Covid-19

[Gaius Octavius]

Most colds are rhinovirus.

Also in Ohio a chilling thing happened. People outside the state capitol started screaming and running towards the building due to some unseen threat. The Ohio government freaked out and shut the doors while everyone outside started pounding furiously and shouting "Let us in!"

Suddenly, everything went quiet.

A few seconds later, there was a sniffle.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories. However I'm looking at what's going on, and I have to wonder.

This response didn't happen with SARS or H1N1. While this disease is bad news for the elderly and those with preexisting respiratory or immunity issues, it's not much different than the common cold for the vast majority of the rest of the population.

In the past 2 weeks trillions of dollars of wealth have been eliminated. The government has dictated the size of public gatherings, including mandating that private businesses and religious institutions close.

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

People are lapping this up. There won't be any need to declare martial law, as too many people will happily submit to the suspension of our rights. This is going to get ugly, as huge swaths of our population are forbidden from working. The CDC is recommending that there are no groups of 50 or more people for the next 8 weeks.

Parents can't work, children can't go to school......And we're allowing the government to stampede all over our lives.

[Gaius Octavius]

To be fair, SARS wasn't that contagious, so it wasn't very widespread. However, I do wonder if this will end up being similar, mortality rate wise, to H1N1 when it's all over. That 3.4% figure could easily end up being less when you factor in the number of people who will test positive but manifest either no symptoms or very mild symptoms. Some epidemiologists are saying it will end up being >1%.

[peter]

today there are 30,000 less emergency care beds in hospitals

That could mean there are 30 000 healthier individuals today. Austerity does not necessitate poor health.

Totally - but has no bearing on my point that Governments must be held to account. It's up to them to demonstrate that (say) this is the case, not the responsibility of the opposition not to ask the question because it might be.

[peter]

I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories. However I'm looking at what's going on, and I have to wonder.

This response didn't happen with SARS or H1N1. While this disease is bad news for the elderly and those with preexisting respiratory or immunity issues, it's not much different than the common cold for the vast majority of the rest of the population.

In the past 2 weeks trillions of dollars of wealth have been eliminated. The government has dictated the size of public gatherings, including mandating that private businesses and religious institutions close.

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

People are lapping this up. There won't be any need to declare martial law, as too many people will happily submit to the suspension of our rights. This is going to get ugly, as huge swaths of our population are forbidden from working. The CDC is recommending that there are no groups of 50 or more people for the next 8 weeks.

Parents can't work, children can't go to school......And we're allowing the government to stampede all over our lives.

This.

There comes a point when the "cure costs more than the disease". I'm wondering if it might not be better that we simply let the disease do what it does, let the health services do what they do - and simply get on with our lives (taking such reasonable precautions as are appropriate in the pursuit of the same).

[TheFallen]

Although I'm not (at all) buying into Nano's claim that the National Guard will soon be shooting people in the street, he's right to point out that SARS didn't have a particularly high infection rate at all, when compared to COVID-19.

As I keep having to point out, despite having a significantly higher mortality rate, the 2002-3 SARS outbreak only resulted in just over 8,000 infected and just under 800 dead. Harshly speaking, that's barely worth a mention against a global scale of things - 2002-3 SARS was only ever an outbreak and not a pandemic.

H1N1 in 2009 absolutely was a pandemic, in that over the 18 months it was notably taking effect, according to CDC estimates, it infected somewhere between 11 to 21% of the entire global population. That's a pretty big number (between 0.7 and 1.4 BILLION) - and because it is a pretty big number, although H1N1 only had a very small mortality rate of 0.03%, hundreds of thousands of people died of it worldwide. However, because H1N1's mortality rate was so low, this pretty much probably only doubled the total number of people who died anyways due to normal winter flu. Again being harsh, globally speaking that's small beer.

