COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[caulfield12]

12 hours ago, greg775 said:

Geez. Do the stores have food? Enough food? I did have a question. I've read the symptoms are usually not life threatening. What would happen if people just went about their everyday lives. I mean when we get a bad cold or the flu here, most people only take a day off work. Sure people get infected and sick from others germs but life goes on. How come they can't just let the disease run its course like the flu here? Just let everybody go out and about and whoever gets sick gets sick a week max? Like the flu here? I mean if it's not life threatning is it that big a deal if peeps get sick? Bless you and yours! It must be maddening to never leave your house.

Because the real mortality rate might be 2X or 3X the common flu, but the numbers aren’t reflecting it, YET.  SARs after three months was at 4.8%, and ended up at close to 10%.   Almost as many patients have died as have been cleared medically.  The official number and actual number of those with this virus might already be in the hundred thousands compared to 12,000. 

Because you can get sick with this one twice, so a vaccine is REALLY tricky.

Because you can pass it on to others without having any symptoms (asymptomatic.)

Because so many crowded population centers in Asia....Kowloon/HK, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, etc.  50%+ of the world's population.

To prevent it from wiping out 15-25% of the population of Africa, unless we want to play Thanos or Hitler here in terms of culling the world if its most vulnerable segments.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3048459/chinas-belt-and-road-after-gold-rush-pakistan-sees-downside

For example, what happens when four million Chinese construction workers pour back into Pakistan after the Lunar New Year holidays?

 

Edited February 1, 2020 by caulfield12

[caulfield12]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/local-red-cross-fire-china-coronavirus-donation-mess-200202055418491.html

[Santti]

A researcher from Belgium discovered that a 86 year old malaria medicine called 'chloroquine' works against the corona virus. I think this has been known for quite a while now, but after several weeks of testing it has been proven to greatly reduce the symptoms and speed up recovery as of today. I can only find news articles in my native language but I guess this is pretty good news.

[Chisoxfn]

Caufield...how are you holding up? 

[Iwritecode]

I just got a message from Amazon that my daughter's prom dress won't make it through customs.

Another friend of mine had a daughter that ordered a wedding dress that is being held up.

[ptatc]

13 minutes ago, Iwritecode said:

I just got a message from Amazon that my daughter's prom dress won't make it through customs.

Another friend of mine had a daughter that ordered a wedding dress that is being held up.

Ouch. I feel for you. Downside of online shopping.

[Iwritecode]

On 2/20/2020 at 12:12 PM, ptatc said:

Ouch. I feel for you. Downside of online shopping.

Her prom isn't until the end of April so we have plenty of time. Went dress shopping this weekend and she found another one. Slightly different style/color and more money but she likes it. Now we just have to cancel the Amazon order.

[caulfield12]

Uh-oh.

Glad I sold 20% of my mom’s mutual funds (she’s almost 91 and in assisted living with dementia/Alzheimer’s) when the market was around  27,000.

Hard to imagine all those gains the last year, gone in almost two days.

We’re fine still, all things considered.  Can’t go outside to buy food anymore, so it’s basically staple goods like rice, eggs, noodles and dumplings.

Our school didn’t or couldn’t pay our FEB salaries..which is causing a lot of angst.  That said, there’s likely no way to get physical money from an ATM machine, as the country continues to go electronic with financial transactions.

Many small and medium sized industries are just days or weeks from bankruptcy.  Large state-owned businesses will be saved, but those are the most inefficient levers in the Chinese economy to push.

[caulfield12]

Now should be the best time in history to get cheap lobster.  90% from Maine and Australia usually ends up here... 

[he gone.]

55 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Now should be the best time in history to get cheap lobster.  90% from Maine and Australia usually ends up here... 

I like the follow up on Lobster.

But seriously thanks for the updates. Certainly very interesting and weird times. Keep us up to date!

 

My questions - and certainly feel free to not answer --- so... everybody is just inside their apartments/houses? Like ... nobody walking around- ghost town? Like what does a normal day look like now? Are people working from home still where possible? But then places like factories are just shuttered? I just find it hard to wrap my head around of what a city like Chicago would look like in this situation, let alone a bigger city that has a ton of (presumably) manufacturing jobs. 

