Corona Virus 2019-nCoV

The Democratic ones were ok to good - only the other Republican presidents were bad, Trump being not so much the worst one as the last straw, or ton of bricks in his case.

And it only became hopeless with Trump, who managed to get the bus all the way over the cliff; before Trump walked into the White House, found the nearest commode, and began tweeting, the US had

1) an agency staffed by experts put together for the exact purpose of responding to the early signs of a pandemic by coordinating the national response. They had set up, in advance, the connections and contracts and formal waivers and so forth necessary to ramp up production of ventilators and acquisition of emergency hospital beds and development of diagnostic tests and distribution of masks and gloves and deployment of National Guard and other military resources and requisition of quarantine facilities and so forth - ready to launch on iirc three days notice, in response to

2) a division or sub-agency ("PREDICT") put together and funded for the purpose of spotting outbreaks of epidemics that could become pandemics, using circumstantial clues that did not depend on accurate information from foreign governments or sophisticated medical care systems, so the US military, diplomatic, and pandemic response agencies would have as much warning as possible (they would have spotted this one by the end of December at the latest, which means we would be more than two months into ventilator production and have plenty of cheap masks by now - as well as having flattened that famous curve considerably.

3) a small group led by an experienced medical and diplomatic professional stationed in China near Wuhan and with personal as well as political connections among Wuhan's hospital staff and public health administrators, with the express purpose of getting early info about epidemics informally, before the Chinese government went public.

4) the collected information and experience of a team of epidemiologists and related pros who had wargamed various scenarios including - just a couple of years before - a breakout of a newly mutated zoonotic coronavirus from Asia that could spread as a respiratory infection (they were spitballing a worst case - they chose a respiratory coronavirus because it combined rapid spread with lack of a vaccine - possibly no vaccine, as no one has yet developed an effective coronavirus vaccine).

Had Trump not thrown all that preparation away, dismissed all that expertise from government service and ignored all that information, we might be facing the quarantine of a couple of cruise ships and some foreign travel restrictions trapping tourists abroad, with the dead numbered in the tens and a half dozen hospitals dedicated to treating the sick.

And that is a refrain that needs to be repeated, pounded home with a sledgehammer: this, the US government's response to this natural disaster of continental scope, is what the Republican Party has become.

 

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No that would mean that community containment is virtually impossible, and all we have left is akin to "whacking a mole". That the health care systems will be overwhelmed for many months and as such the death toll will be considerably worse than anticipated.

Imagine the Italian, Spanish experience being replicated globally... and you get an idea...

 

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If almost everyone has it ALREADY and the mortality rate is that much lower, then it won't be worse than anticipated.

 

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USA
CFR 24 hour growth at 15.94% yesterday.

 

Math on the fly...

We aren't suggesting that every one has it...
But if I did:
The current Global CFR is about 5.36% (average)
It is both understated and over stated because testing is far from adequate.
but assume a CFR of 5%
7 billion people with a death toll of about 5% = ?
add in collateral deaths...and undeclared COVID deaths. (rhetorical)
add in understating for high population area that have poor health services ( India, Africa etc ) that have yet to provide any realistic stats. ( Ignore the China stat problem)

The average of a global CFR 5% is significantly understated.

The advice was that the current confirmed cases do not include unconfirmed cases. That those unconfirmed cases including asymptomatic cases could mean that the actual infection load is between 4 to 10 times what is being reported. ( for Australia)
Example ( extrapolated to the USA):
USA has a population of 327,000,000
Currently it has a confirmed case load of: 247,000
247k * 4 = 988k
247k * 10 = 2,470k
and growing at a rate of about 12.20% ( yesterday )
====
BTW this is all premised on the notion that the body bag count is relatively accurate..( which we have since found out that it is far from accurate and being seriously understated.)

 

Masks:
Australian expat Jeremy Howard, a medical data scientist at San Francisco University,
“There’s a lot of evidence now that strongly suggests that if 80 per cent of a people in a population wear any kind of cloth face cover it can entirely stop the spread of COVID-19,” he said.
“Hand washing and social distancing we have to do as well but this is such an easy, extra thing.”
“The high-quality manufactured masks should be saved for doctors and nurses but a homemade one can stop asymptomatic patients spreading the virus when they leave home.”

“But you’ve got to make it compulsory, particularly in Australia because Australia is coming into Winter and the southern hemisphere is going to be the first to really see what this virus can do.”​

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04...a-live-blog-updates-covid-19-april-4/12120782

 

Thinks aren't looking good for that imaginary girlfriend moving into your sanctuary are they?

 

?? No.

Right now there are a million people with COVID-19. 58,000 deaths. That means fatality rate is 5.2%.

