interesting money issue-

There is pressure for WHO not to call it a pandemic till July to avoid major loss

of money:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snZ-BQo-L6I

if they do it earlier then World Bank WHO bond holders lose 425M

people waiting in line for a mask (S. Korea)

https://videos.dailymail.co.uk/preview/mol/2020/02/24/3705359263580469802/636x382_MP4_3705359263580469802.mp4

Quote from Alan Smith

Shinzo Abe PM of Japan has decreed all schools (public and private) to shut from monday until after the normal April holiday.

That is a very serious step.

This is also impacting the college entrance exams. People who miss them cannot retake them, because the answers are revealed and they cannot write a new test for a make-up exam. I don't understand why they don't make several tests, but they don't.

Here is an article by a political scientist who is highly critical of Abe administration and the Japanese government's response to the coronavirus:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0…oronavirus-japan-abe.html

W.H.O.: cases in China probably not undercounted much. QUOTE:

"When the virus started to spread in Guangdong — the province where the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak began — worried people flooded fever clinics to be tested. Of 320,000 tests performed, just under 0.5% were positive for the virus at the peak of transmission there, he said — which suggests that only 1 case out of 200 was being missed."

https://www.statnews.com/2020/…ity-rate-who-expert-says/

This means the mortality rate estimates are probably accurate.

That does not mean the mortality rate is fixed. It appears to be falling in China, as the doctors get a better handle on treatment, and more equipment. This only means the initial estimates of 2% are probably accurate.

Quote from Alan Smith

The politicians and the bureaucrats overrule medical advice, exactly as happened with Fukushima

As far as I know, the bureaucrats and government officials did not interfere or second guess the experts at Fukushima. Not during the melt-down and explosion, and not afterwards. They were scared stiff. They did not want to be blamed.

There were accusations after the fact that someone prevented the construction of a higher sea-wall, which would have prevented the accident. As a I recall, someone found a written recommendation that should be done. A nuclear plant expert said, "you can find an after-the-fact recommendation for anything." His point was that people look at every possible fault, and if every recommendation were followed, the plants would never be finished or operational. I think that is a valid point.

A new paper on drug repurposing discussed at ---

Existing drugs may offer a first-line treatment for coronavirus outbreak

https://medicalxpress.com/news…coronavirus-outbreak.html

The paper cited is ---

Discovery and Development of Safe-in-man Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Agents

https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30076-X/pdf

Refer to section 4 at page 14 ---

Thirty-one BSAAs as drug candidates for treatment of 2019-nCoV infections

Also a more complete (very large) table is provided on page 44 which includes other agents that may also be effective against corona viruses.

Lou Pagnucco

Some of the drugs in the first citation are very toxic, for example, cyclosporine. And hexachlorophene? That was banned even as a topical (skin only) agent after several deaths from it's use in surface skin cleaners.

Quote

The LD50 (oral, rat) is 59 mg/kg, indicating that the compound is relatively toxic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexachlorophene

A very strange list but sure, maybe something on it will work out.

As was discussed here and also on TV by NIH's Dr. Anthony Fauci, the current promising antiviral specifically against coronavirus is a combination of remdesivir and chloroquine. https://www.theverge.com/2020/…nt-wuhan-china-gilead-hiv

Some have advocated large doses of vitamin D which is not without risk. The virus seems to use angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) receptors and there are very safe and effective ACE inhibitors used very commonly to treat high blood pressure and heart failure and these may also help prevent or treat infection. A lot of clever people are working on this so it's pretty sure other drugs will be found. The success of ativirals varies widely. The current ones used against HIV are extremely effective while those used against influenza are not. We can certainly hope for a useful drug and we also need to hope it won't cost too much to make.

ETA: This seems to be the most current "scholarly" paper about remdesivir and chloroquine: https://www.nature.com/article…I67SkcgREM4DyxxAcPauRuf5w

However this is only from "in vitro" testing:

Quote

Our findings reveal that remdesivir and chloroquine are highly effective in the control of 2019-nCoV infection in vitro. Since these compounds have been used in human patients with a safety track record and shown to be effective against various ailments, we suggest that they should be assessed in human patients suffering from the novel coronavirus disease.

