Cases in South Korea have doubled every day for four straight days. And in Italy, 10 cities face a quarantine.
Here are some details from Worldometers.
Italy
- With 79 total cases and 2 deaths, Italy now has – by far – the highest number of cases and deaths in Europe, accounting for over 60% of all European cases, and becoming the country with most cases among all western (non Asian) nations. There are now a total of – 55 cases in Lombardy region (including 1 death, 1 critical, and at least 14 serious cases), of which at least 35 in the Codogno area. There are 18 in Veneto region (including 1 death and at least 1 critical case).
- EMERGENCY MEASURES: Towns and areas affected by the outbreak have been placed in lockdown: nobody is allowed to enter or leave the area (other than for special circumstances to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis).
- Hundreds waiting for test results. 10 towns, 50,000 people, placed in precautionary voluntary quarantine. Schools (full list), workplaces, municipal and private offices, 3 train stations, coffee shops, and public places closed in the affected towns. All universities in Lombardy and Veneto regions, all schools in Trentino region will be closed starting Monday. Friuli Venezia Giulia region declared a state of emergency.
- “People must be distantiated right now, because this is a virus that is transmitted very effectively at close range” said the director of the infectious diseases department of the Higher Institute of Health, Gianni Rezza.
- The 38-year-old man in Codogno (Lodi), near Milan (patient #1) is in critical condition (mechanically ventilated in intensive care, according to his parents) and at least 14 contacts are in serious condition, according to doctors, and include: – 5 health workers and doctors. – 3 patients at the Codogno hospital. – 3 elderly (in the 70s and 80s) clients of a bar run by the father of the man’s friend.
- 1 new death in Italy, a 75-year-old woman who was hospitalized a few days ago for pneumonia in the Lodi area (Lombardy region) and had contacts with the 38-year-old man.
South Korea
142 new cases in South Korea, of which 92 linked to the Cheongdo Daenam Hospital, 38 to the Sincheon Daegu Church, and 12 unknown pending investigation.
South Korea Progression
- Feb. 18: 31 cases
- Feb. 19: 58 cases
- Feb. 20: 111 cases
- Feb. 21: 209 cases
- Feb. 22: 433 cases
CDC Warns of “Tremendous Threat”
US CDC: this virus represents a “Tremendous Public Health Threat. Likely that Community Spread may eventually happen in the United States“
Pandemic Predictions
https://twitter.com/VirusWhisperer/status/1230885490200653830https://twitter.com/VirusWhisperer/status/1230885492914294784
South Korea Quarantine
https://twitter.com/MelAnneRose/status/1230890016164864000
Olympic Training in Japan Posponed
Is the first step?
(Remember the Japanese gov’t badly mishandled the cruise ship which caused the virus to get out into the general population. If the have to cancel, I cannot see how Abe survives)https://t.co/BnNccH10hO https://t.co/BnNccH10hO
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 22, 2020
Bianco on Japan and South Korea
Here are the latest numbers. These are log charts, if they are upward sloping, it means exponential growth.
South Korea and Japan have a real problem. Are they about to “re-run” what China is going through?
(1/3)@chrismartenson @jodigraphics15 @ErikSTownsend @MishGEA pic.twitter.com/BFHqG2VdvR
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 22, 2020
18 More Hospitals in China
I thought the infection count was peaking in China.
If so, why is this NOW necessary? https://t.co/OiTn3yl6tX
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 22, 2020
Deaths on the Rise
The simple mortality rate of deaths/confirmed cases (red line) has been creeping higher in recent days.
One reason, when you have 76k cases, you’re not treated in an ICU by a team of infectious disease experts.
You’re shuffled into a sports stadium (pix from Feb 18 in Wuhan) pic.twitter.com/DSLZxZWMs6
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 22, 2020
And guess what happens when you build “hospitals” that look like stadiums to hold all the “mild” cases with everyone next to each other in beds.
What a disaster.
US Woefully Unprepared for Coronavirus
In case you missed it, please see Tweets of the Day: US Woefully Unprepared for Coronavirus
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
“Recovered” people still transmit
Coronavirus: Wuhan to quarantine all cured patients for 14 days after some test positive again
Recovered and discharged people were sent to designated centres from Saturday onwards
Decision follows several instances in which recovered patients were found to be still carrying the virus and able to infect others
Here’s the latest scientific paper, this one from China.
Scroll to the bottom of the abstract button and click on the download button to get a PDF of the complete paper.
