Coronavirus is known to be less transmissible in the warmer seasons.
The long incubation period paused government intervention and bumped up the R0 value.
One point missing that I think could be important even in the more worrying scenarios is the average health condition or age of the people who develop severe stage infection.
If the CFR is high but people dying are mostly old and not of working age, the pandemic will create a drag on global economy but not as bad as the CFR might lead to suppose.
Don’t mean to sound cynical, just putting another element into the equation.
1) This is an ignorant statement, there are plenty of people in the 55+ age range who work worldwide.
2) Simply having workers get incapacitated is one of the smallest impacts the virus will have. Take a look at the present price of crude oil - the effects of the epidemic in China are already sending that crashing.
Quarantines, the need for medical supplies, lost work hours, elimination of disposable income, an economic downturn worldwide as products become harder to get and more expensive to transport... there are lots and lots of impacts this will have, including vastly increased unemployment.
Even if no one at all dies, a pandemic with the world getting sick all at the same time will have an impact bigger than any other event going back to World War II.
From a reliable source, a Western journalist who was evacuated, this article's information seems accurate.
It's difficult to tell what the current numbers are, or even what they will be because of censorship, but you can bet it's 2-5x what's reported. Also, it's compounded by the delay of information having to go to intermediaries before reaching international journalists. And, there are some isolated instances of bodies on the streets and in crashed cars of people not making it to the hospital before expiring, and then not being collected quickly because of fearful coroners/undertakers... which is expected in a minor pandemic in a densely-populated city. I would bet there are at least a dozen dead bodies on the street right now of the 400+ people who die in NYC's five boroughs every day. Even if it were Ebola-deadly and infectious as an airborne-mutated norovirus, sustained isolation of population members can kill any pathogen because its transmission rate drops to insignificant and then 0.
> It's difficult to tell what the current numbers are, or even what they will be because of censorship, but you can bet it's 2-5x what's reported.
Definitely. IIRC, to be counted in the official statistics, an infected person has to have significant contact with the medical system, but the medical system in Wuhan has been so overloaded that people have been turned away in large numbers so that diagnostic work is not being done in many cases. There are reports of many people dying at home in Wuhan, which wouldn't be counted as part of the official statistics.
I've also heard reports that the crematoriums in Wuhan are also overloaded, and aren't allowed to report any statistics except to the government.
I don't think we'll know the full impact for a long time, until someone can some kind of excess mortality study with individualized vital records.
> A Site Tied To Steve Bannon Is Writing Fake News About The Coronavirus
> Founded by an exiled billionaire and critic of the Chinese government, G News claimed without proof that China was prepared to admit the disease originated in its labs.
Yeah I'll give you that. I'd guess the truth is somewhere in the middle. That said the basic claim "... alleges Wuhan has crematoriums working 24/7" seems backed by other sources. Even the Chinese government admits it's figures are only tested cases and they can't test everyone.
"[..] a study in the Lancet estimated back on January 25th that 75,000 people had already been infected and that the virus was doubling every 6.4 days — which would suggest that more than 300,000 people may now be infected with the virus."
Doesn't this blatantly ignore the fact that the infection would have run its course in many of those people by now?
If they run out of people to infect the rate of new infections will go down. There are a lot of people in China though. Obviously the 6.4 days thing is rough estimate.
But the last part of the sentence talks about the number of people who "may now be infected with the virus", which seems to ignore the fact that some of the early new infections are no longer infected.
I am wondering why the world still does not seem to care about it. Why do we have to wait until every city gets infected? Why we can't stop travelling? Eventually, when it spreads to a city, the quarantine must be the only way... but why we aren't preventing that ourselves? The politicians does not really seem to care (in the bunkers)? Individual, consumer society with no interest and without resources, civil routine and real impact to the events is crazy to me. Even a couple of days ago WHO was thinking about restarting the flights to China. It's just WTF to me.
In last days I can't even read any tech/HN news because it's not news to me compared to this unsolved terrible situation. I don't even understand how this topic is not more visible here in HN and on other places. We need to do something.
I think it's pretty clear that many people do care about it very much. Imposing travel restrictions, cancelling flights to major trading partners, etc, has a very significant cost and isn't taken lightly. I've heard many people say things along the lines of "it's just the economy, our health is more important" lately, but peoples' livelihoods literally depend on the economy.
Say for example that your family operates a tiny tourism-related business in South East Asia. A prolonged shutdown of travel between China and your country could literally drive you into poverty, given how dependent some countries in the region have become on inbound tourism from China. Given your extremely remote chances of catching the virus, the risk of losing your entire family income is a much more significant risk to your health.
Because of this, it's important to be balanced in thought and decisions, and not just panic because of what could happen. Where there is evidence to support restrictions, keep them in place. Where there is not, remove them.
