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Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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3 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Nsiap. Informative discussion from the Chinese head of their CDC. This discussion on this alone can get political but I find it odd that we do not strongly follow the suggested guidelines from a country/people which have a 3 month head start in fighting the virus. 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/not-wearing-masks-protect-against-coronavirus-big-mistake-top-chinese-scientist-says

Not wearing masks to protect against coronavirus is a ‘big mistake,’ top Chinese scientist says

By Jon CohenMar. 27, 2020 , 6:15 PM

Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.

 

Chinese scientists at the front of that country’s outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have not been particularly accessible to foreign media. Many have been overwhelmed trying to understand their epidemic and combat it, and responding to media requests, especially from journalists outside of China, has not been a top priority.

Science has tried to interview George Gao, director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for 2 months. Last week he responded.

Related

Gao oversees 2000 employees—one-fifth the staff size of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—and he remains an active researcher himself. In January, he was part of a team that did the first isolation and sequencing of severe acute respiratory syndrome 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19. He co-authored two widely read papers published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that provided some of the first detailed epidemiology and clinical features of the disease, and has published three more papers on COVID-19 in The Lancet.

His team also provided important data to a joint commission between Chinese researchers and a team of international scientists, organized by the World Health Organization (WHO), that wrote a landmark report after touring the country to understand the response to the epidemic.

First trained as a veterinarian, Gao later earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Oxford and did postdocs there and at Harvard University, specializing in immunology and virology. His research specializes in viruses that have fragile lipid membranes called envelopes—a group that includes SARS-CoV-2—and how they enter cells and also move between species.

Gao answered Science’s questions over several days via text, voicemails, and phone conversations. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

gao_internal2_1280.jpg?itok=lEeYgHSd

George Gao, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention

 
STEPHANE AUDRAS/REA/REDUX

Q: What can other countries learn from the way China has approached COVID-19?

A: Social distancing is the essential strategy for the control of any infectious diseases, especially if they are respiratory infections. First, we used “nonpharmaceutical strategies,” because you don’t have any specific inhibitors or drugs and you don’t have any vaccines. Second, you have to make sure you isolate any cases. Third, close contacts should be in quarantine: We spend a lot of time trying to find all these close contacts, and to make sure they are quarantined and isolated. Fourth, suspend public gatherings. Fifth, restrict movement, which is why you have a lockdown, the cordon sanitaire in French.

Q: The lockdown in China began on 23 January in Wuhan and was expanded to neighboring cities in Hubei province. Other provinces in China had less restrictive shutdowns. How was all of this coordinated, and how important were the “supervisors” overseeing the efforts in neighborhoods?

A: You have to have understanding and consensus. For that you need very strong leadership, at the local and national level. You need a supervisor and coordinator working with the public very closely. Supervisors need to know who the close contacts are, who the suspected cases are. The supervisors in the community must be very alert. They are key.

Q: What mistakes are other countries making?

A: The big mistake in the U.S. and Europe, in my opinion, is that people aren’t wearing masks. This virus is transmitted by droplets and close contact. Droplets play a very important role—you’ve got to wear a mask, because when you speak, there are always droplets coming out of your mouth. Many people have asymptomatic or presymptomatic infections. If they are wearing face masks, it can prevent droplets that carry the virus from escaping and infecting others.

Q: What about other control measures? China has made aggressive use of thermometers at the entrances to stores, buildings, and public transportation stations, for instance.

A: Yes. Anywhere you go inside in China, there are thermometers. You have to try to take people’s temperatures as often as you can to make sure that whoever has a high fever stays out.

And a really important outstanding question is how stable this virus is in the environment. Because it’s an enveloped virus, people think it’s fragile and particularly sensitive to surface temperature or humidity. But from both U.S. results and Chinese studies, it looks like it’s very resistant to destruction on some surfaces. It may be able to survive in many environments. We need to have science-based answers here.

Q: People who tested positive in Wuhan but only had mild disease were sent into isolation in large facilities and were not allowed to have visits from family. Is this something other countries should consider?

A: Infected people must be isolated. That should happen everywhere. You can only control COVID-19 if you can remove the source of the infection. This is why we built module hospitals and transformed stadiums into hospitals.

Q: There are many questions about the origin of the outbreak in China. Chinese researchers have reported that the earliest case dates back to 1 December 2019. What do you think of the report in the South China Morning Post that says data from the Chinese government show there were cases in November 2019, with the first one on 17 November?

A: There is no solid evidence to say we already had clusters in November. We are trying to better understand the origin.

