Reposted from the Fabius Maximus Blog
By Larry Kummer, Editor / 25 February 2020
Summary: Epidemics are like wars in that truth is the first casualty. I see comment threads in which misinformation makes most readers know less than when they started. Meanwhile, this blockbuster good news from China is lost amidst the chaff.
First, a status report
From WHO’s February 24 situation report.
Outside China, there are 29 nations infected (1 new, 6 since Feb 3). There are 1,374 cases (261 new, 1,221 since February 3). This does not include the 695 infected and then quarantined on the Diamond Princess.
Blockbuster news from China
Here are excerpts from remarks by Tedros Adhanom, Director-General of WHO, at the February 24 media briefing. This is important news – contradicting guesses by the doomsters.
“We’re encouraged by the continued decline in cases in China.. …They found that the epidemic peaked and plateaued between the 23rd of January and the 2nd of February, and has been declining steadily since then.
That is good news, and not just for China. With no preparation and relatively primitive public health networks (compared to those of developed nations), the epidemic stabilized in roughly four weeks – probably due to China’s fast and large quarantines. That is good news, because other nations are relying on quarantines to contain the infection.
Also, this suggests that the doomsters’ predictions that the epidemic would prove uncontrollable in China – sweepting through to its four corners – are wrong. China’s 77 thousand cases sounds like a large number, but it is a small fraction of China’s 1.4 billion people. That is true even if the true number infected is twice as large, or even (implausibly) five times as large.
“They found that the fatality rate is between 2% and 4% in Wuhan, and 0.7% outside Wuhan.”
The fatality rate in the developed nations will certainly be lower than that in China outside Wuhan (medical facilities in Wuhan are overwhelmed), although the estimate of a 0.7% fatality rate might be wrong. Original estimates were over 2% (e.g., here). If proven correct, this is great news.
“They found that for people with mild disease, recovery time is about two weeks, while people with severe or critical disease recover within three to six weeks.”
That is also important news, as the length of time required for treatment of critical cases determines how quickly an epidemic overloads the hospital facilities of a region.
The Director gives the bottom line about the status of the epidemic: it is not a pandemic, yet.
“The sudden increases of cases in Italy, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Korea are deeply concerning. There’s a lot of speculation about whether these increases mean that this epidemic has now become a pandemic. We understand why people ask that question.
“WHO has already declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern – our highest level of alarm – {on January 30} when there were less than 100 cases outside China, and 8 cases of human-to-human transmission.
“Our decision about whether to use the word “pandemic” to describe an epidemic is based on an ongoing assessment of the geographical spread of the virus, the severity of disease it causes and the impact it has on the whole of society.
“For the moment, we are not witnessing the uncontained global spread of this virus, and we are not witnessing large-scale severe disease or death. Does this virus have pandemic potential? Absolutely, it has. Are we there yet? From our assessment, not yet.”
See the WHO website for details about the meaning of “pandemic” (here and here).
The doomsters spread panic
The doomsters are multiplying faster than those infected with the diesase, spreading misinformation. They use graphs showing rapid growth in the small numbers of infected to make this seem like a major pandemic outside China. It’s not, at least yet.
They make bold statements about COVID-19 not justified by currrent research, especially comparing it to the flu. Most importantly, they assume developed nations will have the same rates of spread & mortality as China – despite our vastly better medical infrastructure.
Making this much worse is the same dynamic seen in the climate change debate: experts seeking their 15 minutes of fame by making statements (often quite wild) that are outside of the consensus, without mentioning that. In the early stages of the epidemic, there was pushback to this by other experts. Now, as in climate science, the pushback has stopped – encouaging more experts to fuel the hysteria for their own gain.
What next?
Epidemics are like wars in another respect: their outcomes are difficult to predict. But whatever happens, this is – as I said on January 25 – a historical milestone. The combination of global organization and high tech has allowed preparations during the past 54 days of an unprecedented speed and scale. Without these, by now we might be in the midst of a devastating global pandemic. This is progress.
But as usual, Trump wants to reduce our defenses to anything other than war. In the midst of the Coronavirus epidemic, President Trump proposed cutting funding to the World Health Organization by 53% and to the Pan American Health Organization by 75%. Madness.
