Don’t Panic
What does that even mean?
There are no signs of panic in the US. If and when conditions merit panic, it will be too late to panic. Assuming of course we can accurately define “panic”.
Harvard Professor Says Global Pandemic Is Likely
Here are a few pertinent snips from the Wall Street Journal Report How Many People Might One Person With Coronavirus Infect?
“Right now, coronavirus is much more of a concern than SARS ever was,” said Steven Riley, a professor of infectious-disease dynamics at Imperial College, referring to the global outbreak in 2003, when 8,096 people got sick and 774 died. “The main reason is our estimate of the number of people who are currently infectious is higher than the maximum who were ever infectious at one time with SARS.”
“Where we’ll look next is Hong Kong and Singapore,” Dr. Riley said. “We may see a growth phase there next,” although, he added, researchers haven’t yet seen exponential growth outside of mainland China.
“I think it is likely we’ll see a global pandemic,” said Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “If a pandemic happens, 40% to 70% of people world-wide are likely to be infected in the coming year. What proportion of those will be symptomatic, I can’t give a good number.”
Beijing Sets Stringent New Quarantine Rules
The New York Times Reports Beijing Sets Stringent New Quarantine Rules
The mandate came as the national Chinese government disclosed that hundreds of medical workers who had been helping combat the coronavirus outbreak had become infected and at least six had died.
Beijing demands that all who enter its territory isolate themselves for 14 days, or “be held accountable according to law.”
For the first time on Friday, China disclosed figures that drove home the risks faced by those on the front line: 1,716 medical workers have contracted the virus and six of them have died. Of those people, 1,502 were in Hubei Province, with 1,102 of them in Wuhan, the provincial capital and the center of the outbreak.
Leadership Fear in Beijing
Cruie Ship Update
https://twitter.com/MackayIM/status/1227828292247408641
Lights Out
Terrifying
First, they covered up the truth, second, they said this disease was preventable and controllable, third, they locked you up. Now they terrify you like this.
I am not even sure what’s going on, but yes, it looks terrifying.
Facebook Cancellation
Procrastination Likely
I panic is warranted, it will happen too late to do any good.
Nurse Denied Entry to Her Own Home
Mislabeled Deaths
Full Article Translated: Why Is Aspergillus Pneumonia Listed as the Direct Cause of Coronavirus infection?
Caught Red Handed
https://twitter.com/jenniferatntd/status/1228177565203845120
How Self-Quanatines Work in Practice
Stay Home No Food in the Market
Cell Phone Trap!
If you inadvertently respond to a text message and you have been to Wuhan, thay have you.
Just Try to Get Answers
Move Along, Nothing to See
Move along. There is nothing to see, nothing to do, nothing to fear.
It’s all under control.
This is not as bad as the flu.
Don’t let that Mish guy, Harvard professors, Chris Martenson, Jennifer Zeng, Jim Bianco or anyone else scare you.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
They have no cure for common cold
Thanks for raising fears and panic
How about adding more conspiracy theories, like this one.
More plausible, but still probably wrong, is Covid-19 accidentally escaped from a bioweapons lab in Wuhan. As reported in MishTalk on another thread (check this), the Wuhan lab director was advertising for somebody knowledgeable in coronaviruses last fall. Coincidence? Hmm…
A reminder on vaccine hopes: They did develop a vaccine for SARS, but it failed in animal testing. Animals who were vaccinated over-reacted when exposed to SARS, and were more likely to die than those not vaccinated. Will the same thing happen to COVID-19? We will have to wait and see what happens when the various vaccines are tested.
For those of you that like sourced posts rather than just some dude’s speculation (and hey, I also post unsourced speculation) here is a link to what Carl_R is saying, and also more stuff (including four theories of how Covid-19 arose, including not just ‘bats’ and ‘intermediate hosts’ but the intriguing theory it accidentally escaped from a Wuhan bioweapons lab. Link:
Harvard Professors believe in climate change so I don’t see why I should trust them on this either. Right, Mish?
Presumably you wouldn’t trust their vaccine either for the same reason, -:)
You shouldn’t “trust ‘them’. ” For any “them.” Ever. People doing that, is why we’re stuck kowtowing to half literate Dear Leaders in a totalitarian, progressive hellhole to begin with.
