Tracking Covid-19 Apr 3 . . . are we peaking (for this wave)?

BobRyan, I know we had an exchange on this before:

If there’s a reduction in cases in the cities throughout the United States, it won’t be due to social distancing.

but isn't it true that we simply can't make such a determination? We are not running a carefully designed experiment which would allow us to rule out distancing as a cause of such a reduction in cases. By the way, are you practicing social distancing yourself? daveS

BA77, 149: Yet more proposals on mechanisms, many of which may well be acting in parallel. Which is good, it is plausibly harder to get viral resistance to several diverse effects that attack it. KF kairosfocus

If there's a reduction in cases in the cities throughout the United States, it won't be due to social distancing. Gangs and homeless are not following any protocols. Places like Los Angeles and San Francisco have large populations of both. The inner-cities have cramped living quarters, which make it impossible to have distance. We should see increases if COVID-19 is not acting in conjunction with influenza. If there is a lowering number of people being admitted due to COVID-19 symptoms, that means social distancing had no impact at all. Drug deals and prostitution have not stopped. The homeless are still packed together. Drive by shootings are always done with at least two people, at least one to shoot and one to drive. The Constitution has been violated and it would be nice if we were a country of equality under the law. There is no pause button for the Constitution. They never put in a provision of suspension of rights due to smallpox. People are being arrested for exercising their right to worship freely. People cannot peacefully assemble to protest. With nothing but doom on the horizon, including the idea of not knowing if they will have a job a month down the road, the suicides will continue at a higher rate. They already expect a doubling of those who are going to kill themselves. Who is going to answer for those lives that will be lost? BobRyan

found these 2 things to back up what was claimed in post 149:

Cameron Kyle-Sidell, an ER doctor in Brooklyn, makes the same assertion. Patient’s lung muscles work, but the patients have no oxygen in their blood (hypoxemia). He concludes there may need to be changes to ventilator protocols and stop treating Covid-19 as typical ARDS. https://medium.com/@andrewt3000/covid-19-and-hypoxemia-697bc8a19bae and Second thing they do is ventilate dozens in the average hospital; they use extracorporeal membrane oxygenation [removing blood from a person’s body and oxygenating their red blood cells] when ventilation doesn’t work. This is sophisticated health care. They have a survival rate for this disease I would not extrapolate to the rest of the world. What you’ve seen in Italy and Iran is that a lot of people are dying. This suggests the Chinese are really good at keeping people alive with this disease, and just because it’s 1 percent in the general population outside of Wuhan doesn’t mean it [will be the same in other countries]. https://www.vox.com/2020/3/2/21161067/coronavirus-covid19-china

bornagain77

My supply of quercetin arrived today. Already had the zinc. (quercetin is a natural ionophore) :cool: ET

Covid-19 - what is really going on in the body and some thoughts how to best treat it.

Covid-19 had us all fooled, but now we might have finally found its secret. Quote: "The past 48 hours or so have seen a huge revelation: COVID-19 causes prolonged and progressive hypoxia (starving your body of oxygen) by binding to the heme groups in hemoglobin in your red blood cells. People are simply desaturating (losing o2 in their blood), and that’s what eventually leads to organ failures that kill them, not any form of ARDS or pneumonia. All the damage to the lungs you see in CT scans are from the release of oxidative iron from the hemes, this overwhelms the natural defenses against pulmonary oxidative stress and causes that nice, always-bilateral ground glass opacity in the lungs. Patients returning for re-hospitalization days or weeks after recovery suffering from apparent delayed post-hypoxic leukoencephalopathy strengthen the notion COVID-19 patients are suffering from hypoxia despite no signs of respiratory ‘tire out’ or fatigue." Here’s the breakdown of the whole process, including some ELI5-level cliff notes. Much has been simplified just to keep it digestible and layman-friendly. Your red blood cells carry oxygen from your lungs to all your organs and the rest of your body. Red blood cells can do this thanks to hemoglobin, which is a protein consisting of four “hemes”. Hemes have a special kind of iron ion, which is normally quite toxic in its free form, locked away in its center with a porphyrin acting as it’s ‘container’. In this way, the iron ion can be ‘caged’ and carried around safely by the hemoglobin, but used to bind to oxygen when it gets to your lungs. When the red blood cell gets to the alveoli, or the little sacs in your lungs where all the gas exchange happens, that special little iron ion can flip between FE2+ and FE3+ states with electron exchange and bond to some oxygen, then it goes off on its little merry way to deliver o2 elsewhere. Here’s where COVID-19 comes in. Its glycoproteins bond to the heme, and in doing so that special and toxic oxidative iron ion is “disassociated” (released). It’s basically let out of the cage and now freely roaming around on its own. This is bad for two reasons: 1) Without the iron ion, hemoglobin can no longer bind to oxygen. Once all the hemoglobin is impaired, the red blood cell is essentially turned into a Freightliner truck cab with no trailer and no ability to store its cargo.. it is useless and just running around with COVID-19 virus attached to its porphyrin. All these useless trucks running around not delivering oxygen is what starts to lead to desaturation, or watching the patient’s spo2 levels drop. It is INCORRECT to assume traditional ARDS and in doing so, you’re treating the WRONG DISEASE. Think of it a lot like carbon monoxide poisoning, in which CO is bound to the hemoglobin, making it unable to carry oxygen. In those cases, ventilators aren’t treating the root cause; the patient’s lungs aren’t ‘tiring out’, they’re pumping just fine. The red blood cells just can’t carry o2, end of story. Only in this case, unlike CO poisoning in which eventually the CO can break off, the affected hemoglobin is permanently stripped of its ability to carry o2 because it has lost its iron ion. The body compensates for this lack of o2 carrying capacity and deliveries by having your kidneys release hormones like erythropoietin, which tell your bone marrow factories to ramp up production on new red blood cells with freshly made and fully functioning hemoglobin. This is the reason you find elevated hemoglobin and decreased blood oxygen saturation as one of the 3 primary indicators of whether the shit is about to hit the fan for a particular patient or not. 2) That little iron ion, along with millions of its friends released from other hemes, are now floating through your blood freely. As I mentioned before, this type of iron ion is highly reactive and causes oxidative damage. It turns out that this happens to a limited extent naturally in our bodies and we have cleanup & defense mechanisms to keep the balance. The lungs, in particular, have 3 primary defenses to maintain “iron homeostasis”, 2 of which are in the alveoli, those little sacs in your lungs we talked about earlier. The first of the two are little macrophages that roam around and scavenge up any free radicals like this oxidative iron. The second is a lining on the walls (called the epithelial surface) which has a thin layer of fluid packed with high levels of antioxidant molecules.. things like abscorbic acid (AKA Vitamin C) among others. Well, this is usually good enough for naturally occurring rogue iron ions but with COVID-19 running rampant your body is now basically like a progressive state letting out all the prisoners out of the prisons… it’s just too much iron and it begins to overwhelm your lungs’ countermeasures, and thus begins the process of pulmonary oxidative stress. This leads to damage and inflammation, which leads to all that nasty stuff and damage you see in CT scans of COVID-19 patient lungs. Ever noticed how it’s always bilateral? (both lungs at the same time) Pneumonia rarely ever does that, but COVID-19 does… EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. — — — — — — — — — — — — - Once your body is now running out of control, with all your oxygen trucks running around without any freight, and tons of this toxic form of iron floating around in your bloodstream, other defenses kick in. While your lungs are busy with all this oxidative stress they can’t handle, and your organs are being starved of o2 without their constant stream of deliveries from red blood cell’s hemoglobin, and your liver is attempting to do its best to remove the iron and store it in its ‘iron vault’. Only its getting overwhelmed too. It’s starved for oxygen and fighting a losing battle from all your hemoglobin letting its iron free, and starts crying out “help, I’m taking damage!” by releasing an enzyme called alanine aminotransferase (ALT). BOOM, there is your second of 3 primary indicators of whether the shit is about to hit the fan for a particular patient or not. Eventually, if the patient’s immune system doesn’t fight off the virus in time before their blood oxygen saturation drops too low, ventilator or no ventilator, organs start shutting down. No fuel, no work. The only way to even try to keep them going is max oxygen, even a hyperbaric chamber if one is available on 100% oxygen at multiple atmospheres of pressure, just to give what’s left of their functioning hemoglobin a chance to carry enough o2 to the organs and keep them alive. Yeah we don’t have nearly enough of those chambers, so some fresh red blood cells with normal hemoglobin in the form of a transfusion will have to do. The core point being, treating patients with the iron ions stripped from their hemoglobin (rendering it abnormally nonfunctional) with ventilator intubation is futile, unless you’re just hoping the patient’s immune system will work its magic in time. The root of the illness needs to be addressed. Best case scenario? Treatment regimen early, before symptoms progress too far. Hydroxychloroquine (more on that in a minute, I promise) with Azithromicin has shown fantastic, albeit critics keep mentioning ‘anecdotal’ to describe the mountain, promise and I’ll explain why it does so well next. But forget straight-up plasma with antibodies, that might work early but if the patient is too far gone they’ll need more. They’ll need all the blood: antibodies and red blood cells. No help in sending over a detachment of ammunition to a soldier already unconscious and bleeding out on the battlefield, you need to send that ammo along with some hemoglobin-stimulant-magic so that he can wake up and fire those shots at the enemy. The story with Hydroxychloroquine All that hilariously misguided and counterproductive criticism the media piled on chloroquine (purely for political reasons) as a viable treatment will now go down as the biggest Fake News blunder to rule them all. The media actively engaged their activism to fight ‘bad orange man’ at the cost of thousands of lives. Shame on them. How does chloroquine work? Same way as it does for malaria. You see, malaria is this little parasite that enters the red blood cells and starts eating hemoglobin as its food source. The reason chloroquine works for malaria is the same reason it works for COVID-19 — while not fully understood, it is suspected to bind to DNA and interfere with the ability to work magic on hemoglobin. The same mechanism that stops malaria from getting its hands on hemoglobin and gobbling it up seems to do the same to COVID-19 (essentially little snippets of DNA in an envelope) from binding to it. On top of that, Hydroxychloroquine (an advanced descendant of regular old chloroquine) lowers the pH which can interfere with the replication of the virus. Again, while the full details are not known, the entire premise of this potentially ‘game changing’ treatment is to prevent hemoglobin from being interfered with, whether due to malaria or COVID-19. No longer can the media and armchair pseudo-physicians sit in their little ivory towers, proclaiming “DUR so stoopid, malaria is bacteria, COVID-19 is virus, anti-bacteria drug no work on virus!”. They never got the memo that a drug doesn’t need to directly act on the pathogen to be effective. Sometimes it’s enough just to stop it from doing what it does to hemoglobin, regardless of the means it uses to do so. Anyway, enough of the rant. What’s the end result here? First, the ventilator emergency needs to be re-examined. If you’re putting a patient on a ventilator because they’re going into a coma and need mechanical breathing to stay alive, okay we get it. Give ’em time for their immune systems to pull through. But if they’re conscious, alert, compliant — keep them on O2. Max it if you have to. If you HAVE to inevitably ventilate, do it at low pressure but max O2. Don’t tear up their lungs with max PEEP, you’re doing more harm to the patient because you’re treating the wrong disease. Ideally, some form of treatment needs to happen to: Inhibit viral growth and replication. Here plays CHQ+ZPAK+ZINC or other retroviral therapies being studies. Less virus, less hemoglobin losing its iron, less severity and damage. Therapies used for anyone with abnormal hemoglobin or malfunctioning red blood cells. Blood transfusions. Whatever, I don’t know the full breadth and scope because I’m not a physician. But think along those lines, and treat the real disease. If you’re thinking about giving them plasma with antibodies, maybe if they’re already in bad shape think again and give them BLOOD with antibodies, or at least blood followed by plasma with antibodies. Now that we know more about how this virus works and affects our bodies, a whole range of options should open up. Don’t trust China. China is ASSHOE. (disclaimer: not talking about the people, just talking about the regime). They covered this up and have caused all kinds of death and carnage, both literal and economic. The ripples of this pandemic will be felt for decades. http://web.archive.org/web/20200405061401/https://medium.com/

