COVID-19

[Seppia]

In Italy this is how it works:
Mild symptoms get quarantined at home, basically trusting you to be a good citizen and respect the rules.
Severe symptoms stay in the hospital.

The key here is not to overwhelm the healthcare system.
As an example, you only get tested if you show symptoms, or if someone you were in contact with tests positive.
Otherwise, if in doubt, stay at home, rest and wait.

[George the original one]

Any idea on what the quarantining looks like? Are they being kept someone or are they at home?

Home quarantine. As I recall, they're without symptoms.

[AnalyticalEngine]

Looks like the virus is already evolving. There's an S type, which is the older virus and less virulent/contagious. Then there's the L type, which is evolutionary newer and more deadly/contagious. L is still more common than S, but the severe quarantines changed some of the selective pressures to favor S.

Population genetic analyses of 103 SARS-CoV-2 genomes indicated that these viruses evolved into two major types (designated L and S), that are well defined by two different SNPs that show nearly complete linkage across the viral strains sequenced to date. Although the L type (∼70%) is more prevalent than the S type (∼30%), the S type was found to be the ancestral version. Whereas the L type was more prevalent in the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan, the frequency of the L type decreased after early January 2020. Human intervention may have placed more severe selective pressure on the L type, which might be more aggressive and spread more quickly.

https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-ar ... 36/5775463

[Jason]

Given the fact that it disproportionately takes out senior citizens, it might have a significant effect on politics.

At least the virus's obvious racism against older people cuts across party lines.

[ertyu]

May be the forum's first case. Sore throat, chest pain in right lung, no runny nose, mild fever + sweating yesterday night, relevant travel history. Today no fever but throat and lung worse. No cough yet, but it's shaping up to be dry - i feel dried out more than runny.

My country doesn't really test unless you are hospitalizable because we're rationing tests (and because our gvt is in denial and apparently wants to be Iraq). Am supposed to fly back to job Friday. No one will stop me at the airport, but I'm not sure it would be ethical to fly. (Alternatively, it may be too late in the pandemic game and not make a difference). RIp plane ticket money (non-refundable), and rip salary.

[Bankai]

Chances are overwhelming it's not. I'd still fly based on this assumption.

You can also calculate your odds (roughly).

[Riggerjack]

No one will stop me at the airport, but I'm not sure it would be ethical to fly.

Or for that matter, ethical to go back to work. Call in, let them know how things are for you, and I expect they will agree that extending your stay where you are is best for everyone.

Even if all you have is the common cold, your coworkers and fellow passengers don't need it.

Having savings allows you the means to make the ethical choice. You have the opportunity to indulge yourself as you get better, while also not risking others. Why squander it?

Is there anything about being sick in your country of employment that is better than being sick where you are?

[ertyu]

Or for that matter, ethical to go back to work.

We're all getting quarantined on arrival, that part will be fine. But I'm supposed to report if I develop symptoms on risk of getting fired (in addition to being criminally prosecutable), so I might get taken to a local hospital and get reinfected with a strain they've got going around. (RIP that guy they wrote about on reddit that was infected by 2 different strains at once. Probably wasn't fun even if he made it). I wish they would just let me recover at home.

So far, we don't know if what I have is some local flu or corona. If I wait more before flying back, it might be a while before it's safe to fly again.

[black_son_of_gray]

More more thoughts I've had recently:

1. Most models (e.g. of healthcare, economies, social structure, government) going forward will be useless or even backwards, because this event is outside the bounds of most models. And guess who's going to be relying on those models? Central banks, governments, economists, etc.

A disturbingly high fraction of various opinion pieces and articles I've read from fund managers/analysts/economists/editorial boards say that they expect this to be temporary/"a couple months"*. They are looking for the exit without having even entered the room yet.** They aren't simply wrong, they are wronger than wrong, because there won't be a "return to normal", at least not for everything. Important systems are going to break. And by the time they realize this, "normal" will already be impossible.

Here's a generic example of what I'm talking about: "Since [arbitrary date or number of years], when X happens, Y happens Z percentage of the time." You've seen this form a thousand times. Let's plug in some made up numbers in a financial context: E.g. "Over the last 50 years, every time the market has corrected down 10%, the market was up 60% of the time one year later." Or you'll see something like "here's an average of the S&P500 during the last 4 global health scares [i.e. ebola, SARS, swine flu]." But if none of the items in their sample pool looked anything like this virus, it means nothing. The same is true for examples about governing or social systems: they're based on sample pools that don't include anything like this, and some of them are going to be spectacularly wrong as a result.

The only "sample" that looks close to the coronavirus from what I can tell is the Spanish Flu of 1918, but the world was a dramatically different place back then, with no globalism, a completely different structure to the economy (lots of farming, not many service jobs), and less dependence on fragile high-tech systems. So at best, we kinda sorta have a 100 year old n=1. And how many models include Spanish Flu anyway?

