New publication out of china following some 2k children shows yes, less severe than adults. HOWEVER and here’s the big change - about 10% of those under 1 have severe or critical symptoms.
That’s… distressing to me personally
Eta: I heard the Brian Williams gaff on air and thought it was funny. It’s making a big deal of absolutely nothing, especially in an era where whole networks have been trying to convince the public that this disease is somehow a hoax.
Information still not available re: student loan interest being paused temporarily. NASFAA is working to get more clarification, but this is from NASFAA News Today:
At a press conference Friday afternoon in which President Donald Trump declared a national emergency due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, he also announced he would be pausing the interest on federal loans to support impacted student borrowers — though it’s unclear exactly how that change will be implemented …
The interest accrual pause would apply to all federal loans, including those in income-driven repayment plans, those in forbearance, federally-held Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) loans, and federally-held Perkins loans. The interest waiver will be automatic, retroactively dated to Friday, though Department of Education (ED) officials said it may take time to operationalize.
DH has been trying to get the health system which owns many of the hospitals in our area to set up their tents. He’s been trying since the end of January. No tents. Most of the isolation rooms in the hospitals were full as of yesterday morning.
A hospital administrator today asked, “But where should we put the tents?”. DH suggested the visitors parking lot, but really, anywhere. Otherwise, how will we manage the numbers in a safe way?
Then the administrators called a meeting and hemmed and hawed about what a big deal it is to put up the tents. They were turfing questions about increasing capacity to doctors who were like, “We’re too busy seeing patients and trying to keep ourselves safe. Your job is to support us so do it!”
So, yes, having the Army Corp of Engineers come and put up temporary capacity sounds really good to me.
Without optimism things may rapidly devolve to a place no one really want to be. In a rapidly changing environment – expect rapid change (something most people do not like under any circumstances).
Personally, I think the focus should be placed on people keeping jobs - because “X” weeks/months from now having that job will be a better than an unemployment check (for a certain number of weeks). Helicoptering in money right now (like the $1k per adult) may be a little premature but sounds like it might be a good arrow to add to our quiver.
With all this, I remain optimistic. So, while I have disagreed with @privatebanker many times in the past, on this, I’m with him! Be optimistic.
@doschicos mine says about 50% mild or asymptomatic. Up to 40% had moderate disease which includes pneumonia. (I’m surprised pneumonia in children is even considered moderate instead of pushing up into severe)
After a nap I’ll read both of the studies. I’m obviously following kids outcomes very closely and want to know if they’re getting different outcomes or using different measurements. (If the former, I’m even more concerned about data reliability)
The other studies focused on adults also had patients with pneumonia in the “mild” category which struck me at the time as indicative of the seriousness of Covid-19. I don’t think flu patients pneumonia, as an example, would be referred to as a mild case of the flu.
College my son visited last week had professor test positive. We were never notified of this. I heard today from friend. I emailed and called the school and the initial person I spoke with didn’t get it. She said, “we notified all the students in the professor’s class” and “we posted about it on our website”. They didn’t notify visiting high school seniors and didn’t seem aware he had even been there. Spoke to various people including one who said he would find out if my son was in the professor’s class. Would not tell me the building or department, citing HIPPA. I asked to be told also I’d any student he had close contact with was in the professor’s class. They got back to me.pretry quickly and let me know that my son was not in the class or around students who have class with the professor. Spoke to my.allergist who said that at this point my son is at no more risk of having been around it than the rest of us because it is out there spreading around and any of us could be exposed so we should all practice social distancing all the time of six feet or more and not go out and not go to restaurants or the gym. He said it is asymptomatic going people doing a lot of the spread and people who don’t practice social distancing. He said we might be a week late with the shutting down of things and closing schools but if we had waited another week to so this it would be so much worse. He felt we were catching it on the earlyish side. He said as a doctor he treats himself as though he has it and stays away from all others other than when he works. He is washing hands all the time. He said cooking food kills it and that it isn’t know if you can get it from raw food but of someone sneezed on your food, it could have it on it but washing raw food well should remove it (why would water only work on veggies but not hands?). He said he wouldn’t worry about that type of exposure. Said other things. He said I should treat myself and everyone I meet as though we have it and be very careful, practice social distancing stay home, wash hands, etc.
Economists are not known for their predictions folks. There are so many and many views.
Great at analyzing data and trends. Very helpful at understanding the basic dynamics and asset pricing as of a moment in time. The future. Not so much.
I’m literally on calls with them every morning. Economists working for one of the largest institutions in the world. They’d be the first to tell you this fact. They’re brilliant at helping us understand the complex data sets and systems at work. Even working on the same things and for the same company different conclusions are met.
