Coronavirus: COVID-19

[Axeface]

Its no secret that CoV2 has been known and studied for years

Please give links to earliest publications about CoV2.

How could they sit on that and not develop a vaccine?

You do what you get paid for and research funding is limited. If you have resources to do one thing only and you have two options: something that might be good and something that is known to be good, which one will you choose?

Ignore what I said, It looks like I was wrong and it is basically a new strain that is almost identical to ones observed previously, and that it has mutated as it made the jump to humans. So perhaps it is a new strain that was only discovered in december. perhaps one of the articles I read was incorrect (I do try to read legit articles only, maybe one sensationalist article slipped through).

Hopefully its similarity to strains that have been known for a long time will make the development of a vaccine much faster.

[felter]

..... meaning any immunity that you have will be useless and out the window.

Were that true we'd all die of the common cold every year.

No that is not true, the common cold does not kill and that is not due to immunity, if it was I would probably be dead by now. Every year the flu kills thousands of people while others will survive and have immunity against the flu they recovered from, they can catch the flu again and die from that as it will be a new mutated strain they have just caught, this is due to the immunity they have from the previous infection being null and void, it does not effect the new mutated strain.

This is why one of the biggest fears is that this virus will mutate, but saying that it may mutate into something that is not as bad as it is right now, but it can easily mutate into something with a very high mortality rate. A good example could be that currently they don't think this virus is spread by air, it's contact spread, now Imagine if it mutated and became an airborne spread virus that could live in the air for several hours after someone coughed.

It is also why they come out with a new flu vaccine every year, this comes around by years of studying how the influenza virus has mutated over the years, but in the end it is all just guess work and there is no guarantee that the vaccine will work.

Also remember that the covid-19 is just really a mutated strain of the SARS virus from a few years back, but they are totally different, any working solutions they have for SARS does not work with covid-19. I don't know if they have a vaccine for SARS, I suppose if they do that could be used as a baseline for a covid-19 vaccine but a SARS vaccine will not work on the covid-19 virus, and the same goes if covid-19 mutates a covid-19 cure or vaccine will not work on a new mutation, they will have to start all over again on a new cure or vaccine.

A virus is a nasty thing but not all of them are dangerous, like the common cold, while others like covid-19 are dangerous and kill by the thousands but there is always the possibility of a more dangerous virus waiting just around the corner. Right now there is no cure for the common cold after years of looking for one, just imagine if one day that mutated into something that is dangerous to human life.

[birdtable]

@ felter ... Well that cheered me up no end,, going back to the tinned tomato topic.

[Vertigo 7]

Hah! ESPN stepped up to the plate and they're airing ESPN 8 'The Ocho' to provide a bit of relief. I actually might have a reason to watch ESPN now...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/esp ... g-n1165996

[burger1]

So with 0.9% death rate posted by officials and 96,006 recovered 13728 deaths (13% death rate) + x % of people who will be permanently damaged I think there must be well over 1M carriers. The death and new case rates are still climbing basically exponentially.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Some of the death/recovery rates are pretty high. Brazil 18 dead 2 recovered, USA 388 dead 178 recovered , Denmark 13 dead 1 recovered, Spain 1756 dead 2215 recovered, Italy 4825 dead 6072 recovered, UK 244 dead 93 recovered, Netherlands 179 dead 2 recovered, Canada 20 dead 14 recovered

Males are also much more likely to die. 2.8% (4.7%) males vs 1.7% (2.8%) females.

[pjknibbs]

Um, not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but I've not seen any official claiming a 0.9% death rate, and death rate is defined as number of deaths divided by number of cases, not number of deaths divided by number of recoveries. Sure, some people who currently still have the virus and haven't recovered may possibly die, but the odds are most of them won't.

[Chips]

Its all very strange. Its really hard to get my head around it and the only conclusion I can come to is that we are being lied to about the statistics and chinas released statistics are false.

You've got to bear in mind here that when China puts a city into lockdown, they *really mean it*. They can do stuff to force people to stay home that western democracies like Italy or the US simply can't, so it's not entirely surprising they've been able to bring their outbreak under control. Of course, it *is* entirely possible they're lying through their teeths about it, but this is one instance where I think they might be legit.

