Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Syt]

Austrian football/soccer league is suspending play. The Austrian ice hockey league, currently in quarter finals, ends the season without championship.

St Stephen's Cathedral has been closed for tourists.

[Tamas]

Austrian football/soccer league is suspending play. The Austrian ice hockey league, currently in quarter finals, ends the season without championship.

St Stephen's Cathedral has been closed for tourists.

How many cases are there?

I guess Austria is aiming to suppress now and die in the winter, unlike UK which aims to cultivate it slowly now and enjoy the winter.

[Syt]

180 or so confirmed cases so far.

[Zanza]

Chinese propaganda starts to try rewriting history and suggest that virus is foreign.

[Admiral Yi]

Chinese propaganda starts to try rewriting history and suggest that virus is foreign.

Italian bats and pangolins were smuggled into China by the CIA, working with the Dalai Lama and Uighur jihadists.

[celedhring]

[FunkMonk]

We're going to be seeing a lot of Walter White impersonators in the next few months.

[crazy canuck]

Executive summary to put the part you quoted in context.

Covid has a very high mortality for old people - 80+

Like lots of other things.

Yes I read that and yes I understood the context. I was not even talking about that context but the overall lethality of the virus over a large population, which is a big part of the concern about the virus. Whether the overall lethality is 1% or 3.5% is a big deal if this thing is going to soon be all over my country. How does your context clarify that? It doesn't at all.

I do live with my mother-in-law and am very close to my parents and have many older friends so even this context is not very reassuring to me. I do care about people who are not me.

At least read the parts I quoted - this is a virus that kills the old and infirm.  Not the people who are not old and infirm.  People are freaking out because people like you are not differentiating between groups who are really at risk here.  As the people who know what they are doing said - people in that age group get killed by a lot of things - this is one more of those things.

[Sheilbh]

A bit like the Layla Moran thread - kind of trying to take this to heart and stop roaring

With Italy on lockdown, fear over coronavirus is natural but we must not be alarmist
Gaby Hinsliff
It's hard not to worry, but we have to hope the epidemiologists are giving the UK government the right advice
Tue 10 Mar 2020 16.25 GMT
Last modified on Tue 10 Mar 2020 16.59 GMT

In a epidemic, nothing spreads as fast as fear.

There are only so many pictures of Italy's deserted cafes and empty streets that the average Briton can look at without beginning to wonder why we're not on lockdown too. Social media only feeds the hysteria, spawning endless scary-looking graphs plotting Italy's soaring death toll against the rest of Europe's and suggesting that everyone else is simply a few days behind on the same awful trajectory. Why doesn't our government act now, before we get there? The political consensus around how far and how fast to go is already breaking down, with the London mayoral hopeful Rory Stewart calling for school closures even though the resulting childcare crisis would make it impossible for many NHS staff to get to work. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage is inexplicably given airtime on the BBC's Newsnight to demand screening at airports, because apparently even the guy who once suggested doctors had got it wrong about smoking is an amateur epidemiologist now.

Yet it's experts we crave now, not opportunists, which is why Boris Johnson barely emerges in public lately without the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser flanking him. It was left to Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, on Monday to explain why some things that make intuitive sense to the public – like screening anyone getting off a plane from Italy, or banning crowds at football matches – make a lot less sense to doctors.

Screening is only useful if you know exactly what you're looking for, and coronavirus sufferers may be infectious but without obvious symptoms for several days. Going to watch the football in an open-air stadium, within coughing range of only a handful of people, may be less risky than watching it indoors in a crowded pub with a load of mates. (If anything it's smaller gatherings full of people who know each other, like parties where everyone is mingling and chatting, that I'd worry about; World Health Organization experts studying the early stages of the Chinese outbreak found most clusters of cases were within family circles, not linked to specific public places where strangers gather).

But as the crisis in Italy grows, so does the niggling fear here. And nothing fuels it like any sliver of difference between the experts and the politicians – as when Whitty signalled to MPs last week that we were moving towards the "delay" stage of trying to flatten out the curve of a likely pandemic so it doesn't overwhelm the NHS, while Johnson seems keen to insist we're still at the earlier "contain" stage. There are good clinical reasons for not leaping to the nuclear options yet, including the risk that people will get bored and break out of self-isolation if it lasts too long, but any whiff of political interference from a government desperate to keep the economy ticking over sets alarm bells ringing. How can we be sure the balance they're currently striking between containing infection and bringing national life, including the emergency services we would need in a pandemic, to a grinding halt is the right one?

