Could be.
According to JHU’s map, these are numbers in two locations in China:
Zhejiang (1232 cases, 1216 recoveries, 1 death)
Jiangxi (935, 934, 1)
Wouldn’t these be statistical anomalies?
Not sure how JHU gets the numbers, but Xinhua cites them as authoritative.
I think China did a great job once they got on board with what they were doing. In spite of people thinking of them as third world, their medical system is top notch - in many cases, better than ours. The culture is also different. Friends of ours who are immigrants from China tell us that folks over there use masks anytime they are sick and the vast majority willingly stayed in rather than were forced to stay in. They marvel at how different our culture is here.
In Italy too many people blew it off to start with. It took them seeing so many dying to get on board. Exponential functions require quick timing.
Which country are we going to be like?
We do NOT have the majority of our people carrying the disease right now (nor did China). Those who say oodles have it and the rates of severe/deadly cases are off are wrong. If they were right, we’d see a majority of these tests coming back positive. They aren’t. It’s less than 10% of those with symptoms or a reason to believe they might be positive who are testing positive. The rest have colds or something else - perhaps even stress. Many who might have had contact are “asymptomatic” (according to some theories) because they don’t have it, not because they aren’t showing symptoms.
If folks would stay home for a relatively short time (two weeks - month?) to figure out who does have it and who doesn’t - then treat accordingly - this whole thing could be done with. That’s what China successfully did.
Unfortunately, too many don’t realize this could happen - or don’t care about those they deem expendable.
There is a lot of unverified data floating around. Many journals have been allowing releases of publications as preprints, without peer review because the situation is so dynamic. I expect that when the dust settles, there will be quite a few retractions. Statisticians have tools to probe data sets for fakery, too.
Samuel Shem can say things for dramatic effect, I think he is flat out wrong.
99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says’
More than 99% of Italy’s coronavirus fatalities were people who suffered from previous medical conditions, according to a study by the country’s national health authority.
The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country’s coronavirus fatalities, finding that just three victims, or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology. Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions.
More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease.
Threat to the Elderly
The median age of the infected is 63 but most of those who die are older.
The average age of those who’ve died from the virus in Italy is 79.5. As of March 17, 17 people under 50 had died from the disease. All of Italy’s victims under 40 have been males with serious existing medical conditions.
While data released Tuesday point to a slowdown in the increase of cases, with a 12.6% rise, a separate study shows Italy could be underestimating the real number of cases by testing only patients presenting symptoms.
According to the GIMBE Foundation, about 100,000 Italians have contracted the virus, daily Il Sole 24 Ore reported. That would bring back the country’s death rate closer to the global average of about 2%.
*** One-Stop Page for Links to the Major Companies’ Cancellation Policies:
400 AD solution … Too funny 
She might be more use operating a couple of ventilators.
Staff at Kirkland Facility With Coronavirus Outbreak Spread It to Other Facilities, Study Finds
Poor infection-control procedures, irregular supplies of protective equipment, and staff who worked despite feeling sick are among the factors that fueled an explosive outbreak of the new coronavirus at nine Seattle-area nursing homes, according to a new study published Wednesday.
The outbreak, identified in late February at the Life Care Center of Kirkland, Wash., spread from one nursing home to another, carried in part by infected staff who worked at multiple facilities, according to the epidemiological investigation by public-health officials from Seattle and King County, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other entities. Some staff came to work even though they had symptoms.
This set off a deadly chain reaction that led to 129 cases within 11 days, killing more than 27% of the residents who were sickened during that period, according to the study, which was published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The report identified Life Care as “Facility A,” but could be identified through context…
The study also shows how some practices common in nursing homes, such as sharing staff, along with inattention to infection control, can worsen the toll, making it easy for a highly transmissible virus to spread.
The facilities didn’t have enough supplies of personal protective equipment, alcohol-based hand sanitizer, and other items, the study noted, and staff were not well trained in how to use them.
Tim Killian, a public-information liaison for the Life Care Center, said in a news conference Monday the staff there started taking precautionary measures for infection control as early as about Feb. 10, after seeing several patients with respiratory illness, though the staff didn’t suspect they had the disease associated with the new coronavirus until notified by authorities of it on Feb. 29.
Several residents of Life Care developed fevers and respiratory illnesses in mid-February, according to the study. They were tested for flu, but all of the tests were negative. Covid-19 didn’t come up as a possible cause; staff had a “low index of suspicion” about the cluster of illnesses, the study said. At the time, to be tested, a patient had to have a link to China, where the virus originated.
On Feb. 24, a 73-year-old woman who lived at Life Care was hospitalized with a fever of 103.3, an arrhythmia, and respiratory failure. The woman, who had heart disease, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease, had had a fever, cough, and shortness of breath for five days, the report says.
Four days after she was admitted, put on a ventilator, and run through a battery of tests, doctors tested her for Covid-19. They got a positive result on Feb. 28. The woman died on Mar. 2.
Public-health authorities led by Seattle and King County, as well as the CDC, investigated the cluster at Life Care, queried about 100 long-term care facilities about cases of respiratory illness, and combed through disease surveillance reports.