It’s easy to follow the coronavirus story
The World Health Organization provides daily information, from highly technical information to news for the general public.
- There is their daily situation report, with detailed numbers.
- The Director-General of WHO gives frequent briefings, which are quite insightful.
- Their daily press briefings have more information. An audio goes up quickly afterwards. A transcript is posted the next day.
Posts about the coronavirus pandemic.
- The 2019-nCoV virus shows that we’ve built a better world.
- Hidden news about the epidemic sweeping across America! – How fake news drives out good news.
- Amazing but hidden news about coronavirus – Update about the epidemic, and why so few know the good news.
- Lessons from the coronavirus about climate change.
- Cut thru myths to see facts about COVID-19.
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.
Please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Also, see these posts about epidemics…
- See the ugly cost of the next big flu pandemic. We can do more to prepare.
- Stratfor: The superbugs are coming. We have time to prepare.
- Posts debunking the hysteria about the 2009 swine flu in America.
- Posts debunking the hysteria about the 2015 ebola epidemic in America.
Films about scientists responding to global threats
In these films, we see scientists behaving according to their and our highest ideals.
When Worlds Collide
Contagion (2011).
Available at Amazon.
Available at Amazon.
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“But as usual, Trump wants to reduce our defenses to anything other than war. In the midst of the Coronavirus epidemic, President Trump proposed cutting funding to the World Health Organization by 53% and to the Pan American Health Organization by 75%.”
You probably don’t play “Go”, an ancient board game of complexity overlaying simple moves that depends on effectively allocating scarce resources. Your view of Trump’s tactics may overvalue W.H.O. and undervalue other wiser moves. There is room for disagreement, but don’t underestimate the President.
It’s generally the aged and those with weakened immune systems or respiratory problems that can die like flu. However a virulent strain like this that can kill the young doctor is problematic in an economic sense as we’ve seen. You can’t lock up large sections of productive economies and a sudden spike strike rate of 20 or 30% of the population can overwhelm medical facilities and we don’t need snowflake societies panicking and flooding hospitals demanding treatment.
That’s the real risk and not the actual risk of secondary pneumonia and death but where in any of the emergency plans is the method of prioritisation? We aint like China where the State rules with an iron fist so it needs a social pact and understanding of procedure and ranking of importance or there can be entitled mayhem. We aint all gunna die from it but many more unnecessary ones will if there’s a disorganised stampeding rabble.
if the Chinese numbers are correct? Why are 750 million people on lockdown
I suppose this is one way to free up beds in Wuhan.
If China sends someone to the crematorium while he’s still alive, I assume if there’s a death certificate it will list any preexisting condition as the cause of death.
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3881683 says, in part:
On Feb. 24, the dissident site Youth Production (少年譯製) uploaded a video of a Chinese woman approximately in her 60s sharing her traumatic experience surviving a stay in a Wuhan hospital while infected with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). In the video, titled “Burned Alive,” a woman wearing a surgical face mask and speaking with a heavy Wuhan accent tells her harrowing tale to a taxi driver who is covered from head to toe in protective gear.
She starts by saying that she was in bed number 18, when another patient, a male in his 70s, was admitted on the morning Jan. 28 and stayed in bed 17. She said that by that afternoon, a team from Tianjin had arrived and found that the patient was having difficulty inhaling.
The woman said that she was experiencing the same symptoms, but not as severely as she was younger. She said that the man was weak but was still breathing when medical workers “bound his head” and then his hands and feet, which were “still moving.”
The traumatized survivor then said that medical personnel placed the man in a black plastic bag and pulled up the zipper, before placing him in yet another plastic bag. She said they then wrapped the man in two more layers with an unidentified material.
The driver then asked if the man was burned alive. She confirmed that the man was still alive when he was sent for cremation, and she said there were fears that the toxic gas from the crematorium would spread.
She claimed that she actually saw several cases of living patients stuffed in body bags and taken for cremation. She said that another elderly man in her isolation ward was still breathing but was also sent for cremation.
The horrified woman said she had never seen anything like it and said the patients were treated “just like dead dogs.” The video closed with the woman saying that those who were dead “were stacked one after another in yellow body bags.”
I believed that no one in China would have any reason to make up such a story, I suppose I would automatically believe this.