bornagain77

And UBI. Jim Thibodeau

Jack Dorsey of twitter contributing ~25% of his net worth (USD 1 billion) to combat the virus, then to girls' education and other things later. daveS

F/N: I cross-post from the current Zelenko thread, as notable: >>F/N: Dr Mehmet Oz on with Lou Dobbs: Didier Raoult has initial results on his first 1,000 patients, 7 deaths, 20 to ICU, observes "a case series of 1,000 patients is not anecdotal." He notes that NY Gov Cuomo's ruling locked down his outpatient study, parallel to Raoult. A transcript of a key part:

Dr. Oz: Well the trial that I was helping with at my institution was shut down when the governor banned the use of hydroxychloroquine for prescription use for outpatients. And I was trying to see if it could prevent, well there was a prevention trial that was approved, but I was trying to see if it could actually treat early disease and replicate what has been done in China and in France. Unfortunately, those trials have been held back. I don’t know of a trial in New York State. I have been searching for the one that has been spoken about… I spoke this morning to the famous French Infectious Disease specialist Didier Raoult, he’s the one who’s actually been pioneering the hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin, it’s not published yet, but he shared the results of his first thousand patients who have been on that protocol. Seven people died. They were all older and frail individuals. That is lower than what you would expect from people who have been admitted to the hospital. And he’s had 20 got to the ICU, again lower than I would expect… Well, I’m upset because I wanted to do the trial. Also I wanted it to be legal in my state for a doctor to talk to a patient about the COVID-19 and treat them as they saw appropriate.

Something very wrong is going on at governance and policymaking level. He is also calling for someone with Lupus on HCQ with CV19 to come forward, in concert with a support group. So far, he has not had anyone. He also reports the colleague who heads the Lupus Society and others in that world of practice see fears over side effects as punched up, i/l/o their collective experience. This holds for heart effects and he says eye effects show up after five years of chronic use. Another straw in the wind.>> KF kairosfocus

Intelligently designed anti-bodies to fight COVID-19. Looks very promising. Still not a vaccine but it will definitely help sick people whenever it is released. ET

How does Chloroquine and Remdesivir work against the new coronavirus? It's a blog post so follow-up research is warranted. ET

@Ed George

I am still trying to figure out how chloroquine works. I know that for lupus and arthritis it acts as an immune system suppressant. If that is the case, why are imonocompromised people so at risk? Or are they?

Study Biology then. It is really fascinating. And logic. Logic is fascinating and very useful too. Truthfreedom

EG I think HQ is an anti inflammatory drug and helps with the lungs and is used along with a Z pack. There is so much we don’t know. Vivid vividbleau

I am still trying to figure out how chloroquine works. I know that for lupus and arthritis it acts as an immune system suppressant. If that is the case, why are imonocompromised people so at risk? Or are they? Ed George

KF The idea that all these people who had jobs are going to magically get them back is a pipe dream. It’s going to take a long time for people to be comfortable in crowded spaces, many jobs that existed before don’t exist now. Case in point my office lease is up ,for regulatory purposes I need an office, so my plan is to lease the smallest office I can, work from home, and cut my overhead by 5k a month, great for me but not so great for the building owner. Commercial real estate is going to get savaged and all the jobs that are related to it. That’s just one example multiply that by 1000. Why didn’t I do this before because clients expect me to have a nice office but they don’t expect that now. Vivid vividbleau

Vivid, the economics is always an issue. Once a pandemic broke loose, a lot of wealth was going to be destroyed. The issue is, which is least worst in an age of pandemics. KF PS India is making a very clear statement. BTW the US used uo 1/2 its existing stockpile of Pennicilin to treat the first successful case in 1942. But then mobilisation kicked in and that was the wonder drug of the war era. Never mind its limitations and the issue of penecillin shock. kairosfocus

KF “AKA, triggering another deep recession only a few years after the world is starting to climb out of one, cannot be sound policy. KF” Right now everyone’s attention is on the virus but one day soon we are all going to turn our attention to the economy and say “OMG what have we done”!! Vivid vividbleau

JT, my conclusion pivots on the number of the mild or asymptomatic forming the base of the pyramid/ iceberg; estimates I have seen range up to 50 - 80 percent. That's significant. While testing is important for treatment, I think the notion that we can get a census of all cases or even all symptomatic cases is ill advised. We need to remember, sampling, including randomised and stratified random with adjustment to demographics. That's much like, tracking polls. In that context, I would calibrate tests against an antibody based population sample, to build up a statistical model. This has the advantage, that we can then look at the demographics and trends. My fundamental model is of course a market growth, logistic curve related approach, with the growth rate [proxy, new cases per day as estimated] giving a picture on the driving impulse. The second rate actually allows us to spot turning points. And, I love log-lin time series plots as we can see above. What these tell us is that we are capturing enough of the signal to make sense as informed by SIR related models; it is better to be roughly right than exactly wrong -- and for strategic decisions, rough trend indicators are often good enough, as long as we have some good models . . . which BTW is also so for price indices, price level estimating baskets, GDP numbers, I-O analysis tables for the economy and more. As noted in the OP, the big message is that we are at turning point globally on the driving impulse [it is peaking], though of course the US is still not yet at peak, projected in 1 1/2 weeks. That overall message is that there is light at the end of the tunnel. The morrow, more tracking thoughts, including on onward waves and sustainable strategies in the face of a pandemic threatening to be with us for years to come. AKA, triggering another deep recession only a few years after the world is starting to climb out of one, cannot be sound policy. We are looking at strategic change and linked governance, policymaking and creating critical mass at kairos. (And yes, that is directly connected to my handle.) KF kairosfocus

EG “KF, it might be of interest to you that India has stopped the shipment of drugs, including chloroquine, outside the country.” That did not last long. Vivid vividbleau

DaveS “Their distancing measures worked at first, then people apparently became overconfident, and the numbers of deaths rose sharply.“ I don’t see how we don’t get a second and likely a third wave if a prophylactic is not found, all the people that are distancing will make up those waves. To shut down the economy until a vaccine is approved is just not a viable solution. Not that you have advocated that, just saying. Vivid vividbleau

It "looks" like the distancing measures are working and the number of deaths are a bit less than projected perhaps? I say this because I was listening to a radio show recently about the 1918 pandemic. Their distancing measures worked at first, then people apparently became overconfident, and the numbers of deaths rose sharply. daveS

PS: On de egg-spurt gamez (and, I confess freely, I are wut pazzez fer wun, in my small korner . . .) https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/experts-pseudo-experts-and-other-progressive-conceits.php Hayward of Pl, gives food for thought:

The downloads folder on my computer is jammed full right now with endless charts depicting data and analysis of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic shocks rolling across the world, and naturally they can tell a widely varying story depending on the data quality and, most crucial of all, the assumptions that go into any model that generates projections about the future—even the near future. Experts and models disagree! Who’d a thunk it? More importantly, what is a responsible president or prime minister to do? President Trump is naturally taking fire for not following “the experts,” even though it is a simple matter to point out that “the experts” (including even the sainted Dr. Fauci) were downplaying the risks of the Coronavirus as late as the end of January, when liberals, the media, and some “health experts” howled at the moon when Trump imposed the travel ban on China. All the while, the “experts” at the CDC were botching the rollout of a reliable COVID-19 test. More broadly, though, it is worth lingering for a moment on the fetish for expertise . . . . While it is perfectly sensible to seek improvements in technical expertise and its integration into decision making by our political leaders, this misses the main point. For a century now, progressives have represented expertise as a distinct claim to rightful rule, akin to the classical claims on behalf of democracy and aristocracy. You can see this at work right now in the deep thinkers who are saying that Joe Biden ought to pick Bill Gates as his running mate, or that Dr. Fauci should be made president by acclamation. The progressive conceit of expertise lies at the heart of a lot of the progressive contempt for the non-credentialled “deplorables” of “flyover country” who, progressives think, don’t deserve self-government. Whenever a progressive says we should “follow the evidence” because we must have “evidence-based policy-making,” you should reach for your wallet (for starters). Because today we all too often have the opposite: policy-based evidence-making.

