Coronavirus latest:
-China death toll at least 1,483; Hubei infections up by 4,823
-Japan confirms first death from the virus—third fatality outside mainland China
-China regrets Australia's ban on mainland Chinese citizens until at least Feb. 22https://t.co/UBMQ65KPSe— Bloomberg (@business) February 14, 2020
2. #Covid19: Most of the illness/deaths are in Hubei province still, with 4823 cases & 116 deaths. pic.twitter.com/iXKE50ihNy
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) February 14, 2020
Bit early tonight, because the site keeps going down for me, too.
Coverage of the epidemic seems to have reached a new phase. It’s shifted from ‘encapsulated foreign novelty lede / local coverups / random conspiracy theories from the predictable sources’ to ‘ongoing nightly tv news updates / major political actors start experimenting with using the outbreak for their own ends’. And while I’m no expert, I get the feeling Twitter, at least, has started patrolling for random paranoia-cum-grifters; on a raw google within the site, I’m getting a lot fewer ‘God’s plan’ and ‘X has the only guaranteed cure’ tweets. (I’ve seen multiple news sites, however, pushing back on Jim Bakker’s attempt to sell colloidal solution to his flock. Bet you didn’t even know that creep was still alive.)
Important background on the massive jump in confirmed cases. Key thing to also remember – the true number of cases (including asymptomatics) is going to be *much* higher than the confirmed number (currently ~60,000). https://t.co/BoOX6tzit1
— Kristian G. Andersen (@K_G_Andersen) February 13, 2020
Very good explainer @latimes @Emily_Baum https://t.co/VLYuJ7b8CO
— Marc Lipsitch (@mlipsitch) February 13, 2020
… The iceberg’s tip — the part you see — is the patients who die. This is the easiest number to assess for the simple reason that deaths are hard to miss.
All the other infected people are the part of the iceberg that’s underwater. Epidemiologists divide them into tiers.
Just below the surface are the patients who get sick enough to be hospitalized. Below them are patients who seek basic medical attention. The next tier is made up of people who nurse their illnesses at home, and the last is the people who have no symptoms.
In 2009, when Lipsitch was helping the CDC determine the severity of the H1N1 flu, he and his fellow researchers recognized that no single data source could capture all five tiers. So they gathered surveillance data from various parts of the U.S. health system and pieced them together to generate their iceberg model….
In any outbreak, disease severity data tend to skew high at first, for the simple reason that the sickest patients are most noticeable…
In the early days of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, which was traced to pigs in Mexico, it looked like 10% of people infected there were dying of the flu. Then health workers identified a slew of infections so mild that people didn’t even see a doctor. Once those cases were taken into account, the death rate plunged below 0.1%, Lipsitch said.
“In the end, that flu was no more deadly than regular seasonal flu,” Michaud said…
At this point, the new coronavirus seems to have more in common with the regular flu than with exotic diseases like Ebola or Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), both of which had fatality rates around 40%. Among a group of 17,000 people with confirmed coronavirus infections, 3% were classified as critical, 15% had severe infections and 82% were mild, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s acting head of emerging diseases. Of the 2% who died, many were elderly with underlying health issues that made them more vulnerable.
“We can say pretty confidently that this isn’t killing people left and right,” Del Rio said…
The shift in how new cases are diagnosed has compounded questions about whether the world can rely on the coronavirus numbers coming out of China, amid criticism over the government's handling of the outbreak https://t.co/RrTjAUUfAS
— CNN International (@cnni) February 14, 2020
Priorities, by party:
Yesterday we had a Homeland Security committee meeting to discuss the coronavirus. No current Trump administration public health officials attended.
Americans deserve public hearings as soon as possible to know what this administration is doing in response.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) February 13, 2020
At the NORTHCOM/STRATCOM hearing, Sen. Cotton asked about coronavirus, but took a minute to lambast the World Health Organization for being "politically correct" by giving it the official name of Covid-19.
— Valerie Insinna (@ValerieInsinna) February 13, 2020
? Please bookmark the following URL if you need an easy way to access the latest fact-checks published by the #CoronaVirusFacts / #DatosCoronaVirus alliance. More than 90 fact-checkers in 39 countries are collaborating to keep you well-informed ? https://t.co/jZKcWn5yQQ pic.twitter.com/usGBlqLhbz
— IFCN (@factchecknet) February 13, 2020
Great thread on @WHO presser https://t.co/kjFbKQqLXp
— Marc Lipsitch (@mlipsitch) February 13, 2020
Under-reported story: So many meds are made in whole or in part in China. Lots also made in India — with active ingredients from China. The impact of this #Covid19 epidemic will likely be felt by many more people than those who contract the virus. https://t.co/zhD8bwydyh
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) February 14, 2020
"Four days after a World Health Organization (WHO) advance team arrived in Beijing no details have been released on how and when the full mission will deploy."
