Based on the localized infection cases I see across the US and have been watching as well as the characteristics of the virus (life outside host/on surfaces, in air, the degree of asymptomatic transference, etc.), it's well beyond containment IMHO.
Travel isn't going to do too much to reduce infection rates alone. We need significant cultural changes to reduce infection rates, but I don't see that happening for a variety of reasons. This country isn't about proactive action and is all about reactionary action though, so we're just waiting for that reactionary threshold. Some preventative measures have been pushed but they're no where near aggressive enough at this point.
It will be interesting how this is handled in our modern cultural, current political and work culture, etc. I suspect it's going to be fairly nasty but certainly hope not. I've been advising my parents to stock up and minimize any outside interactions for awhile.
All reductions in (non-essential) travel are good in a pandemic. That doesn't mean it's sufficient, but it's something positive.
I think we would all like to see stronger social distancing rules domestically (in the US), but here the US has a problem as it granted the President broad discretionary powers to suspend international travel but not domestic gatherings, which can't be banned via executive order and even if congress were to pass a law banning such gatherings, there would be first amendment implications as well as federalism issues.
It's not easy to pass a law giving the President this type of power and I suspect many in congress already rue passing the laws that gave the president power to suspend international travel. That's one of the prices of living in a federal government with separation of powers and a bill of rights guaranteeing right to assembly rather than in a place like China.
For example, the CDC has issued social distancing guidelines but they are only guidelines not laws: Santa Clara county has said "no thank you we'll follow our own guidelines" instead, when the CDC asked to ban meetings of more than 250 but Santa Clara banned meetings of more than 1000, and just refused to change their target to the CDC recommendation.
So the US simply lacks the tools that would allow the President to go on the air and announce "I'm declaring that the MLB season needs to be delayed and Disneyland must close." He can try to exert pressure, or rather have the CDC exert pressure, but these types of declarations are not going to happen in America.
Long term, I think some mechanism to mandate more social isolation is going to be needed.
For example when travelling from California to Arizona, there is currently no quarantine area or checkpoint, and that's fine if you want free movement, but then it's harder to say that states should run their own pandemic policy as long as there is free movement between states.
And this is a general trade off. More interconnected world => localism is less viable as a means of countering global threats.
But I'm just a cynical man. It could very well be something else and I'll be very interested to read about this emergency once it's all behind us.
Yet we can't.
That's crazy and it has to change.
Similarly in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, a politically connected one-man "energy company" called Whitefish, with no experience or skills, emerged out of nowhere and was given the contracts to rebuild the entire Puerto Rican grid.
Months later nothing had happened other than he hired a few people as unskilled as himself who were just dorking around down there, while people died.
So they fired that guy and hired another company called Cobra, with the same terrible terms, and the same ineffective response. Eventually it was found out that Cobra people had paid massive bribes to officials to ensure the deal.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/us/puerto-rico-fema-arres...
The whole story of Whitefish being unqualified is just corrupt politics. Subcontracting is a legitimate way to get the work done.
China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong King all slowed the curve, and have rules governing their whole country.
At any rate, no, a town that has 50 people per square mile should not be forced to respond in the same way as some city with 50,000 people per square mile. In the meantime, the people of Fargo have all the relevant information and their local officials can make calls as needed to suit their demands.
The NBA just suspended their season "until further notice".
All travel is essential to somebody. All restrictions on movement also have a cost, and any analysis that only looks at the benefits of something without looking at the costs cannot hope to be correct.
But we can consider the downsides and decide that we want to restrict travel.
I don't actually need to go visit my rellies. I want to, but I don't have to. On the other hand, if I go on a voluntary trip, I probably have to return home because I can't really afford a hotel indefinitely into the future.
So it's obvious to me that there is some distinction between necessary and nice to have.
I genuinely have been underwhelmed by the reaction to this disease through much of the world. It is necessary in a constitutional democracy to react sometimes to maintain the trust of the voters - or they might say "A democracy is fine when things are going well, but when the chips are down we need a strong leader who can make the decisions we need". Saying "those entertainment business can't open during this outbreak", "keep your tables at least a metre apart" and "don't travel" are reasonable reactions in this circumstance. And we need democratic leaders so that they can know when it's gone on for too long and they have to accept we can't stop it - something a "strong leader" can't tell.
I travelled to starbucks today. I’d hardly consider that essential.
