Why We Shouldn’t Hope COVID-19 Is Seasonal Like The Flu
There’s an excellent video discussion on 538 entitled Why We Shouldn’t Hope COVID-19 Is Seasonal Like The Flu that I recommend everyone play.
Here’s a few lines that stood out for me.
“It’s not an individual risk problem as it is a collective risk problem. The problem is not whether you will recover. The problem is whether you spread it to somebody who doesn’t.”
The video explains the virus does not go away in warm weather. Rather, it lessens but intensifies in the opposite hemisphere, then comes back. There are other issues related to humidity that scientists do not quite understand. For example, near the equator viruses can persist at the same strength near round. It is the temperate zones that are cyclical.
Please click on the above link and play the video.
Lockdown in Spain
What About France?
US vs Europe
Massachusetts Coronavirus Cluster
https://twitter.com/kr3at/status/1238920033088274432
Massachusetts coronavirus cluster of at least 82 cases started by people not yet showing symptoms.
Social Distancing
Denmark Closes Border
Meanwhile … in LA
https://twitter.com/kr3at/status/1239003194098884608
Meanwhile … in the US
https://twitter.com/NKaeding/status/1239001126579703809
Expect Hospital Beds in the US to Fill
Meanwhile … In the Dallas Ft Worth Airport
Screening is pure useless bullsheet.
Meanwhile … At Chicago O’hare Airport
Meanwhile … in Ft Lauderdale
https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/1238842194166939648https://twitter.com/anameonagrave/status/1239003569736597504
Meanwhile … at the “Mar-a-Lago Petri dish”
But Hey
But hey, please keep your social distancing. Especially at crowded airports where it is impossible.
Amazingly Wild Ride: The Week in Review
In case you missed it please see Amazingly Wild Ride: The Week in Review
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Laparoscopic surgery is a surgical technique in which [url=https://www.akshayahospital.in/%5DLaparoscopic myomectomy surgery[/url] short, narrow tubes are inserted into the abdomen through small incisions.
https://www.akshayahospital.in/%5DLaparoscopic
Here is some hard to find health advice: (everyone relies on drugs now)
It’s all just a big coincidence… https://youtu.be/AoLw-Q8X174
Really… https://techstartups.com/2020/03/12/mit-biologist-says-fear-mongering-coronavirus-will-go-biggest-fraud-manipulate-economies/
He is running for the senate
He is against vaccines
His main expertise is in engineering Biology is a recent degree
He claims that he invented email
Due diligence
I tend to think that this is way over-hyped, but then part of me thinks, wait, maybe this is really a massive crisis, but then I read about the Swine flue, again from the Chinaman, and by this time many people were infected and over 1000 dead Americans and the Media hardly even talked about….so go figure…time will tell if this was “manipulation.”
Don’t know that I agree with this. Have you seen this study?
https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=350017064003085125070097099080097119097014088087016004031107064030089004066069011030032012051099111045001109071013084118075019058073017052065019077015125028016095004076031118127071119112091025120116085076072093090082090097007019112087088114110084124&EXT=pdf
Look at the bright side—this may help make social security solvent for longer
as long as you aren’t one of the victims Dust to Dust
Ask about our free carbon recyling plan!
A virus is just like a thunder/lightning, etc, it’s a part of nature with both good and bad as perceived by human beings.
Who knew?
A bunch of billionaires might get wiped out thereby reducing income inequality….
I doubt that. Billionaires are the first to flee and to protect themselves. During the plague they left the cities until it went away with their millions intact.
Epidemics follow Farr’s Law, not exponential growth, but panic is fun.
This is an immune system event, not a virus event. Strong immune systems are not at risk & immune systems strengthen with sunlight.
Agreed. Those with weak immune systems should die. It’s the natural order asserting itself. Humans have to be the only species that actively subverts the natural order — so counter-productive.
Lovely so the 10% fill up all the hospital beds in the country just like in Italy.
