If you thought there was a slowdown in coronavirus cases, you thought wrong. Instead, there was under-reporting as most if us realized all along.
- There are currently 60,286 confirmed cases and 1,367 deaths from the Wuhan Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak as of February 13, 2020, 01:45 GMT.
- “Total Cases” = total cumulative count (60,286). This figure therefore includes deaths and recovered/discharged patients (cases with an outcome).
Today China Confirms 14,840 New Cases, 242 Additional Deaths.
The rise in cases comes as Chinese officials broadened their definition of confirmed cases. Now, lung imaging can be used to diagnose the virus in a suspected patient, in addition to the standard nucleic acid tests, according to AFP.
Chinese officials said 13,332 of the new cases and just over half the new death toll can be attributed to the new classification, AFP reported.
There really was not such a jump, just better reporting and methodology.
Other Items of Note
- CDC confirms 14th coronavirus case in U.S. This is the second person at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar to test positive for the virus.
- World’s biggest technology trade show canceled due to coronavirus. The Global System for Mobile Communications Association, or GSMA, has held the annual trade show in Barcelona, Spain, since 2006. GSMA CEO John Hoffman announced the association’s decision to cancel this year’s show in a press release on Wednesday, saying it would reconvene in 2021. The show typically attracts over 100,000 people from around the world.
- World Health Organization says it was not pressured to praise China. When asked directly if he was pressured by China to support their response, Ghebreyesus told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday that the “facts speak for themselves.” [Indeed they do. The WHO is corrupt and incompetent]
- CDC has yet to be given direct access to China’s data. “CDC stands ready to send staff to China … but we haven’t been invited yet,” said CDC director Dr. Nancy Messonnier, noting that the World Health Organization has a team in China that is being given access to the raw data.
- WHO: Outbreak in China “reducing,” and outside China it’s “very manageable”. [That tidbit came before this latest 14,800 case update.]
- Virus forces delay of Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix.
Faulty Test Kits
The CDC says Coronavirus Test Kits Sent to States Are Flawed.
Some of the coronavirus testing kits sent to state laboratories around the country have flaws and do not work properly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.
“Obviously, a state wouldn’t want to be doing this test and using it to make clinical decisions if it isn’t working as well, as perfectly, at the state as it is at C.D.C.,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said at a news conference on Wednesday.
At a news conference on Wednesday morning, Dr. Messonnier said that test kits had been shipped to more than 30 other countries, but later in the day said that she was mistaken, and that the international shipments had been held back because of the flaw.
The flawed test kits are a separate issue from the mislabeled samples in San Diego that led officials to discharge from a hospital a woman who was sick from the coronavirus.
Jim Bianco Update
Case Count on Log Scale
Confirmed Active Cases Log Scale
Delayed Positive
Rate of Change
Understatement of the Day Award
“Things may not always go as smoothly as we may like,” said CDC director Dr. Nancy Messonnier.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Scientists at DARPA and the Los Alamos National Lab estimate a much higher rate of infection for the novel coronavirus: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.07.20021154v1
They bump the RO up from 2.2-2.7 to 4.7-6.6.
“How contiguous the 2019-nCoV is in other countries remains to be seen. If the value of R0 is as high in other countries, our results suggest that active and strong population-wide social distancing efforts, such as closing down transportation system, schools, discouraging travel, etc., might be needed to reduce the overall contacts to contain the spread of the virus.”
Interesting comment that the death rate may be higher in Wuhan due to the LNY selection event (too sick to travel).
A sign of the times on February 13th, 2020:
Dr Robert Redfield, director of the CDC in the U.S. interviewing on CNN: “So far we have been able to contain it, but I think this virus is probably with us beyond this season or beyond this year and I think, eventually, the virus will find a foothold and we will get community based transmission [in the U.S.] and you can start to think of it, in a sense, like seasonal flu. The only difference is, we don’t understand this virus…Right now there is no evidence to me that this outbreak is at all under control [in China]. It is definitely not controlled…Our whole issue right now is, as I said, aggressive containment to try to give us more time…It’s going to take 1 to 2 years to get that [a vaccine] probably developed and out; to prepare the health system to be able to be flexible enough to deal with the potential second major cause of respiratory illness.”
Stock market the next day: “So, people will be making and buying iPhones again in 2 weeks? Cool.”
106 Undead in Wuhan! There were 1426 dead in Wuhan yesterday, but today only 1318 of them are still dead. I guess they need to accelerate the pace of cremations. 😉
Silly@Carl_R. Those dead were merely virtual dead that were created by “double counting.” They never actually existed, and if they did exist, then they were uncreated by correcting a bookkeeping entry. There were not any “undead” unless you think dishonest bookkeeping can create zombies.
On second thought, isn’t that part of how zombie corporations are created? Maybe I should rethink this.
