COVID-19

[JohnRoberts]

Here is an interesting data point... Saudi officials are cancelling visas for Hajj pilgrimage.  Millions of people affected.

Still not evidence of anything other than prudence about public safety, time will tell, I sure don't know.

JR

 

[fazer]

Its time to stop all unnecessary travel and work from home. ;D  Besides slowing down the spread of infection, imagine the impact on reduced fuel usage.   

Im personally avoiding the work on my desk so I can post in the brewery today. 8)

 

[dogears]

Eh, when I first started reading about this last month I decided to more or less qualify any information coming out of China.

I am more sensitive to the action of more legitimate governments than I am to China's. You never can take anything there at face value, and my coworkers near Shanghai commented that several moves were taken during this outbreak to remove political opponents of Xi. That made me wonder if this wasn't an opportunity being played up beyond the severity of the actual risk.

I was encouraged by what happened in Singapore (seemed to get it under control) but my coworkers in Singapore told me they had mandatory 100% temperature checks for all employees twice a day. I found that a bit more concerning.

The response in Japan tells me the leadership is taking this very seriously indeed. I was fortunate enough to work for a Japanese corporation for five years and in the course of that I traveled to Japan dozens of times. I generally find them to be a serious, sober, disciplined people and not prone to hysteria or flights of panic. Much less so than the US, anyway, I think. So again, I take this strong response as another piece of information. No conclusion drawn from it, it is just information.

Now I'm watching what my current corporate office in Switzerland will do.  That's really all we can do - watch how others are reacting and see if their reaction is successful. Singapore's seemed to be.

 

[Script]

Yes, Japan is closing schools for two weeks, followed by another two weeks of regular spring break. So it's just a longer spring break.  New school year starts in April. Makes sense, circumstances given. 

There has been a case of a school teacher in Hokkaido infecting children. But could just as well have been the other way round :  one of the kids had it and infected the teacher...

----
Gilead are into HIV meds. Those are inhibitors -- effective, it appears, in reducing replication of this virus in the body, but it comes with many (some serious) side-effects, which in turn have to, but can be controlled easier. The other company I read about is called Moderna (burning hot).

 

[JohnRoberts]

----
Gilead are into HIV meds. Those are inhibitors -- effective, it appears, in reducing replication of this virus in the body, but it comes with many (some serious) side-effects, which in turn have to, but can be controlled easier. The other company I read about is called Moderna (burning hot).

Both are down today, but even gold is down this morning so massive selling programs raising cash from anywhere they can...  Traders do not like to go into weekends long so I expect more selling pressure today... lots of obvious bargains already but hard to catch a falling knife.

JR

 

[matriachamplification]

I have no connection to outside media at all.

My wife was telling me about the virus... meanwhile the Via Rail was down in Canada due to protest. This impacted store shelves here in the sticks. My wife said it really looked "apocalyptic", in the movie sense. No hand sanitizer or cleaning products anywhere. 

Then in a thread from Mr. Thompson-Bell, he mentioned the closure of factories causing delays in production as result of the virus.

Positive vibes to all

 

[Tubetec]

Its only just hit Ireland if your to believe the news ,
A person flew in via Dublin from the North of Italy , then apparently took public transport to Belfast,but the method the used to travel has been kept secret by authorities 'for public safety' reasons.

Since then the governments  stance surrounding this whole thing has changed dramatically .
Now we have  an outgoing minority government ,who had its tail put between its legs by the kicking it got in the elections at the helm with a real sh!tstorm on the horizon . We went from where we were apparently ready to deal with the situation two weeks ago according to the health minister ,to one where  'face masks have been ordered for health workers and government officials' yesterday.
The latest advice now is ,if you have flu like symptoms ,stay at home , barricade the door , dont invite people around ,stay away from the other people in the house , dont go to the doctors surgery, dont go to the hospitals (which are already beyond bursting point anyway) . What they do want people to do is voluentairily  call a phone number or log onto a website and report that you have symptoms  ;D
but besides that your on your own. 

