SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 Update 02 March 2020

26 thoughts on “SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 Update 02 March 2020”

1. Please include in your comments that the mortality risk is with males 70 and over and those with serious underlying heath issues.

   Even in China, there are no cases of Corona virus in those under 15. This is in stark contrast to the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 where the majority of deaths were under 40.

   Further, 98% of people will recover with a vast majority not exhibiting more than a fever and sniffles.

   For further info, read Friday’s editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine that went into detail on known cases.

   Now that we can study this virus in the US where we have higher hygiene standards, modern medicine and reliable reporting, it appears to be no more serious than the standard flu according to the NEJM experts.

2. Page Turner: As a newbie here, please read our discussions for the past month or more before jumping in. In particular, made sure you are familiar with the percentage of patients who require ICU care, and the implications of that. When you’re caught up, feel free to chime in again.

3. Panicking is fun, but at some point we need to look at the numbers. The problem is — what numbers to believe?

   Not so long ago, punters were praising the people of Hong Kong for standing up to the untrustworthy Chinese government. And Hong Kong is filled with ethnic Chinese (maybe more susceptible to the disease?) and Hong Kong has a high population density (maybe increasing disease transmission and re-infection rates?). Perhaps Hong Kong figures are more reliable than some other sources. So what has been Hong Kong’s experience with this virus?

   In the depths of yet another piece of breathless Doomer Porn in the South China Morning Post, something slipped past the editor:
   https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3053033/beware-coronavirus-outbreaks-coming-back-life-who-warns

   Hui, who sits on a Covid-19 government advisory panel reporting directly to the [Hong Kong] city’s leader, said that even though the patients’ mortality rate was lower than the 2-3 per cent mortality rate of patients with flu infections, the figure was still significant. “The virus is highly contagious, so a 1.4 per cent mortality rate still means a substantial number of deaths.”

   So, about half the mortality rate of ordinary flu — if we want to take this report seriously.

   And it is worth remembering that mortality rates are not necessarily additive. This virus will target many of the same people who otherwise would have died from ordinary flu.

4. New readers should consider these portions of the second and third from last paragraphs of Gavin Newmuir’s post immediately above in deciding whether to permanently ignore him. That is normal for him.

   “The virus is highly contagious, so a 1.4 per cent mortality rate still means a substantial number of deaths.”

   So, about half the mortality rate of ordinary flu ”” if we want to take this report seriously.

   The mortality rate of ordinary flu is about 0.10%.

5. Is there any indication that the idea floated by Trump that warmer, more humid weather will stop the spread?

   I find his interpretation of this event as another political attack to be quite unfortunate. I’ve seen that message passed along in some conservative sources — Limbaugh, The Last Treehouse, Instapundit’s night shift person.

   Dr. Feigl-Ding still thinks it may be contained in the US. Let’s hope so, although my gut feeling is that today would be a good day to shut down int’l and domestic air travel… If only for a week to catch up on testing and contact tracing.

   Dr. Feigl-Ding also highlighted a lung transplant in three PRC yesterday, prompted by covid 19. It bet the recipient was a Party member. let’s hope the pulmonary fibrosis is a side effect of the higher smoking rate and air pollution levels.

6. Tom Holsinger asserted without providing a reference: “The mortality rate of ordinary flu is about 0.10%.”

   On the other hand, SCMP quoted a medical professional: “Hui, who sits on a Covid-19 government advisory panel reporting directly to the [Hong Kong] city’s leader, said that even though the patients’ mortality rate was lower than the 2-3 per cent mortality rate of patients with flu infections, the figure was still significant.”

   So what are we to make of this? Mortality rates have a numerator (number who died) divided by a denominator (some sample or population). Some figures use the total population of a country or area as the denominator, which includes all the people who never catch the disease. Other figures use only the identified cases admitted to hospital as the denominator.

   Anyone who wants to panic ought first to make sure he knows which denominator is being used.

7. In case anyone still was taking the WHO seriously, you can stop doing so immediately:

   https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/washington-state-confirms-2nd-us-coronavirus-death-amid-rash-new-cases-virus-updates
   The outbreak only kills roughly 2% of those it infects, Dr. Tedros said. Because of this, he said, Dr. Tedros believes that “the stigma to be honest is more dangerous than the virus itself,” he said. “Let’s really underline that. The stigma is the most dangerous enemy, for me it’s more than the virus itself.””

8. I am by no means an expert, so grain of salt required. That being said, the pattern of the virus so far seems to be a period of undetected growth, followed by infectious disease people discovering a few cases and rapidly discovering more by contact tracing, but so far, days or weeks behind the actual spread. When the discovered cases reach a critical mass, they institute local shutdowns of big spreading places in areas the virus had spread days or weeks before.