Instead, for every one of “their” claims, you should look at the study methodology and results of the studies underpinning their claims. Or, if applicable, the soundness of their logical deductions from accepted priors. And only then, if the results and methodology, and/or deduction, warrants it, trust, narrowly, just what is being demonstrated. Never trust any “them” in general. Anything anyone claims, is just random, with a hefty bias in the direction of self serving, opinion; until he has conclusively proven it to be otherwise.
Well said Stuki, though as a practical matter due to time constraints I’ve read that scientists actually look at the author reputation as a shortcut to the probable quality of their work or paper.
A note about the empty buildings, that’s not really virus related. I remember seeing a special from some guys in China about their empty buildings. People buy up property and then leave it unfinished. Why? Because it’s worth more to the next buyer in their property bubble. If you finish a property, it is considered “used” and isn’t as valuable.
So those few lights are just what is normal, people living in buildings that are primarily property investments (people owning 3-4 or more homes to get in on the crazy values).
True. Another factor is sometimes electricity is expensive overseas (in the Philippines it’s more expensive than in the USA) and people save money by literally living in the dark. An entire apartment building will be occupied with just one or two lights on.
The things that we do know.
There is an elevated death rate with this virus.
Reducing the elevated death rate requires intensive medical input.
In China, the need for intensive medical input has broken the medical system.
The virus is virulent–it spreads like oil on water.
Quarantines have slowed but not stopped the spread.
“There is an elevated death rate with this virus.
Reducing the elevated death rate requires intensive medical input.”
Agreed
The Case Fatality Rate (CFR) for a normal flu season is under 0.1% or as stated from the Harvard article:
“On severity, estimates are that it’s worse than seasonal flu, where about one in 1,000 infected cases die, and it’s not as bad as SARS, where 8 or 9 percent of infected cases died. I’ve been working with some colleagues on estimates. They’re preliminary still but bounded by those two. That’s a large range, however, so the important question is where the final figure ends up, because 3 or 4 percent of cases dying would be much more worrisome than 0.4 percent.”
No one has any immunity from this virus and it is virulent. The normal flu season is coming to an end but will that have any effect? The first wave of the Spanish Flu hit in March, died down, then the second wave hit later that year.
No 2 pandemics are alike but could we see a similar effect remains to be seen.
“There’s likely to be a period of widespread transmission in the U.S., and I hope we will avert the kind of chaos that some other places are seeing.”
Re your second link, some viruses remain in a population a long time with no apparent ‘immunity’, for example after the scientist Jennings coming up with a smallpox vaccine, it was not eradicated until about 180 years later, around 1980.
bullshit. More ppl are recovery from corona than sars.Unless someone tries enhance the virus and make it hard to destroy the virus
Yes, it appears that COVID-19 has a lower CFR than SARS, but it also true that far, far more people are being infected with COVID-19.
Following ZENG posting (and some comments here and there by Chinese doctors who said that recovered people are not cured and may still be infectious so they must take an anti-viral cocktail)
this virus could be a combination of a flu virus with the AIDS virus.
I WOULD PREFER NOT TO BELIEVE THAT UNTILL IT IS PROVEN
because if that is the case like with the AIDS disease when it has been caught it is not yet curable. AIDS patients still wait (for more than 20 years)
for a vaccine. In the meantime the AIDS virus remain in a NICHE (the
T lymphocyts) and are impeded in their replication thanks to a daily cocktail of anti-virus.
Imagine the whole human race on anti virals.
Might buy some shares in whoever has the second largest market share (on the basis that the market leader will be found to be complicit in the virus release).
Humour – I don’t believe this is bioengineered.
Thanks to this wildly speculative but not impossible scenario, crazyworld. Indeed more mainstream publications have said that Covid-19, like it’s close cousin SARS, like Ebola, have a nasty habit of reappearing every so often once “eradicated”. I think even smallpox, officially eradicated in 1980, is still around, and a quick Google search (screen scrape below) confirms this. Google: “Smallpox has been eradicated for decades, but other, related “poxviruses” are still around and continue to pose a risk to humans, experts say. In fact, cases of human infection with viruses in the same family as the smallpox virus are appearing in growing numbers.” (2019)
The key is to manage the rate of infection, so that the available resources are adequate. Probably 80% will manage with little or no serious symptoms and should remain home to avoid spreading the virus. About 15% will need hospital or at least home based oxygen care as they will have a serious pneumonia. The 5% or so who develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) will need intensive care with many of them intubated. That may save most of their lives. Maybe only 1% will die. If there are not sufficient ICU beds available because the virus is affecting too high a portion of the population, then the death rate may more than double, maybe increasing four-fold because there is no ability to treat the patients.