I assume the U.S. government will be pumping money directly into the hands of small businesses and employees.
But OPs point stands -- unless you're working from home and never going out to eat / get groceries / not go crazy from cabin fever you have to travel somewhere
Restricting routine trips to just home-to-work, work-to-home, and large-scale resupply missions is still acceptable at the moment. Make use of your local grocery's picker service with delivery to the parking lot, if you can.
Consider switching your dining-out trips to ordering via phone, fax, or electronic ordering system, and doing drive-through, carry-out, or parking-lot pickup. Pay electronically, in advance, instead of handling cash at the point-of-sale terminal. If you get cabin fever, and need to socialize, do it through screens.
It is essential for Starbucks to serve customers in order for them to stay in business. You don't have to stop going. But you can put in your order via website or app; walk into the retail location only when it's ready; pick it up without speaking to, breathing on, or touching anyone; and then leave immediately. It is possible to minimize the duration and intensity of contact, without eliminating it entirely.
It is better to be in contact with your regular friends, acquaintances, and business associates--that are all the same people every day--than to have a lot of transient contacts with complete strangers. It is slower to traverse a social network one connection at a time than to hit a lot of random, unconnected people all at once with a brodcast.
Not at all.
Isn't there an obvious compelling state interest?
I don't know how strong that actually is. Over the past few years, we've seen some Trump work the courts pretty consistently. Even if his administration is doing something explicitly unconstitutional, running something all the way to the Supreme Court can take 6 to 18 months, during which time the unconstitutional order would stand (if not stayed early on).
Their point is that there's absolutely no effect of banning travel between two areas with similar prevalence, based on rather simple logic.
Take two bags with mostly white and a similar number of red balls in them. Then, twenty times, grab one hand from each bag and empty it in the other. What's the expected change in number of red balls?
Multiple cities with hundreds of thousands of people in both the US and Europe are infection free right now. Extending that for even a few weeks is very useful.
By your model, some reductions in travel ought to have a negative effect. Is that a fair corollary?
Limiting all Schengen traffic is an extreme example, but it's not obvious that some level of restriction would necessarily produce a significant bottleneck effect (given that citizens are exempt).
By your last analogy, the red balls would have paint rubbed off them in the exchanges.
When the concentrations in the US get higher it will start to make sense to constrain travel more over there. Right now the chances a domestic flight contains an infected individual is quite low, but that won’t always be the case.
Bear in mind the virus cannot be stopped, or contained at this point. All we can do is slow it down while also limiting the harm our countermeasures cause.
Saying the virus cannot be stopped seems defeatist. China seems to have managed it locally, albeit with some very aggressive measures.
That's what you're proposing, if you don't realize it. If you get the growth rate below 1, you can wipe out the disease, instead of merely delaying it.
But this is clearly false because population density is another important factor for contact between people.
There is a lot more leadership across government (federal, state, local), private industry, and independent individuals could be doing to proactively reduce transference and even stomp out significant portions of infection is followed through. My point is that our cultural trends surrounding all of these (governments, work, personal action) are almost all running counter to what we need to be doing.
We need strong government leadership at all levels pushing support out where possible, be it resources, accurate non-politically influenced/dictated information, etc. Businesses can be more proactively supporting work from home more where feasible, extend sick leave or create sick leave options to reduce pressures to work, provide some security/continued employment for those who need it (especially demographics at high risk). People can avoid attending work when sick, reduce/limit public exposure (be it out shopping, attending an event, etc.), practice frequent hand washing, limit exposing themselves to at risk populations, etc.
Economically it's a disaster (as the markets are also anticipating) but it's going to be one way or another. It seems to me that you're better off to take a well calculated hit that can bounce back to a healthy workforce that doesn't strain existing healthcare infrastructure than trying to pretend nothing is going on, minimal fallout will occur, and play-it-by ear.
I'm considering the USA fully seeded at this point.
Even if you think you have it, there's still not enough test kits available yet - even if you're swabbed it can be days for a result(Saying this from west michigan).
It matches this article on restrictive testing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/coronavir...
Long distance travel and exposure to those who have been (e.g. hugging your wife got off a plane from Spain 2 days ago) is still a top predictor for exposure.
Which is exactly why everyone with those symptoms needs to be tested. One of the most important things we need to do right now is detect the people who got the virus through community transmission.
