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

Also note the choice of word. "Mutant Coronavirus" instead of "New Coronavirus Strain" where mutant is a strong word with somewhat unnatural connotations, whereas the reality is normal biological variation. Click bait authoring.
It can also be a question of the connotation attached to a word in general usage versus what it means in a specific field. Other controversies or miscommunications have arisen because the way a word is used in a field has a very different connotation.
"New" is potentially less accurate than saying a virus is a mutation. There are multiple mutant forms for the virus, but those tracking it wouldn't label each one new, but they'd likely list each as being a mutation in their findings or in communications. The choice of mutant could be made for creating headlines, but media that is not familiar with the science (most) can also latch onto words that seem familiar and use them in the colloquial sense.
Similarly, using the word "theory" for public scientific discussion versus its usage in science is a stark difference. Public debate often uses the term "just a theory" to imply a concept is controversial or weakly substantiated given how most people use the term, whereas in science if discussing recognized theories they are discussing some of the most fundamentally tested and corroborated models known (theory of gravitation, theory of relatively, etc.).


Coronavirus: France's first known case 'was in December'

Link

First Covid-19 case happened in November, China government records show - report

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...november-china-government-records-show-report

Coronavirus outbreak in France did not come directly from China or Italy, study says

https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/othe...ly-from-china-or-italy-study-says/ar-BB13nlqF


So what the hell is going on? A coincidental mutation of a local coronavirus in France? And if it was in December thats very early and very close to the date it appeared in China. But a different coronavirus?
The wording of the article is somewhat unclear. It states the tested samples weren't connected to cases of known direct travel from China. However, it goes on to state they appeared to be connected to Belgium. However, I'm not sure they were arguing that Belgium's outbreak wasn't connected to China. There's also some discussion family working at the international airport, in one of the articles.
There are multiple ways for this to happen without assuming simultaneous mutation of unrelated coronavirus genomes to produce nearly the same genome.
The typically recognized China cases likely represent a subset of virus mutations that became common in Wuhan province after infections ramped there. Given the indication that there was a possible case in November and a trickle of cases for about a month, it is possible that there was some circulation outside the surveillance of the hospitals, and perhaps one of the variations in that phase made it to Belgium, but was not the version that hit the densest population centers first in China.
There's also some discussion in the earlier article about the "mutant" virus that Belgium's samples in particular show a higher incidence of mixing, meaning patients had contracted multiple strains, which encourages transfer of traits. The more chaotic mix in Belgium may have spawned the subtype that made it into France, while the cases labelled as being from China were tied to a genetic line that may have been carried by direct travel, but the probability would have been proportional to the ramp in China of the subtype people recognize as being from there.

These are still early days, so interpretation of the exact lineages of a mutable virus are likely to change or remain forever ambiguous. The other story indicates that recognition of the virus was a lagging factor, which is a mixture of understandable factors such as not considering the possibility of a novel virus for the earliest cases, to inertia or official resistance to recognizing an inconvenient threat to stability, metrics like GDP, or legitimacy.
That's one reason why nations in Asia with history with SARS-1 started mobilizing once news started to spread, and clamped down so fast. Even if officials acted with all possible speed, the places that could detect the virus would have found it after the fact, and they would need time to see a trend. The most strident voices for action were often those that understood from previous epidemic timelines that the first warnings were late ones for an exponentially growing threat.
 
"Genetic analysis showed that the dominant types of viral strains in France belonged to a clade " or group with a common ancestor " that did not come from China or Italy, Europe's earliest epicenter. Instead, the outbreak was caused by a locally circulating strain of unknown origin, the researchers said."
The article brings up Belgium a few paragraphs later as a possible source, and that Belgium's strains were related to the earliest ones China.
 
Ohio has yet another bad day for number of new Hospitalizations and still hovers around 6%-15% positive case to testing rate. They're finally increasing the testing numbers to what they should have been on day three, and yet Ohio still remains in the running for dead last in testing.

Ohio did 12.2K tests for today's numbers which may be their highest number of tests yet, with previous days at 3.3K, 3.6K, 5.5K, 4.9K, 6.5K, 5.2K, 4.3K, 4.9K, 5.5K, 8.1K, 7.0K, and 8.2K.

Ohio's numbers today, Confirmed: 23,697 (up from 23,016 ), Hospitalized: 4,300 (up from 4,218 ), and Deaths: 1,331 (up from 1,306 ).
CDC Expanded Cases and Deaths: 1137, 117
Confirmed Cuyahoga County: 2,755 (up from 2,668 ) ~ 3.26% increase.

