Coronavirus

[flash2015]

I'll take comments that didn't age well for $100:

"President Obama has a personal responsibility to visit & embrace all people in the US who contract Ebola!"

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 9429689344

What was Trump saying about politicizing a potential epidemic again?

[Octavious]

Really? I'm pretty sure we have confirmed cases, they must be testing something to confirm it...

Yep, we have tests that can confirm that someone with a severe case does indeed have it. But we don't have any tests that can reliably confirm whether someone doesn't have it. Which, when preventing people who are infected from spreading it is a primary aim, is something of a problem.

[orathaic]

Really? I'm pretty sure we have confirmed cases, they must be testing something to confirm it...

Yep, we have tests that can confirm that someone with a severe case does indeed have it. But we don't have any tests that can reliably confirm whether someone doesn't have it. Which, when preventing people who are infected from spreading it is a primary aim, is something of a problem.

Fair. If that is what you meant. I know that early in the infection people who show no symptoms would likely not spread it, but when they start showing minor symptoms (coughing) spread becomes far more likely, and this can be well before it gets bad enough that anyone would think to test.

I am not sure where along this process our tests become effective at detecting it.

[orathaic]

I'll take comments that didn't age well for $100:

"President Obama has a personal responsibility to visit & embrace all people in the US who contract Ebola!"

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 9429689344

What was Trump saying about politicizing a potential epidemic again?

https://twitter.com/ofchus/status/12324 ... 26176?s=19

This must be the hoax he is worried about; has to blame someone, or step down. Can't see him stepping down.

[Octavious]

So, some good news about the Coronavirus pandemic. It's looking like the mortality rate is somewhat lower than 1%. It's unfortunate that we have failed utterly to contain, but it could have been considerably worse.

[Randomizer]

I saw mortality rate over 3%:
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-citing-hun ... 15419.html

With Trump telling infected to go to work, I'm waiting for the first confirmed case in the White House and germaphobe Trump fleeing to an undisclosed bunker. If cases don't drop soon, Trump followers following his advice might die in great enough numbers that he could lose the election.

[Octavious]

Trump is, rather unexpectedly, quite right. 3.4 percent of reported cases dying is not a mortality rate. A mortality rate is the percentage of people who contract the virus who die, which is a very different thing and substantially lower.

The simple truth of it is the Democrats are wrong and Trump is right.

[Randomizer]

This is the World Health Organization using the same methodology to calculate its number compared to other flu mortality rates. After all in all flu cases there will be unreported cases that are too mild to be tested. What's important is the ratio of dead to known infected between the coronavirus and other flu strains. For now it's higher than the last few major deadly flu strains.

Trump is just guessing with no way to test his method. He makes up numbers in the past that have been shown to be false. Like more people showing up at events than could fit in the building.

[Octavious]

What makes you think Trump is just guessing? His statement is in perfect alignment with that of Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer for England, Chief Medical Adviser to the UK Government, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Health and Social Care and head of the National Institute for Health Research). Either Trump's guessing is exceptionally good, or he is simply repeating the advice of the top medical experts in the US in his own unique style. I suspect the latter.

[Randomizer]

I'm saying Trump is guessing because of past experience. After speaking with CDC experts and pharmaceutical manufactures he spout the nonsense that vaccines would be available in 3 months when they told him no. Trump latches on to what he wants to hear or thinks he's heard and says misinformation. Then he doubles down on being wrong.

[orathaic]

Also, apart from very mild cases, we also know some of the current cases haven't died yet, need to look at the count of cases from about two weeks ago (which is a lower number) and add the invisible cases (which might make the number higher, or still lower) and divide current deaths.

Apparently you get a range of 0.13% to 9%. Which is a pretty wide range. So it is possible that Trump is giving the lowest possible answer; and... Actually I don't give a shit what he says, what is important is how he acts to handle the crisis.

[flash2015]

After all we know, I don't know how anyone takes Trump seriously, especially on this. At the very best it is just shallow speculating, we know he is not a deep thinker. Most of the time a stopped clock is closer to the time than whatever Trump says to the truth.

[Octavious]

But Randomizer and Ora take Trump very seriously. I couldn't care less what he says, but when he happens to agree with people I do listen to (such as Chris Whitty) the likelihood is that he's right. Some people here would swear blind that the sky was orange if they overheard Trump saying it was blue.

The American people, however, should care what Trump says. And as at the moment what Trump says is far closer to the truth than what the Democrats are saying, that is very much to America's benefit. The Democrats should be slated for spreading misinformation though.