Amazing display of ignorance
In the early stages, Farr’s law and Exponential distribution are the same. Once you get to 40-50% of the population infected, they diverge, and you start down the back side of the bell curve. Note that every chart you see that urges “flatten the curve” shows a bell curve. I have never seen one that shows an exponential curve to infinity. Thus, he’s just stating the obvious.
Humanity’s “leaders” blew the chance to prepare for this most recent virus army. Now, we’re all reduced, again, to hunkering down in our fox holes and waiting anxiously for it to pass. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
There are lots of plausible reasons why flu slows in the summer. More humidity, higher temperatures, more UV light, less time indoors, etc, but for every virus that seems to follow one of these, there are others that don’t. I have started tracking the spread rate regionally, and I see no reason to think it is going to slow, and that, unfortunately, means we will hit the wall in late April.
Here are the average daily growth rate for number of cases by region for the last 3 days:
Caribbean 143 cases, growing 46.4% a day
S. America 349, 41.4%
Former USSR 202, 36.5%
Central/South Africa 138, 35.5%
N. America 3338, 30.9%
C. America 143, 30.6%
Pacific Islands/Aus/NZ 621, 30.4%
N. Africa 205, 25.7%
Europe 50574, 25.1%
S. Asia 1023, 12.7%
Middle East 15266, 12.1%
Asia except China 9190, 1.8%
China 80850, 0.0%
Death Princess 696, 0.0%
The cases in the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere got off to a slower start, and I would attribute that to the fact that there is a lot less travel to/from there. Now that they have a foothold, though, their cases are growing fast. In fact, they are growing fast in virtually every part of the globe. The ONLY area where cases are growing slower than the rest of the world without tight controls seems to be the Middle East. Thus, maybe the virus doesn’t like hot dry climates, but other than that, it spreads effectively in any other climate.
The only places where cases are not growing is places that have locked down or instituted other controls. There is nothing here that indicates that weather is a factor. China locked down, and stopped it. S. Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan have stopped it, too. Iran and Italy let it get bad, but have instituted controls, too.
Here are the last three days for countries who have locked down or have other effective controls:
Italy +19.1% per day, down from 25% before the lockdown
Iran 12.1% per day (but, how accurate is their data?)
Japan 7.9% per day
Singapore 5.9% per day
Hong Kong 4.0% per day
Taiwan 3.3% per day
S. Korea 1.2% per day
China 0.0% per day
Take these countries out, and the entire rest of the world is growing at 28.8% per day. That means doubling every 3 days, and going up by a factor of ten times about every 9 days. Expect shutdowns and tight controls in more places, soon.
China’s numbers no longer matter, other than the fact that they give us hope that it can be contained. As we see the “China method” implemented in Italy, we will see if their results are similar. In the end, what matters is the numbers in your own country.
The fear is that Italy aren’t implementing the “China method” rigorously enough.
I remember posts about Chinese workers literally nailing people’s doors shut, to keep them inside. And of people being locked up for weeks without food. Not sure if either was true and not just attempts at “Scary Chinaman” fear mongerig, but it does seem as if the Wuhan quarantine was/is pretty intense.
The Italians, even now, don’t seem to have the stomach, nor perhaps the resources, for that sort of intensity.
Neither do they seem to be nearly as aggressive wrt disinfecting the background environment. Which may, or may not, be of critical importance (even from Asia I haven’t seen any conclusive studies clearly demonstrating it’s necessity), but has been another component of the various, seemingly successful, East Asian responses.
It will take months before data is meaningful. Places with few cases most likely have infections that originated in other countries, so you can’t use the numbers to measure community spread, which is what would be hypothetically contained with the onset of summer.
I agree that right now we don’t have data separating local spread from travel, but I disagree that it will take months to sort out. Travel around the globe is shrinking daily, and meanwhile, local spread is accelerating. Withing a week or so most cases in most places will be local spread. The rate of spread was again very high today in C. America (35%), the Caribbean (40%), and S. America (39%), all of which are warmer climates.
