Corona Virus Live Thread. No 7.

3/1/2020

[Vermont Lt]

Continuation of the thread.

Previous Thread 6 here.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3820357/posts

[DannyTN]

China is report 7365 critical cases out of a total 79,828.
That’s 9.2% in critical, much higher than the 5% the China CDC report said as of Feb 11th.

China could be understating the number of cases to make it look like they have it under control in order to reopen plants.

Or Maybe there were a lot of unresolved cases in the FEB 11 report that hadn’t gone critical yet.

[LilFarmer]

I hope it’s okay to being this over, I think it’s important

SNOHOMISH CASE - gene sequencing The team at the @seattleflustudy have sequenced the genome the #COVID19 community case reported yesterday from Snohomish County, WA, and have posted the sequence publicly to http://gisaid.org. There are some enormous implications here.

This case, WA2, is on a branch in the evolutionary tree that descends directly from WA1, the first reported case in the USA sampled Jan 19, also from Snohomish County, viewable here: https://nextstrain.org/ncov?f_division=Washington.

This strongly suggests that there has been cryptic transmission in Washington State for the past 6 weeks.

It's possible that this genetic similarity is a coincidence and these are separate introductions. However, I believe this is highly unlikely. The WA1 case had a variant at site 18060. This variant is only present in 2/59 viruses from China.

I'd assess the p-value for this coincidence at 2/59=0.03 and so is statistically significant. Additionally, these two cases are geographically proximal, both residing in Snohomish County.

I believe we're facing an already substantial outbreak in Washington State that was not detected until now due to narrow case definition requiring direct travel to China.

We will be working closely with @KCPubHealth and @WADeptHealth to investigate the full extent of the outbreak.

We're hoping to update soon with better estimates of the number of infections in Washington State using available data.

Thank you to the @seattleflustudy team, and particularly to @lea_starita, for exceptionally fast turnaround from diagnostic assay at @WADeptHealth to sequenced genome.

An update, because I see people overly speculating on total outbreak size. Our best current expectation is a few hundred current infections. Expect more analyses tomorrow.

https://twitter.com/trvrb

[TornadoAlley3]

*

[yesthatjallen]

The 3 cities to watch are San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.

[mrsmith]

I think it very likely the strain DID NOT get spread by the first patient. We’d have seen more evidence sooner IMO if it was.
That doesn’t rule out it being introduced at about the same time though.

Shame that our front line states for this are so incompetent.

[calenel]

Been saying it all along.

“Don’t panic. Prepare and be vigilant.”

And a lot of “It’s NOT the flu.”

Taken a lot of abuse from the “but, but, but flu” people. No doubt they will own up and profusely apologize, once they get back from their panic shopping. Not so much abuse from the “we’re all gonna die” crowd.

My wife and I discussed taking the kids out of school a month ago. We pull the trigger soon, I think. We are prepped for up to a 3 month quarantine (except for TP which the females in the house seem to burn through but I’ll fix that tomorrow). Nothing we’ve done is more than an acceleration of things we’d have done anyway. If nothing happens here, all we’ve done is beat the shortages that will occur as others panic. So we go light on the shopping for a few months, maybe.

Even with quarantines we shouldn’t lose power or other services for long periods, but there might be interruptions that will be of longer than normal durations (what would be a day response might be two days with all the precautions the service people will need to take, that sort of thing). So we are not too worried about refrigeration and such.

All in all, we’re in a comfortable place. I hope you all are as well.

PS: Wait for the second bounce to buy into the market.

[Jim Noble]

How long before anyone gets on the Diamond Princess again?

[calenel]

I think he meant something like “Gee, since so many people are dying let’s get rid of a few troublemakers. Nobody will even notice.”

My answer is that it’s almost a certainty.

[janetjanet998]

Will Ripley
@willripleyCNN
#breaking North Korea urges foreign diplomats to leave on Friday. Dozens of foreign diplomats quarantined in Pyongyang, North Korea are planning to take an evacuation flight this Friday, a source inside the country tells me.

The source agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, given the extreme sensitivity of the current situation in North Korea: “We got a new note [on Saturday] urging missions again to leave and stating [the flight] is scheduled to leave on the 6th [of March],” the source says.

[datura]

Lol! I can’t fathom why..... ;)

[janetjanet998]

Lookner live again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-nVOVTUUxk

[LilFarmer]

I don’t know, he’s a pretty well known I his field, and he makes a pretty good case with the statistical significance that the two was by chance as less than .03. It’s definitely not a fast moving disease, and people can retest positive even weeks after testing negative. Who knows if they can still shed.

As he said, the next few genome sequences will nail it down. It’s like DNA, which is probably why Wuhan stopped submitting sequences in January.

[mrsmith]

"It's just the flu...".

Well, I think there's something to that!

Merely make the small change to...
" it's just a new, additional very, very bad flu."

[Empire_of_Liberty]

If you mean that China did NOT intentionally release this on themselves, I agree.

However, I think China IS stupid. Their response to this outbreak makes me think that they were aware of its origins and what it was, immediately.

I think it is highly likely that they stole this virus and brought it to Wuhan, like they steal everything else from the West that they can get their hands on. If this is the case, it got away from them.

If it was from the local “bat market”, or whatever, their paranoia, hostility and secrecy has let this escalate way out of hand, increasing the danger to the rest of the world.

We are all getting a timely lesson in Communist Government. It is the definition of STUPID.

[LilFarmer]

Never let a crisis go to waste.

[blueunicorn6]

I’m concerned about this thread.

Come on lucky 7!

[LilFarmer]

😂

[calenel]

I wouldn’t believe any numbers from China. They are tossing suspected cases into their Death Camp hospitals (that have no bathrooms...) so the numbers are meaningless. Watch S. Korea and even Italy. It looks like one area in Italy is about to have its medical infrastructure overwhelmed, so it will be interesting to see how they respond. :(

[cherry]

I was all over Seattle last weekend and this weekend, Portland, eating out at several places and next week VEGAS...

Yay!

[Jane Long]

CERAWeek cancelled amid growing coronavirus fears

https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/CERAWeek-cancelled-amid-growing-coronavirus-fears-15096750.php

...A major oil and gas industry conference that brings thousands of international visitors to Houston every March has been canceled amid elevated fears related to the growing number of coronavirus cases around the world.....