> Long distance travel and exposure to those who have been (e.g. hugging your wife got off a plane from Spain 2 days ago) is still a top predictor for exposure.
I'd say that testing those people should be lower priority, since an assumption they're infected is more likely to be accurate, so they can take preventative measures without needing a test.
This. I'm in my twenties so it's very possible for me to get COVID and only experience cold like symptoms (or less!). I'm sorry to everyone, but I won't self-quarantine myself for 14 days just because I have a stuffy nose (it's likely a cold right?). I'm fortunate enough to have the ability to take time off/work remote - but what if it's a cold this week and COVID in two weeks? I can't take a month off.
I'm from West Michigan - ATM there's very little testing available, and I'd only be tested if I had recently traveled. But we're past the point where recently traveling is such a big indicator - we're seeing plenty of community transmission for me to believe it's very likely everywhere already, and any lack of cases is because of a lack of testing.
Overpay for an extreme case rather than adapt your system around it.
Now, I have other complaints about our system and how it is unsustainable, but this is a poor argument as to why.
To be clear I'm not saying more infections are a good thing, simply that if there are a lot more cases that already exist, knowing they exist and having more accurate data that shows us COVID19 is less harmful than currently perceived/projected would be good for everyone.
The president did claim that some criticisms about his handling of the situation were a "new hoax" in the same way he has labeled previous unfounded criticism and accusations as hoaxes.
Huh?
He called Fox News and said on air ""So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people [with COVID-19] that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better,""
His whole schtick until just about a few hours ago was that the risks were all hugely overblown.
I am also curious to know exactly which "previous unfounded criticisms" you are referring to.
Yes. Yes it is. How many times has Trump tweeted about the stock market and how it proves he is a great president? Hundreds. Literally. His NEA chair has explicitly stated "I have long believed that stock markets are the best barometer of the health, wealth and security of a nation. And today's stock market message is an unmistakable vote of confidence for the president." His entire political argument for reelection is premised on his "business acumen." His down playing of coronavirus (to what end? why?) was a blatantly partisan attempt to gamble that this whole thing would blow over rather than risk spooking the markets.
The messaging on this has been pathetic. The other day UW in Seattle announced they had a capacity to test 1,000/day. Not adequate for the nation, but for the PNW, sure.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/rt-pcr-detecti...
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/rt-pcr-panel-p...
ETA: I'm having trouble locating positive control template sequences.
I am happy for S. Korea running 100,000+ tests, and embarrassed that the US has maybe run 1000s at this point. I also think that the virus is widely dispersed in the US and the best we can hope for is to keep the case load at a level manageable by our health care system. I'm pretty worried about that though.
Thankfully all of us seemed to get over it without much complication, and it doesn't seem like very many of the people we've since interacted with have come down with it. We might very well have just been lucky, though.
We are unlikely to ever find out, because we won't have a reason to give everyone antibody tests
Los Angeles → Catalina Islands → Ensenada → Los Angeles
> and were there lots of mainland Chinese people on it?
I mean, I didn't exactly go around asking people "are you from China?", but based on the number of people who sounded like they were speaking Mandarin I'd tentatively answer "yes".
> Sadly the symptoms for CoVid-19 are pretty common across a variety of diseases, so “flu-like but not flu” doesn’t necessarily point to this.
Indeed, which is why I'm still at least somewhat skeptical. Still, it's hard to rule it out, especially given the relatively-severe symptoms (not the absolute worst I've felt, but it was pretty bad).
That said, you'd be surprised what draws tourists from mainland China; Las Vegas and Reno (for example) both get plenty of Chinese tourists looking specifically to gamble, and I'd imagine the ship's onboard casino to have a similar appeal. Plus, there were plenty of other tourists from long distances, too, both from within the US (East Coast) and from Europe and Australia (from what I gathered from the people whom I did talk to). So evidently there were at least some non-Chinese tourists flying thousands of miles for it; seems reasonable that some mainland Chinese tourists might, too.
No "massive uptick" yet, but there are quite a few every week, so it could be that it's still blending in with non-COVID pneumonia cases.
Indeed. There are typically above 3000 deaths/week due to Pneumonia and 200/week due to influenza at this time of year. We had a smallish spike in mid-late January, where for 3 consecutive weeks, deaths were above trend at nearly 4000 & 400 per week.
