Covid-19 Extent

[Northwoods]

I work with several guys in India.  One was telling me a friend of his was evacuated from Wuhan back to Delhi where he's been held in quarantine.  That guy is saying the death toll was at least 100,000 as of when he left.

If true this may mean Covid-19 is much worse that we thought.  And that China really is a shithole.

[Viking]

I work with several guys in India.  One was telling me a friend of his was evacuated from Wuhan back to Delhi where he's been held in quarantine.  That guy is saying the death toll was at least 100,000 as of when he left.

If true this may mean Covid-19 is much worse that we thought.  And that China really is a shithole.

Squares with the rumours of crematories running 24/7, along with mobile crematories being brought in.

[Viking]

IIRC the timeline correctly, last week we had one confirmed case of Covid-19 here in Sweden. We now have atleast 24. Most seems to have been infected either in Italy or Iran. One in China and one in South Korea too IIRC.

[MechAg94]

I work with several guys in India.  One was telling me a friend of his was evacuated from Wuhan back to Delhi where he's been held in quarantine.  That guy is saying the death toll was at least 100,000 as of when he left.

If true this may mean Covid-19 is much worse that we thought.  And that China really is a shithole.

The tinfoil hat side of me wonders if China was using this disease as an excuse to get rid of troublesome people.  But that is an accusation without proof so we will see.

[Ben]

The tinfoil hat side of me wonders if China was using this disease as an excuse to get rid of troublesome people.  But that is an accusation without proof so we will see.

My tinfoil hat is wondering, given that it appears WHO has been less than forthcoming (and as I mentioned elsewhere, a WHO bigwig is also a Chinese bigwig), if some joint WHO/China disease research went haywire and they are both covering something up.

[cordex]

If the virus was that lethal I'd expect to see more deaths in other countries than we actually have.

[Northwoods]

If the virus was that lethal I'd expect to see more deaths in other countries than we actually have.

Unless total infections are in the 1-10mil range.  Might be getting close to the entire population of Wuhan.

[Viking]

If the virus was that lethal I'd expect to see more deaths in other countries than we actually have.

I expect that the general health of the population plays a significant role in death rates.

[makattak]

If the virus was that lethal I'd expect to see more deaths in other countries than we actually have.

Yep. IF the infection rate was high enough to match that 100,000 death to the rates we're seeing in other countries¹, I don't think there'd be any way China could stop the spread.



1: At current rates in other countries (for which we have data), there would have to be 5M-10M infected in China. I don't think China could stop something that widespread from spreading all through China and possibly all through Asia.

[Jamisjockey]

I work with several guys in India.  One was telling me a friend of his was evacuated from Wuhan back to Delhi where he's been held in quarantine.  That guy is saying the death toll was at least 100,000 as of when he left.

If true this may mean Covid-19 is much worse that we thought.  And that China really is a shithole.

Even with the possibility of using the disease as an excuse for some purging, I doubt those numbers.  But I also doubt China's infection and death number, too.  And the WHO can *expletive deleted*ck off I don't trust them either.
At least we're bungling the initial response, and if it's really that bad, we won't know until it's too *expletive deleted*ing late and rampages though the country.
But hey, Almost every super tuesday state has reported cases of kung-flu.

[MechAg94]

Even with the possibility of using the disease as an excuse for some purging, I doubt those numbers.  But I also doubt China's infection and death number, too.  And the WHO can *expletive deleted*ck off I don't trust them either.
At least we're bungling the initial response, and if it's really that bad, we won't know until it's too *expletive deleted*ing late and rampages though the country.
But hey, Almost every super tuesday state has reported cases of kung-flu.

We suspended travel to China earlier than most.  If something like this spreads easily, I really doubt they could stop it completely when you consider just how much direct travel there is/was on a daily basis.  Unfortunately, it may be one of those things we won't know for sure until it has already happened. 

[Jamisjockey]

We suspended travel to China earlier than most.  If something like this spreads easily, I really doubt they could stop it completely when you consider just how much direct travel there is/was on a daily basis.  Unfortunately, it may be one of those things we won't know for sure until it has already happened. 

