re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

They are the perfect compliment to each other both giving documented and linked data to prove their point. Plus they are debating with integrity and not shite talking each other. We need more of that around here not less.

Way over my head, for sure. This is more my speed:

Afternoon update:
Here is a slightly delayed bit of info (few more deaths and cases now) on the South Korea outbreak:


Women account for 62.5% of cases yet only 37.5% of deaths

No deaths under 30 years and the 1 in that age range had chronic liver disease.

50-80+ are about 39% of cases yet account for about 94% of fatalities.

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What’s been parroted throughout much of this thread...

The newest death in CA was elderly with underlying health issues.

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I know. It just sucks to see such stark numbers.

Especially after losing one grandmother recently and my remaining grandparents being up there in age.

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This is the freaking flu

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No, actually it is the corona/SARS virus.

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NEW: U.S. House passes $8.3 billion coronavirus emergency spending bill; now moves to the Senate

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World Bank also announced $12 billion.

Source: German podcast with Christian Drosten, the head of virology at the Berlin Charité.I saw this and figured some of them might be helpful:

Countries with higher CFR: He is in touch personally with multiple colleagues from countries that have been experiencing higher lethality rates (e.g. Italy, Iran), and he says based on the queries ans requests they contact him about, it is quite evident that mild (or asymptomatic) patients are simply not recognized in these countries, resulting in the higher CFRs.

Immunity: With viruses of the corona family we have "fleeting immunity". Regular influenza flu has a high rate of mutation, but once recovered from it, people are immune for a very long time. So the mechanism of regular cold/flu viruses to survive long-term is the mutation rate. On the other hand, coronaviruses are much more stable (little mutation), so in order to survive, they rely on allowing recovered patients to develop only "fleeting"/temporary immunity (otherwise the virus would die out quickly). He cites the example of SARS, where patients were observed to have very little immunity left 5 years post infection - though other more thorough testing showed other immunity mechanisms that last longer. The same or a similar mechanism is assumed for the current virus, and the expectation is that after 5 years, little immunity will be left, and after a couple more years, none at all.

Attack rate: The attack rate of the virus (proportion of infections among contacts of a confirmed patient) is about 10%. This means basically that, on average, among the contacts of a confirmed infected patient, 1 in 10 will get infected by that patients. Estimating the attack rate is crucial to prognosticating the speed of spread, and thus the timeframe of the pandemic.

Expected spread: His expectation is that 60-70% of the German population will get infected. [Since this is a global outbreak, a similar ballpark estimate presumably applies to many if not most other countries.] he says that another way of framing this estimate is: What proportion of the population needs to get infected in order for the pandemic to stop? The calculation to arrive at 60-70% is simple and as follows: As long as R0 > 1, the pandemic continues, and the number of infections grows. When R0 = 1, the disease/virus is still present, but it is stable in terms of number of infections. If R0 < 1, the virus will die out sooner or later. Assuming the current R0 as being 3, we need to decrease this to 1 in order to halt the pandemic. As things stand, the only thing that can bring down this value so drastically is immunity, so to reduce the R0 by two thirds (from 3 to 1), two thirds of potentially infected people must be immune, which means two thirds of the population will need to have experienced the virus already.

After the pandemic: This virus is expected to remain endemic after the pandemic (remain circulating long-term), and he says each and everyone will get infected at some point in the future, similar to a regular cold or flu. [Needless to say there will be vaccines and medications, so things will obviosly be much less critical in the future]. Key issue is really how long the actual pandemic will last (when nobody os immune yet).

Warmer weather: In his opinion, a relatively likely scenario will be that the warmer and drier spring and summer weather will slow down the speed of spread considerably. This is an encapsulated RNA virus, and those are much more sensitive to dryness especially, compared to not encapsulated ones. There will still be cases popping up here and there, and a few deaths also, but similar to the regular flu, this will be more accepted, the media will stop the constant panicky coverage, and it will fade to the background in terms of public perception. However, come fall and winter, the pandemic spread is anticipated to accelerate again. He says he is not too concerned with the current situation, nor the coming months; his worry is more about the next winter.

General note: He says he cannot emphasize often enough that this pandemic is not really a problem on the individual level - the average individual shouldn't be wondering when they will die from this, because "that will not happen", or rather there is only "the tiniest of probabilities" of dying from this. Instead, this is an issue on the societal and healthcare system level, and when the CDC or himself say that the situation will get "bad", the idea is not that we'll have the walking dead here, but that it will obviously be bad if healthcare resources are overwhelmed and exhausted by a huge number of mostly mld cases, resulting in the relatively small proportion of serous cases to received less care. The more we can delay and slow down the spread, the less severe that issue will be.

Sorry for the wall of text.

I guess I shouldn't be, but I am kinda shocked that this election and politics garbage is still the big story.

The election is months away and we're basically in a pandemic. I don't give two fricks about the election at this point.

Our a-hole government is so worried about elections that they're fricking up the biggest crisis we've seen in a long time.

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#BREAKING: Federal officials announced that a medical screener at LAX has tested positive for coronavirus, AP reports.

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I think I was reading a CNBC article earlier about this case. They worked from Feb 14th - 21st and became symptomatic on Feb 29.

So who knows if they were infectious while working. At least they did the smart thing when they became sick: self-quarantined, contacted their doctor for testing and then contacted the appropriate medical officials and their work.

A much better case than the hospital employee in New Hampshire who was told to self-quarantine and instead went out to a private event.