Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[The Brain]

Are you even allowed to ask an employee if they are severely obese?

[Sheilbh]

Also in Britain's ongoing quest to not let a pandemic get in the way of a good sex scandal: the Imperial Professor behind the famous model, Neil Ferguson, has resigned from SAGE after he was caught breaking social distancing rules to have "trysts" with a married woman (she's understood to have an open marriage so it's not an affair)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/05/exclusive-government-scientist-neil-ferguson-resigns-breaking/

Edit: Also love that they confirm that her house in South London is worth £1.9 million. The dream British scoop

Edit: And also - Brexit broke people's minds - I'm now seeing dark conspiracy theories that this has been leaked by government figures. Surely after like 50 years of sex scandals and over 200,000 snitching calls to the police if people exercise twice, we've realised that we're a nation of curtain-twitchers who will love the opportunity of dobbing someone in

[The Brain]

I don't think the eyes of God recognize open marriages.

[viper37]

United Front groups in Canada helped Beijing stockpile coronavirus safety supplies

All while they were denying the extent of the pandemic and human-to-human transmission.
They were buying PPEs stocks are cheap prices and are now resselling it at golden price in South America and Africa.  They created the shortage of PPEs we had to live through.

[crazy canuck]

I don't think that's accurate. Our first case was in January.

When was Italy?

And Washington shut the state down fairly quickly. Their numbers have been flat for a couple of weeks now. New York City, however, got a later start on getting the virus and shutting things down.

We need to stop treating the US as a monolith. Every state has handled things differently, and it shows. That should be accounted for.

To illustrate your point further look at the difference between Ohio and Michigan

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/opinion/coronavirus-ohio-amy-acton.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Also, 200k new cases and 3000 deaths per day by June due to states opening up too early.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-updates.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage#link-26b9256b

If there are 200k cases a day we're going to be seeing 12k dead a day, not 3k.

Tell that to the people making the model

[viper37]

The number of cases and deaths per country have so little correlation with severity of quarantine measures (and even population size) that I doubt they're of much use at all.

Because it's not the severity, it's when it began.

Imagine a society going into total lockdown as soon as they see 1 infected person outside of China.  Borders are closed, in-country travel is severly restricted, etc, etc, just like China imposed on Wuhan.  And then they re-open gradually about today.

It isn't realistic because the population would have rebelled, but it's just to show my point.  The sooner it is is implemented, the less deaths there are in the general population.

[viper37]

This is disturbing:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/must-watch-tearful-nurse-blows-whistle-new-york-hospitals-murdering-covid-patients-complete-medical-mismanagement/

On the one hand it wouldn't surprise me, I have heard some horror stories second-hand.  On the other hand, did anyone other than this far right trash blog pick up this story, or even just check basic facts?

I have seen other similar reports with less hyperboles, notably when the NY doctor killed herself

[viper37]

This is disturbing:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/must-watch-tearful-nurse-blows-whistle-new-york-hospitals-murdering-covid-patients-complete-medical-mismanagement/

Guy who made that website lives fairly close to where I live.  He was involved in a plot to pay women to make accusations against Robert Mueller.

Ah, thanks, I should check my source better.

[derspiess]

Hell Vipe, even I know better

[Legbiter]

Also in Britain's ongoing quest to not let a pandemic get in the way of a good sex scandal: the Imperial Professor behind the famous model, Neil Ferguson, has resigned from SAGE after he was caught breaking social distancing rules to have "trysts" with a married woman (she's understood to have an open marriage so it's not an affair)

Well, on the other hand vitamin D is an important immune booster...

[Syt]

https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2020/05/05/coronavirus-officials-stop-arizona-state-university-covid-19-modeling-team/5173380002/

State health department tells university COVID-19 modeling team to stop work, limits data access

The Arizona Department of Health Services told a team of university experts working on COVID-19 modeling to "pause" its work, an email from a department leader shows.

The modeling team of about two dozen professors at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona was compiling the most robust public model in Arizona of COVID-19.

The email, from DHS bureau chief of public health statistics S. Robert Bailey, came on Monday evening, after Gov. Doug Ducey announced plans to begin easing social distancing in the coming days.

ABC15 first reported on the email stopping the modelers' work.

The state is instead relying on a model from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This model has not been released to the public.

The universities' model had shown that reopening at the end of May was the only scenario that didn't dramatically increase cases.

In late April, Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, said the model showed five different scenarios for how the disease could progress in Arizona, depending on how social distancing efforts were relaxed.

The slowest curve, based on if the state reopens at the end of May, is "the only one that doesn't put me immediately back on an exponential growth curve," Lant said in April. That's because transmission rates would be lowest at that time, he said.

"I can say, scientifically, no, it's not safe to reopen unless you're planning on, you know, shutting down again after a couple of weeks, and we can help figure out what the appropriate amount of time is to stay open before we shut down," he said.

Bailey wrote that health department leadership asked the team to "pause" all work on projections and modeling. The department would also be ending access to special data sets the modeling team had been using for their efforts, Bailey said.

"We realize that you have been, and continue to be working very hard on this effort, so we wanted to let you know as soon as possible so that you won't expend further time and effort needlessly," Bailey wrote.

The team could be needed again in the late summer or early fall as the influenza season returns, he noted.

Bailey thanked the modeling team and said it "has produced very high-quality results, and these have been very helpful in guiding and informing the decision-making process."

ASU referred media inquiries on the issue to the state health department. UA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In an interview on Tuesday, state health director Cara Christ said the modeling team wasn't disbanded.

"We just asked them to take a pause for a little bit," Christ said. "We are continuing to get updated FEMA models and we think that that is really representative of where we are. But we did tell them to please stay engaged, because we may need to bring them back in the fall to look at modeling during flu season."

Christ said it should be "pretty easy to just pick up the phone and ask them to come back and help us out" later in the year if needed.

Christ said the department again asked FEMA Tuesday if its model could be released publicly, but the department hasn't received a response yet.

Democratic State Rep. Kelli Butler of Phoenix said on Twitter that the move was "incredibly troubling."

"So, fewer experts and even less transparency as GovDucey reopens #AZ," Butler wrote.

In a blog post on the Arizona Public Health Association's website, the organization's director, Will Humble, wrote that the move was astonishing. He said the model was "very solid work being done by top talent in the field that is very useful for decision-making purposes."

He noted that the email from Bailey didn't cite any specific reason for the work to stop, aside from that it was at the request of the department's leadership.

"Last night's action to disband the Arizona COVID-19 Modeling Working Group begs the question whether the Modeling Working Group was producing results that were inconsistent with other messaging and decisions being made by the executive branch?" Humble wrote.

[The Brain]

And they were so close to the Magnum.

[Barrister]

Alberta's numbers have been decreasing for 4 days.  May 1, 218 new cases, May 5, 57 new cases.

Selfishly, zero new cases in Edmonton.

Maybe, just maybe, we can beat this.

[Josquius]

Things don't look good in the US...

[Maladict]

Russia and Brazil are looking really bad too. Time for those strong leaders to step up to the plate and, oh wait.