Just to clarify the joke, there is an internet meme that the logo for the Wuhan Bio center looks exactly like the logo for Umbrella Corporation in the game “Resident Evil”, except for the colors. Apparently, in the game, Umbrella Corporation is responsible for the creation of zombies, starting in Racoon City. Racoon, of course, is an anagram of Corona. And thus, goes the meme, the expected end product of the Corona virus is zombies.
Unfortunately the truth isn’t quite as tidy, according to snopes.com. The Biotech company that shares the logo with Umbrella Corp is actually in Shanghai, and the game spells Raccoon City with a double C. Still, it’s hard to pass up a good chance to inject zombie humor into the conversation, plus, if we’re all going to die from the virus, we just as well die smiling…. 😉
So, you were being sarcastic when you posted that data from the idiotic tweet that claimed the ratio was staying at 2.1%? I’m sorry, I missed that. Yes, if you look at the daily data reports, the data reported from China changes widely from day to day. The only day that was 2.1% was 2/1, and the other days varied from a low of 1.0% on on 1/26 to a high of 4.9% on 2/10. Since the number of reports on any one day is small compared with the total for all days, obviously the huge daily swings aren’t going to affect the cumulative average much at all.
OMG! This is bad: https://www.sciencealert.com/covid-19-your-questions-answered-about-the-coronavirus
Nearly one in five die.
No, they don’t. Always go to the source:
You are confusing “case fatality rate” with “death rate” (not sure the latter is a true medical definition).
If you have 1000 people with a virus, 10 get tested and 2 die, the CFR is 20%, not 2%.
In Wuhan, we know that the only people being tested are those with severe illness.
The best data we have to date is that about 82% do not develop severe illness, 18% may require hospitalisation and of those 3-5% need intensive care facilities. That is still a very big concern in countries like the U.K. and US where we don’t have many beds, but it is not the same as “20% of the country is going to drop dead”.
Also note that as yet, we don’t have much information on how this virus will behave outside of China, where levels of smoking and pneumonia are much higher than in the West.
I’ve seen a number of factors that predict death rate for people from viral pneumonia. All people are not equal. Over 65 has a higher death rate, as do former smokers, people with diabetes, and people with COPD. Apparently one of the best predictors is lymphocyte level. Patients with lymphocytes under .8 are at the greatest risk.
I tried to post this a couple times today, with a link to the article, but my post vanished. I’ll try again, without the link. CNN appalled me today with an article about the Coronavirus that I thought was extraordinarily unhelpful. In describing it they said it was basically like a cold, but with a chance that if you were elderly, or immune compromised, you might develop symptoms that were like pneumonia or bronchitis.
Umm…no, just no. While elderly, and immune compromised people are more at risk, anyone can develop severe symptoms, and moreover, anyone has a chance of dying of viral pneumonia. The doctor that found the first cases died of it in his 30s.
I don’t know that much about viral pathology, but the virus seems very nasty. From what I have read it evades the immune system to a degree, and in the more severe cases later reduces the immune system.
It is not flu (different family of virus) though it shares some symptoms. It is not a cold though it comes from the same family of viruses as colds.
I don’t think it is understood how it effects some more than others. The elderly or infirm is understood that fatality will be more likely, there is no secret to this, but it is all age groups that are susceptible.
It is because it is novel, new, our immune systems have never seen it, it is not evading the immune system, it is just that our immune systems do not recognize it as a threat till it is too late. And men have a much better chance than women to get sick. All I know is if I get it you can say goodbye to me, I nearly died of pneumonia when I was young and still healthy, a couple of times. And I remember reading way back last year about a man being brought by ambulance into the city of Wuhan, they called it a case of pneumonic plague at the time, I thought OH SHIT! This is it. And then he died and two more were brought in.
Are you in China? It sounds from the above that you might be?
You are right, the virus is new. What I think is clear is that the path to recovery or death is a long one for many, and therefore I suspect that ensuring you get enough sleep, eat healthily and boost levels of vitamins will be important.
We don’t have data on all those who have died but we do know that air pollution and smoking increase risk of respiratory disease in any case. We also know that at least three of the young dead were doctors working round the clock, and the impact of that on the immune system is well known.
I probably sound like some diet obsessed nutritionist – I’m not – but taking care of your immune system is important.
One last thing – my aunt and uncle. Uncle was in his 80s, aunt 13 years younger. He had COPD and asthma, the former brought on by years of smoking and there had been several touch and go moments with pneumonia. She was relatively healthy and still worked part time. Both got the flu. She died, he lived. Nothing is certain.
No Jimmy. I am in Oregon now, moving to Florida next month. But, it will sythe through populations all over the world eventually. Yes they might temporarily contain it for the moment, or slow it, but it is here now and will spread eventually.
From what I read it is more than that, I’d have to go through a ton of bookmarks to find the paper but if I do I will post it. It has some property apparently that makes its recognition difficult, not just out of novelty. The more serious cases have immune system failure occuring that is not just leading to pneumonia but other difficulties. I’m out of my depth but the study was professional, and the implications unpleasant.