[flash2015]

Where are democrats fearmongering about the death rate (note that Trump doesn't refer to any specific statements by specific democrats)? Perhaps I am missing something but I haven't seen it. Democratic politicians have been primarily complaining about the response effort which is fair game. From what I have watched/read, democrats have been very careful about what they say about the severity of the virus, especially ones that have some control over the response effort like Governer Cuomo in NY (Cuomo keeps on emphasizing that for 80% it will be very mild which I believe is the consensus to keep the panic down...without going near final death rate speculation).

Trump has spread so much misinformation about coronavirus in so little time, like saying the flu had a higher death rate, saying that the patient count would quickly go to zero (when it was 15) or saying that Coronavirus would just disappear one day (there is a chance it could be like flu and is seasonal but we don't know that yet). There was a fact check of his February 27th press conference here detailing some of the misinformation he was spreading:

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/factc ... onference/

If Trump knew what he was doing, he should already have been prepared for this death rate question and he should have deferred the response to expert staff (i.e. indicated another press conference with head of CDC for this - if they truly have a lower estimate different from WHO then they can go into the details). Words matter now. He needs to be more careful about what he says.

[Octavious]

What I have watched or read comes largely from the stuff posted here, in which the Democrat National Committee responded to Trump correctly saying the virus kills less than 1% of people by falsely describing it as misinformation.

But yeah, that press conference was pretty poor. It seems the Yanks are getting plenty of shit from both sides at the moment. No wonder half of them don't bother to vote!

[Randomizer]

Beyond the public statements, Trump and Pence are restricting the flow of information from the CDC to doctors and the public. While they are primarily the ones spouting nonsense, they are vetting what useful information gets out that could curb the spread. They also direct what the CDC and other federal government response groups can do.

Pence and his chief of staff refused to answer whether the uninsured could get tested. The CDC will do it for free, but emergency rooms will currently charge for it.

The CDC has been barred from releasing to other doctors information from doctors on what has successfully worked in treating confirmed cases that have survived. You know how to keep people alive so more people might not die.

Trump cut the budget and eliminated the CDC group that deals with viruses before they spread. He's been fighting to reduce people that can get insured.

Being like a stopped clock and sometimes getting it right isn't useful. Trump's the first US president that has to be fact checked every day to reduce misinformation.

[flash2015]

Unlike Trump, the WHO (I keep thinking of the band) is not pulling the 3.4% number out of their behind though. They did recently send a 25 person team to China to investigate. A nice person on reddit summarized the report:

https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comm ... _to_china/

It is pretty scary stuff (now I see where Cuomo got his 80% figure from). I hope they are wrong and I hope Trump is right...and now I am questioning whether I am taking a stupid risk by getting on a plane to Europe tomorrow.

[flash2015]

I have to go see my elderly parents in a month in Australia. I have to seriously be careful that I don't bring it with me because it would probably kill them.

[Octavious]

They're not pulling the number out of their arses, but it isn't a mortality rate. It is the number of people who have been detected as having the virus who have died. This is very different to a mortality rate, which is the number of people who have had the virus who have died. Trump is right. The mortality rate is highly likely to well below 1%.

You're not taking a stupid risk going to Europe. Containment has failed, and the world is moving into the delay phase. What this means is that efforts to stop people catching the virus have been abandoned, and it is now assumed it will spread across the world. We're looking at anywhere between 20-80 percent infection rate. The washing hands, isolation, closing sporting events and schools strategy is not designed to keep the number of infections low, but to spread them out so that hospitals are not overwhelmed by the peak numbers of cases.

In short it's coming, there's a decent chance you'll catch it, but there's a very good chance you'll be fine. Going to Europe or not may have some influence on the timings, but not much else.

It will likely be similar to the Hong Kong flu in the 60s. A few million dead around the world, but that's all. If we're unlucky it'll be closer to Spanish flu and there will be a few more million victims.

[flash2015]

The summary says though:

"The vast majority of those infected sooner or later develop symptoms. Cases of people in whom the virus has been detected and who do not have symptoms at that time are rare - and most of them fall ill in the next few days."

There may be lots of people out there carrying it which are asymptomatic but we don't know that. If there were lots of people walking around which do have it but don't have systems (and have not been tested), I think it would have been hard for China to rein it in (if their official figures are to be believed of course).

You are right. It is all about delay. We won't stop it. Part of the problem in Wuhan was that the hospital system got overwhelmed. And there are other factors at play in China like the level of pollution and the high male smoking rate. And the longer we can delay the better chance we can improve best practices for dealing with it. And if I don't go now, it isn't likely to be any better for the next few months (at least)...but I am planning to shorten my trip so that if I do get infected I will be back home. The worst thing to happen would be to be sick in quarantine in a foreign country for several weeks.

A few million dead is still nothing to...uh...sneeze at though. I really hope that is wrong too.