WTF :2019-nCoV NovaCoronaVirus Thread

[VJ]

I doubt seriously, with over 1.1 billion people, that China has "contained" anything... They kicked out all of the Journalists and most of the epidemiologists.

It is not so much the size of the country, but the efficiency at which they managed to limit people's movement. Don't forget that the government has a controlled social point system with face detection in place (that e.g. penalizes by limiting peoples' access to trains, airports and other possibilities for traveling, limit access to schools, or any other aspect of daily life): when the government says stay inside, people will fear the consequences as any disobedience can really impact their long term future comfort and life. So I don't think it is impossible. More democratic countries just cannot achieve that level of lockdown: for example, in Belgium, when the country went in lockdown, people organized lockdown parties on the last evening... In addition, I see that here in Poland people are much more isolating (restricting themselves more than the government does), but the explanation rather is in the distrust of the healthcare system: whatever you do, do not get yourself into a situation where you need to go to a hospital. So maybe such aspects also play...

But I honestly also don't know... But we can also look at South Korea, that also managed very well to limit the growth...

[Dr Mordrid]

UK's Imperial College has revised its model

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/#

The UK should now be able to cope with the spread of the covid-19 virus, according to one of the epidemiologists advising the government.

Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London gave evidence today to the UK’s parliamentary select committee on science and technology as part of an inquiry into the nation’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

He said that expected increases in National Health Service capacity and ongoing restrictions to people’s movements make him “reasonably confident” the health service can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in two or three weeks. UK deaths from the disease are now unlikely to exceed 20,000, he said, and could be much lower.

[Dr Mordrid]

GM and Ventec weren't working fast enough on their ventilator project so POTUS just brought down Mjölnir;

Homeland Security and Health & Human Services can use the Defense Production Act to FORCE production of whatever is needed. DoD transports for logistics.

Peter Navarro has been appointed Director.

Update

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/489938-trump-names-new-defense-production-act-coordinator-for-coronavirus

[Umfriend]

I wonder, why now? Why not over a week ago? And is Navarro a good choice? Seems to me he is a bit politically driven. And will this actually speed up production?

[UtwigMU]

I'm surprised how despite being a small country our diplomacy is working well taking care of expats. Government hired a plane and is repatriating people from UK, Spain and other places free of charge. I thought this was something only big countries do.

So far 632 cases, 9 dead. Work is shut down for 2 days, then production will be on hold (government pays 80% salary to workers who get put on hold). I'll work from home afterwards. It's a relief as week before was stressful

The part of Slovenia near Italy where I am surprisingly has 2nd least cases. This can be attributed to: people here don't venture far into Italy and nearby Friuli Venezia Giulia didn't have early outbreak, people here don't ski much (not so many went to Italian resorts), people here speak Italian and follow Italian news, so they acted more cautiously. People here are really following stay at home and so far we haven't introduced new limits to how far one can move. Yesterday went to Ljubljana and apart from transit trucks only met couple passenger cars on highway. In city only saw a few lone walkers and food delivery cyclists.

Serbia is sending people with suitcases full of cash to buy protective gear. It has happened that gear shipped through Germany for other countries got held up and was prevented from being exported. People who break quarantine in Serbia get convicted on Skype and are sent to jail.

[Dr Mordrid]

Trump has called up US military reserves, mostly to expedite logistics and help the US Army Corps of Engineers convert hotel & dorm rooms and large venues into equipped negative-pressure ICU rooms.

Twitter video of Lt. General Semonite explaing it

https://twitter.com/USArmy/status/1241185656094801923?s=19

Hot spots like NYC, WA, Detroit and others with disaster declarion requests first.

[UtwigMU]

Chinese mobile carriers lost 20+M subscribers during this crisis

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-23/china-s-mobile-carriers-lose-15-million-users-as-virus-bites

Mortuaries distributing greater number of urns than reported deaths

https://www.zerohedge.com/health/more-evidence-china-lying-number-urns-more-double-reported-coronavirus-deaths

The number of infected to dead during ongoing outbreak is somewhere around 130 (Germany) and 170 (Czechia) or above for asymptomatic cases. So China's and Italy's 80.000 are off by order of magnitude at least.

[UtwigMU]

One black humour I read: morgues will be like Starbucks. You will approach, say a name, they'll write it with sharpie on an urn and hand it to you.

[Dr Mordrid]

I wonder, why now? Why not over a week ago? And is Navarro a good choice? Seems to me he is a bit politically driven. And will this actually speed up production?

The govt. usually works with vendors during an emergency like this, but if one of two give them trouble or try to profiteer the hammer comes down. This is why after WW-2 most of the wartime rules were formalized by Truman & Congress into the Defense Production Act of 1950.

Local update

Detroit's North American International Auto Show is off - the Army Corps of Engineers & FEMA are converting the TCF Center (formerly Cobo Hall) into a field hospital.

