Topic: Coronavirus outbreak

@NEStalgia Economies do recover. Sometimes it takes longer or short or dramatic events. The only time in history you can kind of argue that that didn't happen was fall of the Roman Empire and the ensuing dark ages in Europe. But even then, humanity survived and recovered.

But even if they are right, and this is going to hit everyone - I'm not about to roll over and die. I don't see that as a mercy no matter how things get. I'm gonna fight, kicking and scream and darn it all if needed I will literally fight and probably die then. But I'm not gonna roll over and die thinking it's the easy way out. And I'll pressure all those around me to keep fighting. Maybe if things get as bad as you describe I'll eat a bullet for it - but then, I win, I went down fighitng.

@Heavyarms55 The dark ages are probably one of the better comparisons in that it was the plague that extended it as it was. The dark ages lasted nearly 600 years. If you're talking about "recovery" happening centuries from now, that's not exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the lives of the people here now. GoogAzon getting back to full speed and growing their market cap (now with 80% more low cost third world labor!) isn't going to mean much to the millions of homeless that pop up in the next 2 years.

The First Depression (let's be real, that's what that will be soon - historians name this stuff later on, not now - same with Black Death, it wasn't called Black Death, at the time, nor was WWII called WWII at the time) had no visible end. It was the sudden economic activity of major war that ended it. For the winning side, it was the spurred economic activity of production and the "spoils of war" - for the losing side it was the decimation of total population and the "reset" of the economic activity from reconstruction that really ended the depression. There were no other indicators of a recovery beyond that, and with the hindsight of looking at the ideas and methods leaders had at the time...they were going to fail miserably at trying, and always were. Wars tend to spur economic gains , and often have been caused by, and were a resolution of, such economic problems.

Well your good news is odds are you're not going to die from it. You could but odds don't favor it. So there's that. The 15% death rate sounds remarkably incorrect either way. I've not seen that number floated anywhere else. I've seen as much as 4% floated. Officially it kills about 10x more than infuenza, which is substantial, but still in the low single digit percentages overall.

They're putting too much emphasis on those confirmed cases numbers. They largely mean nothing other than statistically identifying hot spots. In the US the official policy is, if you think you have it, stay home, wait for it to go away. Don't go to a medical facility unless you're (I quote) "very, very, very" bad condition. It's safer for you if you don't have it, and safer for everyone else if you do. So only the "very very very" bad cases get tested. They're rolling out more testing for the masses in limited ways now, and, surprise surprise, the numbers are skyrocketing. I.E. a lot more people have it than appear in those numbers and previously would have. It was only the endangered cases that even appeared in numbers before, heavily skewing the values of the death rates.

But what that also tells us is: a LOT of people already have/have had this. The numbers make it look like it's suddenly surging, but the reality is they're just covering more territory in testing people that otherwise would have gotten over it and been fine after. What that makes me question here is: How many people had it in February in the US....but we weren't testing. How many had it in January, but we weren't testing. How many "colds" were actually this for the past several months? Meaning what overall percentage of the population already was exposed long before the lockdowns where it may have been circulating. It's haunting thinking of New Years. They kept touting, "the biggest crowd ever, over a million people from all around the world"....all in shoulder touching space. Weeks after the virus was already known in Asia. They did recaps of the big news stories of 2019....the virus wasn't among them. Do we really believe no one in that crowd (including a large crowd from Asia due to the performance of BTS) may have brought this then? That was Dec 31. NYC appears to be the biggest hot spot suddenly. What if it's been a hot spot for months and nobody knew? If so, it's quite literally EVERYWHERE. Alternately we have the idea that suddenly NYC propagates a disease in a few weeks during a mostly total lockdown far, far faster than LA managed to in over a month plus? That seems hard to believe. They 're similarly dense cities.

Then it would've spiraled out of control weeks ago, with hospitals filled with people; and a big spike in deaths. I don't think that has happened yet. So I don't think it was always in NYC since the beginning. That just doesn't make sense. I mean, sure, the first few cases probably go unnoticed, so it could've been there for a week or two before the first confirmed cases started popping up, but I don't think it's been in NYC for months without anyone knowing.

