As the prior thread is getting slow to load, I’m adding this new thread. There’s s lot of good information in the prior threads, so folks new to the topic, or looking at it historically at some future date, may wish to start there. In chronological order:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/01/26/chinese-novel-coronavirus-outbreak-2019-ncov/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/01/29/global-2019-ncov-corona-virus-outbreak/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/02/01/ghe-2019-ncov-corona-virus-outbreak/
At the time of this posting, it is a global pandemic. South America and Africa are showing no cases, but have some under observation or contact trace with an exposure. I suspect a lot of under reporting.
Cases outside China continue to grow. Taking comfort in the low numbers is an error. Exponential growth always looks small at the start. Just a month ago, almost no one saw China as being in trouble either. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Given the multimodal and asymptomatic transmission, I see little stopping the virus spreading to completion. Slowing it, perhaps a lot, yes. Growth curves outside China are flattening, but are still showing growth of cases.
This also means the likely cases are far higher, but the lethality far lower as it is not including those mild cases in the calculation.
The best thing to note is the generally mild symptoms in children and young adults. It may make them good germ vectors, but it also says you need not panic about the next generations. Older men need to be most careful to avoid exposure. Retired folks can just stay in the house a good long while. Those with existing health problems are most at risk, so nursing homes and convalescent facilities need to be vigilant.
Some shortages of rubbing alcohol have surfaced, yet left on the shelf are jugs of hydrogen peroxide, in some ways a superior hand sanitizer. Also, one Tablespoon or 15 ml of bleach in a quart of water works well too. Don’t just react, think.
Musings from the Chiefio 
Here is the JH Map as of 9am Central
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
A shortage of Alcohol, looks like I need to fire up the still and make some more, for medicinal purposes of course. I have about 40 gallons of crap wine to salvage As an old man I can’t be too careful about sanitation needs. 8-) …pg
@P.G.:
Let me know if you want help removing that “crap” product… ;-)
BBC Reported:
Hyundai will shut down S. Korean production if (when…) their Chinese supply chain is interrupted.
Macao has shut down their main industry, casinos.
Looks like the global integrated manufacturing chain is starting to close down.
@M .Simon:
Fascinating link there: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080720222549.htm
So direct suppression of cytokines and so ought to moderate cytokine storms…
This mornings numbers archive image.
20704 cases, 427 dead, 727 recovered.
The recovered number is now solidly above the dead, which I think is more a case of we are deep enough into the process that the full cycle is represented (at least in the officially acknowledged cases). I strongly suspect that for many reasons (political, institutional, operational limitations) that these numbers are only a “sample” of total cases. They are likely missing cases too minor to be noticed in the face of a pandemic (yes I think we can honestly call this a pandemic now) and the cases missed in the official tally because of inadequate manpower or test kits to verify many cases and the hurry to cremated those who died without followup autopsy etc. that would happen in normal conditions. Twitter still has lots of unattributed images of people simply collapsing in the street or while shopping. A few have been revealed to be drunks passed out but I doubt they all are.
As is the video clips showing stacks of body bags in ambulances or side rooms in hospitals are hard to ignore.
Likewise China’s aggressive quarantine actions (50+ million quarantined, people unwilling to quarantine being arrested by force, preparation of large bed facilities and building new hospitals ) also indicates they know this is only going to get worse for a while.
Case counts are getting large enough in other countries that we will start seeing daily increments in those counts and international travels impact on breaking containment before people even know they have a problem.
Item on Hyundai shut down.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hyundai-motor-virus-china/hyundai-motor-to-suspend-south-korea-production-as-china-virus-hits-parts-supply-idUSKBN1ZY0GG
Discussion on good practice for such an event.I think this exposes a bit of wishful thinking in the health community that “if we just ask people to self quarantine” things will be alright. Just because a practice has not been used in a historically recent period of time does not in any way show it is improper. Quarantine, (cordon sanitaire) measures are only needed in rare instances and by that reasoning alone will seldom be seen in recent history, but they are a proven measure to limit damage and buy time while mobilization takes place. It may increase harm in a local area but reduce harm in the rest of the world. It is no different than the choice to amputate a limb, drastic but necessary to protect the whole body.
It would be far better tolerated by the public if the government had not squandered public trust by self serving actions and corruption so that a significant fraction of the public will strongly resist government measures as their first instinct because they have repeatedly seen that those government measures have a very strong tendency to work to the detriment of the public and the benefit of a select few insiders. This lack of trust and cooperation is a self inflicted wound of bad government in the past place the blame where it belongs.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200203.393483/full/
It still looks to me as though the reactions are causing more problems to society than the virus. To those that get seriously sick or die, of course, the individual doesn’t care about the societal disruptions.
Regions with higher health care abilities likely better at treating folks; for example, the person from Washington State has be released from care.
So, I don’t expect this is going to be the “big one” of these outbreaks.
I do think there is reason for other countries to press for cleaning up some practices in China (and others) that spawn such things.
I do not see any reason to worry about this as yet
As this is a flu, what matters is if mortality is higher than any other run of the mill flu. Air pollution in China is generally bad, weakining the respiratory track. I would assume this makes for a higher mortality rate in the general population than seen in Western developed countries.
I doubt that western developed countries will see mortality significantly greater in the general population than normal flu, discounting mortality in the homeless and drug addicted population which run on the ragged edge anyway. Adding their mortality into the general population mortality gives a false sence of how dangerous this version of the flu is to the general population.
The public is self limiting risk where they can.
Interesting thought, world population is a bout 7.6 billion, if you have a new virus by definition you will have nearly 100% susceptibility in the population, let’s say 95% susceptibility.
Let’s also presume the 2% case fatality rate is correct.
(7.6 * .95 ) *.02 = 144,400,000 potential deaths from this virus after it has had time to reach all corners of the earth. Suppose it can only fully saturate the population of 20% of the world in one flu season – we still end up with a potential for 28,880,000 so this is well within reason to presume total deaths will rank up there with the 1918 spanish flu when all is said and done.
Reduced to the US population of 329,000,000 we get with the same assumptions.
((329,000,000 * .95) * 0.02 ) * 0.20 = 1.25 million excess deaths in the US vs the typical world wide fatality count for seasonal flu of 290k – 650k excess deaths world wide
I read yesterday that this years regular Flu season in the US has claimed 10,000 to date.
@ Larry –
I agree. This virus is out of containment and I believe that it will travel across the globe over the next several months. It’s possible that with the many low symptom cases that people will carry it and infect others with almost not symptoms.
So, while the death rate may be much lower in the west due to improved health care and the receptor binding profile of the virus, there is still the chance that the annual deaths from this will far surpass flu on an annual basis.
People who cry – this isn’t nearly as bad as the flu are missing the point- flu has been around forever and we actually have a shot we can take to minimize the impact or innoculate us on a season basis. We have no protection against this virus and it has a 2% mortality rate. If it does encompass the globe and all 7+ billion of us the death rate is going to be astronomical – the 100+ million number you supposed…
Tip of the business problems starting to show.
https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/202002042228/hyundai-motor-to-suspend-production-at-all-of-its-plants-in-korea-update
From that AMAZING post linked by David A;
This is from the Zheng (sp?) 2008 article.
As I read it, they modified something ( a virus?) and showed that it could bind to (infect? these my words)
Human ACE2 receptors ?
“Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is caused by the SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which uses ACE2 as its receptor for cell entry. SL-CoVs and SARS-CoVs share identical genome organizations and high sequence identities, with the main exception of the N terminus of the spike protein, known to be responsible for receptor binding in CoVs.
Whereas the SL-CoV spike protein was unable to use any of the three ACE2 molecules as its receptor, and the SARS-CoV spike protein failed to center cells expressing the bat ACE2, the chimeric spike protein the study created did gain its ability to center cells via human ACE, and
A minimal insert region (amino acids 310 to 518) was found to be sufficient to convert the SL-CoV S from non-ACE2 binding to human ACE2 binding, indicating that the SL-CoV S is largely compatible with SARS-CoV S protein both in structure and in function.”
Re-read that last sentence, published in 2008;
AFAICT, they have been modifying (gene-splicing) virus for at least a decade.
YIKES!
OF
Octave, yes as I read it, they demonstrated this scenario years ago.
It is very possible that they intended to develop an antidote for a weapon against a likely natural mutation which they considered likely.
It is possible that they lost containment. China has made containment errors numerous times in the past. It is possible it simply developed naturally as they feared.
However, their claim of being surprised by this is very deceptive.
The overall population mortality does not express “my” true risk, which is my worry.