COVID-19 is different and as such is definitely worth taking seriously. If rigorous segregative action is not taken, it seems to naturally display a similar infection rate to H1N1 - and this seemingly happens a whole lot faster, too (just take a look at the meteoric rise in Italy). Take the low side of the CDC estimate for H1N1's infection rates - call it 10% for ease of maths - and you'd end up with around 770 million becoming infected with COVID-19.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 is then displaying a much higher mortality rate than H1N1. It's very early days with data yet, but this is looking like it'll end up being somewhere between 30 and 100 times higher than H1N1, so between 1% and 3%. It then becomes trivial to do the maths to estimate potential total deaths...

So I am absolutely foursquare behind governments taking very rigorous short-term measures to slow infection rates... and I am a bit pissed off with the UK for (currently) not implementing robust enough action. Both Italy and Spain have effectively (and quite rightly) imposed a nationwide lockdown - my daughter's working in Spain, so I have an inside track on this - and Austria's bang-on correct in imposing a ban on any gatherings of more than 5 people.

We need more of this in the short-term. It's important and buys time for health services to get more resources (beds, drugs, equipment, staff) in place. The so-called "flattening/elongating" of the hump is massively desirable - and if it requires temporary legislation to help bring that about, bring it on - no matter if some civil liberties may be impinged upon for a short while.

On balance IMO that is absolutely the most sensible way forward and by far the lesser of two evils.

And Pete, I hear what you're saying in your most recent post... but I don't think you're taking into account the core differences within the current pandemic, as per laid out above. Purely hypothetically, if the UK Government's "best guess" modelling shows it that, if it sits on its hands and does nothing, somewhere between 70,000 and 400,000 Brits will be offed by COVID-19, should it then do nothing?

Fortunately, from an employer point of view, numerous larger firms seem to be not waiting around and taking proactive action themselves. Wherever possible, employees are being told to work from home for the next couple of weeks by these - and a whole load of money is being shelled out in very rapidly acquiring whatever equipment is needed to enable this (my other half works for the UK arm of a very major IT and services reseller - their order book for and recent shipments of enabling hardware like laptops and tablets have both gone through the roof over the last three weeks, precisely because of this. As just one example, she informs me that more than 4,000 new Lenovo UK laptops ended up in the hands of their eventual end-users in just 24 hours last week... by literally miles and miles its highest ever daily number).

Finally for those interested in live updated stats on the COVID-19 situation, can I recommend https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ as an excellent and entirely dispassionate information resource? It's got full by country breakdowns as collected from official agencies within all reporting nations...

[Avatar]

Well, extreme measures implemented here, travel bans, bans on gatherings of over 100 people, ports / borders closed etc.

And just found out that somebody in the office may have been at risk of exposure, so we're all going to work remotely for the next few days and see how it goes.

--A

[aTOMiC]

If the reports are accurate China's total active cases has fallen below 10k.

Someone has to keep an eye on the silver lining given the prevailing attitude is that of a life ending asteroid heading for Earth in 10 minutes.

[TheFallen]

Agreed that this is readily manageable...

...and that China (with, as you say Atomic, the caveat that the figures reported out of Beijing are accurate), is seemingly doing a sterling job in halting the spread of this virus...

...BUT surely the point here is that it's precisely the very "draconian" lock-down measures that the Chinese government took (and to a very large extent still is taking) that are apparently proving to be so effective?

I still don't see the slightest harm (but plenty of upsides) in the West doing the exact same thing. It's not like doing so is going to make for the sudden and ongoing imposition of a fascist regime anywhere. Well, no more than is already in play...

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories. However I'm looking at what's going on, and I have to wonder.

This response didn't happen with SARS or H1N1. While this disease is bad news for the elderly and those with preexisting respiratory or immunity issues, it's not much different than the common cold for the vast majority of the rest of the population.

In the past 2 weeks trillions of dollars of wealth have been eliminated. The government has dictated the size of public gatherings, including mandating that private businesses and religious institutions close.

