This new science paper suggests “Considerable countermeasures have effectively controlled the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan”. That suggests that similar countermeasures being enacted worldwide might have an effective result.
This paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, but given the speed (or sluggishness) of that process, the authors thought they should do a pre-print first. Sometimes the web can be the harshest peer-review. – Anthony
Evolving Epidemiology and Impact of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions on the Outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Wuhan, China
medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.03.20030593. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.
It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .
The entire paper is available here.
ABSTRACT BACKGROUND
We described the epidemiological features of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) outbreak, and evaluated the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions on the epidemic in Wuhan, China.
METHODS
Individual-level data on 25,961 laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases reported through February 18, 2020 were extracted from the municipal Notifiable Disease Report System. Based on key events and interventions, we divided the epidemic into four periods: before January 11, January 11-22, January 23 – February 1, and February 2-18. We compared epidemiological characteristics across periods and different demographic groups. We developed a susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered model to study the epidemic and evaluate the impact of interventions.
RESULTS
The median age of the cases was 57 years and 50.3% were women. The attack rate peaked in the third period and substantially declined afterwards across geographic regions, sex and age groups, except for children (age <20) whose attack rate continued to increase. Healthcare workers and elderly people had higher attack rates and severity risk increased with age. The effective reproductive number dropped from
3.86 (95% credible interval 3.74 to 3.97) before interventions to 0.32 (0.28 to 0.37) post interventions. The interventions were estimated to prevent 94.5% (93.7 to 95.2%) infections till February 18. We found that at least 59% of infected cases were unascertained in Wuhan, potentially including asymptomatic and mild-symptomatic cases.
CONCLUSIONS
Considerable countermeasures have effectively controlled the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan. Special efforts are needed to protect vulnerable populations, including healthcare workers, elderly and children. Estimation of unascertained cases has important implications on continuing surveillance and intervention
The entire paper is available here.
Unrelated to the paper, but relevant and interesting, this WaPo graph comes from Matt Ridley on Facebook.
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According to the Johns Hopkins site, there have been 33 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. to date. This is strange because there were 40 yesterday. I guess some of the causes of death were reclassified, some people came back to life or the severity of the illness really is exaggerated.
Various sites with statistics do not agree with one another.
22 Deaths are from “Life Care Center” – a nursing home in Kirkland Washington. (King County)
Hope that adds some perspective.
Seems like they found those dead people and a couple of more.
I heard a radio report that medication used for inflammation for another medical problem was successfully used in patients with the virus in two countries. Sorry, I cannot remember further details. It may we worth looking into. Perhaps someone can give a link to a written report?
Dan Bongino and guest, Stem cells… I take 3 doses a day of curcumin / black pepper, fish oil and some other foods that really quell overactive inflammatory response.
Mario
The healthier you are the better. People with any respiratory ailments, diabetes, heart conditions even high blood pressure apparently are at risk. Fever is a way your immune system tries to fight infections. I guess the reason why older people are at risk.
Yes I agree. I’ve grown up with asthma and allergies and did not eat well (too much candy since I worked at the age of 12 and could buy what I wanted). My doctor at 12 years old, told me not to exert myself. Stubbornly, my dad told me to job from telephone poll to poll, and then walk and so on. I sneaked at the drug drop and bought primatene tablets which made it possible and then I weened myself off. The gym teacher drafted me to the track team in Jr High and then I had no more asthma… Unless I got sick, then my lungs were attacked. Anyway as an adult, I’ve learned to eat certain nutrients and exercise – hoping that I can keep it up so that is not what gets me when I am in my 80s.
Don’t neglect vitamin D (with vit K) for modulating immune response.
I take 50mcg 3 x day plus it is in the Wellness formula which is magical shit… https://www.pureformulas.com/wellness-formula-240-capsules-by-source-naturals.html?accountid=53000524&CAWELAID=1298330829&CATARGETID=530005240008779802&cadevice=c&gclid=Cj0KCQjw3qzzBRDnARIsAECmryolpu6vQYbdEeL7EGjSqPpZQht3fZGXDhYH7jw5rO9I47V0KjnRYd8aArCKEALw_wcB
I wondered why had Italy 5 or 6x the cases as Spain or France had. A report I saw, stated that all the leather goods companies in N. Italy had been sold to the Chinese, They ,as is their manner, had brought in 100,000 Chinese workers. Q.E.D
Interesting, I had read that it is thought that a likely explanation for the Spanish flu was that the UK brought in several hundred thousand Chinese workers to help in the war effort die to a shortage of manpower. The UK did have one of the first deaths associated with that pandemic.
good to see you folks here are finally listening.
Poor steve, he just can’t let go of his irrational prejudices.
That and his need to take large group of people and stuff all of them into unflattering boxes of his own design.
Biden and his team will take full control. I think he might have said that he would follow China’s model and harvest plasma from infected prisoners and stem cells from babies to be aborted.