They are saying based on their haplotype analysis what probably happened was that a mild form of the virus originated in Wuhan probably sometime in early to mid-November, then made its way to the fish market in December when the first serious cases started happening around December 8. This would explain why it got out of hand so quickly. All those mild cases were spreaders and since the CoV was still new and unknown, Covid-19 got off to a great start before anyone suspected anything was happening.
And what of the insane decision to have a buffet for 50-100k people in the early days of January? Just think how many people a single infect person could have passed SARS-COV-2 to in a matter of hours.
I assume the “mild” version you refer to, would be from their haplotype groups A and B, which they suggest could have been imported into Wuhan, or at least the Hua Nan market, from somewhere else. Or even evolved into Wuhan prevalent Group C haplotypes somewhere else, before being brought to, then exploding out of Wuhan.
While the sample numbers outside China, and really outside Hubei and Guangdong, are low; a cursory look at their figures, indicate groups A & B, hypothesized to possibly be ancestral to the “Big” Group C, are over represented in samples from outside China.
Per their inferred and hypothesized evolutionary paths, that does lend credence to the virus circulating, either subclinically or without a novel virus being considered as the source of presented symptoms, even internationally, prior to, or at least independent of, the “official” Wuhan outbreak.
Which would help reconcile the “everywhere they test, they keep confirming masses of cases” conundrum of the Diamond Princess, and also elsewhere.
Now that this preliminary network model is built, it would be awfully nice if the Japanese, Koreans, Italians, Iranians and others, would go through the effort of fully sequencing and publishing their own confirmed cases, so this could be expanded upon. As the network is expanded, it could well be it starts pointing back to ancestors circulating even earlier than mid November. Perhaps even to an origination somewhere outside of China…..
As the number of sequenced genomes grow, differences between haplotypes, or haplotype groupings, wrt symptoms, mortality etc. would also be nice. And also, over time, whether immunity acquired after an infection with a “mild” version, meaningfully carries over to and protect against subsequent infection with a “Wuhan Bad Boy” one.
Not sure I buy it. I’ve read stories of coronavirus being stolen from labs in Canada by Chinese nationals from Wuhan. This thing has the hallmark of a bioweapon if found to be true. We may never know the truth.
The genomes are available to all comers on GISAID…. They also explain their methodology, and note which tools they used…. It’s not like their conclusions are just pulled from “secret” CCP databases, and cannot be independently checked.
Since noone seem to care enough to bother sequencing and publishing sequences from the vast, vast majority of infected cases (more likely they have more pressing concerns; I’m not criticizing them. Just being annoyed by lack of data. First world problems…..), it is certainly possible that things would look different if more data was available.
As for the possibility that someone is curating which data is published: Fat chance. Noone understands the full complexity of any of this even remotely well enough to know where even to begin. And with so many eyes on data with so many hitherto undiscovered patterns and relations being discovered every day, the sort of clumsy attempts at curation which is the best anyone could hope for, would be too likely to leave taints for anyone even half literate to bother with.
As for whether posterity will prove the paper’s conclusions correct or not; that’s a whole ‘nother story. While better than 42, 96 genomes, chosen just because they were the only ones they could get their hands on, isn’t all that much to base the answer to life, the universe and everything on. Doubly so, since genome availability is invariably skewed by immediate clinical, and even political (emergency declarations..) concerns.
But the underlying methodology is sound, and pretty much universally recognized as such: You simply have to have full genomes, and from that construct likely networks, in order to piece together how the virus as of today looks to have gotten here.
CDC is making preparations for a pandemic. Expect closures of schools, offices and any public interaction by summer if not before.
Was just telling the kids my guess is their schools will close in a month or two. It’ll just take a dozen cases in my city and everyone able to will be working from home and grocery store shelves will be decimated.
We’ve just had the third death in Italy. From now on, I don’t want to hear any remarks along: “tell me when the first Caucasian has died”. But then again just like how the Chinese are screwing with their statistics, we can simply change the definition of Caucasian 🙂 i.e. every white person except Italians.
STAT News has a new article titled: “The coronavirus is picking up steam outside China, narrowing chances of eliminating it”
Quoting a number of paragraphs:
Osterholm and others suggested overly narrow testing protocols are obscuring the world’s ability to see how far the virus has spread. In the United States, for instance, the Centers for Disease Control only recommends testing people who have symptoms and have been to China or who have symptoms and have been in contact with a suspected or confirmed case.
“Basically if you get tested and you’re found and you’re positive, then we know. But how many people right now are not being tested who are just like this case in Canada?” he asked.
If the Canadian doctor who caught the country’s most recent case had been following that type of protocol, the woman who returned from Iran would not have been tested for Covid-19, the disease the new virus causes.
