At what point is Muster canceled?

The dreaded yellow tree pollen has started to coat everything outside in the Houston area.

Coronavirus going to hit it's peak and start falling faster than expected. (NY Post)

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Worldwide, there have been about 3,400 coronavirus deaths, out of about 100,000 identified cases. Flu, by comparison, grimly reaps about 291,000 to 646,000 annually.

China is the origin of the virus and still accounts for over 80 percent of cases and deaths. But its cases peaked and began declining more than a month ago, according to data presented by the Canadian epidemiologist who spearheaded the World Health Organization's coronavirus mission to China. Fewer than 200 new cases are reported daily, down from a peak of 4,000.

Subsequent countries will follow this same pattern, in what's called Farr's Law. First formulated in 1840 and ignored in every epidemic hysteria since, the law states that epidemics tend to rise and fall in a roughly symmetrical pattern or bell-shaped curve. AIDS, SARS, Ebola they all followed that pattern. So does seasonal flu each year.

Clearly, flu is vastly more contagious than the new coronavirus, as the WHO has noted. Consider that the first known coronavirus cases date back to early December, and since then, the virus has afflicted fewer people in total than flu does in a few days. Oh, and why are there no flu quarantines? Because it's so contagious, it would be impossible.

More good news. This month, the Northern Hemisphere, which includes the countries with the most cases, starts heating up. Almost all respiratory viruses hate warm and moist weather. That's why flu dies out in America every year by May at the latest and probably why Latin America has reported only 25 coronavirus cases. The Philippines, where I live, has about a third of the US population, but it's so damned hot and humid here, so far we have had no confirmed cases of internal transmission.

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I have noticed a shift in the commentariat over the past week that I read/listen to (not MSM/fake news types) seeming to push back against the pannick in force. I don't think this is 'politics related' but many are political commentators (Dan Bongino types). Logic seems to be starting to take hold for more. The 'adults' in the room on the Sunday talk shows also certainly seemed like the 'everybody calm down' pair of health officials the Administration put on.

A recession hurts everyone regardless of who gets elected.

tysker said:

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At what point is Muster canceled?

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At this point I assume it will be. France yesterday announced no gatherings over 1,000.

We will certainly (easily) see France levels of infection in a week or two.

Anyone know the story with Germany? They've announced 1151 confirmed cases, but no deaths.

This is a must watch IMO.

R0 is to disease what NET is to basketball rankings. It is the new buzzword that shows how serious you are as a fan.

PJYoung said:

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tysker said:

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At what point is Muster canceled?

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At this point I assume it will be. France yesterday announced no gatherings over 1,000.

We will certainly (easily) see France levels of infection in a week or two.

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If they aren't canceling classes yet, I can't see how they cancel campus Muster.

CDub06 said:

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Anyone know the story with Germany? They've announced 1151 confirmed cases, but no deaths.

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I think some of that is random.

The USA has a very high death rate so far because one of the first clusters happened to appear in a nursing home where, of course, the population was decimated.

Maybe Germany's first clusters were in a much younger age demographic? I have no idea.

claym711 said:

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A recession hurts everyone regardless of who gets elected.

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Agreed but it's the left that has tried to use this as a bludgeon against...of course, President Trump.

I won't link to them but the likes of former Dem congressman Delaney, Bill Maher, Chuck Todd, and innumerable articles in places like the NYT, Politico, and fake news outlets have been designed to both build panic and blame Trump over "Trump Virus."

They overtly hope for a big recession to help the senile/socialist old white male Dem candidate win in November.

Agreed. It completely ignores the concept of initial conditions. Flu begins with a baseline of something like a billion cases per year. And the line about quarantine is silly as well, for two reasons. One, severity (perceived or actual) is what drives quarantine behavior. No one would advocate heavy-handed quarantine for the common cold, regardless of how contagious it is. And the second is that we do quarantine for the flu, on an individual basis. We tell people to isolate, we shut down schools if too many kids have it.

