I wasn’t trying to be reassuring. Just telling it like it is.
I’d been hearing 2-4 week estimates so far. That it could be even longer would be a new development.
I think there’s a lot of BS out there which is normal. For example, I doubt this spreads through fecal matter but it’s possible.
But one thing I have heard is that there are definitely asymptomatic people, it may be as high as 20-30% (apparently this is true for the flu, blew my mind), but the belief is that they still spread the virus.
We can’t stop this thing, we can only hope to contain, er, mitigate it.
LOL this is nuts. If carriers can go for four goddamn weeks without being symptomatic, there’s no way this gets contained. This will be pandemic, no doubt.
Good news is that we have about a week of cases leveling off in China. We’ll see what happens.
The guy in Italy they thought was patient zero supposedly never had the virus. Now they don’t know how it began there. Containment is going to be hard.
I agree that China cases levelling off is good news.
Here’s the graph of total active cases.
There is no way that conference had a carrier and nobody has shown symptoms yet after 2 weeks. There might be people where incubation is longer but the average is definitely below 2 weeks as the cruise ship and other traceable infections outside China have shown that. Someone getting sick 4 weeks after last contact can also mean they missed a carrier in between. Missing carriers is not good news either of course.
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They’re checking people at airports by doing an IR scan of body temperature. Containment is impossible. Like, humans have a bell curve of body temperatures normally. You ever touch someone and they have cold hands? Yeah, human body temperature varies. Also, some people will be taking medications that lower their body temperatures. Antipyretics and shit.
If you have millions of people it’s a lock that there is some guy with an abnormally low body temperature who is also taking medications that decrease his body temperature to the point where he could have a raging fever and no IR scanner is going to detect that. We put in a hero effort, but there’s no way this will be confined to China.
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It’s hopefully possible to limit the spread of this virus, as the Chinese have tried in their major cities, but containment doesn’t seem realistic.
If 60% of a country’s population will be infected over a period of, say, a year, clearly no health system can cope with that number of patients and there will have to be public health programmes to get people to self-quarantine and recuperate at home, as well as mandatory work from home policies for those who can.
As usual I expect many governments will stick their heads in the sand and be too slow in rolling these policies out.
“Globally, we will not be able to contain the spread of this virus. We can slow it down, but we can’t stop it,” said Dr. Allison McGeer, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital who worked on the front lines of the SARS epidemic in 2003.
“The number of countries with cases is going to continue to increase.”
Stephen Hoption Cann, an epidemiologist at the school of population and public health at the University of British Columbia, said if COVID-19 continues to spread worldwide, there is the possibility of the virus becoming endemic — or something that re-emerges on a seasonal basis.
“Are we going to be able to contain this virus and prevent it from spreading into the next season?” he said. “It’s really hard to say now; it’s looking like there’s a possibility that we will be seeing it back again next winter.”
Have we seen viruses with incubation periods this long? Which virus holds the record for the amount of time that patients are asymptomatic?
I believe people can be carriers of some viruses, like HSV1 or 2, without ever showing symptoms.
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Looks like Italy is being hit hard by it.
Wonder if people are gonna start quarantining Italian people.
HIV is also one where carriers do not show symptoms for a very long time.
What’s the record for airborne viruses?
This article says Iran now has 7 deaths.
This means there must have been several hundred infected 3 or 4 weeks ago, and so likely several thousand or more now. Meanwhile, officially they are reporting 28 infected.
At this point, I’m resigned that we are truly fucking fucked.
Request for a WAAFF badge, please.
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I’m really curious what the futures market looks like when it open this evening. There seems to have been a shift over the weekend in how serious people are taking this threat, at least in my circles and the other forums where I post. (For example, a change in the tenor at the Bogleheads forum, with people who were scoffing and joking about the threat now admitting that they are concerned. And some people admitting to making changes in their investments due to this threat.)
But I’ve also read about a lot of crazy stats/stuff happening with no way to know if those things are true. So maybe it’s just my own perception is skewed.
Anyone else contemplating any preparations now while supplies are easily available? Things like purchasing masks, gloves, sanitizing solutions and bulk rice, beans, bottled water, dried milk, etc.? Enough to hunker down for a while if necessary? I feel sort of crazy for even thinking about making these kind of preparations, to be honest. But that’s where I’m at now.
How about a WATFF badge?
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President Moon Jae-in on Sunday put South Korea on the highest possible alert in its fight against the coronavirus, a move that empowers the government to lock down cities and take other sweeping measures to contain the outbreak.
“The coming few days will be a critical time for us,” Mr. Moon said at an emergency meeting of government officials to discuss the outbreak, which in just days has spiraled to 602 confirmed infections and five deaths.
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In a televised address on Saturday, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun urged people to comply with a ban on large protests in the capital, warning that the government would deal “sternly” with people who participate in “massive rallies,” as well as those who hoard goods or interfere with quarantine efforts.
But thousands of Christian activists defied the ban that same day, gathering in central Seoul for their weekly protest against President Moon Jae-in, whom they accuse of coddling North Korea and mismanaging the economy.
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“We care more about the country and our fatherland than our own lives,” the Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon, who organized the rally, shouted at the cheering crowd. He vowed to hold another rally next Saturday.
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Iran announced it would close schools, universities and cultural centers across 14 provinces starting Sunday in an effort to curb the coronavirus, which has killed at least eight people in the country, state television said.
Just days ago, Iran said it was untouched by the virus, and the sudden increase in cases has raised concerns that it may be experiencing a significant outbreak. Iran’s health ministry said Saturday that 43 people had tested positive, with eight deaths, state-run Press TV reported.
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State Department officials say that thousands of Russia-linked social media accounts are spreading disinformation about the coronavirus, including a conspiracy theory that the United States is behind the Covid-19 outbreak.
There is no downside to this. You don’t need to go overboard because water and electricity will be fine and you will be able to get food if necessary.