Percentage increase: 2.96%, 1.94%, 1.91%
Raw increase: 681, 82, 25

Ohio has total tests of 195,533 (up from 183,269 ) and tests per 1M population of 16,796 (up from 15,743 ) taken from https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/key-metrics/cases and https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ [case numbers updated later]

They're using roughly 11.641482 million as the population of Ohio

Additional information on Ohio Trends

upload_2020-5-9_16-54-22.png
 
The article brings up Belgium a few paragraphs later as a possible source, and that Belgium's strains were related to the earliest ones China.
So just like I suggested, came from route other than china>france or china>italy>france
 
2019 Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19) for Dallas County Texas
https://www.dallascounty.org/departments/dchhs/2019-novel-coronavirus.php

May 9, 2020 - 5,619 confirmed cases - 143 deaths

5,619 confirmed cases up 250 over yesterday and eight new deaths
those 250 new cases represent a 4.7% increase over the last day

Increases (by percent) over the last 44 days:
21.0%, 19.6%, 11.1%, 12.5%, 14.9%
-- Month of April 2020 --
15.8%, 13.7%, 10.8%, 10.2%, 9.6%, 3.9%, 9.2%, 5.0%, 8.2%, 7.3%, 7.0%, 4.8%, 3.8%, 5.0%, 5.8%,
4.0%, 6.0%, 6.1%, 4.5%, 3.5%, 3.6%, 3.1%, 3.0%, 2.6%, 2.6%, 3.6%, 3.0%, 4.3%, 3.5%, 5.3%
-- Month of May 2020 --
5.3%, 4.9%, 6.0%, 5.7%, 5.9%, 5.3%, 5.2%, 4.9% and now 4.7%

Increases (by count) over the last 44 days:
+64, +72, +49, +61, +82
-- Month of April 2020 --
+100, +100, +90, +94, +97. +43, +106, +63, +108, +105, +107, +79, +65, +89, +109,
+80, +124, +134, +104, +84, +90, +81, +80, +71, +75, +105, +91, +135, +112, +179
-- Month of May 2020 --
+187, +181, +234, +237, +253, +246, +251, +249 and now +250

As of 11:00am May 9, 2020, Dallas County Health and Human Services is reporting 250 additional positive cases of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19), bringing the total case count in Dallas County to 5,619, including 143 deaths.

The additional 8 deaths being reported today include:

  • A man in his 30’s who was a resident of the City of Garland, and had been found deceased at home.
  • A man in his 50’s who was a resident of the City of Dallas, and had been critically ill in an area hospital.
  • A man in his 50’s who was a resident of the City of Cockrell Hill, and had been critically ill in an area hospital.
  • A man in his 60’s who was a resident of a long-term care facility in the City of Dallas, and had been critically ill in an area hospital.
  • A woman in her 70’s who was a resident of the City of Balch Springs, and had been critically ill in an area hospital.
  • A man in his 80’s who was a resident of a long-term care facility in the City of Dallas, and had been hospitalized.
  • A woman in her 80’s who was a resident of a long-term care facility in the City of Richardson, and had been critically ill in an area hospital.
  • A woman in her 80’s who was a resident of Farmers Branch, and had been critically ill in an area hospital.
Of cases requiring hospitalization who reported employment, about 79% have been critical infrastructure workers, with a broad range of affected occupational sectors, including: healthcare, transportation, food and agriculture, public works, finance, communications, clergy, first responders and other essential functions. Of cases requiring hospitalization, two-thirds have been under 65 years of age, and about half do not have high-risk chronic health conditions. Diabetes has been an underlying high-risk health condition reported in about a third of all hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Of the 143 total deaths reported to date, over a third have been associated with long-term care facilities.
 
Ugh, looked at the local Indiana COVID site today and got nicely terrified/disgusted. On the brightside it doesn't look like we've overloaded our capacities yet, but we've been re-opening since last week and my county is due to open I think either Monday or the next. (I live in the top left county, Lake, right next to Illinois' Lake county. Convenient for remembering. ;) )

I like the site, it's been up a while and it's pretty straight-forward with no bullshit:

https://www.coronavirus.in.gov/

BTW- Does anyone know of a medical condition not allowing you to wear a mask? My neighbor's daughter who gave us the german shepard is posting up what I consider to be truly batshit insane crazy talk in her facebook feed. It's like seeing the other side from the inside, terribly fascinating! (She was bitching that Costco wouldn't let her in without a mask even though she had a note from her doctor. :| )

Just curious since it sounds very bullshit to me, but I really don't know. I figure if nothing else just wear a lighter mask.