Regardless of how serious you think the nCov stuff is that paragraph is dumb.

there's been some recent research that suggests the attack rate doesn't lend itself to a super-high R0 compared to flu

maybe there's a super spreader element or an elevated attack rate on the older cohort that isn't defined in the broader study

it might actually be slower but more deadly

Tanya 93 said:

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PJYoung said:

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tysker said:

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At what point is Muster canceled?

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At this point I assume it will be. France yesterday announced no gatherings over 1,000.

We will certainly (easily) see France levels of infection in a week or two.

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If they aren't canceling classes yet, I can't see how they cancel campus Muster.

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Like has been many times recently, we'll know more in a few weeks. A month feels like an eternity. Depending on numerous factors, cancelling Muster by, say, April 9th may be a proper response.

PJYoung said:

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This whole paragraph is laughable when you consider an R0 of between 2 and 4 compared to flu at 1.3.

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Clearly, flu is vastly more contagious than the new coronavirus, as the WHO has noted. Consider that the first known coronavirus cases date back to early December, and since then, the virus has afflicted fewer people in total than flu does in a few days.

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I thought they had reassessed and the coronavirus was somewhere at R0 of 1

Exsurge Domine said:

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PJYoung said:

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This whole paragraph is laughable when you consider an R0 of between 2 and 4 compared to flu at 1.3.

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Clearly, flu is vastly more contagious than the new coronavirus, as the WHO has noted. Consider that the first known coronavirus cases date back to early December, and since then, the virus has afflicted fewer people in total than flu does in a few days.

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I thought they had reassessed and the coronavirus was somewhere at R0 of 1

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We've seen a lot more of conflicting information here. I would err on the side of caution with infection rates.

so is it airborne?

what level of caution do you think is prudent here?

Stock market melting down right now... -7%... disturbing

I wish news agencies would report confirmed recovered cases.

Seems they only report cases and deaths.

CDub06 said:

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Anyone know the story with Germany? They've announced 1151 confirmed cases, but no deaths.

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Germany is an extremely clean culture obsessed with sanitation with some of the best health care in the world.

Are the democrats cancelling their primary in Michigan tomorrow? Are they urging some groups not to go vote because it is crowded and thus dangerous?

This week is definitely the week cancelled business travel kicked in. DIA was creepy empty today and my flight up sfo has most middle seats open. Usually an over sold flight.

Interesting paper here: Feasibility of controlling COVID-19 outbreaks by isolation of cases and contacts.

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Simulated outbreaks starting with five initial cases, an R0 of 1.5, and 0% transmission before symptom onset could be controlled even with low contact tracing probability; however, the probability of controlling an outbreak decreased with the number of initial cases, when R0 was 2.5 or 3.5 and with more transmission before symptom onset. Across different initial numbers of cases, the majority of scenarios with an R0 of 1.5 were controllable with less than 50% of contacts successfully traced. To control the majority of outbreaks, for R0 of 2.5 more than 70% of contacts had to be traced, and for an R0 of 3.5 more than 90% of contacts had to be traced. The delay between symptom onset and isolation had the largest role in determining whether an outbreak was controllable when R0 was 1.5. For R0 values of 2.5 or 3.5, if there were 40 initial cases, contact tracing and isolation were only potentially feasible when less than 1% of transmission occurred before symptom onset.

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If you're watching S Korea or Singapore aggressively trace and isolate and that's making you feel good, looking at the cluster that is the US right now should do the opposite.

Also if you want to learn yourself some things, this is a nice paper talking about r0.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/25/1/pdfs/17-1901.pdf

AgsMnn said:

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I wish news agencies would report confirmed recovered cases.

Seems they only report cases and deaths.

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This. I know recovered cases have more stringent criteria in the case of coronavirus, but surely there are recoveries to report. It's a choice by the media.

We know deaths get clicks and make money for the news, but it also begins to take away hope when everting is doom and gloom. We need hope - its a powerful thing to have.

Maybe if we have some hope portrayed there isn't a freaking run on toilet paper and paper towels.

