Bobcat06 said:

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This is a fast developing situation with a lot of unknowns, so we're relying on a lot of anecdotal evidence and first hand account. Everyone should be skeptical of everything that it posted, but all of it is still worth considering external information regardless how fringe it may be (bioweapon, HIV strands, etc). That information needs to be examined and analyzed to determine how legitimate it is so that we can make the best decision in how to prepare for this thing.

Rapier doesn't post external information. All he does is insult people who do. He brings nothing to this thread.

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All of that is fine. The anecdotal evidence, the first hand accounts, all of it. I do not think fringe external information such as a bioweapon based on a book is worth considering. That conspiracy. If there is reasonable evidence of a bioweapon, that is worth considering.

I am very thankful for the information being posted here, mainly the counts of new confirmed cases and what countries they are in. That is super useful information for decision making. The CDC, WHO, and other organization updates are very useful as well.

However, there is a considerable amount of things that get posted from external sources go without being examined and analyzed initially. We do need people to oppose that and challenge so we have a chance at weeding out bad info.

I agree the insulting people isn't cool. I think those who post external information should be prepared to be challenged to an extent.

I'll play counter to this. Is there any reason to exclude the cruise ship from global numbers? If we exclude them as an anomaly, why not exclude a possible outbreak in Africa as not indicative of the rest of the world? We're not trying to arrive at some certain model of how it will propagate in a given set of circumstances (i.e., US urban environment). We're looking at what has happened.

We should observe what happened in one special environment on the globe (cruise ship under lockdown) as well as another (China). There are many other special environments that may impact the rest of world number (3rd world, prisons, etc).

PJYoung said:

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VaultingChemist said:

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UncoverAg00 said:

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VaultingChemist said:

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I thought that it should slow down once the weather starts getting warmer... so wouldn't the rate slow down here in the next month or 2?

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You would hope it would, but we don't really know. Singapore seems to have their outbreak under control, so that is really encouraging.

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Yep I am surprised by the Hong Kong and Singapore #s. Great news so far.

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k2aggie07 said:

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I'll play counter to this. Is there any reason to exclude the cruise ship from global numbers? If we exclude them as an anomaly, why not exclude a possible outbreak in Africa as not indicative of the rest of the world? We're not trying to arrive at some certain model of how it will propagate in a given set of circumstances (i.e., US urban environment). We're looking at what has happened.

We should observe what happened in one special environment on the globe (cruise ship under lockdown) as well as another (China). There are many other special environments that may impact the rest of world number (3rd world, prisons, etc).

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I'm excluding them because it's 634 cases or whatever versus the rest of the world (outside of China) that is just over 700. I don't see how a cruise ship relates to the rest of the world at this extremely early stage.

JJMt said:

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On the whole thing about the virus not liking warm weather, we're not at all sure that's true. That bromide comes from the fact that the numbers for other viruses, like the colds and flu, tend to rapidly diminish as the weather warms. But it's my understanding that no one knows why that happens; no one's shown that the warmth actually has a detrimental effect on the virus itself. It could be mere correlation.

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Singapore's your canary in the coal mine regarding impact of temps on this. It's nice and balmy over there with highs in the 80s to 90s.

PJYoung said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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I'll play counter to this. Is there any reason to exclude the cruise ship from global numbers? If we exclude them as an anomaly, why not exclude a possible outbreak in Africa as not indicative of the rest of the world? We're not trying to arrive at some certain model of how it will propagate in a given set of circumstances (i.e., US urban environment). We're looking at what has happened.

We should observe what happened in one special environment on the globe (cruise ship under lockdown) as well as another (China). There are many other special environments that may impact the rest of world number (3rd world, prisons, etc).

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I'm excluding them because it's 634 cases or whatever versus the rest of the world (outside of China) that is just over 700. I don't see how a cruise ship relates to the rest of the world at this extremely early stage.

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It's probably pretty relatable to population density throughout most major European and Asian cities, as well as a few places here in the U.S.

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I don't believe that. It's simply not true, especially if you don't include the numbers from the cruise ship.

Excluding the cruise ship, on 2/1 there were 164 cases worldwide. As of midnight on 2/19, there were 474. That's not a tenfold increase.

This virus is bad enough; there's no reason to exaggerate or simply lie.

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Day 19....100 cases
Day 39.....1000 cases
and yes that is still two days away, but if you believe that the numbers are going to decline, especially in light of all the Iran outbreaks, I guess we will just have to disagree.

