Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Fate]

It can take up to 2-3 weeks for the critically ill with it to die which is why the # of ICU beds and ICU docs is a limiting factor to how many people we can save in a pandemic. You don't just keel over as you enter the emergency department. UK may unfortunately catch up to where Italy is today in a few weeks.

[Zanza]

Last I heard was that Germany's main infection vector seem to be skiing tourists from the Alps and the infected population is below median age for Germany. So far our healthcare system is not overburdened which is when lethality suddenly spikes.

[Tamas]

UK up to 1140, I think that's about 340 new cases in one day. Yesterday's increase was 200-something, day before 100-something.

Herd immunity here we come!

[Threviel]

One would assume that hundreds of 80+ people dies every day in the larger countries, could it be like Sheilbh said that some countries count death with corona, whilst some count death by corona?

[Syt]

Austria at 655. 1 death so far.

By state:
Tirol (206)
Oberösterreich (116)
Wien (101)
Niederösterreich (82)
Steiermark (71)
Vorarlberg (34)
Salzburg (30)
Burgenland (10)
Kärnten (5)

7467 persons have been tested.

[Sheilbh]

UK up to 1140, I think that's about 340 new cases in one day. Yesterday's increase was 200-something, day before 100-something.

Herd immunity here we come!

They've definitely ramped up testing though - that's about 8,000 tests in two days which is excellent news because those numbers were declining.

From what I can see there's genuinely mixed views about different strategies among epidemiologists and virologists. The thing they all seem to agree on is the need for far more widespread testing, so this is good. We're not at South Korean levelsl yet in terms of numbers being processed a day but it's an upward trajectory. I also think, from what I've read, we're not testing widely enough yet.

[DGuller]

What the bottleneck with the testing anyway?  Is it staffing-related or manufacturing-related?

[Habbaku]

But we did some up with 1.5 trillion dollars to help the stock market. I guess that shows where Washington thinks the priorities are.

I mean yes millions of people's lives are impacted by the stock market but surely a few dollars can find their way to the common people trying to weather this storm.

We're an oligarchy.

Saw that student debt in 2008 was $1.47 trillion.

Would have been a much better use of that money.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but injecting $1.5 trillion of liquidity into the market is not like spending $1.5 trillion.  The actual cost to the Fed is nowhere near that high, and sometimes they even make money on such things.

You're not wrong at all. It's just Tim confidently and ignorantly spouting off on something he knows nothing about. When have we ever seen that happen?

I expected better of Valmy. 

[Liep]

It seems we stopped testing. The PM told the nation that anybody with just the sniffles is assumed to have corona and should stay at home, only people with severe symptoms that require hospitalization will be tested. This could take quite some time to fix.

We've been told to keep the trains running but just 1 day after this initiative 10% of the drivers called in sick.

[Syt]

The US president is a true rolemodel in this time of crisis.

[Admiral Yi]

Is it true that contact with a carrier who is asymptomatic is low risk?

[Sheilbh]

What the bottleneck with the testing anyway?  Is it staffing-related or manufacturing-related?

There's some issues with the US that are specific.

In the UK I think to begin with there were just a few specialist labs that were able to do it initially - and they were doing around 1,500-2,000 a day. I don't know why, it might just be that these are new tests, it's a new disease they're looking for so they need to do it in the most specialised expert labs to develop a more widely useful protocol that can be rolled out? I've no idea.

The NHS have now rolled the testing out to regional pathology centres which are linked and the last few days the number of tests has shot up. Once all the regional centres are up and linked it should be about 8,000 a day (which is still less than South Korea). But presumably once they're running it will just be a case of expanding capacity rather than having to set up the system so should be able to expand?

[Habbaku]

We are led by a complete moron:

https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-donald-trump-google-website/

President Donald Trump announced Friday that the US government's coronavirus testing apparatus, which has lagged badly behind other developed nations, would soon get an assist from Google. The search and advertising giant will create a website, Trump said, that would help Americans figure out if they need a test for the virus, and if so where they can find one.

The only problem: There is no nationwide site like the one Trump described. And Google had no idea the president was going to mention one.

