COVID-19

[Gilberto de Piento]

+1 for the Hot Zone book Jacob linked to. I'm not sure how relevant it is to the current situation but I found it very interesting.

[5ts]

I am certainly not complacent, because the threat is very real, but I'm not worried right now and just taking my standard precautions. I guess I trust the system, and it's not 1918, in many different ways, so I still don't know if we can mitigate these potential pandemics because we are so connected or the connection actually makes us more susceptible. We just don't have a lot of examples so far.

[diracwinsagain]

Indian scientists discovered insertions in the 2019 coronavirus not found in any other coronavirus. The insertion has similar composition to that of HIV leading to the thought that the virus was manufactured.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 1.full.pdf

Abstract:

See this post: https://mobile.twitter.com/guacamolebio ... 0297324544

[classical_Liberal]

Wuhan is new, whereas the normal flu is already out of the bag. Flu kills ~50,000 Americans(*). Not everybody gets infected but if you do, the fatality rate is 0.13% and it mostly kills those with weak immune systems so people aged 5- or 65+. Also there's a vaccine, so people feel they have some agency.

If this virus becomes normalized there will be a vaccine in short order. FYI vaccines, like the flu, have 80% efficacy rate in the best scenarios, usually much, much less. So it's not the individual protection that matters, rather its the herd immunity. IOW, if something had double digit mortality rates, I would never feel individually protected even if I was vaccinated. Although there is some evidence of reduced illness severity with vaccinations as well,.

Wuhan nCov has a fatality rate of 2-3% (although it's not locked down yet).

I have a suspicion this mortality rate is going to end up being extremely exaggerated. Most of the people being held in quarantine with confirmed cases outside of China are not really getting that sick. I would venture to guess that there are massive amounts of undiagnosed mild cases in the zone of infection. Obviously at risk populations are going to get hit hard, but I will bet dollar to donuts the actual mortality rate for this virus is 1/10th what we think based on the "confirmed cases".

[AnalyticalEngine]

Good news from the WHO situation report today:

The main driver of transmission, based on currently available data, is symptomatic cases. WHO is aware of possible transmission of 2019-nCoV from infected people before they developed symptoms.Detailed exposure histories are being taken to better understand the pre-clinical phase of infection and how transmission may have occurred in these few instances. Asymptomatic infection may be rare, and transmission from an asymptomatic person is very rare with other coronaviruses,as we have seen with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus.Thus, transmission from symptomatic cases is likely not a major driver of transmission. Persons who are symptomatic will spread the virus more readily through coughing and sneezing.

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source ... 273c5d35_2

[bostonimproper]

So let's say the virus is a tenth as fatal (on the order of a 0.2% fatality rate, which is still quite high), is in fact more infectious than the flu, and there are 10x more cases than currently estimated due to systematic underreporting of mild and asymptomatic cases. What does the Chinese government do?

It may be that the outbreak is impossible to contain at this point, but announcing there are vastly more cases (albeit mild ones) may induce a panic. They could extend the quarantine and holidays across all provinces-- already it seems another week of inactivity is likely. Even then you'll have distributed pockets of the disease as family members in close quarters chain their illness one after another, which could lead to a resurgence a couple months down the line. But a more prolonged quarantine is likely to be untenable, both economically and socially.

Best case scenario you quell the current outbreak with a relatively brief quarantine going into February but not extending through April/May and come up with a vaccine that you can distribute across the population before another major outbreak ramps up. You might luck out as population health improves going into the late spring/summer months. You can possibly even suppress information about a secondary outbreak by not alerting the WHO and take the fatalities in lieu of even more economic restriction, though it won't take long for other countries' medical systems to notice. Or you can have another wave of quarantines if need be.

The question is then whether the government can deftly handle the international pressure of extended travel bans coupled with prolonged trade tension as companies consider diversifying their supply chains away from China. If this outbreak (or series of outbreaks) is a year-long ordeal coupled with an economic slowdown, what does that mean for the CCP?

[thrifty++]

NZ just issued a travel ban, banning all travellers from China from entering the country. Have many other countries done the same thing? No reported cases here - yet.

[ZAFCorrection]

@bostonimproper

I wouldn't be particularly surprised if it turned out that the virus is already spreading widely in the US and other places that have allegedly not been affected yet. Unless people explicitly check everyone coming in to the ER for 2019-whatever, it's not certain that it would be noticeable. I've already heard stories about the flu being particularly bad this year. If I were the authorities, I would be sorely tempted to do nothing and then just let everyone know 6 months later that they already caught it.

[ertyu]

If I were the authorities, I would be sorely tempted to do nothing and then just let everyone know 6 months later that they already caught it.

The chinese tried exactly this

Didn't work too well for them

What's with the bravado in the face of this i have no idea.

[ertyu]

Btw, if you find yourself to be on the more muggle side, this guy is an actual doctor that has made a couple of youtube videos that are really slow, patient, and good for noobs

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB ... IBupFtBDxg

[bostonimproper]

@thrifty++ Singapore, Australia, and the US have all issued travel bans on foreign nationals coming in from China.

