Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Ancient Demon]

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.

[Valmy]

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.

There is definitely some weirdness going on out there on a region by region and country by country basis.

On the other hand it makes no logical sense that a quarantine would have no impact on a virus

But I guess once this is all over the tale will be in the numbers.

[alfred russel]

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.

There is definitely some weirdness going on out there on a region by region and country by country basis.

On the other hand it makes no logical sense that a quarantine would have no impact on a virus

But I guess once this is all over the tale will be in the numbers.

It is so complex with so many variables...I mean most of us are working from home or unemployed. We are more or less taking it seriously and isolating. A friend's brother recently showed up at his home from college with nine friends to hang out - pretty clearly they have just been carrying on with life. I've seen people playing basketball and american football at the park. In every country you have an undercurrent of people that are just carrying on as before, and serving as a vector for everyone else.

Obviously the quarantine is having a huge impact--otherwise the previous exponential growth would have continued.

[Admiral Yi]

I've recently seen students here throwing house parties.

[merithyn]

I see.  Yes, you are correct that Europe has been ravaged much more severely than US has been so far, as of today.  However, are we comparing like for like? 

Let's assume that Europe is one month ahead of the US, as stated by Meri.  One month ago, Spain and Italy death toll was 40% of what it is today.  France and Germany death toll was about 15% of what it is today.  The death rate for US today is 40% of Europe today, so even with lockdown extended for the next month US will may well catch the worst European countries at the same point in time of the pandemic progression.  Europe wasn't opening up a month ago, so if they're stupid, they're still not as stupid as we are.

When Meri wrote "The countries that were a month ahead of the US on this virus?" I thought she was referring to their response, not that they got it a month sooner than we did.

You were incorrect in your assumption.  DG got it right.

[Eddie Teach]

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

[merithyn]

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.

[Eddie Teach]

Italy was 10 days later.

No question Washington has done better than New York, I agree.

[celedhring]

+280,000 unemployed in Spain during the month of April, a +8% increase (it was +302,000 in March). This doesn't include all the people in temporary unemployment schemes which are around 2,500,000.

Gotta say I expected worse since April was entirely spent on lockdown while March only was 15 days. But I guess a lot of firings were frontloaded. Still those are staggering figures that far exceed the worst months of the great recession (which was brutal over here).

By sake of comparison, the worst month in the historical record was January 2009 with +200,000 unemployed (January is always one of the worst months because of all the people let go after the holiday season finishes).

[Sheilbh]

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.

Italy had its first cases in late January but their outbreak began properly in February. They've also just published their excess mortality figures for March - when it peaked in Italy - and it is striking how much Italy didn't have a national outbreak. Excess mortality in Northern Italy in March was about +95%, in Southern Italy it was +2%.

The latest UK all-cause excess mortality figures to the week ending April 24:


There were a further over 11,000 excess deaths that week, taking the UK total to about 42,000 (which more or less tracks with the FT's prediction).

Edit: Figure 7 in the ONS data is interesting because while we've peaked in all settings (care homes peaked a week after hospitals) it seems that the care homes are recovering far more slowly than hospitals:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending24april2020

There are also fairly low numbers on deaths in the community. In the UK on average just under 50% of deaths occur in hospitals, then just under 25% in care homes and homes, with a few percent in hospices and then the other, slightly more surprising locations. But as I say hospital fatalities have declined far more quickly so the latest date (April 24) has about 400 deaths in hospitals (from a peak of about 980) and about 300 deaths in care homes (from a peak of just over 400).

[The Larch]

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.

Italy had its first cases in late January but their outbreak began properly in February. They've also just published their excess mortality figures for March - when it peaked in Italy - and it is striking how much Italy didn't have a national outbreak. Excess mortality in Northern Italy in March was about +95%, in Southern Italy it was +2%.

In fact I've already read some news pieces on the anger that Italy's government blanket measures entail, with some people in the South fed up with the very restrictive measures imposed when they barely have any cases.

[Sheilbh]

See there's a bit social media campaign for people to not use the NHSX trace-and-track app. The main line seems to be that the UK is going it alone and that the app is actually a secret Dominic Cummings' data harvesting project. I swear to God Brexit broke the minds of our middle class - we're going to be in lockdown forever at this rate

It's quite something the number of people who, I imagine, use Google Maps every week who are swearing they'll never touch this "dodgy, data-harvesting app". Also it's bullshit that the UK is going it alone - there is a divide and there are issues on both sides - between centralised and decentralised models. The UK and France are taking a centralised (as was Germany until about a week ago), other countries are lining up behind the Apple and Google decentralised approach. Needless to say I am dubious about the great privacy enhancing model being developed by *checks notes* Google

Edit: Actually I just checked Twitter and Cambridge Analytica (and for some reason Bobby Sands) is trending. Brexit broke us

[jimmy olsen]

Mutation has been detected that causes the virus to spread more quickly. It also directly affects the mechanism which vaccines in development are aiming to disrupt, so this likely delays that effort. 

Long and interesting article at the LA times.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-05/mutant-coronavirus-has-emerged-more-contagious-than-original

[Maladict]

First case in France traced back to December 27th. Maybe there's more to this nasty flu going around in January/February after all.

[jimmy olsen]

First case in France traced back to December 27th. Maybe there's more to this nasty flu going around in January/February after all.

Would be the original strain, not the new one that's become dominant