Coronavirus: Now they get it. WHO says 1% mortality.

Coronavirus

Overnight, people woke up to the real threat and markets crashed appropriately. Unless we take massive action immediately, the exponential curve is about to lift off. And if we don’t act now then massive action is coming anyway in a month, along with major disruption, pandemonium, and worse.

There are now 5,300 cases outside China. If it doubles every 5 days (as it just has) then 40 days from now 5 million people will be infected.

What does massive action look like? A bit like this:

In Japan some are in uproar — they’re the ones who don’t understand how 226 infections becomes a national hospital crisis in weeks. Japan (like most nations) is theoretically only 19 doublings away from 100% infected.

Here’s what not to do: disorganised mayhem communist style

Anonymous from Wuhan, Epoch Times,

Lies are killing people in Wuhan. We don’t know the real situation, not even the situation of our own residential building. But we deserve the right to know everything, which can only help us to control the contagion. We were told that buildings with red tape indicate that no residents are infected by the virus, but the ones with white notices posted outside indicate infections. But our building has no such notices, and we have no way of knowing who’s infected.

On the lockdown:

 The first problem, however, is that the rules for the isolation facilities have been loosely applied, which I can still observe today [Feb. 18] from my apartment, a high-level unit. The second problem is that security measures have turned out to be a mere formality. I saw with my own eyes that security guards were often absent from their posts. Many of them let people through…

WHO says 1% mortality rate in China

The high mortality rate is not the tip of the iceberg —  it is the iceberg.

At the start of an outbreak the apparent mortality rate can be an overestimate if a lot of mild cases are being missed. But this week, a WHO expert suggested that this has not been the case with Covid-19. Bruce Aylward, who led an international mission to China to learn about the virus and the country’s response, said the evidence did not suggest that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg. If borne out by further testing, this could mean that current estimates of a roughly 1% fatality rate are accurate. This would make Covid-19 about 10 times more deadly than seasonal flu, which is estimated to kill between 290,000 and 650,000 people a year globally.

A virus with a 1% case fatality rate–  that’s ten times worse than The Flu — could kill 70 million people.

The WHO is rarely worth quoting, (because of this kind of conflicts of interest) but they’ve been playing this disaster down. When the team run by an apologist for Xi says “1%” and it matches the shocking stories on #Covid2019, it’s time to pay attention.

As bad as it is, its a relief after weeks of watching this build while leaders were asleep the wheel. Finally, some action. If a few major economies launch into action — others will suddenly follow. Like fish flipping from “don’t want to look alarmist” to “don’t want to look inept”.

See all stories on Coronavirus

So keep sending your letters to the MP’s.

h/t Pat. Bill in Oz

9.4 out of 10 based on 53 ratings

105 comments to Coronavirus: Now they get it. WHO says 1% mortality.

  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    Israeli scientists are reportedly only a few weeks away from having developed the first vaccine to combat the coronavirus, which originated in China, and could have the vaccine available 90 days after that.

    A team of scientists at MIGAL had been working for years on a vaccine against an infectious bronchitis virus (IBV).

    “Let’s call it pure luck,” Katz said. “We decided to choose coronavirus as a model for our system just as a proof of concept for our technology.”

    https://www.dailywire.com/news/bds-this-israel-makes-exciting-breakthrough-in-race-for-coronavirus-vaccine

    90

    • #

      WE hope so, but vaccine development is a field littered with the corpses of great predictions. Many steps have to work.

      161

    • #

      “Let’s call it pure luck,” Katz said.

      It’s a bit like Event 201, a global pandemic simulation sponsored by the Gates Foundation and World Economic Forum just last October. The pandemic simulated was due to a coronavirus. Let’s call it pure luck.

      91

      • #
        joseph

        Yes, pure luck.

        52

        • #

          While I still don’t have much of a clue what’s going on, I thought the video of a man collapsing in Wuhan was interesting. Looked very much like someone doing a rehearsed lunge, with both arms suddenly in front and hands flattened to take the fall. He was completely dazed and inert before and after the fall. In another clip some blood appears mysteriously under his head after a change of position.

          Maybe getting his arms and hands in the perfect position just in time was pure luck.

          41

    • #
      David Maddison

      If the Israeli vaccine is successful (and they have an excellent record of achievement) the questions are 1) how much quantity of it and how fast can it be produced and 2) can the regulatory approval processes in various countries (including Australia) be fast tracked or will they go at the usual snail’s pace?

      70

      • #

        Will the vaccine offer protection for 1 year, 6 months or 4 weeks? Even a 4 week safe zone could be useful, but you can see that normally vaccine testing takes a long time. It can be hard to fool our immune system into reacting to something that isn’t a threat. How fast can we ramp up that production, especially if we don’t have the factories to make the parts needed in the assembly line?

        My main hope is that the anti-virals that are already proven safe to use in people and exist in current stocks will prove useful. That is probably much faster than vaccines. In the long run vaccines are cheaper, except that in the long run the virus evolves to go around that too.

        90

  • #

    Ok, but early numbers suggested anything between 10% and 20% mortality which really would have wrecked the global economic system if it all happened in a short period of a few months.
    I don’t feel confident about the Chinese numbers but numbers outside China show relatively modest fatality rates and the working assumption has been 2% to 3% but heavily weighted towards the old and infirm (i.e. not just old). A mere 1% would be nice in comparison but if there are lots of undiagnosed mild cases it could be even less.
    So, most fatalities will be amongst the economically inactive.
    There comes a point where deaths from lack of food and medicine due to the collapse of supply lines kills more than 70 million. I suspect we are approaching the point where the risk factors intersect.
    So, we might be better advised to switch to mitigation rather than containment in order to keep supply lines open.
    I say that as a high risk 70 year old.

    151

    • #
      nb

      ‘we might be better advised to switch to mitigation rather than containment in order to keep supply lines open’
      Yes. A balance between slowing social movement sufficient to relieve pressure on medical resources, and provide a little extra time for development of disease prevention measures such as a vaccine, but keeping social movement going sufficient to prevent supply line/economic collapse.
      Everyone will have a different view of the correct balance, mistakes will be made, and as a result there will be lots of tedious finger-pointing.

      80

    • #

      Stephen, I get the point about damage created by closing factories and towns in an attempt to slow this spread. But to ask humans to just accept a 1% fatality rate — which could become 5% without medical assistance, without making an attempt to prevent it — is asking us to be inhuman. People will stay home out of fear, and it is not unreasonable.

      The death rate in Wuhan has been estimated as being as high as 5% — possibly because the infection ran loose, the exponential curves doubled every few days and the hospitals were overrun and were not able to help save 4 of those 5 people.

      As I keep spelling out: the rate that progress to severe is around 10% and the rate to “critical” care is about 3%
      We have about 1 ICU bed for 12000 people. If 3% need ICU in Australia then we can’t allow more than 60,000 people to be simultaneously infected. We are thus 11 doublings from a major hospital crisis — does it sound alarmist to call it breakdown or collapse of the medical system? Perhaps – but I’m talking about a situation where someone in need of critical care can’t get it. (It will start at a lower level of doublings given that many ICU beds are already in use with other conditions).