These “health disasters” crop up every couple of years, roar into the western developed world, and are later seen as barely a ripple in the mainstream population groups. Groups leaving on the edge take, as always, a disproportionate hit. Hard on any individual, but not that much impact on the nation.
For example: “In the UK, the most-deprived quintile had a mortality rate due to 2009 H1N1 influenza 3 times higher than the least-deprived quintile, and South Asian ethnic groups and those living in socioeconomically deprived areas had disproportionately higher rates ..”
21. Rutter PD, Mytton OT, Mak M, Donaldson LJ. Socio-economic disparities in mortality due to pandemic influenza in England. Int J Public Health 2012August;57(4):745-750
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4170985/?report=classic
As these first deaths are in stressed populations, of which includes most of China due to air quality, the mortality rate the US could experience is almost certainly being exaggerated.
Below is a video – some great information especially the 5:10 mark – shows head to head the diff of this vs. the flu – his numbers may be a little higher than we have discussed here, but still much higher than the flu:
His biggest fear is that we still have not seen anything in South or Central America or Africa – especially when there is such a large population of Chinese in Africa – makes him (an me worry) that it’s blowing up there and being ignored or covered up…
Also –
He referenced this site which is competitor to the Johns Hopkins site –
https://wuflu.live/
The other wild card few are talking about is this virus will probably mutate to get better at infecting people as time goes on and it chews through a billion or so hosts – sooner or later a more successful gene will pop up and then we might get either an accelerated growth or even a new variant that is no longer protected against by the immunity gained from the first exposure to the original variant.
There are really a huge number of unknowns here.
@Ed Forbes:
While I get your point, a technical detail: this is NOT a flu. At all.
It does have a lot of “flu like symptoms” and is a virus with similar modes of transmission, so somewhat similar viruses. But…
Flu is only caused by the influenza virus. This is a corona virus that causes lower respiratory illness. Entirely different things.
One observation – flu season is hemisphereic, we are in the peak flu season in the northern hemisphere because flu like infections are favored by cold winter like conditions.
The southern hemisphere might already have subclinical infections but no one is noticing because it is summer and the activity of the virus is strongly suppressed temperatures and high sun UV levels there. They might see a resurgence of infections as they move into their traditional late fall winter flu season in a few months.
Here is a cure that I can go with! 8-)
https://www.foxnews.com/health/man-coronavirus-china-whiskey-honey
ancient Chinese remedy…pg
I went to the hospital today to visit my heart Dr. (scheduled appointment) I got asked if I had been to China recently. (Not joking). I replied I haven’t even been to Chicago (the nearest big city – 2 cases). . The nurse giggled and said she wasn’t traveling anywhere for a while
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/04/johns-hopkins-dr-amesh-adalja-says-new-coronavirus-is-here-to-stay.html
With a 2-3% mortality rate…
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/04/researchers-say-the-coronavirus-may-be-more-contagious-than-current-data-shows.html
And more data – so basically it is going to do what we thought – will encompass the entire globe eventually – but don’t worry about it because we can’t have the economy hurt, ect…
Only a 2-3% mortality rate
Is this important ?
https://www.unz.com/article/do-you-know-all-coronavirus-victims-appear-to-be-chinese-thought-not/
May people of Chinese origin be more susceptible to this new viral disease for genetic reasons ? Interesting discussion.
Is this important ?
I’m pretty sure it is important to the Chinese trying to avoid infection!
As noted above in that little chart Asians have significantly higher expression of the ACE2 cells this virus binds to than other races. This leads some to think it indicated it is targeted at them but could also simply be that the virus originated and made the first jump and spill over from another species into someone with Asian gene expression.
@ Bill –
Go back and look at some of the other data – Asian Men have more of the receptor that the Coronavirus binds to than other men – like 5X more – that that may be a big factor in the severity of the disease for them…
From a Zerohedge recent write up.
Summary:
Confirmed deaths: 479
Confirmed cases: 23,865
Chinese authorities have enforced full community lockdown in Nanjing Province
American Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Jetstar close routes to China
Taiwan tightens travel restrictions
WHO infectious hazard chief says outbreak ‘not a pandemic’
Japan says no coronavirus cases confirmed on cruise ship “Diamond Princess”
Kudlow says impact on US economy from outbreak will be ‘limited’
By the way seeing some indications that twitter is limiting load, yesterday you could scroll through hundreds of posts on topic of 2019-nCoV today only a couple pages (maybe 100 posts).
I just got a slow page load warning
By they way too early to know if this is the real deal but reports of fires breaking out in Wuhan quarantine area.
https://twitter.com/zerohedgenew2/status/1224807290601078788
Posters are saying wrong city
Shocking events continue in #China 5.1 strong tremor was recorded at 00:05 (local time) in the regions of Qingbaijiang Chengdu Sichuan. Although people are quarantined they took to the streets Big fire in Putian, Fujian after the powerful earthquake
Well it appears they got this one wrong the first time.
Update (1845ET): At least 10 cases of coronavirus have been discovered aboard the Carnival Japan cruise ship “the Diamond Princess”, which has been quarantined at Japan’s Yokohama port since yesterday after officials learned that a passenger who recently disembarked tested positive for the virus in Hong Kong.
First major update of the evening is out
23,892 cases
492 total deaths
857 recovered
Most updates should be posted in about 4+ hours when it is noon in Wuhan China
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Good news if available stocks are sufficient or able to be churned out fast enough to get ahead of the pandemic.
Chloroquine is an extremely common anti-malarial and ought to be very plentiful.
The wiki is interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remdesivir
I believe the 1st US patient was released from the hospital today.
@S.T. Taylor – I do not think we can trust the mortality rate as long as the large majority of the cases are confined to China. They have not been forthcoming with the facts since it started.
We can hope it is only 2-3%
Looks like limiting test kits is how the Chinese are cooking the confirmed cases numbers.
https://twitter.com/jenniferatntd/status/1224703084238180352
I’m just home from the gym where I get my best ideas I think.
I was wondering about this Corona virus.
Could it be a Bioweapon that the Chinese government
Had made for use in Hong Kong & Taiwan
To help soften these places up
For a full Communist party takeover
With China ‘saving’ the people of Hong Kong & Taiwan from the disease ?
It seems curious that this virus
Which people of Chinese ethnic background
Are more vulnerable to,
‘turned up’ in Wuhan’s markets
Soon after related military research work started just 16 ks away
At China’s new Level 4 Biological research facility.
Could someone working there have released it in Wuhan
As a protest against it being used as a bio-weapon ?
And to prevent it’s use against Hong Kong & Taiwan ?
Speculation I know.
But it is all very curious !
PLEASE let go of the “bioweapon” idea.
Corona Virus is an obsolutely lousy platform that FAILS on almost all of the desired criteria.
One, for example, is you want the weapon to work, then END. This one would just have your own troops wiped out as soon as they engaged the area
Another is you want an effective vaccine and treatment. Given the rapid rate of mutation of retro viruses, vaccines are very hard and fail often.
You want very low contagion. Disease ought to be only in troops who were deliberately exposed, not in your troops who pick them up, or if the wind shifts. (Learned in W.W.I with chemical weapons)
The list goes on and on.
It is just an emotionally attractive very wrong notion.
The only really plausible way to connect the lab would be them doing research to STOP epidemics like SARS and had a failure of containment (aka big screw up) and even that is entirely unnecessary.
You have an animal, the bat, that is natural reservoir for MANY viruses at once (they don’t manifest disease but just carry a high vurus load) and of the involved types. Virus replication is slipshod with LOTS of mutations and recombination events. Wuhan is smack dab in the major bat range. A known blogger popularized eating bats, creating a fad, so many were collected, slaughtered, shipped etc. in the area. This would spread virus all over. Someone picks it up. THAT is by far the most likely process.
Especially since it can spread via stool and many folks have few symptoms of note. The notional “patient zero” need only to have shared a public toilet with someone, the actual patient zero, who slaughtered, prepared, or just delivered a live bat, and got diarrhea…
@Larry L.:
It is equally possible they are only able to make a limited number of kits and this is the best they can do right now.
Normal triage when you can only handle 20 patients / day but have 100 is the Triage Nurse is given criteria for who gets seen and the rest told they get no service. For example: IFF they have severe pneumonia and a fever, test them and admit, otherwise give them NSAIDS and call back if it gets worse. That is even normal in our system. You sort the patients into “going to die anyway” who get no service so that others can live; likely to be OK anyway, who get no service, and “needs help AND we can do some good” who get service. There is nothing unusual about that.
“The only really plausible way to connect the lab would be them doing research to STOP epidemics like SARS and had a failure of containment (aka big screw up) and even that is entirely unnecessary.”
