The senate trial of the Trump Impeachment went from Jan 16, 2020 to acquittal on Feb 5, 2020. That occupied the entire senate and many members of the house during a critical time in the coronavirus timeline and slowed the US response. And for what? But thankfully the person on trial acted in record time to close the entry of people and securing the border which just about every nation has done the past couple weeks>
Stop with the Politics! Commenting on Fox news is Political. Considering the facts, I think our lawmakers and Fox News have been focused and measured. It is the shock and awe that effects our markets. It hurts us ALL. This virus will wane and we will all get back to our lives. When you act irresponsibly or over react is when we have issues. Please act like an adult and focus on what you can do to help. If that means stay home then stay home, that is the option I am choosing. Sorry for the Rant.
UH Football will return and our Cougars will play on Saturday. Cant Wait
P5, respectfully here are some counter points. 1st no one can say for sure what the death rate is because no one knows how many people have it. So modeling how many people will die is just a guess. The potential lung damage you refer to can also happen with pneumonia. Italy’s population is much older than the U.S.
Again I know what I am saying is unpopular and has many detractors. But we have taken a HUGE step into the unknown. A HUGE step.
I mean… ok? There are guesses then there are educated guesses. Thankfully we have statisticians that understand the science and can model a general range of impact. And there are a lot of models out there so I’m not saying that one is more correct or that any one in particular can’t be wrong. I’m saying that even the most optimistic models show hundreds of thousands dead on the lower end of the range if we were to do everything right and things go our way. That said, we’re not doing everything right and things don’t seem to be going our way.
The mortality rate is based on number of people diagnosed. This is also true of flu mortality rate. The CDC estimate of 8% of the population getting the flu, is probably lower than the actual number.
The Italian population is older, but the mortality rate is based on global infection and mortality numbers
A lot of things can cause fibrosis. There is even a disease call Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) where fibrosis happens for no apparent reason. However pneumonia caused fibrosis and IPF incidence rates are very low, ever lower than that for the flu.
The fibrosis rate linked to Covid19 is likely to be a lot higher than fibrosis from other causes.
Suppose the US mortality rate is 1/3 that of the global average. That still means nearly 450,000 dead in a very short period of time. How is that better? The real number to worry about is not the mortality rate, its the infection rate. In the next 2-3 weeks we will see how that number is changing.
BTW, in the UK as of today, the 3,270 cases have been confirmed with 144 deaths, giving a mortality rate of 4.4%. Between Mar 1 and today, the number of confirmed cases has grown from nearly 0 to 3,270. In the last 24 hours 643 cases have been confirmed.
France has a slightly lower mortality rate of 3.7%. So far, Germany has the lowest mortality rate in Europe, because of a whole series of steps they implemented from the very beginning. However even the German minister of health admits that their low mortality rate is likely to rise in the coming days.
Currently, the US infection numbers are artificially depressed because of lack of testing. Ohio has estimated that their cases are closer to 100,000 even though only a couple of thousand have been tested. Keep an eye on infection growth rates. That will tell you everything you need to about how serious (or not) the situation is.
8% of the US population getting it over 6 months is hardly cause for for concern. 8% of the population getting it in a matter of 2 weeks, will likely put severe strain on the healthcare system, particularly in the poorer southern states. Florida because of their elderly population could even match Italy. The next 2 weeks will reveal all.
The question is can we afford to ignore the Italian, Chinese, Iranian experience and go about business as usual? The UK govt tried that for a while (against advice from infectious disease experts), the next 2 weeks will tell if the UK govt was smartest of the lot.
What is amazing is what happened with H1N1 and the numbers …
To calculate the burden of 2009 pandemic influenza A (pH1N1) in the United States, we extrapolated from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infections Program laboratory-confirmed hospitalizations across the entire United States, and then corrected for underreporting. From 12 April 2009 to 10 April 2010, we estimate that approximately 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (8868-18,306) occurred in the United States due to pH1N1. Eighty-seven percent of deaths occurred in those under 65 years of age with children and working adults having risks of hospitalization and death 4 to 7 times and 8 to 12 times greater, respectively, than estimates of impact due to seasonal influenza covering the years 1976-2001. In our study, adults 65 years of age or older were found to have rates of hospitalization and death that were up to 75% and 81%, respectively, lower than seasonal influenza. These results confirm the necessity of a concerted public health response to pH1N1.
