Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I've seen the travel ban be extended from international travel to intra-UK travel. It feels like only a matter of time before we move to entirely remote working.

Edit: And I've got a friend whose company has banned all travel international or UK without specific approval by the board. Needless to say no-one's making the requests.

[HisMajestyBOB]

I don't think anyone is claiming Trump's actions are based on sound medical advice.

Sadly he is not the only one

Should no country shut anything down? Are Italy and South Korea only acting out of social media panic and not sound medical advice? Should they follow the advice of the BC CDC?

[OttoVonBismarck]

It's interesting how entrenched the narratives are getting between "we're all going to die" and "this is a nothingburger." I think perhaps too little attention is being paid to the reality that the WHO and national public health authorities have all learned quite a bit from past pandemics and epidemics and it's easy to say "swine flu was never that big a deal", "SARs was never that big a deal" etc, but we don't know to what degree the reason those weren't big deals is because we took robust public health actions to trace and limit the spread of these diseases.

At the end of the day I think when you have a novel virus for which humanity has no herd immunity, concern is warranted. I think at the same time, lots of private companies for reasons more related to publicity, consumer fears etc are taking actions that aren't supported by the science. I think governments are to some degree intermittently doing the same (i.e. Trump's weird travel ban that doesn't include the UK or Ireland is extremely irrational.) There's definitely an element of stupidity to it, like the people buying out all the toilet paper. But I actually think most national health authorities are doing good work and it's 100% valid for people to be concerned about covid19, a lot of serious and devastating mistakes have been made in the past in handling of epidemics/pandemics that likely lead to much higher mortality rates than were necessary, so I think being on the lookout for that is a good thing.

All that being said, I can also see a scenario where these cases peak in the West while we're still in the thousands of cases and not the tens and hundreds of thousands of cases. Once it is obvious that cases have hid a sort of peak growth rate I think the levels of consumer fear go down quite a bit. Of course it's still possible it reaches flu pandemic numbers of infected and we have tens of millions of cases.

[Sheilbh]

Should no country shut anything down? Are Italy and South Korea only acting out of social media panic and not sound medical advice? Should they follow the advice of the BC CDC?

South Korea didn't shut much down. My understanding is there were local shut-downs for specific clusters, but the general South Korean approach has been voluntary social distancing, mass testing and communications. From the Guardian:

South Korea: drive-through testing, mobile alerts, mass screening

South Korea has the highest number of cases outside China but on Tuesday reported its slowest single day rise in two weeks, prompting President Moon Jae-in to suggest the country was about to enter a "phase of stability".

His optimism might have been slightly premature, as there were 242 new cases on Wednesday. However that is still a large drop from a peak of 916 on 28 February.

Moon told aides this week: "We must maintain this trend. We have come this far thanks to the citizens who were united and cooperated well with the government. But it's too early to be optimistic. Please be a little bit more patient and stay away from mass gatherings such as religious events."

The reference to religious events was significant. More than 60% of cases in South Korea have been linked to a branch of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive religious sect, in the south-eastern city of Daegu. While the outbreak placed huge strain on the city's medical services, new infections appeared to slow after health authorities completed Covid-19 tests on 210,000 Shincheonji followers. Identifying so many cases among a single group, and in a relatively confined geographical area, appears to have helped slow the rate of infections.

South Korea's government opted against localised lockdowns, concentrating instead on testing large numbers of people in an attempt to identify infection "hotspots", along with encouraging social distancing. As one of three designated "special care zones", Daegu received extra medical supplies and staff, and troops were sent to disinfect the streets.

The country is conducting about 15,000 tests a day, free of charge, and has carried out almost 200,000 screenings so far. It has also set up about 50 drive-through testing centres and distributed smartphone alerts about the movements of people who have tested positive.

Not everyone shares Moon's optimism. Noting that outbreaks had been observed at nursing homes and small hospitals, the conservative JoongAng Daily accused the government of "patting itself on the back" ahead of next month's national assembly elections.

There has been another uptick and it looks like there might be a new cluster in Seoul, and there are concerns about privacy around how much information the government publishes about confirmed cases. As I say I'd love to know more about South Korea in part because they appear to have bent the curve, but also because they're doing so much more testing than anyone else and I get the impression their approach has been different than some other countries.

