Corona Virus

[rightstar76]

Interesting article:

South Korea once had the world’s second-largest number of infections after China but brought the outbreak under control through aggressive testing, tracking infected people and widely observed social distancing.

The country continued to record a low number of new infections on Thursday, reporting 22 new cases – the fourth day in a row they have stayed below 30. The country has a total of 10,613 cases and 229 deaths.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... s-outbreak

[balzaccom]

For those whoo question the shelter in place policies, this appeared today in the Guardian

No matter how you crunch the numbers, this pandemic is only just getting started

William Hanage

People are understandably looking for good news. But the truth is, we’re nowhere near controlling coronavirus

There has not been a lot of good news lately. But with the discharge of Boris Johnson from hospital on Sunday, and statements that the “peak” strain on the National Health Service would be over the Easter period, you might be under the impression that the storm is passing, and the Covid-19 pandemic will soon be a memory.

Fueling this mood are reports from studies of communities already hit by the pandemic. At long last we are beginning to see the results of work looking for signs that people have already been infected, through the presence of antibodies against Sars-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19. Some of this data suggests strongly that many infections may have passed unnoticed, with the only symptoms being mild things such as loss of the ability to smell and taste, and that as a result, more people may be immune than had been thought. Surely this is a sign that communities around the world can breathe a sigh of relief and start getting back to work?

Unfortunately, it is nothing of the kind.

Talk of the “peak” can be misleading, because it’s not clear whether you are talking about the Matterhorn or Table Mountain – both have a summit, but the peak is far more pronounced in one than the other. In countries such as Italy (unlike Wuhan) the initial surge in the Covid-19 pandemic has not evaporated quickly. There are multiple reasons for this but the most important is that the impact of physical distancing achieved in China has been hard to accomplish elsewhere, mostly because of the freedoms we correctly value in liberal democracies.
Worse, there may be a mountain range. In other words, what is happening right now could be just one peak – not the peak. And the reason for this is that despite all those positive signs from antibody testing, the huge majority of the population is not immune.

An editorial in the British Medical Journal has reported data from China suggesting that as many as four in five cases of Sars-CoV-2 infection could be asymptomatic. It then goes on to quote people from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford, who say that if this is true “What the hell are we locking down for?” I wish those people would be brave enough to go and repeat that opinion in an ER in the Bronx right now, in which actual medicine is going on. Worrying about the exact rate of asymptomatic infection, or the currently unknown duration of immunity and a possible “second wave”, is like politely applauding the performance in a jazz club and murmuring “nice” while the building is demolished around you and the piano player gets decapitated.

There have been more than 93,000 cases of Covid-19 identified in the UK. Let’s round that up and say it is 100,000. So if the reports from the BMJ editorial are accurate, the actual number would be that multiplied by five, in which case there would have already been half a million infections in the UK. If this really is the peak and we see as many cases on the way down as on the way up, that would total 1 million infections from the initial surge in the UK – hopefully all of those people would then be immune.

That would leave about 65 million people in the UK still without immunity.

I am going to be unusually optimistic here, and assume that everyone who has Covid-19 becomes fully immune (not a given), and that the virus is towards the less transmissible end of the range of estimates currently available. If this is the case, you would need half your population to have been infected to achieve a level of population immunity that would stop the epidemic continuing to grow and overwhelming healthcare systems.

As I write the UK is reporting more than 10,000 deaths from Covid-19. Due to the realities of collecting data during an infectious disease emergency like this, that is likely to be an underestimate. Again, if we assume this is the peak and there is the same number on the way down that’s 20,000 total from the initial surge. And to get to population immunity you have to multiply that by at least 30: based on the current data, that’s about 600,000 deaths to get there, minimum.

Finding a vaccine to offer a complete solution to this pandemic is, even in the best scenarios, is still a long way off But it is not hard to see many ways we can slow the pace of the pandemic and save lives. One of them is greatly improved testing to identify cases and their contacts, which could be supplemented by clever digital methods to spot who has been at risk.

Governments around the world are attempting ways to keep jobs and businesses afloat while lockdowns are in place – but the pressure remains to swiftly end such shutdowns. I get that this is going to be a mammoth strain on the economy. But the deaths of many thousands of people would be too: it is simply not possible to thoroughly insulate an economy from the impact of a pandemic of this kind.

Where I live, in Cambridge Massachusetts, I keep hearing sirens. This crisis is not close to over, quite the reverse. The pandemic is only just getting started.

• Dr William Hanage is a professor of the evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease at Harvard

[c9h13no3]

For those who question the shelter in place policies, this appeared today in the Guardian

The main people who are questioning these policies think this is a media created panic. Who are you looking to convince by posting a TL;DR article from center-left leaning Guardian? We all preach to the choir sometimes, but I try not to make a habit of it. It makes you less receptive to others views when you re-affirm your own like this.

What bothers me the most about all these laws is that they're applied in a totally arbitrary manner, and to me, officials are in "cover-my-ass" mode, rather than acting in a rational & coordinated manner. They say to only recreate in parks 5 miles from your house, and then shut down all the parks 5 miles from my house. They shut down parks as being non-essential, but then places that earn them tax dollars (like pot dispensaries) are open & running. They've made so many hypocritical rules that they don't enforce, that I've just decided to do what I personally think is safe. I've pulled my risk way back on my outdoor trips (no skiing ), I'm going to the store only once per week, washing my hands after I touch anything that is touched by others. But I'm also driving to trail heads 2 hours away, and hiking in closed parks.

