totm april 2020 Coronavirus

[tater]

Went to grocery store to get some generic tylenol. People panic shopping. Morons.

They weren't starving last week, they're not gonna starve this week (except now they've screwed up all the supply chains since the store is cleared out of stuff it should not be cleared out of).

Found this:

Assuming the thread this reply is to is accurate, basically try to mitigate transmission, most people get it, average mortality likely like South Korea. SK mortality % is driven by having more data and is therefore likely closer to the actual mortality rate. That's the only point of testing, really, treatment is unrelated to the diagnosis, flu, covid19, both are not treatable, you treat the symptoms, secondary infections, etc.

I saw some tweets about people annoyed that someone that probably had it wasn't getting tested. If you have COVID19 or flu right now, stay home, try not to get other people sick. What do people want, something like an "I voted" sticker for street cred? Stay home for a couple weeks, get better. If you are sick enough to need a hospital, again, what you have doesn't matter, doesn't change treatment at all.

92% of people 80+ who get this will live. Actuarial tables show that an 80 YO has a 4% chance of dying that year, an 85 YO has a 7% chance of dying that year. 86 YOs have a expectation of death that equals the COVID19 rate. By 90 it's up to 12%. So this will kill a bunch of 80+ YOs, but a % of them won't be "excess deaths," but will be people who would have died anyway.

Interestingly, 53 YOs have a 0.41% chance of death, roughly matching the virus toll.

 

[DDE]

So I've just called in 'work from home' for today. Definitely got a mild form of respiratory infection yesterday - given that a colleague went down with tonsillitis on Wednesday, I have a clear suspect for the tiredness, very mild fever, and soreness in my upper throat. But then a whole lot of those COVID arrivals from Italy may have passed through the same subway hub as I do daily...

Now to less personal issues...

What we have here is the Foreign Ministry spokesman questioning whether US servicemen in the US that have been tested positive for COVID-19 post-mortem were the actual worldwide patients zero.

Huge is true; not sure whether he is as prone to mudslinging as, say, Maria Zakharova.

Edited March 13, 2020 by DDE
Wrong tweet?

[VoidCosmos]

Just imagine if the whole world is kept in quarentine. It would be horrible.

Found this:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/coronavirus-symptoms-vaccines-risks-200122194509687.html

Edited March 13, 2020 by VoidCosmos

[VoidCosmos]

And this: 

https://m.economictimes.com/news/science/scientists-in-israel-likely-to-announce-it-developed-coronavirus-vaccine/articleshow/74592807.cms

[VoidSquid]

27 minutes ago, VoidCosmos said:

And this: 

...which already fuel some conspiracy theories, how can they have a vaccine this fast, when it usually takes two years?

[KerikBalm]

37 minutes ago, VoidSquid said:

...which already fuel some conspiracy theories, how can they have a vaccine this fast, when it usually takes two years?

Because the 2 years includes the trial phases, which normally take quite a while unless "fast tracked" (even then...).

Nowadays, you can produce a vaccine in a matter of days once you've isolated the pathogen - the question is #1) does it work, and #2) is it safe, and at what doses?

If you've got the pathogen isolated, you can sequence its DNA in a day, and identify its protein encoding genes in minutes. From there, by homology you can already identify the surface proteins (a quick search in minutes, then a couple hours to review). Then you can compare by homology to the surface proteins used in vaccines for related viruses, take the new homologous sequence, stick it in a plasmid, and start making the protein, which is the vaccine. Because you're only injecting 1 protein, not a complete viron, then it can't possibly be infectious, yet because its the same protein sequence as found on the surface of the virus, your immune system should recognize the virus after being exposed to this protein. This whole process can be done very quickly if needed (not that there won't be meetings, group discussions, review, etc..).

But then... you would normally make sure the protein is not too immunogenic (you don't want patients to go into anaphylactic shock when you inject it from an overactive innate immune response), that it doesn't lead to autoimmune disorders or cause too much inflammation, you'll want to test how much you can safely inject, how much to inject to get an effective immune response without causing too much inflammation... then you'll have shown its safe, then you need to show its effective... this is normally another study, in which you need to vaccinate large groups and see who gets sick and who doesn't.

Because its humans, you can't deliberately infect them after vaccinating them, so you need to do a large population and follow them for a long time so that you can see statistical differences between the control and vaccinated group...

So... making the vaccine is fast, its the testing procedure (pre-clinical+animal studies followed by clinical trials) that takes time. Obviously in a public health emergency some of those things can be rushed a bit if one relaxes the regulations.

2 hours ago, DDE said:

What we have here is the Foreign Ministry spokesman questioning whether US servicemen in the US that have been tested positive for COVID-19 post-mortem were the actual worldwide patients zero.

