outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Tokyo is going into lockdown but only a the weekend and only if people feel like it.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200325/p2g/00m/0na/132000c

NYT:

As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in New York continued to grow — reaching more than 30,000 — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Wednesday that there were early signs that the state’s stringent restrictions on social gatherings could be slowing the virus’s spread.

In a briefing on Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo said there were indications that social distancing measures put in place in New York appeared to be helping — but that more needed to be done. “The evidence suggests that the density control measures may be working,” he said.

On Sunday, for example, the state’s projections showed hospitalizations doubling every two days. By Tuesday, the estimates showed hospitalizations doubling every 4.7 days, he said — adding the caveat that such a projection was “almost too good to be true.”

He cited encouraging news from Westchester County, where the rate of infection has slowed. “We have dramatically slowed what was an exponential rate of increase,” Mr. Cuomo said. “That was the hottest cluster in the United States of America. We closed the schools, we closed gatherings, we brought in testing, and we have dramatically slowed the increase.”

New York State, which has tested more people than any other state, now has 30,811 confirmed cases, an increase of more than 5,000 since Tuesday morning. New York City has 17,856 confirmed cases.

But Mr. Cuomo said that more needed to be done, particularly to make it easier to maintain social distancing in New York City, the most densely populated major city in the United States....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/world/coronavirus-updates-maps-usa-world.html

Koike said Monday that like other major cities in the world, Tokyo could go into lockdown if WHEN all steps fail to slow the spread of the virus.

ireland have redesigned the conditions required in order for you to qualify for testing, you now need to be verified as displaying two symptoms (fever + one from coughing/shortness of breath)

seems a sensible step given limited tests and long delays for testing/results, at a certain stage confirming people have this is useless and you move to focus on who needs triaging into hospital/ICU

Yeah, my sister has had to reapply after applying last week - by the time they get the test it'll be useless though.

daughter-in-law's 20-year-old niece is in critical ICU with double pneumonia and probably has this :(

Wishing her the best!

thanks, AF

damn, good luck to her

Good luck to her.

oh no sleeve, i wish her a swift recovery

fingers crossed sleeve

Some good news in Italy - ventilators hacked together from scuba gear, following on from a project to repair broken ventilators.

https://dgiluz.wordpress.com/2020/03/23/its-working/

And here’s the whole toolkit on how to do it

https://www.isinnova.it/easy-covid19-eng/

social distancing is currently *not* happening in my clinic (where we're doing telehealth) and it's realllly starting to bug me out

is there an armchair epidemiologist here who can attempt to explain infective probability relative to the number of transmitted virions?

i.e. if one were to inhale a thousand virions as opposed to a hundred (or in whatever volume they ordinarily transmit) is one then theoretically 10x more vulnerable?

the grim statistic i want to know is how many ppl have gotten it *despite* practicing social isolation (like, say, limited to going to the store or w/e)

xp or: is there a certain threshold of "trace" bacteria beneath which infection is unlikely?

I honestly think most people probably have it at this point. I brought up the loss of taste/smell thing and apparently one of my co-workers hasn’t been able to smell or taste anything for three weeks but has no other symptoms. Now let’s just pretend she def has it - that would be three weeks of commuting, working, etc. how many people could you already have transmitted it to??

it's definitely not "most people"

Ok maybe not most but I think whole lot more than people realize. I think they will find that there’s a high percentage of carriers who are symptomatic or have symptoms that they don’t realizes are COVID related. This now makes three people I know who have completely lost their ability to smell and taste over the past month.

the grim statistic i want to know is how many ppl have gotten it *despite* practicing social isolation

When you find out let us know, too, will ya?

counterpoint: we should be fine by easter, a perfect day

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, March 25, 2020 5:18 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

counterpoint: no we are the best

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, March 25, 2020 5:18 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

def going to be interesting to see how don spins things if this is the trajectory, because he's always "all about the numbers"

probably going to say that the reduced price of oil is all his doing

xp I was going to say "let us know too, will ya, but if it's a scary big number then write it in code somewhere where I don't have to scare myself"

but I guess if it's that high a number at least we can all just go to the damn shop and stop taking circuitous routes all over the place looking nervously round every corner

best wishes to your family sleeve

Brilliant ENBB!

oh, yes, sorry - good luck to your family, sleeve

and stay safe, ENBB

thx all and no worries if you missed it b4 posting, thread moves fast. I have never met the niece but the family is wonderful and they are very concerned. another stark reminder that youth does not confer immunity.

yes, and that not everything merely short of dying is a picnic for anyone contracting it

that's what plays on my mind as a historical pneumoniac

update!

Apparently her test came back negative for Covid-19 🙏 However she is exhibiting all of the symptoms and the tests are supposedly not 100% accurate. Either way, she is not out of the woods yet. She is on a ventilator and the doctors are hoping she will begin to make progress with that and other treatments. She’s fighting. Thank you all for your love and positive energy

wishing all good things

best wishes to her and her family whatever it turns out to be

Not for the first time The Australian border force is trying to get people killed

These are concerning reports and images. The Government - specifically @PeterDutton_MP - needs to explain what is going on here, what protocols are in place at airports, and what directions are being given to @AusBorderForce #COVID19Aus https://t.co/XtDClMzker

— Kristina Keneally (@KKeneally) March 25, 2020

Seoul is 60% denser than New York and it has 334 cases. NYC alone has more cases than all of S Korea. https://t.co/LE3l52bxhM

— T.K. of AAK! (@AskAKorean) March 24, 2020

Of course you lie all the time but this one of the most violent and destructive lies you’ve ever told. https://t.co/tWNcAOfpIT

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) March 25, 2020

scare quotes around testing seem significant

have to wonder (but probably shouldn't) if there are 8 or 10 senators ruing their impeachment votes rn

probably not!

8 or 10 senators ruing their impeachment votes rn

that is not how their minds work. they are ready to hop on the trump train or off it, depending on how their own state is trending, plus how soon they are up for re-election. they do not currently think they will die of this or anyone close to them. only when it hits close to home will they know the score, and by then it will be too late to flip the script.

probably not!

This now makes three people I know who have completely lost their ability to smell and taste over the past month.

Now I am imagining an end of the crisis in which restaurants can reopen, but no one has a sense of taste anymore.

all the better for some restaurants then

brb, gotta buy some soylent stock.

wow oxo really branched out huh

starting tomorrow night the most populated communes in santiago, chile are under full 7 day renewable quarantine , where you need a permit ( i think you can get online) to leave your house to go to the market/pharmacy/doctor.

and in other news Bolsonaro is very strong. he was an athlete.

Nice tune, lack of effective social distancing in the control booth.

https://youtu.be/PUHrck2g7Ic

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/

Great, really thorough, piece (focuses on the US but lots of interesting material on vaccine development)

when I took the garbage down last night, sense of smell still intact

xpost That was a really good piece, but unless I missed it (entirely possible!) it doesn't stress the importance of testing people to see if *they already had it.* If 80% of people have mild to no symptoms, then it stands to reason that some huge number of people are shut inside for no reason, which makes their hypothetical immunity moot. Once people can be assured not that they don't have it but that they *had* it and are now likely ok (assuming this is the case, and there's no reason to assume otherwise) they can get out and about, do the shopping, go back to work, help others and so on. And as people confirm they've had it, that number of back to normal folks will grow bigger and bigger. Not herd immunity, per se, but an increasingly large herd that is immune, not worried about themselves, not taxing medical services, and so on.