Not with a Bang, but with a Sneeze?

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Post by Bryn Mawr »

LarsMac;1531067 wrote: I am flying through Chicago, today. Not relishing being around several thousand of my fellow travelers for a three hour stopovers.


Look after yourself, best of luck :-)
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Post by spot »

spot;1531039 wrote: Here's the current state on my summary spreadsheet, if the blue line doesn't bend flatter I think it will show over a million confirmed cases worldwide before the end of the month, one tenth of which would have been in China.




I think there's now enough data to narrow that down a bit. The millionth confirmed case worldwide appears to be due on March 26th give or take a day. Beyond that it's pointless to make estimates, but the course of March seems predictable now within reason.

I'm not sure how medical reporting will keep up with reality by that stage. When the outbreak in China was uncontrolled the cumulative reported case figure was multiplying by ten every 14 days. In the rest of the world for the last week that gap is down to 10 days, the figure is increasing significantly faster than it did in China and the excuse of cruise ship amplification no longer applies.

Something eventually will make that 10 day gap widen. I'm not sure what it would be but medical containment isn't on my list of likely salvation. Just waiting for long hot summer days in the Northern hemisphere isn't sensible either.

There has so far been very little sense of urgency in the news reporting, at least in the UK.

I wonder how fast human trials of a potential vaccine will take, once candidates are proposed. I'm not sure how one would design the trial to be both ethical and quick. Unethical is easy, you randomly inoculate participant staff at infection hospitals with vaccine or placebo and see which category fares better.

So, here are my current graphs. I'll only post an update to them if the position changes significantly.
















The first just shows the daily new cases in the Rest of the World, on a log scale. A steady gradient shows exponential growth. There is a steady gradient.

The second focuses on how far the cumulative Rest of the World confirmed cases diverges from the exponential line. It's pretty close to not diverging, but that's the graph to look at in future if there's a variation arising. If there were no variation from the exponential prediction then the points would all lie in a straight line at 0.010.

The third is the cumulative Rest of the World confirmed cases compared with those of mainland China (in red, 100th the scale to make an overlay comparison). The figures in China have stabilized and are no longer exponential. The blue line has not stabilized and shows no sign that it will. The yellow line is the projected progress at the current rate. The red points were uncontrolled to begin with and then flat once medical isolation became effective. The blue points were raised high by the cruise liner epidemics at close quarters, since when they've just been an exponential progression.

I note that prisons worldwide are very like cruise liners.

The progression of the disease in the Rest of the World lags the China figures by four weeks, which is why the cumulative Rest of the World figures are still lower than those in China. That will soon change.
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Post by LarsMac »

Well, we now have two reported cases in Colorado.

Looking all the goings'on I think we now have reached a point where there are tow things that will screw with keeping track of this thing.

1. A large number of people are asymptomatic. They have been exposed, and probably have the virus, but have either not yet expressed symptoms, and may not even know they have it. This will play hell with trying to control the thing.

2. There are likely to be people who are symptomatic, but not severly, and may never report to, or request aid from medical facilities.

Of course there will also be people who have something else - Common Cold, one of the various Influenza strains, or something else.

Bst thing to do is hunker down, and avoid crowds, and practice proper Hygiene.



My wife wants to go up the hill to the casinos and play for a day or so. Somehow, hanging out in a big building crowded with people who demonstrate poor judgement is not my idea of a good time, even in the best of days.
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I agree that the actuality on the ground has little to do with the published figures.

What's published will also vary a lot on what the national medical reporters are told, and as you say if tests aren't done on asymptomatic real positives then they'll not be registered as positive. I reckon Indonesia is a huge instance of exactly that, a country with thousands of positive bodies two of whom have been tested.

We can continue counting deaths for a few more weeks but then that count will also diverge from the ground truth. I think we've done what we needed to do already, established where the outbreak is going and what the consequence will be.

By Christmas this year there will be a number of deaths due to Covid-19. We could now set a likely bracket and say it will be between these two figures. We can base it on the reported deaths to date for the registered positives up until, say, two weeks ago (to allow them time to be registered dead after going into the tested-positive category).

What we can't know yet is whether summer will slow the progress. What we can be sure of is that people who catch it will either gain immunity by surviving the disease or they'll die of it, until a vaccine is available for everyone who hasn't yet caught it, and that no vaccine will be in mass circulation by Christmas.

Ballpark totals? I can do that for America and the UK, the rest of the world has too many unknowns to try.

The number of deaths this year in America and the UK will be 50% up on normal years.

The actual number of those excess dead Americans will be around [1] the country's combined total military wartime losses from all causes since 1775, but that's neither here nor there. More proportionately, given the population increase, America lost 0.13% of its population to World War 1, 0.32% to World War 2, and this year's comparable Covid-19 toll will be about 0.45%.

