The very latest out of China and South Korea (within the past day) is starting to feel a bit discouraging again. These are the countries to emulate, but it feels like they aren’t out of the woods yet by any means. They are both definitely still battling against it.

Quote from Dr Richard

. The older generation who would be most affected by COVID-19 probably still buy their tried and tested chloroquine on the black market

In Indonesia??? source please...

.....anywhere ...how could you distinguish between fever caused by malaria or by coronavirus or indeed HIV? You would take any medicine available like chloroquine or other analogues. Problem now is are any air mail deliveries getting through now?

...and another thing ...chloroquine would only be used effectively in the early stages of covid infection. One could not expect it to reverse the later pathological lung damage caused by breakdown of alveolar epithelium gap junctions. Hence its reported 'limited effectiveness-

I will send you some if mine arrives first....I've ordered both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. Otherwise there's tonic water which only has 20 mg/litre quinine. Other non-toxic antivirals are found in coconut oil (lauric acid and monolaurin) If air freight has gone down we're truly stumped!

Think about this then-how do we make our government and NHS take action on this and make these antivirals generally available on the NHS? If the Chinese government could do it with a massive 'no charge' order from Pakistan why can't we? Boris/Trump must be aware of this by now, I can't believe they are that stupid, and if it all worked out would save their political futures by actually doing some good.

It could be that the Covid-19 degree of contagion is correlated to temperature and humidity, and that warmer spring and summer weather may well diminish the spread of this coronavirus:

https://gvn.org/enhanced-model…-risk-of-covid-19-spread/

Then again it may not - is it worth taking the risk? Remember this:

'Pakistan has effective drug for COVID-19' | The Express Tribune

tribune.com.pk › story › 1-pakistan-effective-drug-covid-19

22 Feb 2020 - Over 300,000 tablets exported to China as CEN is now collecting clues for heroes who made it possible. ... Earlier, Economic Daily reported that on February 5th, GPHL first purchased 15,000 tablets of chloroquine phosphate in Pakistan through various channels, and then purchased another 200,000 tablets.

It took less than 4 days from purchasing in Pakistan to arriving in Guangzhou. In addition to the international and domestic airline time, it is not easy for Pakistan, a country with less developed transport infrastructure that is suffering from severe locust plague, to urgently collect, transport and cooperate to undertake the fastest international rescue for dispensing the effective drugs to treat COVID-19. It reminds people of “For 61 Brothers” in Chinese textbook.

So why are the Western governments doing nothing? My own son has had a contact with a COVID-19 positive and is in self-isolation with a fever in London. Just 16 new cases in China today, 12 were foreigners. So who is saying chloroquine does not work effectively? WHY ARE THE HEALTH MINISTERS SUCH IDIOTS!

I ordered hydroxychloroquine (plaquenil) last week. It should arrive tomorrow. Now it is no longer available where get mine from.

https://www.foxnews.com/health…cal-condition-coronavirus

I didn't follow all your probably interesting debates around this virus. sorry.

However, I am curious to see the geopolitical evolution when this virus will go away.

Relocation from Asia ?

Impact on oil dictatorships countries ?

Without wanting to be provocative, I predict that our world will be better "helped" by this virus.

A kind of awareness from general selfishness.

I expect that indirectly it will have a positive impact on future CO2 shift for example.

Your opinions ?

Sure none available anywhere now - but China has vast quantities of veterinary grade chloroquine phosphate for sale at around $50 a Kg. The government could buy it by the ton if they had the will to do so.

I got some chloroquine a month or two ago at a fish pet store. OK it was for aquariums but....

I also ordered some tablets from India a month or so ago but it has not yet arrived. Its is tracking (arrive Ap 17??) but looks like most shipping is stopped or slowed to a stand still.

dumb question...…. if chloroquine is so hard to get now, why not just use quinine? It is readily available.

Quote from Deleo

The very latest out of China and South Korea (within the past day) is starting to feel a bit discouraging again. These are the countries to emulate, but it feels like they aren’t out of the woods yet by any means. They are both definitely still battling against it.

Why do you feel this way? Why is it discouraging? I don't see a problem in either country. Of course they still have cases, and they will until a vaccine is deployed, but I think they have the situation under control. The number of new cases is decreasing rapidly.

Deaths in China are still high, at 14 per day, but that is because there are still 3,226 serious cases.

Japan seems to have the situation totally under control. There are ~45 new cases per day, and only 36 people in intensive care. They can easily handle that level of disease for a year. It will cost a lot of money of course, but nowhere near as much as having thousands of sick people. Or millions, as the U.S. may have in a month. There was a 1-day increase in Japan up to about 100 new cases last week, but that was all people they knew were sick, who were brought back from Europe. They have all been isolated in quarantine, so they will not spread the disease. The reason Japan has control is because every single case is followed up on. They know when and where nearly every patient got sick. They follow up, informing the public when and where, and they inform directly other people they know may have been infected. China does this too, and a vastly larger scale, with hundreds of small groups of people assigned to tracking down cases.

The U.S. might have done this, because we have talented internet experts, and our cell phone companies follow every single user and save all the data, for commercial purposes. They sell the data to advertisers. But we have done nothing. The administration's plans are classified secret, so I do not know what they are up to, but I expect rumors would get out if they were launching a web-tracking application. In any other country it would already be launched. If present trends continue, by the end of the month there will be 56,000 new cases per day in the U.S., so I doubt it would do any good. I doubt even the Chinese could follow up on 56,000 new cases per day.