So, we’re looking at voluntary social distancing. In the US, it will be mostly from media advice and abject fear, but may require full pay for workers to stay home (even gig workers) when ill. If managed well, this may not create panic, and the impact may be mitigated until more effective treatments can be tested and hopefully allow eradication. There will be a major economic impact, especially if curative treatments take a long time to become accessible.
The Third World will have a worse time, as they already have minimal health care resources and less well trained health care workers.
From what I’ve read online, Covid-19 is a close cousin of SARS, which had a 10% death rate, not 1% as you say. Further, the preliminary data indicates Covid-19 has more like a 4% death rate. And ‘hand washing’ and “masks”, while helpful, won’t stop you from getting the virus from a super-spreader (somebody who is shedding more viruses than the average person). One such super-spreader infected 60 people, all taking precautions, in a hospital.
The Black Death (a bacterium) reached Venice about 670 years ago. Eventually, according to estimates, between 1/4 and 1/3 of the European population perished. The plague began not long after the medieval warming period which enabled a rise in human population from about AD 900 to about AD 1300.
The corona virus is different from a bacterium but it is possible that human population is in a bubble whose growth was enabled by the benefits of capitalism starting with the Industrial Revolution and which has now reached the space age or computer age or whatever you want to call it. In any case, large population increases began with the advent of the Industrial Revolution starting about 1760 (in England).
If so, the corona virus could end up being the 21st century equivalent of the Black Death, except that it may become a world-wide thing as 6 or 7 billion people represents a lot of ‘food’ for ‘hungry’ pathogens. I doubt that any government measures would be able to stop it. It would be every man for himself and family and a few close friends.
So how many are likely to die in such a case? If the plague is any guide, about 2 billion or more may die while 4-5 billion survive.
The silver lining? The Renaissance began not long after the plague. Although the depleted population also meant a drop in production (depression), those who survived had plenty of gold and other assets to divide up among smaller numbers of people. Wealthy persons commissioned great works of art, much of which you can see in Florence. The Reformation began, followed by the Enlightenment and all that other good stuff.
The key here is, how long the corona virus will take to kill off a few billion of us if that is what it is going to do. Things happen much faster today than 670 years ago but it could take generation or two before things get great again.
According to some, the Black Death started in the east and made its way to Europe over the Silk Road. Hmmm.
Indeed.
There is a short video that somebody linked to the other day that explained why European diseases affected Native Americans but there was no reciprocal transmission. TL;DR: we domesticated animals, caught their diseases and built dirty cities….and they learned that buffalo are utter bastards which you can’t domesticate, and anything else can jump out of your yard….so couldn’t build any cities.
There is no comparison because scientifically we know way more. The plague would have stood no shot against today’s modern science. Looking at nCoVd through the lens of what happen in ancient times just sounds faulty.
“There is no comparison because scientifically we know way more.”
No, people won’t be coughing up blood. That is not the point. The point is that no matter how good medical science is at preserving human life, eventually there will be so much human life that the number of different ways any human can be infected will increase to the point when the viruses kill us too fast.
Eventually, for example, we are likely to have several pathogens as dangerous as the coronavirus – all at once.
In fact, the more ‘weaklings’ whose lives are saved, the more likely the epidemic.
We are not static beings. We adapt just as quickly as viruses do. Look at the population growth of humans vs number killed by all viruses. We continue to outstrip anything a virus can do. The death rate would have to be significant in for all viruses in the aggregate to be prevailing. We are prevailing. 7.5B and counting.
I hope Casual_Observer is right, but from some of their other posts they seem like Dicken’s Mr. Micawber * (smile). If Covid-19 is anything like AIDs/HIV, then a new vaccine will be a long time in coming. And Covid-19 is a close cousin of SARS, where no vaccine was ever made despite extensive efforts, and, unlike Covid-19 at the moment, SARS naturally died down quickly.
I don’t envy does under martial law in Whuhan.
The CCPP should have respond timely, should have been maintaining transparency, should collect the actual stats, and should publish them as-is (with accurate meta-info!).
That said:@Mish , given the bad situation of the PRC and Whuhan, what would you recommend they do differently and practically?
One thing I would not do is lock people in their homes with iron bars.
One thing I would do is let in the US CDC and the top UK scientists.
Another thing I would do is ask for food, help, and medical supplies from other countries.
