Remember back in February when the mainstream media was telling us this was “just like the flu”?
They weren’t asking the Health Minister “how many Australians might die” or “why don’t we close the borders”. They didn’t want to know whether the PM had calculated the cost of leaving the borders open? They weren’t estimating how many weeks it would be before we ran out of ICU beds.
Nor were they demanding to know whether Australians could make more medical masks, had enough ventilators, or should be stocking up with weeks to go, so we could avoid last minute shopper panic. Australians were still booking holidays on cruise ships and flights to Bali instead of putting spare toilet paper in the shed.
Australians were blindsided by the incompetent media. That’s why they are panic shopping now. And now the media still wont ask the borders question — those who sold the country into this mess which could have been so easily avoided. The media doesn’t want to go there because it would be to admit they failed too. They kept it off the table — presumably to stay fashionably aligned with their academic buddies who were shedding tears about 65,000 student cash cows being stuck at home in China.
Watch the advert at 3:00 minutes –China Global Television Network promoted the spread of coronavirus with a advert.
It’s almost like the media were bought by China….
In Australia yesterday the ABC or SBS chopped Trumps answer so Australians mostly won’t know that Trump calls it the Chinese Virus because China is calling it a virus from American Soldier.
Australian Medical Association WA President Andrew Miller said Western Australia was headed for a situation like Italy and are 8 – 10 days behind Sydney. Read his scathing comments below.
The tally in Australia is now about 900, the same as Italy had on Feb 28th, just three weeks ago. Now Italy has 41,000 cases and 3,405 people have died. Their population is three times larger than Australia and slightly older, it’s colder and packed in closer. At a guess, with the present SlowMo/SlowState response, maybe only 10-20,000 Australians will catch this in the next three weeks? “Great”.
[Miller said:] …“And we’re not doing any of the things that the countries that are being successful are doing like Hong Kong.
“They are using fever monitoring in public, they lock people down away from their families if they’re positive, whereas here we send them home.”Dr Miller said the WA Government knew before today’s announcement that community spread was happening.
“They’re in a state of disbelief, confusion and chaos,” he said.
The AMA has called for the State’s borders to be closed.
Dr Miller said: “They said, ‘that’s ridiculous, we’re not closing them. And it’s impossible and unnecessary because no one gets infected on a plane’.
“And the next day, the Premier comes out and says, “it should be non-essential travel only, interstate (but) we can’t close the borders, that would require a national agreement that contravenes the constitution.’
“The next day Tasmania closes its borders. They’re full of s**t. You can quote me on that.”
He has since apologized for being disrespectful.* No one should waste words on anything except the main problem at hand which is not manners and ettiquette when lives are at stake.
“The AMA (WA) has always recommended that we should be taking ALL measures to flatten the curve of the spread outlined by the World Health Organisation. This includes closing borders, slowing community spread and most importantly — being prepared.
It’s not a choice between Let It Rip and the slow bleed of “Flatten the Curve”. It’s not a choice of health versus money. The third option no one is mentioning is to Crush The Curve: we go hard, fast, and do a major short sharp quarantine. It’s not radical, it’s just textbook epidemiology, it saves more lives and it saves the economy too.
SlowMo, Boris and Trump are still two weeks behind the virus. It’s time to get the Third Option on the table.
Flattening the Curve is a fatalistic slow bleed that must last months. It rescues us from the demolition derby that the Let It Rip disaster is cursing on Italian hospitals, but it’s deadly for the economy. All leaders who are keeping schools open while turning student dorms into triage units are locked into this limited thinking. It’s the Influenza-plan rejigged.
There is another way — (as I’ve been saying) — we stop dithering and acting two-weeks-late, and jump ahead of this inanimate code. We aim for extinction — hunt every infection down, keep most people at home, reduce the spread, then finish by following every contact, track and trace. It’s not that big a deal. When we said “close the borders” people said it was unthinkable, but they’re closed now. Somehow life goes on without the trip to Bali, and the dinner at the Hyatt. The slow-bleed keeps people going to work and dinner parties, and keeps the kids in school, but we walk the tightrope of Hospital Doom with an exponential foe — people dying drip, drip, drop all the way.
Crush the Curve instead, enough with the fatalism
We’ve already given up sport, holidays and big parties — it’s not the end of the world to just call a halt to work and school and stay home for a few weeks. I predict we’ll end up there anyway, so the sooner the better. As long as people have food, it’s not exactly “survival camp” struggle to stay home for a few weeks. Regions can still trade with care. We drop the containers at the border, swap cabs and use local drivers. Planes with cargo can be quarantined or cleaned. We do food deliveries, so no one goes hungry. We test those delivery guys, and the packer girls. We guard the supply chain people — the farmers, health workers, and all essential services.
We live without lawyers and accountants for a few weeks, and look after the supply chain people. We expect the delivery team to be as isolated as possible (apart from the delivery rounds), and tested often, so we pay them more temporarily. The last thing we want are deliveries of coronavirus. (Like in Italy).
In this future we build holiday homes, not hospitals.
The secret is strict walls. We stop feeding the virus fresh bodies and simply outwait the code. Its big weakness is that it can’t repair from daily wear and tear. Heat will break the bonds. So will UV. Sooner or later (nine days?) we don’t have to do anything and the code disintegrates. One snip and it’s powerless.
The great thing about this is certainty and speed
Do it once and do it well, then maintain the barrier around the Virus Zone as it shrinks bit by bit.
Imagine nations split into mosaics of small regions and we clean one at a time and build from there. As each small region is cleared of the virus it can be opened to other clean regions, then clean states join clean states, and finally clean nations connect. This quarantine is only as good as its walls, but it can be done. And it can be maintained and it will keep airlines, events and restaurants alive. Footy games too.
Schools have to go skeleton minimalist (briefly) — all kids who can stay home should stay home. South Korea had emergency classes for children of essential workers and kept class sizes to 10. After the state is clean, schools can run normally again. In the six month Slow-Bleed-Plan schools will have no certainty that they won’t be shut down due to infection any day. Flights can’t be restored quickly, and businesses go bust.
How realistic is it to aim for extinction?
This is not 1918. We don’t have to give up before we even start.
Thousands of medical researchers are working on this from scores of different angles. There are plenty of interventions in the pipeline to improve the odds.
It will take a special kind of determination. It will take thousands of tests and discipline, but we won’t have to keep it up for six months. Keeping the virus out would have been a snap a few weeks ago, but now we need to over reach to aim for zero. Instead of slowly sliding belatedly into greater and greater restrictions, just do them all now temporarily. Make it top priority to get the Ro under 1 and keep it there. Declare a war on this virus.