The spread of corona virus is depressing on its own, but equally depressing is the fact that a dumb virus will be responsible for introducing some sanity into a dysfunctional trainwreck of economic system. One can only hope.
How do you think our economic system will change? If anything I think it will keep the current system in place for a lot longer then thought possible.
It could (hopefully) spell the end of ten-storey floating germ incubators a.k.a cruise ships industry. It’s a start.
If this situation were to run out of hand, it would at least prove that debt driven economic ponzi schemes are way too fragile and even short term unsustainable….
When patients with severe symptoms are able to find a place in an intensive care unit, that virus show a fatal rate of around 2 per cent.
In case of a pandemic, like in China Wuhan, the medical system will be completely overwhelmed. The authorities there have imported ten of thousand of medical personnel and are working on increasing hospital bed capacity.(more than 30.000 new beds so far.)
When the medical system will be unable to treat the severe case as needed, the death rate will probably rise up to 5 per cent.
I have read here above a paper recommending to accept the pandemic and stop containment procedures (including investigations of transmission links).
They recommend just prophylactic measures to avoid people to be infected like we actually do to avoid yearly flu epidemic.
They must not forget that most old age people over here in Europe at least vaccinate themselves each year against the specific flu virus, so the number of critical case is tremendously limited and the medical system is never overwhelmed by the yearly flu pandemic.
This covid-19 is far more dangerous (normal death rate for people able to reach the IC units is around 2 per cent which is more than ten time the flu death rate.) and also far more infectious (asymptomatic bearers spreaders every where)
In case of a pandemic I therefore think that giving up severe containment measures would not necessarily be the right choice.
I think we are past thinking that severe containment can totally stop it, but absolutely it can still slow it down, and it MUST be slowed as much as possible. Allowed to spread unchecked, we’ve seen that case numbers increase at 50% a day.
In Wuhan they made no attempt to slow it at first, and suddenly they needed, not 2k of ICU beds, but 20k of them…. in only a month. Finally they imposed draconian quarantines, and the rate of increase slowed. Had they continued to do nothing, what would have happened? At 50% a day growth rate, it would take 8 days to get from 40k to everyone in the city. They were barely over a week away from needing not 20k of ICU beds, but, with 15% severe cases, and everyone in the city infected at the same time, they would have needed 1.5m ICU beds! Since those could not have existed, there would have been 1.5m deaths in Wuhan alone.
Anyone that thinks we should abandon attempts to contain it and stop trying to slow the spread is insane.
Unfortunately we decided not to implement containment measures. That is to say national containment by quarantine of incoming was not implemented. Instead the virus is allowed to spread and reactionary measures are taken afterwards. This is being behind the curve, and it is a known choice by authorities.
What I imagine will happen is that once pandemic is widely enough established to warrant action by authorities under their criteria, we will see an expanding series of isolation/quarantine of towns, regions and countries. If the virus is as serious as it seems then this will be maintained.
These new borders will require quarantine before exit from infected zone. Non infected zones will have movement relatively unrestricted. It follows that a case in one town sees that region listed as infected as well. A country infected will have quarantine placed on it also for travel from it. In other words you have a multiple firewall to the spread of the virus. An individual infected is isolated from others. His town becomes isolated from surrounding towns, that region or county becomes isolated from those surrounding, and that country becomes isolated from others. Isolated can mean full physical isolation as per the first individual infected, semi physical isolation for those in that town from each other, quarantine for those moving out of that town, restricted/registered movement between neighbouring towns, quarantine between regions and nation.
You notice that the measures are not just inceasing in ease by size of unit, though this is just an example and criteria could be various to the level at each border . This is because ability at containment management, local activity, acceptable level of contagion, boundaries of authority vary.
I think protocol of this nature will have been studied and most efficient approach calculated.
For those who think just acceptance of pandemic with few restrictions will occur, and assuming high cfr and care costs, well no. People and regions and countries will demand obvious measures of protection for their own community, and for the personal effort/cost they are going to contribute in keeping the virus out.
….. if a worst case scenario were to play out it would only be a matter of weeks to have the global economy flat on its belly, with overendebted individuals and corporates out of business; apart from the health system, the already decrepit financial system would fall apart too…. Interesting times I d say ….
I agree COVID-19 should be slowed as much as it can be in an effort to meter how many hospital beds get filled at the same time. Given the number of asymptomatic and mild cases, the difficulty with false negative tests, and how communicable the virus appears to be, I also believe quarantine efforts are going to be completely ineffective at some point. At that point, broad quarantines are going to be more harmful than helpful. Individual people will still need to do what they can to stay healthy, but once the infection essentially everywhere, restricting the flow of people and supplies is going to make conditions worse rather than better.
