Tweets of the Day: Expensive Words, Death Rate Comparison, Containment, Forward Guidance, and Trump Says
Latest Cornoanvirus News
- The daily briefing from the Chinese National Health Commission reports 508 new confirmed cases and 71 deaths, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 77,658 and 2,663 total deaths. There are 2,824 additional suspected cases and 87,902 individuals are under medical observation.
- South Korea Centers for Disease Control is reporting 977 confirmed cases and 10 deaths. Public health officials are actively planning to test 200,000 members of the Shincheonji Church in which most confirmed cases have been linked back to. There is an additional cluster of 186 cases linked to a hospital in Daegu.
- A bulletin from the Italian Ministry of Health reports 283 infections and 7 deaths. The majority of cases are in the Lombardy region, however cases have been confirmed in 7 additional localities in Italy.
- A total of 5 cases are now confirmed in Spain. Four cases have been confirmed on the Canary Island of Tenerife, which has a small outbreak resulting from an infected traveler from Italy.All infected individuals were staying at the same Tenerife hotel, and now more than 1,000 tourists at the hotel have been placed on lockdown (ie, quarantine). In addition, one case has been confirmed in a 36 year old Italian woman living in Barcelona. The woman reportedly visited the Bergamo and Milan areas of northern Italy between February 12 and 22.
- There are 61 confirmed cases in Iran and 15 deaths. Notably, the Iranian deputy health minister has tested positive for COVID-19. Public gatherings have been banned in an effort to reduce transmission during the ongoing outbreak, the ban will be in place until the Persian New Year. The General Civil Aviation Authority United Arab Emirates has suspended all flights from Iran.
The above from Johns Hopkins email update. The lead chart is from Worldometers.
Most Expensive Words on Wall Street
Death Rate Comparison
Hard to Believe US is Contained
What They Do and What They Say
Trump on the Stock Market
Trump Says Coronavirus Under Control, Stock Market Looking Good
What’s Happening?
- CDC Admits Spread of Coronavirus in the US Appears Inevitable
- Lie of the Day: This is Not a Pandemic
- Bond Yields Crash and Gold Soars on Pandemic Threat
- Fed Minutes Highlight Coronavirus Concerns and Uncertainty 8 Times
- Nearly 50% Odds of “At Least” 3 Rate Cuts by December
Rate cuts odds started rising before coronavirus threat materialized on news Largest Global Shipping Decline Since 2009.
I thought the warmer weather was going to save us all. LOL.
Germany is at the beginning of a coronavirus epidemic after new cases sprung up which can no longer be traced to the virus’s original source in China, Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Wednesday.
He urged health ministries in Germany’s federal states as well as hospitals and employers to review their pandemic planning
I don’t think Trump and Kudlow and the rest of the dopes realize that while you can jawbone a market a virus really doesn’t care what you have to say. This will be the sword upon which Trump impales himself.
And the little blip we’ve had in the market? A mere 5% down? That’s nothing. If we face a prolonged slowdown the bankruptcies will be going off like strings of firecrackers.
For Trump, the only thing that matters are the markets.
Buy the dip
Buy the dip
Step back and let that sink in for a bit, You have one of the most over-valued markets ever and Trump, Kudlow want you to buy the dip. Supply chains are being severely disrupted, quarantines in countries increasing, coronavirus spreading, etc. buy the dip.
Its gone by April, vaccine in 6 weeks, were in great shape, best economy ever, buy the dip.
Interesting to see what transpires out of Trumps News Conference to set things straight to get rid of fake news and get the market to even greater heights.
Thanks, St. Funogas: China population >65 = 9%, Hubei Covid-19 deaths of all those over 65 = roughly 27%, a 3 to 1 skew, and a heavy skew to male, 63.8% of all deaths.
Anyone remember Jim Henson dying of walking pneumonia in 1990? I wonder if the typical Chinese guy has the same attitude: Brush it off and keep plugging? If so, when you get to intensive care in Hubei, Covid-19 kills you 49% of the time.