The testing is what this administration and the CDC dropped the ball on.  They just barely started screening flights from Italy YESTERDAY.  Insane stupidity.  Testing should have been ramped up weeks ago, with screening of flights from any hotzone that wasn't outright banned, including testing.

The genie is out of the bottle on this, but unchecked it could run wild through many of our cities.  For most of us, it will be just the flu, or nothing at all.
But for those who get sick, many more will need hospital services that will overwhelmed.  And the risk for death with comorbidity factors goes up a lot.

[TommyGunn]

The true spread of Covid-19 may be a case for:   

[cordex]

If you believe Chinese numbers their inflection point of when more people are recovered than are infected happened on 2/28 and the past couple of days have only been adding just over 100 new cases of infected per day.  If their numbers are accurate, they're well on the way toward controlling this.  Ignoring the peak on 2/12 when their detection rules changed and there was a huge spike in counts, they peaked at adding 4,050 new cases on 2/13.  Since then their new infection rate has declined precipitously.

In the rest of the world we are still going up fast.  New non-Mainland China infections increased by 2410 yesterday which was 39% higher than the number of new cases that were added on 3/2.  Yesterday Italy added more than 400 cases while Korea and Iran each added over 800 cases.  No one else is even close.

For perspective, we are 53 days into this and there are currently three times as many people known to be infected with Covid-19 vs 53 days into H1N1 (Swine Flu) and 13 times as many people as were infected 53 days into SARS.  Covid-19 is responsible for 6 times as many deaths as SARS and almost 22 times as many deaths as H1N1 at equivalent progression.

[Jamisjockey]

If you believe Chinese numbers their inflection point of when more people are recovered than are infected happened on 2/28 and the past couple of days have only been adding just over 100 new cases of infected per day.  If their numbers are accurate, they're well on the way toward controlling this.  Ignoring the peak on 2/12 when their detection rules changed and there was a huge spike in counts, they peaked at adding 4,050 new cases on 2/13.  Since then their new infection rate has declined precipitously.

In the rest of the world we are still going up fast.  New non-Mainland China infections increased by 2410 yesterday which was 39% higher than the number of new cases that were added on 3/2.  Yesterday Italy added more than 400 cases while Korea and Iran each added over 800 cases.  No one else is even close.

For perspective, we are 53 days into this and there are currently three times as many people known to be infected with Covid-19 vs 53 days into H1N1 (Swine Flu) and 13 times as many people as were infected 53 days into SARS.  Covid-19 is responsible for 6 times as many deaths as SARS and almost 22 times as many deaths as H1N1 at equivalent progression.

China was extremely proactive..in a draconian way.  This is where freedom has it's downsides.  It takes serious issues before the US would dare do something like quarantine a whole city.  We're more interconnected with travel than the chinese, our military isn't in a position domestically to be used immediately for locking down travel.  It will run amok.  We just don't know how bad it will be yet.

[K Frame]

'China was extremely proactive..in a draconian way.'

Not as proactive as the Norks, who have supposed killed at least 1 of their identified cases.

[cordex]

China was extremely proactive..in a draconian way.  This is where freedom has it's downsides.  It takes serious issues before the US would dare do something like quarantine a whole city.  We're more interconnected with travel than the chinese, our military isn't in a position domestically to be used immediately for locking down travel.  It will run amok.  We just don't know how bad it will be yet.

China was reactively proactive.  Before they closed down Wuhan and started locking people up lots and lots of people left the area carrying the disease spreading it to other parts of China.  Way more than have entered the US with it, I'd wager.  Probably by a factor of 10 or more. 

I agree that the US is much less likely to use the same forceful measures as China, but to balance that our hygiene is probably significantly better which is likely to slow the spread.  I think that if it was going to blow up in the US the way some people are worried about then it would have already happened in China and elsewhere.

Not that it is a non-issue.  It is spreading quite a bit and sickening quite a few people.  The death rate isn't apocalyptic but it is killing quite a few.

[K Frame]

I was talking with a neighbor yesterday. He's a major in the Air Force and his thing is hospital administration and care services. He made the comment I made here several days ago, that even if the infection rate here in the US takes off it's likely to be a lot less lethal than it is in China due simply to the standards of supportive care.