That's not the right number. The death rate is the (deaths/total cases)x100.

Based on this data, that's 4%. But the real number is guaranteed to be a lot lower than that, because it's mostly people who have strong symptoms who get tested, so the actual denominator is gonna be way higher, meaning the percentage is lower.

@Octane Maybe. Or it has a more frequent long incubation than believed, and or is less deadly than presumed until/unless some mix of events or individuals occurs and thus can spread more freely without notice. I still find it strange that suddenly it arrives in NY and lights up the whole city, but was in LA for months at a much slower rate. And that it simultaneously lit up everywhere at the same time more or less. Not a pattern of spread but a sudden multi-pronged spread. Maybe it was weaponized by some group/government, or maybe it spreads more subtlely than they have monitored, which seems more likely. Remember, it's not a particularly notable disease except in cases when it becomes a particularly notable disease. I don't know that that they have an real data on when that difference is actually triggered. At its heart, it's just a common cold nobody has immunity to that has a dangerous trick move it occasionally uses that makes it dangerous. Prior to now, how many "common cold" cases were tested for corv19? Even now, how many are? We know far too little about the spread still, and there are no patients zero for this.

They're still trying to figure out what it is about cruise ships that makes it seem more infectious than other venues - that Diamond Princess infected three separate passenger loads, but they're still not convinced it's surface contact that's the culprit. Air circulation systems? Something else on the ship? Or was the disease already so common that someone, minimally, on each voyage brought it on? Being a contained quarantine vessel would make the result that much more apparent where it might otherwise have gone ignored.

@Dezzy That's incorrect. The number of currently running cases worldwide is 4%, but the actual total death rate so far is 16%. And that's only for the closed cases, obviously, so that current 4% that's still in the critical range could both still rise and add to that total of 16%.

On this website, they maintain a live update of daily numbers worldwide:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
And by country:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

@NEStalgia It would seem to be pretty obvious to me. Cruise ships, much like any other place where lots of people are together, are basically germ cesspools, so it's not that hard to contract something on a boat or any other boxed-in place. Trying to keep 5 ft distance to everybody at all times is virtually impossible. And yes, those air ventilation systems certainly don't help either. The same would go for offices, which often also have the same kind of ventilation systems. I've definitely had my share of "common" colds at the office, over the years.

@ThanosReXXX, I keep on seeing people on forums calculating the mortality rate based solely on closed cases (and having it over 10% because of that), but if it was that simple, why do organizations such as the WHO & CDC have it lower (usually about 3-4%, to 6-7% in overwhelmed countries like Italy).

Surely the experts who've dedicated their lives to the study of these things couldn't be all overlooking something so simple?

We’re too globalized now. One domino falls over and the whole system comes crashing down. Even just a little two week shut down threatens nearly half of small businesses, which are the lifeline of the economy. They go out of business and can’t pay their bills, that means half the country stops spending money, on top of which they can’t pay their rent so the landlords and mREITs go bankrupt, which means they can’t pay the banks back so the banks all go under... and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

There are things far worse in this world than a virus with a 2-4% death rate. And if this economy stays shut down much longer than two weeks people are going to find that out first hand real quick.

I’m not saying things should go back to normal after two weeks. But we can’t just keep the economy in gridlock for months on end. We can’t do that. Chyna manage to do it because they are a communist country and declared martial law and it came with an incredibly steep cost. And even now we don’t know if it’s truly over there because all it takes is one person to start it all back up again.

After the two weeks, businesses must resume for the sake of peoples livelihoods. But caution must be taken with incredible seriousness. People should go to work and then come home. Work. Home. Businesses should migrate online as much as possible and delivery services used whenever and wherever they can. Even then certain sectors of the economy are going to go bankrupt in alarming numbers. Just because businesses are forced to be shut down doesn’t mean people are going to magically start going to movie theaters again, tanning beds, nail salons, restaurants, etc. Those businesses are going to be, almost assuredly, going under. Which means even if this economy comes out of gridlock in a week and a half we still might not be able to save it from crumbling. I’m not convinced there’s anything the government can do, as fiscal stimulus doesn’t address the massive supply side deficit or the shock to demand in certain sectors.