Maybe if we all, this forum community, agreed to the salient points - we could have a constructive discourse....

there is an accurate flu / strep test... there is not a reliable nCoV19 test.

the nCoV has been in the wild since december, public since January, and is spreading world wide via air travel

China has publicly acknowledged there are extreme measures in place to contain the point of origin

It's like Lego's, feel free to build on...

AG 2000' said:

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JJMt said:

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On the whole thing about the virus not liking warm weather, we're not at all sure that's true. That bromide comes from the fact that the numbers for other viruses, like the colds and flu, tend to rapidly diminish as the weather warms. But it's my understanding that no one knows why that happens; no one's shown that the warmth actually has a detrimental effect on the virus itself. It could be mere correlation.

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Singapore's your canary in the coal mine regarding impact of temps on this. It's nice and balmy over there with highs in the 80s to 90s.

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So is Thailand and The Philippines. Hence, it's reasonable to assume this virus can't thrive in warmer weather.

Once pretty much everyone in China has had it and most survive and recover they will resume more or less normal production. This thing will definitely cause a global economic slowdown as it messes up production and causes supply chain chaos for a year or so.

IrishTxAggie said:

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AG 2000' said:

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JJMt said:

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On the whole thing about the virus not liking warm weather, we're not at all sure that's true. That bromide comes from the fact that the numbers for other viruses, like the colds and flu, tend to rapidly diminish as the weather warms. But it's my understanding that no one knows why that happens; no one's shown that the warmth actually has a detrimental effect on the virus itself. It could be mere correlation.

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Singapore's your canary in the coal mine regarding impact of temps on this. It's nice and balmy over there with highs in the 80s to 90s.

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So is Thailand and The Philippines. Hence, it's reasonable to assume this virus can't thrive in warmer weather.

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The health care system in both of those countries is nothing like Singapore's, you can't really trust numbers out of either of those places.

I've been focused on Japan, Singapore, and South Korea.

Singapore details (and their transparency) are promising.

Japan's kind of a WTF but you have to balance their culture against the situation.

South Korea has great medical facilities and a good HC system, but their personal hygiene practices and what they eat over there are a mess.

Dont forget cases in Zimbabwe. Much warmer than Iran.

JJMt said:

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You're also cherry-picking your dates. The growth of the virus has accelerated in the last few days. If it continues growing at that rate, you may turn out to be correct. However, if you pick an earlier time period, the virus clearly wasn't growing at anything like 10x/20 days.

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Exponential growth rate math isn't hard.

JJMt said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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I'll play counter to this. Is there any reason to exclude the cruise ship from global numbers? If we exclude them as an anomaly, why not exclude a possible outbreak in Africa as not indicative of the rest of the world? We're not trying to arrive at some certain model of how it will propagate in a given set of circumstances (i.e., US urban environment). We're looking at what has happened.

We should observe what happened in one special environment on the globe (cruise ship under lockdown) as well as another (China). There are many other special environments that may impact the rest of world number (3rd world, prisons, etc).

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I agree completely with that. What I don't agree with is including the cruise ship numbers in trying to extrapolate future world wide numbers. It may be a decent indicator of what the virus growth may look like in similar environments, possibly such as prisons, but it's a useless indicator in trying to guess or estimate what the virus growth might look like in the U.S. or other non-similar environments.

You are correct that we cannot ignore it. It's a fact like every other fact relevant to this crisis. But it is unique and an anomaly, and should be treated as such; we shouldn't simply lump it in with the rest of the world. We also treat China itself as an anomaly and don't trust their numbers, so we typically show numbers that show China and elsewhere as separate data points. Even the Johns Hopkins site creates a separate line item on its spreadsheets for the cruise ship, not including it in Japan's numbers, because its environment and controls are vastly different than what exists in the rest of Japan.

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How do you propose to handle the number of cases that are being unreported in Iran?

If there are 9 deaths, you would need to have about 450 cases minimum at a CFR of 2%. Or do you believe that the CFR is much higher? Or do you believe that those reports are inaccurate?

VaultingChemist said:

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rgag12 said:

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VaultingChemist said:

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If the Coronavirus wasn't new nobody would care

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If the flu was killing 1 million people, and causing 5 million to be hospitalized for two weeks, we would care a whole lot.

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It's not, you're being an alarmist.

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Of course the flu is not. You brought up the "what if" scenario.

But if 41 million are infected with the coronavirus, those are the resulting statistics, based on several epidemiology studies that were published recently.