We kid them though. Every year economists are polled on the general guesstimates for the percent change in interest rates. Generally they are incorrect over 50 percent. Not the size of the change but the direction.
The future is difficult to guess. Or we would have a lot of billionaire economists who wouldn’t be economists. They’d be running hedge funds or on their island.
Also if I knew I’d be a billionaire as well.
One can only use past experience and the judgement of many economists and strategists in combination of factors.
I can’t post it here but there was a Goldman investor call today with a view that was more optimistic (sorry no pun intended). Not rosy but not the 1930s. There is very little comparison to these eras. Except for humans always with the ability to change that destiny. Markets are not autonomous. They are creatures of man.
If anyone wants to see notes from the call. DM me and I can direct you to public post of one of the participants.
Markets will stabilize and there may be very rapid reversals. When and how. ?? So be careful out there.
Don’t get too depressed based on a blog of two UK economists. They may be correct. It certainly not the consensus of many other very serious people as well. Time will tell.
My husband has followed the numbers out of China very closely and according to him, no one under 16 died from it. That was about a week ago when he told me that.
I’m optimistic as well, but only after people, especially those in position to do something to deter the spread of the virus, have recognized the seriousness of the threat. The virus is a common enemy for everyone, regardless of where one resides or comes from. The experiences from a number of Asian countries have already shown that the virus can be defeated.
@3SailAway - if your husband has any input over design of drive thru testing, may I offer a suggestion? Today it was claimed that one of the big issues with getting large numbers of people tested was that the healthcare worker doing the test (understandably) needed to be fully gowned, gloved with full face shield because the swabbing caused the person tested to cough in the face of the healthcare worker. Understandable. But drivethru testing could prove an advantage here with a small amount of engineering. If the potentially contagious person is in their car, the car already protects everything except the exposure through the window.
Instead of enveloping the healthcare worker, cover the window. For each car, have a prepared 6’ x 6’ square of plastic that’s draped over the open window as soon as the person pulls up. Have all these sheets of plastic prepared with a 3" hole to which a glove has been duct taped and a swab taped to the glove. The healthcare worker just reaches through the glove, swabbing the person, then backing away with the plastic still between the healthcare worker and car. The two people (one on either side) holding the plastic slowly step back from the car, the car pulls away and the swab is bagged.
Yes, it would look silly, but it would be a way to use the materials we have plenty of - plastic tarps and gloves - to protect both healthcare worker and patient until we can get more protective gear.
Tldr - we don’t have enough protective gear, so stop extensively bagging the healthcare workers and instead create a barrier over the open car window.
OMG. Shutting down all companies in Bay Area is irresponsible. There are some that are working feverishly to get tests to market (yes!) and some are working to develop treatments.
The pictures of nurses in the UK drive throughs are almost laughable, all they had was a crappy apron and a mask, no eye protection, no face shield, no hair covered, apparently they swab you good an proper and there is no way to avoid coughing and spluttering. They have their on clothes on under scrubs, as it is outside and cold.
It was local officials in China who covered up things, not the national government far as I know. Certainly after it spread in wuham, but I think before they had as much spread across their country as we have now in the US, the Chinese took very strong action that has been effective at steaming the disease.
My husband said some now wonder if the virus originated in the us and someone brought it from here to China. Many people fly back and forth between the two countries and we s it only takes one person to make an outbreak. There were deaths attributed to pneumonia that Redfield admitted some of these are covid 19 as show in some testing but most were not tested. Do I think it started here and went to China, not really but I agree it is at least possible…
I think that telling people it will go away, is no big deal, not testing, and encouraging people to not take it seriously while it was spreading uncounted and untested and unquarantined across the country so we now have to shut down schools and other businesses and the stock market is dripping and people.are drying and hurting financially is unforgivable. It was science-denying and that’s something we should not have in our leaders.
I can write allay about what a bad government China has. Noone is surprised by that who has studied Chinese history. It has some good points, too, but I’m sure not a fan. But that’s a low bar for a country like ours, a world leader (we were, anyway), a democracy, a superpower, and we can’t even do the basics in response to this virus until now? I don’t believe that. We could have done so much better and had much flatter.curve, fewer deaths,.far.less economic impact as a result. It isn’t about like or don’t like temp. .it isn’t about left or right. If any president handled this well I would sing their praises whether I liked them otherwise not and would be truly grateful to them. In this case I’m ticked off. No excuse for the many bad decisions that emdanger millions.
I saw some photos and was appalled. The “aprons” they had on were just a really long version of a lobster bib. So flimsy and barely any coverage. And the masks they had on were the kind they give out in the doctor’s office, also flimsy and cheap.