As a side benefit, even if we don’t achieve extinction we stop more countries losing control. And we discover what makes this virus tick and which restrictions matter the most. Crushing it now buys us time to find ways to improve the odds. Being defeatist now just makes it harder to use the new tools when they come. And they will come, we know the code.
Any antivirals (chloroquine, anti-HIV drugs) can be used as preventatives on the contacts to ring-fence the virus. New biotech solutions with potential to make this easier include mass production of monoclonal antibodies, or small copies of the infectious spike protein or stem cell treatments and RNAi. We declare war on this virus. We study it to the nth, do gene assays, figure out which people are most at risk of infection or at risk of being carriers or at risk of getting the severe disease.
But we don’t need hi-tech, we need a clear mission, and some time…
States with the fewest infections have the best chance to lead the way — New Zealand, Tasmania, Hong Kong. West Australia. Russia, Macao, Taiwan. India?
After the curve is crushed, freedom is mostly fixed fast
Inside the No-corona-state everyone has all the freedom that they usually have, they just can’t leave and come straight back without a two week quarantine. But restaurants, schools, clubs and pubs are all back on again.
The proviso is that that walls must stay strong. A No-corona state can only afford open travel with other proven No-corona nations. All arrivals from the virus zone will have to be quarantined and not with polite requests but mandatory checks and carefully enforced. But every nation will want to be on the clean list — there is a big incentive to get there and maintain it, and to be honest. Countries caught hiding infections will be dropped like hot potatoes, and lose the right to get back on the list quickly. Poor nations will need help but big clean nations will have healthy economies, and they can assist.
There is better future
Until there is a vaccine or a serious treatment we live with constant vigilance looking for an outbreak. But when it happens, we know what to do. Short, sharp and fast. Obviously we test, test, test, and then test again.
I’ve said from the start that anti-virals were always going to be more useful to us this year than vaccines, which take so long to test and be ready for use. What we really need are anti-virals which also happen to be preapproved and tested and hopefully in mass production. Chloroquine is cheap too, though I doubt Australian stocks of the drug are very high, or that our genius rulers have arranged more. This may be a godsend in Africa where chloroquine use is already high and may reduce the spread of Covid-19 somewhat.
There are links to papers and discussion below but I can’t beat this great description explaining how inside the cells zinc stops a major viral protein from copying the virus. Chloroquine is a zinc ionophore — it opens the ion gates and pumps zinc into the cell, just what we want if we have virus trying to take over the cellular machinery.
The South Korean results are not based on a randomized blind trial so we can’t be sure if it works. But the South Korean death rates are lower. Perhaps they are doing a better treatment than Italy. Perhaps the viral strains are different. Perhaps the population is different, older, have higher blood pressure, etc etc.
h/t to Bulldust, Geoff S, Willie Soon, Eric Worrall, David E, Hugh P, Colin A, Chris D.
Please send a letter to incompetent Health Ministers to make sure they are looking at how to maximize stocks now, and to remove bureaucratic hurdles to using this for the most severe cases, which may help reduce the ICU load as well as keep people alive.
This is yet another reason to go hard, go fast, reduce the rate of infections.
If treatments are just around the corner, the financial and “lives” advantage will be amplified if we stop the explosive exponential curve as fast as possible. Brendan-let-them-die-Murphy our fatalistic Chief Medical Officer seems to have given up on saving as many Australians as possible.
A renowned research professor in France has reported successful results from a new treatment for Covid-19, with early tests suggesting it can stop the virus from being contagious in just six days.
Professor Didier Raoult from infection hospital l’Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire (IHU) Méditerranée Infection in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur), published a video explaining the trials on Monday March 16.
This was a small study on only 24 patients. Doses were 600mcg/day for ten days.
“We were able to ascertain that patients who had not received Plaquenil (the drug containing hydroxychloroquine) were still contagious after six days, but of those that had received Plaquenil, after six days, only 25% were still contagious.”
If patients are young, healthy, and have mild symptoms without underlying conditions, doctors can observe them without antiviral treatment;
If more than 10 days have passed since the onset of the illness and the symptoms are mild, physicians do not have to start an antiviral medication;
However, if patients are old or have underlying conditions with serious symptoms, physicians should consider an antiviral treatment. If they decide to use the antiviral therapy, they should start the administration as soon as possible: … chloroquine 500mg orally per day.
As chloroquine is not available in Korea, doctors could consider hydroxychloroquine 400mg orally per day (Hydroxychloroquine is an analog of chloroquine used against malaria, autoimmune disorders, etc. It is widely available as well).
The treatment is suitable for 7 – 10 days, which can be shortened or extended depending on clinical progress. Notably, the guidelines mention other antivirals as further lines of defense, including anti-HIV drugs.
Mechanism of action — increases intracellular pH to clogs up cells machinery which stops viral replication.
A different view on how it works (I prefer the video description above).
Six weeks after this disaster was obvious to bloggers-watching-twitter-feeds, the entirely predictable shortage of masks is only just starting to be addressed? Why weren’t they doing this a month ago?
Australian Defence Force soldiers have been deployed to help Australia’s only mask manufacturer, Med-Con, near Shepparton.
The Federal Government confirmed on Tuesday about a dozen ADF personnel would be called out under the Defence Assistance to the Civil Community rules to help Med-Con ramp up production of personal protective equipment.
Three army trucks were seen heading north on Old Dookie Rd about 7.20 am Wednesday morning.
Australians are panic buying because the sheer incompetence of our medical advice and management is obvious to everyone. It didn’t occur to me to suggest the government get local mask production running because any sensible ten year old would have seen that coming.
Dithering politicians push the fatality from 0.5% toward 5%
A gritty analysis by Tomas Pueyo shows how leaders inertia is killing people every day. Some of the victims of tomorrows Virus Get-Togethers won’t die for a few weeks, but the next batch starts tomorrow (and every day until the nation self-isolates, stops the pox-parties, the cough-shopping, and pneumonia-planes. ). And each day there are more than the day before. Sounds macabre, but at this point in an exponential epidemic, it’s just how it is. Since we didn’t stop the Airbussed virus, we’re going to have to shut everything down anyhow, the later we do it, the larger the cost, and the longer it takes. We have to get ahead of this virus.