But, in fact, I can think of lots of reasons why people would be looking to smear and/or discredit the government there.
Sorry…skipped a word at the beginning:
IF I believed that…
The name “dissident site Youth Production” certainly had me concerned, and I don’t know how respectable Taiwan News is.
OTOH, some of the stuff I’ve been reading about conditions in Wuhan lend some credibility to stories like this. And frankly, compared to Larry Kummer’s screeds here the two occupy about the same level….
Anyway, it is an horrific story.
I would not go so far as to say it is inconceivable, but it is difficult to imagine there are large numbers of people willing to suffocate people in body bags and burn them alive.
Why not just give them some overdose first, if there was some directive that was being carried out by large numbers of people to murder people by incinerating them alive or suffocating them in body bags?
Just about anything would do it for someone in that condition.
Even people on deaths door seem likely to go absolutely nuts with panic if this is done to them…at least some of them.
If this is actually happening, where are the videos?
Even Nazi soldiers in WWII had a hard time killing large numbers of innocent people (or so I have been led to believe) after they had been ordered to do it a few times…and those were soldiers.
These are people in hospitals.
Maybe I am naïve, but I cannot believe that very many people could be induced to do this to others.
[Genocidal tone here, too. Mod]
Moderators…I know it is a very touchy subject, but I was cautioning against taking such stories at face value.
I tried to make it clear I do not think there are many people in the world who would do what this person described.
I looked through all the other comments, and did not see any others flagged, so not sure what others ones are referred to.
I do not want to violate any policies, so if you want to make snips or suggest anything for me to stear clear of, I am fine with that.
Moderators,
I think I have some comments from the past few days in moderation, on this and some other threads.
Do I need to request a check on each thread, or is the moderation bin collective for all threads?
Thanks,
NM
I took a look. While I’m not on the moderation team, I do have that superpower. I didn’t see any posts from you in limbo. They were either released, or Pressable just lost them. (There is a single bin.)
OK, thanks Rick.
I have been commenting on several threads and keep making the mistake of using words I know will get a commented moderated.
Kay aye double Ell is the one that gets me the most.
Thanks again.
News at this hour includes a long list of additional countries with cases of COVID19 now present. South America, Middle East, Europe…
And in Germany, some official just said it has now become impossible to track down the sources and contacts of the new cases…IOW, the containment has failed.
This will happen in one country after another, in my view.
There is one chance to contain a virus, and it has failed.
‘Trace numbers’ or counts in the 1,000’s?
What percentage traveled to China? Customs in conjunction with airlines should be able to source those numbers …
It is just reports. I think in the countries with new cases it tends to be a low number at first.
My impression is this is community cases, as they are called. Not travelers in airports being identified.
Customs and airlines track people?
Hmmm.
Here is how many flights are in the air right now. Not sure if this is only commercial flights or what:
“Flight Tracker Overview
Tracking 10,438 airborne aircraft with 984,413,538 total flights in the database.
FlightAware has tracked 116,895 arrivals in the last 24 hours.”
https://flightaware.com/live/
“There is one chance to contain a virus, and it has failed.”
I could never see any chance to contain the virus. It was bound to fail. Virus are so small. One suspects that they can suspend in air for a period rather like house dust. Their density would be interesting
Walk down any street on a blustery day with the infected
I wrote before about my experience re trying to protect myself and my clothing when handling powdered dye concentrate outdoors. This was years ago but my thought was “Man it must be hard to avoid contamination from a toxic substance”. One needs a laboratory environment. Clearly, many hospital precautions have failed.
Us, in a everyday environment? No chance
M
They were able to do it with SARS, MERS, EBOLA, and several others.
They are small, but one virion will not cause an infection, there is a minimum infective dose far any particular virus and person, over some period of time.
Outside, UV light kills viruses quickly. They are delicate.
For some, dry cold air kills them, for others, moisture and warm air kills them.
There are viruses and bacteria everywhere, all the time, but people do not always get sick.
Out bodies have numerous layers of innate immunity consisting of external and internal barriers and chemicals and cellular defenses, etc.
The numbers of actual virions can be very high.
Many thousands.