      Because medical workers are not immune, all coronavirus patients — even the not-so-sick ones — should be in negative pressure rooms, which are even rarer than ICU units. Otherwise medical staff are exposed. Plus they need full hazmat gear, decontamination rooms etc.

      What those who understand the medical system are hoping to avoid is the point where docs and nurses fall ill, there are no beds left, people are turned away, told to stay home.

      That’s the reason if we let this virus in, we are dooming ourselves to spend weeks or months closing schools, factories, keeping people at home. We have to slow that exponential curve. Will we cripple our economy to save those people who can be saved? Of course we will. It won’t matter what the government does. People will refuse to work.

      That’s why the cheapest option is international border closures. Domestic ones are vastly more expensive.

      110

      • #

        The thing about a 10% death rate is that the ghastly horror would probably have shut down every border already. The worst combination in terms of deaths is a disease worse than the flu, more infectious than it and more deadly, but not in the zombie apocalypse category. The world tries to behave like it is the flu, with quarantine measures that are always two weeks too late, chasing the ball, thinking they can manage it, only to see death rates rise rapidly as infrastructure and systems fall apart.

        100

        • #
          David A

          Regarding mortality rates, this is my take. ( I am removing the links as it would not post?)

          Jonova, I deeply agree with your main post, yet please let me explain why the current 1 percent mortality method is, IMV, completely wrong. ( As well as support your post with disparate yet in kind thoughts.)

          This is the method commonly used.
          Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) = probability of dying if infected by the virus (%).

          This ONLY works after all patients are either cured or dead. So, excluding this year, and going by the past 9 year history of either cured or dead, the flu is just above one tenth of one percent fatal. ( One in every thousand flu cases dies). U.S. numbers.
          https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

          From the link above, average flu cases per year in the US is about 30 million. Multiply that times one tenth of one percent, or .001 which equals 30,000 dead in an average flu year. Actual average est was about 33,000 dead each year, but 30 k is well within the error bars of the link, as is one tenth of one percent.

          Average flu hospitalization is a bit over 4 million, which, over the 13 week flu season, this is 308,000 hospitalizations per week with an average stay of about 5 days per patient.

          Now, from this link… https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
          regarding global death rate of the Coronavirus…

          Infected 84,173

          Deaths: 2,876

          Recovered 36,880

          Active 44,417

          Serious or critical 8,095 (18%)

          So assume that by a magic wand, patient 84,173 is the last patient. We currently have 8,095 serious or critical. We also have about 20,000 of those 84,173 cases that are new in the last two weeks, the vast majority of which have not had time to go critical or fatal.

          Let’s conservatively take a WAG that an additional 18 percent of 15,500 cases go serious or critical. That’s about 2,800 more serious to critical cases. So call it 10,000 serious or critical, and we can expect about 20 percent of those to be fatal. ( Early number , may need an update) So about 2,000 more fatal. 2,000 plus 2,876 is 4,876 likely deaths in 84,173 cases. A 5.8 percent mortality!

          BTW, death to recovered for the Coronavirus, which is exactly what the flu statistics are based on, is 7.8 percent!

          Now this is mostly China’s numbers. They are simply FUBAR. It could be there are many mild cases that were never counted, lowering the mortality. It could also be that there are thousands of deaths never assigned to the Coronavirus, both in hospitals and in homes, and in incubation-quarantine centers, ( group quarantine is not quarantine) and in rest homes for the elderly, that died and never got recorded as cases and or deaths. Link… https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-china-continues-with-fake-reporting-of-71-new-deaths,-508-new-infections-and-as-more-contradictory-cases-emerge-

          If you were in China with flu symptoms, and knew the hospitals were over whelmed, and full of the Coronavirus, and you thought you were, like 80 plus percent of the infected, just fine with only mild flu like symptoms, and or thought your illness may be the regular flu, also more likely at this time, and so figured you had a 95 percent plus chance of making it without medical help, why would you report your symptoms, which would likely result in being thrown into a giant room of thousands of other possibly exposed, row after row of beds in large single room facilities with common restrooms or, if lucky, placed in an overcrowded understaffed hospital. That is an infection trap, worse then the Princess cruise, which had a very high R-naught.

          In Summary it is very likely that China has far more cases, recoveries and dead then their official numbers. Let’s hope they are at least balancing the case load totals; hospitalized to fatal, so that the percentages are helpful to the R.O.W.

          An average U.S. flu year of 30 million cases, and 30,000 deaths, becomes, with a mortality rate of 5.8 percent, 1,740,000 dead with this illness. 58 times as deadly as the flu under the same case load, IF they are equally infectious. Unfortunately they are not.

          Now let’s consider the R- naught of the flu, 1.3, vs the Coronavirus. It is very generous to go with an R- naught of 2.6 for the Caronavirus. Here is one of several studies which show a higher R-naught then the CDC. In this case 3.1. Researchers from Lancaster University
          https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v2.full.pdf

          Several credible medical institution’s have placed the Coronavirus R-naught up to 6.9 to 7.0.
          ( Link to follow)

          So, going with just the 2.6 R-naught, the U.S. then have 60 million infected and 3,480,000 dead. We also have 18 percent of 60 million needing hospital beds for a week. That is 10,800,000 hospital beds. Divided by a typical flu season that is 839,770 beds needed each week. ( In reality it would be better in the early phase, and much worse at the peak)

          The US only has about 900,000 hospital beds! The U.S. has an overall hospital occupancy of 63 percent. During the flu season ( other illnesses peak along with the flu) I am guessing that this occupancy rate increases by about 22 percent of total beds to 85 percent occupancy, leaving about 135,000 beds available. ( Best case) With an R-naught of 2.6 and a serious to critical hospitalization need of 839,770 beds, the U.S. would be 705,000 beds short each week! This would tremendously overburden our medical facilities. ( Did you see the videos out of Wuhan of medical staff breaking down, streets lined up to get into hospitals, etc…) How many more people, with other serious diseases, would die if this scenario occurred?

          This is why China has destroyed their own economy at a critical time of economic vulnerability. This is why every nation with borders to Iran, when it had only 30 cases, closed those borders. This is why South Korea is stopping public events, putting cities on lock down, closing businesses.

          My perspective is to watch what nations do, not what buricrats say.

          BTW, other nations, seeing the economic collapse of China, are very likely to also greatly minimize the real numbers.

          The above scenario is what is very realistic IF we treat this as a common flu. It could be considerably worse, a higher R-naught for instance, and reports of up to 14 percent of cured still testing positive and re-infections, therefore much greater fatalities.

          However we are not treating this as a common flu. It could mutate to a less virulent form. We could develop an effective vaccine while we take necessary painful steps to slow this down. As individuals we can decide to stock up now on extra food now, to lessen the panic later. Same with water, medicines, pet needs.