Let's say that _half_ of everyone has it, because most people get minor cases. That means fatality rate is .00145%. Let's say that twice that many are _going_ to die from it. Now it's at .003% - with a total death toll of about 120,000.

 

???No...
It means that half of every one else is contagious spreading it like wild fire to the rest ... leaving with you CFR that is determined by health services available and how over whelmed they are.
You eventually end up with a global CFR..once the incubation period turns in to symptomatic then on to fatality.
Any way since when is 4 to 10 times CC mean half of everyone...?
10 times 1 million is ...duh! 10 million

Global population is about 7 billion
Global recovery rate is only 20.92% of CC

"Apples for apples, horses for roosters, imaginary girlfriends for clouds in the sky..."

 

Oh no, she was already in my sanctuary but I had to get her to sleep in another room due to social distancing requirements...lol

 

So I take it most members here at sciforums believe that they can underestimate this bug?

Don't worry... you are not alone... USA, Italy, Spain, Germany even... oh and the UK of course. (Australia is pretty close but estimating better now after the Ruby Princess cruise ship disaster)

But we are a nation of only about 24.6 million

CC 5350
CFC 28

CC growth under 6%

 

04/04/2020 10:45am
Singapore has just announced a near total lock down due to a re-surging case load. ABC TV
South Korea may probably follow with similar soon.
China? who knows?

 

Right - but if they don't die, the CFR stays very, very low.

 

When this is all over it will be interesting to see how many died from the lock down itself due to poverty, suicide, services not being available, shortages, etc.

If you add all that to the lives saved by the lockdown and add all (non-homicide) deaths and compare that to a typical year, it will be interesting to see the relative difference.

The fastest way to be done with this crisis (not necessarily the best) would be to let most people be infected which would happen at an exponential rate and the recovery would be exponential as well and it would be over with the economy largely intact.

When you try to prevent infection via lockdown, you are potentially committed to continuing that for an extended period of time depending on how serious you are about it.

You probably have to do just exactly what we are doing due to the unknown nature of the virus but in hindsight that may turn out not to be the best choice.

 

So you are happy to see up to 2.3 million (?) USA citizens in the grave?
oh plus the suicides and the collateral deaths, unemployment as the virus generates it's own lock down.
Keep in mind all medical services would be entirely overwhelmed in ways that are not easy to model.

Would you go to work knowing that you had a high chance of infection with out a hospital system that is functioning?
What work safety responsibilities are involved for the employers knowingly and deliberately exposing their staff to viral risk?

 

Ohhh my.

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While this makes some sense, the problem comes in when hospitals become entirely overwhelmed, and people start dying (unnecessarily) because there simply isn't enough care, beds, etc to go around. I don't think anyone wants to have such a situation happen on their watch, which is why the lock down seems like a decent idea, although not ideal either. (because of the other reasons you mention)

If ''everyone'' starts getting sick at the same time, people will be calling off, and there will still be a lot of fall out in terms of companies not able to work with their full staff, at capacity. Hard to say how much worse or better off we'd be, honestly.

But, what would stop if we applied your idea, is the panic shopping. Supply chains wouldn't be so depleted, because we would be going about life, dealing with a novel virus, in much the same way we deal with flu season - wash hands, be mindful of distancing, if you feel sick, head to the doctor, etc. But...with less panic.

Is this what they mean by arm-chair quarterbacking?

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I think we are at a much higher risk of deaths due to "services not being available" if you just let everyone get infected and let the infection rapidly peak.

Keep in mind that the reason people are going to die isn't because Amazon can't deliver something in time - it will be because they can't breathe and there are no emergency medical services available.

 

I agree. I didn't write anything about being "happy" with any negative outcomes and I said that what we are doing is probably what we have to do given our current knowledge.

In hindsight, there might be some areas (other than being more prepared in the first place) where we would have done things differently (or not).

Shutting down the world economy is a pretty blunt tool after all. Doing so isn't just about helping the rich protect their assets after all. It's how all of our governments and their citizens are organized. It's the engine that makes everything else possible.

If I were actually responsible I can't say that I would do anything differently. Since I'm not in charge I can wonder about alternatives in a non-hysterical way.

 

extremely blunt and a step not taken lightly.
I think the logic is that
if we don't do a managed shut down we will have to do an un-managed one any how...and for sure the unmanaged one would be considerably more devastating than a managed one.
For example:
Most Governments are shutting things down with the view to preserving those industries so that after this is all over they can start up again. Quickly restoring economic activity.
If they didn't take these steps the number of bankruptcies would mean that the economy would be crippled after this is all over. Restoring the economy would be difficult indeed.
and no doubt there are other reasons I haven't mentioned...