has no credibility with me. I don’t believe anything they say anymore.
That seems pretty extreme to me. Who else is a better authority?
HN comments........
The CDC
The Santa Clara County health department
The Santa Clara County health department
Why should anyone in 195-1 countries care about either of those?
Because if anyone took this seriously (shelter in place worldwide 1 month ago) we would not be in this situation.
> Because if anyone took this seriously
You mean if everyone took this seriously. Which is obviously a lot more difficult. It would probably not be possible to get everyone to agree that the sky is blue or 2+2=4.
You mean if everyone took this seriously. Which is obviously a lot more difficult. It would probably not be possible to get everyone to agree that the sky is blue or 2+2=4.
There was a point in time where a single city could have made that difference. Then there was a point in time where single province could have made that difference. Then a country. Now none of this matters anymore but it is still an interesting question: was the virus known and detected at a point in time where it could have been contained?
From the long incubation time my gut feeling is that it probably couldn't have been. International airtravel speeds things up, it also didn't make a difference in 1918 when intercontinental traffic was by boat. Lindbergh didn't make his flight until 1927.
From the long incubation time my gut feeling is that it probably couldn't have been. International airtravel speeds things up, it also didn't make a difference in 1918 when intercontinental traffic was by boat. Lindbergh didn't make his flight until 1927.
Why? Genuine question
They showed a strong unwillingness to declare the high state of emergency from the start, which dragged the numbers 30 fold through delayed action. They were the one institution with the moral authority to drive prevention (incentivising testing, the closure of air travel, etc). People act as if the only possible responses are complete inaction or panic. This is terribly misguided. Had the WHO declared high alert a month ago, it would have meant a whole month to take it all in, plan, condition your touch-your-face reflexes, rethink your lifestyle, etc. Maybe they didn't want to be the boy who cried wolf after SARS, MERS and H1N1 were declared global outbreaks and ended up not being full-blown pandemics. But now what? Is the watchdog scared to watch? They act as if Chinese numbers are trustworthy, and I can only guess that it's half political reasons, half delusion. The CCP has a history of under/misreporting catastrophe that should be factored in, at the very least as a warning label. With a mostly mild disease that spreads like wildfire there's bound to be huge visibility biases which were not taken into account, and then you end up with things like Italy where they don't even know how it spread.
Instead there's a discourse vacuum where people seem to decide what's going to happen more on the basis of pre-existing narratives than reality. Examples; People mistrust the US believed it's all exaggerated to hurt China, for a while some "journalists" wrote more about racism and stigma than the actual ongoing development, politicians kept ringing the everything's OK alarm, and finally, mindless optimists are the worst.
The Chinese government decided to establish an economy-crippling quarantine on January 23rd with only 1000 confirmed cases. Something was awry. And in the following week all the warning sings have been available (the quick spread, reports of CCP measures and life in Wuhan, research papers about the spread, incubation, etc). But for a month now the WHO refused to read the writing on the wall, only god knows why.
Instead there's a discourse vacuum where people seem to decide what's going to happen more on the basis of pre-existing narratives than reality. Examples; People mistrust the US believed it's all exaggerated to hurt China, for a while some "journalists" wrote more about racism and stigma than the actual ongoing development, politicians kept ringing the everything's OK alarm, and finally, mindless optimists are the worst.
The Chinese government decided to establish an economy-crippling quarantine on January 23rd with only 1000 confirmed cases. Something was awry. And in the following week all the warning sings have been available (the quick spread, reports of CCP measures and life in Wuhan, research papers about the spread, incubation, etc). But for a month now the WHO refused to read the writing on the wall, only god knows why.
We now know with certainty Chinese numbers are more trustworthy than US (and half of EU) ones on the sole basis Chinese are actually TESTING people, while CDC refuses any due diligence.
But back to the discussion about the WHO, their bland attitude is greatly to blame for the inaction of the CDC, and the rest of the world.
As a case study, for some days half of all confirmed cases outside of China were in the Diamond Princess, and the proportion held until very recently with 1000+ cases worldwide (sans China). Why? Sampling bias. Even arguing that a cruise is more virus-friendly cannot possibly account for a single ship holding half of the world's cases. And then came about Iran and Italy, with no clear path of spread. It's hurtfully evident that there are so many more cases and there's a huge visibility issue, and the WHO delaying measures aggravates the matter dramatically.