          We can self quarantine IF this gains a foothold in the country you live in. We can work together locally and with other nations to lessen the pain that is yet increasing. Let’s hope – pray that the R- naught is lower and the mortality is lower in developed nations of cleaner air and less smoking addicted, and with summer coming a greatly reduced viral load and R-naught.

          Unfortunately in early stages of exponential growth the mortality rate is skewered low because of the mean time to death. ( In this case about 21 days from infection to death.)

          [David A, for some reason these comments were caught as spam. I have freed up all that were found with your name. If this happens again please email support. ] ED

          00

        • #
          David A

          I am greatly shortening an attempted post about mortality rates, as it has not appeared.

          Jonova, I deeply agree with your post, yet please let me explain why the current 1 percent mortality method is, IMV, completely wrong. ( As well as support your post with disparate yet in kind thoughts.)

          This is the method commonly used.
          Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) = probability of dying if infected by the virus (%).

          This ONLY works after all patients are either cured or dead. So, excluding this year, and going by the past 9 year history of either cured or dead, the flu is just above one tenth of one percent fatal. ( One in every thousand flu cases dies). U.S. numbers.
          https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

          From the link above, average flu cases per year in the US is about 30 million. Multiply that times one tenth of one percent, or .001 which equals 30,000 dead in an average flu year. Actual average est was about 33,000 dead each year, but 30 k is well within the error bars of the link, as is one tenth of one percent.

          Average flu hospitalization is a bit over 4 million, which, over the 13 week flu season, this is 308,000 hospitalizations per week with an average stay of about 5 days per patient.

          Now, from this link… https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
          regarding global death rate of the Coronavirus…

          Infected 84,173

          Deaths: 2,876

          Recovered 36,880

          Active 44,417

          Serious or critical 8,095 (18%)

          So assume that by a magic wand, patient 84,173 is the last patient. We currently have 8,095 serious or critical. We also have about 20,000 of those 84,173 cases that are new in the last two weeks, the vast majority of which have not had time to go critical or fatal.

          Let’s conservatively take a WAG that an additional 18 percent of 15,500 cases go serious or critical. That’s about 2,800 more serious to critical cases. So call it 10,000 serious or critical, and we can expect about 20 percent of those to be fatal. ( Early number , may need an update) So about 2,000 more fatal. 2,000 plus 2,876 is 4,876 likely deaths in 84,173 cases. A 5.8 percent mortality!

          BTW, death to recovered for the Coronavirus, which is exactly what the flu statistics are based on, is 7.8 percent!

          [David A, for some reason these comments were caught as spam. I have freed up all that were found with your name. If this happens again please email support. ] ED

          00

      • #

        Jo, all good points but for many nations the idea of border closures is impractical due to an inability to provide basic essentials domestically.
        We are not all potentially self sufficient in the way that Australia is.
        The UK is now planning for about 10% of the population needing some medical support and of course steps will be taken to spread that over as long as possible which will involve domestic self isolation but we simply cannot feed ourselves or provide the necessary equipment in winter and spring without open borders.

        61

        • #

          Imagine a world where the UK, Australia and a few others had just shut borders. We’d all be clean, we’d still be able to fly within the safe zone. We can still trade.

          Even the UK — not self sufficient in food — can still import foods that can be cooked from a virus infected country. And raw salads can be grown in the UK under glasshouses in summer.

          Importing food is no reason to justify importing deadly germs.

          10

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          Jo makes a very good point.

          You can send tinned food, or vacuum packed food, or other food that can be irradiated, on arrival across borders.

          It is the carrier, in the form of a human being, that is the vector. Remove the carrier and you remove the vector.

          It is my view, that it is the desires of politicians, to desperately want, “things to be as normal”; that is a major driver for some of the problems we face.

          Politics does not help.

          00

      • #
        David A

        Anyone please help me with my logic. I think the global mortality numbers are far higher then one percent. Here us what I see…

        This is the method commonly used.
        Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) = probability of dying if infected by the virus (%).

        This ONLY works after all patients are either cured or dead. So, excluding this year, and going by the past 9 year history of either cured or dead, the flu is just above one tenth of one percent fatal. ( One in every thousand flu cases dies)
        https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

        From the link above, average flu cases per year in the US is about 30 million. Multiply that times one tenth of one percent, or .001 which equals 30,000 dead in an average flu year. Actual average est was about 33,000 dead each year, but 30 k is well within the error bars of the link, as is one tenth of one percent.

        Average flu hospitalization is a bit over 4 million, which, over the 13 week flu season, this is 308,000 hospitalizations per week with an average stay of about 5 days per patient.
        ( Naturally stays are not average for the entire season, raising peak hospitalized, and some cases occur year round, lowering peak hospitalized)

        Now, from this link https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
        regarding death rate of the Coronavirus…

        Infected 84,173

        Deaths: 2,876

        Recovered 36,880

        Active 44,417

        Serious or critical 8,095 (18%)

        So assume that by a magic wand, patient 84,173 is the last patient. We currently have 8,095 serious or critical. We also have about 20,000 of those 84,173 cases that are new in the last two weeks, the vast majority of which have not had time to go critical or fatal.

        Let’s conservatively take a WAG that an additional 18 percent of 15,000 cases eventually go serious or critical. That’s 2,700 more serious to critical cases. So call it 9,900 serious or critical, and we can expect about 20 percent of those to be fatal. ( Early number , may need an update) So about 2000 more fatal. 2000 plus 2,876 is 4,876 likely deaths in 84,173 cases. A 5.8 percent mortality. ( Today’s numbers global)

        BTW, death to recovered for the Coronavirus, which is exactly what the flu statistics are based on, is 7.8 percent!

        Now this is mostly China’s numbers. They are simply FUBAR. It could be there are many mild cases that were never counted, lowering the mortality. It could also be that there are thousands of deaths never assigned to the Coronavirus, both in hospitals and in homes, and in incubation quarantine centers, and in rest homes for the elderly, that died and never got recorded as cases and or deaths. Link… https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-china-continues-with-fake-reporting-of-71-new-deaths,-508-new-infections-and-as-more-contradictory-cases-emerge-

        If you were in China with symptoms, and knew the hospitals were over whelmed, and you thought you were, like 80 plus percent of the infected, just fine with only mild flu like symptoms, and or thought your illness may be the regular flu, also more likely at this time, and so figured you had a 95 percent plus chance of making it without medical help, why would you report your symptoms, which would result in being thrown into a giant room of thousands of other possibly exposed, row after row of beds in large single room facilities with common restrooms. That is an infection trap, worse then the Princess cruise, which had a very high R-naught.

        In Summary it is very likely that China has far more cases, recoveries and dead then their official numbers. Let’s hope they are at least balancing the case load totals, hospitalized to fatal, so that the percentages are helpful to the R.O.W.

