Covid-19 News

So why has the epidemic subsided in China? Simple, they are all being effectively treated! In contrast our pessimistic negligent ignorant politicians are just sitting around doom saying (Boris quote 'that families must expect the losses of loved ones'). How pathetic this all is reducing modern medicine's approach to containing the coronavirus to an inane discussion of hand washing, or building up herd immunity in the population? Has the government in its abject paralysis confused this with an outbreak of foot and mouth disease and so treats us all like cattle?

@SOT - but it does support the Utopia conspiracy theory that these Top Dogs (the one percent) have already been innoculated against the virus which was engineered to trigger a deep recession which will then be followed by Third World War - one way of reducing global warming with a nuclear winter!

Quote from Dr Richard

So why has the epidemic subsided in China? Simple, they are all being effectively treated! In contrast our pessimistic negligent ignorant politicians are just sitting around doom saying (Boris quote 'that families must expect the losses of loved ones'). How pathetic this all is reducing modern medicine's approach to containing the coronavirus to an inane discussion of hand washing, or building up herd immunity in the population? Has the government in its abject paralysis confused this with an outbreak of foot and mouth disease and so treats us all like cattle?

I hate to say it but maybe a totalitarian government is better to manage something like this. Of course free societies beat communism in everything else, but this is the one time it may beneficial to have one. Johnson seems like a guy who is shrugging his shoulders and ok with the fact that the UK is going to lose a few people, but their British way of life will go on.

Quote from Deleo

I hate to say it but maybe a totalitarian government is better to manage something like this.

Nope. S. Korea and Japan have both contained the virus effectively. They are democracies. They had several weeks warning from events in China, so they were able to contain it more effectively than the Chinese. But, in any case, they succeeded. The infection rate in both countries is now manageable. If it remains at this level until a vaccine becomes available, they will have enough ICUs to handle the patients along with patients with other diseases. Their economies will be severely impacted, and it will cost a lot of money, but the damage will be far less than the likely outcome in the U.S. which is now anywhere from 400,000 to several million deaths. I say "likely" because nothing has been done to prevent this, and there is no telling when the first, essential steps such as testing will begin.

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So why has the epidemic subsided in China?

Where do you get such crap? Due to draconian measures and a total police state, it has been possible to reduce the growth of number of cases and deaths per day. This is not the same as stopping the epidemic. It's simply a response to extreme mitigation measures. The desirable result is spreading out the infection numbers vs time curve so as to decrease the overload on the medical care systems. It is in no way causing the eventual number of infections to "subside." . In the end, the total number of cases may not be different. Deaths will be less because of less stress on hospitals and health care people. Eventual true "subsiding" of the epidemic will probably await effective antivirals and a vaccine. That or a natural process such as summer but that doesn't seem likely.

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@SOT - but it does support the Utopia conspiracy theory that these Top Dogs (the one percent) have already been innoculated against the virus which was engineered to trigger a deep recession which will then be followed by Third World War - one way of reducing global warming with a nuclear winter!

Possibly one of the dumbest conspiracy theories I have read in recent memory.

These people are simply stupid and for the most part, lacking any understanding of epidemiology and microbiology. There were people there who certainly know better like Dr. Fauci. However, I suppose he has decided to take his chances in order to be able to do his job. That also may be true for some of the reporters. With the advance of the number of cases which is almost certain to come, I bet their behaviors will change.

Quote from Max Nozin

Meanwhile our Jed gets into technical curve analysis as some stock market purist do.

Technical? A 6th grader could do it. Just take the Worldmeters curve in logarithmic scale and draw a line on it:

The analysis couldn't be a simpler. (You get the same answer putting the numbers into Excel, as I did yesterday.)

Gilead's remdesivir not yet a silver bullet

https://www.statnews.com/pharm…-covid19-clinical-trials/

“Based on our review of the clinical and virological courses, we believe remdesivir’s contribution to efficacy remains unclear,

and with a side-effect profile that may not be completely benign,” the RBC analysts wrote in a note to investors

. “We continue to see a less than 50/50 possibility that the drug is ultimately proven effective.”

