Patterico's Pontifications

3/3/2020

Coronavirus Spreads Inside U.S.

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:58 am



On February 28, Donald Trump ran a rather premature victory lap because of the low number of reported cases of coronavirus in the United States so far.

There’ve been no deaths. At all. A lot of that’s attributable to the fact that we closed the border very early. Otherwise it could be a very different story.

(He didn’t actually “close the border,” of course, but he did implement travel restrictions regarding certain countries, and that has been an ongoing process.)

When Trump spoke in the video above, nobody had died yet — but that was four days ago. There have since been six deaths in Washington State.

The thing of it is (as Richie Brockelman used to say), as Allahpundit has noted, it’s not that many more cases aren’t out there. It’s that we don’t know about them because the CDC has sent out defective test kits and has been slow to replace them with ones that function properly. Allahpundit:

There are probably thousands of undetected cases in the U.S. right now — watch Scott Gottlieb’s comment on that in the second clip below — and there’ll be thousands more soon because the genie is too far out of the bottle to shove it back in. I wonder too, though, if the CDC is inadvertently being shielded politically by the fact that critics of the Trump administration usually strain to find reasons to tie government incompetence to Trump himself. Every story in the Trump era is a “Trump story,” and Trump did himself no favors with the happy talk recently about how few people were infected. But to all appearances, the coronavirus spread isn’t a “Trump story.” It’s a CDC story. He trusted them to be on top of this out of the gate. So did everyone else. Oops?

If you’re a Trump skeptic, you look at the history of administration pressure on agencies to make sure Trump’s less factual statements are not undermined (remember the sharpie marks on the hurricane map?), and you have to wonder whether the federal government would hide the extent of the problem here.

In any event, we’re seeing more and more cases. As I write this, new stories are popping up, including:

New York:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Tuesday morning a second confirmed case of coronavirus in New York, a man in his 50s in Westchester County, just outside of New York City, suggesting that it was spreading in communities with no known connection to hot spots for the disease.

Florida:

A mother and son from Sarasota Military Academy have been quarantined after coming into contact with a patient who tested positive for coronavirus at Doctors Hospital, the school reports.

The mother came into contact with the patient in her “professional roles,” according to a post on the Sarasota Military Academy’s official Facebook page. Coronavirus causes the disease COVID-19.

Georgia:

Two people who live in the same household in Fulton County are the first in Georgia to test positive for the new coronavirus, Gov. Brian Kemp and state officials announced Monday evening at a hastily arranged press conference. The two showed symptoms of the illness shortly after one of the people returned to Georgia from a trip to the northern Italian city of Milan, officials said.

These are just some recent stories. The New York Times has a roundup, but what I report in this post is a snapshot which will surely be outdated soon. So far, it’s 103 cases in 15 states:

The number of known coronavirus cases in the United States spiked over the weekend and into Monday, with dozens of new diagnoses bringing the total of confirmations to 103.

Public health officials reported that the virus was spreading among people with no history of overseas travel. Schools closed. Governors declared states of emergency.

. . . .

Health officials in California, Oregon and Washington State have all reported incidents of the virus turning up in people with no high-risk travel history, suggesting that it could be spreading undetected within the United States.

. . . .

While coronavirus has been diagnosed on both coasts and in the Midwest, it has mostly been concentrated in just a handful of states.

Combined, California and Washington account for 60 of the cases. Those patients include a mix of people who contracted the illness locally, traveled in China or were passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which docked in Japan after an outbreak on board. Doctors in Nebraska, where there is a hospital unit specializing in biocontainment, have treated 13 coronavirus patients, all of them former Diamond Princess passengers.

Health officials in Illinois, Florida, Georgia, Oregon, Massachusetts and Rhode Island have all reported multiple cases of coronavirus. And individual patients, all of whom had a high-risk travel history, have been treated in Arizona, New Hampshire, New York, Utah and Wisconsin.

There’s no telling how bad it will get, but it will get worse — likely far worse — before it gets better.

Wash your hands.

93 Responses to “Coronavirus Spreads Inside U.S.”

  1. Follow normal flu considerations. You are sick, stay home. Wash your hands regularly. Don’t touch your face. Be an adult.

    NJRob (4d595c)

  2. Six deaths, near Seattle, Washington, a “Death With Dignity” state (that’s euthanasia for non-Euphemismian speakers), four in one nursing home and the other two nearby (quite possibly already in a hospital or hospice). I consider it meaningless in terms of a national epidemic.

    nk (1d9030)

  3. If it has a 2% death rate, that indicates 300 people infected. If it has a 0.2% death rate, that’s 3,000 cases.

    I would like you to be right, nk, but I doubt it.

    Yes, it will mostly kill the elderly, people with diabetes or other illnesses, etc. But it will continue to spread and kill. Slowing it down can save lives, giving time for treatments to be developed, hospital facilities to keep up where life-saving support is helfpul, and the seasons to change, since it may prove to be seasonal (as well as with us for some time).

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793)

  4. South by Southwest in Austin feels like just the ticket to make sure this thing gets everywhere, fast!

    Nathan (5efffe)

  5. Patterico, I sent you some thought and sources on this. It’s hard to keep track of what to trust and what not to trust.

    I read this recently, and am not sure.

    https://www.julianagrant.com/blog/2020/2/29/coronavirus

    I do tend to trust Dr. Vincent Rancaniello of Columbia. He has a podcast on virology that he often updates, and many of the sessions are about coronavirus these days. It’s worth a listen

    http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

    Best wishes to all.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  6. Thank you, Simon.

    nk (1d9030)

  7. For the links and the wishes.

    nk (1d9030)

  8. Here’s my perspective as a lifelong Seattleite and Puget Sound resident. Out of 18 confirmed cases, six are dead. It’s likely that there are hundreds of undiagnosed cases (link).
    The problem is that so many have to be quarantined. We have 25 firemen and cops under quarantine for just interacting with two virus patients. Every visitor to that rehab center are sitting in their houses until they get cleared. A UPS worker got the virus and now his fellow workers at the mail sorting plant are quarantined.
    A Jackson HS student came down with the virus, and they kept the school closed yesterday (Mrs. Montagu works in the same school district, just 3-4 miles from Jackson High). Northshore School District (33 schools) was also closed yesterday for disinfecting. The good news is that the serious cases aren’t with the kids, but with the older folks.
    You notice the little things. At the Y, where I gym-rat with the usual crowd, the steam sauna was closed (but not the dry sauna).
    At Costco, entire freezer sections were cleared out. Only the brown organic eggs were available. The chicken soup was sold out, and so were the rotisserie chickens. Winco was extra busy, but there were no apparent shortages.
    The interesting thing is that there are no infections in Seattle proper. Yet. They’re all on the Eastside and in Snohomish County.