        So let’s consider hospital loads. In this study for the US. An average U.S. flu year of 30 million cases, and 30,000 deaths, becomes, with a mortality rate of 5.8 percent, 1,740,000 dead with this illness. 58 times as deadly as the flu under the same case load, IF they are equally infectious. Unfortunately they are not.

        Now let’s consider the R- naught of the flu, 1.3, vs the Corona virus. It is very generous to go with an R- naught of 2.6 for the caronavirus. Here is one of several studies which show a higher R-naught then the CDC. In this case 3.1. Researchers from Lancaster University
        https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v2.full.pdf

        Several credible medical institution’s have placed the Coronavirus R-naught up to 6.9 to 7.0. link to follow.

        So, going with just the 2.6 R-naught, we then have 60 million infected and 3,480,000 dead. We also have 18 percent of 60 million needing hospital beds for a week. That is 10,800,000 hospital beds. Divided by a typical flu season that is 839,770 beds needed each week. ( In reality it would be better in the early phase, and much worse at the peak)

        The US only has about 900,000 hospital beds! The U.S. has an overall hospital occupancy of 63 percent. During the flu season ( other illnesses peak along with the flu) I am estimating that this occupancy rate increases by about 22 percent of total beds to 85 percent occupancy, leaving about 135,000 beds available. With an R-naught of 2.6 and a serious to critical hospitalization need of 839,770 beds weekly, we are 705,000 beds short. This would tremendously overburden U.S. medical facilities. ( Did you see the videos out of Wuhan of medical staff breaking down.) How many more people, with other serious diseases, would die if this scenario occurred?

        This is why China has destroyed their own economy at a critical time of economic vulnerability.

        This is why every nation with borders to Iran, when it had only 30 cases, closed those borders. This is why South Korea is stopping public events, putting cities on lock down, closing businesses.

        My perspective is watch what nations do, not what buracracies say.

        The above scenario is what is very realistic IF we treat this as a common flu. It could also be considerably worse, a higher R-naught for instance, and reports of up to 14 percent of cured still testing positive and re-infections, therefore much greater fatalities.

        However we are not treating this as a common flu. It could mutate to a less virulent form. We could develop an effective vaccine while we take necessary painful steps to slow this down. As individuals we can decide to stock up now on extra food now, to lessen the panic later. Same with water, medicines, pet needs.

        We can self quarantine IF this gains a foothold in the country you live in. We can work together locally and with other nations to lessen the pain that is yet increasing. Let’s hope and pray the R- naught is lower and the mortality is lower in developed nations of cleaner air, fewer smoking addicted, and with summer coming a greatly reduced viral load and R-naught. Unfortunately in early stages of exponential growth the mortality rate is skewered low because of the mean time to death. ( In this case about 21 days from infection to death.)

        [David A, for some reason these comments were caught as spam. I have freed up all that were found with your name. If this happens again please email support. ] ED

        00

      • #
        David A

        Jonova, I deeply agree with your post, yet please let me explain why the current 1 percent mortality method is, IMV, completely wrong. ( As well as support your post with disparate yet in kind thoughts.)

        This is the method commonly used.
        Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) = probability of dying if infected by the virus (%).

        This ONLY works after all patients are either cured or dead. So, excluding this year, and going by the past 9 year history of either cured or dead, the flu is just above one tenth of one percent fatal. ( One in every thousand flu cases dies). U.S. numbers.
        https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

        From the link above, average flu cases per year in the US is about 30 million. Multiply that times one tenth of one percent, or .001 which equals 30,000 dead in an average flu year. Actual average est was about 33,000 dead each year, but 30 k is well within the error bars of the link, as is one tenth of one percent.

        Average flu hospitalization is a bit over 4 million, which, over the 13 week flu season, this is 308,000 hospitalizations per week with an average stay of about 5 days per patient.

        Now, from this link… https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
        regarding global death rate of the Coronavirus…

        Infected 84,173

        Deaths: 2,876

        Recovered 36,880

        Active 44,417

        Serious or critical 8,095 (18%)

        So assume that by a magic wand, patient 84,173 is the last patient. We currently have 8,095 serious or critical. We also have about 20,000 of those 84,173 cases that are new in the last two weeks, the vast majority of which have not had time to go critical or fatal.

        Let’s conservatively take a WAG that an additional 18 percent of 15,500 cases go serious or critical. That’s about 2,800 more serious to critical cases. So call it 10,000 serious or critical, and we can expect about 20 percent of those to be fatal. ( Early number , may need an update) So about 2,000 more fatal. 2,000 plus 2,876 is 4,876 likely deaths in 84,173 cases. A 5.8 percent mortality!

        BTW, death to recovered for the Coronavirus, which is exactly what the flu statistics are based on, is 7.8 percent!

        Now this is mostly China’s numbers. They are simply FUBAR. It could be there are many mild cases that were never counted, lowering the mortality. It could also be that there are thousands of deaths never assigned to the Coronavirus, both in hospitals and in homes, and in incubation-quarantine centers, ( group quarantine is not quarantine) and in rest homes for the elderly, that died and never got recorded as cases and or deaths. Link… https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-china-continues-with-fake-reporting-of-71-new-deaths,-508-new-infections-and-as-more-contradictory-cases-emerge-

        If you were in China with flu symptoms, and knew the hospitals were over whelmed, and full of the Coronavirus, and you thought you were, like 80 plus percent of the infected, just fine with only mild flu like symptoms, and or thought your illness may be the regular flu, also more likely at this time, and so figured you had a 95 percent plus chance of making it without medical help, why would you report your symptoms, which would likely result in being thrown into a giant room of thousands of other possibly exposed, row after row of beds in large single room facilities with common restrooms or, if lucky, placed in an overcrowded understaffed hospital. That is an infection trap, worse then the Princess cruise, which had a very high R-naught.

        In Summary it is very likely that China has far more cases, recoveries and dead then their official numbers. Let’s hope they are at least balancing the case load totals; hospitalized to fatal, so that the percentages are helpful to the R.O.W.

        An average U.S. flu year of 30 million cases, and 30,000 deaths, becomes, with a mortality rate of 5.8 percent, 1,740,000 dead with this illness. 58 times as deadly as the flu under the same case load, IF they are equally infectious. Unfortunately they are not.