(Anyone adamant the virus is natural can save time by not reading the following, as it looks at pointers to other origin)
Which is incidentally where it finds an intersect with conspiracy theory. The HIV markers have gone for further review, another professional study is being rewritten because a sequence that had no plausible natural explanation was then found in an older SARS sequence ( the implication being maybe that SARS was manufactured, or not) , the lab chief in Wuhan specialised in how bats remained carriers ( i.e. either how they defended/lived with the virus in terms of vaccination effort vs. offensive use long incubation transmitters or immune system evasion) , you have known accidental releases, opinion of biological warfare professionals, you have smuggling of samples, you have known biological warfare strategies, or odd events like batCoV ratg13 (closest relative to sCoV2) being found in bats and registered after sCoV2 is epidemic so providing a one off explanation path to natural introduction, you even have the left overs of public psychosis from the Skripal event. Maybe propaganda against “conspiracy” and “disinformation”, or their own extremes, has closed down people’s thinking, because anyone half awake would not dismiss the possibility that there was foul play without first being certain there was none. That is hard to accept for many because the implications are beyond what they are able to comprehend, because it is an endless series of trails that just evaporate for want of proof, just as other official explanations often meet similar ends and simply rest on pushed hypothesis or empty assumptions.
Just saying, and fortunately there are some serious people taking a scientific or informed approach to try to answer or clear up these questions.
Well, if the biowarfare theory is correct – the lab technician who inadvertently let SARS out last time probably got more than a slap on the wrist this time.
I wouldn’t know where to start with these theories to be honest, it will have to be some good science that narrows down the possibilities of what has occured, the point is that the likelihood there is some kind of human input to this event is high in my opinion. I don’t know what happened to those involved in the earlier releases, a cleaner was probably not heard from again or something. Here if they admit own mistake then they have the relatives and friends of a thousand victims (so far) who are not going to understand the meaning of social harmony any more I think. High level biolabs and the work they do I imagine are about as close to central authority as it gets, so blaming the local mayor or even the director of the lab is not going to absolve those who created the labs in the first place, no matter their intention for doing so.
Yes, has to to with the way it attaches and injects it’s genetic materials, that is why men are more susceptible than females. On the other hand, while females are more resistant once they get it the bug is more likely to be fatal due to what appears to be the immunopathology of their much greater immune response.
Remember that in SARS younger people got it just as often as older, but in them it was mild to moderate, while in people over 60 the death rate from SARS was 50%. That is a pattern that is repeating here if not quite as strongly, but then it is rather early to tell. One thing is certain, there is clear evidence that if you wanted to design a bug to wipe smokers off the face of the earth this would be your germ. I have smoked for about 50 years, I am toast when this shit gets to the USA and starts to spread through the population.
I learned From CNN today how dangerous coronavirus is:
” The viruses can make people sick, usually with a mild to moderate upper respiratory tract illness, similar to a common cold.”
“For those with a weakened immune system, the elderly and the very young, there’s a chance the virus could cause a lower, and much more serious, respiratory tract illness like a pneumonia or bronchitis.”
So, nothing to worry about. It’s pretty much like a mild cold, but the elderly and very young do have a chance that it becomes more like bronchitis or pneumonia, though it won’t really BE pneumonia. For everyone else, there is nothing to worry about.
Here are a couple other news stories that I haven’t seen commented on:
What is even scarier is that if the lady in the photo knocked on my door, I’d let her in :).
Leaving quarantine should be a serious criminal offence.
But equally quarantine should be protective. Shutting people in a big hall (I think Mish called it a deatharium) is cruel.
I wasn’t trying to make a value judgement, only to point out that it is inevitable that people will not want to be quarantined. They will think they are well, and fear than in quarantine, they might catch it, and flee, which in turn may make them super-spreaders if, in fact, they actually are infected. This won’t be the last we hear of people fleeing quarantine. It’s a natural, if unfortunate, reaction.
And, indeed, advised.
A couple of years ago we had a series here with an SAS fellow telling people how to survive certain circumstances. One was a flu pandemic. Key message: don’t get put in a quarantine facility and if you do, get out quickly.
Its a weak hand flush..into the …….
Apparently “SARS-COV-2” is the scientific name for this coronavirus and not the WHO name for this virus. According to Dr. Michael J. Ryan in today’s WHO press conference, “The naming process for the virus is not done by WHO. The virus is named according to its phylogenetic links with other viruses.” He then explained that WHO named the disease the virus causes “COVID-19” because they believe that name better “relates the virus to the world.” I guess they were not comfortable with people calling this “SARS-2?” I prefer the scientific naming method.
I am going to start calling this illness “SARS-2” just to annoy the WHO.
Apparently they said Wuhan flu or Chinese virus etc. discriminated or carried negative connotations. I won’t use their name because it seems stupidly out of place , like they took the name of a robot pet owned by a techie. I will just stick to nCoV, or sCov2 or Wuhan virus.