The advance team is 3 people, the full mission would include 10-15 experts. https://t.co/V0EsdUvn8I
— Josh Michaud (@joshmich) February 13, 2020
San Antonio has a case confirmed. Remember, new cases of #COVID19 are to be "expected." It's virtually impossible to stop a virus in any country, even with a herculean effort.
This is the first confirmed coronavirus case in Texas.…https://t.co/WfQVOoSlTP https://t.co/Wb73yXWnwN
— Rodney E. Rohde, PhD "Doc R" (@RodneyRohde) February 13, 2020
2. The @WHO #Covid19 update says most known cases exported from China haven't infected anyone else. But there have been at least 4 clusters involving at least 9 secondary cases. The largest involves 20 people (so far) in 6 countries. https://t.co/hn4ufUFmEX pic.twitter.com/DvavIgqGEa
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) February 13, 2020
"Unprecedented data sharing and breakneck genetic sleuthing are charting the new coronavirus’s travels around the globe. https://t.co/oKFOyM3xlw" #science #news
— Aniox ?? (@Aniox07) February 14, 2020
NEWS: NIAID labs have produced images of the #NovelCoronavirus SARS-CoV-2 ? Check out more images on #NIAIDNow: https://t.co/tMQZTgRWVh #SARSCoV2 #COVID19 #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/WkI1p1Rf8Y
— NIAID News (@NIAIDNews) February 13, 2020
China's citizens are beginning to question not just the government response to coronavirus, but the overall competence of the Communist Party https://t.co/FG8xgH4SDr
— Businessweek (@BW) February 14, 2020
JPL
Anne, Thank you for gathering the information and keeping us informed. Kamala must know by now what the president is doing about it…nothing.
Rusty
Cotton is in the lead to be the bottom scraping slug to replace Trump. The scary part is he is a true believer and smarter, he would be more effective at tearing what ever remains after Trump down. Cotton is also proof that lots of fancy education doesn’t make you moral or caring, but it can make you more effective for evil ends.
SectionH
@JPL: I’m sure she does… I’ll probably vote for Liz but my heart is still with Kamala.
OzarkHillbilly
To quote Jesse Pinkman, “Science, bitches.”
Leave it to Cotton to complain about not being able to get his racist on.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: He’s the face of evil.
Central Planning
OT – how do I report the obnoxious Little Ceaser’s add that puts an orange border on the screen on my iPhone? It doesn’t have any “report add” option
Mai naem mobile
@SectionH: I think there is a good chance Kamala will end up being the Veep. Not the same as being the head of the ticket but not bad either .
MagdaInBlack
@Mai naem mobile:
Kamala as AG would be fun ?
BruceFromOhio
Yer harshing my clickbait buzz, man. How’s a snakeoil guy supposed to get by??
WaterGirl
@Central Planning: Can you please send me a screen capture of that?
Joey Maloney
@MagdaInBlack: I’d rather see the AG appoint Kamala as special prosecutor with a generous budget and staff and task her solely with bringing every single Trumper to justice, from the orange fart cloud on down.
Betty
Just learned that Dominica is the first country in the Caribbean to be able to test for the virus. And that this country of about 50,000 is donating face masks to China? Our PM depends on their support.
Bufflars
De-lurking to say thanks for posting these recaps Anne. I know they don’t get many comments but I definitely read the coronavirus updates daily.
retr2327
I understand that doctors and epidemiologists want to know how likely is it that an infected person will die. And I also understand the difficulty in calculating that, especially when some of those infected have symptoms so mild that they don’t seek treatment (and/or may not even know that they are sick, let alone with what).
But it seems that from a lay perspective, and to a very real extent a public health perspective, the more critical issue is how likely is it that I — or any other non-infected person in a given community where the infection is present – will get seriously ill and/or die. And that calculation should actually be simpler, since the denominator is much easier to determine: it’s the population in a given area. As is the numerator: hospital admissions and deaths.
There are very real calculation problems nonetheless, because you can’t get a good fix on the numbers until the infection in a given population has run its course. But the difficulty of identifying the mildly sick is avoided, and that’s what causes the mortality rate in the H1N1 influenza to vary so wildly (10% to 0.1%).
Central Planning
@WaterGirl: if it does it again I will. Of course I’m not getting that ad now