There are a lot of holes in the following and it is a worst case scenario, but i am going to disagree with you learned fellows and say instead “let it rip”. No quarantines.
Assuming a double time of 6.4 days, an initial 10 cases on 1st March, and a total attacked population of 34m (half the UK).
Scenario 1: No attempt at quarantine.
The UK’s critical care beds are overwhelmed by 9th April assuming 10% bed availability (which is high in winter) and by 28th April assuming 100% availability. By mid August, the virus has attacked the entire 34m people and 1.65m people are dead.
Scenario 2: A harsh quarantine that succeeds in extending the doubling time to 24 days from 6.
By the end of 2020, only 340,000 people have been infected and only 72,000 are dead. But by mid November, critical care beds are overwhelmed and the death rate is up at 5%.
So on the face of it, harsh quarantines are worth it. But i think there is more at play. We are likely to see multi-centred outbreaks in the UK. So you have to lock down a lot of people at a vast cost to the economy.
Because what happens after the end of this year is this: those cases continue to grow until May 2021, when the 33m have all been infected. Your critical care beds were overwhelmed in November, and the death rate is now 5%.
Believe it or not, the difference between extending the doubling time and not trying is a mere 10,725 lives!!!
Now clearly this is a very flawed analysis, but it leads to some big questions:
(i) a vaccine – 12-18 months away at best, apparently. So no.
(ii) an effective treatment – if Thailand’s success was replicated, we’d be hearing about it by now, academic rigor or no.
(iii) more critical care beds – but how many more would you need to make a difference? In Scenario 2, critical care beds are overwhelmed in mid November and you’d need 4 times as many by the end of December to keep ahead of demand. And all in the context of an epidemic that is killing medical staff and destroying supply chains.
Although a full scale outbreak would look horrible on TV, unless something game changing comes along it is going to happen anyway. 2020 becomes annus horribilis, but in 2021, the economy starts to recover.
I hope health officials will be able to quickly recognize when quarantines are doing more harm than good and shift protocols. Being able to detect when there are large numbers of endemic infections might be helpful. I think the CDC should be monitoring for these cases, but it seems they may not be doing that. Perhaps they secretly agree with your “let it rip” recommendation and they are just keeping up appearances until nationwide spread is obvious.
I’m on the side of quarantine.
First reason would be to understand the nature of the virus. We don’t know enough about how it infects, if it is likely to reinfect, who it targets, even if people clear themselves of it. You would want to study the economic implications and how to manage them, the possibilities of the virus becoming more dangerous, set up alert systems and more care facilities, study ways to quarantine without greater impact. Much more besides.
If you let it through there is no saying how it might morph and we would be even more unprepared for if it worsened. If it changed strain to overcome recent immunity and became more deadly, more likely the more it infects, the event would be lost in the background data.
That said, cities are basically in big trouble either way, you cannot quarantine a big city properly, and people will go nuts if they only have four walls to look at for weeks on end. Smaller towns and rural is much less of a problem, there isn’t population density, people know who is local and what the score is between themselves.
We might think of one pandemic event and that is it, but in reality it might return and reinfect the same people but more severely in future waves.
“I’m on the side of quarantine.”
To clarify, I agree quarantine is a fine tool to use when timed so that it helps the situation. Given the contagious nature of COVID-19 and the probability of asymptomatic transmission, I think there is a practical limit to how effective quarantine efforts can be, that’s all.
SARS-CoV-2 is not a completely alien virus, but a new strain of coronavirus. It will be a source of serious respiratory illness, no doubt. If it does morph into something extremely lethal as some people are already hypothesizing might have happened in Iran, then the spread of that version will have to be contained no matter what, but that seems unlikely based on what is known. It seems more likely that Iran accumulated many endemic cases before noticing anything and they are now noticing only the most seriously ill. I am speculating. If I had information that indicated this was a very lethal version then I would fully support extreme quarantine efforts until a vaccine could be developed. The economic cost of doing that would be extremely high, so I would not do that lightly.
The political cost of saying “Oh well, there is nothing we can do. It’s hopeless.” would be very high. The cost of having to say “We tried everything we could think of, and it wasn’t enough” would be much lower.
Do what helps when it helps. Avoid making things worse. That is what I am saying.
Those insisting that extended hard quarantines within the US will help are making an assumption that we have not had several hundred mild cases wandering around for the last month or two. In my mind, that is a pretty big assumption.
