@anomander, I certainly agree that actually working from your home limits your exposure. I’m just not terribly convinced that flying is significantly different than a normal work day for many people. Close quarters on a subway, bus, or commuter train, using bathrooms in offices or restaurants, handing over a credit card for lunch or a dinner out, shaking hands at a meeting – it all sounds pretty much the same to me.
You missed the above bit in your selective quoting, so putting it up there for you again.
Three Boston area high schools just put all of kids on quarantine who traveled on school trips to Italy over MA winter break. I don’t know all of the details on each district, but one in particular said quarantined until further notice.
“Maybe a larger proportion of 50 and over” and 80 percent of the ship being over 60 (which is what I saw on initial reports) are so different that you can’t even to discuss in my view anything about this virus to the world at large.
I do agree that it is probably going to be an unfortunately best case scenario for nursing home that don’t have residents as hardy as the cruisers.
Indeed. In a nation where many people have no sick days, and limited access to affordable health care, we will see individuals going to work - and infecting others - because they just can’t afford to self quarantine.
That is my concern too. Both my mom (86) and my in-laws (90s) live in retirement communities in areas that have been particularly affected by this virus. And in areas where a lot of people travel, internationally, and to Asia & Europe in particular.
There’s a N95 mask ad in the sidebar right now!
There is a useful comparison within the cruise ship data. Something like 1045 were crew members and 2700 were passengers. Not including any passenger children in the mix, the average crew member is likely younger (I haven’t seen data so won’t say it categorically) than the average adult passenger. As of last week, maybe 150 crew members were infected. I don’t think any of these (at this point) had fatal outcomes. So yes, these data will likely reinforce the elderly or those with underlying health conditions are most at risk, but we also can derive additional case fatality information for certain age groups.
@Marilyn. Be care. There will be lots of knock offs on the internet. Most likely not even n95. Look for major manufacturers like 3m FYI… I know you just saw an ad. Just saying. Plus all companies are now on allocations to their major vendors etc like hospitals etc. Doubt your going to be seeing them at home depot anytime soon
@Knowsstuff - I have no intention of buying, was just amused.
Interesting and somewhat reassuring interview with WHO assistant director Bruce Aylward summarizing lessons learned on a recent mission to China.
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/2/21161067/coronavirus-covid19-china
They believe mortality may be somewhat increased by the high smoking rate in China, but this is offset by the highly sophisticated methods they use to keep people alive;
“Maybe a larger proportion of 50 and over”
in 2016, a million working RNs were over 50. >50% of them are obese and overweight. The front line of workers in health care are very vulnerable themselves to this virus, as we already see HCPs are going to have a higher risk of infection. This is just RNs, not LPNs, CNAs, where the age and health issues might be even more concentrated. The the exposure of ambulance staff, firefighters (!) . The people that are being relied on as the carers here will be the victims later.
“Indeed. In a nation where many people have no sick days, and limited access to affordable health care, we will see individuals going to work - and infecting others - because they just can’t afford to self quarantine.”
I agree that’s an issue. But an equal one is that unless you are suggesting that EVERYONE quarantine themselves why would asymptomatic people quarantine themselves if they didn’t just travel or know someone who traveled to high risk places? If this virus is ( as many scientists believe) being spread by people with no symptoms that’s a problem that few other viruses have brought. And even if they have no financial or other pressure to work do you think many people will quarantine because they have a very mild sore throat or infrequent dry cough. I do not.
That was a great read. Thanks
Let’s do a little arithmetic. We have one person infected in King County, Washington in mid-January, and we know that person infected other people because someone showed up downstream from them last week. We know, sadly, that at least five deaths have already resulted from this one person. We know that the doubling rate for infection (the time from having N cases to having 2N cases) is a bit less than a week, the time from exposure to symptoms is around 4 days, and the time from symptoms to death is two to three weeks.
So if the people who are infected but have not died are roughly similar to the people who were infected and did die, we should expect ten to twenty more deaths in King County just from the people who are presently infected.
This is just math.
All stats from here:
https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus
Wouldn’t you expect the Diamond Princess crew was young, maybe 18-35? I have seen only limited senior crew over 40, as it is a hard life on board.
https://nypost.com/2020/03/02/ex-cdc-head-tom-frieden-says-kids-may-be-secret-coronavirus-carriers/
would this concern anyone out there working in schools?
NY Times article that pulls no punches on CDC stumbling with the SARS-CoV-2 assay development and roll out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-testing-cdc.html
Byline - “Federal health officials botched an initial diagnostic test and restricted widespread screening. Critics fear the virus may gain a toehold in the U.S.”
some excerpts …
IMO, no. It was likely here before China even publicly admitted there was a problem.
We could confirm H1N1 pretty quickly but it still ended up affecting some 60 million Americans.
Not excusing the Chinese government for putting the world at risk, but I think as much early information that we have on community transmission would be useful. Slowing spread means there is more time for remdesivir to be tested for efficacy, and then provided to at risk communities. Having a more available test earlier also means that long-term care facilities can better monitor their employees and residents. It would also make quarantines more effective.
We have tools in place for flu (herd immunity through vaccination, widely available diagnostics, and an antiviral drug that mitigates the severity of the outcome if accessed earlier) that we don’t have for SARS-CoV-2, so making the test available (even one from overseas - again, this is not complicated stuff) sooner would have had benefits.
I do agree that the virus will eventually become endemic, as 4 other coronaviruses are in the human population, thus the semantic issue of the journalist saying it wouldn’t have taken root in the US doesn’t detract from the larger point that there is/was benefit in ensuring that we could screen as soon as possible.