2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 2

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I cannot be the first to have noticed this ...

From the latest WHO situation report, quite a few of the countries neighboring China have no reported cases: Mongolia, Laos, Myanmar, various central Asian ones (yeah, North Korea too, but no one believes that). And among Chinese provinces, the smallest numbers are for Xizang (Tibet, just 1) and Qinghai. Nepal has just one, a long time ago. While Russia has 7, I’ve no idea where in that vast country they were. Nor which Canadian provinces. In the US, none in Alaska.

Yeah, a lot in Iceland, but despite its name, winters there aren’t all that cold. Not that it ever gets cold in Myanmar, or Laos for that matter.

Strange, no?
 
Belz... said:
Well, that was as blatant an anti-intellectual post as I've seen.
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Anti-intellectualism from Nigel Farage? Next he'll be arguing that we should sever ties with our neighbours and best trading partners because they are a bunch of funny foreigners!
 
JeanTate said:
Perhaps we could call this the Chinese curse?

Through efforts - draconian, heroic, whatever - the spread of the coronavirus is stopped; a mere low-thousands dead.

But then infections took off, in Iran, Italy, South Korea, Japan, ... the US, North Korea. Whose containment efforts were not as, um, successful.

So, a few months down the track, an infected visitor from one of those places, perhaps one who, it turns out, was highly infectious but totally asymptotic, ignites a community cluster, in Qinghai, say, or Ningxia (both provinces barely affected to date). Which is not detected for a month (easy to invent plausible scenarios).

And so begins draconian/heroic part 2.

Or: draconian/heroic Italy succeeds, though the total numbers of deaths ends up being ~10k. Then an infected visitor from the US, say, perhaps someone who went to that CPAC meeting but was very rare in having been asymptotic and infectious for far longer than normal (or the infection bounced around between her family members, pets, etc), turns up in Genoa, say.

And so begins Italy draconian/heroic part 2.

Lather, wash, rinse, repeat ...
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Apparently that has already happened ... though the report I heard didn’t say from which place that infected person had arrived (just that it was not from elsewhere in China).
 
Darat said:
Epidemic is just medical jargon for "lots more people have the disease at the same time", and it is really an arbitrary label.

Environmental factors can lower infection rates, but not 100%.

From what I've read this is likely to become endemic unless we can develop an effective vaccine and have very high take up of the vaccine.
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The word being bandied about now is "pandemic". CNN has reported that they are calling it that now. That's an arbitrary label as well, but it covers a much larger scope.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Nigel Farage Tweeted

The World Health Organisation is just another club of ‘clever people’ who want to bully and tell us what to do. Ignore.
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He tweeted this in 2017. While stupid it doesn't appear Corona virus related.
 
I used to be amused when I'd hear several of the CNN anchors coughing, sniffling, or sneezing over the course of a few days because it's obvious that a bug is running through the center.

The last couple days I'm hearing coughs and sneezes off-camera and it doesn't sound like anyone's covering up. I'm waiting for the day a reporter gets a dirty look from their co-anchor for doing that.
 
JeanTate said:
Thanks! :)

So at this OOM stage:
- population 330 million
- will get infected: 40-80%; geometric mean 56.6%
- of those, will die: 0.2-5.3%; geometric mean 1.0%

Total estimated deaths:
- high: 13.99 million
- low: 264k
- mean: 1.92 million.

FWIW, in my experience, this OOM-ing is pretty good, surprisingly so. And it is very easy to generate inputs ("reasonable" ranges, or upper and lower limits). In this case, with just a handful of independent estimates (or guesses), from a half-dozen ISF members who've posted regularly here (call it wisdom of the crowd, if you like), I think you'd find the estimated mean number of deaths would vary only slightly, perhaps by only +/- 30%. :jaw-dropp
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Applying this to Hubei province, population ~59 million:

Estimated cases: 33 million; reported to date ~68k
Estimated deaths: 344k; reported to date: ~3k

OK, how about we assume zero cases in Hubei outside Wuhan (population 11 million)?

Estimated cases: 6.2 million; reported to date ~68k
Estimated deaths: 64k; reported to date: ~3k

Of course, there are certainly both false positives and false negatives in both cases and deaths, and new cases (and deaths) reported every day. But the OOM estimates are waaaaay off ... why? :confused:
 
JeanTate said:
Applying this to Hubei province, population ~59 million:

Estimated cases: 33 million; reported to date ~68k
Estimated deaths: 344k; reported to date: ~3k

OK, how about we assume zero cases in Hubei outside Wuhan (population 11 million)?

Estimated cases: 6.2 million; reported to date ~68k
Estimated deaths: 64k; reported to date: ~3k

Of course, there are certainly both false positives and false negatives in both cases and deaths, and new cases (and deaths) reported every day. But the OOM estimates are waaaaay off ... why? :confused:
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Possible reasons I can think of
1) You can't trust China although I don't think they could hide that many deaths.
2) It hasn't been long enough yet.
3) The rates being used are too high.
4) All or some of the above.
 
JeanTate said:
Applying this to Hubei province, population ~59 million:

Estimated cases: 33 million; reported to date ~68k
Estimated deaths: 344k; reported to date: ~3k

OK, how about we assume zero cases in Hubei outside Wuhan (population 11 million)?

Estimated cases: 6.2 million; reported to date ~68k
Estimated deaths: 64k; reported to date: ~3k

Of course, there are certainly both false positives and false negatives in both cases and deaths, and new cases (and deaths) reported every day. But the OOM estimates are waaaaay off ... why? :confused:
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As I wrote earlier:

A major problem for making inferences about morbidity and mortality from the statistics being presented is that they are NOT based on random samples and use tests that can only detect if an individual is currently infected.

Both of these factors are going to skew the estimates.