Apparently they had drones flying around with speakers on them which would hover over someone shouting at them for being out... literally 1984 style (but without then being executed).
Of course, this may be exaggeration or utter bs. Who knows Think it was in the Guardian, but I can't remember and this is precisely how fake news starts

[Observe]

I live in Washington State next to Oregon. Yesterday, there were crowds of people visiting Oregon beach towns, with the highway lined up for miles with cars heading to the coast. Residents in these beach towns are angry that people aren't staying away. For many people, this is just Spring vacation come early.

People just aren't getting the message. It doesn't help that President Trump only confuses things with his contradictory messages.

At this rate, things can only get much worse. My wife and I are both in our late 60's. I fear one or both of us may not make it through this.

[matthewfarmery]

I live in Washington State next to Oregon. Yesterday, there were crowds of people visiting Oregon beach towns, with the highway lined up for miles with cars heading to the coast. Residents in these beach towns are angry that people aren't staying away. For many people, this is just Spring vacation come early.

People just aren't getting the message. It doesn't help that President Trump only confuses things with his contradictory messages.

At this rate, things can only get much worse. My wife and I are both in our late 60's. I fear one or both of us may not make it through this.

Then again the US is about 3 or 4 weeks behind Spain. So if people aren't going to stay indoors, then expect things to get get far worse. Sadly, its Trump that doesn't seem to be getting the message. I still think he thinks this is still a hoax and its nothing to worry about. that and it will disappear in a poof of smoke.

He really hasn't got a good handle on this. But if things do end up escalating, it will be Trump that will get blamed.

[Axeface]

This was posted on reddit, the article that the image is from is where I thought I read that Cov2 has been around for a long time. I was wrong of course but its still worth knowing. https://i.redd.it/ub0lb0hl49o41.jpg

Actual journal - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2176051/

[felter]

Ouch, well it looks like my American predictions are starting to become true.

NY is reporting that they will run out of major medical supplies in the next 10 days, Trumps answer, here's some money. Here's the thing, they don't need the money, they need the supplies along with 49 other states. Trump seems to think money is the answer, just go and buy what you need, it's as simple as that. But with all 50 states, all trying to buy the exact same thing in very large numbers, there is not enough to go around. So it doesn't matter how much money you have, if there is nothing there to buy you just can't buy it. So supplies are running out, all the states require respirators, medical gloves, masks and gowns but there are none to buy and demand is greater than what is currently being manufactured. What are Trump and the senate doing about it well nothing, they are currently arguing on how to boost the economy with 2 trillion dollars (keeps going up), but what's the point of an economy when a large portion of you populace is dead.

We are in the same predicament with a lack of equipment, but here's the thing were diverting our manufacturing capabilities towards the manufacturing of those medical supplies, all trump seems to be doing is spending money.

Some facts. NY has around 5% of all the cases of the covid-19 virus in the world and they are running out of supplies to keep that 5% alive. They have over 15000 confirmed cases of the virus more than 4000 of them were confirmed yesterday so nearly a third of their current cases were confirmed in a single day. And as I said Trumps answer, here's some money.

America could do with one thing right now, and it's the one thing they cannot have, that's Obama. You know that little meeting they have when handing over the presidency, Obama warned Trump about this exact thing happening and what did Trump do, he sacked all the people Obama had put in place to deal with it, because it was done by a black guy. it's good to have a racist in charge.

[Axeface]

You know that little meeting they have when handing over the presidency, Obama warned Trump about this exact thing happening and what did Trump do, he sacked all the people Obama had put in place to deal with it, because it was done by a black guy. it's good to have a racist in charge.

If obama was still in charge this could have ended quite different globally. If he was actively putting teams together for it they would probably have done more work on studying the family of viruses in general, he was obviously heeding experts warnings. I do wonder if he could have done more once he got unseated though.

I watch things like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5TZ6fTYrsE and just drink it in. I drink in this mans pure imbecility and wanton arrogance and let it feed my deep loathing for him. The people that vote for that are something so far removed from who I am and the way I think, its like they are some kind of alien race that I cant comprehend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsI3w-jRBPA

[Vertigo 7]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-su ... b7c5458af2
These guys? Disgusting people... These turds were damn near gone till Trump came along.

[felter]

So I was just on the Johns Hopkins web site looking at the stats there, and I have to say something tells me the Russians are not telling the truth, as they are reporting only 367 confirmed cases and zero deaths. I know Putin is trying to portray that there is nothing to fear, that mother Russia has everything under control as he went around being photographed shaking hands with a lot of people, what he wasn't telling anyone is that every one of them were pre screened to make sure they didn't have the virus.