By November you'll have lost around 4 senators and 20 representatives to the disease - half of them are old, let's face it - and you'll finally get to re-elect President Trump. Hell of a year all round really.

eta: here, in timely fashion, is the Guardian on the same topic. One hour later by the look of it. So it turns out I'm not being alarmist.

UK has plans to deal with pandemic causing up to 315,000 deaths







1: That bit of the post is entirely gratuitous and I only mention it because my coronavirus calculation ended up saying 1.352m and the Wikipedia table for United States military deaths through combat and all other causes, including the Confederacy, is given as 1.354m. Pure coincidence.
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Schools in Seattle closed. I spent yesterday training for Distance Learning and Tele-teaching. My School is developing a plan for online school is the school is closed for two months or more...

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Post by LarsMac »

Bryn Mawr;1531068 wrote: Look after yourself, best of luck :-)


I managed to find defend-able spots at both airports where I could keep my distance from random travelers while waiting for my plane. Apparently many of the passengers had the same idea. And when lining up to board, everyone was keeping their distance, as well.

Sitting there sniffling randomly, and clearing my throat every now and again, helped.

Also the airline was offering fee-free reservation changes, so I think some folks opted to stay home for the now.

And when I got to DEN, I opted to call an Uber rather than the original plan of taking the Regional Transportation System.

home safe since Tuesday night.
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Post by spot »

Saint_;1531141 wrote: My School is developing a plan for online school is the school is closed for two months or more...


If you go down that route you might find a proportion of children prefer it and stay there. For one thing they needn't be physically proximate to the school any longer, for another they can be a lot more selective in what they study. The school itself might end up with a lower-cost teaching model. From where you're stood it's a slippery slope.
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Post by Bryn Mawr »

LarsMac;1531143 wrote: I managed to find defend-able spots at both airports where I could keep my distance from random travelers while waiting for my plane. Apparently many of the passengers had the same idea. And when lining up to board, everyone was keeping their distance, as well.

Sitting there sniffling randomly, and clearing my throat every now and again, helped.

Also the airline was offering fee-free reservation changes, so I think some folks opted to stay home for the now.

And when I got to DEN, I opted to call an Uber rather than the original plan of taking the Regional Transportation System.

home safe since Tuesday night.


That’s good to hear, thank you :-)
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Post by LarsMac »

some thoughts:

The thing to remember about all those dots on the map is that they represent people who showed up at a medical facility with symptoms severe enough to draw attention to their condition, and then field-tested positive for the COVID19 Corona Virus.

The Bug is here. You can count on the fact that a lot more people have been exposed, and infected, already. The question that remains is how many people will have dangerous symptoms from the thing.



In Mainland China, the cases seem, for the moment to have leveled off. Less than 100 thousand reported cases, in a population of over a billion. You can bet that there are a lot more people in China who were exposed, and infected, but may have never experienced extreme symptoms.

Some of that may be the result of the attention drawn to it by the authorities. But that is unsustainable. Eventually the authorities will have to relax the level of vigilance. Evenutally a vaccine will be produced, maybe. Or it will fade into the background as just another bug we must watch out for.

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Post by spot »

There is a measurable indicator of the unseen unregistered cases, and that's a statistical sampling of people in general. Those who were exposed, even asymptomatic, will test positive for antibodies. You compare the hits with the register.

I'm quite sure WHO and the Chinese are gathering that information, but I've not seen it published.
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It will be a while before such a test becomes common. Maybe, China will see their way to enforce such a test on their populace. Would be usefull to see the stats.

As for the US, it will prove an expensive distraction for a while.

I asked my Primary care office about that, and was told they are not prepared to initiate such a test at the time. If we express severe symptoms, we are advised to contact an Urgent Care Clinic. Otherwise, stay home and drink plenty of fluids. And WASH YOUR HANDS!!
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Just doing that test once on a sample population would be enough to get a feel for how many people now have antibodies, compared to the count of cases. It will take fewer people and cost a lot less the longer it's deferred.
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Post by spot »

My holiday in Venice just got cancelled by the Italian government.

How far off is a hundred days. Let me check. Today is March 8, 2020 so that means that 100 days from today would be June 16, 2020. I didn't type that, I copied it from https://www.convertunits.com/dates/daysfromnow/100

So, someone bump this thread on June 16th and confirm that most people in America and the UK have developed their own personal antibodies to Covid-19, and then perhaps we can all get on with life. Between now and then it appears we will be inconvenienced. I don't exactly mean "all" all, but you know what I mean.

For what it's worth, I think the governments should be focused on keeping the economies afloat, since that's within their ability, as opposed to trying to mitigate the pandemic, which isn't.