This is looking more like another “old man’s friend” to me, assuming you are not already immune-compromised with heart, diabetes, cancer etc. problems AND you get care with symptom onset. Apparently, there are around 30 ways to get pneumonia. We may now have 31, permanently.
More surprising than he 49% fatality rate for “critical” cases (5% of cases), is the cold, hard, zero fatality rate for anyone else.
I didn’t find any explanation of how case severity was decided on. If it was done after the fact, perhaps in order to make it look as if the care provider “saved” everyone aside from the truly critically “unsavable”, it doesn’t tell much at all. But if it was based on an even semi standardized assessment of clinical state upon entry into the system, as it should be, there have been no deaths reported, by patients who weren’t half dead already, by the time they were admitted. That’s remarkable enough to almost look too good to be entirely unfudged.
I’d love to see what treatment were given to the various patients. In particular if many/most of the non criticals largely rode it out themselves, just under observation. ICU resources may be in short supply pretty much anywhere during a major outbreak with a spike in cases, and very low fatality rates even among non criticals not receiving much in the way of active care, would be more comforting than the same if they were all on respirators for days on end.
Yes, and I’ve read elsewhere that the recovery time for the 51% survivors who showed up “critical” is looking like six weeks. Wonder what that survival looks like, and if it’s worth having… If this thing knocks you down, you’re staying down for the count the way it’s looking.
….and yet some keep on insisting this is merely a flu like issue….
Severity per the Chinese paper was as follows:
Mild included non-pneumonia and mild pneumonia cases. Severe was characterized by dyspnea, respiratory frequency ≥30/minute, blood oxygen saturation ≤93%, PaO2/FiO2 ratio <300, and/or lung infiltrates >50% within 24–48 hours. Critical cases were those that exhibited respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or multiple organ dysfunction/failure.
None of those in the Severe category died, although that statistic is meaningless since presumably some progressed to Critical.
“None of those in the Severe category died, although that statistic is meaningless since presumably some progressed to Critical.”
And that, is the problem….. With doctors being more concerned about operational “details” like curing the patient in front of them, than about facilitating statistical relevance….. 🙂
In the heat of battle, for a doctor trying to save lives, it makes all the sense of the world, to move a patient who presented as “severe,” into “critical”, once it becomes obvious he requires the care of a “critical” patient. But man, does doing so ever mess with the ability of people halfway around the world, to build reliable models of an outbreak.
couldn t help it but a song popped up in my mind : ’30 Ways to Get Pneumonia’ get on the bus Gus, shake hands Hans, go on a cruise Bruce, catch a plane Lane, etc… Excuse me no offence meant …
Unless “your prediction” was made say, on January 23rd when China locked down Wuhan or earlier, it wasn’t very prescient. A bit like predicting Japan would surrender after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There is no discussion of prediction in this post so I have no idea what you are talking about.
Meant to reply to Carl_R. BTW Professor Neil Ferguson ( whose YouTube video you posted a couple of weeks ago) made a presentation to the World Economic Forum and it was posted yesterday to YouTube. It is the most definitive analysis I have seen on where we are with the Corona virus and where the world is going.
My prediction that the election in the Fall will be a single issue may seem like an obvious prediction, but it certainly isn’t one that you will see in the media. For it to become true, SARS-COV2 needs to escape containment in the US, and in needs to be a serious epidemic in the US come fall. It is far from certain that either will happen.
Do y’all think maybe trump is LYING?
Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Trump really tweeted that the the Coronavirus is very much under control? Unfortunately, that can’t possibly even be true. It may be true that for now the situation is under control, but for how long.
I have predicted that the Fall election will be decided by the Coronavirus, and that Trump will win if he acts like a leader who confronts it aggressively. Denying that a danger exists is about as bad a start as he could have. It looks especially bad when he sends that out on the very same day that CDC says they can’t keep in under control for long.
