Coronavirus

[John Hjorth]

There are rumors saying that the virus was accidentally released by a military research center in WuHan. It was initially intended to be used to stop the protests in HK.

It certainly did wonders in Paris. As soon as a woman from WuHan arrived in Paris, protests stopped and people rushed to buy musks.Lol

 

Perhaps it's time to take a closer look at something like :

 

Jardine Matheson Holdings Limited [J36.SI] &/or

Jardine Strategic Holdings Limited [J37.SI].

 

[Perhaps not.]

[sleepydragon]

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10810762/coronavirus-outbreak-virus-escaping-chinese-lab-warning/

 

 

[Convexity]

Late to the party here.  My $0.02:

 

Using the Wikipedia timeline for past couple of weeks:

- Roughly 40% daily growth rate in confirmed cases 

- Roughly 60% growth in deaths

- Roughly 60% growth in quarantines

 

Deaths outpacing confirmed cases.  But death rate is 0.02%, which is about the same as "standard" seasonal flu.

 

SARS was 10% death rate with thousands of cases

Avian flu was 50% death rate in humans with dozens of cases

Swine flu 0.02% in humans as well

 

Novel Coronavirus deaths also have only affected those groups typically susceptible to flu deaths.  Data therefore says the thing to worry about is time from infection to death. 

 

If person to person transmission outside of the quarantined areas in China happens, and the virus mutates and beings more harmful, then there's more concern.

 

[abyli]

Late to the party here.

 

Using the Wikipedia timeline for past couple of weeks:

- Roughly 40% daily growth rate in confirmed cases 

- Roughly 60% growth in deaths

- Roughly 60% growth in quarantines

 

Deaths outpacing confirmed cases.  But death rate is 0.02%, which is the same as flu.

 

SARS was 10% death rate with thousands of cases

Avian flu was 50% death rate with dozens of cases

 

Incorrect, death rate in Wuhan is around 10%, in Hubei Province is around 5% so far....

[Convexity]

Late to the party here.

 

Using the Wikipedia timeline for past couple of weeks:

- Roughly 40% daily growth rate in confirmed cases 

- Roughly 60% growth in deaths

- Roughly 60% growth in quarantines

 

Deaths outpacing confirmed cases.  But death rate is 0.02%, which is the same as flu.

 

SARS was 10% death rate with thousands of cases

Avian flu was 50% death rate with dozens of cases

 

Incorrect, death rate in Wuhan is around 10%, in Hubei Province is around 5% so far....

 

You're right that I'm wrong.  80/2744 is ~3% 

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavirus_outbreak

[muscleman]

There are many who got infected but never got confirmed because there is a huge shortage of the PCR test kit. Some of them die and quickly got burned. No stats in the official numbers. But there are also some of these guys who self cured.

So calculating the death rate from the official numbers is grossly inaccurate.

[clutch]

There are many who got infected but never got confirmed because there is a huge shortage of the PCR test kit. Some of them die and quickly got burned. No stats in the official numbers. But there are also some of these guys who self cured.

So calculating the death rate from the official numbers is grossly inaccurate.

 

You suspect 100k+ to be infected. Let's say around 1000 died (10x the official amount to be really skeptical) which would mean that the death rate is still only about 1%.

[zippy1]

As confirmed cases of a novel virus surge around the world with worrisome speed, all eyes have so far focused on a seafood market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the outbreak. But a description of the first clinical cases published in The Lancet on Friday challenges that hypothesis.

 

The paper, written by a large group of Chinese researchers from several institutions, offers details about the first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). In the earliest case, the patient became ill on 1 December 2019 and had no reported link to the seafood market, the authors report. “No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases,” they state. Their data also show that, in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace. “That’s a big number, 13, with no link,” says Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University.

 

Earlier reports from Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization had said the first patient had onset of symptoms on 8 December 2019—and those reports simply said “most” cases had links to the seafood market, which was closed on 1 January.

 

Lucey says if the new data are accurate, the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019—if not earlier—because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. If so, the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan—and perhaps elsewhere—before the cluster of cases from the city’s now-infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was discovered in late December. “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace,” Lucey asserts.

There is an article from Science about this:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally?fbclid=IwAR3DGPoNSLRJ6l3c1Zhpw5sBRhaDHdtnND8guR2t_Ut2cFcVK7ICnItM1jM

 

The Lancet paper in question can be found at:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext?fbclid=IwAR186GhA9ZBSRGn0Chp-FjzPuUdNEyinsDvwyY4iAkui8wiEX-yMKAdimfk

[zippy1]

You may also find Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding's findings interesting.  His recent twits are quite alarming and got me worried:

UPDATE: Transmission of #coronoavirus estimated at 2.6 by another research group (lower than the 3.8 initial reports). But 2.6 is still extremely bad —each infected person will infect 2.6 others. Even the authors admit #CoronaOutbreak containment will be very difficult.