“Correlation of 1 TCID50 value to the number of infectious influenza virions is, however, not clear. Ratios of TCID50 to number of virions of 1:100, 1:400, and 1:650 have all been documented (Weber and Stilianakis 2008). Using real-time quantitative PCR, van Elden et al. (2001) reported that 13 copies of viral RNA of influenza A and 11 copies of viral RNA for influenza B equaled 0.02 (1:650) and 0.06 (1:183) TCID50, respectively. ”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12560-011-9056-7
For some viruses, the number of TCIDs to equal 1 M.I.D> is in the millions.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12560-011-9056-7/tables/1?shared-article-renderer
They are small, but one virion will not cause an infection, there is a minimum infective dose far any particular virus and person, over some period of time.
Outside, UV light k!lls viruses quickly. They are delicate.
For some, dry cold air k!lls them, for others, moisture and warm air k!lls them.
There are viruses and bacteria everywhere, all the time, but people do not always get sick.
Out bodies have numerous layers of innate immunity consisting of external and internal barriers and chemicals and cellular defenses, etc.
The numbers of actual virions can be very high.
Many thousands.
“Correlation of 1 TCID50 value to the number of infectious influenza virions is, however, not clear. Ratios of TCID50 to number of virions of 1:100, 1:400, and 1:650 have all been documented (Weber and Stilianakis 2008). Using real-time quantitative PCR, van Elden et al. (2001) reported that 13 copies of viral RNA of influenza A and 11 copies of viral RNA for influenza B equaled 0.02 (1:650) and 0.06 (1:183) TCID50, respectively. ”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12560-011-9056-7
For some viruses, the number of TCIDs to equal 1 M.I.D> is in the millions.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12560-011-9056-7/tables/1?shared-article-renderer
This preprint has some typos and appears a bit confused. They made an attempt to estimate the real case count in Iran, and came up with “We estimated that 18,300 (95% confidence interval: 3770 to 53,470) COVID-19 cases would have had to occur in Iran, assuming an outbreak duration of 1.5 months in the country, in order to observe these three internationally exported cases reported at the time of writing.”
Yeah, just based on three exported cases, don’t read as gospel.
I read last night that Bahrain identified six from Iran, which I think would pump up the estimate a lot if there isn’t much traffic between the two places.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.24.20027375v1.full.pdf+html
A very small insight to China that may not be so small in reality.
From a friend of mine today:
Hi Codetrader,
If its any consolation or any different perspective my daughters softball team has had their jerseys on order for a few weeks and of course they are being produced in China. Well the manufacturer of the jerseys let us know a few weeks ago that there will be a major delay because of the coronavirus and the shutdown of the workforce and quarantine. Well as of a few days ago they are back up and running and production is back on schedule. So it cannot be AS BAD as our news media is making it out to be 😊
Josie
LMAO.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8047793/Coronavirus-outbreak-52-TIMES-worse-one-Chinese-province-officials-admit-report-claims.html
What makes this topic interesting is that we can make predictions and find how accurate they are within a shortish period of time. With climate change we cannot – even within many of the here contributors’ lifetime
How long before we know if this outbreak has a major, minor or minimal impact in relation to global mortality and economics? I’m saying 3 months
I have always believed that the prime threat to the human species is natural biological – not climate, war or physical catastrophe. But, maybe not within my lifetime
Nature shows that when a species in an ecosystem rapidly increases in numbers it reaches a point of collapse after which its numbers stabilise at a very much lower level
Just saying
M
Michael Carter
I understand your comment, but can’t agree to it.
Simply because for me, the prime threat to the human species over the long term is – apart from a major supervolcano eruption like Yellowstone – the absolute urge to rule, and to exercise dominion anyway, if necessary even with the worst consequences for humanity.
Rgds
J.-P. Dehottay
If you thought car sales were a bit slow in your neck of the woods?
https://www.msn.com/en-au/motoring/research/chinese-car-sales-plummet-due-to-coronavirus/ar-BB10ozFi
And for Oz we’ll be heading for autumn and winter with the flu season and if Covid hits you can imagine everyone who gets the flu symptoms will think the worst-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/coronavirus-could-combine-with-winter-flu-causing-patient-surge/ar-BB10secn
It’s not so much a medical problem as an economic disruption problem that requires a social compact well ahead of any possible pandemic which under general flu season circumstances won’t have to be that large an infection rate to cause a run on our medical capability.