 

So essentially it's like a movie in a sense -- people made giant food runs to load up on rice and staples and just sit inside all day? Sounds wild (in a bad way).

[greg775]

Caulfield I still don't understand why everything is shut down. I mean here in the US we have flu season. A TON of people catch the flu and people with demanding jobs still have to work (and infect everybody). We seem to get through it and in the summer it burns away so to speak.

You said businesses are going to fold there? The school can't pay you? What is going on? I see Italy is very paranoid about this if it's the right word.

Tell us more Caulfield. How do people eat? I would guess the stores are closed and/or out of goods. Is it illegal to leave your house? Peace brother.

[lane]

9 hours ago, greg775 said:

Caulfield I still don't understand why everything is shut down. I mean here in the US we have flu season. A TON of people catch the flu and people with demanding jobs still have to work (and infect everybody). We seem to get through it and in the summer it burns away so to speak.

You said businesses are going to fold there? The school can't pay you? What is going on? I see Italy is very paranoid about this if it's the right word.

Tell us more Caulfield. How do people eat? I would guess the stores are closed and/or out of goods. Is it illegal to leave your house? Peace brother.

Flu kills about 0.1% of all people it infects. COVID19 is killing 1-3% of its victims. So it's about ten to thirty times deadlier. Apples to oranges, man.

[he gone.]

2 hours ago, lane said:

Flu kills about 0.1% of all people it infects. COVID19 is killing 1-3% of its victims. So it's about ten to thirty times deadlier. Apples to oranges, man.

Exactly. basically lock down everybody and then you avoid having it spread, theoretically ending the spread. But that's rosy. 

And then if everybody is locked down, then you don't have workers at factories which upsets the supply chains of almost everything around the world. 

 

Or in this case, locally, since there are no customers but payments need to continue for buildings. My guess is that a lot of BK's would be spared in the sense that there's no upside for the banks to completely cut off credit if the business was well performing outside of this unforseen issue out of their control. But who knows. 

Should lead to an interesting 3-12 months in the future. 

[lane]

15 minutes ago, BrianAnderson said:

Exactly. basically lock down everybody and then you avoid having it spread, theoretically ending the spread. But that's rosy. 

And then if everybody is locked down, then you don't have workers at factories which upsets the supply chains of almost everything around the world. 

 

Or in this case, locally, since there are no customers but payments need to continue for buildings. My guess is that a lot of BK's would be spared in the sense that there's no upside for the banks to completely cut off credit if the business was well performing outside of this unforseen issue out of their control. But who knows. 

Should lead to an interesting 3-12 months in the future. 

The strange thing with contagious diseases like this is that high, rapid lethality often helps stop the outbreak. Why is Ebola, for the most part, limited to isolated areas in Africa? Because it kills 25-90% of its victims and does so in a couple of days. No time to spread.

But I read an Atlantic article earlier today about how we will all likely get COVID. Not joking- the piece is titled "You're Likely to Get the Coronavirus." Somebody in the article posits that 40-70% of humanity will get the disease at some point. Now, for some of us, it will be mild; maybe even asymptomatic. Of course, combining that suggestion with the fatality rates in my previous post, it means somewhere between 30-150 million people will die.*

Yeah, so, uh...get ready?

*I would caveat this by saying that most of these people will probably be in Asia, and that this number is probably high because I would assume that mortality would decrease over time. But what do I know. Probably won't book my desired vacay to Hong Kong anytime soon, anyhow.

[Balta1701]

1 hour ago, BrianAnderson said:

Exactly. basically lock down everybody and then you avoid having it spread, theoretically ending the spread. But that's rosy. 

And then if everybody is locked down, then you don't have workers at factories which upsets the supply chains of almost everything around the world. 

 

Or in this case, locally, since there are no customers but payments need to continue for buildings. My guess is that a lot of BK's would be spared in the sense that there's no upside for the banks to completely cut off credit if the business was well performing outside of this unforseen issue out of their control. But who knows. 

Should lead to an interesting 3-12 months in the future. 