As a case study, for some days half of all confirmed cases outside of China were in the Diamond Princess, and the proportion held until very recently with 1000+ cases worldwide (sans China). Why? Sampling bias. Even arguing that a cruise is more virus-friendly cannot possibly account for a single ship holding half of the world's cases. And then came about Iran and Italy, with no clear path of spread. It's hurtfully evident that there are so many more cases and there's a huge visibility issue, and the WHO delaying measures aggravates the matter dramatically.
> We now know with certainty Chinese numbers are more trustworthy than US (and half of EU) ones on the sole basis Chinese are actually TESTING people, while CDC refuses any due diligence.
That just means the upper bound of the potential quality of the Chinese numbers is better, not that the actual quality of the numbers is better. Just because they are gathering more information doesn't mean they are publicly reporting it accurately.
That is, the Chinese potentially internally have more complete data, because they are doing more surveillance. That doesn't mean that the numbers they are reporting are more trustworthy.
That just means the upper bound of the potential quality of the Chinese numbers is better, not that the actual quality of the numbers is better. Just because they are gathering more information doesn't mean they are publicly reporting it accurately.
That is, the Chinese potentially internally have more complete data, because they are doing more surveillance. That doesn't mean that the numbers they are reporting are more trustworthy.
Right now it is all about slowing down the onset of the eventual peak. Any delaying action will give healthcare systems in countries that are really working on preparations (and they all should be) time to get more capacity in place. The sooner that peak hits the harder it will be, the more people will die.
On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%. In another article in the Journal, Guan et al. report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity.
If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%.
This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.
— New England Journal of Medicine, Feb 28, 2020
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387?query=rec...
If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%.
This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.
— New England Journal of Medicine, Feb 28, 2020
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387?query=rec...
Once the hospitals are overloaded, fatality would be way higher. In China, fatality rate in the epicenter Hubei province is more than 4%, while it's less than 1% for the rest of the provinces.
If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%.
Well sure, if one assumes that, you can easily make yourself feel better. But is there a specific reason to believe this? The widespread contact tracing and testing in SK, Singapore, and Italy are not comforting. If there was a huge number of asymptomatic cases, wouldn’t they be finding them?
Well sure, if one assumes that, you can easily make yourself feel better. But is there a specific reason to believe this? The widespread contact tracing and testing in SK, Singapore, and Italy are not comforting. If there was a huge number of asymptomatic cases, wouldn’t they be finding them?
The point is that the fatality rate depends on the denominator chosen.
Choosing a denominator of only people with COVID who go on to develop pneumonia, results in a rate of 2%.
Choosing a denominator of all people with laboratory confirmed cases of COVID, results in a rate of 1.4%.
Clearly a denominator of “everyone who was infected with COVID” is larger than the denominator of “everyone with a laboratory confirmed case”.
The question is, how much larger? The number of reports of asymptomatic and mild cases which are asked not to go to a hospital are specific reasons why the true fatality rate is less than 1.4% and may be considerably less than 1%.
Choosing a denominator of only people with COVID who go on to develop pneumonia, results in a rate of 2%.
Choosing a denominator of all people with laboratory confirmed cases of COVID, results in a rate of 1.4%.
Clearly a denominator of “everyone who was infected with COVID” is larger than the denominator of “everyone with a laboratory confirmed case”.
The question is, how much larger? The number of reports of asymptomatic and mild cases which are asked not to go to a hospital are specific reasons why the true fatality rate is less than 1.4% and may be considerably less than 1%.
The number of reports of asymptomatic and mild cases which are asked not to go to a hospital are specific reasons why the true fatality rate is less than 1.4% and may be considerably less than 1%
Total speculation. There is no reliable data on how many uncounted people there are. I've been watching your comments on here for days and it's clear you want this to be overblown, as we all do, but you're intentionally twisting the uncertainty in the evidence and data to try and downplay things. Things could turn out to be worse than we think, not better. Look at the death rates in Italy and Iran. Not to mention how high hospitalization rates could overwhelm our medical infrastructure and push the mortality rate even higher.
In short, unless you're a working expert in a relevant field, there's exactly zero reason to listen to you. I'll continue to listen to what health officials are saying, and watch what they're doing. And when I do that, it's pretty clear that you and others like you who claim this is overblown and no big deal are almost certainly wrong.