Meanwhile, would anyone like to give me 1000 to 1 odds for a £1 bet that Prince George of Cambridge will be King of England before the year's out? Both Ladbrokes and William Hill are refusing to open a book on it.
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Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of GPs, warned that the Covid-19 outbreak is a “significant crisis” for the health service but said that estimates 100,000 could die are a “worst-case scenario”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... rus-crisis




Finally, a figure from authority.

He's low by a factor of 2.4 according to my calculator. I'll be delighted to find out he's correct. Perhaps he thinks the NHS can provide intensive care for more people at a time than I do.

The Rest of the World figure will overtake Mainland China's 81,000 total on Saturday.
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spot;1531192 wrote: I'll be delighted to find out he's correct.


Me...not so much. Being that I am in the high risk group. and thanks for the reassurance, Spot. I'l sleep so much better now. Sheesh!
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Saint_;1531211 wrote: Me...not so much. Being that I am in the high risk group. and thanks for the reassurance, Spot. I'l sleep so much better now. Sheesh!


Knowledge is power. Head for the hills with a burro and a roll, wait it out until the vaccine arrives, eat off the land. Squirrel, gopher, that sort of thing. You'll get lean and mean and weathered and you'll end up eating the burro.

What I'm waiting for is President Trump staring into the TV cameras announcing that America was attacked, to guarantee his re-election. What do you reckon? Four weeks? Six?
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spot;1531213 wrote: What do you reckon? Four weeks? Six?


LOL! Oh...four weeks, definitely. He's already in the "We have made a perfect response" phase. So, denial is already an option.
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Saint_;1531215 wrote: LOL! Oh...four weeks, definitely. He's already in the "We have made a perfect response" phase. So, denial is already an option.


I'm not sure what the inside of the President's brain feels like but it can't be pleasant.

By "delighted to find out he's correct" I meant delighted if the final total for Britain remains less than 100,000, not delighted that it would get that high. Perhaps I was unclear.
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Post by spot »

This is well worth a reed.

Coronavirus: Scientists use genetic code to track UK spread

It's too short to trim a quote from.

As for how long the NHS can manage without army field hospitals,

Twenty days into its outbreak, Italy is grappling to contain the spread of the virus and find space and beds in intensive care units, which are dwindling day by day. To manage the emergency, the sick are being placed in operating rooms or in hospital corridors.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... toll-jumps




We have to get through 100 days of increasing numbers, and the British and American outbreaks are three to four weeks behind the Italian outbreak?

That puts at least the UK in dire straits, bedwise, by mid-April.

Italy has just stepped up the pressure:

All of Italy will be placed under the lockdown conditions thus far imposed upon the so-called “red zone” in the north of the country, the Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte has said.

The restrictions will include banning all public gatherings and preventing all movement other than for work and emergencies. According to the Reuters news agency, he has said the decision was necessary to protect Italy’s most vulnerable citizens and that the right course of action now is for people to stay at home.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... atest-news




And this from AP a half hour ago.

WHO IS PAYING FOR TESTING IN THE U.S?

Federal health plans like Medicare and Medicaid along with major private insurers say they will cover the cost of the lab test. Additionally, many insurers are waiving copayments, deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs to encourage people to seek help. But some patients may still face a bill if other tests or X-rays are done, or they seek care in an emergency room instead of a doctor’s office.

https://apnews.com/74ad74536dc511cc09cd74a42c5f68d0

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Are we to expect a surge of births to follow peak virus, with people stuck for entertainment opportunities? Or will the birthrate fall with people stuck for entertainment opportunities.
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Post by Bryn Mawr »

spot;1531239 wrote: Are we to expect a surge of births to follow peak virus, with people stuck for entertainment opportunities? Or will the birthrate fall with people stuck for entertainment opportunities.


Depends how bad a headache the virus gives you? :-)
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The coronavirus outbreak has been labelled a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).

WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the number of cases outside China had increased 13-fold over the past two weeks.

He said he was "deeply concerned" by "alarming levels of inaction" over the virus.

A pandemic is a disease that is spreading in multiple countries around the world at the same time.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-51839944




Just in case anyone was in doubt, presumably.
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Post by Saint_ »

bryn mawr;1531243 wrote: depends how bad a headache the virus gives you? :-)


lol! :D
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Post by spot »

I do have a puzzle, though. I don't know the answer to it.

We are being told (by Angela Merkel, most recently) that since there is no cure, what countries are doing is to delay the course of the disease. I don't know what reason they have for delaying it.

90% of the symptomatic cases which need treatment will happen within the span of a single month. The workload on health services will be indistinguishable whether that surge is delayed or it isn't.

Delaying, on the other hand, makes the social and financial consequence far worse, I think, and nobody is pretending a mass vaccination program will happen before that surge regardless of whether the surge is delayed or not.

What am I failing to grasp?
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spot;1531273 wrote:

90% of the symptomatic cases which need treatment will happen within the span of a single month.