True, it is not necessary. Yet we know the first half of the equation happened, the research was done and demonstrated a decade ago! We know China has feigned surprise at a development which they demonstrated and were forwarned about. We also know that China has lost containment of bio-research at least 4 times.
So many reasonable questions from this are unanswered. Until then we are, IMV, in 49/49 land. ( The missing 1 percent is, as you say, on the edge of unreasonable.)
Just from the top of my head…
A decade ago China demonstrated what this virus does, what research was done since?
China’s known research explains one of the four short sequences found in the new virus; what do we know about the other 3? ( Likely sources and affects on recipient hosts)
How likely is it for those other sources to naturally pre-exist in the Wuhan area of origin?
Did the Wuhan lab do research work with potential sources of the other three sequences, as we know they did with the bat derived sequence?
What were the results of that research?
P.S. Not expecting answers anytime soon.
PPS. Go President Trump!
@E M, I . was posing questions in my mind. out of curiosity. Questions to see what others know & think. And you have given your informed view. Fine ! And David A has done the same. Fine !
Major update is complete it looks like
They fixed a minor glitch in the display of the graph window.
It is continuing on the recent growth rate unchanged growth of 2.11x in 4 days
20.3% growth over the last increment of the growth graph. The visual slope of the graph is increasing but the numerical change per day is dropping slowly
Right now and the last 4 days growth is consistent at about 20% per day It was at about 24% a day earlier but I suspect their “cases” count in reduced as they add recovered cases and dead ( removing them from active cases.
Does not matter a whole lot since the numbers are so fluid but growth as charged is still increasing.
Well now I know how they built that hospital in 10 days they paid the workers about 5x their normal wage each day.
Discovering Eyes
@DiscoveringEyes
51 minutes ago
CGTN exclusive! @Yunfei_Zh reports at the construction site of Leishenshan Hospital today just before completion. A hospital offering 1600 beds usually needs 2 years of construction. But workers there are paid $150 per day to finish the project in 10 days. #2019nCoV #Wuhan
Chinese growth strong and unabated, they have lost control. But reassuringly outside of China the infection rate seems to be dropping, less new cases in last 3 days than in preceding 3 days. Perhaps we can control it with strong quarantine measures.
Some info to chew on.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224692813251534849.html
David A says:
5 February 2020 at 5:56 am
The “novelty” of 4 short sequences is much greater if the 4 sequences are predicted in advance.
Suppose 5 had been found? Or three?
Location too is a “novelty” factor. Is it dead code? Or active?
I saw, somewhere…. a report that control was not in place and cases increasing in Cambodia. Now I’ve lost the pointer. Also, IIRC, Thailand has increasing case counts (but also has a treatment). Finally, I think it was Canadian news, CBC?, had an “expert” on saying that due to low symptom carriers and number of countries involved it was now uncontrollable and would be with us as a new persistent global pathogen, like the flu. That was a bit depressive.
But it is an interesting question… Does this “burn out” and fade away like SARS, or just slowly chew through the global population mutating as it goes, with fresh outbreaks from time to time? Will we form a reservoir populatiom somewhere in the world?
@Bill in Oz:
I’ve generally got no problem with question asking. This case just is a bother due to the persistence of mud slinging (in general, not you) at the Chinese over it, and especially when we know that most new human diseases arise by crossover from animals naturally.
There’s a 99% odds situation that it came, on its own, via the bat eating fad. Why reach for the one that is highly unlikely. Occam, his razor, and all. It is the extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence when we have nearly none, and what exists is compatible with the natural path. Then things like odds it was predicted? Quite high from folks specialized in looking for future risks from a SARS like source. No more surprising than the prediction of a new flu next year, or that eventually one like Spanish Flu will return.
We have MERS and SARS and specialists looking at them, and at the camel and bat reservoirs. My immediate thought, given the peculiar way bats are sort of commensal with their virus loads of several viruses at once, is “Golly, that’s a great place for mutation and recombination and novel virus creation” followed by “and then they carry SARS and suspected in AIDS… wonder if they would combine and what it would be?”. And I’m only a blogger who was awake in bio and genetics classes… not soneone doing it every day as my passion.
Predicting a likely event, then having it happen, is not extraordinary. Having it not happen is the strange bit.
French language article, will have to be translated. I used https://www.bing.com/translator/
https://bioinfo-fr.net/analyses-bioinformatiques-du-coronavirus-2019-ncov-pourquoi-et-comment
WHO interim guidance on use of masks regarding 2019-nCoV
(download pdf)
https://www.who.int/publications-detail/advice-on-the-use-of-masks-the-community-during-home-care-and-in-health-care-settings-in-the-context-of-the-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)-outbreak
Interesting item here, perhaps an unintentional leak of real casualty data or a coding blip?
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871594
App you can use to play with key parameters to see how it affects growth of the pandemic.
https://art-bd.shinyapps.io/nCov_control/
(the bad news is that using this app the only way I can get predictions to match up with reality (log plot) is to push R0 value to the max number of 4 [actually would need to go just a bit higher to get a true match])
Chart of survival times of common infectious agents
Just to put some context on the size of the human catastrophe in China:
Population (per Wiki): 1,427,647,786
Lethality: 2% – 3%
Eventual dead: 28,552,955 (yes, 28 Million, more than many countries)
High range 3%: 42,829,433 (42 Million or all of California plus a few other States)
Keep that in mind when assessing “extreme” measures to stop the spread.
In that context, I would put 100% of my effort into stopping it, reporting the dead can be done later….
It might also be that Tencent has both reported and an estimated set and sometimes shows the estimated (much like we’ve done here as have others). You report the official numbers and also “do the math” as a kind of sanity check. Then it just becomes someone clicked the other icon…. perhaps deliberately.
Very interesting video discussion by Bannon
It looks like this article cites the same source as the Canadian news expert reported:
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3869848
The Bannon video has some good stuff in it but I only managed about 15 of the 53 minutes.
They are discussing the same stuff we were talking about 3-4 days ago, and coming up with the same sort of projection numbers we had then.
Moving on to get more current info on twitter – let me know if they say anything earth shaking later in the video we have not already touched on.
E.M., the study I linked here…
…and Simon linked here…
no longer have the link to the study that documented China’s past research on exactly this scenario. The links are not dead, they are simply gone?
I had used them several times to revisit the article, and so am certain that they were there and worked.
Any thoughts?
Question for David A;
David A says:
5 February 2020 at 5:56 am
You mentioned that ‘we know’ of 4 containment failures of Chinese Bioresearch.
Some of us didn’t know that. Am curious of the back story there.
For Larry;
Larry Ledwick says:
5 February 2020 at 12:19 am
that Don Hackett guy mentioned 3k/24K official confirmed cases were ‘serious’.
Does that imply ICU needed for 12% of cases?
Explains the need for insta-hospitals.
Jefe;
WHO says that masks SHOULD be worn by symptomatic persons and known infections.
i.e., to contain their emissions. For now, carers need N95 during aerolizing treatments of pts.
OF
@David A:
You want me to speculate about something I do not know, about a link I can not see, on a topic I didn’t investigate, to a paper I barely skimmed? OK…
My thoughts would be: when sonething interests you or is important, download a copy or screen shot immediately. At the end of the week you can purge the irrelevant downloads and disk is cheap.
Why might a link go away? That’s a big list.
Lawsuit
Political pressure
Fumble fingers
Paper withdrawn
Site down (and admin dissabled error message generator)
Someone found out it was a hoax
Money changed hands
The boss didn’t like it
The bosses spouse didn’t like it
They did a software update with “issues”
The network link to the site is saturated (ddos?) and you didn’t wait for the time out error
Cosmic rays twiddled a memory bit (it happens…)
Power spike twiddled bits (it happens too)
Etc…
Yes I have seen several references that said about 25% of confirmed cases get serious complications and something like 15% end up in ICU.
Historically there have been 4 cases where Chinese research labs had leaks of SARS organizes, right off hand I don’t recall the reference. But found this item with a google search
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/sars-escaped-beijing-lab-twice-50137
https://meaww.com/wuhan-coronavirus-warned-2017-lab-wuhan-deadly-diseases-escape-lab-level-4-safety-scientists
The link in question is now showing;
“ERROR 410
This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules.”
I luckily printed it out, numerous pages.
Just saved to PDF.
Very valuable resource, including 125 papers published by Zhengli Shi, and 4 pages of conference presentations.
It did require heavy filtering of the ‘what if’ questions and speculations of SHI travels, to US facilities within a few miles of conference locations.
The ‘clickbait’ embedded in the link title might have been ‘the problem’.