3/12 patients received remdisivir ...and tolerated it

https://www.statnews.com/pharm…-covid19-clinical-trials/

By the way, that line shows total cases reaching 300,000 by April 1, and 1 million cases by April 4. I am not predicting that, but anyone can see that is what will happen if nothing is done to change the infection rate. Something will surely be done to change the rate, even if the Trump administration continues to dither and takes no effective action. People will do for themselves. They will be frightened, and most of the country will be shut down, the way Italy is. Unfortunately, that will be too late to prevent tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths.

It is still too early to see whether the steps taken in Italy have been effective. The only slightly good news is that new cases today are below yesterday's: 2,547 compared to 2,651. "Not increasing" is good news during the exponential increase phase of an epidemic. (That phase ends when enough people have had the disease, recovered, and become immune; or it ends when everyone dies, which is what happened in some remote places in 1918, such as Inuit settlements.)

Quote from Max Nozin

[A 6th grader could do it.]

exactly

So, what is your point? Does that make it wrong? Can you show us a better analysis? Look at the curves of other epidemics. This is how they look.

Quote from Deleo

just reading this article below about the UK makes me think this has to be one of the biggest medical experiments in history.

The European tactics is to let between 20 and 60% of the people get an infection but do this with a slow raise in the infections. The spread will stop after the herd has some immunity.

The death rate in central Europe is way below influenza for healthy people if hospital can take care of the cases that would survive influenza. They others would die anyway from the next influenza. That's nature.

If you don't let it go at a reasonable rate any economy will collapse.

But this tactics will not work for the US with it's 30% of the people with medium to severe health conditions compared e.g. 5-10% in Switzerland.

Italy was a bad example with 1/4 of the Germany's amount of intense care beds/inhabitant. They were careless und unprepared. Italys death rate is still high at, 5% today. But most dying folks (man!) with the same habits as in Wuhan like living under Smog, do smoke and have high blood pressure... (temperament..)

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Due to draconian measures and a total police state [in China], it has been possible to reduce the growth of number of cases and deaths per day. This is not the same as stopping the epidemic.

The epidemic has been effectively stopped in China. It might restart, but at present very few new cases are emerging. Factories and schools are restarting, with every employee being tested. They can handle the present level of ~100 cases per day until a vaccine is deployed. It will hurt their economy and their education system, but very few people will die, and they will quickly recover. See:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

The measures were not that draconian in most places. The public supported them, including the public in Wuhan. It was mainly applied science and technology, especially internet technology to track down cases. It was based on cooperation and public spirited activities, such as delivering food to people stuck in their apartments. Most of the steps they took were also done in Japan and Korea, which are not police states. The more extreme, draconian steps taken in China are now being done in Italy, which is not a police state. If similar steps are not taken in the U.S., hundreds of thousands of people will die unnecessarily. Read the W.H.O. report and see the presentation by Aylward.

Quote from Dr Richard

So why has the epidemic subsided in China? Simple, they are all being effectively treated! In contrast our pessimistic negligent ignorant politicians are just sitting around doom saying (Boris quote 'that families must expect the losses of loved ones'). How pathetic this all is reducing modern medicine's approach to containing the coronavirus to an inane discussion of hand washing, or building up herd immunity in the population? Has the government in its abject paralysis confused this with an outbreak of foot and mouth disease and so treats us all like cattle?

Dr Richard,

What does the infection/time curve look like for China?

Say it started January 1st, 2020, and it started receding on March 15, 2020.

Infections in thousands on Y axis,

Time in days on X axis?