“good to see you folks here are finally listening.”
Well, the next-most-popular (?) climate contrarian website, JoNova’s, has not only been listening but sounding the alarm (responsibly and with good links and data) from January.
https://jonova.com.au
Re this Coronavirus BS. Einstein said something like “I dont know if the universe is infinite but I do know for certain that humans are infinitely stupid” Humans have just wasted billions on a nothing burger just like climate change
This analysis (and explanation) is a MUST READ for everyone: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
From the article:
This is what you can conclude:
• Excluding these, countries that are prepared will see a fatality rate of ~0.5% (South Korea) to 0.9% (rest of China).
• Countries that are overwhelmed will have a fatality rate between ~3%-5%
Put in another way: Countries that act fast can reduce the number of deaths by a factor of ten. And that’s just counting the fatality rate. Acting fast also drastically reduces the cases, making this even more of a no-brainer.
I have been watching the daily numbers for the last several weeks using this site, … https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
An observation is that the death rate is initially high for a nation, then is reduced as more cases are found. Iran had an initial death ration of 10% to 12%. Now it is down to 5% which is still a high rate. Italy has the worst numbers at 7%. The new cases today are at 3,500, still growing daily. They have jumped into second place for having the highest case load over the last 5 days. Those are the two worst hit nations outside of China.
Then there are a number of nations with very low death rates. Makes me wonder if Italy/Iran were hit with a more deadly variation of the virus.
Re this Coronavirus BS. Einstein said something like “I dont know if the universe is infinite but I do know for certain that humans are infinitely stupid” Humans have just wasted billions on a nothing burger virus just like climate change. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/13/evolving-epidemiology-and-impact-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-on-the-outbreak-of-coronavirus-disease-2019-in-wuhan-china/#comment-2936929. It seems to me that Australians, English and Irish (and USA democrats) have become notoriously stupid and backward from being before great countries with great people. They seems to thrive on misery and bad news nothing is positive for them. Glad I left and live in South America a looong loong time ago where people are actually happy and have a life. BTW my 2 cents worth cheers
I have posted on Wuhanvirus several times here previously.
To push aside racist naysayers, it did begin in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, in late 2019. The mechanism was bats to pangolins to humans in a Wuhan wet market. The PC virus name is now SARS-CoV-2, and the resulting fatal respiratory disease is CoViD-19. AKA Wuhan virus.
Latest mortality data (several previous posts) based on the ‘experimental’ Diamond Princess ‘experiment as reported from Japan. The data ‘corrects’ mortality/ recovered outcomes number from JHU.CSSE.edu for the undiagnosed as yet uncertain case denominator.
So, when Japan published the final Diamond Princess report last week, there were 705 total PCR diagnosed, 392 symptomatic (fever >100F) and 313 ‘asymptomatic’. That last value is skewed high, so alarm maybe also high. Elderly cruisers are more susceptible, and some ‘negatives’ presented symptoms later in Nebraska. But is the best actual ‘experimental’ data we have now. Based on that ‘fact’ denomination correction, we have the following CFR (case mortality outcomes, deaths/ recovered):
Last Thursday and each day following:
3.4 same as WHO the day before, perhaps coincidentally.
3.5
3.5
3.6
3.6
3.7
3.8
3.8
4.1.
Notice this consistent and fact based albeit negatively biased method is NOT a good trend, and NOT media reported.
Rud,
What are you using for the fatality numbers for the Diamond Princess?
The WHO numbers as of today are 696 infected and 7 dead. That gives a fatality rate similar to China outside Hubei Province, which the survey report estimated as 0.7%. As you note, fatality rates vary by demographics of the group infected and other factors.
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200313-sitrep-53-covid-19.pdf
“AKA Wuhan virus.”
AKA Wu-Flu.
How do you KNOW the “mechanism”?
For a look at the 1918-1920 Flu Pandemic, see 100 Years Later: The Flu.
Note that WHO reported this in mid-February. I posted their reports here on Feb 23 and Feb 25, to very loud comments of denial.
Just more examples here of similar behavior as that of climate extremists – which is condemned here. Not much self-awareness. Sad, really.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/23/cut-thru-myths-to-see-facts-about-covid-19/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/25/blockbuster-news-from-china-about-covid-19/
A doctor on Lou Dobbs the other day had been in China studying what they did. Blood plasma from a person recovering from the coronavirus can be used to treat 3 other people who are sick. This is what we used to do before we had antibiotics and it has proven effective in China. A Chinese colleague of the doctor sent him the paper. We can do this now.
Hi P. Redfern, – This viral treatment using a plasma tactic is not new; probably not a panacea for this Wuhan coronavirus. If want to see some of the limitations (& improvements) there is relevant data for 80 corona-virus patients reported in (2005) free full text on-line of : “Use of convalescent plasma therapy in SARS patients in Hong Kong”.