If you don't believe in the science and the math, explain to me where it is incorrect.

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I like you said I was using an "if" scenario then followed it up with your own.

If a disease was killing a million people people would be concerned. The Coronavirus isn't killing a million people, not is it infecting 41 million people this late into flu season. Only in your wildest fantasies would it do that. Everything you are saying is nonsensical and impossible.

Are you climate scientist by any chance? This would make a whole lot more sense if you were.

Rapier108 said:

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The party member contact is saying that they are over 1 billion in some form of quarantine.

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The population of China is just under 1.4 billion.

Does not pass the smell test.

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Not sure why this is out of the realm of possibility, they were reported at about 700million 5 days ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/f4j895/10_of_the_worlds_population_is_now_under/

MouthBQ98 said:

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Once pretty much everyone in China has had it and most survive and recover they will resume more or less normal production. This thing will definitely cause a global economic slowdown as it messes up production and causes supply chain chaos for a year or so.

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You say normal production, but it may be new normal. This may be highly disruptive for them. Don't forget they are extremely leveraged, with a ton of bad debt and zombie loans, extremely inefficient real estate construction, and so on. They are an economic bubble, and this may be the needle.

JJMt said:

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You're also cherry-picking your dates. The growth of the virus has accelerated in the last few days. If it continues growing at that rate, you may turn out to be correct. However, if you pick an earlier time period, the virus clearly wasn't growing at anything like 10x/20 days.

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I picked the easiest dates and numbers for anyone to follow the logarithmic increase. I am not trying to exaggerate anything. I am not cherry-picking what cases to include or exclude either.

Yeah - I think it's actually important because it shows how contagious and dangerous this thing actually is. It's almost a kind of study in and of itself. If we trust that Japanese doctor's video, the cruise ship is an example of what the virus can do to a population who is ignorant of proper PPE - but who are actively trying to control it. You'd assume the folks on board are washing hands, avoiding contact, etc. at an increased rate from normal, and it still basically ran through it.

The Thai healthcare system is actually pretty good compared to a lot of the region. Thailand expat community is pretty massive which has kept their healthcare up to par.

You can throw out the cruise ship data just because you don't like the results. Data is data.....

It's not comforting knowing that this spreads very quickly in confined spaces but it's useful nonetheless. We can extrapolate it into similar settings such as nursing homes, prisons, navy ships, container ships, oil tankers, college dorms....

If you want to control the spread, changes in habits and sanitization will be needed OR these types of confined spaces will need to be completely quarantined.

Easy to do w prisons not so much with dorms....

Keep your eye on Burr... I'm wondering if he recently came into power somewhere.

Again, you missed the point. You stated...."If the Coronavirus wasn't new nobody would care".

I believe that statement to be incorrect. The newness or name does not affect whether people care. You could call a seasonal flu "Teddy Bear Flu", and if it was much deadlier than the swine flu, everyone would care.

Just for the record, I believe climate change is the biggest hoax in the history of science.

JJMt said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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Yeah - I think it's actually important because it shows how contagious and dangerous this thing actually is. It's almost a kind of study in and of itself. If we trust that Japanese doctor's video, the cruise ship is an example of what the virus can do to a population who is ignorant of proper PPE - but who are actively trying to control it. You'd assume the folks on board are washing hands, avoiding contact, etc. at an increased rate from normal, and it still basically ran through it.

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There was a post earlier in this thread about a doctor who snuck on to the cruise ship and was appalled at what he found. The crew were continuing to bunk and eat together with no PPE, there was no one on board giving advice or direction to the passengers, etc.

It does show how contagious and dangerous (or possibly non-dangerous - we have to see what the data is as the cruise ship cases mature), but it also shows how screwed up the Japanese handled the situation on the ship. It's a primer on what the worst practices would be if you're confronted with a contagious disease in a confined and closed environment.

I've purchased puts on Carnival because of the cruise ship; my guess is that it may be facing massive liability. Don't anyone follow my lead, though. Carnival's liability may be mitigated by the terms of its passenger tickets, international law, and insurance. So far, the market's shrugging off the risk like it is with almost everything else associated with the virus.

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People assume too much regarding the cruise ship. Japan wasn't really trying to help those on the ship. They were just trying to keep it from spreading off the ship onto their little patch of dirt in the Pacific.

VaultingChemist said:

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Just for the record, I believe climate change is the biggest hoax in the history of science.

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Eugenics for the win.

Let me know when climate change leads to the death of 6 Million people