 

3 hours ago, lane said:

Flu kills about 0.1% of all people it infects. COVID19 is killing 1-3% of its victims. So it's about ten to thirty times deadlier. Apples to oranges, man.

I'm not sure I believe the 1-3% number, because it's a lot easier to underreport sick people than dead people. But one other important factor is hospitalization. The rate of severely sick people, needing medical treatment, is something like 20% on the reported cases, which might mean it's like 5-10% of the full number who do get sick. If you're getting a few dozen extra people visiting your hospital because of flu season that's one thing...but what happens when 1000 people show up at your local hospital and each need 7 days of treatment? 

If all the precautions do is slow down the infection rate, it makes it more manageable. 

[caulfield12]

On 2/26/2020 at 4:15 AM, BrianAnderson said:

I like the follow up on Lobster.

But seriously thanks for the updates. Certainly very interesting and weird times. Keep us up to date!

 

My questions - and certainly feel free to not answer --- so... everybody is just inside their apartments/houses? Like ... nobody walking around- ghost town? Like what does a normal day look like now? Are people working from home still where possible? But then places like factories are just shuttered? I just find it hard to wrap my head around of what a city like Chicago would look like in this situation, let alone a bigger city that has a ton of (presumably) manufacturing jobs. 

 

So essentially it's like a movie in a sense -- people made giant food runs to load up on rice and staples and just sit inside all day? Sounds wild (in a bad way).

Most of the major Chinese cities are getting back to work this week, but Shanghai also has the appearance of a ghost town as well...something like 18 million live there, as opposed to 11 million in Wuhan.

One of the biggest issues has been loosening the travel restrictions so that the migrant/factory workers could return to their jobs after Chinese New Year.

The most dangerous aspect of this whole thing is that it travels 10-20x faster than SARS/MERS...you can pass it without having any symptoms, it can remain in the body for 14-23 days and now even the “recovered” are not allowed to return home for fear they may still infect others or are susceptible to getting sick again.

Whether we end up at 2% or 3% or 4%, the worry is these countries around the world....mostly in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa...simply don't have the existing medical infrastructure in place to control outbreaks from becoming new Wuhans.

 

We are looking at going back to work as early as March 10th, which is almost 7 weeks since the shutdown of the city.

That said, Hong Kong has already pushed back their school restart to April 19th, and they have roughly 50 cases compared to the hundred thousand here in Hubei.

[greg775]

4 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

Most of the major Chinese cities are getting back to work this week, but Shanghai also has the appearance of a ghost town as well...something like 18 million live there, as opposed to 11 million in Wuhan.

One of the biggest issues has been loosening the travel restrictions so that the migrant/factory workers could return to their jobs after Chinese New Year.

The most dangerous aspect of this whole thing is that it travels 10-20x faster than SARS/MERS...you can pass it without having any symptoms, it can remain in the body for 14-23 days and now even the “recovered” are not allowed to return home for fear they may still infect others or are susceptible to getting sick again.

Whether we end up at 2% or 3% or 4%, the worry is these countries around the world....mostly in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa...simply don't have the existing medical infrastructure in place to control outbreaks from becoming new Wuhans.

 

We are looking at going back to work as early as March 10th, which is almost 7 weeks since the shutdown of the city.

That said, Hong Kong has already pushed back their school restart to April 19th, and they have roughly 50 cases compared to the hundred thousand here in Hubei.

Hang in there, Caulfield. You have friends in Internet land praying for u and your and/or sending u best wishes. Are u running out of $$? Take care sir.

[mqr]

There are much more important things to worry about, but since it's relevant to the board I'll say I get the feeling we're going to lose a large chunk of the baseball season. 

[caulfield12]

16 hours ago, greg775 said:

Hang in there, Caulfield. You have friends in Internet land praying for u and your and/or sending u best wishes. Are u running out of $$? Take care sir.

Fortunately, that’s the least of my worries...even if I did have the ability to go outside, cash transactions are virtually non-existent, except for tipping delivery drivers.  And they’re destroying most of the currency in Hubei Province because of virus prevention/fear.

