2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 2

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ynot said:
Perhaps NZ's super aggressive sunshine is frying the little buggers :cool:.
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Jesus, I hope there's something like that going on, because us and Aussie have got off very lightly so far.

There is a virus sweeping through the country, but not Covid-19.

Yet.

novaphile said:
They've been in Australia since January.

They caught it here.
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That says there must be quite a lot of mild cases under the radar.
 
Earlier in the thread, someone asked about Australia, and what we're doing to prevent the spread.

So here's a list:
1. We're testing aggressively.
2. We now have pop-up, and drive through clinics.
3. When cases are identified, we're tracking contacts aggressively.
4. We belatedly put travel restrictions in place (too late in all cases, but better than nothing - we've banned flights from Italy today, for example).

In my workplace, on my floor:
1. Posters everywhere about hand-washing protocols.
2. Alcohol based hand sanitiser at all three entrances to the floor.
3. Ongoing emails about our state of preparation, and calling our attention to the hand-washing and hand sanitisation.

Now the scary bits...
1. Our (workplace) flu vaccinations are at least two weeks away.
2. We're running out of hand-sanitiser really quickly, the three boxes I reported earlier were all filled with the rest of a large stationary order, hand-sanitiser is still on 'back-order'.
3. One of my team didn't report to work today.
4. Another member of my team was sent home today, because he was suddenly struck down with a high fever and shivering.

To the people who keep saying "seasonal"...

... not a chance, it is hot in Australia, rarely humid, and we're seeing personal transmissions within the country everywhere.
 
novaphile said:
They've been in Australia since January.

They caught it here.
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Quite logical that the bug they caught was locally sourced.
Also logical to think they caught it from someone in the production team who could have come from LA, SF, Hong Kong, Seoul, or even NYC who previously came from or caught it from someone in Wuhan. Also, lots of other avenues are available, though not as likely.
If you travel and then also travel with travelers, anything is possible.
 
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Sherkeu said:
Quite logical that the bug they caught was locally sourced.
Also logical to think they caught it from someone in the production team who could have come from LA, SF, Hong Kong, Seoul, or even NYC who previously came from or caught it from someone in Wuhan. Also, lots of other avenues are available, though not as likely.
If you travel and then also travel with travelers, anything is possible.
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I'm sure it won't surprise anyone to hear that they are both amazingly nice, and have been socialising a lot, and apparently haven't refused any 'selfies'.

But yes, they could have caught it from a crew member who had recently travelled.

Queensland (where they are) is currently showing 12 active cases.
New South Wales (the adjacent State) is showing 65 active cases.
(On the Johns Hopkins tracker)
 
I would like to quietly point out that Italy had 2 confirmed cases on 31 January.

Approximately 6 weeks later, they have 12,462.

That number includes 827 people who have died, and 1,045 who have recovered.

Remember SARS killed approximately 800 people world-wide.
 
novaphile said:
Earlier in the thread, someone asked about Australia, and what we're doing to prevent the spread.
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That's quite sickening against what we're doing here, which is sweet FA.

We are gonna be in deep trouble very shortly, I fear.
___________________________

Meanwhile, until the results of Remdesivir are in, I'd be having a shot at chloroquine phosphate. The trials aren't yet complete, but Chinese doctors seems to think it's pretty useful.

Tricky stuff, because it's been shown to make matters worse in cases of chikungunya virus and it also has a narrow margin between useful and fata; dose.
 
pipelineaudio said:
The you guys who keep talking about the impending panics
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Are you reading the same thread? I haven't seen anyone talking about impending panics, other than people buying toilet paper.

I think you'll find people here are deeply concerned.

Deep concern looks well justified when a country can go from zero cases to 12,000, causing over 800 deaths, in the space of six weeks. If not stopped, we could be talking about hundreds of thousands dead in Italy alone.
 