It also looks like the UK has something that they have been exporting more than anyone else as 64 people returning to Singapore from the UK had the virus America is in second place with only a measly 24 infections. Not something we should be proud of, that's for sure.

At last a country has told the IOC to go get stuffed, as Canada has pulled all of it's athletes out of the Tokyo 2020 games. I hope the UK and many other follow suit and sooner the better.

[red assassin]

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1662088

Good interview here with epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, who worked on the smallpox eradication and consulted on the film Contagion, among other things. Worth a read.

[Mightysword]

Ouch, well it looks like my American predictions are starting to become true.
...

Except for the part about New York may run out, or projected to run out of supply in 10 days, just about everything else you said in that post are either misinformation or half truth.

1 - The US army already started moving its reserves supply around the country since 2 weeks ago for the short term need, which epic center like New York set to receive priority in the coming days.
2 - That's "here's some money" that you're mocking of is called "federal approved state of emergency", which is something a president (ANY president) only grants at the state request.
3 - Also today, in the morning the mayor of New York asked for the army to be deployed to help, by noon of the same day the WH approved the deployment of the army in 3 states, New York is being one of them.
4 - 2 hospital ships are being deployed on both coasts, with one of them (the Compassion) gonna be in NY next month. It's going through maintenance and resupply and staffing in VA right now. Once it's on station it'll add 1000 beds + that many medical staffs on site.
5 - The WH already signed into effect a law that allows government to compel industrial manufacture to produce needed items.

On point 2 and 3, Trump and NY have a history, and the media is certainly milking it for all its worth if you just mindlessly devouring all those sensationalizing headlines. On point 5, even after that law was signed (which basically clear any legal hurdle) certain sections of the media still try to spin it into a negative prospect in the past week. Fact is, it's not like the government can just go in and say "all of your factory belong to us", even with this law negotiations still have to happen, and then factories can't just be refurbish/reconfigure to produce something else overnight. To give you an update:

- In the past two weeks a large number of cosmetic/distilleries in the US already switched to producing sanitizers, in fact half of distillery in WA state are producing sanitizer products right now. I'm guessing because the production chain didn't need a large modification.
- General Motor since 10+ days ago had started the process of converting some of its manufacturing capacity into making medical supply like mask and ventilator, not that really different then what your RollsRoyce is doing, and 3 days ago Ford, Tesla and SpaceX joint that effort. I also expect more will join them soon once the government work out the agreement with companies. But yes, I'm fully aware if your choice of "news" came from a certain section of the media then you would think "NOTHING" is being done, I know because I ran across those articles myself.

Again, please, we're in the middle of a global crisis right now, and if anyone are going to care please be genuine about it, or at least try to be objective and impartial about it. If people want to criticize government slow response, if you want to complain about lack of resource I would understand. But PLEASE, if you just want to whack on your favorite villain then we already have a specific thread for that, just to echo an earlier request from other posters. There is no need to take every paragraphs, every sentences and butchered them into 101 things to get angry about. In the past two months I had pretty much tuned out anything any one said be it from Trump, McConnel, Pelosi, WHO official, Boris, Merkel or whoever. Heck I don't think I had even listened to ONE statement from the governor of my own state. Rather I track and stay informed of what they had done, what they are doing, and what are being planned to do. Ink or paper, practical action being carried out, objective stuffs like that instead of the sensational yet irrelevant crap the media are trying to feed me.

[Chips]

Ouch, well it looks like my American predictions are starting to become true.

Okay, don't take this the wrong way - but ...

They are currently arguing on how to boost the economy with 2 trillion dollars (keeps going up), but what's the point of an economy when a large portion of you populace is dead.

The term "large proportion" is really vague - it definitely can be implied to mean greater than average. Thankfully, in this instance, it doesn't. You could claim it means 3-5%, but it does feel like an apocalyptic proportion that you make it sound being thrown around.

We are in the same predicament with a lack of equipment, but here's the thing were diverting our manufacturing capabilities towards the manufacturing of those medical supplies, all trump seems to be doing is spending money.