Caretaker first minister Leo Varadkar just declared what sounded like a federal state of emergency USA style here ,complete with four letter psudonymed authorities.Its  in relation to severe rain and floods in the western parts of the country, the army are mobilised  filling sand bags ,for now .

Its unclear if the customary trip to the White House on St Patricks day is still on or not at this stage ,but  Leo may have been summoned to do his dance monkey routine in front of Trump and the world , and its very rarely he misses an photo op like that . I do recall Mr Varadkars comments to Connor McGreggor about his appearance in the New York St Patricks day parade last year and how he wasn't representing Ireland  in any official capacity.
Varadkar never had a clear mandate from the public as leader of this country  ,9 years later when it eventually came to an election he and his cabinet got a resounding thumbs down from the crowd  on the basis of performance, does he have the gall to proport on a world stage  he does represent this country ?  yes at least as much as Connor McGreggor does 

 

[Matador]

Excerpts from Trump's briefing:

[quote author="Trump"]
We have through some very good early decisions, decisions that were actually ridiculed at the beginning. Those people are getting better, or we think that in almost all cases, the better they are getting. We could have left them and that would have been very bad, very bad I think, American people. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller. And one instance, where we think we can be somewhat reliable. It seems to have gotten quite a bit smaller. With respect to the money that’s being negotiated, they can do whatever they want. I mean, they can… We’ll do the two-and-a-half. We’re requesting two-and-a-half. Some Republicans would like us to get four, and some Democrats would like us to get eight-and-a-half. We’ll be satisfied, whatever it is. We’re bringing in a specialist, very highly regarded specialist tomorrow, who works actually at the State Department. Very, very tremendously talented in doing this. I don't think it's inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. We’re very, very ready for this, for anything, whether it’s going to be a breakout of larger proportions or whether or not we’re, you know, we’re at that very low level.
[/quote]

Now apparently Pence is going to be leading the virus outbreak management effort in the US.

[quote author=@realDonaldTrump]
Obama just appointed an Ebola Czar with zero experience in the medical area and zero experience in infectious disease control. A TOTAL JOKE!
[/quote]
Wow, there really IS a tweet for everything! 

 

[pucho812]

Did some math this morning. Of all the currently reported cases, it makes up .00012% of the entire world population. Of all the reported cases, about 3.1% have died from it. 
Hmmmm.  Not sure what to make of these figures but that is the math.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Pompeo has reached out to Iran (through Swiss government) to offer help to Iran in dealing with Corona virus breakout that has killed 25+ and infected hundreds there (including the top government health official).

On the scale of other outbreaks these numbers do not seem huge, but the health infrastructure there is challenged, and made even worse by sanctions. The outbreak is in a holy city with many worshippers coming and going who could spread the virus.

JR

 

[pucho812]

more die from the flu yearly

 

[dogears]

Comparing to the flu is a bad take. More die from the flu when the flu is mitigated by vaccines and is a disease we have some immunity to due to centuries of exposure.

If COVID-19 winds up infecting the same number of people as the flu does it’s going to be really bad. 2-3% case fatality rate and an R0 of 3-6 is no joke. :/

 

[JohnRoberts]

Comparing to the flu is a bad take. More die from the flu when the flu is mitigated by vaccines and is a disease we have some immunity to due to centuries of exposure.

If COVID-19 winds up infecting the same number of people as the flu does it’s going to be really bad. 2-3% case fatality rate and an R0 of 3-6 is no joke. :/

Therefore it seems prudent to contain the spread until we can develop an effective vaccine... but we are still learning. Early days...

JR

 

[Script]

Yes -- and numbers of new infections in China are slowing down with recoveries catching up fast.

However, it has the potential of severely straining any country's health infrastructure, when suddenly TOO many people require hospitalisation and intubation, as happened in China.

Therefore, in Japan, the idea is to confine preventively,, or at least postpone and stretch it out -- ideally until the generic flu season is over. Common sense.

Up to 80 percent of cases are mild, almost indistinguishable from a common flu. That's both good and not good.