Huge is true; not sure whether he is as prone to mudslinging as, say, Maria Zakharova.

I highly doubt this for a number of reasons:

#1) Trump's mishandling of the response is hurting his re-election chances. It wouldn't be in the interest of the US leaders to start this epidemic, and then be so unprepared for it in the US.

#2) Bioinformatic analysis shows it comes from animal strains endemic to china. The simplest explanation is that it jumped from animals to humans in China, in a place where humans were in close contact with those animals. Its much less plausible that the US took viruses from the animals in china, deliberately made them adapt to humans, infected humans and sent them to china, prevented the infected personell from infecting anyone in the US so that a large Chinese outbreak happened first - and was then unable to stop a large US outbreak after china.

#3) Trump has been mishandling the outbreak, and often when things get bad, he blames someone else. He recently started criticizing /blaming China even more (mudslinging), so it seems likely that this is just the Chinese retaliating against what Trump said (Trump slung mud at them, they sling mud at the US/Trump)

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, VoidCosmos said:

Just imagine if the whole world is kept in quarentine. It would be horrible.

The whole world is in quarantine is the same as not being in quarantine.

No sense blocking travel between two countries with uncontrollable outbreaks.

[Delay]

Next Monday all schools are cancelled for two weeks, after which I have easter vacation anyways.

I have ceased to understand this world.

[VoidSquid]

1st infection confirmed in our town (pop. 6000)

[dave1904]

[RCgothic]

This morning one of my acquaintances went straight from "Coronavirus is an engineered cull" to "No Jews were killed in 9/11".

Conspiracy theories are poison.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

#1) Trump's mishandling of the response is hurting his re-election chances. It wouldn't be in the interest of the US leaders to start this epidemic, and then be so unprepared for it in the US.

This assumes the interests of the decision-makers behind the purported attack are aligned with Trump or the general US populace. A very gracious assumption, but such discussions all too likely to end up unproductive, and are well beyond the scope of the forum.

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Its much less plausible that the US took viruses from the animals in china, deliberately made them adapt to humans, infected humans and sent them to china, prevented the infected personell from infecting anyone in the US so that a large Chinese outbreak happened first

It is less plausible than a purely natural infection escaping a biological reservoir, yes. But hypothetically, in the US's place, using Typhoid Maries to deliver a seemingly natural virus would have been the way to do it - and you wouldn't want them to die while still in China.

The best rebuttal to this is that China would have had everything on any USG personnel anywhere near Wuhan in autumn 2019, and wouldn't have been afraid to show it.

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

He recently started criticizing /blaming China even more (mudslinging), so it seems likely that this is just the Chinese retaliating against what Trump said

Edit 2: so yes, now it looks like mudslinging; the other part of the Ministry is trying to smooth those comments over.

It could be a certain someone else.

37 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

This morning one of my acquaintances went straight from "Coronavirus is an engineered cull" to "No Jews were killed in 9/11".

Conspiracy theories are poison.

We need to start selling Occam & Hanlon-brand razors.

Edit: So on second thought, COVID would be a poor choice for the nefarious international elites (echo quotes optional) to cull the hoi polloi... because an airborne virus proliferated by airplane inevitably hits said international elites first, as we see quite well.

Edited March 13, 2020 by DDE

[Guest]

Went to buy my groceries. Chatted a bit with the cashier. She said yesterday was completely nuts with the hoarding, but we agreed that we'll figure this out.

The practical outcome for me was that I had to buy pears instead of bananas and shallots instead of onions, because they were out. 

"Shortage" is a highly relative concept.

Spoiler

They were out of TP and ready-made meals, and pretty low on eggs, yoghurt, and some other things, but seriously there was plenty of stuff there.

 

[KerikBalm]

32 minutes ago, DDE said:

This assumes the interests of the decision-makers behind the purported attack are aligned with Trump or the general US populace. A very gracious assumption, but such discussions all too likely to end up unproductive, and are well beyond the scope of the forum.

Well, I have a hard time imagining whose interests this virus would serve... If it was a US group behind the attack, what would be the goal, and why would they do it now? The specific allegation involves the secret US military/intelligence services... If the goal was to influence the election, I think its a bit early, and also these groups could likely just leak a whole lot of more incriminating documents. A plot by some arm of the US government, aligned with Trump or not, does not really seem plausible, the accusation seems really contrived.

Often when discussing ideas about some plot, one would ask what benefit comes from the alleged actions, and who does that benefit go to?

In my estimation, the only benefit to come out of this is environmental, CO2 emissions are way down due to reduced travel, depressed sales and manufacturing, etc.