    Paul Montagu (ac6302)

  9. And, according this map, there’s another eight confirmed cases in Vancouver BC, just a couple hours away.

    Paul Montagu (ac6302)

  10. As for a vaccine, Trump said, “I’ve heard very quick numbers, that of months. And I’ve heard pretty much a year would be an outside number. So I think that’s not a bad range. But … you’re talking about three to four months in a couple of cases, a year in other cases.”

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, instantly corrected Trump: “Let me make sure you get the … information.” A vaccine could be ready “at the earliest [in] a year to a year-and-a-half, no matter how fast you go,” said Fauci, noting: “Like I’ve been telling you, Mr. President.”

    So, he doesn’t read AND he doesn’t listen.

    Super…

    Ragspierre (d9bec9)

  11. This personal account is insightful, and reveals the chaotic responses possible sick people are receiving:

    I live in Seattle, I have all symptoms of COVID-19 and have a history of chronic bronchitis.

    Since I work in a physical therapy clinic with many 65+ patients and those with chronic illnesses, I decided to be responsible and go to get tested. This is how that went.

    I called the Corona hotline, was on hold for 40 minutes and gave up.

    So I looked at the CDC and Washington public health websites. They told me to see a primary care doctor, but there’s no information about testing.

    I called 2 primary care doctors. One told me they don’t know where to get testing, and that I should not to seek out testing. The other one told me to go to an urgent care or ER.

    I called the Urgent Care, they also had no idea where tests are, but told me to call the hospital.

    I called the hospital. They do not have tests, but transferred me to the COVID-19 hotline to “answer my questions”. Since I was transferred on a medical provider line, I actually got through. Progress!

    The lady with the hotline was very kind and professional and understood my concern about my own health and those at my clinic. (Which is currently being sanitized). However, I was told I do not qualify for testing. And I was not given a timeline or info on current resources.

    So. Who does qualify? Those who have been out of the country in the last 14 days, and those who have had contact with one of the few people who have been tested and come up positive. That’s it.

    The only way I can get treated is if my symptoms get so bad I develop pneumonia or bronchitis, which is very likely in my case. Then I’ll be in the ER and quarantined for several days while waiting for a test and for the results to come back.

    This is all incredibly frustrating because I am trying to do everything right in a system that punishes moments of “weakness” like taking days off.

    It’s also scary to know that I won’t be able to get help until I need life support.

    To sum up: this is not contained. No one knows what the fuck is happening. I can’t work. WASH YOUR F*CKING HANDS.

    Dana (4fb37f)

  12. 8. Paul Montagu (ac6302) — 3/3/2020 @ 8:35 am

    Out of 18 confirmed cases, six are dead. It’s likely that there are hundreds of undiagnosed cases (link).

    Most of them are residents of the same nursing home, which acted as Petri dish. I think they are finally going to take the residents out of there into personal isolation.

    One false assumption being made is that if you’re infected, you;’re infected, but I think probably people can get re-infected, and every separate infection can colonize a different area of the lungs.

    The people who died I think do not include the person who was given the antiviral remdesivir, which is administered . intravenously, and was originally tried for ebola, where it didn’t do too much good,ad the question is why isn’t everyone infected, and people near them, and medical personnel, given that too, or an anti-HIV antiviral that may be more readily available.

    https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/jan/31/washington-state-coronavirus-patient-treated-with-

    The report on the Washington man’s treatment cautions that “randomized controlled trials are needed to determine the safety and efficacy of remdesivir and other investigational agents for treatment of patients with 2019-nCoV infection.”

    There should be no place for this kind of thinking.

    This maybe should be treated as a war, and in a war, you act on the basis of incomplete information.

    You can try fine tuning dosage later. And actually I think this will result in faster, not slower drug approval. And there is even a new “Right to Try” act that allows investigational drugs to be
    to be given to a patient who has: Been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease or condition, and here it should not be only used as a last resort, bt with any hospitalized case, nor should it require special paperwork, and the pharmaceutical companies should stick out their necks and not be afraid of the FDA and ask for more and this should be extended to prophylaxis.

    And by the way, no special permission is required for off label use of already approved drugs, and there are several anti-HIV antivirals available, so what’s stopping them from choosing one and using it??

    Sammy Finkelman (4eebb9)

  13. South Korea is generating very good numbers now. The current numbers show a mortality rate of.03%. So far all people with compromised cardio pulmonary systems. As of yet I have seen no youngsters being infected. Lots of known diagnosis have been very low grade, small cold, type of symptoms. These are all KNOWN facts that are being filtered out, of almost all media reports.
    Right now is seems like actions being taken by some Govt actors, (schools and such) are very safe but covering actions. Like Atlanta shutting the city down when a half inch of snow is forecast.
    Yes numbers of infections will go up. Still haven’t seen what the accuracy of the test is. Sounds to me like the experts in charge, have stepped on their dick as far as the testing protocols are concerned. But by all means listen to the experts…as long as they support your personal version. Ignore the other experts.
    Always amazes me people listen to experts when they are often wrong. And are not immune from falling for their own personal bias.

    Iowan2 (1c4a14)

  14. It’s also scary to know that I won’t be able to get help until I need life support.

    She should just ask a doctor to prescribe an oral anti viral medication usually used in cases of HIV infection. Really. If she’s worried.

    Also take some vitamins.

    WASH YOUR HANDS.

    Hand washing is not to prevent someone from giving it to someone else, but to protect yourself because your hands will get in your food or in your mouth or on your dishes or utensils – and they can last even on metal for two hours.

    The washing does not disinfect, but simply physically removes the material. Dove or Palmolive dishwashing liquid is probably better than soap, and I would guess TIDE detergent even better than that, and quicker..

    The masks, on the other hand, are not to protect yourself, but to prevent an infected person from giving it to someone else, although they may be of some use for protection to anyone in heavily contaminated area but they usually use better masks than that for that purpose. There are not enough masks and the CDC is asking anybody that doesn’t need them not to buy them.

    Sammy Finkelman (4eebb9)

  15. It has a 2% death rate in the sense that it has an 8% survival rate. If you look at Deaths/(Deaths + Recoveries), instead of Deaths/Infections, you get a 15% death rate/85% recovery rate. That’s putting aside how any of this is being counted. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

    PTw (894877)

  16. Iowan2 (1c4a14) — 3/3/2020 @ 9:26 am

    As of yet I have seen no youngsters being infected.

    Very young children are better at fighting off novel infections.

    That’s why measles is so much less dangerous to children than to unvaccinated adults.

    Still haven’t seen what the accuracy of the test is.

    There have been some troubles with manufacturing accurate ones.

    But by all means listen to the experts…as long as they support your personal version. Ignore the other experts. Always amazes me people listen to experts when they are often wrong.

    That’s one problem with Michael Bloomberg. He assumes there is a known, expert opinion for everything. What we really need is someone who’s good at finding out who’s right, and searching for such a person, not someone who looks for the most recent groupthink.