I think the “locking up” was localised and may have been limited to quarantine breakers. Reason: BBC featured story about local woman going out daily to try to get her Dad into a hospital after Uncle died. Everybody would have known that family was infected, nobody locked them up.
I don’t think you can discount the level of poorly aligned bureaucracy in that country.
Hard times coming though. If the heAlth services in U.K. and US are running out of masks (the cheapest thing they could stock up on) then nobody is going to be helping other countries out when they ask for help.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
If you are calculating the “death rate” by dividing the number of cases by the number of deaths, you are mistaken. The death rate is the number of deaths plus the number of recoveries divided by the number of deaths. While the number of cases is significant to follow (since if there was no increase in cases, we would expect the death rate to eventually go to zero), until there is a known outcome (death or recovery) we won’t know the actual death rate.
(D+R)/R would be a good formula only after the whole ordeal is said and done and presuming that D+R represent the whole infected population. Albeit, in the present this formula is merely a grossly inaccurate approximation.
D and R are distributions along the time dimension. They probably behave differently. The reported D+R is way smaller than the total number of infections.
ETC.
I have better ideas how to estimate the ratios but that would require a white night…
Properly computing the CFR requires a complete set. You need to track, say, 1000 patients, until they are all either healed or die. We don’t have data in that form, so we make guesses.
Simple math will tell you that Dead Now/ Initially Infected is a lower bound that will, with mathematical certainty, rise… Right now the ratio appears between 1%-4% and rising, perhaps to the 10% that SARS had, a close cousin of Covid-19.
I read the reports by medical and disease experts who say that it is possible that the COVID-19 will eventually gain a foothold here and become a community disease potentially infecting 2/3 of the world population.
Then I read the comments here by posters who apparently don’t have any medical or research training and they say that they “don’t think” that will happen. They say that a vaccine will probably be found. In fact, Inovio says it developed a vaccine in just a few hours. Where is this vaccine? Has it gone through clinical trials? What was the result? Does it have FDA approval? What are the side affects? When will it be produced in enough volume to vaccinate the population? What is the cost?
Here is an analog: Do you think a recession (minor or major) is on the horizon? If you don’t think so, you have nothing to worry about and you should continue to be fully invested in stocks. But, if you believe it is inevitable that we will enter recessionary territory (brought on the Corona virus or just due to the business cycle) then perhaps you should make some changes and preparation in your investments.
All of this aside, my concern is that if the projected infected rate forecast by the experts does in fact come to pass, our healthcare system, like that in China will be overwhelmed and we don’t have their authoritarian system to isolate people or quarantine them. Hospitals and insurance companies will be bankrupted. The FED will have to print record amounts of money to fund Medicare and Medicaid. Businesses will lose employees to the virus and be unable to service customers. People will avoid restaurants and other places where people congregate. Business bankruptcies will inevitably follow. There is no good news other than hope and prayer.
I live in NW Montana in a geographic area of around 190,000 population. We have one hospital with 343 beds. If the infected rate is as high as has been mentioned by these experts (2/3 of the population), well…. you see the problem. It’s no wonder now why China built those two 1,000 bed facilities in Wuhan.
As Njbr has stated, from a WHO report which looks to be the most credible at this pt in time but certainly subject to changes.
Of those who get the Covid-19
-80% will experience a tingling throat to minor cold symptons
-15% will get pneumonia
-3-5% will require ICU
And as you state we still do not know the CFR (Case Fatality Rate)
Chinas economy is currently at a standstill and WILL certainly affect the supply chain of other countries, a no brainer that for some reason seems oblivious to some.
Certainly hospitals will be overwhelmed. Pictures like those in China with patients in hallways would be certain.
No 2 pandemics are alike but from my perspective this certainly has the potential to be another 1918 Spanish Flu repeat.
And like you, I am miffed at the “don’t worry, its all good, just doom porn” by some. Bizarre, there is a very real cause for concern.
The WHO has zero credibility because it is not independently funded and it is fronted by someone who has dubious credentials (by design). He is a yes man – not someone with any authority. Honestly, people who swallow the line of any supra-national rep is as dumb as dog sh*t.
The bulk of the posts here are from people who admit they don’t know. Obviously we all hope for a vaccine, but realistically we expect that 1-2 years, if then. In the meantime, we hope that the CDC continues to be successful at keeping the virus from spreading freely in here, but being realistic, we recognize that it is probably only a matter of time before it escapes.
