Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

[localizer]

Sudden jump perhaps due to additional diagnostics procedures.

boy media gonna have a field day.

 

[KYli]

A significant change has been made by the Chinese government in the reporting of cases by including clinically diagnosed cases as confirmed cases. In the Hubei province alone, 13,332 cases had been added to the numbers. You will see a significant spike in numbers and consequently headlines once it hits the news wire. This also mean that until to-date, the numbers were under represented in terms of scale of infection.

Everyone knew that many suspected cases in Wuhan weren't reported as confirmed cases. Wuhan hospitals were simply overwhelmed. It is required by law any confirmed cases to be admitted to the hospitals. That's why they set up so many temporary hospitals to admit more patients but most of them would be just for monitor and quarantine purpose til their conditions improve or deteriorate.

 

[manqiangrexue]

These groups are extremely powerful because they effectively took advantage of the U.S.-China ideological competition and won the material and moral supports of the West. Beijing now has no choice but to live with the fact that these groups are always plotting to overthrow the CCP and spread fake news. The CCP is already losing the propaganda war (narratives) from the Coronavirus outbreak to Hong Kong.

What support did they win? Con some pity money from the West to survive? LOL Did they even get any? They don't even dare go home much less challenge the CCP. Beijing has no choice but to live with the fact that traitorous people can hide outside China and it can't just kill them all or lock them up? LOLOL What big news! Which country in the world doesn't have to live with the fact that state enemies cannot all be assassinated as they hide in foreign countries? Or you mean that these groups "plot" to overthrow the CCP and that makes them powerful? LOLOL If I "plot" to overthrow the US government while hiding in North Korea subsisting on Kim Jong Un's stipend, does that make me EXTREMELY powerful too? Oooh, are the cockroaches in my kitchen "EXTREMELY powerful" because I have no choice but to live with the fact that I can't find them or kill them once they get under/behind my heavy appliances, as they plot to steal more and more food from me? Hahaha So many EXTREMELY powerful things in the world, eh? Propaganda is most powerful in the country of its origin. People in China support the CCP; outside of China, what can be done? China would have to take over the state medias of other countries in order to not "lose" the propaganda war by your definition.

Just to continue your indefensible stance in this discussion, you've had to set the bar so low for the definition of "powerful" that it is a mockery of the word! In order to put your spin on it, anything that Beijing cannot kill at the snap of a finger from half the world away is "extremely powerful." You have the definition confused with "still surviving."

 

[OppositeDay]

The mistake everyone pushing the "cover-up" story makes, including the Caixin article above, is hindsight bias.

Given that we known COVID-19 is 1) a new virus, and 2) has caused an epidemic, if we now go back and look at the actions and decisions of public health authorities, it is easy to imagine there was a cover up going on. When the authorities downplay the seriousness of the virus, you are thinking: "hey, we know the virus is serious, so obviously these guys are lying!".

What you are failing to take into account is that false positives far outnumber the false negatives.

When administrators and authorities downplay the seriousness of the outbreak, they are not trying to cover things up. They are trying to prevent people from panicking for no reason.

My twins were born premature at 29-weeks. They spent 3 months in the NICU. During that stay, the hospital we were at had an alert for an abnormally infectious flu-like virus. Needless to say, everyone at the NICU was extremely worried. The nurses reassured us that as long as we kept to established hygiene procedures, there was nothing for us to worry about. A week later, no viral outbreak occurred and everyone promptly forgot about this incident.

These kinds of alerts happen all the time in hospitals. COVID-19 happened in the middle of flu season, where many hospitals are routinely overwhelmed with pneumonia patients. When the surge of pneumonia patients occurred early on in Wuhan, the possibility of this being due to a completely novel and highly infectious virus was scientifically remote. A far more likely explanation was a simple statistical surge in the number of flu complications. That is why they needed the link to the seafood market to establish that this really was a novel virus. This was no conspiracy, simply the first step in establishing a valid epidemiological case.

I‘m well aware of the benefits of 20/20 hindsight, but the health authorities' responses cannot be excused on the ground of being in the flu season. The people who were alarmed by early January were not the members of the lay public or even ordinary healthcare workers, they were respiratory and radiology specialists in some of Wuhan's top hospitals. They certainly knew what a normal or even a particularly nasty flu season looked like. Also at the end of December Wuhan health authority had already announced there were cases of pneumonia caused by an unknown virus, so at the novel part of 'completely novel and highly infectious virus' was already known. What did health authorities in Wuhan do when healthcare workers began to develop pneumonia?