To be frank I don’t see an easy answer, and as I personally tend towards individual responsibility and often find government is a cause of mistakes, my own route is clear enough. However, when I think of being somehow responsible for several tens of millions of lives as per government , and what could be done in this circumstance, I just give the view of cutting losses early by trying to mitigate what could be a disastrous reality. I know quite well that people can tolerate far more inconvenience than first seems, if it seems justified to them. So with that attitude, and admittedly the horse is already out of the barn in some ways, I would be quite harsh installing some serious barriers to the spread of the virus. One caveat, I am just estimating the severity of the virus from what information is publicly available. Government sources will have a much better idea. I have the feeling what will happen though is maybe a worse combination, that governments will only ‘step in to save the day’ after the epidemic is out of hand, as it will be the justification needed for their actions. Hopefully in the west it will be more a voluntary call for public participation in, and understanding of, whatever measures. What they won’t do though is just leave everything running at that point as if there were no epidemic, they can’t because it would be understood as inept and careless.
So the other side to it is how the public reacts, and government measures will I guess be partly aimed at smoothing out the ability of society to self quarantine, whether that involves allowing leave or subsidising for lack of activity etc.
I guess we will find out what they have in mind soon enough anyway.
I have some different opinions on your assumptions:
Thus, my math would be starting with 10 case, in 40 days at 50% increase a day, it would take 37 days to infect all of Great Britain, leaving 5 million dead. If you try to quarantine, and can limit the spread to doubling every 6 days (12% a day), you reach the end of March with 930 cases, and perhaps 18 dead. Then say you pick up again in mid-October, you might very well infect all of Great Britain by the end of March the following year, but by then you would have a full year to prepare more efficient quarantine methods, and more hospitals, as well as time to research treatments and vaccines.
Good points, although i wonder how much of the 50% growth is down to “apparent” spread rather than real spread. One thing that strikes me as odd: the NHS has said that they will stop testing for new cases once 100 are confirmed, so that they can prioritise resource elsewhere. OK, makes sense. But how does that tally with quarantine? Do you shut down entire towns when somebody coughs, because without tests that’s what you have to do.
I have tickets to Switzerland and Italy mid-April … but starting to seem like that may perfectly coincide with widespread quarantines and travel bans.
Same here with trip to northern Italy mid April. There’s risk of corporate actions too. In other words if you travel to an impacted geography your employer could say no return to an unimpacted corporate facility for 2-3 weeks.
That one is a rather easy to solve luxury problem, innit ?
You can still sell the tickets. There is always a buyer, as discovered by Charles Darwin.
Coronavirus Northern Italy Iran Interesting Genetics: link to youtu.be
What is this? Did you make the video? Did you have a stroke while you were making it?
Latkes that url doesn’t look right. your computer may have been compromised
That is a regular youtube url. Nothing wrong with it. The video is shit, though.
No, it is not a genuine youtube link. Note the extra period in the middle of “tu.be”. Do a web search for “youtu.be” and you will find that it is a virus site that will install nasty things on your computer.
Youtu.be belongs to Google. It’s just a short version of youtube.com. They have been using it for years.
Anyone who is suspected of having the virus must be immediately killed. There is no other solution.
This wasn’t funny the first time you posted it.
The living will envy the dead. People will be volunteering to be euthanized before it’s all over. Deaths will be in the hundreds of millions before long. The only solution is prompt disposal of the carriers.
If we follow your plan then yes.
On the other hand, you lock up a few tens of million of endebted genx through millenial for weeks on end with their parents who just lost everything on the stock market and who insist on blaming them for everything for being useless then who knows what will happen :/
Would make everyone very suspicious of if others suspected them, so everyone would race to suspect others first to stop them suspecting, until only the unsuspecting were left, but even they would be suspected of suspicion and so be suspect of suspecting others.
I suppose the person who can give others the most suspicious look wins ?
Would you like to volunteer yourself and family when you are suspected (not confirmed)?
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT READ…it’s viewpoint from virologists that say that containment is no longer a realistic hope–pandemic is here and the facts have to be faced now with governmental authority…
Past Time to Tell the Public: “It Will Probably Go Pandemic, and We Should All Prepare Now”
The sharp rise in cases in South Korea, Japan and Italy cannot be a recent event. They clearly show that where there had been heavy two way traffic with China or chinese tourists before the lock down, these places have the virus circulating undetected, they just haven’t been testing or treating them like pneumonia or flu.
That would make a lot more sense than the official narrative.
If you don’t test, you won’t get any confirmed cases!
I think you underestimate just how fast this can spread. On the Death Princess one person got on the ship for a few days, and got off. Within two weeks there were 624 people infected and 2 dead. You do not need tons of two way traffic; you only need one spreader, and you can have 600 cases in a hurry. That is what makes this so dangerous.
