Intro
This is another of the W.O.O.D. series of semi-regular
Weekly Occasional Open Discussions.
(i.e. if I forget and skip one, no big)
Immediate prior one here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/01/13/w-o-o-d-12-january-2020/
and remains open for threads running there (at least until the ‘several month’ auto-close of comments on stale threads).
Canonical list of old ones here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/w-o-o-d/
For just general FYI notices, use to “tips” pages. All the old ones remain for historical reference:
“Tips Pages”
What’s Going On?
Brexit – T Minus 10 and Counting
In Theory, in 10 days, Brexit is a “Done Deal” but The Deal is not a done deal.
Then follows a year during which The Deal is dealt. The EU are pushing the notion that there’s another year or two to be tacked on if “needed” so they want to need it. The UK is saying “Not Going To Happen.”
I personally find it a bit daft to be “out” yet “still in” for Yet ANOTHER Year. But at least it is a real step toward being out.
Initial EU demands for The Deal are to basically have the UK still IN for all practical purposes (especially those loverly fishing rights even down around the Falklands as the French love their fish…)
So we’ll be counting down the days in this W.O.O.D. and planning for a bit of a party on January 31 / Feb. 1 (does anyone know the exact TIME it happens? Is it midnight? If so, that would be about 7 PM Eastern or 4 PM Pacific, so nice time to start a bit of celebration.)
Dr. Steve Turley seems to think Merkel is starting to catch clue but isn’t there yet:
Jeff Taylor has a load of Brexit videos on several of the finer points:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Jeff+Taylor+BREXIT
In this one he christens the exit party as the Big Brexit Celebration, or BBC, just to be cheeky… Supposedly the countdown clock will be projected on the front of Number 10 Downing Street and who knows what all else will happen.
So mark your calendars for The Big Global BBC Party, January 31st. Perhaps starting in Australia? Or ought it finish there? (Too bad the International Date Line wasn’t placed on the same meridian as the UTC time standard…)
Australian Fires
Got Rain?
The OTHER BBC seems to think rain makes fires:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51003504
Australia fires: Rain brings relief but huge blazes expected
Rain has fallen in fire-ravaged parts of Australia and temperatures have dropped – but officials have warned that blazes will “take off” again.
Sooty rain fell down the east coast, from Sydney to Melbourne, with “torrential” rain reported in some parts of New South Wales (NSW).
Can’t let a good soaking get in the way of The Narrative, now can we?
The BOM has rain totals showing around the edges:
Australia Rainfall 24 Hours 21 Jan 2020
So here’s hoping it keeps up like that.
Harry & Meghan
Managed to stomp all over Ms. Pelosi’s Impeachment Party. Look out Harry & Meghan, you’ve made the Mean Girl mad at you! Next thing you know, you might be forced out of your offices… Oh, Wait! ;-)
So at this time it looks like they keep the HRH in the locker for an easy return if needed, but don’t get to use it in public. Then off for a bit of retreat to Canada (and promises to pay back their Royal Cottage bill and whatnot, but with what? One presumes they have some private money?)
Probably my last comment on H&M unless something big pops.
Non-Impeachment
This is now off to the Senate, and I’ve got a thread open to discuss it for the duration:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/01/21/senate-impeachment-trial-begins-yawn/
Going For Woke
I’ve watched a bunch of reviews of Picard. They universally pan it for Going For Woke, via the same idiots who screwed up Discovery.
Spouse intends to watch a couple and let me know if it is worth it. I’m likely to watch the first one, but could just as easily sit it out.
Sir Patrick Stewart has said he didn’t want to just reprise his prior role but wanted to make it more of a relevant commentary on how horrible things are today what with Brexit and Trump and all… And another one bites the dust. Oh Well.
The basic theme seems to be that the Federation Of Planets has gone all nasty and has issues with wanting to exclude foreigners. Right… a federation of all those worlds of a wacky range of species has exclusion issues… Uh Huh… So right out the gate they fail the Suspension Of Disbelief test. Then, it’s set in the wrong time line. Romulus has been destroyed and one is left to presume that it’s all those peace loving Romulan “Refugees” who need a new planet to live on that are being “excluded”. Maybe.
There’s some kind of Androids involved (mostly wearing red, so guess what that might mean…) Oh, and ignore that Historical Issue of Data being the only android in the Federation… Canon? What canon?
Then Picard gets rebuffed when he asks The Federation to do a rescue mission of some sort, so assembles a bunch of Misfit Radicals (from the land of misfit toys?) to do it on the sly and against the government. Sigh.
It is set in the Dark Theme of Discovery. None of the positive uplifting theme of Roddenberry need apply, it seems. Doom, Despair, and Agony On Me… A bit over 2 minutes.
Here’s the 2018 trailer. It’s had reshoots and production delays, so only now making it to the screen (Ignore the April in the trailer…):
Later trailers have less of the old good stuff in them and more dark and depressing, including something to do with the Borg, but it’s all made deliberately opaque.
Here’s the newer trailer:
So long live the resistance and all that… I guess…
There’s now a Mysterious Girl who beats up security officers and needs Picard to help her. Then there’s some kind of Romulan’s Borg Research facility (perhaps in the damaged / captured Borg cube?) and more dark stuff.
Yeah, way complicated for not much benefit, full of dark and depression. Not real Trek.
Snow Season & Cold
We had snow a few days back in the hills above Silicon Valley. There’s been heavy snow all over Eastern Canada (had to send in the army to rescue some folks) and then Washington State has a bunch of folks cut off by snow. Again a minor rescue party sent in.
https://weather.com/storms/winter/news/2020-01-18-newfoundland-blizzard-record-daily-snow-st-johns
Crippling Newfoundland, Canada, Blizzard From Bomb Cyclone Smashes All-Time Daily Snow Record
By Jonathan Erdman 4 days agoAt a Glance
An intense storm delivered a crippling blizzard to Newfoundland, Canada, Friday and Saturday.
A state of emergency was declared in St. John’s and other cities, banning vehicles on city streets.
St. John’s smashed its all-time daily snowfall record which had stood for over 20 years.
Photos showed massive snow drifts blocking doors of homes.
This storm was a bomb cyclone, which intensified rapidly once it moved off the coast of New England.
And with characteristic absurdity, the picture they show is folks in bikes with the Golden Gate behind them on a sunny warm day. Can’t let the actual snow disasters get in the way of the Visual Narrative, now can we?
https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article239313158.html
People in Miami don’t mind pictures of the snow they ran away from ;-)
Northwest hit with more snow, wind, power outages, 2 rescued
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS JANUARY 15, 2020 09:45 PMSKYKOMISH, Wash.
More snow fell in the Northwest through Wednesday, causing Washington state officials to send food, water and fuel to an area hit hard northeast of Seattle and resulting in a hourslong rescue of a stranded couple southwest of Mt. Bachelor in Oregon.
The Seattle metro area didn’t see much new snow but many schools, including those in Seattle, remain delayed or closed because of lingering snow and ice.
Reports from Port Angeles ranged up to 20 inches of snow. North of Seattle, Mount Vernon tallied 8 inches of snow while Anacortes recorded 12.
Storms Cut Power in Washington State Mountain Towns for Days
Rural mountain communities outside Seattle where unusually intense winter storms knocked out power for days have seen some relief.
By Associated Press, Wire Service Content Jan. 17, 2020, at 4:41 a.m.SKYKOMISH, WASH. (AP) — Rural mountain communities outside Seattle that have been without power for days and cut off from the outside world by a series of winter storms saw some relief as convoys brought in food and other supplies.
The storms have dumped several feet of unusual snow on parts of western Washington state. As they moved south Thursday, heavy rain and strong winds battered parts of Northern California, while the Lake Tahoe area braced for heavy snow.
Crews in Washington state cleared snow, power lines and trees that had fallen across a highway leading to small towns including Skykomish and Baring, allowing some residents who had been without power for nearly a week to leave and for supplies to be brought in Wednesday. On Thursday afternoon, U.S. Highway 2 fully reopened to all travelers.
But hey, it’s only weather, right? Right?
Musings from the Chiefio 
We had a nice January thaw, here, a week or so ago. Sadly accompanied by tornadoes; but that is life here. We are now in the refrigerator, and I, for one, don’t like it at all. I am old, retired, sick and due for surgeries beginning Jan 27th. Heat, eat, or meds is a thing, and I don’t like it, either. It is what it is.
Picard is only available on the CBS streaming pay for play site. I still have yet to see the other recent release of Star Trek for the same pay for play reason. I guess one could find “in the wild” bootleg iterations.
Sorry to hear that CD but look on the bright side I don’t think you have to dig out of snow like this.
https://twitter.com/QTAnon1/status/1219553832549531648
@Larry,
Indeed. Anything more than flurries, here, is a bother. During the Blizzard of ’93, parts had to deal with a foot or more. Where I was, it was only 6 inches of white stuff. I have experienced thundersnow, deep in the Heart of Dixie. I never thought I’d live to see/hear that!
Interesting paper coming out from Ned Nikolov on cloud cover and earth’s temperature.
Hmmm interesting – first I have seen on this apparently Japan is well along on developing a home grown SST aircraft to bridge the time gap involved in visiting Japan and bring them closer to their major industrial nation market.
https://blog.boomsupersonic.com/japan-airlines-finds-teamwork-progress-on-most-recent-trip-to-the-boom-hangar-790e364b859c
Meanwhile going to get chilly in Florida.
@Ossqss:
We have the streaming service as the spouse likes a lot of their other stuff. Basically the Trek Drek is free to me as it is in the bundle. Having seen STD (they really needed to think about the title abbreviation for Star Trek Disappointment) I’d not pay to get it.
@CDQuarles:
Hope the medical bit works out for you. If you have any interest in cheap but good meal recipes let me know and I’ll post some. In a restaurant cost control is key, then 2 parents from The Great Depression… end result is I can make very good meals very cheap.
It can be as simple as a big baked potato with some cheese shreds and SPAM julienne on top, side of chili beans. Or a baked chicken (a bunch of meals and sandwiches) then the bones and pot drippings make soup for a week. (Handful each of lentils and barley makes it a robust soup.) Overall it can be about 50 ¢ for a decent meal. FWIW, this is stuff I cook all the time because I like it. IMHO, no need to ever skip dinner.
One I especially like is to simmer a pot of lentils, about 1/2 pound, with 2 to 3 inch chunks of potatoes and some fat (botttled oil or saved chicken fat from the roast) about 30 minutes. Then stir in curry powder and salt as you like if. Makes a BIG pot of curry. Ladle over rice ( 1/4 cup in rice cooker w 1/2 cup water) very filling and in the cents per serving. I’ve also sometimes put carrots or green peas in it too. Only downside is a bit high on starches if diabetic.
Then there’s a simple chefs salad. Torn lettuce on a plate. Slice one slice of sandwich ham into bits, one pile of cheese shreds, a few olives drained from a can, one hard boiled egg cut into wedges. Dressing. It makes a full low glycemic dinner for maybe a buck, depending on your lettuce cost and things like type of ham. I get big ones at COSTCO and and divide it into freezer units. Same thing with cheese shreds. Big bag, divided and frozen smaller tubs.
Oh, and you can use a slice of the roast chicken, chopped, instead of the ham (or in addition). Turkey works too and can be in the 89 ¢ / pound range, so very low cost. But a 12 pound turkey makes a lot of soup / stew :-)
A catch is that all of the household members have different needs and issues. I am extremely lactose intolerant. My sister is extremely spice intolerant. My nephew has a different set of food issues and has had them all of his life.
Re: H&M – M is independently wealthy, and I understand BK has offered H a nice job (You want fries with that whopper?)
On Patrick stewart – let him be woke. You once wrote why Enterprise failed. And you are correct. That is why Discovery is failing and piquant will fail.
No heart. Lots of woke, but no heart.
FWIW, on Akkad Daily was a mention that Tommy Robinson was “quarantined” on youtube but had a new channel. You must search for it. In the interest of thwarting censorship (of any POV) here’s the link to “TRNews”:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqYsfLD1GOiTAlOVfSBqzeQ
@CDQuarles:
I did Thanksgiving Dinner regularly for a family that had:
Glucose issues.
Wheat allergy.
Corn allergy.
Soy issues / sickness.
Chick Pea reactions.
Vegetarian / Vegan mix.
All Meat Keto.
Lactose Intolerance (mild).
Love chili & curry (me).
Can’t stand spicy (spouse).
and then there was the “must be diabetic friendly” and the “must be oxalate kidney stone friendly” parameter set… so spinach vs lettuce and more including which nuts.
Ever try to cook vegetarian without corn, wheat (and related rye, triticale, emmer, barley, sometimes oats), soy, and chickpeas?
You learn a few tricks after a while. Like non-milk cheese for the vegan / lactose folks, or leave off cheese and add coconut oil for the vegan’s baked potato. It’s all about substitutions.
For the mild lactose intolerance I was still able to make his meals with cheese as the fermentation took out enough. But for the vegans all animal cheese was out.
So if you are interested, just let me know what’s the limit on dairy. None at all, or just avoid milk, or butter out or whatever.
One of the “tricks” is to make the basic dish and then have a spice mix to blend in at the end. Separate the pot, spice one leave the other bland. I do that with chili. Make it very mild and then add “zip” to mine ;-)
It is milk that is an issue with me. If it has been fermented, I’m fine with it.
I must say, that’s an impressive list.
Being old boomers, we remember what Grandma did. As far as cheap meals go, we can handle that. (And yeah, I did forget that I make kidney stones and still pass them at times, as much as I like spinach, especially raw spinach.)
@CD:
Well, it was a challenge, which is part of why I liked doing it ;-) Essentially every person was a custom meal in some way. Then again, I like to tell the spouse that she married a short order cook. Not a chef. Short order cooks make 60 meals an hour, all different. Sometimes more ;-)
So, OK, you remember Gramma’s Cooking. Got it. I’ll let it go now ;-)
On the Family Thanksgiving:
One of the things I did was make a Millet Bread for me (where I swapped millet flour for corn) and corn bread for everyone else. Made with non-soy vegetable oil, so the vegans were OK, then on the table were both butter and non-soy margarine. So basically it was mix all the dry goods BUT the corn / millet, mix the wet. Divide 1/2 & 1/2 in two bowls. Add respective millet / corn meal. Mix, pour in small individual pans, bake. Eventually divided the corn version into 1/2 lots and used “wheat substitute” flour mix to replace the wheat flour for the wheat allergy guy. So 3 kinds of corn bread…
Now generalize that to the gravy (mushroom and turkey one with milk one not), thickened with non-wheat (IIRC arrowroot or another flour) the turkey itself (one vegan TauxFurkey and one real), the salad dressing ( one vegan, one creamy), the … etc.