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

People are lapping this up. There won't be any need to declare martial law, as too many people will happily submit to the suspension of our rights. This is going to get ugly, as huge swaths of our population are forbidden from working. The CDC is recommending that there are no groups of 50 or more people for the next 8 weeks.

Parents can't work, children can't go to school......And we're allowing the government to stampede all over our lives.

Exactly, and now people--including many Democrats--have applauded the measure giving emergency powers to the Supreme Chancellor...erm, I mean "have applauded Trump declaring a national emergency", which gives him and his Administration more authority to deal with the situation.

Face it--people have been freaking the fuck out about coronavirus and their freaking out is not concordant with the situation. Everyone is acting as if coronavirus is World War Z (or some other overly-dramatized Hollywood movie about a fast-spreading, virulent disease) and that simply isn't the case. When I say "freaking out" I mean it--in India people are drinking cow urine because they think that will ward off or cure corona. In Iran, where alcohol is outlawed, people were drinking industrial alcohol (probably methanol or isopropyl) leading to several deaths. There have been notices sent out here reminding people not to drink bleach as a way to cure corona (no, I am not kidding).

Now
kids are not in school
you can't go into a restaurant
I doubt you can go to the movies
theme parks are closed
the people who can are working from home--this one is actually a good thing and businesses have simply been hesitant to adopt it because they don't trust their employees to work if they are at home
there are no sporting events
political meetings are being canceled--Ms. Lebwohl was supposed to have a district meeting for all the precinct chairs on Saturday
some primaries/caucuses are being postponed
special events are being canceled
spring break party beach destinations are closed
New Orleans police cleared Bourbon Street
hell even casinos are closing

IT. IS. NOT. THAT. FUCKING. BAD.

Most people who catch corona have symptoms similar to a severe cold or the flu but then recover; only the elderly, people with chronic conditions already, or are immune-compromised for some reason have actual reason to be afraid.

Here is the real kicker, though: in most places, groups of people >= 100 are forbidden; the CDC is recommending no groups of >= 50 people. You can't protest the government if you can't gather together. It won't take the military to lock down the nation--most of the people in the nation gladly and willingly submitted their sovereignty by choice.

In 6 months, when this is all over, I hope people look back and are ashamed at how they overreacted.

[Gaius Octavius]

In China, authorities would seal families inside apartments, and the food they had was what they had in their apartment previously. They don't care if people starve or die in their draconian measures.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

To be fair, SARS wasn't that contagious, so it wasn't very widespread. However, I do wonder if this will end up being similar, mortality rate wise, to H1N1 when it's all over. That 3.4% figure could easily end up being less when you factor in the number of people who will test positive but manifest either no symptoms or very mild symptoms. Some epidemiologists are saying it will end up being >1%.

As testing has become more widespread, the percentage of critical cases has fallen dramatically, from about 20% to about 7%. So many people are asymptomatic or are confusing this with the cold or flu, that the total number of active cases is severely underrepresented.

Far more concerning is the elimination of trillions of dollars of wealth and blatant transfer of power to government from the people.

[TheFallen]

Hashi, it's not often I disagree with you (or Nihil for that matter), but here I am going to - at least in part.

Firstly, yes people are freaking out, over-reacting and in places behaving incredibly dumb - cf your examples of gargling with cow piss or bleach. That's a given. It's also true that global markets have gone into meltdown and that has at the moment wiped trillions of dollars off the global economy. Neither of those things are good.

Having said that...

When a pandemic (and bear in mind, this is a pandemic) is initially tracking as having a potential infection rate of say 10% (as per the low estimate for H1N1 back in 2009) and when it is initially tracking as having a mortality rate of say as low as just 1% (and it's currently tracking significantly higher than that), you can do the maths as well as I can. There are what... 330 million US citizens?

So, what are you advocating as a suitable Government response here? Just advice as to self-isolate for 7 to 14 days, if you're showing flu-like symptoms?

