No idea. The post about waiting for full peer review is a good one. I don't really do this kind of work anymore and don't have time (or computation really) to try to recreate their alignments, so I couldn't really tell you anymore than what the paper says.

I don't think the suggestion would be to not try and control behavior. It's still pretty bad.

lead said:

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Nuclear Scramjet said:

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90% capacity in the ICU already? That's going to be a problem.

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. Those numbers are per capita - either UK is leaving people to die waiting on beds or the US hospital system is ridiculously bloated. OR maybe those numbers are bogus/unstudied and it's a story written to capitalize on covid hype.

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You can click on some of the embedded links to get to the underlying data. There is support for the small number of ICU beds in the UK relative to the US and Germany.

I'm going to guess that the number of respirators is roughly going to track the number of ICU beds, so that's likely to be the real limitation on their ability to deal with the seemingly inevitable rise in infection rates.


The reality of the NHS has never met the marketing hype because the English have an Emperor's New Clothes thing going on with NHS.

KorbinDallas said:

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Here is the background on India's jump in cases:

Quote:

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It is feared hundreds of Indians could contract the deadly coronavirus, known as Covid-19, after coming into contact with an infected Italian tour group, Joe Wallen has reported.

16 members of the group and their Indian driver tested positive for coronavirus today as India recorded its biggest jump in cases, surging to 30 from just six on Monday.

Local media reported the tour visited six states after arriving on February 21, including Rajasthan, with the Indian Government scrambling to establish their exact route.

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Italy is going to be worse than China at this rate in terms of spreading the disease.

Only Iran might eventually be worse.

but that would be the reaction naturally, if one type is more prone to outbreak and mass death then the mitigation actions will ramp up in response to the proliferation of that type, whereas the less deadly type will spread slower, milder, and farther

since containment is no longer feasible

Rapier108 said:

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Italy is going to be worse than China at this rate in terms of spreading the disease.

Only Iran might eventually be worse.

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Well Italy has a ton more interaction with the outside world but it seems like Iran is going to be completely over run with the disease. They are both in the running at this point.

And it seems like Iran has backed off on the idea of sending 300,000 teams of soldiers to test everybody door to door as some people made the obvious claim that a plan like that would just ensure that every house was exposed.

Does anyone wonder why Iran of all places is experiencing so many Covid 19 infections and why government officials are infected? Iranians don't have the same dietary regime as Chinese and their contacts with Chinese are pretty much limited to officials since Iran is not a great tourist destination for China. Heretofore any suggestions that Covid 19 originated in the Wuhan Bioweapons facility were discounted. Yet China and Iran have cooperated on weapons development so I would not be surprised if the Iranian outbreak is the result of faulty biological hazards protocols as Iran seeks to develop its own bio weapons.

UTExan said:

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Does anyone wonder why Iran of all places is experiencing so many Covid 19 infections and why government officials are infected? Iranians don't have the same dietary regime as Chinese and their contacts with Chinese are pretty much limited to officials since Iran is not a great tourist destination for China. Heretofore any suggestions that Covid 19 originated in the Wuhan Bioweapons facility were discounted. Yet China and Iran have cooperated on weapons development so I would not be surprised if the Iranian outbreak is the result of faulty biological hazards protocols as Iran seeks to develop its own bio weapons.

---

This does a good job explaining what happened:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/iran-cannot-handle-coronavirus/607150/

cone said:

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but that would be the reaction naturally, if one type is more prone to outbreak and mass death then the mitigation actions will ramp up in response to the proliferation of that type, whereas the less deadly type will spread slower, milder, and farther

since containment is no longer feasible

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But how would anyone know? I guess they can develop a test to determine which type you have, and test when you show up at the hospital, and adjust treatment accordingly.


Side note, people are starting to self-quarantine on their own, based on things here in the DFW area. Traffic has been much lighter since Monday, some colleagues who traveled this week for work said both the DFW and San Antonio airports were ghost towns, and that they saw light traffic in SA as well.

Yes, people are still out, but those who are aware and treating this as a somethingburger are taking steps to reduce exposure and interpersonal contact.

Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess

Very interesting that the Iranian leadership acquired it so quickly...upper level leadership too.

OverSeas AG said:

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The Chinese help Iran extensively on all sorts of "technical" projects. There is a lot going of cross pollination. My guess is that it is not only impacting the leadership, but that is what we are hearing about.

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The Iranians just released 54,000 prisoners. If this weren't serious, why would they do that?

UTExan said:

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OverSeas AG said:

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The Chinese help Iran extensively on all sorts of "technical" projects. There is a lot going of cross pollination. My guess is that it is not only impacting the leadership, but that is what we are hearing about.

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The Iranians just released 54,000 prisoners. If this weren't serious, why would they do that?