If you assume a 1% mortality rate for COVID, and you assume all deaths are due to pneumonia, and you assume the entire late-January spike is due to COVID, that could be hiding 300,000-400,000 US cases. (To be clear, those are all questionable assumptions! The mortality rate could easily be either lower or higher, a meaningful fraction of deaths might not show as pneumonia or influenza, and it is normal for there to be a moderate spike above trend at some point in the flu season)
That doesn't mean that there were or weren't a few hundred thousand cases in that time -- it just means that some significant number of cases could easily hide in "routine-looking" spikes in the graph.
This does mean, though, that it is unlikely that everybody who got "the really bad flu" that's been going around this year actually had COVID -- but, especially if you live in a place with lots of people who travel to China regularly (like I do!), it isn't unreasonable to wonder if that "really bad flu followed by a lower-respiratory-tract infection that tested negative for influenza" you got in late January/early February wasn't really COVID.
(Remember, though, that while the rapid influenza test has a pretty low false-positive rate, it's got about a 50% false negative rate -- so testing negative shouldn't lead you to assume it isn't influenza)
Critical cases and fatal cases are way more likely to be detected for this reason -- but during the 3 weeks I was talking about, it was believed that there was no COVID in the US, except for folks evacuated from China to quarantine sites.
During that time unexplained pneumonia leading to death -- especially in an older individual -- would likely not have been thought to be COVID, and would just have gone on the books as pneumonia.
"In fact, officials would later discover through testing, the virus had already contributed to the deaths of two people, and it would go on to kill 20 more in the Seattle region over the following days." [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...
Akin to how securing a network is more than setting up a firewall at the perimeter.
YES! Restricting US<=>EU travel is just about the least useful thing we need to be doing right now.
At this point, the only rational thing to do is to try to slow the spread. The good news is that this is a very mild virus, and the vast majority of infected people will have minor symptoms. The fatality rate in Korea is currently 0.6%, and becuase of the comprehensive nature of their testing, this should be considered the upper bound on CFR.
That's the exact opposite of what the WHO said when they made the pandemic declarations:
"We cannot say this loudly enough, or clearly enough, or often enough: all countries can still change the course of this pandemic," reads a statement from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO.[1]
South Korea has shown this to be correct.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/11/corona...
But more importantly, you’re not dying and not clogging up a hospital. That’s what’s relevant to this discussion.
It will be a big problem both in Europe and in the US, because they are starting to take measures only now.
The vast majority of cases are mild, like a head cold. This is a fact, and has been reported around the world.
You’re arguing about relative hospitalization rates, but that has nothing to do with the discussion here. Mild cases aren’t clogging up ICU wards at all, because they’re quite mild.
I think you mean that this should be considered the goal upper bound on CFR. It's really the lower bound on CFR if you do everything right. If you do everything wrong, like the US is heading towards, you get overloaded health systems, critical shortages, and a 12% CFR or higher.
I think the true measure will be the year over year total mortality.
If we overload our hospitals then CFR will go towards the number of cases that require hospitalization. Which is around 20%. Italy is currently far over hospital capacity and has a CFR today of 8% and rising.
Media and government keep making this claim, yet where are the recovery numbers of people? It drags on for weeks and weeks with no end in sight, correct? And current case fatality rate in Italy is 8%, was 7% this morning, was 6% yesterday - because they do not have hospital resources for the number of serious cases they have.
Serious, critical, and dead outcomes are said to be over 20% of case. This being described as "very low, a very small number" by certain people. That is not a low number at all.
Regarding the rise in CFR: it will naturally go up as cases decline, because fatalities stem from a time when the case rate was more rapidly increasing. Korea’s case rate had been declining for several days:
https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/12297080012...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/heal...
At some point, this scary story is going to have to be adjusted to reflect reality.
Buy a stool for crying out loud, they're like $10
In comparison, Korea's response was disastrously wrong. Their "Let's test everyone" policy sent lots of people into medical limbo ("We can’t let you go because you're COVID-19 positive ... but meanwhile we have particularly nothing to do for you because you're not that ill") and got their hospitals flooded with mild cases.
Too bad money making is somehow above preventing others getting sick. People wouldnt show up to work if they didn't have to worry about their wages. I'm sorry but 3 sick days is garbage and requiring doctors notes is asine when your healthcare plan is shite. Not to mention wasting a day in a hospital. Companies can afford this stuff. It's not often and it's minimal to say the least. But God forbid a small business can't have someone for 80 hours a week at minimum wage!
