Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

[superdog]

There is good 200 years worth of statistical tool available to compensate all of this kind of problem.

Best part of them was developed during the 2nd WW to analyse the wartime manufacturing capacity of the enemy countries , with good accuracy and with way less data.

What statistical tool have you used exactly, and to compensate for which problem?

 

[schrodinger]

It doesn't matter what day the US was informed. It would've turned out the same way. Trump didn't take the virus seriously and it seems many Americans aren't taking it seriously hence why stay-at-home orders are expanding because people are still gathering in large non-essential groups in defiance of the warnings. It'll take it hitting them personally for them to take it seriously.

It'll be an interesting study if all the propaganda of the US being number one, not in just handling an outbreak like we heard for weeks, but in everything else built up this type of arrogance in general and thus this lax attitude that make them vulnerable to such emergencies.

Not seeing people wearing masks even in king county.

 

[KYli]

It is a good gesture from Jack Ma to help the world.

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China’s mass deployment of medical aid to fight the coronavirus reached Africa as Ethiopia received its first shipment of supplies, including protective gear and test kits, for distribution across the continent from billionaire Jack Ma.

The Horn of Africa nation received 5.4 million face masks, more than 1 million testing kits, 40,000 items of protective clothing and 60,000 sets of face shields, China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Jack Ma’s foundation said in a statement Sunday. More medical supplies are expected over the next few weeks.

“Getting these donations to all 54 African countries, with diverse geographic conditions and different levels of infrastructure, is a great logistical and transportation challenge,” the foundation said. “We are working around the clock to make the delivery as fast as possible.”

Ethiopia’s Health Ministry will coordinate the distribution together with the national carrier, Ethiopian Airlines, and with support from the World Food Programme and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said separately. Abiy announced a week ago he’d struck a deal with Ma.


Although the spread of the virus has been relatively slow in Africa, the number of people who tested positive have climbed to about 1,000 in more than 40 countries.

Still, the consequences of pandemic will be “catastrophic due to the continent’s weak health care systems, including inadequate surveillance and laboratory capacity, scarcity of public health human resources, and limited financial means,” said Abiy.

 

[reservior dogs]

1. A dramatic drop can't be faked? A dramatic drop on its own needs more support than a decrease in line with normal distribution.
2. No one cares about China. First rule of Trump is to "blame someone else " , and he just follow that .


It is the end, most likely the Coronavirus will flush the value of the Chinese FX reserves - in a years time they will worth of a few toilet paper roll : D

What I mean by this is that China use to have tens of thousands of people sick in the hospital at the height of the crisis. Today, they are reported to have 3500 listed in mild conditions and 1800 listed in critical conditions in all of China. That is just the capacity of one of their newly created hospitals in Wuhan. Now If this dramatic drop in case load was not real, you can easily see it in the hospitals and the new cases that popped up. In fact, if the virus weren't under control, the number of sick will be in the thousands and climbing to tens of thousands. You will see evidence of medical facilities in various locations being overwhelmed. They would not be talking about and actually loosening control and trying to get back to the normal daily activities.

 

[plawolf]

Not sure what you are trying to say here. Can you pinpoint what you believe is falsified? Otherwise, it is difficult for me to reply to your accusation.

From the look of it, UK is preparing for the worst case scenarios. It is what happened when your healthcare system no longer is able to cope with the influx of patients. That has happened in Wuhan in the early days and the mortality rate is 5.8% even with 45000 medical professionals from other provinces come to aid Hubei. On the contrary, South Korea mortality rate is around 1% and have similar data China has so you want to accuse South Korea for falsified data also. I just don't understand what you are implying here.

The UK government’s abrupt public u-turns had nothing to do with ‘false Chinese data’ and everything to do with internal factionalism and misrepresentation of information, specifically the strength of the consensus behind the government’s expert scientific advice.

Many of us, myself included, were calling BS the second we heard of that ‘herd immunity’ nonsense.

I have not looked into the reputation of Patrick Vallance, the UK chief scientific officer, who appears most supportive of the infamous ‘herd immunity’ strategy, too closely, but his performance thus far in the COVID19 crisis is giving me serious cause to question his credibility, judgement and even integrity.

It is one thing to have a difference of opinion between scientists and medical experts on the best course of action, but it is exceptionally irresponsible to package your own personal opinion and views as the expert consensus opinion as he has done repeatedly.
The main thing to have changed the government’s stance appears to have been the report from Imperial College London, and even then I cannot believe those projections and predictions should have come as any sort of surprise to the government, who has been endlessly praising their own modelling on the virus.

So the only thing different was that the government knew the Imperial were about to publish their findings, and the idea of having a quarter million extra deaths due to herd immunity strategy as the headlines around the world is what changed their minds so abruptly.

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10 Days That Changed Britain: "Heated" Debate Between Scientists Forced Boris Johnson To Act On Coronavirus

It was on Wednesday March 11 — 10 days ago — that some of the experts on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies began to realise that the coronavirus was spreading through the UK too fast for the NHS to cope.