Meanwhile in Australia, the average punter seems to realize this and the mood is hitting feverish notes with tramplings in supermarkets — The government is calling for calm, but doctors are calling for borders to close, and schools to go online, they’re standing outside schools with signs telling parents not to send their children to school. Doctors are warning that we are the next “Italy” if we don’t get our act together. But the government says it’s too early to close schools (apparently we have to kill some more people first). The keep-schools-open excuses are bizarre: parents are being told to send kids to school so that kids don’t stay home and infect grandparents — which implies that they will infect parents and somehow that is OK. Ministers doesn’t seem to realize that if kids stay home with grandparents early, and we stop this spreading, no one gets sick in the first place. The other excuse to keep the schools open is that healthcare workers need the childcare which South Korea solved by holding small “emergency” classes of under ten students. Better for healthworkers kids and the teachers. In some schools in NSW and Victoria a quarter to a half of all students are already absent as parents keep them home. The Catholic School system (which huge here) is calling for stoppages. Teachers, not surprisingly are not too happy about being sacrificial child minders. They don’t understand why a crowd of 500 is not OK, but a school of 1000 is. And finally some cancer patients, disabled folk and longer lived humans are identifying as the 1-4% who “Are expected to die” and they don’t like being referred to as a casual-nevermind-addendum.
When’s the best time to stop an epidemic? Before it becomes one.
Pueyo calculates the likely final death rates in different areas by converging two different ways to estimate it. Far in the future some countries are headed for a 0.5% while others are aiming for 4% — it depends on the day they start.
How many people will start down a path to dying tomorrow…
Peuyo has a handy method to guesstimate the “percentage of infected employees” or odds of getting infected in your own state — he’s trying to help people answer the question “when should you lock down”. Read it all.
Excluding these, countries that are prepared will see a fatality rate of ~0.5% (South Korea) to 0.9% (rest of China).
Countries that are overwhelmed will have a fatality rate between ~3%-5%
Put in another way: Countries that act fast can reduce the number of deaths by a factor of ten. And that’s just counting the fatality rate. Acting fast also drastically reduces the cases, making this even more of a no-brainer.
Some countries have kept the exponential curve at bay…
Notice the main rise and fall plays out over four weeks of lockdowns. And also that it takes 12 days from major action to slow the ship and start to see a difference.
…
He estimates that the true rate of infections (grey lines) rises much faster than the recognised cases.
The two estimates of death rates converge on under 1% or close to 4%. The difference comes down to the day the leader gets their act together. No country on Earth has enough ICU beds for this virus. The later they stop the spread the sooner the hospital wards overflow.
The death rate in central China will end up around 5%. The rate in the rest of China is more like 1%.
…
The rate in South Korea is tending towards 0.5%. (Though it is a pretty “out there” graph — South Korea is one of a kind.)
In Italy the curves are headed towards 4%. The hospitals are totally overrun. Here’s hoping they can bring that back fast. But suddenly it’s clear why the semi lock down one day became a nation lockdown the next.
I heard tonight that Italy has more hospital beds per capita than the US does.
…
Wow. What China did.
The lengths at which it went to contain the virus are mind-boggling. For example, they had up to 1,800 teams of 5 people each tracking every infected person, everybody they got interacted with, then everybody those people interacted with, and isolating the bunch. That’s how they were able to contain the virus across a billion-people country.
This is not what Western countries have done. And now it’s too late.
I do have a reservation with the Pueyo analysis — he doesn’t seem to realize the Chinese stats are computer modeled CCP estimates of something probably ten fold higher. But the rates in China match elsewhere — they might have been using the real ratios, even they faked the numbers to hide the scale. There are only a couple of sentences that hinge on the actuals – -I don’t think Wuhan was really locked down when infections were . Otherwise, the trend is King, unfortunately.
I seem to have the uncanny ability to predict what frontline experts will recommend days in advance. It’s not genius. Just medical training and that the solution to this is so Bleeding Obvious, and politicians are still 2 to 3 weeks behind an exploding epidemic of an inanimate nucleic acid code.
Top doctors across WA’s biggest hospitals are sensationally calling for the state to effectively close its borders to protect West Australians from the coronavirus pandemic.
In a remarkable letter obtained by The West Live to be discussed exclusively on this morning’s show, it can be revealed the Combined Medical Leads Advisory Group has raised concerns about the “extremely limited” availability of testing infrastructure and supplies in WA.
The group, which includes senior medicos from FSH, RPH and SCGH, also warns there is “limited evidence of effective anti-viral treatment”, “no effective vaccine” and that rationing is already in place at hospitals.
It recommends that to “flatten the curve” that attention should be paid to “extending isolation restrictions to all personal interstate travel”.
Just to spell this out, all states without community transmission have the chance to quickly put this virus back in the box. The first thing they need to stop is stop flying in the virus. Then they track and isolate all current cases, and if appropriate, tell people to stay home, call off all movement in the state and suspend everything bar essential services. Then within three to four weeks said state will be in blissful nirvana where all citizens can fly inside the state, take holidays, resume their normal jobs, send their kids to normal schools, and get elective surgery, medical care and all the normal things we hope for.
After this point border quarantine must be maintained. The state must be vigilant for any outbreak. When outbreaks occur, we track and trace.
As I said two days ago, trucks and trade still cross the border even during the lockdown but the drivers (fresh virus fuel) are either swapped at the border or kept only in special sealed hotels before they return.
So if you want to save the local economy, thousands of lives and our very way of life — Close the Borders Now.
I remain baffled as to why so many people think we have to let this virus run wild, and why the cost of domestic door to door lock down is not seen as hideously expensive and therefore state border closures are a bargain compared to the inevitable pain and suffering coming.
In the UK and US, Canada there will still be regions where there is no community spread yet. These can be saved, and then as more clean regions are achieved more flights and movement between these safe regions will rescue airlines, tourism agents, etc etc. The world will soon be divided into the countries or states which have beaten this virus and those which haven’t.
The Clean World = Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Russia, Hong Kong, Singapore. Imagine your home state there and start working on that future.
Note from blogger: For fed up readers — yes, I get it. Normal transmission will resume soon. In comments, I’ve explained that the area of science I was always most passionate about was virology, disease, and genes (my majors and research)*. I would never have guessed in a billion years that I would end up writing a blog on climate science. And just as I feel in the climate debate that I can help the hands-on experts explain their case with renewable energy and meteorology, in this medical debate there are thousands of doctors and medical researcher nerds who are political and media naffs that seem to need some help.
*Also prevention of such, which means nutrition etc — don’t get me started, take your D, Zn, and Se. :- )
Scuttlebutt that crossed my desk today says “”US to have nationwide quarantine for 14 days'”. h/t Scott.