    Sammy Finkelman (4eebb9)

  17. instead of Deaths/Infections, you get a 15% death rate/85% recovery rate

    If I understand you correctly, no, that’s silly. That’s with a very cloistered elderly population of vulnerable people who would show the most severe symptoms, including death, and all be tested. People who have lesser symptoms and aren’t tested have to be a much larger population.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793)

  18. 4. Make America Ordered Again (23f793) — 3/3/2020 @ 8:19 am

    But it will continue to spread and kill. Slowing it down can save lives, giving time for treatments to be developed,

    There’s no reason to wait fr treatments to be developed.

    They ned to be used

    And if this was 1948, they would be used.

    https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/flu-and-anti-hiv-drugs-show-efficacy-against-coronavirus-67052

    combination of flu and HIV medications may be able to treat severe cases of 2019-nCoV, the new coronavirus that has emerged in China, according to doctors in Thailand who have been caring for infected patients. The team’s approach, which used large doses of the flu drug oseltamivir combined with HIV drugs lopinavir and ritonavir, improved the conditions of several patients at the Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok.

    “This is not the cure, but the patient’s condition has vastly improved,” Rajavithi Hospital’s Kriangsak Atipornwanich says of one 70-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, according to Reuters. “From testing positive for 10 days under our care, after applying this combination of medicine the test result became negative within 48 hours.”

    Sammy Finkelman (4eebb9)

  19. [T]he number of cases in the United States topping [is] 100 across 15 states, including six deaths.

    China, the epicenter of the outbreak and still the worst-hit, announced its lowest number of new cases since late January — 125 in 24 hours — and 31 deaths, bringing its totals to 80,151 infections and 2,943 deaths.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/03/03/coronavirus-live-updates/

    That would be a death rate of 6% in the United States (but I think it’s a meaningless cluster like I said above). It’s 3.7% in China. That’s 37 people out of a thousand. Iowan2’s 0.03% is the kind of Trumpkin horse manure we ought to avoid.

    nk (1d9030)

  20. [T]he number of cases in the United States [is] topping [is] 100 across 15 states, including six deaths.

    nk (1d9030)

  21. You can’t trust the Chinese numbers.

    I hope you’re optimism is right and I’m wrong, but, again, I doubt it.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793)

  22. [T]he number of [verified] cases in the United States [is] topping

    Look at Dana’s comment 11. Testing is a mess.

    Also, a lot of cases of healthy, especially young, people will have mild symptoms and people won’t even know to go for testing. Coronavirus is in the same family as the common cold.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793)

  23. Even if the Chinese are underestimating, 37 out of a thousand is still almost four times as much as Iowan2’s 3 out of a thousand. Along with fear itself, we need to fear Trump’s lies.

    nk (1d9030)

  24. Gah! I don’t know how to do math, either. 37/3 is *more than 12 times as much*.

    nk (1d9030)

  25. CVD-19 isn’t going to ruin the world or anything, but it’s a threat to the economy and thus Trump’s re-election, and also to many, many people’s lives, at least older and more vulnerable people.

    It could turn into another seasonal killer like the flu. If so, that would suck.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793)

  26. If I understand you correctly, no, that’s silly. That’s with a very cloistered elderly population of vulnerable people who would show the most severe symptoms, including death, and all be tested. People who have lesser symptoms and aren’t tested have to be a much larger population.

    Now these numbers are taken/derived from wiki but that is the general idea. Excluding China, Hong Kong, and International Conveyance (cruise ships) as of this morning:

    Infected 11,284
    Deaths 180
    Recovered 822
    Deaths/Infection 1.60%
    Recoveries/Infection 7.28%
    Deaths/(Death + Recovery) 17.96%
    Recoveries/(Death + Recovery) 82.04%

    Though again, and as you say, the original numbers are a mishmash of what any of those words mean. And as I say, lies, damned lies, and statistics. But these are (one set of) the numbers available.

    PTw (894877)

  27. Ragspierre @10.

    As for a vaccine, Trump said, “I’ve heard very quick numbers, that of months. And I’ve heard pretty much a year would be an outside number. So I think that’s not a bad range. But … you’re talking about three to four months in a couple of cases, a year in other cases.”

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, instantly corrected Trump: “Let me make sure you get the … information.” A vaccine could be ready “at the earliest [in] a year to a year-and-a-half, no matter how fast you go,” said Fauci, noting: “Like I’ve been telling you, Mr. President.”

    So, he doesn’t read AND he doesn’t listen.

    Trump (or Mike Pence) is probably listening to other people besides Dr. Anthony Fauci.

    Dr. Anthony Fauci is talking about how long it would take to develop a vaccine, with no special knowledge of candidate vaccines or new methods of vaccine development, and using normal bureaucratic procedures.

    How long it would really take is different.

    And how long did it take to develop (a totally unnecessary and harmful) swine flu vaccine in 1976?

    (it gave some people Guillain–Barré syndrome.

    The new flu strain was discovered at Ft Dix, New Jersey in February 1976, and contained so well it soon became extinct, and they began the research to develop the vaccine in late March, an Act of Congress was passed and signed into law on April 15, and the vaccine was ready by October, 1976.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-shadow-1976-swine-flu-vaccine-fiasco-180961994/

    https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-public-health-legacy-of-the-1976-swine-flu-outbreak

    Sammy Finkelman (a64d54)

  28. I believe I misunderstood your point, PTw.

    In any case, this sounds about right, subject to change, both in terms of stats and outcomes of the disease: Deaths/Infection 1.60%.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793)

  29. On the Diamond Princess:

    (as of approximately Friday, February 28)

    Exposed: 3,771
    Infected: 705 (18.7%)
    Deaths: 6 (0.85 of cases, 0.0159 of population, 1 out of 628)

    Deaths/Infection 0.85% so far.

    Sammy Finkelman (2646d3)

  30. What we want to avoid is being like the demanding Starbucks drive-through poster child whose plaintive whines Dana posted at her Comment 11.

    What’s someone with chronic bronchitis doing living in Seattle in the first place? She should move to a warmer, dry climate, like Albuquerque.

    nk (1d9030)

  31. Deaths/Infection 1.60% probably depends on the type of medical treatment, and the number of other ases (other ases raises the death toll)

    And could probably be reduced to near zero with the administration of the HIV drugs lopinavir and ritonavir and the flu drug oseltamivir. The failed anti-ebola drug remdesivir, which needs to be administewred intravenously, could also be of some help.

    Sammy Finkelman (2646d3)

  32. 31 Errata

    * Other cases.

    This could be for two reasons: Overworked doctors and nurses and accompanying lower quality or non existent nursing care; and re-infections from other patients and themselves.