We are in terra incognita, and it's worth it to simply acknowledge that. Big things will happen that no model could have reliably predicted, and attempted responses (e.g. helicopter money [HK, anyone?], debt jubilee, yuuuuge money printing, [insert most absurd utopian/dystopian fantasy]) will also likely be completely outside of modeled possibilities.

*Funny, I haven't seen epidemiologists express that sentiment.
** If even 10% of humans ultimately get the virus this year (low estimate from the numbers I've seen thrown out), then we are only ~100k/780M = 0.01% of the way there. In terms of effects, we aren't "in the midst" of a crisis. The impact hasn't. even. started.

2. Related to 1, and somewhat related to the "...but exponential growth!" chorus that now, appropriately, pops up in a lot of discussions. Indeed, a lot of issues will exhibit exponential growth, but a lot of other issues that crop up will show all-or-none characteristics (isn't that kinda sorta the opposite of an exponential? Or just a sign inversion?). This also breaks models. These are things like travel bans, school closures, mass quarantines, supply chain disruptions, multiple organ failure. E.g. The Olympics will happen or it won't. A business is either solvent or it isn't. Models don't do a good job with that kind of thing, especially if they are based on continuous functions.

3. Three related points:

• @jacob posted this link earlier, which details how age and existing conditions changes fatality rate https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... ographics/ It's well known at this point that older age ups the risk a bunch.
• This study, where researchers argue that it's useful to think of obesity as premature aging: https://www.concordia.ca/news/stories/2 ... shows.html So imagine if being obese "aged" you 10 years, then look at the fatality rate vs. age table again. Hmm...
• About a week ago, I read an article in the local paper saying that the obesity rate in the US has now reached 42%.
  Not sure how much to make of all this, but you could make the argument that the US (or, hell, any other Western country that is, frankly, pretty fat) CFR might reflect that of an older society.

4. Fed says "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" the same day it does an emergency rate cut. Are we full-on Orwellian yet?

5. This virus isn't actually containable until we get a vaccine. @AnalyticalEngine I totally understand your point above - you're right - and I'm not really arguing against it. China has certainly gone to great length to minimize the spread, and I'm convinced that their efforts have been effective to a decent, maybe great, degree. However, on a longer timescale, the idea that China has contained it is absurd because pandemics roll around the world in a never-ending series of waves and pop-up hot spots. China is under constant threat of importing it again from another country or from another "hot" province within their country, and no doubt they've just seen the start of this too. Barring a very effective vaccine and a near-unprecedented global vaccination campaign, this virus is just with us now.

6. The people with the greatest job security in the world right now are contact tracers.

Feel free to argue a more optimistic case if you've got one! Or tell me to shut up... I not here to ruin anyone's day with doom-and-gloom or anything. These are only half-baked, soft-batch musing anyway. I could be way off.

[5ts]

Economists don't have a clue because epidemiology is completely outside of their sphere of knowledge. They want this to be temporary so they say it's temporary. My layman prediction is this will hit full force worldwide in a couple of months or, with strict quarantines, will grow a little slower until a vaccine is developed.

Don't panic, it's not helpful. Probably a good time to stock up on essentials now. It won't hurt at least, as long as we aren't creating fear and panic which I don't think we are.

[Ego]

Feel free to argue a more optimistic case if you've got one!

I don't think you were particularly pessimistic. Just realistic. I pretty much agree with everything you said.

The only thing I'd add is that it appears that two types of governmental reaction are shaking out. Erring on the side of closing it down or erring on the side of leaving it open. It seems that most countries test, close, quarantine, isolate, and trace contacts. With some exceptions we seem to be doing the opposite.

In hindsight we may find that it comes down to:
-Sacrificing the economy for the sake of protecting old and fragile people from the virus.
-Sacrificing old and fragile people to the virus for the sake of protecting the economy.

Can't be an easy decision.

[jacob]

@bsog - Similar to how Keynesians and Austrians project their politics onto the full system of the economic system emphasizing the parts that are compatible with their preloaded frameworks and de-emphasizing the others, so do various professions project their observations into whatever experiential frameworks they hold thanks to their background/experience.

There's an old observation that if an old scientist says something is possible, they're generally correct, but be careful if they say something is impossible. For a young scientist it's the other way around. The difference is experience and because science is pretty constant and only slowly evolving. Therefore the scientific framework is constant---the old scientists know it better; the younglings don't know it all but are eager to challenge/broaden it. When frameworks don't change, base rate forecasting dominates.

Good forecasters in finance and economics tend to focus on the base rate---because people's economic behavior is rather constant in time; humans human in much the same way humans humaned 2000 years ago. The simplest possible prediction, which is often correct, is to say that tomorrow is going to be like yesterday, so X(t+1)=X(t)+Noise(). The random walk theory for the market is very much like that if you average it over a few weeks w/o adding any special insight (which most people don't have). Thus the best prediction of tomorrow is that it's going to be very much like today + random noise.