Quote from Lou Pagnucco

A new paper on drug repurposing discussed at ---

Existing drugs may offer a first-line treatment for coronavirus outbreak

That's treatment, not prevention. Only a vaccine can prevent it. Of course, treatment is also valuable.

The New York Times just reported that an ordinary seasonal flu vaccine may offer some protection against Covid-19.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gl…update-cases-latest-live/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/…covid-19-feb-28-1.5479265

Quote from Alan Smith

The old PM interfered like crazy. . . .

This agrees entirely with what a Mitsubishi Heavy Engineering volunteer rescue worker told me at the time, they formed an expert team and waited for permission to go to the site, but it never came.

On the other hand, physicists I heard from such as Mizuno who were assigned to it said the bureaucrats stayed out. And there were several press reports in the U.S. and Japan saying P.M. did a good job. I guess you would have look at a detailed history to find out whether he interfered or helped, and witnesses will have different opinions about it.

He may have had nothing to do with the decision to withhold permission from the Mitsubishi group. I wouldn't know, but that might have been a technical decision by someone which the P.M. never heard of. He reportedly went along with whatever the technical experts recommended, which is what a political leader should do in these situations. I wish Trump and Pence would do that, but every indication is they intend to lard the process in politics. See:

Pence Will Control All Coronavirus Messaging From Health Officials

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0…us-coronavirus-pence.html

HHS whistleblower says workers without protection or training ... Washington Post

[An HHS expert with two awards last years was punished for telling the truth and warning of danger.]

Here is some of the WaPost text, from behind the paywall. This is dreadful:

Whistleblower: Workers at risk aiding evacuees

Complainant alleges she was targeted for raising concerns.

By Lena H. Sun and Yasmeen Abutaleb

Washington Post

WASHINGTON -Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services sent more than a dozen workers to receive the first Ameri­cans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, with­out proper training for infec­tion control or appropriate protective gear, according to a whistleblower complaint.

The workers did not show symptoms of infection and were not tested for the virus, according to lawyers for the whistleblower, who is a senior HHS official based in Washington who oversees workers at the Administra­tion for Children and Fami­lies, a unit within HHS.

The whistleblower is seek­ing federal protection because she alleges she was unfairly and improperly reassigned after raising concerns about the safety of these workers to HHS officials, including those within the office of Health and Human Services Secre­tary Alex Azar. She was told Feb. 19 that if she does not accept the new position in 15 days, which is March 5, she would be terminated.

The whistleblower has decades of experience in the field, received two HHS department awards from Azar last year and has received the highest perfor­mance evaluations, her law­yers said.

The complaint was filed Wednesday with the Office of the Special Counsel, an independent federal watch­dog agency. The whistleblow­er's lawyers provided a copy of a redacted 24-page com­plaint to The Washington Post. A spokesman for the Office of the Special Coun­sel said he could not com­ment on complaints filed with the office. . . .

The complaint alleges that HHS staff were "improperly deployed" and were "not properly trained or equipped to operate in a public health emergency situation." The complaint also alleges that the workers were poten­tially exposed to corona­virus because appropriate steps were not taken to pro­tect them, and staff were not trained in wearing personal protective equipment, even though they had face-to-face contact with returning pas­sengers. The workers were in contact with passengers in an airplane hangar where evac­uees were received and on two other occasions: when they helped distribute keys for room assignments and hand out colored ribbons for identification purposes. . . .

A second person familiar with the situation said the workers were not tested for coronavirus because none of them met the criteria for test­ing, which only calls for testing people who had recent travel to China or contact with a con­firmed case. The workers also did not exhibit any symptoms, the person said. If they had, appropriate protocol would have been followed.

The deployments took place Jan. 28 to 31, around the time when the first plane­load of evacuees arrived at March, and Feb. 2 to Feb. 7, during the time when addi­tional flights were arriving at Travis. The planes each car­ried about 200 Americans repatriated from Wuhan.

After their deployments, the workers returned to their normal duties, some taking commercial airline flights to return to their offices around the country, the lawyers said.

Quote from Max Nozin

What is the best case estimate? Doesn't hurt stating it.

The best case would be the disease is contained by quarantine until a vaccine can be developed and deployed. A vaccine should stop it, because it is one species and probably will not mutate before the vaccine can be deployed.