Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Sheilbh]

Anyone know if Italy is showing any signs of flattening?

I've heard a couple reports of "early signs of possible inflection points" in the US.

It looked like it was flattening last week - the rate was declining for several days even if the numbers were horrific. I think that's changed in the last few days as there's been a jump in deaths, hopefully just a blip.

Isn't it too soon to tell for the US and UK?

Yeah, I think there's no way we're close to flattening the curve or peaking.

I hope I'm wrong, obviously.

[Admiral Yi]

I also heard someone else say the US can expect to peak around the end of April.

[Sheilbh]

I also heard someone else say the US can expect to peak around the end of April.

I don't know - I think the UK is expecting it to peak in 2-3 weeks according to the government's scientific advisors.

I suppose the grim point with that is we had over 200 deaths in the last couple of days and we are at the start (but still at the low end) of the rapidly increasing bit of the curve. So what those figures will be in 2-3 weeks time when we peak is quite scary.

This may mean nothing - but from the FT's mortality tracker chart the US does appear on a different, steeper trajectory. The UK, Germany and France are all basically tracking Italy - Spain is worse hit. The US has a lower rate but isn't on that sort of path at the minute.

[Tamas]

Is it even possible to consider the  US a single entity for such tracking? It's even less accurate than saying where Europe's peak will be.

[crazy canuck]

I also heard someone else say the US can expect to peak around the end of April.

Who made that claim? 

[Fate]

Anyone know if Italy is showing any signs of flattening?

Rate of increase in new cases is slowing. But we don't know if that's because the curve is flattening or it means Italy is maxing out its ability to test.

The number of deaths isn't going to significantly start declining until ~14 days after the peak in cases.

[Sheilbh]

Is it even possible to consider the  US a single entity for such tracking? It's even less accurate than saying where Europe's peak will be.

Yeah this is a really fair point. From what I've read it's like they've got loads of different outbreaks - at the minute New York, New Jersey, Louisiana and Florida.

I mean I suppose their peaking could even be the larger more urban states starting to decline while there's a second wave of infections on the more rural states?

[Liep]

A coworker who usually sits next to me in the control tower went home sick today, he got very ill with a fewer and had to lie down for a few hours before he could go anywhere. Kinda worrying.

[mongers]

A coworker who usually sits next to me in the control tower went home sick today, he got very ill with a fewer and had to lie down for a few hours before he could go anywhere. Kinda worrying.

Damn, that's not good; Liep hope it's a false alarm.

[mongers]

No indication if the patients were Coronavirus victims, but what a way to go, the hope of better treatment and then this:

Medevac plane explosion kills eight on takeoff from Philippine capital

A medical evacuation plane exploded in a ball of flames during takeoff in the Philippine capital on Sunday, killing all eight passengers and crew on board, officials said.

And in away worse still if the passengers were valuable medical staff only.

Source: reuters.

[Sheilbh]

So interesting distribution of recorded cases in Iceland (testing widely available to all) and the Netherlands (testing restricted and focused on those showing severe symptoms):


I understand Germany's planning a randomised blood survey of 100,000 to try and confirm who has it, who has had it and is immunised etc.

Edit: Also this map from the sequencing of the virus is fascinating - and in a weird way I kind of love it for how interlinked and globalised we all are, which I hope we don't lose. This is lookint at the UK, but you can look at states and other countries too:
https://nextstrain.org/ncov?f_country=United%20Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

I also heard someone else say the US can expect to peak around the end of April.

Just to follow up on this the UK briefing that just happened did discuss a time line. They said "nobody's pretending that this will be over in a few weeks." And in 2-3 weeks we'll be able to see if the social distancing measures are working.

The Deputy Chief Medical Officer said the timeline might be:
- 3 weeks till review lockdown
- 2-3 months to review the curve
- 3-6 months of social distancing measures

But it could be longer. This is where I think the point of fatigue is really important, I think there's already some reports of people basically being sick of this in Singapore and Italy. I don't know how long is plausible, but the most optimistic here is they review the results from lockdown at the end of April, following that review maybe ease the lockdown in May if the curve is doing what you want and then start to ease social distancing in June. But that's the most optimistic timeline.

[Josquius]

209 mortalities which is a 20% increase and lower than yesterday.  (EDIT: Sorry got number wrong but rate right)

But, I worry, it's just a blip at this point because I really don't think we're near the flattening the curve/peaking point

Deaths are the wrong number to track IMO. Not to downplay the tragedy, but far more important to track is the numbers of cases.
1 week into strict lockdown, 2 weeks into a half arsed one.... Hopefully towards the end of next week we should see some signs of flattening.
Being very optimistic of course.


I'm just hoping these quick tests prove effective then we can start going into partial lockdown before the end of next month.

[Sheilbh]

Deaths are the wrong number to track IMO. Not to downplay the tragedy, but far more important to track is the numbers of cases.
1 week into strict lockdown, 2 weeks into a half arsed one.... Hopefully towards the end of next week we should see some signs of flattening.
Being very optimistic of course.

I'd agree if we had widespread testing, but because we don't yet I'm just not sure how useful tracking the cases is. Whereas the death figures are more certain.

Also in terms of scale - especially for American figures saying this'll peak soon - it's worth remembering that yesterday the CEO of NHS England said that keeping the fatalities under 20,000 would be considered a good result and it'll be a "close run thing" which depends on NHS surge capacity and people socially distancing properly. At the minute the UK is about 1,200 and 20,000 is double what Italy has now. Which I think gives a scale of how much worse I think this'll get.

I'm just hoping these quick tests prove effective then we can start going into partial lockdown before the end of next month.

Agreed.

[Josquius]

Well, looking at the numbers for Switzerland, who started their lock down a week before us; and Italy, who started 2 weeks before, their daily new case numbers are holding fairly steady now.
I don't see it being over any time soon but barring any super spreaders, we should see signs of the lockdown working before that long.