This screening BS started a LONG TIME AGO. I came in through SFO Feb 2nd, and it was the same story. Also another of our delusion has been shattered: “MORE THAN 50% OF THE 300 #COVIDー19 CASES IN CRITICAL CONDITION IN FRANCE ARE UNDER 60,”
Social distancing = halted economy. So long as the virus maintains a > 1 transmission rate – then what? And even if a country does manage to eliminate cases does it then reopen international travel?
A flu outbreak changes people’s utility functions.
The economy keeps ticking along just as it always does.
Actors just rearrange their relative preferences, the value they place on different things, as a result of new information being made available.
For example, the relative utility of a toilet paper roll is upped, vs that of a trip to a crowded night club or whorehouse.
As a result, some activities are comparatively halted, while others receive increased emphasis.
I doubt it, since the question posed by rum_runner posits an ongoing crisis, think of it like a hurricane that lasts for years. It’s not just a rearrangement of preferences but more like continuing damage control, which long run harms GDP (but does help the profits of companies like Purex, then hand sanitizer company).
GDP and the economy has nothing in common.
I suppose one could posit that noone has a utility function which benefits from getting seriously ill or dying. Hence, increases in illness and death, are definitionally economically damaging. As in, inevitably destroying utility, not just altering the preferences going into computing it.
I think you mean to say stock markets and economy have nothing in common (there are numerous stock markets where the economy has done poorly for the average person but stock markets are great, for example, South Africa’s). In general however, GDP = economy say most textbooks.
…. and fox is promoting the power of prayer.
Maybe I should double down with healing crystals and homeopathic remedies from the MLM I just joined that’s gonna make me rich because god loves a salesman.
The stupid never stops.
Well, prayer has been shown to boost the immune system and there’s whole medical journal articles that promote the power of placebo, but point taken. I personally would not pray in a crowded house of worship however…
My doc is a specialist in infectious disease and consultant to the CDC. We got into a discussion about the flu. He says they simply don’t know why the flu is seasonal.
It is really hard to isolate for weather. With colder weather, people tend to stay indoors where they are closer to one another, and with warmer weather they tend to go outside where social spacing is greater. Is it the weather that affects the virus, or is it the resultant activity?
What do you do in the summer? Hide in the woods? I see way more social togetherness activities. BBQ, swimming pools, race tracks, restaurants, etc etc etc this thesis is worthless, unsubstantiated and zero proof other than opinion.
Northern daycare centers and schools claim to have less cold and flu problems if they dress kids and send them out in the winter, than if they keep them cooped up inside, swimming in each other’s snot drooled all over.
Participants in “Social togetherness” share much less air between them out in the open, than they do inside. Nothing crams more people closer together with less ventilation and more shared contact surfaces, foods, air etc. than typical midwinter germ-spreading holidays; Christmas New Years, Chinese New Year, Hanukkah… (Only the Muslims seem to have the sense to take a break from holidaying in the worst of winter between November and March…. Not that it helps much, since they make up with it with almost permanent pilgrimages..)
“What do you do in the summer?” I do a lot of hiking, biking, that sort of thing.
“worthless, unsubstantiated and zero proof other than opinion” In other words, just like your post? No need to be so uncivil. You should consider seeing someone about your anger issues.
Vitamin D deficiency in winter has been mentioned..
Just look at those pics. And the article that’s surprised people without symptoms are spreading it date 3-14! There is NO way this will be contained. All responses are reactionary the virus moves to fast. All this social distancing crap when people at airports are crawling each other like ants the odds of none of them having it are remote and this is all the proof I need to know we are fast approaching hell on earth. Things are going to be radically different before long many of us wont be here to see it. Most people I know still claim this is a nothingburger and some of them are highly educated. I even have a friend that was in China during SARS and he says this is nothing. I’m thinking everyone is brain dead.
In fact im pretty much done talking to anyone about it asides the occasional net rant do whatever the hell you want.
