WTF :2019-nCoV NovaCoronaVirus Thread

[Umfriend]

- CFR <50 is very low. We might have been able to weather the outbreak by merely confining the >50 cohort of population. This would have reduced the need for a lot of ICU capacity

I must be dumb but I don't get this. Surely by confining less people, we would have used more ICU capacity?
Edit: I also wonder (but could not find easily) whether the CFR for 20 - 50yo is in fact lower than for typical influenza. I suspect not.

- just in time supply chain, which is another problem as it greatly reduces the stability of any system depending on it. Perhaps we should move to a system.with mandatory levels of minimum stocks for food, fuel and medical supplies.

Perhaps. I remember when national security [in the US] required steel production "at home". It is always a balancing act. Sure, having stock of potentially life saving stuff is nice. It also comes at a real cost. It's just very hard to predict what is worth while to keep in stock. And remember, it is not as if having 3 months of normal use-stock would have sufficed. I am pretty sure most nations had that somewhere, somehow. Demand just outgrew everything.

- centralized production created a huge issue when china's production was fully stopped. Surely you haven't forgotten the whole month of February? Decentralized production (ir having a regional production capacity of essential goods) reduces that risk by a large amount.

But China only made half of the worlds production. And a lot of that is because US manufacturers exited the market out of legal liability concerns (they got sued a lot in the US). AFAIK, every continent had production capability of N95 masks.

- did one day pass without 80% of media contents being about covid19? That's what I call blowing this thing out of proportion. It's as if all other news disappeared from the radar.

Ah, yes, that I agree on. But, at least what I read, even though a lot was about Covid, what they wrote about it wasn't sensationalistic.

[dZeus]

I must be dumb but I don't get this. Surely by confining less people, we would have used more ICU capacity?
Edit: I also wonder (but could not find easily) whether the CFR for 20 - 50yo is in fact lower than for typical influenza. I suspect not.

Less broad confinement, but better confinement for >50 and implementing proper protocols (i.e. regular testing of all personnel in healthcare/elderly care, better yet: isolate them with the patients/elderly if possible, put a lot of effort into a virus-free supply chain for food/materials to hospitals and the elderly).
A broad confinement imo is just symbolic measures, politicians showing 'well we did our part, what else could we have done?', when they've been sitting on their arse since we learnt of the outbreak in China in January.

Perhaps. I remember when national security [in the US] required steel production "at home". It is always a balancing act. Sure, having stock of potentially life saving stuff is nice. It also comes at a real cost. It's just very hard to predict what is worth while to keep in stock. And remember, it is not as if having 3 months of normal use-stock would have sufficed. I am pretty sure most nations had that somewhere, somehow. Demand just outgrew everything.

just-in-time is cheap, keeping stocks is expensive. Nobody is going to do this unless they are forced because of regulations. Hence, we should have some regulations on things that we KNOW we don't want to do without if the supply chain fails for 1-4 weeks

But China only made half of the worlds production. And a lot of that is because US manufacturers exited the market out of legal liability concerns (they got sued a lot in the US). AFAIK, every continent had production capability of N95 masks.

Most production capacity has moved from the western world to China, because of money (increased profits). Clearly there needs to be a counterbalancing force to preserve national/regional interests. I'm very glad the EU does this with agriculture, and we should do it in other crucial sectors (chemicals, pharmaceutical production, industrial production, technology, etc.).
And yes, I am fully aware this is going to make things more expensive and drop the standard of living. A necessary trade-off imo.

Ah, yes, that I agree on. But, at least what I read, even though a lot was about Covid, what they wrote about it wasn't sensationalistic.

Publishing the new cases and death figures every day is pretty sensationalist in my view.

[Umfriend]

I may come back on the rest but:

just-in-time is cheap, keeping stocks is expensive. Nobody is going to do this unless they are forced because of regulations. Hence, we should have some regulations on things that we KNOW we don't want to do without if the supply chain fails for 1-4 weeks

Well, 1-4 weeks would not have sufficed. Moreover, this goes for about anything! Energy, food, medicines (all of them??), medical equipment (all of them??), military stuff. But I'll grant that this is something that should be reconsidered and probably shift to a more conservative attitude.

Most production capacity has moved from the western world to China, because of money (increased profits). Clearly there needs to be a counterbalancing force to preserve national/regional interests. I'm very glad the EU does this with agriculture, and we should do it in other crucial sectors (chemicals, pharmaceutical production, industrial production, technology, etc.).
And yes, I am fully aware this is going to make things more expensive and drop the standard of living. A necessary trade-off imo.

