“My overall impression of the interview is that he made some very serious claims based on mostly opinion.”
I agree with this. I would list the claims as follows:
Several countries, including the US, Russians, Canadians, British, French and Chinese, are aggressively developing bioweapons including viruses similar to the corona virus.
I think this claim is within his sphere of expertise and likely to be correct.
The Wuhan lab was used for such research.
Again I think this claim is within his sphere of expertise and likely to be correct.
The corona virus epidemic is caused by the inadvertant release of such a weapon from the Wuhan lab.
Here he is clearly guessing - and he acknowledges this himself. He claims Occam’s razor supports his position. I have no data with which to judge this. What is the chance of a weapon escaping? What is the chance of such a virus arising naturally? How many bio weapon labs are there in the world and where are they? If we knew the answers to these questions we could make an estimate of the relative likelihood of the virus arising naturally vs escaping from a lab - but we don’t know them.
I doubt he is really in a good position to judge this either - and his personal bias is shining through loud and clear.
Pirbright have a vaccine and he has the patent on his desk.
He admits he hasn’t even read the patent, so how on earth does he know that it is a for a vaccine to 2019-nCov? This appears to be pure hyperbole.
Regarding the theory of China burning that many corpses:
Burning corpses releases SO2, witch you can track real time in the world.
The micro region where all the crematoriums are located in Wuhan has levels about 4x higher than the highest level in Pequim. Moving like a few blocks from that region you already have levels much lower. I wasn’t able to find any spot in the whole map (of the world) higher levels than this small region with all the crematorium.
Speaking of math, a bit puzzled here - we hear death rates like 2% or 8% - low numbers like that, but we also see in the rollup stats from today (Feb04): Deaths 427, and recovered 664. Does that mean out of 1091 people, 60% recovered and 40% died? Am I missing something?
Reading the linked study, it is likely much too early to estimate infection rates for different populations. It looks like all humans carry the receptor this virus uses, the variable is in how many. Accordingly, I don’t see how this would effect how contagious the virus will be around the globe. A receptor is a receptor, unless as the study noted there are other not yet identified dependencies. However, as a point of conjecture based on the numbers at hand, it could make a difference in how likely progression of the illness is into ARDS for different population groups. We should start seeing trends like this developing over the next couple of weeks if true. Something to watch for. Depending on which group you belong to, it could make the difference on the viability of home treatment. However, unless you can hole up somewhere until a vaccination comes out, I think a whole lot of us are going to get sick. Like some of the other things we follow at PP, make plans to try and mitigate the worst case, then be happy if afterwards you don’t need it.
This is the reason I ever followed you way back in 2007/08. Chris it was your data and teaching prowess and I DID learn an incredable amount from you and it will always be appreciated… So glad I didn’t follow your stock market guesses though. Some day you’ll be right as the broken clock strikes every number twice a day. Anyways, just an outstanding public service with regards to the Coronavirus, and I thank you for this. You will actually save lives is my guess and for that feel comforted. Be good. BOB
Does that mean out of 1091 people, 60% recovered and 40% died? Am I missing something?
Yes, it should read: "out of 1091 people for whom the disease has run its course, 60% recovered and 40% died. The problem lies in determining for whom the disease has run its course. Based on the official stats, we can see that that would be 1,091/20,676 or 5.3%. What's going on with the remaining 95% of people is to be determined... Based on the 14-day median time lag between diagnosis and death and the fact that deaths occur quicker than "recoveries," this remains the biggest unknown at this point.
I am starting to wonder what, if anything can stop this non-sensical market euphoria greed driven trump fanatical money printing monster of a market!!!
If we get a critical asteroid hit tomorrow, tsla will prob be up 15% ?
“Japan’s health ministry said on Tuesday that the new coronavirus has been detected in three people whose initial test results were negative.”
It appears the current test does not detect low levels of virus in the early stages of infection. If true, this is terrible news.