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Because that many people in crowded, probably not sanitary conditions is a recipe to overload a system. Then you infect all the guards and then the most dangerous people get loose and cause real havoc. Uptick in crime from these folks? Prolly. Do it to triage versus worse consequences? Yeah I can see that calculation. Don't like it, but I could see it.

VaultingChemist said:

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Quote:

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Once we have dozens of cases around the country then yes, we should let it go.

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Do you still believe this?

Is it time to let it go?

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Yes, do you disagree? Its already out there being spread by unknowing carriers.

AG 2000' said:

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cone said:

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but that would be the reaction naturally, if one type is more prone to outbreak and mass death then the mitigation actions will ramp up in response to the proliferation of that type, whereas the less deadly type will spread slower, milder, and farther

since containment is no longer feasible

---

But how would anyone know? I guess they can develop a test to determine which type you have, and test when you show up at the hospital, and adjust treatment accordingly.


Side note, people are starting to self-quarantine on their own, based on things here in the DFW area. Traffic has been much lighter since Monday, some colleagues who traveled this week for work said both the DFW and San Antonio airports were ghost towns, and that they saw light traffic in SA as well.

Yes, people are still out, but those who are aware and treating this as a somethingburger are taking steps to reduce exposure and interpersonal contact.

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The article doesn't say anything about lethality if strains. They simply identified two strains in the population, based on a statistical technique called Linkage Disequilibrium, and noted that there is a higher prevalence of the L-type in earlier samples closer to Wuhan, than in later samples elsewhere. That is then used to infer that the severe actions taken by China may have placed a negative pressure on the L-type but not so much the S-type.

Suggestion of lethality or transmissibility based on this is just hypothesized based on patterns in population statistics. There's nothing mechanistic in this paper. The L-type and S-type are based on presumptive markers that need to be further evaluated in other genetic comparisons.

Only thing actionable I'd take from it is that, if there is relationship to transmissibility and lethality between these markers, swift and severe action may be the best way to put pressure on stamping out the L-type. You won't know how long that needs to go without a lot more testing.

PJYoung said:

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UTExan said:

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Does anyone wonder why Iran of all places is experiencing so many Covid 19 infections and why government officials are infected? Iranians don't have the same dietary regime as Chinese and their contacts with Chinese are pretty much limited to officials since Iran is not a great tourist destination for China. Heretofore any suggestions that Covid 19 originated in the Wuhan Bioweapons facility were discounted. Yet China and Iran have cooperated on weapons development so I would not be surprised if the Iranian outbreak is the result of faulty biological hazards protocols as Iran seeks to develop its own bio weapons.

---

This does a good job explaining what happened:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/iran-cannot-handle-coronavirus/607150/

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Quote:

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Picture the following sacred but unhygienic scene: Pilgrims from a dozen countries converge on one small city. They stay in cramped hotels, using communal toilets and eating meals together. For their main ritual, they converge on the tomb of a woman, the sister of a holy man, and as they get closer, they feel with rising intensity grief over her death and the deaths of her kin. The grief is a commandment: Each tear, according to one tradition, will be transformed in the afterlife into a pearl, and an angel will compensate them for their tears with a bucket of pearls that will be signs of their devotion when they arrive at the gate of paradise. But for now the bodily fluids are flowing, wiped away occasionally by bare hands, and the crowd is getting denser. A metal cage surrounds the tomb itself, and when the weeping pilgrims reach it, they interlace their fingers with its bars, and many press their face against it, fogging up the shiny metal with their breath. Some linger for minutes, some for seconds. In a single day, many thousands pass through the same cramped spacebreathing the same air, touching the same surfaces, trading new and exotic diseases.

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Quote:

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It is difficult to overstate what a disaster these numbers expressnot just for Iran, but for everyone. Qom is a seat of Shiite learning, the spiritual omphalos of Iran, and as a result, it draws the pious from all over the Shiite world. I profiled a Lebanese cleric in Paraguay for The Atlantic in 2009; his previous address had been in a seminary in Qom. On the streets of Qom, you hear Persian spoken in many accents, including Tajik and Afghan. In some restaurants, servers will address you in Arabic, and posters of Muhammad al-Sadr, a revered Iraqi ayatollah, look down at you as eat your kebab. Qom feels like a Shiite Disneyland, filled with religious attractions (with junk food for sale between stations), and that comparison might be the best way for Americans to understand the gravity of this outbreak. What if we found out that thousands of people at Disney World all had a highly contagious, sometimes fatal illnessand that vacationers had been coming and going, returning to their home city, for weeks?

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A stock market driven solely by headlines....what could go wrong?

We have a major film festival starting tomorrow.

The town is already beginning to fill up and downtown will be packed starting tonight.