    Sammy Finkelman (b32091)

  33. Deaths/Infection 1.60% probably depends on the type of medical treatment, and the number of other ases (other ases raises the death toll)

    Sure, even ethnicity has been speculated as a factor in the outcomes, although I’m becoming less convinced of that as a factor.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793)

  34. Co-morbidity. People already on the verge of organ failure from other illnesses. Something as “simple” as incipient renal failure from hypotension brought about by their Parkinson’s Disease medication.

    nk (1d9030)

  35. I heard a doctor say refraining from touching you face as much as possible is also good policy.

    On the other hand…..

    https://twitter.com/GregVol_/status/1234850728721731588?s=20
    _

    harkin (b64479)

  36. That’s why goggles are more important than a mask if someone is really interested in wearing something to protect themselves.

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793)

  37. I heard a doctor say refraining from touching you face as much as possible is also good policy.

    On the other hand…..

    https://twitter.com/GregVol_/status/1234850728721731588?s=20
    _

    harkin (b64479) — 3/3/2020 @ 10:33 am

    WTF is wrong with him

    Dustin (33f5ee)

  38. I heard a doctor say refraining from touching you face as much as possible is also good policy.

    I will do my best to avoid lighting up driving back home from the grocery.

    nk (1d9030)

  39. In 1976 there was a small increased risk of GBS following vaccination with an influenza vaccine made to protect against a swine flu virus. The increased risk was approximately 1 additional case of GBS per 100,000 people who got the swine flu vaccine. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) conducted a thorough scientific review of this issue in 2003 and concluded that people who received the 1976 swine influenza vaccine had an increased risk for developing GBS. Scientists have multiple theories on why this increased risk may have occurred, but the exact reason for this association remains unknown.

    Sammy tells us…”it gave some people Guillain–Barré syndrome”.

    This is like you “correcting” me when I noted Woodrow Wilson won a landslide as a populist POTUS candidate. He took 81%+ of the electoral votes, and that’s a landslide in anybody’s reckoning.

    Sometimes you don’t know what you’re talking about.

    Ragspierre (d9bec9)

  40. Outbreak causes FED to do ’emergency rate cut.’

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  41. Good.

    Make America Ordered Again (c1ef7d)

  42. Conservatives get rid of obama care just in time for election and you get medicare for all! Corona virus spreads because poor can’t afford to see doctors and their kids spread it in schools. Working poor can’t stay home ;but must work.

    corona virus (3dbc0d)

  43. This is like you “correcting” me when I noted Woodrow Wilson won a landslide as a populist POTUS candidate. He took 81%+ of the electoral votes, and that’s a landslide in anybody’s reckoning.

    OK, this is just stupid. And reeks of desperation to prove yourself “right” about something that would get marked wrong on virtually and high school level American history test. Lawd…using electoral college votes to prove that someone was a populist? You cannot be serious. In political science/historical terms, being a “populist” is not dependent upon being more popular. You do understand how this can be, yes? From Webster:

    Definition of populist (Entry 1 of 2)
    1: a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people
    especially, often capitalized : a member of a U.S. political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies
    2: a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people

    It’s the populist’s claim on the Banner Of The Common Man that makes him a populist. I know, it sounds stupid, but that’s history writers for you. If it were, McKinley would have been the populist and William Jennings Bryan, pretty much the text book definition of a populist, would not. And even that aside, Wilson NEVER won a majority of the POPULAR vote. TR & Taft split it in 1912 and in 1916 WW only got 49.2%. Good, but not a majority.

    Now I doubt you’re high school history teacher still walks among us, but if he/she does, he/she owes me.

    PTw (894877)

  44. your not you’re

    PTw (894877)

  45. Definition of populist (Entry 1 of 2)
    1: a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people
    especially, often capitalized : a member of a U.S. political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies
    2: a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people

    Yep. That was Wilson, down to the ground.

    As between you and history writers, I know who’s stupid. Wilson won his first POTUS election by a landslide. (See the period?)

    And there was a reason; he was a populist, or presented everything about his approach as populism.

    Ragspierre (d9bec9)

  46. McKinley would have been the populist

    BWAAAAAAAHAHA…gasp…hahahaha

    McKinley was a devout defender of the Constitution, and ANTI-populist. What a maroon…!!!

    Wilson the EXACT opposite.

    Ragspierre (d9bec9)

  47. Conservatives get rid of obama care just in time for election and you get medicare for all! Corona virus spreads because poor can’t afford to see doctors and their kids spread it in schools. Working poor can’t stay home ;but must work.

    Well, those are words. They are also 99.97% lies. The ACA is still the law of the land. Poor people aren’t the only ones with jobs, in fact, the opposite is pretty much universally true.

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827)

  48. I think everything is fluid right now. But I suspect the following: the numbers of infected are much, much higher than we think, currently. After all, with the mild symptoms, who is to say if it is the novel coronavirus or not? We are not testing for novel coronavirus except in dire cases, or in very small numbers.

    If that is the case, the scary numbers go away.

    I do think that pandemic preparedness is important. But the internet is full of cray cray at present.

    Like the claim that DJT “muzzled” Fauci.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-gags-top-us-coronavirus-official-history-censoring-science-2020-2

    But Fauci says that is not true.

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/02/29/nihs_dr_fauci_ive_never_been_muzzled_by_the_trump_administration_a_real_misrepresentation_by_media.html

    Guess which is being discussed?

    Sigh. I really, really hate politics.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  49. All of the amateur epidemiologists and bio statisticians should step back and think about China. Here is a country (China) not known for any squeamishness about holding back bad news and relocating mass populations. But they basically shutdown huge parts of their economy as well as quarantined a major metro area. So what scared them into action and public disclosure?

    My guess is they have a good idea of the fatality rate and rate of serious cases needing hospitalization. These also correspond to stories of perfectly healthy middle aged adults getting sick and dying a few days later.

    Also sophisticated European countries like Switzerland are shutting down events and public gatherings. We should be prepared to do the same.

    dirtyjobsguy (96cdc8)

  50. There should be an over/under for how long Dr. Fauci keeps his job. Quote:

    “You should never destroy your own credibility. And you don’t want to go to war with a president,” Fauci, who has been the country’s top infectious diseases expert through a dozen outbreaks and six presidents, told POLITICO in an interview Friday. “But you got to walk the fine balance of making sure you continue to tell the truth.”
    And the truth about coronavirus? “I don’t think that we are going to get out of this completely unscathed,” he said. “I think that this is going to be one of those things we look back on and say boy, that was bad.”

    Link. BTW, the US death toll is now at nine, all in the Seattle area, five of which are at LifeCare Center in Kirkland.

    Paul Montagu (cbbfc4)

  51. @41. Yeah, banks really need easier access to cheaper, near-zero-cost-money to loan out to you on your CCs at 18%, 19%, 22%. Keeps the Platinum card Trumpsters and bank-buddy-Biden happy.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  52. If you want to know how contagious the virus is, here’s an example:

    KIRKLAND, Wash. — Twelve of 30 firefighters and police officers in Kirkland who have been quarantined after potential or direct exposure to the COVID-19 virus at the city’s LifeCare facility are now showing “flu-like” symptoms, according to city of Kirkland officials.

