Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

sirloindude said:

There’s been a lot of discussion about the likelihood of a great number of asymptomatic “stealth carriers,” and given that those individuals are never likely to know they had/have this virus and thus won’t appear in data, it could drastically alter the death rate of this virus.

This is a completely valid point.

We pretty much know how many deaths we can attribute to the virus (more or less). We have a rough(?) idea of how many symptomatic cases there are - at this point, this would only include those who self-identify as symptomatic and get tested.

We have no idea how many fall under the "asymptomatic" banner - and that would include anyone not sick enough to personally care...even those with symptoms to varying degrees.

That's a hell of a variable.

Yes, that's why the R0 and latency and fatality rate together overwhelm the system.

What's happening in Italy is not imagination. Spain and France aren't far behind. King County hospitals are low on supplies, and healthcare workers are getting infected, available bed count is low. That's what skepticism gets you.

With coronavirus, if you wait until things even start to look bad, you're too late. Way too late.

In Japan, S. Korea, Italy, and I think the US now too, it took roughly two weeks to go from 100 confirmed cases to 5,000 confirmed cases. Thus, the number of confirmed cases in these countries increased by a factor of 50 in two weeks. So ~5,000 cases in the US in ~two weeks is where we (in the USA) are today. Without implementing severe measures to limit the outbreak, it would likely increase by another factor of 50 in another two weeks to 250,000 cases. Then to 12 million cases by mid April.

There are reports indicating that 19% of the confirmed cases in New York are requiring hospitalization. Yes, I know this is probably skewed due to the fact that many people aren't getting tested, but it is still worth looking at. At the uncapped exponential growth rates, there could be 100,000 people per day seeking hospital treatment, and there is no way our or any medical system can keep up with that.

There are reports out of Italy that they are considering what to do if things keep getting worse. The solution - refuse to treat anyone over 80 to save the space for younger people who are typically easier to treat. These are worst-case scenarios, but we need to take precautions to ensure we don't get there. Yes, I don't like what they have had to implement, but I just see any other solution as being worse.

I would just caution us to ensure we’re using the right terminology. Cases and confirmed cases are two different things. There could be far more than 5000 people with it and we’d never know given how “normal” it is for some people to never exhibit any symptoms. A lot of statistics could be way off from reality, and absent more regular testing, we’d never know.

Also, regarding Italy, I think it’s important to keep in mind that the average age of its citizens is much higher than ours. Only Japan is higher. I wouldn’t expect things to be quite as dramatically severe here even if we weren’t taking serious precautions. I also think it’s worth considering the U.K. which, as I understand it, is operating under more a herd immunity methodology, and at least for now, I’m not hearing horror stories from there. If what I read about their response was wrong, though, please disregard.

Look, if there isn’t a significant population of stealth carriers that would drastically alter the fatality rate to something much lower once factored into the statistics, and these measures are absolutely and truly necessary to prevent widespread death, then okay, I can support them. I just think that given the severity of what is being implemented, the problem had darn well be as bad as it’s made out to be. A LOT of people will be facing a host of other problems, especially in the service industry, and it would be unspeakably terrible if it turned out it was over something that wasn’t as dire as it was alleged to be. I’m just saying that what we’re doing had absolutely better be the right solution. I don’t want to play God and callously say to just let thousands of people die to protect the livelihood of others, but I think that before blindly accepting a near-full economic shutdown over a disease where the odds of survival are dramatically in your favor, there are some healthy questions that are worth asking.

I don't think we will ever know what the exact right response should have been and I am sure we will argue about for years to come. The Allegheny County Health Department now estimates 40-60% of its population with contract the virus over the next few months. Woof...

These dense Asian cities largely won by way of testing like crazy and tracking every case and its origins. Why? Because they already had a plan for that.

https://nyti.ms/39XDUqR

Because those Asian countries got burned by prior outbreaks of SARS and MERS and implemented those plans as a result to avoid having it happen again.

This is the most telling from the article:

"And the vigilant monitoring systems in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong were built over years, after their failures to stop another dangerous outbreak — SARS — 17 years ago. The United States disbanded its pandemic response unit in 2018."

Jeff said:

It was not already here. Come on man, aren't you an engineer? As contagious as it is, we'd be on the back side of it with collapse of the healthcare system.

I love it that everyone is a statistician when they don't like the results.

Yes, what does that have to do with anything? I'm not a doctor, statistician nor do I study infectious disease or anything remotely similar.

I'm not saying it originated here, i'm just saying its very possible that this has been 'active' in the US weeks prior to any attention being focused at it. But I obviously don't know, it's just speculation.

It's not very possible, because every single bit of evidence indicates otherwise.

GoBucks89 said:

Because those Asian countries got burned by prior outbreaks of SARS and MERS and implemented those plans as a result to avoid having it happen again.

Yes, and nations with scientific minded leaders would understand that outbreaks know no borders. And here we are. I saw on the news that fewer than 40 people have been tested in Orange County, Florida, a place where 75 million people visit annually. That's a huge fail.

Does Europe have scientific minded leaders? At this point Europe is now the epicenter of the pandemic. Were there no scientific minded leaders in Asia before SARS and MERS outbreaks hit them and their economies (resulting in them taking the steps they have in place for this virus)?

