LinvilleGorge

Here in Colorado we've only tested 711 people. We have 101 confirmed cases. The number jumped by 30% today. There are still a lot of infected people out there who are either experiencing minor symptoms and think they have a cold or they're still in the incubation period and are currently asymptomatic. The really scary thing for us here is that our first fatality occurred today. She was a lady in her 80s with pre-existing health conditions (to be fair I think being in your 89s by itself probably qualifies as a pre-existing health condition). What makes it scary is that she played bridge with over 100 other elderly people over the course of five consecutive nights prior to her diagnosis. There were a lot of people potentially exposed and they're all part of the most vulnerable demographic. We could have an even worse version of the Seattle nursing home situation here soon because these elderly people weren't confined to a nursing home. They were out and about after their exposure.

Here's a sad chart. Based on what we had already seen in China and South Korea before the Italy situation even blew up, the measure we're seeing taken today should've been taken about two weeks ago. We likely would've had a chance to replicate the Singapore situation where this was practically stopped in it's tracks from the get go. Now we're in the exponential curve. And that's with absolutely piss poor access to testing. The actual number of cases is almost certainly a lot higher.

What is the ulterior (that's the word you were looking for) motive that would explain many of the world's countries, allies and foes alike, basically grinding to a halt to stop this thing? Lots of major private businesses coming to a decision independent of government intervention to practically grind their own businesses to a halt in an effort to stop this thing? Maybe, just maybe it's because they're run by people who aren't complete morons who understand the potential danger we face and that major interruption to their countries and businesses are absolutely inevitable at this point and taking drastic actions in the short term is going to look a lot better in the long-term than doing nothing and letting this thing spread like absolutely unchecked wildfire by continuing business as usual. Here's a hint at why current gross numbers don't really matter. What matters is how much bigger they were vs. months, weeks, and days ago.

Just left the grocery store. It was apocalyptic. Like if a blizzard and a hurricane we're gonna hit the NC coast at the same time.

There's a reason why novel coronaviruses for the past two decades or more continue to be largely traced back to Chinese wet markets. It's not a condemnation of China or the Chinese people as a whole, but the way those wet markets work with a smorgasbord of everything that walks, crawls, or flies being housed in very close proximity and slaughtered in the open gives these viruses the ideal environment they need to cross the species barrier and ultimately infect humanity. There's more than enough evidence at this point to show that these things are a global health hazard and that evidence existed before COVID-19. Once we get over this one there needs to be SERIOUS international pressure on China to shut down these wet markets.

The test came back negative.

Well, cancer isn't contagious either. I agree with you though. I'm not all doom and gloom about this, but people do have to take this seriously and get serious about taking aggressive mitigation efforts. I do think we're going to go through a period of ugliness though. Hopefully not as bad as Italy due to our younger and less concentrated population. The nightmare scenario for America would be a major outbreak somewhere like NYC. It'll be interesting to watch Seattle. I do think there's hope that the virus will be less contagious during the summer. Early studies show that it's most contagious around 8.7 degrees Celsius (roughly 48 degrees Fahrenheit) with fairly significant drop-off as temperatures climb from there.

oops, the zero shouldn't have been there. Not sure if it was auto fill or a brainfart on my part.

I hope we don't see it. With proper mitigation efforts we very well might.

Why can so many people fail to understand that pandemics experience exponential growth? We're only at the very beginning of this thing. If people would stop sticking their fuging heads in the sand then maybe we can actually take the necessary steps to significantly mitigate the spread and avoid a complete fuging disaster. It's gonna suck ass in the short term, but we'll be a helluva lot better off in the long-term to suck it up and mitigate the fug out of this thing rather than take half ass measures and hope for the best because that poo ain't gonna work and if our healthcare system gets overrun then that's also gonna mean that a helluva lot more people are gonna die from those other conditions he mentioned because there's not gonna be any medical assistance available for them with everyone dealing with COVID-19 patients. /rant off

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.