Thanks again for all the info. It's not the disease that's scaring me so much, we can deal with it..it's just my country isn't and we're about to do a repeat of the 1918 spanish flu's second wave and I'm just not looking forward to that no matter how darwinian cleansing it is. :(
 
BTW- Does anyone know of a medical condition not allowing you to wear a mask? My neighbor's daughter who gave us the german shepard is posting up what I consider to be truly batshit insane crazy talk in her facebook feed. It's like seeing the other side from the inside, terribly fascinating! (She was bitching that Costco wouldn't let her in without a mask even though she had a note from her doctor. :| )

Just curious since it sounds very bullshit to me, but I really don't know. I figure if nothing else just wear a lighter mask.

AFAIK ... No. The nearest thing is reaction to latex that some masks use on the straps near the ears and chin. My sister is a nurse at University Hospital and can't wear any of their masks if they use latex on the straps near the ears or chin. So she has to use their surgical masks which doesn't use latex.
 
There are a number of breathing issues that a mask could exacerbate, but I expect you should be able to tolerate it for a while in costco.

Honestly at least half the people I see wearing masks are not wearing them right or they keep touching them so they are spreading virus with their hands. If the mask is what gives them confidence for going out, it's not having a positive impact.
 
I suspect the lower number of cases and hospitalizations from folks postponing going in because of Mother's Day holiday on Sunday. If this is the situation, then number for Monday and Tuesday will spike higher.

Ohio did 8.1K tests for today's numbers which is a huge drop from their highest number of tests yesterday (one third less), with previous days at 3.3K, 3.6K, 5.5K, 4.9K, 6.5K, 5.2K, 4.3K, 4.9K, 5.5K, 8.1K, 7.0K, 8.2K, and 12.2K.

Ohio's numbers today, Confirmed: 24,081 (up from 23,697 ), Hospitalized: 4,351 (up from 4,300 ), and Deaths: 1,341 (up from 1,331 ).
CDC Expanded Cases and Deaths: 1190, 121
Confirmed Cuyahoga County: 2,795 (up from 2,755 ) ~ 1.45% increase.

Percentage increase: 1.62%, 1.19%, 0.75%
Raw increase: 384, 51, 10

Ohio has total tests of 203,672 (up from 195,533 ) and tests per 1M population of 17,495 (up from 16,796 ) taken from https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/key-metrics/cases and https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ [case numbers updated later]

They're using roughly 11.641482 million as the population of Ohio
 
How are you handling following this so closely Brit? I'd go nuts.

No disrespect meant, I'm truly envious you can do it. It just overwhelms me.
 
State of Texas complete COVID-19 data breakdown

75af1a2d-68d9-450a-9ce9-ccd60b8fbfe3.png


https://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/ed483ecd702b4298ab01e8b9cafc8b83

Data as of 5/10/2020 @ 3:35 PM:

Total Tests: 501,776 (Up +12,482) : 17,518 below the 30,000 Daily Tests that the Governor of Texas Abbott promised, Not Good
Cases Reported: 38,869 (Up +1,009) : -242 less cases today over yesterday.
In Hospitals: 1,626 (Down -109)
Patients Recovered (Estimated*) : 21,022 (Up +881)
Fatalities: 1,088 (Up +39)

Texas tests per 1M population are 16,875 (Up +420) which places Texas as the 3rd worst State. Down three places from yesterday.

Click this link: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us
and on the page click the Tests / 1M pop column to sort from worst to first

They're using roughly 27.885 million as the population of Texas.
 
2019 Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19) for Dallas County Texas
https://www.dallascounty.org/departments/dchhs/2019-novel-coronavirus.php

May 10, 2020 - 5,870 confirmed cases - 143 deaths

5,870 confirmed cases up 251 over yesterday and no new deaths
those 251 new cases represent a 4.5% increase over the last day

Increases (by percent) over the last 45 days:
21.0%, 19.6%, 11.1%, 12.5%, 14.9%
-- Month of April 2020 --
15.8%, 13.7%, 10.8%, 10.2%, 9.6%, 3.9%, 9.2%, 5.0%, 8.2%, 7.3%, 7.0%, 4.8%, 3.8%, 5.0%, 5.8%,
4.0%, 6.0%, 6.1%, 4.5%, 3.5%, 3.6%, 3.1%, 3.0%, 2.6%, 2.6%, 3.6%, 3.0%, 4.3%, 3.5%, 5.3%
-- Month of May 2020 --
5.3%, 4.9%, 6.0%, 5.7%, 5.9%, 5.3%, 5.2%, 4.9%, 4.7% and now 4.5%