The countries that are doing the best with this outbreak by and large are those that were burned by prior outbreaks and as a result put plans into place to protect against the next one. As I noted, seems to be a flaw of human nature that is what is required (something has to make it real/bring it home). Also if you look at having limited resources and time, it makes some sense that you would prioritize that which is most real (and in the process discount that which is perceived).

US intelligence/security was something of a sh-t show for decades. Chinks in the armor were revealed now and again but no real changes. Took something of the magnitude of 9-11 to get people's attention and bring about changes.

As far as the possibility of the existence of Coronavirus in the US longer than February, I decided to ask Dr. Kestler at our local college, I'll update you if he answers. He has been releasing a series of videos starting back a week ago specifically about this virus and why we are doing what we are doing. Something he mentioned is that there isn't an antibody test that has yet been developed that can prove if you had already had Coronavirus. For those who don't understand, when you get a virus, your body produces antibodies to fight off that virus and allow for recovery. You're less likely to get sick from it again because you now have the antibodies to fight it. This is different from something that is bacterial, where you need antibiotics to help fight off that infection.

For those who'd rather get information from an expert rather than a news article (Jeff, this isn't a shot at media, I don't think journalists are experts in this field but they do their best with the info they are given), I suggest seeing his videos to get a better understanding of what's going on.

Anyone here can be an armchair scientist and say “well I don’t feel like it has to be as bad as some of y’all bla bla bla...”

Then there are the real scientists, the ones that aren’t interested in ratings, money, or worried about the optics.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/...3-2020.pdf

I’d rather listen to those people.

And if you need a breakdown of what that means:

https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239975682643357696

Ohio's first confirmed case was announced about 10 days ago (May 9th I believe). Last Thursday, the director of the Ohio Department of Health said that she believed there were at least 100,000 people in Ohio with the virus as of that time. Given doubling time, transmissions, etc., I would expect the virus was here for some time before we knew it. Exactly when we won't likely ever know.

The conversation some of us were having at work was at what point does the mental health and well being of the population become a priority? It's obviously not realistic to assume everyone is able to do what they are doing now for the next 12-18 months. Businesses like theme parks and restaurants aren't going to stay closed until the summer of 2021. At some point life has to "go on", but at what point is that acceptable? It's a very real conversation. I think more and more people every day are accepting the fact that the current situation is our new temporary normal. But expecting people to isolate for more than 4-8-12 weeks is not practical for myriad reasons. Much like the folks in Italy are having the "who do we save" conversations now, American (and world) leaders and businesses are at some point going to have to have the "at what point do we start to open things back up and let individuals and families make the best choices for themselves" conversation. I don't know when that conversation is practical to have, nor do I know that the right or wrong answers will be. But once these initial periods of social distancing and sheltering in place begin to go away, these conversations are inevitable. Seasonal theme parks can delay their 2020 openings, restaurants can go take out only, and Walt Disney World can only stay closed for so long. This is when I wish I had an ounce of faith and trust (or even just took comfort) in our current Presidential administration. As John Oliver said the other night, we are somewhat on our own right now, and that really sucks.

BrettV said:

The conversation some of us were having at work was at what point does the mental health and well being of the population become a priority?

When depression's mortality rate and R0 factor exceed that of COVID-19 maybe?

At some point life has to "go on", but at what point is that acceptable?

When that won't result in tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths.

But expecting people to isolate for more than 4-8-12 weeks is not practical for myriad reasons.

The average deployment length during WW2 was 6 months. Pretty sure we can handle watching Netflix in our air conditioned homes for that long if necessary.

I’m already out of work for at least two weeks because I’m high risk. I’m working on home projects, texting and calling family and friends, watching TV, and I bought about $140 in liquor before I went in to near isolation so that I can drink and talk to my friends on friday and Saturday nites while listening to music and/or face timing.

I’m planning on basically trying to mitigate depression by doing what I would normally do, but from home.

djDaemon said:

The average deployment length during WW2 was 6 months. Pretty sure we can handle watching Netflix in our air conditioned homes for that long if necessary.

I've never agreed with this meme floating around the Internets. At least in the US, life was still able to go on during WW2. People naturally still want to be productive and social. Sitting at home watching Netflix is neither of those.

At this point, those who can work remotely are retooling themselves to adjust to this different environment. My product team is already developing content for our own webinars to continually stay in our customer's faces. I'm starting to see other companies begin to retool the way they do business as well. I wouldn't be surprised if this accelerates the obsolescence of things like offices and schools. That shift could affect the demand of other things like construction, hotels, automotive, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is, we are probably living through a transformation the way we do things and we shouldn't have expectations of things going back to how it was.

When this topic started in January, none of that was on my radar.

Mulfinator said:

.... Trump disbanded its pandemic response unit in 2018."

FIFY.

Rob: Real journalists are quoting qualified doctors and scientists. That's exactly the right place to seek information.

After reading the article about Singapore, and reluctantly going out today, I realize now that the only way to normalcy is the widespread availability of testing. None of us is "clean" until we've been home for 14 days. Without testing, we have to assume we've been exposed.

So why are we not focusing energy on ramping up that infrastructure?