        Now let’s consider the R- naught of the flu, 1.3, vs the Coronavirus. It is very generous to go with an R- naught of 2.6 for the Caronavirus. Here is one of several studies which show a higher R-naught then the CDC. In this case 3.1. Researchers from Lancaster University
        https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v2.full.pdf

        Several credible medical institution’s have placed the Coronavirus R-naught up to 6.9 to 7.0.
        ( Link to follow)

        So, going with just the 2.6 R-naught, the U.S. then have 60 million infected and 3,480,000 dead. We also have 18 percent of 60 million needing hospital beds for a week. That is 10,800,000 hospital beds. Divided by a typical flu season that is 839,770 beds needed each week. ( In reality it would be better in the early phase, and much worse at the peak)

        The US only has about 900,000 hospital beds! The U.S. has an overall hospital occupancy of 63 percent. During the flu season ( other illnesses peak along with the flu) I am guessing that this occupancy rate increases by about 22 percent of total beds to 85 percent occupancy, leaving about 135,000 beds available. ( Best case) With an R-naught of 2.6 and a serious to critical hospitalization need of 839,770 beds, the U.S. would be 705,000 beds short each week! This would tremendously overburden our medical facilities. ( Did you see the videos out of Wuhan of medical staff breaking down, streets lined up to get into hospitals, etc…) How many more people, with other serious diseases, would die if this scenario occurred?

        This is why China has destroyed their own economy at a critical time of economic vulnerability. This is why every nation with borders to Iran, when it had only 30 cases, closed those borders. This is why South Korea is stopping public events, putting cities on lock down, closing businesses.

        My perspective is to watch what nations do, not what buricrats say.

        BTW, other nations, seeing the economic collapse of China, are very likely to also greatly minimize the real numbers.

        The above scenario is what is very realistic IF we treat this as a common flu. It could be considerably worse, a higher R-naught for instance, and reports of up to 14 percent of cured still testing positive and re-infections, therefore much greater fatalities.

        However we are not treating this as a common flu. It could mutate to a less virulent form. We could develop an effective vaccine while we take necessary painful steps to slow this down. As individuals we can decide to stock up now on extra food now, to lessen the panic later. Same with water, medicines, pet needs.

        We can self quarantine IF this gains a foothold in the country you live in. We can work together locally and with other nations to lessen the pain that is yet increasing. Let’s hope – pray that the R- naught is lower and the mortality is lower in developed nations of cleaner air and less smoking addicted, and with summer coming a greatly reduced viral load and R-naught.

        Unfortunately in early stages of exponential growth the mortality rate is skewered low because of the mean time to death. ( In this case about 21 days from infection to death.)

        [David A, for some reason these comments were caught as spam. I have freed up all that were found with your name. If this happens again please email support. ] ED

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      Kalm Keith

      Good point Stephen, business and manufacturing are shutting down.

      This could soon cripple the distribution of living essentials like food electricity and water. High rises beware.

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    Damo

    Covid19 is out and experts are predicting that we’ll all get it, eventually. I agree with them. The data continues to show exponential growth outside of China and I don’t see any action that will significantly mitigate that. What I don’t get is the failure of mainstream thinking to recognise it as a problem.

    So to most, it will just be a cold and will only kill the elderly and immune compromised. But not not much consideration (though Jo Nova has identified this) has been given to the knock on effect of this virus on our health system. Potentially, this virus will affect elective surgery. Particularly, anybody needing a hospital admission or overnight bed for their operation. So, if you have problems with gallstones or a hernia then this may not be the the year for you.

    Another aspect is more serious. If you have curable cancer, you may have to wait longer for your curable treatment which will lead to poorer outcomes (deaths). This won’t be recorded in the Covid 19 stats. In addition, if you need chemotherapy to help cure your cancer then this virus could happen to kill you or disrupt your treatment!

    My advice is, don’t get sick this year!

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    graham dunton

    Hi Jo,
    Interesting article

    https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/

    Israeli researchers at the Galilee Research Institute say they are just a few weeks away from the first vaccine of the coronavirus. If all goes well, the vaccine could be available in 90 days

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    James Poulos

    Wow.

    A couple of monkeys loose in a market and all of a sudden ‘Global Warming’ isn’t the greatest threat to the planet.

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    • #
      Greg Cavanagh

      You didn’t read WUWT yesterday did you, a new report released said Global Warming is the greatest threat to man kind, and could kill someone maybe in 50 years.

      Talking with people at work, nobody is aware of just what’s happening with this virus. Me and the guy beside me have been following it, mostly because I keep saying “Wow, check this out”. But others are unaware of anything unusual happening.

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        OriginalSteve

        Yeah and get this-likely in 2 months time, anything you want to buy ( including some goods ) are going to be difficult to get.

        I was saying to my wife, any cosmetics etc that cones from overseas may not be available or delayed for months. Prescription medicines – made in china. Do you have extra in case?

        Even with police and military, there may not be enough people to keep fuel and other things flowing. What about if the power drops out and manpower is greatly reduced so cant be gixed for days?

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    • #
      James Poulos

      Yeah… I read it.

      This is my morning routine in order:

      Andrew Bolt, Michael Smith, Tim Blair, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, The Daily Caller, Jonova (with occassional comments), WUWT, Facebook, @realDonaldTrump, and then I go to Commsec – there’s gonna be some good buying very shortly.

      I then drive to work and sit around a table with my mates for a team briefing – and in between disseminating information from the day before and discussing today’s problems, issues and concerns – someone will sneeze or cough and everyone else cracks up and yells out “zombie apocolypse”.

      While we have keenly followed this story from its incept our biggest concern is the facial rash from the antiseptic solution we use to clean our M17 Gas Masks with.

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    James Poulos

    And I notice the real scientists working on a cure aren’t standing around with their hands out demanding grants before they get to work on the problem.

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    mark jones

    This next week is going to be interesting with our pandemic position already enacted. What the world needs now is a fast acting kit to detect the virus. Going by the cruise ship experiment basic contact hygiene appears not to protect you. This virus must be airbourne.

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    • #
      Andrew McRae

      There is still no evidence whatsoever that the virus is airborne from respiration.
      The only person to claim it was airborne was Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau deputy head Zeng Qun published in the China Daily on Saturday 8 Feb. This was contradicted by China’s own Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and also two days later by the Singapore Ministry of Health who said “for the general public, the risk of infection from transient contact, such as on public transport or in public places, is assessed to be low.” Subsequently Singapore’s Minister for Transport repeated the same advice.

      This is consistent with later epidemiology. In a cluster just this morning traced to an air-conditioned office in Singapore there are only 4 people who have been confirmed to have contracted it at that office, and yet 100 people work in that company. This is far fewer cases than would be expected if it could be spread by exhaled aerosol, rather than through larger droplets. Advice that indoor air-conditioned spaces have higher risk are not because the virus is airborne but because cool air keeps it viable on surfaces for longer and hot weather kills it quicker. (I’m not trying to give you Singapore overload, but the Singapore Straits Times has a pretty good coverage and FAQ on this.)

      Other healthcare staff are being told to use protection against airborne pathogens when dealing with suspected COVID19 cases, but the USA CDC describes this as purely precautionary:

      We do not yet know how long COVID-19 remains infectious in the air. In the interim, it is reasonable to apply a similar time period before entering the room without respiratory protection as used for pathogens spread by the airborne route (e.g., measles, tuberculosis).

      The infection rate on the ship can be explained by people passing through common areas such as passageways for scheduled “daily outdoors fresh air breaks on open decks.” Any infected droplets in their breath may settle on a surface that is not irradiated by UV nor cleaned by alcohol or bleach, so allows the virus to persist and be picked up hours later.