Q: Wuhan health officials linked a large cluster of cases to the Huanan seafood market and closed it on 1 January. The assumption was that a virus had jumped to humans from an animal sold and possibly butchered at the market. But in your paper in NEJM, which included a retrospective look for cases, you reported that four of the five earliest infected people had no links to the seafood market. Do you think the seafood market was a likely place of origin, or is it a distraction—an amplifying factor but not the original source?

A: That’s a very good question. You are working like a detective. From the very beginning, everybody thought the origin was the market. Now, I think the market could be the initial place, or it could be a place where the virus was amplified. So that’s a scientific question. There are two possibilities.

Q: China was also criticized for not sharing the viral sequence immediately. The story about a new coronavirus came out in The Wall Street Journal on 8 January; it didn’t come from Chinese government scientists. Why not?

A: That was a very good guess from The Wall Street Journal. WHO was informed about the sequence, and I think the time between the article appearing and the official sharing of the sequence was maybe a few hours. I don’t think it’s more than a day.

Q: But a public database of viral sequences later showed that the first one was submitted by Chinese researchers on 5 January. So there were at least 3 days that you must have known that there was a new coronavirus. It’s not going to change the course of the epidemic now, but to be honest, something happened about reporting the sequence publicly.

A: I don’t think so. We shared the information with scientific colleagues promptly, but this involved public health and we had to wait for policymakers to announce it publicly. You don’t want the public to panic, right? And no one in any country could have predicted that the virus would cause a pandemic. This is the first noninfluenza pandemic ever.

Infected people must be isolated. That should happen everywhere.

George Gao, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Q: It wasn’t until 20 January that Chinese scientists officially said there was clear evidence of human-to-human transmission. Why do you think epidemiologists in China had so much difficulty seeing that it was occurring?

A: Detailed epidemiological data were not available yet. And we were facing a very crazy and concealed virus from the very beginning. The same is true in Italy, elsewhere in Europe, and the United States: From the very beginning scientists, everybody thought: “Well, it’s just a virus.”

Q: Spread in China has dwindled to a crawl, and the new confirmed cases are mainly people entering the country, correct?

A: Yes. At the moment, we don’t have any local transmission, but the problem for China now is the imported cases. So many infected travelers are coming into China.

Q: But what will happen when China returns to normal? Do you think enough people have become infected so that herd immunity will keep the virus at bay?

A: We definitely don’t have herd immunity yet. But we are waiting for more definitive results from antibody tests that can tell us how many people really have been infected.

Q: So what is the strategy now? Buying time to find effective medicines?

A: Yes—our scientists are working on both vaccines and drugs.

Q: Many scientists consider remdesivir to be the most promising drug now being tested. When do you think clinical trials in China of the drug will have data?

A: In April.

Q: Have Chinese scientists developed animal models that you think are robust enough to study pathogenesis and test drugs and vaccines?

A: At the moment, we are using both monkeys and transgenic mice that have ACE2, the human receptor for the virus. The mouse model is widely used in China for drug and vaccine assessment, and I think there are at least a couple papers coming out about the monkey models soon. I can tell you that our monkey model works.

Q: What do you think of President Donald Trump referring to the new coronavirus as the “China virus” or the “Chinese virus”?

A: It’s definitely not good to call it the Chinese virus. The virus belongs to the Earth. The virus is our common enemy—not the enemy of any person or country.

tldr: China sucks

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10 hours ago, AngryBevo said:


ahh those fucking sticks. Man, and festivals and shit where there are crushes of people the police dont shout or give instruction, they just randomly swing those fucking sticks and tag andom people. It’s like they are beating cattle. If you are a foreigner they will avoid you and clock the guy next to you. Usually.

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My impression is that masks have been a common health tool in some Asian countries for years so they're quick to jump to masks. America's culture just isn't there. Yet.

It does seem like a good idea not from necessary protecting you but protecting others from you.  And if everyone wore a mask, it would seem like it would reduce infections. It's hard to think otherwise. I have zero idea where we would get enough masks for everyone.

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1 hour ago, GreenspointTexas said:

The back and forth between posters with name calling and pointless banter is fucking cloak room level. 
 

Some of yall have some kinda weird misplaced reaction that compels you to respond to every fucking single post

 

If we are this bored sitting at home now, i cant wait to see what this thread is like in 6-8 weeks

It's not nearly as surly as the beer thread.  amirite?

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1 minute ago, Surly Bevo said:

All the Chinese mask wearing talk is likely a solid reason the Japs didn't get played yet (no offense to the Orientals) despite having every other ingredient that would predispose them to being a clusterfuck.  

Russia Vodka - Japan Sake.  very simple.