His professional profile can be found here:

https://scholar.harvard.edu/ericding/home

 

[nodnub]

There are many who got infected but never got confirmed because there is a huge shortage of the PCR test kit. Some of them die and quickly got burned. No stats in the official numbers. But there are also some of these guys who self cured.

So calculating the death rate from the official numbers is grossly inaccurate.

 

You suspect 100k+ to be infected. Let's say around 1000 died (10x the official amount to be really skeptical) which would mean that the death rate is still only about 1%.

 

How do you calculate mortality rate when you don't know how many of the currently infected will eventually die (after say 2 weeks)?

 

Isn't the only way to do that accurately to have a controlled population of confirmed, infected patients and then measure how many are dead after 2-3 weeks?  I think the only way to get accuracy on that during the outbreak is to have a large group of infected individuals that you monitor.  And right now it looks like pandemonium in any city that has a large group of infected cases (so it's hard to measure).  That's what the Lancet study did for 41 patients in Wuhan and found that 6 out of 41 died (see under Discussion).

 

Also virus continues to mutate over time and can become easier (or harder) to spread.  Early version of "1918 spanish flu" were less fatal in Scandinavia in 1917.  More fatal version of the same virus evolved in following year.

 

 

[zippy1]

R0 estimates for flu pandemics lie in the 1.5-2.5 range. Yes, Measles is much higher (10-15). An epidemic with an R0 of 2.5 could still infect between 60% and 90% of the population, depending on contact patterns and assuming no prior immunity. Not all might be symptomatic though.

The R0 for this thing is estimated to be 2.6 and some reported higher numbers such as 3.8.

60% of population and even at 1% case fatality rate is really bad.  I can see why Chinese government would shutdown Hubei province and locked down a population of 60 million.

The question seems to be "would this be enough?"

[StubbleJumper]

There are many who got infected but never got confirmed because there is a huge shortage of the PCR test kit. Some of them die and quickly got burned. No stats in the official numbers. But there are also some of these guys who self cured.

So calculating the death rate from the official numbers is grossly inaccurate.

 

You suspect 100k+ to be infected. Let's say around 1000 died (10x the official amount to be really skeptical) which would mean that the death rate is still only about 1%.

 

How do you calculate mortality rate when you don't know how many of the currently infected will eventually die (after say 2 weeks)?

 

Isn't the only way to do that accurately to have a controlled population of confirmed, infected patients and then measure how many are dead after 2-3 weeks?  I think the only way to get accuracy on that during the outbreak is to have a large group of infected individuals that you monitor.  And right now it looks like pandemonium in any city that has a large group of infected cases (so it's hard to measure).  That's what the Lancet study did for 41 patients in Wuhan and found that 6 out of 41 died (see under Discussion).

 

Also virus continues to mutate over time and can become easier (or harder) to spread.  Early version of "1918 spanish flu" were less fatal in Scandinavia in 1917.  More fatal version of the same virus evolved in following year.

 

 

My point earlier in the thread is that getting a handle on the denominator of the case fatality rate will probably be nearly impossible.  The only "cases" that public health authorities know about are the cases where people seek medical attention.  But, how many 25 and 30 year-old people became sick, but were not so sick that they chose to go to the doctor or to the emergency ward?  The confirmed cases are likely those who are more susceptible to the virus, either due to age or to being otherwise immuno-compromised.  The apparent case fatality rate is alarmingly high, but it's entirely possible that the denominator could be off by a factor of 4 or 5 because of people who never sought medical help, which would bring the case fatality rate back down to earth.

 

The other thing that might or might not happen is that the r-naught could come down as public health authorities communicate avoidance strategies to the population and infected people begin to better self-isolate.  But, that's just a faint hope at this point.

 

SJ

[perulv]

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/wuhan-virus-will-affect-iphone-and-other-electronics-production

 

"The area is not only one of the biggest producers of iron and steel, it’s considered a ”crucial hub in the middle of China”, with the Yangtze river going across it, three railway stations and an airport. It’s also considered a major automobile industry, electronics, optics and fiberoptics production site. In fact, 230 of the Fortune 500 companies have investment in this area."

 

Not much details in the article, though...  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[rogermunibond]

Map tracking the spread and cases/deaths.

 

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

[Jurgis]

I'm gonna predict that containment within China will fail (actually has already failed IMO).

 

I'm somewhat sure that containment outside China is also going to fail. But that's per country somewhat. I.e. Asian countries are more likely to fail than e.g. Switzerland.

 

I'm gonna predict that specific drugs addressing the virus won't be developed anytime soon ( 3 months+ ).

I'd say the vaccine - similar to flu shot - is more likely. Although probably will take couple months too. Also likely to have similar protection to flu vaccine - not guaranteed.

