My error on the 3%. It should be 619 total cases divided by 3711 total passengers. That comes out to 1.13% without consideration for demographics.
In lighter news you can now graduate high school from byu
2 Likes
Nice, so now not only can athletes cheat via the correspondence courses using their system, but now they donât even need to personally graduate high school! Shrewd move byu-provo, shrewd move.
3 Likes
NYT, March 16: Coronavirus is hiding in plain sight.
If already posted, excuse me.
âIf we have 3,500 confirmed cases in the U.S., you might be looking at 35,000 in reality,â said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University and the senior author of the new report, which was posted by the journal Science.
The scientists said the number of undetected cases for every confirmed one could vary twofold from country to country. The unidentified cases in China that proliferated before the lockdown, although less contagious on average than the confirmed ones, did not necessarily cause milder cases in the newly infected, the researchers said.
âJust because you get the disease from someone with mild symptoms does not mean yours are going to be mild,â Dr. Shaman said. âYou could still end up in the I.C.U.â
According to CDC, confirmed cases in the US are 4,226, with 75 deaths. This website: Worldometer: COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak. has the US at 5,921 cases, 74 deaths.
We are seeing evidence like this over and over again. It is why people need to stay away from other people, because none of us knows whether we are contagious or not.
1 Like
I thought this was a nice message from Carmela Coyle, the CEO of the California Hospital Association, to her members:
CEO Message: Rising to Meet the Moment
âMenâs and nationsâ finest hour consist of those moments when extraordinary challenge is met by extraordinary response.â â Neal A. Maxwell
As the days and nights have blended together over the past two weeks during the growing coronavirus threat, thereâs one thought that continues to rise in my mind.
Itâs this: How fortunate; how very fortunate we are to have the dedication of our teammates during this uncertain time.
We donât yet know how far, how fast, and how hard coronavirus will hit our nation or our state, but each of us does know, right now, that there are people we can count on when our backs are against the wall. And those people have others they count on. And so on.
In turn, your patients â those who are sick or injured â count on you, because their backs are against the wall. In the coming weeks and months, your communities will need to count on you as well.
This is where we are today, at a moment when each of us, individually, will be tested.
For all of us, are we following the science and doing our duty on social distancing and home isolation? For our political leaders, are they taking the steps necessary to protect not only the public, but also our vital health care workforce? For our neighbors, are we checking in to see if now-homebound seniors need groceries? Are we avoiding hoarding food and supplies so all can get the things they need?
These days, information is flying at a breakneck pace; policies are changing by the day; and events on the ground are shifting by the hour.
Through all of this, you, the individual threads that make up Californiaâs health care tapestry, have held firm in your commitment to protect and care for people.
Thatâs why Iâd like to pause for a moment to thank all of you personally, because I know that you have each othersâ backs â from sharing scarce personal protective equipment to creating more space for patients.
And when we all stick together, collectively, we have the backs of the millions of Californians who are counting on us every day. Thatâs why we do what we do.
To add one thought to Mr. Maxwellâs quote on extraordinary challenge being met by extraordinary response: that response is only possible when extraordinary people are doing it.
Thank you for all the extraordinary work you do to make sure someone has the back of all Californians.
â Carmela
2 Likes
Thank you for your well-spoken and kind words.
One of my salt-of-the-Earth neighbors said this in text to me today:
âNow we have a chance to prove to be human beingsâ
2 Likes
The Man Who Saw the Pandemic Coming.
Written by Kevin Berger March 12, 2020 for Nautilus.
Very worthwhile article. He writes about and interviews Dennis Carroll. A teaser hereâŚ
For decades, Carroll has been a leading voice about the threat of zoonotic spillover, the transmission of pathogens from nonhuman animals to us. Scientists are confident the current outbreak, which began in Wuhan, China, stemmed from a virus inherent in bats. In 2009, after years of studying infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Carroll formed a USAID program called PREDICT, where he guided trailblazing research into viruses hiding, and waiting to emerge, in animals around the world.
âDennis is a visionary,â says Christine K. Johnson, an epidemiologist at the One Health Institute at the University of California, Davis, where she is a professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine. âHe took the reactive approach to infectious diseases and turned it on its head. He said, âWeâre going to work on a proactive approach to help countries prepare for the emergence of infectious diseases.ââ Johnson, an investigator at PREDICT for 10 years, says Carroll was a pioneer in looking beyond livestock. âDennis saw that emerging infectious diseases, far and wide, have mostly come from wildlife, and there needed to be investment in research in the wildlife sector.â For a decade, PREDICT received annual federal funding of $15 to $20 million. In 2019, its funding wasnât renewed. Carroll left USAID and formed a new program, the Global Virome Project, âto build on PREDICTâs scientific insights and experience,â he says.