      In addition the crew were given PPE including N95-level face masks, which by definition will only catch 95% of particles 0.3μm or larger. That still leaves 5% of very small droplets that may get through, and remember the virus particle itself is less than 0.1μm in diameter. The N95 masks are a good hazard reduction, but not a perfect protection. So after a week of rolling that dice 3 times per day at close proximity for hundreds of passenger cabins, it’s possible the crew could end up being infected and transmitting the virus to the passengers. It happened to a Government quarantine officer on board so it could have happened to other crew too.

      Under those circumstances there was no need to invoke aerosolization for that rate of spread. It’s unfortunate that too many people jumped to conclusions about that.

      There is evidence of the virus being present in urine and so some nurses have assumed the virus can become aerosolised during urination. This implies the air circulating around men’s urinals present a higher than usual risk of infection. If the facility has been designed with air-conditioning with positive pressure inlet near the ceiling and an exhaust outlet near the floor around the urinal this should reduce the chance of normal smells from being inhaled and will therefore incidentally be useful for reducing inhalation of virus during an outbreak. Badly designed amenities will be riskier.
      The ventilation around toilets are typically better for obvious reasons, with an exhaust above each stall. If an outbreak happens here, perhaps guys should temporarily join the sit-down club for the duration of the epidemic?? Better to swallow your pride than cough up a lung, I imagine.

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        Andrew McRae

        Well that is really amazing. For the first time ever I just received a spam phone call on my mobile phone which was a pre-recorded message in Chinese. Absolutely no idea what they were saying so I hung up. This 048 number ended in 331106.
        The co-incidence is too great. Less than 30 minutes between posting a comment mentioning a Chinese government official and getting a spam phone call from someone who is either a stalker or a Chinese Communist Party department.
        If they have any substantive argument at all they are really failing to communicate their reasoning.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Hmm….can you learn the phrase in Chinese for “get lost, this is a democracy”?

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          greggg

          I get the odd Chinese spam call from ebay sellers to a number I only give on ebay. I just had one from a 0483 number.

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        • #
          Andrew McRae

          Hey everyone, I just saw this really great new video. 😉

          It’s time to call out China’s BS!
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msrqE87yTRs

          It’s a bit of a soapbox rant about how many ways China is exporting a lot of problems to the rest of the world, breaking rules that other countries are expected to follow, mostly environmental but of course coronavirus gets a mention.

          Hmmm, is that enough for another call? No, still something missing.

          Hey maybe Wang Xiaodong, The Governor of Hubei, should lead a cleanup of Chinese hygiene practices starting with those wet markets? If you’re not sure how to do that, Xiaodong, my consulting services are available for hire and I’ll be happy to take your call for a modest price! 😀

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      • #

        Thanks Andrew. That’s useful (hopeful) information. Anything is better than “airborne”.

        No idea about that phone call. I’ve had lots of spam calls. None from China.

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        mark jones

        Andrew, ever been on a Princess? The crew are anal about guests using the provided sanitiser liquid dispensers for exactly preventing this type of transmission. I would imagine the Captain and crew would triple stress this during the quarantine.

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        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          The increased focus on asking/requiring the guests to use the provided sanitizers sends a message of it’s own.

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      • #
        David A

        I hope you are right, yet this is the report I read…
        https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/china-officially-announces-that-the-coronavirus-can-be-airborne-and-can-be-conditionally-spread-via-aerosol-transmission-


        Speaking at a press conference Thursday in Beijing, Dr Wang Guiqiang, director of the infectious disease department of the Peking University First Hospital, explained the changes in the sixth scheme…

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        • #
          Andrew McRae

          The ThailandMedical article is just fruity clickbait. If you had bothered to watch the video of the WHO Director you would see that after having stuffed up his description of it being “airborne” at 38:30 in the video, he has a quiet consultation from his other pensive staff, and later at 44:30 he corrects his earlier comment by saying

          “Sorry I used the military word airborne. (It/I) meant to spread via droplets or respiratory transmission. Please take it that way. Not the military language. [laughs awkwardly]”.

          Odd that the authors were happy to shout “airborne” as much as possible but neglected to tell you that he retracted the word “airborne” and corrected himself.

          The Straits Times article they link to says:

          Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) emphasised on Thursday that the publication recognised close contact and respiratory droplets are still the predominant mode of transmission for the virus.
          MOH said the publication also contained three caveats for aerosol transmission: That it is possible with prolonged exposure, through high concentrations, and in a closed environment.

          Right, so its still not an airborne disease. Those same conditions increase the chance of droplet transmission, so it is not clear why transmission under these conditions have to be interpreted as only an aerosol transmission. They give an ICU as possible example, which is consistent with the precaution given for health workers by the CDC.

          To be fair, a cough or sneeze has a continuous distribution of particle sizes with most being large and a small percentage being small. Yet the experts still make a distinction between an airborne aerosol versus a droplet. The amount of precaution required is vastly different depending on whether the exhaled particle is small enough to remain suspended (airborne) or falls out over a short distance (not airborne). Droplets fall, so you need to be at close range to inhale them before they fall onto a surface, and that is not what experts mean when they talk about an “airborne” pathogen.

          A droplet is a droplet, it’s governed by physics, so the virus species does not matter. Or to say the same meaning another way, SARS-CoV-2 is no more airborne than influenza, and traditionally influenza has not been treated as an airborne disease. It doesn’t go around corners or linger for hours in the air. Covering coughs, keeping separation distance, and washing hands have been effective. If influenza was airborne then those steps together would not be effective at stopping it from spreading.

          It’s been 10 days since those articles were written and the advice is still to prevent transmission of this new virus via droplets (the same as for influenza). I’ve just checked and it turns out even Dr John Campbell, who previously inferred that it was airborne on the Diamond Princess 8 days ago, has said this morning that while it has “some airborne characteristics”, it is not due to aerosolisation carrying over a distance, it is being spread mainly through droplets and surfaces. (He posted that video 11hrs ago which is 12hrs after I had reached the same conclusion, which is somewhat of a relief.)
          And it all comes back to evidence. After all the flights with confirmed cases there’s just not enough people catching this thing for it to have been aerosolised by normal asymptomatic respiration.

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          • #

            Hi Andrew,

            After a while I realised that the Thai source is mainly alarmist click bait just like #coronavirus. Both sites upset me for a while until I started finding flaws in their reports.
            China did not lock away sick people. It just reduced entrance opportunities to 1 per building
            The building with only 7 lights on would have been photographed in the early morning when most were asleep.
            And so on.

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    el gordo

    ‘The Australian medical officers’ “pandemic” call was so far ahead of the rest of the world for a simple reason: they didn’t trust the World Health Organisation, which they believed was succumbing to China’s pressure.’

