outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

good luck usa

whoops

In Iran it is being reported that the deputy health minister has tested positive for coronavirus. According to the semi-official news agency ILNA, the spokesman for Iran’s health ministry confirmed in an interview with state television that Deputy Minister Iraj Harirchi has been infected and is now under quarantine.

I heard now even the coronavirus has coronavirus

I recall thinking a while back 'jesus, what if the ebola scare had happened while Trump was in office?'. I guess we're going to basically find out, huh.

ebola has a 50% mortality rate, compared with 1-2% for this thing, so not exactly

Yeah, and the thing is, as far as I can tell, in the end it's still just basically the flu. And the flu already kills millions each year. It's a far cry from ebola, which has you, like, bleeding from your eyes, ears and nose, among other symptoms.

I just meant more in terms of having an infrastructure capable of containing or limiting an epidemic.

Transmits a lot easier than Ebola (iirc isn’t there something about diseases that transmit easily being less deadly and vice versa? Where you get the worst possible mix is like a flu pandemic which transmits fast and hits hard).

Don’t all the asymptomatic and low-key infections suggest most people infected are experiencing mild cases?

good luck usa #26,974

We're so screwed pic.twitter.com/d19VvaLkHe

— Yakov "militarize the IRS" Feygin (@BuddyYakov) February 24, 2020

For the U.S., it’s not if but when, the C.D.C. says.

Americans should brace for the likelihood that the coronavirus will spread to communities in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday.

“It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

She said that public health officials have no idea whether spread of the disease to the United States would be mild or severe, but that Americans should be ready for a significant disruption to their daily lives.

“We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad,” Dr. Messonnier said.

that link tracer posted above is recommended (https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/)

In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent, the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced.

Public health advocates have been ringing alarm bells to no avail.Public health advocates have been ringing alarm bells to no avail. Klain has been warning for two years that the United States was in grave danger should a pandemic emerge.

...etc etc etc etc

btw, how is this going to kill me -- dehydration? fever? pneumonia?

Pneumonia, I think.

Poll

prob won't kill you also

no buboes, no pox, no credibility

I just got a pneumonia vaccine, will that save me?

nm, nothing to worry about

"We have contained this, I won't say airtight but pretty close to airtight." -- Kudlow, on @CNBC now.#COVID19

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) February 25, 2020

I am prepared for the expectation that this might be bad

it's kind of crazy that they aren't even testing for more in the US but i guess deductibles...

man, kudlow is dumb as rocks if he thinks we're containing this. who is he even listening to?

"We have contained this, I won't say airtight but pretty close to airtight."

I'm picturing him saying this while holding some sort of vacuum-sealed viral containment device that has sprung a leak and is hissing directly into his right eye.

kudlow's just trying to head off further panic on wall street. priorities!

who is he even listening to?

His associates, who are all Trump's "best people", who keep telling each other that the IMPORTANT THING in a situation like this is to avoid a PUBLIC PANIC, because that might cause stocks to fall and that would be BAD FOR THE ELECTION.

tbh i might be ready for the GMU professor's program of forced infection -- could stand to lose some weight, wouldn't mind some time off work, don't particularly care about living or dying

lol "airtight"

if i get coronavirus before i leave I am going to tell everyone I have cabernetmono.

My cold-bloodedly practical MD mom said the one good thing about it spreading is that it will also spread immunity.

Seems there’s a decent chance this could be Trump’s Katrina. Let’s hope for all our sakes it isn’t.

heh, was just musing along similar lines in the democratic primary thread

i think there's a very good chance it will be like a slow motion katrina for trump. they are so, so incompetent. incompetence + budget slashing + antigovernment (in a situation which begs for governmental leadership) + cynical motive to downplay severity for political reasons

your cold-bloodedly practical MD mom otm. the biggest reason why this is more dangerous than the flu is that roughly 0% of the world's population has an acquired immunity from it. but, practically speaking, acquiring that immunity from a vaccine would be the ideal method.

Barring that: coronavirus parties!

My cold-bloodedly practical MD mom said the one good thing about it spreading is that it will also spread immunity.

what makes you think that people might be getting reinfected? is there a source for that?

Apparently it's possible, because no one knows how long immunity lasts. Whooping cough, chickenpox ... a lot of people are vulnerable to things they've been vaccinated against because vaccines wear off eventually.

True, plus always a possibility the infection didn’t fully heal, like those colds that hang around for ages. Don’t say this thing doesn’t have its advantages though; just managed to dissuade a man with a horrendous-looking burrito from sitting beside me because I happened to be blowing my nose at the time.

seems like a mighty short immunity cycle if the virus was discovered only a few months ago and most known cases occurred in the past two months.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vaccine/607000/

Lipsitch predicts that, within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But, he clarifies emphatically, this does not mean that all will have severe illnesses. “It’s likely that many will have mild disease, or may be asymptomatic,” he said. As with influenza, which is often life-threatening to people with chronic health conditions and of older age, most cases pass without medical care. (Overall, around 14 percent of people with influenza have no symptoms.)

Lipsitch is far from alone in his belief that this virus will continue to spread widely. The emerging consensus among epidemiologists is that the most likely outcome of this outbreak is a new seasonal disease—a fifth “endemic” coronavirus. With the other four, people are not known to develop long-lasting immunity. If this one follows suit, and if the disease continues to be as severe as it is now, “cold and flu season” could become “cold and flu and COVID-19 season.”

The emerging consensus among epidemiologists is that the most likely outcome...

^ that makes more sense than the idea that people are already getting reinfected.

If coronavirus is indeed a "seasonal disease", does it not stand to reason that if we can contain it until mid-spring, infection rates will begin to drop and we can buy time to develop vaccines?

When I had so-called Asian flu in 2003 I had a relapse a month later and got it even worse. Either that or it went dormant or something. Maybe the first infection messed up my immune system, making me more susceptible? Anyway, re-infection is a thing, not trying to scare anyone or anything.

yeah, I always think that you are more likely to get things once your immune system is so weakened.

good thing I use an immunosuppressive drug for a chronic condition!

xpost did you get tested and was it confirmed to be the same strain? how did you know it was the same thing? (not saying it wasn't)

It's common for viral pneumonias to be followed weeks later by bacterial pneumonias (like Streptococcus), that thrive in the aftermath of lung damage.

Anyway, hand washing is always a good idea. But for perspective, over the 2018-2019 U.S. flu season there were apparently an estimated 42.9 *million* cases, nearly 650,000 hospitalizations, and maybe 60,000 deaths. That's the boring ol' flu, that's only the U.S., that's just last year. Tbf that's with some semblance of a vaccine, but still, people get sick all the time.

If coronavirus is indeed a "seasonal disease", does it not stand to reason that if we can contain it until mid-spring, infection rates will begin to drop and we can buy time to develop vaccines?

the article also goes into why that's easier said than done

i actually am not worried about the illness. It's more what happens when shit gets real if they have to start quarantining more places.

sounds sensible