The worse things get, the higher the faang stocks will go. The reason Apple hasn’t gone on a tear in the last week is that it actually has comparably decent fundamentals and doesn’t need support. The virus is actually holding it down. Tesla is a basket case so the Fed has to directly intervene and shovel money into it. The ESF has their computers hooked up to the stock market. We will not get a deflationary crash, except possibly at the very end if those in power want to shed some blood. Not sure why they would though as the assets to be bought up on the cheap in such a case have little intrinsic value. We will have a hyperinfltionary crash instead. Kicking myself for ever letting the deflationists affect my financial decisions, against my own intuition. Hopefully theres still time to make a million off of it.
Tesla to $4000 and beyond!!!
The following isn’t new information for those on this site, but may be presented in a different way.
This is a CDC-based “disease pyramid,” showing what happens in the IDEAL epidemiological situation and why we hear so much about the “tip of the iceberg” with initial stats. Basically, among everyone exposed to an illness, people drop out of the numbers moving up the pyramid. It also explains why case fatality is always highest early because people who don’t seek care, by definition, drop out early in this process, so every subsequent level up is only assessed among people who are sicker and die. I also point out that this situation occurs during periods of what’s called passive surveillance - meaning people wait for reports to come to them - and, depending on how severe illness is, a LOT of people might drop out between the yellow and red layers, so the initial case fatality rate might seem a LOT higher than it actually is.
Right now, public health authorities are doing active surveillance - which is reflected in the statistic that there are currently about 180,000 contacts who are under “medical observation.” This means that people are actively trying identifying close contacts and following them over time to determine who gets sick, so they too can be included. In terms of the pyramid, it means bringing more people from the yellow layers into the red layers. Meaning, as time goes on, there should be less bias in who gets tested, based on severity of disease. Meaning that, while the case fatality rate may still be likely to drop, it’s unlikely to drop as precipitously as it does initially.
This doesn’t get at any of the questions surrounding the truth of the official statistics. But it does help explain what I’m seeing professionally among epidemiology colleagues who don’t seem too concerned… yet.
As an aside - it’s worth pointing out that this is the ideal, “training” example for students in Epidemiology 101. And it has almost always worked out that way. Where it didn’t was for SARS, where the initial CFR was ~3.5% and was later revised up to 7-9%. Just sayin’.
Hi analuizasavi, and welcome to the PP tribe! Thanks for posting this very intriguing information. Is there a link to the mapping function with visuals in real time, and might it archive readings to identify differences in SO2 output over time, by location? Could there be other sources of SO2 that are not related to burning human corpses?
This appears to be a potentially objective indicator of crematoria activity in China (and elsewhere if nCoV really gets out of hand). Any additional information and guidance you can provide on this would be appreciated.
Like SARS this targets the ACE-2 Receptor cells. These are much higher in Asian males. So most deaths from this virus may well be East Asian. This would explain the lack of fatalities outside China.
-Andy
Hopefully as bad as needed for humanity to use it as a wake up call to change our ways.
Economic activity and money have become anti-life. We can not distinguish between cutting a tree down for economic activity and to keep it in place for bio-activity life.
Ultimately a patient with a lung cancer diagnosis caused by smoking, can still decide to discontinue their habit and defeat the disease. The level of the sickness must rise to the level of the problematic habit. A chronic cough or repetitive chest cold isn’t enough.
We can either stabilize ecosystems or we can grow the economy. That choice looms before us. How will you help break the habit? And how will you help heal the wounds that offers the opportunity to look within? If you do choose to continue to grow the economy, how will that choice sit with you? Where is right action vs complacency?
Rose
I ran across several mentions of this after the SARS outbreak-- given that (apparently several types of) coronavirus use the ACE receptor to enter the cell. Using a class of blood pressure drug called “Angiotensin Receptor Blockers” (ARB’s for short) might interfere with the virus’s ability to replicate, and buy time.
I ran across the paper here explaining how using these common blood pressure meds might change a life-threatening illness into something more akin to a common cold. Full link is: http://genomed.com/pdf/AT1RSARS.pdf
[Emailed just that paper to Chris and Adam on Jan 27, wondering if they might have some research connections to explore the idea. But it probably got lost in very full inboxes.]
While not an expert, why put the coffin in with the body like we do in the US, assuming there is one. Why not stack a couple bodies in at a time. Cleaning? Open it up throw a couple more in and go. Clean it only when you have to.
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