This depends on how you're defining containment. Grounding aircraft may not decrease the current case count, you're right, but it may help not adding to it, or adding as much, or as fast. Because of this, it may still be worth doing.
The notion that we're going to abandon containment measures in favor of mitigation, which I've seen in many places (not in your comment though of course), is wrong. We're going to be doing both.
Now I will not attempt to speak for Europe but the US government could certainly push short public advisories and messages to adults and children through broadcast TV and even get the cooperation of streaming services as well. Short thirty to ninety second spots that give helpful non panic information.
The US President is hamstrung by both political disagreement and the law. There were articles he is loathe to declare any national emergency declaration until approached by the governors of many of the states. If he did without states approaching him and asking you can damn well guarantee there were would be Democrats out there claiming he was trying to be a Dictator and comparing him to Putin. The same article concerning the declaration also reveals all the behind the scenes work going on with Congress to get funds in place before any message is put forth so that the government as a whole looks to be cooperating as well as acting appropriately.
Clearly there are clusters throughout the United States. Unconfirmed, unrecognized clusters. And with the adversity of many to utilizing health care, it seems impossible to deal with now.
It's also worth noting that this flight ban applies only to non-Americans, just as the Wuhan restriction before did. During the prior travel restriction dozens of flights a day were going to and from Wuhan -- they just had Americans on them, who apparently aren't susceptible to the foreign virus. This new restriction is identical, allowing Americans to march the globe with their COVID-19, but at least they kept out the foreigners.
Instead of any actual efforts it is again mere security theater. And again Trump will pat himself on the back for his very-close-to-useless theatrics.
Here's the perspective of a San Jose public high school [1] proving that containment isn't a concern:
> Oak Grove High School officials said they were not considering school closures because “children have not been shown to be a high-risk group for serious illness from this virus.” The Centers for Disease Control said last week that limited reports showed child COVID-19 patients in China had generally presented with mild symptoms.
> “As much as possible, children should be allowed to carry on with their education and normal activities,” school officials said.
Related, a family member received a "exposure notice" from her child's school that one of the students tested positive. No closure.
There's no attempt for containment in the US. My hunch is that it's not needed as much as is being suggested by some. I guess we'll see.
[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/08/oak-grove-high-school...
Well presumably they'll always allow non-Americans to leave. As for americans, they would still have to wade through quarantine or whatever restrictions the other country requires.
For entry into the US, does the govt even has the power to keep americans and permanent residents from entering? Seems like every country will at worst only quarantine its own people.
The point is that the action is farce. Those flights to and from Wuhan were always full of primarily Americans, and continued unabated. Just as Americans can still fly to and from Europe, though obviously carriers are going to drastically cut the flight counts.
Regardless, it is without an ounce of doubt that COVID-19 is spreading, completely uncontrolled, throughout the US. Italy is a week or so ahead of the United States, but sadly the most probable outcome is a catastrophe in the near future.
I don't see why commercial sea-shipping would be restricted.
Mariners may not be allowed to leave their ship while in port though.
Me either, but Trump did seem to say that. Vaguely. Stand by for "clarification".
> It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.
> In general, because of poor survivability of these coronaviruses on surfaces, there is likely very low risk of spread from food products or packaging that are shipped over a period of days or weeks at ambient, refrigerated, or frozen temperatures.
The CDC themselves were involved in the study that says you're wrong.
If someone is able to find the source for this info I'd really appreciate it. Just spent like 10 minutes trying to find the paper they're citing but I can't find it and I don't have time to keep looking now. Maybe it isn't published?
It might be this one, actually. This one suggests it can live up to 72 hours on certain surfaces. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033217v...
I'd love to have some more data on this if anyone can provide.
How does it spread then? Seems hard to believe all these people are being infected through hand shakes or being coughed on.
> The virus is thought to spread mainly from person-to-person.
> * Between people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet).
> * Through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
> These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/transmission...
I mean, we have city parties here 'for all the family' which result in everyone touching each other (just as friends mostly of course but still touching hands, shoulders, neck, face, back), kissing (mostly on cheeks with strangers, but you mostly 'friendly' kiss everyone meet/talk/dance with and otherwise shake hands or even both) but all the other factors do apply as well; bad/no toilets, no soap/water, everyone drunk so who washes their hands anyway, vomiting and not being so careful with putting your sleeve in front of your face when you sneeze or cough... I only go during the day to such things if I go at all (when most people can still walk up straight) because it is rather disgusting after a while (I am old; I used to like that when I was young), but I can see a few people infecting basically everyone if they are popular/drunk enough.