True...That's what we're trying to delay. That way the hospitals won't get swamped.

The workload on health services will be indistinguishable whether that surge is delayed or it isn't.


If not all of the possible patients get sick at the same time, the work load is easier on the hospital.
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Post by spot »

Saint_;1531274 wrote: If not all of the possible patients get sick at the same time, the work load is easier on the hospital.


Really - 90% of the people who need treating in the entire pandemic will need treating in a single month. That can be delayed or not delayed, but it can't be spread more thinly. The workload of that surge is unavoidable and can't be made smaller. Why do you think it could be?
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spot;1531276 wrote: Really - 90% of the people who need treating in the entire pandemic will need treating in a single month.


How can they need treating if they are not exposed until later?

That can be delayed or not delayed, but it can't be spread more thinly.


Sure it can. With quarantines, some of the people who would have gotten sick won't get sick or will get sick later.

The workload of that surge is unavoidable and can't be made smaller. Why do you think it could be?


You seem to be saying that everyone who can get sick will get sick in the first month.

But that's not true. Information, quarantines, and behaviors can slow that process.
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Post by spot »

I'm describing an exponential process - you teach math, you know what it involves. I've not said the 90% get sick in the first month, I agree the 90% get sick later but they still get sick together in a one-month period.






The vertical divides are months. The x-axis shows January to May.

The yellow projection stops in mid-May. It's not what I think will happen, it's to indicate when the blue line of Rest-of-the-World cumulative confirmed cases diverges next.

The blue line crosses the y-axis mutiply-by-ten major divisions every 20 days or so. When, say in May, the blue line finally peters out and stops growing, 90% of the reported cases will have been reported in the previous 20 days. 10% of the reported cases will have been reported in the year up until that 20-day period.

What does "delayed" mean? A smaller gradient on the yellow line, I think. That's why I said "month" instead of "20 days". Yes you can reduce the gradient, but you still have 90% of your cases in the final month before the outbreak flatlines.

That's why I wondered why delay is a benefit, since delay completely screws the world economy over a longer period.

A mass deployed vaccine can be expected by month 15 perhaps. Or month 12, that's all complete guesswork. The official figure is month 18. The graph goes up to the middle of month 5, May, and runs out of population very soon after. Expecting a vaccine before all of this is over is not rational.

The yellow projection reaches two months into the future and crosses four orders of magnitude, each of which adds a zero to whatever local outbreak you're looking at. Cornwall currently has 5 confirmed cases. If the blue line stays on the yellow line we can expect 50,000 symptomatic (what we presently call reported confirmed) cases in the county by mid-May, two months from now, and the civilian health service is most definitely not going to cope with that. Every child in the world who has played Plague Inc on his tablet knows what's going on here.

Maybe the blue line will in fact flatline in the next few days. Anything's possible. I would be surprised if it happens. That last yellow dot of symptomatic cases on the chart is at 300 million and we will be very lucky indeed if it stops there.
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Post by spot »

There seems some doubt in today's newspapers as to whether the overnight worldwide Stock Market slump is due to an arbitrary spur of the moment closing all America's ports and airfields to travellers from Mainland Europe, or to the announcement that Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks and wife have tested positive in Australia.

We may of course never be certain but I would hope it was the distressing tweet from Mr Hanks, since the former would have been avoidable stupidity while the latter was at least in pursuit of art.



eta, eight hours later::

Boris has spoken on the reason for delaying the spread. Firstly, the NHS will be under less pressure as the weather improves and will have more room for the peak. Secondly, it will give more time for medical research. I doubt the marginal scale of either warrants the extended financial strain but even so, Boris could have done a lot worse. He's keeping active intervention, as opposed to good advice, for when he has to use it, after the scale becomes blatant and nobody's going to argue. On the other hand, for balance, anyone needing a diatribe of monumental proportions will appreciate Health expert brands UK's coronavirus response 'pathetic'



I'd quite like to see the emergency committee's briefing information made public immediately without editing, I think that would help the nation. The impressive article at Closed borders and ‘black weddings’: what the 1918 flu teaches us about coronavirus says much the same thing - here's a quote:

One lesson governments took from 1918 is that mandatory public health measures tend to be counterproductive. Containment is much more effective if people choose to comply. But for that to happen, they need to be properly informed about the threat they face, and to trust the authorities to act in their collective interest. If either – or both – of these things is missing, containment works less than well. In 1918, most governments were caught unawares by the pandemic – because they had no disease surveillance system in place – and public information campaigns were risible.


This is also a step forward in clarifying the euphemistic "underlying condition":

Patients with hypertension appear to be at a higher risk of dying from the coronavirus, said a top Chinese intensive care doctor who’s been treating critically ill patients since mid-January.