I hope this is correct. My reply:”Brilliant”. Finally, a hint of an attitude determined to beat this. It’s so refreshing after all the defeatist fatalism telling us this is a disease we have to have. I predict if the US does this, other countries will follow. This is the fastest way to get borders open, and people back to work, and reduce the death toll. Flights will be able to reopen among countries that have done this and done this well.
UPDATE: Officially denied already? The Whitehouse has been forced to deny national shutdown rumours.(A search for “Rumor US two week lockdown” turns up almost no news items?) Don’t believe anything til it is officially denied… but don’t believe the rumours. The fact is there are no facts.
Forgive me if I repeat: A virus is just an inanimate chemical code. It can’t reproduce and it can’t repair itself. To beat it, all we have to do is out-wait it. Without machinery to copy the code it will degrade into foodsafe ingredients. Air, oxygen, time and light will crack the code. The longer we feed it, the stronger it gets.
A perfect quarantine needs two weeks. An imperfect one will need longer. But giving up social contact, income, parties and holidays isn’t the end of the world. Obviously, some people will bear a larger cost than others. (Hope temporary measures can look out for them). But everyone will bear a smaller cost in the long run if we go hard, go early and get serious.
No more feeding it free bodies. Except apparently in the UK, where that is actual policy…. ? Seriously?
UK recycles old measles/flu policy to come up with Very Stupid (Sounding) Plan
UPDATED: UK Local, Stephen Wilde warns it was a bit more complicated and Hanage at The Guardian spun a side comment for political effect. But the stories about the Herd Immunity Plan went right across the Atlantic and popped up downunder too and given what Sir Patrick Vallance said, seem to fit.
Ed young The Atlantic: The country is not aiming for 60 percent of the populace to get COVID-19, but you’d be forgiven for thinking so based on how badly the actual plan has been explained.
This sstill sounds like the influenza “we have to have” plan. Not the deadly virus plan:
With the peak of the pandemic still weeks away, the time hadn’t come yet for stricter measures, Johnson and his advisers said. They worried about “behavioral fatigue”—if restrictions come into force too early, people could become increasingly uncooperative and less vigilant, just as the outbreak swings into high gear. (As of yesterday, the U.K. has identified 1,391 cases, although thousands more are likely undetected.) And while suppressing the virus through draconian measures might be successful for months, when they lift, the virus will return, said Sir Patrick Vallance, the U.K.’s chief scientific adviser.
To avoid a second peak in the winter, Vallance said the U.K. would suppress the virus “but not get rid of it completely,” while focusing on protecting vulnerable groups, such as the elderly. In the meantime, other people would get sick. But since the virus causes milder illness in younger age groups, most would recover and subsequently be immune to the virus. This “herd immunity” would reduce transmission in the event of a winter resurgence. On Sky News, Vallance said that “probably about 60 percent” of people would need to be infected to achieve herd immunity.
Half-baked quarantines don’t work very well. But a serious quarantine can save thousands of lives. Why not aim high?
He won’t close schools, and perhaps, suddenly that will now be a viable option, though Sydney still needs short sharp major action to save lives. Could they bear doing no sport or social events for two weeks?
The big risk to most states are now flights from Sydney. Will NSW aim for the “slow bleed” eking out infections over months, hoping none accidentally go wild, or will it aim to wipe this out in three weeks so life gets back to normal, and Australia can play sport again against New Zealand, asap?
With this news, just in the nick of time, the future is now looking better. My prediction: Watch as leaders all round the world pick this up. This is a good boost for nation states and sovereign borders. All eyes are on the EU now where the open border policy has been disastrous — Spain (6,300), Germany (4500) and France (4,500) are where Italy was on 7th March, just over one week ago. Even if they lock-down seriously now their hospitals are set to reach breaking point.
Tell me again how flight bans and quarantines don’t help.
When there is an epidemic coming, flat lines are our Christmas-glitter-favourite trend. This graph from Coronavirus data in Australiashows infections arriving here followed by mysterious long flat lines. The dates are unreadable but we all know what happened and when. h/t Travis and Chris D
How many thousands of Australians were saved by that one call to stop flights from China?
Italy had the same number of cases as Australia does now (250) on the 24th of February. Now 1,500 Italians are dead and 20,000 are infected. That’s three weeks “progress”.
UPDATE: Will NSW follow Italy? On Feb 23rd Italy had 134 cases and 2 deaths. By 7 days later, the tally was 1,700 and 34 deaths. Sun, warmth and a lower population density mean it will be lower in Australia.
Obviously flights from the USA and Italy should have been quarantined a week ago. For all these discovered infections there only needed to be a few that went unnoticed and seeded the community spread we are now seeing in NSW. The only planes we want right now come from Russia, Israel, Taiwan and New Zealand.
Across the Tasman, just like that yesterday — all flight arrivals to New Zealand were quarantined. Voila. New Zealand may end up being the best place on Earth to be in the next month. After this is over, a few leaders will be seen to have saved tens of thousands of lives. Jacinda Ardern will look like a hero. SlowMo will look like a Slow Mo.
NZ could’ve allowed flights from Australia but we’re too high risk.
Slow leaders are choosing to kill people and the economy
To protect people in the rest of Australia, interstate travel could be quarantined. [UPDATE: Maybe this is not necessary now. But the nation would beat this faster if we did]. People could return to their home state with a two-week isolation. If borders were closed now WA, SA, Tas, NT would quickly get a tiny epidemic back under control with contact tracing. Then they could send spare masks and doctors and ventilators to NSW to save lives. Trucks could unload trailers and containers at border stops to be picked up by local drivers in local semi cabs. Or they could be allowed to drive right through but stay in designated secure hotels before returning home.
We could build holiday homes instead of hospitals.
Some genius economist needs to explain how the economy benefits from allowing a mass outbreak-that-we-don’t-have-to-have. Interstate travel, restaurants, schools, businesses in the smaller states could reopen for business with domestic sales and travel in perhaps four weeks time saving thousands of businesses from going under. High risk vulnerable Australians could take a one month holiday in a safe state to wait out any mess in NSW etc.
All this is achievable, but which state leader has the balls to stand against the Open Border Bullies and deadly fatalistic medicos like Brendan-we-have-to-die-Murphy?
Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy says school closures and stockpiling a fortnight’s food are ‘premature’ at the moment.
School closures and stockpiling a fortnight’s food to prepare for coronavirus self-isolation are “premature” for the general population, the health minister, Greg Hunt, and chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, have said, though all options are on the table.
Australians are stockpiling right now because it is obvious to soccer moms that the leaders are incompetent.