Outside of China this issue still remains far less serious than many other health-related risks. The "we need to do something" (anything!) mindset is actively harmful.
Even with the existing restrictions the virus spreads. Spread leads to quarantine as we've seen in many chinese cases. I don't see why should we hope for the better with less restrictions.
Not being a huge problem outside of China is a fact for NOW. Does not mean it won't happen in weeks. The question is: do we want to solve the problem now, or we want to postpone the solution for later. There won't be "deus ex machina" which just makes it disappear. Many people will die if we're going to ignore the existing facts and make fun of the situation with these stupid heat scans checks which do prevent nothing on the long term based on existing experiences.
What I see is because noone wants panic it prevents us calling the right moves. Because its "panicky".
> Even with the existing restrictions the virus spreads. Spread leads to quarantine as we've seen in many chinese cases. I don't see why should we hope for the better with less restrictions.
If we can identify which restrictions are helping, and which are not, then we can remove the ones that are not. The point of my comment above is that the restrictions come with their own costs, in some cases severe.
> Not being a huge problem outside of China is a fact for NOW. Does not mean it won't happen in weeks.
It doesn't mean it will, either. We should be approaching this in a rational, evidence-based way, not just waving our hands and saying "many people will die" with no evidence.
> What I see is because noone wants panic it prevents us calling the right moves. Because its "panicky".
If you believe you have a better idea what the "right moves" are than experts who have spent their careers studying these events and preparing for them, then by all means step up. But you should expect to be asked for evidence for your claims. Panic is a significant cost on its own.
At this point I am not sure what is evidence for you. Do you need a mathematical paper on it with the conclusion of irreversible damage?
The experience is that it is still spreading. Yesterdays numbers < todays numbers out of China. Why is it not enough evidence? To me your argument is like we have to ruin all the possible ways we can so we can find out which is the least terrible way to do it.
I am saying that we should take a measured approach to everything and not panic and take extreme measures because of what "could" happen. Economic damage can destroy lives too, though probably not yours or mine. I think I'll stop engaging at this point, because we seem to be talking past each other.
If you believe you have a better idea what the "right moves" are than experts who have spent their careers studying these events and preparing for them, then by all means step up. But you should expect to be asked for evidence for your claims. Panic is a significant cost on its own.
I think this is unfair on two fronts.
First, labeling it as “panic” is just dismissive. What constitutes panic vs. what is responding rapidly and vigorously to a critical emergency is in the eye of the beholder.
Secondly, it’s possible to trust the experts and also think that the proper measures are not being taken. The experts are the epidemiologists, virologists, doctors, public health officials, etc. who are working on this outbreak, and they seem pretty damn concerned. I’ve read very few statements that suggest this is likely to blow over, and many more that show a widespread opinion among the experts that containment is unlikely and that this is very serious. But the experts don’t run the world, politicians and bureaucrats and business leaders do. And they have different interests and incentives. There are also likely discussions behind the scenes that we don’t know about. The WHO could be urging countries to shut down all air travel but leaders are reluctant to do so for fear of the political backlash.
All you have to do is look at how China treated the doctors who reported on this back in December to see how “trust the people in charge” is not the same as “trust the experts”. If China had clamped down on this six weeks earlier than they did, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
> First, labeling it as “panic” is just dismissive. What constitutes panic vs. what is responding rapidly and vigorously to a critical emergency is in the eye of the beholder.
It can be both. The actions of individual citizens in Singapore, HK and other countries with a small number of cases certainly seem to be panic: buying more instant noodles than they could eat in a year, buying every toilet paper roll available, buying so many face masks that rations are introduced, and so on. Some government actions also appear to be going beyond what is necessary to respond; for example banning travel from country A to country B, when country A has fewer cases than country B itself.
> Secondly, it’s possible to trust the experts and also think that the proper measures are not being taken. The experts are the epidemiologists, virologists, doctors, public health officials, etc. who are working on this outbreak, and they seem pretty damn concerned. I’ve read very few statements that suggest this is likely to blow over, and many more that show a widespread opinion among the experts that containment is unlikely and that this is very serious. But the experts don’t run the world, politicians and bureaucrats and business leaders do. And they have different interests and incentives. There are also likely discussions behind the scenes that we don’t know about. The WHO could be urging countries to shut down all air travel but leaders are reluctant to do so for fear of the political backlash.
The WHO, in fact, has mostly suggested a more measured approach to air travel restrictions than what many governments have decided to take. Most of the expert opinions I've read have presented a number of different paths this could take, and suggested a lot of uncertainty as to the likelihood of each. This is sensible. Meanwhile, most of the forum posts and comments that I've read have strongly emphasised the worst possible cases, and continued to do so as the worst path that previously could have happened (which they were implying was a virtual certainty), didn't.
