Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]

Shifty Geezer said:
Yes, indeed. That and the symptoms versus age. I don't think anyone has this data publicly available.
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The age data is irritatingly inconclusive and of course incomplete. It is easy to see how different national demographics or overwhelmed medical facilities will shift the critical age bracket downward. But that’s not all. The last update from worldometers on France, March 21, was this:
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    1847 new cases and 112 new deaths in France. 50% of the 1,525 patients currently in intensive care are under 60 years old [source] [source]
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Wow. Although that number in isolation is itself misleading as you need to know out of how many and it's easy to inflate it to 'out of all young people' where it's actually 'out of the percentage that tested positive'. An overwhelmed medical service will prioritise the young, so you'd get more young people in ICU in proportion to all people needing health care.

It shows the young aren't immune, but still doesn't tell us how age groups fair.

Also, there have been a number of mutations already.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.15.991844v1

The equilibrium dissociation constant (KD) of three RBD mutants emerging in Wuhan, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and France were two orders of magnitude lower than the prototype Wuhan-Hu-1 strain due to the stabilization of the beta-sheet scaffold of the RBD. This indicated that the mutated viruses have evolved to acquire remarkably increased infectivity. Five France isolates and one Hong Kong isolate shared the same RBD mutation enhancing the binding affinity, which suggested that they may have originated as a novel sub-lineage...This enhancement of the SARS-CoV-2 binding affinity to its host receptor ACE2 reveals a higher risk of more severe infections during a sustained pandemic of COVID-19 if no effective precautions are implemented.
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However, it's also possible that the disease is mutating into less-deadly forms as well if these reproduce faster. Evolution of the virus (selection pressure) will favour that which spreads fastest, not necessarily which is most lethal. It may be the virus that is most resistive wins out, but alternatively it could be the one that spreads twice as fast (exponentially) with minimal symptoms (so people don't isolate, causing more infection) is the one most people get (if such a thing exists) which may even help develop resistance against tougher strains - see cowpox versus smallpox.
 
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Shifty Geezer said:
Wow. Although that number in isolation is itself misleading as you need to know out of how many and it's easy to inflate it to 'out of all young people' where it's actually 'out of the percentage that tested positive'. An overwhelmed medical service will prioritise the young, so you'd get more young people in ICU in proportion to all people needing health care.

It shows the young aren't immune, but still doesn't tell us how age groups fair.

Also, there have been a number of mutations already.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.15.991844v1



However, it's also possible that the disease is mutating into less-deadly forms as well if these reproduce faster. Evolution of the virus (selection pressure) will favour that which spreads fastest, not necessarily which is most lethal. It may be the virus that is most resistive wins out, but alternatively it could be the one that spreads twice as fast (exponentially) with minimal symptoms (so people don't isolate, causing more infection) is the one most people get (if such a thing exists) which may even help develop resistance against tougher strains - see cowpox versus smallpox.
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Yup.
There is, unfortunately, A LOT we just don't know at this moment in time, and some of it is potentially positive! But knowing that we'll have 20/20 hindsight eventually doesn't really help.
Some projections governments just keep quiet about, because panic really doesn't help anyone. And some things are just very uncomfortable to acknowledge, such as that the price of herd immunity invariably is a culling of the herd as you pointed out above.

I don't think we gain that much either as a society or a species a from such a culling from CoVid-19, but I do think the economy, long term, could gain from such a Darwinistic culling of businesses and business tactics. Personell, needs to be satisfied and so on will still be around, but structures will be shaken up and there will be increased space for re-organisation. Not that this won't have its costs in human wellbeing as well, but compared to masses of people dying, it is rather modest.

I can play the numbers games. It's my profession to understand modelling. But there are human and societal consequences of various courses of action as well, apart from effects on BNPs and trade. And those intangibles may be more important at the end of the day, as those are the base of society building in the first place.
 
Yes natural selection push towards more infectious and less letal viruses.... if a virus kills someone almost immediatly after infection the virus cannot efficiently spread to infect others.
I suspect in China less letal viruses sharing the same antigen patterns where around since long time... this explain how they arrive to the today situation.... also they are very efficient.
 
