Oh, boy…the scientific research on covid-19 (the new name of the Wuhan coronavirus) continues to reveal what a huge challenge containing this virus is.
A new report from Los Alamos Labs calculates its R0 at between 4.7 to 6.6. That is massively contagious!
It's little wonder then why we're seeing more and more reports of doctors and health workers falling sick, despite using proper PPE and contamination protocol.
China, which bumped up the number of total infected within the country by 33% last night, is clearly facing a public health nightmare of epic proportion.
As we keep saying, we think the true reality on the ground there is even much worse than the official numbers we’re being given.
That said, China’s totalitarian approach of mandatory home quarantine for hundred of millions of people is likely the best way to fight a virus this contagious.
Will other countries, like the US, be able to enforce such controls on their populations if required to combat covid-19? Could they, even if they tried?
A full-blown pandemic looks increasingly unstoppable at this point.
Be sure to stay up-to-date on Peak Prosperity’s ongoing full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak by visiting here.
Chris,
First comment from a new subscriber.
I have read everything on this site over the last couple of weeks and think your video updates have been superlative.
I have one BIG question. Why few to no deaths outside China??
I realize all the statistics come with caveats. Not testing asymptomatic carriers in the U.S… China lying about their stats, etc. I think you touched on this in the cytokine storm video. Did China expose/vaccinate their population with an experimental SARs vaccine AND then inadvertently/accidentally/or on purpose, expose them to Covid-19 with the resultant pathological overreaction of the immune system to the Covid-19 resulting in the high serious complication rate? Or is this an overreaction to an accidental release of Covid-19?
I guess I have subsequent questions. What does that portend for the serious complication rate for those of us outside China who probably will not face this the first time it comes around? Will we be subject to a 1918 Spanish flu situation where the second wave a year latter gets us?
AJ
I can answer for Chris, he doesn’t know. We can aggregate and analyse incoming news and numbers.
We do know a lot about SARS. There have been extensive studies. We know that the Chinese where far more prone to get sick from SARS. We also know the higher temperature and humidity the less the impact.
At this stage we will not know whether the Chinese vaccinated. They would keep that a secret.
But the numbers of SARS at its high point were terrible and not unlike COVIR 19.
It was the stupidity and fear which lead to ignoring the crisis in the beginning followed by a fatal decision to go forward with the new year holidays causing COVIR 19 to succeed in massive spreading.
When I look back at the big outbreaks of diseases I dont see any that were actually “stopped” by human intervention. There is a narrative that “they stopped” ebola, but the fact is that a harmless variant of ebola spring up and inoculated most of the population. Humans had absolutely nothing to do with halting the progression of the Ebola virus.
Spanish flu, ebola, sarrs, plague, etc…they run their course. Not much we can do. The disease runs its course, authorities claim to be working on it while giving us wrong numbers, and when its over they claim victory and society goes back to believing that we are in control of our destiny.
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2020/02/no-coronavirus-transmission-in-pregnant-women-to-womb/
A new study published in The Lancet, however, has found no evidence that COVID-19 is passed from women in their third trimester to their unborn fetus in the womb, a mechanism known as vertical transmission, based on examination of medical records and tissue samples from nine pregnant patients who were infected with the disease.
If proper isolation practices during and after birth are followed, women diagnosed with COVID-19 should be able to deliver healthy babies without the infection, said Wei Zhang, associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and co-author of the study. Wei cautioned, however, that these results may not be generalizable to earlier-stage pregnancies.
“Many pregnant women are concerned right now, and these findings confirm there’s no scientific evidence for vertical transmission,” Zhang said. “But, all of the women in this study were in the later stages of pregnancy: we don’t yet know about any potential transmission during earlier trimesters.”
Link to study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30360-3/fulltext
“We don’t know a lot about this virus,” Redfield told CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “This virus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year, and I think eventually the virus will find a foothold and we will get community-based transmission.”
Right… I think this will peter out in high summer. But there is the possibility, like plaque hiding in rodents in the US, that this corona can be passed to the bats. Then and only then it will indigenous.
A topic that needs explored. The fact that endogenous retroviruses actually become part of the genome (at least 8% of the human genome is viral origin) makes a nice backdrop for some good dystopian science fiction scenarios. Gives the concept of a bad seed a whole new dimension. Especially if the virus is man made and winds up infecting most of the globe, this could a self-inflicted evolutionary event.
Davez - thanks for putting together the Singapore data. Will be interested to see how this progresses there. Agreed the Chinese data is garbage, not only are they tailoring their narrative, so many other factors skew data such as folks hiding out/not going to hospital for diagnosis and inability to keep up with any sort of testing…
Weakening of global magnetic field strength due to sun entering a Grand Minimum (a la Maunder Minimum) increases chance of genetic mutations worldwide in everything, not just nasty viruses of unknown origin.
Health and Human Services Secretary says our risk is very low at this time!
Ugh, why don’t I feel happy with that news?.My favorite response is “I am not paranoid, just better informed”! https://youtu.be/4gd1fuEYD3Q
Note that none of the other viruses names have incorporated a date: Ebola, Swine Flu, H1N1, Avian Flu, SARS, MERS. The earlier version of the novel coronavirus referenced the year the “first” case was identified: nCoV-2019. The new name, Covid-2019, also identifies the year. Did they choose this naming convention to allow for identification of future coronavirus outbreaks: Covid-2020, Covid-2021? Maybe they’ll need to make a distinction between first, second, third or more waves: Covid-2020.a, Covid-2020.b, etc. A scary possibility…
FWIW, I’ve been a PP Premium member for over 5 years. There has been a few times in the past couple of years where I thought about dropping my PP subscription, but I glad I’ve stuck with it, and especially during these past few weeks.
Essentially it cost about the same as taking two really smart dudes out to a nice steak and lobster dinner every 3 months and picking their brains for hours on Chris’ 3 E’s (Energy, Environment, & Economy). Awesome non-political and fact-based analysis and assessments. You won’t regret signing up.
Based upon his lack of direct answers and deflected responses, there is cause for concern. He seems genuine about the anticipated future responses. However, it has been quite a long time from case zero until now and there is a lot of water over the dam already without overt activity.
Dear Cheapseats,
For some reason the link did not work when I tried it repeatedly. It just says they will start at 9;30 & then nothing. Any chance you can repost the link & I will try again?
Thanks
All, FYI : The newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party China Daily ( https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/ ) today has a number of articles where they seem to have given up on containment, and focus instead on mitigating the effects, consistently with the analysis in today’s video. Especially this article (https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202002/14/WS5e45951aa31012821727767d.html), where Xi Jinping is quoted as : “The fatality rate remains at a relatively low level, breakthroughs are being made in treatment methods and the recovery rate continues to rise” To me, what is said between the lines comes down to preparing the mood for an announcement that containment will be abandoned at some point.