Asked about the Victorian chief medical officer’s suggestion people should stockpile a fortnight’s worth of food, Murphy replied it was “a little bit premature at the moment”.
Murphy’s plan is to wait til the day before the lockdown then hope the stores have 20 x the normal stock, thus guaranteeing panic buying…
Australians should have been stocking up a little each week for the last four weeks. Easy.
Appearing alongside Hunt on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, Murphy said that federal authorities are currently recommending that returned travellers socially distance themselves although others should begin “practising” to do the same, especially at-risk groups such as the elderly.
Lets all “practice” not visiting aged care homes. What does that even mean? We do or don’t do.
Text books will be written on this about “What Not To Do in Public Messaging” and “How to Panic Crowds in Three Easy Steps: Deny, waffle and fog.”
Naughty exponentials lifting off in Australia exactly as predicted.
We know where this goes from here.
Is this what France, Spain and Germany are headed for? Has NSW dodged this bullet?
As community transmission takes off in countries the spread leaps to 40% growth per day but we won’t find out til a week later. Hundreds die, hospitals get overrun. Doctors and nurses get sick. Stroke patients and cardiac arrest victims soon lose the chance to get the help they need. Doctors have to choose which patients get the chance to live in the last ICU bed available. (Italy may abandon the over 80s to their fate). Then, after we know for sure it’s all gone to pot, leaders do what they should have done three weeks earlier, and they shut all borders, churches, conferences, holidays, travel, schools and universities.
So we pay the price, pay it longer, kill more people, wreck more businesses, and it is all entirely foreseeable. Then we do a Royal Commission later to make up excuses to cover the asses.
We will get this outbreak under control
We know how to stop it. Are we willing to give up four weeks of football, weekends away, movies, and some money or would we rather do that for 2 months and kill lots of people as well?
Finally, some action happening around the world. Australia has banned gatherings over 500, but for some reason gatherings of 1500 small humans on a daily basis are still fine. Admittedly short humans (of the young sort) don’t get as deadly sick, but they still spread it, and generally go back each day to houses with people who are at risk. Homeschooling is now on an exponential growth, and it isn’t the end of the world. Ireland has closed schools, as has Greece (a lot of countries, can someone do a list? )
John Campbell always does a good summary. Sensible. h/t to the person weeks ago who first linked him in. I’m trying to find that comment.
The fatalism that says “we have to catch this” is killing people.
Let’s aim higher.
Anyone who thinks this is still like the flu — check the situation on the ground in the ICU wards of Italy from the doc who manages them.
On the plus side there is a lot you can do to avoid this virus. It is not a fait accomplit. Stay out of its way. Stay home. Order online, avoid crowds. Wash hands, don’t touch faces. No need to assume doom but a need to get serious.
Could Italy be suffering from a different and nastier strain?
Figures from South Korea and the Diamond Princess may not be a good guide to what’s happening in Italy and Iran. There something seriously different going on there. Death rates are much higher than expected. Three weeks ago, Italy officially had three cases, now a thousand people are dead and 12,000 have the virus. The hospital system is already at the point of being overwhelmed. Reports say that even stroke patients are now missing out on help, the ICU wards are overflowing, and the staff are prioritizing younger people because they have a better chance of survival.
Perhaps Italians hug more and spread more, perhaps it’s worse because they have an older demographic. But perhaps this is a deadlier strain than the one Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea appear to be containing. The Italian strain, whatever it is, is from the Iranian strain. Every country that has imported infected passengers from Iran will likely also have the Iranian strain.
Do we really want to follow Iran and Italy?
It’s not impossible — Just stop feeding the virus fresh bodies
The great weakness of this 32 k bit of inanimate code is that it constantly needs fresh bodies — all we have to do is stop feeding it fresh fuel. (A bit like fighting a bush fire.)
We can outwait it now, then later outwit it. The code can’t spread without hijacking our cells machinery. It can’t spread if we don’t put it on a plane. It may last for nine days on surfaces, but eventually the code breaks, degrades, and is no longer a threat. Sunlight, air and time can save us.
Comparing this with influenza is irresponsible. We have no herd immunity. No vaccines, no treatments. The black swan inside the black swan is the shortage of ICU beds. This is a bad event until we run out of ICU beds, then it’s off-the-charts. Yes, the death rate is much higher in older people, but that doesn’t make it OK. Do we like grandparents or not?
The exponential curve we don’t want that I’ve been warning of for six weeks is upon us.
As I keep saying, we have only 1 ICU bed per 12,000 people (I assume this is similar in the US and UK etc). If 12% (!) need an ICU bed, then Australia can only afford to allow the number of cases to be 16,000 simultaneously (and that assumes all our ICU beds are free, or that we have increased the number dramatically.)
Australian hospitals are likely to be swamped by thousands of coronavirus cases within a month, experts say. …
“Basically the doubling time of the epidemic is six days,” Professor MacIntyre [head of the biosecurity program at the UNSW’s Kirby Institute] said. “So it’s going to get worse very, very quickly.
“If it becomes widespread, there is the potential for the health system to be overwhelmed.” …
Doubts have emerged about the need to quarantine people for 14 days, with suggestions this could be reduced in the future. It follows a report by Johns Hopkins University in the US that symptoms appear in most people five days after infection.
To drone on: this is so simple — Quarantine all flights Now.Israel has, Russia has. Every day we wait, we kill more people. International quarantine will no longer stop this virus on it’s own, but it still helps. Then as Yasha Mounk says in The Atlantic “Cancel Everything”.
We now get to do both international quarantine and domestic quarantine. If we don’t do international quarantine we will need to do longer and tougher domestic ones.
The US, Donald Trump, has finally blocked all flights from Europe. When will we? Every plane that flies in without a two week quarantine potentially means we run out of ICU beds even faster. It doesn’t matter if there is some spread in the community. Tom Hanks and his wife have caught the virus and are in a Qld hospital. We hope they won’t be using one or two of our ICU units next week, but we won’t hesitate to give one to them. But there is a limit and it’s days away.
It’s a bad sign when stars and politicians and stars are going under, but they are a high risk group — they fly and shake hands. Hopefully it is the wakeup call the pollies need.
In Time Magazine they graph about 2,000 cases (below) and find that in nearly every country mortality rates fall as testing increases — meaning South Korea found more of the asymptomatic patients than anyone else, and the true death rate is probably under 1%. This looks like good news. But Italy is suffering a 3% mortality rate and it has been doing a lot of testing. I’m not sure how they calculate “mortality rate” and whether that includes delays. But infections must be running undetected through the wider population in Italy, or the death rate would be even higher than this.