Vaccines will be fast tracked. I know this because I say it in “Outbreak”. Clinical trials will be “did it kill him, and did it work” on vulnerable patient sets. Nobody is going to talk about Phase 1,2 or 3 trials. My guess is we would see widespread vaccimation programmes, starting with healthcare workers, within 6 months of discovery. Which, of course, might be 10 years.
Niall Ferguson, big public health guy here in the U.K., says the virus is going to burn through the U.K. population affecting possibly all adults within the next 12 months. He wouldn’t get drawn on deaths but said 400,000 is “not unreasonable”. The 60% infection rate – 100% of all adults, fewer kids.
The actual numbers will, of course, depend on the speed of that burn. As I posted the other day, assuming the doubling times seen so far, we would have 300,000 intensive care patients dying in tents by the end of May.
The government therefore faces a choice. Swallow the pain in 12 months of terror, or introduce very strict quarantines that in the best case will slow the virus to the point where either every ICU patient gets the care he needs. That way you still get the terror, but you get a more politically swallowable body count….but a longer weak economy. And that assumes that Wave 2 either doesn’t happen or is milder.
Given that we are still flying in plane loads of Chinese folks, my guess is option 1 is preferred, which has the nice side benefit of windfall inheritance tax and the clear out of some long term problems.
So, stop smoking, take vitamins, eat healthily, get lots of sleep, identify as female.
Certainly if this does hit hard it is going to have dramatic changes on our society. For example, I have a 3 year old. They don’t seem to be getting ill from this but they are probably a big factor in its spread. Does she go a year without seeing her friends, going to the park, etc. Does she then see her grandparents? What about her friend who is also 3 and has regular lung illness. What about restaurants?
Conferences? Concerts?
Thinking in those terms I don’t see how a deep recession can be avoided. Which is a concern for me as my job will finish in June. Will employers be interviewing staff in the middle of a raging epidemic?
And what about people who are going to get ill with other disease in the next 12 months.
Cancer patients, surgical patients – with everybody fighting an epidemic a lot of people are going to go untreated.
I think this is going to hit harder than the 1918 flu. Not in numbers terms, but culturally. People back then were a lot more used to high mortality from disease and war. Today, they worry about not having enough to take offence over.
“Vaccines will be fast tracked.”
They’ll be a lot of law suits afterwards if there’s any adverse side affects.
If you read this link: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/01/31/2019-ncov-wuhan-outbreakdue-to-failed-coronavirus-vaccine/
You see that SARS could not be vaccine’d against, since they stopped work on SARS (a cousin of Covid-19) since animals were dying too fast after being vaccined, and SARS died out naturally. Ebola took several years of work but eventually (it’s said) a vaccine is available. And let’s not forget 1976’s H1N1 ‘swine flu’ epidemic, which worked out pretty well for the USA:
Vaccines?
Inovia created a computer model of what a vaccine could be. Is it effective–who knows? The real substance needs to be developed and run through animal and human testing where effectiveness vs problems are analyzed. Then enough needs to be produced and administered to provide herd immunity.
It’s be a year or more, if you read beyond the PR release.
Google and WHO are going to keep us safe from all that misinformation out there. https://www.ibtimes.com/coronavirus-update-who-teams-google-battle-online-misinformation-2914982
“Google and WHO are going to keep us safe from all that misinformation out there.”
Google is misinformation.
Judging from past behavioral patterns, Google and WHO are probably co-sponsors of the Georgia Guide Stones.
lol. You mean you don’t trust Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of WHO? He does at first glance, with his overly friendly smile, look like a tool for China, but he gets style points for having such a cool name. Along with the late, great Boutros Boutros-Ghali .
Since viruses can mutate rapidly, could this become deadlier or less harmful just like that?
I mean, the Spanish Flu was killing left, right and center, and then suddenly it just sort of vanished.
From what I read coronaviruses do not change very fast, at least not the envelope if I remember…but they do change and the change can be either way – more deadly or weaker. When you have millions infected the possibility of change is obviously much higher due to the combined activity of so much virus. Like colds, a vaccine is not obvious as a reply because new strains emerge over time. Then there is the question of if a more lethal strain would not transmit so easily and so on. Really it is not much worth guessing imo, but just to be aware that a more deadly strain is possible, and that it might be several weeks or even months from its start before it is picked up on if there were already a high number of other nCoV cases going on. We just don’t want to catch this virus is all I know.
Correct. They have some kind of proofreading function. Although weirdly a lot of the pronouncements from those in the know seem to suggest that mutation is happening.
The second wave is usually the worst.