Dear CDC/WHO,
And while I’m bitching about no data, I’d like to add the following request to the list being worked by the CDC and Wuhan folks, since I’m sure they have nothing else going on:
Do you have thorough autopsies on the dead? If so, how do their gut microbiomes stack up against “normal” in the region? Any skew to prior antibiotic use? If so, how? We’ve been overdosing on antibiotics for 80 years now. A new dose coming down the throat must look like the bomb bay doors opening on the Enola Gay to the four pounds of bacteria, fungi and friendly viruses using us as their life support system. Have we driven them underground with 80 year’s nuking? If not, why not?
I also note the continued, mysterious, but infrequent “bad cold seasons” Are these coronavirus invasions being beaten off by our microbiomes mounting successful defenses for us that we’re oblivious to?
I note that there are precious few peer reviewed publications on fungi, one of the three key members of the gut microbiome that might possibly act as sentinels, since they’re all over us, especially our mouths. You must have spent $3.95 on fungi since we’ve spent the $180 Billion on climate; Sorry.
And, yes, like Latkes, I’d like to see age at death on all the poor victims to date.
Your welcome.
Here are the age at death statistics on the first 72,314 cases in China. This is from their CDC database.
Click on “Results”, then see Table 1.
Thanks!
It is hard to conclude anything from their data, and assuming the inputs are correct.
If we look at CFR by date of onset, it decreases the later the date used. This could be due to including milder cases, or it could be because the outcome is not closed for the more recent dates. They give an overall CFR of 2.3% using fatalities vs cases, which tells me they are not segregating unclosed cases – unless I missed a detail saying the whole study was closed cases. CFR of closed cases at worldometer is 9% for example. Also of note is that even using that aggragate of total cases, whether closed or not, CFR for all age groups except youngest starts at 0.2%, which is I think already high compared to flu.
So for me that dataset is a start, but not clear enough in total to be decisive. It is possibly misleading.
Any attempt to compute CFR has to be done separately for Wuhan than the rest of the world. It is apparent from the data that there are two CFRs. The first is the CFR in the case of optimal healthcare. That appears to be about 1% or slightly less, which is 10-20x higher than the flu. The second in the CFR when the medical system is overwhelmed (i.e. Wuhan) and care is sup-optimal. In that case, the CFR rises to about 5%.
Unfortunately, the numbers will always be larger from areas that are overwhelmed, for the simple reason that large numbers are what it takes to overwhelm a system. Based on the deaths we are seeing reported from Iran, their healthcare system may also be overwhelmed.
That poses the question, could the healthcare system in your community become overwhelmed? Absolutely. Nowhere in the world has the sort of excess capacity that would be required in the case of a massive outbreak. That’s why control, and limiting the rate of spread, continues to be important.
I agree, however I question the raw data. Possibly there were few tests at start of outbreak, or figures were massaged to avoid panic, possibly mild cases were not added at the right time, possibly clinical confirmation was exaggerated, possibly cases were missed later, possibly the figures overlap for timing wrt closed vs registered, etc. etc. , so I refuse to draw any conclusions from those numbers except that for younger age groups (and without defining comorbidity) CFR is listed as 0.2% , and that even that is already high enough for anyone to be concerned. Add to this that the virus might become more lethal than whatever it is, and that it is highly contagious, and that we are not in a position to handle a serious pandemic, and the picture is not good.
Only 0.2% CFR healthy or young patients btw for anyone = 1 million casualties all ages but youngest in Europe and US at around 60% infection rate. That is not counting older people higher CFR. Add to that an immense disruption due to other cases.
Cont.
So my reply to the official reactions everywhere so far is, and using a national population of 50 million :
You are going to put your country through this, watch a hundred thousand of all ages of your co-nationals perish, just so that a small minority of people can travel easily for a month or two more ?
Sorry, but our nations are spoilt and run by corrupt and/or inept authorities. The national border has been transferred to the local or individual border, and society has become so atomised because of this that it doesn’t even think reaction is possible beyond trying to close the door of own house to it all.
What is becoming increasingly clear from new cases in Europe is that the outbreak in Italy is dispersing due to international travel. Almost all cases in various regions of Spain, Greece, Germany, Algeria, Brasil are via travel with Italy.
