LinvilleGorge

IMO, China, South Korea, Singapore, etc. show that mitigation efforts work. We're way behind on them, but it's better late than never.

The places where cases are leveling off or decking are places that have taken aggressive measures. IMO, it's not a reason to take this lightly, it's a reason to implement our own aggressive measures.

That's part of what makes this dangerous. A lot of people may have what they think is a mild case of cold or flu but what they really have is Covid 19. What caused only a relatively mild illness for them has the potential to cause severe illness in someone else. And right now, we don't have anywhere near the testing capacity to test anyone other than those presenting with very specific symptoms with very obvious links to potential exposure. Not good.

I still have three grandparents alive. My former next door neighbor who I still keep in touch with is 82 years old. I give a poo about those people. I'm not really scared for myself but to be honest, yeah I am scared for those people.

I just left the grocery store about an hour ago. Seemed like any other day other than people being a lot more diligent to wipe down their carts and toilet paper (?) and hand sanitizer being out of stock. Where are these people who are "freaking out"?

My primary source of information on this is a good college friend who is a PhD who previously worked for the CDC and is currently a professor at Johns Hopkins specializing in infectious disease. You shouldn't be scared, but you should be aware and you should try to take precautions to avoid the spread of this disease to try to help protect the types of people who you just patently dismissed.

Do math. 4000 dead out of 22 million cases = 0.02% mortality rate. That's roughly in line with the common flu. Right now the global average is 3.4% mortality rate. That's 748,000 dead out of 22 million cases. I said earlier that South Korea is probably our best case study for the true mortality rate. It's 0.6%. That's still 132,000 dead out of 22 million cases. Using the South Korea figures, Covid 19 is approximately 30 times more lethal than the disease that caused the swine flu pandemic. Last flu season resulted in an estimated 35 million cases. Covid 19 is a little over twice as contagious as the seasonal flu. Not trying to scare you but is it starting to make sense now?

Meanwhile, at BOA...

This is Donald Trump you're talking about. If he'd been tested and it came back negative he'd be spiking the football all over the media and twitter about it.

A) They have, they're positive, and they don't want to disclose it. B) Because they're complete morons who want to continue to keep their heads buried in the sand on this. Pick one.

Yeah, there are definitely a lot of unidentified cases everywhere. But, he was there shooting a movie so he was probably hanging out with a bunch of high flying globe trotters. Good chance he was exposed due to contact from someone who isn't Australian.

That also highlights how well another country is tracking their infections to try to identify routes of community spread where as a lot of the cases here results in a big old shrug of the shoulders as to where and how they were infected. The most likely answer to that is probably that it's simply already widespread in our communities.

Here ya go: 15 of the initially reported cases in Australia all had a direct or indirect travel history to Wuhan, China 10 cases, including 1 death, are associated with the Diamond Princess cruise ship repatriation flight from Japan 18 cases are reported to have had a direct or indirect travel link to Iran 52 cases are reported to have had a direct or indirect travel link to countries including the United States of America, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Italy, Iceland, Singapore, Thailand, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Nepal, Egypt, Austria, France, Spain, Hong Kong 7 of these cases are considered to be import-related 28 cases, including 2 deaths, do not have a reported history of overseas travel 8 of these cases are associated with an aged care facility in NSW. 2 residents of this facility have sadly died 2 cases are either directly or indirectly associated with attendance at a workshop 18 cases are close contacts of known cases, with further details pending The likely place of exposure for a further 3 newly reported cases is under investigation

Australia barely has over 100 cases. We don't have nearly enough information on their outbreak yet to make any determination at all. Cold/flu doesn't go away in the summer either, but it's drastically reduced. Since we have no herd immunity resistance to a novel virus, "drastically reduced" is going to be relative to spreading like wildfire.

People who continue to parrot this idea clearly don't understand how math works.

One thing I find interesting is Hong Kong and Singapore's success at containing this. They did a great job taking aggressive early measures but I also wonder if weather has a big impact on this. There has been a lot of speculation that this spread will naturally tails off in the summer as temps and humidity rises because that's often the case with these things. Could HK and Singapore lend credibility to that theory? It'll be interesting to see how things go in the southern hemisphere. That'll tell us if we'll catch a break in the summer.

It's gonna hurt in the meantime economically but I think we'll see one helluva boom on the other side of this.

He's not downplaying. He's just being realistic and not irrationally panicking. Statistically speaking, your last sentence is incorrect. Sure, there are always outlier cases, but the under 40 global mortality rate is 0.2%. This pandemic is primarily about protecting the elderly and immuno-compromised as well as trying to prevent the healthcare system from being overran which would lead to a serious health crisis not just from coronavirus but other medical issues requiring care as well.

Just gonna add this... I don't intend to invite panic. My personal hunch is that the actual mortality rate is significantly lower than the globally reported 3.4% simply because I think there are a LOT of undiagnosed cases. South Korea is pretty much setting the global standard on how to deal with this and have by far the best testing program and their mortality rate is significantly under 1% at 0.6% They're not exactly a young population either with an average age of 41. The average age in the US is 38. The global average is 30. They're probably the best case study right now. The Diamond Princess cruise ship is another good one 705 people ended up testing positive. Six have died. That's a 0.8% mortality rate. It's also worth noting that according to the Cruise Lines International Association, the average cruise passenger is 47, so significantly older than the South Korea population, possibly explaining the higher mortality rate compared to South Korea. Don't panic, but be aware and use precaution.

A vaccine, if one can be developed, is probably a year away. There won't be a cure. It's all about supportive care and trying to minimize the spread the best we can. Over time, the population will likely develop a natural immunoligical resistance but right now there's none with it being a novel virus.

Food for thought for those touting the current "low numbers". These things grow exponentially and we're probably too far into the curve to keep this from overwhelming many of our hospitals soon. There's an expectation for a doubling of cases every 4 days. When you're going from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 it takes awhile for the momentum to build. Three weeks in you're "only" at about 32 infected from patient zero. However, three weeks (six total weeks) after that you're at over 1000. Three more weeks (nine total weeks) you're at over 32,000. Three more weeks (12 total weeks) and you're over a million. Three weeks after that (15 total weeks) you're over 33 million. That's 10% of the US. About two weeks after that (17 weeks) exponential growth has infected the entire US population. That's what exponential growth does. Now that's not going to happen, not everyone is going to be infected and most infected will recover. But we're going to see a huge surge of cases and it's right around the corner.

That was Michael Osterholm director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. What's scary is that his predictions on the way this thing will play out have been spot on so far. He was pounding the drum back in early January that this was going to become a global pandemic unless we took drastic action immediately.

We're running low here. Gonna be some straight from the throne and into the shower action going on soon. LOL!

Their average age is about 47. They're one of the older populations in the world. It's not surprising their mortality rate is trending higher but the current 8% is pretty damn alarming. It's not likely to improve with their healthcare system overrun. I'd be lying if I said I trusted the numbers coming out of China.

Truly asymptomatic? Uncommon. Honestly, it would probably be fair to use the word rare. Mild symptoms that could easily be construed as a run if the mill cold? Yep, very common. Approximately 80% of cases. Most of those people likely aren't seeking treatment and would go undiagnosed even if tests were widely available, which they aren't.