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8 minutes ago, Doc Reeves said:


ahh those fucking sticks. Man, and festivals and shit where there are crushes of people the police dont shout or give instruction, they just randomly swing those fucking sticks and tag andom people. It’s like they are beating cattle. If you are a foreigner they will avoid you and clock the guy next to you. Usually.

The infamous lathi charge.  Traffic cops in Bangladesh stand near intersections with these 10 foot bamboo sticks and just whack the living fuck out of anyone that gets out of line.

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I’m sure millions would currently be wearing masks daily if they weren’t all sold to the health care system who needs them at this time. 
 

China did cancel all foreign mask delivers to use for their people and of course now are “printing money” as one factory sales manager said in regards to masks. 
 

https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1887780/printing-money-chinese-mask-producers-booming

"A mask machine is a real cash printer," said Shi Xinghui, sales manager of an N95 mask machine company in Dongguan city, southeastern Guangdong province. "The profit of a mask now is at least several cents compared to less than one in the past.

"Printing 60,000 or 70,000 masks a day is equivalent to printing money."

Qi Guangtu has put more than 50 million yuan ($7 million) into his factory producing mask-making machines in the southern industrial hub of Dongguan.

Edited by ChickenSandwich
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16 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

So, I put a lot of NYC data together.  I expect the NYC Shut Down changes (restaurants and bars closed at 8 PM on 3/16) to start showing up in the data.  I think it might have already started based on the changes between 3/25 and 3/26 and 3/26 and 3/27.  Totals seem high, but when you look at the rate of change from the prior day, I think some of the measures might be working.

 

  16-Mar 17-Mar 18-Mar 19-Mar 20-Mar 21-Mar 22-Mar 23-Mar 24-Mar 25-Mar 26-Mar 27-Mar
Cases                        
Bronx                1,564    1,999    2,505    3,542    4,243    4,880
Brooklyn                3,154    3,742    4,407    5,232    6,095    7,091
Manhattan                2,324    2,646    3,013    3,616    4,046    4,627
Queens                3,050    3,848    4,667    6,420    7,362    8,529
Staten Island                   666       877       999    1,166    1,330    1,534
Unknown                      6          7          6        35        36        36
Total     464       923    2,009    3,954    5,683    8,115  10,764  13,119  15,597  20,011  23,112  26,697
Increase from Prior Day         459    1,086    1,945    1,729    2,432    2,649    2,355    2,478    4,414    3,101    3,585
Percentage Increase   99% 118% 97% 44% 43% 33% 22% 19% 28% 15% 16%
                         
Deaths                        
Bronx                          60        80       101
Brooklyn                          64        81       102
Manhattan                          43        55        65
Queens                          92       123       149
Staten Island                          21        26        33
Unknown                            -          -          -
Total        7        10        11        26        43        60        99       125       192       280       365       450
Increase from Prior Day            3          1        15        17        17        39        26        67        88        85        85
Percentage Increase   43% 10% 136% 65% 40% 65% 26% 54% 46% 30% 23%
                         
Hospitalizations                        
Bronx                         802    1,071    1,200
Brooklyn                         919       968       989
Manhattan                         584       729       709
Queens                      1,363    1,659    1,810
Staten Island                         251       283       321
Unknown                            3        10        10
Total                    2,850    3,922    4,720    5,039
Increase from Prior Day                      1,072       798       319
Percentage Increase                   38% 20% 7%

Seems like you would really want to know the number of test results coming in each day to make any meaningful sense out of the case rates.

Edited by Johnny Sack
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Our social distancing and shutdown efforts may be having an effect, according to the "US health weather map"

https://healthweather.us/

Kinsa makes wifi thermometers and uses the collected data to forecast hot spots of disease.  They make a public national "weather map" showing trends and with the ability to drill down to any county.  Around Feb 29th, the amount of people with a high fever started to increase and deviate from their expected seasonal model.  The deviation kept getting worse until about Mar 19th.  The trend then reversed sharply, fell through the expected range, and is now below the expected range for this time of year.  If you drill down to counties, you can see this happening all over the country, but in different degrees.

So, something is happening.  Either normally healthy people are taking their temperature more than expected and the weather map does not account for that, or social distancing is working, or some other factor is at play.

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19 minutes ago, GreenspointTexas said:

Telling people that masks dont make a difference and/or not to wear them is one of the absolute dumbest things ive ever heard ever

I disagree. Healthcare workers have had a hell of a time getting masks. If the general public received too many masks intended for healthcare workers, our hospitals would be fucked. Masks generally haven't been produced in the US because they are a low margin product. Asian markets, I presume kept mask availability low. China understandably preferred to have masks available for their citizens over shipping them out to other countries.