How do we explain spreading from asymptomatic people? They're not sneezing.
And it’s the small droplets that float around the longest. These penetrate deep into your lungs and get stuck there.
So there's a constant conflict between simple and easy to understand but not totally correct info, and scientifically correct but incomprehensible to most info.
Someone sneezing in your face = really bad. Someone sneezing an hour ago vs. touching something they just sneezed on... hard to say which is worse.
very low risk != no risk.
Any method of transmission that infects fewer than one additional person on average are effectively negligible on the overall exponential curve.
So yes, it is likely possible that symptomatic people can infect others, and it is likely possible that a contaminated doorknob can infect people for a week, but if these things happen rarely enough, it doesn't matter. The virus will die out if other routes of infection (e.g. the more typical person to person transmission) can also be made rare enough.
I apologize if this is coming off as pedantic but the damage being done by misinformation and speculation about the coronavirus is significant, and I don't think it's possible to be too zealous about precision here. Trump's claims that fears were overblown and a "hoax" have been amplified into widespread and potentially deadly skepticism that coronavirus is even a danger. People have suggested various quack cures that at best drain the resources of vulnerable people. Even saying something as seemingly-innocuous as "wear a face mask to reduce your risk" ends up having a devastating impact on healthcare providers who really need the masks but can't source them. We should be listening to public health authorities and mainstream health experts, and taking reasonable precautions, but absolutely refraining from speculation that might have unforeseeable consequences.
Which would you say is the most credible source then?
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033217v...
Ocean liners that carry passengers take 4-5
Even a day is a long period of time in optimal conditions, and not many situations are close to optimal.
It's a half-life thing. The larger your initial sample, the longer the sample can go and still have enough infectious ability left.
Scenario: Infected person sneezes over a large area and deposits over a wide area. Then you come by 6 hours later and touch a deposited surface and then 10 minutes later touch your eyes.
Each transition only picked up a fraction of what was left.
And each time period left only a fraction of what was there.
More important to limit travel, limit direct/close contact and clean commonly used surfaces frequently.
And better to avoid replicating the environmental conditions that created the "up to 9 day" figure: low temperatures and low humidity.
Numbers are about to spike everywhere pretty much no matter what anybody does, because better testing and funding has become available.
Quarantining an entire continent, and even worse than this badly doing it, seems to be an astonishing overreaction. The average age of death for coronavirus victims is 83. The mortality rate seems to be as low as 0.6% in South Korea or as high as 5% in Italy. Italy is especially vulnerable because it has the oldest population in Europe which is one of the factors that is leading to the 5% figure from there. It is not an End of Days zombie apocalypse.
I recently watched a speech by a US mayor which essentially said that the panic over Corona is going to do much more damage to people than the actual virus and I tend to agree. Simple quarantining measures mixed with best practices for infection control until we have more information about the virus seems perfectly fine. Blowing up the global economy is complete overkill and is a typical move from an administration whose response to topics are either to ignore them or sledgehammer them.
[1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-infection-outbreak-...
[2] - https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464?s=2...
[3] - https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-ans...
[4] - https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-...
[5] - https://www.kff.org/hivaids/fact-sheet/the-hivaids-epidemic-...
EDIT: I originally didn't post sources, so I backfilled those in and slightly tweaked the numbers to match.
EDIT 2: I adjusted the numbers again because as a reply points out one of my sources updated their estimates.
I saw another seemingly reputable estimate today - some disease person on Joe Rogan's podcast, who was saying that 96 million people could get it, of which 48 million would need to be hospitalized. This makes no sense unless you are predicting a virus mutation. We're not even close to seeing 50% hospitalization rates.
I can. Look at how seriously China shut down cities etc and it still spreads, though much slower. Do you think western nations will take the level of action China has at all or in anyhting similar to the same time frames?
And to be clear, when I say 'I can' I'm not claiming Im right or predicting anything, I really dont know. But this seems as likely as any other scenario especially when experts are saying levels around this.
Source: https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-warn-coronavirus-mo...
However, I do believe that a lot of inaccurate information is being presented. The public attention on this subject is enormous, making it a ripe topic for the media to profit from alarmist headlines.