Like everything else, a lot of it will be just to maintain an illusion something is being done. Like my kids workplace that declared the lunchroom a coronavirus restricted area and must take lunch now in a larger area but while working they are all over one another. But heh…………the company can say were responsible and serious about taking care of our employees. One huge sorry ass joke.
Several have commented the virus does not do well in humid environments, and drippy noses help reduce chances the virus attaches
This has me thinking about the volumes of people who take allergy medicines. Maybe those medicines are making people more vulnerable to viruses, so they should stop taking allergy medicine. The medicine in most cases is not for a life-threatening condition.
There is a definite cold and flu season so I fully expect this CoV to slow down down during the summer months, then come back in full force in September.
Here is a chart showing which months different types of viruses are active most active:
Slow down, hopefully. Problem, say main trend of contagion is due to infection while asymptomatic, whereas flu less so and relying on remaining long viable.
Related topic. How difficult could it be to produce an immunization vaccine, considering the corona virus is structurally similar to the flu virus? Either growing it in eggs, or engineered bacteria.
There are 6 other coronaviruses which infect humans and they’ve never been able to come up with any successful vaccines for any of them. Not saying it’s impossible but don’t hold your breath.
It is NOT similar in structure to flu viruses. IT’s totally different. That’s why it’s called a corona virus…different structure than the flu.
What I was referring to: it has outside proteins that presumably serve to attach itself to the cell and dissolve the membrane, as does flu. The flu vaccine uses these protein to prime the immune system. However, it must be tough if there was an attempt to make one for SARS.
Sars vaccine R&D was scaled back dramatically after the crisis passed. I expect the same this time.
I believe, this time some elected representatives of the people will kick the dust. That will make a big difference.
This virus is now global public enemy #1. So the focus on finding vaccines and treatments is going to be unprecedented.
Some say antiviral drugs are better than vaccines since they can be tested and developed more easily.
Japanese, understandably, want Olympics to continue. Their decision to conduct limited testing (instead of a thorough job that Japanese are known for), ironically, makes it likely that cases will explode at precisely the wrong time. Like, before final decision, or in the thick of the games itself.
I don’t think anyone but the Japanese think the Olympic Games are going to go ahead!
Spanish Flu was relatively mild in US Spring 1918, people began to say things like Trump said as in ‘hey maybe it will just disappear.”
Then the second wave in Fall 1918 killed 650K in US and millions around the world.
Last night on Coast to Coast Ian interviewed John Berry, author of
Also worth nothing is that Covid19 virus and the Spanish Flu virus have roughly the same death rates (Internet, reliable source: “The global disaster that was the 1917 “Spanish flu” pandemic killed 2.5% (though some estimates exceed 10%).”)
It killed at a much higher rate than 2.5%.
In the US, about 675,000 people died of the 22 million who caught the flu (Spanish flu of 1918/19. (0.675m/22m = 3.1%, and note 22% of the roughly 100M Americans at the time caught the Spanish flu)
Just analyzing diseases, & article was about, if, temperature would get gone; the COVID-19, if weather warmer/hotter. If it won’t get rid of poo, then, odds are against the virus! 😵😡🤬
Why would it be better if it’s not seasonal? I’ve read the opposite. But it’s hard to know who to believe.
As I understood it, the “hope it is not seasonal” comment was a little bit of misdirection meant to be humor. The person being interviewed actually meant: “Hope it does not come back next season.”
I think it would actually be better if not seasonal because we do not want Covid19 filling the hospitals with patients in respiratory distress at the same time flu patients are there. If we are lucky, Covid19 will do its worst when it is not flu season. If both diseases are worst during the same time of year, then hospitals will be less able to cope, causing more bad outcomes.
While we are wishing for SARS-Cov-2 to behave in one way or another we should wish that (1) it goes away on its own {not likely} or, (2) the infectivity in the summer drops to a somewhat lower level, just enough to help flatten the curve without mitigation measures having to do it all.