While there’s been no published research yet explaining why, Chinese doctors working in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the virus first emerged, have noticed that infected patients with that underlying illness are more likely to slip into severe distress and die.

Of a group of 170 patients who died in January in Wuhan — the first wave of casualties caused by a pathogen that’s now raced around the world — nearly half had hypertension.

“That’s a very high ratio,” said Du Bin, director of the intensive care unit at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, in an interview over the phone from Wuhan. He was among a team of top doctors sent to the devastated city two months ago to help treat patients there.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/ ... eath-risk/

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Post by spot »

The Guardian has an infographic today demonstrating the beneficial aspects of a delay. It is scandalously misleading.

It describes the y axis as "Number of daily cases" plotted against time, and titles the graph "Delaying the development of outbreaks and lowering infection rates ensures healthcare systems do not exceed capacity".

The blue area is described as "Outbreak with intervention: Outbreak peak delayed and reduced number of overall cases and health effects".

The red area is described as "Outbreak no intervention: Increased peak in number of cases and related demands on hospitals and infrastructure".

The scales are clearly exaggerated to the point of outright lying. The Guardian should hang its head in shame. "ensures healthcare systems do not exceed capacity"? Seriously? What! Who actually wrote those words?

The delay will not reduce the number of cases or the "health effects", whatever that might mean. Shifting the start time for the delayed shape is clearly bogus, they plainly have to start together and the delay phase only started this week. The exaggeration of the shapes shows the undeferred peak 35% earlier and 250% higher than the deferred peak, while even optimistic reasonable estimates would be less than 20% and 20%. Pretending the graphic was from the CDC is just a final insult.








https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... it-says-pm
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Post by spot »

spot;1531192 wrote: The Rest of the World figure will overtake Mainland China's 81,000 total on Saturday.


And here it is. Saturday, collision day.








I've added a box at the top labelled "peak virus". I've bent over backwards in assumptions to make it as painless as possible. Short of the virus stopping dead in its tracks because of miraculous intervention or heatstroke or global warming, the graph is an approximation of when we're getting what we're getting.

I've assumed that once 40% of the population recovers they'll be protected from re-infection and the spread will stop. That's half the proportion I expect will be needed but I'm aiming low.

I've assumed, for want of any evidence, that 90% of people are asymptomatic, untested and don't appear on the graph of confirmed cases, but that they also have antibodies and are protected from re-infection. If anyone has good reason to think 90% is the wrong figure I'd like to know, but I doubt it can be higher. Is it higher? If it were higher, the pink box edges down a touch.

I've assumed measures to delay will have minimal effect. If they cut the transmission rate then the pink box will edge into May, toward June, and possibly end up as a June/July thing instead of a May/June thing. I don't think that will help a lot but it's not unlikely. If it makes the pink box wider then the highest daily confirmed case count will be lower and to that extent the pressure of incoming patients would drop if hospitals are still taking in patients. Personally I think at that stage hospitals will be admitting one in ten, or even one in a hundred, of the patients in need, so again I can't see the benefit to anyone in moving that pink box into the future.

90% of everyone who becomes a confirmed case (or would, if testing continues that far) will contract the virus within that pink box. The whole of the rest of the graph shows 10% of cases.

If the assumptions at the top of this commentary are too low then the pink box will slide up the yellow line. Let's hope it doesn't. At the moment it peaks out around 400 million confirmed cases worldwide before there's enough immunity to stop it spreading, and it peaks out in early June. The yellow line shows mid-May but the delay measures are bound to curve it to the right by some amount.

I don't think we'll be discussing "confirmed cases" much longer, I think during April the emphasis will turn to reporting deaths. The graph is pretty identical, but the scale on the y-axis needs two zeros removing. None of the commentary changes. The number of deaths is far less bad, by an order of magnitude, than the 1918 pandemic. It could be as low as one to five million deaths worldwide if that 90% asymptomatic estimate turns out to be close to true. Divide by 100 to get the British death total (10-50 thousand), divide by 20 for the American total (50-250 thousand), then adjust upward by however much the asymptomatic proportion is too high.
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I'd quite like to see the document discussed at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... spitalised

It has been drawn up in recent days by PHE’s emergency preparedness and response team and approved as accurate by Dr Susan Hopkins, PHE’s lead official dealing with the outbreak. It has been shared with hospital bosses and senior doctors in the NHS in Engand.


It's not dissimilar to my suggestions. It puts the average for asymptomatic or self-isolating mild cases not requiring hospital treatment at 82% between now and next spring, instead of my explicitly optimistic 90% until the end of June. It estimates 80% of the country will become infected in the next 12 months. I offered 80% by the end of June but said I would deliberately halve it to 40% to offer the best case, because 40% was the figure used in the press discussion of "herd immunity".

The article describes "a peak at around the end of May to mid-June" which I think chimes well with "it peaks out in early June".