Slow mutation is not necessarily a bad thing. With the flu, they constantly change, requiring new vaccines every year. If this doesn’t mutate, in the end a vaccine could be developed and used to eliminate it.
Most obvious problem arising from a slow mutation rate of a novel virus, is that it blunts the effectiveness of host species’ natural and inevitable response to effectively select for less symptomatic mutations/strains behaviorally. Hence slows down the natural attenuation of symptomatic severity, which works to reduce all initially highly symptomatic, widely spread, novel viruses towards “background noise” symptom wise.
Biggest upside, in addition to this leaving them an easier, less moving target for (at least with current technology) pharma and vaccines, is that; since viruses’ only (at least per current standard models, and certainly main) means of adaptability to changing circumstances, is by way of change to their genetic makeup; a slower rate of genetic change implies they are less adaptable to changing circumstances. Hence have a harder time infecting as diverse a target population.
The “molecular proofreading” hypothesis for this virus, was based on genomic similarity to SARS, which did look to mutate slowly. And was, along with the hypothesis that the currently spreading virus had either one, or at most a low number, of original human hosts, supported by findings that the viral genome was very similar from a group of different patients. Slowly mutating, for an RNA virus, could still be considered pedal to the metal compared to almost anything else, though….
Later, larger samples of patient genomes, do show the virus mutating, even if slower than something like a flu virus.
Purely theoretically, I have a hard time seeing how a virus too slow to mutate, can infect people as widely and readily as Covid-19 seems to do (SARS was less infectious). Doing so, indicates a fair amount of ability to adapt to differences between individuals. People aren’t clones. Hence are unlikely to all be susceptible to infection by a genetically identical clone-borg of viruses. And, furthermore, this is by evolutionary necessity, not happenstance. Any specie sufficiently “monocultural” to be susceptible to that simple an attack, is highly unlikely not to have had that weakness “found out,” and hence been exploited to extinction, a long time ago. And so far, we’re still here. As is this virus…..
Assuming the CFR can be kept at 1% or so in the developed world the question will be accept that and just push your way through the outbreak as best you can or bring on a brutal economic depression with Chinese style public health measures. My guess is, once infections become widespread, governments will just have to accept large numbers of deaths rather than an economic catastrophe.
Losing a few millions of the over 65 population in the West ( I’m one of them) would protect pensions, transfer lots of wealth to the young, reduce housing costs etc. Politicians would weep crocodile tears of course but it would get them off the hook for a decade or two.
There is over reaction and I doubt it will get too far out of hand.
At an extreme Black Death had a similar impact as described in your last paragraph. Following it there was greater social mobility and increased labour rates.
Perhaps we will swap war with mutating biological agents as the method of regularly reducing population.
You’re not thinking straight. War doesn’t exist to restrain the population. War (these days) is largely driven by companies that need war to survive. If you sell weapons as a living, then …. wake up and smell the farckin coffee, you chump.
You misunderstand. Biology will take over as the cull mechanism (possibly as a result of weapon development).
From powers butting up against each other fighting across borders to now excess population density and interconnectedness moving the front-line to between close neighbours.
Nothing to do with money, just the mechanism changing.
Right now China is stuck between a rock and a hard place. At some point they do have to get their economy going which is at a halt. The virus running its course is certainly a strong possibility going forward.
Jennifer Zeng is a “human rights activist” with an agenda and Jim Bianco posted the debunked SO2 cremation story, Chris Martenson is a perma-doomer…
Harvard professor, sure that is someone I can take more seriously.
We’ll see where this goes in the next few weeks. No matter what happens, it’s better to be prepared.
The saying don’t listen to what to what they say but watch their actions definitely applies here.
But don’t worry” its all good” has been and will continue to be the narrative for the Chinese govt.
It’s funny. Everybody I know is preparing. Most of my friends have 2 months worth of food. Is that panic? Even I am prepared and I don’t even think it will be that bad.
Basic preparation to be self-reliant is not panic. It is thoughtful and smart. “Panic” is what happens when anyone who has not prepared in advance tries to buy everything they need at the last minute. If everyone prepares ahead of time, then there cannot possibly be any panic, even if COVID-19 turns out to be a severe illness. I am hopeful COVID-19 will not be severe for most people.
If the mainstream media actually wanted to be of public service, they could tell people how and why to prepare ahead of time for COVID-19, like they do when they explain how to prepare for minor hurricanes. They could also inform people in detail about the expected severity and course of the illness, and how to recognize when to stay and home and when to seek professional medical care.
