Coronavirus (Sports-Related and General)

[el-pietro]

This is escalating exponentially. The current numbers will be a drop in the bucket if we do not take action.

If I gave you a penny on day one and doubled the amount I gave you each day you would have over $10M dollars by the end of 30 days. That is what is happening with this virus. Every 3-4 days the total infected is doubling in each region.

If as some people have predicted this could eventually infect 50-60% of the population then a 2% fatality rate kills more people WWII. If it kills even a tenth of that that is still extremely serious.

Forget how people and the media are reacting and look at what governments are doing. China quarantined millions of people. Italy quarantined the northern regions, and then the entire country, and then went even further when those first two didnt work. Denmark and Ireland, all schools closed. Slovakia, borders closed. This is no tsomething they would do if they felt it was not a serious issue.

In the USA there were just 100 confirmed cases on March 2nd. As of March 10th there were 994. That is a ten fold increase in 8 days.It took Italy 8 days to go from 79 cases to 1128. It took them 10 more days to hit 10,149.

This is not unique to USA and Italy. Germany France and Spain were all at or close to 1,000 confirmed cases within 8 days of hitting 100.

South Korea went from 11 on Feb 20th, to 1,261 on Feb 26th.Iran went from 95 on Feb 25th to 978 on March 1st.

Part of this is due to a lack of early testing, and we know that the US is currently not doing wide spread testing, which means its unclear how widespread this issue is.

[schillingfan]

I have a somewhat different concern. I’ve had asthma since childhood, not severe, but every cold becomes bronchitis and my mother died of pneumonia at age 58.I’ve stayed home, she goes to the courthouse every day. What do I do if she catches corona virus?

With regard to the social issue, I think it’s probably better for the economy to suffer a whole lot of pain for a short term, than bleeding steadily for a long period. Obviously the government will have to implement emergency measures for the hardest hit. I would give money to state and local governments to implement what they need.

[Lawman]

The USA now has 40 deaths out of 1,426 known cases of Coronavirus. That's a 2.8% death rate. We are told "Coronavirus is very contagious, but we are not testing enough so we don't know what we have." Assuming we have 1 million cases in the US, which is probably high. That would be TWENTY EIGHT THOUSAND DEATHS if the rate of 2.8% holds true!

We are at 40 (this accounts for most deaths because severe cases likely get tested and reported but maybe delayed). But, feel free to up the death rate to 200.

If we have now only 40 deaths, how/why do you think we have significantly more Coronavirus cases that are unreported? Coronavirus is either VERY contagious and the US has now a significant amount of unreported/untested cases and, with a 2.8% mortality rate, it would mean a termendous amount of deaths already, which is not close to being the case, so the death rate is much lower. Or the rate is 2.8% which means contagion is much lower. It can't be both, right?

[el-pietro]

I believe the eventual death rate will be much lower than is currently reported as many people are infected but do not realise it or have not yet been confirmed but still higher than a traditional flu. On the other hand, people don't die from this immediately. There are deaths still to come.
The worst of it will be when hospitals ore overwhelmed and are unable to treat patients due to lack of resources as is happening right now in Italy.

[andyb]

The mortality rate is likely much, much lower than the data suggests. Think about it. We have not been testing. Even if tests were readily available more than half of the people that get it have only mild symptoms. They would not all get tested. Hopefully they stay at home and do some sort of self-quarantine.

This will get bad. Shutting down public events is justified. But it is really likely that 50,000-100,000 people already have it in the U.S. and the mortality rate is far lower than advertised. Frankly that is one of the rare things Trump has gotten right over the past week.

It is never good news when far more people have it than we know about, but it is almost certainly true. Frankly the way we kick this thing is with herd immunity after lots of people get it but then are unable to transmit it to others when they get better.

[bigegypt0417]

NCAA tournament has been cancelled.

[Lawman]

Frankly the way we kick this thing is with herd immunity after lots of people get it but then are unable to transmit it to others when they get better.

That holds true for other viruses. Will that hold true for this one as well?

[julio]

Frankly the way we kick this thing is with herd immunity after lots of people get it but then are unable to transmit it to others when they get better.