He does a great job of seeing into the future, understanding how viruses jump from animals to humans, and accurately placing priorities of recent administrations.
Why arenât weâgovernments and policymakersâdoing that?
First, this is an expanding problem driven by unprecedented population change. Itâs only in the last 100 years that weâve begun adding people at a rate thatâs causing this incredible disruption of the larger ecosystem. If you and I were having this discussion 100 years ago, there were 6 billion fewer people on this planet. It took us the better part of our total existence of the species, 300,000 years, before we hit the 1 billion mark. But in 100 years weâve added 6 billion people and weâll add another 4 to 5 billion before the end of this century.
The fact that your PREDICT program was not refunded has become a political rallying point against President Trump, who has shown an ignorance of science. Do you think thereâs a connection between the end of PREDICT and what has happened with the coronavirus?
No, I donât think so. PREDICT was a beautiful project. It was scientifically well executed. It was forward-leaning. But its scale was small. It discovered slightly more than 2,000 viruses. If youâre going to have a public health impact, finding 2,000 viruses out of a pool of 600,000, over 10 years, isnât going to transform your ability to minimize public health risk.
1 Like
No. This is America dammit. We canât agree on â â â â .
1 Like
Another fascinating article, this time in Scientific American (March 12, sorry if posted earlier) on where corona viruses come from.
How Chinaâs âBat Womanâ Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus.
Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli has identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves, and she warns there are more out there.
The researchers found that the new coronavirus enters human lung cells using a receptor called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). The scientists have since been screening for drugs that can block it. They, as well as other research groups, are also racing to develop vaccines and test promising candidates. In the long run, the team plans to develop broad-spectrum vaccines and drugs against coronaviruses deemed risky to humans. âThe Wuhan outbreak is a wake-up call,â Shi says.
The article also discusses how one bat species contained the anti-bodies for SARs.
1 Like
Meanwhile, the great minds among us are thinking about the really important issues.
Iâm reasonably sure if I raised my open palm in greetings, it will get high-fived. The fist bump is dumb, but better than sweaty palm-to-palm action.
I donât mind doing the fist-in-open-hand asian bow though.
Part 1
A Chilling Scientific Paper Helped Upend U.S. and U.K. Coronavirus Strategies
William Booth
March 17, 2020 at 1:25 p.m. PDT
Washington Post
LONDON â Immediately after Boris Johnson completed his Monday evening news conference, which saw a somber prime minister encourage his fellow citizens to avoid âall nonessential contact with others,â his aides hustled reporters into a second, off-camera briefing.
That session presented jaw-dropping numbers from some of Britainâs top modelers of infectious disease, who predicted the deadly course of the coronavirus could quickly kill hundreds of thousands in both the United Kingdom and the United States, as surges of sick and dying patients overwhelmed hospitals and critical care units.
The new forecasts, by Neil Ferguson and his colleagues at the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, were quickly endorsed by Johnsonâs government to design new and more extreme measures to suppress the spread of the virus.
The report is also influencing planning by the Trump administration. Deborah Birx, who serves as the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, cited the British analysis at a news conference Monday, saying her response team was especially focused on the reportâs conclusion that an entire household should self-quarantine for 14 days if one of its members is stricken by the virus.
The Imperial College London group reported that if nothing was done by governments and individuals and the pandemic remained uncontrolled, 510,000 would die in Britain and 2.2 million in the United States over the course of the outbreak.
These kinds of numbers are deeply concerning for countries with top-drawer health-care systems. They are terrifying for less-developed countries, global health experts say.
If Britain and the United States pursued more-ambitious measures to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, to slow but not necessarily stop the epidemic over the coming few months, they could reduce mortality by half, to 260,000 people in the United Kingdom and 1.1 million in the United States.
Finally, if the British government quickly went all-out to suppress viral spread â aiming to reverse epidemic growth and reduce the case load to a low level â then the number of dead in the country could drop to below 20,000. To do this, the researchers said, Britain would have to enforce social distancing for the entire population, isolate all cases, demand quarantines of entire households where anyone is sick, and close all schools and universities â and do this not for weeks but for 12 to 18 months, until a vaccine is available.
âWe might be living in a very different world for a year or more,â Ferguson told reporters.
The modelers did not give numbers for the United States for the most intense suppression efforts.
The researchers reminded governments that these forecasts are based on current observed trends in China, South Korea, Britain and Italy but that much remains unknown about the virus.
The Imperial College report, which was shared with the British government over the weekend ahead of its official release Monday, was responsible in large part for Johnsonâs turnaround decision to begin rolling out what 10 Downing Street described as life-altering, âdrasticâ measures to control the spread of the novel coronavirus, aides said.