Message to readers: The way out is to stay home, order supplies. Sit this out for the moment until we know more. The less you venture out the less likely you are to catch this. Wash hands, don’t touch faces, space yourself from other people.
Do we know what we are letting in to the country?
Mortality rate compared to tests done. Italy breaks the trend. | Time Magazine
Statistics from Italy: Ouch? Could ONE person have caused all but the first three cases? ( I have my doubts). But these numbers are dark.
Higher Institute of HealthPress Release N ° 20/2020 – Coronavirus, transmission in Italy for all cases except the first three
ISS, March 10, 2020
The transmission of the Sars-Cov-2 infection occurred in Italy for all cases, with the exception of the first three reported from the Lazio region that were probably infected in China, and a person of Iranian nationality was later reported by the Lombardy region however, it was not indicated where the infection could have occurred even though the person was likely to become infected in Iran. This is suggested by the epidemiological survey conducted by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, contained in the in-depth analysis that will be published starting today on Tuesday and Friday on the Epicentro website.
Currently, we read in the document based on the situation at 10 am on 9 March 2020, it is not possible to reconstruct, for all patients, the transmission chain of the infection. Most of the cases reported in Italy report an epidemiological connection with other cases diagnosed in Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and Veneto, the areas most affected by the epidemic.
Clinical status is only available for 2,539 cases, of which 518 (9.8%) asymptomatic, 270 (5.1%) pauci-symptomatic, 1,622 (30.7%) with symptoms for which the severity level is not specified , 1,593 (30.1%) with mild symptoms, 297 (5.6%) with severe symptoms, 985 (18.6%) critical. 21% of cases are hospitalized, and among those whose hospitalization is known (1,545) 12% are in intensive care. The median age is 69 years (0-18 years: 0%; 19-50 years: 10%; 51-70 years: 46%;> 70 years: 44%).
“The investigation – stressed the president of ISS Silvio Brusaferro – finds a significant percentage of cases under 30 years of age, a figure that confirms how crucial this age group is in the transmission of the virus”.
The news is also that young people spread infections. Close those schools.
Italian hospitals are so ‘overwhelmed’ by the coronavirus outbreak that stroke patients are going untreated, a doctor has revealed. The entire country has been placed under an unprecedented quarantine as officials desperately try to contain the virus, which has killed 631 people so far – the highest number of fatalities outside of mainland China. More than 10,000 have contracted the Covid-19 strain of coronavirus, with tens of thousands more being tested in hospitals. A medic in northern Italy said hospitals were running at ‘200 per cent capacity’ with doctors forced into life-or-death decisions over who should receive intensive care.
Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/10/italian-doctors-forced-choose-save-coronavirus-12377883/?ito=cbshare
Mortality demograhics from a few weeks ago. Based purely on the ages of the populations we would expect to see a higher rate of deaths in France, Germany, Greece and presumably Italy. Am I reading this correctly? 1% in China means 3 -4% in some parts of Europe?
To reduce your risks: stay home, order food and deliveries. Avoid large gatherings. Wash your hands. Stock up responsibly. If you do have to go out, practice social distancing, don’t touch your face. Everyone who feels even slightly unwell should stay home and isolate themselves at the very minimum.
Then sit back, relax, and send messages to politicians and newspapers telling them to Quarantine ALL arrivals, starting two weeks ago.
Will we need to stop flights forever? No
Obviously flight quarantines are temporary. This is how the future pans out. We do massive action to control this immediately, asap, and the more the better. We spend the next 1 – 2 years living with the fear of repeat outbreaks. We don’t allow flights from countries that don’t have this controlled except with a two week mandatory quarantine. But sooner or later we will defeat this or find a cure or it will become “another common cold”.
We stop the flights til:
1. We get data and understand the enemy. How bad IS this virus?
2. We get rid of all cases within our nation by standard isolation procedure. Starve the virus. No more free bodies to feed it.
3. The rest of the world copies us (or does it with us) and sooner or later one by one we open up the flights to each nation as it gets rid of the infection. We’re talking weeks.
4. We were lucky with SARS. That was easier because there was no asymptomatic infection. Once we knew this one could spread asymptomatically all that has happened since then was utterly text book predictable.
5. Yes, the deadly exponential curve has been stupidly and recklessly unleashed. People are going to die that didn’t need to. But every day we put off doing what we should have done at the start more people will add to that horrible tally. We can have a big pile or a bigger pile.
6. It’s not a case of aiming to keep the infection rate lower than the point where our hospital system collapses. There is no single more important priority right now. Surely we are willing to spend “quite a lot” to stop the death rate going from 0.5% to 4% because we can’t find enough ICU beds?
7. Australian citizens – bring them home with a 2 week quarantine. There have been no infections in Australia from the Wuhan rescue flights. None from the Diamond Princess.
8. Then after the calm — Then we will need a two week quarantine for flights from countries that have the virus. When the odd incident occurs — as they will — we go straight for isolation and tracking. No holds barred containment. And by then, we might have antivirals. The virus might have mutated. We might have antibodies or CRISPR something. Gene therapy. Stem Cells. RNAi. Biotech will beat this. Let’s give it time.
This could end up being biotech’s great moment. But bureaucracies dumbest mistake.
Do young adults learn anything that matters in school?
They’re protesting in the streets but can’t even answer the most baby-basic questions about energy or their pet molecule “CO2”.
It’s almost like carbon dioxide is totally irrelevant? Teachers don’t care. Kids don’t care. Media don’t care, and when they all grow up the adults won’t care either.
Only 26% of people aged 18-24 understand that nuclear power is a low carbon source of electricity, compared with 76% for renewables such as wind and solar, according to a new poll by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE).
Older people are more likely to say that nuclear power is low carbon. The poll found the level of understanding rising from 47% among 35 to 44-year olds to 61% among 65 to 74-year olds, although it remains well below levels seen for renewables.
Good on the Mech Eng’s for asking. I call “fake” on the protesters that tell us the world is at stake but can’t be bothered learning the basics.
Wait til they find out they’ve been dragooned into being free advertising for conglomerate industrial capitalists.
Moving at sedimentary-rock speed, the Australian government has finally put a ban on flights from Italy effective at 6pm, and only ten days too late. On the 28th of February Italy had 1700 cases and infections were growing at 30% a day. At that point it was obvious where the numbers were headed. Today France, Spain and Germany are where Italy was then. How many infections will we fly in before we do the inevitable and ban them too?
All the cases are imported on planes, and all of the solutions include people getting sick. Are we missing something here?
