We’re saved! VP Pence has been placed in charge of our National Response to the virus!
Pray, pray, pray the fever away.
True. I still don’t think it will overwhelm the system.
This.
I heard on NPR earlier today that otherwise-healthy children don’t seem to get an active infection, which could be more or less dangerous, depending on your viewpoint.
I’m sure the odds are very low, but what are the chances that it could mutate in such a way that the incubation period remains high (14+ days), but the virus becomes more virulent and lethal? To me, this would be a worst case scenario by which it kills off a large segment of the population before it runs out of hosts. I acknowledge this might be a dumb question, since I’m somewhat ignorant about viruses, mutations, etc.
You are of the belief that the lock down stopped the spread of COVID-19 in Hubei and thus kept the actual infection rate much much lower than it will be everywhere else in the world.
Timing does not fit. See the timeline here remember incubation period and thus lag time between exposure and symptom onset.
The lock down of Wuhan and other cities occurred right about the same time as there was a peak of new symptoms onset in the confirmed cases which then in that timeline drops a week or more before any significant impact of the lock down would be seen.
The bug had been out there in the community with some of those who became confirmed cases having been symptomatic back in early December. By mid January there were hundreds of those who later sought care and were confirmed out and about across the region symptomatic.
This germ is quite contagious. In a densely populated community for well over a month. It had already spread.
If you do believe that the lock down was effective, what happens when it is eventually eased? Still a bunch of previously uninfected in that case with the germ still in circulation. Should they stay on lock down forever?
Given that the mortality rate per infected case is still an unknown that is not something that can be stated as fact. Unless one believes that the lock down was a very effective tactic, so effective that it stopped the exposure to uninfected people even before it was put in place, then the excess mortality rate from infections in Hubei is much less than seasonal influenza usually is.
No.
Oops Forgot link. Timeline here.
Replying to myself: I told this story and posted this link on my Facebook page, and one of my FBFs, who is an ICU nurse in Winnipeg, said that her own hospital has such a unit, also designated only for things like this, and she is one of the nurses who has trained to work there, although she’s not at the top of the list to do it. It was originally a burn unit but didn’t meet current standards for that, so they remodeled it into this.
::: looks at Pence’s record on public health as governor of Indiana :::
We’re doomed.
Wuhan might have something to say about that…
I hope it doesn’t overwhelm our system, but I recognize the possibility that it could.
This may be of interest: Japanese woman confirmed as coronavirus case for second time, weeks after initial recovery
FTA:
There is a lot we don’t know about this virus and the disease it causes.
Japan just closed schools for a month.
Another little bit to illustrate how using a hospitalized population to extrapolate broadly could give a very skewed perception of case fatality rate.
Dang. Based on this sort of look, similar to the look we have with COVID-19, case fatality rates of 22.7 and 11.6% for these HCoVs!!! Those two HCoVs are very contagious bugs too!
Yet there were no alarm bells and lock downs to these two HCoVs … which are two of the germs that are frequent causes of the common cold and other minor viral illnesses. But if the only view of illness caused by these two HCoVs was the view of looking at those in the ED or hospitalized with respiratory symptoms, the view we essentially have of the HCoV-SARS-2, the germ of COVID-19, it would have been almost as rational of a decision.
I for one, am longer concerned about this coronavirus.
The President’s words, like some unguent, soothing, were a balm that banished fear from my panicked brain.
God bless you, Mr. President.
Just got off a flight from Boston Logan to Gatwick, is guess 2/3rd full. See what happens when we fly into Bologna next week.
Let’s just rebrand this thing. Coronavirus is too silly… makes it seem like “beer flu”. COVID-19 is kinda scary, but boring. Me? I propose a simple modification:
Captain Trumps
… you’re welcome.
I miss the halcyon days of last month where people were legitimately afraid Iran was going to nuke the United States and that would cause Trump to act “disproportionately”
PERFECT! 
Man, this whole thing has been playing out like Stephen King’s envisioned apocalypse. It’s freaking me out. It’s been forever since I read The Stand. How long start to finish did it take to kill off 90 something percent of the world’s population? A few months?
But don’t worry! Captain Trumps to the rescue!
Not exactly sure how to ask this question or if it is even relevant. Each tie someone is infected a new colony starts. How many generations of colonies does it take for a virus to mutate itself into a weaker version of itself. It would seem that it could go a million different directions with each new colony being isolated from the others??
Good point, I’ll account for that.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that around 60% of the population will contract the virus based on Marc Lipsitch’s estimates based on previous pandemics. Using the data from the Chinese CDC (The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Outbreak in China—Summary of a China CDC Report) we can assume around 19% of those cases will be severe enough to require hospitalization, and among those cases that are severe enough to require hospitalization around 2.3% will die.
This works out to around 850,000 deaths in the US and 20 million deaths worldwide.