Coronavirus: How dangerous a threat?

[GVFTA]

Duke U, Kent State, Ohio State have all said all classes on line.

Also San Fransisco/San Jose area of California are allowing games to go on without fans. The state of Ohio has said games may go on but no fans. Sounds like Washington (state) is saying no games at all. Also think the Pac 10 and one other conference tournament are going to be played without fans. On the other hand, NC is allowing the ACC Tournament is going on with fans.

NCAA just announced all tournament games will be played without fans! Not sure if that means conference tourneys also.

 

[tobydawq]

Denmark closing schools, prohibiting (sort of) gatherings of more than 100 people.

 

[Koronin]

NCAA just announced all tournament games will be played without fans! Not sure if that means conference tourneys also.

I just saw that as well. No idea. ACC and the Big East have games at 7 tonight, so I guess we'll known if the NCAA means just NCAA Tournament games or if it includes conference games.

Also I heard that Seattle, Washington is closing all schools.

 

[GVFTA]

I just saw that as well. No idea. ACC and the Big East have games at 7 tonight, so I guess we'll known if the NCAA means just NCAA Tournament games or if it includes conference games.

Also I heard that Seattle, Washington is closing all schools.

We only have a handful of confirmed classes here in Colorado but I think we are about to see some very serious restrictions placed on us out of caution. 48 hours ago I thought that was crazy, but I'm on board now. As long as they let me out on my bike and into the back country on my skis, I'll deal with it.

 

[Koronin]

We only have a handful of confirmed classes here in Colorado but I think we are about to see some very serious restrictions placed on us out of caution. 48 hours ago I thought that was crazy, but I'm on board now. As long as they let me out on my bike and into the back country on my skis, I'll deal with it.

It appears that no one is restricting people from leaving their home (unless they are sick). Just restricting gathers over a certain number of people. So hopefully that means we'll still be able to out and ride

 

[BullsFan22]

So pretty soon nobody around the world will be allowed to step out of their home?

 

[GVFTA]

So pretty soon nobody around the world will be allowed to step out of their home?

Not that drastic but hopefully nobody will be allowed to come visit Boulder. I might be able to handle it for one more summer.

 

[movingtarget]

Bali has it's first fatality and French Polynesia have confirmed their first verified case. Many countries have less than 10 deaths so far.

 

[Nirvana]

They made even stricter the measures here, in the last two days wasn't possible to move from a town to another except for work but was still possible to go out for a walk within the town borders. From tomorrow you literally can't go out your home unless you have to go to work (but everything not essential is shut down and only a few have to work) or you have undelayable urgent needs, so basically you can only go out to buy food.

 

[Archibald]

so with all these lock-downs and closures, just what is the criteria for re-opening?
considering the last I saw of a viable vaccine being about 18months away, just how long are the predictions?

 

[Nirvana]

Looking at the data, almost 200 deaths today and more than 200 more in intensive care, that's really huge considering that in Lombardia it's saturated so are all in other regions and with over 1.000 in total means more than 20% of the whole nation intensive care places used.

*73.753 tests done.
*12.462 total cases (7.280 Lombardia, 1.739 Emilia, 1.023 Veneto).
*10.590 infected at the moment (5.763 Lombardia, 1.588 Emilia).
*1.045 recovered (900 Lombardia).
*1.028 in intensive care at the moment.
*827 deaths (617 Lombardia, 113 Emilia).



For who is interested the detailed table is back, ridiculous how much (well, how less) they are testing in Sudtirol and Vallée...

http://www.salute.gov.it/imgs/C_17_pagineAree_5351_6_file.pdf

 

[Koronin]

so with all these lock-downs and closures, just what is the criteria for re-opening?
considering the last I saw of a viable vaccine being about 18months away, just how long are the predictions?

I've heard a few people (one yesterday was on (CNBC) saying that treatments are a few months away, so I suspect getting a treatment to the market will help. I've heard vaccines are 12 to 18 months away.


Nirvana, thank you for posting the number.

 

[yaco]

Some Asian countries have already started aggressive treatments of combination drugs that were used for SaRS and AIDS cases which seems to be why there is a a comparative lower number of deaths.

 

[Koronin]

Some Asian countries have already started aggressive treatments of combination drugs that were used for SaRS and AIDS cases which seems to be why there is a a comparative lower number of deaths.

Hopefully that means that there is treatment for it and that a treatment for this specifically will be sooner as they maybe/hopefully have a starting point for one.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I heard a rather shocking report today, I'll just copy and paste, plus here's the link to the article:

"Numbers released from the University of Nebraska Medical Center estimate nearly 96 million Americans could become infected with COVID-19, resulting in roughly 480,000 deaths."

Granted, this is just one source, but this is one of the first time I saw some solid numbers and it's alarming to me.

 

[Jagartrott]

So, the USA is closing its borders to Europe, except for people from the UK (who appear not to be affected - or what's the logic). It's already there guys, probably as much as in Europe - you just haven't done much testing.

 

[RedheadDane]

Personally, it's not so much getting sick I'm worried about - though I am worried about accidentally infecting someone who's not so well "equiped" to handle it - it's not being able to get food!

 

[PeterB]

I heard a rather shocking report today, I'll just copy and paste, plus here's the link to the article:

"Numbers released from the University of Nebraska Medical Center estimate nearly 96 million Americans could become infected with COVID-19, resulting in roughly 480,000 deaths."

Granted, this is just one source, but this is one of the first time I saw some solid numbers and it's alarming to me.