There's two ways of interpreting "0.4%-1% mortality" and the article, with no supporting quote from the document, takes that to be of all infections. I take it to be of confirmed cases, those being the ones needing hospital treatment. The Guardian (again not quoting the document) therefore comes out with their own calculated total deaths ten times my range. I think that's mistaking what's said, and mistaking what the actual totals from December to now show. The actual figures show 1%-3% mortality for all confirmed cases depending on which country you look at, and that range necessarily excludes the undocumented mild and asymptomatic cases.

The Public Health England document also states that:


The health service cannot cope with the sheer number of people with symptoms who need to be tested because laboratories are “under significant demand pressures”.

From now on only the very seriously ill who are already in hospital and people in care homes and prisons where the coronavirus has been detected will get tested.

Testing services are under such strain that even NHS staff will not be swabbed, despite their key role and the risk of them passing the virus on to patients.


I do hope the full text gets into the public domain.

As for the current state of the NHS, there were 101,598 General and Acute overnight beds in England in December and they had 92% occupancy.

If the anticipated 7.9 million coronavirus in-patients are evenly spaced over the next year, that gives each occupant 5 days treatment if only coronavirus in-patients are allowed the use of an overnight hospital bed.

Or, if coronavirus in-patients have to fit into the remaining unoccupied 8% of overnight beds, they can have 10 hours each. From what I recall it takes longer than that just to go through registration and discharge. If the Estates General ever get round to guillotining those responsible then So-Called David Cameron will be the first on stage, but castrating the NHS will probably only show up on page 94 of his charge sheet.

I'd say coronavirus in-patients might actually need an average 14 days hospital bed treatment in which case perhaps the NHS would like to requisition England's entire hotel beds capacity because, let's face it, no other buggers are going to be queuing for those this year.
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I'm not often annoyed, but photos of moronic twattery like this one just go to confirm my impression that some moronic twats do still exist on this planet and that they often come to the fore when they're given a sense of power and entitlement.

What moronic twat thought it a good idea to take all the passengers of all the international flights into O'Hare airport, wherever O'Hare airport is, and then to force them into ultra-close proximity for hours on end, and then to allow the asymptomatic ones who presumably only got infected in the preceding hours in the queue to enter the Homeland. Letting everyone walk quietly off the planes and directly out of the airport with no administrative delays at all would have brought in far fewer infected people.

Utter berks. It you wanted to design a means of growing a pandemic you couldn't improve on it.








https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51895246
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For the record, O'Hare is Chicago's main airport. In processing international flights in the US is seldom efficient in the US. SFO (San Francisco, CA) and MIA (Miami) are the only two I have been through that seemed to have it figured out. I don't recall O'Hare being efficient even on a normal day.

It seems to me that they have this back-assward.

The screening should be carried out BEFORE passengers board a plane. once on a plane the transfer rate quadruples.

And, once a sickly person in in your airport, he/she is already in your country, exposing your citizens.
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1. Definitely worth noticing.

The virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is stable for several hours to days in aerosols and on surfaces, according to a new study from National Institutes of Health, CDC, UCLA and Princeton University scientists in The New England Journal of Medicine. The scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel. The results provide key information about the stability of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 disease, and suggests that people may acquire the virus through the air and after touching contaminated objects. The study information was widely shared during the past two weeks after the researchers placed the contents on a preprint server to quickly share their data with colleagues.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-re ... s-surfaces




2. The British police have now been granted power to indefinitely detain anyone they suspect of infection, in "appropriate isolation facilities". I don't recall the government saying they were building any but there we are. Maybe they're repurposing abandoned coal mines.

3. North Wales GP surgeries are swamped by rich English second home owners fleeing to the hills if they start coughing, self isolating and calling the local practice. The Welsh Provisionals will restart burning cottages again at his rate.

3. The Imperial College report is now published https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-i ... ronavirus/ and says what needed to be said. The economic cost is extreme and would have to continue until mass vaccination comes on-stream next year if it's to have any point at all. They do say a lot more than that but just look at the available intensive care bed line in red, graph after graph.

Clearly the UK and Europe are already past the stage where recession can be avoided. Equally clearly we needn't have gone down this route, we could have just got it over with quickly. How many people do we think we're actually saving? 20% of the non-intervention deaths at he very most? 10% more probably? I'm not sure, given all the other unknowns, that is is a worthwhile swap.

Glastonbury just got cancelled.
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Post by LarsMac »

There probably was some valid logic behind that graph when it was first devised. The problem was that we were a lot further along the initial curve than anyone thought, already. Had some of the measures begun in late January, there may have been hope of that kind of containment.