    Paul Montagu (cbbfc4)

  53. dirtyjobsguy (96cdc8) — 3/3/2020 @ 11:51 am

    All of the amateur epidemiologists and bio statisticians should step back and think about China. Here is a country (China) not known for any squeamishness about holding back bad news

    Yes it is known for squeamishness about that. I am not sure what you have in mind.

    and relocating mass populations. But they basically shutdown huge parts of their economy as well as quarantined a major metro area. So what scared them into action and public disclosure?

    The fact that the disease could escape China.

    And it especially scared them that the president of the United States was Donald J. Trump.

    But Donald Trump didn’t give them credit for being able to contain the disease in part of China. Obama might have. But Donald Trump put a 14-day quarantine on all of China, and on anyone who didn’t live in the United States who had even been in China.

    And now the same rule is in place for Iran, South Korea and Italy. But I doubt that the measures will be as severe, or stay as long anywhere else as they will in China.

    And the government of China can’t remove the restrictions because their big argument for removing the restrictions is that no infected person will escape China. And they can’t do that if they remove the restrictions because infected persons will escape if there are no restrictions both within China and between China and the rest of the world.

    But at the same time they can’t say it’s wrong to place a quarantine on all of China if it’s not wrong to place quarantines between different places in China.

    It would seem like they’re trapped in a Catch-22 but they have an idea:

    What they’ve decided to do now is keep tight control on any information doctors can give out (which they do anyway); minimize the number of cases in China; use their influence on the World Health Organization to exaggerate the number of cases outside of China, argue there’s more cases outside of China than in China; argue it’s everywhere; and argue there’s no point to a quarantine of China.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  54. Re: Wilson the populist:

    [Woodrow Wilson] took 81%+ of the electoral votes, and that’s a landslide in anybody’s reckoning.

    In 1912, Woodrow Wilson won 42.5% of the popular vote in a 4-way race if you include the socialist Eugene V Debs.

    This is even below the 44.2% of the popular vote that William Jennings Bryan collected in his third run for the presidency in 1908. William Jennings Bryan was we can safely say, a populist, especially in his original run in 1896.

    And in 1912 being a populist was probably more true of Theodore Roosevelt, who called his party the “Progressive” party than of Woodrow Wilson (or William Howard Taft of course)

    We call what happened in 1912 “an Electoral College landslide.” Bryan collected just over one third of the electoral vote in 1908.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  55. And in 1912 being a populist was probably more true of Theodore Roosevelt, who called his party the “Progressive” party than of Woodrow Wilson (or William Howard Taft of course)

    We call what happened in 1912 “an Electoral College landslide.” Bryan collected just over one third of the electoral vote in 1908.

    Again, Sammy you don’t know what you’re blathering about. Wilson was a long-time populist Progressive. He’d written a history book that was used well into the 20’s.

    In The State, Wilson wrote that governments could legitimately promote the general welfare “by forbidding child labor, by supervising the sanitary conditions of factories, by limiting the employment of women in occupations hurtful to their health, by instituting official tests of the purity or the quality of goods sold, by limiting the hours of labor in certain trades, [and] by a hundred and one limitations of the power of unscrupulous or heartless men to out-do the scrupulous and merciful in trade or industry.”[59][page needed] He also wrote that charity efforts should be removed from the private domain and “made the imperative legal duty of the whole,” a position which, according to historian Robert M. Saunders, seemed to indicate that Wilson “was laying the groundwork for the modern welfare state.”[60]

    Wilson, as a Princeton academic, warmly HATED our system of government, especially the Congress.

    Additionally, he polled almost twice his nearest rival (TR) in popular votes in 1912. Look at the freaking map!

    Many of the T-rump sucking populists of today would declare ANY win by Duh Donald where he polled nearly double his closest rival a “landslide”, and we alllllllll know it.

    Ragspierre (d9bec9)

  56. 48. Simon Jester (c8876d) — 3/3/2020 @ 11:40 am

    I suspect the following: the numbers of infected are much, much higher than we think, currently.

    than anyone is estimating maybe.

    After all, with the mild symptoms, who is to say if it is the novel coronavirus or not? We are not testing for novel coronavirus except in dire cases, or in very small numbers.

    In China, where the first case was reported on December 8 and kept secret they required a DNA test to diagnose it. They tried to hide it. It was thought even by doctors in the hospital in Wuhan to be SARS (which is extinct)

    They said there was no human to human transmission but tried to get people om Hubei to take precautions while keeping the reason for it secret, so many didn’t. It was finally reported to the WHO on December 31. It wasn’t till January 5 that they told people there was human to human transmission.

    At some point in January they gave orders to consider anyone with pneumonia to have this. Now I think they’re backtracking on that because they want to argue there’s fewer cases in China than outside and eventually that they got rid of it.

    New York State and New York City got permission from the FDA to test for corona virus, and this is going nationwide so we’ll get more reported cases.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/health/fda-coronavirus-testing.html

    Mr. Azar’s announcement, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” came a day after the Food and Drug Administration announced that it was giving laboratories and hospitals across the country the go-ahead to conduct tests that had been severely limited to those analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ..

    Public health experts and hospital officials across the country have expressed frustration in the last few weeks at the inability to test for possible coronavirus cases.

    Until recently, the C.D.C. had insisted that only its test could be used on suspected cases, and only under limited circumstances — on people who had traveled to China within 14 days of developing symptoms or had contact with a known coronavirus case.

    I think the United Kingdom is now testing anyone with pneumonia, so well get good figures out of there.

    RE: The claim that DJT “muzzled” Fauci.

    Fauci said he now had to get permission to speak, but he gets it. I think Mike Pence is supervising him with a very light hand, and Donald Trump is not paying any attention to this stuff.

    Fauci probably has to get approval for what he can say if he wants to say something dramatic. Maybe he has to tell Mike Pence and company first if he wants to say anything new to the public. I don’t think Mike Pence is doing any big censorship probably because he and all he others on the panel thinks that would be crazy.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  57. I think Mike Pence is supervising him with a very light hand, and Donald Trump is not paying any attention to this stuff.

    Or, not listening, as I said above.

    Ragspierre (d9bec9)

  58. Off topic by now 55. Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 3/3/2020 @ 2:31 pm

    Wilson, as a Princeton academic, warmly HATED our system of government, especially the Congress.

    Is that populist? He was in some respects progressive but not populist. He favored a Parliamentary system

    And look who he appointed Secretary of the Navy. This was a person who was a cheerleader or a leader of an anti-democratic coup in Wilmington North Carolina, in 1898. There’s anew book out called Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino.