> All you have to do is look at how China treated the doctors who reported on this back in December to see how “trust the people in charge” is not the same as “trust the experts”.
I'd be the last person to suggest trusting China's leadership, but neither am I inclined to assume that the measures taken by other governments in response to this are entirely based on expert advice or even entirely for health-related reasons.
> If China had clamped down on this six weeks earlier than they did, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
I am wondering why the world still does not seem to care about it.
Let me flip that question around and ask, what difference would it make? What can you as an individual do, that you are not already doing, when the totalitarian government of the most populous nation on Earth is determined to downplay it?
Way too many things/people depend on traveling. You can't stop the world for such a small thing. We should take precautions, probably more than what we do now, but stopping the world isn't going to work.
It kills fewer total than the flu right now, but that’s a specious comparison. The flu infects orders of magnitude more every year. If this becomes as widespread as the flu and kills 2% (20-50x as many as the flu) and puts another 10-20% in the hospital, it’ll be total global pandemonium. Healthcare systems will collapse, supply chains will collapse, economic depressions, etc. “Only 2%” sounds so benign, but that’s a huge number of people, and having many more in the healthcare system means that deaths from all other causes will go up too. Widespread panic and shortages, etc. This has been studied. As I recall, it takes about 3% of the population needing medical care before the system collapses.
We’d survive but it wouldn’t be pretty. I really doubt that’ll happen here, but this is a serious risk.
Let's panic when it's time to panic, in the meantime it's business as usual. You add "virus" and "china" in the same sentence and people start to lose their shit way to easily. We had worse before, we'll be just fine.
How often do you want to do that worldwide travel shutdown? We got through SARS and Ebola without one. At the height of each, without the benefit of hindsight, did you consider them less serious then this one?
I have advocated a worldwide travel shutdown exactly twice in my life: SARS, and now. SARS was a damn close call; it was stopped by proactive measures of contact tracing and quarantine (i.e. you quarantine, forcibly if need be, not only each sick person, but everyone they came into contact with); had it not been stopped, the death toll would've hit nine digits. This one looks about equally serious, and has clearly not been stopped.
This is a country the forced doctors at gun point to perform live delivery abortions in order to enforce the one child rule.
A good friend's sister was a Obgyn in China, and when women were discovered with their second pregnancy they would be brought in for abortions even if the baby was full term.
Doctors would either comply or have guns drawn and be threatened, doctors who failed to comply would be taken away, never to be seen again. At one point my friend's sister was performing twice as many abortions than she was delivering babies, and all of the abortions the mothers were being forced. Screaming, yelling, begging, pleading and crying hysterically.
As my friend would say, "My country doesn't value human life in any way, people are just numbers, all people are just numbers."
This account seems exaggerated. Forced late-term abortions in China were certainly a real thing, and the value of the life of a stranger is on par with that of livestock. However, guns are rarely seen in everyday life in China. This is especially the case with policemen and low-level enforcers. The exception are soldiers on duty, and security for transporting currency. Guns are kept in armories, brought out by specially trained "armed police".
My guess is this thing is bad - keeps spreading, high mortality and the best we can do is slow it until we have a vaccine. I'm kind of optimistic people may be able to speed the vaccine stuff when they see how bad the situation is.
Animal trials have started already
>Shanghai-based Tongji University School of Medicine and Stermirna Therapeutics Co., Ltd. The vaccine samples were injected into more than 100 mice Sunday, the report said.
There's also the ongoing Phase 3 Remdesivir trial. [1] Which was used in the treatment of Washington's 2019-nCoV case. The patient appears to have begun recovering soon after the remdesivir was administered and was released shortly after. [2][3]
> Treatment with intravenous remdesivir (a novel nucleotide analogue prodrug in development) was initiated on the evening of day 7, and no adverse events were observed in association with the infusion. Vancomycin was discontinued on the evening of day 7, and cefepime was discontinued on the following day, after serial negative procalcitonin levels and negative nasal PCR testing for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
> On hospital day 8 (illness day 12), the patient’s clinical condition improved. Supplemental oxygen was discontinued, and his oxygen saturation values improved to 94 to 96% while he was breathing ambient air. The previous bilateral lower-lobe rales were no longer present. His appetite improved, and he was asymptomatic aside from intermittent dry cough and rhinorrhea. As of January 30, 2020, the patient remains hospitalized. He is afebrile, and all symptoms have resolved with the exception of his cough, which is decreasing in severity.
This is obviously just a single patient’s outcome and not proof that Remdesevir is effective, but it’s just about the only positive news related to 2019-nCoV. Hopefully the trial yields good results.