Switzerland is interesting. They went from a single case Feb 28 to now being in the top ten for number of cases.
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LarsMac;1531431 wrote: There probably was some valid logic behind that graph when it was first devised. The problem was that we were a lot further along the initial curve than anyone thought, already. Had some of the measures begun in late January, there may have been hope of that kind of containment.
.

Figure 2 on page 8 of the Imperial College report shows the effects of mitigation on the number of intensive care beds needed, with different strategies considered. The red line shows the actual number of intensive care beds that are available and staffed. It's a disturbing version of the real, as opposed to the made-up, infograph of delaying.
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Coronavirus: Violinists play Titanic hymn in front of empty toilet paper aisle

Two violinists dressed in lifejackets have put on a widely shared performance in a US supermarket, amid panic-buying over the coronavirus.

Bonnie Von Duyke and Emer Kinsella performed the 19th Century hymn Nearer My God to Thee, known to many for its use in the film Titanic, in a toilet paper aisle. Video of the performance was posted online.

They tell the BBC they hope it may help people cope, and bring some light-hearted relief.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us- ... aper-aisle




Come on, that's cleverly funny.
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Perfect
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If I go out on a limb, I'm going to offer a 3-week projection. That's exactly half way to the start of my pink box, so it's half way to the two-month peak period.

I'm assuming China will still have everything under control within its own border. Their determined ability to hold the line against the virus puts the rest of us to shame.

On April 10th.

World cases: 3.45 million.

Daily new cases: 0.44 million

Cumulative deaths: 0.22 million

Deaths among everyone infected so far: 1%

Deaths among everyone who has needed hospital admission: 6%

UK deaths to date: 2,200

US deaths to date: 11,000

Days until President Trump claims that America was deliberately attacked: 2.

After that, things go progressively downhill until May and then they get bad. Cancelling this year's school exams was a good idea.





eta: Boris spoke!

The next 12 weeks could “turn the tide of this disease”, Johnson told the daily Downing Street press conference on the pandemic, saying it was possible to “send coronavirus packing in this country, but only if we all take the steps we have outlined”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... n-12-weeks




Boris, if the entire government and everyone who takes pay from taxation were to go into the bunkers and ignore the world, the next 12 weeks will indeed “turn the tide of this disease”. It's what it's doing all on its own. Your task, you proclaimed, was to extend the duration, not to leave it unchanged to peak in just 12 weeks.

12 weeks from now will be: Thursday June 11, 2020 (again I copy from the web rather than scratch my brains)

And that, unchanged, practically to the day, is when the virus is going to peak if left to its own devices. That'll be the day the UK registers around 1.2m new cases severe enough to need hospital treatment, assuming anyone is still counting new cases, after which the daily new case total will decline a lot quicker than it went up. Whatever you do, don't claim the subsequent decline is anything to do with government intervention. Especially don't say "Life's better under the Conservatives", it would not go down well. Your peak patient intake across that fortnight will be 20 times bigger than the combined number of overnight beds in the entire NHS, and renting hotel rooms for the overspill is not going to help in the slightest unless they're homeless to start with.

Other than that, you're doing a better job than expected. Not that you'll improve anything, but at least you've not made matters worse by locking us into our rooms.

And the Church of England has restricted weddings to five people. Bang goes the £30,000 wedding industry then. About time, too.

That's five people attending including the happy pair, not five people marrying each other polygamy. English is hard work on occasion.

What could make things worse. How about a B-52 over the Spratly Islands being forced to land, that might enliven matters considerably. I'm not sure why President Trump keeps needling people but he does, incessantly. He's welcome to the job but he's been the most unpleasant, whining, dislikeable, petty little bombast in the public eye for decades. I would so much rather have had Jerry Springer.

The Rest of the World cumulative confirmed case count has gone from passing the total in China to doubling the total in China in just four days.
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I note that someone in the UK has been detained indefinitely by the police for not self-isolating. Meanwhile students are flocking to Florida to party on the beaches.

And "Locust crisis poses a danger to millions, forecasters warn". The Four Horsemen are having a field day, what we need next is evangelists with sandwich boards out in the town centres.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe ... n-51974140

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us- ... oronavirus

https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... sters-warn

And a Guardian opinion piece is quite right when it says "When Johnson says we'll turn the tide in 12 weeks, it's just another line for the side of a bus. There’s something unsettling in seeing the prime minister repurpose his Brexit media strategy for a deadly contagion".

It seems from today's press conference that "the best part of a year" is expected before the outbreak will be effectively over in the UK. The Prime Minister and his advisers say they'll ramp up measures or relax them sufficiently to keep the NHS from losing the plot, and that a series of ever-reducing peaks might be created. Perhaps that last observation was Evan Davies on his 5pm Radio 4 program, it's hard to recall. I don't think the ramping up will manage what they hope to achieve, and I think if they fail to get that degree of control then the best part of a year will be over by the end of August.