This “convalescent plasma” tactic has had research published for use with other viruses (ex: influenza). And there are other reports related to it’s use in SARS besides the above cited study.
Who collects and issues the data in China?
With the inevitable leakage from the lock-downs and vast semi-rural areas with poor medical facilities China’s Fat Lady ain’t singing yet
Wake up chaps
Here’s an excellent article, deeper and wider in parts than much else I’ve read:
“What Will You Do If You Start Coughing? “Stay home” is not a sufficient plan”
The Atlantic Mar 11 · 12 min read
https://medium.com/the-atlantic/what-will-you-do-if-you-start-coughing-6a3c986b9db6
Where there is no social distancing – “This all suggests that COVID-19 is a relatively benign disease for most young people”
“A quarantined boat is an ideal—if unfortunate—natural laboratory to study a virus
March 9, 2020 by Robert
Data from the Diamond Princess cruise suggests that COVID-19 is a relatively benign disease for most young people and not as deadly as we think.
Here are excerpts from an article by Jeremy Samuel Faust entitled COVID-19 Isn’t As Deadly As We Think.
“The most straightforward and compelling evidence that the true case fatality rate of SARS-CoV-2 is well under 1 percent comes not from statistical trends and methodological massage, but from data from the Diamond Princess cruise…
“A quarantined boat is an ideal—if unfortunate—natural laboratory to study a virus.
“In China, 9 million people die per year, which comes out to 25,000 people every single day, or around 1.5 million people over the past two months alone. A significant fraction of these deaths results from diseases like emphysema/COPD, lower respiratory infections, and cancers of the lung and airway whose symptoms are clinically indistinguishable from the nonspecific symptoms seen in severe COVID-19 cases.
“During the peak of the outbreak in China in January and early February, around 25 patients per day were dying with SARS-CoV-2. Most were older patients in whom the chronic diseases listed above are prevalent. Most deaths occurred in Hubei province, an area in which lung cancer and emphysema/COPD are significantly higher than national averages in China, a country where half of all men smoke.
“This is where the Diamond Princess data provides important insight. Of the 3,711 people on board, at least 705 have tested positive for the virus (which, considering the confines, conditions, and how contagious this virus appears to be, is surprisingly low).
“On the Diamond Princess, six deaths have occurred among the passengers, constituting a case fatality rate of 0.85 percent…. The most important insight is that all six fatalities occurred in patients who are more than 70 years old. Not a single Diamond Princess patient under age 70 has died.
“(In other words) The true case fatality rate, known as CFR, of this virus is likely to be far lower than current reports suggest. Even some lower estimates, such as the 1 percent death rate recently mentioned by the directors of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, likely substantially overstate the case.
“In the early days of the crisis in Wuhan, China, the CFR was more than 4 percent. As the virus spread to other parts of Hubei, the number fell to 2 percent. As it spread through China, the reported CFR dropped further, to 0.2 to 0.4 percent. As testing begins to include more asymptomatic and mild cases, more realistic numbers are starting to surface. New reports from the World Health Organization that estimate the global death rate of COVID-19 to be 3.4 percent, higher than previously believed, is not cause for further panic.
“… another thing that’s worth remembering: These patients (on the Diamond Princess) were likely exposed repeatedly to concentrated viral loads (which can cause worse illness). Some treatments were delayed. So even the lower CFR found on the Diamond Princess could have been even lower, with proper protocols. It’s also worth noting that … many patients with chronic illnesses go on cruises.
“This all suggests that COVID-19 is a relatively benign disease for most young people, and a potentially devastating one for the old and chronically ill, albeit not nearly as risky as reported.”
problem with relying on data from a source known to fudge data is….you got a real good chance of having a fudged outcome.
stay calm, practice good hygiene, avoid risky situations.
IOW act like you should always be acting anyways.
I think that, yes this disease is very serious, but I believe that the so called cure is much worse than the virus. Hysteria , paranoia, misinformation and on and on. Have you noticed as well, that the hardest hit parts of the globe are mostly the most affluent? In part, I think that we in the most sanitized regions have compromised immune systems that do not enable to fight off new strains like the corona virus.
It was well known in Soviet Union and other dirty and poor countries that the tourists most often ill where the Americans; far later, the West Europeans. The ones from poor countries were the strongest ones.
The Americans (those who travel) had very weak immunity.
In case folks haven’t seen. Queueing theory and epidemics
Gompertz Curve
https://www.apsnet.org/publications/phytopathology/backissues/Documents/1981Articles/Phyto71n07_716.PDF
Queuing theory and epidemiology
http://www.few.vu.nl/~rplanque/resources/PapersForProject/trapman.pdf
A lot of public comment has been about “flattening the curve” which is really an effort to control arrival rate. I wonder if just as much effort has been taken to manage dwell times/ service times etc.