Over the next few days, Britain’s leading epidemiologists were embroiled in a series of extremely tense — and until now private — discussions among themselves, with the UK’s chief scientific advisor Patrick Vallance, and Boris Johnson’s government over what to do.

There was no consensus. Several of the scientists frantically argued that the UK must immediately introduce social distancing to halt the spread of the virus. Some pleaded with the government to change tack or face dire consequences.

But others continued to believe that introducing social distancing now would be unsustainable for a long period and would lead to a more disastrous second wave of infection.

The days-long debate between the experts themselves and with the government was “heated” and “extremely difficult”, multiple sources familiar with the discussions told BuzzFeed News. Vallance admitted as much at a health select committee hearing this week: “If you think SAGE is a cosy consensus of agreeing, you're very wrong indeed”.

The extent of the disagreement between the nation’s top scientists and the government can be revealed at the end of one of the most extraordinary weeks in modern British history.

As chancellor Rishi Sunak unveiled an unprecedented package of state intervention in the economy, and Johnson enforced the closure of pubs, restaurants, theatres and gyms, it also emerged that: Ministers have criticised the prime minister's senior aides for “outsourcing” leadership on coronavirus to a small group of experts; Downing Street is still considering a partial lockdown of London in the coming weeks; and cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill introduced a series of new Whitehall structures after concerns that the government was acting too slowly on both its health advice and its economic response.

While the scientific debate was raging last week between experts, officials and ministers in face-to-face meetings and over emails and text messages, Johnson’s government was publicly insisting that the scientific advice showed the UK did not yet have to bring in more stringent measures to fight the virus.

Political aides tacitly criticised other countries who had taken more dramatic steps, claiming Britain was being “guided by the science” rather than politics.

Towards the end of last week, some ministers and political aides at the top of the government were still arguing that the original strategy of home isolation of suspect cases — but no real restrictions on wider society — was correct, despite almost every other European country taking a much tougher approach, and increasing alarm among SAGE experts.

The thought of months or even a year of social distancing was simply not feasible, some in Johnson’s team still thought at that point. They continued to privately defend the controversial “herd immunity” approach outlined to the media by Vallance, even as other aides scrambled to claim the UK had never considered it to be policy.

And there was fury behind the scenes among members of Johnson’s team at the likes of Rory Stewart and Jeremy Hunt, who had been publicly saying the government had got it wrong.

But data from Italy — presented to the government before it was

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— changed all that. Their report confirmed the earlier fears of the epidemiologists who had been calling for more drastic action.

It showed that the NHS would indeed soon be overwhelmed if the UK’s “mitigation” strategy continued. The country had to move right away to a “suppression” approach with much more social distancing and restrictions on normal life, Imperial concluded.

Vallance and Johnson accepted the chilling findings and the prime minister finally advised social distancing on Monday. The experts who had been demanding this for days wondered what the lost time would mean in terms of deaths.

They also raised concerns that the government must be completely transparent with the public, questioning why Vallance later chose to describe the difference between the mitigation and suppression strategies as “semantics”. “This will all come out in the mother of public inquiries,” a source said.

"If you want to know how much we underestimated this, last Wednesday Rishi's budget gave a £30 billion stimulus for the economy, six days later he had to spend another £330 billion," said a Whitehall official.

Allies of Johnson strongly defended his performance over the last two weeks to BuzzFeed News. They said no British government since the Second World War had been forced to deal with a crisis on this scale, and stressed that both the volume of decisions that had to be taken and the enormity of those decisions meant that they could not get everything right straight away.

Johnson’s own personal views on the role of the state have also been a major factor, according to those familiar with his thinking. The prime minister has held deep ideological reservations about turning Britain into an effective police state, as some other countries have done. On Wednesday, Johnson told a press conference that the UK was a “land of liberty”, but warned he would take further measures to enforce social distancing if necessary.

A lockdown at least in part reminiscent of what has happened in Italy and France is still being considered at the top of government if the situation worsens in the weeks ahead, despite Downing Street denying that it would happen. “This will be the hardest decision he will ever make,” a source said of the PM.

While the crisis that Johnson faces is undoubtedly unprecedented, there is significant criticism of Number 10’s handling of the situation across the government and the Conservative Party.

Chief among them is the view — expressed by several ministers and Tory MPs to BuzzFeed News over the last few days — that Johnson and his chief aide Dominic Cummings have effectively “outsourced” the government’s decision-making process to Vallance, the chief medical officer Chris Whitty, and a small team of scientific advisers.

While Downing Street’s deference to the experts won plaudits early on, this approach has turned out to be lacking, the ministers and MPs said, because the scientists themselves disagreed on what to do. One minister said that it was then the political responsibility of Johnson and Number 10 to decide which scientists to back, but described a “vacuum of leadership” among aides.