[crazy canuck]

I don't think anyone is claiming Trump's actions are based on sound medical advice.

Sadly he is not the only one

Should no country shut anything down? Are Italy and South Korea only acting out of social media panic and not sound medical advice? Should they follow the advice of the BC CDC?

Politicians should defer to their local medical experts

Edit and following our model wouldn't be a bad idea

[Oexmelin]

College where I work extended spring break a full week, and is asking students not to return. We are moving to online instruction for the remainder of the semester. Whatever that will mean.

[OttoVonBismarck]

One reason I'm not really too bothered by the degree of "overreaction" in Western countries is we have actually seen that places like Hong Kong and Singapore, which followed a very burly government-lead crackdown model, have seen a real leveling off of cases and really appear to have it under control. In a sense it's good for public society in the West to 'overreact', because if such measures become necessary in the West, it's unlikely our political and legal systems can easily implement them, so to some degree keeping things from popping off in the first place is our best bet.

[Josquius]

I do wonder why trump is so reluctant to close.
A corona related economic decline would be help work as a nice guard for him if things do go bad before the election - with the international situation they probably will

[Tamas]

UK up 134 cases in one day.

Sounds like the plan of slowly embracing the virus before the winter is right on schedule! 

[DGuller]

I don't think anyone is claiming Trump's actions are based on sound medical advice.

Sadly he is not the only one

Should no country shut anything down? Are Italy and South Korea only acting out of social media panic and not sound medical advice? Should they follow the advice of the BC CDC?

Politicians should defer to their local medical experts

Edit and following our model wouldn't be a bad idea

In other words, politicians should defer to the one expert that CC likes to listen to, regardless of local conditions.

[Sheilbh]

UK cases up 134 to 590. Two further deaths

The Scottish numbers are particularly striking. They've gone from about 30 to 60.

On the upside testing numbers are starting to climb up again.

[Tamas]

I don't think anyone is claiming Trump's actions are based on sound medical advice.

Sadly he is not the only one

Should no country shut anything down? Are Italy and South Korea only acting out of social media panic and not sound medical advice? Should they follow the advice of the BC CDC?

Politicians should defer to their local medical experts

Edit and following our model wouldn't be a bad idea

In other words, politicians should defer to the one expert that CC likes to listen to, regardless of local conditions.

Just let it go, mate. We don't HAVE to convince him.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The Trump travel ban is fairly shocking in its illogic. Let's start with hypothetically accepted Trump's thesis, that European travel poses particularly significant risks to the United States from covid19. Okay, if that is true, explain why we are still allowing our own citizens to both visit Europe at will, and to fly back to the United States at will? It's clear in my mind it's because Trump doesn't want to ruffle the feathers that would be ruffled if you told Americans where they could and couldn't vacation.

Secondly, given we're assuming his thesis is correct, is there any logical reason it did not include the UK and Ireland? Other than the simple reality that Trump has significant business interests in both countries that he is loathe to harm through executive action? Like Ireland and Britain may be islands, but there's no real walls (yet) between these countries and the rest of Europe, with free travel between them imposing a travel ban on continental (or rather Schengen area) Europe but not the UK/Ireland is illogical in the extreme.

[The Minsky Moment]

Haven't listened to the Trumpster's speech yet, but news sites here report that he's blaming Europeans for spreading the disease in the US, because the contact with China wasn't cut soon enough.

Also, is there any fact based reason not to include the UK in the travel ban (since it's for the Schengen area)?

Not for public health reasons, but this is what happens when Stephen Miller is involved in speechwriting. Everything gets filtered through the nationalist culture war prism, so a mindless virus becomes a "foreign invasion," the feckless Euros are duly bashed, but of course our island Anglo cousins get a pass.

[Sheilbh]

All fair and the UK report on the modelling of a pandemic says a 90% decline in flight travel would delay the peak for a couple of weeks. Because if it's already internationally present and spreading in communities it doesn't make much difference. Even a 99.9% decline in flights is projected to only delay the peak for 2-3 months.

But it's big, it's dramatic and it's exactly the sort of thing Trump thinks solves problems (I think he always moaned at Obama during ebola for not banning travel from Africa).