Typical symptoms are fever and sore throat, but no running nose. And in the case of any flu-like symptoms, people in Japan are kindly requested to simply stay home.

Only if fever above 37.5 Celcius persists for four days (with common flu it's usually gone after three days) are you kindly ask to pick up the phone. Also pretty common sense.

 

[Tubetec]

There is a certain lack of focus from Donald lately in his speeches , like you might see from someone chronically sleep deprived, handed a script and trotted out  :-[

 

[JohnRoberts]

There is a certain lack of focus from Donald lately in his speeches , like you might see from someone chronically sleep deprived, handed a script and trotted out  :-[

Remarkable analysis....  :

I do sometimes wonder when he sleeps... I could never keep up with his schedule, but I'm old (too).... :

I believe his speech patterns are likely his brain moving ahead to the next topic, before finishing the one he is still speaking.

If anything he seems a little calmer than normal. Maybe he is finally figuring out this politics game. He needs to project calm to not scare the sheeple in uncertain times like this.

JR

 

[iomegaman]

more die from the flu yearly

While this is true at the moment the thing to watch is the "R0"...which is basically the amount of people you will infect if you have the flu, I think the common flu this year the rate is something around a R0 of 1.2 people ...(from memory could be wrong)...the completely inaccurate R0 for coronavirus at this point is at least 2.5...so if you take the averages its going to be much worse because the rate of infection...

Add to this the amount of people infected that have not reported or found their way into the database yet...AND the fact that the virus can survive on surfaces for almost 10 days...you could have gotten a package in the mail last week from China that had particulates still alive on some surface...(this is not true of the normal flu)

If the mortality rate is lower on coronavirus than the common flu it might still have a huge impact because you are going to be dealing with much larger numbers of infections...THIS is what has the experts concerned...

It isn't the voltage here, its the amps...the current of coronavirus at this point is creating at least twice the amps of the normal flu virus.

 

[hodad]

Remarkable analysis....  :



If anything he seems a little calmer than normal.
JR

Calm, but largely incoherent(seriously, did you watch that press conference?  It was rambling, contradictory, and factually challenged.)  Of course, after his presser he runs off to one of his rallies & declares coronavirus the Democrats' new hoax.  So far, he's given me little reason to believe that he's handling this with competence, and with as much concern for loss of life as for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. 

 

[dmp]

Trump is calling this a hoax???

 

[JohnRoberts]

Calm, but largely incoherent(seriously, did you watch that press conference?  It was rambling, contradictory, and factually challenged.) 

As compared to some other typical speech pattern from him?  You and I are seeing two different movies, based on expectation bias.

Of course, after his presser he runs off to one of his rallies & declares coronavirus the Democrats' new hoax.

Schumer and Pelosi do appear to be politicizing this, but I guess that depends on our political bias.

So far, he's given me little reason to believe that he's handling this with competence, and with as much concern for loss of life as for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

I doubt there is anything he could do to make you believe he is competent (sorry I can't read your mind but do see a pattern).

[joke] I suspect if President Trump cured cancer, democrats would criticize him for putting doctors out of work. [/bad joke]

Dr Drew Pinsky has been critical of media's hyperbolic coverage of this.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWY0oZV51VY

Dr Pinsky has been a sensible voice about multiple current public health issues like the homeless population in CA.

I do not mean to trivialize this but overtly partisan behavior (like occurred surrounding the administration's funding request) and false accusations that stirs up fear are not in the public interest, IMO.

Wash your hands and try not to touch your face.

JR

PS: The original coronavirus quick test kit sent out by CDC feb 5, had problems where one of the three enzyme reagents was faulty, causing inconclusive test results. This is not a good thing, and these tests are important for diagnosing spread of this virus. Reportedly adequate testing can be performed with the two good reagents. I suspect we will see some finger pointing over this, after the dust settles and good test kits are more widely available. 
[edit- while reportedly the test works with only two reagents, three good reagents can break the tie if needed. /edit]