Here’s that link again, now dead;
“https://medium.com/@realAdrianBond/coronavirus-exposed-part-1-communist-coverup-or-pandemic-bioweapon-of-mass-destruction-229ad482c0d3”
OF
[Reply I put ” around the link as it was bilnking out of visibility. I think Worpress was starting to display, but then finding it dead so masking it. That’s another way a link can “dissappear”. Software ‘feature’ hiding dead links. -EMS ]
Well this is not good. Watching an update video (when it finishes I’ll add it to this comment) which says 11 cases from the ship off Japan. Diamond Princess with 3700 aboard.
The interesting bit is the test numbers. Several thousand on the ship. They tested 273, got 31 results back so far of which 10 were positive. Is that the actual rate, or biased by testing the most at risk, or symptomatic first?
So is this a PCR test and thus rate limited on Techs, PCR Machines, and reagents? Were there only a few hundred test kits available, or is that the number the nurse got swabbed the first day?
Note that this is similar to the “China not testing everyone” in structure, but not being China, folks are not tossing rocks. While reputation matters, “just the facts” usually is better…IMHO.
In any case, looks like we have our fishbowl forbidden experiment…
My question about the link was curious in that I know little about such things I thought as a blog host you would know more. I assumed a link could somewhat easily become non functional, but for links to disappear, vanish is something I have not encountered before, and did not know that could be easily done.
Octave, I had copied about 4 or 5 cogent paragraphs from that link that vanished, perhaps you could to a slightly longer post here highlighting the most interesting statements.
The reference to the 4 previous bio study leaks from China was in that article as well. Yet I saw it elsewhere also. That can likely be found via a web search.
@David A:
See my note added to O.F. last comment. Looks like WordPress hides dead links as a ‘feature’.
BTW, one can know too much about a topic to give a reasonable answer without some filtering context. Like asking an M.D. “what do bacteria do?”… prepare for a book…
You might also check the Wayback Machine for that link. See if they ever archived it.
Useful rabbit hole, this dead link discussion. Now I know I need the live link AND a quoted version in case Worpress decides to have it hide when dead…
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
A nice meter. (NOTE::Do NOT use a .com in the name… It’s a junk SPAM like site. The real site is .info)
“CoronaVirus — huge ghost statistics mysteriously come and go. A hint of much worse?”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/02/coronavirus-huge-ghost-statistics-mysteriously-come-and-go-a-hint-of-much-worse/
IDavid A;
If anyone knows a good way to convey an 8.7MB pdf, I can reconvey that Medium article to be available to interested parties. Especially if Wayback lost it. It is a huge resource, albeit one with relentless speculation heavily larded into it. Am somewhat busy with work today.
I thought I had forgot to paste that link when it didn’t show up at first until Jefe fixed it..
I, for one, greatly appreciate your contributions, as well as the heroic duty that Larry was/is performing.
My family thinks I’ve gone crazy. TIme will tell…
OF
Thanks!
How many pages is it? You could convert it to png images that anyone could view.
Mike Thompson, MD, PhD, FASCO
@mtmdphd
58 seconds ago
First Case of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Confirmed in Wisconsin #2019nCoV
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/05/coronavirus-live-updates.html
Item from NYT on how some critical journalism is still functioning inside China either because the govt cannot control everything or perhaps as an intentional back channel method to both acquire an disseminate information while maintaining separation from the official channels.
Oops
WHO down plays news items that imply an effective adhoc treatment for 2019-nCoV has been found, the process of validating such discoveries takes a lot of time and often reveals problems.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-treatments-who/who-no-known-effective-treatments-for-new-coronavirus-idUSKBN1ZZ1M6
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-05/coronavirus-update-governments-prepare-for-pandemic
@Octave, thank you, that would be great to get again.
As to bring crazy, well I hope your family is right, and that this turns into ” much ado about nothing”. I am not one to easily jump, generally skeptical of anything new just because… yet China’s very strong reactions and economically destructive ones at that, got my full attention.
Regarding the vanished publication, it has occured to me that with China’s research on the very scenario we are facing, they likely know all the factual information on the 2019-nCoV pathology that we are struggling to ascertain. And, if so, then their reaction warrants our full attention.
I do not see how they can blame nations putting travel restrictions out, when they have quarantined close to 70 million people!
My brother travels to China on business several times a year. His friends and associates there, ( wealthy connected Chinese) say that basically the nation is shut down with Military, health and food services active.
My PDF won’t open. Tried to save as HTML, got the new blocked version.
Later I will scan my printout and pursue conveyance if it is gone from Wayback.
OF
was able to copy/paste into Word document, 80 pages. Encyclopedic
Here’s some papers; I tried to edit out non-bat papers.
There is 125 references and also conference presentations.
I gotta take a boss phone call.
More later
OF
I
4. Luo, C. M., Wang, N., Yang, X. L., Liu, H. Z., Zhang, W., Li, B., Hu, B., Peng, C., Geng, Q. B., Zhu, G. J., Li, F*. & Shi, Z. L*. (2018). Discovery of novel bat coronaviruses in South China that use the same receptor as Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. J Virol 92 (13). 10.1128/JVI.00116–18.
5. Luo, Y., Li, B., Jiang, R. D., Hu, B. J., Luo, D. S., Zhu, G. J., Hu, B., Liu, H. Z., Zhang, Y. Z., Yang, X. L. & Shi, Z. L*. (2018). Longitudinal surveillance of betacoronaviruses in fruit bats in Yunnan province, China during 2009–2016. Virol Sin 33 (1), 87–95.
6. Wang, B., Li, W., Zhou, J. H., Li, B., Zhang, W., Yang, W. H., Pan, H., Wang, L. X., Bock, C. T., Shi, Z. L., Zhang, Y. Z*. & Yang, X. L*. (2018). Chevrier’s field mouse (Apodemus chevrieri) and Pere David’s vole (Eothenomys melanogaster) in China carry orthohepeviruses that form two putative novel genotypes within the species orthohepevirus C. Virol Sin 33 (1), 44–58.
7. Wang, N., Li, S. Y., Yang, X. L., Huang, H. M., Zhang, Y. J., Guo, H., Luo, C. M., Miller, M., Zhu, G., Chmura, A. A., Hagan, E., Zhou, J. H., Zhang, Y. Z., Wang, L. F., Daszak, P. & Shi, Z. L*. (2018). Serological evidence of bat SARS-related coronavirus infection in humans, China. Virol Sin 33 (1), 104–107.
8. Hu, B., Zeng, L.P., Yang, X.L., Ge, X.Y., Zhang, W., Li, B., Xie, J.Z., Shen, X.R., Zhang, Y.Z., Wang, N., Luo, D.S., Zheng, X.S., Wang, M.N., Daszak, P., Wang, L.F., Cui, J.*, Shi, Z.L*. (2017). Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus. PloS Pathogens 13(11): e1006698.
9. Waruhiu, C#., Ommeh, S#., Obanda, V., Agwanda, B., Gakuya, F., Ge, X. Y., Yang, X. L., Wu, L. J., Zohaib, A., Hu, B. & Shi, Z. L*. (2017). Molecular detection of viruses in Kenyan bats and discovery of novel astroviruses, caliciviruses and rotaviruses. Virol Sin. 32 (2), 101–114.
10. Zhang, Q., Zeng, L.P., Zhou, P., Irving, A.T., Li, S., Shi, Z.L.*, Wang, L.F. (2017). IFNAR2-dependent gene expression profile induced by IFN-α in Pteropus alecto bat cells and impact of IFNAR2 knockout on virus infection. PloS One. 12(8):e0182866.
11. Wang, B., Cai, C.L, Li, B., Zhang, W., Zhu, Y., Chen, W.H., Zhuo, F., Shi, Z.L., Yang,
X.L.* (2017). Detection and characterization of three zoonotic viruses in wild rodents and shrews from Shenzhen city, China. Virol Sin. 32(4):290–297.
12. Zeng, L.P., Ge, X.Y., Peng, C., Tai, W.B., Jiang, S.B., Du, L.Y.*, Shi, Z.L.* (2017). Cross-neutralization of SARS coronavirus-specific antibodies against bat SARS-like coronaviruses. Sci China Life Sci. 60(12):1399–1402.
13. Wang, B., Yang, X. L., Li, W., Zhu, Y., Ge, X. Y., Zhang, L. B., Zhang, Y. Z., Bock, C. T. & Shi, Z. L.* (2017). Detection and genome characterization of four novel bat hepadnaviruses and a hepevirus in China. Virol J. 14:40.
14. Liang, J., Yang, X.L., Li, B., Liu, Q., Zhang, Q., Liu, H., Kan, H.P., Wong, K.C., Chek, S.N., He, X., Peng, X., Shi, Z.L., Wu, Y.* & Zhang, L.* (2017). Detection of diverse viruses in alimentary specimens of bats in Macau. Virol Sin. 32(3):226–234.