[greg775]

7 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

Fortunately, that’s the least of my worries...even if I did have the ability to go outside, cash transactions are virtually non-existent, except for tipping delivery drivers.  And they’re destroying most of the currency in Hubei Province because of virus prevention/fear.

damn. caulfield you should contact CNN and/or NY Times about writing a daily diary/video diary for them. Make some money.

[ron883]

1 hour ago, greg775 said:

damn. caulfield you should contact CNN and/or NY Times about writing a daily diary/video diary for them. Make some money.

???

[raBBit]

5 hours ago, greg775 said:

damn. caulfield you should contact CNN and/or NY Times about writing a daily diary/video diary for them. Make some money.

There was a journalist doing that and he's now uh, not doing it anymore.

In all seriousness though, prayers to you and you family Caulfield. I can't even imagine what you all are going through.

[caulfield12]

7 hours ago, raBBit said:

There was a journalist doing that and he's now uh, not doing it anymore.

In all seriousness though, prayers to you and you family Caulfield. I can't even imagine what you all are going through.

Thanks.  Everyone seems to know someone who knows someone who died in a city of eleven million. Kind of puts everything in perspective, except the only trustworthy connection we have to reality is social media, and there’s no sense of loss or mourning (yet) because there aren't even funerals allowed for the dead...and the “recovered” are not even allowed a comforting return to loved ones.  In fact, quite the opposite, as portrayed below quite accurately (the stadium pictured at Hongshan is roughly 1 km from where we live, along with the home of the whistleblower doctor, Dr. Li Wenliang.)

https://www.wqad.com/article/news/nation-world/heathy-residents-in-wuhan-coronavirus-quarantine/526-bfa780f1-f333-41fb-ab71-99ae90ece347
 

Ironically, this was posted by one of my hometown’s news channels.  As the story has moved on from China, this captures the surreal nature of things this week as well as any.   
 

Edited February 28, 2020 by caulfield12

[caulfield12]

They just discovered the second community transmission in California. 
 

The CDC had two months to prepare, and they’re still having problems with the kits.   There’s only something like 15 hospitals/medical centers around the country prepared to deal with this.

How is it that South Korea can run 100,000 tests in a manner of 2-3 weeks and we can barely handle 500?

We weren’t fully prepared for the cases coming from here in Wuhan or from the Diamond Princess...health care workers don’t have the necessary equipment and training.

Japan and the US might have botched this up just as much as the Chinese government...when all is said and done.  The rest of the world has another major problem, which is that democratic nations won’t easily acquiesce to forced quarantines of hundreds of thousands (northern Italy, Japan, South Korea) and eventually millions or tens of millions.

As argued before, once it penetrates the poorer countries of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin/Central America, it’s way too late and will decimate vulnerable populations.  Perhaps this is the Earth’s way of fighting back to restore balance.  Perhaps it’s also governmental and human competence combining to form a perfect storm or Black Swan or whatever you want to call it.

By the end of all this, it’s not inconceivable that the very idea of globalization and free trade/travel will be called into question.

[ron883]

2 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

They just discovered the second community transmission in California. 
 

The CDC had two months to prepare, and they’re still having problems with the kits.   There’s only something like 15 hospitals/medical centers around the country prepared to deal with this.

How is it that South Korea can run 100,000 tests in a manner of 2-3 weeks and we can barely handle 500?

We weren’t fully prepared for the cases coming from here in Wuhan or from the Diamond Princess...health care workers don’t have the necessary equipment and training.

Japan and the US might have botched this up just as much as the Chinese government...when all is said and done.  The rest of the world has another major problem, which is that democratic nations won’t easily acquiesce to forced quarantines of hundreds of thousands (northern Italy, Japan, South Korea) and eventually millions or tens of millions.

As argued before, once it penetrates the poorer countries of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin/Central America, it’s way too late and will decimate vulnerable populations.  Perhaps this is the Earth’s way of fighting back to restore balance.  Perhaps it’s also governmental and human competence combining to form a perfect storm or Black Swan or whatever you want to call it.

By the end of all this, it’s not inconceivable that the very idea of globalization and free trade/travel will be called into question.

The president recently called the coronavirus "the next hoax" at a rally.