What's the homeopathic community saying about Coronavirus?

https://facultyofhomeopathy.org/coronavirus-advice-from-the-uk-homeopathic-community/

Can homeopathy help?
Homeopathic medicines have been used extensively for flu-like symptoms and in epidemics around the world. If you decide to take a homeopathic medicine, this should be in addition to the various measures outlined above and should not be your only approach. Selection of the most appropriate homeopathic medicine is based on an individual’s unique symptoms. However, Gelsemium 30c and Bryonia 30c are commonly used for flu-like symptoms and have a long-established, traditional usage over many years.
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In other words: "We know we peddle snake oil and don't want to be prosecuted."
 
Clearly Trump has been using the collective power of the NSA, CIA, DHS and FBI to monitor my partner's and my communications and conversations with our friends and family to formulate a travel policy that maintains our position between a rock and a hard place.

Several Vegas hotels have suspended buffets.

Have Americans started shooting each other over toilet paper and canned food yet?
 
pipelineaudio said:
Why is italy doing so much worse than korea? Wasn't korea first?
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Early and rigourous testing, very fast tracking of the movements of those infected, informative websites including a lot of information about infected people, more compliant population, Cultural practices of distancing?

There could be loads of factors. On the other hand...

Italy, and very soon Spain and France have populations that are not taking this seriously, people who are fleeing “red zones”, nobody wearing masks, continuing to gather together in large groups, poor to non-existent testing.
 
pipelineaudio said:
Why is italy doing so much worse than korea? Wasn't korea first?
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Italy has an average age of 45.4 years

Korea has an average age of 40.8 years

USA has an average age of 38.2 years

Lets watch this and see if this is the reason some countries are getting hit harder.

I don't think China's age mattered, because they were the ground breakers on this, didn't know it was coming.
 
dudalb said:
Problem is we need a POTUS who can calm things down, and Trump whole MO is just the opposite..create hysteria that he can exploit for his political purposes.
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With any luck he'll catch the ******* thing.

alfaniner said:
Tom Hanks just Tweeted that he and his wife have tested positive for the virus. This puts a famous international face on the issue. I expect the panic meter to go off the dial.
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That's it for me. It's an emergency.

World governments will have to pool their ressources to save one of the greatest actors of our time. GET IT DONE, people. :mad:

angrysoba said:
And of course, no vaccines or immunity yet.
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And this virus has more in common with the common cold than the flu, so maybe use that as a a comparison.
 
The MAGA types on my local shooting forum honestly seem to believe the whole thing is a hoax to make Trump look bad.

There's a dark irony to this as they tend to be older and are probably much more vulnerable to the disease, but are being brain poisoned by Fox News into under-reacting.
 
alfaniner said:
Tom Hanks just Tweeted that he and his wife have tested positive for the virus. This puts a famous international face on the issue. I expect the panic meter to go off the dial.
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There is now video footage of him quarantined on Bondi Beach. He doesn't seem to be handling it well, I'm sad to say. :(

 
Things are getting so bad in Spain, that Chinese people are being asked to return to China by their relatives. They apparently don't have a lot of faith in the way Spanish authorities are handling the situation.

Link
 
LondonJohn said:
There are two crucially important factors to bear in mind when comparing COVID-19 with what's colloquially known as "seasonal flu".

The first is the one which the media usually focus on: the mortality rate. Current evidence (though many of the stats - especially those from China - still have reliability issues) suggests that the total-population mortality rate for COVID-19 is something between 2.5% and 3.5%. By contrast, the typical total-population mortality rate for seasonal flu in developed nations is 0.1%-0.2%.
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Evidence from South Korea puts the mortality rate for COVID-19 at ~0.6%. Since most cases are mild and never reported or confirmed how extensive your testing is will have a direct impact on mortality rate. SK has the most comprehensive so their numbers are most likely to be accurate. Since even SK has not tested everyone, even their numbers are probably too high.
 
Belz... said:
Good.
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The median age of the Fox News viewer is around 65, and that network is really downplaying the severity of the outbreak. Right wing propaganda gonna get these people killed.

