Corona virus affects us

[Enzo]

Apparently i am still on the mailing list for Peterson, the strobe tuner folks. I was a dealer for years.

I just got a notice that the corona virus outbreak was affecting their "manufacturing chain", and they would be having delays in shipping product. Translate: Chinese factories shut down by government. They are closing entire areas of the country to contain this disease.

Expecting 30-45 days delay at this point.

At least they had the decency to report this.

[olddawg]

It’s really affecting Apple too. My wife is a virologist (scientist not an MD). U of M alumni Enzo . She’s been warning about China for years. Want to get scared? Ask where your inexpensive generic drugs are made. Want to get more scared. Ask where the precursors for most drugs world wide are made. Electronics wasn’t the only vital industry that was off shored in the past 40 years.

[Mick Bailey]

The deaths numbers though are skewed by the underlying mortality rate of the population group. That is, those people who would have died anyhow. The death rate in China is roughly 7.5 people per 1000 population, weighted towards those with underlying health conditions or old age. When the figures are reported on coronavirus nobody is interested in this because it undermines those headline news figures.

We seem to have forgotten about Avian Influenza, which would be a far more serious disease and which is more likely to kill young, otherwise healthy people.

[Jazz P Bass]

40,000 people a year, on the average, die in automobile accidents every year in the USA.

Are you paralyzed with fear when you drive?

Maybe we should be.

[Enzo]

That misses the point. They are scared to death that this COULD be the next big disease that kills millions. Car crashes don't infect people and spread. We will kill 30,000 - or whatever - this year on the highway. That won't turn onto 400,000 next year, and 20,000,000 the next. A hundred years ago the Spanish Flu pandemic killed as many as 100 million people. Every year, flu kills something like a half million. 60 years ago, and again 50 years ago we had flu pandemics that killed a million.

Coronavirus is the TYPE of VERY infectious disease that has potential to be this destructive. They scramble to contain it early so it doesn't. it isn't about freaking out that a few hundred people die, it is about freaking out they may be the canaries in the coal mines.

[Justin Thomas]

While I'm not the type to hunker down & panic in my house with my Purell & Bleach wipes, I'm glad they're taking this seriously.

Good way of putting it, Enzo. I think more recently, we have AIDS, for the ultimate example of what dismissive attitudes can do. And although it didn't kill zillions of people, Ebola.

I feel like we don't know the half of what's out there yet, & some of it is genuinely horrifying...

Justin & Jusrin

[g1]

The deaths numbers though are skewed by the underlying mortality rate of the population group. That is, those people who would have died anyhow.

This is true, but also true of regular flu. They keep talking about not killing as many as regular flu, but they downplay the mortality rate. I've been keeping track of the numbers. Mortality rate for Covid19 has stayed pretty much around 2%. Mortality rate for regular flu is usually around 0.05%.
If this thing explodes, it is going to be pretty serious. If you're male, over 60, with underlying conditions, especially so. Unfortunately, I tick all those boxes (or very close). I'm not panicking, but a bit worried.

[Mick Bailey]

There's no way of knowing though how many people have become infected, but show only mild symptoms and don't seek medical assistance. It could take a longer time to establish the true mortality rate and whether the infection rate in China is more rapid due to social and other conditions than it may be in other countries. The mortality figures have to be based on everyone who has the virus, not just those who are hospitalized. For example, the mortality rate for seasonal influenza is quite low amongst the general population, but far higher for those who are hospitalized due to complications. The comparison is not like-for-like as the only study group for coronavirus at the moment is those who are hospitalized and are confirmed cases. We also don't know if race or genetics affects coronavirus as the sample is largely Chinese and we don't know if other races are affected differently. Already it's emerging that the dominant infection and mortality is among male patients.

[mozz]

Speaking on Fox News, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, raised the possibility that the virus had originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/b...ton-china.html

[Enzo]

And all those unknowns are why they approach these outbreaks so aggressively.

When I was a kid Measles ran rampant through kids in schools. Chicken pox too, they were super contagious. I never got them, but mumps as well. Then they developed vaccines to fight those, and they were VERY effective, all but wiping out those diseases. So there were drn few cases at any time. it was easy to assume there was no threat from them, any more than plague was a threat or leprosy. But now we have a stripe of anti-vaccine people in our society, and they don't get immunized. And what do you know, we now are seeing outbreaks of measles and chickenpox. If we don't rise up and fight these diseases, we will lose our comfortable lack of a threat.

it isn't about 300 people, it is about not letting it grow.

When I was a kid polio was a scary scary disease. Look up "iron lung" if you want to see something to shudder about. Then Jonas Salk came up with his anti-polio vaccine, and the fight was on. We all had to gather in the big room at school, and the health department injected us one by one. Later they came up with an oral version. Sabin? I forget the name. Anyway, the drug was put on a sugar cube they gave us to eat. SO it was known as the sugar cube vaccine. No more shot. Eventually we wiped polio from the USA. And we took the fight to the world, and we almost wiped polio out completely.

And then someone came up with a rumor the vaccine was made to sterilize their children, and so in Nigeria there came a resurgence of the disease about 15-20 years ago. Fortunately that worked itself out, and now pretty much all the wild polio is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A few dozen cases. But again it serves to show that the low numbers of cases are ONLY there due to the hard work to prevent it.

[Mick Bailey]

A few years ago I was in a research post and lead officer assessing the likely impact of Avian Influenza, which was seen at the time as as having a high likelihood of becoming a pandemic with high mortality. The group consisted of local government officers, medical professionals, epidemiologists, statisticians and and the emergency services. Temporary mortuaries were identified, Tamiflu stocks established and procedures defined. It was a pretty grim picture. We predicted an overall workforce depletion of 67.5% - made up of infected persons, people unwilling to attend work, people refused entry to the workplace and those absent because of tending to family members, and those who would die. All of this having a real impact on social structure and civil disorder. First-responder teams were set up along with control centres and emergency communication links. In some ways it felt like we were preparing for a war. The sad thing was the way preparations affected those team members who were young, or who had children; they were in the high-mortality group and felt like they were preparing for their own deaths, though first-responders and their immediate families were prioritized for anti-viral drugs. The lower-mortality group consisted of otherwise healthy, older adults who had in their lives previously been exposed to certain strains of influenza.

This project ran for around two years but then gradually ran down to zero. By then the stockpiled drugs had expired, along with all the protective equipment. I don't recall afterwards it ever being a topic for discussion. A massive amount of planning went into the project - instigated by central government, but nothing at all was retained for future use.

There's a village near to where I live called Eyam. The village self-isolated during the great plague to save others, under the guidance of one man. In the gardens of the cottages there are plaques saying who died and on what day. It's chilling to think what they went through and deeply moving. I thought of that place quite often during the preparations we were making. I was thinking about the people I knew, relatives and friends. Who would die first and how many would be left.

[nosaj]

Speaking on Fox News, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, raised the possibility that the virus had originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/b...ton-china.html

In the end we will find out it was a covert operation to sway the trade war.

nosaj

[Mick Bailey]

It occurred to me though that the mortality rates are being expressed as a percentage of known infected cases, but isn't the real picture more representative when mortality is expressed as a percentage of resolved cases? If you get infected there are two main outcomes - you live or you die. When viewed as resolved cases then the mortality is about 9%.

[galaxiex]

The planet is overpopulated (over 7 billion).... we are killing it...pollution etc...

This (flu's, disease etc) is Mother Nature fighting back.

Stupid humans....

[catalin gramada]

Always I try to look and understand who have to gain something from this