I happen to believe that the world is overpopulated and overconsuming, and the biosphere/ecosystem itself benefits.

So, using the criteria previously mentioned, the only allegation that would that pass my first plausibility test, would be that some sort of militant-environmentalists / eco-terrorists are behind it... and I don't think that's likely that such a group have the organization and resources to pull it off.

So I'm going with a natural explanation without anybody planning this

[sh1pman]

10 hours ago, tater said:

Except the death rate by age is the CFR, which is likely off by an order of magnitude.

The author said both studies adjusted for that. The first one was based on Diamond Princess data where everyone was tested, and both of them give similar numbers.

[VoidCosmos]

4 hours ago, VoidSquid said:

...which already fuel some conspiracy theories, how can they have a vaccine this fast, when it usually takes two years?

Good question

[tater]

4 hours ago, VoidSquid said:

...which already fuel some conspiracy theories, how can they have a vaccine this fast, when it usually takes two years?

Because SARS-CoV-2 is closely related to the previous troublesome coronaviruses. There was a rush to work on vaccines for those, then the outbreaks petered out, and the demand effectively ceased. Modern gene sequencing allows for rapidly sequencing an entire genome, and editing the old vaccine candidate is similarly trivial now.

The US also has vaccine candidates, as does Australia for the same reason, previous work on SARS-CoV (and presumably others have them as well).

[StrandedonEarth]

Minor hockey has also been cancelled, at least in this area. The season-end “Hockey Day” championship games and festivities have been postponed, which is a serious bummer for my kid, who was all pumped up to play for the Cup tomorrow. 

However, since alcohol is a disinfectant, all slo-pitch games are going ahead... 

[Superfluous J]

Just got "permission" to work from home until this whole thing blows over.

I put that in quotes because the news from corporate was pretty clear in that if we can work from home (I can) we are allowed to but must inform (not ask permission of) our manager.

But it was nice of him to agree with me that I could

[tater]

 

[VoidSquid]

5 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

news from corporate was pretty clear in that if we can work from home (I can) we are allowed to but must inform (not ask permission of) our manager.

I envy you.

55 minutes ago, tater said:

Because

I just saw several websites with such conspiracy theories, that doesn't imply that believe in them  

[DDE]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

So, using the criteria previously mentioned, the only allegation that would that pass my first plausibility test, would be that some sort of militant-environmentalists / eco-terrorists are behind it... and I don't think that's likely that such a group have the organization and resources to pull it off.

Agreed. This isn't a Tom Clancy novel.

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Well, I have a hard time imagining whose interests this virus would serve... If it was a US group behind the attack, what would be the goal, and why would they do it now? The specific allegation involves the secret US military/intelligence services... If the goal was to influence the election, I think its a bit early

Not if you influence elections permanently. Which is exactly what happens when an event decimates a population group with known - and unwelcome - voting habits.

Spoiler

 

Note: image above is from a blogpost discussing the idea of banning 'boomers' from voting

Crippling a geopolitical opponent is a bonus.

But I agree that there are far easier methods.

Edited March 13, 2020 by DDE

[sevenperforce]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Well, I have a hard time imagining whose interests this virus would serve... If it was a US group behind the attack, what would be the goal, and why would they do it now? The specific allegation involves the secret US military/intelligence services... If the goal was to influence the election, I think its a bit early, and also these groups could likely just leak a whole lot of more incriminating documents. A plot by some arm of the US government, aligned with Trump or not, does not really seem plausible, the accusation seems really contrived.

Often when discussing ideas about some plot, one would ask what benefit comes from the alleged actions, and who does that benefit go to?

If you engineer a highly contagious virus that disproportionately kills old people and sick people, then deploy it in China with a vector to the US, you accomplish a variety of things:

• Reduction in the long-term costs of end-of-life healthcare (because old people are dead)
• Reduction in the long-term costs of chronic-disease healthcare (because sick people are dead)
• Reduction in the right-wing voting population (because Boomers are dead)
• Increase in support for socialized medicine (because omg pandemic)
• Distrust in the current administration (because obviously he was going to bungle it)
• Distrust of protectionism (because it didn't help here)

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say that all of these accomplishments would benefit the far-left in the United States.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, however, and I think this is preposterous.

[StrandedonEarth]

 

[dave1904]

Austria: Just got an SMS from the my boss. I am on construction and our company is closing down because all the shops are on lockdown from monday..... Basically unemployed because without materials we cannot work. Luckly I am not in a bad situation financially. I do not get why it. The people in most danger are the ones selling food in the shops and those shops remain open. We work outside all day long in fresh air. 

Any chance KSP2 can have an early release? I have time