Increases (by count) over the last 45 days:
+64, +72, +49, +61, +82
-- Month of April 2020 --
+100, +100, +90, +94, +97. +43, +106, +63, +108, +105, +107, +79, +65, +89, +109,
+80, +124, +134, +104, +84, +90, +81, +80, +71, +75, +105, +91, +135, +112, +179
-- Month of May 2020 --
+187, +181, +234, +237, +253, +246, +251, +249, +250 and now +251

As of 10:00 am May 10, 2020, DCHHS is reporting 251 additional positive cases of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19), bringing the total case count in Dallas County to 5,870, including 143 deaths. No new deaths are being reported today.

Of cases requiring hospitalization who reported employment, about 79% have been critical infrastructure workers, with a broad range of affected occupational sectors, including: healthcare, transportation, food and agriculture, public works, finance, communications, clergy, first responders and other essential functions.

Of cases requiring hospitalization, two-thirds have been under 65 years of age, and about half do not have high-risk chronic health conditions. Diabetes has been an underlying high-risk health condition reported in about a third of all hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

Of the 143 total deaths reported to date, over a third have been associated with long-term care facilities.
 
How are you handling following this so closely Brit? I'd go nuts.

No disrespect meant, I'm truly envious you can do it. It just overwhelms me.

It's the only way to know how the State is doing, since I can't believe in any of the words they say. I'm actually less worried about it since there are numbers I can follow, and I can decide how much or how little contact with society I want.

My biggest concern for society is how are corporations going to handle things? The office space needs to be entirely revamped. I dont see them doing so. Not at all. My largest concern is the bathrooms. I dont see how any of them can remain or keep germ free. You practically have to go into a single room with decontamination process before and after every use, like the safety room zone in Gears 5 Escape mode. Right @TheAlSpark ?

Outside of that, on the work front...

Its actually sort of nice to be working from home. I'm getting so much more accomplished in shorter periods of time because all the stupid work meetings are cut or kept to a minimum. This is forcing others to have to think before they just call a meeting or try to get in touch with me, because they need to put things in writing. They seem to be finding out they can do it or it's not an actual fire level emergency. Which none of it ever was, but now they're forced to think and analyze before hand.

But I do think I need to cut back the hours I work since the output efficiency is of the charts. My work pattern before was work from home on Fridays and that's when I'd finish up or make the largest strides on projects. Now every day is like that, so I started pulling in items off my own ToDo list so I feel more professional growth. That is instead of focusing entirely on the designated project that still doesn't have written requirements. Non-developer inspired projects still falter after the pandemic as they did before.

I do miss some of the social aspects but we talk now and then when we get tired of typing, so we just start a voice chat.
 
Oh yeah, and the best part of not being in the office is not hearing all the fucking morons who insist this isn't any worse than a cold or flu and how it's all a hoax. I was hearing that from the other departments of people talking around my area since January until March 13th when I started my stay at home. This was before the state started enforcing the no school issue but had ordered it to happen the next week.

That's also why I can't trust any of the office coworkers to not come in if they're sick. I couldn't trust them with a normal cold or flu. I sure as hell can't trust those motherfuckers with a pandemic. I certainly can't trust HR to have a clue or to do the right thing either. They're the ones that got half the office sick from toxic fumes during the summer when they okayed facilities to reseal the roof during work hours.
 
Looking at the deaths in Sweden or even Stockholm specifically something is not adding up for traditional herd immunity calculations. With minimal measures the virus seems to run it's course in about 5 weeks and peaks in 3 ... that's much faster than expected (and calls to question the wisdom of late lockdowns in heavy hit areas, perhaps better never than late?)

Even though this is a scientist theorizing outside of his own domain, I think Nicholas Lewis might have a point. The herd immunity threshold is much lower than first assumed.
 
If I understand you right, you are looking at this graph:

upload_2020-5-11_16-26-53.png

And where we see a typical spike, this one isn't the result of lockdown but is a natural peak?
 
I consider that a strong possibility.

The few feeble attempts at determining the percentage of people with antibodies in Sweden don't seem to predict classical herd immunity levels at this time ... but they're pretty damn feeble.
 
What leads you to making that sort of conclusion?
All the mortality graphs from European countries exhibit the same shape. Why would it indicate herd immunity in case of Sweden?
Because Sweden hasn't implemented the same lockdowns as I understand it. All the other graphs of this shape can be attributed to halting the spread of the disease, but that's not the case for Sweden so the down-turn has to come from something else.
 
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