The minister told BuzzFeed News that Cummings and Vallance were “close allies” and claimed the government had “bet” the future of the UK on advice from a very small group of scientists that for a long time differed from the wider international consensus, and other members of SAGE.

 

[plawolf]

continued due to character limit

They said they had been reassured that Sedwill had taken on a greater role in setting up new structures to manage the crisis over the last few days.

On Tuesday, the cabinet secretary established four implementation committees — chaired by Sunak, health secretary Matt Hancock, foreign secretary Dominic Raab, and Michael Gove — to form a "war cabinet" that is providing greater political and civil service support to the experts and Number 10. Senior officials from across Whitehall have been drafted in by Sedwill to head up work on coronavirus.

The new structures have begun to improve the government's response, insiders said, but there is a general belief that this should have happened days or even weeks earlier — and if it had, Johnson and Sunak would have been able to announce this week's health and economic measures sooner and in a more joined-up way.

One cabinet minister said that the culture instilled by Johnson’s Downing Street operation had not helped in terms of quickly and smoothly implementing radical policy changes, suggesting that the personal style of some aides had made it harder for issues to be raised internally.

Widespread disquiet at the slow pace of the government’s response to coronavirus blew into the open on Thursday, as

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to lambast the Treasury for taking too long to announce safeguards for workers, businesses and those on benefits.

While French president Emmanuel Macron announced a full package to safeguard his economy largely in one go, it took Sunak five days to come up with Britain’s own response.

The government’s failure to announce a full suite of economic measures simultaneously to Johnson’s statement on social distancing on Monday, coupled with Sunak’s statement on Tuesday missing out measures on wages, as well as the further delay on that announcement to Friday, had likely led to thousands of layoffs across the country, the cabinet minister said.

Even the massive economic package for workers and businesses eventually delivered by Sunak on Friday is not complete. There is a growing Tory backbench rebellion on the lack of measures aimed at self-employed people. MPs expect Sunak to have to “go further” once again next week to protect the self-employed.

Despite the prime minister’s praise for Londoners, there is increasing concern in Downing Street the public is so far not heeding his advice to avoid unnecessary social gatherings.

It is believed that in particular, millennial men have been the worst offenders at failing to reduce their contact with other people, continuing to visit pubs, travel widely and take part in other social events, despite being told that doing so risks the lives of the elderly and vulnerable.

On Wednesday, health minister and recent coronavirus sufferer Nadine Dorries blasted the "selfishness" of Londoners who have been failing to follow social distancing advice.

But there is also criticism within government of Downing Street’s messaging. While France and Italy used the law to enforce social distancing, and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison gave an impassioned speech telling people to stop hoarding, Johnson gave a press conference on Thursday where the cut-through message was one of optimism that coronavirus can be defeated, rather than a stern order about the nation’s behaviour.

The length of time to announce measures has also inevitably resulted in widespread speculation about what is coming next, which in turn has led to increased panic-buying from some sections of the public.

Some ministers want Johnson to deliver a starker warning to the country about how difficult life is about to become in the UK over the next few weeks.

“This is going to get much, much worse, very quickly, both in terms of deaths and the economy,” the cabinet minister said. “It will not be long before we are getting numbers like Italy. I don’t think people realise that yet.”

 

[AssassinsMace]

Senator Rand Paul tests positive for coronavirus.

 

[Jura The idiot]

Italy: 5476-4828=648 dead since
Yesterday at 6:29 PM

4828-4032=796 killed by COVID-19 in Italy during the last 24 hours (

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)

 

[vincent]

Someone made a really great analogy about the virus in an article that I read (I cannot remember the source now), which is that the numbers we are seeing being reported is like the stars we see at night. The light from those stars have taken so long to reach us, than many of the stars we can see in the sky may have died long ago.

Canadian federal chief medical officer said that

 

[superdog]

What I mean by this is that China use to have tens of thousands of people sick in the hospital at the height of the crisis. Today, they are reported to have 3500 listed in mild conditions and 1800 listed in critical conditions in all of China. That is just the capacity of one of their newly created hospitals in Wuhan. Now If this dramatic drop in case load was not real, you can easily see it in the hospitals and the new cases that popped up. In fact, if the virus weren't under control, the number of sick will be in the thousands and climbing to tens of thousands. You will see evidence of medical facilities in various locations being overwhelmed. They would not be talking about and actually loosening control and trying to get back to the normal daily activities.

Recently there are tons of videos in China, both from media outlets and from personal accounts, about temporary hospitals closing and medical workers from other provinces that were sent to support Wuhan return to their hometown. They were treated as heroes on their returning trip, with police escorts and water cannons (for their airplane) etc., various ceremonies were held.

This is not something you can fake. There is no question that the first wave of infection has been quelled in China. Those who still doubt usually are not familiar with Chinese media and have no idea the level of information you can get from it.