“On the Death Princess one person got on the ship for a few days, and got off. Within two weeks there were 624 people infected and 2 dead.”
Possibly. Or, there could have been multiple pathways by which the virus entered….. Unless complete sequences of all infected are published, and strongly indicate all on board infections look to stem from one single source, it’s darned near impossible to untangle all possible contagion pathways for everyone infected on board.
From what I’m seeing, there does seem to be a strong correlation between geographical areas where intense testing takes place, and geographical areas with many confirmed cases.
Which could be due to health authorities being remarkably accurate at testing exactly where infected people happen to be.
Or, it could be because people are infected all over the place, with tests serving, at least partially, simply to confirm this.
Thing is, during an outbreak, noone is going to “waste” scarce testing resources on “control groups” in St. Paul, Minnesota, Buenos Aires, nor even random towns in Southern Philippines nor on Hawaii.
As I’ve said all along, and not just me, the official Covid-19 numbers are fake. There’s lots more cases. In fact in South Korea as of today it’s not 433 infected but 602 (Sunday, 2/23/20). Yet the ‘overall infected’ graphic here: link to gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com has not been updated as of today. It shows a ‘leveling off’. It will gap up this week, and IMO the US stock market should (?) gap down.
This news source is being rated, previously virtually unknown I think
Anybody have a link to a site which lists Italian cases individually ( est. date of infection, date of confirmation,
current symptoms/state , age etc.) ?
Cannot find this info.
Looked at all Italian government sites, WHO etc., seems these figures just aren’t available. Oh well, we’ll just have to wait for official study and data… 🙁
One way of trying to look at the accuracy of reported numbers is to compare total cases to total deaths. Early in a rapid spreading situation, most cases will be fresh, and people will not be dying yet, so you expect the ratio to be low. If a quarantine is effective in cutting the spread, the rate of new cases will fall, while deaths continue to occur from the earlier cases, and the ratio will rise. This was the pattern we saw in Hubei, for example. Early on, the ratio sat at 2.1% average, but once the quarantine went into effect, new cases started to fall, but deaths continued to rise, and the ratio is up to 3.7% now. The initial death rate of 2.1% was higher than you’d expect, but the medical system was overwhelmed.
Cases/Deaths for various areas:
Iran: 43 cases, 8 deaths 18.6%
Hubei: 64084 cases, 2346 deaths 3.7%
Hong Kong: 74 cases, 2 deaths 2.7%
Italy: 132 cases, 3 deaths 2.3%
Korea: 602 cases, 6 deaths 1.0%
Japan: 135 cases, 1 death .7%
Rest of China: 12852 cases, 96 deaths .7%
Death Princess: 634 cases, 2 deaths .3%
Singapore: 89 cases, 0 deaths 0.0%
Iran appears to clearly not know the extent of their problem. They more likely have 800 cases, not 43. Hubei has a higher death rate than you would expect because of an overwhelmed medical system. Italy, like Iran, may have a bigger problem than they realize. For Japan, Korea, and the Rest of China the data looks plausible. The Death Princess is a unique case because all the infections are fairly recent. They have 36 cases in serious or critical condition, and the number of new cases will fall, so their ratio will head towards the ultimate CFR, probably around 2%. Hong Kong and Singapore are small data sets, with one being high and the other low.
Hubei, and particularly Wuhan, is also special because that is where the virus looks to have originated. Cases and deaths there, could be from different strains than from the ones which are sustainably spreading further.
6 weeks ago no one had even heard of this virus now close to 1 billion people are under some sort of quarantine situation. What can we expect in the next 6 weeks? 6 months?
Is it crazy to go stock up 6/8 weeks of supplies?
Anyone still think the olympics are gonna happen?
My view on this is quarantines will end within a country once that country’s health service concedes containment efforts are no longer helpful. At that stage, attention within an infected country should shift to other things uninfected individuals can do to keep themselves healthy while they go about their lives, and how to manage the illness if they do become infected.
The majority who get this (80%) will be asymptomatic or have something like a minor cold. Given how contagious SARS-CoV-2 is proving to be, I would be surprised if any country outside of China attempts containment for six weeks or longer (the only reason China might go that long is because they were first). Once the quarantine phase ends, the 80% of the population who is only slightly affected should be able to keep the critical parts of modern society functioning. Those who are unlucky enough to become seriously ill may find that they are unable to get the professional medical care they need.
I agree the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan might have a problem.
Before the Olympics we have Mardi Gras, Carnival, Fat Tuesday. This week lots of people from all over North and South America will be getting together to party for several days. The economic importance to the cities involved is substantial for cities like New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro. I truly hope it doesn’t become widespread after these events.