Total speculation. There is no reliable data on how many uncounted people there are. I've been watching your comments on here for days and it's clear you want this to be overblown, as we all do, but you're intentionally twisting the uncertainty in the evidence and data to try and downplay things. Things could turn out to be worse than we think, not better. Look at the death rates in Italy and Iran. Not to mention how high hospitalization rates could overwhelm our medical infrastructure and push the mortality rate even higher.
In short, unless you're a working expert in a relevant field, there's exactly zero reason to listen to you. I'll continue to listen to what health officials are saying, and watch what they're doing. And when I do that, it's pretty clear that you and others like you who claim this is overblown and no big deal are almost certainly wrong.
> In short, unless you're a working expert in a relevant field
FYI, the italicized portion was a quote from the New England Journal of Medicine from a working expert in a relevant field.
FYI, the italicized portion was a quote from the New England Journal of Medicine from a working expert in a relevant field.
> I've been watching your comments on here for days and it's clear you want this to be overblown, as we all do, but you're intentionally twisting the uncertainty in the evidence and data to try and downplay things.
Agreed. There are a few users on here who are almost 'hysterically' downplaying things and it's fascinating. I imagine these are the types of people who would get busy rearranging deck chairs as the Titanic went down, so to speak.
Agreed. There are a few users on here who are almost 'hysterically' downplaying things and it's fascinating. I imagine these are the types of people who would get busy rearranging deck chairs as the Titanic went down, so to speak.
It's been spreading since November 2019, initially news of it was muzzled by China and then they didn't know or didn't have tests for it in other countries.
So it's going to popup everywhere. Any town with an international airport or university with international students will be flooded with cases in a month. Absolutely no-one has immunity since it's never existed before and since everyone feels entitled to still go to work or shop while very sick, it will spread like wildfire.
Also remember there are millions upon millions in the USA without any kind of insurance or easy access to healthcare.
So it's going to popup everywhere. Any town with an international airport or university with international students will be flooded with cases in a month. Absolutely no-one has immunity since it's never existed before and since everyone feels entitled to still go to work or shop while very sick, it will spread like wildfire.
Also remember there are millions upon millions in the USA without any kind of insurance or easy access to healthcare.
Not to mention that political leadership and one corner of the media is throwing chaff in the air and blaming the Democrats and mainstream media for sensationalizing the virus. Trust, which is absolutely key to having the population take action, has been eroded.
They are taking action, there’s no hand sanitizer on the shelves
I don’t know if it’s going to pop up everywhere. It’s more hitting the counties that have open borders with China still.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/02/28/santa-clara-county-an...
Second community acquired infection and it's in the heart of the valley.
Second community acquired infection and it's in the heart of the valley.
Given the incubation time, the virus has been spreading in the community for at least 1-2 weeks. Not a US citizen and don’t really understand how things work there, but you’d think it’s time for a response at scale to have any chance of containment. From a distance, it seems politics is interfering with this.
The smart thing to do at this point would be to abandon the fool's hope that this will be contained in the US, stop trying to track cases and spread, and just work on shoring up the heath care system for when it's inevitably going to be overrun. Trying to keep it contained now is like putting up a truckload of sandbags to stop a tidal wave.
If it wasn't possible to be reinfected, I'd say the wise thing to do would be to get yourself infected now, while you can still get a respirator in the hospital.
If it wasn't possible to be reinfected, I'd say the wise thing to do would be to get yourself infected now, while you can still get a respirator in the hospital.
>...Trying to keep it contained now is like putting up a truckload of sandbags to stop a tidal wave.
I don't think this is true, and since we still don't know enough about true fatality rates outside of China (yet) it seems foolish to be fatalistic at this stage about containment. There's no "shoring up the [US] health care system". We can't build hospitals out of thin air (China's attempt notwithstanding), and we can't apparate more medical devices, whose supply chains are broken because of our dependence on China. Limiting infections - especially in higher risk demographics - seems critical at this point.
>If it wasn't possible to be reinfected, I'd say the wise thing to do would be to get yourself infected now, while you can still get a respirator in the hospital.
Uhhh no. This would needlessly stress the existing infrastructure. If you're young and healthy, don't soak up resources that should be used to care for at-risk populations. WFH and wash your hands.