Quote from JedRothwell

Or millions, as the U.S. may have in a month.

Here is my simplified projection for the U.S. one month from now. This does not take into account the leveling off that will start to occur as the number of immune recovered patients increases. At present, the 1.3 daily increase is nearly unchanged from March 1, so no simplification is needed. Experts say it is unlikely more than 70% of the population will be infected.

I say the increase is "nearly unchanged" because there a slight decrease yesterday, but I doubt it was significant. Here are the numbers from March 2 - March 15. As you see, it went down to 1.24 twice in the last 14 days, and it was 1.25 yesterday.

If these numbers hold, U.S. hospitals will be overwhelmed by April 4. That's based on the number beds and ICU listed in the N.Y. Times. By April 11, there will be ~1 million new cases per day. There will no care available for most patients. No drugs at all. People will be dying at home at about the same rate they did in the 1918 pandemic, because the mortality rate for untreated patients is about the same, 2% to 3%.

Actually, the mortality rate for the U.S. untreated population may be a little higher than 3% for the cononavirus, because our population is unhealthy. 40% of adults over 20 are obese. 8% are severely obese, and 32% are overweight. This is well known cause of comorbidity for a wide range of diseases, such as heart disease, cancer and -- of course -- diabetes. According to Michael Osterholm (

) the effect of obesity is roughly equivalent to smoking. Obviously, smoking is more directly dangerous with a respiratory disease such as coronavirus. So anyway, based on this, I looked that the Chinese statistics for elderly and unhealthy populations and comorbidity. It shows 9.2% mortality for pre-existing diabetes. (https://www.worldometers.info/…rus-age-sex-demographics/) 30% of obese people have diabetes. (https://news.harvard.edu/gazet…ry/2012/03/the-big-setup/) So, just looking at diabetes, and ignoring other comorbidity caused by obesity, we have:

~40% of adults obese, ~30% of those with diabetes, equals ~12% of U.S. adult population dying at 9.2% instead of rates ranging from 0.2% to 3.6% for people under 60.

That is, 12% of the adult population that is infected, not the whole population. I think this would be enough to push mortality significantly above the expected rate of ~2% or 3% for untreated patients in a catastrophic situation. Even if hospitals are not overwhelmed, there is no doubt that the 40% obese population will die at a higher rate than the average Japanese or Korean population, because obesity is rare in these countries. What it boils down to is that 40% of our population will die at the rate 70-year-old Japanese patients do, because we have a gigantic burden of comorbidity.

Obesity is a major reason the U.S. healthcare system is number 27 in the world, behind every other first world country. (https://www.businessinsider.co…care-and-education-2018-9) The other reason, obviously, is because 90 million people have no health insurance and no sick leave, so they cannot go to the doctor. (The notion that emergency room treatment is "free" is complete nonsense. They charge you for it. A friend of mine had emergency room treatment and was in a coma for several days. He woke up facing a bill for $90,000. When I last heard, the collectors had taken his truck, and they were after his house. They will take every penny and leave you homeless, if they can.)

Needless to say, the fact that many people cannot go the doctor or even stay home sick will push up the death rate, and it will accelerate the speed of the epidemic.

Quote from JedRothwell

Why do you feel this way? Why is it discouraging? I don't see a problem in either country. Of course they still have cases, and they will until a vaccine is deployed, but I think they have the situation under control. The number of new cases is decreasing rapidly.

Deaths in China are still high, at 14 per day, but that is because there are still 3,226 serious cases.

Japan seems to have the situation totally under control. There are ~45 new cases per day, and only 36 people in intensive care. They can easily handle that level of disease for a year. It will cost a lot of money of course, but nowhere near as much as having thousands of sick people. Or millions, as the U.S. may have in a month. There was a 1-day increase in Japan up to about 100 new cases last week, but that was all people they knew were sick, who were brought back from Europe. They have all been isolated in quarantine, so they will not spread the disease. The reason Japan has control is because every single case is followed up on. They know when and where nearly every patient got sick. They follow up, informing the public when and where, and they inform directly other people they know may have been infected. China does this too, and a vastly larger scale, with hundreds of small groups of people assigned to tracking down cases.

The U.S. might have done this, because we have talented internet experts, and our cell phone companies follow every single user and save all the data, for commercial purposes. They sell the data to advertisers. But we have done nothing. The administration's plans are classified secret, so I do not know what they are up to, but I expect rumors would get out if they were launching a web-tracking application. In any other country it would already be launched. If present trends continue, by the end of the month there will be 56,000 new cases per day in the U.S., so I doubt it would do any good. I doubt even the Chinese could follow up on 56,000 new cases per day.

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I think for 2 reasons.

1. Deaths in China listed at 14 today is a bit higher than where they were a couple of days ago. But I agree there are just still a lot of active cases.

2. If South Korea is still having 75 cases per day that is good, but by no means great. Let's say in the U.S. we go the way of South Korea and not Italy, which is probably a best case scenario. I actually think we have reason to believe we are heading in the direction of Italy/Spain/Germany. So SK has a population of 50 million people. Based on the U.S. having over 6 times their population that would mean we would still have 480 cases per day to their 75. Maybe that's not the right way to look at it. But with 422 cases today in the U.S. it just means there's a long road ahead.