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

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got a link?

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Yes, I do.

This is in response to my contention that China was faking their virus-related cases and deaths from January to mid-February:

LINK

Along with this, someone on twitter was using an algorithm to predict the new Chinese numbers each day before they were reported. It was actually somewhat humorous, even though it was tragic at the same time.

In case you don't click on the link:

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In terms of the virus data, the number of cumulative deaths reported is described by a simple mathematical formula to a very high accuracy, according to a quantitative-finance specialist who ran a regression of the data for Barron’s. A near-perfect 99.99% of variance is explained by the equation, this person said. Put in an investing context, that variance, or so-called r-squared value, would mean that an investor could predict tomorrow’s stock price with almost perfect accuracy. In this case, the high r-squared means there is essentially zero unexpected variability in reported cases day after day.

Barron’s re-created the regression analysis of total deaths caused by the virus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of last year, and found similarly high variance. We ran it by Melody Goodman, associate professor of biostatistics at New York University’s School of Global Public Health. “I have never in my years seen an r-squared of 0.99,” Goodman says. “As a statistician, it makes me question the data.”

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Of course, China completely changed the criteria for cases and the reporting of deaths later in the month, which completely muddied up any semblance of statistical consistency.

We’re at 104 US deaths. I’m going to guess the mortality rate is around 0.2% which would mean we are above 50,000 cases nationally.

Your guesses and numbers would have to assume no one else in that 50000 dies......

Just want to say this thread has been pretty dang good and informative the past day or so with minimal trolling. Great info across the board, but especially from the docs and nurses!

How many cases does Russia have? They border with China. I didn't know until recently that China makes our meds.

Could this be payback for the embargo?

I'll remove my tinfoil hat but it doesn't add up.

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Touro is not a big hospital

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Makes sense then I guess, how many ventilators would they have available?

Your blood type matters

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OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between the ABO blood group and the COVID-19 susceptibility. DESIGN The study was conducted by comparing the blood group distribution in 2,173 patients with COVID-19 confirmed by SARS-CoV-2 test from three hospitals in Wuhan and Shenzhen, China with that in normal people from the corresponding regions. Data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and 2-tailed ?2 and a meta-analysis was performed by random effects models. SETTING Three tertiary hospitals in Wuhan and Shenzhen, China. PARTICIPANTS A total of 1,775 patients with COVID-19, including 206 dead cases, from Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, Wuhan, China were recruited. Another 113 and 285 patients with COVID-19 were respectively recruited from Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan and Shenzhen Third People's Hospital, Shenzhen, China. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Detection of ABO blood groups, infection occurrence of SARS-CoV-2, and patient death RESULTS The ABO group in 3694 normal people in Wuhan showed a distribution of 32.16%, 24.90%, 9.10% and 33.84% for A, B, AB and O, respectively, versus the distribution of 37.75%, 26.42%, 10.03% and 25.80% for A, B, AB and O, respectively, in 1775 COVID-19 patients from Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital. The proportion of blood group A and O in COVID-19 patients were significantly higher and lower, respectively, than that in normal people (both P < 0.001). Similar ABO distribution pattern was observed in 398 patients from another two hospitals in Wuhan and Shenzhen. Meta-analyses on the pooled data showed that blood group A had a significantly higher risk for COVID-19 (odds ratio-OR, 1.20; 95% confidence interval-CI 1.02~1.43, P = 0.02) compared with non-A blood groups, whereas blood group O had a significantly lower risk for the infectious disease (OR, 0.67; 95% CI 0.60~0.75, P < 0.001) compared with non-O blood groups.In addition, the influence of age and gender on the ABO blood group distribution in patients with COVID-19 from two Wuhan hospitals (1,888 patients) were analyzed and found that age and gender do not have much effect on the distribution. CONCLUSION People with blood group A have a significantly higher risk for acquiring COVID-19 compared with non-A blood groups, whereas blood group O has a significantly lower risk for the infection compared with non-O blood groups.

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LINK

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Two fundamental strategies are possible: (a) mitigation, which focuses on slowing but not necessarily stopping epidemic spread –reducing peak healthcare demand while protecting those most at risk of severe disease from infection, and (b) suppression, which aims to reverse epidemic growth, reducing case numbers to low levels and maintaining that situation indefinitely.Each policy has major challenges. We find that that optimal mitigation policies (combining home isolation of suspect cases, home quarantine of those living in the same household as suspect cases, and social distancing of the elderly and others at most risk of severe disease) might reduce peak healthcare demand by 2/3 and deaths by half. However, the resulting mitigated epidemic would still likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many times over. For countries able to achieve it, this leaves suppression as the preferred policy option.

We show that in the UK and US context, suppression will minimally require a combination of social distancing of the entire population, home isolation of cases and household quarantine of their family members. This may need to be supplemented by school and university closures, though it should be recognized that such closures may have negative impacts on health systems due to increased absenteeism. The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package –or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission –will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) –given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed.We show that intermittent social distancing –triggered by trends in disease surveillance –may allow interventions to be relaxed temporarily in relative short time windows, but measures will need to be reintroduced if or when case numbers rebound.Last, while experience in China and now South Korea show that suppression is possible in the short term, it remains to be seen whether it is possible long-term, and whether the social and economic costs of the interventions adopted thus far can be r and economic costs of the interventions adopted thus far can be r

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Interesting paper from Imperial College London. Seems that there are two schools of thought on dealing with this: either try and mitigate the initial outbreak which could lead to more infections and deaths or go the route of suppressing this outbreak which would mean long term lock downs. I do agree that we will be dealing with this until a vaccine is developed and until that happens we will see another outbreak develop once restrictions are lifted. I'm glad I'm not having to be in charge of directing the response to this. Either way you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Team O+ checking in

It's an interesting hypothesis that blood type matters, but that article hasn't been peer reviewed yet.

Given what we know about the chaotic circumstances in Wuhan, I'd like to see a much broader sample.