As of Mar. 9, they said, authorities had identified 129 cases, including 81 nursing-home residents, 34 staff members and 14 visitors. Of the total, 23 died. At least eight other skilled nursing and assisted-living facilities had reported one or more confirmed Covid-19 cases, the study said.
so this helps to explain the explosion in the # of cases in the Seattle area.
That’s really unfortunate thinking. Surely these medical school students understand the necessity for trained medical folks to be able to work at their jobs without worrying about child care.
I still say…this would be helpful. It would give some essential personnel the ability to get to work without worry.
More information about Michigan, including ages of those affected. The man in his 50s had “pre-existing conditions” but no more specifics.
Once upon a time, before there was vaccination, there was variolation.
If you know the origins of the words, you know what it was. If not, variolation was the technique that people used to become immune to smallpox by causing an actual smallpox infection that they hoped would be less severe than wild smallpox infections. However, that was still much more dangerous than the cowpox that was observed to produce a vaccination effect against smallpox.
200 staff members and patients at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin are being tested after a physician tested positive.
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Not sure why babysitting would be seen as a good use for med students. If you’re organizing a program why not use actual teachers, who in hard-hit areas can’t teach right now anyway?
My local hospital has put out a call for babysitters in the local community. Lots of teens and young adults are volunteering. I’d rather see those med students used as glorified PAs if we get into an all hands on deck situation.
[quote=“menloparkmom, post:7785, topic:2080517”]
More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease.
I have been focused on the high number of fatalities with high BP comorbidity. Most people control their high BP, so it seems alarming. There is strong evidence that ACE inhibitors commonly used to control BP open pathways in the lungs that allow the virus to quickly colonize.
Anyone taking ACE inhibitors should check with their physician - my H talked to his on Monday and is now off Lisinopril and just using a diuretic.
Bill Gates Says Virus Shutdowns Could Last Up to 10 Weeks
Bill Gates, who last week said he’s stepping down from the board of Microsoft to devote more time to philanthropy, told Reddit users on Wednesday that the coronavirus shutdown could last as long as 10 weeks – if things go well.
“If a country does a good job with testing and ‘shut down’ then within 6-10 weeks they should see very few cases and be able to open back up,” he said.
Gates, whose foundation has committed up to $100 million to help with the global COVID-19 response, used the Ask Me Anything event to give his thoughts on issues including social distancing, vaccines and the economic fallout.
On what worries him the most:
“I worry about all the economic damage but even worse will be how this will affect the developing countries who cannot do the social distancing the same way as rich countries and whose hospital capacity is much lower.”
On what people can do to help:
“A big thing is to go along with the ‘shut down’ approach in your community so that the infection rate drops dramatically to let us go back to normal as soon as possible...We do need to stay calm even though this is an unprecedented situation.”
On the potential use of chloroquine:
“There are a lot of therapeutic drugs being examined. This is one of many but it is not proven. If it works we will need to make sure the finite supplies are held for the patients who need it most.”
On when we may see a vaccine:
“The first vaccines we get will go to health care workers and critical workers. This could happen before 18 months if everything goes well but we and [coronavirus task force member Anthony] Fauci and others are being careful not to promise this when we are not sure. The work is going at full speed.”
On when the economy will recover:
“The economic impact of the ‘shut down’ will be large but if it is done well (including the testing piece which I keep mentioning) eventually we can open back up.”
We’re not yet to an all hand on deck situation.
And PAs have much more clinical training than med students have.
I’m not saying it’s right or wrong.
But there is kind of precedent for the naming protocol in popular culture for pandemics and this type of outbreak.
Locations involved or animal origins.
And none of it faced this type of concern.
Maybe we should call it fruit bat virus. It makes no difference to me.
But there’s also some Chinese game playing. 5 mm people came and went from Wuhan and hubei after they knew about it.
-Ebola. Ebola river in Africa
-Zika Zika region of Africa.
-Hong Kong flu
-Spanish Flu (misnamed)
-Swine Flu
-Japanese smallpox
-London Plague
-Justinian Plague
-Asian Flu
-Russian Flu
-Middle Eastern Respiratory syndrome
-Italian Plague
-New World Smallpox
The idea of forcing all the risk categories to self quarantine (isolation) while the very low risk categories to go ahead and go out may be one that is feasible after the first 2-4 weeks of social distancing and staying home by the entire population. Even though I have an immuno-compromised young person in my home, I’m not against this idea after we’ve tried mass social distancing for a while.
The 80,000 include all the confirmed cases. Since they likely did not test the entire 60 million population of Wuhan, we can already assume that many people with no symptoms or with light symptoms were not tested. From the people who tested positive on Diamond Princess, about half were asymptomatic, and about 1/2 of the symptomatic people had light symptoms. So those 80,000 could mean that over 300,000 were actually infected. I would guess that the number of dead may be higher, as well.
The provincial government of Wuhan has done its best to hide its mishandling of the beginning of the pandemic, so it’s likely that we may never know a lot of the actual data for many years. I expect severe punishments will be meted out to some higher level officials by the central Chinese government, including executions. I also think that we will not hear about most, since the Chinese government may try and maintain the myth that it did not bungle its response to the pandemic, at any government level.