HBRU said:
Yes natural selection push towards more infectious and less letal viruses.... if a virus kills someone almost immediatly after infection the virus cannot efficiently spread to infect others.
I suspect in China less letal viruses sharing the same antigen patterns where around since long time... this explain how they arrive to the today situation.... also they are very efficient.
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China is able to enforce their decisions in ways that are difficult or impossible in most of the rest of the world.
The WHO said China’s most effective measures were “extremely proactive surveillance” to detect cases, extensive testing and immediate isolation of patients, rigorous tracking and quarantine of close contacts and an “exceptionally high degree of population understanding and acceptance” of such measures.
The "understanding" of course helped by factors not as present elsewhere. And the amount of resources devoted in terms of pure number of people involved in the quenching of the outbreak.

That makes it difficult to use Chinese data to make predictions, if these hinge on factors that aren't pertinent elsewhere. In just about every other country, testing is not as extensive, tracking is less or completely given up on, and so on.
 
Regarding negative tests... can anybody tell me if that negative only implies that you are not infected and not if you were infected in the past and already cleared the virus off your body?
 
eloyc said:
Regarding negative tests... can anybody tell me if that negative only implies that you are not infected and not if you were infected in the past and already cleared the virus off your body?
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The tests being used are designed to test the presence of virus. If you have cleared the virus it won't be present. I don't know if they have or are using any test that would show that you have had it in the past, but are now clean. (Testing for antibodies)
 
Maybe this is the wake-up call Senators needed that testing needs to be more wide-spread?

Senator Rand Paul has tested positive for COVID-19. He is feeling fine and is in quarantine. He is asymptomatic and was tested out of an abundance of caution due to his extensive travel and events. He was not aware of any direct contact with any infected person.
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https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1241794180268978177
 
Once they started taking the virus seriously, the Chinese put over 1,800 5-man teams into the country to contact trace those infected. Wanna bet that the whole of the Western world combined has put far fewer than 9,000 people to do the same task? I think, (from what I've read), that only Germany has really been putting a lot of resources into contact tracing and, so far, they've done a good job of keeping their fatality rate down (though it may just be that the figures look to be in their favour because they are testing those with only mild symptoms as well as the most serious).

Ultimately, I think it worth investing significant resources in contact tracing from here on in. Firstly, it will save lives. Secondly, it will provide vital information and experience for the all but inevitable outbreaks in the future. The cost of shutting down the world economy is so vast that it is worth spending a lot of money if you can lessen the shutdown by just a week or two.

I'm not specifically saying we should start contact tracing now the horse has bolted, but planning to enact this as the initial surge dies down seems a good idea as things dampen down.
 
how Can you contact trace, when most ppl are infections are spread by ppl without symptoms. Who pass it on to other ppl without symptoms and so on exponentially. Perhaps you could do this if you start with 10 or so ppl, but China didn’t start until many thousands of ppl had it
 
Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong have kept things in check with contact tracing. South Korea the same but for the annoying clusters which keep popping up (many of them due to idiots at churches).

It's the countries who remember and dealt with SARS who have done the best in this regard. The rest of us didn't have a clue.

Obviously, asymptomatic and community transmission makes the process more difficult, but it can be done given the resources.

I'd imagine the future will be a different place in regards to the way governments go about dealing with this sort of an outbreak.
 
I also wonder whether this might have an effect on the proportion of people who get vaccinated against the seasonal flu every year.
 
Mariner said:
I'd imagine the future will be a different place in regards to the way governments go about dealing with this sort of an outbreak.
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Hopefully none of them will ever proclaim the next upcoming pandemic as just like a common cold or less deadly than the normal Flu or a Democratic Hoax.
 
Televangelist Jim baker is claiming the colloidal Silver he sells on his tv show cures corona virus
only $125 for 2 16oz bottles
I do hope he gets jailed again

Televangelist Kenneth Copeland can cure you through your t.v just place your hand on the screen.
ft5MC0V.jpg
 
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