 

The hope is that the fatality rate is going to be low. At flu level or lower.

 

 

 

None of the above are deep insights. There are other people saying what I said. Just posting to have a reference in the future of what was my thinking at the current time.

[Convexity]

There are many who got infected but never got confirmed because there is a huge shortage of the PCR test kit. Some of them die and quickly got burned. No stats in the official numbers. But there are also some of these guys who self cured.

So calculating the death rate from the official numbers is grossly inaccurate.

 

You suspect 100k+ to be infected. Let's say around 1000 died (10x the official amount to be really skeptical) which would mean that the death rate is still only about 1%.

 

How do you calculate mortality rate when you don't know how many of the currently infected will eventually die (after say 2 weeks)?

 

Isn't the only way to do that accurately to have a controlled population of confirmed, infected patients and then measure how many are dead after 2-3 weeks?  I think the only way to get accuracy on that during the outbreak is to have a large group of infected individuals that you monitor.  And right now it looks like pandemonium in any city that has a large group of infected cases (so it's hard to measure).  That's what the Lancet study did for 41 patients in Wuhan and found that 6 out of 41 died (see under Discussion).

 

Also virus continues to mutate over time and can become easier (or harder) to spread.  Early version of "1918 spanish flu" were less fatal in Scandinavia in 1917.  More fatal version of the same virus evolved in following year.

 

 

My point earlier in the thread is that getting a handle on the denominator of the case fatality rate will probably be nearly impossible.  The only "cases" that public health authorities know about are the cases where people seek medical attention.  But, how many 25 and 30 year-old people became sick, but were not so sick that they chose to go to the doctor or to the emergency ward?  The confirmed cases are likely those who are more susceptible to the virus, either due to age or to being otherwise immuno-compromised.  The apparent case fatality rate is alarmingly high, but it's entirely possible that the denominator could be off by a factor of 4 or 5 because of people who never sought medical help, which would bring the case fatality rate back down to earth.

 

The other thing that might or might not happen is that the r-naught could come down as public health authorities communicate avoidance strategies to the population and infected people begin to better self-isolate.  But, that's just a faint hope at this point.

 

SJ

 

Using this source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.27.922443v1.full.pdf

 

The cases are ~27k.  The biggest unknown are the lag times/incubation periods.  Are the deaths happening from pre-symptomatic infections from 1 day ago? 10 days? 30?

 

I also haven't seen much stating that anyone who isn't susceptible to flu death (elderly, etc) has died.  Anyone know if this has been happening?

 

[muscleman]

I'm gonna predict that containment within China will fail (actually has already failed IMO).

 

I'm somewhat sure that containment outside China is also going to fail. But that's per country somewhat. I.e. Asian countries are more likely to fail than e.g. Switzerland.

 

I'm gonna predict that specific drugs addressing the virus won't be developed anytime soon ( 3 months+ ).

I'd say the vaccine - similar to flu shot - is more likely. Although probably will take couple months too. Also likely to have similar protection to flu vaccine - not guaranteed.

 

The hope is that the fatality rate is going to be low. At flu level or lower.

 

 

 

None of the above are deep insights. There are other people saying what I said. Just posting to have a reference in the future of what was my thinking at the current time.

 

Despite all the bad news that I am telling you in this thread, I actually think the worse is over. Look at stock prices of LAKE and a few others. They are topping. Mr. Market is right most of the time.

[StubbleJumper]

There are many who got infected but never got confirmed because there is a huge shortage of the PCR test kit. Some of them die and quickly got burned. No stats in the official numbers. But there are also some of these guys who self cured.

So calculating the death rate from the official numbers is grossly inaccurate.

 

You suspect 100k+ to be infected. Let's say around 1000 died (10x the official amount to be really skeptical) which would mean that the death rate is still only about 1%.

 

How do you calculate mortality rate when you don't know how many of the currently infected will eventually die (after say 2 weeks)?

 

Isn't the only way to do that accurately to have a controlled population of confirmed, infected patients and then measure how many are dead after 2-3 weeks?  I think the only way to get accuracy on that during the outbreak is to have a large group of infected individuals that you monitor.  And right now it looks like pandemonium in any city that has a large group of infected cases (so it's hard to measure).  That's what the Lancet study did for 41 patients in Wuhan and found that 6 out of 41 died (see under Discussion).

 

Also virus continues to mutate over time and can become easier (or harder) to spread.  Early version of "1918 spanish flu" were less fatal in Scandinavia in 1917.  More fatal version of the same virus evolved in following year.