Don't mistake a call going out with actual instant results. Likewise, don't dismiss the idea that money isn't part of expanding capabilities/capacities. Around Europe some companies are re-purposing to produce supplies off their own bat, it's true. However, taking ventilators which the Govt has asked for help making more - the increased numbers are in the short term coming from the existing makers attempting to ramp up production. It'll likely be months before any results are seen. Most commentators poured scorn on the idea.

Funnily enough, you mention money as not being important despite Govts around the world throwing hundreds of billions of pounds to stabilise markets and protect jobs - so it appears every nation believes protecting the economy is absolutely vital during combating the virus. Do you think it isn't? Are you saying there's no need?

Some facts. NY has around 5% of all the cases of the covid-19 virus in the world and they are running out of supplies to keep that 5% alive.

Some facts? Figures to back up those "facts" please. Why do I ask? What you've just written imples (or believe?) that everyone who has this is "fighting to stay alive".
That's not a fact. That's hyperbole and demonstrably false; stop it.

Yes, a percentage of infected people require hospital treatment, and of that a percentage require intensive care beds and respirators. That is very true. There are figures out there to back that up - think it was in that Imperial College bit the UK Govt used to shape policy where it highlights the age groups, % cases requiring hospitalisation, % cases of those requiring intensive care respirators, %age cases that die. Per age group.

By the way, even if we had a respirator for everyone in the world, some people will still die. A shortage of them will mean more people will die than otherwise necessary, but it's not going to stop every death. The respirators just grant people's bodies enough time to be able to fight the virus, but if their lungs are being too badly damaged during that time, then...

I'm not defending Trump. Never liked him, never will.

[Mightysword]

@Felter, normally I wouldn't be posting stuffs about other state, but I'm gonna do a bit of PSA today just to allay your concern of the well being of New Yorkers.

- 4 temporary hospitals will be built in New York with the work starting immediately. They are built by the US army with the Federal footing the bill through FEMA fund.
- The governor today requested an additional 4 field hospitals on top of the 4 temporary one. Together with the Compassion once deployed, it'll give the state an addition 4000-5000 in term of capacity.
- 2mil N95 masks are being purchased and delivery to the state, this is the stuff that was claimed gonna run out in 10 days yesterday.
- Production also being ramped up, apparel companies are being converted to produce medical supply now.
- With the Federal Approved Emergency - again, the one that you were mocking as "Trump think money is the answer" - the federal government now footing 75% of the cost of the response. In fact today the governor asked for more, 100% covering instead of 75-25 split.

And just in case whatever sensational news source gonna twist this into something "it took yesterday declaration for Trump to drag his feet to do something!" because I know they will. I'll just preemptively say that most of the things I just stated isn't a panic/knee jerk response to yesterday headline. For example the plans for the 4 temporary hospitals already been in motion for weeks, with the state officials touring dozen of prospective sites with the army engineering corp last week.

And where is my source? Not from any news station, it's straight from the governor office. If you truly and genuinely care about the situation and simply wish to stay informed on fact, not fiction, I would suggest you to do the same

This is the quote at the end of the latest briefing:

This is a public health crisis, but worse than the virus is the fear, but we have a plan and we are doing everything we can to keep the people informed and save lives.

So at the very least, please do your part of not spreading the fear. Or at the very least if you can't help it, then try to objectively balance with fact that also can give people hope, a lot of people desperately need that right now.

[matthewfarmery]

Trump is fretting over the US economy, saying that he wants to reopen businesses soon. but considering that the number of confirmed cases is now over 46k, it could very easy becoming the next hotspot.

He also been blurting out that the US isn't a country that shuts down. But if Trump does go against the advice of experts on this. Then again, expect the number of cases to sky rocket.

Trump really doesn't have a good handle on this. He clearly not focused on lives, but his profit margins. But saying that this will be all over in a couple of weeks, is clearly sending the wrong message. He may very well end up putting more lives at risk. What a fool he is.

Meanwhile in the UK, even more restrictions have now come into force. Many businesses are now shut, and eve tighter restrictions on travel and going out. At least the government here are starting to do the right thing, even though, it has taken them a while to do the right thing.

We are still no end in sight. We have a a rough few months ahead or more.

[Chips]

We got sent home. Working from home now. Thankfully, though we can't actually work... we are going to be paid to research into techs to improve applications. Unfortunately, it means producing reports and demos, so wasn't quite what I imagined when I'd gone .. 'oh, we're going to "work" from home - goody'.

Oh well