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https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/06/were-learning-a-lot-about-the-coronavirus-it-will-help-us-assess-risk/

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Transmission in China happened among family members and close contacts. True "community spread" was less common.

"This virus is not circulating in the community, even in the highest incidence areas across China," Van Kerkhove insisted.

What's the difference between spread among close contacts and community spread, you might wonder? Van Kerkhove said the data the mission saw in China pointed to the virus finding its way into households and transmitting there. One family member gets infected and infects others. The "secondary attack rate" the percentage of people in a household who got infected after someone brought the virus into the home was between 3% and 10%.

Van Kerkhove said true community spread involves transmission where people get infected in a movie theater, on the subway, or walking down the street. There's no way to trace back the source of infection because there's no connection between the infected person and the person he or she infects. That's not what the Chinese data show, she said.

Marc Lipsitch, an infectious diseases epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, found this claim puzzling. "I have reached out to the World Health Organization to understand the basis of some of those statements. My perception is that there is significant community transmission, especially when you aren't aware that someone is sick, because there's not enough testing," he said.

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See the doom and gloom has kicked in this morning

k2aggie07 said:

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Interesting paper here: Feasibility of controlling COVID-19 outbreaks by isolation of cases and contacts.

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Simulated outbreaks starting with five initial cases, an R0 of 1.5, and 0% transmission before symptom onset could be controlled even with low contact tracing probability; however, the probability of controlling an outbreak decreased with the number of initial cases, when R0 was 2.5 or 3.5 and with more transmission before symptom onset. Across different initial numbers of cases, the majority of scenarios with an R0 of 1.5 were controllable with less than 50% of contacts successfully traced. To control the majority of outbreaks, for R0 of 2.5 more than 70% of contacts had to be traced, and for an R0 of 3.5 more than 90% of contacts had to be traced. The delay between symptom onset and isolation had the largest role in determining whether an outbreak was controllable when R0 was 1.5. For R0 values of 2.5 or 3.5, if there were 40 initial cases, contact tracing and isolation were only potentially feasible when less than 1% of transmission occurred before symptom onset.

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If you're watching S Korea or Singapore aggressively trace and isolate and that's making you feel good, looking at the cluster that is the US right now should do the opposite.

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This is how it started with SK, no? A large number of people spreading it around (the cult) and then they traced it back. The article doesn't mention testing.

Also, in NY and the East coast, what leads you to believe they aren't haven't been tracing every case back? Everything we've read seems like they have been tracing it back and asking people to quarantine themselves.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20028423v1

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Overall, 1286 close contacts were identified for index cases testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 between January 14 and February 9, 2020, with 83% (244/292) of cases having at least one close contact. Ninety-five percent of close contacts were followed 12 days or longer. Ninety-eight tested PCR positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection, and one had presumptive infection. Excluding those with a missing test result, we found that the secondary attack rate was 14.9% (95% CI 12.1,18.2) among household contacts and 9.6% (95%CI 7.9,11.8) overall (these drop to 11.2% and 6.6% if those with missing results are considered to be negative). In multivariable analysis of contact types household contact (OR 6.3, 95% CI 1.5, 26.3) and travelling together (OR 7.1, 95% CI 1.4, 34.9) were significantly associated with infection. Reporting contact occurred "often" was also associated with increased risk of infection (OR 8.8 versus moderate frequency contacts, 95% CI 2.6,30.1).

Attack rates were similar across infectee age categories (Table 3), though there is some indication of elevated attack rates in older age groups (Figure 1). Notably, the rate of infection in children under 10 (7.4%) was similar to the population average (7.9%). There was no significant association between probability of infection and age of the index case. Surprisingly, in univariate analysis a longer time in the community prior to isolation was associated with a reduced risk of causing infections. However, this association was no longer significant after adjusting for contact frequency and type.