15. Ge, X.Y., Yang, W.H., Zhou, J.H., Li, B., Zhang, W., Shi, Z.L.* & Zhang, Y.Z.* (2017). Detection of alpha- and betacoronaviruses in rodents from Yunnan, China. Virol J. 14:98.
16. Waruhiu, C., Ommeh, S., Obanda, V., Agwanda, B., Gakuya, F., Ge, X.Y., Yang, X.L., Wu, L.J., Zohaib, A., Hu. B., Shi, Z.L.* (2017). Molecular detection of viruses in Kenyan bats and discovery of novel astroviruses, caliciviruses and rotaviruses. Virol Sin. 32(2):101–114.
17. Tan, B., Yang, X. L., Ge, X. Y., Peng, C., Liu, H. Z., Zhang, Y. Z., Zhang, L. B. & Shi, Z. L.* (2017). Novel bat adenoviruses with low G+C content shed new light on the evolution of adenoviruses. J Gen Virol. 98(4):739–748.
20. Zeng, L. P., Gao, Y. T., Ge, X. Y., Zhang, Q., Peng, C., Yang, X. L., Tan, B., Chen, J., Chmura, A. A., Daszak, P. & Shi, Z. L*. (2016). Bat Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Like Coronavirus WIV1 Encodes an Extra Accessory Protein, ORFX, Involved in Modulation of the Host Immune Response. J Virol 90 (6), 6573–6582.
24. Yang, X.-L., Hu, B., Wang, B., Wang, M.-N., Zhang, Q., Zhang, W., Wu, L.-J., Ge, X.-Y., Zhang, Y.-Z., Daszak, P., Wang, L.-F. & Shi, Z.-L*.(2016). Isolation and
Characterization of a Novel Bat Coronavirus Closely Related to the Direct Progenitor of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus. J Virol., 90, 3253–3256.
25. Wang, M. N., Zhang, W., Gao, Y. T., Hu, B., Ge, X. Y., Yang, X. L., Zhang, Y. Z. & Shi, Z. L*. (2016). Longitudinal surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats by quantitative real-time PCR. Virol Sin., 31, 78–80.
26. Ge, X. Y., Wang, N., Zhang, W., Hu, B., Li, B., Zhang, Y. Z., Zhou, J. H., Luo, C. M., Yang, X. L., Wu, L. J., Wang, B., Zhang, Y., Li, Z. X. & Shi, Z. L*. (2016). Coexistence of multiple coronaviruses in several bat colonies in an abandoned mineshaft. Virol Sin., 31, 31–40.
27. Hu, B., Ge X., Wang, L. F., Shi, Z*. (2015). Bat origin of human coronaviruses. Virol J., 12(1): 221.
29. Yang, X. L., Tan, B., Wang, B., Li, W., Wang, N., Luo, C. M., Wang, M. N., Zhang, W., Li, B., Peng, C., Ge, X. Y., Zhang, L. B.,Shi, Z*.(2015). Isolation and identification of bat viruses closely related to human, porcine, and mink orthoreoviruses. J Gen Virol. 96(12):3525–3531.
31. Wang Y, Sun Y, Wu A, Xu S, Pan R, Zeng C, Jin X, Ge X, Shi Z, Ahola T, Chen Y, Guo D*. 2015. Coronavirus nsp10/nsp16 methyltransferase can be targeted by nsp10-derived peptide in vitro and in vivo to reduce replication and pathogenesis. J Virol, 89: 8416–8427.
32. Yang Y, Liu C, Du L, Jiang S, Shi Z, Baric RS, Li F*. 2015. Two mutations were critical for bat-to-human transmission of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. J Virol, 89: 9119–9123.
33. Menachery VD, Yount Jr BL, Debbink K, Agnihothram S, Gralinski LE, Plante JA, Graham RL, Scobey T, Ge X-Y, Donaldson EF, Randell SH, Lanzavecchia A, Marasco WA,Shi Z-L, Baric RS*. 2015. A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence. Nat Med 21:1508–1513.
34. Mazet JK., Wei Q, Zhao GP, Cummings DT, Desmond JS, Rosenthal J，King CH., Cao WC, Chmura AA, Hagan EA, Zhang SY, Xiao XM, Xu JG, Shi Z, Feng F, Liu XP, Pan WQ, Zhu GJ, Zuo LY & Daszak P. (2015). Joint China-US Call for Employing a Transdisciplinary Approach to Emerging Infectious Diseases. EcoHealth, DOI:10.1007/s10393–015–1060–1.
.
36. Ge, X-Y., Li, J-L., Yang, X-L., Chmura, A.A., Zhu, G., Epstein, J.H., Mazet, J.K., Hu, B., Zhang, W., Peng, C., Zhang, Y.J., Luo, C.M., Tan, B., Wang, N., Zhu, Y., Crameri, G., Zhang, S.Y., Wang, L.F., Daszak, P.*, Shi, Z-L*.(2013). Isolation and characterizationof a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor. Nature, 503(7477):535–538.
38. Wu, L., Zhou, P., Ge, X., Wang, L. F., Baker, M. L. & Shi, Z*. (2013). Deep RNA sequencing reveals complex transcriptional landscape of a bat adenovirus. J Virol 87, 503–511.
39. Shi, Z. Emerging infectious diseases associated with bat viruses. (2013). Sci China Life Sci. 56: 678–682.
40. Zhou, P., Han, Z., Wang, L. and Shi, Z*. (2013). Identification of Immunogenic Determinants of the Spike Protein of SARS-like Coronavirus. Virol Sin 28, (2):92–96.
Added information – rumor? from within China, public transportation is breaking down, many are trying to leave the cities and rural areas likely to be quarantined next. ( The harder the orange is griped, the more the juice runs out, not good)
Chinese authorities are literally welding doors and gates shut to quarantine buildings it looks like.
https://twitter.com/IsChinar/status/1225180216223588352
Augie Ray
@augieray
19 minutes ago
My data, by the way, is derived from the Johns Hopkins data visualization (https://arcg.is/0fHmTX ) and the associated time-series spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UF2pSkFTURko2OvfHWWlFpDFAr1UxCBA4JLwlSP6KFo/edit?usp=sharing …). And, if you’re interested in checking my math:
Source is from link at the bottom center of the Johnshopkins dash board
Downloadable Google Sheet (new link): Here.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UF2pSkFTURko2OvfHWWlFpDFAr1UxCBA4JLwlSP6KFo/edit#gid=0
Visited a hospital today for a cardio exercise class. “Corona” signs all over warning that you will be kicked out of the hospital if you are not a patient and showing any signs of the flu or Corona.
This is new since my last cardio class on Monday.
Also something else new today. Some visitors to the hospital wearing face masks. More nurses in the hallways in masks. So far in my area it is just flu. But they started asking intake questions about visits to China yesterday (Tues.)
US Case 12 Wisconsin – Dane County – which means Madison and the surrounding area. UW hospital is good for heart surgery. Don’t know how they are with infectious diseases.
Corona virus (2019-nCoV-) watcher
@2019_nCoV_stats
1 minute ago
BREAKING: 10 more infections on board of Diamond Princess cruise ship have just been reported.
Corona origins.
Commercial impacts starting to develop as expected, especially those which depend directly on tourism will take a huge hit.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/05/business/cathay-pacific-coronavirus/index.html
First evening update has come out. 27705 cases, 563 dead, 1128 recovered.
Since the map is pretty much just becoming a big red blob right now, I think the slope of the plot of cases actually provides more information in a readily useful form than a bunch of numbers.
As long as the slope is becoming greater (curve is turning upward more) that shows that the exponential growth is increasing and control measures have had little impact on rate of reinfection (real world R0 value). Once control measures become effective the graph will began to curve to the right and over time the slope will diminish (or the infection runs out of people to infect)
Interesting post about infection & death statistics for Novel Corona virus. Also some interesting links in the discussion.
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/02/coronavirus-huge-ghost-statistics-mysteriously-come-and-go-a-hint-of-much-worse/
Hmm, on that wuflu.live site, outside of Hubei, very few deaths vs. mostly recoveries.
What do we make of that?
Province Confirmed Deaths Recovered
Hubei 19665 549 633
Zhejiang 895 0 77
Guangdong 895 0 39
Henan 851 2 50
Hunan 661 0 44
Jiangxi 548 0 27
Anhui 530 0 23
Chongqing 389 2 15
Shandong 343 0 18
Jiangsu 341 0 25
Sichuan 301 1 24
Shanghai 254 1 15
Beijing 253 1 24
Creator Of US BioWeapons Act Says Coronavirus Is Biological Warfare Weapon
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/creator-bioweapons-act-says-coronavirus-biological-warfare-weapon
This may have appeared before. But since it is an area of interest.