    Hartcher / SMH

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    OriginalSteve

    Listening to a US Senate enquiry Sen Tom Cotton ( a logical person and practical ) who said apparently 1500 people from Wuhan, China flew into New York in January…..ponder that.

    The virus can have a 3 week incubation and possibly longer……so about now we shoukd start seeing cases.

    That said, the societal disruption may be worse than the disease….many elderly could die from people not being able to get to them fue to wuarantine ( hello martial law?) . If it gets bad we could see stuff like looting.

    Begin sarc

    Good thing we have all those schools with 6′ fences around them, huh,…..and if schools are emptied due to the “virus” the Elite can round up trouble makers under emergency powers …nah… they wouldnt do that would they? We live in a *ahem* democracy , right?

    End sarc

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  • #
    Bulldust

    Iran may have cancelled Friday prayers, but the holy shrine at Qom is still open because it has “healing properties” according to Dr John Campbell (being open, not the properties):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmIRMHzBZdU

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  • #
    Frosty

    In the article above it says:

    This would make Covid-19 about 10 times more deadly than seasonal flu, which is estimated to kill between 290,000 and 650,000 people a year globally.

    but then in the very next line it also says:

    A virus with a 1% case fatality rate– that’s ten times worse than The Flu — could kill 70 million people.

    If the seasonal flu kills up to 650,000/year, then something 10x worse might kill up to 6.5M/year.
    That’s a long way from 70M people total. Are you suggesting that there could never be a vaccine in the next 5-10 years?

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    RickWill

    The number of new cases being reported in China is declining rapidly. If accurate, then they appear to have the virus under control. There is no longer indication of exponential growth in China.

    I wonder how rates of infection in China are being assessed if whole buildings are locked down. It would take a huge number of medical staff to administer tests. Are there even enough test kits/facilities to administer tests.

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    • #
      Bill In Oz

      Shonky propaganda figures Rick !
      Read Epoch Times if you want a real perspective of what is happening in China !
      Disregard and look at what is happening in South Korea & Iran & Italy.

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      • #
        RickWill

        I went to this site:
        https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-in-focus-feb-27_3254979.html

        There is nothing in this latest update that suggests China has accelerating infection. In fact it gives the impression that lockdowns and quarantine are given precedence over civil liberties so authorities can limit infection rates.

        Iran is the place that appears to be out of control. When senior government officials and medical workers have the virus you can bet it is widespread and numbers infected grossly under reported.

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    • #
      greggg

      Maybe cases being reported have declined because of changes in testing? Actual infection rates may not have changed much. Or maybe symptoms are worse in some areas than others due to pollution etc.

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    Richard Ilfeld

    I’m willing to accept the 1% — but that’s a figure that seems to be net true without an effective & accepted treatment regime.
    All the talk about a vaccine misses the point — that will be nice for next year.

    An effective treatment, preferably one that doesn’t require an ICU stay and allows the normal person who gets a severe case to go to the
    hospital with some certainty of coming out alive allows life to return to normal.

    1,000,000 people go to Japan for the Olympics. Half are infected. 5,000 die. This is utterly unacceptable, and the games are probably canceled,
    or held as a TV event after the athletes spend 14 days beforehand in quarantine.

    Same story, but 50 die. Well if there is a new virus and half are infected, that’s bad too, so probably the games are sparsley attended, folks wear
    masks and use good habits, some jurisdictions are interdicted, and there are few if any problems. Activity is changed and reduced, disrupted and
    annoying, but not stopped.

    AS soon as there is a good and repeatable treatment regime for otherwise healthy people life and economic activity can get back to a pretty good approximation of
    normal in the Western world, even if its as complex as the HIV cocktail. The intrusions on life sufficient to prevent geometric expansion don’t stop commerce;
    that’s the role of blind panic. And as far as that goes, canceling a sorting event is a different category than supplying a grocery store.

    And there will be another reason for political backwaters like Iran and repressive regimes like China to rethink their governmental models, and for the rest of the world to think about how much latitude we need to extend a country that might present to us a clear and present danger simply through terrible public market hygiene.

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    Another Ian

    Cross referenced

    “27 Feb 2019-nCoV / SARS-CoV-2 / Covid-19 Diagnostic Of Pandemic”

    https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/02/27/27-feb-2019-ncov-sars-cov-2-covid-19-diagnostic-of-pandemic/

    Suggests being stocked up for at least two weeks

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    mark jones

    Interesting comment from Australia’s chief medical officer..kids are not coming down with this disease as would be expected, either they are showing little effect or are resistant, it is something that needs looking at.

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    • #
      Chad

      And from our health minister..

      Average age of all fatalities is 71..

      So , fair to assume 99% of fatalities are in the 50+yr age demographic ?

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    robert rosicka

    Just seen this story from Hong Kong about a dog that’s tested positive for the virus but it’s unsure if it’s just the trace of the virus from the owner or if it’s actually caught the virus .

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/a-dog-in-hong-kong-tests-positive-for-the-coronavirus-who-confirms.html

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  • #
    Drapetomania

    from having developed the first vaccine to combat the coronavirus

    Its an RNA virus.
    Their weakness is the mutation rate.
    Their strength is their mutation rate.
    The vaccine will work against one type..then the mutated versions will be encountered..and the vaccine cannot have built up “augmented” T-lymphocytes, as well as B-lymphocytes for this.

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  • #
    Bill In Oz

    And now an Iranian woman returning from Iran
    To Queensland has COVID 19 !
    WTF !
    Surely it’s time for Morrison and his mob
    To pull their act together & ban all persons who have ben in Iran recently
    From entering Australia !
    And if they are Australian citizens or permanent residents
    Put them all in quarantine
    The same as in China !
    Or will they be utter contemptible wimps
    Under pressure from China & WHO !
    Probably the latter !
    Bloody idiots !

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-29/coronoavirus-queensland-sixth-person-confirmed-iran-return/12013580

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      As i said in an earlier post, in january, 1500 people direct from Wuhan landed in New York.

      Now, assuming this thing is super infectious ( but possibly not as dangerous to people in the west ) then its going to take off fast in NY if it hasnt already.

      Australia will likely suffer the same fate, but I suspect the societal dislocation and supply chain interruption internally could be significant.

      However, it likely will subside after some months and life will go on……like it did with the 1918 flu.

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    • #
      Bill In Oz

      She worked ina beauty parlour on the Gold Coast.
      And saw & handled at least 40 people
      before deciding she was sick & going to a hopsital for assessment !

      Bugger !
      Queensland has biggish problem !

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  • #
    Rocket Rod

    How about our $100M National Medical Stockpile deployed across Oz for just such outbreaks.
    20M face masks etc etc
    We are better prepared than a lot of countries.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Regarding the possible Israeli vaccine, I hope all those Leftist losers that support the antisemitic BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement refuse the vaccination – you know, because we all know Leftists aren’t hypocrites…

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    Zane

    Disgusting, how the Guardian continually disses ScoMo about his policies on coronavirus, deporting kiwis, and climate change. They obviously didn’t get the memo, that the Labor-Green Coalition lost the election… Talk about leftwing bias.