   Given that pattern, I suspect that the northern part of the west coast will be mostly shut down by the end of March, along with Chicago and suburbs. There will probably be subsidiary centers of infection around major universities. Hopefully the virus spread will slow a bit in April with warmer weather. Hopefully also it will spread more slowly in most of the US than it has elsewhere because our public transit sucks most places and a lower percentage of our population depends on it. Public transit would be an ideal spread mechanism. In warmer weather, a car parked in the sun a few hours may mostly self-disinfect and even if it doesn’t, it has less spreading potential than a bus or train. So public transit heavy northern cities would logically get hit harder than car-centered ones.

   The virus should also be easier to detect when it gets warmer because the seasonal flu will mostly go away in the northern hemisphere. So I would expect considerable slowing of the spread from April to early October, then the really big problems in fall/winter 20/21. Hopefully that will give us around six months of relative reprieve to get ready for the really nasty time. Hopefully also, we actually use that time to get ready instead of just saying “see, that wasn’t so bad.”

   There are lots of wild cards in all of this. How much can Chinese manufacturing recover in the spring and summer? How much does heat actually inhibit the virus? How willing are authorities to shut down schools and transport links? Is the virus reasonably stable in current form or will it mutate as it adapts to humans? Can you really catch it a second and possibly more deadly time?

   The mutation possibility is particularly nasty because in a virgin field epidemic like this one, where nobody is immune and there are millions of potential infectees, evolution would presumably favor strains that shed more virus quicker and are more infectious. It doesn’t matter as much if a strain kills or incapacitates its host because there are plenty more out there. So if a mutation makes spread easier but is more likely to kill the host, it would be selected for.

   To some extent easier spread will probably breed more vicious strains while if we can slow spread we’ll be selecting for less severe ones, maybe even asympotamatic ones.

9. I wonder if contact tracers will start using cellphone location data to supplement patient memory. That has horrible privacy implications, but might be a powerful tool to trace actual contacts quickly.

10. Ctl-F ‘India’ yields no hits. That’s interesting, to say the least.

11. I venture to predict that the biggest problem is going to be idiots blowing this way out of proportion in the media.

    I’m almost certain that this corona virus has been present in the population here in the US since at least January. What’s going to be the “trigger point” for it “breaking out” is going to be reliable tests for it, which are going to show a “pandemic” crisis, mainly because it wasn’t identifiable as such. There’s going to be a slight actual uptick in deaths, with the usual suspects being the victims–Elderly, those with compromised immune systems, and the plain unlucky.

    Odds are excellent that the media is going to try to spin this up into mass panic, and blame Trump for it. They want to hang something like Katrina around his neck, so anything you see in the media is going to be suspect. You should also be suspicious of anything emanating from the “Deep State”, or the CDC. CDC has been politicized to some degree since the late 1980s, right along with USAAMRID. I used to work alongside an NBC officer who’d been assigned to work in that area, who had a degree in microbiology and all the pertinent specialties. His opinion of the mass of the people working in those agencies was not good–Most of them he referred to as people who couldn’t hack it in academia, or industry, and who had found refuge working for the government. It’s bizarre to see a lot of his predictions come to life–He told me, back in the day, that anything novel which came along would have the CDC tests turn out to be non-functional, and late to production/distribution. He based that on structural/political problems he saw going on in the agencies and not getting corrected.

    When you get down to it, we’re basically being defended by the “D” students, many of whom are unemployable outside government. There are some competent people working there, but they are drowned out by the majority. Do remember that this is the Gang who Couldn’t Shoot Straight which so woefully flubbed the investigations into the 9/11 Anthrax attacks.

    Reality is that this will most likely turn out to be the equivalent of a really bad flu season, and that the Chinese mortality rates are due to crappy public sanitation and generally poor health care. The pollution in China has probably compromised everyone’s immune systems such that this new disease kicked the majority of the dead over the edge.

    What it is actually going to do here in the US remains to be seen. I’m not going to panic, just yet–The media hype makes me suspicious of the entire proposition.

12. Do remember that this is the Gang who Couldn’t Shoot Straight which so woefully flubbed the investigations into the 9/11 Anthrax attacks.

    Are you aware that someone who is working on the COVID-19 situation is Stephen Hatfill?

13. “Are you aware that someone who is working on the COVID-19 situation is Stephen Hatfill?”

    Other than that I’m surprised he’s still willing to work with the crooked bastards that framed him, I’m curious as to why that “fact” is of any significance whatsoever.