Octave Fiddler says:
6 February 2020 at 1:19 am
Hmm, on that wuflu.live site, outside of Hubei, very few deaths vs. mostly recoveries.
What do we make of that?
I suspect that is an artifact of the long delay between infection, hospitalization and eventual death.
I think most of those cases outside Hubei are relatively young cases (only a few days into hospitalization) and it takes up to a week to ten days before most patients get critical and die.
Problem is there is lots of information that strongly suggests we should place very little trust in “official information” coming out of China on this topic, they have lots of possible reasons to be giving partial, incomplete or out right doctored numbers right now.
Lots of apocryphal information that a great number of cases are never being officially confirmed to be 2019-nCov infections and deaths of patients who are not confirmed are being written off as other common causes like pneumonia, COPD, complications of the flu etc.
Anti-Chinese propaganda?
Chinese Leaders to Sacrifice Coronavirus-Infected Cities to Save 11 Others; Prepared to Accept Millions of Fatalities
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-01-31-brutal-chinese-leaders-to-sacrifice-coronavirus-infected-cities.html
This is based on the Tencent “leak” that has been commented on in quite a few places.
Taiwan News Reports Coronavirus Infections “Astronomically Higher than Official Figures”
Claims real numbers are ten times higher.
https://summit.news/2020/02/05/taiwan-news-reports-coronavirus-infections-astronomically-higher-than-official-figures/
I conveyed the contents of that Adrian Bond article from medium.com to Jefe.
Interested parties might request it from him.
OF
For those comments you see on line about President Trump firing the Pandemic response group in the NSC, it was redundant and more pork in the NSC making it a festering sore of Obama hold outs.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-regarding-presidents-coronavirus-task-force/
The US already has agencies responsible for pandemic response, FEMA, CDC, Surgeon General and Health and Human Services to name a few, not to mention the Military medical resources and hospital ships.
Click to access National-Biodefense-Strategy.pdf
Strategic National Stockpile system
https://www.phe.gov/about/sns/Pages/default.aspx
@M.Simon:
That origin article is very interesting. I’d not considered a vaccination development gone wrong that way. It looks most likely. Their summary dismissal of natural recombination is a bit nieve.
Per “bioweapon” article: It is zerohedge who never saw an exciting rumor of doom they didn’t love.
Once again: This is not a bioweapon. The CHARACTERISTICS are ALL WRONG.. Look up what makes a good biological weapon. This ain’t it.
It us NOT an area of interest. It is click bait internet rumor.
Per sacrificial cities: since we have zero insight to the Central Committee (just like every one else has no clue) at best that can be informed speculation. At worst, click bait or propaganda. Absence of evidence is evidence of empty rumor. It could be either way. Something or nothing: therefore a null point.
@OF.: So I guess I need to check my email….
Where is Xi Jinping?
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/05/asia/xi-jinping-china-wuhan-virus-intl-hnk/index.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-04/china-will-soon-find-out-if-mass-quarantine-worked-virus-update
Looks like The Wayback Machine has the text but you will need to hunt up linked images:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200203110836/https://medium.com/@realAdrianBond/coronavirus-exposed-part-1-communist-coverup-or-pandemic-bioweapon-of-mass-destruction-229ad482c0d3
Well EM – this is not what you wanted to hear. This appears to be just some random electrical engineer type – he gives no source link. I will see if I can find a reference.
ENKI0999 – TRUMP2020
@enki0999
1 minute ago
More
A woman in Santa Clara, CA carrying 2019-nCOV came back from China and had been in the US for 10 DAYS before her illness was ID’d. Every single person she came in contact with in that time is now a potential carrier, and for the next two weeks they won’t know they are contagious.
Apparently she did not travel much after her arrival, was not seriously ill (another case of “almost asymptomatic” ) but even one trip for outpatient care could have exposed 5 – 6 people, including untraceable strangers.
Interesting short video (10 minutes)
Methods for Estimating the Case Fatality Ratio for a Novel, Emerging Infectious Disease
American Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 162, Issue 5, 1 September 2005
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/162/5/479/82647
Looks like an information suppression operation has begun / reached American cyberspace.
This guy has generally had accurate data and analysis. Now his wiki bio has been removed and reputational assault started.
The Lancet
Available online 5 February 2020
Reducing mortality from 2019-nCoV: host-directed therapies should be an option
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673620303056
@Larry:
Kind of what I expected. We’ve been mostly isolated for about 10 days… I expect we will see much more of this as there is a large Chinese expat population plus “work contact” pool in the area. Especially the Upscale Asian areas (Cupertino, some of Santa Clara city, etc).
I’m actually less concerned about S.F. Chinatown, as it is mostly folks who left China a couple of generations ago (and restaurants / tourist traps don’t have design meetings in China…)
That one lady is, in fact, the exemplar of what I expected and stated as soon as it was in the news that thousands of passengers from China were being screened for a fever ONLY then set loose on the nation. We have a few weeks of those folks running around, and the ones with mild symptoms or just diarrhea will not be found.
So it will be a game of a thousand Whack-a-moles as cases “ripen”.
We skipped church last Sunday as an example change. Not gone to the store in days. Etc. Having a couple of months prep feels real nice right now…
I do have some things I need to do out of area, but being alone in the car and using a glove on gas pumps works for me… and cases are here not there…
Maybe I need to start a series “Reporting Live! (for now) from ground zero USA!” /sarc;
Indoor exercise is now taking off among cabin fever quarantined Chinese.
https://www.malaymail.com/news/life/2020/02/06/hangzhou-man-runs-50km-around-two-massage-tables-at-home-amid-coronavirus-o/1835028
I have almost been under full lock down, made one last grocery store run Monday morning (very little traffic off normal rush shopping hours on the weekend).
I ordered a couple things from amazon to be delivered and other than that just checked mail and picked up packages from the apartment leasing office.
I will continue to make periodic supply runs for consumables like bread milk and eggs, but will seek to avoid high traffic hours. If I need to I can completely lock down but figure at this point there is no point given the very low case count in the country and my part of the country.
I have been “practicing” a few safe practices just to refresh the instincts. When I went to the grocery store, I kept my gloves on when I went in the store and did the cart hand rail wipe down thing which I “never do” just to become familiar with where the wipes are and that sort of thing.
I am really not much worried at this stage of the epidemic, spread, but will take such things much more seriously in late March and into April which is when I expect case growth in the US to peak – during the hot summer months conditions do not favor agents like flu viruses so like the normal flu I expect things to settle down for a 6-9 weeks. By then we will know a lot more about this critter and the real risk profile.
In the short term I consider this a test exercise to do a little testing and evaluation on my preparedness situation. For the foreseeable future my risk of catching the seasonal flu is significantly higher than this new bug. In a few months that risk balance will likely shift.
We did a test run last week to a govt office. I had a paper towel in pocket for door handles, but didn’t actually use it, just to see what else would work.
Only issues were:
Right to left hand transfer while waiting in lobby.
Hand to keys transfer.
A Guy with very Chinese accent entered the lobby, walked past us, and talked to the clerk. Nobody wearing a mask. (Were things at the concern stage, I’d have been masked or not gone).
Exiting the building an Indian guy insisted on holding the door open until our faces were 2 feet spart.
Hand sanitizer was available on the counter, but we did not use it after using their sign in pen / clipboard.
So, OK, we learned a lot of awareness, that about 3/4 of it we were prepared for, had the time been right . Mostly learned it will be a PITA and nobody else seemed even aware…
Given present cases in the area, most likely our limited outings drop to zero next week. Depending on arrival of the first diagnosed case that did not return from China (or their family). I.e some “round eyes” with no clear ties to China.
For now, it is watch cases, practice distancing & sanitizing, and avoid crowds.
Larry Ledwick says:
6 February 2020 at 1:46 am
I understand and acknowledge your points.
I wonder if the ‘overwhelm’ factor is at play;
when the # of cases (albeit under reported/recognized) is ‘small enough’,
there are enough critical care facilities to get the sick ones through the crisis,
and only when the hospitals are overwhelmed, that is when the crumpers become the croakers.
I haven’t seen any discussion of this aspect, and maybe it is just wishful thinking.
This would be consistent with rushed construction of more hospital beds
.
PS. how do they make the drains drain on daisy-chained pre-plumbed prefab modules?