As far as warmer weather is concerned and the possibility of a damping of the infection what I have found so far is that:
(coronavirus)
Using nose sprays (with natural anti-virus plant extracts) and throat anti-viral spray systematically when exposed to crowd could help avoid getting the virus in the first place where it strike.
Lived by dog park. Rented out vet book @ local library, searched whole town. No vet book, until new library built, on how to get rid of poop & urine. I lived next door. Smell came thru my windows. Compared medicine in humans to animals.( They have organs too! ) Tried all kinds of entrepreneur ideas. Nothing. Found out, the temperature of heat to rid, the waste, well, we might as well be that inferno on Saturn. Yup, extreme heat. Can’t even match it, by burning the park down. Same goes for frozen places like Antarctica. I think disease’s are being released as the ice melts.
You do realise that ground zero – China – is not a part of the polar zones?
GRANDPA AND GRANDMA ON THE DEATH ROW.
When China try to restart economic activities, the new cases rate trends up. That will improve when immunized people will be a substantial part of the population. There are far more immunized (having build antibodies) people than the number of recovered people as a lot of asymptomatic (or low symptoms people) people got the virus and were not treated or counted.
However they are now able to close emergency hospitals in Wuhan and even send medical teams and medical supplies and devices to Italy and Iran.
BUT when I see how the containment measures are lightly applied in our countries be it US or Europe
There are too few testing so a lot of asymptomatic virus spreaders are encountered everywhere.
I see yet no obligation (moral or law inforced) of masks and gloves use outdoor as it is the case in ASIA everywhere
Public transport are petri dishes for the virus and what the pictures above (airports waiting files amongst other) show is mind bogling.
People tested positive but not too sick are quarantined IN THEIR FAMILY HOME (crazy)
I think we will, as usual, learn the hard way what the experimented Chinese showed us to do
I added this note
Note: The video explains the virus does not go away in warm weather. It lessens but intensifies in the opposite hemisphere, then comes back. There are other issues related to humidity that scientists do not quite understand. For example, near the equator viruses can persist at the same strength near round. It is the temperate zones that are cyclical.
Play the video
The virus does not go away – it lessens but intensifies in the opposite hemisphere.
The title is accurate – It does not go away.
Because the high R0 2-3 the only way to stop it is quarantine. When it drops to below 1 it will die out on its own. Mass quarantine = great depression financially world wide. There are some drugs that are being used to treat it with success.https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/02/coronavirus-drugs-and-vaccines-in-development/
Also, if you search for
“Interferon Alpha 2B (IFNrec)”
you’ll find many stories about how Chinese used it recently.
If it IS good, then presumably US is aware of it and will make its own version – because of course everyone knows that nothing from a socialist country can possibly be any good, let alone superior to, anything developed in the most exceptional nation in the history of the world.
Growth rate of the virus is now higher in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere.
Could not agree more Mish. I’m a physician in New Zealand which thankfully gives us some time given our isolation. Our Prime Minister is appearing to grasp the seriousness of the situation and partially at least moving in the right direction.
But case numbers in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, Argentina, Chile and South Africa are on the rise simultaneously. The notion that hotter temperatures will save the day is just demonstrably wrong.
Heaven help us all. This will be the worst thing in multiple generations….
Yes, so why isn’t the stock market to 10k level yet on the DJ-30? Obviously the consensus is that Covid19 will go away. Sell in May and go away? Maybe…
Weather does not make the viruses go away, but the viruses sure made the food store shelves empty.
This site seem to have picked up a few bugs.
After you comment to a comment, refresh the page.
I know that, the comment showed up, the link didn’t.
So, extra screening in airports that is not able to detect many cases of coronavirus slows the security lines for everyone and forces large crowds of people to spend more time in enclosed areas of the airport? Brilliant. What happened to social distancing?