Technologists who work in a field where frameworks constantly change faster and faster are more prone to interpreting the world in terms of exponential runaways. You got CPU speed as a prime example. But also the rapid takeover of the next programming paradigm ... and you never know which one will dominate except it comes on really fast once it's detected. Here it makes sense to forecast that whatever trend recently emerged will "take over in a few short periods and most people (who are not as smart as this technologist) will be astounded at the rapidity". Epidemics is similar also mimicking exponential growth during the early stages. People chasing down contacts think like that. Perhaps we should ask the perspective of those treating the diseases that got away but don't kill much, that is, they only add 0.2% to the general mortality rate, or the public health burden that just gets ignored such as the widespread infection of driving, junk food, industrial pollution, smoking, drinking, sedentary recreation, ...

However, Gartner's hype cycle might be more descriptive of humanity's reaction to covid19 because of the eventual adaption and normalization of expectations. Adaption would be things like fist bumps and not-touching-the-face (I'm getting much better at this) and perhaps a vaccine of sorts. Normalization would be in terms of thinking of this like a "second flu"... just one of those things mainly old or sick people also die from on top of everything else. The median age on the planet is ~30 years old. The CFR for 30 year olds is pretty low. This will not destroy the world economy in itself but the reaction to it might.

[jennypenny]

In his latest video, Martenson said that the virus can last up to 9 days on certain surfaces. Is that right? Has anyone else heard that?

[jacob]

I've read "several days" multiple times. In physics, "several" usually implies 5-7 when used in the literature. Dunno if it's different in other fields.

[jennypenny]

That's a long time. We've been leaving packages outside overnight before bringing them in. I don't know why but I figured 24 hours was enough. How can you go anywhere in public or take public transportation? I'd even be afraid to touch an ATM or gas pump.

This sucks.

BTW ... I know for a fact that a couple of companies in NYC have suspected cases and are encouraging people to set up working from home by the end of the week. It must be everywhere.

[Riggerjack]

It must be everywhere.

Yeah, it's probably everywhere. Or will be soon. Our public health measures have been set to fail from the beginning.

And I agree with all that bsog and Jacob said above.

But don't let that freak you out too much. It's new, and scary, so of course the internet is having a good ol' time with fanning the flames of paranoia. Don't let the hype cause hyperventilating.

This isn't SARS, or Avian Flu. With those, the survivors are still dealing with the after effects. But those also had MUCH higher fatality rates. Over 50% for avian flu. People are going to die, but this ain't Captain Tripps. We don't know what the long term effects will be. Probably not great, but also probably nothing on that scale, either.

I think the economic effects will be very harsh, but as much from the duration and causes of our last recovery as from the supply chain disruption and productivity loss. But this is a group that tends to look at crashes as opportunities, anyway. So our plans will get a stress check, and that may actually relieve anxiety for some of us...

Now is just a good time to check in with friends and family to help them get a grip on their prep. It's just for a supply chain disruption, no big deal, but it's new to some, and the internet rabbit hole goes deep, here. People who haven't considered any kind of prep may be a bit overwhelmed. (Or in denial... )

Here in the Seattle area, the virus has been loose for weeks, and the co-worker married to the lady delivering Panda Express to patient zero has been complaining about a cough for weeks. I have plenty of masks, and I still haven't shaved my beard. Wash hands, and avoid people. Rules I have lived by for decades, so this should be nothing new...

I try to remember, the flu has been far more common for far longer, and it's been years since I caught that. And now I am much more conscious about hand washing and touching surfaces.

Take precautions, prepare for disruption, but try to keep perspective. Bad days are coming, but good days, too.

[Riggerjack]

And you can always order a blacklight to shine on packages, or put them in a closet with an ozonating air filter. UV and Ozone are good disinfectants for viruses.

[George the original one]

Per the Oregon Health Authority tweets, it appears Oregon takes a day to crank through 5 COVID-19 tests. There are still 13 patients awaiting results. CDC confirmation takes even longer.

[George the original one]

I can be good at washing hands, but touching my face (nose tickles, adjusting glasses, etc) requires extra concious thought. I've been allowing myself full freedom at home, but put the mental reminder in place when running errands (shopping, mail). If I'm out longer than 2 hours, I need to wash hands so I can get my face touching out of the way.

[black_son_of_gray]

More thoughts, from way out in the cheap seats behind left field this time!

• How does this pandemic intersect with Census 2020 in the US? The constitution mandates it, which makes for the hilarious-if-it-weren't-potentially-horrible scenario where the government is encouraging social distancing (particularly the vulnerable) while simultaneously sending out hoards of census workers to make sure that every single resident is contacted and interviewed (particularly the shut-ins).
• For that matter, when do we start getting paranoid about opening/touching mail? Am I going to have to put my letters in a toaster oven on low for a while before opening them?
• Can't remember where I read it, but there was an interesting article focusing on the daily routine of a delivery driver in Wuhan. These kinds of people, who are frequently overlooked by high society, are now considered to be heroes for those who are quarantined or otherwise isolated. It was an interesting if not heartening example of how society might be quickly flipped upside down.