Yes, the WHO naming guidelines are written to prevent unfairly stigmatizing an animal, a place, or people. I have no problem with that, but when WHO avoids the word “SARS” even though the virus that causes COVID-19 is a relative of SARS, then I object. I suppose they think people would be confused.
I figure “SARS-2” is a good name because the viral researchers officially named the virus “SARS-COV-2.” I guess if the Fed were naming this virus, they would call it “Not-SARS.”
I thought the Kung Flu was the best choice.
Quick estimate: 3% outside of China, non-smoker, 12% outside of China, smoker, 5% China, non-smoker, 25% China, smoker.
I am struggling to follow this, apologies. Could you reword?
Oh-oh, the conspiracy theorists are gonna be all over this one.
They decided to tell 20% of the truth to make themselves look legit. I love the plant that went back to work this week and already has the entire place in quarantine and no one can go home. Probably making them work 24/7 as well. Fk China.
Thanks for using Log Scale charts!
Twitter commentator Harry Chen PhD has shifted his video coverage from sardonic comments on police interacting with the citizens of Wuhan to the number of fire videos posted to Wechat. Something is going on in China and insurance fraud comes to mind.
My guess is that, if containment holds, the the current out-break will rip through quarantined area by April and infect anyone that is susceptible to the virus–hence the China government statements as to the timing.
This says a few of things–first, the transmission of the virus is pretty rapid and unstoppable in a population. Second, if it is in the population you are a part of, you will get it (asymptomatic, mild, moderate or severe). Third, containment of cases will not occur without dictatorial oversight and enforcement.
Th unknown question–IF quarantine holds, IF all possible people in quarantine area have had the disease–is transmission still possible through residual virus in those people?
-80% mild symptoms
-15% pneumonia
-3-5 % intensive care
Those numbers subject to change but at this point in time look to be best projections from the CDC report.
Big unknown is still the CFR rate which looks to be 1-4%. We may not know for some time what the actual numbers are?
Where are we going remains to be seen but there is definitely cause for concern.
What that does not tell us is if some of those that survive infection go on to be carriers, what then? Lifetime quarantine? Knowing China that would be a very short lifetime. It also does not mention anything about something nobody is talking about, this is a fairly fast evolving virus, with this many cases the possibilities for mutation are high, some mutations into milder bugs, but some into superbugs with a much higher death toll. And the quarantine so far has been more hope than substance, we saw a guy get it in Singapore and then spread it to France and UK. Whole cruise ships with thousands aboard quarantined. Another cruise ship that was denied docking moved on to Cambodia where there is as good as no public health system, and people get off that to fly around the world sick. I have to admit I saw a Chinese man in the airport last week when I had to fly to Tampa and back, I just wanted to get as far away from him as I could. And the Denver airport, what a zoo, crowded, 9 degrees F outside with drafts and forced heat, perfect breeding conditions. Airplanes packed to the gills with people practically stacked up like cordwood breathing recycled air. Jesus. This is going to sweep the planet.
Could you please elaborate on what “western” and “eastern” sanitation methods constitute and how one prevents spread and the other does not?
10% of Chinese cooking oil is derived from the illicit trade in “gutter oil”, which comprises fat bergs removed from sewers and boiled so that sanitary towels and other solids can be removed.
Admittedly boiling fat is unlikely to carry viruses, but combined with the wet markets, you can start to see why people think form this view.
On the other hand:
That’s disgusting
It is absolutely disgusting. Probably not a health hazard (other than the dangers from rancid oil) but disgusting none the less. You can find youtube videos showing the “processing” (by which I mean heating it in a wok, scooping out the solids) but I would plan around mealtimes.
I think the following posters answered your question on Chinese sanitation. Case closed.
Quite obviously there is a lack of test kits as well as accurate test kits, China probably isn’t being nefarious but they are simply reporting CONFIRMED cases….it’s our media that is not pointing out these are confirmed cases only!
For the past 3 days youtube has been tagging all the independent video producers with a link to WHO if they post a video on the Corona Virus, but all the CNN, MSNBC, ect, MSM are not tagged when they post corona info. Let’s see what happens to these videos/independent producers.
“I find it amazing that there are 0 cases in Africa or South America and even though I agree with our great leader on this particular idea of closing off China, I doubt that will work.”
I read a story somewhere that 1500 people a day travel from China to Africa, most going to Ethiopia which is taking passengers’ temperatures.
What’s the death rate? Do we reliably know this?
About 4% death rate. This figure is unreliable, it could be as low as 1% or maybe as high as the SARS virus 10%. BTW WWI battlefield casualties were about 10% in major battles, by comparison.
a couple of thoughts from an MD:
1). they bumped the numbers because the external monitors are gearing up with the WHO lead team coming to China, they can’t hide this completely. Plus the 250% increase in deaths in 1 day isn’t the headline with this bump in numbers. Maybe they are hoping to obscure the death number.