A question that I can’t answer from the data is to what extent the CFR goes up with age alone, and to what extent it goes up with age because co-morbidity rates go up. I admit that my interest is selfish because, while I am over 65, I am in perfect health with no co-morbid factors. Based on age alone, my guess for my personal CFR would be 3.6%, but if I am correct that those without co-morbid factors have only 1/8 the chance of death, my odds improve to .45%. Those aren’t bad odds, but I’d still rather not have the virus, nor deal with any problems it might leave behind if I survive.
The same question applies to younger age groups, the factor of comorbidity is missing. All I know is that younger healthy individuals are also succumbing to the virus.
Younger cases are dying, and they appear to be healthy, but not all is always as it seems. It is not uncommon for young, even athletes, to have diabetes, for example.
Antibiotics are not being used against viruses. If they are, it’s because of incompetence/stupidity. There are two methods against viruses as far as I know.
None is an antibiotic, and none is used what one might call proactively.
I understand, but if friendly bacteria in the gut microbiome are being annihilated routinely by over-prescribed antibiotics, as suggested below, not only are we growing drug resistant staph, but any ancient, (vital?) symbiotic relationship(s) between friendly bacteria, viruses and fungi in the gut microbiome are also being blithely blunderbussed in the process. There seems to be a lot of buzz around whether lupus, arthritis, etc. are symptoms of problems here.
It seems curious to me that five of the seven coronavirus strains now known to exist have suddenly popped up causing problems in the past 18 years, per Professor Gallaher’s excellent white paper. Are we that much better at finding them or maybe…growing them?
They prescribe antibiotics with nCov when severe because it reduces the immune system and other infections then occur.
Okay, Brazil might very well have the coronavirus too. Authorities tested a man who tested positive for the virus, they’re conducting a second test before formally confirming the case. Now will the WHO declare a pandemic? We’re into a sixth continent!
The WHO is now comprised of 2 individuals: Peter Townsend and Rodger Daltrey. Do we need the nod from both or is one good enough. Their word is certainly more valuable than China, the other WHO, and the CDC put together. It’s been a circus act at best, and we actually paid for this.
The number of new cases in China is not growing exponentially as you would expect in an epidemic. That’s encouraging. 500 new cases a day is not a lot.
Why is the fatality rate in Iran 15% instead of the 2 to 3% everywhere else?
China is locked down where there is virus , that is why cases have slowed probably, along with people outside those zones being more careful. What happens when they try to restart is another question.
As for Iran, their data is clearly flawed. You knew that the first day, when they reported 2 cases, 2 dead. Since it takes about 14 days to die (if you are going to), these cases had been around a long time, but the first time they noticed them was when they died?
More like Chinese data is flawed. Charts and graphs will look completely different if it keeps going on outside china that the bs we see now.
Singapore appears to be doing things right
How many times will this idiotic nonsense be repeated? These numbers can’t be compared like this. We have limited data on Covid-19. Most cases are probably not even registered. You can’t take lab confirmed cases of one virus, most of them serious, and then compare them to a broad estimate of all cases of another virus.
It will take some time to collect meaningful stats, and some will receive the results on the other side.
JimmyScot mentioned previously there is said to be no large background of unrecorded cases. I guess this info is based on the testing done in Italy or elsewhere in the west, looking for related cases. So these existing samples, small that they are and so not fully representative of demographic , can be taken as true samples ?
How do we know that there is not a large background of unrecorded cases? If there are so very few how do random people who visit for a few days and go back home get infected? One woman in Sicily, who just happened to go through Northern Italy. A man in Lebanon, who visited Iran. An Italian tourist in Canary Islands etc. How do these people find the infected drops in the large sea of healthy people in such a short time?
The alert goes out for people with symptoms who might have had contact. So (now appeared in Madrid also btw), people who were in Italy with symptoms are being tested, and this is recording cases.
However this is not the sample I meant (and you would have to look for the post by JimmyScot for his reference). The sample that came to mind was Italy, maybe same in Korea, where they tested many people for virus in a small population, including those without symptoms . Most came back negative, the sample size is like a random test of population where serious, mild, and asymptomatic get registered. From the outcome of that sample you can get closer to CFR (in a few weeks once all cases are resolved), same as on Diamond Princess they now have a known sample where the number of asymptomatic vs. fatalities vs. recoveries can be calculated.