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  • #
    Crakar24

    Its here via Iran, shouldn’t ld be shutting borders now but we wont, inept leadership

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  • #

    If I might inject some sarcastic humour into all of this.

    In this current COVID-19 upcoming World pandemic, we can be thankful for one thing.

    Prince Philip is still alive!

    Tony.

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  • #
    Stevem

    I don’t belief the 1% figure at all. 1% of those who have caught the disease may have died, but 90% are still ill. The ones valid way to calculate the mortality rate is to use the mortality rate against the survival rate. In China, 2834 have died and 3i,986 have recovered.
    The true morality rate is therefore 2834/(2843+31986) = 6.8%

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    • #

      STeve, case fatality rate can only be calculated by starting with a cohort and following them all through. Some deaths and some recoveries take a whole month. The instantaneous figures of recovered and dead are not comparable. Recoveries are on average slower than deaths. Delayed.

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      • #
        LightningCamel

        Further to that, we have little knowledge of the total of infected. Even if we accept that the various counts are accurate we have little data on the number of people infected in place who have mild symptoms or remain asymptomatic. These people are invisible to screening programs at transport hubs and contact tracing is not without misses. Reports from Europe mention many detections in asymptomatic individuals. Will these develop symptoms? Not much data yet.

        Bottom line is that it will be some time before we get an accurate figure in fatality rates but they are likely to be significantly lower than anything we can calculate from current data.

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      • #
        Bill In Oz

        Or, Jo, death ‘delayed’ by heroic medical intervention !

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        • #
          LightningCamel

          That is the $64 question isn’t it. If survival depends on heroic medical intervention then, as Jo has been saying for some time, this may not be available. Korea will be worth watching over the next few days, they currently have 10 in the serious / critical group but this is a delayed statistic from the rates of infection and we will know in the next few days if it ramps up in similar proportion to the infection count in a country with modern health infrastructure.

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  • #
    Russell

    Their ABC telling healthy people that they don’t need to wear masks.
    These “national emergency broadcaster” folks do not have a clue – why are we wasting our money on them?

    Healthy folk SHOULD wear a mask to stop themselves from touching their mouth and nose directly.

    Most people involuntarily touch their face many times in each hour of the day unless they are asleep.
    If they have touched a contaminated surface before a touch, they are helping to spread the virus.

    This is not “precautionary principle” action – it is a direct risk that needs to be managed urgently.

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    • #
      el gordo

      This has taken aunty by surprise and her climate emergency script looks pallid by comparison. If the organisation puts a foot wrong on this issue, costing people’s lives, then they will pay dearly.

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      • #
        Bill In Oz

        The ABC does not have a script on this oen EG
        So they are playing soft shoe nonsense instead.
        The BBC is actually far, far far better than the ABC
        With it’s reporting on the Corona epidemic.
        Real coal face stories by brave reporters.
        And the BBC reporter on this in Beijing is an Australian !

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    • #
      Chad

      Quick !…
      ….im off to the fancy dress shop for the full “STIG” outfit,,….
      .. full face helmet , suit, gloves, boots, etc
      …..that should do the trick !

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    Rocket Rod

    If we all get sick then we’ll all have elevated temperatures which will raise the temperature of the planet another 0.1C which will result in governments taxing us more which in turn will :
    a. Upset Greta more. Yay!
    b. Give the governments the funds to fight nCov.

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    • #
      Greg in NZ

      How come She Who Sees Everything
      didn’t see this coming…

      And her high priests/advisors & (un)experts…
      Existential ©rap.

      Achoo Wuflu.

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  • #
    pat

    (John) Hopkins Medicine: Coronavirus Disease 2019 vs. the Flu
    Lisa Maragakis, M.D., M.P.H., senior director of infection prevention at Johns Hopkins, explains how the flu and COVID-19 are similar and how they are different.
    Infections
    COVID-19: Approximately 84,119 cases worldwide; 62 cases in the U.S. as of Feb. 28, 2020.
    Flu: Estimated 1 billion cases worldwide; 9.3 million to 45 million cases in the U.S. per year.

    Deaths
    COVID-19: Approximately 2,871 deaths reported worldwide; 0 deaths in the U.S., as of Feb. 28, 2020.
    Flu: 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year…READ ALL
    https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu

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    Crakar24

    Am i right in assuming we did not close our borders to save the economy?

    Soon we will shut our schools and day care centres thus parents (those that are not sick) will not be able to work thus crashing our economy .

    Am i missing something here

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    Power Grab

    Just an observation from flyover country in the US…I saw several Asian-looking young adults at the store this week. Three of them. They had that “lean and hungry” look. They weren’t wearing masks. I wondered if they had been staying out of circulation due to concerns about COVID-19.

    I wanted to ask them if they had enough to eat.

    It concerns me that the Chinese authorities expect people to stay penned up, but they toss on the road the food that the farmers bring to town. I don’t see how folks can get well if they’re starving.

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    David Maddison

    Are people familiar with the 1971 movie The Andromeda Strain? Based on the Michael Crichton novel. Directed by Robert Wise.

    An overview is presented here: https://youtu.be/ut9ejKRuni0

    A trailer is here: https://youtu.be/YMbSpnlOOtE

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    Raving

    Aylward claims that China is quenching the outbreak. That would be wonderful news as it indicates that agressive containment is effective. If true, practices in China Canada Italy UK and elsewhere will supress the epidemic in the intermediate time frame

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-19-china-epicurve-1.5479983

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    MichaelB

    Correct me if Im wrong… if Influenza results in about three to five million cases of severe illness and about 290,000 to 650,000 deaths per year world wide (11.75% death rate), isn’t the corona virus (1% death rate) nothing but an annoying virus that’s hard to treat, control and quarantine?

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  • #

    The WHO still favours containment over mere mitigation so the risk intersection between health and economics has not quite been reached yet.
    There are some positive signs in that Wuhan apparently now has spare beds due to recoveries exceeding new cases.
    In South Korea the cases are mainly sect members who have close physical contact during ceremonies.
    In Italy their social habits involve close physical contact.
    Little infection seems to have occurred in air conditioned environments so, again, it is a matter of physical contact or touching infected surfaces as on the cruise ship.
    The UK still has a very slow rate of infection though it has had what may be the first case of infection internally.
    Singapore seems to have slowed down the rate of growth.
    There is a chance that changed behaviour between individuals combined with basic hygiene measures will turn this around.
    Fingers crossed.

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    Btw Scylla ‘n Charybdis,
    what’s new? …
    What ter do ? Use
    yr old common sense,
    the root cellar ‘n
    yer medicine chest,
    stock up ‘n
    – do – not
    – be – afraid!

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    Crakar24

    The israelis are close to a vaccine, fortunately they were working on one for another identical (almost) corona virus. How lucky are we??

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