Another day, another video update from Chris on the latest status of the Wuhan coronavirus:
Pretty much the entire country of China is in lockdown at this moment. Unbelievable.
Along with restricting travel within and across its borders, the Chinese government has begun heavily censoring the data its sharing with the world.
Chris calls into question the few statistics they’re currently reporting, suspecting the situation is devolving into something much worse than admitted to.
Be sure to stay up-to-date on Peak Prosperity’s ongoing full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak by visiting here.
If the virus were much more infectious than China is suggesting, wouldn’t we expect the cases outside China to be growing at a much faster rate than they appear to be doing at the moment? It seems unlikely that all the cases were caught as soon as the people entered the country.
If the virus were much more infectious than China is suggesting, wouldn’t we expect the cases outside China to be growing at a much faster rate than they appear to be doing at the moment?
Yes, I'm in agreement. The relative lack of cases outside China is comforting. But I'm still extremely worried.
The way these things work is that as they build up a head of steam the "law of large numbers" begins to work against you.
China has been trying to get ahead of that dynamic but always too late. I understand too. It's a huge and disruptive if not dangerous decision to shut down a major city like Beijing or Shanghai. Very hard to make that call.
Here's why we haven't seen that many cases outside China yet. Also why I am absolutely livid that the WHO and other bodies have not declared a major emergency and sought to shut down all travel.
So I'm not surprised there's been relatively few cases internationally so far. But that's going to pick up here now that we're much further up the infection curve.
My estimation is that a single plane leaving from Wuhan today (and they still are *ugh*) has the same statistical odds of being an infection carrier as two weeks worth of planes at the beginning of it all.
And by this time tomorrow *those* planes will exceed today's planes infectivity.
Just how the numbers work.
I work in a hospital lab in the Wash DC area. Yesterday a university student showed up in our ED with fever and trouble breathing. He had been in Wuhan 1 week ago. Labs were taken and sent off to the state for testing and he was SENT HOME. Presumably back to the university. This is the current state of things in the US.
K
I mean, if he is showing symptoms of ncov how will he feed himself, if he is at university does that mean shared food preparation area, shared bathroom, room mates? The asymptomatic incubation period is 7 to 14 days, so he probably has been spreading it at a university for the last week. What you just said was it’s time to panic, I mean this is containable but only if someone who has the virus is isolated and everyone who has had contact with them is also isolated.
Simple math shows the r0 value can’t be less than 3. The only variable not corrected for is the date when the 1st actual infection occurred not the one I used which was 1st reported. There are two charts, that show the upper and lower incubation time frames. So using mathematics it can’t have a r0 value of less than 3, or this had to have started back in November not December. These numbers are projected infection rates, not reported infection rates, so in order to get the current 2800 number of reported confirmed infections you have to have a much higher rate of actual infections out there.
Using an asymptomatic incubation period of 7 days based on a 1st infection date of December 1st
1st case in china
R0 1.5
R0 2.4
R0 3
R0 4.5
01/12/19
1
1
1
1
08/12/19
2
2
3
5
15/12/19
2
6
9
20
22/12/19
3
14
27
91
29/12/19
5
33
81
410
05/01/20
8
80
243
1845
12/01/20
11
191
729
8304
19/01/20
17
459
2187
37367
26/01/20
26
1101
6561
168151
Using an asymptomatic incubation period of 14 days based on a 1st infection date of December 1st.
1st case in china
R0 1.5
R0 2.4
R0 3
R0 4.5
01/12/19
1
1
1
1
15/12/19
2
2
3
5
29/12/19
2
6
9
20
12/01/20
3
14
27
91
26/01/20
5
33
81
410
I'll note I'm not a doctor, and this isn't my area, I'm an engineer with a spreadsheet program, check my math, it took me 5 minutes in a spreadsheet program.
I work in a hospital lab in the Wash DC area. Yesterday a university student showed up in our ED with fever and trouble breathing. He had been in Wuhan 1 week ago. Labs were taken and sent off to the state for testing and he was SENT HOME. Presumably back to the university. This is the current state of things in the US.
No, I'm still catching up with everything here...I just finished touring the world data (been up since 5:30)...
So thanks for reposting.
And, my god, that's just about the dumbest thing I've heard...today. So far. It's really amazing how unprepared we are for this. People don't have any training or authority to make the right calls.
Every decision counts. Every minute matters. That's the nature of these things. This virus is moving 100x faster than bureaucratic responsiveness. It's like watching the best running back in the NFL up against an elementary school squad.
Want to grasp the improbability of “containment?”
Then do as I did and go to FlightAware and take a gander at all the flights to and from China.