Like most people, I’ve spent time buying masks, food and desperately seeking papers that prove that I will not die.
I think you were involved in the discussion about ACE2, which eventually ended with Carl pointing out that the study was flawed as there were only 8 individuals in it, and only one was Caucasian.But the story may not end there.
Lots of research since SARS that strongly indicate that this variant of coronavirus uses the ACE2 protein as an attack vector. Here is just one:
The study that Carl highlighted was recently (this week) cited in another paper, this one looking at ACE2 expression and smoking. It turns out that smoking possibly has a statistically significant association with elevated ACE2 expression.
60% of Chinese doctors are smokers (smoking rates in UK doctors are less than 11% by comparison).
And just look under “Hubei Province” in Wikipedia’s article on Chinese smoking:
I’d love to know whether air pollution has similar affects on ACE2.
The point is that if these connections stack up, there are modifiable risk factors for the rest of us.
Evidence, so far, shows that the mortality rate will be much less than in China, for whatever reason.
Also, Chinese death rate is overinflated because they count only serious cases.
ACE2 receptors in the lungs of Chinese male smokers. Unfortunately, we never get age/sex demographic breakdowns of deaths, we only get a number.
The ACE2 receptor thing may be a red herring.
I think the Chinese angle is certainly a red herring. But i’ve been reading a lot more this evening and there does seem to be a common theme: air pollution and smoking increase ACE2 expression, and SARS (but possibly not MERS) targets that.
There are now 4 deaths outside of China, as France reported one. Two weeks ago there were 174 cases outside of China. If all the deaths involved people who were among those 174, that is a 2.3% death rate. Sure, that’s lower than Wuhan, where the medical system was overwhelmed, but it’s not low. A death rate of 2.3% is 100 times higher than the flu. Furthermore, in a pandemic situation, healthcare systems everywhere would be overwhelmed, meaning a higher death rate.
The death in France was an 80 year old Chinese man who arrived there sick from Wuhan. The death in Philippines was a Chinese man who arrived there sick from Wuhan. The death in HK was also a Chinese. The only non-Chinese death so far is the 70 year old man in Japan.
I doubt the death rate will be above 1%, probably closer to 0.5%, but we’ll see. The numbers so far suggest that new cases have peaked in China.
Not panicked, but have always kept 2-4 months of dry goods in storage and just ordered 2 25kg bags of beans and rice – $60.00 well spent!
And a pack of 10 KN95 masks (readily available in my area a week ago, now not available until April, so used different source).
(And wish I’d bought that great value blue water cruising vessel a few months back – spending a year cruising the Pacific Islands sounds about right right now!)
That map is pretty impressive:
Can’t help but wonder: how many of us on this blog now will still be here in 1-2 years time? Will this all peter out in a few months as many assume? Or what? As someone in the male aged 65 or over category, gather am in the most high risk group.
Well, at least will have plenty of beans and rice!!!
Beans and rice, the gold standard 🙂
We have a lot of both stored too.
I am glad people are getting prepared. This helps the system so much. Preparing now is only positive. I helps GDP, it increases store ordering and frees up resources for others when things do start to get bad.
Keep up the great work.
I think you aren’t properly discounting medical solutions. Vaccines have already been developed. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/us-based-inovio-pharmaceuticals-says-it-has-a-coronavirus-vaccine/vi-BB100Cys
Clinical trials are under way https://www.wired.com/story/china-launches-a-crush-of-clinical-trials-aimed-at-covid-19/
Eh, don’t hold your breath. I understand Remdesivir worked great for Ebola in vitro, and then flopped in animal tests. Certainly it is worth testing for COVID-19, but the majority of all new drug candidates fail before they finish trials. There are similar issues once a vaccine candidate gets to animal trials. They may not work or can induce unacceptable side-effects.
When a director of the CDC says they might have a vaccine in 1-2 years, I accept that he knows what he is talking about.
I would agree with anybody who says they “might” have a vaccine in three years. The word neatly encapsulates its corollary: “might not”!
My view is that they won’t have a vaccine for at least a year, which in pandemic terms is all we need to know – there won’t be a vaccine if a pandemic occurs over the space of the next year, which to me is near certain.
Yep, it’ll all be fine. Buy stocks!
The SARS vaccine made those infected after the vaccine have a worst outcome/high death rate. It was a very limited trial though.
That’s why you don’t rush stuff. Things can get worse.