Based on 48 pairs of cases with a clear infector-infectee relationship and time of symptom onset, we estimate that the serial interval is gamma distributed with mean 6.3 days (95% CI 5.2,7.6) and a standard deviation of 4.2 days (95% CI, 3.1,5.3) (Figure 2B, Table S2). Hence, 95% of cases are expected to develop symptoms within 14.3 (95% CI, 11.1,17.6) days of their infector. It should be noted this estimate includes the effect of isolation on truncating the serial interval. Stratified results show that if the infector was isolated less than 3 days after infection the average serial interval was 3.6 days, increasing to 8.1 days if the infector was isolated on the third day after symptom onset or later (Table S4).

The mean number of secondary cases caused by each index case (i.e., the observed reproductive number, R), was 0.4 (95% CI 0.3,0.5). The distribution of personal reproductive numbers was highly overdispersed, with 80% of infections being caused by 8.9% (95% CI 3.5,10.8) of cases (negative binomial dispersion parameter 0.58, 95% CI 0.35, 1.18).

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Time to cut off travel from Italy:

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/missouri-woman-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-after-flying-to-u-s-from-italy-taking-train-from-chicago/2233358/

Worse, this woman's father took her sister to a Daddy-Daughter dance after he had been exposed to her:

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/family-st-louis-county-woman-coronavirus-violated-quarantine-going-school-dance#stream/0

The idea of relying on other countries to do proper checks is insane. At the very least, everyone coming from overseas should be handed an N95 mask and directed to go straight home with minimal contact Then their names should be entered into a database and local health officials notified by the CDC so they can be tracked.

Like others have said, no need to freak out, but allowing these kind of gaps in the system to go unchecked will undo even the best laid containment plans.

Goose61 said:

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Time to cut off travel from Italy:

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/missouri-woman-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-after-flying-to-u-s-from-italy-taking-train-from-chicago/2233358/

Worse, this woman's father took her sister to a Daddy-Daughter dance after he had been exposed to her:

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/family-st-louis-county-woman-coronavirus-violated-quarantine-going-school-dance#stream/0

The idea of relying on other countries to do proper checks is insane. At the very least, everyone coming from overseas should be handed an N95 mask and directed to go straight home with minimal contact Then their names should be entered into a database and local health officials notified by the CDC so they can be tracked.

Like others have said, no need to freak out, but allowing these kind of gaps in the system to go unchecked will undo even the best laid containment plans.

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Our own country is just as bad...

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with 80% of infections being caused by 8.9% (95% CI 3.5,10.8) of cases

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is this study is correct, isn't this text book superspreading?

which implies social distancing and self-quarantine would actually work really well

Beat40 said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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Interesting paper here: Feasibility of controlling COVID-19 outbreaks by isolation of cases and contacts.

Quote:

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Simulated outbreaks starting with five initial cases, an R0 of 1.5, and 0% transmission before symptom onset could be controlled even with low contact tracing probability; however, the probability of controlling an outbreak decreased with the number of initial cases, when R0 was 2.5 or 3.5 and with more transmission before symptom onset. Across different initial numbers of cases, the majority of scenarios with an R0 of 1.5 were controllable with less than 50% of contacts successfully traced. To control the majority of outbreaks, for R0 of 2.5 more than 70% of contacts had to be traced, and for an R0 of 3.5 more than 90% of contacts had to be traced. The delay between symptom onset and isolation had the largest role in determining whether an outbreak was controllable when R0 was 1.5. For R0 values of 2.5 or 3.5, if there were 40 initial cases, contact tracing and isolation were only potentially feasible when less than 1% of transmission occurred before symptom onset.

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If you're watching S Korea or Singapore aggressively trace and isolate and that's making you feel good, looking at the cluster that is the US right now should do the opposite.

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This is how it started with SK, no? A large number of people spreading it around (the cult) and then they traced it back. The article doesn't mention testing.

Also, in NY and the East coast, what leads you to believe they aren't haven't been tracing every case back? Everything we've read seems like they have been tracing it back and asking people to quarantine themselves.

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It pretty muse useless since the virus is spreading undetected because our country is incompetent and can't test.