2). verifying the cases today via a CT is not nearly as accurate as doing PCR lab testing. CT would only show cases with obvious pneumonia, not a mildly symptomatic case as we have seen many patients have. A few days ago they were saying, if the person tests positive via lab but is asymptomatic we won’t count them – which of course would be under reporting and missing a lot of those folks.
3). If it takes the Prime Minister of Japan to declare that all of Japan’s resources will be used to do PCR testing at 1000 cases a day, to get the cruise ship cleared, China can’t possibly keep up. Even the CDC seems to be struggling with a few hundred cases they are watching. Unfortunately China must be overwhelmed.
4). The CDC is warning the public that it is moving to the idea that this virus is coming here, as are the officials in Great Britain. This is a change in their stance from previous days.
5). I find it amazing that there are 0 cases in Africa or South America and even though I agree with our great leader on this particular idea of closing off China, I doubt that will work. Maybe a week or 2 ago that could’ve worked for us if the entire world sealed off China completely but this will show up elsewhere and it will have already spread. Too many people have ‘mild’ disease or are asymptomatic carriers, so all the temperature checks are just BS like airport screening – to make us feel safe. Doctors in other countries (or even the US) with a flu case in some elderly guy won’t be thinking – let’s check for nCov2019. By the time they figure it out there will be an outbreak of 50 or 100 cases and by the time they catch that, it will have already spread. for the vast majority of people this looks like a common cold at the worst.
6).Hopkins website has been a great resource for tracking. The graphs were looking great until today’s number change- nice log graphs.
I had been patiently waiting for a while for my short options calls though with the market ignoring all this, I had to go in partially with options expiring in Sept and January. I will gamble more on shorting this bull market if it keeps rising, I don’t want a recession but I believe this will be the black swan this time. I doubt China will be opening for business anytime soon.
Good calls (no pun). I’m also out of the US stock market before COVID-19 hit, for unrelated business reasons. Below is a nice “parade of horribles” from a commentator on Marketwatch named “MikeR” on today’s lead story at MW (and Asian markets down 1% today). The only thing unsaid below is that viruses like this have a habit of staying in a population for a long time, and reappearing. The COVID-19, in various mutations, generally less lethal each time, could be with the world for years…
Killer (no pun) sentences below: “Lives on surfaces for 9 days (at least) [imagine the shoppers at Walmart!-RL]. Lethality is as high as SARS, and even worse the spread rate is an Rnaught of 4.0. 70% of China’s people will get this virus.”
MikeR commentator at MW:
Its gonna slam the US economy in ways you cannot even conceive. Every single product we buy has some origin or connection to China. 500 million people are now on lock down. These are the people in the BIG cities where manufacturing is done. Rural areas arent being locked down, but those people arent part of the factory equation. Look – China has been covering up the numbers big time, as its a huge debacle and will be a MAJOR embarrassment once all the real facts and death figures come out. It wont need to be a global pandemic for this situation to reek havoc on the US and many other countries. China basically cannot work, and execute the necessities of daily life at all. They are in pure survival mode, and they have their military now trying to come in to keep the entire system from falling apart. This virus is wicked every sense of the word. Asymptomatic spread. 5 to 24 day incubation period where its totally contagious. Lives on surfaces for 9 days (at least). Lethality is as high as SARS, and even worse the spread rate is an Rnaught of 4.0. 70% of China’s people will get this virus. It will change their lives forever. The sickness itself, horrible symptoms and lung failures and organ failures, and no help from medical systems, will scar them forever. This is like a nuke went off in every one of their big cities, except its going in slow motion, so it will be months before they can even think about recovering. The spread will go in waves
“I find it amazing that there are 0 cases in Africa or South America”
Cold viruses don’t survive HEAT. South of the Equator, It’s Summer now. Come May – June I believe this virus will slow down or be wiped out in the Northern Hemisphere unless people prefer to live in ACs –
One guy comes back from Wuhan to Toronto and later they confirm he has the corona virus. Toronto area schools cancels classes.
I think it is time both to acknowledge the effort that China has gone to in order to contain this, but it is also time to question the utter stupidity of other governments. Clearly, we can’t stop the virus forever, but stopping flights from China would slow it down. I’m guessing at least 1500 people arrive at Heathrow from China everyday.
Just did a quick calculation based on number of confirmed cases in UK today, doubling time of 6 days, 3.5% of people needing intensive care, 10 days in intensive care before resolution.
By 13th April, we will have half our UK intensive care beds in use (that assumes we have half available – 90-95% are in use in winter)
By 23rd April, all ICU beds are in use.
By 28th April, the ones in ICU are the lucky ones, 5000 lying in corridors.
One month later, every NHS hospital bed is full, and 100,000 intensive care patients are lying in tents.
Obviously that assumes containment measures are not successful, doesn’t account for the warming weather, etc. But it does suggest that flying in thousands from China every day is short sighted.