George Phillies I am a retired university professor. I have friends who do biochemistry. The RNA sequence of the virus has been known for months. The exact procedure for generating the nucleotide sequences, etc., for the RNA test for the virus is well known and uses equipment and skills available in hundreds of laboratories across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. These tests could use the CDC sense and antisense codons and be the same as the CDC test. Friends observe that they could each turn out hundreds or more tests a week, if it were not for Federal interference. Someone should try fixing this.
How are the feds interfering?
Any thoughts on the origin of this virus , ie natural or man made by the communists.
I personally favor the theory that that Wuhan virus was man-made, since the Wuhan bioweapons lab was advertising for a coronavirus expert last fall, and it’s notoriously hard to contain viruses in a lab. Hard to imagine this was a coincidence. If it walks like a duck, quakes like a duck, it’s probably a…flying bat-duck-harboring-nCoV19!?
What do you think of this:
I personally don’t care if it came from US or China or wherever, because you can go on forever with Spy vs Spy scenarios and we’ll never know (stolen, accidental release, deliberate release, one side setting up the other, one side stole from the other and doctored it further etc. etc.) but it would be nice to know if it’s doctored or natural.
Everything in medicine is extensively regulated. Major goal is to control competition and keep prices high. You can bet your ass that there are regulations that justify the $7 cotton balls and $20 Tylenol in the hospitals.
Exactly
If you are into statistics, Chris Matensen explains: 2009 H1N1 flu never went away in the summer, there was a dip, and then a rise in the fall.
With my limited knowledge of biology, the same can be expected of Corona virus. To be precise: a dip in the exponential growth of cases.
youtu.be/Rb94GXQVEKQ?t=352
Addendum:
The following link is an interview with a Russian specialist, and it’s the most technical I’ve read aside from scientific papers. The interviewer tries to steer the answers to a common language.
The gist:
Neither am I. Corona is not a flu, it’s basically a cold virus. I have had the flu in the late fall, winter and real early spring, but the warmest 5 months never. I have had a few colds during summer though. That is something to think about.
That’s cherry picking one flu strain. The other 99% are all seasonal in cold weather. The four CoV’s which cause 15-30% of the common colds are also seasonal in cold weather so we have every reason to believe that this coronavirus will also be less in warm weather and then resurge in the fall. This first year may be different while it is in epidemic stage and nobody in the entire population has immunity. In 2021 and subsequent years, the normal rules of seasonality will no doubt apply.
There is more sunlight in summer. Sunlight and, more generally, ultra-violet light will help kill viruses on surfaces. So yes, summer should help slow the spread.
More sunlight, better ventilation (people open windows), people spend more time outside instead of cooped up inside…
There’s all kinds of good reasons why the spread will slow in summer; compared to if winder conditions continued.
That slowdown could easily be overshadowed by other effects, though. Say a meaningful share of health care workers infected. Or shared spaces and volumes coated in viruses and contributing a continuous background component to the spread, on top of the exponential one etc.
And besides, the slowdown is only in the exponential growth rate. In terms of absolute number of infecteds, which is what most people immediately experience wrt cases around them, the growth will only accelerate, until it starts running out of new uninfecteds to infect. The latter either from effective distancing, or from “everyone” already being infected.
I keep an eye on some southern countries, main hurdle is reporting cases though, many are not set up well to register them. So maybe government reaction speaks ? Dubai just closed most tourist attractions, no new visas after the 17th, not even tourist entry for now. Protecting itself maybe ? Africa then…
has a clickable map which explains cases and measures. Closed borders and closed schools etc in some. They have few registered cases, but clearly they think epidemic is possible there.
Summer should help, but maybe not that much.
Epidemiologists are studying the effect of UV light on Corona right now, but the hubbub isn’t real positive in that community.
UV light kills viruses, I don’t think there is any need for any hubbub :).
But it’s correct to say that the virus won’t disappear. Spread will slow for many reasons (principally high humidity and increased sunlight, but also people’s nasal passages are wetter).
Maybe if this had been SARS it would have been the end of it. But it’s not.
Will Coronavirus Slow Down In The Warmer Months Like Flu Season? Think again