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Matteo Renzi, former PM of Italy, made some interesting comments. https://www.blogsicilia.it/oltrelostretto/riapriamo-tutto-matteo-renzi/526221/

Quote

"We reopen everything, we will live with the virus for two years", 

“This virus will still hurt us. Not for weeks, for months and months. The vaccine is not there and if it goes well we will hug again in a year, if it goes wrong between two ... ». He said Matteo Renzi , the leader of Italy Viva, in an interview with Avvenire .

"Reopen. Because we can't wait for everything to pass. Because if we stay closed people will starve. Because there will be only one way: living with coronavirus for two years"Added the former Prime Minister, for whom" life must be allowed to resume. And we must allow it now. Italy has been closed for three weeks and there are people who can't take it anymore. He has no more money, he has no more to eat. Usury's tentacles are lengthening threatening especially in the South. Without money, despair will win and the social revolt will ignite. The balconies will soon turn into pitchforks; the songs of hope, in desperate protests ». And again: «We need a plan for reopening and we need it now. Factories must reopen before Easter. Then the rest. Shops, schools, bookstores, churches. We need attention, we need graduality. But we must reopen ».

The Tuscan senator also said: «Any type of request for money must be suspended: taxes, rents, mortgages. Those who have been closed hold up if you eliminate their deadlines or offer them an extraordinary injection of liquidity. It is the only way: the state must give guarantees to banks and banks must guarantee liquidity. Without asking for infernal forms, a request form based on the turnover of the previous year and the guarantee of the State must suffice ».

"The government has blocked the freedoms of sixty million Italians - added Renzi - but has not been able to block the bureaucracy virus. The Care-Italian is an incomprehensible stream of words. The self-certifications to move change every day: we do one less self-certification and one more buffer. In moments like this, people's lives must be made simple, not complicated, in moments like this, bureaucracy cannot win over the Constitution ».

I disagree, but those words may have a powerful appeal to some Italians. I'm looking forward to the protests, they should be glorious.

Edited by Thetexashammer
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4 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

Our social distancing and shutdown efforts may be having an effect, according to the "US health weather map"

https://healthweather.us/

Kinsa makes wifi thermometers and uses the collected data to forecast hot spots of disease.  They make a public national "weather map" showing trends and with the ability to drill down to any county.  Around Feb 29th, the amount of people with a high fever started to increase and deviate from their expected seasonal model.  The deviation kept getting worse until about Mar 19th.  The trend then reversed sharply, fell through the expected range, and is now below the expected range for this time of year.  If you drill down to counties, you can see this happening all over the country, but in different degrees.

So, something is happening.  Either normally healthy people are taking their temperature more than expected and the weather map does not account for that, or social distancing is working, or some other factor is at play.

I’ve been monitoring this as well. The big flaw is the demographics of folks that own and use a fancy AF thermometer. 

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11 hours ago, wild_turkey said:

 


Not sure what it says about me but I agree with about half the comments there.

The quarantines feel like a joke if we allow 80% of businesses to continue operating as an essential business. I live in FW which has been “stay at home” since Tuesday and my neighborhood golf course had tons of golfers out today. Seriously, golf is acceptable right now but as an ophthalmologist I can’t see my patients. Went to Central Market to get groceries and it was packed with people. No one even cared about maintaining any kind of radius.

Really frustrating to have these half measures in place because they seem mostly ineffective. Either lock it all down or admit defeat and let the virus do what it’s gonna do.

 

I played golf this week with my son.  They sanitized the carts and we were not within 100 yards of anyone at any time.  So what?

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Our social distancing and shutdown efforts may be having an effect, according to the "US health weather map"

https://healthweather.us/

Kinsa makes wifi thermometers and uses the collected data to forecast hot spots of disease.  They make a public national "weather map" showing trends and with the ability to drill down to any county.  Around Feb 29th, the amount of people with a high fever started to increase and deviate from their expected seasonal model.  The deviation kept getting worse until about Mar 19th.  The trend then reversed sharply, fell through the expected range, and is now below the expected range for this time of year.  If you drill down to counties, you can see this happening all over the country, but in different degrees.

So, something is happening.  Either normally healthy people are taking their temperature more than expected and the weather map does not account for that, or social distancing is working, or some other factor is at play.


Crazy how we can even come up with this information. Never would’ve thought of WiFi thermometers being evidence to see if we’re doing our job
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3 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

I played golf this week with my son.  They sanitized the carts and we were not within 100 yards of anyone at any time.  So what?