 

 

My point earlier in the thread is that getting a handle on the denominator of the case fatality rate will probably be nearly impossible.  The only "cases" that public health authorities know about are the cases where people seek medical attention.  But, how many 25 and 30 year-old people became sick, but were not so sick that they chose to go to the doctor or to the emergency ward?  The confirmed cases are likely those who are more susceptible to the virus, either due to age or to being otherwise immuno-compromised.  The apparent case fatality rate is alarmingly high, but it's entirely possible that the denominator could be off by a factor of 4 or 5 because of people who never sought medical help, which would bring the case fatality rate back down to earth.

 

The other thing that might or might not happen is that the r-naught could come down as public health authorities communicate avoidance strategies to the population and infected people begin to better self-isolate.  But, that's just a faint hope at this point.

 

SJ

 

Using this source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.27.922443v1.full.pdf

 

The cases are ~27k.  The biggest unknown are the lag times/incubation periods.  Are the deaths happening from pre-symptomatic infections from 1 day ago? 10 days? 30?

 

I also haven't seen much stating that anyone who isn't susceptible to flu death (elderly, etc) has died.  Anyone know if this has been happening?

 

 

Actually they ran four scenarios, one of which considered the possibiltiy that there might have been up to 100k cases.  It's an interesting paper because it provides a framework for thinking about the outbreak, but the authors are by necessity relying on assumptions to parameterize their model.  Strangely, the paper makes me feel a bit better about this outbreak.

 

Everything that I have read suggests that it is the elderly and immunocompromised who have the greatest mortality.

 

 

SJ

[Cardboard]

Key economically is that everything is paralyzed right now.

 

If you work with them, as I do, you have no idea when workers will return to work and what they will be capable of doing (only work from home?). Some that have left to visit family at the begining of Chinese New Year Holiday may not be allowed to return for a while.

 

If you have any kind of supply chain linked with China you have zero idea when things may resume, at what rate and then eventually return to normal? Most are hoping that it will only be next week that will be a write-off which is already quite a bit but, it may get much worst.

[LongHaul]

I heard Grupo Modelo paid $10 million to name the Corona Virus.

 

 

[rkbabang]

I heard Grupo Modelo paid $10 million to name the Corona Virus.

 

It's great served with a slice of lyme disease.

 

[rkbabang]

So many people are searching for Corona Virus beer memes and jokes that journalists without senses of humor think that people don't know that beer has nothing to do with the virus.  These must be the same journalists who think people are sharing The Babylon Bee stories because they believe them to be true.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2020/01/29/coronavirus-corona-beer-surges-on-google-trends-as-virus-spreads/4606997002/

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-corona-beer-not-related-google-trends-2020-1

 

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjdvvd/a-disturbing-number-of-people-think-coronavirus-is-related-to-corona-beer

 

[Spekulatius]

I heard Grupo Modelo paid $10 million to name the Corona Virus.

 

It's great served with a slice of lyme disease.

 

An ad for Corona beer went viral, so to speak.

[DocSnowball]

Two new pieces of information that are more concerning - definitely cash flows of any company related to China are going to be affected in the next 3 -6 months. If they don't control it yes, and if they do control it then as a lingering risk which rears its head up every few months when cases happen.

 

A new paper out of China:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.27.20018952v1.full.pdf+html

this puts R0 at 4.08 (each infected person spreading to 4 more) and fatality rate at 6.5%. Also, the model fits best with a date of start of outbreak prior to Dec 15th 2019. Either that's true and very concerning, or the model will end up being revised.

 

Chinese cases update from yesterday - an interesting thing to note is the significant number of cases outside Wuhan and Hubei Province. This makes me expect transmission within China will be very very difficult to contain. Outside China, all it takes is a few people traveling while infected and a healthcare system that doesn't pick up early enough on the exposure history/ link to China (or someone doesn't reveal that for fear of discrimination or rejection)

 

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/01/who-experts-again-weigh-ncov-emergency-status-more-nations-affected

Chinese cases pass 6,000

"Early today China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 1,459 new cases spanning 31 of its 33 provinces and administrating regions, boosting the overall total to 5,974. It also reported 26 more deaths, lifting the fatality count to 132. A situation update from the WHO said today that 1,239 illnesses are severe.

 

A Chinese medical site that flagged new reports from China's provinces and cities put the total this afternoon at 6,095 cases, 133 of them fatal. Hubei province, home to Wuhan, where the outbreak was first reported, accounts for roughly half of the cases, with four provinces now reporting more than 200 cases: Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hunan, and Henan.

 

Apart from affected parts of Hubei province, cities reporting the highest numbers of cases are Chongqing, Beijing, and Shanghai."

[Jurgis]

this puts R0 at 4.08 (each infected person spreading to 4 more) and fatality rate at 6.5%.

 

If this is true, we are looking at global meltdown, since containment is pretty clearly failing at least in China. Even assuming it doesn't fail outside China (which is doubtful), 6.5% fatality rate in China is huge and crippling.