Can you say “ over reaction”
In my mind, the inclusion of clinically diagnosed cases with the total confirmed infected is a good move. Including pneumonia deaths that were clinically diagnosed but not confirmed with a lab test is also a good move. No doubt China’s doctors have seen enough patients that they can tell what the pneumonia from SARS-COV-2 virus looks like on a CT scan. (W.H.O. almost named the virus SARS-B. I was close.) I applaud China’s decision to include these cases with their totals. Bravo!
It is a serious concern that the lab tests used for conclusive diagnosis thus far have given significant false negatives. Dr. Anthony Fauci mentioned this problem in the first press conference when the President’s Coronavirus Task Force announced quarantines and travel restrictions with regard to the U.S., and I was surprised nobody made a big deal about that.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why the passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess cannot be tested to allow them to get off the ship. Barring a better test, they are not going to be able to get off unless they stop having new cases or unless their respective nation states agree to arrange for dedicated evacuation and transport to quarantine facilities within their home countries. Those people are in a seriously bad situation.
I agree that this is a good move. Those who said China was probably not able to keep up on testing were proven correct. It also appears that those who believed China was intentionally under-reporting have to deal with a data point in the opposite direction. Going back and rediagnosing 125 or so death as coronavirus deaths that were previously diagnosed as pneumonia is a step towards better numbers.
The one concerning thing about recent data is that, now that China has build the two new hospitals, and staffed them with 1600 people from around China, you’d expect to start seeing Hubei moving towards the CFR that is found everywhere else, but it remains very high.
Four out of 174 taken off the Diamond Princess are in serious condition in ICU and/or on a ventilator (2.3%). All are over 60 years old.
… and now it is 218.
Lack of accurate info sharing is THE problem.
Seems as nobody knows what’s really going on.
It is sensible to track “lab confirmed” cases given we also know how many cases were lab tested and the credibility of lab testing (at each time – let’s say daily).
It is reasonable to publish stats for clinically diagnosed patients given there is visibility to the criteria used.
Not only it is difficult to maintain the needed consistency and metadata detail, but there are question about the integrity of the whole data collection and publishing process.
This viral infection in the USA is flattening because of the Western Sanitation methods! In Asia it will keep growing at a fast rate because of their sanitation methods. OUR ONLY WORRY IS THAT IT DOES MUTATE AND BECOME MORE VIRULENT AND TRANSMITTED IN OTHER WAYS!
LOL. Sanitation is not an issue, and your concern is not the ONLY WORRY. And quite shouting. You’ll have time enough to shout when the DJ-30 is down 10000 points (a typical draw down btw, it would not surprise me, but down 20000 points would and probably be a buying opportunity).
Yeah 20k drop MIGHT be a buying opportunity I suppose but aIm still hedging with physical bullion
Thank you for continuing to question the information coming from the Chinese government. It is clear that they cannot be trusted to report the truth.
There are so many questions about this virus, not just the numbers of those infected and dead, but also about its origin.
As many have pointed out, the BL4 lab in Wuhan is not far from the market the virus is supposed to have originated from. This lab probably had a leak of a bioweapon. There are serious questions about the research labs in China and the security of the viruses they are studying.
Recently two researchers at Harvard: the head of the Chemistry Department, Charles Leiber, and a Chinese national, Zaosong Zheng, doing research in pathology at Harvard’s lab at Beth Deaconess Medical Center were arrested for possible espionage ties to China. Zheng was arrested for trying to smuggle biological research items out of a Boston lab and into China, aboard a commercial flight.
The kind of genetic research Zheng was doing can be used for medical and vaccine purposes but also for bioweapons research. It seems clear that China was actively trying to bribe U.S. researchers, and to infiltrate their labs to steal research that could be very dangerous if not handled properly.
It is worth asking questions about the level of security and safety of Wuhan’s BL4 lab, the viruses there and all of Chinas labs, especially when one of the top Chinese research scientists is trying to smuggle biological matter into China for testing in his lab, by hiding it in his socks.
If we are not investigating the origins of the virus and these espionage incidents, then more pandemics will follow.
…Total Cases = total cumulative count (60,286)…
No, massive, no, gigantic under-count–look at the step in the graph and fill in the other dates to an approximate slope and total cases is about 160,000.
And that doesn’t take into account the less ill, or those dying at home.
I will repeat my comment from earlier today….
….The coronavirus produces mild cold symptoms in about 80% of patients, Dr. Sylvie Briand, head of WHO’s Global Infectious Hazard Preparedness division, told reporters on Monday. About 15% of the people who contract the virus have ended up with pneumonia, with 3% to 5% of all patients needing intensive care, she said….
And this is the real problem that has produced the chaos in China– the 3 to 5% needing intensive care.
For example, Minnesota, a state pretty well served by medicine has a population of about 5 million. If 50% of the people had some form of the virus, that would be 2.5 million people. Of that, 3 to 5% might require quarantined intensive care (75,000 to 125,000 people). Based upon the typical stay of at least 10 days to recover, that would be 750,000 to 1,250,000 patient-days of quarantined care required.