Now a VP in Iran has Covid-19. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/iran-cannot-handle-coronavirus/607150/ says in part:
Today, Masoumeh Ebtekar, Iran’s vice president and a notoriously cruel member of the group of Iranians who held U.S. diplomats hostage in 1979, announced that she, too, has the disease. According to reports, she met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet just yesterday, potentially exposing the entire senior leadership of Iran to the disease.
Harirchi stated that the government refuses to impose quarantines, because they are premodern and ineffective. Mohammad Saeedi, the head of the shrine in Qom and a local representative of the country’s supreme leader, not only opposes a quarantine but begged people to visit the shrine, calling it a “place of healing.”
Israeli Scientists Say They Will Have Coronavirus Vaccine “In A Few Weeks”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/israeli-scientists-say-they-will-have-coronavirus-vaccine-few-weeks
Quoted {on Thursday, a team of Israeli scientists one-upped the US, boasting that they could have a vaccine ready “in a few weeks.”
According to a statement cited by the Jerusalem Post, a team of Israeli scientists are on the cusp of developing the first vaccine against the novel coronavirus, according to Israel’s Science and Technology Minister, Ofir Akunis. If all goes as planned, the vaccine could be ready within a few weeks and available for human use in 90 days.
“Congratulations to MIGAL [The Galilee Research Institute] on this exciting breakthrough,” Akunis said. “I am confident there will be further rapid progress, enabling us to provide a needed response to the grave global COVID-19 threat,” Akunis said.
For four years, a team of scientists at MIGAL has been developing a vaccine to combat infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), which causes a bronchial disease affecting poultry. The effectiveness of the vaccine has been demonstrated during preclinical trials carried out at the Veterinary Institute.
During the process, they discovered a process for developing new vaccines that they expect will help facilitate a novel coronavirus vaccine in world-beating time.
“Our basic concept was to develop the technology and not specifically a vaccine for this kind or that kind of virus,” said Dr. Chen Katz, MIGAL’s biotechnology group leader. “The scientific framework for the vaccine is based on a new protein expression vector, which forms and secretes a chimeric soluble protein that delivers the viral antigen into mucosal tissues by self-activated endocytosis, causing the body to form antibodies against the virus.”
Here’s how the team discovered their project would be useful for the coronavirus vaccine.
In preclinical trials, the team demonstrated that the oral vaccination induces high levels of specific anti-IBV antibodies, Katz said.
“Let’s call it pure luck,” he said. “We decided to choose coronavirus as a model for our system just as a proof of concept for our technology.”
But after scientists sequenced the DNA of the novel coronavirus causing the current worldwide outbreak, the MIGAL researchers examined it and found that the poultry coronavirus has high genetic similarity to the human one, and that it uses the same infection mechanism, which increases the likelihood of achieving an effective human vaccine in a very short period of time, Katz said.
“All we need to do is adjust the system to the new sequence,” he said. “We are in the middle of this process, and hopefully in a few weeks we will have the vaccine in our hands. Yes, in a few weeks, if it all works, we would have a vaccine to prevent coronavirus.”
Akunis said his government has ‘fast-tracked’ all the approval processes for the vaccine to get it out as soon as possible.
MIGAL would be responsible for developing the new vaccine, but it would then have to go through a regulatory process, including clinical trials and large-scale production, Katz said.
Akunis said he has instructed his ministry’s director-general to fast-track all approval processes with the goal of bringing the human vaccine to market as quickly as possible.
“Given the urgent global need for a human coronavirus vaccine, we are doing everything we can to accelerate development,” MIGAL CEO David Zigdon said. The vaccine could “achieve safety approval in 90 days,” he said.
It will be an oral vaccine, making it particularly accessible to the general public, Zigdon said.
“We are currently in intensive discussions with potential partners that can help accelerate the in-human trials phase and expedite completion of final-product development and regulatory activities,” he said.
Israel has only confirmed a handful of cases among travelers who visited South Korea and Italy (one case they confirmed on Thursday). We wonder: If Iran does roll out a vaccine, will it share it with Iran?}
Dr. Tedros is the Baghdad Bob of world public health. He was the handpicked choice of China to run WHO.