I’d make a corn casserole with canned corn, crackers, butter… and a version with rice crackers for the wheat guy… and part with margarine instead of butter and with “organic” vegan crackers. The last two variations small sized lots. Tried making one with other things (peas, etc.) for me but just never could get a flavor that was interesting or anywhere near corn… that I love but can’t have.
It’s all about the pre-planning. Lay out the basic meal plan. Compare it to the checklist of “issues”. Do portion sizing for substitution options to meet the needs, if at all possible. Adjust the process to put in the “divide” points… Then work like crazy making 20 “dishes” instead of 5 ;-)
Really did remind me of the days in the restaurant…
Hmmm Puerto Rico is coming to a boil I suspect, now that they have discovered that there are multiple warehouses full of disaster aid that never got delivered to the intended recipients.
https://twitter.com/zachhaller/status/1218999870133919744
I didn’t realize it was 13 warehouses – and don’t forget the pallets of water stored out on an old runway that never got distributed.
@EM,
About restaurants, I’ve been there and my sister even more. We have a second cousin still in the business. Yeah, I am very much aware :).
For your phrase collection
“Tes-la-que”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/01/22/we-dont-need-no-flaming-sparky-cars-51/
On snow
I have the winter snowfall records kept by my town since 1959. The average is 9.7 metres. The minimum is 5 metres (we are going to beat that this winter: take that climate change!), The max is 16.3 metres in 2012. I learned a lot about clearing snow that winter.
@EM: On BREXIT timing:
Per the legislation, ‘A clause locking in Brexit at the stroke of midnight, 31 December’
As far as I know, Brits don’t need much of an excuse to have a party at the pub. Since the 31st is a Friday, perhaps they’ll take the whole day off!
Regarding the Puerto Rico mess;
Non-delivery started years ago. In an early incident union truck drivers didn’t like something or other and goods sat at ports. Maybe port folks had to move the goods from the docks just so they could unload more.
Anyway, after a big snow in Washington State brought trees and power lines down there was a lack of response from the government of Jay ‘climate change’ Inslee. The storm and stranded people aspect was the big news item for days, but Jay said ‘we had not been asked’ or something.
Local residents with snowmobiles and pickup trucks entered the void to carry food and fuel and help anyone that needed things.
The U.S. President (doesn’t matter) can’t fix the Puerto Rico mess.
I think the first I ever heard of Puerto Rico was the 1954 United States House shooting by four Puerto Rican nationalists: Link
In 1950 the population was 2,210,700.
In 2000 the population was 3,808,600.
In 2016 the population was 3,195,100.
Many are moving out, but illegal immigrants move in with an educational imbalance. The number of PRs in the US far exceeds those living there.
Suggestion: move everyone off the island and make it a nature reserve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico#Demographics
Even if warming were real, it isn’t a catastrophe:
@Another Ian:
Combining a battery that bursts into big flames on impact, with computer driven unexpected acceleration, seems a recipe for repeated disasters of the lethal kind.
Spouse says she would not take one for free. I’m drifting that way. Air bags are little help in an inferno. We’ve had several crash and burn deaths now.
Tesla needs a model Q so it can be properly badged “Tesla-Q”.
Curious. Steven Fraser a few posts ago reckons midnight is H-Hour for Brexit (December? – is this an earlier version of the legislation? – there are so many), but everything I’ve heard/seen says 11pm on Jan 31st (e.g. here, ha ha ;-) – GMT applies in January.
Besht shelebrate 23:00 and 00:00 to be shertain …
Speaking of Star Trek…I watched my DVD of Star Trek: Into Darkness this past long weekend.
It struck me at the time that CGI stuff is, more often than not, really dark. Most of the screen is black. Flashy explosions excepted, of course.
It made me wonder if it’s faster/cheaper to create mostly-black scenes because they render faster.
It has bothered me that so much modern so-called “entertainment” is so dark. I wonder if that has anything to do with how depressed young people are. I know their screen-based world has a lot to do with that, too. But when I compare the old, Depression-era movies, and how most of them were intended to be a fun escape from the real world of struggle and dreariness (which is why I have them in my collection and watch them and pointedly avoid the modern ugly movies to the extent possible), it’s like night and day.
Does anyone here have any knowledge of the finer technical points of creating movies using CGI? Is it faster to leave most of the screen black?
Maybe they want to party for an hour leading up to the moment?
I notice that Boris’ BREXIT bill was modified by the Lords and now has entered Ping Pong.
What are ths odds it ping pongs to a hard BREXIT?
As I understand it, no bill means hard BREXIT, yes?
I’m going to go to the party at Parliament Square. Booked the hotel weeks ago, within walking distance. I’ll report back on the current W.O.O.D afterwards.
I can’t find the recent thread where we mentioned AI and face id systems but this is related to it.
Note that basically anyone who appears in an unrestricted web photo of a crowd or event is likely in or soon will be in this data base.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/groundbreaking-clearview-ai-technology-used-to-take-down-alleged-child-sex-predators
Is it faster to leave most of the screen black?
Very likely one of the video compression techniques used to cut down bandwidth of on line videos is it only renders the things that change, so if you have scene in a park and most of the trees and grass does not change frame to frame it just uses that same image over and over and overlays just the pixels that changed from the prior frame as I understand it.
We saw physical evidence of this in the New Zealand shooters first person videos of the shootings.
If you watched it frame by frame you could see the spent brass ejected from the rifle spin away from the rifle then when it got small enough simply disappear.
Much like the jpg compression technique that does not bother rendering color or luminosity changes which are so small a human cannot easily perceive them. (this is the source of the color artifact in sky photos where instead of being a continuous tone gradually getting darker blue as it goes up from the horizon in some photos you see banding in the sky of identical color bands each just a bit darker that the previous one.
WOW this is bizarre!
Is Sen Schumer seeing invisible people?
https://twitter.com/Graenni/status/1219938057668919296
CGI renders faster if more area is one tone, any tone. It is slower with lots of color changes, subtile textures, reflections, and fine movements. That’s why fur was so hard and only recently have they made moving fur bits.
Look at Monsters Inc for really good rendering, including fur. In the credits is the fur guy…
Why dark? Bigger contrast and impact with fire and explosions. Fire in daylight is unimpressive to nearly invisible. For drama, you want the big hit of full black to brightest reds and yellows.
There were older dark films too. Film Noir used the technique to set a dark mood. Many films today want to also set a dark mood, then contrast it with lighter moments. There are modern films that are bright, just not the big names… IMHO.
Finally, the real world has several stops more range of light than film can handle. Each stop a doubling of photons. Best B&W film you might get 7 out of a 10 contrast scene. Color film sometimes only 5. So shooting on film stock, you either blow out the bright spots making clear film, or the shadows are hard black with no information. So a lot of effort went into lighting to reduce contrast range. Fill in shadow areas. Shoot in morning light outdoors for “flatter” light. Shoot sunset skies, not noon. (Or for westerns in the desert have that blinding white sky….)
Compare digital cameras or worse, CGI where I can set my pixel to any binary value at all, no limits beyond word length, then view it on a superduper monitor. Then you watch it on your TV after compression in transmission has made my subtile texture shadows into flat black by removing the lower order bits….
That’s the big lumps, IMHO. Enhanced by people who have never really had any excitement or hardship in their life trying to make themselves feel something stongly. They have no hardship to escape, so want to imagine what a real life is like. They live in bright palaces, so their fantasy is about the forbidden dark.
@L.L.:
It is strange. Tried to find another story to fit… checking watch or looking over bifocals at lady behind him, but it still looks like he’s casting out daemons… Maybe just practicing a line for later on camera?
“Tulsi Gabbard — staying one step ahead of the Clintons.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/01/22/bills-wife-13/#comments
Tulsi Gabbard, is a bit irritated at Hillary;
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gabbard-hits-clinton-with-50-million-defamation-lawsuit-over-russian-asset-remarks
I hope her life insurance is paid up.
Looks like China has quarantined the city of Wuhan (11 million) due to outbreak. Probably see more of this coming.
In other news , Tacos anyone? 😎
https://www.miamiherald.com/miami-com/restaurants/article239520633.html
@ EM and Larry Ledwick:
Thanks for responding to my question about CGI stuff.
Yes, that fur in Monsters Inc is amazing!
I hadn’t thought about the compression issues. That makes sense.
I’m made aware of compression issues when I make music tracks. If the client wants to play it over a big sound system in an auditorium, I give them a CD with WAV files. If they just want something via email for personal use, I send them MP3 files. If it’s up to me, I give them WAV files on a CD.
I’m good with iguana tacos! Just wish I was there now.
@ Larry Ledwick:
Maybe Schumer has one of those brain control implants, or got his meds mixed up!
They sure do act like they’re under the control of something or someone else.
If you’re just an actor, you’ll do whatever insane thing your handlers tell you to, I guess.
Of the Media, By the Media, and For the Media.
@OssQss re tacos – Funny that. Mrs. H.R. was in the mood for tacos tonight so I hit up Taco Bell.
Sadly, they didn’t have iguana tacos on the menu. Darn!
Remember, Schumer said you do not go up against the C.I.A.. They will ruin or kill you. Hillary said that half of Washington will hang with her. This entire coup was hatched and operated out of Central Intelligence and the State department. Trump is NOT a part of their team. The Trump Team is a threat to their organization and it’s wealth and power gathering…pg
On a totally different topic – There is now solid proof that natural migration has brought wolves into Colorado, there is now a confirmed pack in north west Colorado (Moffat County) near Craig Colorado, so it is only a matter of a few years that we will have wolves coming into the mountains near Denver.
This will improve the health of our elk and deer herds but will also change the rules for open range grazing in Colorado and in time it will also impact hikers and back packers as they will have to change their behavior to recognize another predator is in the woods. Mountain lions are already coming back to the point that they are now becoming a risk to small children and pets in the mountain communities just outside Denver.
The wolf lovers will learn first hand that the re-introduction is not all roses and beautiful night choruses in the mountains. It will be much less safe to leave pets out at night in the mountain communities and same goes for letting small children run free late in the evening and early morning (like waiting for school buses.)
Not a surprise – many have speculated about this recently.
HRC likely siphoned off BILLIONS .
https://truepundit.com/top-fbi-agent-died-after-uncovering-hillary-clinton-funneled-billions-of-tax-dollars-from-state-dept-to-clinton-foundation-and-associates/
In the pandemic news front.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/case-of-wuhan-coronavirus-detected-in-washington-state-first-in-united-states/
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/21-students-from-chinese-province-at-center-of-virus-outbreak-in-fairfax-county-for-school-cultural-exchange
Looks like they are using thermal screening (works if the subject has started to present a fever) not so much if they have not been infected long enough to begin to show symptons.
https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/national/us-to-screen-airline-passengers-from-china-for-coronavirus
Prince Charles and Greta
“Giants of climate Scientology”
Via a comment at Jo Nova
Hannity does a heck of a good rant on the senate proceedings here:
The interesting bit for me is how Democrats are buying the shit and Republicans are not. So are the Democrats just becomming the party of the really dumb lead by the really corrupt? Is that enough for a majority?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10805423/queen-gives-brexit-bill-royal-assent-with-boris-to-hail-freedom-in-january-31-speech/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/rudy-fires-warning-shot-going-to-release-evidence-on-the-bidens-millions-in-corrupt-deeds/
https://www.diamondandsilk.com/blog/2019/12/28/bombshell-paul-pelosi-nancys-son-under-scrutiny-for-shady-dealings-in-ukraine/
I am seeing a trend they are going to let the Democrats make fools of themselves in the impeachment trials then slap them in the face with a storm of corruption trials and news stories that totally buries the impeachment saga.
https://www.ammoland.com/2020/01/virginia-aftermath-is-dem-gun-control-push-political-suicide/
https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/23/why-jeff-bezoss-claim-that-saudi-arabia-hacked-his-phone-is-ridiculous/
Reminder: most infectious diseases have an asymptomatic period of about a week. You become infectious during this period. Most symptoms are the result of activating the immune system. You remain infectious through most of this period.
Bottom line: you have different groups of people. One group is naturally immune due to lack of the necessary receptor. Another group is naturally immune due to cross reactivity as a result of another infection that’s similar enough. These may never be infectious. You have one group that is infectious but never shows symptoms, for whatever reason. One group gets a mild illness. One group gets a severe illness yet they are not life threatening. One groups gets a fatal illness.
https://archive.md/vpLxq
Enjoy
Media now forces me to endure an additional step before reading. If the journo is female – check if she has children. No children? She’s likely out of her mind – not worth the trouble to read.
@Steve C: BBC says ‘The UK will officially leave the bloc at 23:00 GMT on 31 January – more than three and a half years after the country voted for Brexit in a referendum in June 2016.’
I defer to your opinion.
Power Grab, I’ve noticed that too & have read this is often due to the movie being meant to show in darkened theaters, not in a day-lit room. Read somewhere putting your TV screen in “Theater Mode” helps — my experience is that helps slightly. Speech (but not the explosions) is also very faint in these unaltered made-for-theater movies.
Re Brexit at 11 pm / midnight.
It’s midnight in Brussels (CET) which is 11 pm UK time
For future reference:
Catastrophy FUD list:
@View:
Ah, now it makes sense… so 9 hours earlier here or 2 PM. Is that about 5 AM in Australia? But they have a few time zones….
@Beng135:
Part of the sound issue is the 5 speaker Dolby encoding not being decoded at home properly on two speakers. I find it worst on DVDs but haven’t bothered to buy a Dolby ready sound system…
@Taz:
Link didn’t work for me….
@CDQ:
Yup. I’m in the group that tends to just toss off infections. Yet sometimes I go down hard on a new one. Had 105 and 106 F fevers on two. One of those being the flu in about 1956? It was a bad one. I was just a few years old. No flu since has been as bad.
I’ve had others around me go down hard on some bug, and I’ll get sniffles for a day. Spouse was a teacher at the daily bug exchange. After a while she’d had everything and stopped getting sick. I can’t remember the last time either of us had a 3 digit fever. It’s been many years.
But what I worry about is the notion that those who are carriers have a fever. As you point out, not in the early stages. The vilification of quarantine is bizarre and will kill people.
@Larry Ledwick
Yes, those killer mutant bees. Hollywood made 2 films about that threat.
Did the Navy figure out a fusion reactor?