And then we get 'MPs say "stay away" amid death threats to a holiday resort offering self-isolation stays'. That's an MP and council leader in Cornwall, both of whom should resign. That advice is a scandalous self-serving populist disgrace. Whatever happened to doing the right thing and pitching in to help. Cornwall will be just as much infected by the time it's over but we'll have shamefully hindered others on the way.

The Now Show, bravely transmitting with no audience and no canned laughter for only the second time in its thirty years on air, introduced the concept of Homeopathic Money. I do hope that stays in the public mind.
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This is a must-reed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

It shows the predominantly over-70s deaths each year and says that the Covid-19 deaths we'll have might be a comparable number but they're the same people.

I'd thought that through a while ago but they're concluding wrong. Some of the deaths overlap, yes, but there's no logical reason to decide that most would overlap. The deaths expected in a normal year take a half million and leave ten million of the age group. Covid-19 might take up to the same number but from the same ten million. The overlap of the two groups won't have a major effect, you still end up adding most of a half million to your normal half million.

The numbers in the preceding paragraph are wildly approximate, they're just indications.
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They seem to be suggesting that those old farts that die from COVID-19 would be dying, anyway. That if COVID doesn't get them, something else will.

That seems a bit callous.

I mean, I may not make it to 80, but I expect to meet my fate at the hands of something bigger than a bug.
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My stepson is a trucker, stuck in California waiting for clearance to leave with a load of Produce.
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LarsMac;1531517 wrote: I mean, I may not make it to 80, but I expect to meet my fate at the hands of something bigger than a bug.


Amen to that brother.

Flash: this just in: Spot is denigrating the American response. Unexpected!
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Post by Bryn Mawr »

LarsMac;1531517 wrote: They seem to be suggesting that those old farts that die from COVID-19 would be dying, anyway. That if COVID doesn't get them, something else will.

That seems a bit callous.

I mean, I may not make it to 80, but I expect to meet my fate at the hands of something bigger than a bug.


An irate husband at three in the morning? :wah:
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Saint_;1531519 wrote: Flash: this just in: Spot is denigrating the American response. Unexpected!


What? The students flocking to party on the Florida beaches?

I'm not criticizing. I'd join them.

Somewhere out there is that report the COBRA committee received last week, it's been officially declassified and released. I've not found a copy yet.
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Bryn Mawr;1531524 wrote: An irate husband at three in the morning? :wah:


Not if the Mrs catches me first ;)
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We have been talking around this a bit, but it is now coming out:

Infected people without symptoms might be driving the spread of coronavirus more than we realized

...

"We now know that asymptomatic transmission likely [plays] an important role in spreading this virus," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Osterholm added that it's "absolutely clear" that asymptomatic infection "surely can fuel a pandemic like this in a way that's going to make it very difficult to control."

...
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Post by spot »

Perhaps social separation of people with no symptoms will manage to slow that particular avenue. One can only hope. Are any other steps being taken to slow the progression at the moment? Some is voluntary, some is lockdown, some is closure of gathering places but it's all to keep uninfected people away from the virus.

We could check well before the peak period arrives. We could take the current rate of progress, look ahead and then we can see whether the world has actually slowed things at all. I don't think the "confirmed cases" announcements will mean a lot eventually, but I expect the cumulative figure for coronavirus deaths will remain meaningful.

To convert a factor of ten into a doubling rate, divide by 3. Numbers are doubling every 5 days, or adding a zero every 15 days.

Today's cumulative deaths outside of China is around 10,000. April 5th is 15 days from now. Without any slowdown the total can be expected to rise one order of magnitude in that time. We could test it by country too on the same basis.

I don't think that a 15-day period for a tenfold jump is inaccurate at the moment. I don't think it's been meaningfully shorter than that in the past. The whole idea of delay is to make that number of days go up, and we need to be able to do it before healthcare systems become overloaded. The governments say they'll try their hardest. I don't think they have the slightest chance of it, but it's what they're offering.

The three battles at the moment are to slow the progress, to provide good hospital care for those who need it, and to fully distribute a vaccine worldwide by the summer of 2021. I don't expect any of that to happen even in the UK or the US, much less worldwide. A fourth battle, keeping the Western economies afloat, strikes me as an abandoned cause already. It would have depended on people staying at work.

President Trump's only possible hold on power is to announce America was deliberately attacked, I think that's inevitable too. It's on a par with the WMD lie concocted by the Bush administration but without the fig-leaf glamor of Colin Powell.

A look at what this "peak virus" phrase means would be instructive. Here's an earlier version, city by city, rising and falling across a two month period.








By August this year I think we'll be able to show our own plots from 2020. We don't have the wobbly foothills this time, I think, because the window for infection spread from anyone with the disease is different, so isolating cases is perhaps harder this year.

The graphic is from which is well worth watching.
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