Three more diagnosed cases of COVID-19 brings the total to nine in WA
WA has released a pandemic plan to keep delivering essential services
Dr Robertson said the three people had recently flown back from Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Health officials were working to identify the flights on which the three patients travelled and would contact the passengers who sat closest to them, Dr Robertson said.
The pandemic plan, which was last updated in 2014, provides all Government agencies with guidelines to continue to deliver essential services in the event of a widespread coronavirus outbreak.
It includes preparations for school, business and childcare centre closures, cancellations of major events and public transport, and even processes for cemeteries to implement quicker burials.
The plan also considers “special arrangements for shopping hours to avoid overcrowding”.
Some governments can say they were blindsided. Other governments know in advance their policies are killing people.
Keep sending those letters. Get radio talk back active.
Every plane has an increasing chance of bringing people who could unwittingly kill our citizens, and may themselves need precious ICU beds as well.
Rock and Hard place choices here:
We can do deaths and pain and then kill the local tourism and restaurant industry. Or we can demand a two week mandatory quarantine and skip the dying bit and possibly save those industries because we’ll all have the freedom to fly and drive inside our own state.
International quarantine is a bargain compared to domestic lock-downs.
Even then Australia already had a century-long rolling cycle of floods, fires and droughts. One natural disaster after another back when CO2 levels were perfect.
These go back to the earliest dates of European settlement. Wherever Captain Flinders landed in 1782 — 1792 he found “found traces of drought and bush fires invariably”. In 1839, the drought was so bad that fish “putrefied” in the big Murrumbidgee River even though there was not one coal fired power plant on Earth.
The author laments that the droughts “become forgotten in the flood intervals.”
In the modern Wifi era humans can forget even faster.
Below is my summary list of the events described in the story.
Below that, the full letter. From The Queenslander, Sept 19th, 1885.
*Since Captain Flinders was born in 1774 I assume those dates were wrong and he wasn’t commanding a ship when he was 8 years old. Any other suggestions welcome.(thanks Gee Aye, SteveD, James West and Peter Fitzroy)
(1795 onwards?)*
..
Droughts and fires
1788
Drought in Sydney
1797
Drought near “Melbourne”
1799-1806
Nearly every year “high flood” in NSW the Hawkesbury river rose 101ft
1810
Excessive rain ruled til 1810 then ended
1811-1826
More floods than droughts
1826-1829
Longest continuous recorded drought in Australia
1830
Great Flood. Windsor on the Hawkesbury became an island.
1831 – 1836
Moderately dry
1837 – 1839
A three year drought which almost exterminated the sheep and cattle of Australia, a dried up that great “father of waters” the big Murrumbidgee River itself, leaving the very fish to putrefy in the dry bed thereof…
1840-1841
More floods. In 1841 was the highest known flood in this part of the world. The Brisbane and Bremer rivers were both in flood at once, and the water rose 70ft at Ipswich.
1841-1849
“there was rather more rain than was wanted”
1849-1851
Severe drought and on Black Thursday, terrible fires: “boxed the scattered bushfires of of the colony of Victoria into one vast wild blaze, before a northerly hurricane, which blew coaches and men-of-wars rowing boats over like hats. Farms buildings fences, crops, and lives were lost”
1852
A flood so bad it swept away the town of Gundagai and drowned more than a score or two….
1857, 1863, 1864, 1870, 1873, 1875, 1879
Floods of the Brisbane River with “boats rowing in Mary-Street and Stanley-Street”
1869, 1877
Dry years
1882, 1883
Wet years, and the eruption of Krakatoa brought “the constant glow and iron drought that has scarcely been broken since”. “Since then cholera and floods in the Northern Hemisphere, droughts and disease in this hemisphere, have been rife.”
THE following letter by Mr. N. Bartley
appeared in Monday’s Courier:—
The present severe drought serves to remind
me of a paper which I read 5th
January, 1864, before the Queensland Philoso-
phical Society on ” Meteorology,” and which
led to the establishment in this colony of ob-
serving stations, till then unknown here ; and
as this paper, amongst other matter, contained
a list of droughts and floods in south-east
Australia since the year 1782, it may be of
some interest to repeat that part of it now. From 1782 to 1792, Captain Flinders landed at intervals in various places on the south and east coasts of our continent, and he found traces of drought and bush fires invariably.
Suddenly there are no more weddings for a quarter of all of Italy. No more movies, pubs, dance halls or trains to some parts of the country either. Italy is about to overtake South Korea for the number two spot on the list no country wants to lead, unless Iran beats Italy to it (which it almost certainly has already). Today 16 million Italians are not free to go about their business, or go to school.
On Feb 21st, Italy had three cases, now 366 people are dead, and 7353 are infected (at least). How life has changed in two weeks and three days. Suddenly France and Germany are about to reach the 1,000 mark. This is what exponential curves feel like.
The Frankfurt and London exchanges dropped by 8 percent in early Monday trading, while in Paris stocks were trading 4 percent lower. An index of Europe’s 50 biggest companies was down nearly 6 percent.
Oil prices lost nearly a quarter of their value in futures markets, as two major producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia, set off a price war while the world’s thirst for crude is already ebbing. While low oil prices can give consumers a boost, they can also disrupt countries that depend heavily on petroleum dollars to keep their economies running.
Stanford Uni and University of Washington have cancelled all classes and gone online. The first of many. One student started a petition and got 3700 signatures. Maybe that did it, or maybe the rulers there are smart and worried about catching it themselves.
This is all so predictable.
But we don’t have to sit back and wait for leaders to figure out the obvious. Send those messages. Start those petitions. Write to the editors. On the curve, every day matters. We know what we should do. We just need to get serious. Stop the flights, stop the crowds, stay home and get deliveries. Close the schools. Do it well fast and hard and then it’s over. Then open flights up to all the countries that did it properly too. Its not the end of the world. Then we can help others.
The good news: South Korea continues to get fewer new infections (only 272, down from 800 at the peak). Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan appear to be in control. There is a future where the West awakes, stops doing everything two weeks too late, playing catch up with a virus, and pretty soon we can flatten that curve.
The video’s pretty full on, but history books will be written about this week. Tucker Carlson’s not boring and there’s plenty to debate, like how fast can we start mass production of antibiotics. (UPDATE: Antibiotics won’t beat a virus, but we sure need them).
Does Greg Hunt have a plan, or is he hoping the US does and we can piggy back? Or thinking India will have medicine to spare? They banned pharmaceutical exports four days ago.
If Australians are a bit skittish it’s because Greg Hunt has said we’re “prepared” 400 different ways with an old influenza plan and no other details.