OF
I open push to open doors with my elbow, forearm, shoulder or my knuckles (fist). On pull to open doors I pull them open with one finger on the bottom part of the door handle that almost no one ever touches, or if I have something in my I hand use that between my fingers and the door handle. If I need to use my fingers it is usually my middle or third finger and I intentionally reach in deep so the contact is made not on the pad of the finger but near the second knuckle.
Twist to open doors are still pretty hard to avoid contact with the area everyone else touches so something like your paper towel (or perhaps take off your ball cap and use it like a glove.
I have done that for years and it may be partially responsible for why I almost never get a cold.
With a little practice it becomes quite natural to hold doors open with the back of your hand or your forearm instead of your hand grabbing the edge of the door.
The light compression gloves I picked up will help with that, they are light enough and have good enough touch you can sign receipts or work your phone with them on.
The other day I picked up some food service disposable gloves like cafeteria workers use, could easily carry one in your jacket pocket, or one of those wet wipes in a zip lock bag. Right now it would make you look goofy, but if things hit the air circulator, people will wonder why they did not think of it.
If you think about it, you can usually avoid touching the parts of the door etc. people generally touch by using similar techniques. I now (last couple days) carry a small 2 – or – 3 ounce bottle of hand sanitizer in my jacket pocket and now also have one in the car.
I usually wear wrap around sun glasses so that provides eye protection against random floating drops. I am trying to condition myself to rub my nose with the back of my wrist and shirt cough rather than with my fingers. It is the summation of all those little actions that lower your risk significantly. That and maintaining wide personal distance. I have also been known to hold my breath for a moment while walking past someone who is talking loudly, coughing, or sneezing when infection risk is high. WHO guidelines suggest the critical distance is under 6 or 3 feet depending on which document guidance you are looking at. Three feet for just casual brief approach and 6 feet if something is going on that would produce aerosol particles like someone who has a cough or a nurse doing airway suction or changing bed linen etc.
Linked article within the Origins paper;
I’m too tired to figure out if it is redundant or ‘cumulative’.
OF
Looks like the major updates for today are done, it is 23:48 MDT here now, numbers are 28,289 total confirmed cases, 565 total deaths, and 1219 total recovered.
Calculated slope for last 24 hours is 15.2% per day (28289/24541) so the increase in cases is slowing down slightly, but still compounded daily will lead to big numbers (also assumes the method of confirming cases in China has not changed significantly over the last few days which I am not certain is a safe assumption.
@O.F.:
Same way you do on any other drain. Slope.
Each module has an ABS drain “downspout”. It enters a fitting in the large drain collector / manifold pipe. The collector has slope from high at far end to low at sewer attachment.
As each module is placed you use the right length “downspout” part or trim to length. Apply solvent weld glue, and press into fitting.
Alternatively, instead of uniform modules, each can have a numbered location with appropriate slope for that place in the daisy chain.
Either approach is valid, just depends on what you want in construction flexibility.
Oh, alternatively, you can have a powered pumped drain of the sort used in basements. Expensive, but then slope is irrelevant.
Per “overwhelm factor”:
I’ve discussed it under the name “triage”. It is standard crisis / disaster medicine.
Heck, just watch M.A.S.H. and you see some of it in the serious scenes. “Making do” with improvised anesthesia , bandages and equipment. Triage Nurse sorting out who can be saved with what you have. Expedient fast sub-optimal surgical procedure to save two lives instead of ideal procedure and one dies. (One episode in particular had, IIRC, Hawkeye telling Charles Winchester to drop the fancy stuff and do meatball surgery… so more kids live.)
One of the things I watched (and maybe posted) talked about oxygen supply and equipment as limiting. Similarly, the demand fof ICU beds being far in excess of supply once you enter epidemic scale.
That stuff is the major reason it is of benefit to slow down infection rate even if eventually everyone gets it anyway. Get treatment run rate closer to infection run rate.
This is what everyone is getting wrong about quarantine, they say it “won’t stop the infections” – well that is not the intent, quarantine is to buy time and make the problem solvable. So your capacity matches the increasing case load instead of getting run over by an avalanche of hopelessly sick people or killing all your trained staff by over working them and getting them infected too.
It is like having a boat with lots of little leaks and a big hole in the bottom. No matter how fast you bail you are going to sink until you plug that big hole. Then you have a chance to save the boat.
The more you delay the inevitable the more time you have to get the supply train moving, to train new staff, to set up recovery wards, to pray for medical breakthroughs or some treatment protocol that might be available in 2 weeks but not now.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-02/coronavirus-patient-santa-clara-county-fourth-case-california
Looks like the low symptom lady was clueful.
Presuming the outpatient clinic practiced “universal protections” for a patient presenting with infection symptoms, it comes down to her care in using a mask in the waiting room and / or proximity to others in the room.
Easy to contact trace the staff and others with appointments then. Add in the airplane passengers and you likely have most of the risk.
So of the half of US patients that are in California, all either arrived from near Wuhan, or are their spouse. No onward infection outside the group. (So far).
There is an elephant in the room.
The Chinese Communist party government
Has effectively put the Chinese entire population in quarantine.
That is 1,400,000,000 people in lockdown !
1: This has never been done before -ever – not at this scale !
2: There must a a huge pressing & urgent necessity, making the Chinese government take this action.
3: 25,000 infected and 600 people dead does not ‘cut the mustard’ as a sufficient reason IMIO.
@Bill In Oz – The CCP is definitely suppressing plus putting out wrong information due to
1 – Bureaucratic incompetence
2 – Systems being overwhelmed, so no accurate numbers
3 – Face saving for the CCP elite, who must be seen as wise and competent
4 – Normal reporting difficulties due to lags in onset of symptoms vs outcome
5 – Avoiding a panicked stampede in the population
6 – Societal breakdown causing them to be tossed from power (nahhh… there will be brutal suppression to prevent their ouster)
So your comment…
“There is an elephant in the room.
The Chinese Communist party government
Has effectively put the Chinese entire population in quarantine.
That is 1,400,000,000 people in lockdown !”
… is of the type that tells us by observing actions, it’s serious, because we’ll not be getting good numbers for the reasons I listed and more.
“
HoustonBeijing, we have a problem.”Agree entirely !
This is a great feature of this site. Many different perspectives and high general knowledge with overlapping experiences. There’s nothing like a world spanning salon, where folk can talk, and agree to disagree agreeably.
🦠🇨🇳 BEIJING – The Chinese doctor who first warned in late December about the risk of a major health crisis linked to the spread of coronavirus 2019-nCoV has died as a result of the disease (WHO).
Latests WHO sitrep
Click to access 20200205-sitrep-16-ncov.pdf
{Sigh}
This idiotic drum beat is getting really tiresome. Would be nice if they used their media platform for good instead of pushing brain dead propaganda
https://time.com/5779156/wuhan-coronavirus-climate-change/
He ( Ophthalmologist Dr Li Wenliang ) apparently went from diagnosed to death in one week.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2020/02/06/wuhan-doctor-punished-trying-warn-coronavirus-dies-infection/
Now they are asserting he is in very critical condition
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049411/coronavirus-li-wenliang-doctor-who-alerted-authorities-outbreak
Congratulations E.M. we were a full week+ ahead of official guidance.
https://www.ready.gov/pandemic
Wuhan Exhibition Center being converted to a field hospital
Fiat warns of plant closure due to supply problems due to outbreak in China
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51397677
Secondary impacts on trade are starting to show up in all sorts of commodities.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Gas-Prices/Gasmaggedon-Sweeps-Over-Global-Gas-Market.html
Now the general transmission begins outside the primary infection zone.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/third-person-in-uk-confirmed-as-having-coronavirus
@Larry L.:
Yes, congratulations to you, too, since your information haul was the base to build on.
Isn’t it amazing what results when you toss PC strictures out the window and do data based reasoning?
I find it much easier, too, than trying to track all the PC “rules” du jour. All you need is clean data, technical understanding, and formal logic.
https://nypost.com/2020/02/06/hong-kong-faces-toilet-paper-shortage-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/
Interesting question posed in one of the threads on twitter – what about the emergency blood supply?
How do you screen blood donors and how do you verify safety of recent blood donations?
This is going to be a big problem in a few weeks!
Right now you can presume that most all donors in the US are 2019-nCoV negative but that window of safe blood donations is closing rapidly. in a week or so they will need to start screening blood donors / donations.
I’ve seen no information on the safety of blood in people infected with 2019-nCoV and if the blood is infectious or if the virus moves through the lymph system etc.