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190295733A1/en?inventor=Salvatore+Pais&oq=inventor:(Salvatore+Pais)
Given the incubation time is up to 14 days the real numbers will not show up until we have passed the point of 3x – 5x the incubation time, then the real extent of the risk will be self evident and not able to be suppressed for political ends.
Part of that vilification comes from hepatitis and HIV epidemics from the 70s/80s combined with certain political decisions. One could say that about the corona virus from/in China now. What scares me is what will happen when a Marburg family virus acquires the mutability of influenza viruses; where both are zoonotic viruses, just like this corona virus is. (And remember, a function of viruses is ‘cross-species’ exchange of genetic material.)
Odd that it started in a city with their top end biohazard lab….
https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-officials-quarantine-entire-city-2020-1
https://thedailycoin.org/2020/01/23/the-real-umbrella-corp-wuhan-ultra-biohazard-lab-was-studying-the-worlds-most-dangerous-pathogens/
I’m sure it is just a coincidence….
Maybe …
Back when I did pathology work, I would occasionally walk past the virology lab. That said, really ugly pathogens were not studied there, at least during my time, other than HIV.
Current guidelines on Wuhan Coronal Virus (current info is hard to find and details even harder)
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/clinical-management-of-novel-cov.pdf?sfvrsn=bc7da517_2
Wiki page on Corona
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus
Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/summary.html
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/01/second-family-cluster-found-wuhan-novel-coronavirus-outbreak
A coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China has killed 18 people and infected more than 630.
This implies a fatality rate of about 2.8-3%
The virus’ scientific name is 2019-nCoV
Incubation period is around 2 to 14 days
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-virus-everything-we-know-deadly-2019-ncov-wuhan-spread-2020-1#this-map-shows-where-the-virus-has-spread-around-the-world-14
blob:https://view.ceros.com/d6b502fe-319e-4a7d-a3f5-36180a3f74ee
@ beng135:
I’m out of luck, I guess. All I have is 2 old, tube-type TVs. One was $15 and one was free.
I don’t want to have to ditch my entertainment centers to make room for a big screen TV. And where would I put my collection of movies and records? You can’t stream the stuff I like the best.
But I’ll bet my sound is better than flat screen TVs unless they’ve been hooked up to a better sound system.
China handling a suspected person infected with 2019-nCOV
Nifty little isolation carriage they have there.
@EM – Re: Dem vs Rep
Pointman has a very interesting take on the current situation. – https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2020/01/23/the-smart-but-machiavellian-move-the-dems-wont-make/
I think it is more wishful thinking, but I do see problems ahead for the dims.
A few observations about 2019-nCOV virus (Wuhan outbreak)
https://twitter.com/unseen1_unseen/status/1220572544669028359
[I get a page doesn’t exist message for this link. -EMS]
Just finished the first episode of Picard. Star Trek Gerontology… in it, several of the artificially created mysteries from the trailers are resolved. Beautifully filmed, well acted, stunning special effects, and a tedious script dripping with morose introspection and self pity.
I’ll likely watch more episodes, since it is “free to me” in a package we already have. I’d not bother to buy it though.
They use the usual memory flashback trick and dream sequence bit to put in plot “twists” so that the folks trying to guess the plot from the trailer would be wrong. Boring….
Turns out Dahj isn’t Picard’s daughter. SPOILER ALERT:
I’m going to spill the beans on the plot line and misdirections.
Dahj is sort of a Data daughter, created by a rogue scientist since they banned synthetics. The scene of Mars being attacked seems to be a reference to when other synthetics attacked Mars killing off a bunch of folks (implied to be Romulans rescued by Picard back when). Dahj gets killed off in the first episode but, surprise, has a twin (shades of recycled Data story lines…). The twin is working in the captured Borg cube.
So my guess is that Picard is off to save the twin from destruction by the same folks (Romulans for God only knows what reason). Next show will be rejection by Star Fleet and crew assembly, followed by chasey chasey bang bang… undoubtedly more morose moaning about The Federation not being the same anymore and how horrible people were to those peace loving Romulans (who, despite being blown up in a supernova in the movie had a gaggle rescued by Picard and a volunteer fleet… details to be sorted out later…)
So far I’m deeply unimpressed. It has the same general esthetic and feel as STD Star Trek Discovery / Disappointment. Great special effects in a confused script that violates canon and wallows in PC Emoting. Oh Well.
Not certain why the China reaction is so extreme, quarantine of about 35 million people. ( Latest number)
Last week in California about 35 died from the flu.
I wonder what they mean by quarantine. ( No travel ?)
Oh, I ought to add that the script regularly has rampant stupidity in it. Like Romulan blood now able to disolve a phaser rifle so it blows up, Dahj supposedly having a positronic brain in a human flesh and blood body, but still manages to do android feats of strength and speed, states “Data was unique” so ignores Lore, has Dahj run across an entire rooftop toward a Romulan professional assassin with a phaser rifle, who always hits the ground at her feet, has a bunch of Romulans beaming in trying to capture her … so why not just beam her out?
It is dumb writing with lots of emoting and little thinking, unaware of actual Trek. If you start to think about it, it gets worse… like first Dahj shows up at Picards vinyard, then decides she must sneak out in the night to “protect Picard” from the assassins after her… which somehow didn’t enter her mind before she got there. Or when they say they could clone Data from just one positron from his brain… so clearly don’t know what a positron is or that Data doesn’t have DNA to clone. These writers don’t know science so write a soap opera with funny makeup and props.
It just seems like they had a storyboard of sets in mind and gags / effects, then glued them together with whatever idea came to mind. Like wanting to use the acid blood from Alien so just tossed that in. Rather like a stoner trying to tell you about a movie they saw.
Well found the reason for the page does not exist message.
unseen1
@unseen1_unseen
7 hours ago
More
I deleted the thread on the new virus. It’s late and I’m not 100% sure of the information. I’ll double check in the morning and report when I can be sure of all the data.
@David A.:
The quarantine does seem a bit excessive. It looks like they shut down transport in whole cities.
OTOH; When you must pay for treating a Billion people if the whole nation gets it, maybe going into rapid lockdown is worth it.
We also don’t know the actual mortality rate. So say most of the few hundred cases are in early stages, but the 18 dead were out of 50 early cases … that would be huge.
They also might be more easily triggered due to the AFS taking out so much of their pig population.
Looks like the dirty tricks folks are corrupting food science too. Trying to call a paper that found the evidence against red meat was too thin to claim it is a health risk, a threat to our health. Because we might then eat meat. Demanding it be retracted prior to publication.. Yup, the fake meat folks are using the same dirty trick of intimidating editors and pushing junk science to support a finding that meat is bad, so you will buy their fake stuff.
I’m not interested in the Vegan Mafia choosing my diet for me.
Looks like BREXIT is at the finish line. Lords folded on their amendments, so it is down to the Queen giving approval. So in one week, BREXIT is done. Then 11 months of negotiating The Deal for final removal of EU Rules. Boris’ exit bill forbids a further extension, so I’ve been told.
It feels like it has been forever. Wasn’t Obummer POTUS at the start? So long ago…
With BREXIT a done deal, Johnson and Trump can deal with making the Anglo-American Empire a thing of reality and deprive the one world GEBs of their prize. The Russians should cheer this outcome as the English and the Americans have often saved them from invading enemies over the last 300 years,
I think the Chinese quarantine effort is justified. Current numbers (which will of course get more solid with time) estimates the fatality rate of the 2019-nCOV virus is on the order of 3% (this in countries which have sophisticated medical systems. The normal flu death rate is about 0.01%. Thus it is about 20x – 30x more lethal that the seasonal influenza so this places 2019-nCOV virus in the same category as the 1918 Spanish flu which killed 50 million people world wide at the start of the last century.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5933a1.htm
This report summarizes the results of these analyses, which found that, during 1976–2007, estimates of annual influenza-associated deaths from respiratory and circulatory causes (including pneumonia and influenza causes) ranged from 3,349 in 1986–87 to 48,614 in 2003–04. The annual rate of influenza-associated death in the United States overall during this period ranged from 1.4 to 16.7 deaths per 100,000 persons.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
The global mortality rate from the 1918–1919 pandemic is not known, but an estimated 10% to 20% of those who were infected died. With about a third of the world population infected, this case-fatality ratio means 3% to 6% of the entire global population died.[2] Influenza may have killed as many as 25 million people in its first 25 weeks. Older estimates say it killed 40–50 million people,[3] while current estimates put the death toll at probably 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million.[41][5] These estimates would correspond to three to five percent of Earth’s human population at the time.[42]
https://news.yahoo.com/chinas-coronavirus-has-the-same-death-rate-as-the-spanish-flu-pandemic-that-killed-50-m-people-151608803.html
The death rate will climb significantly if 2109-nCOV gets into high density low medical availability societies like Central Africa or Latin America.
Better source on spanish flu death rate:
correction to my prior numbers was off by decimal point on normal flu death rate.
(death rate ~ 2.5 % vs 0.1% for seasonal flu)
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-0979_article
An estimated one third of the world’s population (or ≈500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses (1,2) during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. The disease was exceptionally severe. Case-fatality rates were >2.5%, compared to <0.1% in other influenza pandemics (3,4). Total deaths were estimated at ≈50 million (5–7) and were arguably as high as 100 million (7).
Looks like BREXIT is at the finish line. Lords folded on their amendments, so it is down to the Queen giving approval.
I believe Royal Assent has already been granted.
https://www.cityam.com/brexit-bill-granted-royal-assent-and-signed-into-law/
We now have a confirmed 2019-nCOV case in Chicago, under observation and her contacts are being monitored.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/1/24/21080139/coronavirus-chicago-patient-confirmed
I think this is an undercover video of the Democratic Impeachment plan.
It seemed like a good idea at the time!
Corona 2019-nCOV update on national patients – 63 patients in 22 states, 11 have tested negative for the virus.
https://nypost.com/2020/01/24/second-us-case-of-coronavirus-confirmed-in-chicago/
Am thinking of exiting the stock market for a bit, seems like we will be having progressively worse news over the next few weeks. What do clever people think about this?
OF
China locking down another city
Chinese city of Jingzhou to be put on lockdown at 5 p.m., raising number of people in locked down cities to 35 million
Expert expects full impact of the 2019-nCOV virus to become apparent this weekend due to typical incubation time being about 8 days. We will see the first wave of infections from those who left the city of Wuhan during their return home from the Lunar holiday.
He added that the “golden time” to contain the virus had already passed, despite the city imposing a travel ban on Thursday, because most people traveling home for the Lunar New Year would have already left the city.
“They might have been in contact with patients in the community and still in the incubation stage when they left Wuhan. They are probably virus carriers on the move,” Guan said.
He said he expected the outbreak to peak over the weekend, noting that the virus had an incubation period of around eight days.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-viral-outbreak-could-be-10-times-the-scale-of-sars-expert-says_3214138.html
China continues to lock things down. – now at 14 cities locked down.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7923913/Shanghai-Disney-closed-Saturday-help-prevent-spread-virus.html
For something different
North American water must be much kinder to machinery than that down here
https://www.allischalmers.com/forum/td-24-swamp-thing_topic167565.html
Koo (King of Obselete, Lynn Lake Manitoba) has a fair bit of experience – owns two D6 9U’a that were under water for three years and is just negotiating the recovery of a Ford truck that sank 24 years ago. Go to
http://www.kingofobsolete.ca/
Scroll down and click on “What the king did today)
Scroll down to “Jan 24th) for video
Scroll down further for the ones on finding and recovery methodology for the truck
@Another Ian:
Chemical reaction rates are temperature dependant. Frozen tends to preserve…
Here’s the 2020 census questions – intrusive as ever.
Click to access planned-questions-2020-acs.pdf
The bikes were fun to watch. If they ran it 4-8 persons at a time, with 30 second delay, perhaps workable.
@OF: Buying Opportunity.
I saw a video clip of someone collapsing on the street while walking.
I read that they ran out of test kits, which was/is keeping down the ‘verified cases’ #.
Also, that an entire surgical team was infected from a single patient.
OK< clear confirmation bias…
I wanted to bail yesterday, but did it today.
Now the question will be re-entry plan.
China is not locking down millions because it is fun or popular.
When a massive lockdown is shown to be too little/too late, yikes.
I think the nearterm downside risk greatly outweighs any upside.
Octave
Just so you know
“Delingpole: George Soros Donates $1 Billion to Combat ‘Authoritarianism.’ Seriously?”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/24/delingpole-george-soros-donates-1-billion-to-combat-authoritarianism-seriously/
“Merkel says she wants to talk to skeptics. We’ll believe it when we see it”
Any mention of listening?
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/merkel-says-she-wants-to-talk-to-skeptics-ill-believe-it-when-i-see-it/#comment-2262502
Mad Magazine “complete the ad”
“FNC’s Wallace: Democrats ‘Have Made a Powerful Case’ Against Trump being impeached”
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/01/23/fncs-wallace-democrats-have-made-a-powerful-case-against-trump/
“The Carbon Tax, Dicksplained.”
Link at
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/01/24/the-carbon-tax/#comments
Rudy tells us he will be dropping some corruption stink bombs over the next few weeks. He opened this/his new site up. I expect some interesting things to come as he has been teasing it up for the last week. First podcast today at the bottom of the page.
https://rudygiulianics.com/
When you have a bad viral infection, you should quarantine early and often, otherwise it can get out of hand. {IOW the opposite of what the PTB wanted to do, despite what the Health Department/infectious disease folk wanted; so HIV in the USA impacted many more people than it should have been limited to affecting.}
Yes but the public memory of things like Typhus and community or home quarantines has dimmed to the point that political correctness is more important, can’t discriminate by forcing a protected class to not kill dozens of other people, and require them to order in their groceries rather than go shopping in crowded stores at Saturday rush times.
Political Correctness will be seen in the perspective of history as destructive as believing disease was due to “bad air” or evil spirits.
No telling how many thousands will need to die before the world re-learns the value of isolation of high risk groups during a pandemic.
Of course we can’t cut into air line revenues by shutting down international travel until folks have passed a medical hold without showing symptoms.
Our daughter-in-law is in China and set to come home at the end of the month.
I don’t know her itinerary. She visits a lot of manufacturers in different cities. It’s too many to detail to us, and some visits she sets up while she is in China. So we don’t know a lot about where she is or where she is going.
We are concerned that she may get locked in and prevented from returning home for a while. Meanwhile, our son is in Vancouver, B.C. and does not have an international plan, so we haven’t been able to find out if our daughter-in-law has much exposure to the virus or not.