A source at Google tells WIRED that company leadership was surprised that Trump announced anything about the initiative at the press conference. What he did say was also almost entirely wrong. There will be a coronavirus testing site, not from Google but from Alphabet sister company Verily. "We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing," Google tweeted in a statement. "Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time."

Even that, though, was not the original plan. The Verge reported Friday afternoon that Verily had intended the site for health care workers only. After Trump unexpectedly publicized the effort, Verily decided it will let anyone visit it, but can still only provide people with testing site information in the San Francisco area.

Google did not respond to requests for comment. A Verily spokesperson characterized the intention of the site differently from the Verge report. "We were initially planning to focus on highest risk populations, which includes healthcare workers—but this was not solely intended for them," the company said. "We are collaborating with organizations like Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp as part of this initiative, and local organizations to determine what will work best. At Verily, we are focused on developing a tool to help triage individuals for testing."

It's unclear whether senior Google or Alphabet leadership was aware of Trump's plans, but CEO Sundar Pichai apparently made no reference to it in a company-wide memo about its coronavirus efforts Thursday, which was first reported by CNBC. In the memo, Pichai told employees that "a planning effort is underway" for Verily to "aid in the COVID-19 testing effort in the US."

The White House declined to comment on the record, but did not dispute that Google was unaware that Trump would announce the site Friday.

The disconnect is especially odd given how extensively Trump and other White House officials touted the website during Friday's press conference. Google had 1,700 engineers working on it, Trump said. By Sunday, offered Vice President Mike Pence, they would be able to announce timing for the site's availability. Recently appointed White House coronavirus coordinator Debbie Birx walked through how the site would work. "Clients and patients and people who have interest can fill out a screening questionnaire," she said. If the answers indicate that they have symptoms for Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, the site will direct them to the nearest drive-through testing site. Once tested, they'll get results within 24 to 36 hours. It sounded a bit like Google Maps: Pandemic Edition.

It's unclear at this point the extent to which the Verily site will reflect that description. It's part of a larger coronavirus testing package the White House announced, including partnerships with pharmacy giants CVS and Walgreens and retailers Target and Walmart. The tests themselves will be provided by biotech companies like Roche Diagnostics, which received approval for its version earlier Friday.

That the White House is finally treating testing with any kind of urgency is a welcome, if belated, push. But the apparent miscommunication—or outright misrepresentation—may bode poorly for the administration's broader efforts. "What we have learned from past public health emergencies is the importance of clear, consistent, and accurate information that the public can use," says Christopher Friese, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. Friese's comment was specifically about the importance of clarity in a testing information website, but also seems to apply more broadly.

Important questions remain about the Verily site itself, like how it handles data. At Friday's press conference, Birx held up a flowchart that suggested visitors would have to log into the website to use it. "It is critically important that Google does not collect any personally identifiable information at the coronavirus website," says Marc Rotenberg, president of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. "And there should be no covert tracking techniques, such as the retention of IP addresses linked to identifiable users. Moreover, no one should be required to use a Google account to gain access to public health information."

Most important, today's White House presentation created confusion at a time when the US can least afford it. People will be looking for a site that tells them where to get tested; unless they live in a handful of zip codes, it will be useless to them for the foreseeable future. That Trump said untrue things about a focal point of his plan also does not engender confidence in the rest of the measures. The US needs reliable, wide-scale testing, now. Without that, the site issue is moot.

"Will patients who are indicated for testing actually be able to get tested," says Friese. "There are ample credible reports that is not the case presently. If patients still cannot get tested, the website is nothing more than lipstick on a pig."

Or, as it turns out, an empty lipstick tube.

[Sheilbh]

Is it true that contact with a carrier who is asymptomatic is low risk?

My understanding is that it doesn't make much of a difference and that actually this is most contagious during the incubation stage when you're not showing symptoms (unlike SARS). But could be wrong that's just stuff I remember reading.

[Sheilbh]

The US president is a true rolemodel in this time of crisis

I genuinely think the White House and Mar-a-Lago could be infection vectors given the number of infected people who've been in and around it