Bula,
The effect on log trade is being felt in New Zealand. We would typically send 1.3 million cubic metres of raw log to China per month. This has dropped to near zero. No Letters of credit are being issued. It is a perfect storm of cheap lumber from Europe on the new rail, Chinese New Year and CV. With the country in lock down no one is working so no demand for lumber and there is already 4 million cubic metres on wharves…
Layoff have started in NZ and over 150 logging crews will be effected directly.
Crunch comes when these crews can not meet their financing requirements (equipment borrowings over $500 million). Expect interest rates to head up sharply!
African news outlet to keep an eye on, they may have some suspected cases of 2019-nCov in South Africa but so far no confirmation.
https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/just-in-two-suspected-coronavirus-cases-reported-in-kzn-health-department-20200206
If this pandemic continues to develop world wide they may need to declare debt payment holidays to prevent massive chain reaction due to inability to pay routine bills as those secondary impacts begin to develop.
Not sure how you would accomplish that without wrecking the entire economy if large supply demand fluctuations develop over a long span of time though.
WHO strategic response plan for 2019-nCoV pandemic
who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/srp-04022020.pdf
Note today from firstborn child;
San Fran Office closed yesterday due to transient exposure episode from a wuhan visitor.
Will stay closed until notified.
Work from home.
Will be interested to see if this ‘makes the official news.’
Second kid was mad I sent emergency food kit.
Probably they won’t be calling their mom to complain of my ‘paranoia’ anymore.
Just go back to their favorite topic, my emotional deficits…
OF
Thank you Larry, for your tireless , relentless efforts to educate us all to unfolding events.
An article about AI projections for the Coronavirus –
Maybe the AI projection is accurate or maybe it is alarmist – but an interesting article none the less
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/02/05/ai-predicts-coronavirus-could-infect-25b-and-kill-53m-doctors-say-thats-not-credible-and-heres-why/#555f39bf11cd
It is curious to me that China can quarantine 70 million people plus travel restrictions all over, and complain that other nations are restricting travel to – from China.
Numerous Statist politicians calling it racist, of course.
Larry Ledwick says:
6 February 2020 at 6:23 pm
Our podunk hospital is already asking common intake – “have you been to China recently?”
I expect they have been asking blood donors for a while longer. The system in the US seems to be reacting at a speed commensurate with how the problem is developing so far.
Quarantine comparison
“The few places that escaped the Spanish Flu — lessons from Samoa”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/02/the-few-places-that-escaped-the-spanish-flu-lessons-from-samoa/
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks
High dose Vit C for anti viral activity.
http://orthomolecular.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=9fc3d7152ba9336a670e36d0ed79bc43.137&s=6694370c7f9d5a6970f99ed7336f2d93
Larry Ledwick says:
6 February 2020 at 9:24 pm
Wow, I thought I had enough, but apparently not.
That article takes mega-dosing to a whole new level.
I was institutionalized in Pasadena back when Linus Pauling was on his Vitamin C campaign.
His fellow academics on campus were ashamed and viscerally disdainful of him,
the only guy yet to win two unshared Nobel prizes.
They spoke of him and treated him like he had gone senile.
I hope the esterified version has similar efficacy.
OF
Today’s WHO sitrep
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200206-sitrep-17-ncov.pdf?sfvrsn=17f0dca_2
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China has begun a round up of all infected (even mild cases) and placing them in communal quarantine facilities with only limited services.
https://twitter.com/howroute/status/1225480460979056642
Japan evacuated 565 people from Wuhan and tested them all for 2019-nCoV. Of the 8 with coronavirus, only 4 had symptoms of the disease. Strong sign of asymptomatic ones who may have and transmit the virus without knowing. Positive side: lethality should be much lower than 2%
Octave Fiddler says:
6 February 2020 at 9:40 pm
Yes sounds like bowel tolerance dosage is completely off the chart compared to conventional recommendations.
Steroid treatment may be contraindicated for this situation and treatment of 2019-nCoV.
This has some concerning ramifications.
Larry Ledwick says:
6 February 2020 at 5:23 pm
Cold viruses thrive in the cold. Don’t they know that they are undercutting their own message?
These people are stupid.
Larry Ledwick says:
6 February 2020 at 10:28 pm
One of the ramifications is a growth rate of 1.49 per day. The sample is of course too small for a reliable estimate. You would need 30 cases to make the implied noise acceptable. And 2 or 3 completed cycles after that. Say a month or 45 days.
Octave Fiddler says:
6 February 2020 at 9:40 pm
Open wounds – Vit C powder and powdered sugar. Suggested by some MD friends in the late 70s. It works.
I have never used over 20g a day to cure an infection. Nature’s anti-biotic. And it works on virus infections too.
It appears the next level is upon China if correct.
Update (1615ET): A senior Chinese official has ordered Wuhan authorities to immediately round up all residents infected with the novel coronavirus and place them in isolation, quarantine camps, or designated hospitals, according to the New York Times.
New numbers out if my GMT translation is correct.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Coronavirus Cases:
31,439
of which 4,824 (15%)
in critical condition
Deaths:
638
Recovered:
1,563
Larry Ledwick says:
6 February 2020 at 9:24 pm
High dose Vit C for anti viral activity.
http://orthomolecular.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=9fc3d7152ba9336a670e36d0ed79bc43.137&s=6694370c7f9d5a6970f99ed7336f2d93
“The sicker a person was, the more ascorbic acid they would tolerate orally without it causing diarrhea. In a person with an otherwise normal GI tract when they were well, would tolerate 5 to 15 grams of ascorbic acid orally in divided doses without diarrhea.
That was my experience with Vit. C as an infection fighter. My criteria was flatulence. No gas = not enough “C”.
I have seen one source that asserts that flatulence is a temporary signal and it will disappear after a short while, it is a sign that the vitamin C is killing organisms in the upper gut and once the susceptible organisms are eliminated, that symptom goes away.
ossqss says:
7 February 2020 at 12:14 am
The actual next level is a massive teaching of public health matters. Germ theory. Cleanliness. etc.
Too many commissars. Not enough public health inspectors.
Larry Ledwick says:
7 February 2020 at 12:34 am
I never had that experience. But maybe I didn’t keep at it long enough. I did reduce my dose as I was feeling better.
The best thing is prophylaxis. Keep your C levels up normally.
Go figure, I went to Netflix to find a distraction to watch and what did I find in recent additions for 2020/January?
https://www.netflix.com/title/81026143
What timing eh?
M Simon, maybe they heard you retroactively…..
ossqss says:
7 February 2020 at 1:32 am
Public hygiene was not a topic. Sanitation inspection in public food preparation was also missed.
8 more Americans on quarantined ship have Cvirus.
https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/02/07/8-more-americans-confirmed-with-coronavirus-on-cruise-ship/
Coronavirus: Malaysia confirms first case of human transmission from Singapore meeting, taking tally to 14
The 40-year-old woman did not travel to China but her brother became infected after a company meeting at the Grand Hyatt in Singapore last month
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3049350/coronavirus-malaysia-confirms-first-case-human
From the scmp link above.
Malaysia has tightly policed “fake news” surrounding the coronavirus outbreak. At least five people have been arrested and a journalist, Wan Noor Hayati Wan Alias, was on Wednesday charged over social media posts that could cause “fear or alarm to the public” after she claimed 1,000 Chinese nationals had arrived in Malaysia.
Attorney general Tommy Thomas said those who initiated and disseminated “lies on any issue relating to the coronavirus on the internet” would be investigated and charged if a case was established.
China Reports, Deletes, Then Again Reports Death of Wuhan Virus Whistleblower Doctor
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/02/06/china-reports-deletes-again-reports-death-wuhan-virus-whistleblower-doctor/
Who is in charge there? The Party is being indecisive?
Apologies if someone else has already posted these links that seem to show that the laboratory was responsible for the virus.
Also the oft quoted 2% death rate is misleading, deaths today should be compared to infections 3 weeks previously, so death rate would several times higher than 2%.
Another death rate is to compare deaths against recovered, which at 30% is more concerning.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-02-03-the-coronavirus-was-engineered-by-scientists-in-a-lab.html
The main link that pins it on the Wuhan lab.
https://jameslyonsweiler.com/2020/01/30/on-the-origins-of-the-2019-ncov-virus-wuhan-china/amp/
We need statistics from corona infection in the west, rather than Chinese statistics. I guess that country will be Canada based on the fact that they had 44 Sars deaths and are proposing to allow people collected from Wuhan to self isolate.
How do they plan to do that ? Let them get off a plane, walk through a crowded airport, get in a train, get on a bus, go to the supermarket, buy 14 days of food, go home and stay indoors for 14 days and don’t answer the door to anyone.
Wow, 24 hours with no added comments, just when things seem to be leaking out more from China!
Is there another follow-up thread I don’t know about/
Yes, this one
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