    The Democratic party in Wilmington North Carolina had been losing to Fusion ticket that used black votes. Josephus Daniels’ newspaper had a lot to do with instigating a massacre, which killed and chased out a lot of its Negro population. The very existence of the black community there and anyone who had been in it, and anything connected with it was put into the memory hole. (once something has been suppressed for twenty or thirty years, it stays suppressed)

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/rhiannon-giddens-and-what-folk-music-means

    To grasp the significance of what the twenty-first-century folksinger Rhiannon Giddens has been attempting, it is necessary to know about another North Carolina musician, Frank Johnson, who was born almost two hundred years before she was. He was the most important African-American musician of the nineteenth century, but he has been almost entirely forgotten. Never mind a Wikipedia page—he does not even earn a footnote in sourcebooks on early black music. And yet, after excavating the records of his career—from old newspapers, diaries, travelogues, memoirs, letters—and after reckoning with the scope of his influence, one struggles to come up with a plausible rival.

    There are several possible reasons for Johnson’s astonishing obscurity. One may be that, on the few occasions when late-twentieth-century scholars mentioned him, he was almost always misidentified as a white man, despite the fact that he had dark-brown skin and was born enslaved. It may have been impossible, and forgivably so, for academics to believe that a black man could have achieved the level of fame and success in the antebellum slave-holding South that Johnson had. There was also a doppelgänger for scholars to contend with: in the North, there lived, around the same time, a musician named Francis Johnson, often called Frank, who is remembered as the first black musician to have his original compositions published. Some historians, encountering mentions of the Southern Frank, undoubtedly assumed that they were merely catching the Northern one on some unrecorded tour and turned away.

    There is also the racial history of the port city of Wilmington, North Carolina, where Johnson enjoyed his greatest fame. In 1898, a racial massacre in Wilmington, and a subsequent exodus of its black citizens, not only knocked loose the foundations of a rising black middle class but also came close to obliterating the deep cultural memory of what had been among the most important black towns in the country for more than a century. The people who might have remembered Johnson best, not just as a musician but as a man, were themselves violently unremembered.

    A final explanation for Johnson’s absence from the historical record may be the most significant. It involves not his reputation but that of the music he played, with which he became literally synonymous—more than one generation of Southerners would refer to popular dance music simply as “old Frank Johnson music.” And yet, in the course of the twentieth century, the cluster of styles in which Johnson specialized––namely, string band, square dance, hoedown––came to be associated with the folk music of the white South and even, by a bizarre warping of American cultural memory, with white racial purity. In the nineteen-twenties, the auto magnate Henry Ford started proselytizing (successfully) for a square-dancing revival precisely because the music that accompanied it was not black. Had he known the deeper history of square dancing, he might have fainted.

    As a travelling “Negro fiddler,” Johnson epitomized the one musical figure in American history who can truly be called “ur.” Black fiddlers are the trilobites of American musical history. A legal record from the mid-seventeenth century details a dispute between Virginia households competing for the services of an enslaved man who had played the fiddle all night for a party on the Eastern Shore. After that, for more than two hundred years, black fiddlers are everywhere in the written sources. Then, around the start of the twentieth century, they fade, abruptly and almost completely.

    They went into the memory hole. To hide that happened in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. They were intent on cutting off all leads to the story.

    This massacre (called a race riot) became a precedent for a number of other massacres till the early 1920s.

    Ethnic cleansing in America – it happened before it happened anywhere else except in Armenia in 1896. And extreme lies.

    Southern publishers knew they could not hide slavery or justification of slavery because too many northern scholars knew about it. But they ciudl attemot to hide what hapepned after 1865.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  59. Is that populist?

    Yes.

    He was in some respects progressive but not populist. He favored a Parliamentary system

    He was THE progressive…more-so than TR…AND a definitional populist.

    I dunno what the rest of your nonsense is about, but papering any argument with BS does seem to be your forte.

    Ragspierre (d9bec9)

  60. I mentioned Coronavirus to a physician yesterday. He said that the flu will still kill more Americans.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  61. The Federal Reserve Board cut interest rates by half a percentage point – and I don;t think this was even at a time when a rate decision meeting was schdeuled.

    Ships are leaving China only 10% full.

    Sammy Finkelman (7c54bd)

  62. Trump naming Pence to handle coronavirus gives Trump the option to dump Pence as VP before November. If coronavirus cases expand, Trump can say Pence is needed as Trump’s coronavirus czar and will step down as VP to continue that task. It also lets Trump blame someone else (as he likes to do) if things don’t go well with American coronavirus cases.

    DRJ (15874d)

  63. Being s coronavirus czar doesn’t interfere with being Vice President.

    It’s not like the Vice President has any duties he needs to carry out.

    Trump’s not looking to get rid of Pence.

    Eisenhower did want Nixon to take Cabinet post. He said it would be better preparation for the Presidency. It was the job leading up to the presidency in the early years of the republic up to John Quincy Adams in 1824.

    It was also favored by the Republicans in the early Twentieth Century. Taft was Secretary of War before the election of 1908, (William Howard Taft left office as of June 30, 1908) Herbert Hoover was Secretary of Commerce before the election of 1928. (He left office on August 21, 1928)

    By the early Twentieth first century , ethics rules required a Cabinet member to resign before taking any part in politics. Hillary Clinton resigned in early 2013. Maybe so early so as to get personal money, Mike Pompeo did not run for the Senate in Kansas but night have if Trump had fired him.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  64. Much to update about coronavirus

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  65. Trump naming Pence to handle coronavirus gives Trump the option to dump Pence as VP before November.

    Please choose Tulsi, please choose Tulsi.

    Make America Ordered Again (eca5f8)

  66. Yesterday a second case (and a third) was reported in New York State. As a result, a big synagogue, the Young Israel of New Rochelle, was closed. The person in the hospital (and they don’t put anyone in a hospital unless he needs some treatment that can only be done in a hospital) is a lawyer who didn’t travel to any place known for corona virus – only to Israel and Miami. Israel by the way, has cut itself off more from the world than most places and there are thousands of people in quarantine. The one thing they are stopping themselves from doing is cutting off trips from the USA.

    The lawyer first felt bad on Saturday Feb 22. He may have been twice in the synagogue. Cases take a week or more to become noticeable. His 15-year old son attends Yeshiva University (which also has a high school) He tested positive but is not so sick. Hundreds of people are in self quarantine. The MTA is cleaning some subway stations.

    I saw this on TV last night (11 pm WCBS Channel 2 News) but didn’t read about it in the paper but now it is in the newspaper web sites.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/nyregion/new-rochelle-coronavirus.html

    March 4, 2020

    Updated 4:22 p.m. ET

    …By Wednesday, it was clear that the illness had spread: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced at a morning news conference that the man’s wife, 20-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter all tested positive for the virus, as did a neighbor who drove him to the hospital last week. By day’s end, five more positive cases were disclosed: a man who was in “close proximity” with the Manhattan lawyer, as well as his wife and their three children.