We hope she is clear of all the mess and will be home on time with no exposure to the virus. (Yeah, hope is not a strategy, but sometimes it’s all you have to work with.)
jim2 says:
24 January 2020 at 10:15 pm
Here’s the 2020 census questions – intrusive as ever.
That is the full long form community survey which will only go to a sample of the total population.
The majority of us will only see the short forms if they follow the pattern of recent years.
This could be interesting! (I would love to see this play out the way it should with some government officials going to jail.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/show-up-to-court-with-a-toothbrush-ice-says-sanctuary-city-officials-should-expect-jail-time-if-they-ignore-subpoenas
Next day reports are just starting to come out now on 2019-nCOV, confirmed cases have apparenly about doubled in 24 hours (part of that will simply be awarness to check for it).
Lab confirmed cases depending on source range from 900 – 1300 world wide with mortality remaining at essentially 3%.This strain may be more infectious than previously suspected but will take days to get solid numbers on real world infection rate and a large enough sample of cases to get solid numbers on mortality.
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geographical-distribution-2019-ncov-cases
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
The last link above appears to be nearly real time tally of the current cases world wide.
Trying something here is a screen shot of the current display for archival purposes
As of 01/24/2020 18:00 MDT
Here are a couple more sources
https://www.mobs-lab.org/2019ncov.html
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0117-coronavirus-screening.html
https://www.who.int/csr/don/en/
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
On a lighter note:
https://babylonbee.com/news/capitol-building-replaced-with-giant-circus-tent-for-duration-of-impeachment-hearings
I have no way to confirm the validity of this post but in the FYI catagory:
https://twitter.com/cCg3D9NHCkOBu9i/status/1220887855620190209
If this one is valid looks like hospital over load has already been reached.
https://twitter.com/ezracheungtoto/status/1220641000063848448
@Larry Ledwick says:
24 January 2020 at 5:45 pm
The numbers do not compute. If we start from the premise that 500m had the flu, then a death rate of 2.5% is ONLY 12.5 not 50-100m, which would be a death rate of 10-20% which is truly catastrophic!
“China building 1,000 bed hospital over the weekend to treat coronavirus.”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/01/china-building-1000-bed-hospital-over-the-weekend-to-treat-coronavirus.html
You lost me Phil where are you extracting those numbers from?
The spanish flu killed between 65 and 100 million world wide with a greater than 2.5% mortality rate, but estimates of total deaths are much higher than that number implies if 500 million were infected. Note that mortality is a greater than 2.5% number they don’t specify the high end of the range . In some communities it was very high.
Around the globe (from wiki)
The difference between the influenza mortality age-distributions of the 1918 epidemic and normal epidemics – deaths per 100,000 persons in each age group, United States, for the interpandemic years 1911–1917 (dashed line) and the pandemic year 1918 (solid line)[39]
Three pandemic waves: weekly combined influenza and pneumonia mortality, United Kingdom, 1918–1919[40]
The global mortality rate from the 1918–1919 pandemic is not known, but an estimated 10% to 20% of those who were infected died. With about a third of the world population infected, this case-fatality ratio means 3% to 6% of the entire global population died.
I think the clinker in those numbers is that in most of the world they have almost no confirmed numbers for “clinically confirmed cases” and are extracting from the excess death rate what the probable total number of deaths were.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/
An estimated one third of the world’s population (or ≈500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses (1,2) during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic.
I think the greater than 2.5% number came from reliable hospital settings where they had good numbers on confirmed cases and deaths. Out in the distant parts of the world with poor medicine death rates might have been much much higher like the Native American population which was very hard hit.
From the wiki
Devastated communities
A chart of deaths in major cities, showing a peak in October and November 1918
Coromandel Hospital Board (New Zealand) advice to influenza sufferers (1918)
Even in areas where mortality was low, so many adults were incapacitated that much of everyday life was hampered. Some communities closed all stores or required customers to leave orders outside. There were reports that healthcare workers could not tend the sick nor the gravediggers bury the dead because they too were ill. Mass graves were dug by steam shovel and bodies buried without coffins in many places.[80]
Several Pacific island territories were particularly hard-hit. The pandemic reached them from New Zealand, which was too slow to implement measures to prevent ships, such as the SS Talune, carrying the flu from leaving its ports. From New Zealand, the flu reached Tonga (killing 8% of the population), Nauru (16%), and Fiji (5%, 9,000 people).[81]
Worst affected was Western Samoa, formerly German Samoa, which had been occupied by New Zealand in 1914. 90% of the population was infected; 30% of adult men, 22% of adult women, and 10% of children died. By contrast, Governor John Martin Poyer prevented the flu from reaching American Samoa by imposing a blockade.[81] The disease spread fastest through the higher social classes among the indigenous peoples, because of the custom of gathering oral tradition from chiefs on their deathbeds; many community elders were infected through this process.[82]
In New Zealand, 8,573 deaths were attributed to the 1918 pandemic influenza, resulting in a total population fatality rate of 0.7%.[83] Māori were 10 times as likely to die as Europeans, because of their poorer and more crowded housing and rural population.[82]
In Ireland, the Spanish flu accounted for 10% of the total deaths in 1918.
Data analysis revealed 6,520 recorded deaths in Savannah-Chatham County, Georgia (population of 83,252) for the three-year period from January 1, 1917, to December 31, 1919. Of these deaths, influenza was specifically listed as the cause of death in 316 cases, representing 5% of all causes of death for the total time period.[84]
In Iran, the mortality was very high: according to an estimate, between 902,400 and 2,431,000, or 8% to 22% of the total population died.[53]
In the U.S., about 28% of the population became infected, and 500,000 to 675,000 died.[54] Native American tribes were particularly hard hit. In the Four Corners area, there were 3,293 registered deaths among Native Americans.[55] Entire Inuit and Alaskan Native village communities died in Alaska.[56] In Canada, 50,000 died.[57] In Brazil, 300,000 died, including president Rodrigues Alves.[58] In Britain, as many as 250,000 died; in France, more than 400,000.[59]
In Ghana, the influenza epidemic killed at least 100,000 people.[60] Tafari Makonnen (the future Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia) was one of the first Ethiopians who contracted influenza but survived.[61][62] Many of his subjects did not; estimates for fatalities in the capital city, Addis Ababa, range from 5,000 to 10,000, or higher.[63] In British Somaliland, one official estimated that 7% of the native population died.[64]
This huge death toll resulted from an extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms.[3] Symptoms in 1918 were so unusual that initially influenza was misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera, or typhoid. One observer wrote, “One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred”.[41] The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia,[65][66] a common secondary infection associated with influenza. The virus also killed people directly by causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung.[66]
The unusually severe disease killed up to 20% of those infected, as opposed to the usual flu epidemic mortality rate of 0.1%.[2][41]
Predisposition is probably a major player in this scenario. Those numbers will be forthcoming in a bit.
The velocity of spread is the bigger issue with respect to such predisposition from a mortality standpoint.
@HR, I wish you daughter well. I would suspect she is exiting china as possible.
On another note, I have discovered an abandoned squirrel target that Mr. HR left today.
I would surreptitiously decree, that by the powers vested in me from the incantations of my back yard, the said Squirrel resetting target shall be recoverable at a 6 pack fee. Excluding shipping and handling charges through lost and found. :-)
From CNN but appears to be good sound reporting by someone who had experience with the SARs outbreak which had a 9%+ mortality rate.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/24/opinions/wuhan-coronavirus-china-strategy-garrett/index.html
Omigosh! I left ‘Chuckie’ behind?!? Noooooo!!!!!
For the rest of y’all, the First Annual Chiefio Blog Rod and Gun Club shooting championship was held in Florida today.
The official results were:
OssQss – Next to last
H.R. – Second place
;o)
The fishing competition was cancelled due to H.R. casting the Official Lure about 5 feet up into the trees on the opposite bank. Let it be recorded that it was a fine cast, though. Had a lot of oomph on it.
P.S. to OssQss – That story I told? It finally hit me why almost all of the Uncles were named Joe. They were all working class and were probably told by their father that when they showed up on the job and the guys asked their name to just say “Joe.” They all just used the same nickname to blend in. It’ll be some months before I find out if I’m right about that.
In case anyone is curious about protective measures looks like all the standard recommendations still apply to 2019-nCOV
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/guidance-prevent-spread.html
Surface disinfection
Use a diluted bleach solution or a household disinfectant with a label that says “EPA-approved.” To make a bleach solution at home, add 1 tablespoon of bleach to 1 quart (4 cups) of water. For a larger supply, add ¼ cup of bleach to 1 gallon (16 cups) of water.
H.R./OSSQSS
Sounds like a great but short fishing competition, (was that during the “longest cast” competition or the “casting for accuracy” event? I assume you both pulled out a cold one and pondered climbing the tree to get the lure back for several rounds?
Well imagine that Spain and Poland are talking about leaving the EU now.
Spaxit and Polexit?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1220232/Brussels-chaos-Spain-Poland-EU-Brexit-Spaxit-Vox-ECJ-latest-news
Chinese medical staff over worked exhausted out of supplies – emotional break down.
– – – –
The paramedics broke down.
Wuhan medical care is in distress! 】
Wuhan’s major hospitals more than 10,000 medical staff have been overworked for days, also can not see relatives, coupled with the lack of supplies in the hospital, in the lounge mood finally collapsed.
https://www.rfa.org/english/
This looks like it is going to go sideways very quickly – how do you feed cities of 35 million population which is quarantined – air drops? Wuhan alone is population 11 million, (equivalent to the combined population of New York and Chicago).
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/scramble-01232020132136.html
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/breathing-01222020122435.html
Updated numbers
“Greta Inc – Rebel Media exposé on the people behind Greta the Climate Child”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/01/greta-inc-rebel-media-expos%C3%A9-on-the-people-behind-greta-the-climate-child.html
Something doesn’t add up. A few hundred cases, yet thousands of medical workers run ragged and out of supplies?
More here
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/01/24/its-probably-nothing-28/
In comments at SDA
“The new fad disease called the “coronavirus” is sweeping headlines.
Funny enough, there was a patent for the coronavirus was filed in 2015 and granted in 2018.
US Patent for Coronavirus Patent (Patent # 10,130,701)
l
E.M.Smith says:
25 January 2020 at 7:40 am
Something doesn’t add up. A few hundred cases, yet thousands of medical workers run ragged and out of supplies?
That is exactly what has people worried, since the SAR’s epidemic China imposed a complex approval process on release of disease figures, first the subject is tested at the local hospital level, then before a confirmed test can be released samples have to be sent to an official site (like our CDC) for confirmation, only after both tests come back positive and the government approves are the test results released to the world.
That means (assuming the Chinese government is operating in good faith) that the official numbers are days behind actual cases. It is a safe assumption that true cases are 3-5x what is reported.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3046913/chinas-post-sars-reporting-system-may-explain-long-delays
Now if this is actually like the Russian case many years ago where a biological agent got out of a research facility by mistake it could be much worse than generally anticipated.
Was the release (if true) sufficient to effectively wipe out the staff of the most competent research facility available?
Protective measures imply the Chinese government thinks this is far worse than generally accepted.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/25/coronavirus-outbreak-doctor-in-wuhan-hospital-dies-as-army-medics-flown-in
https://www.ispm.unibe.ch/about_us/news/coronavirus_outbreak_in_china/index_eng.html
Click to access manuscript_v2.pdf
They have not updated the official numbers over at https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/ yet this morning. It is currently 17:22 in Hong Kong (local time here 02:22 MDT) so end of the working day in that part of the world probably will give a final daily tally in a few hours.
By they way we have a confirmed case here in the Denver Metro area in Lakewood which is a few miles south of my location.
So will see how things go. Luckily I have already taken most common protective measures some time ago (masks, on hand sanitation products etc.)
From my above link:
Click to access manuscript_v2.pdf
(hand transcribed from the PDF)
Discussion
… Our study is the first to focus on the quantification of early human-to-human transmission of 2019 -nCOV. The observed patterns of transmission confirm that the current situation has a much closer relationship to what was observed during hte early stages of SARS-CoV transmission in Beijing and Singapore rather than during the emergence of MERS-CoV in the Middle-East [5-7]. Although very different virological characteristics limit the relevance of such a comparison, the transmission patter of nCoV-2019 is aso similar to those of 1918 pandemic influenza [10].
Scarcity of available data, especially on case counts by date of disease onset as well as contact tracing, greatly limits the precision of our estimates and does no yet allow for reliable forecasts of epidemic spread. While based on a few data points, our analysis ca still shed light on the early transmission pattern of 2019-nCoV. First, our estimate of R0 suggests that the disease has the potential for sustained human-to-human transmission. This implies that effective prevention and control measures will be crucial at this stage to limit further spread of the virus. The recent shutdown of several cities including Wuhan shows that Chinese authorities are aware of the potential magnitude of this outbreak. Second, the risk of superspreading events could be similar to SARS-CoV and MERS-Cov, but is unlikely to be higher. This has important implication from one or a few unidentified imported cases. The implementation of control measures in hospital settings, especially emergency rooms, will also be of prime importance, as has been shown by examples of MERS-CoV in South Korea [15] and in Saudi Arabia.
What is R0
https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/chinas-coronavirus-could-this-be-a-global-health-crisis/
An important measure epidemiologists use of how infectious an organism is the basic reproduction number (R0 or “Rnaught,” defined as the number of new infections causes by each infected person). SARS and MERS have quite low R0 meaning they are not very easily transmitted. We still have no estimates of how contagious 2019-nCoV is but my early guess is that it is likely to be in the same range as MERS.
Click to access Jones-on-R0.pdf
https://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/hsc-scen-3_flu-transmission.htm
Flu Transmissibility / Reproductive Number
Influenza viruses are genetically variable, and transmissibility is difficult to predict. With a novel flu virus the R0 will start out low, probably a little above 1, and then with each generation of transmission it will increase as the virus adapts to the human population. The speed with which transmissibility can improve highlights the unpredictability of influenza viruses. The reproduction, or transmissibility (RO) rates refer to the average number of secondary cases of disease generated by a typical primary case in a susceptible population; an RO rate of 1.0 would thus indicate no transmission.
The reproductive number at a given time, represented as R(t), is the average number of secondary cases infected by each primary case infected at time t. This number must be held steadily below one for the spread of the virus to decline; while this objective may or may not be possible for pandemic influenza without a vaccine, the level of R(t) is perhaps the best single measure of the effectiveness of control measures at a given time.
