Today is Japan's biggest one day gain yet.

Olympics not looking great

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

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The market cap of a company is theoretically the net present value of all future free cash flow. They're inherently forward looking. Financial performance is a lagging indicator.

Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess

UTExan said:

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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.

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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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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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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?

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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.

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https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-iran-became-a-new-epicenter-of-the-coronavirus-outbreak

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Initial reports indicate that the carrier of the virus may have been a merchant who travelled between Qom and Wuhan, in China, where covid-19 is believed to have originated. The outbreak is estimated to have begun between three and six weeks ago, which would mean that the two Iranians who died could have been sick and infecting others for weeks.

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They have also said this:

RE: Iran- a week or so ago I read something that the most likely source of the virus in Iran would be construction workers/labors returning to Iran from China following the lunar new year. Can't remember the source, will try to find and link it here, but that definitely makes more sense than collaboration on a biological weapon.

OverSeas AG said:

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As I said... there is a ton of commerce between the two countries. It only took Chinese in Iran to go home for Chinese New Year and then return to Iran after it was over to start spreading it.

I guarantee you that other countries that have a lot of commerce (and I mean interchanges of Chinese nationals) with China are also highly impacted, they are just not reporting it yet - for various reasons.

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And that makes sense. But then why haven't we seen the same infection rates in San Francisco's (original) Chinatown? Many people of Asian descent from the Bay area travel to China for the recent Chinese New Year's holiday season. And we are a far more mobile society which would facilitate the spread of the disease during the original scare at the end of Jan-early February.

Looks like there is an example to follow for the disease for even a densely populated area. Aggressive hygiene will slow and even stop the spread.

The other net benefit? All infectious disease diagnoses have plummeted in HK. Truly impressive result for the city state.

Would it not be smart for the US to just shut everything down, now, for 2-3 weeks (extended spring break for everyone) and take the economic loss. Then, come back in 3 weeks and know where we are really at?


...instead of blindly spreading it around now?

CDC and Emergency officials could test/identify people at home...and have a few weeks to catch up in testing/medical supplies/location preparation, etc.

I mean if this is all for the sake of the economy, we are going to get what we deserve...

what if world life expectancy goes up over the next five years because everyone gets super serious about washing their hands and not touching their face?

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Would it not be smart for the US to just shut everything down, now, for 2-3 weeks (extended spring break for everyone) and take the economic loss. Then, come back in 3 weeks and know where we are really at?

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nationwide quarantine of 100s of millions doesn't seem required to manage the disease

but large events should absolutely start getting cancelled. i anticipate once the spike of positive cases is realized after the testing rolls out en masse that will happen very quickly.

PJYoung said:

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UTExan said:

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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/

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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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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.

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https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-iran-became-a-new-epicenter-of-the-coronavirus-outbreak

Quote:

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Initial reports indicate that the carrier of the virus may have been a merchant who travelled between Qom and Wuhan, in China, where covid-19 is believed to have originated. The outbreak is estimated to have begun between three and six weeks ago, which would mean that the two Iranians who died could have been sick and infecting others for weeks.

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They have also said this:

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Thanks for the info. That is a great explainer for the outbreak. Edit tom say you can see the power dynamic in this meeting between the Chinese and Iranian foreign ministers:



https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/05/chinas-great-game-in-iran/

JJMt said:

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but large events should absolutely start getting cancelled. i anticipate once the spike of positive cases is realized after the testing rolls out en masse that will happen very quickly.

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College football?

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March Madness?

Nuclear Scramjet said:

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Looks like there is an example to follow for the disease for even a densely populated area. Aggressive hygiene will slow and even stop the spread.

The other net benefit? All infectious disease diagnoses have plummeted in HK. Truly impressive result for the city state.

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Hong Kong has an average high temperature of 70 degrees in March, along with high humidity.
That may or may not be a factor in the spread of the disease.

JJMt said:

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but large events should absolutely start getting cancelled. i anticipate once the spike of positive cases is realized after the testing rolls out en masse that will happen very quickly.

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College football?

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Just like with the Olympics, we're still pretty far out to just up and cancel either.

Went to Sam's last night, and the freakin' place was clean out of bottled water and toilet paper. Ridiculous how much people are panicking.

absolutely

March Madness

NHL

MLB

NBA Playoffs

sorry sports fans but this is the year without crowds at games

Stupid question, maybe. Regarding the L and S types; it's stated that 70% of cases were L-type and 30% S-type and that this suggests that L-type has a higher transmission rate. My question is whether or not the disparity mean that L-type is 2x more contagious or not necessarily (too many other factors involved)?

cone said:

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absolutely

March Madness

NHL

MLB

NBA Playoffs

sorry sports fans but this is the year without crowds at games

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No.