Hope none of them have recently been to Italy for a film premier.

I have tickets to several shows. The mom of one of my really good friends in town brought me a box of masks because she can't have my boy getting sick if I insist on taking him to some of these movies. I might wear it the first night just to gauge the reaction. I guess I pull it down to drink my chia wheatgrass smoothies?

Some people have said that COVID-19 will go away once the weather warms up.

Wouldn't the virus be more likely to survive longer in environments that are more similar to the human body? 98 degrees and humid?

Beat the Hell said:

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VaultingChemist said:

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Quote:

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Once we have dozens of cases around the country then yes, we should let it go.

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Do you still believe this?

Is it time to let it go?

---

Yes, do you disagree? Its already out there being spread by unknowing carriers.

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I definitely do not agree. You have to try to contain it. Trace all contacts. Quarantines. School closures. Public service announcements. Any and all NPIs.

You have to slow it down or else the deaths will rise exponentially as your hospitals are swamped.

I have always heard that viruses spread more easily in cool, dry climates. When spring hits & the humidity spikes, droplets hit the ground sooner.

Mr.Infectious said:

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A stock market driven solely by headlines....what could go wrong?

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If you think the headlines are what boosted it as opposed to all the vote yesterday and Bloomberg dropping out, you aren't thinking hard enough or else are too focused on this virus

plus the impact of increased UV as a disinfectant

and people more naturally distance themselves outdoors

I wouldn't count on it but there's a chance it helps

cone said:

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plus the impact of increased UV as a disinfectant

and people more naturally distance themselves outdoors

I wouldn't count on it but there's a chance it helps

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I saw a tweet that stated that temperatures as low as 80 degrees will kill it on most surfaces. I found no verification for it, though.

Any thoughts on that article that 'TinFoil' posted -- about the neuroinvasive potential?

If I'm understanding it correctly, it was saying that the virus can invade the brainstem and disrupt the cardiorespiratory center, possibly explaining respiratory failure in the infected who died.

"Now I don't know what any of that means, but it sounds pretty bad" - Lt. Daniel Kaffee

UncoverAg00 said:

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Any thoughts on that article that 'TinFoil' posted -- about the neuroinvasive potential?

If I'm understanding it correctly, it was saying that the virus can invade the brainstem and disrupt the cardiorespiratory center, possibly explaining respiratory failure in the infected who died.

"Now I don't know what any of that means, but it sounds pretty bad" - Lt. Daniel Kaffee

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I have seen no formal reports of any neurological damage aside from multi-organ failure due to ARDS. It would be extremely odd for a Coronavirus to cross the blood brain barrier.

Quote:

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A stock market driven solely by headlines....what could go wrong?

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What else do you think it should be driven by? CNBC is providing their opinion on the reason which may or may not be correct, but the market is just one giant opinion aggregator.

It's completely hypothesis/conjecture. States that infection of CNS is known for previous SARS infections and that it may be occurring here and might explain some of the sudden respiratory distress. Discusses timing of what's been reported.

Just tying together what's already been reported to suggest possible route of action. It's a commentary with no new information presented.

JJMt said:

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I've been downloading the raw numbers every day from the Johns Hopkins GitHub site. The numbers from Europe are discouraging.

Worldwide, the number of infections have been increasing at a rapid exponential rate of around 20% daily since 2/20. The daily growth rate seems to be similar to that percentage in all of the European countries, not just Italy. Italy looks worse because the virus took root there earlier and, as a result, the total numbers are dramatically higher. But the UK, France, Spain and Germany are following Italy's lead. In Spain the growth rate is dramatically higher than Italy.

The last couple of days in the U.S. have also been bad with similar or even higher growth rates. It's dangerous to extrapolate from just two data points, but given what the data looks like in other countries, we'll probably start seeing daily growth rates of around 20% hereafter until the virus growth naturally tails off or we somehow figure out how to slow its growth.

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We are over 80 countries now.

PJYoung said:

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PJYoung said:

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UTExan said:

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Does anyone wonder why Iran of all places is experiencing so many Covid 19 infections and why government officials are infected? Iranians don't have the same dietary regime as Chinese and their contacts with Chinese are pretty much limited to officials since Iran is not a great tourist destination for China. Heretofore any suggestions that Covid 19 originated in the Wuhan Bioweapons facility were discounted. Yet China and Iran have cooperated on weapons development so I would not be surprised if the Iranian outbreak is the result of faulty biological hazards protocols as Iran seeks to develop its own bio weapons.