Well, we disagree on the CAP. It has disadvantaged Africa to a very severe extent. I agree it makes sense to be able to produce quite a bit but the CAP was wrong. One question is: where do you stop? Europe? Country? Autarky?

[/quote]Publishing the new cases and death figures every day is pretty sensationalist in my view.[/QUOTE]Well here I disagree. This is relevant info and there is a lot of interest for it.

[dZeus]

Well here I disagree. This is relevant info and there is a lot of interest for it.

So do you want daily deaths for a bad flu year too?
Pure sensationalism imo...

[Umfriend]

When there is a flu epidemic that has the same number of deaths? That we have no vaccine for? That likely no one is immune to? Yes. It would be extraordinary and that is newsworthy by itself. Especially because it may help everyone to take informed decisions. Not perfect, just reasonable. Also, if it affects your life, say through government measures, then I would think you deserve to know what the basis is for those measures (even if many don't understand or are remotely able to make reasonable assessment of those fact. Looking at you, Trump!, but that is OT).

[Dr Mordrid]

When there is a flu epidemic that has the same number of deaths? That we have no vaccine for?

The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, a form of
H1N1. Death estimates average around 50 million worldwide. US deaths are estimated at over 500,000, some as high as 850,000.

In the 2017-2018 flu season US deaths hit 80,000. CoVid-19 hasn't hit that yet.

Also, a New York state CoVid&19 antibody study shows about 2.7 million infected statewide, often without symptoms and far higher than expected, with a death rate of only 0.5%. This is higher than most flus, but a fraction of what the models showed.

Vaccines are in trials, but it takes more than the few months since the first CoVid-19 infections to develop them and effective tests to the point of approval. Many current tests show high false negatives and positives. Better tests, and antibody tests, are starting to arrive.

[dZeus]

The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, a form of
H1N1. Death estimates average around 50 million worldwide. US deaths are estimated at over 500,000, some as high as 850,000.

In the 2017-2018 flu season US deaths hit 80,000. CoVid-19 hasn't hit that yet.

Also, a New York state CoVid&19 antibody study shows about 2.7 million infected statewide, often without symptoms and far higher than expected, with a death rate of only 0.5%. This is higher than most flus, but a fraction of what the models showed.

Vaccines are in trials, but it takes more than the few months since the first CoVid-19 infections to develop them and effective tests to the point of approval. Many current tests show high false negatives and positives. Better tests, and antibody tests, are starting to arrive.

At what point does it become acceptable to destroy your economy to get lower death rate than what is considered a bad-but-acceptable yearly death rate from flu ?
Politicians are short sighted/too emotional/lack courage&rationality in prioritizing to reduce 'highly visible' deaths from Covid over the damage inflicted by confinement measures on our economy.

Not saying that there shouldn't have been a firm response, but general confinement seems unnecessary and counterproductive. Confine that part of the population that actually runs an outsized risk of dying from Covid, and focus on creating 'clean' environments for these people (e.g. nursing homes, hospitals, etc.).

Lastly, I am firmly convinced that in a couple of years this general confinement will be regarded as manifestation of mass-hysteria.

[Umfriend]

Lastly, I am firmly convinced that in a couple of years this general confinement will be regarded as manifestation of mass-hysteria.

Sounds like a new multi-year bet to me

[UtwigMU]

Yay, car washes opened, so I washed my car today.

[Dr Mordrid]

Michigan is starting to open. Gov. Whitmer (Witless?) relaxed many of her dumb restrictions under pressure from the legislature, and there a new wear a mask in public rule. 2 week extension of sheltering, IF the legislature agrees.

[paulw]

Yay, car washes opened, so I washed my car today.

Car wash?? I wash mine at home :-)

[UtwigMU]

I can park at the curb, throw a 15m cable from the balcony and take the vacuum out to vacuum the car and bring water in buckets to wash interior. But I don't live in a place where I can hose the car.

[Umfriend]

In the 2017-2018 flu season US deaths hit 80,000. CoVid-19 hasn't hit that yet.

Also, a New York state CoVid&19 antibody study shows about 2.7 million infected statewide, often without symptoms and far higher than expected, with a death rate of only 0.5%. This is higher than most flus, but a fraction of what the models showed.

At what point does it become acceptable to destroy your economy to get lower death rate than what is considered a bad-but-acceptable yearly death rate from flu ?

So I'll admit I am out of my depth here but still..