Food for thought. My longstanding rule: arguments gain persuasive power through pathos, ethos, logos. Particularly, no authority, expert or presenter is better than his or her facts, logic and assumptions. AKA, figgers don't lie but liars and fools can figger their way into trouble. Caveat emptor. kairosfocus

I read yesterday that as of Sunday night America had tested fewer than 900,000 people. Lord only knows how many real cases there are. Jim Thibodeau

DS, the local events are actually international, given the significance for volcanology and disaster management. And as you know, the associated logic, epistemology, ethics, decision theory and statistics are all general matters. As is the macroeconomics. And yes, when we accept a speed limit with a given degree of risk, we are implicitly pricing a value on lives; through what we tolerate. That extends directly to the regulatory burden on drugs testing in general and in the face of emergency. There is a priceable value for the priorities that did not push testing of HCQ etc post SARS1 (etc). We are now paying the price for those implicit decisions. In that mix, we find ambulance chasing litigation and deep ideological polarisation, agit prop and lawfare cultivated by some as a road to power. KF kairosfocus

PS: Funny thing, UK papers seem the best documentation just now! They allowed me to spot the area and while I was by the Clinic, I realised it had to be higher up the hill. The house is at an angle to the road. The man I recognised drives the green pickup. kairosfocus

F/N: Back home from Doc and Supermarket. Just passed by and wished condolences from the road. The house is on the main road in Sweeneys, in the St Johns area around the corner from Aravin's.The car was in the driveway. This is a video of the road and the house: https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/black-rippers-death-shrouded-mystery-21826146 According to ZJB (as I heard in Aravin's) an autopsy has been called for a sudden death. KF kairosfocus

Neither marijuana nor being an activist is a plausible cause of death. :roll: ET

Kairosfocus: ZJB has confirmed the passing. Cause is not plausibly COVID-19. He was a big marijuana smoker/activist so another cause was going to be more likely anyway. Loved your bit of detective work!! Thanks! JVL

@121 Kairosfocus:

All of that goes back to the point that the day of blind trust in ex cathedra announcement of experts is over. So is the day of pretence of “consensus” of experts [maintained by the no true Sassenach fallacy, doubtless].

True. And the Internet has been playing a key role here. That thing, information , is fascinating, ain't it? :) Truthfreedom

KF,

DS, are you aware that the FDA Fauci works with has given two successive tiers of approvals?

Yes, Bob O'H mentioned this recently here, and I read it earlier in some blog posts. And I think I can understand why you would take this position, given local events. For my part, I simply do not have the expertise needed to evaluate the situation. I have made too many probability/stat errors to trust my intuition (for example, the first time I saw the classic false positive exercise). daveS

F/N: ZJB has confirmed the passing. Cause is not plausibly COVID-19. KF kairosfocus

JVL, news to me, but I don't track that sort of thing. The list of cases here is a closely guarded secret compounded by medical confidentiality. Rumours abound. KF PS: Did search, found DM: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8193925/Rapper-Black-Ripper-dead-32-Tributes-pour-marijuana-advocate.html The licence plate in the April 1 2020 photo is definitly from here and the house is the right sort of"wall" house, in a plausible colour. The stone wall is right too. West is definitely a Montserrat name, he is wearing a Montserrat tee shirt. Off to the left, that looks like Katy Hill in the background, seen from somewhere St Johnnish. I recognise the man in the black tee shirt. The car licence number is right and I think I may have seen that car on the road. If he was here April 1, most likely, he would still be here. So, I fear, your story is plausible. I will come back as more develops. kairosfocus

Kairosfocus: Just found out, via my son, that British rap artist Black the Ripper died yesterday on Montserrat! No details of the cause of his death have been released yet . . . was he one of the COVID-19 cases? JVL

DS, 118, Pardon, I decided to wait overnight. I think you know I live on an island with a volcano that has been eruptive in various ways since 1995. What you likely would not know is how that volcano literally rewrote the book and repeatedly caught us all by surprise. As a result, it taught us some sharp lessons about what Professor Okada of Japan termed the tetrahedral model [better, framework]. Namely, that the scientists [experts], officialdom, media [public and independent] and people exist in a mutually dependent framework. As a consequence, there has to be a building up of social capital through truthfulness, respect and openness ahead of time. That way, when the day of hard decisions comes, there will be the mutuality that allows for a critical mass of support. In that context, a point Vivid emphasised above comes home to roost. Scientific knowledge [and in fact any empirical, inductive knowledge] is in a sense provisional, open to correction especially of explanatory or modelling constructs. That is, while it is legitimate and commonplace to speak of knowledge, it is in a soft sense that means, responsibly warranted, reliable and credibly true belief. But that is not equal to incorrigible certainty. As a result it progresses, is revised incrementally and is subject to replacement through paradigm-shifting revolutions, a context in which "consensus" or "expertise" are inevitably relativised. Indeed, scientific disagreements are legendary. As a result, especially in a fluid, dangerous situation, we have to learn how to make collective decisions under risk and uncertainty. Risk, here, implies ability to specify a reasonably expected span of possibilities and to assign some sort of quantification, however crude. Uncertainty obtains when we don't even know that much. Hence, Donald Rumsfeld's notorious known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Frankly, we have had more of the last here than we like to admit over the past quarter century. One of the techniques developed to replace "consensus of experts/scientists" was expert elicitation as a way to characterise span of outcomes and estimates of likelihood. In that context, contributions were and are calibrated on a test of expertise. It has reduced but has not eliminated degree of disagreement and controversy. If -- God forbid -- another partial evacuation had to be called during this period of lockdown, it would spark controversy. All of that goes back to the point that the day of blind trust in ex cathedra announcement of experts is over. So is the day of pretence of "consensus" of experts [maintained by the no true Sassenach fallacy, doubtless]. Instead, we proceed by mutuality and critical mass informed by prudence and sound risk taking guided by SWOT analysis on good environment scanning. Strategies should build on strengths, capitalise on opportunities [moderated by mutuality in community!], counter threats, compensate for and where possible eventually correct weaknesses. Much harder, but in the long haul sounder. In this case, we must realise that urgency and loss of life in quantity are driving factors. On evidence from the post-SARS literature of 15 years ago, HCQ should have been tested as an antiviral in accord with the usual double blind, cross-treatment, control studies with due accounting through ANOVA etc. That was not done, a significant opportunity was lost. (And BTW, here, we were warned in a paper about a decade before the event . . . ) In our situation, prudence requires decision informed by balance. Where, there is growing evidence that HCQ and Z-Pac with Zn supplements is a credible treatment, albeit not risk-free. There are hints that Z-Pac can be substituted for successfully. For example, Doxycycline. That evidence does not come from large scale, prolonged, hugely expensive and bureaucratically cumbersome studies. However, it is demonstrated repeatedly that HCQ is an antiviral in vitro, in relevant tissue samples and relevant concentrations. It acts chemically as an antiviral, by one or more of several suggested mechanisms. In that context, after 65 years of use, dosage, side effects, risks, toxic effects etc are fairly well understood. So it is actually no great surprise that it is having an effect clinically. In that context, approval for emergency, compassionate and exploratory use have been granted by the FDA even as studies proceed. I imagine, use with signoff on risks [similar to for surgery] would be reasonable. What is not reasonable is to suggest that there is no credible evidence or that disagreement and objection should paralyse us. That, is what would be imprudent. KF kairosfocus

Vivid, that's excellent news. Meanwhile, we here are on tenterhooks (and request prayers) as we learn that not only was UK PM Boris Johnson taken into hospital even as Good Queen Elizabeth spoke to the Commonwealth but has now been transferred into ICU. We pray that things work out well. KF kairosfocus

She added more color on TV tonight about the hassle she had to go through because the Governor of Michigan had banned HQ. She was lucky to get it when she did and she credits Trump for that as well.. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020/04/06/democrat-karen-whitsett-coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine-trump/2955430001/ Vivid vividbleau

DS, are you aware that the FDA Fauci works with has given two successive tiers of approvals? KF kairosfocus

Port restrictions and canceled flights are straining the ability to replace seafarers on board ships, further weakening global supply chains already snarled by the coronavirus pandemic. Hubs like Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Shanghai have halted most crew transfers, while global lockdowns have complicated travel from the Philippines, which supplies about a quarter of the world’s seafarers. At risk is the flow of goods like food, medicine and energy via commercial shipping, which accounts for about 80% of global trade. While unseen by most consumers, restrictions on crews are among the unprecedented challenges wrought by the virus, which has ground major economies to a halt. rhampton7

KF, Isn't it prudent for me to admit I don't know what the risks and benefits are, and defer to people who have decades of experience with these issues? Perhaps to the guy on the president's coronavirus response team, in fact? daveS

JT, you have an urgent, crisis situation, where the consistent report is that the desired tests will take far longer than the peak of fresh cases and life-threatening ones. In that situation too late is as good as never. At the same time, we have at least 15 years published record that shows broad-base antiviral action in relevant tissues, in plausible concentrations deriving from reasonable doses. In that context, significant studies in the clinic show that in about 5 days, HCQ and Z-pac together [with Zn a relevant supplement] clear infections, with good reliability. This points to a need for early intervention before life-threatening complications emerge. It suggests, frontline health workers likely should be on preventative doses. Yes, side effects are possible, but there is nearly 70 years of experience in hand. This calls, not for skepticism but prudent decision in the face of a less than ideal choice to use a drug vs facing, credibly, a surge of preventable deaths. This is battlefield decision-making not idealised decisions where postponement has no great cost. That choice is in material part being clouded through a highly polarised climate that taints just about any policy issue. As I have pointed out, there has been a squandering of vital social capital. KF kairosfocus

JT, Thanks, that's what I thought. daveS

@Ed George Do you keep mantaining that the death ratio assiciated to the flu is higher than the death ratio associated to COVID-19? Let me remind you that you are a known liar. Truthfreedom