14. It’s good they have someone with epidemiological knowledge,

15. Miguel,

    And it’s good to have someone on the job who knows how incompetent and evil the federal government often is.

16. DaleCozort wrote: “There are lots of wild cards in all of this. How much can Chinese manufacturing recover in the spring and summer?”

    Agreed there are lots of wild cards — and that is probably the biggest one!

    It is not just Chinese manufacturing. When Hyundai shuts down auto manufacturing in Korea because of a lack of parts from China, that affects many Korean suppliers to Hyundai. In turn, the suppliers stop buying steel, which means business slows down for the iron ore mines in Australia and the shipping companies which transport the ore to Korea. On & on. Let’s not even mention the chemicals that China used to supply to the pharmaceutical industry in India which supplies many generic drugs to the US.

    We know that the supply chain can withstand localized interruptions from a storm or a tsunami. What we are all going to find out is how the supply chain reacts to a much broader longer-term interruption affecting the world’s major manufacturer. Seriously, we are all in the dark about the potential impacts. It is this possible major disruption to critical supply chains which separates the current situation from all those earlier virus scares like SARS, MERS, Bird Flu, Ebola, HIV, etc.

    As to Chinese manufacturing recovering quickly, a business acquaintance who is under lockdown in a Western Chinese city told me his lockdown period has just been extended at the order of the Chinese government for another month until April. And it is obvious that when Chinese manufacturing does gear up again, their top priority will be replenishing their own domestic market — the West will have to stand in line.

17. So Pelosi hopes that the vaccines will be affordable. LOL. So what will happen is that the very large amount of people with no insurance, and no money will not get treated, as they can’t afford it. The lowest common denominator, will decide your infection rate. Ain’t capitalism great. ;)

18. Vaccines tend to be fairly cheap. The flu vaccine that is produced every year costs about $10. I would expect that the feds would buy up all of it and distribute it like they did polio. The real bottleneck will be first developing it, which may have been done already, then testing it to be sure that it isn’t a bigger problem than what it is supposed to block. This will be a hard call, remember the swine flu vaccine after the 1976 outbreak caused an increased incidence of Guillain-Barré Syndrome. This kept 75% of the population from being vacinated. Then there’s the problem of showing efficacy which usually means giving it to disease free individuals and waiting to see if they avoid being infected which all take time, it’s not now permissible to deliberately expose subjects. Then there’s the need to produce it in volume that presently takes several months conventionally, the same process that’s been used for decades. I believe that the vaccines that are being touted are produced in a different way that is much faster. The first two steps remain.

    We’re beyond the point where shutting down much of anything will help. Shutting down schools and day care will remove a lot of doctors and nurses from hospitals as well as a lot of all the other people that society needs to keep functioning. Unless you’ve already bought one of those bunkers, you’re not going to be able to hide from this. Some facilities such as nursing homes should have been following strict protocols for flu but probably weren’t.

    The spread in China shows that they were months late in addressing this. Back in the 60-70’s, the number of people traveling to and from China was negligible, now there are direct flights every day. It’s here, it’s everywhere and it’s been here for months. All that’s left to make it a complete disaster is for our politicians to repeat the stupidity of the Chinese government and try to “do something” out of “an abundance of caution”. People need to remember a 100 years of communist rule keeps showing us what not to do.

    I saw where King county in Washington is buying a hotel for isolating people, they’ve already quarantined all the fireman and paramedics that responded to the nursing home. I expect they will run out of firemen pretty soon, buildings will keep burning. The hotel will be a landlocked ghost ship. Unless they install the facilities to operate ventilators, anyone that shows serious symptoms will have to be moved, exposing more paramedics. Then there’s the problem of simply maintaining the inmates, they can’t be allowed to circulate among themselves to do things like food prep, delivery and cleaning, so they will have to hire people to do this. If it really is airborne over long distances, the HVAC system guarantees that every one who enters the building without full protection, including air supplied respirator will be exposed and the building itself will remain a hazard for the foreseeable future. This assumes that this is an actual good faith effort to control the spread rather than disaster theater. This is a city that can’t get a homeless person off the streets for a million dollars.

19. Stanley wrote — “I find his interpretation of this event as another political attack to be quite unfortunate. I’ve seen that message passed along in some conservative sources ”” Limbaugh, The Last Treehouse, Instapundit’s night shift person.”

    Not what happened. The “hoax” comment was in reference to the political attacks by liberals. No one anywhere that I have seen has said that the virus is just a political attack.

20. The poor people who clean public restrooms are in deadly peril. Almost so are those who clean other public restrooms, and those who clean motel and hotel rooms. It might even be necessary to pay more than the minimum wage to find suckers for such jobs.