The reproduction, or transmissibility (RO) rates are situation specific and can be highly variable, with person-to-person transmission probabilities are highest in households; lower in the day-care centers, playgroups, and schools; and even lower in the neighborhoods and population at large. For influenza a person with flu-like symptoms at a workplace may not self-isolate before the end of the working day, which will be a substantial delay on influenza’s rapid time scale of development and spread.
Flu may spread rapidly because it has a very short generation time, even if it has a low R0. One study assumed human viral reproduction, or transmissibility rate (RO) [the “reproductive number”], ranging from about 1.0 to 2.0, and set the generation time (Tg), meaning the average interval between infection of an individual and infection of contacts, at 2.6 days. This Tg factor was arrived at on the basis of analysis of past estimates of transmissibility of respiratory diseases and is less than the approximately 4 days assumed in most past modeling studies, say the authors. A predicted attack rate of 50% to 60% derived from these factors was consistent with the first two waves of past flu pandemics.
Influenza, which has a very short generation time, will spread very quickly even if each individual does not spread it to many others. ß(t) can be estimated from experimental infections. Some suggest a mean of 3 days (when variance = 0.5 × mean2), whereas viral shedding peaking at 2 days suggests that S(t) has an estimated mean of 2 days. This results in a range of attack rate estimates of 30% < ? < 50%.
Some analyses report that influenza typically has a transmission rate of about 10. But others suggest that flu is not as highly transmissible in a community setting as has been imagined. The R0 for the 1918 pandemic was estimated to be only 1.8 in one study, while the 1918 pandemic strain’s R0 was estimated at around 2 by another estimate. According to another analysis, the estimated proportion of the population with A/H1N1 immunity before September 1918 implied a median basic reproductive number of less than 4. Another study estimated R0=1.89 from influenza case incidence data for the first wave of pandemic influenza A (H3N2) starting in July 1968 in Hong Kong. These results suggested that the reproductive number for 1918 pandemic influenza was not large relative to many other infectious diseases. Other recent estimates of R0 for seasonal and pandemic flu typically range from 1.5 to 3. Estimates of the reproductive number (R) from England and Wales (1958-1973), for a mixture of influenza types and subtypes, ranged from 1.4 to 2.6. In contrast, SARS had an R0 of 3 (excluding super-spreaders), and measles has an R0 of 10 to 15, pertussis (16 – 18) or polio (8 – 12).
Estimates of R0 based on the initial epidemic growth rate may underestimate the true value of R0. Data from an influenza outbreak in an English boarding school has been used to estimate model parameters by trajectory matching. The most commonly used framework for epidemiological systems, the SIR (susceptible – infectious – recovered) model, yields an R0 of 4.38, whereas for the SEIR (susceptible – exposed – infectious – recovered) model yields an R0 of 16.9. A maximum bound for R0 can be obtained by analyzing the case data from an outbreak of the 1978 H1N1 flu in a boys boarding school, yielding an upper bound of R0 < 21.
Another estimate of the reproductive number for 1918 influenza was made by fitting a deterministic SEIR (susceptible – exposed – infectious – recovered) model to pneumonia and influenza death epidemic curves from 45 US cities: the median value was less than three. The estimated proportion of the population with A/H1N1 immunity before September 1918 implies a median basic reproductive number of less than four. These results suggested that the reproductive number for 1918 pandemic influenza is not large relative to many other infectious diseases.
If the basic reproductive number (R0) was below 1.60, some simulations show that a prepared response with targeted antivirals would have a high probability of containing the disease. The higher the R0, however, the lower the likelihood of containing the virus. When the R0 is set at 2.4, for example, the outbreak quickly grows uncontrollably large in most cases of some simulations.
Current twitter chatter:
Aurora Intel
@AuroraIntel
9 minutes ago
A secondary specialist hospital will be built in #Wuhan, #China to deal with #Coronavirus. This one will have bed capacity of 1300.
Aurora Intel
@AuroraIntel
4 seconds ago
The health commission have also requested that 24 general hospitals be converted to specialised hospitals for #coronoavirus adding an additional 6000 beds.
Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding
@DrEricDing
Jan 23
I’ll be honest – as an epidemiologist, I’m really deeply worried about this new coronavirus outbreak. 1) the virus has an upward infection trajectory curve much steeper than SARS. 2) it can be transmitted person to person before symptoms appear — I.e. it is silently contagious!
More
2) This piece reports on 2 Lancet articles, one of which suggests very insidious symptomless transmission. The R0 attack rate still being pinned down, but initial reports of 2.5-3.8 is higher than SARS’s 2.0-3.5.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/24/coronavirus-infections-no-symptoms-lancet-studies/
3) the UK author’s paper stated that the “reproductive number for this 2019-nCoV outbreak is higher compared to other emergent coronaviruses, suggesting that control of this pathogen may be substantially more difficult.” His words, not me ‘fear mongering’.
Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding
@DrEricDing
11 minutes ago
More
5) This coronavirus though, it’s R0 attack rate of 2.5 or 3.8 (still prelim) is super high. Much more people fly now than in 2003 SARS. While measles has higher R0, it has a vaccine 💉. Nobody has immunity to this new virus. Good R0 explainer:
Video clip from movie Contagion
Tony Moore
@PerpetualWinger
32 minutes ago
Replying to @DrEricDing @WHO
As a public health specialist I validate your description. You are not inciting fear, your description sadly is proportionate
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1220919589623803905
HOLY MOTHER OF GOD – the new coronavirus is a 3.8!!! How bad is that reproductive R0 value? It is thermonuclear pandemic level bad –
2/ “We estimate the basic reproduction number of the infection (R_0) to be 3.8 (95% confidence interval, 3.6-4.0), indicating that 72-75% of transmissions must be prevented by control measures for infections to stop increasing…
3/ … We estimate that only 5.1% (95%CI, 4.8-5.5) of infections in Wuhan are identified, and by 21 January a total of 11,341 people (prediction interval, 9,217-14,245) had been infected in Wuhan since the start of the year. Should the epidemic continue unabated in Wuhan….
4/ we predict the epidemic in Wuhan will be substantially larger by 4 February (191,529 infections; prediction interval, 132,751-273,649), infection will be established in other Chinese cities, and importations to other countries will be more frequent. Our model suggests that..
5/ travel restrictions from and to Wuhan city are unlikely to be effective in halting transmission across China; with a 99% effective reduction in travel, the size of the epidemic outside of Wuhan may only be reduced by 24.9% on 4 February. Our findings are…
6/ …critically dependent on the assumptions underpinning our model, and the timing and reporting of confirmed cases, and there is considerable uncertainty associated with the outbreak at this early stage. With these caveats in mind, our work suggests that…
7/ a basic reproductive number for this 2019-nCoV outbreak is higher compared to other emergent coronaviruses, suggesting that containment or control of this pathogen may be substantially more difficult.
@JonRead15
With lots of uncertainty in both case data and model uncertainty, R0 estimates will be changing rapidly. Important to update and monitor. We’ve updated our estimates with case data through 22 Jan. New estimated R0 of 2.5 95% CI 2.4, 2.6. Paper to be updated asap. #coronvirus
As noted above in some of the discussion the numbers will change rapidly as we get better data, and also we have an unknow variable regarding how the agent adapts to humans, it might become more virulent for a while or could down grade its lethality as a virus can be so lethal it infects very few people.
So don’t get too wound up over high R0 estimates but likewise realize they might be telling us something important.
Here is the tread rollup in a more readable form
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1220919589623803905.html
Another Ian
Coronavirus is a very common family of viruses and they do patent variants developed to work as test agents or weakened varieties for use in vaccines etc. So that does not mean much.
The 2019-nCoV is a “novel” virus meaning it is the first time this particular genetic signature has been seen but it is in the Coronavirus family so will share many characteristics with other variants.
My guess is this explosion was caused by a tank of ethylene oxide, stored as a liquid. The liquid can explosively polymerize if set off by either acids or bases.
https://www.oann.com/2-dead-in-houston-industrial-building-explosion/
Update on D-I-L in China: Our son arrived back in the States yesterday and Mrs. H.R. talked to him this morning.
Our daughter-in-law’s business dealings took her to Wuhan about 4-5 weeks ago. She is currently in Shenzhen with her parents and protecting them from going out. I believe they are about 10 years older than the Mrs. and me, so they are quite vulnerable to the flu. D-I-L is taking the standard precautions and doing the groceries and other errands to keep her parents out of public places.
She’s due back in the States next week, but is considering extending her stay until the virus dies out in Shenzhen. So far, Shenzhen isn’t on lockdown, though they have… 78?… officially reported cases of the COV flu or maybe that’s deaths. It’s in one of the graphics Larry L. posted above. I’ll check later.
When she gets back, we’ll probably get the real story and extent of the problem from her She has a lot of business contacts all over China and no doubt the epidemic is discussed. She probably has a lot of unfiltered information about the outbreak.
So far, she’s free to leave China, but our concern is that it could change, and she’d be stuck for another month or so. That wouldn’t be good because she has to get back to the U.S. to conclude the Stateside portions of the deals she facilitated on this trip. AND… the longer she’s there, the better her chance will be that she gets exposed.
Even though U.S./China trade has been reduced due to tariffs, there is still a huge amount of trade still going on and there is a lot of travel between the U.S. and China on a daily basis. I expect the U.S. to get hit pretty hard. The genie was already out of the bottle before the U.S. had a clue about it due to China’s reluctance to report internal problems that reflect negatively on their leaders.
Start taking precautions now, because I’m sure the virus will be in your neighborhood sooner or later.
Bike video an interesting example of cascade failure.
Wonder if that Soros $ Billion is money he grafted out of Ukraine or was it Clinton Cash related?
Pandemic: Looks assured from those R0 numbers. Basically, you must find and isolate over 3/4 of infected people before they are symptomatic. Not going to happen. The other approach is to get over 3/4 of the population to practice very high quality hygene. We don’t have enough masks and by the time most folks decide to use them it will be too late. School and work will not be cancel world wide.
Looks like it will be a bumpy ride for a while.
BTW , spouse has just flown back from Chicago… where the virus has arrived… Hopefully flying from Midway avoided the International crowd. I’ll know in a week I guess.
Sidebar: Over the last two days I got to learn about stove cooktop installation and repair. Once again we have a working cooktop. The wires in them are surprisingly small. Number 12 maybe? Looked thinner than lamp cord to me. Then has the burners daisy chained on it I can only guess it is heat resistant wire run warm. Whatever, it works (again).
Overall, I found the Trangia / Esbit alcohol stove most pleasing to play with due to zero noise and interesting complex behaviour from a passive device. It is also small, light and effective. The Gas One Asian style stove is next. A bit big and heavy, but just works and handles bigger pots and pans well. Just set it up and turn the knob when you want fire. The dual fuel one worked fine on propane too. It became Daily Driver due to zero fuss and fast morning coffee ;-) coupled with very low fuel cost and long life from a canister of propane.
Honorable mention to several butane camping stoves. Nice for something small in the office or den like soup or tea, but fussier to use with larger pot prone to tipping and blowtorch noise at full power. Best for backpacks and car emergency kits. One of these and an alcohol stove are my redundant emergency kit contents. Canister butane for immediate “just works” and alcohol stove for fuel at any auto parts store or drug store.
It was fun living from the prepper kits for a while, seeing how ideas held up to reality over time, but nice to have the cooktop back. Overall I was most surprised by how just about any of them were enough for emergency cooking. Only the incident where the Trangia “burped” on ethanol / methanol / bit of ketone “stove fuel” ( when run very long and hot ) was a negative surprise. Easily fixed with a fuel tweek and protection via a pie pan. Even the $5 Sterno Stove was ok (indoors, no wind, warm… it is way underpowered for outdoors windy cold conditions, but a Trangia burner in an empty tuna can substituted for the Sterno can works well then).
So for Fixed Base home kit, the Gas One is now the first choice. Displacing the big old Coleman Dual Fuel to EOTWAWKI use when unleaded matters For road kits, an Alcohol stove and very tiny canister stove combo.. As the butane stove is 25 grams, it is essentially all the 250 gram fuel canister that matters, and one of them is good for a few days of cooking. By then you can locate some fuel supply for the alcohol stove, or have reached home.
2019-nCoV bits for this morning
Note key diagnostic feature is fever greater than 38 deg C (100.4 deg F) that is a relatively mild fever. Most people don’t get concerned until fevers get a bit higher (39-40 C or 102.2 – 104 deg F)
Possible patients with nCoV being watched in Mexico (if this gets out of hand in the poor neighborhoods of Mexico it will be catastrophic.
https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/english/suspected-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-case-reported-mexico-city
richard horton
@richardhorton1
4 hours ago
The challenge of 2019-nCoV is not only the public health response. It is clinical capacity. A third of patients so far have required admission to ICU. 29% developed ARDS. Few countries have the clinical capacity to handle this volume of acutely ill patients. Yet no discussion.
Updated info places R0 at 2.6 (uncertainty range: 1.5-3.5)
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/news–wuhan-coronavirus/
Report 3: Transmissibility of 2019-nCoV
(25 January 2020 – Imperial College London)
Report 3 = https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-2019-nCoV-transmissibility.pdf
Report 2: Estimating the potential total number of novel Coronavirus cases in Wuhan City, China
(22 January 2020 – Imperial College London)
Report 2 = https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/2019-nCoV-outbreak-report-22-01-2020.pdf
Report 1: Estimating the potential total number of novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) cases in Wuhan City, China (17 January 2020 – Imperial College London)
Report 1 = https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/2019-nCoV-outbreak-report-17-01-2020.pdf
Yoong
@yoongkhean
2 hours ago
Yoong Retweeted Geralt of riveria
Don’t confuse no. of infected as severity. In reality;
1. MERS-CoV: R0 is than SARS, MR for now 15%
Helen Branswell
@HelenBranswell
2 hours ago
At least 48M people in 15 Chinese cities are effectively quarantined in China’s struggle to stop spread of 2019-nCoV.
The mind reels.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/coronavirus-china-live-updates/2020/01/25/0ca57a5e-3ed7-11ea-afe2-090eb37b60b1_story.html
Dr Alexandra Phelan
@alexandraphelan
Dr Alexandra Phelan Retweeted MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis
“Self-sustaining human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) is the only plausible explanation of the scale of the outbreak in Wuhan”
Dr. Dena Grayson
@DrDenaGrayson
32 minutes ago
Dr. Dena Grayson Retweeted ConnieSemeniuk
The #CoronavirusOutbreak is extremely serious, otw #China wouldn’t have 3.5% of their population living in locked-down cities (roughly the equivalent of the U.S. locking down NYC and Chicago), let alone expend resources to build 2 mobile hospitals.