And here's a really nasty way of looking at the Chinese reaction...

They have their "social credit" or "social currency" or whatever it's called. You think someone with a low social credit score is going to be given the same care as someone with an excellent social credit score?

[Jamisjockey]

I was talking with a neighbor yesterday. He's a major in the Air Force and his thing is hospital administration and care services. He made the comment I made here several days ago, that even if the infection rate here in the US takes off it's likely to be a lot less lethal than it is in China due simply to the standards of supportive care.

And here's a really nasty way of looking at the Chinese reaction...

They have their "social credit" or "social currency" or whatever it's called. You think someone with a low social credit score is going to be given the same care as someone with an excellent social credit score?

Yes and no.  The US has a severe shortage of available ICU beds to handle even the low end estimates of this.  We are short especially of ventilators. 
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2761044
Double digit percentages from this study needed a ventilator. 
While the US's standard of critical care is very, very high typically, it would be an issue based on sheer numbers.
https://www.sccm.org/Communications/Critical-Care-Statistics
According to this article, as of 2015 there were fewer than 100,000 ICU beds in the country.  That's for a total of 321 million people.

Numbers from China
"That burden could become more acute: More than 40,000 people are hospitalized with Covid-19 in Hubei, health authorities for the Chinese province said in a Feb. 23 statement. Among those, 8,853 cases are serious and 1,845 are critically ill. The total number of cases in China is about 77,000."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-23/coronavirus-patients-long-ventilator-stays-strain-hospitals

The need for acute care is one of the serious issues with COVID-19.  And I doubt the US is prepared if it spreads like wildfire.

[MechAg94]

The testing is what this administration and the CDC dropped the ball on.  They just barely started screening flights from Italy YESTERDAY.  Insane stupidity.  Testing should have been ramped up weeks ago, with screening of flights from any hotzone that wasn't outright banned, including testing.

The genie is out of the bottle on this, but unchecked it could run wild through many of our cities.  For most of us, it will be just the flu, or nothing at all.
But for those who get sick, many more will need hospital services that will overwhelmed.  And the risk for death with comorbidity factors goes up a lot.

That is the sort of response to immigration and travel that the administration has been fighting in the courts for 3 years with limited success.  Do you think any past administration in the last 40 years would have quickly shut down and screened all travelers?  I think the death rate would have to be a lot higher to generate that sort of response.  

And I have my doubts that such efforts would do more than just delay or slow the spread to the US.

[Jamisjockey]

That is the sort of response to immigration and travel that the administration has been fighting in the courts for 3 years with limited success.  Do you think any past administration in the last 40 years would have quickly shut down and screened all travelers?  I think the death rate would have to be a lot higher to generate that sort of response. 

And I have my doubts that such efforts would do more than just delay the slow the spread to the US.

Slow spread is the ultimate goal. That's how the world community beat SARS.  And Ebola when it got out. 
China told us this was serious in January.  It's March.  We've had 2 months to ramp up testing.  The CDC dropped the ball, pure and simple.

[MechAg94]

Slow spread is the ultimate goal. That's how the world community beat SARS.  And Ebola when it got out. 
China told us this was serious in January.  It's March.  We've had 2 months to ramp up testing.  The CDC dropped the ball, pure and simple.

Compared to a lot of countries that trade with China, we have slowed the spread.  But you are on a roll, don't let me stop you.   


Maybe Trump should copy Obama's ebola policy and bring some infected people to a US hospital for treatment. 

[Jamisjockey]

Compared to a lot of countries that trade with China, we have slowed the spread.  But you are on a roll, don't let me stop you.   


Maybe Trump should copy Obama's ebola policy and bring some infected people to a US hospital for treatment. 

 Keep your head in the sand on this one, don't let me stop you.

[cordex]

Maybe Trump should copy Obama's ebola policy and bring some infected people to a US hospital for treatment. 

Haven't we done exactly that?  Pretty sure that at minimum we repatriated both the infected and non-infected passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship ...

[MechAg94]

Haven't we done exactly that?  Pretty sure that at minimum we repatriated both the infected and non-infected passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship ...

I thought they quarantined them at an army base?    I didn't see it as the same.  Opinions may vary.