It is just to say they will be getting closer to the mark as time goes by, and by avoiding the mistake of guessing how many unregistered cases there might be – because they have proper samples to work with.
(Also SARS went the other way, CFR went up)
Diamond Princess is a terrible example. Last time I looked, 2 people were in critical condition without even having the virus. A boat full of old people, not allowed to disembark.
You seem to think they would not adjust the figures to represent a normal demographic setting ? They are not that stupid, though some others might use headline figures for effect. Diamond Princess will be weeks also till proper figures are known.
As far as I can tell, the figures are not adjusted to demographics. How can they be? There is too little data.
That is why people are guessing to a large degree. However over time the figures will become more accurate, I think in two weeks or a month they should be close. This is why I dislike WHO and China not releasing clearer details, they should not withold this information. Same in the west, we should be publicly given detailed data of ages infected, est. date of infection, symptoms, outcome etc. so the public can start to estimate what is occuring instead of relying on haphazard or witheld announcements.
For now all I know is that it is fast fatal for older people or those who are already infirm, with very high CFR.
That it is also fatal for younger age groups, including those who are relatively healthy, CFR unknown as their cases take longer to resolve.
Youngest age groups seem to be less affected for now, but the samples so far released include very few from that group, either because they have some immunity already, or because they have not been exposed to the virus as much.
A lot of unknowns there.
We are in agreement about this having to take longer for the figures to become accurate. Where I disagree is that two weeks or a month from now we will be able to credibly compare the mortality to the flu. We won’t. It will take much longer to estimate the overall prevalence of the virus.
Understand tho this can go either way…lower or higher. We(USA) have little to no extra hospital bed capacity which could drastically increase the death rate in a major outbreak. Also individual country demographics may effect the death rate…too soon to know but it ain’t neccesarily lower
It’s unlikely to go the other way. Epidemics always have higher apparent mortality rate at the beginning, precisely because only the serious cases are tracked. Later only tested cases, later based on superficial symptoms and eventually, long time after, we end with general estimates like we do with the flu.
I’ve probably read 100+ papers in medical and scientific journals over the past 5 weeks. IMO, here’s the best synopsis to date, written by an MD in plain everyday language on why, in all probability, you’re going to get it no matter what you do and why it’s going to be around for years to come.
One has to fret, however, over the actual numbers coming out of Hubei to date:
2,563 dead, and counting out of 64,786 cases, and counting for 3.96 percent of those who have contracted it. That’s almost forty times the flu’s kill rate…if it stopped today, and if all the cases have been accurately reported to date.
The only good thing to say at present is that the draconian control efforts are apparently working if a population of 59,170,000 has “only” 64,786, and slowing, infected.
If it gets away from them, (or us) the author’s estimate of “40 to 70 percent” of the population getting it extrapolate to 2.3 million deaths, at least for Hubei, and millions more for us unless…?
If every single person in Hubei had been tested weekly, or daily, you’d almost certainly fins some asymptomatic positives who aren’t currently counted….. China may have thrown more at this than most countries are able to, but they’re still woefully short of a complete map of all infected.
The probability of being tested, in general increases in lockstep with increased symptoms. Do that, and you inevitably end up with a skew in the direction of an artificially high death rate.
Does anyone know how many have been rigorously tested in, say, Italy, who came back negative? Even better, did any current positives test negative a month ago? 2 weeks ago? 1 week ago?
Almost everywhere where testing has ramped up, in response to either a death or someone highly symptomatic or close to one such, they keep confirming masses of infections.
No doubt some of that is due to testing being being guided by who is reported to have had contact with known infecteds. As in, test the guys coming back from Wuhan.
But that sort of pattern, in articular against a backdrop of most cases being asymptomatic and also regular flue/cold season, also hints that infection could already be much more widespread than limited testing resources have so far been able to confirm. IOW, we may already be a lot closer to that 40-70%, than what published confirmed cases numbers indicate. How much closer is the, or at least a, question.