Happy Saturday 01/25/2020 (dashboard had not updated numbers from yesterdays 1354 yet, it is just after midnight in Hong Kong currently 09:49 MDT)
I presume this is real – if true actual numbers of infected may be near 100,000
https://twitter.com/EM_KA_17/status/1221010506590367745
Summary of history of this family of pathogenic viruses in recent years.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2759815
Time line of this pandemic from Lancet
If whole genome was sequenced on Jan 12 and it takes 3.5 months to produce first trial vaccines we won’t see effective control of this out break until sometime around first of May 2020.
Dr. Dena Grayson
@DrDenaGrayson
35 minutes ago
🚨BREAKING: in a highly unprecedented move, the city of #Beijing announces that it will restrict travel, including **suspending domestic and overseas group tours** due to the worsening
US orders evacuation of staff in Wuhan, if we do have a “super spreader” problem (asymptomatic individuals like Typhoid Mary this could go exponential very quickly)
H.R. says:
25 January 2020 at 4:39 pm
Hope the D-I-L has good luck avoiding this outbreak – best wishes on her health and that of her parents!
FYI I just checked most of the n95 face masks on Amazon are unavailable, so surge buying has already started.
New numbers starting to come in on the disease dash board now showing 1438 confirmed cases (surely an order of magnitude low)
If this is true this is the same immune system behavior (cytokine storm) that killed in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, and most affected young prime age otherwise healthy individuals in their late teens early 20’s.
https://twitter.com/howroute/status/1221123432118661120
@EM, 12 guage wire would be used for a 20 amp circuit.
H.R. might be of interest to you – stay up to date with State Dept advisories for U.S. citizens in China.
https://www.vaxbeforetravel.com/us-department-state-ordered-departure-all-non-emergency-personnel-and-their-family-members
Current State Department Advisory
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/china-travel-advisory.html
Click to access 2020.01.23.20018549v1.full.pdf
Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext
Findings
By Jan 2, 2020, 41 admitted hospital patients had been identified as having laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection. Most of the infected patients were men (30 [73%] of 41); less than half had underlying diseases (13 [32%]), including diabetes (eight [20%]), hypertension (six [15%]), and cardiovascular disease (six [15%]). Median age was 49·0 years (IQR 41·0–58·0). 27 (66%) of 41 patients had been exposed to Huanan seafood market. One family cluster was found. Common symptoms at onset of illness were fever (40 [98%] of 41 patients), cough (31 [76%]), and myalgia or fatigue (18 [44%]); less common symptoms were sputum production (11 [28%] of 39), headache (three [8%] of 38), haemoptysis (two [5%] of 39), and diarrhoea (one [3%] of 38). Dyspnoea [dyspnoea Difficult, labored or obstructed breathing.] developed in 22 (55%) of 40 patients (median time from illness onset to dyspnoea 8·0 days [IQR 5·0–13·0]). 26 (63%) of 41 patients had lymphopenia. All 41 patients had pneumonia with abnormal findings on chest CT. Complications included acute respiratory distress syndrome (12 [29%]), RNAaemia (six [15%]), acute cardiac injury (five [12%]) and secondary infection (four [10%]). 13 (32%) patients were admitted to an ICU and six (15%) died. Compared with non-ICU patients, ICU patients had higher plasma levels of IL2, IL7, IL10, GSCF, IP10, MCP1, MIP1A, and TNFα.
I think this graphic shows an important reality here. If as stated above dyspnoea sets in about 8 days after infection the likely delay between infection and death would likely be about 10 days or so.
Looking at the chart below we are just beginning to see deaths from the very earliest part of the infection curve. Next 10 days will be critical and mortality might skyrocket if this assumption is correct
Small burners are about 1200 W while the large ones are about 1800, or 3000 for both. 6 kW if the whole top is on full. 6000 / 240 = 25 amps. I’m pretty sure I have a 30 Amp breaker set.
There is also a question of length vs amps vs watts. Very short wires, anchored to binding blocks at each end, carry more as they cool better. The main cable to the stove is heavy gauge armored cable. The wire to each burner is appropriate for that burner. On the switch block, small (about 12 ga. solid) wire serpentines from inlet to the 4 switch sets. But, IIRC, the feed point is in the center, so at most 3 kW on each half. That leaves the only “risk” being the short pigtails, about 6 inches long, from the armored cable junction box to the switch block. I can only assume that wire that short connected to junction fittings is effectively cooled by conduction.
While I really like precise engineering, it just looks like it is right at the limit. OTOH, it has worked for over 50 years without failure, so something must be right. Even then, what failed was a switch after liquid got spilled into it. Not the wires.
It looks like some oil became carbonized on and in the switch making conduction paths that kept the burner on at all times (low power but warm to hot). I suspect initial heating was water path that transitioned to carbonizing. One 1 cm chunk of a corner of the bakelite was broken off giving more access for crud. No idea if that came first or was a consequence of a tiny steam explosion…
Dr Kevin Purcell
@kevinpurcell
3 minutes ago
“Cytopathic effects were observed [by light microscopy] 96 hours after inoculation on surface layers of human airway epithelial cells”
So about 96 hours after exposure to 2019-nCoV before (in vitro) lung tissue starts to change.
Hinting at incubation period of 4 days.
Click to access 3000165.pdf
Looks like at this point everyone knows a train is coming, but no one is sure how fast it is moving.
Only time will tell how this plays out. It will take 2-3 infection cycles before we have enough data to get good numbers I would guess.
Incubation time about 4 days
respiratory crisis onset about 8 days after symptomatic in susceptible individuals.
Above best practices suggests up to 14 day window between actual infection and the disease becoming clinical, so lumping all that together we are talking about a month before enough data is available to get a hard analysis of the real risk, and about 3.5 months before any realisitic chance of vaccine development.
There is a possibility of treatment with antivirals but who knows if there are sufficient stocks to help on this large of an outbreak (some have speculated total infected numbers may already be in the 100,000 plus range in China).
Also some question if antivirals will be effective to prevent cytokine storm development on those who have strong immune reactions.
That exponential virus growth is an issue.
I think I’m going to delay my road trip a couple of weeks. I’d thought of visiting Chicago to see the new granddaughter… but I think she will be ok if it is a couple of weeks later.
This site lists foods to avoid as they stimulate cytokine production, and foods that tend to suppress the production.
https://sites.google.com/site/naturalimmunesystemboosters/cytokine-storm
Most interesting is the efficacy of Vit. C. With an anecdote of Spanish Flu survival with C. I have regularly used 2 grams to 10 grams Vit C to halt various viral infections. So that might be a good first step. Just keep your vitamin levels up.
Skipping the hot chocolate is a bummer though ;-)
Interesting to note kimchee contributes to cytokine storms. Might mean western diet folks will see fewer deaths.
A bit more on the situation.
Lack of genetic diversity in the virus suggests it is a very recent and single event type jump to humans. This would in my mind also suggest the virus is not “optimized ” yet for its new host, and might “improve its ability to infect” as more and more people get infected and pass it on to others.
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/01/doubts-rise-about-chinas-ability-contain-new-coronavirus
What many do not realize is the most viruses gradually mutate to less deadly forms as really deadly forms kill off too many hosts and limit spread. Viruses which have long symptom free periods of virus shedding on the other hand can cause very large numbers of infections and even though the actual specific mortality is lower the much higher number of infections can result in greater total mortality as the virus will find more weakened hosts to infect if it spreads widely and easily, with a long enough delay in symptoms so that the spreader does not realize they are infectious due to lack of symptoms.
This disease outbreak will be very interesting to watch and see how modern technology impacts control and behavior of people likely to get exposed / infected.
Social media can be both good and bad for this, rapidly spreading info but not all viewers will be good and applying proper filters and evaluations of uncertainty.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-plans-to-evacuate-citizens-from-epidemic-stricken-chinese-city-11579951256
Re: EM & Vitamin C:
British Dr Sarah Myhill on her Vitamin C webpage writes (among other things!) “[Vitamin C] kills all microbes (bacteria, viruses and fungi).” She also says that you can’t OD on it, only under-dose.Well worth a read.
https://drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/Vitamin_C_-_learn_to_use_this_vital_tool_well_%E2%80
%93_the_key_is_getting_the_dose_right
Sorry about the hot chocolate, though!
RGB
She uses bad practice naming on her web page for wordpress which cobbles the link.
Need to cut and paste below and remove the square brackets to get there easily.
[https://drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/Vitamin_C_-_learn_to_use_this_vital_tool_well_%E2%80%93_the_key_is_getting_the_dose_right]
Short take on the impeachment coverage.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1221181078431506432
Direct source to some talent on outbreak.
Wow, did not know it would post that from the basic link. Sorry EM.
A couple of new sources
https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/-2019-ncov-new-coronavirus/china-2019-ncov/821830-china-2019-ncov-cases-in-several-provinces-and-cities-including-confirmed-health-care-workers-at-least-41-deaths
Reddit also has a sub reddit on the Chinese outbreak
https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/
I don’t expect updated numbers for another hour or so, yesterday the dashboard updated at about 18:30 local MDT it is currently 08:00 local in Hong Kong, using the US fire service managment model I would expect they will have management update meetings until 9:00 -10:00 am and then announce new figures at about that time.
Reminder dash board is at:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Local resident in medical community asserts up to 90,000 have been infected.
No worries. I gave up caring about WordPress antics with links years ago…
Per virus age: given the rapid spread and near point origin, I doubt it was kicking around for 2 months. Either it is a two step thing (some 3rd reservoir species into some meat animal 2 months ago, then on to people at the market) or there was a person as carrier in the boonies for 2 months who went to market. Either one a stretch. If there are low or no symptom carriers, of any species, that’s going to be very bad.
Per vit C overdose: Their are OD symptoms. You get diarrhea. Basically, it just gets dumped. Some folks with oxalate problems can form kidney stones faster. Anything over 5 to 10 grams is wasted.
If she is correct a reinfection rate (R0) near 14 would be comparable to Measles which is one of the most infectious agents there are.
This could imply a long asymptomatic but still infectious period prior to the onset of serious illness.
If it is that high they won’t be able to hide it for long.
Starting to see unatributed statements that new numbers will be 1755 infected and 57 dead in China.
That would be a 1.22x increase in infections in 24 hours (part of which is just catching up on reporting lag I am sure)
An world wide death jumping from 42 to 57 ( a 1.36x increase in 24 hours )
That is not good news!
Looks like the wiki page she is referring to is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavirus_outbreak
Numbers coming in even bigger than posted on the wiki above.
Chinese health authorities announced Sunday that 1,975 confirmed cases of pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), including 324 in critical conditions and 56 deaths, had been reported in the country by the end of Saturday.
Another “plague” under the microscope
https://rebeldonations.com/greta-thunberg-inc-rebel-news-keean-bexte-documentary/
Well this is encouraging!
The current estimants listed above of 56 deaths from 42 yesterday is an increase of 1.33x If that rate of multiplication continues for 30 days, that becomes (1.33^30 ) * 42 = 218,171 deaths in 30 days.
Same sort of multiplication of cases 1975/1438 = 1.373x
or (1.373^30) * 1438 = 19,403,273 cases in one month. the next month at that rate brings total cases to approximately the entire world population.
Now we know for a fact that that sort of exponential growth cannot happen infectious disease spread follows a logistic curve and only approximates exponential growth in the early phases when the number of cases is small compared to the pool of susceptible hosts.
But it does show that within a couple weeks these numbers will be very big even with best effort controls in place.
The key will be to watch that daily rate of increase as long as it is stable near current levels growth in cases will be explosive, Only when it flat lines and drops to near 1.0 will they be getting control of things.
H.R. you might want to watch this video has some first person reporting from Wuhan, turn on closed caption and mute the sound he is speaking in Chinese.
Not sure how long this will stay up if anyone knows how to capture a video.
A bit of fun with numbers:
When talking about pandemic infections you talk about the R0 number or average number of infections caused by a single infected host. In the case of the 2019-nCoV virus this appears to be about 2.6.
There is a similar usage of the same concept in nuclear weapon and reactor design – the number of neutrons produced on average by an atom of the material as it fissions
For U235 that number is about 2.43, for Plutonium that number is about 2.89 for fissions triggered by a slow neutron. When a nuclear device goes super critical and begins a chain reaction on average about 57 generations of fissions occur before the device “disassembles itself”, 99.9% of the energy produced occurs in that last one or two fission generations.
The same exponential math applies to both cases. This new virus is like a nuclear bomb going off,it will appear to move slowly at first then will accelerate at frightening speed until 10’s of generations of infections have occurred. That is when the big numbers hit.
If we figure an average incubation time and generation time of each infection being 8 days, then peak velocity (if no effective counter measures are able to reduce that 2.6 R0 to a lower number) will not occur until we get to Gen 30+ or so (240 days, or about 8 months – late summer into the early fall).
If control measures (or numbers available to infect become scarce) and can lower the effective R0 value to near 1.0 then the infection will plateau. It will not die out as a pandemic until they can get that effective R0 down below 1.0.
In the case of most flu like viruses high ambient temperatures reduce their effectiveness. They like slightly lower than normal body temperatures in the nose, mouth and lungs to grow effectively where immune response diminishes in cold weather and gathering in groups in enclosed spaces increase in cold weather.
Perhaps that is why sauna like traditions exist in many ancient northern tribes?
One of the ways to beat these infections is to get into a hot moist environment and push up the body temperature with exercise or air temp or let the body do it for you with a fever.
LL @ https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/01/21/w-o-o-d-21-january-2020/#comment-123004
You know the old saying: There are lies, damned lies, statistics, models, and dimowits.
Sen. Blackburn smokes Vindman. From the article:
But it is a series of tweets from Blackburn that have infuriated the president’s enemies, Never Trumpers and Democrats alike, where the freshman U.S. senator and conservative firebrand from Tennessee–a strong ally of the president–has called for the truth to finally come out about Vindman and others’ role in orchestrating this entire impeachment charade from the beginning.
Everything Blackburn has said about Vindman is factually accurate.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/25/over-the-target-marsha-blackburn-draws-ire-of-trump-foes-as-she-exposes-key-impeachment-figure-vindman/
Well I was about to give up but that 2019-nCov dashboard web page finally updated at noon local time.
A quick scan of news has several sources claiming many folks who get the coronavirus from Wuhan have only mild symptoms. This is both good and bad.
The bad is it means the claims of 100,000 infected would likely be true. The good news is that it means only a few thousand of them got sick enough to be hospitalized. The bad news is this means a lot more of the world is likely already infected, so most all of it will be. The good news is the percent that die is much smaller than indicated by the use of the smaller number of hospitalized cases instead of the total actual in the computation.