Well, it is possible that significant percentage of the population will sooner or later contract the virus, provided there are currently no means of protection other than not exposing yourself to outside environment. The above figures are unfortunately very much possible - 30% of population affected, 0.5% mortality rate. But it is good that such estimates are published because a lot of people still take the situation lightly (and I don't mean that they should stock with food up to the roof, but that they should behave a little bit more responsibly).

 

[Red Rick]

If 100 million Americans get it, hell will freeze over before they have a lower mortality rate than South Korea.

 

[BlueRoads]

I'm not even close to understanding this.
So in Italy there are 12500 cases - 830 dead, 1000 critical cases.
in China 80000 - 3100, 4200
South Korea 7800 - 66, 54
Germany 2000 - 3, 9.
And the European Patient Zero is supposed to come from Germany, so it has probably been around here for a while, too. (Though maybe it did not yet spread like in Italy because we are not as social as them...)

So, probably the number of infections in Italy must be like... 10times higher than this says?? Or are there so many older people affected?

 

[Red Rick]

I'm not even close to understanding this.
So in Italy there are 12500 cases - 830 dead, 1000 critical cases.
in China 80000 - 3100, 4200
South Korea 7800 - 66, 54
Germany 2000 - 3, 9.
And the European Patient Zero is supposed to come from Germany, so it has probably been around here for a while, too. (Though maybe it did not yet spread like in Italy because we are not as social as them...)

So, probably the number of infections in Italy must be like... 10times higher than this says?? Or are there so many older people affected?

Hard to extrapolate from the deaths because it takes quite a while to kill, which could mean the deaths may be a better indication of the amount of cases 5 days ago.

It's very plausible the true number of infected people is far higher than the 12500 that's reported. It's really important to know the amount of tests they do, who they test and the % of tests that comes back positive, etc.

 

[Sestriere]

I heard a rather shocking report today, I'll just copy and paste, plus here's the link to the article:

"Numbers released from the University of Nebraska Medical Center estimate nearly 96 million Americans could become infected with COVID-19, resulting in roughly 480,000 deaths."

Granted, this is just one source, but this is one of the first time I saw some solid numbers and it's alarming to me.

Merkel said yesterday on a press conference that if no vaccine or anti-viral drugs become available, experts expect 60-70% of the German population to become infected. With a mortality rate of 1-2% that would be anywhere between 400,000 and 1,000,000 deaths in Germany. Are there reasons to believe that the development in the US will be significantly better? With similar estimations I get between 1.5 to 3.8 million for the US.

Also, are there any studies about what will happen when China starts to release the lockdown measures on its population? As soon as people from abroad start travelling there again, there will be another outbreak I would guess. Are there plans to keep this situation up until there is a vaccine available? With all the global outbreaks I have a hard time seeing the virus contained below those 60-70% unless every country applies rules like China or Italy until a vaccine is found.

 

[Red Rick]

Merkel said yesterday on a press conference that if no vaccine or anti-viral drugs become available, experts expect 60-70% of the German population to become infected. With a mortality rate of 1-2% that would be anywhere between 400,000 and 1,000,000 deaths in Germany. Are there reasons to believe that the development in the US will be significantly better? With similar estimations I get between 1.5 to 3.8 million for the US.

Also, are there any studies about what will happen when China starts to release the lockdown measures on its population? As soon as people from abroad start travelling there again, there will be another outbreak I would guess. Are there plans to keep this situation up until there is a vaccine available? With all the global outbreaks I have a hard time seeing the virus contained below those 60-70% unless every country applies rules like China or Italy until a vaccine is found.

At higher % the recovered people will start being significant in providing herd immunity.

I don't see drug therapy as a means to control the outbreak but as a means to control the severity of illnesses and save lives.

I really believe the biggest question is to what extent hospitals will be overrun.

 

[King Boonen]

so with all these lock-downs and closures, just what is the criteria for re-opening?
considering the last I saw of a viable vaccine being about 18months away, just how long are the predictions?

It was discussed before but I would take any vaccine time line estimations with an enormous pinch of salt. From what I've seen they are taking lead candidates from SARS and MERS research and testing them against this virus. That makes perfect sense but the rate limiting step is producing enough vaccine for clinical trials, recruiting participants and checking the data. They may accelerate these processes, and 12-18 months is possible, but it's very much a perfect case situation.

However, once the vaccine has been developed they then need to produce it and get it to the most at risk people first. This means setting up a facility that can reliably produce large quantities of the vaccine and this isn't simple. Scale up of any drug production can have very large issues. You then need to produce enough to vaccinate your at risk people. In the US alone, going on 70+ years of age only, that's between 35 and 36 million people. Compare this with the number of births, as most vaccines are given to children, which is about 4 million. In other words, you need to produce ten times as much vaccine for this one thing than is currently produced for any other vaccine (even vaccines/boosters given at other ages will be tied to the number of births). After the SARS and MERS epidemics they did start to plan for such an eventuality, but unsurprisingly, for reasons we really can't discuss, this was stopped almost as soon as SARS was eradicated.

The next issue is these viruses tend to mutate quickly. It's likely any such mutations which persist will make lower mortality rates, and it's possible that some learned immunity may aid in fighting off new strains, but the vaccine may not be effective. Similar to the flu vaccine which isn't 100% and we've been exposed to flu for long enough that there is inherited immunity present in the population. As such, any mutations could cause similar outbreaks and the cycle will need to be repeated.


Thinking a vaccine is going to do much for this immediate situation is likely a forlorn hope.

 

[sir fly]

No worries about the vaccine, people.
Our health minister stated that should we need it we'll make one... just like that.
I suppose we won't be that selfish not to share it with others.

Lots of irresponsible behaving in the region.