And if all the consumer discretionary companies go under, that means they don’t have money to spend in the economy. Which means the economy is going to see a massive drop in demand just from the lack of dollars being spent by small business owners in the sector who go under or are barely struggling to stay in business.

I don’t see any surefire way out of this no matter what anyone does. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It’s really just a matter of the lesser evil. I think the lesser evil is to at least ensure half the country isn’t permanently jobless a month from now because half the nations businesses didn’t have the cash flow to survive. People think it can’t happen to the western world, but when half the country (or more) ends up jobless, people will start starving to death, crime will skyrocket, poverty will wash over the land like a high tide crashing on shore. The government would then start printing money faster than trees can grow for food provision, which could send the currency into hyper inflation, and that is an end game scenario nobody wants to see. Especially on a global level.

There is one plausible solution I see though- a debt holiday or even a full debt jubilee on a global level. Because things are so globalized you can’t just do it in one country, because ultimately that debt will be owed abroad somewhere along the chain. This would have to be something done as an international effort. Where all the major countries of the world agreed to put all debts and obligations on pause for a month, then force everyone home worldwide under threat of arrest. It wouldn’t come without problems because, with all debts being halted there would be a lot of people who couldn’t afford to buy food and medicine and other essentials during that month. Which means it would also need to come with massive government stimulus. But it could work.

Update 3/25/20

@JaxonH THANK YOU! Somebody gets it!

The first depression is a positively cheery time in contrast to what we'll be looking at. I can't say I love the idea of people going out again and the virus spreading.... And yet on the other hand calls to shutdown as long as it's necessary want to save lives the way Mao saved hunger. Maybe if they had a set plan at the start instead of winging it daily...

Meanwhile people, even in shutdown are patting themselves on the back for finding ways around it, meaning it's spreading anyway, and we have those direct quotes that everyone will get it anyway. Theyre not even doing this to stop the disease, they're tanking the economy and millions of lives simply to not overwhelm hospitals all at once and end up with Italy's problem, and nothing more. So destroy your livelihood today to defer the disease until tomorrow? Malnutrition, rampant substance abuse, and homelessness aren't going to help fight disease. Neither is crime.

Some is us have been railing against this globalization for decades as immensely stupid, but no "think of all the benefits!". the people who ignored the obvious failings should be the ones left salvaging food in dumpsters.

@RR529 without doing the numbers in guessing mortality rate isn't calculated on just confirmed cases but presumed active, i.e. their numbers are that each infected infects 2 more on average. So multiply the confirmed cases by 3 as a start. Really more than that because those would already have infectef two others. There's probably a much more complicated formula they use to factor in known unknowns.

Everyone has pointed out how Italy has an older population. But the number of people dying seems much higher in Italy - more than I would have expect the difference just because of their older population. Is it possible that the strain in Italy is more lethal than elsewhere? At the rate viruses reproduce, mutations happen far fast than other organisms.

@Heavyarms55 maybe, but typically they mutate in ways that make them less deadly rather than more. Killing the host is the worst case result for a virus. It cuts off it's reproduction and survival and tends to leave it without hosts sooner or later. Evolution tends to make a disease a nuisance rather than a plague. Even this one is just a common cold with a twist. The twist is self defeating for itself. I despite all the ruckus, they do expect that it will mutate in such a way it becomes just another common cold among many all get multiple times in our lives... Nothing special after it matures. It's still an infant but adapted to humans yet.

Despite the dire name "Coronavirus" that's pretty misleading. Nearly all cold are coronavirii. This one is an offshoot of SARS but much more contageous.

That's not to say that that isn't what happened in Italy.... Just that it would run contrary to expectations by the experts. If you're right, that bodes badly for Europe and the us as Italy is likely the main strain in Europe and Eastern us, the worst part.

It could also mean there's a secondary factor in who/how the disease develops it's "dangerous" mode that's undiscovered. It's completely benign if it roots in the upper respiratory tract. Just another cold. That's the contageous infection. It's dangerous if it roots lower respiratory. Not many diseases "toggle" method of infection like that which is why this one is so problematic. But so far it seems random as to when it does that. Maybe it's not random and something about Italy exacerbates that "mode"?