But nobody knows for sure, do they.
Probably another week before we find out the real severity and lethality.
@Larry L – from your post referenced:
You said
“>2.5% vs 0/1%”
and
“n estimated one third of the world’s population (or ≈500 million persons)”
2.5% of 600m is 12.5m. Not 50-100m
Yes, 10-20% is much higher than 2.5, but the implication was that normal rate was 0.1% (stated above) and the Spanish flu was about 2.5+ (which is usually how the rate is expressed, not at a rate 1/4 to 1/8 the actual rate). That is why I said your math was off. It was 10-20%, not 2.5, so not sure why it was stated that way,
PG Infectología HUAL
@HUAL_PGInfecto
3 minutes ago
Current status of coronavirus cases (2019-nCov) to date. N total of confirmed 2019. An increase in confirmed cases of 581 patients in the last 12 hours. Fatality rate of 2.77. The vast majority of new cases were in Territorial China.
Well after watching this stuff for 24+ hours now, I decided I needed to get some health food to improve my resistance to infection.
I just finished 3 bacon sandwiches.
@larry L and EM – re: Coronovirus. It has not added up since it was “discovered”. Until you factor in it is in COMMUNIST China. I think we are looking at a bad bug accidentally released and it is very bad! Germ warfare.
CIA knows it and that is why they are playing along Fake news is too deep into the CIA love affair due to TDS, so they cannot question the garbage coming from them.
And so it goes Just another example of how fake news is failing the public
Just got a notice about this:
https://principia-scientific.org/38-infected-coronavirus-patients-cured-in-china/
An interesting bit of trivia on the Spanish flu I just stumbled across.
“The problem is that even in slow coach travel times 1918, the Spanish flu which took between 20 and 100 million lives worldwide (there is no authoritive number but where it is estimated between the two), did its deadliest between week 14 and week 26, some 12 weeks at least before the masses would ever receive the drug cure presently.”
This probably coincides with the end of the linear portion of the logistic curve when there is still a large pool of hosts who are not immune to the virus in the population pool. Later on you run out of people you can infect because either everyone has it or has already had it and recovered with immunity, granting herd immunity to those lucky few who have not been exposed yet.
In my reading also found several references where they test alcohol hand rub jells and their efficacy against common viruses including cold, and influenza and if the “wet time” recommended is as recommended (about 2 minutes) they are surprisingly effective in some tests 2x more effective than surgical hand wash on a time required basis. (ie 3 min with hand gel out performed 6 min with surgical scrub).
http://www.virology.ws/2009/07/17/hand-hygiene-removes-influenza-virus/
Compared :
Soap and water handwashing
Use of a gel containing 61.5% ethanol
Use of a gel containing 70% ethanol and 0.5% chlorhexidine
Use of a gel containing 70% isopropanol and 0.5% chlorhexidine
https://healthfully.com/what-organisms-does-isopropyl-alcohol-kill-12309315.html
One noticed that isopropyl alcohol was slightly more effective than ethanol but have not found a test yet which specifically tests that hypothesis.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4387647/
Hsieh, in a systemic literature review, showed hand rubbing for 3 min with an alcoholic disinfectant was more effective than 6 min of hand scrubbing using chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) 4%.
It is really interesting to watch the information trickle in a bit here a bit there.
Oh, and there are 9 special hospital in Wuhan for patients of 2019-nCoV, each of them are capable of receiveing and curing more than 1000 people.
And they are all full now.
Chinese Goverment are building two more hospital to receive 3700 more people.
Here is your proof China is cooking the numbers These are for Hubei province Wuhan is the capital of that province.
Confirmed 1,052
Suspected [ they list no suspected patient numbers the above item implies there are 9000+]
Recovered 42
Deaths 52
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/chemical-warfare-trucks-spotted-rushing-21346037
Looks like the Chinese are trying a massive general disinfection campaign in Wuhan.
The decontamination agents typically used for chemical/biological agents are typically something like a strong chlorox solution so could be used to provide general decontamination.
Which raises another interesting question how long is this virus viable on a dry surface? Most will die in hours, SARs which is 80% identical to 2019-nCoV can survive for 24 hours on a plastic surface and survives cold temps.
https://www.sfgate.com/health/article/New-light-on-SARS-transmission-Studies-find-2618663.php
Interesting patient profile here, there appears to be a sex bias in the victims is this biological or perhaps occupational?
Not sure if this got posted earlier, video showing the play of a voice mail from a Chinese Doctor in Wuhan. Sounds catastrophic.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1220926124139667463
I’ve see several posts which state insiders are estimating over 100,000 infected.
Unfortunately not translated and close captioned (yet) but posts from native speakers are giving snippits of what she is saying.
https://twitter.com/howroute/status/1220802981408448512?s=21
Multiple translations of the content agree on the basics:
CFly
@TiltIsLife
Jan 24
Replying to @howroute
Not sure if this is real or not but this is basically what she said.
She a doc in wuhan, there are 90k cases. Virus can spread from 1 carrier to 14. All medical facilities in wuhan are low in supplies. They are running donation to get masks gloves etc
Evil
@iEvil777
Jan 24
Replying to @howroute
in mandarin She said in China around 90,000 people (infected or dead???) and if one infected person is not treated properly with the right medical care it can spread from one person to 14 others (1:14 ratio). She urged everyone to not go out and stay home. It is out of control
Zo
@Zo58054296
Jan 24
Replying to @howroute
I’m from hubei province, The part one said there have90000 people infected not dead, one person will infect 14 people on average.all the hospitals need medical materials. Like N95 masks, face protector, protector suits, disinfectant fluid. They need people to donate these.
The Lockdown Defender
@LockdownCouncil
Jan 24
Replying to @howroute
Im going to weight in, This seems pretty bad and seems to me like a global emergency, she said the Virus mutated to be able to infect 14 people at a time and they can’t stop it at all… I’m pretty sure the youngest person to be infected was 33-35 older persons are at higher risk
Keep in mind this is all just raw data but appears by the mass of consistent reports to probably be sound summary of conditions.
Evaluate and determine how credible it is to you as things are moving too fast for the people on the scene to verify all their reports
Okay found a text translation of her video.
Per sex ratio:
IMHO, likely just exposure patterns. SARS had many more medical staff and way more nurses exist than doctors and mostly female. MERS is Middle East Respiratory…. and mostly only men leave the house for social contact. Etc.
Per duration on surfaces: heard one report of a few days… but at least many hours.
Disinfectant: classical DIY is 1 Tbls (15 ml) 5% chlorine bleach per quart ( L) of warm water. Or 2 oz / gallon.
I bought a gallon of bleach today, but damn it, forgot the bacon! ;-)
Saw the presser by the Toronto emergency medical folks per their patient. It was all ~”Everthing is fine. We have a protocol and a test. Don’t worry. Guy flew in from China, next day felt sick, only lives with his wife. He’s in quarateen and she is asymptomatic so in self quarateen at home. Only 3 rows each side of him from the airplane need to be contacted. Folks in the airport will be fine as it takes more than just waliking past to catch it. We’re on top of things….”
I think that smells. Folks are wearing bunny suits to handle patients and we have very rapid contagion. Did he stop at a snack bar where he changed planes from China to Toronto? Sneeze in the bathroom? Hand a paper boarding pass to the Stew to board? I suspect Canada is going to have more cases.
Just a personal observation, when it comes to collecting information during an emergency I am a vacuum cleaner. (hard won lesson actually doing this on the ground floor in an emergency center listening to 5 radios and getting notes passed to me. I want the raw data you only get one chance to collect it in very many cases, its validity will be proven or disproven in time – no sense burning cycles trying to validate something that is inherently impossible to validate.
In emergency response, you know up front about 50% of your initial reports will be flat out wrong another 30 % will be close but not quite right and 20% will be vital info that you need to act on as soon as you can make sense of it, but over time they self validate as more and more consistent reports come in or as reports come in that totally conflict with some other report (ie both cannot be true). By the very nature of social media it is much like the random bits of info you get when a big fire occurs or a tornado or a flood happens. You take a thousand puzzle pieces and try to make them fit as best you can. Over time you blend in a little instinct to toss out things you know are likely bogus and you do little back of the envelop calculations to see if numbers make sense, so don’t take any of this info as gospel and don’t absolutely discard any of it either. Let the stew cook and see what rises to the top.
Example one night I was the on call duty officer for the state emergency operations center. I was the guy that got the first call and decided who on our staff got called next or in certain cases I could act with the authority of the Governor if I thought the situation justified it. I got a call about 10:00 pm that there was a gas spill in a northern county, an unleaded gas line was pouring raw gasoline into an irrigation canal. The guy who made the call got a bit carried away and said the gas line had exploded. I paused for a second and processed what he had already told me and asked him.
Exploded as in ruptured, or exploded as in fire ball?
He sort of did an “Oh shit” and said ruptured!
We both said Whew and moved on – had to figure out who could turn off the gasoline flow who owned the ditch, where the water went, how to control the gasoline floating in the canal, and jump through about 20 hoops to keep the Governor, the fire units, the Health department, water quality control and the EPA all happy – it was an interesting night.
A wide sample up front helps you later to fit in ambiguous items that show up later.
You can never get ahead of the curve perfect information simply does not exist at this time in this sort of a situation. I can absolutely guarantee you that the Chinese leaders are doing the same thing and trying to make sense of multiple bits of information.
Some emergency response actions are not intended to “work” they are intended to perform a calming function by giving the impression the problem is being handled. I suspect that is what that bug sprayer thing was all about, someone grabbing at straws trying to keep the public calm by giving the impression corrective actions are being taken.
That 1 can infect 14 statement sounds to me very much like a staff meeting snippet to reinforce on people the multiplier effect. No one even those on the ground know the real R0 value, and the R0 value can change due to both mutations of the pathogen and changes in protective measures. So I would bet you a bowl of egg drop soup that is not a real number but rather a representative estimate grabbed out of the air based on personal experience by some lead doctor.
He has patients stacked on every flat surface including along the hall way and he sees some of them getting wheeled off to the morgue every hour or so, and based on that grabs a number out of the air and tells his staff 1 can infect 14 if you don’t do your job, pay attention to protective gear and don’t cross contaminate – – – etc.
This is zerohedges take on the “suspicious circumstances” of a huge pandemic breaking out just a couple miles from one of their high level 4 biological research labs Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coronavirus-canada-and-weaponize-it
This study suggests the actual spillover event that started the 2019-nCoV occurred on or about 2 December 2019.
http://virological.org/t/clock-and-tmrca-based-on-27-genomes/347
Report on Chinese measures to control the spread of 2019-nCov
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-56-people-killed-from-outbreak-in-china-11918069
California has a confirmed case now in Orange County.
https://abc7.com/5879603/
I am still waiting to see if they confirm the suspected Colorado case.
More confirmation that Chinese numbers don’t make any sense when compared to their actions of drastic quarantine and lock down of millions.
Those actions only make sense if he true numbers are the numbers in rumors which suggest actual infections are upwards of 100,000 now, and the medical system is completely over whelmed.
https://dcdirtylaundry.com/the-numbers-for-the-wuhan-coronavirus-outbreak-just-dont-add-up/
Larry L: “Those actions only make sense if he true numbers are the numbers in rumors which suggest actual infections are upwards of 100,000 now, and the medical system is completely over whelmed.”
Hmmm… I just realized that my daughter-in-law is backing that up with her actions. It must be bad enough in Shenzhen, where she is, that she is keeping her parents from going out so they won’t be exposed to the virus. Don’t listen to what the government says. Pay attention to what the people are doing.
BTW, Shenzhen is just a little way across from Hong Kong and has a red dot on the map above. Even though Shenzhen is quite far away from ground zero in Wuhan, it’s the gateway city on the mainland to Hong Kong. Much of what goes out of China through Hong Kong goes through Shenzhen.
She is 42, so she may be in luck. She’s not in the young group that has not had a lot of exposure to flu, and she’s not elderly with all the vulnerability that comes with age. Age and taking exposure precautions makes me think she may come out of this epidemic OK.
We won’t get to talk to her until March, but we should get a secondhand report from our son in the next few days.
@Larry, just a note of thanks for all your contributions on ” Musings”
All the best…
Larry – thanks for all the information on the Corona virus. Makes sense that the numbers of infected are much larger than in the normal news. Given what the authorities in China are doing, they are pretty alarmed.
IIRC, bacteria and viruses can remain viable for 24 hours or so on a stainless steel or plastic surface, but die pretty quickly on Copper or brass and even faster on Silver. Some truth in the idea of using a Silver bullet, or feeding a baby with a Silver spoon…. To help in avoiding infection, maybe using colloidal Silver on the face-mask could help (may be useful for your DIL, H.R.). There are instructions on the net for how to make your own colloidal Silver solution. If you can’t do that, maybe spray the face-mask with Bouillie Bordelaise (Copper Sulphate and slaked lime) to reduce the lifetime of the bugs that you’re breathing.
It seems inevitable that travellers will be infectious and not yet showing symptoms, and thus that this epidemic will get pretty widespread and will have a lot of deaths. Reminds me a bit of Stephen King’s “The Stand”, where people trying to escape the infection carried it with them. Luckily, though, the death rate is somewhat lower for this one.
Unfortunately we likely know very little about the death rate or a true RO number. This article explains how the layers of burecratic process can take up to 12 days to report a confirmed case and that there is a large shortage of test kits. Many deaths are apparently being attributed to respitory illness, or pnumonia.
Reports are coming in that all non essential vehicle traffic is on lock down in many urban areas.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/reported-corona-virus-cases-in-china-massively-under-counted-due-to-shortage-of-diagnostic-kits-and-layers-of-bureaucracy/
So maybe some greenie who wants to limit human population stole it from a Chinese lab and released it to “save the planet?” Or maybe the Chinese did it themselves, to make it easier to feed, clothe, and shelter their own population? They could already have inoculated themselves with a vaccine. The Chinese government has no legal, ethical, or moral restrictions; so with them, just about anything is possible.
China’s economy was already faltering. Will this crush it?
Global impact, ???
@Larry; thank you for your postings,you seem to be our best early warning source on many things. As you say it must be screened for logic and reinforcement.
This possible pandemic has the hallmarks of an escaped germ warfare agent, that it is a super bad “cold” that will overload and collapse the social system but is not all that lethal. The Chinese response seems to be built around this scenario.