    In the meantime, avoid public restrooms.

21. Also pity anyone who desperately needs hospitalization in the next year and DOESN’T have CoVid-19.

22. This video from Iran is legitimately terrifying:
    https://twitter.com/MohamadAhwaze/status/1234612870400397312
    translation: One of the medical personnel documents the death of dozens of people infected with the Coronavirus in the city of Qom only, and says many deaths, and there is no place for funerals who have corona .. While the Iranian government covers up the scale of the disaster and says there is nothing to worry about!

    I advocate that you should never panic, so probably no one should watch that video. It’s probably best just to tell yourself “it’s just the flu” and go about your day…

23. Murphy’s Second Law — Once something has gone wrong, it will get worse. And who better than elected politicians & their bureaucrats on the Pacific Coast to make things worse by failing to recognize that “Perfect” is not usually one of the choices on offer. Rather, the choice is often between “Bad” and “Worse”. Why choose “Worse”?

    https://mynorthwest.com/1743981/coronavirus-cases-washington-state/
    “Two dozen first responders were also quarantined after possible exposure to coronavirus at LifeCare. KIRO 7 initially reported it was seven firefighters, but that number climbed to 25, adding a pair of police officers.
    Fire station 21 in Kirkland has a sign up tell people to keep out, including firefighters based there.”

    At least the poor people trapped in their burning car after a traffic accident, desperately hoping for someone to come & rescue them before they die, won’t have to worry about maybe catching a virus from a first responder.

24. Note the bottom frame of this twitter feed:

    Steven Nabil
    @thestevennabil
    · 9h
    How government security personnel are using hunting guns and rifles against unarmed protesters in #Iraq

25. It will be interesting to see how the virus changes the structure of 2020 political campaigns. Will the Democrat and Republican national conventions be the traditional huge, packed, thousands of people extravaganzas or will that kind of gathering be considered too dangerous by that time? What about the Trump mega-rallies?

    Other thoughts: Businesses that will probably be hit hard if the virus continues to spread: realtors””who wants to buy a house when there are so many unknowns hanging out there, movie theaters, sit-down restaurants, airlines, hotels, cruise ships, theme parks””anything optional involving mass transit travel and crowds.

    Box office for movies would be severely reduced even if the virus doesn’t cause a drop in moviegoers here because China receipts will be down drastically for at least several months.

    I expect quite a few businesses in the categories I mentioned to fold. If they are marginal anyway, the revenue drop will knock them out. Even if they have the money to survive, they may not be able to get employees. Who would want to work minimum wage facing masses of people when something like this is going around?

    On the other hand, streaming TV services will probably boom, along with online grocery delivery services and maybe gaming, anything that kills time at home.

    By the way, I’m new to commenting here, and just discovered the blog, but I recognize a couple names from the old GEnie online service decades ago. I used to enjoy Tom Holsinger’s posts in the alternate history group there and Trent Telenko’s posts in political/military groups. I had been wondering where the GEnie people ended up. It’s good to see that you are still active.

26. Stan Brown:

    “Not what happened. The “hoax” comment was in reference to the political attacks by liberals. No one anywhere that I have seen has said that the virus is just a political attack.”

    Trump has lumped in the Corona virus headlines with the egregious Russia collusion and the totally spurious Ukraine impeachment. This association has led manyTrump supporters to incorrect conclusions about the serious situation we face. I feel that is the source of some of the comments here in recent days downplaying this. At instapundit Las week Gail Herot wrote – count the fingers on both your hands. Fewer people than that will die in the US of Corona virus when all is said and done.

    And this from Conservative Treehouse a few days ago:

    “”The mdia is initiating panic about the Coronavirus in 2020 the same way the media attempted to manufacture panic about an upcoming U.S. recession in 2019.

    Everything about Coronavirus is hyped with purpose. The CDC official who lit the fuse to create the panic was Dr. Nancy Messonnier who read a script handed to her by resistance operatives inside government. Dr. Messonnier is Rod Rosenstein’s sister.

    Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar appears on Fox News to discuss Coronavirus (COVID-19) while a gleeful Chris Wallace excitedly questions Azar about “millions of people hoarding food”, and how the virus will eliminate all life on planet Earth by Tuesday.””

    I understand why Trump and Trump supporters feel ill-disposed to the press. But while the Messonier’s message to prepare for significant disruption might irk Trump, particularly given her blood ties, it is nevertheless true and necessary. That message is in there with the 2009 flu standard messaging, as outlined in the Peak Prosperity video “Last Day to Prepare”.

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