I don't think this is true, and since we still don't know enough about true fatality rates outside of China (yet) it seems foolish to be fatalistic at this stage about containment. There's no "shoring up the [US] health care system". We can't build hospitals out of thin air (China's attempt notwithstanding), and we can't apparate more medical devices, whose supply chains are broken because of our dependence on China. Limiting infections - especially in higher risk demographics - seems critical at this point.
>If it wasn't possible to be reinfected, I'd say the wise thing to do would be to get yourself infected now, while you can still get a respirator in the hospital.
Uhhh no. This would needlessly stress the existing infrastructure. If you're young and healthy, don't soak up resources that should be used to care for at-risk populations. WFH and wash your hands.
> Limiting infections - especially in higher risk demographics - seems critical at this point.
We've already failed at this - it's in the community, cases are popping up with no known contact with an infected person. Asymptomatic cases are contagious for several days, and in a large chunk of patients it presents as a common cold that they won't go to the hospital for, and even if they could there isn't enough capacity to do the necessary testing. Game over.
We've already failed at this - it's in the community, cases are popping up with no known contact with an infected person. Asymptomatic cases are contagious for several days, and in a large chunk of patients it presents as a common cold that they won't go to the hospital for, and even if they could there isn't enough capacity to do the necessary testing. Game over.
> We can't build hospitals out of thin air (China's attempt notwithstanding), and we can't apparate more medical devices, whose supply chains are broken because of our dependence on China.
Seems like a lot of “we can’t” assertions. If any country started seeing ~1M deaths per month or something, I bet they’d somehow figure out a way to do it.
Seems like a lot of “we can’t” assertions. If any country started seeing ~1M deaths per month or something, I bet they’d somehow figure out a way to do it.
Sure. It would take a WWII-level mobilization to do so, and some very hard trolley_problem.jpg choices about what to do. Even then I'm still skeptical. Let's take medical devices, for example. So we could, temporarily, nationalize a PCB fab in the US to make the circuit boards ... but do we even have the gerber files? Do we have the human capital to QA a new process? How long for tooling on the rest of the mechanicals?
I hope that, deep in the Pentagon, someone is asking these questions. Not necessarily because of COVID-19, but just in general.
I hope that, deep in the Pentagon, someone is asking these questions. Not necessarily because of COVID-19, but just in general.
It's closer to the cold than the flu, so like the cold people have been reported to have been infected after having had it, then not had it, then to have it once more. Though, at this point it's not known if it was dormant or through new infection.
That assumes you can't get it twice, which we don't know yet. It also assumes there are no long-term effects, and there are already reports of lung fibrosis. You're better off delaying it as long as possible. Work from home if you can, and try to avoid non-essential travel while people work on better treatments.
> That assumes you can't get it twice
I'm assuming you can get it twice, based on recent news[1], that's why I said:
> If it wasn't possible to be reinfected
[1] https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...
I'm assuming you can get it twice, based on recent news[1], that's why I said:
> If it wasn't possible to be reinfected
[1] https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...
Sorry, missed that.
According to this podcast featuring a Harvard epidemiologist, someone can get it twice: https://pca.st//episode/ca05539a-1c01-4862-9e86-8882e5e42178
Short term reinfection is extremely unlikely. Natural immunity 1-3 years.
https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/12333387467890360...
Long duration shedding even after recovery is a more likely explanation than than re-infection. But even that's not good news if someone is contagious after they've recovered. https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1231662145156374528
Long duration shedding even after recovery is a more likely explanation than than re-infection. But even that's not good news if someone is contagious after they've recovered. https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1231662145156374528
Slowing the spread via containment so the health system can be shored up seems sensible to me.
Possibly those weeks could make a difference; I'd imagine vaccine development is highly parallelised relative to a normal year, and there may be something in the next 6 months. 4 weeks in that scenario could be huge.
Possibly those weeks could make a difference; I'd imagine vaccine development is highly parallelised relative to a normal year, and there may be something in the next 6 months. 4 weeks in that scenario could be huge.
It doesn't sound like a vaccine is going to save the day here[1].
> Marks said a real late-stage trial to test a vaccine is likely “months away.” One concern is that some previous coronavirus vaccines have caused worsening of the disease, not improvement.
> “We have to make sure that as we proceed with development, we’re not creating problems,” Marks said. It might be realistic, he said, for studies of vaccines to begin by the summer, although that timeline is still aggressive.
[1] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-vaccines-are...
