COVID* STANDFORD MASK STUDY---Elsevier journal to retract widely debunked masks study whose author claimed a Stanford affiliation p345

Like you have the case fatality rate at 56% how? I don’t understand what that means.

An Ian blog on coronavirus (MERS)

There (might be) something in the air tonight... [UPDATE]

[link to virologydownunder.blogspot.com (secure)]


Just read it. It's short enough.

Can you please explain the math!? I guess I don’t understand it

Like you have the case fatality rate at 56% how? I don’t understand what that means.

The numbers mean nothing unless they are broken down by approximate time of infection. The confirmed cases are rising as new people become symptomatic. The number of dead and recovered refer to people that were infected at least 2 weeks ago in the case of the dead and more than that for the ones that are recovered, since by their own definition a patient has to be fever free for 10 days to be considered recovered. We don't know how many of the dead were from the same wave as the recovered and how many are part of the second wave of currently sick patients. Numbers are only useful when organized into proper context which we aren't getting.

h/t tetano

[link to news.china.com.cn]

On the 28th, Shengxiang Biotechnology Co., Ltd.'s new coronavirus nucleic acid detection kit passed the approval of the State Drug Administration and obtained a medical device registration certificate. This kind of test kit that can produce results within 30 minutes greatly shortens the detection time, and will allow the suspected cases of this epidemic, especially those with hidden infections, to be quickly shunted to effectively prevent the spread of the epidemic.

A coworker of mine had a 40yo family member recently go to hospital with pneumonia, got airlifted to Albuquerque and died soon after with collapsed lungs. Very rapid. Don’t know if it has anything to do with nCoV, but still freaky.

I wonder what the false negative rate is for these new kits?

I made the following notes during the press conference by Professor Gabriel Leung. He is the Dean of Medicine at Hong Kong University and led HK's efforts against H1N1 in 2009.
I was only able to summarize the English portions. Also I apologize if I have misnamed or mistaken any Chinese cities, I did my best to transcribe them correctly.
GL: The report I am about to share with you (PDF) is also being immediately sent to the authorities in Beijing and to the WHO.
GL: The epidemic is growing at an exponential, accelerating rate. The real question is given the lag between infection, incubation, symptom onset, hospital admission, treatment, and then recovering or perishing, given that lag, we used our mathematical model to try and infer how many cases there actually are/were (as of two days ago) in Wuhan and other places in mainland China.
GL: the basic reproductive number we measure as 2.13 - this is the best estimate we have at the moment. A doubling time of six days in the absence of any public health interventions is expected.
GL: (explaining a graph presentation) The number of clinically apparent cases we model to be 25 to 26 thousand as of Chinese New Year Day. The number of total infections when including presymptomatic cases "approaches 44 thousand."
GL: Wuhan is extensively connected to the North, South, East and West of China. The number of cases exported from Wuhan to the rest of mainland China, in our model as of Jan25, range from 18 in Qingdao to a high of 318 in Chongqing. The numbers will be higher by now. But that's not the most important point. There have been megalopolis quarantines since Jan23. We ran the model with and without the quarantines accounted for, and the forecasts are very similar. The quarantines may not be able to substantially change the course of the epidemic curves in other major Chinese city clusters.
GL: We modeled epidemic curves out to August 2020 for all the major city clusters in China: Chongqing, Shanghai-Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Beijing. Chongqing is predicted to have the largest epidemic due to large population and most intense traffic volume coupled to Wuhan. The timing of the peak is sometime in April to May 2020, one to two weeks in Chonqing before the other major city clusters (except Wuhan which will peak even earlier).
GL: a special note on HK and Macao. They are also linked to G'zhou and Shenzhen by rail which may (be more important than?) the links direct from HK/Macao to Wuhan. (His speech is not clear here).
GL: We are expecting to see Self sustaining epidemic clusters - not just repeated exports from Wuhan but actually a local self sustaining epidemic - within all five?/four? of the major city clusters of China.
GL: The question is now whether those predicted self sustaining epidemics will in turn seed such local epidemics overseas. The four Bj/Sh/Gz/Shz account for 53% of all international travel in the country and 70% of all international air travel out of Asia originating from mainland China. These four are highly likely to seed local epidemics in connected ports overseas.
GL: The conclusion that we draw from this analysis - why it's important to submit it publicly immediately after sending to WHO - The epidemic in Wuhan, as a precautionary principle, we must be prepared for it to become a global epidemic. This is not a certainty but there is a "not weak," "not insubstantial," "not trivial" chance that this will happen.
GL: There is already self sustaining chains of transmission modeled in the major Chinese cities. (Because the four mega city clusters have such high population?), if these cities were in turn to become significant exporters of virus (due to the acceleration of their epidemic curves?), they would have a "NOT TRIVIAL" chance of kickstarting local epidemics in connected overseas cities.
GL: Again let me emphasize, this is not a prediction but these findings make us concerned enough to alert the authorities and the public to keep everyone informed. It is incumbent on us to prepare for this non trivial possibility.
GL: If we want to change the course of these epidemic curves, then we are looking at "SUBSTANTIAL, DRACONION MEASURES LIMITING POPULATION MOBILITY" which should be taken sooner rather than later: school closures, ban mass gatherings, work from home, but also between population clusters, we must reduce population mobility. Should containment fail and local transmission is established, mitigation measures from previous pandemics could "come off the shelf" as templates for action. The major Chinese cities would be "well advised" to review these mitigation plans and prepare to act. (Prof. Leung did not specify in English what those measures would be).

In that conference I head them say a traveler went to Germany from China for business. She started feeling sick before flying home. Two of her associates are now sick in Germany. Connection to epicenter is her parents visited her from WHan before her trip to Germany.

Would love to know timeframe

So Tedros says 99% of cases from China. Only 3 H2H in other countries, no deaths in other countries, but will convene a PHEIC tomorrow?

He's telling us there is no reason for a PHEIC yet, but, going to convene a meeting anyway?

In epidemiology, a case fatality rate (CFR) – or case fatality risk, case fatality ratio or just fatality rate – is the proportion of deaths within a designated population of "cases" (people with a medical condition) over the course of the disease. A CFR is conventionally expressed as a percentage and represents a measure of risk. CFRs are most often used for diseases with discrete, limited time courses, such as outbreaks of acute infections.

[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]

So as of now, resolved cases are 252 (133 dead + 119 cured)

So CFR = 133 divided by 252 = 0.527777777 round to 0.53 or 53%

Hope this helps.

So Tedros says 99% of cases from China. Only 3 H2H in other countries, no deaths in other countries, but will convene a PHEIC tomorrow?

He's telling us there is no reason for a PHEIC yet, but, going to convene a meeting anyway?

So, due to the lag between initial infection and resolution, we cannot come to a decent estimated guess?

If we took avg of 5 days to resolution and applied that to certain charts I've seen floating around, that number comes out to around 50%, and not the initial 3% I also had mistakening thought was a real number.

Am I looking at this the right way? I'm assuming the 5 days to resolution of course.

I would think we are getting to a very serious point soon. 25% of the cases are serious/critical. To me, critical means respirator/ICU bad. Even with 250+ hospitals in Wuhan, how many ventilators are there? I would presume most or all are in use to try to save the serious/crit patients. And you can't just shit out another ventilator or ECMO machine. Presumably, these new hospitals will be for mild to moderate patients, and they would be xferred to the regular hospital when they need to be vented.

Someone is going to have to make some very tough moral decisions soon.

And then, if it progresses as predicted, hospitals will be overwhelmed and people will be on their own. (And don't think that can't happen in First World countries, too)

So, due to the lag between initial infection and resolution, we cannot come to a decent estimated guess?

If we took avg of 5 days to resolution and applied that to certain charts I've seen floating around, that number comes out to around 50%, and not the initial 3% I also had mistakening thought was a real number.

Am I looking at this the right way? I'm assuming the 5 days to resolution of course.

We now know what the "mitigation measures" mentioned a few days ago are.

Police are now barricading returning Wuhan residents inside their apartments. [link to twitter.com (secure)]

Read discussion of it here : [link to i.imgur.com (secure)]

That discussion is a back and forth with one of the China_Flu mods. The mods there are known for trying to censor all new developments in the outbreak. You can see in one message the mod says they want to remove the post because there is no evidence China is barricading people in. You are watching the evidence! There is no evidence until there is all of a sudden evidence.

Sign says "Apartment is occupied by residents who returned from Wuhan. Do not contact."

For those wondering, the barricade is attached to the door itself so it doesn't matter whether the door opens in or out.

Second video in that twitter post shows them building the barricades.

It is surreal to be a non-credentialed lay person sitting here knowing what these so called international experts don't know, yet having only a tiny fraction of the reach/influence that they have.

NOt sure I understand your question. I've seen 10.5 days as the number for after symptoms appear, people have been dying..on average. Now assume 2 people go into the hospital at the same time, both on the 1st day of symptoms. BOth are treated. P1 dies in 10.5 days. P2 receives treatment for xx days, and gets better. Now P2 has to be free from fever 10 days, and pass 2 screenings to be considered cured. So that's 10 days beyond the time to treat to get P2 in a position to start his 10 day fever-free time. So, P2 may be released a week or 2 or even 3 after P1 died. So, we sgould see more P2s as time goes on as they resolve more slowly.

To, me, this skews the numbers toward deaths for a while before they hopefully even out. So, CFR *should* start going down a little here soon, IMHO.

Does this get close to answering your question?