Well, in Minnesota in 2017, there were approximately 500,000 to 600,000 patient-days of care over the year. This was for all cases in all hospitals (non-quarantined for the vast majority).
How does a medical system serve a case-load that would go from 500 thousand patient-days to 1.25 million or 1.75 million ? Not very well. And throw in the quarantine requirements. How would that mix with the standard patient population that has the normal cancers, heart problems, broken bones, bullet wounds, etc, etc ?
Chaos is the only possible result….
By the way, Wuhan had about 6 million people after the reported 5 million fled.
Buckle-up boys!
Stock market is setting new records every day. Gold is headed for the toilet. Trump has a lock on a second term. What’s not to love?
“What’s not to love?”
eh, people dying?
Who gives a toot about the state of some Federal Reserve welfare program?
Gold is up nearly $20 on the latest news and stock futures are down.
The mining stocks do not confirm the current gold price so this is temporary. They point to a gold price around $1300.
You’re nuts Gold will outperform stocks this year
More news like this over the coming months.
BNN stated as source this: http://wjw.hubei.gov.cn/fbjd/dtyw/202002/t20200213_2025581.shtml
What it says is that from now on, they will also add “clinically diagnosed” patients to the total. In other words, until now, they were only counting people with lab results (just like everybody else). Now they will count using superficial symptoms, so that people can get medical help even without tests.
Out of the 14,840, there were 13,332 “clinically diagnosed” people. Based on symptoms, they may have the coronavirus, or flu or something else. It’s not lab confirmed.
Using the original criteria (lab confirmed, like everywhere else), there were 1,508 new cases today. Less than yesterday.
I would also like to point out that the chart, as is, is meaningless, given the change in criteria.
Thanks for the sober analysis. However, it’s also likely China is underreporting the numbers, see Mishtalk and also this telling Tweet (as found from MishTalk):
There is no way to know the real numbers. Asymptomatic and mild cases are usually not counted, even though they may be the majority.
The math you posted is odd (though less odd once you stop rounding the decimals). The fact that there are zero non-Chinese deaths to this day is odd too.
Spoke to a colleague in Singapore this morning. Locally, they are hearing from the media that of 50 cases, 8 are in critical condition. I’m guessing we are a few days away from some non-China fatalities.
We also have some cases now in the UK that look serious – young kiddie with haemophilia and a lung condition.
We did see another non-China death today, this one from Japan. If you take 3 deaths divided into the cases 2 weeks ago, which was 105, you are nearly at a 3% CFR. We are also, as I pointed out, starting to see more non-Wuhan deaths reported in China, with 10 reported yesterday. Whether the CFR is 1% or 3%, it is far, far above the CFR for the flu.
30-60 million people in the US get the flu every year. This has a higher R0 than the flu. If it gets free in the US, it is not impossible that we would see 60 million people get it, which means 600,000 to 2 million deaths, depending on the CFR.
It always cracks me up when someone posts that and demonstrates that they have limited comprehension of math. You do realize that the ratio you cite is meaningless, but also that it reflects a large pool, and when you add a few more cases and deaths each day, it isn’t going to move the ratio very far.
Just to make the point clear to my fiend Carl_R, who seems to roll around laughing on the floor at inappropriate times, lol, do the math: 361/17238 = 2.09% (reported as 2.1% by China) but merely add another 39 cases in the numerator and you get: 400/17238 = 2.32% = 2.3% rounded, which is not the constant ratio of 2.1% reported by China for weeks now. In real life, as I said, if the numbers were real and not manufactured you’d have slight variances like 2.1%, 2.3%, 2.0%, 2.5% etc. Time to buy some puts Carl_R? Protect yourself.
You’re just digging deeper. The daily numbers vary widely and dropped as low at 1.4% on 1/31, and then rose steadily from there, reaching 4.9% two days ago. They are far, far from constant. However, when you add a single day’s data to a large pool, the pool doesn’t move much. If you go back further than your data, the cumulative data was 2.9% on 1/25, and fell slowly, reaching 2.1% by February, and almost reached 2.0 percent by 2/4, but has been rising ever since, and hit 2.5% two days ago. The chunk of data added yesterday was so large that it made the cumulative ratio move quite a bit, and since they added a lot more cases than deaths, yesterday’s daily ratio was 1.7%, dropping the cumulative number to 2.3%.
If you think China is manipulating the data, that is something that can’t be proven or disproven. If you try to prove it by claiming the ratio is constant, which it demonstrably is not, you only make yourself look foolish.
China’s Coronavirus Figures Don’t Add Up. ‘This Never Happens With Real Data.’
Thanks for the breakdown.
Not sure “diagnosing” Aids with X-rays ought to be considered “better reporting and methodology.”
More of an admission that there just isn’t enough resources to perform more reliable tests on every candidate in a timely manner, so you settle for second best….