@NEStalgia You're absolutely right that mutations tend to make viruses less deadly because killing off the host is counter productive - but mutations are effectively random. Not planned out or anything. So it is entirely possible that the strain in Italy is more lethal.

Your last point about something in Italy potentially pushing it toward the more dangerous mode makes sense. There could be environmental factors that trigger it. Perhaps something in the air or water, or the weather or the presence or lack of some chemical or other microorganism.

@Heavyarms55 Italy also had a crush against their healthcare ability, so the lethality was increased for cases that required more acute care. They began being forced to triage and turn away.

@HobbitGamer So Italy is a glimpse of what happens when the system is overwhelmed then? Considering how much smaller Italy's population is compared to the US, that's frightening.

@RR529 Well, I'm not calculating anything, I just posted a website that keeps tabs of the actual numbers, on a daily basis. I would think that you can't get more accurate numbers than that. And seeing as this site gets its numbers from all the official instances worldwide, I doubt that they would be wrong. And their numbers are updated every day, at the exact same time.

Mind you: you do need to see the numbers on that site in the right context. The 16% is based on the confirmed cases of deceased and cured, and the 4% also mentioned is based upon cases still in process of either getting better or possibly dying, and in the first category, the total number of people is obviously not the same, compared to the second category, so it's a bit more complicated than that, but it's definitely not just 2 to 4 percent in total on a worldwide scale. And the death rate in Italy and now Spain is still rising at an alarming rate, with hundreds of new victims on a daily basis.

And now it has started to seriously affect India, and probably the directly surrounding countries. Seeing as those countries are already overcrowded, much like China, and hygiene also isn't much of a first priority over there, I'm suspecting that at the very least, we're looking at millions of newly infected within months. They won't all die, but I have a feeling that it's going to be pretty serious for a lot of them.

Man... I’ve just got a bad feeling about all this.

And I’m not a doom and gloom kinda guy, but I’m just not seeing how this ends well in any scenario. The only way to stop the virus is full lockdown for 1 to 2 months (they say that 14 days of a full lockdown would actually do it but that’s in theory, if every single person in the country was fully isolated and every single person who developed symptoms during the two weeks stayed quarantined afterwards... and that will simply never happen in reality). Which means you would need a good 60 days to properly weed it out. And 60 days will send the economy into Depression territory. Don’t lock down for 60 days and you won’t stop the virus. You can gradually wear it out via caution as the country operates on high alert status, and hope for the best in the warmer summer months, but it’ll resurface in the fall/winter during flu season. And we still won’t have a vaccine. Which means we’ll have to go into high alert status all over again and do this all over again. Meanwhile certain sectors of the economy will be out of business for like, a year. And if they couldn’t stay in the black for two weeks without struggling how are they going to make it for 12 months?

I read in the bill they were pushing for the digital dollar. I knew that was coming. Actually told one of my friends they’d use this to advocate for Fedcoin hours before the news broke. I don’t think it’ll make it into the final bill but the simple fact they’re pushing for it means it’s time is near. And that is a real danger because once a digital dollar is established they will subsequently eradicate cash over a time span of several years, perhaps even faster than that if they argue that physical money can transmit the virus.

And if we go full digital there’s nothing stopping them from implementing negative interest rates. I’m not sure how much people know about negative interest rates but that’s a rabbit hole we will never climb out of. Ever. We’re already at zero. They’ve got nowhere else to go. If they implement negative interest rates now people will just pull their money out of their bank accounts and hold cash. And that’s the last thing they want to see happen. Because people spend less when they don’t have immediate access to their money on a debit card, which will only drag on the economy even more. They need that digital dollar if they want to get the full effect of negative rates. This isn’t the last we’ve heard of it. In fact they’ll probably propose it again in the next stimulus bill (oh you thought this was it? Heh... they are just getting started). I don’t know how long it’s going to take before the people realize their currency has been inflated away- usually there’s a substantial delay between the printing of money and the erosion of dollar value. But once this catches up to us your dollars are going to be worth half what they’re worth now. Maybe even less depending on how much they print. We’re still waiting to see the effects of QE1, QE2 and QE3 over the last decade. And the only reason it hasn’t eroded the dollar value is because deflation has been so prevalent. No matter how much they print they just can’t seem to increase the velocity of money enough. They keep needing to print more and more and they keep getting smaller and smaller effects in return.