    So the son is in the college, not the high school.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  67. 60. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 3/3/2020 @ 4:01 pm

    I mentioned Coronavirus to a physician yesterday. He said that the flu will still kill more Americans.

    I wonder what would happpn if every case of flu was treated like coronavirus.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  68. Attempted humor by Saturday Night Live

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4qvO0StKto

    (just a farce mixing politics and coronavirus)

    Also Weekend Update

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGFkad-N-kk

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  69. A Class 3 165-MPH tornado hit Middle Tennessee early Tuesday. At least 24 dead as of now.

    I suppose it was Trump’s fault.

    DN (095be6)

  70. Meanwhile, in Iran:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/world/middleeast/coronavirus-iran.html

    Nearly three dozen Iranian government officials and members of parliament are infected and a senior adviser to the supreme leader has died…

    …Iran’s leaders confidently predicted just two weeks ago that the coronavirus contagion ravaging China would not be a problem in their country. They even bragged of exporting face masks to their Chinese trading partners….But instead of receiving government help, overwhelmed doctors and nurses say they have been warned by security forces to keep quiet…The authorities seem as worried about controlling information as they are about controlling the virus, according to telephone interviews and text messages with more than a half dozen Iranian medical workers.

    Several said security agents stationed in each hospital had forbidden staff members from disclosing any information about shortages, patients or fatalities related to the coronavirus.

    A nurse in a northwest Iranian city sent a private message to her family — later shared with The New York Times — describing a letter from the security service warning that sharing information about infected patients constitutes a “threat to national security” and “public fear mongering.” Such offenses “will be swiftly dealt with by a disciplinary committee,” the nurse said the letter had warned.
    ..

    A prominent pathologist in Tehran said laboratory staff members testing for the coronavirus were told that they had been threatened with interrogation and arrest if they provided information to the news media.

    “Disgraceful,” the pathologist said in a telephone interview. “By turning this into a national security issue, they are putting more pressure and stress on doctors and medical teams and creating an environment of chaos and fear.”

    All spoke on condition of anonymity because of the threats….

    …Dr. Mohsen Basiri, an Iranian physician now in Houston, said that in a conference call on Sunday about emergency supplies his colleagues in Iran had said that security agents forced doctors to fill out false certificates for deaths that appeared to be coronavirus, ascribing them instead to lung or heart failure in order to avoid acknowledging fatalities linked to the epidemic…

    Sammy Finkelman (ec94de)

  71. The first case in New York was in a 39-year old health care worker who had just returned from Iran to New York with her husband (also a health care worker.)

    Here is an estimate passed on by the Governor and the mayor:

    https://abc7ny.com/5978615

    80% of people infected with the coronavirus self resolve. Most people are able to treat themselves. 20% get ill and require medical attention. He quoted the CDC at 1.4% mortality rate for COVID-19. He said that is mainly senior citizens or people with compromised systems. Children seem to be less vulnerable to coronavirus than the flu.

    “So far it does not seem to be a disease that focuses on our kids, in fact, the opposite,” Mayor de Blasio said.

    “The woman who tested positive, she’s at home. She’s not even at a hospital,” Cuomo said…

    Sammy Finkelman (ec94de)

  72. The first case in New York was in a 39-year old health care worker who had just returned from Iran to New York with her husband (also a health care worker.)

    No doubt there are a lot of brave people in Iran working hard to try and save people’s lives. May this couple recover fully.

    Make America Ordered Again (6a3f87)

  73. It’s a Chinese party purge that inevitably was going to spread past the old Party members on immunosuppressants because of their organ transplants whom Xi Jinping has targeted. Watch for the disease to die down in China, and sooner rather than later, because the Chinese already have the vaccine and are administering it covertly as “routine care” to the non-targets.

    And don’t forget the hashtag when you text or tweet this comment.

    What? You gotta be orange to be nuts?

    nk (1d9030)

  74. Well that’s a plausible theory, there are others, including an attack by elements of “us.”

    Make America Ordered Again (6a3f87)

  75. IRL, I am helping to organize a convention in Austin in a few months. Obviously the subject of COVID-19 has come up and people are not being completely rational about it. The best I have to offer is the CDC site: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html — not perfect but at least it’s not actively crazed.

    I’d love to see a post (but I also love my $100) discussing the various political axes being ground while scaring the bejeezus out of most people. Trump isn’t the only one and a pox on all their houses.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  76. scaring the bejeezus out of most people. Trump isn’t the only one and a pox on all their houses.

    Trump is trying to calm people, not scare them. He knows that if this hurts the economy, it has the propensity to hurt him politically.

    His calming them is thus far not fact-based, though. It has and will spread. It’s a matter of slowing that spread in the USA to give time for medical services to keep up, possible treatments to be developed and improved, and a change of seasons to potentially aid in the fight.

    It’s true that it affects the old and sick much moreso.

    Make America Ordered Again (6a3f87)

  77. False calming is as bad as fear-mongering. It debases the argument.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  78. Sure, you can definitely intepret my comment as a criticism.

    Make America Ordered Again (6a3f87)

  79. Sure, you can definitely intepret my comment as a criticism.

    What makes you think I did?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  80. 76. Make America Ordered Again (6a3f87) — 3/4/2020 @ 6:32 pm

    His calming them is thus far not fact-based, though. It has and will spread. It’s a matter of slowing that spread in the USA to give time for medical services to keep up, possible treatments to be developed and improved, and a change of seasons to potentially aid in the fight.

    No, no, they are just trying to avoid inconsistencies or justify their recommendations. There’s no true logic behind it, and you shouldn’t search for it.

    I believe that, for quite some time, the CDC was deliberatly trying to avoid having too many people tested for Covid-19, because then it would be very disruptive (and actually not necessary) to follow their recommendations for what to do in case someone tested positive.

    It’s not scalable. You have to change the recommendations.

    Sammy Finkelman (9570ad)

  81. Some idiots on the internet are promoting the use of vodka as hand-sanitizer. NO! DON’T!

    Vodka’s alcohol content is not high enough. 80 proof is not 80%. It’s 40%. That will not kill germs.

    Use rubbing alcohol, 70% or higher. I always buy the 91%. All are highly flammable (that’s what “proof” means, BTW) so be careful!

    nk (1d9030)

  82. Yesterday, Holman Jenkins’ column in the Wall Street Journal had this data, which he got from somewehere “some pint to:” that each perso infected wit the Wuhan virus infects 2.2 others while that figure id 1.4 for the flu.

    This 2.2 is not and cannot be astable figure, or true down to the individual case level. One person might infect nobody – maybe many infect nobody while someone else could infect a dozen or 70. This goes down with time, and when it gets below 1.0 the epidemic tends to die out. This happeeedwith the influenza epidemic of 1918. They had to do DNA analysis of samples taken from people buroed in Alaska in the tundra to find out exactly what it was.