That sounds promising. I see in in vitro trials chloroquine also seems to work which would be handy as it's cheap and widely available https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/020620/could-an-ol... which would be. In fact I may even take some prophylactically for my Singapore jaunt. You don't even need a prescription to buy it in the UK
>Our findings reveal that remdesivir and chloroquine are highly
effective in the control of 2019-nCoV infection in vitro. Since these
compounds have been used in human patients with a safety track
record and shown to be effective against various ailments, we
suggest that they should be assessed in human patients suffering
from the novel coronavirus disease. (Conclusion from the letter to Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0.pdf)
That's nice, but not comparable to a vaccine. Treating people with this means saving more of those who would die, but death is only on impact of the virus (as serious as it is).
Without a vaccine, the only way to keep people from getting infected is to isolate them.
Those that wanted the massive decoupling between the United States and China.
Those that wanted to see China suffer, fail, collapse, and devolve into another destructive civil war; while the United States remains ascendant.
Well, their dreams might be about to come true.
This coronavirus was the perfect economic weapon that was dropped in the heart of China. And not even a bullet was fired.
The economic backlash from this virus is going to be monstrous. But the reality might be even worse than they imagined, where even they themselves cannot escape the fallout, and that they would reminisce of better days.
But there will also be opportunities. Companies will fail, but others will succeed.
The Fed had better keep on printing that money, because the bubble in a lot of sectors will pop, especially Real Estate. Then automotive. Then aerospace. Then tourism. This house of cards is going to come crashing down.
The moment of the black swan event is about to arrive.
If Trump screws up the response to this virus (like by cutting the CDC's budget in the middle of a crisis) then the people most vulnerable are the same demographic as Trump's supporters.
The interesting thing is that the Trump supporters benefited the most, but they just didn’t realize it.
They blamed China for taking their jobs, and Trump capitalized on it. A foreign country with people that don’t look like yourself, or even speak the same language, and with a different political system was an easy target to scapegoat.
What they failed to realize was the impact that technology and automation had on their lives.
Do you see people working inside the heart of a car manufacturing factory anymore? No, it’s all robotic. What used to take hundreds of men, is now streamlined into an assembly line of 10 robots.
First, in the 80s and 90s, Walmart came and killed off the small businesses, but at least they provided some minimum wage jobs in their stores. Then, Amazon came and killed off the remaining smaller retailers, and tried to kill off Walmart. No more minimum wage cashier jobs, but more jobs for delivery people and warehouse workers.
Then, the software and hardware got better, that it started to replace those minimum wage cashiers jobs. Then robots got better, that they even started replacing the warehouse jobs.
But the United States had the benefit of creating technology over the past 70 years, and massively benefiting from the royalties that followed. Qualcomm doesn’t physically make any phones or computer chips, but 50% of their revenue comes from China.
Other jobs in technology like software, engineering, design, QA, project management, etc., were created in relation to technology, but these are not celebrated. Microsoft spawned a lot of software companies. Apple spawned a lot of smaller software businesses vying for space in their app market. But it seems none of these are celebrated in the world of Trump supporters.
Meanwhile, the Trump supporters benefited handsomely in one area: farming. Massive windfalls were made in selling grains and soy to China, who eagerly bought it all. The industrialized farms were literally printing money. And they thought they deserved that business, as if it was a god given right to them.
Maybe they got greedy, but more likely, they fell for the charm of a charlatan, and voted Trump into office, to take on the China problem. You know, the exact foreign customer that was buying up all their farm products. This baffles the mind on how they couldn’t make this connection.
Then in one fell swoop, Trump took that all away. Farm bankruptcies went higher and higher under Trump. He came in and demonized the very customer that was buying their products.
And now we have the coronavirus, and those dreams of decoupling the two economies of China and the United States, are about to come true.
The question is: are those Trump supporters ready for the ensuing fallout?
I won't address the content of your post here - there's too much to go through and too little time.
But, I will say that Trump's supporters are both ready and unready for the fallout.
Ready because they're essentially decoupled from actual facts and information and fed entirely on the "truth" from him and his allies, so they won't ever blame him for anything.
Unready because they're not capable of handling reality, and regardless of who they are told is the reason for their problems, they have to live with it.
China is losing millions every day, aside from psychological credit, as people want nothing to do with China.
(Anecdotally, the local shoe outlet claims that the kids shoes for at their brand will be manufactured in Thailand from next week.)
The Chinese can solve their disadvantage by either eliminating the virus, or by making sure other countries have it as well. (No point in going to Thailand if they are also getting sick.)
Elimination doesn't seem to be going as well as hoped for.
The Chinese government doesn't have a reputation of caring about other people, or human rights.
What are the chances it won't be breaking it out worldwide?
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