The honest truth is that I don't know for sure, and with apologies to any internationally renowned epidemiologists who may be reading this, you almost certainly don't either. The circle of people actually qualified to judge the clinical merits of this strategy is both tiny, and mostly too busy tackling an epidemic to be writing long alarmist Twitter threads about it, which means the public are largely asked to close our eyes and trust.

Yet, regardless of what Boris Johnson wants to call it, the truth is that we entered a different phase the minute the chief medical officer declared on live television that in about a fortnight's time things will change. Worrying about coronavirus isn't something you can do by appointment or by setting an alarm clock, reminding the nation to wake up and panic obediently on the correct date. The natural response to being told we'll soon be asked to self-isolate for minor illnesses is, for those who can, to get ahead of the curve now – and that means a staggered introduction of more serious restrictions is effectively already under way. People who can easily work from home will now do so at the first sign of a cough, if they're not already, although people who can't easily stay away (including many emergency workers) are more likely to wait until the formal advice kicks in. (One reason for waiting a fortnight is that by then the normal cold and flu season should be slowing down; suspicious coughs and fevers should become easier to distinguish from general winter sniffles).

Many people will voluntarily stop throwing parties, buying festival tickets or taking the kids to see the grandparents long before they're formally advised to start social distancing. Change may be coming more slowly than in Italy, which seemingly failed to get a grip on the very early stages of the outbreak and is now racing to catch up, but it will be upon us very soon. Until then, it's worth remembering how much easier it is to be the bloke in the pub roaring that something must be done, than the one responsible for doing what actually works.

• Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Edit: My natural instinct is still to panic and demand more is done. But I do feel like there's a strong chance I'm wrong and should listen to the experts

[garbon]

What are blue ticks Shelf?

Verified accounts of people on twitter.

[Iormlund]

The past few days I've made a pool: by December 31, 2020, how many US cases of coronavirus will there have been. Whoever is closest wins bragging rights.

Guesses so far:

Me: 10 million
Girlfriend: 20k
Father: 500k
Brother: 105,327
Friend: 10k

What do you guys think?

About 100 million.

[Pedrito]

All of Italy is now in the almost-red-but-not-totally-so-maybe-some-orange-to-not-definitely-destroy-hopes zone, up until April 3rd.

This means the government issued a strong "STAY AT HOME" suggestion to everyone, every commercial activity bigger than 250 square meters must close on weekends and every place open to the general public must force one meter minimum distance between persons.
Bars and restaurants must close at 18.00 (probably before the virus exits office and goes back home), and the city is virtually empty, it seems the middle of August when everyone is on holiday.

The health system in Lombardy is almost at collapse, Veneto is following, and the region governors have asked for a total lockdown to the government; this means, if decreed, that everything will be closed, only supermarkets and drugstores could remain open. This will mean that all of the nation's economy will definitely crumble to dust (not that it was exploding of health, anyway).

My chinese neighbor thinks I'm crazy because I don't use a mask, and gifted me a FFP2 model. That is useless against the virus. And is made in PRC, he told me he just ordered them. Talk about Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes...

And now for something completely different, a graph that shows that the curves in the major nations are almost exactly the same (except for Japan), only Italy is ahead of some 9-11 days compared to the other nations.

L.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Not to be rude about the president of the USA, but he is an obese git in his 70s, a brush with the virus could be very unpleasant for him.

Sanders and Biden are also relics that might get wiped out.

[Josquius]

Not to be rude about the president of the USA, but he is an obese git in his 70s, a brush with the virus could be very unpleasant for him.

Sanders and Biden are also relics that might get wiped out.

Purely politically speaking here....Thats a sacrifice I would take to be rid of Trump.

Speaking from a more humanitarian/me perspective I hope they're fine. Sanders in particular with his recent heart trouble is a risk.