[0]The source of the 40%-70% figure has since dramatically altered their estimates, and added several qualifiers.
[0]https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464?s=2...
> Summary: Should have said 40-70% of adults in a situation without effective controls.
There's an enormous difference between 40-70% of everyone and 20-60% of adults - specifically if no countermeasures are deployed.
We should be trying to promote risk assessments that are situationally correct.
I mentioned that here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22552973
> [0]The source of the 40%-70% figure has since dramatically altered their estimates, and added several qualifiers.
> [0]https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464?s=2....
After reading the entire thread, he didn't say "zero attempts to mitigate infection". He said "without effective controls". He also said " Increasing evidence that the extremely intense control measures in China have reduced transmission while they are in force. As long as such intense control measures are in place it is possible to imagine keeping the number infected well below 40%. I don't believe most countries (maybe not even China) can keep such controls for months or a year, the minimum time frame for potentially having a vaccine. But even more moderate ones if effective could reduce incidence considerably". Not even Italy has gotten to the extreme measures that China was implementing. Also if you read his more recent tweets you will see that he thinks the European travel ban is futile.
Overall it sounds to me like that 20% number that I have been using since your first post is the updated number based off of our current mitigation strategy. I don't see any indication that he thinks that number is too high given the current path. Once again, I am completely open to learning otherwise if you have something that you can point to that clearly states otherwise.
We don't know enough about the virus to predict almost anything about it and are learning more every day.
I feel like people have already made up their mind about this by reading some extremely poor sources rather than bodies like the WHO so are going to panic no matter what people say.
The best option here would be for me to come back in a month and we'll reexamine the comment. 625,000 is literally insane.
[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51835856
[2] - https://www.wbaltv.com/article/what-percent-of-people-in-the...
1. Reducing the transmission rate lowers the total number of people sick at one time. Lowers the ultimate number who contract it. And pushes the peak infection rate out.
2. The above numbers are very sensitive to r0.
3. An exponential when it hits looks like a wall. You end up with a significant percentage of the population sick at once.
Could be my model being shitty but it looks like at high r0 there is a momentum effect which drives the total number infected above what you would expect.
Note this is a “mean-field” model (everyone evenly mixed together) so take it with a grain of salt...
You can spend weeks or months in therapy before you are recovered, or you can get scarring in your lungs - or worse - that leaves you with a permanent disability. Not to mention damage to other organs.
I think many are discounting, or are unaware of, these other nasty possibilities. We don’t know enough yet of the prevalence of these effects, but we do know they happen.
Given that we've only been tracking the virus closely for 2 months, and we've only had a decent sample size of patients for only about 1 month, you really can't be making claims like this at this point.
> Fatality is the wrong yardstick. Catching the virus can mess up your life in many, many more ways than just straight-up killing you. "We are all young"—okay. "Even if we get the bug, we will survive"—fantastic. How about needing four months of physical therapy before you even feel human again. Or getting scar tissue in your lungs and having your activity level restricted for the rest of your life.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/young-unafraid-coronavirus-pandemic...
A few percent is a lot. World War II killed 3% of the human population, and that's where we're headed if we don't stop it.
The coronavirus, in a single country, has killed 5% of infected people and elder people or those with pre-existing conditions are majorly overrepresented in infection rates.
>World War II killed 3% of the human population, and that's where we're headed if we don't stop it.
This isn't just wrong. It's irresponsible for you to be saying these types of absolutely incorrect things.
I'm not sure how you think how critical it is. I personally have never had this issue and do not mind at all to lay still for a whole year to try to reduce the risk of this happening.
Unless all the people you love are over 80 (in which case the chance of them dying before Corona hit was not much less realistic than it is now) that sentance is just completely false.
Why spread such fear and misinformation?
Unless none of the people you love are over 70, that sentence is completely true.
Yes, killing 5% of infected people is serious, especially when viruses of a similar family regularly infect 20% of the population, and the population has no inborn resistance to this partical virus, and it is, provisionially, more infectious than similar viruses.
Simple models suggest we'll have 500k deaths or so by 2021. Of course, it could be less than that, but it could also be more. It's almost certain we'll end up with some days with a 9/11 worth of deaths; it's just a question of whether that's a few days or for months on end.
You're fearmongering, and it's bullshit.
Additionally, for someone calling others' claims bullshit, your numbers have no correspondence to reality. In Wuhan, the 3% number was for the general population; for the 70+ age range, it was ~20%.