ETA: Good Slate article: https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality-rate-lower-than-we-think.html
 
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Ivor the Engineer said:
As I wrote earlier:

A major problem for making inferences about morbidity and mortality from the statistics being presented is that they are NOT based on random samples and use tests that can only detect if an individual is currently infected.

Both of these factors are going to skew the estimates.

ETA: Good Slate article: https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality-rate-lower-than-we-think.html
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The issue appears to be that ~85% of cases it stays in the nose and throat. In these cases it manifest as mild, comparable to a cold. It’s only the ~15% of cases where the lungs are infects that can turn serious. This will make it very difficult to contain, but it also means the infection rate may be a lot higher than current numbers suggest but that corresponding mortality rates should be lower.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
As I wrote earlier:

A major problem for making inferences about morbidity and mortality from the statistics being presented is that they are NOT based on random samples and use tests that can only detect if an individual is currently infected.

Both of these factors are going to skew the estimates.

ETA: Good Slate article: https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality-rate-lower-than-we-think.html
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lomiller said:
The issue appears to be that ~85% of cases it stays in the nose and throat. In these cases it manifest as mild, comparable to a cold. It’s only the ~15% of cases where the lungs are infects that can turn serious. This will make it very difficult to contain, but it also means the infection rate may be a lot higher than current numbers suggest but that corresponding mortality rates should be lower.
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This is why ramping up testing is soooooooo critical. We still have no clear idea of how widespread the disease actually is, or how high the death rate actually is.

I don't worry about the worst case scenarios, but I think it is very wise to take a lot of precautions for now until the science burns through to give us the information needed to accurately assess risk.
 
crescent said:
This is why ramping up testing is soooooooo critical. We still have no clear idea of how widespread the disease actually is, or how high the death rate actually is.

I don't worry about the worst case scenarios, but I think it is very wise to take a lot of precautions for now until the science burns through to give us the information needed to accurately assess risk.
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Does it really matter or would it just tell us we can't do very much about the disease? This is almost a worst case for preventing the spread of the virus, with a large number of infected, contagious, people with only mild cases of the disease saying “I just have a cold” and going about their daily routine. Shutting down the world for months could slow things down but probably isn’t practical.
 
lomiller said:
Does it really matter or would it just tell us we can't do very much about the disease? This is almost a worst case for preventing the spread of the virus, with a large number of infected, contagious, people with only mild cases of the disease saying “I just have a cold” and going about their daily routine. Shutting down the world for months could slow things down but probably isn’t practical.
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But we don't really know that.

We don't know whether or not there are large numbers of infected people with only mild symptoms, or just what proportion of the overall infection rate show little to no symptoms.

If they do exist and are very widespread, there may be little we can do to prevent further spread.

If it is a smaller set of the population that has the disease, then maybe the tight travel restrictions and social isolation can still help.

And if that's the case, then further testing of people with potential exposures might also find people before they have symptoms, allowing them to get into isolation earlier, allowing people with health risk factors to get into medical supervision before they are extremely ill. There may be little treatment, but I still imagine getting an elderly person into the hospital before they have pneumonia is going to give them a better chance than waiting until after they have pneumonia.

Lets ramp up the testing to get the information, rather than just assuming we already know what the testing will tell us. There seems to be a mindset among some people that we should only being doing the tests on people for whom we are pretty sure are infected. That's backwards.


ETA: For example, my state (Colorado) currently has 12 known cases out of 184 people tested (at least 13 test results have not come back yet). There might be many more. If it really is a small number, it could still be contained. If it is a larger number, then we could start testing the medically vulnerable populations as well as the care givers and emergency services people who might spread it into those populations. We could then anticipate the medical issues on a per-person basis, rather than just waiting until nursing home residents start to drop like flies.


ETA2: I guess in terms of sampling, I am thinking of something like the "stratified random" sampling methods I learned in college. So we test all people who might have known exposures, or who have been in areas with high rates of infection. We also universally test on medically vulnerable populations (voluntarily) and their immediate care givers (mandatory, if the caregivers are professional). We test (voluntary) everyone who has flu-like symptoms, regardless of known exposure pathways. We randomly test X percent emergency services and general medical providers, (possibly mandatory, as they are professionals). We test random members of the public at a lesser rate. Do real science, track the vectors, see of any populations are less susceptible to effects, see if there are any commonalities that could identify better treatments, better risk management, clearer vectors. We stop sitting around on TP hoards, waiting to see who gets sick and start to figure it out in advance.
 
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Worldometer added new pages for the most affected countries. Also Spain reported 557 new cases yesterday, which puts it behind Italy and Iran in daily cases. South Korea on the other hand is calming down, and it's incredibly low death rate also seems to have peaked !
 
So now we find out the Hawaii department of health had a Corona virus case dropped in their lap, refused to test, refused to do anything about it and lied to us for more than a month since February 1st
 
JeanTate said:
I cannot be the first to have noticed this ...

From the latest WHO situation report, quite a few of the countries neighboring China have no reported cases: Mongolia, Laos, Myanmar, various central Asian ones (yeah, North Korea too, but no one believes that). And among Chinese provinces, the smallest numbers are for Xizang (Tibet, just 1) and Qinghai. Nepal has just one, a long time ago. While Russia has 7, I’ve no idea where in that vast country they were. Nor which Canadian provinces. In the US, none in Alaska.

Yeah, a lot in Iceland, but despite its name, winters there aren’t all that cold. Not that it ever gets cold in Myanmar, or Laos for that matter.

Strange, no?
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The Canadian cases are currently in British Columbia (west coast), Ontario and BC (the two most populous provinces, somewhat aligned with the east coast of the US.)

Canada recorded its first death from the virus yesterday: an elderly man in a nursing home in BC.
 
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