KF, it might be of interest to you that India has stopped the shipment of drugs, including chloroquine, outside the country. In a world that relies on a global supply chain, actions like this and Trump’s will only cause more harm. Ed George

@DaveS I read less than half the comments here, but I don’t recall seeing anybody talk about delaying the drug beyond it being shown to have a fix. What we want is reliable data that it actually treats this disease before we keep taking it from lupus patients etc and giving it to people and causing possible heart attack type side effects. The WHO now has a study that should produce reliable data, which we haven’t seen so far. Abandoning proper skepticism in order to believe whatever Trump says is dangerous nonsense. Jim Thibodeau

KF, Thanks, I don't see any references in your above posts to specific people _here_ being so affected by TDS that they want the deployment of promising drugs to be delayed unnecessarily. Not that you can't find some on Twitter. daveS

Bob “The prediction seems to be that the peak will be in about 2 weeks, so about half of those deaths (at best) will be in the next couple of weeks” So I think the US deaths currently are approx 9k so we’re looking at 90k in deaths in next few weeks.? That would be about 8k a day. Pretty daunting Vivid . vividbleau

BO'H: It seems the global peaking has already begun, per the tracking plots above. KF kairosfocus

PPS: Notice, Plato in The Republic, reflecting the subtext of how three years of plague wrecked Athens' capability to win the Peloponnesian war, in part by severely damaging the social fabric:

It is not too hard to figure out that our civilisation is in deep trouble and is most likely headed for shipwreck. (And of course, that sort of concern is dismissed as “apocalyptic,” or neurotic pessimism that refuses to pause and smell the roses.) Plato’s Socrates spoke to this sort of situation, long since, in the ship of state parable in The Republic, Bk VI:

>>[Soc.] I perceive, I said, that you are vastly amused at having plunged me into such a hopeless discussion; but now hear the parable, and then you will be still more amused at the meagreness of my imagination: for the manner in which the best men are treated in their own States is so grievous that no single thing on earth is comparable to it; and therefore, if I am to plead their cause, I must have recourse to fiction, and put together a figure made up of many things, like the fabulous unions of goats and stags which are found in pictures. Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain [–> often interpreted, ship’s owner] who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. [= The people own the community and in the mass are overwhelmingly strong, but are ill equipped on the whole to guide, guard and lead it] The sailors are quarrelling with one another about the steering – every one is of opinion that he has a right to steer [= selfish ambition to rule and dominate], though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary. They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them [–> kubernetes, steersman, from which both cybernetics and government come in English]; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard [ = ruthless contest for domination of the community], and having first chained up the noble captain’s senses with drink or some narcotic drug [ = manipulation and befuddlement, cf. the parable of the cave], they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as might be expected of them [–> Cf here Luke’s subtle case study in Ac 27]. Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in their plot for getting the ship out of the captain’s hands into their own whether by force or persuasion [–> Nihilistic will to power on the premise of might and manipulation making ‘right’ ‘truth’ ‘justice’ ‘rights’ etc], they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot, able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call a good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the command of a ship, and that he must and will be the steerer, whether other people like or not-the possibility of this union of authority with the steerer’s art has never seriously entered into their thoughts or been made part of their calling. Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing? [Ad.] Of course, said Adeimantus. [Soc.] Then you will hardly need, I said, to hear the interpretation of the figure, which describes the true philosopher in his relation to the State [ --> here we see Plato's philosoppher-king emerging]; for you understand already. [Ad.] Certainly. [Soc.] Then suppose you now take this parable to the gentleman who is surprised at finding that philosophers have no honour in their cities; explain it to him and try to convince him that their having honour would be far more extraordinary. [Ad.] I will. [Soc.] Say to him, that, in deeming the best votaries of philosophy to be useless to the rest of the world, he is right; but also tell him to attribute their uselessness to the fault of those who will not use them, and not to themselves. The pilot should not humbly beg the sailors to be commanded by him –that is not the order of nature; neither are ‘the wise to go to the doors of the rich’ –the ingenious author of this saying told a lie –but the truth is, that, when a man is ill, whether he be rich or poor, to the physician he must go, and he who wants to be governed, to him who is able to govern. [--> the issue of competence and character as qualifications to rule] The ruler who is good for anything ought not to beg his subjects to be ruled by him [ --> down this road lies the modern solution: a sound, well informed people will seek sound leaders, who will not need to manipulate or bribe or worse, and such a ruler will in turn be checked by the soundness of the people, cf. US DoI, 1776]; although the present governors of mankind are of a different stamp; they may be justly compared to the mutinous sailors, and the true helmsmen to those who are called by them good-for-nothings and star-gazers. [Ad.] Precisely so, he said. [Soc] For these reasons, and among men like these, philosophy, the noblest pursuit of all, is not likely to be much esteemed by those of the opposite faction [--> the sophists, the Demagogues, Alcibiades and co, etc]; not that the greatest and most lasting injury is done to her by her opponents, but by her own professing followers, the same of whom you suppose the accuser to say, that the greater number of them are arrant rogues, and the best are useless; in which opinion I agreed [--> even among the students of the sound state (here, political philosophy and likely history etc.), many are of unsound motivation and intent, so mere education is not enough, character transformation is critical]. [Ad.] Yes. [Soc.] And the reason why the good are useless has now been explained? [Ad.] True. [Soc.] Then shall we proceed to show that the corruption of the majority is also unavoidable [--> implies a need for a corruption-restraining minority providing proverbial salt and light, cf. Ac 27, as well as justifying a governing structure turning on separation of powers, checks and balances], and that this is not to be laid to the charge of philosophy any more than the other? [Ad.] By all means. [Soc.] And let us ask and answer in turn, first going back to the description of the gentle and noble nature.[ -- > note the character issue] Truth, as you will remember, was his leader, whom he followed always and in all things [ --> The spirit of truth as a marker]; failing in this, he was an impostor, and had no part or lot in true philosophy [--> the spirit of truth is a marker, for good or ill] . . . >>

(There is more than an echo of this in Acts 27, a real world case study. [Luke, a physician, was an educated Greek with a taste for subtle references.] This blog post, on soundness in policy, will also help)

kairosfocus

DS & RH7, The issue is as I pointed out in 66 above, which should be addressed substantially. There is indubitably a deep polarisation compounded by the substitution of a false virtue, hyperskepticism trying to steer the rational soul in the place of true prudence. As a result, we have squandered social capital and now face a cacophony of polarised, imprudent voices and views leading to gross, widespread imprudence. As just one illustration, in any reasonable world, influenza would bbe instantly recognised as a comparative yardstick, and the high numbers dying of this per year would be seen as a sober warning on how a novel, highly contagious virus could spiral out of control, with vulnerable groups being at high risk of death. So, responsible, even painful, prudent measures are appropriate. The debate we should be having on HCQ et al is why such were not properly tested and approved as broadly acting antivirals over a decade ago. Especially, for repurposed, cost-effective treatments; post SARS1. That, such is not the debate speaks to the toxic atmosphere that has been cultivated, tainting and twisting everything. In that context of polarisation, loss of trust, wrecked hard-won social capital, it then becomes almost impossible to reasonably discuss any serious matter. Democratic decision-making is undermined decisively and folly is in the driver's seat. That's a civilisational challenge and it is particularly acute in the USA, which you have heard me say ever so many times, is in low grade 4th gen, agit-prop, media amplified street theatre and lawfare tactics dominated civil war. In that context, it is only to be expected that a serious issue or a crisis will expose the consequences of the folly of wrecking hard won social capital. KF PS: Mr Trump is not the cause, he is a sign. His Presidency is the result of a hinterland peasant revolt by ballot box, directly parallel to the premiership of Mr Johnson in the UK. The despising of hoi polloi by those who imagine themselves their betters is a key part of what is going wrong civilisationally. That some are already thinking towards how they can impeach him a second time [refusing to see how abuse of policing and intelligence agencies and courts, resort to star chamber tactics that violate natural justice etc are ruinous] speaks volumes. Worse, some seem to be quietly hoping that recession consequent on strong measures to address epidemic will tip the balance to remove him from office, which is a clear subtext in the concerns of many. Others fail to see that ministering to the soul in a crisis is an essential service [some, imagine we have no souls], but should be balanced with due consideration of contagiousness. The mutual suspicion then threatens to spiral utterly out of control, reflecting precisely why we need to highlight the problem. kairosfocus

Vivibleau @ 100 - The prediction seems to be that the peak will be in about 2 weeks, so about half of those deaths (at best) will be in the next couple of weeks. But keep an eye on this - New York is predicted to peak this week, so if they don't, it means things will be worse. Bob O'H

RH7, the sorts of studies already done manifestly demonstrate efficacy in well proved drugs with highly manageable side effects shown by their longstanding common use. While onward double blind placebo-based control tests may be helpful academically, that does not answer to the challenge of facing a global pandemic with up to ~10% risk of death for patients with vulnerable preconditions. Under those circumstances, with what we know and can readily access, it would be to threaten lives needlessly to treat with sugar pills. So, the challenge we actually face is not credible warrant but duty to the inherently valuable. Hyperskepticism manifestly fails, we must instead restore the true charioteer of the rational soul, prudence. KF kairosfocus

BTW I think we will be seeing parts of our economy opening up before the current 30 day mitigation effort ends, I'm thinking sometime in the next two weeks. Vivid vividbleau

Bob, I don’t dispute what you say but those numbers have been repeatedly given and I don’t know what time frame they are referring to. If it’s for the next few weeks we should start seeing a big spike in the order of about 90k to reach the 100k mark. Vivid vividbleau

vividbleau @ 100 Those numbers are only accurate if China is telling the truth. China lies about everything. They skew the results to make it appear higher than it actually is. Influenza does not require any preconditions to be lethal, unlike COVID-19. This is the reason influenza is more deadly than COVID-19. Had Dr. Li been effectively silenced by the Chinese, no one would be talking about it right now. It mimics the flu with less deadly results. BobRyan

Question to all I’ve seen the number between 100,000 to 200,000 deaths predicted to happen in US. Is this supposed to happen over the next couple of weeks? Vivid vividbleau