For those of you counting on warmer weather to tamp down the virus…
It was 82 degrees in Singapore today–and there is an outbreak there.
It was 74 degrees in Hanoi today–and there is an outbreak in northern Vietnam.
It was 54 degrees in Wuhan today–and there is an outbreak there.
It was 52 degrees today in Yokohama–and there is an outbreak there.
….WASHINGTON — Never mind China; how the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak progresses in Singapore is key to understanding the danger to the rest of the world, said Scott Gottlieb, MD, at a Senate committee hearing.
“So far, in Singapore with 50 cases identified… eight are in the ICU. That’s deeply concerning to me,” said Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner and now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, at a Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs hearing Wednesday.
Of particular importance is how many of those infected with the virus develop severe disease, he said.
Local transmission now appears to be established in Singapore, the densely populated tropical city-nation at the tip of the Malaysian peninsula.
He acknowledged the importance of continuing to watch the epidemic in China. But regardless of what happens there, places such as Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong, will offer a better idea of how the virus could spread around the world.
The outbreak’s advancement in Singapore during a time of warm weather (currently 80°F) is especially alarming, he said, because summer weather would ordinarily be “a backstop” against coronavirus transmission.
Respiratory viruses don’t generally do well in sunlight and humidity. People’s airways tend to contain more mucus, and sunlight kills. It doesn’t mean that the virus won’t spread, just that it’s spread will be limited by those factors. That said, I noticed the other day that humidity is high in all of these countries, so you may well be right.
Would bio engineered do better possibly?
Empirically, “bio-engineered” viruses don’t do anything at all. At least physiologically. They do seem to have quite an effect on some people’s psychological makeup, however…
People calm down. The world is not China. China has some of the worst health risks at a baseline because of the polluted food supply and lack of handwashing. This is a problem in general in Asia and even parts of Western Europe. Biotech companies have already sequenced a vaccine for the virus and are trying to fast track production by this summer. The risk as always is the virus adapts in the meantime and changes to become stronger.
You’re not very bright.
Maybe but I’m not worried. If you live in China or east asia there is reason to worry. Most people outside China are going to survive nCoVD.
Don’t feel bad, Mish. The way the mainstream media in the U.S. is run today, they always attack and marginalize anyone who does not toe the line, regardless of the rationale. People are pack animals. The MSM are masters at using that to manipulate behavior.
I think MISH needs some kind of approval from MSM. He just quoted MSM article showing India’s PM in bad light without even checking if it’s true.
What was wrong with it and how the hell could I possibly check if any of it was true.
Indeed if you look carefully, I toned down the way it was reported.
Please correct the slant I put on it.
MISH, since you asked let me point to the deficiency of your thoughts:
What do you mean by ruin? Claims about science, what were the science claims there? What do mean by separate church and state? Do you even know how Indian system works. State goes above and beyond to suppress hinduism(indian church).
I think a vaccine is on the horizon by this summer. Even without it there won’t be a pandemic. HIV antivirals and tamiflu appear to cure the illness in about 3 days in Thailand even for high risk patients.
how soon do you think (?hundreds of?) millions of the on-the-horizon-vaccine will become available? what do you think about viral mutation?
The vaccines grow in eggs and take months to produce. There’s no way there will be a vaccine by this summer. At least not available to the general public.
Also worth pointing out that there is surprisingly little coverage of this Thai success. Trials are ongoing, but i’m not sure its the silver bullet some believe.
18 months for some of us, 8 minutes for the likes of XI, Trump, Gates etc.
What about an HIV vaccine?
What about s common cold vaccine?
There may not be one.
Should open up housing inventory.
While at the same time cratering property values.
You mean prices. The value of something is fixed – houses provide protection from the elements. Prices, however, are, unfortunately, highly malleable through manipulation. So, the deflation of houses prices to reflect their value is a positive. If it takes a virus and deaths to do it, then that is horrible and the result of more sane house prices is just a small silver lining.
It will probably be a bad situation in the USA by late March. 🙁
“If and when conditions merit panic, it will be too late to panic.”
…
Yes. Hopefully, a cure / vaccine becomes available in not too distant future.
The one thing I have done is stock up on disposable gloves / masks. I’ve noticed in short supply or out in stores. Good luck finding any if large scale outbreak occurs.
“Right now we’re in an aggressive containment mode,” CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta in an interview on Thursday.
“We don’t know a lot about this virus,” he said. “This virus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year, and I think eventually the virus will find a foothold and we will get community-based transmission.”