In almost all examples in human history, whenever a disease stopped, it was either because it burned through most of humanity, or because people decided to make it stop. They don't stop themselves.
You're pretending we live in the 1400s. We don't.
You're pretending we will take no measures to control this at all. That's simply not the case.
the US gov't has spent the last 1.5 months doing nothing to contain this at all. ending flights from europe isn't going to do anything to help if they aren't testing people and preventing spread inside the country
We are testing people, and we are doing quite a bit to prevent spread inside of the country and out.
[1]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa-coronavirus/
But it is real and it has the potential to seriously damage the economy.
A tanked economy will harm far more people than this virus.
If the ban gives sufficient reassurance to the chicken littles to induce them not to sell their stocks and invest in toilet paper, it will be a success.
The reason why it's going to go this way is because we won't have the capacity for everyone who needs critical care. And the reason we won't have the capacity is a) lack of proper investments imagining this scenario, where in Japan and South Korea they have this capacity because they've had this experience and know better; and b) lack of discipline to weld ourselves into our homes or even voluntarily self-quarantine in order to slow things down and effectively give us more critical care capacity.
I spoke to 1/2 dozen people today who are traveling. Three think they have this thing, and have 3 of 3 symptoms. I told them not to travel. They said "Oh well" and are traveling anyway. That's what we're dealing with. A total lack of personal responsibility, upon which both the free market and our democratic government is based - and so far this is about as far as we've come.
The European flights being cancelled, seems sane to me. It's not about 1 or 10 people being sick per plane. It's reasonable to assume after a 6-12 hour flight, that everyone on board is infected if there was even 1 person infected at the start of the flight. I don't know the exact number of incoming European flights per day, I think it's about 80-110K passengers? That's what this stops.
Stopping all domestic travel would be better. Short term pain translates into tens of thousands fewer deaths over the next 3 months. China got a handle on this for now because they welded people in their homes. We aren't doing that which means we haven't slowed it down that much let alone stopped it.
Stopping cargo, if that turns out to be accurate reporting, I think is an overreaction.
edit: air cargo flights between US and Europe also suspended
You know all of the stuff that's made in China? The machines that make that stuff are made in Europe. Well, not literally the ones that make the stuff in China, but the ones that US companies would buy if they were trying to manufacture more stuff domestically to replace the stuff they can no longer buy from China.
But by no means end-of-world serious, all life critical things are still getting through. also money buys a lot, even cargo space on ships and planes.
It's a massive export sector for the EU (€127bn), and a chunk of that is to China, but the easily-available statistics lump machinery and vehicles, so I don't have a source.
There are tens of thousands of incubating cases in the United States already. How exactly is a few dozen sick passengers per day going to affect that at all? You'd have to literally be picking up and flying in planes full of active cases to even match what we have here already.
This is insanity. No one with any expertise at all recommended it. No one serious thinks this is a good idea. It's not going to do anything useful at all.
Don't look into yourself and see what can be fixed, always blame the other.
Unfortunately this kind of measure is going to increase the R0 of the virus, because some people will think "oh I see, the virus is over there, and now the president has closed off that vector."
I can't even tell if this is supposed to be about Trump. Also it doesn't matter.
There are thousands of borders and even more politicians on this planet and if you don't think borders are the scapegoat for problems the world over, then you're really thinking very small.
>You'd have to literally be picking up and flying in planes full of active cases to even match what we have here already
Even one person with corona can do a lot of damage.
For example, a singular person boarded Diamond Princess. The ship had 696 confirmed positive cases and 7 deaths from 1 person who had the virus.
I'm not saying the measure suffices. Obviously domestic travel is also a big issue, as is travel from outside the Schengen area. But being one of the people affected (currently in Schengen), I still believe this is a right step. It might not slow infections down enough but it will certainly prevent many cases. Also, it will remind people how serious the situation is.
The last couple of weeks have been very profitable for "finance".
On the other hand, for long-term investors it doesn't seem like a terrible time to get into the market.
Oil and other commodities also took a dump.
My concern is how economies are going to respond to the US being cut off from Continental ports for a month, which as far as I can tell hasn't happened since U boats were in open waters.
Can anyone comment on supply chains that rely on Europe to source goods? I know medical grade steel comes from over there, but I don't know what else.
Edit: apparently the president misspoke.