Gottlieb, who led the FDA under President Trump until 2019, said a "massive surveillance system" would allow infections to be detected quickly and said the country should have such a system in place. "We'll be able to identify cases when there are small outbreaks in the fall and use case-based intervention," he said. Gottlieb said that until there is a drug to prevent infection in those who are exposed to the coronavirus or treat those who get it, the economy is unlikely to return to normal. "Absent that, this is going to be an 80% economy," he said. "There are things that are not coming back. People are not going to crowd into conferences. They're not going to crowd into arenas. The marginal customer is not going back to movie theaters and cruises and Disneyland. And we need to accept that. Now, what changes that equation is technology. But we need a deliberate approach to getting that technology quickly." rhampton7

Nov 2019: 62% of people who approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president say they can't think of anything he could do that would cause him to lose their support, according to a Monmouth University poll published Tuesday. The sample size for the question was 401. rhampton7

But perhaps more worrying for Biden and Democrats than the narrowing gap is the apparent lack of enthusiasm among the former vice president's supporters. Eighty-six percent of Trump's backers say they are enthusiastic about their candidate, while just 74 percent of Biden supporters say the same. And nearly twice as many likely Trump voters say they are "very enthusiastic," 55 percent, compared to Biden backers, just 28 percent. rhampton7

Sweden’s herd immunity approach update: The Prime Minister of Sweden has issued a stark warning to his citizens, telling them to prepare for innumerable deaths following the country's laid back attitude to Covid-19. Many bars, eateries, schools and office buildings have remained open, with groups of up 500 people being permissible. Only the most vulnerable citizens have been encouraged to self-isolate at home. However, as Sweden's death toll topped 401, and with 6,830 confirmed infections, the tone has shifted. Sizes of gatherings have been hacked down from 499 to 49, and bars and eateries have been instructed only to offer table service. rhampton7

We should have some much more reliable data soon. This study isn’t double blinded, but it’s going to be better than anything previous. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/who-launches-global-megatrial-four-most-promising-coronavirus-treatments# Jim Thibodeau

In the US, Trump supporters are largely enthusiastic and happy to go along with his policy decisions.

We are? ET

KF, In the US, Trump supporters are largely enthusiastic and happy to go along with his policy decisions. That’s the result of polarization, there’s little in the way of lukewarm support for or against the Administration. The churches not following the advice are doing so for religious reasons, not political. rhampton7

It appears that you really do not need chloroquine. All you need is zinc and an ionophore. There are natural, OTC ionophores. HT: Jerry ET

Yeah cuz America doesn't have wood pulp. Which makes me wonder what would happen if Canada had a resource that the USA needed. How did Japan fare when it pissed us off? ET

KF, I think post #66 illustrates the problem well. If I understand, you have suggested that posters here oppose the deployment of chloroquine (sp?) for political reasons. Is that correct? daveS

It turns out that the N95 masks that Trump has ordered 3M not to ship to Canada are largely made with wood pulp produced in Canada. A pulp mill in Canada has now stopped shopping pulp to 3M. Ed George

DS, unfortunately, that is exactly a big part of the troubles we face. We have burned up social capital and are beginning to have consequences. KF PS: Kindly, see 66 above. kairosfocus

KF,

I think you underestimate what happens when everything becomes deeply polarised and balkanised through mutual suspicion.

In that spirit, do you think now might be a good time to set aside the "Agit-Prop, Opinon Manipulation And Well-Poisoning Games" tag? daveS

RH7, were there less severe polarisation and agit prop, the social capital that was squandered would have made for a much more reasonable context in which people could think clearly and act prudently. I think you underestimate what happens when everything becomes deeply polarised and balkanised through mutual suspicion. Once widespread trust, credibility and mutuality have been wrecked, it is far harder to teach, build any community consensus and correct errors. And, imposition by force is going to be deeply resented. The risk of fatal disaffection is great, indeed the USA is on the threshold where elections become unworkable as a loss is routinely attributed to evil tricks of the other side; with the wildest accusations believed -- the principle that there is a right to innocent reputation is undermined. When that happens, all that is left is threat or use of physical force. KF kairosfocus

PS: I see, not CV19. That's good news. kairosfocus

Vivid, I trust things go well; obviously age is on her side. KF kairosfocus

nm daveS

EG Thanks although I have mixed feelings since having to go through all that she is going through and not having immunity going forward is a mixed blessing. Vivid vividbleau

Vivid@76, I am glad to hear that it wasn’t COVID. I hope she feels better soon. Ed George

@Rhampton I never got a single article 15 in the Air Force, but I did know some people who got kicked all the way out. Pro Tip: never lie to your bosses in the military, people. It does not work out well for you. Jim Thibodeau

Marines at Camp Pendleton have been ordered to follow California’s “shelter in place” guidelines and face severe penalties if they don’t, according to the military base’s commanding general. Violations of the order are punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the commander said, and personnel may be subject to “appropriate administrative or judicial action.” While more than 38,000 military family members occupy base housing complexes, Camp Pendleton expands to a daytime population of 70,000 military and civilian personnel. rhampton7

Vividbleau: In other words “The map is not the territory “ Korzybski I didn't realise that quote was attributable. I heard Robert DeNiro say it in the film Ronin. Thanks!! Just looked up Korzybski . . . fascinating work! Thank you very, very much. You've just added someone to my personal pantheon that I didn't even know existed! Yeah!! I love it when that happens. Vividbleau: two points!! And good to hear about your daughter-in-law! Excellent!! But sounds like she's still hurting so I hope things improve a lot soon. JVL

Since the Johns Hopkins numbers are running about a day behind, we’ve passed the 10,000 American deaths mark. And there are still 5 idiot Trumper governors who haven’t issued stay at home orders. Jim Thibodeau

KF All I can say is wow!! My daughter in law tests finally came back and it was negative for the virus. Another nasty bug out there? Vivid vividbleau

South Korea has been held up as a paragon for containing the coronavirus, lauded by the world for successfully flattening its curve, it is now bracing for a possible second wave. Despite this general decline, 125 new cases were reported last Monday — a slight increase from the previous day, at 78. The new stats also showed a rising death toll. Most recently, a hospital in Daegu, the center of South Korea’s outbreak, experienced another cluster infection with at least 62 cases. Mannim Central Church in southwestern Seoul confirmed more positive tests, increasing their number to 33. Dr. Ki Moran, a professor at the National Cancer Center’s Graduate School of Cancer Science and Policy, said that even the slightest loosening of social distancing fosters the danger of triggering another mass wave. rhampton7

KF, Do you believe those churches are more likely to believe the media or President Trump &VP Pence? Those churches, BTW, are not representative of all churches. Not at all. But they are at risk for being new clusters of virus because they are defying common sense health precautions. That’s why all the sport leagues and movie theaters have closed. rhampton7

KF Thanks appreciate you much through these many years, learned a lot. Things got really bad Wednesday night, high fever ( 103), body on fire, episodes of severe nausea, chills which continued into Thursday. Friday fever went up and down was able to eat, then a relapse. Felt fine this AM then relapse again but not as severe. She appears to be recovering but this is one nasty bug. Vivid vividbleau

“True. Theoretical/computer modelling of epidemics is one thing. Reality is another one. A different kind of beast I’d say.” In other words “The map is not the territory “ Korzybski Vivid vividbleau

Vivid, I trust your daughter in law does well. You know what my suggestion is. KF kairosfocus

@66 Kairosfocus:

...full lockdowns cannot be long sustained because of the economic and social havok they wreak.

True. Theoretical/computer modelling of epidemics is one thing. Reality is another one. A different kind of beast I'd say. Truthfreedom

KF re 66 Very helpful thanks. Vivid vividbleau

JT “As terrible as this virus is, it’s probably going to dip in the summer, and then come roaring back in the fall, the experts say.” I think your absolutely right. This mitigation Is meant to buy time, but at some point don’t we all eventually have to be exposed to it in one form or another? A vaccine ( one form of exposure) is at least a year away. We are seeing cases now of those who have been exposed before clamp downs, or those like my daughter in law who got it treating patients, The next crop will be people like myself and millions of others who are social distancing, working from home etc, who have not been exposed that are going to be exposed. A second wave is coming and maybe a third wave. Let’s hope some kind of prophylactic will be found. Vivid vividbleau

JT, again, the World in Data results give context. The US, UK and France currently have doubled in 4 days. This has improved from doubling in 2 - 3 days. The battle rages but its trend is turning. I have noted that globally, we are now seeing peaking as I documented in the OP just above that you refuse to respond directly to. KF kairosfocus

JT, I am glad, in a sense, that you said that. While I carry no brief for our modern Constantine [NOT a compliment], your remarks sound rather like when a Pope in the '80's reacted to a Soviet promoted map of major distributions of US forces. Reagan provided another map, with what was left out. The first thing you left out, of course, is an impeachment capping off a three year campaign of accusations and abuse of intelligence powers. An impeachment that pivoted on star chamber tactics that I noticed how the major media were ever so silent about. And indeed, there are rumblings over another attempt. Do you wonder why the US is nearly fatally polarised? However, it seems we need to go back on what was happening at that time. The toxic polarisation, accusation and insinuation need a bit of correction For one, the disease was not yet generally seen by experts as a strong, direct threat. For instance, here is RCP on the experts [including Dr Fauci] at that time:

As predictions of the coronavirus’ impact have grown more dire and the White House has belatedly acknowledged the pathogen’s repercussions on the nation, the media have increasingly sought to portray the administration as out of touch with early warnings from medical experts about the coming storm. A closer look at the public statements of those very same experts during the early weeks of the outbreak reveals that the administration’s initial reassurances were largely aligned with the assessments of the medical community. Today Anthony Fauci is held up by the media as a national hero of the pandemic response and the only reason to listen to a White House coronavirus briefing. Yet, rewind the clock back to January and his public statements essentially mirrored those of the administration. On Jan. 21, he emphasized that it was unclear whether the virus could spread from person to person: “Is it a continual spread? Is it sustained? We're not quite sure yet.” A University of Minnesota expert offered that “this is one of those inflection moments in outbreak history where we have enough information to be very concerned, but not enough information to say this is going to be an international crisis.” In a Jan. 23 Journal of the American Medical Association podcast, Dr. Fauci repeatedly downplayed the virus’ potential impact on the U.S., noting that all five cases here were travelers from China. He also noted that due to limited testing in China, the number of infections was likely much higher than official counts, meaning that the death rate of the virus was likely much lower than feared. Asked whether the U.S. might contemplate city-wide shutdowns like those China was enacting at the time, Fauci replied, “There's no chance in the world that we could do that to Chicago or to New York or to San Francisco, but they're doing it. So, let's see what happens.” Most importantly, he added that it was still quite possible the Chinese could get control of the outbreak and prevent it from becoming a global issue, and that even if there were more cases in the U.S., “the CDC, as usual, is on top of things.” A day later, Dr. David Heymann, the former head of WHO’s response to SARS, offered that, unlike SARS, the coronavirus “looks like it doesn’t transmit through the air very easily and probably transmits through close contact,” in contrast with recent guidance that it can spread simply through breathing. The same day, Fauci emphasized that other coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS could not sustain person-to-person spread like the flu and that such viruses “maybe never will.” For its part, WHO noted that no person-to-person transmission of COVID-19 had been reported outside of China and that all of the deaths had been limited to that country. Fauci also took care to praise the Chinese government for “being quite transparent” and said he was “impressed” with officials’ cooperation. For its part, the CDC issued a press release on Jan. 24 asserting that “the immediate risk of this new virus to the American public is believed to be low” and instead asking that the public refrain from traveling to China and focus on the seasonal flu rather than the minimal risk of the coronavirus. At a congressional briefing that same day, in response to multiple questions about whether the CDC needed additional funding to combat the disease, Director Robert Redfield reassured senators that it had all of the funds it needed.

That already says much. However, let's look at timeline. First, China, the Epicentre -- which (astonishingly) was being perceived as forthright:

Dec. 30: Ai Fen, a top director at Wuhan Central Hospital, posts information on WeChat about the new virus. She was reprimanded for doing so and told not to spread information about it. Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang also shares information on WeChat about the new SARS-like virus. He is called in for questioning shortly afterward. Wuhan health commission notifies hospitals of a “pneumonia of unclear cause” and orders them to report any related information. Dec. 31:Wuhan health officials confirm 27 cases of illness and close a market they think is related to the virus’ spread. China tells the World Health Organization’s China office about the cases of an unknown illness. Jan. 1: Wuhan Public Security Bureau brings in for questioning eight doctors who had posted information about the illness on WeChat. An official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission orders labs, which had already determined that the novel virus was similar to SARS, to stop testing samples and to destroy existing samples. Jan. 2: Chinese researchers map the new coronavirus’ complete genetic information. This information is not made public until Jan. 9. Jan. 7: Xi Jinping becomes involved in the response. Jan. 9: China announces it has mapped the coronavirus genome. Jan. 11–17: Important prescheduled CCP meeting held in Wuhan. During that time, the Wuhan Health Commission insists there are no new cases. [--> it's not only religious services] Jan. 13: First coronavirus case reported in Thailand, the first known case outside China. Jan. 14: WHO announces Chinese authorities have seen “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.” Jan. 15: The patient who becomes the first confirmed U.S. case leaves Wuhan and arrives in the U.S., carrying the coronavirus. Jan. 18: The Wuhan Health Commission announces four new cases. Annual Wuhan Lunar New Year banquet. Tens of thousands of people gathered for a potluck. [--> it's not only religious services] Jan. 19: Beijing sends epidemiologists to Wuhan . . .

Here is the comparable timeline on US response:

Jan. 7: The CDC established a Wuhan virus incident management system . [Jan 15: CNBC reports, " the first U.S. COVID-19 patient landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Jan. 15" That brought the number of countries with cases to 6.] • Jan. 17: The CDC began implementing public health entry screening at the three U.S. airports that received the most travelers from Wuhan. • Jan. 20: Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, announced efforts to develop a vaccine. [Wiki notes: "The first known case in the United States of COVID-19 was confirmed in the state of Washington on January 20, 2020, in a 35-year-old man who had returned from Wuhan, China on January 15.[4] The White House Coronavirus Task Force was established on January 29.[2] On January 31, the Trump administration declared a public health emergency,[5] and placed travel restrictions on entry for travellers from China.[6]"] • Jan. 21: The CDC activated its emergency operations center to provide support to the coronavirus response. [Wiki notes, Jan 29, WH CV-19 task force set up] • Jan. 31: President Trump declared a public health emergency, announced Chinese travel restrictions, and suspended entry into the U.S. for foreign nationals at risk of transmitting the virus. [This is of course, the "racist" travel restriction. He also brought this up in his SOTU address] • Feb. 4: President Trump promised to “take all necessary steps” to protect Americans from the Wuhan virus in his SOTU. • Feb. 10: An advanced test for detecting Wuhan virus was submitted for FDA approval. • Feb. 11: The Department of Health and Human Services expanded a partnership with Janssen Research & Development to “expedite the development” of a Wuhan virus vaccine. • Feb. 24: The administration sent a letter to Congress requesting at least $2.5 billion to help combat the spread of the Wuhan virus. • Feb. 29: The administration announced a level 4 travel advisory to areas of Italy and South Korea, barred all travel to Iran, and barred the entry of foreign citizens who visited Iran in the last 14 days. • March 3: The CDC lifted federal restrictions on Wuhan virus testing to allow any American to be tested “subject to doctor’s orders.” • March 12: Travel restrictions imposed on the EU. • March 13: Mr. Trump announced public-private partnerships to open drive-through testing sites. March 16: Clinical trials begin on Wuhan vaccine. • March 18: President Trump announced a temporary closure of the U.S.-Canada border to non-essential traffic and invoked the Defense Production Act. • March 21: Advanced Wuhan test goes into production.

The reality is, with a highly contagious air-spreading disease not confirmed as such early on, once lodgements happen, breakouts are highly likely and will only stop if they are stamped on with effective treatment or vaccination or else when herd immunity kicks in. Lockdowns etc tend to slow it down but full lockdowns cannot be long sustained because of the economic and social havoc they wreak. (Note, I write this while under national 24 hr lockdown now scheduled to run for 3 weeks.) I find it interesting that with mounting evidence of a credible, low cost treatment on the table, the same folks decrying lack of early response want to delay deployment. Vaccines are maybe a year away. Lockdowns simply cannot be long sustained. I think we need to do some fairly serious re-thinking. KF kairosfocus

The US is currently getting 35,000 new cases per day. Jim Thibodeau

@61 ET:

Maybe now evos will understand that natural selection is not a biologically creative process.

Maybe. Just maybe. The less jihadist ones could start to see the pattern:

Now, Lynch is no creationist; he is an academic biologist who fails to find compelling evidence for natural selection, preferring instead to consider other models for evolution based on non-adaptive evolutionary processes. If Lynch is right about the lack of a firm evidentiary basis for natural selection, how do we account for the fact that natural selection has been—and continues to be—promoted as the most well-established scientific theory ever devised (or as the greatest single idea anyone has ever had, as Daniel Dennett calls it)? Is it possible that natural selection is more philosophical dogma than evidence-based science? https://www.luther.edu/religion/department/news/?story_id=588693

Truthfreedom

Trump had five MAGA rallies in five different states in January. If he had time to do that, he had time to do his job. If he wasn’t capable of doing his job, he should’ve resigned. “The buck stops here.” -Harry Truman Jim Thibodeau

@58 Kairosfocus:

... just as the epidemic was gathering steam to go global?

Es George was f***** his wife while the pandemic was gathering steam. :)

What I don’t understand is that the death rate associated with the flu is much greater than the caronavirus, yet we don’t close the borders because of it. EG

Nothing to see here. It's not an iceberg, people. Now move on. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/design-inference/the-spreading-of-corona-virus/ Truthfreedom

Maybe now evos will understand that natural selection is not a biologically creative process. I doubt it, but it could happen. ET

Capt. Brett Crozier is positive for COVID-19. Best wishes for a full recovery. Jim Thibodeau

Rhampton7, you cite three church leaders that appear to be behaving irresponsibly. What point are you trying to make? Are you suggesting some Christians are stupid and/or irresponsible? I don't think anyone will argue with that. Are you suggesting that Christians are uniquely stupid and/or irresponsible? If so, do you realize you are extrapolating to a conclusion about nearly 2 billion peopled based on a sample size of 3? Barry Arrington

RH7, you mean, the much lambasted and reviled Trump and Pence, the former impeached just as the epidemic was gathering steam to go global? Do you really understand what burned up social capital and destroyed credibility look like? There is no trust, there are serious gulfs in communication and perception, there are divided counsels, the voices that would be elders in the gates aren't there. And yes, there is a good amount of bad theology and some serious want of prudence on the part of too many church leaders, but that is also in a context of such a polarised and chaotic communication context that the sobering balance needed now isn't there. That's what the sort of low grade civil war I have warned about looks like. KF PS: Had it not been for miracles of guidance and healing in answer to prayer, likely I would not be here. kairosfocus

Sir, your wife is illusorily dead thanks to COVID-19. My illusory condolences. At least she has given you a child to help spreading your selfish genes. Pray Darw'. Truthfreedom

If reality is an illusion (evolutionarily speaking): Are death and suffering illusions too? Truthfreedom

King's Trail Cowboy Church in Whitewright is staying open and took off their front doors to welcome anyone at any time of day. "It was a packed house, you could hear the singing, you could hear everything from outside," said Whitewrite resident Ed Thayer. "they're just being so blatantly irresponsible and have no regard for the rest of this community." Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's executive order, GA-14, states that religious services in Texas are considered essential services and can remain open as long as they follow social distancing guidelines from President Trump and the CDC. Several of the church's own videos on youtube show service as normal, without following social distancing guidelines. "If something happens with that large of a group, it would overwhelm the healthcare system," said Amanda Ortez, spokesperson for the Grayson County Health Department. rhampton7