Johnson said the virus âwould overwhelm any health system in the worldâ if quarantines and limits on social contact are not taken. âAlthough the measures we have already announced are extreme, we may have to go further in the coming days,â the prime minister said Tuesday.
Johnson urged his fellow citizens to immediately start to avoid âall nonessential contact with others,â work from home and self-
isolate now if they are elderly or suffer from underlying medical conditions. The measures are still voluntary, but Johnson warned that his government had the power to make them mandatory.
Part 2
Boris Johnson: âMany more families are going to lose loved onesâ to coronavirus.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on March 12 that the âmost dangerous periodâ of the coronavirus was âsome weeks awayâ for Britain. Johnson said that healthy and asymptomatic Britons should avoid pubs, clubs and theaters. In London, the bars were still open Monday. Most schools, museums and restaurants were, too. But the prime minister said closing schools was âunder consideration.â
Roy Anderson, an infectious disease specialist at Imperial College, who was not a part of the study, said Britain probably had much more to do. âI donât know if these measures are enough yet,â he said. âAnd I wish we had done them last week.â
If Britain had continued on the go-slow, step-by-step course that it set just days ago, the Imperial College modeling envisioned hundreds of thousands of deaths and a tidal wave of cases that would overwhelm the National Health Service and its hospitals. There are currently 7,000 ventilators available for all of England, the largest nation within the United Kingdom, with a population of 56 million.
The British forecast also influenced thinking at the White House. On Monday evening in Washington, President Trump said that Americans should avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people, eating in restaurants or taking nonessential trips â his most significant push yet to combat a viral outbreak.
At a news conference Monday at the White House, Birx said her group has been working with modelers around the globe, including in Britain.
President Trump listens as Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, announces that the outbreak could last months and that gatherings should be limited to 10 people, during a White House briefing on March 16.
âSo, we had new information coming out from a model, and what had the biggest impact in the model is social distancing, small groups, not going in public in large groups. But the most important thing was if one person in the household became infected, the whole household self-quarantined for 14 days. Because that stops 100 percent of the transmission outside of the household,â she said.
To suppress spread in Britain, widespread school and university closings might also be necessary, though Ferguson worried about its impact on staffing at NHS hospitals, where as many as a third of nurses have school-age children, the Guardian newspaper reported.
In their forecast, the modelers envision that strict measures over the coming months will occasionally be loosened, but as soon as they are, viral spread could come roaring back.
âThe major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package . . . 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,â the study concludes.
âIntermittent social distancing â triggered by trends in disease surveillance â may allow interventions to be relaxed temporarily in relatively short time windows, but measures will need to be reintroduced if or when case numbers rebound,â the research team said.
Iâve updated my model to have mortality rates closer to those of established global experience, particularly in China. Iâve doubled the mortality rates per demographic in this case. The mortality rates I use for over 54 aged folks is still lower than the rates shown in other charts from various scientific research to date. However, LAUte posted an article earlier today that used 1.4%, which coincidentally I have modeled here by doubling my earlier estimate. For illustrative purposes only.
Same disclaimers apply. However, these numbers are closer to what the WAPO article showed from Imperial College modeling.
I do not recommend that this chart be distributed. Its just a number crunching exercise by a novice.
Update: COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak Last updated: March 18, 2020, 01:15 GMT.
US stats: 6,468 confirmed cases. 109 deaths. 1,805 new cases today. That is an inaccurate mortality rate of 1.7% based on simply these numbers. If you remove the new cases, the mortality rate is ~2.3%.
That means every day, the new number of cases could (not will) increase by ~40%. I suspect that the number of cases is actually under reported due to limited test kits. What this means is that tomorrow if this is correct, the number of cases in the US will be 8,990. By Friday or Saturday, we could see 17,370 folks with corona virus.
Iâve been modeling other countries, particularly Portugal where we were traveling in early May (now cancelled). The number of new cases was growing there at ~42% daily. My wife asked me how come my projections were one day later off by only 1 and the next day 9 off, and the third day only 17 off. Chilling.
1 Like
I just wish it was socially acceptable to flip everyone off. I mean, it is a more accurate representation of how I feel about most people.
2 Likes
âMenâs and nationsâ finest hours consist of those moments when extraordinary challenge is met by extraordinary response.â â Neal A. Maxwell
Me too ironman1315.
Iâm already seeing the conspiracy theory posts on insta that this is all a move by the government to take control. Thing is, they canât even control the story for a week, how are they going to control us?
2 Likes
In other words, flip people off because that is mighty fine.
I will never understand these theories. Look, you believe the government is so incompetent they canât run healthcare but can somehow manage a massive conspiracy theory. Get real.
1 Like