That holds true for other viruses. Will that hold true for this one as well?

There's no reason to believe that it won't. It's a virus, one of a family of viruses (coronaviruses). While it's possible that it could, for some reason, behave differently from most viruses, that's certainly not a reasonable baseline assumption.

If you want a guarantee... you're out of luck. Life doesn't work that way. But in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we should expect this virus to behave/evolve much the way other serious viruses have historically behaved. It's serious, but it's not likely to exterminate the human species. It's far more likely to mutate over time to being less lethal - if for no other reason than the less-lethal alleles will get spread more widely, as their hosts (people) will not die or be immobilized due to severe illness.

Viruses tend to evolve to a point where they spread most efficiently - and that requires a balance between communicability and lethality. We're going to have an unpleasant few months, but we'll get there.

In the short run - reduce/limit social contact (cancel and/or avoid public gatherings - all you can), practice personal hygiene (more assiduously than you have in the past - I'm looking at YOU!), and for heaven's sake, stay home from work, school, everything, if you're not well. Also avoid stressing yourself unduly (skipping sleep, nutrition, etc.), so that if you do catch the thing, you're as well as possible for fighting it off. Common sense.

Oh, and... you don't need a six-month supply of toilet paper.

[Lawman]

Oh, and... you don't need a six-month supply of toilet paper.

Oh, I always need a 6 month supply of toilet paper.

[julio]

There are rules here, and I’ll abide by them...but sometimes it’s really hard to not take a swing at a softball like that!

[el-pietro]

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has tested positive. Three Leicester City players are self isolating. The Premier League is still not cancelled. The UK really doesn't seem to be taking this seriously

[schillingfan]

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has tested positive. Three Leicester City players are self isolating. The Premier League is still not cancelled. The UK really doesn't seem to be taking this seriously

But they aren’t included in the U..S. Travel ban. Might have something to do with three golf courses.

[zambonir]

And Boris.

(But I wish this hadn't turned into a politics thread. Hard not to though.)

[el-pietro]

Arsenal striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has also tested positive. All Arsenal first team players are in quarantine.

If the Premier League is suspended then there is a big question as to what to do about awarding the title. Liverpool have gone 30 years without winning the League Title. This year they looked to finally end that drought winning 26 of their first 27 games, drawing one. They finally lost a game two weeks ago. They only need two more wins to be confirmed champions.
Rumours that Germany will end their season without a Champion. Can they do that in England? Will they name Liverpool champions prematurely? There is no doubt they would have won it sooner or later anyway.

[Jeff05]

I've got Crohn's Disease. If my immune system comes across an infection, it overreacts; if there is no infection, then my body soon starts attacking itself. I constantly have moderate to severe anaemia (two blood transfusions and six iron infusions, last year!), and an assortment of other issues. I had 'minor' surgery a couple of months ago, and continue to take a biologic drug. Fortunately, I've been taken off an immunosuppressant that seemed to be messing around with my bone marrow and, hence, my red cells! Needless to say, I can't avoid going to a medical centre (biologic next Wednesday) and a public hospital (iron infusion next Thursday).

Nevertheless, I'm not particularly worried for myself and my immediate family. The pantry (and cupboards!) are full, I've got a month's supply of drugs and painkillers, my wife's position at UWA is permanent, and she and our son are in good health. And I'm < 65! (On the other hand, my mother is 84 and has paid for a cruise around Scandanavia and the Baltic region in July.)

However, in the outer (i.e. cheaper) suburbs of Perth where we reside, many people have less secure employment and large amounts of debt. Understandably, perhaps, fear and irrationality are pervasive and certain shelves at Woolworths and Coles are empty well before noon . . .

[schillingfan]

And Boris.

(But I wish this hadn't turned into a politics thread. Hard not to though.)

I almost didn’t post it for that reason, but it was just sitting out there, irresistibly.

[phillychuck]

The USA now has 40 deaths out of 1,426 known cases of Coronavirus. That's a 2.8% death rate.