Maryville Baptist Church has stated on its website that Sunday school is scheduled at 10 a.m. with church service at 11 a.m. The church also plans to hold a youth led service Sunday night and morning worship on Easter Sunday. The church's Facebook page also shows choir members not social distancing. WDRB has a crew outside of the church. Two greeters are reportedly at the door as members, adults and kids, enter inside. Some are also shaking hands. On Friday, Gov. Beshear also reiterated the need for churches and other houses of worship to forego holding in-person services, following reports that some intended to continue hosting congregations. “If you are still holding mass gatherings, church or otherwise, you are spreading the coronavirus and you are likely causing the death of Kentuckians. It’s that clear,” rhampton7

However, the pastor at Center Arena Church told FOX 35 News that he runs a "healing ministry" and some of his parishioners need physical touch. "That's what God has called on me to do. I am not defiant. I am obeying God. For the well of people that are desperate at this time. I am abiding as best I can with the regulations," the pastor said. "Most of them that are complaining, don't come here. So, what I would say to them is mind your own business." rhampton7

Can’t blame the media when President Trump, VP Pence and a lot of Republican Governors have been telling us for weeks to stay home. rhampton7

RH7, it is sad that significant numbers of church leaders seem to be exposing people needlessly. However, ask yourself something on why they would so disregard the assertions and warnings in the media. The answer is going to come back, in key part, that the major media houses have destroyed their credibility through their naked ideological and partisan stridency. People tend not to trust liars and slanderers. In short, yet another sign of the consequences of foolishly burning up social capital to advance agendas through ruthless agit prop. We need to start asking, who has credibility to be heard? My immediate answer is, someone like a Franklyn Graham or maybe a Jerry Falwell Jr. Both of whom were just attacked in the media, one for using Samaritan's Purse [more usually seen in famine and war zones] to set up a small field hospital in NYC. The other, for trying to allow some students to shelter in place in his Uni campus. KF kairosfocus

JT, the tracking evidence I am seeing points to peaking now. It seems likely that HCQ and Z-Pac [with Zn supplements?] will be treatments of choice and that there will be 1/4 billion HCQ tabs by middle of the month. That's a US$20 per case treatment, many of the alternatives are in the US$ 1,000's. Ventilators will come along too and it is predictable that mobilised pharmaceuticals are going to crank out needed drugs. While for next 'flu season a wave is likely, by then there may even be a vaccine. In short, we are in a world war with SAR2, but it looks winnable here. KF kairosfocus

life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA…

Sorry SARS-CoV-2, you are an RNA virus. No purpose for you according to Dawkins the imbecile. Booo-hooo. :) Truthfreedom

To alleviate the suffering, let's read some words of atheist wisdom:

"The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant…" Stephen Hawking

The universe and life are pointless… In a YouTube video he states that evolution “says that there is no special purpose for your life, because it is a naturalistic philosophy. We have no more extrinsic purpose than a squirrel or an armadillo.” Jerry Coyne, the dim-witted biologist

Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life…life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA…life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.  Richard Dawkins

That Man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave. . . Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built. Bertrand Russell

“Man is a useless passion. It is meaningless that we live and it is meaningless that we die.” Jean-Paul Sartre

Truthfreedom

As terrible as this virus is, it’s probably going to dip in the summer, and then come roaring back in the fall, the experts say. Jim Thibodeau

The four stages of Covid-19 transmission Stage 1 is the first appearance of the disease through people with a travel history, with everyone contained, their sources traced, and no local spread from those affected. The number of those infected would be quite low at this stage. Stage 2 is local transmission, when those who were infected and have a travel history spread the virus to close friends or family. At this stage, every person who came in contact with the infected can be traced and isolated. Stage 3 is community transmission, when infections happen in public and a source for the virus cannot be traced. At this stage, large geographical lockdowns become important as random members of the community start developing the disease. Stage 4 is when the disease actually becomes an epidemic in a country, such as it was in China, with large numbers of infections and a growing number of deaths with no end in sight. It is then considered to be endemic or now prevalent in the region. rhampton7

R7

April 4, 2020 at 6:53 pm Now, multiple sources are reporting deepening shortages of the drugs needed to help ventilate patients and keep them sedated.

Surely they could ask Canada and Germany to provide the US with some of these drugs. Ed George

Israel Police and the IDF are gearing up to enact military-enforced closures on more haredi (ultra-Orthodox) cities and neighborhoods, at the request of the Health Ministry. The move comes just days after the government approved such a closure on Bnei Brak, a haredi city of 200,000, and as the number of cases of coronavirus infection in Israel surged to 7,851. Among the places under discussion are Elad, Modi’in Illit, Migdal Ha’emek and several haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh. Despite the latest restrictions, one resident who tested positive for coronavirus was found on Thursday night staying at Bnei Brak’s Ponevezh Yeshiva with another 16 men in order to pray. Police intervened. rhampton7

More than 40 Nebraska doctors are calling on the state's governor, Pete Ricketts (R), to implement stricter social-distancing requirements that "force people to stay at home" amid the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The physicians warn that novel coronavirus has already begun to strain the capacity of Grand Island's health system. They also caution that the number of people infected with the disease could be much higher in their community than the official tally due to a lack of testing. They wrote that there were 47 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Hall County, where Grand Island is located, as of Saturday morning, up from three just last week. Though because of a lack of testing, Steinke and Crockett warn that thousands could be infected with the virus without knowing it. rhampton7

Life Tabernacle Church pastor Tony Spell said he was ignoring advice from local officials to not host the service because it would endanger the health of his followers. Asked whether he planned to go forward despite warnings, the pastor replied, “This morning, yes, sir, 10:00 AM. We will actually run our buses. We have 27 buses that we cover in a 50-mile radius of our city. We bring people into the house of God, feed them natural food and spiritual food and then we go right back into our respective places. It takes us about eight hours to run into service on Sunday morning and then we come back in tonight.” “Last Sunday we had 1,800 in attendance. This Sunday with the fear that’s been propagated into the hearts of my people, it may have had an adverse effect with more people than last week,” the pastor replied. rhampton7

According to Dr Vikas Maurya, HOD, Pulmonology and Senior Consultant (Sleep Medicine and Chest), Fortis Hospital Shalimar Bagh, patients who are symptomatic can have reduced lung capacity after recovering. "As it's a novel virus, we don't know how long it will stay... but with experience with other respiratory viruses like H1N1, it may be there for few weeks to few months or few years depending on the degree of lung involvement and whether patient required ventilator or not," Maurya told IANS. Those corona-patients whose lungs were affected, post recovery, they may face problem in doing earlier routine or simple cardio exercises like running, jogging or brisk walking. rhampton7

Now, multiple sources are reporting deepening shortages of the drugs needed to help ventilate patients and keep them sedated. Shortages are already evident for albuterol; neuromuscular blockers and sedatives, including fentanyl, midazolam, and propofol; and vasopressors for septic shock, even as orders increase exponentially. Esther Choo, MD, MPH, an emergency physician at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, tweeted: "Those ventilators can't really be used without a similarly vast supply of coupled medications to get people *on* the vents — and keep them on humanely. Hospitals are already experiencing shortages, before we even hit disease apex." rhampton7

That's very inconvenient when the feds won't let the states tap into "their stockpile". daveS

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear says his administration is doing everything it can to prepare hospitals to be inundated with cases of COVID-19, but nearly every time the state has placed an order for medical protective gear, the federal government has prevented its transfer. “Our biggest problem is that just about every single order that we have our there for PPE, we get a call right when it’s supposed to be shipped and it’s typically the federal government has bought it,” Beshear said during a Saturday press conference. “It’s very hard to buy things when the federal government is there and anytime they want to buy it, they get it first.” rhampton7

It's the 21st century. Technology can bring the service to you. ET

A Florida county has backed off enforcing a “safer-at-home” policy forbidding religious services during the coronavirus pandemic after the governor declared such activities as “essential business.” Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne was arrested Monday after dozens of people packed into his church — violating a six-foot social distancing rule encouraged by the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and mandated by Hillsborough County. rhampton7

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and as significant religious holidays approach in the coming weeks, Governor Tom Wolf and religious leaders from across the commonwealth are encouraging alternative forms of faith gatherings. Updated guidance notes that while nothing in the stay-at-home order should affect the operation of religious institutions, “Religious leaders are encouraged to find alternatives to in-person gatherings and to avoid endangering their congregants. Individuals should not gather in religious buildings or homes for services or celebrations until the stay-at-home order is lifted.” rhampton7

Korea: virus infections due to cluster transmissions have significantly dropped -- by 70 percent when comparing the number of cases in the 11 days before and 11 days after the intensive campaign began on March 22. Some modest clusters of the virus across the country have been contained enough to avoid widespread further transmission, such as at Manmin Central Church, located in southwestern Seoul’s Guro-gu. So far, 45 cases have been reported among followers of the church. But the number could have been much higher if it had not switched its regular services -- where some 4,000 to 5,000 members gather -- into online services. rhampton7

Depend on? No. Expect them to? Yes. Robert Kraft did it. Mark Cuban is paying all of his employees even though they ain't working. So, yes, I absolutely expect the rich to step up. If they don't then we release the zombies on their properties. ET

Do you really want to depend on billionaires swooping in with their jets to supply us with critical equipment? It seems like there should be a more rational way to allocate these resources equitably. daveS

Gordon Sinclair - The Americans (A Canadian's Opinion) Yeah, baby ET

Yes, daves. If we have to import something that means we don't have enough for our own use. And that means we shouldn't be exporting it. Germany has billionaires. They can negotiate with China. China pretty much cleaned out the supply houses all over the world to support their needs. Now it seems they have a surplus. ET

ET,

Two shipments of protective masks, one scheduled to arrive in Germany, the other in Canada, were diverted to the United States this week under dubious circumstances after the orders had already departed for their destinations. German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel reported 400,000 respiratory masks intended for German police officers were redirected to the US, which is dealing the world's largest outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The delivery from mask manufacturer 3M was shipped from China and reloaded in Bangkok before it was to be transported to Germany by air freight. However, in Bangkok, the shipment was suddenly "redirected" to the US, Berlin police confirmed.

