The Coronavirus thread

Quote: reno

Unless the virus plays out substantially differently in the USA than in Italy, this prediction is probably incorrect.

Italy already has 2,503 deaths (and USA's population is 5 times bigger than Italy's.)

Oops. Correction: Italy has 2,978 deaths.

Quote: kenarman

I hope you are right Mike. Here in Canada our National Health Director is still saying 30% to 70% will still be infected eventually.

Far be it from me to question your National Health Director -- but I will anyway.

In China where this has already flat lined, there are 80,894 cases as of now (source). The population of China is 1.439 billion. That is an infection rate of 0.0056%.

So I don't see where these huge infection rates are coming from, unless the country does little to contain the problem.

Quote: Wizard

Far be it from me to question your National Health Director -- but I will anyway.

In China where this has already flat lined, there are 80,894 cases as of now (source). The population of China is 1.439 billion. That is an infection rate of 0.0056%.

So I don't see where these huge infection rates are coming from, unless the country does little to contain the problem.

Most health authorities are not trying to eliminate the disease they are attempting to slow the spread, the so called 'flat lining the curve'. If this is how it plays out then we will have about the same number of people catching the disease over the long term as doing nothing now would have. If staying home for a few weeks makes this disease obsolete that is great. The likely scenario, however, is that we will have many peaks of the disease over the next year until we get a vaccine. The virus is spread around the world now, we are not going to eliminate it from the environment. It will be sitting waiting to pop out and attach humans until we have a cure or build up some immunity from our exposures to it.

Quote: terapined

You should watch Foxnews
They have actually become watchable over the last few days doing some good reporting
The Times They Are A Changing. Cant believe I said watch Fox. lol

I actually tuned in for about 2 minutes yesterday, when a woman was interviewing an "expert" on disease control. This moronic expert said it was beneficial to have healthy people out in the open, spreading their immunity to the sick. He actually said that, on TV, that a healthy person walking through a hospital spreading his immunity, curing all the sick people as he walks through. I could not believe what I was hearing

Quote: terapined

OMG
Canada has like 35mil, say 1/2 get it, 1 percent die, 175000 deaths
WTF
We're screwed.
On the flip side, playing golf tomorrow. I think its a pretty safe activity, just a twosome.

The mortality rate in Italy right now is at 7.7%

Quote: Wizard

Far be it from me to question your National Health Director -- but I will anyway.

In China where this has already flat lined, there are 80,894 cases as of now (source). The population of China is 1.439 billion. That is an infection rate of 0.0056%.

So I don't see where these huge infection rates are coming from, unless the country does little to contain the problem.

I'm skeptical of China's numbers. This New York Times article from February explains how China keeps changing their definition of what counts as a confirmed case.

Quote: New York Times

The changes to the classification of asymptomatic coronavirus cases emerged on Jan. 29, in a set of guidance from China’s National Health Commission. The agency said that it would no longer count patients who had tested positive for the coronavirus but did not display symptoms as “confirmed cases.” Instead, those patients would be counted separately, as “positive diagnosis” patients, and would become confirmed only if they began showing symptoms.

I have no idea if there is a connection, but yesterday China announced that they were expelling US journalists working for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Times.

Quote: zippyboy

I actually tuned in for about 2 minutes yesterday, when a woman was interviewing an "expert" on disease control. This moronic expert said it was beneficial to have healthy people out in the open, spreading their immunity to the sick. He actually said that, on TV, that a healthy person walking through a hospital spreading his immunity, curing all the sick people as he walks through. I could not believe what I was hearing

Who was the expert and what show was he on? What time EDT did this happen?

I have listened to news stations for days, mainly Fox but some MSNBC and CNN...I never heard ANYTHING remotely sounding like that. I am interested to here who it was.

Quote: reno

Quote: Wizard

Far be it from me to question your National Health Director -- but I will anyway.

In China where this has already flat lined, there are 80,894 cases as of now (source). The population of China is 1.439 billion. That is an infection rate of 0.0056%.

So I don't see where these huge infection rates are coming from, unless the country does little to contain the problem.

I'm skeptical of China's numbers. This New York Times article from February explains how China keeps changing their definition of what counts as a confirmed case.

Quote: New York Times

The changes to the classification of asymptomatic coronavirus cases emerged on Jan. 29, in a set of guidance from China’s National Health Commission. The agency said that it would no longer count patients who had tested positive for the coronavirus but did not display symptoms as “confirmed cases.” Instead, those patients would be counted separately, as “positive diagnosis” patients, and would become confirmed only if they began showing symptoms.

I have no idea if there is a connection, but yesterday China announced that they were expelling US journalists working for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Times.

I have thought all along that the sudden stopping of cases being reported was suspect. Maybe they are just suppressing the numbers so they don't look so bad or we can go with the full blown conspiracy theories out there. The Chinese created this virus as a weapon and unleashed it on the world on purpose. They sacrificed a few of their people to make it look accidental but actually have a cure and are now using it for their own people.

I don't believe the conspiracy theory but the sudden stop in cases makes it very suspect we are getting the true picture from China.

Quote: kenarman

The Chinese created this virus as a weapon and unleashed it on the world on purpose.

Nope. That's absurd.

I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but only if the conspiracy theory is more plausible than the official explanation.

The virus is ruining China's own economy, killing their own people, weakening their own military, ruining their own international reputation. And it's not in China's best interest to ruin the world economy. And if they wanted to destroy their competitor nations, they'd have developed a vaccine for their own people before unleashing it on the world.

If you want to dive down this ridiculous rabbit hole, how do you know that North Korea didn't frame China? How do you know that Putin didn't frame China?

The official explanation (that it transitioned from bats to humans in a wet market) is far far more plausible.

Quote: RonC

Who was the expert and what show was he on? What time EDT did this happen?

I have listened to news stations for days, mainly Fox but some MSNBC and CNN...I never heard ANYTHING remotely sounding like that. I am interested to here who it was.

I never ever watch foxnews, so I don't know the woman doing the interview. She was brunette, seated on the left. The expert was middle aged, white, with a beard. It was actually a couple evenings ago, about 6pm Pacific time. He did actually use the phrase "healthy people should spread their immunity to others out in public". So asinine, my jaw dropped open and I realized foxnews is not for me.