@ZAFCorrection I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there's ex-China spread as well, especially since in initial days the only proactive triage we did were temperature screens of people coming in from Wuhan. I do think if the virus is as infectious as current estimates suggest, even if it's 10x less fatal, at some point that causes an unmanageable load to hospitals and people notice.

First ex-China death reported. Chinese man in the Philippines. He was 44.

[AnalyticalEngine]

New York Times published an excellent article about how China tried to ignore it at first and now that's why it's so bad.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/worl ... virus.html

[ZAFCorrection]

What's with the bravado in the face of this i have no idea.

Maybe it's just that doctors are pretty sharp and noticed the symptoms are distinct. People don't like getting infected by new stuff. So maybe my idea doesn't work for that reason.

But social issues aside, I'm not seeing that the distribution of symptoms is particularly awful. Like your average 36 year old dude could be infected, contract the disease, and assume his relatively mild symptoms are the regular flu. The whole medical/epidemiological apparatus is bypassed if he stays home, has some soup, and feels better in a week.

It's not clear to me how many of those dudes there are, but some evidence suggests there are many. In that case, as has been stated a few times by others, the numbers and severity begin to look remarkably like regular old flu, just with a more regal name.

Put a different way, make the naive assumption that everyone who contracts flu is going to the hospital. Then calculate your mortality rate based on those numbers. Crazy high, right?

[5ts]

Put a different way, make the naive assumption that everyone who contracts flu is going to the hospital. Then calculate your mortality rate based on those numbers. Crazy high, right?

We just don't know enough to panic. I hate fear mongering and I see these articles that a new pandemic could sweep through the world and kill hundreds of millions of people and this Wuhan virus could be this next pandemic and hospitals are going to be overwhelmed and everyone will die. Ok, yes, I guess that could happen but how likely is that? WE DON'T KNOW! We are extrapolating and creating models and daydreaming nightmare scenarios and we barely have any information. This could be terrible or could be like the regular flu. We don't know yet.

[AnalyticalEngine]

Plus it is genuinely scientifically fascinating to watch a pandemic play out in real time. I mean, you read about things like the Spanish Flu in history books and you study disease models in college, so watching it happen in real time over the Internet can be both an interesting and surreal experience.

The cargo culting around mask wearing is interesting too. You're seeing photos out of China of people wearing ridiculous things as masks, and a lot of people wearing masks but using them incorrectly, thus eliminating any protection they would have provided.

[Riggerjack]

This could be terrible or could be like the regular flu. We don't know yet.

This is already terrible. No, this couldn't be like the regular flu. But it could be contained.

And if so, it will be just one more terrible thing, far away. One more anecdote of a tempest, that locally, was contained in a teacup.

Was SARS no big deal, because it didn't hit hard here? Ebola? Swine flu?

Or do we have a locality bias, that lets us discount hazards that have not surfaced locally, within our lifetimes? A bias that allows us to emotionally distance ourselves from bad things happening to people we don't know, and don't intend to know? Could these biases be good for us in an evolutionary biology kind of way? And if so, would they be appropriate responses in our current environment?

But I agree that locally, this could be no big deal. And I think the odds of that are pretty good. I'm hoping for the teacup solution, since that's about all we have.

This virus will either be terrible at a distance, or terrible locally and at a distance. There doesn't seem to be much room for middle ground on this one.

What's with the bravado in the face of this i have no idea.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ee6-sI9rdtA

When I see people whistling in the dark, this scene goes through my mind. Perhaps not accurate, but it puts a smile on my face, all the same.

[AnalyticalEngine]

The lockdown in Wuhan is making me wonder how a similar situation would play out in the US, at least economically. The thing about China is despite being a poorer country, they have a much higher personal savings rate. Even 50% wouldn't be uncommon there. Meanwhile Americans enjoy living paycheck to paycheck. Which means a Wuhan-style lockdown would put a greater financial strain on American households than Chinese households.

[thrifty++]

Im starting to feel less concerned about the coronavirus than I was before. This is because I was initially looking at the SARS virus which seemed minor in comparison to it, despite being classified as a pandemic.

But now I have looked at the 2009 swine flu pandemic, which is a more recent comparison and which I actually contracted. Looking at the numbers it looked far more significant than the progress of the coronavirus - so far to be fair. But, the swine flu is estimated to have infected something like 11 to 20% of the global population and killed between 150k to 500k people. Despite this being a much larger scale fallout I don't remember seeing so much hype and hysteria about it. Although I remember it clearly. But there was so much less hysteria. At least it seemed that way to me. I think the internet has grown since then and perpetuates more hysteria about global issues. I used to spend hardly any time on the net. Now like most people, I am constantly plugged in and looking out for all the latest alerts and updates on anything. 2009 seems a little bit like the stone age of the internet to me now in retrospect.

[Riggerjack]

2009 seems a little bit like the stone age of the internet to me now in retrospect.

Try looking into the internet way back machine, to see how advanced 2009 was.

Things were a lot different when "lightning fast 14.4k!" on the side of the box was legit marketing of PC components... And dial up was a real service, not a curse.

[Jason]

More fallout:

https://www.businessinsider.com/corona- ... ers-2020-1

Reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxJDobrrOYA