Corona virus

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Boem wrote:

I feel obliged to ask, how does this situation differ from a heavy flu?

If we ignore the sensationalism around the subject.

You probably have a relative good experience to compare them since they directly influence your daily routines.

Peace,

-Boem-

My sister, bless her heart, her three kids and her lovingly small world, asked me the same thing. I'll give you the same simple answer I gave her. If I, as someone immunosuppressed, get the flu, get a fever, I know what to do. If it reaches a certain temperature, I go to the hospital and they check me for certain complications. The doctors, in turn, know exactly how to treat it.

If I get COVID-19, I'm straight into hospital, quarantine and very likely some form of ICU because doctors don't know how to treat it. They still don't really know its effects on the immunosuppressed, and it could very likely kill me.

For the average person, Covid-19 will feel like the flu. Maybe even milder. But for the vulnerable (and in this case I include Wuhan's relative lack of health standards), it is much more severe. This is why it's so damn dangerous right now. Every day you will see news reports of people with it going to work or concerts or whatever despite being told to self-quarantine, and they're fine. What you won't know about is who they might have infected, and how that might find its way to someone like me, or a care facility, or even just one geriatric out shopping.

So 'ignorance' is the big difference. And despite certain voices claiming we'll know 'soon', we really won't. Realistically, a year at least. It is going to get worse before it gets better because the iceberg, as it were, is only now starting to reveal itself. In that way, a logical model would acknowledge it's already worse than it appears. A lot of people are going to get sick, BUT I still believe the mortality rate will be quite low. The sensationalism you're seeing isn't over a deadly pandemic; it's over disrupted supply lines, anticipated mass shortage of workers, and most recently, oil spats that have been brewing for a while. Ignorance is incredibly powerful a motivator to panic, and that's where we are now. The US is just catching up, which is itself scary because if there's one country that can't afford to get sick, it's America.

So that's why it's different to the flu. We have integrated the flu into our system: get a flu shot each year if you're vulnerable, monitor your situation, get treatment if you're hit. There is no Covid-19 shot. We don't even know how it's transmitted. It might mutate. Every single day there is significant 'non hyped up' news about its effects on the world. Every single day. Some of that news is overreaction, but I suspect in the face of a wild card 'flu-like disease', overreaction is better than under. Underreaction is how shit like this enters the bloodstream of a community and does its work.

In the future, Covid-19 will probably be as irrelevant as Polio, SARS or Swine Flu. It will have happened. We'll have figured it out. Kids won't even think about it. It'll seem as important to them as black and white photos of the Spanish Flu 'hospitals' seem to us. Did you know there was a severe flu pandemic in 1957-58? Killed about 1.1 million people. I certainly didn't. Pandemics are not world-enders. They're rarely history-makers. But they're significant and should not be downplayed. Covid-19's an epidemic, not a pandemic. It's got a ways to go yet there. I hope we're ready if so. I hope we're ready even if not.

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lolozori wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg

I recommend anyone to follow this guy on youtube, an old school nurse teacher from the UK, everyday he post about this virus. since it started he told people to prepare for it.

Agreed. Dr John Campbell is down-to-earth, knowledgeable, accessible and very, very British. His video on vitamin D is important too, because gamers and other 'indoors recreation' folks are often lacking in it due to minimal sun exposure. I have to get a vit D shot every 6 months because when I was sicker I had a LOT of bed/couch time, and it's totally worth it. But the finding of the video is that daily Vit D supplements has the most effect regardless.

^Pretty much how im viewing it at the moment minus the being immunosupressed.

As far as my projection goes it will be one of those diseases that mutates so fast were likely going to be in a circular fight with it constantly updating the vacines as we go.

Which is similar to the flu, high infection rate low mortality and as a result high mutation rates.

So bassicaly it sucks for you because its the first outbreak, but beyond that while uncomfortable and a pain to get sick it would be fine if this was on a routine already in hospitals?

So the sensationalism is actually working in your favor since it will probably funnel a big amount of resources to the vacines which might speed up the process.

As far as the economic damage, this was easily accounted for by people with a minor understanding of economics.
It never ceases to amaze me how little people realize everything is tangled up with one another and how economics interacts with human nature or periods of irrationality.

The whole toilet paper stuff simply reminds me of the oil shortage situation or the bank rush.

Peace,

-Boem-

I don't particularly worry about myself. People in their 20s and 30s have like 0.2% - 0.4% chance to die so even if I catch it nothing that bad will happen apart from the obvious quarantine and investigation. Thing is, I live and take care of my 88 years old grandma. If I get sick she'll get sick too, which is way worse. I am lucky enough to be able to work from home and have minimal exposure to other people but its still troubling. I definitely don't want to catch it.

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Every single day there is significant 'non hyped up' news about its effects on the world. Every single day. Some of that news is overreaction, but I suspect in the face of a wild card 'flu-like disease', overreaction is better than under. Underreaction is how shit like this enters the bloodstream of a community and does its work.

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Pandemics are not world-enders. They're rarely history-makers. But they're significant and should not be downplayed. Covid-19's an epidemic, not a pandemic. It's got a ways to go yet there. I hope we're ready if so. I hope we're ready even if not.

First off, I want to say I mostly liked this post and appreciate its perspective. I'm quoting only the bits I am critical of.

I think this part of the post unfortunately suffers from black and white thinking. We, generally, and the news media more specifically, are not stuck in a dichotomy between massively overhyping and massively underhyping this or any other story. Expressing moderation so as to give the story just the right amount of concern is an option. Yet this escalated quickly from erring on the side of overdoing it, to "this should not be downplayed." Dude, old ladies be fighting each other for toilet paper, so maybe some downplaying is in order.

Not to say some up-playing is not also in order. Although people are quick to forget this these days — why, I don't know — the world is not an ideologically homogeneous place. You can't just heatmap the entire world to represent a single mean and still have a map that's representative of belief on the ground. There are places where biases lean too heavily in one direction, and other places where they lean too heavily in the opposite direction. There are places where this coronavirus should be up-played, and other places where it should be downplayed. It's not as simple as just thinking the global average is that it's been downplayed too much, and up-playing it to people who are already too concerned.

But people these days don't want to think it terms of moderation. They want to be part of a team, whether that's Team Paranoia or Team Nonchalance, and they want to pwn the other team, because news is a team sport these days. And what the Team Paranoia people want to hear is more and more concern about this coronavirus from their media outlets, while Team Nonchalance wants to hear more and more concern about how and why the "other" media is overhyping. They're customers and the product is

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confirmation bias.

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Which is similar to the flu, high infection rate low mortality and as a result high mutation rates.

This might be the case in the future. However, it is not the case right now.

Numbers. I make this simple.

Doubling.

2*30 is a billion.

2*16 is 65,536.

The flu in just America is a revolving door as you said. 40% or so get the shot every year. 9-45million get it. The percentage of dead are pretty consistant if 9million get it or 45million. Some years it spikes due to the stats behind the shot getting it wrong. It isnt ever 100%. However 45million over a year in say America. To get to this number you would need to double about 25.5times in 365 days. 365/25.5 is about 14days or so.

The Corona Virus in china (our biggest model) exploded. It went from zero to 65k in about 50days. I think Dec 31 til Feb 20th or so. Almost 3k died.

65k is a doubling of 16 times. So 50/16 is 3.125. There are only another 14 doublings before 1billion have it.

So if you do the math and they did nothing. By Apr 15th (from today they spend the last 3weeks in massive quarentine) or so 1billion in china would probably have it. (1billion/80000)3000 is 37million dead. Mostly old people. Those under 50 is less than 1% chance to die.

Italy is fast approaching the no return point. And why it went into lockdown. When something can double every 3 days it is paramount.

This doubling is hitting America too. We are nearing our 10th doubling. But chances are we got hit on multiple points of entry ... ships and planes. 2*10 is 1k peeps.

We are 6 doublings away from 65k. IMHO the magical number that starts to overwhelm medical stuff.

We have 2months at most in America til it hits basically all of us. killing 2.5% if what we know of the rates it kills. Again percents skew to more elderly dead than kids. And this shows now sign of being nice like the flu where only 30% each year get it. The flu is not as contagious. This one so far as I know is more contagious.

It is a massive problem. And one that once it crosses that 65k threshold gets to hard to contain. We still have time. We wasted weeks saying it would go away with the heat etc. Even the flu doesnt go away with the heat. You can get the flu in mid summer.

So no, this is bad. And we still have time. But not much. If I did my math right in America if we do nothing .... in about 3months or so when all of us likely have this we could see 10million dead.

^That comment came after the projection i made once corrona becomes as routine as the flu, so when we have a functional base vacin against it.

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Boem wrote:

As far as my projection goes it will be one of those diseases that mutates so fast were likely going to be in a circular fight with it constantly updating the vacines as we go.

Which is similar to the flu, high infection rate low mortality and as a result high mutation rates.

In that regard the situation will be similar to the flu once we attain that vacin and can put structures into place to vaccinate people to curb most of its spread early on or pre-emptively vaccinate risk cases.

So yes, i was perfectly aware this is not currently the case i was simply looking what the natural progression will be a year from now once we got past the surprise factor.

Peace,

-Boem-

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So yes, i was perfectly aware this is not currently the case i was simply looking what the natural progression will be a year from now once we got past the surprise factor.

That is starting to get through to Trumps head. Finally.

This Corona thing is big. And bad. And very possible to control as China has shown.

The overnight 'stimulus' the Admin just announced is a start. I wish it hit last week. It might have been enough of a start to avoid the recession but should, I hope, be the start of what lets us avoid the Bear.

The Russian broadside to American Shale interests could complicate this. But Trump and MBS are somewhat 'friends'. And from what I know MBS Dad, the King, is now dead. So we could see what the Saudis Russians and Trump intend from this oil stuff. But it is hard to read into this much other than it is another massive blow to stocks too.

But all that, I expect we will see another stimulus and possible quarantines before this gets undercontrol.

Vaccine when??? 8-18months probably.

^No offense but if you wanna take a turd and throw it at trump it would be fair game to also throw one at xi jingping for how poorly they handled the virus.

Trump is just one person people like to focus on politically but he is hardly the nexus of power people imagine him to be.

I see benefits in downplaying the risk just like i see benefits in upplaying the risks. And it's free seazon for all when you have a situation where all party's are correct.

Downplaying keeps the economic system more capable of running and as a result can direct more funds to combat the issue.

upplaying shuts down social interactions and prevents the spread.

The middle road is the solution though since we need the funds to create the vacin and we need the social awareness to prevent the spread as much as possible while allowing the markets to still function.

Not gonna go into the recession topic, because it's flawed logic and conflates irrelevant factors like corona out of convenience and being the "topic of the day". It might highlight or jumpstart an underlying problem but that doesn't mean its good to prescribe it to the secondary factor.
The media and economic sector will jump on it, similar to how i imagine people in business will jump on corona as an excuse to fire people, convenience and an easy discount of accountability.

Peace,

-Boem-

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No offense but if you wanna take a turd and throw it at trump it would be fair game to also throw one at xi jingping for how poorly they handled the virus.

I would imagine it was the same there. A stupid cover it up however (Chernobyl like?). It isnt that bad. It is okie etc. The guy who tried to blow the whistle died. We wont ever know.

But we know they have it under triple digits in growth now. Italy is having to quaratine too. As it is still exploding fast.

Hopefully we dont get there.

I am pretty sure if the don't panic stuff worked,it worked on you. But to the guys who trade and assume risk values it didnt work at all. I give you last 3 weeks of stock market to evalute that style of answering.

What Trump did or didnt do I could care. He will make his own turds. His followers seem to think he cant do any wrong. But, just like Obama, Trump has issues. This could be a bad one.

Hopefully,like the Chinese (for now) managed, we get this under control. That is all I care about. I have two parents I want to see live long enough to see my daughter get her PHD. 7yrs to go.

Trump finally did right. I tossed no turd. Even if it feels that way to you.

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HamsterRebellion wrote:

Hopefully,like the Chinese (for now) managed, we get this under control

The problem is, we dont even know what that means, because...well the Chinese dont exactly convey confidence anything they say is truthful.

They could have easily buried bodies, covered up deaths, lowballed testing and positives, among other things including censorship, silencing, kidnapping, imprisonment, and more.

So let's pump the brakes on giving the Chinese an award for Corona containment (which by all accounts was the epicenter for the damn disease to begin with)