This is what’s coming (something like Italy), plus deaths. Or we can do it now and skip most of the deaths bit:
– Lombardy region (entire region, all provinces) – Piedmont (provinces of Alessandria, Asti, Novara, Verbano Cusio Ossola, and Vercelli)
– Veneto(provinces of Padua, Treviso, and Venice) – Emilia Romagna (provinces of Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Reggio Emilia, and Rimini)
– Marche (province of Pesaro Urbino)
In the above areas:
Travel in and out of the area, as well as within the area, will only be possible in response to “duly verified professional requirements, emergency situations, or for health reasons”
People with symptoms of respiratory disease and fever of 37.5 Celsius or above are strongly encouraged to stay at home and limit social contact as much as possible, and contact their doctor
Avoid gathering
All schools and universities must be closed
All museums and places of culture will be closed
All cultural, religious or festive events are suspended
Cinemas, pubs, theaters, dance schools, game rooms, casinos, nightclubs and other similar places shall remain closed
All sporting events and competitions are suspended
Ski resorts are closed until further notice
Swimming pools, sports halls, thermal baths, cultural centers and wellness centers must suspend their activities
Bars and restaurants can remain open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. provided they respect the safety distance of at least 1 meter between customers – this provision also concerns other commercial activities
Shopping centers and department stores must remain closed on public holidays and the days preceding them
Places of worship remain open, provided that the safety distance of at least 1 meter is respected, but religious ceremonies (marriage, baptism) are prohibited until further notice
National restrictions
As in the north of the country, cinemas, theaters, museums, pubs, game rooms, dance schools, discos and other similar places will be closed
Sports competitions are suspended with some exceptions
Watching South Korea — it appears to have stopped the exponential spread of Coronavirus
Heartening. At its peaks last Saturday and Tuesday, South Korea acquired 800 new infections per day. Since then, whatever it is doing, South Korea has managed to keep the new daily cases between 300-800. That may not sound like much, but in exponential terms it could have been a lot worse. Is this the future for us in the West? Perhaps with aggressive action, and local or statewide lockdowns, wealthy western nations may get outbreaks under control. Will we spend the next year with periodic major lockdowns as outbreaks occur, but manage to keep the virus from en masse spread without hospitals being overwhelmed? But can poor countries achieve this? If not, we will have to close flights to stop repeated debilitating and deadly outbreaks, while doing our best to help them. The world will become divided into nations which have this controlled, and those who don’t. This is still the pandemonium I’ve been talking about for six weeks; we could have avoided it, but it’s better than other scenarios. It’s a middle-run scenario.
We are fortunate that this is not as airborne and infectious as measles, which might have made even this impossible. (Note that Coronaviurs is perhaps 500 or more times more deadly than measles, whose fatality rate is 1 per 100,000. Note the mass panic those outbreaks cause.) Keep the pantry stocked. Reduce your risk. Travel less. Avoid crowds. Wash hands. etc.
The death toll so far in South Korea is 48. Theoretically, even if they have passed the peak of new cases, the death toll will still double in coming weeks. In this one outbreak, 100 people may die, 10,000 plus people will have suffered a potentially debilitating disease, and tens of thousands will have been inconvenienced by quarantine and travel bans. There is also the financial cost of closing workplaces. Note also that there are major privacy issues with the South Korean approach to mapping and tracking victims and their movements by their phones.
When will the Australian Government stop telling people to keep going about their business as if nothing is happening? Presumably when there is an outbreak and it’s two weeks too late?
South Korea, new cases Coronavirus
South Korean cases of Coronavirus.
Extrapolating further than I should, if this is the peak and the decline starts soon and there are no new outbreaks, then in a month or so it may be safe to open flights again to South Korea. (Though if our outbreaks are not controlled, they won’t want our planes.)
The daily growth rate is shrinking — yesterday increasing by 7%. This is ideally a bell curve type rise and fall, and the huge spike on the 20th Feb is probably the discovery of all the cases that existed but weren’t detected in the days before. Is that what we are about to see in the US, which hasn’t been doing nearly enough testing?
Growth in Coronavirus cases in South Korea
Two weeks ago South Korea had only 200 cases, now it has 7,000. So the death toll of 48 (with a two week lag) is not a number we want to calculate, because it’s surely a wild overestimate. South Korea had more undetected cases then. Guess. Guess. Guess. O for data.
Deaths still rising following that “new cases” curve with a two (or three week) delay.
It will be at least another week before it levels off.
….
The first few cases in South Korea were very early (11 cases on Jan 31). It was doing well, but lost control.
Taiwan is worth watching:
How Taiwan managed to avoid a coronavirus outbreak
Taiwan is 81 miles off Mainland China. It is a highly urbanized state of 24 million people with an extremely high population density. It is also one of the first places where the new coronavirus epidemic manifested itself. All things considered, Taiwan was expected to have the highest number of cases outside China. Yet Taiwan successfully managed to avoid an uncontrolled outbreak and only has 44 confirmed cases.
Less than one year after the SARS outbreak, a National Health Command Center (NHCC) was established. The NHCC is meant to serve as a disaster management center command point…
Technology is a key ally when you’re fighting an outbreak, Taiwan realized. So they leveraged the national health insurance database to create a smart system to warn citizens and keep an eye on the situation.
The database was integrated with the customs information to generate a pool of big data. This data generated real-time alerts based on people’s travel patterns. It used QR code scanning and online reporting of travel history and documented health symptoms to classify passengers’ infectious risks. Then, Taiwanese authorities acted based on what the data suggested — and took some pretty draconic precaution measures.
People with the lowest risk were issued fast travel clearance, but people with higher risk were likely to be quarantined at home, whether they liked it or not.
Obviously, there is a lot of big government involvement. Again, we see hi tech tracking. Is that necessary? How much freedom will we have to trade in order to reduce the toll and curb the rising fear? Can we control this just with old fashioned quarantines and public information updates?
______________________________________________
Coronavirus Background: ☀ The Demographics: the young are spared, but the severity increases with age, and slightly more for men than women. ☀ The Ro is 2 – 3 and exponential curves are steep. See the importance of an ICU unit in treating ARDS (the severe respiratory disorder). ☀ Illness progression: Dry coughs and Fevers, Aches. In 15% of people, by day 5 breathing trouble starts. In 3% (?) by day 8 they may need an ICU (intensive care unit). ☀ The good case of Singapore but the ominous calculations of how fast the ICU beds may run out. ☀ The story of how American Samoa avoided Flu Deaths with quarantine in 1918. ☀
Tomas Pueyo
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