I mentioned this to my doctor… He was very aware of the situation. It’s just sterile saline solution in an IV bag, but it came close to putting emergency rooms in danger of limiting treatment of its patients. Puerto Rico produces 98% of the product used in the US. Remember, that Hurricane Maria was just a 24 hour event. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/10/hurricane-maria-puerto-rico-iv-bag-shortage-hospitals
Why is the WHO reluctant to call it a “Pandemic”?
Well, apparently all you need to do is follow the money. The World Bank issued some $450 million or so of “Pandemic Bonds” a couple of years ago. One tranche paid around 6.5% interest, and a smaller one paid 11%. These bonds mature in June or July this year. If the WHO confirms a Pandemic (defined by 2,000 deaths in one country and 20 in a second country, as I understand it), prior to the bonds’ maturity, the bonds go into default and the proceeds are distributed to “developing” countries. The bond-holders are wiped out. The smaller bond issue has a less-restrictive definition of Pandemic, or so I hear.
I wonder who the bond-holders are (these are privately issued bonds) and “who” has an incentive to delay calling it a Pandemic prior to the bonds maturing? In looking for culprits, I always look to the CCP.
Anybody know more on this?
Interesting if true, given WHO apparently just openly threw their six tier scale to pandemic status in the bin, saying they were going to change definitions or something.
I presume, WHO would love to default on the bonds and not pay a dime to bondholders. It’s not that it would suffer the consequences. It’s a UN agency, and if you pay over 6.5% on a bond going forward, it would be snapped up instantly. The fund managers have no skin in it. The new normal.
Except the investors might be high level and threatening to withdraw all funding in future if there is a default etc.
here’s an article about it from 2017
Which led me to this article
which explains why they are not paying yet.
I submitted this comment an hour or so ago and it was dumped, maybe due to a link to a wikipedia article on a book(?).
The CDC, WHO, etc. don’t stand a chance at appearing timely and responsive due to “The Mythical Man Month” effect written about in Fred Brook’s 1975 book by that name. Essentially, once you fall behind the curve on any major project, throwing more people and resources at it doesn’t speed you up, it slows you down. People who were quite productive no longer are because they’re constantly interrupted and distracted by training the newcomers. The problem here is obviously greatly compounded by the fact that any experienced experts are also learning this new beast’s nature.
Went down to Lowe’s a few weeks back, after reading Mish’s first article on Wuhan, and putting on dry pants, bought p95 masks and clorox. Btw, check your latex gloves. If they’ve been sitting open for long, the top several pair are shot from exposure to the atmosphere.
Hope I’m throwing it all out in six months and feeling silly having over-reacted.
I’ve been teased for saying I bought N-95 masks. I wish I would have bought more than I did. Fact is…at this point it is better to be prepared even if it doesn’t blow up.
good luck getting any of your medications here is why: https://prospect.org/health/behind-the-coronavirus-threat-a-middleman-destroying-prescription-drug-markets/
Talk about having your ass sold down the river. Im voting for Sanders just for spite how can things possibly get worse? I’m only going to be on this planet another 15 years give or take and dont have kids so what the hell do I care?
“Contained” is very aspirational word for a country that apparently doesn’t have the means to test for the virus, no effective screening process, and has no visible prepared reactions.
How long does it remain on surfaces? They can speculate all they want, but when you open a box that was shipped from China… Which is pretty much all manufactured products.
Don’t worry, most Chinese container ports are in lockdown.
I believe I read that it varies, but perhaps 3-6 days. Since it takes weeks for things to arrive by boat, this should be a non-issue. Now, if something is shipped via air, it could be a problem.
Italy is the epicenter of the virus in Europe. A few years back I was surprised to find that Milan had a chinatown, and apparently so do some northern Italian cities. Could there be a connection? If outsourcing production of basic protection and testing gear, and importing disease by immigration does not kill globalism, then nothing will.
There are some Italian towns that are now over 50% Chinese. Chinese companies have been setting up camp in Italy to put the “Made in Italy” stamp on their goods.