    Sammy Finkelman (9570ad)

  83. * errata A typo

    It’s 1.3 new cases per old case for the flu.

    This is, of course an average, but there should be a very great standard deviation. As more people become immune, it is harder for the virus to find new people to infect.

    Sammy Finkelman (9570ad)

  84. I was in Costco last night and the first thing they did was hand me an antibacterial wipe. (No, I wasn’t the only one they did this for. I know some of you were thinking it.) Unless the virus has already spread a lot more than we know, these and other measures may help keep it in check. Many people are outright paranoid about it already, even here where there are no cases reported, so my guess is that it will not spread in the US as much as it might have. Hope so.

    noel (4d3313)

  85. Scientific conferences and meetings are being canceled left and right. One of my students was supposed to give the first presentation of his work at a conference at UCLA later this month – canceled.

    CERN (in Geneva) has made a rule strictly forbidding any meeting of over 100 people, and is recommending that smaller meetings be held by video rather than in conference rooms. Face-to-face meetings are supposed to log the participants for purposes of tracing any incidents of coronavirus that subsequently develop.

    Dave (1bb933)

  86. I don’t know how much this will spread. It seems to be primarily related to foreign travelers at this point, but that will change once people get home and back to their normal lives. In addition, the CDC not only botched the test kits but it is making other questionable decisions:

    San Antonio: CDC planned to drop cruise passengers at mall

    Federal health officials planned to drop off some cruise ship passengers at a shopping mall after their release from a two-week quarantine at a Texas air base, one of several reasons the city of San Antonio declared a public health emergency over the new coronavirus, a city spokeswoman said.

    The city filed a lawsuit to halt the plan after a woman was mistakenly released from quarantine at a health care facility over the weekend despite testing positive. She had visited the North Star Mall — the same one where the some of those released from Lackland Air Force Base were to be dropped off — before the mistake was discovered, prompting the mall to shut down for deep cleaning.

    Was the CDC trying to shield their privacy (despite releasing most victims at the airport or car rental agencies) or was it trying to hide its actions by picking public places with many people? The fact that the CDC reportedly told one person it was releasing people to the mall to hide it from the media suggests government secrecy, not individual privacy, was the goal.

    DRJ (15874d)

  87. I’m a massive critic of the CDC and don’t trust their ethics or scientific thinking as far as I can thrown them.

    However, if folks had successfully served the quarantine period and came through disease free, what’s the problem with dropping them off at a mall?

    Make America Ordered Again (23f793)

  88. If the people are being released from a two-week quarantine, they are not sick and could be safely released anywhere, n’est-ce pas?

    Of course, if people are being mistakenly released despite testing positive, that’s a problem (no matter where they are released).

    Dave (1bb933)

  89. A new infection rate of 2.2 new cases for each old case o the Wuhan coronovirus works out to 5 cases total in the third generation (after two transmissions) and almost 550 after 8 transmissions (in the 9th generation) for a 1.3 to 1 ratio for the flu works out to 1 2/3 cases after two transmissions and 8 after 8.

    Now it is easy to understand why flue tends to disappear in warmer weather – a slightly lower average number of new cases per old case transmission takes it below 1.0. A rate of 0.93, for instance, to .86 cases after 2 and .56 after 8. In other words 1000 cases lead to 865 and then to 560.

    The reason the transmission rate for the flu is so low, even without everybody taking special precautions, is that so many people have immunity or partial immunity, But nobody starts off with any immunity to his coronovirus

    Sammy Finkelman (9570ad)

  90. 86. DRJ (15874d) — 3/6/2020 @ 6:41 am

    It seems to be primarily related to foreign travelers at this point,

    Because that;s all they tested, except for their known contacts, people in intensive care with severe respirator infections that weren;t getting better and that didn’t test positive for anything else.

    but that will change once people get home and back to their normal lives.

    The very fact that there are some cases that cannot be traced back to foreign travel to China or to any of the other countries where it notably spread tells you that it is out there, and there are many people who get it who don’t wind up in the hospital. It is not very deadly, but it has a very large transmission rate because is an almost totally new virus, and even its close cousins are rare. Children around 6-10 years old, if well fed, do best with this because to them every infection is new, and their immune system is better equipped than older people to handle new pathogens. This was true for measles and other so called children’s diseases. It was and is very dangerous, or at least considerably more dangerous, for someone to be exposed to measles for the first time at around the age of 20, rather than at age 7.

    Polio in the first half of the Twentieth Century affected children more than adults because, I would say, a lot of adults had some immunity to it, because the polio virus was a slightly mutated version of some more common intestinal virus. The mutation took place in the 1880s. It was first noted in Sweden in 1887 and was new to history.

    Sammy Finkelman (9570ad)

  91. 87. Make America Ordered Again (23f793) — 3/6/2020 @ 6:47 am

    if folks had successfully served the quarantine period and came through disease free, what’s the problem with dropping them off at a mall?

    Transmission aboard ship.

    They’re not quarantined from each other aboard ship!

    Even if they never go near each other they can get it through their food or water, or the heating air conditioning and ventilation system.

    You know something? No matter what they do, the CDC or other health authorities have to accept some risks of transmission.

    Keeping people confined to a ship, or a nursing home, is a way to spread the disease among the people trapped there. People need to stay in near isolation to cut down the transmission rate. Or one case aboard ship will become 600.

    Dave (1bb933) — 3/6/2020 @ 6:49 am

    If the people are being released from a two-week quarantine, they are not sick and could be safely released anywhere, n’est-ce pas?

    No, because a person won’t test position until sometime after they’ve been infected and they could be infected aboard ship within the last few days.

    After 14 days, the first cases will be well beyond the point where they’re either recovered and non-infectious or dead or removed to a hospital, but there will be many more more recent cases, so there’s no point in a 14 day quarantine.

    A 180 day to 365 days quarantine is more like it – till nobody aboard ship is testing positive, and nobody new has for about a week. Or no quarantine aboard ship at all, and take these people out of the nursing home into home care. Those limited in duration ship quarantines were stupid the day they first tried it.

    I wonder what they would do if this virus was actually deadly to a substantial fraction of people. It would be even worse than ebola because with ebola you knew sooner when people had it.

    Of course, if people are being mistakenly released despite testing positive, that’s a problem (no matter where they are released).

    No, it makes a difference because there;s less people they have an opportunity to infect.

    Sammy Finkelman (9570ad)

  92. Was the CDC trying to shield their privacy (despite releasing most victims at the airport or car rental agencies) or was it trying to hide its actions by picking public places with many people?

    I would say it was trying to protect its own people, by limiting the number of drivers who might be exposed to coronovirus. Anyway, they probably couldn’t find enough people to do it any other way.

    Sammy Finkelman (9570ad)


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