And before you answer, perhaps take into account the following live figures from Italy (data up to yesterday):-

Total COVID-19 cases... 24,747 (first cases diagnosed exactly one month ago)

Total recovered cases... 2,335 (9.4%)

Total deaths... 1,809 (7.3%)

Total active non-critical cases... (76.5%)

Total active serious/critical cases... (6.8%)

Now, I freely agree that the Italian mortality rate is liable to be substantially and artificially elevated, because of the doubtless large number of asymptomatic/mild and undiagnosed cases.

Even taking this into account, what action in your opinion is it reasonable for a Western First World government to take in the face of such limited but still hard data?

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Far more concerning is the elimination of trillions of dollars of wealth and blatant transfer of power to government from the people.

I concur. I don't disagree with a modicum of measures and people exercising caution, but when authorities begin mandating that groups of 50 or more are essentially illegal that raises a serious red flag and the civil Libertarian in me does not like it.

Please understand that a lot of this panic is being driven by Democrats--not only do they want to look they are doing absoluately everything so they can complain about Trump when he doesn't do as much, but the ability to be able to shutter schools/public events, close/restrict venues like restaruants and bars, and effectively outlaw groups of people is a test. Now that they know that it is possible and people will accept it given the correct motivating reason, all they will have to do in the future is concoct a similar plot and people will, under the guise of "flattening the curve" or "keeping people safe", gladly give up all sorts of liberties and freedoms.

The governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut will "allow" essential businesses like gasoline stations and grocery stores to stay open past 8pm but all other businesses must close. That is not a reasonable response to corona but panic-based power grab.

I will now officially encourage people to gather together in groups greater than 100. What are authories going to do, arrest them all? Shoot them? I don't recall the First Amendment guaranteeing the freedom of peacful assembly except in cases of viral outbreak.

People who are not self-quarantining or practicing "safe social distancing" are being "self-distance shamed", like the Governor of Oklahoma, who tweeted a picture of his family at a restaurant on Saturday night (the tweet has since been deleted). Remember: if you aren't panicing as much as your neighbors are then you are going to kill them.

This is completely fucked up. We are turning in to China over this.

[TheFallen]

Hashi, again, if you were in a position of authority and could make the call, what actions would you take (if any)?

I'm well aware of what you object to and why you object to it... but what if anything would you do?

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+


Robert Ellsberg @RobertEllsberg | Twitter

[SoulBiter]

This is all about saving lives. The over-reaction I see is the hording of paper products and cleaners. But there is a need to de-segregate the population to keep from over-whelming the system. If you advocate for just letting this run its course, you are looking at our medical systems being over-run. There are just not enough ventilators to keep everyone alive that will get this all at once due to allowing it to just happen. Medical professionals will look at two people, both can be saved but they only have one respirator. They will make a decision on who lives and who dies. This is what Italy is dealing with right now.

So yes this is costly from an economic PoV but the cost to letting some percentage of our population die when it could have been avoided IS more draconian than mandating people stay home for 14 days.

This will pass in a number of weeks. People will go back to work. Restaurants will re-open. The stockmarket will recover the trillions it will have "lost".

[TheFallen]

Soulbiter, I could not agree more with the entirety of your post above. It's in my view the most measured, realistic and pragmatic appraisal of the COVID situation posted in the Tank to date.

[aTOMiC]

If this is indeed just a storm that we must weather then there is hope that normalcy will return before the rising rates of collateral damage become the status quo. My hope is that important lessons will be learned because of this. I know I will view virus outbreaks in far off places with greater attention going forward.
My greatest concern isn't covid19 but effect this outbreak will have on the health of civilization in general. With all world economies in such a weakened state there is a danger that we will find it much more difficult to overcome future challenges. Both natural and man made. Imagine if a radical, disgruntled group or state chose this moment of world wide disarray to make good on a threat. It could be potentially devastating.

[Lazy Luke]

A storm! That is the understatement of the decade. China has just delivered the equivalent of a nuclear strike in your ongoing trade war.
How now is America prepared to retaliate?