Quote from the first Caixin article:

医生病了，无人认账，显然有一种“指令”在起作用。李云华透露，院方不仅不公开医务人员感染情况，甚至出台一条“奇葩规定”——本院医护人员CT检查，对于肺部不明原因肺炎待排除的，CT片子及结果一律不给本人，由科室统一交给医院内部的感染管理科。财新记者采访的武汉多位医生都透露，他们的医院也有类似规定——“检测结果不公开，阳性结果以电话通知”

Not only were they not disclosing the infections among healthcare workers, multiple hospitals in Wuhan began to lock up CT scans of healthcare workers in the infectious disease management departments to keep them away from their colleagues in the clinical departments and only informing the infected healthcare workers personally by telephone. Caixin thought this was unlikely to be a spontaneous decision by multiple hospitals (because it's very unusual) and had to come from the health authorities. Note at the same time the hospitals were locking up evidence of healthcare workers infections in the infectious disease management departments, Wuhan health authorities were telling the public that there was no evidence for human to human transmission.

Also note that the National Health Commission required the following three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for a diagnosis: 1. contact history with the seafood market. 2. fever. 3. genetic sequencing to demostrate the presence of the novel virus. So even if a patient had both the symptoms and the virus, they still couldn't be diagnosed if there were no contact history with the market. I could understand if they required (contact history AND symptoms) OR (symptoms AND virus), but contact history AND symptoms AND virus? I found it very difficult to explain the logic behind this except they were trying to cover up human to human transmission.

 

[shanlung]

Come on guys, cool it a bit. For a while, I thought I was in PDF,

I do not agree with Josh also. But please counter him with facts and not name calling and 4-letter words.

What 4 letter words?

Please show me. You getting hyper excited over my wonderings.

Have a soothing cup of Wulung tea and remember to take your meds.

 

[supercat]

All numbers are preliminary:

February update, daily (cumulative):


2/12 China:

confirmed 15157 (59880)​

,

suspected 3342 (11020*)​

, confirmed + suspected 18494 (75949), severe case ---- (7824), death 252 (1365), cured 1552 (6292)
2/12 Hubei:

confirmed 14840 (48206)​

,

suspected ----- (9028*)​

, confirmed + suspected ----- (57234), severe case ---- (7084), death ---- (1310), cured ---- (3441)
2/12 Wuhan: confirmed ----- (32994), suspected ----- (-----*), confirmed + suspected ---- (-----), severe case ---- (-----), death --- (1036), cured --- (1915)
2/12 Other**: confirmed 317 (11676), suspected ----- (1992*), confirmed + suspected ----- (-----), severe case ---- (740), death ---- (55), cured ---- (2489)

*cumulative suspected = cumulative suspected on the previous day + daily suspected – those who tested positive or negative on the same day (my personal unofficial interpretation)
**Other = China – Hubei

 

[Blitzo]

A significant change has been made by the Chinese government in the reporting of cases by including clinically diagnosed cases as confirmed cases. In the Hubei province alone, 13,332 cases had been added to the numbers. You will see a significant spike in numbers and consequently headlines once it hits the news wire. This also mean that until to-date, the numbers were under represented in terms of scale of infection.

My understanding is that the new categorization only applies for Hubei and not for outside of Hubei because outside of Hubei they have the resources to test everyone due to reduced patient demand, whereas Hubei's labs are likely overwhelmed.

In other words, the fact that they are using clinical diagnosis in Hubei is likely going to lead to an overestimation of the actual number of people who actually have coronavirus (until they actually get positive lab tests), because they're choosing to be safer and more cautious even if it makes the numbers look higher than they are.

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[OppositeDay]

My understanding is that the new categorization only applies for Hubei and not for outside of Hubei because outside of Hubei they have the resources to test everyone due to reduced patient demand, whereas Hubei's labs are likely overwhelmed.

In other words, the fact that they are using clinical diagnosis in Hubei is likely going to lead to an overestimation of the actual number of people who actually have coronavirus (until they actually get positive lab tests), because they're choosing to be safer and more cautious even if it makes the numbers look higher than they are.

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So instead of false negatives, there will be false positives in Hubei. Don't know how I feel about this. I certainly don't want to be a false positive sharing a hospital room with true positives.

 

[Blitzo]

So instead of false negatives, there will be false positives in Hubei. Don't know how I feel about this. I certainly don't want to be a false positive sharing a hospital room with true positives.

At the population level, it is probably safer to treat false positives as if they are actually positive so that you're able to better capture everyone who actually has it.

 

[localizer]

Until we know the parameters for a diagnosis we don't know if it's likely to under or overreport. Really depends on specificity/sensitivity.