The Utopia series was an interesting drama - I don't think the Chinese success in containing the outbreak is simply due to strict quarantine measures - what do you think they are doing with 2 million doses of chloroquine? We need this drug freely distributed in the West too and only a small percentage of the Boris millions allocated for fruitless vaccination research could buy the drug from China and solve our present outbreak too. The hydroxychloroquine analogue (brand name Plaquenil) is even more effective and has been used to treat auto-immune diseases like Lupus and Rheumatoid arthritis for decades. Every drug has some bad side-effects admittedly but low doses are indicated from the in vitro work (Ki 0.37 uM) so this would be a safe remedy in most cases. I'm afraid the Remdesivir drug test is just another example of big pharma trying to capitalize on a desperate situation - it will be way too expensive for most people or for the NHS to provide.

Quoting the Scientist:

These variables include key numbers such as the disease incubation period, how quickly the virus spreads through the population, and, perhaps most contentiously, the case-fatality ratio. This sounds simple: it’s the proportion of infected people who die. But working it out is much trickier than it looks. “The non-specialists do this all the time and they always get it wrong,” Edmunds says. “If you just divide the total numbers of deaths by the total numbers of cases, you’re going to get the wrong answer.”

That is a stupid mistake. Not every non-specialist is that stupid. The correct method is described here, "How to calculate the mortality rate during an outbreak:"

https://www.worldometers.info/…virus-death-rate/#correct

More to the point, we are not wild animals living in nature. To a large extent, the mortality rate is a matter of choice. Some societies respond effectively with public health measures, common sense, internet data, and so on, the way they have in China, Korea and Japan. This greatly reduces the number of infections and the mortality rate. Other societies do nothing. Or their experts project 480,000 deaths as if nothing can be done to reduce them. As if Korea and Japan do not exist, or we cannot possibly do what they have done. Or people say Americans will not "surrender their liberty" or "follow orders" to save their own lives. Where "liberty" is defined as going to the movies, I suppose. This ignores the fact that Americans were quick to follow orders in 1918. Who wouldn't? People are not crazy. If the U.S. government ever manages to manufacture tests, or if they finally agree to buy them from Germany, do you think Americans will refuse to be tested?

Thinking that Americans cannot -- or will not -- do what Korean and Japanese people have done is a weirdly inverted form of racism. It resembles the early months of World War II in the Pacific, when the U.S. public got the mistaken impression that Japanese soldiers were "jungle super-fighters" who could defeat Americans even when outnumbered 10 to 1. The Japanese also began to believe that. That illusion lasted until the battle of Guadalcanal.

And I bet they've started selling it to other far eastern countries (N Korea) - want to bet that their economic recovery will be much faster allowing China to dominate the rest of the World? While we sit on our backsides self-isolating and listening to the media moaning on about what a big disaster it all is? The West's medical/pharmaceutical system is in total disarray unable to respond appropriately to this crisis. GET OFF YOUR BACKSIDES AND JUST DO WHAT THE CHINESE HAVE DONE FOR GOD's SAKE. PUMP OUT THE CHLOROQUINE!

Quote from JedRothwell

Nope. S. Korea and Japan have both contained the virus effectively. They are democracies. They had several weeks warning from events in China, so they were able to contain it more effectively than the Chinese. But, in any case, they succeeded. The infection rate in both countries is now manageable. If it remains at this level until a vaccine becomes available, they will have enough ICUs to handle the patients along with patients with other diseases. Their economies will be severely impacted, and it will cost a lot of money, but the damage will be far less than the likely outcome in the U.S. which is now anywhere from 400,000 to several million deaths. I say "likely" because nothing has been done to prevent this, and there is no telling when the first, essential steps such as testing will begin.

I think you make a good point on South Korea. It's really their testing that has been phenomenal. I wouldn't necessarily say they are out of the woods yet. They still have a decent amount of daily new cases.

To counter my own point, How can we really trust China's numbers completely? It does appear that things have gotten markedly better there. But have they really have arrested the spread of the virus like they want us to believe? How do we take what the Chinese government says to the bank?

There is so much uncertainty over all of this. The key thing first is to test like mad. South Korea is showing how to do that. Everyone should copy them and go from there. If people aren't tested on a massive scale then we are nowhere with this.