Athletes can be narcissistic so there is no telling if the Olympics are held or cancelled.
I suppose they could hold it without audience, no contact sport, let off a few fireworks in a parking lot…
When I went to the Athens 2004 Olympics, I could not buy a ticket, so I sneaked in, found lots of empty seats (corporate sponsor no-shows) and concluded a lot of spectators for the minor events were reporters, athlete support staff or family members as well as legitimate tourists. I think to a degree some of these Olympic meets are more for TV audiences than actual audiences.
Compared to a week ago:
Countries with new cases that had none a week ago: Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel
Italy: +2533%
S. Korea: +1753%
US: +133% (but, that is almost all from the Death Princess)
Japan: 127%
UAE: +44%
Australia: +40% (but, is from the Death Princess)
Taiwan: +30%
Canada: +29%
Hong Kong: +23%
Singapore: +19%
Hubei: +10%
Rest of China: +4%
Thailand: +3%
For a Pandemic, you need uncontrolled spread in multiple countries, on multiple continents. China, S. Korea, and Italy would seem to be sufficient for a declaration that we now have a pandemic. That should also be sufficient that the stock market notices.
Oh, and S. Korea is up to 556, now, another 123 since Mish’s post just a little while ago.
….algos don t get it yet…
Re S. Korea, of of 12:15 PM GMT on 2/23/20, it’s not 556 but 602 and climbing.
Tourism is 13% of Italy’s GDP. The country still hasn’t recovered from the Great Recession so I don’t see how this doesn’t create recessionary conditions for them.
An important observation. Gonna be tough for them. This is a slow-motion train wreck, not only from a perspective of people’s health, but also national economies. Yowzers.
This virus is great at generating fear. It’s almost too perfect.
Clearly another conspiracy, and only tinfoil bunny suits can save us!
Only you can believe such nonsense.
The government banned tin foil many years ago – they replaced it with aluminum which doesnt work.
Fear is a survival trait. So is lack of it. Just depends on the dice!
Regards,
Cooter
P.S. I hope folks can figure sarcasm when they see it.
The question I ask is “Would someone be evil enough to do this on purpose?”
To do what? Make a terrible virus or make a terrible story?
Definitely, such acts are often committed by people.
My question is, would a group of people be able to convince themselves that to do this was nescessary or good , or a lesser evil.
Again yes.
We live in an age where moral has become relative, not definitive. Within the new definition the end or goal can be used to justify the means.
Whether either is the case, I don’t know, but it would not surprise me either.
According to official data:
Taking some wild guesses, I’ll guess that Wuhan had perhaps 2000 open ICU beds before the Coronavirus hit, plus perhaps 10,000 regular beds open. They built 2000 more, probably all ICU beds. They also added perhaps 2000 non-ICU beds in the stadium, exhibition hall, and arena. By my guess, they now have 4000 ICU beds, and 12,000 regular beds. They need 12,000 ICU beds. If we guess that the 46,439 cases doesn’t count a lot of cases with few symptoms, perhaps half of the remaining 34,000 need some form of hospital care, such as an IV for fluids and extra oxygen, that means they need about 17,000 regular beds.
So, they have 4000 ICU beds, and need 12000. They have 12,000 regular beds, and need 17,000. That would mean they need about 17,000 more total beds. Even based on the official stats, building 19 more hospitals seems about right. It also tells you why so many are dying – only 1/3 of the people that need an ICU bed have one available, even after building the new hospitals, and many people still can’t get a bed at all.
If containment in other countries fails, and the odds are high that it will, this situation will be repeated elsewhere. How prepared is the US to build 20 new hospitals in, say, Chicago, in a matter of weeks? Even if they could build them, who would staff them?
In Italy:
Hmmm…
The alleged patient zero, who came back from China and met with the 38 year old “patient #1” never had the virus (virus test negative, no antibodies either). Now everybody around him is sick.
It’s freaky, a few days ago and it was a couple of cases, now semi-lockdown probably for weeks at least. I was running through a calculation of how many were likely infected by the time a first case or two was reported nearby. Answer – a lot, and Italy bears this out.
Via blastingnews Italy
” ‘Contagiosità elevata del virus’
A parlare, durante la conferenza stampa iniziata verso le 14:40 di sabato 22 febbraio, sono stati il Presidente della Regione Lombardia Fontana e l’Assessore alla Sanità lombarda Gallera. Secondo i dati comunicati sono stati effettuati 259 tamponi per verificare l’eventuale positività al virus; dai dati riscontrati il livello di positività è del 13%. Ciò farebbe emergere “l’elevata contagiosità di questo virus, anche se la sua modalità di diffusione è ordinaria”. Dei 39 contagiati confermati in Lombardia, 35 vengono da Codogno.”