[crazy canuck]

A bit like the Layla Moran thread - kind of trying to take this to heart and stop roaring

With Italy on lockdown, fear over coronavirus is natural but we must not be alarmist
Gaby Hinsliff
It's hard not to worry, but we have to hope the epidemiologists are giving the UK government the right advice
Tue 10 Mar 2020 16.25 GMT
Last modified on Tue 10 Mar 2020 16.59 GMT

In a epidemic, nothing spreads as fast as fear.

There are only so many pictures of Italy's deserted cafes and empty streets that the average Briton can look at without beginning to wonder why we're not on lockdown too. Social media only feeds the hysteria, spawning endless scary-looking graphs plotting Italy's soaring death toll against the rest of Europe's and suggesting that everyone else is simply a few days behind on the same awful trajectory. Why doesn't our government act now, before we get there? The political consensus around how far and how fast to go is already breaking down, with the London mayoral hopeful Rory Stewart calling for school closures even though the resulting childcare crisis would make it impossible for many NHS staff to get to work. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage is inexplicably given airtime on the BBC's Newsnight to demand screening at airports, because apparently even the guy who once suggested doctors had got it wrong about smoking is an amateur epidemiologist now.

Yet it's experts we crave now, not opportunists, which is why Boris Johnson barely emerges in public lately without the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser flanking him. It was left to Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, on Monday to explain why some things that make intuitive sense to the public – like screening anyone getting off a plane from Italy, or banning crowds at football matches – make a lot less sense to doctors.

Screening is only useful if you know exactly what you're looking for, and coronavirus sufferers may be infectious but without obvious symptoms for several days. Going to watch the football in an open-air stadium, within coughing range of only a handful of people, may be less risky than watching it indoors in a crowded pub with a load of mates. (If anything it's smaller gatherings full of people who know each other, like parties where everyone is mingling and chatting, that I'd worry about; World Health Organization experts studying the early stages of the Chinese outbreak found most clusters of cases were within family circles, not linked to specific public places where strangers gather).

But as the crisis in Italy grows, so does the niggling fear here. And nothing fuels it like any sliver of difference between the experts and the politicians – as when Whitty signalled to MPs last week that we were moving towards the "delay" stage of trying to flatten out the curve of a likely pandemic so it doesn't overwhelm the NHS, while Johnson seems keen to insist we're still at the earlier "contain" stage. There are good clinical reasons for not leaping to the nuclear options yet, including the risk that people will get bored and break out of self-isolation if it lasts too long, but any whiff of political interference from a government desperate to keep the economy ticking over sets alarm bells ringing. How can we be sure the balance they're currently striking between containing infection and bringing national life, including the emergency services we would need in a pandemic, to a grinding halt is the right one?

The honest truth is that I don't know for sure, and with apologies to any internationally renowned epidemiologists who may be reading this, you almost certainly don't either. The circle of people actually qualified to judge the clinical merits of this strategy is both tiny, and mostly too busy tackling an epidemic to be writing long alarmist Twitter threads about it, which means the public are largely asked to close our eyes and trust.

Yet, regardless of what Boris Johnson wants to call it, the truth is that we entered a different phase the minute the chief medical officer declared on live television that in about a fortnight's time things will change. Worrying about coronavirus isn't something you can do by appointment or by setting an alarm clock, reminding the nation to wake up and panic obediently on the correct date. The natural response to being told we'll soon be asked to self-isolate for minor illnesses is, for those who can, to get ahead of the curve now – and that means a staggered introduction of more serious restrictions is effectively already under way. People who can easily work from home will now do so at the first sign of a cough, if they're not already, although people who can't easily stay away (including many emergency workers) are more likely to wait until the formal advice kicks in. (One reason for waiting a fortnight is that by then the normal cold and flu season should be slowing down; suspicious coughs and fevers should become easier to distinguish from general winter sniffles).

Many people will voluntarily stop throwing parties, buying festival tickets or taking the kids to see the grandparents long before they're formally advised to start social distancing. Change may be coming more slowly than in Italy, which seemingly failed to get a grip on the very early stages of the outbreak and is now racing to catch up, but it will be upon us very soon. Until then, it's worth remembering how much easier it is to be the bloke in the pub roaring that something must be done, than the one responsible for doing what actually works.

• Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Edit: My natural instinct is still to panic and demand more is done. But I do feel like there's a strong chance I'm wrong and should listen to the experts

The places where I would be concerned is where politicians and not the experts are making operational decisions.