Jump to content

CleverNickname

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    951
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by CleverNickname

  1. One week ago I was pretty sanguine. I am a total doomer, witness my being all over page 1. So for six weeks I watched closely, even bought extra food in the pantry, but wasn't really freaked. My brother in law lives in HK, and so he had a closer perspective. Containment is working there. I'm youngish, my children are hale. The cases in China, SK, and Japan seemed to be leveling off so much. We've been at or under 100k for a long time - steady climbing but it didn't seem out of control. I didn't really believe China's numbers. But there were fewer and fewer exported cases from China - lending some credence to the possibly that China proved it could be contained. Neighboring states seemed to be weathering pretty well. The SK cases were a unique blow up, but even that showed major flare ups could be dealt with.  Iran is a shitshow, but I chalked that up to bad government and the impact of years and years of embargos on the health care system. 

    But then Italy and Washington State (and Egypt)... and probably more scare are all the cases those two hotbeds have exported cases. As someone mentioned this AM, there is a case that Las Vegas exported, and we have no idea what things are like there. Now we have SK + Iran + Italy + Wash St + Egypt... probably other clusters across Europe, plus Indonesia and maybe India... just so many more chances to break  out.  

    So this weekend, I feel far far worse about things. I do think any given regional blow up can probably be successfully curbed. It might take months, but there is hope. But if there are dozens of regional flare ups? 

    Prediction: Be ready for schools to extend Spring Break 2-3 weeks. 

  2. 8 minutes ago, akhornfan said:

    The number from Korea is a hard figure(doesn’t mean it’s accurate as a predictor, but it is a real calculation). Actual deaths divided by confirmed cases. It is more likely a ceiling than a floor. It does not count anybody that didn’t test but may have been infected with very mild symptoms. Signs point to the Korea number decreasing not increasing 

    Caveat: Deaths lag identification of cases by 2-3 weeks. 

    • Like 1
  3. I see a lot of photos of the old folks from WA being moved to hospital care and hell of a lot of people wearing some basic masks and not much else in terms of PPE. The Wuhan coverage seemed terrifying precisely because of the head to toe gear health officials were wearing. The WA response looks terrifying because it looks likely a poorly thought through shitshow. 

    • Like 1
  4. NY Times:

     

    The virus may have been in Washington State for weeks.

    As Washington State declared a state of emergency over the new coronavirus, researchers who studied two cases in the state say that the virus may have been spreading there for weeks, suggesting the possibility that up to 1,500 people in the state may have been infected.

    The state became the site of the country’s first coronavirus death on Saturday, at a time when President Trump issued new foreign travel warnings and restrictions in an effort to stop the spread of the virus, while also urging calm among members of the public.

    The number of confirmed cases worldwide had reached nearly 87,000 as of Sunday, with more than 7,000 cases outside mainland China, where the outbreak began late last year. The virus has now been detected in at least 60 countries.

    With 71 cases confirmed in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration announced this weekend that testing for the coronavirus would be greatly expanded in the country, a move that is expected to improve the pace of detecting infections and help identify patterns of suspected or confirmed cases.

    In Washington State, researchers compared two cases in the hopes of gaining such insight. One case, which last month became the first in the United States, appeared in a patient from whom health officials took a sample on Jan. 19. Another case that surfaced in the region last week probably descended from it, based on an analysis of the virus’s genetic sequence.

    The findings suggest that the virus has been spreading in the community for close to six weeks, according to one of the scientists who compared the sequences, Trevor Bedford, an associate professor at the University of Washington.

    If that is true, it could mean that 150 to 1,500 people “have either been infected and recovered or currently are infected now,” said Mike Famulare, a researcher at the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, Wash., who performed the analysis. Those cases, if they exist, have thus far been undetected.

    Many of those people might not yet be contagious, Dr. Famulare said.

    His estimation was based on a simulation using what scientists have learned about the incubation period and transmissibility of the virus. He characterized his estimate of community cases as a “best guess, with broad uncertainty.” Another method, based on census data and estimated sampling, produced similar results, he said.

×
×
  • Create New...