I would cheer more, but lots of otherwise responsible people are going to suffer if this thing runs wild, not just the socially irresponsible.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The MAGA types on my local shooting forum honestly seem to believe the whole thing is a hoax to make Trump look bad.

There's a dark irony to this as they tend to be older and are probably much more vulnerable to the disease, but are being brain poisoned by Fox News into under-reacting.
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Same with all my right wing Trumpy aquaintances on FB. Constantly posting stupid memes about how its just like a flu, how everyone's stupidly panicking etc. That all slowed some time mid yesterday and not a peep from them today.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The median age of the Fox News viewer is around 65, and that network is really downplaying the severity of the outbreak. Right wing propaganda gonna get these people killed.

I would cheer more, but lots of otherwise responsible people are going to suffer if this thing runs wild, not just the socially irresponsible.
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That is exactly the same median age as the people in Italy dying of COVID 19 according to the Italian doctor co-ordinating the ICUs.
 
Bolsanaro being tested after showing symptoms of the virus. Could we really get this lucky?
 
LondonJohn said:
I know - and I heavily caveated the numbers accordingly. Stats and estimates are changing almost daily. And total-population mortality rates for COVID-19 are centering in on 2.5%-3.5%, which is why I used that range.

But I was primarily intending to show the key differences between COVID-19 and seasonal flu (in order to address arguments suggesting we ought perhaps to be more worried about seasonal flu, and/or that we are overreacting to COVID-19), and even though the COVID-19 stats are unreliable, they are (as you say) most definitely worse than those of seasonal flu. And in particular, the difference in R0 stats (again, allowing for current unreliability of COVID-19 figures) mean that COVID-19 almost certainly spreads exponentially more quickly than seasonal flu.








True - though it's likely that COVID-19 will have at least some element of seasonality, perhaps in mortality terms more than transmission terms.







Nope.
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The numbers have been talked about earlier in the thread but I thought you did a good job of summarizing them. The reason I don't think we will see 50 million deaths, as some predicted, or even a few hundred thousand, as we might see in a normal flu season, is the large scale behavior of the virus. Take China, for example. There are objective signs that it is tapering off there. A nation of 1.4 billion people, 3169 (reported) deaths from coronavirus. If it were progressing by the numbers, we should see millions of deaths there, not a few thousand.



Perhaps the seasonal factor is a big one. It will be telling if the warmer places continue to show low numbers as the weather heats up.
 
I'm going to be financially hit rather badly by this epidemic - I drive a taxi here in Helsinki. Now we are looking at closing public events larger than 500 people (currently a government recommendation). Just today, the hockey match that usually gets an audience of 6000+ people will be played to empty audiences, and another big event is canceled.

No big events translates into much fewer customers, translates into a reduced pay check. And that's on top of the slowdown of demand that would result from a recession, something that's looking more and more likely world wide.

I'm using disinfectant on my hands frequently, and wiping down hard surfaces in my taxi after any customer that seems at all sick. I've also got 90+ year old grandparents who are very unlikely to survive if they get hit.

Damn I hope they manage to get the vaccine out in a shorter time frame than expected!
 
Sherkeu said:
What he meant was that NZ could not do the tech and logistical part of delivering things in a "hot zone" like Wuhan had in that amount of time.
If you watched the video of food/medicine delivery there you would see it is quite advanced in terms of controls. Amazing what they could do really, even if the video distribution is 'partially sponsored by the Chinese govt' as youtube admits.
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:boggled:

That's a non sequitur to what I posted.
 
novaphile said:
Earlier in the thread, someone asked about Australia, and what we're doing to prevent the spread.
Click to expand...
That was me.

So here's a list:
1. We're testing aggressively.
2. We now have pop-up, and drive through clinics.
3. When cases are identified, we're tracking contacts aggressively.
4. We belatedly put travel restrictions in place (too late in all cases, but better than nothing - we've banned flights from Italy today, for example).

