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The time to truly worry is when we start seeing sustained community transfer that we can't trace back to China. That is, when people start getting sick on a sustained and community basis, and when contact tracing no longer helps. Note that the CDC is now testing for COVID-19 in patients that test ne...

Serious question. Has anyone actually read these studies about social relationships causing happiness? Because I hear a lot of pop sci discussion on the topic, but I'm wondering if there isn't a serious flaw in the logic. For example, is this just correlation or causation? Do relationships make peop...

Not to mention they have Hubei and other provinces inside a sanitary cordon, so the odds of a random infected person getting on a given plane are pretty low. Combined with airport fever screenings and quick isolation, they've done a pretty good job at containing it. Note that you don't have to detec...

WHO mentioned in their press conference this morning that the spike was causes by allowing for clinically diagnosed cases instead of just lab confirmed cases. The old test involved swabbing the back of the patient's throat and sending it off to a PCR lab to check for viral RNA. The clinically diagno...

Thanks for the reference, Ego. That was a concerning read, and just when I was getting hopeful because the mortality rate seems to be slowing. I read yesterday that Spanish flu had a mortality rate of 2.5%, although I think that varied country to country. So if COVID-19 has a mortality rate of 2%, w...

Interesting case data. I'm extremely curious how the international cases will compare to it. I do think the sex difference in fatality is probably due to smoking rates, but we'll have to see. Spanish flu was actually more like to kill men than women too. Unless the woman was pregnant, in which case ...

Seems like there's quite the perverse incentives going on in the pharmaceutical company. The director of the CDC even complains about this in the link Ego posted. She said something to the effect of "[pharmaceutical companies] are happy to make opioids [but they won't make the vaccine]" I'm also rem...

I know this has come up before, but I'm having trouble finding an answer in one place. So my question is: for all of you who buy dry goods (rice etc) in bulk, how do you store them? I'm not a huge fan of leaving them in the bag because the lack of standard container size makes cooking harder. So I'd...

This is pretty long, but if any of you are interesting in seeing how policy makers/government leaders think about this stuff behind the scenes, the Center for Health Security (ran by John Hopkins) ran a tabletop exercise in 2018 with a bunch of folks from Washington to simulate a global pandemic. Th...

Ages makes a big difference too in some states. Pre-ACA, I think insurers were allowed a 5x range (iirc) between what they charged the young and what they charged the old. So if they charged the young $200/mo, they could charge the older age brackets up to $1000/mo. I believe ACA changed this so the...

Out of curiosity, what factors constitute an insurance death-zone? I've been on a Bronze plan for awhile due to working as a contractor, and I've had to pay the full premium rate due to being too high income. One thing to watch out for too is if you live in a state where balance billing is legal or ...

Jesus, that Atlantic article is terrifying. It would have been less terrifying if I hadn't also noticed these things personally. That part about belief and cynicism is so dammed accurate. I think this is also what's leading to today's hyper partisan environment. Does anyone have any idea of what can...

Esh they found 60 more cases on the cruise ship, bringing the total number of cases on that thing up to 130. If th cruise ship was a country, it's got the second highest amount of cases after China. :? If I had a trip planned, I would still go, but I'd take precautions. Wash your hands and don't tou...

Ego has a good point. I was also reading that this is a problem on the plague quarantined cruise ship too. Many of the passengers are dependent on regular medications, and getting refills to 2k+ people has been a logistical nightmare that's resulted in some people not having enough. Really underscor...

The way I think about the web of goals is basically the concept of synergy. That is, how can I achieve more with one action? Are there strategic actions I can take that will fulfill multiple needs? Are there actions I am taking currently that produce more drain than benefit? If you're used to thinki...

they just announced it spreads by arosol (you only need to breathe the same air as an infected person). keep hoping. This is a simplification of what aerosol spread means, and the distinction is important. What it means is when you cough or sneeze, it creates a bunch of tiny aerosol droplets. These...

It's been about two weeks, and so far we haven't seen an explosion of new cases outside of China. I'm starting to become hesitately hopeful that they're actually able to isolate the cases and reduce the spread. (Or its just spreading undetected...) If another place starts to have sustaining H2H spre...

Have any of you noticed the droves of conspiracy theorists coming out of the woodworks about ncov? My least favorite one has got to be that the Gates Foundation released the virus on purpose in order to sell vaccines. Or people complaining that WHO isn't running around like a headless chicken yet. :...

They're actually already doing randomized trials with those antivirals in China. It's a little surprising how fast they were able to spin up the randomized trial study, but it's already underway. So while the in vitro study is questionable, we should have real data soon if they make a difference. Th...

Right, I do think they were likely talking about strains of the virus shifting in the future. Since it has so many humans to infect, there will be many copies of the virus made. Many copies of the virus increases the odds of genetic drift/evolution. I also read a paper this morning that even casual ...