[UtwigMU]

Things are pretty grim in NY from what I read:
- In US test results take 10 days, here they take a day
- US has tested 300 per 1M, that's worse than Russia, Poland or Iran

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid19-tests-per-million-people?country=AUS+AUT+BRA+COL+FIN+FRA+DEU+IRN+JPN+SVN+ZAF+KOR+ARE+GBR+USA+VNM+RUS+POL

- there are no separate hospitals for covid and other traumas, ambulance crews, doctors, patients getting infected
- tents for testing and drive through tests too late
- not enough protective gear for medical staff - this is a problem across the World but I believe USA could ramp up some production. We lacked masks to the point hospitals were sewing cloth masks but now critical crews hawe them
- lockdown at 20k cases or so and not nationwide lockdown. Italy did same mistake and only did lockdown in Lombardy at first. This caused people from other regions and some locals to leave.

[Dr Mordrid]

Things are pretty grim in NY from what I read:

- In US test results take 10 days, here they take a day

This is changing fast. Abbott just announced a rapid bedside test which uses an automated machine that's in 18,000 locations to test for flu. They're ramping fast.

- US has tested 300 per 1M, that's worse than Russia, Poland or Iran

Directly related to above, and some current tests have high false results so...

- there are no separate hospitals for covid and other traumas, ambulance crews, doctors, patients getting infected

This is changing fast. Elective surgeries and hospitalizations are halting, non-CoVid-19 cases are being discharged or moved into other facilities, FEMA and the Army are converting hotels, dorms & event centers into ICUs etc.

- tents for testing and drive through tests too late

Directly related to the lack of fast automated tests & reliable conventional tests. They're starting to open here now that Abbott has released their test & more are coming.

- not enough protective gear for medical staff - this is a problem across the World but I believe USA could ramp up some production.

Agreed. We are ramping up, but also the US national reserve supplies were allowed to remain at low levels due to insufficient federal & state buying for the last 50 years.

- lockdown at 20k cases or so and not nationwide lockdown.

Ordering a lockdown is mostly a state function due to Federalism & State Home Rule. States are largely independent; their own laws, militias, courts, schools, etc.

For many things, including disaster relief, the Feds cannot come into a State using FEMA, the military etc. unless the Governor asks for a Federal disaster declaration.

Michigan's rookie Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, is in trouble because she didn't grok this.

She declared a State level disaster in early March. This only mobilizes Michigan's resources.

2 weeks later she's hammering Trump, the Task Force, etc. for ignoring Michigan and not sending supplies. A back & forth ensues.

Last week the Detroit Free Press (a Democrat-leaning paper) publishes a scathing rebuke of Gov. Whitmer because she hadn't sent the Feds the required disaster request. No paper, no help.

When asked why it wasn't sent her office draws a blank; 'we'll get back to you on that.'

She's now being called Governor DimWit.

[VJ]

Polish government is trying to use the epidemic to manipulate the elections. There are elections for president in May, and it does not look too good for the sitting president (who theoretically should be neutral but in practice supports the ruling party and signs whatever law they suggest). On previous elections, they already lost their absolute majority in senate.

The government is reluctant to declare a state of emergency, as this legally prevents any elections withing a 6 month time interval. The current limitation of groupings of people is unconstitutional, as limiting citizens movement would only be allowed in a state of emergency. So that is already one issue. And now they modified the election law, so that 60+ can vote via mail. But only 60+... That is the biggest portion of their electorate, and they hope that that way the others will not go out to vote... Not sure if they can keep that up for more than a month though....


Meanwhile I'm still puzzled by the lower number of official cases in Poland. There are not many tests per person (compared to other countries), but hospitals say they test everyone who enters (regardless of what they come in for). They also state that it affects their normal operation, because when a person is found positive, the whole department (or even the whole hospital) shuts down for disinfection - this issue was recently a headline article.
So to explain the low occurrences and tests: either there are not many people coming in with problems, they don't test as thoroughly as they claim, or the country is not properly reporting the cases that occur.

The first case is possible, if there is any truth to the fact that the vaccine for Tuberculosis increases helps in fighting CoViD-19: those vaccinations are mandatory in Poland (as one of the few countries). Netherlands has started vaccinating healthcare staff with it, following on various observations that it may be of use. Of course, it is also possible that the reports are falsified. However, living in the center, with many friends here, I still don't know of any acquaintances who know someone with Corona... Small sample size of course, but still... it puzzles me that the statistics differ here...

[UtwigMU]

We're getting limited to staying within our municipality except for going to work or nearest shop, pharmacy or doctor. So I changed my residency to where I actually live all online.

I filed and digitally signed online form with state issued security certificate (they also support facebook, google, sms), attached scan of rent contract. 3h later I get called that they need one more paper from landlord, which I can email directly to person responsible and after that my temporary residence will be changed.

How does this work in your countries?

[UtwigMU]

VJ: I think Poland is about as much behind Germany as Germany is behind Italy but Poland and Germany locked down earlier in the curve. While they don't test as much per 1M, they started testing earlier in the growth, so the number of tested is closer to infected. Countries with runaway infections only test people who come to hospitals and don't catch cases where people stay at home or have mild symptoms.

Poland and Germany both have 100 to 1 infected to dead, which is about what the number of infected was two weeks ago. Unless they are understating dead. Current number is growth x 2 weeks.

Italy probably has 1-2M infected and USA had 250k infected 2 weeks ago. Now it's probably close to 1M

[VJ]

This is currently circling on Polish social media: https://www.who.int/classifications/icd/covid19/en/ , with the claim that Poland only considers the code U07.1 COVID-19 (laboratory confirmed diagnosis) as positive for CoViD. Maybe other countries count differently...?