Should the US do this? To masks already en route to Europe? Perhaps Germany will think twice when we ask for their support in the future. daveS

The US President is looking out for the USA. He knows that the USA can manufacture the goods we get from the other countries- only 5 of which are prominent trade partners- Canada, Mexico, Japan, Germany and China. I am not sure about raw materials, but we do have the capability to replace foreign goods with our own. China just sold 1.2 million N95 masks to a Massachusetts billionaire. We have to import them. So it doesn't make sense to export what we have. If we can import them so can other countries. Your inability to think is appalling. ET

DaveS

The apparent interception by the US of masks/supplies in transit to our European allies could come back to bite us.

I don’t think there is any question about it. The US imports large quantities of drugs from other countries, drugs that are now in short supply because of the pandemic. If these countries block sales of these drugs to the US in retaliation, it will make things worse. As well, US manufacturers rely on a global supply chain for the production of many things, including PPE and medical equipment. If those supplies are cut off, US production of these items will decline. In the states that border on Canada, a significant number of nurses and other health professionals cross the border from Canada to the US to work. If this was cut off, there would be an impact on some communities close to the border. What Trump doesn’t realize is that his war is against a virus, not against other countries. Ed George

The NE Patriots' owner, Robert Kraft, just sent the Patriots' jet over to China and picked up 1.2 million N95 masks from China. I am sure that Canada has billionaires that could do the same. Why haven't they? Europe also has billionaires. What are they waiting for? ET

The apparent interception by the US of masks/supplies in transit to our European allies could come back to bite us. daveS

KF

JVL, a strategic move, and a lesson if we will heed it. KF

To be fair, China has since sent plane loads of PPE to Canada. I suspect the lesson we will learn from Trump’s recent action is to pass legislation that all public health PPE will have to be purchased from a local (not foreign owned) company. Ed George

KF, Yes, and it brings a sense of unity, as people around the world are dealing with lockdown. It's a sad time, but normal life still continues. We can enjoy music and other things, we just have to stay indoors a bit more and take precautions. daveS

DS, while I am utterly unmusical, that does seem to be a contribution. I also see where a Spanish actress has gone back into nursing. KF kairosfocus

One silver lining of all this is all the musicians, at all levels, who are recording and sharing music while on "lockdown". For example, Matthew McAllister, a brilliant Scottish guitarist, is putting up videos daily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xNIylaXwPk daveS

BobRyan, I live in a small rural town without much/any gang activity or crime, for that matter. Our friends are going out as little as possible and maintaining physical separation. My wife's church suspended in-person services several weeks ago (churches were contacted by the local health dept very early so they were able to plan for this) and they are encouraging members to take precautions against the spread of the virus. Traffic is even lighter than usual. My neighbor, an elderly woman who lost her husband last year, is visited by her son frequently, but he doesn't enter her house and they stay probably 15 to 20 feet apart. Just a few observations. I'm not saying everyone is taking such measures, but we largely are, in a population that generally doesn't like being told what to do by the government. daveS

JVL, a strategic move, and a lesson if we will heed it. KF kairosfocus

Before they publicly acknowledged the severity of the novel coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese government sent instructions to two Chinese real estate development companies in Australia. The order: buy up all of the medical “personal protective equipment” they can and immediately ship them to China. Greenland Group bragged in their newsletter about shipping over 3 million masks, 700,000 protective gowns, and 500,000 pairs of gloves. Risland Australia bragged on LinkedIn that a “chartered plane with 90 tons of medical supplies, including 100,000 most needed protective coveralls and 900,000 pairs of medical gloves, has successfully departed from Sydney and arrived in Wuhan.” Greenland said it also sourced bulk supplies of thermometers, antibacterial wipes, and Panadol (acetaminophen), and also loaded up on PPEs in Canada, Turkey, and other countries — all of which now have a critical shortage. China analyst Richard McGregor says it’s not surprising the companies would “publicize their patriotism,” because Chinese “real estate companies are particularly exposed to government whims, as all land is owned by the state.” (MS/Sydney Morning Herald) JVL

BR, yes, those are all valid but it is clear that distancing measures as simple as cloth facemasks are reducing risk of propagation. KF kairosfocus

kairosfocus @ 13 Most of the United States is not heavily populated. You have ranches, farms, people who live in mountains, deserts, swamps, and a whole host of other regions where the nearest neighbors already bring distance. The places where distance cannot be done effectively due to building up instead of out, are the cities. Particularly the inner-cities, which is where the majority of gang activity takes place. Gangs are ignoring everything and continuing to do what they have been doing, which cannot be done with space between them. Cities are also the places where the law abiding cannot avoid neighbors. Laundry still needs to get done, food and medicine still need to be purchased, some people still have a job they have to go to. Not everyone who is essential can work from home. They are living in tight quarters and cannot avoid each other. It is difficult to put space between people in narrow halls and small rooms used for things like laundry. Most people are not going to leave their laundry unattended, since they do not wish to come back to find their clothes have been stolen. BobRyan

BO'H: Yes, where each country (or community!) is, differs. Hence the World in Data tracking of cases since 100 and deaths since 5. That pattern, plotted log-lin, is showing the slowing, as is the lengthening of time to double to current level. Notice, that is country by country. My onward concern is of course if the peak becomes a plateau on fresh cases rather than diving to zero. Yes, varying testing regimes and the like (such as doubts on China) point to difficulties, but we are operating on a roughly right rather than precisely wrong principle here. The trends are pointing to peaking. Flattening due to containment is a sign that an intervention is actually working, not a defect. However, if that only leads to a plateau or fails to break the transmission chain, presence of a semi-permanent lodgement implies onward possibilities of breakouts thus secondary waves. That is actually a general expectation. Such is why we desperately need effective treatments and if we can get it fast track effective vaccinations. Just maybe, very mild strains may be spreading and giving us herd immunity on the cheap. (Is that part of what accounts for mild cases?) KF kairosfocus

That looks like a peaking, certainly it is not exponential surging in new cases.

There are a few issues here: 1. It's global, and the progress of the epidemic is different in different countries. So what's going on in these graphs might not say a great deal about what will happen in your country or state. In Europe, it definitely looks like Italy's curve is flattening, but not the UK's (for example). I wouldn't want to interpret this as a single population. If, for example, it takes off in Africa we could see a second peak. 2. Some of the flattening will be because of the introduction of containment measures. 3. Differing testing regimes make these plots more difficult to interpret, although I guess that the net effect is optimistic: testing is being ramped up, so some of the increase may be because of that (OTOH the populations being tested now have a smaller fraction who are infected). Bob O'H

BR, while your point is well taken, social distancing is not an all or none measure. The issue is to sufficiently reduce social interaction and contact that the reproduction chain begins to die out in an artificially induced saturation. This first buys time by flattening the surge of new cases, keeping facilities from being overwhelmed [which spikes death rates]. Tie in effective treatments and the partition between deaths and recoveries for serious cases (the ones that are the focus of efforts) begins to shift in favour of recovery. If a vaccination can be mobilised rapidly (and there are a few straws in the wind) then that allows putting in place artificial herd immunity. Vaccination is the only proved approach that is able to extirpate infectious diseases in the wild, or even globally eliminate, e.g. smallpox. KF kairosfocus

daveS @ 2 If you really believe Americans are following distancing and staying at home, then you have not been paying attention. Gang activity has not stopped in a single city. The shootings continue and it is not exactly a duel being used to shoot each other and whoever happens to get shot in the process. If there is a decline in anything, it will not be as a result of anything the government has mandated. We should see a stark increase SARS 2 cases in every city where distance is not possible. People live in apartments and unable to keep from bumping in to each other in the halls. They still have to leave to take care of laundry and buy food. Cities have a population problem and that means there can be no social distance. Criminals are breaking into stores that are considered non-essential. They are not working alone, since someone needs to drive the car. Just because the news is refraining from bringing this up, does not mean it does not happen. BobRyan

Folks, in the OP there is some data suggesting rates of change in what is already a first derivative of the cumulative effect functions. That data is reflected in the log-linear cumulative effect functions. It seems to me that we are beginning to see the breakout from exponential growth and resultant peaking. That is highly suggestive for this wave, and that the interventions being taken are having some positive effect. KF PS: Of course, a second wave may be coming. kairosfocus

@8 Ed George

In Canada over 50% of the deaths have been in seniors homes.

'Survival of the fittest' at its best. Go complain Darwin. :) Truthfreedom

Forgive the US President for thinking of the USA first. :roll: ET

Even though the young can die from this, by far the greatest risk is the seniors. In Canada over 50% of the deaths have been in seniors homes. Part of the problem is that staff in seniors homes didn't have sufficient PPE to prevent transfer from staff to the guests. And, thanks to Trump forbidding 3M from selling PPE to Canada, the risk will not be lower any time soon. Sadly, this act will be bad for 3M in the long run as countries realize that they cannot rely on international supply chains for health care materials, and pass laws that they must be manufactured at home. Ed George

Jim T:

Not knowing how to use computers is literally going to kill some people.

Ignorance will tend to do that. ET

JT, Yeah, I ran into a coworker getting some supplies yesterday. He's late 70's, with every imaginable risk factor. He's also a very nice sociable guy and was not keeping 6' of distance from others, to say the least, daveS

Folks, let's look at the data i/l/o the second rate of change. KF kairosfocus

@DaveS according to a friend elderly people who refuse to go digital are still coming to his store to pay bills with checks. Not knowing how to use computers is literally going to kill some people. Jim Thibodeau

DS, that's good. The picture in the tracking graphs, however is global. KF kairosfocus

People in the USA seem to obeying the stay at home and distancing orders better than I had anticipated. I think some of the governors have done a good job getting people to take the pandemic seriously without panicking them. daveS

Tracking Covid-19 Apr 3 . . . are we peaking (for this wave)? kairosfocus