In my workplace, on my floor:
1. Posters everywhere about hand-washing protocols.
2. Alcohol based hand sanitiser at all three entrances to the floor.
3. Ongoing emails about our state of preparation, and calling our attention to the hand-washing and hand sanitisation.

Now the scary bits...
1. Our (workplace) flu vaccinations are at least two weeks away.
2. We're running out of hand-sanitiser really quickly, the three boxes I reported earlier were all filled with the rest of a large stationary order, hand-sanitiser is still on 'back-order'.
3. One of my team didn't report to work today.
4. Another member of my team was sent home today, because he was suddenly struck down with a high fever and shivering.
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Thanks! :)

Entirely consistent with what I’d read. Go Aussies go! Or as they’d say in China, jia you (literally, add oil)!

To the people who keep saying "seasonal"...

... not a chance, it is hot in Australia, rarely humid, and we're seeing personal transmissions within the country everywhere.
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While not at all the same as in Australia’s big cities, the weather in Singapore is/has been very different from that in Wuhan, Iran, S Korea, or northern Italy. That different weather didn’t seem to slow local, community transmission (small number statistics of course).

Maybe the Trump administration, led by Pence, has been preying for Covid-19 to be seasonal, rather than doing research, or preparing in case it isn’t much affected by the seasons.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
:boggled:

That's a non sequitur to what I posted.
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Yours was the non-sequitur.
He had said (in response to my posted video of China deliveries in infected zones) that NZ couldn't do it...that it was an advantage of a large country. Your response didn't make sense, so I clarified.

I can go back and clip the needed text but I'm sure you can look yourself.
 
angrysoba said:
Not necessarily no. That said, with seasonal flu, the seasons are fairly reliable guides to when flu will die down. With this virus we do not have that kind of reassurance as far as we know.
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Exactly. Wishful thinking, IMO.

If you look at the 2009 new variant flu, which is a better example because it was a shift (as opposed to drift) in the genome, few people had immunity. The outbreak in the US started in the summer and that continued into the next summer.

When a population has some immunity, spread via droplets on surfaces plays a more important role in the virus getting to a susceptible host. Heat kills the virus (both coronavirus and flu) and it survives longer on surfaces in cold weather.

But when a virus is spreading rapidly person to person because everyone is a susceptible host, then survival on surfaces only need be brief. Summer is unlikely to slow the virus.

In addition, people forget some viruses are more prevalent in different seasons.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Crickets from the anti-vax community as well. I'm sure they'll be in line with the rest if there is a vaccine developed.
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Sure, that’s almost certain. Especially if they’re male, over 65, and have certain existing medical conditions*.

But vaccinate their kindergarteners? Don’t be silly! Go wash your mouth with soap! Everyone knows the vaccines contain mercury/cause autism/etc, and are entirely unnecessary because a) young kids don’t get that virus, and b) if they do it doesn’t hurt them (it’s even milder than measles and everyone knows how harmless that is).

*TB
failed kidneys
diabetes
pneumonia
cancer (not really sure about this one; lung cancer for sure, but all cancers?)
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Exactly. Wishful thinking, IMO.

If you look at the 2009 new variant flu, which is a better example because it was a shift (as opposed to drift) in the genome, few people had immunity. The outbreak in the US started in the summer and that continued into the next summer.

When a population has some immunity, spread via droplets on surfaces plays a more important role in the virus getting to a susceptible host. Heat kills the virus (both coronavirus and flu) and it survives longer on surfaces in cold weather.

But when a virus is spreading rapidly person to person because everyone is a susceptible host, then survival on surfaces only need be brief. Summer is unlikely to slow the virus.

In addition, people forget some viruses are more prevalent in different seasons.
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Good explanation. Thanks! :thumbsup:
 
Pence is in a CBS news interview now giving out more lies and incorrect information about testing in the US.

Outright lies and stupidity.

He actually claimed private labs were doing the testing but weren't required to report the results. What a lying piece of ****. Private labs were prohibited from testing because the CDC withheld permission.
 
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