Which says high contagion, 13% of 259 tested (I assume possible contact) infected. The Italian press is running continuous stories of people with symptoms being tested around the country, even though this was almost all in Codogno. Milan has cases also I think, a big city. It makes you wonder though if he was source to all the infections mentioned – now they don’t know where they started.
BTW Italy has a history of criminalizing everything, lol, they once tried and I think succeeded in jailing some vulcanologists who failed to predict a volcano erupting or earthquake. And then there’s Amanda Knox, jailed for murder on zero physical evidence but on a kinky conspiracy theory. I am NOT confident on Italy “getting it right” re Covid-19 and containing anything. Posting at the moment from neighboring Greece.
Most Mediterranean countries are in similar circumstance of organisational ability. Maybe summer will bring some relief, but for outbreaks to be quietening down in june is a bit late as far as tourist bookings are concerned. At least in Greece you have a choice of nice islands (not too far east) … if quarantine will work it will be on those I expect.
I Wonder WHY India, the Next neighbor haven’t reported any deaths or major numbers – perhaps they are hiding, Who’se counting ? Perhaps the weather is milder in India compare to China.
Living part-time in the Philippines (I’m a US Greek) I can tell you why India has not reported Covid-19 cases: lack of health care infrastructure. Any infected are probably rapidly transmitting the disease undetected, not unlike in the Philippines. Offtopic, I sometimes wonder why such large populations as in SE Asia don’t report more serial killers, and I suspect for the same reason: they go undetected IMO. Luckily, Covid-19 is not as bad as SARS (10% deathrate) but IMO the stock market has not yet discounted the years long effect this virus will have. Already people on Twitter (AnandTech editor) are reporting PC parts shortages due to the lockdown in China. Time will tell. I’m out of the stock market but will reload when DJ-30 hits 1999 levels 🙂
I am no longer convinced by the humidity argument. The weather in Wuhan has been very humid throughout January, in excess of 90% on some days and with fog being a regular weather feature.
Maybe temperature and sunlight will stop this, but i don’t think humidity will.
Seems that the next phase of a pandemic are upon us. New locus of infection. People who became infected in Iran are now in Canada, UAE, Iraq, and Lebanon. People have contracted the coronavirus in Singapore and spread it to France and the UK. South Korea? Elsewhere? And when will Africa begin to show cases? A very fascinating event. Can’t help but be reminded of the Spanish Flu pandemic.
Fascinating? LOL!
May you live in interesting times — Ancient Chinese curse
Spanish flu pandemic is the closest historical analogy I can think of too.
Source: The 1918 influenza had a case fatality rate of 2–3%.[67 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2791802/%5D
The “bad” reflects the fact that the number of 2019-nCoV cases and deaths so far suggests that the new coronavirus has a fatality rate around 2%. That’s almost certainly an overestimate, since mild cases aren’t all being counted. But even 2% is less than SARS’ 10% and nowhere near the 37% of MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus). On the other hand, seasonal flu kills fewer than 0.1% of those it infects, though that’s still tens of thousands of deaths a year just in the U.S. The global disaster that was the 1917 “Spanish flu” pandemic killed 2.5% (though some estimates exceed 10%).
Once it hit’s the US this airborne virus will decimate whole cities especially with all the homeless transients seemingly everywhere could wipe out half the population in LA /San Mateo/Santa Cruz counties.Cali,NY virtually every major city already bankrupt and with there soaring homeless population……No one unless you’re a drug dealer,pimp or work for the govt can afford to get sick today!
C’mon – this IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD. The CFR (case fatality rate) is like 2%. Maybe higher, data is sketchy, particuarly since China was the first horse out the gate.
Is it serious? Oh hell yes. Not to be an american douche bag, but it got me reorganizing my freezer and pantry (mostly in good shape, but booting quitters and hitting costco to fill the space).
If this virus has a 50% fatality – humanity as we know it is over. It isn’t that bad. But it is serious. We are just now getting real numbers – from Korean, Japan, Italy, etc – those are the metrics to watch. Let the story unfold.
Thanks MISH for all you do – I don’t agree with you on everything, but that is why I hang around – never learned from a pat on the back, learned more from a kick in the butt.
Regards,
Cooter
If the CFR is 10% (same as SARS) with a 60% infection rate in the US that’s 19,900,000 people. That may not be the end of humanity but it will reshape our culture you years.
This thing is bad. We will soon know how bad.