Time to buy more gold (which, btw, is at $1640/oz, up nearly 10% this year, while everything else is down 25%). There’s a shortage right now. Physical Gold and silver is sold out everywhere. All the online bouillon dealers are selling what little they have for WAAAAY over Spot price, and with 3 week delays. There’s a complete detachment of the paper market from the physical market. People are scrambling to buy gold hand over fist.

@NEStalgia Your theory does not explain what is now happening in Spain, which is pretty much the same as what has happened, and is STILL happening, in Italy. It's predominantly the old and weak dying. I'd say the explanation could be far simpler than that: with a regular flu, the same would apply. The old and already weak or sickly would run the biggest risk, and might ultimately get a lung infection, pneumonia or any other respiratory disease, whereas most other people would at most get seriously sick and bed-ridden for a week or two, and then simply recover.

Seeing as COVID-19 is still a relatively new Corona virus, the immune system simply doesn't know how to handle it yet, and as such, it spreads faster and attacks seem more violent/lethal, even though the virus itself isn't supposed to be more deadly, in and of itself. In a year or so, we'll have the antibiotics to treat the symptoms, and mitigate the disease, but for now, we've got to get through the first wave of it.

@Heavyarms55 also, diets. pH has an effect on surfaces. Base (alkalines) break down the protein shell of the organism. Acids act as containment. Not sure what effect that does or doesn't have inside a host, but it's why soap (a base solution) is effective (it's not just washing away the germs, it's actually bursting them) - it's certainly conceivable a person's internal pH, influenced by diet (or water) has an effect. Or local water activity levels influence it. It's worse in the temperate North than the hot South. So far that indicated temperature sensitivity (like most Corona/colds) or humidity sensitivity (like influenza), but it could be something more to the locations.

@ThanosReXXX the deceased and cured closed cases mostly only count critical cases that warranted hospitalization to begin with, not necessarily a realistic estimate of all cases. I presume the 4% is coming from a model of that now realistic overall view.

@jaxonh screw the gold, if you find a good cyanide tablet dealer, buy in bulk, I'll wholesale for you. Toilet paper will look unwanted compared to that demand surge. Id rather go live in the 1930s. Waay better. I'm the biggest cynic around. Even i never pictured bad would get this bad this soon. No I thought a nice quaint world war or something first would fix things. But no, they had to let nature do it.... I buy almost everything online... But i still refuse to live in a cashless world. I'll take my chances with the plague first. It's a whole lot less lethal even if it were 16%.

@ThanosReXXX 40% of the deaths have supposedly been under 50's. It's not just the old and weak. Which is comforting in a way. If it were so radically wiping out a eugenically desirable population so clearly, I'd be very convinced this thing was purposefully designed.

@NEStalgia There seems to be this belief that weather has a big impact on the virus and that might be the case, but I'm not convinced. The virus is still hitting in places in the middle east, the American south and southwest, Australia and the like. It's warming up in the northern hemisphere. But it's cooling down in the southern hemisphere.

And no slight intended, but many places in the southern hemisphere are not as well equipped to deal with major viral outbreaks.

@Heavyarms55 yeah i was going to comment a week ago that when it hits India it's going to so damage that makes China and Italy seem tame. It's an absurdly dense, unrealistically populated, and pretty poor country. There's no good outcome there. The only "good" there is: their existence needed a population reduction one way or another, and if it wasn't this, there was a famine/food shortage coming within 35 years. Overpopulation is always, always, always a disaster in the waiting. I feel cheap having said that for years and here it is. Then again bill Gates told the world it wasn't prepared for a pandemic 5 years ago and nobody listened to him either....

It still hits the southern areas but generally not as hard. But that was a hypothesis based on: all of the other Coronas are heat sensitive and remit. Or if it's more like influenza, that's humidity sensitive and remits. But it's unknown is that applies here. The lower impact on equatorial areas suggests it might be. But that may not pan out.