---

This does a good job explaining what happened:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/iran-cannot-handle-coronavirus/607150/

---

Quote:

---

Picture the following sacred but unhygienic scene: Pilgrims from a dozen countries converge on one small city. They stay in cramped hotels, using communal toilets and eating meals together. For their main ritual, they converge on the tomb of a woman, the sister of a holy man, and as they get closer, they feel with rising intensity grief over her death and the deaths of her kin. The grief is a commandment: Each tear, according to one tradition, will be transformed in the afterlife into a pearl, and an angel will compensate them for their tears with a bucket of pearls that will be signs of their devotion when they arrive at the gate of paradise. But for now the bodily fluids are flowing, wiped away occasionally by bare hands, and the crowd is getting denser. A metal cage surrounds the tomb itself, and when the weeping pilgrims reach it, they interlace their fingers with its bars, and many press their face against it, fogging up the shiny metal with their breath. Some linger for minutes, some for seconds. In a single day, many thousands pass through the same cramped spacebreathing the same air, touching the same surfaces, trading new and exotic diseases.

---

Quote:

---

It is difficult to overstate what a disaster these numbers expressnot just for Iran, but for everyone. Qom is a seat of Shiite learning, the spiritual omphalos of Iran, and as a result, it draws the pious from all over the Shiite world. I profiled a Lebanese cleric in Paraguay for The Atlantic in 2009; his previous address had been in a seminary in Qom. On the streets of Qom, you hear Persian spoken in many accents, including Tajik and Afghan. In some restaurants, servers will address you in Arabic, and posters of Muhammad al-Sadr, a revered Iraqi ayatollah, look down at you as eat your kebab. Qom feels like a Shiite Disneyland, filled with religious attractions (with junk food for sale between stations), and that comparison might be the best way for Americans to understand the gravity of this outbreak. What if we found out that thousands of people at Disney World all had a highly contagious, sometimes fatal illnessand that vacationers had been coming and going, returning to their home city, for weeks?

---

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But Covid 19 originated in China. The article explains conditions for the spread of the disease but what about its origins? One or several infected Chinese technicians? Not many Shii in China to travel to Iran.


Or does Iran have its own bioweapons research facility operated in coordination with Chinese efforts?

Quote:

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As with CW, the U.S. has suspected that Iran first developed a BW program during its war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988. In 1982, U.S. government officials began holding briefings claiming Iran had imported cultures from Europe and had begun working to make mycotoxins, simple biological agents, at different research facilities. Experts believed the BW program was controlled by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
A blatant indicator of the Iranian government's intention to develop BW is its recruitment of scientists who worked on the Soviet Union's germ-warfare program. Two of the scientists told the New York Times that Tehran outright asked them to assist Iran in producing BW.
During the 1980s and 1990s, reports continued to emerge of Iranian procurement of BW-suitable technology and materialsfungus strains from Canada and the Netherlands in 1989; of advanced BW technology from Switzerland and containment equipment and technology from Germany in 1993; dual-use technology from India and China in 1996; and so forth. Leading centers for biotech and medical researchand therefore likely candidates for BW research and developmentare the Louis Pasteur Institute, the National Research Center of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (NRCGEB), and the Razi Institute for Serum and Vaccines. The Nuclear Threat Initiative notes that the seemingly benign activities undertaken by those institutes have dual-use applications. "For example, the NRCGEB's expertise in recombinant DNA technologies, genetic engineering, and DNA vaccine production could conceivably be utilized to research methods for increasing the virulence or resistance of select pathogens, and equipment for mass-producing vaccines and antiserums at the Pasteur Institute could be utilized to mass-produce biological weapons as well."

https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/blog/irans-chemical-and-biological-weapons-programs-an-under-appreciated-threat

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The timing of the spread of Covid 19 in both China and Iran is strangely coincidental at the very least.

Quote:

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What else do you think it should be driven by?

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Hmmm.......maybe actual financial performance of the companies?

cisgenderedAggie said:

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UncoverAg00 said:

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First, that article doesn't even hint at what you're claiming. In fact, there are other articles already published that have looked into the sequencing of the virus and have concluded that this is highly probable of being a natural mutation. Stop spreading conjecture and false info.

Second, there is a part in the article you posted that was stunning...

Quote:

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In light of the high similarity between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV2, it is quite likely that the potential neuroinvason of SARS-CoV-2 plays an important role in the acute respiratory failure of COVID-19 patients. According to the complaints of a survivor, the medical graduate student (24 years old) from Wuhan University, she must stay awake and breathe consciously and actively during the intensive care. She said that if she fell asleep, she might die because she had lost her natural breath.

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That's ****ing terrifying.

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Reposting the link since it seems it was taken out with the trash.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jmv.25728

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Wow. Terrifying for sure.

Don't read too much into it.

Mr.Infectious said:

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Quote:

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What else do you think it should be driven by?

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Hmmm.......maybe actual financial performance of the companies?

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Keep the crazy talk to the virus please