Tamu_mgm said:

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Went to Sam's last night, and the freakin' place was clean out of bottled water and toilet paper. Ridiculous how much people are panicking.

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Just buy some refillable jugs. Better for the environment and you can do it from home and just store it just in case.

i haven't seen a good argument as to why viewing live sporting events or going to concerts or conferences or parades or local culture expos are more important than protecting vulnerable communities

if people can't brag on instagram for a year is that such a massive loss

no what?

no you won't stop attending mass gatherings even if other countries show it saves lives?

MeKnowNot said:

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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?

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The more humidity in the air the less distance the virus can cover, not to mention people are no longer coop up in tight quarters.

Well, it looks like social distancing is beginning for me and the hubby. According to Santa Clara County over 50 is higher risk. We both also have asthma and hubby has hypertension.

This is from the Santa Clara County website:

Who is at higher risk?

Information about risk factors for COVID-19 infection is evolving, but the best evidence currently available makes clear that risk of severe illness begins to increase at age 50 for those who contract COVID-19, and increases with age (i.e., an 80-year-old person is at greater risk than a 70-year-old person). The highest risk group are persons age 80 and over.

Persons with underlying medical problems also are likely at higher risk for severe disease, including persons with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, or chronic lung diseases like COPD, as well as those who are immunocompromised.

What should I do if I am at higher risk?

The County Public Health Department is recommending that persons at higher risk avoid mass gatherings such as parades, sporting events, and concerts where large numbers of people are within arm's length of one another. This would not include typical office environments, grocery stores, or shopping centers, where it is unusual for large numbers of people to be within arm's length of one another.

UncoverAg00 said:

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Stupid question, maybe. Regarding the L and S types; it's stated that 70% of cases were L-type and 30% S-type and that this suggests that L-type has a higher transmission rate. My question is whether or not the disparity mean that L-type is 2x more contagious or not necessarily (too many other factors involved)?

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Not a stupid question, but probably not really knowable based on that paper. I think you'd need separate populations with similar management response to speak much on transmissibility.

I didn't note anywhere where they discussed difference in the proteins between the L and S types, at least not in the relevant positions described for RBD for the spike protein. The markers differentiating the types were In very different locations from the genes that seem to be discussed with regard to transmissibility.

cisgenderedAggie said:

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UncoverAg00 said:

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Stupid question, maybe. Regarding the L and S types; it's stated that 70% of cases were L-type and 30% S-type and that this suggests that L-type has a higher transmission rate. My question is whether or not the disparity mean that L-type is 2x more contagious or not necessarily (too many other factors involved)?

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Not a stupid question, but probably not really knowable based on that paper. I think you'd need separate populations with similar management response to speak much on transmissibility.

I didn't note anywhere where they discussed difference in the proteins between the L and S types, at least not in the relevant positions described for RBD for the spike protein. The markers differentiating the types were In very different locations from the genes that seem to be discussed with regard to transmissibility.

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What effect, if any, will this have on producing a vaccine?

I've never worked on developing vaccines, so take that for what it's worth.

I don't know. If that paper is to be believed, they describe some residue differences between the L and S types, but I don't know if they would make good enough antigens toraise a discriminatory response against. If the rest of the external proteins (antigen-presenting, I would assume) are similar enough, I'm not sure why you would want a vaccine to discriminate between them though. Seems like you should be able to produce something that works for both.

I'm thankful Google exists for this epidemic, because without it I wouldn't be able to follow these papers and what you just said with any sort of efficiency. I'm still reading that L and S type paper having to take Google breaks it seems every paragraph looking up what a peptidicalimmunocidacell is (yeah, I made that up, I think). I'm glad you Will Hunting folks exist to save us from our own nastiness.

PJYoung said:

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All of the new cases in LA are either due to travel (probably Italy like everything else seems to be) or directly connected to a case from travel.

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/health-officials-to-make-major-announcements-1-day-after-coronavirus-case-confirmed-in-l-a-county/

Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess

We should have started using the WHO test immediately when we realized ours wasn't working. Containment will buy time.

This is another side to the story we'll need to think about.

Where do the bailouts start and end?

this is probably going to cost us a trillion dollars to deal with when it's all said and done