 

1 minute ago, JesusSweatDuck said:

Did you sanitize your hands after pulling the pin at each hole?

No way. He didn't use any protection when he pleasured himself on the ball washer either. 

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41 minutes ago, Bevo said:

I disagree. Healthcare workers have had a hell of a time getting masks. If the general public received too many masks intended for healthcare workers, our hospitals would be fucked. Masks generally haven't been produced in the US because they are a low margin product. Asian markets, I presume kept mask availability low. China understandably preferred to have masks available for their citizens over shipping them out to other countries.

If we could all wear masks, there would be much fewer of us in need of hospitalization so their workload and ppe demand wouldn’t be so high. 
 

but we are a selfish, vain, stupid society so half of us wouldn’t wear them anyway if told to. 

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6 minutes ago, Wally Fairway said:

 

I'm guessing either this poster
a) they can't read
b) is a knuckledragger
c) both

There is a lot of bullshit in that Q&A though. His answers to the questions about the timeline are deflections about China's actions, especially when the whistelblower was brought before the local officials on January 3rd, and it's highly likely that China is cooking their books on the community spread to focus only on imported cases at this point so that they can blame foreign powers. 

It's interesting to read but hard to trust considering China's actions throughout this entire process

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4 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

If we could all wear masks, there would be much fewer of us in need of hospitalization so their workload and ppe demand wouldn’t be so high. 
 

but we are a selfish, vain, stupid society so half of us wouldn’t wear them anyway if told to. 

mah Freedom!!!!

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3 minutes ago, GabrielsHorn said:

There is a lot of bullshit in that Q&A though. His answers to the questions about the timeline are deflections about China's actions, especially when the whistelblower was brought before the local officials on January 3rd, and it's highly likely that China is cooking their books on the community spread to focus only on imported cases at this point so that they can blame foreign powers. 

It's interesting to read but hard to trust considering China's actions throughout this entire process

Again, who gives a shit right now when or where it started. The shit is here. Those assholes have been fighting it 3 months longer than we have. Take lessons learned and best practices to save lives and mitigate the spread. There's plenty of time to re-visit blame if/when the world defeats this thing.

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Italy with 969. Not controlled. Quarantine apparently not working. They're saying there are fewer new cases but that's irrelevant.
We've been locked down almost three weeks, more than that in Lombardy and Padua.

These deaths are from from cases before the quarantine.


Sadly there’s probably a lot of “at home” deaths too.
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20 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

Italy with 969. Not controlled. Quarantine apparently not working. They're saying there are fewer new cases but that's irrelevant.

We've been locked down almost three weeks, more than that in Lombardy and Padua.

Wait. That's actually good news, isn't it? If the new cases have leveled off wouldn't that be the leading indicator that the lockdown is having an effect?

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19 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Again, who gives a shit right now when or where it started. The shit is here. Those assholes have been fighting it 3 months longer than we have. Take lessons learned and best practices to save lives and mitigate the spread. There's plenty of time to re-visit blame if/when the world defeats this thing.

Amen, it's fun to take pot shots but most of our energy needs to be spent fixing this shit.  We can all agree being stuck inside fucking blows. 

Although, I feel just as shitty as I normally do on most Saturday mornings and I'm 99% sure I didn't spend much of any money last night.  Maybe I can get used to this for a couple weeks...max. 

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21 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Again, who gives a shit right now when or where it started. The shit is here. Those assholes have been fighting it 3 months longer than we have. Take lessons learned and best practices to save lives and mitigate the spread. There's plenty of time to re-visit blame if/when the world defeats this thing.

Except we can't really trust the information coming out from them based on their confirmed cases and death, their false report about the transmission of the disease, their bad tests that they sent to Italy and Spain, and how they are actively using propaganda to put the blame on others, particularly the US.

Unless whatever they claim is proved true by the WHO, you can't really trust anything from them. We are better to look at places like South Korea which have been fighting it for as nearly as long and also aren't actively spreading misinformation. 

Edited by GabrielsHorn
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2 hours ago, dcar00 said:

multiple millions have it/have had it at this point.  I'd say 4M+

I was in Nashville for corporate meeting first of February.  Flew out of DFW.  About a week later started with low grade fever and chills.  Three days after that woke up face significantly swole up with inflamed salivary glands and began experiencing pretty nasty headaches. At this point my temp was around 102.  Went to doc and the tested for flu and an assortment of viral tests but everything came back negative and my blood showed mumps antibodies.  Felt a little tightness in my chest/difficulty breathing but that went away pretty fast.  No cough.  I’m sure it wasn’t the corona but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.  

Edited by stork642
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  • hayden_horn changed the title to Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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