> Marks said a real late-stage trial to test a vaccine is likely “months away.” One concern is that some previous coronavirus vaccines have caused worsening of the disease, not improvement.
> “We have to make sure that as we proceed with development, we’re not creating problems,” Marks said. It might be realistic, he said, for studies of vaccines to begin by the summer, although that timeline is still aggressive.
[1] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-vaccines-are...
Experts say a vaccine is 12-18 months away for wide use. Then the task of manufacturing a billion or so for starters.
There are only 4 countries outside of China which have at least 100 confirmed COVID cases.
There are only 3 countries outside of China which have had at least 10 COVID deaths.
The story at this point has been blown massively out of proportion relative to a typical flu season. How many more people died last week from flu-related complications than died of COVID?
It’s wise to take precautions, but it should be done rationally. IMO, I think prophecies of WWIII level calamity should be flagged, as it’s not healthy discussion but more like gruesome fan fiction.
There are only 3 countries outside of China which have had at least 10 COVID deaths.
The story at this point has been blown massively out of proportion relative to a typical flu season. How many more people died last week from flu-related complications than died of COVID?
It’s wise to take precautions, but it should be done rationally. IMO, I think prophecies of WWIII level calamity should be flagged, as it’s not healthy discussion but more like gruesome fan fiction.
The problem with R0=2 is that its exponential. Nor saying at all people should panic, Singapore shows it can be contained, but using 《100 as a yardstick for severity is not very useful. Germany will be 》100 in today and 》1000 a few days later, they already have up contact tracing on two clusters and it seems every local mayor gets to decide if schools stay open.
[deleted]
In other thread, people commented that "it's becoming real" because now we have TWO cases in US among the population over 300M. The current economic damage is at least $50M/death due to COVID-19 virus! I'm not sure if this is the most dangerous disease but its certainly most expensive diseases the world has seen so far. So yes, the hype is real.
The hype is hype. The reactions to the hype are certainly real, and obviously extremely overblown. It will be easier to see this by April 1 than it is to foresee it on March 1.
In the moment, when reactions are snowballing, it's hard to be the one who doesn't cancel an event. And then of course there will be the people who claim next month that all the economic fallout was worth it because a pandemic never materialized.
Personally, I think it's not terrible to have a good solid Stress Test for "Disease X", but it's also very much nothing to worry about. Hopefully the over-reaction this time doesn't lead to an under-reaction if it's ever truly needed.
In the moment, when reactions are snowballing, it's hard to be the one who doesn't cancel an event. And then of course there will be the people who claim next month that all the economic fallout was worth it because a pandemic never materialized.
Personally, I think it's not terrible to have a good solid Stress Test for "Disease X", but it's also very much nothing to worry about. Hopefully the over-reaction this time doesn't lead to an under-reaction if it's ever truly needed.
Ebola is a perfect example of an extremely hard to spread infection that stands zero chance of ever propagating in the US.
Only in areas where it’s common to have close contact with infected during their dying days while they are vomiting and hemorrhage blood can Ebola spread with an R0 approaching even 1.5.
Only in areas where it’s common to have close contact with infected during their dying days while they are vomiting and hemorrhage blood can Ebola spread with an R0 approaching even 1.5.
Yeah, I think Ebola is a pretty strong argument against using R0 for public consumption. Ebola has never spread in the presence of a functioning health system, and even without a functioning health system outbreaks have been localized - a metric showing it's as contagious as the common cold is not measuring the common-sense definition of "contagious".
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That's because the US CDC produced defective test kits and hasn't done enough testing. A tiny nation like SK has tested 30k people while the US has only tested 450+(and each kit costs a patient $3k while it's free or cheap in other countries).
The scientific facts are simple and clear. R0 is between 2 and 3, fatality rate is around 1%.
Even if it's not containable, actions should be taken to buy us more time before an effective vaccine is produced.
The scientific facts are simple and clear. R0 is between 2 and 3, fatality rate is around 1%.
Even if it's not containable, actions should be taken to buy us more time before an effective vaccine is produced.
But from the numbers, coronavirus appears to be roughly 34 times more deadly then the flu?
You'll never convince these armchair epidemiologists that they're wrong and virtually all the public health and medical experts are right.
hk__2(4)
No longer true: CDC Confirms Possible Instance of Community Spread of COVID-19 in U.S.
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/s0226-Covid-19-sprea...