I will also point out that the new procedures seem to only affect Hubei. Just as we had been seeing in Hubei prior to today’s numbers, the rest of China is reporting slowing numbers of new cases, and rising numbers of deaths. Here is the data for the rest of China for the week:
627 new cases, 4 deaths (.6%)
566 new cases, 5 deaths (.9%)
480 new cases, 8 deaths (1.7%)
433 new cases, 6 deaths (1.4%)
387 new cases, 5 deaths (1.3%)
359 new cases, 5 deaths (1.45)
324 new cases, 10 deaths (3.1%)
So, today was the lowest number of new cases in the rest of China, and the highest number of new deaths, and there is no jump in new cases today except in Hubei. (and no, it wasn’t a constant ratio at 2.1%…rofl).
How does anyone know what is happening outside Wuhan to claim no jump in cases?
Cui Bono?
Seriously, at this point in the game China has a LOT more to gain from transparency than from cover ups.
There is no indication of deliberate cover ups anywhere – at least not since the national govt got involved. There was a diagnostic standard that was followed, and it was found to be flawed. But I highlight once again: in China, pneumonia is not an uncommon illness. As high as 221 deaths per 100,000 people, as opposed to around 28 in the U.S.
So you are an A&E doctor treating a case of pneumonia. There will be maybe 24500 deaths from this in Wuhan this year. This case has been tested and does not have Coronavirus. You record it as pneumonia.
Don’t forget that the eventual Mexican swine flu number was many, many times higher than we knew at the time, due to the same fog of war.
I think the issue is that there has been so much deliberate rumour mongering from the start that everybody now concludes China cannot be trusted. But at present nothing they have said has been contradicted and the rumours have mostly been debunked.
Hysteria. People love it for some reason.
What I note is that the confusion over Chinese figures serves as an excuse for other countries and WHO to not pronounce or react. It is sort of ironic because if Chinese figures are close then it is not good, but people just agree to dismissing them, as either not including all fatalities or not including mild infections – so we wait a month or two instead :/
Your quip to Esclaro was prescient btw
The situation reminds me of the standard American disaster movie format. Somebody warns of an impending disaster, it doesn’t happen, he or she is discredited, then he or she forecasts another disaster and is ignored by his boss (who, eventually and in a usually unintentional act of contrition, gets crushed, blown up, drowned or infected).
“SARS is the big one”
“MERS is the big one”
“Coronavirus is the big one……..we think….but we’ll just take a little longer to decide”
When the economic imperative to return to some normality outweighs social concerns – everyone will be allowed back at work and it could really spread exponentially.
Can there now be a “safe”, “nothing to see hear folks” time? It can’t return to the old “normal” but this is not yet admitted. When it is there’s likely to be a real “wake-up” call.
If it only takes down non-workers they will let it run but when a 34 year old Dr can be killed no one is safe.
Mish, I’m not making any comment about what is or is not actually going on in other parts of China. What I am saying is that the huge jump in reported cases all came solely from Wuhan. There was no jump in reported cases from the rest of China. As I showed in my post above, reported cases from the rest of China actually declined.
The hospitals in Wuhan would have been overrun quite quickly. Medical staff also contract the disease quite quickly if not protected. Over 500 medical staff in Wuhan alone had the illness in mid January.
The true number of cases is very likely, far far higher. Particularly if it’s as contagious as it seems to be evidencing in Hong Kong.
The number of cases outside of mainland China is likely far higher than the confirmed roughly 600 now. There will be plenty of data that can be gleaned from this over the next few days. We now have 3 deaths for those 600 so far. I’m hearing anecdotal evidence of people in Singapore who had a cold/flu not even being recommended testing for coronavirus by the doctor, from about 2 weeks ago. Many people have mild enough symptoms, particularly if they are young. For the Japanese lady that died from Coronavirus, they only found this out posthumously. I think people are going to realise that it’s impossible to keep proper numbers on this. They still have hardly tested a third of the people on that one cruise ship in Japan. How long has it been, a week? We are expecting that China can do full testing for thousands of people every day. That seems ridiculous to me. Japan hardly has any cases so far and is having difficulty testing. We still have only the same number of countries declaring cases as a week ago also, 27… seems quite implausible to me.
As I listen to all of this, it doesn’t sound like this is containable. If indeed there can be a 24 day incubation period and most cases are as mild as a common cold, there will be no way to effectively prevent the spread, since it will be impossible to detect the infected in time. Are there hundreds more cases than have been identified walking around outside of China? I don’t know, but it seems to be likely. This thing may be unavoidable over the long term.
Best bet for survival, get sick early, or prep for a month or two of isolation, stay in and stay healthy until after the peak in infections occurs. That way medical care might not be overwhelmed when you get sick. Quitting smoking, losing the spare tire and heading to the gym might improve your chances a bit, too. This is not necessarily the case, though, as some viruses kick the healthiest the hardest.