This is from a few minutes ago (8:05 a.m. EST): Sigh
After I think 3 days of radio silence from the CDC, last night’s sit sum had these two tidbits:
Person-to-person spread in the United States has not yet been detected, but it’s likely to occur to some extent.
and
It would not be surprising if person-to-person spread in the United States were to occur.
Considering everything, those seem to be pretty game-changing statements that have, as of yet, not been picked up by the media. I am an infectious disease epidemiologist who previously worked in the public sector and I know the type of wordsmithing that can occur with public statements from CDC. This has all of the hallmarks of either knowledge that the virus is here already or at least CYA. By the time they issue an actual alert for people to become prepared, it will be too late. Sad, because I spent a few years of my career working on statewide pandemic influenza preparedness plans and this was not how it was supposed to go...
… those flights are just scheduled but later cancelled.
Click on any of the flight numbers to see the history. Also, the map doesn’t show any inbound flights.
In one video, a Chinese doctor mentioned that one sick person infects another 14 people.
The incubation perdiod is 10 days for most patients but it can be a slow as 1 day and up to 14 days.
… those flights are just scheduled but later cancelled.
You're right. I just checked the status of those scheduled flights and they are now listed as "unknown" so I guess that can be interpreted to mean they didn't fly? Oddly some are listed as cancelled, some as delayed and the rest as unknown. Seems to me that status really should be known. Any idea how to interpret that?
Next, the image I posted in the above comment is of actual flights in the air. You'd have to burrow in to determine the to/from status, but it's safe to say that many of them are departing and arriving from cities in China where the virus is pretty much uncontained.
Remember:
Yeah, "other reasons"
Considering everything, those seem to be pretty game-changing statements that have, as of yet, not been picked up by the media. I am an infectious disease epidemiologist who previously worked in the public sector and I know the type of wordsmithing that can occur with public statements from CDC. This has all of the hallmarks of either knowledge that the virus is here already or at least CYA. By the time they issue an actual alert for people to become prepared, it will be too late. Sad, because I spent a few years of my career working on statewide pandemic influenza preparedness plans and this was not how it was supposed to go…
First, the person-to-person barrier has been broken in Canada. From this morning:
So that's out of the bag.
The CDC is busy preparing as if this is a pandemic:
9 hr 32 min ago
CDC official: We’re "preparing as if this is a pandemic"
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, responded to a statement Sunday by the Chinese health minister Ma Xiaowei that people are infectious before they have symptoms of Wuhan coronavirus.
“We at CDC don’t have clear evidence that patients are infectious before symptom onset, but we are actively investigating that possibility,” she said.
Messonnier said the risk to the American public for contracting this virus continues to be low.
“We need to be preparing as if this is a pandemic, but I continue to hope that it is not,” Messonnier said.
The CDC confirmed Sunday there are five cases of Wuhan coronavirus in the United States – one in Arizona, two in California and two previously confirmed cases in Illinois and Washington. All five cases were in people who had recently traveled in Wuhan, China.
The CDC has about 75 people still under investigation because they might have the virus, and about 25 others who were found not to have the virus. The CDC is the only lab in the United States that tests for the virus.
Good grief. There's tons of hard evidence of asymptomatic transmission. That's being just too careful.
Finally, we'd all be interested to hear from you further about your experience and what should be done at this point from a public health standpoint.
What's not being done that should be? Given that, what should people be doing?
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- Officials at William Penn Charter in East Falls are working with officials from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health to determine whether an exchange student from China might be infected with the coronavirus.
The student is among a group of teens who caught a connecting flight out of Wuhan City, ground zero for the illness, before arriving in the U.S. earlier this month.
The child felt unwell last week and has received medical treatment, and is actually feeling better.
Health department officials have reassured school administrators that the risk to any of the visiting students or chaperones having the coronavirus is very low.
Wow! Agreed game changer language from the CDC.
Oops Chris I see you already referenced US ICU bed numbers. We Already have a shortage of critical care nurses, doctors, equipment and medications here in the US. So even IF we had enough beds, other issues remain. Karen so sad about the University student being sent “home”. Not just from super spreader perspective but emotionally, who will care for him?
From the Stat news article…
The WHO so far has not declared the outbreak a global health emergency, though Tedros, as he is know, has said the spread of the new virus is a crisis for China and a risk to countries beyond it. The WHO declined to label the outbreak a global health emergency of international concern on the advice of a panel of experts who met Wednesday and Thursday, though those experts were split on whether a PHEIC should be declared.
So I'm not surprised there's been relatively few cases internationally so far. But that's going to pick up here now that we're much further up the infection curve.
My estimation is that a single plane leaving from Wuhan today (and they still are *ugh*) has the same statistical odds of being an infection carrier as two weeks worth of planes at the beginning of it all.
And by this time tomorrow *those* planes will exceed today's planes infectivity.
Just how the numbers work.
Yeah, "other reasons"