2017-2018 flu deaths in the US are estimated at 61K by the CDC (not 80K) (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html). This is a model-based/statistical estimate, contrary to Covid-deaths which are mostly based on confirmed cases. Also, like with Covid, flu deaths hit harder with the elderly and people in bad health/comorbidities (one big difference is that the flu also hits harder among the very young). There are 56K Covid-deaths to date, starting from Feb 29th and we're not there yet. Moreover, we now know Covid deaths occurred prior to Feb 29th. I am convinced that any sensible modelled estimation of Covid-deaths in the US exceeds 80K already.

My point is, we're over the toughest flu-season in the last decade already and not finished by a long shot. If we look at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm, table 2 (where reporting is trailing big-time), we see that this season from Feb 1st, Covid-deaths exceed flu-deaths for all age brackets from 25 years old. Again, this is while quite some restrictions have been in place for a while now. It is impossible for me to estimate but I would bet that any sensible model would show that without restrictions (aside from quarantining in case of illness) for the <55yo, that group alone would suffer 61K deaths by covid before summer. I also believe that that would have had severe economic repurcussions as well (albeit likely not as severe as now).

Also, even though Covid-deaths are higher as infected are older, this is true for the flu as well (https://www.livestories.com/statisti...aths-mortality, a graph by age). So I am not at all convinced a comparison as a bad flu is appropriate. I disagree with the idea that the objective is to "get lower death rate than what is considered a bad-but-acceptable yearly death rate from flu". The objective has been, for a while now and IMHO, to try to ensure that we do not suffer a lot of additional deaths (including non-Covid) due to the health care systems becoming overloaded.

I'll make another prediction: Wisconsin had a protest of a few thousand on April 24th. In the period between May 8th and May 15th, we will see a seizable uptick in new cases in Wisconsin that can be tracked back to this protest.

[VJ]

Bosch has a cordless high-pressure cleaner (15 bars), with a 15 l reservoir: https://www.bosch-diy.com/gb/en/p/fo...08b6000-v46379 .
I don't have it, but saw it in the catalog when I got my drill, as it uses the same batteries. Looked interesting, but not sure I have enough use for a pressure cleaner like that. But nice to know it exists.

[dZeus]

So I'll admit I am out of my depth here but still..

2017-2018 flu deaths in the US are estimated at 61K by the CDC (not 80K) (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html). This is a model-based/statistical estimate, contrary to Covid-deaths which are mostly based on confirmed cases. Also, like with Covid, flu deaths hit harder with the elderly and people in bad health/comorbidities (one big difference is that the flu also hits harder among the very young). There are 56K Covid-deaths to date, starting from Feb 29th and we're not there yet. Moreover, we now know Covid deaths occurred prior to Feb 29th. I am convinced that any sensible modelled estimation of Covid-deaths in the US exceeds 80K already.

My point is, we're over the toughest flu-season in the last decade already and not finished by a long shot. If we look at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm, table 2 (where reporting is trailing big-time), we see that this season from Feb 1st, Covid-deaths exceed flu-deaths for all age brackets from 25 years old. Again, this is while quite some restrictions have been in place for a while now. It is impossible for me to estimate but I would bet that any sensible model would show that without restrictions (aside from quarantining in case of illness) for the <55yo, that group alone would suffer 61K deaths by covid before summer. I also believe that that would have had severe economic repurcussions as well (albeit likely not as severe as now).

Also, even though Covid-deaths are higher as infected are older, this is true for the flu as well (https://www.livestories.com/statisti...aths-mortality, a graph by age). So I am not at all convinced a comparison as a bad flu is appropriate. I disagree with the idea that the objective is to "get lower death rate than what is considered a bad-but-acceptable yearly death rate from flu". The objective has been, for a while now and IMHO, to try to ensure that we do not suffer a lot of additional deaths (including non-Covid) due to the health care systems becoming overloaded.

I'll make another prediction: Wisconsin had a protest of a few thousand on April 24th. In the period between May 8th and May 15th, we will see a seizable uptick in new cases in Wisconsin that can be tracked back to this protest.

The healthcare system would not have been overloaded if there had been a better and earlier focus on confining the elderly and people with underlying conditions.
Germany has shown this is feasible. Almost every other country in Europe + the US has screwed up confinement of the elderly. (although I have to admit it's hard to confine elderly when they mostly live with their children/grandchildren like in Italy).

General confinement is an overreaction of incompetent politicians who only started to take things seriously when Italy's healthcare system was getting swamped. At that point they had at least 4 weeks to prepare, but squandered it.

And indeed, Covid is much worse than the average flu from the last 10 years without taking confinement measures of the elderly. However, with confinement of the elderly and those with underlying health conditions, the fatality rate seems low enough that nobody needs to get hysterical and freeze the entire economy.