Rather than argue about whether there should be shelter in place laws, how has your behavior changed in the past months? What laws are you willing to abide by, and which do you think are unreasonable?

[rlown]

My friend from Woodland went to Dillon Beach last weekend. Waved and said hi to the ranger, and returned to find a citation on the window for being out of town. Pretty much out of control on the enforcement thing.

They now require masks when you go out in Sonoma county.. Sigh, If you're that concerned, test early and often already.. I grow tired of the extrapolations and models. Use current data already.

[BillyBobBurro]

There are so many ways that this whole shelter-in-place event could of been handled better. It has been very frustrating to watch as outdoor activity after activity has been curtailed right after being overrun with people trying to get some fresh air. I would love to see the state parks and national parks/forests implement some way to remotely reserve access while still ensuring social-distancing but government agencies are not know for moving fast unless they are coming down on your ass. The reality is the are a lot of institutions (public and private) are figuring things out on the fly.

Testing early and often would be wonderful. After Korea got hit with MERS they made damn sure that they would be ready to rapidly respond to the next pandemic. The results of their effort should be a lesson for us. Wide spread and easy to access testing right now would do a lot to enable us to return to something approaching normal. The federal response has been a day late and a dollar short from day one.

[TahoeJeff]

Don't come to the beach up here or you could face a $5000 fine or up to six months imprisonment:

https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/ ... ion-sites/

[TurboHike]

South Korea has tested 538,777 people as of April 16th (today). This number is from the Korea Centers for Disease Control. The country has a population of slightly more than 51 million, so they have tested about 1% of the population. I do not consider this to be a very high rate. The difference, in my opinion, is how South Korea tracks people. Everybody has an app on their phone that displays a QR code that is unique to them. Somebody gets on the subway, they scan their QR code. They go to a restaurant, they scan the code. They go to work, they scan the code. And so forth. If someone else gets sick in one of those locations, the CDC can track down those who have been to those areas and tell those folks to self isolate. When elected U.S. officials talk about tracking, this is what they are talking about. It remains to be seen if the U.S. public would go along with tracking. I would be fine, I have nothing to hide and I want things to open up ASAP. Others I am sure would view it as an invasion of privacy. It does seems to work though, at least in South Korea.

[BillyBobBurro]

One important thing to consider with the testing numbers re:Korea vs USA. Korea did a lot of testing early on and got ahead of the spread. While Americans dithered around with testing until the spread really got going. I think we are lucky that Italy demonstrated in a very real manner where we were heading and forced the shelter-in-place issue to the forefront.

Without some form of tracking we will end up seeing wave after wave of upswings in the numbers. Maybe some of the "easy" measures we are taking will help to contain/mitigate covid-19 until a vaccine is available. Hopefully people will be staying home when they have the "flu", "cold" or "seasonal allergies". Working in an open office environment and taking BART leading up to the shelter-in-place was not fun.

[creekfeet]

Rather than argue about whether there should be shelter in place laws, how has your behavior changed in the past months? What laws are you willing to abide by, and which do you think are unreasonable?

Personally I've only been going to trailheads that I can get to on foot or by bike, but I'm lucky in that quite a few such trails exist in my neck of the woods. However if I was single and without a young child, it's pretty likely I'd be roaming all over Death Valley, or other locales far from home.

Regarding the closure of parks, I think it's just a really tricky issue to navigate. It's a debate between libertarianism and regulation, but the problem with libertarianism is that people rarely act in society's best interest, yet alone their own. In San Mateo County where I live, the closures have actually worked out pretty well. At the very beginning of shelter in place all the local trails became overrun with out of town folk, so the county closed most parks and coastal parking. And while the parks still technically remain closed, locals have continued to use them, and as far as I can tell the authorities are just looking the other way since crowds are now manageable. The beaches have still gotten a bit crowded on nice days, but it's just local families and teenagers within walking distance. Other than that, there's a slew of trails out here that are part of the Golden Gate Recreation Area which hardly anyone knows about, including the NPS as far as I can tell, and they have remained mostly uninhabited.

But based on what I saw at popular beaches and parks in the early days of shelter in place, I think closures are 100% necessary to respect social distancing rules, and protect people from themselves so to speak.

[SSSdave]

After spending a month without driving anywhere to exercise, just hiking local urban streets from home, the last couple days drove about 20 miles to a local county open space to hike. After the dry February that stunted early rising plants, especially all the alien grasses, the rains these last couple weeks has caused a significant rise of late season annuals. In Mesozoic ultrabasic serpentine areas the bloom in places is now spectacular though few people understand where such geology is. Thus will continue to drive out to work such areas on uncommon sunny days with light breezes.

Note the SIP order for Santa Clara County allows such driving for exercise although some authorities have publicly confused the issue by discouraging doing so that is wisely aimed at lowest common denominators that will otherwise ruin it for the rest. Thus I strongly advise people to actually read what their county orders state. Mountain bikers are particularly out in fair numbers. Generally problems are most likely to occur about public lands close to large populations. I passed just 4 groups while hiking 5 miles on trails Wednesday and likewise yesterday that reflects how few are out in less popular areas.