But NOTHING was ever done. ZERO border closings, zero shutdown of sports, no job closings, zero self quaranties.
looking at those numbers… WHY? andwith H1N1 it was believed that the USA was the hardest hit. Yet the media and government did and said nothing. Again WHY?
P5 that is the 80.27 trillion dollar (global economy size) question, can we afford it. If this causes a 1930’s level depression, the number of people dying of this virus will seem like a drop in the bucket. Look at infant mortality rates during the great depression.
There are no easy answers. But if you are asking me I would have kept the economy going with people less at risk of dying from the virus.
Its like being at war. There are hard decisions to make and no answers without pain and loss of life. I understand people disagreeing with me, I do,
Actually the UK, Canada, and US provide a very good test case your hypothesis. Both countries have been slow to adopt quarantine and social distancing. UK even more so than the US. Canada is kinda in-between in adopting social distancing, but ahead in testing.
We wont have to wait long to see results in all 3 countries and examine how they compare to other countries where more drastic measures were implemented much earlier. 2-3 weeks will be enough to establish which approach was the right one. UK/Canada/US or the rest of the world.
In one respect we are lucky that a lot of people now have the option to work remotely, so that has the effect of keeping things going to some extent, while at the same time reducing risk of infection spread. Unfortunately for most workers in the supply chain, working from home is not an option.
P5 my biggest fear is that it took 3 years for the economy to shrink by a 1/3 in the 1930’s. We will see that in 4-5 months. The speed of this is terrifying and quite frankly no one knows what happens when we reopen.
This is unprecedented. What history has proven however is bad caca happens when economies fail. Bad people emerge. This time they will have nukes.
68M were infected with 12K deaths. That’s why we didn’t take extreme measures. That mortality rate is far below the normal flu. If that’s what we were dealing with, I’d be right there with people pushing back on these measures.
To compare, if 68M got this one, 1-3M people would die based on current mortality rates.
There is a risk either way. If you do nothing and the worst happens, you wont have an economy to worry about. Society itself could collapse. The line taken by most countries is that its better to do something, take the economic hit and its implied risks and hope that we can ride it out without too much damage. There really is no right answer.
If the Chinese experience is anything to go buy, things should take 6-8 weeks to settle. But then they implemented really strong quarantine measures that only a totalitarian govt can do. The only real hope is vaccine, which is at least 12 months away. And already there is fighting among countries about rights of who owns vaccines.
Frankly if a vaccine is developed all nations should pool resources to compensate the inventor decently, and the manufactures a reasonable profit (certainly nowhere near the 20% they typically earn), and distribute the vaccine for free all over the world. My greatest fear is that vaccine itself will be turned into a weapon for strong nations to bludgeon weaker ones. Every nation (rich and poor) should contribute to the vaccine fund, with contribution proportion in line with the size of per capita annual income.
What happens if China develops the vaccine first? They already have a 2 month head start. No moral scruples about how and who its tested on.
Correction: Removed the bit about the US govt wanting to buy exclusive rights to the german vaccine. That has been debunked. My apologies for not knowing this sooner.
From what I’ve read, H1N1 was different in key ways:
About 30% of the population was already immune due to the previous exposure of H1N1 decades prior. That helped reduce the rate of infection and spread.
We had a stockpile of H1N1 vaccinations that were used for high risk people who were not immune. We also could go straight into production of the vaccine. No trials or testing for safety/clearance needed.
H1N1 is a subtype of the regular Influenza A virus and it wasn’t novel so testing was readily available which allowed epidemiologists to track and isolate it with focused and narrow preventive measures.
Since we had a better handle on the virus from the jump, we were able to slow the rate of infection and flatten the curve while we waited for the additional vaccinations to be ready.
And as said above, the fatality rate was 0.02%. So at best, it was 50 times less fatal than COVID-19.
Eighty-seven percent of deaths occurred in those under 65 years of age with children and working adults having risks of hospitalization and death 4 to 7 times and 8 to 12 times greater, respectively, than estimates of impact due to seasonal influenza covering the years 1976-2001. In our study, adults 65 years of age or older were found to have rates of hospitalization and death that were up to 75% and 81%,
SO it is saying people under 65 have a 8 - 12 times greater chance of death than the flu for H1N1 but no panic or shutdown.