For whatever the reason, this will really crush their economy when pilled on top of their other festering problems. I think that the problem of a super power China has just been solved…pg
Tin foil hat in place. As a cynical optimist, I don’t think this is possible, but would accept it if evidence comes out. The only situations I could see where the following could occur would be if China was close to a WW3 situation, or if they were controlled by GEBs and were implementing the massive population reduction scheme.
What if China has weaponized the Coronavirus with a high mortality rate? What if one of the people involved found that a much less deadly version would inoculate people from the more dangerous version? Would this person self-infect and spread (12 Monkeys) knowing there would still be fatalities, though at a much lower level?
There are indications that it has mutated to a far deadlier, more lethal, form.
Re logistic curve, that’s correct. Eventually, the virus will infect all that it can. That will either be natural or via human efforts to limit it (also natural, though with additional pathways). Viral shedding, which is the result of a virus commandeering the cell’s natural DNA/RNA synthesis pathways and apoptosis, actually starts rather rapidly. Hours to a few days, depending on factors such as infectious dose and cell susceptibility. Prior to immune system activation, most will not have symptoms. Reminder, things like fever are the result of immune system activation.
Re weaponized agent, well, we have and may still do that kind of work. Mostly for defensive reasons, but yes, a GEB would want to make an offensive weapon, too. Never mind the blowback.
Like Larry, I have some experience with these kinds of things. I once was on a county EMA team. We would do drills. We would have considered various scenarios about a virology lab, if we had one.
Again, the situation here is a reminder of why we do certain things, learned the hard way. If there is a bad infection, quarantine early and often. Better to err on the side of overzealousness, since false negatives will expose others to and may result in way more death and disease than necessary.
Pingback: Chinese Novel Coronavirus Outbreak – 2019-nCoV | Musings from the Chiefio
Quarantine failure? –
“… there is just one problem: the much needed quarantine and lockdown were far too late, because as Wuhan’s mayor Zhou Xianwang revealed on Sunday during a press conference, about 5 million residents had already left Wuhan before the lockdown because of the deadly coronavirus epidemic and the Spring Festival holiday. As the SCMP reports, many of Wuhan’s residents had already left the city for the holiday, while others rushed out after the lockdown was announced on Wednesday night.
Add in mild cases and hidden carriers, possible two week incubation ( reports on this all over the board)
Sorry, forgot link ( Zero Hedge post)
I’ve added a thread dedicated to 2019-nCoV here:
Morning all – diving back into the news pool, in catch up mode right now but this item caught my attention – Looks like intentional under reporting (perhaps triage – figuring certain people have no hope (old age) keep them comfortable until they die)
This would explain the skewed numbers only reporting a segment of the problem to keep from losing control of the cities. If the public really know thousands were (or had) died you could not maintain your quarantine, so keep them happy until they are too sick or terrified to move outside their home. (just speculation on my part but makes sense from a crisis management point of view)
If you lose control of the cities quarantine efforts it is game over and you have black death scale event.
Yale is taking this situation seriously.
Carly Weeks
@carlyweeks
Breaking: Federal health officials say the Toronto man who has the coronavirus was symptomatic on the airplane last week when he was returning to Canada. Efforts are now underway to reach passengers who may have been in contact with him.
8:53 AM – 26 Jan 2020
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/public-should-use-surgical-masks-not-n95-masks-to-guard-against-wuhan-virus-spread
A study on survival of disease viruses similar to 2019-nCoV on surfaces.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2863430/
Inactivation on surfaces depends significantly on temperature and humidity levels, most rapid deactivation occurred at 50% RH and 20 deg C if I am reading this correctly. Cold dry prolongs survival on surfaces (ie winter conditions)
Breaking news Kobe Bryant has apparently been killed in a helicopter crash.
https://amp.tmz.com/2020/01/26/kobe-bryant-killed-dead-helicopter-crash-in-calabasas/
Meanwhile Iran directed militias want to pick a fight with the US military in Iraq.
Good luck with that idiots.
Interesting study on flu vaccinations.
https://healthimpactnews.com/2013/study-flu-vaccine-causes-5-5-times-more-respiratory-infections-a-true-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-study/
Jack Posobiec @JackPosobiec 2:09 PM – Jan 23, 2020
At this point only 3 Chinese regions, including Tibet and Inner Mongolia, have not reported cases of Wuhan virus
I suppose someone has already pointed out by now that native Tibetans and Mongolias are genetically significantly different from the prevailing population of Chinese, known as Han? Maybe not even closely related, despite China’s centuries of effort to dominate or dilute them? Tibetans and Mongolias are descended (if I recall correctly) from ancient Turkic or Tungusic populations (or some combination).
Lack of cases is more likely due to remoteness from the source and low population density. Just not a lot of bodies going there to mive the virus in.
@Larry Ledwick – That’s a very interesting report on flu vaccinations. It chimes perfectly with my own experience as a hostel popular with all varieties of respiratory antagonists: the two years I weakened and accepted the offered “immunisation” were the two worst seasons I can remember. One of the treatments was the Health Service jab for that year, the other was a homoeopathic “triple nosode”, but the effects were surprisingly similar – more and worse. The lesson has been learned!
https://arcdigital.media/the-covington-kids-controversy-one-year-later-90937d6a4bb4
Compu Gator says: 27 January 2020 at 5:32 am [0:32 am EST]
Tibetans and Mongolians are descended (if I recall correctly) from ancient Turkic or Tungusic populations (or some combination).
I disavow this statement on the grounds that it was a late-night (EST) posting indiscretion. Upon further review, I’m unconvinced that I did recall correctly.
I should know better than to make off-the-top-of-the-head claims about origins of Central-or-East-Asian peoples, especially when I hadn’t tried to confirm using my own sources (i.e., a few books on Asian history) that I hadn’t opened in several years.
So I took refuge in fall-backs from the usual place:
Among the difficulties in the study of ethnic groups in China are the relatively long periods of time involved, together with the large volume of literary and historical records which have accompanied the history of China. Classical Chinese ethnography (like much premodern ethnography) was often sketchy, leaving it unclear as to whether Chinese-depicted names referred to a true ethnic group or a possibly multiethnic political entity. Even then, ethnonyms were sometimes assigned by geographic location or surrounding features, rather than by any features of the people themselves, and often carried little distinction of who the Han Chinese authors considered Chinese and non-Chinese for differences such as lifestyle, language, or governance. Many of the ethnonyms were historically used in such a way as to invite comparison with the word barbarian.
As for the distinction (quoted above) of “true ethnic group or a possibly multiethnic political entity“, I offer this:
The specific origin of the Mongolic languages and associated tribes is unclear. Linguists have traditionally proposed a link to the Tungusic and Turkic language families, included alongside Mongolic in the broader group of Altaic languages, though this remains controversial.
Among the historical ethnic groups more-or-less connected with mainland China that newly introduced readers might struggle to keep straight while learning about them: Khitan, Manchu (a.k.a. Jurchen), Mongols, Sogdians, Tanguts, Tibetans, and Uyghurs. For additional challenges, try to keep straight ethnic groups versus language groups.
Compu Gator says: 27 January 2020 at 8:55 pm [3:55 pm EST]
Weeell, (expletives-deleted) WordPress apparently autodeleted the citation in conventional URL-text style that I originally included for the quote introduced thus:
So I took refuge in fall-backs from the usual domain:
(Italicized quoted text elided by author.)
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Chinese_history].
Conversely, the citation I originally overlooked including for the quote introduced thus:
As for the distinction (quoted above) of “true ethnic group or a possibly multiethnic political entity“[WP quote-rendering-error sic]
(Italicized quoted text elided by author.)
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongols#Language].
While we are on the subject of flu shots doing poorly and causing problems:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/09/01/Swine-Flu-Shot-Linked-to-Killer-Nerve-Disease.aspx
I’ve had exactly one flu shot in my life and noticed nothing at all from it.
Larry commented just above here… https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/01/21/w-o-o-d-21-january-2020/#comment-123117
“The trial included children aged 6-15 years. 69 were given Vaxgrip and 46 received the saline placebo.”
I must be mis-understanding; how does a study where 69 children were given an influenza vaccine result in over 400 respiratory illnesses in the next 9 months? It appears to be staying each child given the vaccine was sick on average about 7 times. ???
CNN
“This is the perfect example of the disdain in which Mainstream Media holds the rest of us”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/01/this-is-the-perfect-example-of-the-disdain-in-which-mainstream-media-holds-the-rest-of-us.html
@David A:
Never had a kid in kindergarten or preschool? “Bug Of The Month Club”…
@Another Ian:
Thanks for that link. Tim Pool had a story on it this morning, but not the clip, so you’ve saved me needing to hunt down the clip ;-)
I’m frankly OK with them doing that Yuk Fest. 2 reasons:
1) Raised Trump vote by several percent on increased turnout.
2) It shows they are working from terribly wrong premises so will be way off the mark on all sorts of stuff. Being obviously clueless is a great way to reduce effectiveness.
It is especially fun to watch them be so horridly stereotypically bat shit crazy wrong when watching it from the perspective of a person on the “gifted” side of the scale and knowing a lot of other “gifted” folks who are also Trump supporters. Folks who managed to graduate U.C. “Cum Laude” while resisting the Socialism Indoctrination part. People here with strings of letters after their names, or folks like P.G. who have more skill making / growing / building things and is more clueful about the real world than anyone on the YSM shows. Watching Don Le-Mon just brings that wonderful “Bless his heart” phrase to mind… ;-)
This is not good.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us60007idc/executive?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ENS&utm_campaign=realtime
Maybe new thread ? The hits just keep coming.
Breaking911
@Breaking911
26 minutes ago
UPDATE: Massive 7.7M Earthquake Strikes Between Cuba and Jamaica, Tsunami Possible –
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
CNN Breaking News
@cnnbrk
Tsunami warning for U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay has expired. Quake was felt there but no injuries reported. http://bit.ly/4ilYl
Given the lack of tsunami I don’t see the need for a new thread dedicated. However, I’ll need to add a new W.O.O.D. as this one is filling, and a second nCov thread as that one is slowing to load.
I had a nerve pinch for a couple of days, but today hss been good; and I can start catching up some postings.
I was just going to post it looks like no big deal on the earthquake.
Had there been a tsunami, it would have been big…
Strike-Slip faults typically don’t produce big waves as there is not much displacement. However, a 7.7 event is quite large and sometimes can globally teleconnect/induce other events. We shall see.
Don’t forget about the 6+ quake in Puerto Rico 5-6-7(?) days ago.
It seems the furniture is being rearranged in the Caribbean.
@OssQss – I think your observation that there may be a teleconnection will probably hold true, but it seems like more localized shuffling around instead of a global influence. Agreed: we shall see.
It begins.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us60007iig?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ENS&utm_campaign=realtime
Re ” Never had a kid in kindergarten or preschool? “Bug Of The Month Club”
😅 Yes, 4 children, 3 es with all ( finally) Educated Employed and Elsewhere.
But nothing like this…
Any Seasonal Influenza 58
H1N1 (Swine Flu ‘Pandemic’) 58
Total Influenza Cases. 116
Noninfluenza Viruses
Rhinovirus (common cold) 230
Coxsackie/Echovirus 160
Other Respiratory Viruses 97
Total Other Viruses 487 88
So imagine all 4 in this study, each child gets 1.7 flues 3.3 colds
1.4 other respiratory viruses, and 2.3 bouts of
Coxsackie/Echovirus. For all four of my children, nope, never anything remotely close. Maybe two or three colds and one bout of the flu as the worst for one child.
Makes me think anyone pushing such help should be imprisoned.
First major update for this evening, current local time in Wuhan China is 08:01, There will likely be another smaller update in about 4 hours, but trajectory of confirmed cases continues basically unchanged at about 19% per day for this update.
Well this is app behaving badly territory – this is basically a trojan app it appears, offers a useful function/feature to trick you into exposing your whole digital identity.
Bad App!
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/ring-doorbell-app-packed-third-party-trackers
They are gearing up for the big game this weekend.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/super-bowl-liv-security-norad-conducts-drills-over-miami
Just so you don’t forget there is a real war brewing with China in the China Sea:
Latest deployments in the preliminary preparations for a confrontation over the Chinese attempt to drive the western nations from that area…pg
Nice summary video. I suspect losing about 50 million of their population, weighted toward the older men, in this virus outbreak, will slow their schedule some.
Still , until their nose is bloodied they won’t back off.
I can see them sinking another Philippines boat and discovering Trump means to enforce our mutual defense treaty. Then us wiping them off one of the artificial islands.
It does make one wonder about the validity of this Pandemic scare. What better way to mobilize for war and confuse the enemy during the first few hours. After all, most of what we know right now about this influenza is confusion and numbers that don’t make sense. DEATH tolls that don’t match up with the information presented. And a lock down on communications. At least an attempt to lock it down with “leaks” as well as “seeding” the West with “carriers” of the disease…pg
I have a thought. Just one. It’s been a slow week.
Nancy delayed sending the House Articles to the Senate, for a month, for no apparent reason.
John Bolton had a book in pre-publication National Security processing during January.
Did Nancy delay the Articles until she was sure John’s book notes would leak?
@pouncer; there is no doubt that the Bolton Book Article was timed right after the NSC said it, the book, could not be released for security reasons, so no one could question the validity of the article. The democrats got their talking points thanks to someone in the NSC just like all the other “leaks” out of the “Administration” by “Whistle Blowers” find their way to the “independent” press…pg
The Democrats never do things by accident. Don’t know if it was Bolton or sonething else, but it was timed for a reason and Bolton fits the schedule.
It was just the last hail mary. Like Ballsy ford and Anita hill.
I made a gentleman’s bet with a man over a year ago. My wager was that the MUeller report would not show any crimes, collusion or wrongdoing.
So I make another. When Bolton’s manuscript comes out, it will actually support Trump. Bolton is not stupid. And Neither is Trump.
Here is an interesting tidbit. I may try this a little later on one of my desktops and see what happens.
Either way, could prove to be useful for some until they cut it off.
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/you-can-still-download-windows-10-free-you-should-because-windows-7-dead/
Pingback: W.O.O.D. – 1 February 2020 | Musings from the Chiefio
@ossqss – My wife’s computer blew up a couple of months ago (blew as in windows disappeared as a bootable partition). I did not realize until later that it was 10 years old (but still ran fine and the battery is still good). So I had to reload from the rescue media. That of course was windows 7. I knew support was ending, so I went to the MS site and downloaded the upgrade and ran it. It was the easiest upgrade with Microsoft I have ever done.
Anyone using Windows 7, I highly recommend it. As you note, no telling how long it will remain out there.