What you're quoting is called a known case fatality rate. This is not the true percentage of fatalities likely from a community spread of the disease. That is called the true case fatality rate, which is the number of deaths divided by the actual number of cases, which mostly has to be estimated, since in most disease epidemics there are lots of people who have mild symptoms, moderate symptoms, or in the case of this virus, no symptoms at all, and therefore don't get tested and confirmed. The widely used estimate is that around 20% of cases for RNA viruses get tested and confirmed, which means the true case fatality rate in the US is around 2.8%/5 or about 0.56%.

And this HIGHLY over-estimates the true rate even as low as it is. 17 of these 40 deaths are from a nursing home in Seattle filled with vulnerable people. This nursing home under normal circumstances averages between 10-14 deaths over the period of quarantine. During the outbreak they had 22 deaths over the quarantine period, 17 diagnosed with COVID-19. That is an excess of 10 deaths--on average, 12 of those people would have died anyway from some other cause during the quarantine. That and the cruise ship deaths (again, a highly vulnerable, elderly dominated group) would bring the US deaths in the general population down to approximately 20, and cut the true case fatality rate in half to about 0.28%, roughly where a severe flu lands (actually lower than some flus, like the 2009 H1N1 season).

I don't think all the choices we're making as a society now are optimal, but, as I've written elsewhere, we are too far down this road right now to reverse course, or even to sensibly manage the acceleration of the response.

[rpmcmurphy]

Respecfully, phillychuck, not everyone agrees with this optimistic analysis.

from Business Insider:

“ even given the lower death rates in South Korea, COVID-19 is still a far more dangerous disease than the flu.
The overall death rate in the US from last year's flu season was about 0.1%, about 8.5 times lower than South Korea's COVID-19 death rate. While both the flu and the coronavirus are more dangerous for older patients than younger patients, the flu's death rate of about 0.8% among patients 65 and older is about one-fourth that of South Korea's COVID-19 death rate of about 3.4% among patients 60 and older.
Comparisons between COVID-19 death rates in other countries and death rates from the flu are similarly stark.”

There is a lot of conflicting information out there. We need to be careful about sounding too sure about anything right now. We need a lot more hard data, which won’t be available until we start testing a significant number of people.

[phillychuck]

Respecfully, phillychuck, not everyone agrees with this optimistic analysis.

from Business Insider:

“ even given the lower death rates in South Korea, COVID-19 is still a far more dangerous disease than the flu.
The overall death rate in the US from last year's flu season was about 0.1%, about 8.5 times lower than South Korea's COVID-19 death rate. While both the flu and the coronavirus are more dangerous for older patients than younger patients, the flu's death rate of about 0.8% among patients 65 and older is about one-fourth that of South Korea's COVID-19 death rate of about 3.4% among patients 60 and older.
Comparisons between COVID-19 death rates in other countries and death rates from the flu are similarly stark.”

There is a lot of conflicting information out there. We need to be careful about sounding too sure about anything right now.

Interesting points. People should not be using last year's flu death rate for comparison--it was a pretty mild flu and we had substantial herd immunity due to vaccination.

South Korea's case fatality rate is still not a true case fatality rate because not everyone was tested. Mild cases, some moderate cases, and non-symptomatic cases are not included. It's hard to estimate those for COVID-19 because we don't have any significantly-sized population where everyone was randomly chosen, tested, and followed.

The best number from that study is the elderly patient death rate, which is clearly higher for COVID-19 than flu, but we are getting better at treatment now.

Finally, I just saw the case fatality rate of health care workers is 0.3%, which seems to agree with a general population rate, although working in health care probably excludes most of those over 70.

PS, let me say again that the Seattle nursing home deaths are currently a whoppingly high percentage of the overall US deaths and are skewing the numbers.

Oh, and by the way, I'm not optimistic. I'm afraid of the disease, but I'm also afraid of how people react to it. People are primitive and irrational. Try to buy anything at your local supermarket tomorrow if you don't believe me. That fear and irrationality scares the bleep out of me.

[rpmcmurphy]

That is true. I was at Walmart today. There were no paper towels, toilet paper, or hand sanitizer. Until the herd immunity is in place, the herd mentality could get ugly.