Can you imagine putting Pastor Mike Pence in charge of anything besides a Bible Study group ?
The notion that he's America's Coronavirus Czar is akin to making the convicted felon and recently pardoned Rod Blagojevich the Director United States Office of Government Ethics.
3rd World Leadership at its finest.
This will not go well for America and Americans.
Voting matters.
Elections matter.
Wake up, America.
45
@Socrates
I have stumps in my yard with higher IQs and more animation that this wooden dummy...
Pence is most qualified to hold the position of washroom attendant..smile quietly, hand out washcloths, brush off people's shoulders.
30
How about less criticism of Chinese coverups before we look carefully at home to see what our government is doing.
There are not enough test kits and our devious government should be telling us that. We DON'T know how many people have COVID-19 in the US! A commenter in this column has a daughter with suspicious symptoms. Not tested! Therefore "doesn't have the novel virus."
The CDC is determining who can be tested and not local doctors who oversee the actual sick patients. The COVID-19 patient in Northern California was not tested for several days, in spite of requests from doctors, because he/she did not have obvious contact with a source of the virus.
Stores are out of hand sanitizer and masks. It will be around a year before a vaccine can be ready, if ever. There is still not a vaccine for HIV.
Meanwhile, President Trump told us that it is under control and a vaccine is almost ready. Those lies were to support the stock market. (It did anyway because Trump supporters are well aware of Trump's lies, they usually just don't care.) In addition Trump assigned the job of coordinator (i.e., coverup Czar) to the king of prayer science, Mike Pence.
There is lots more in this line of facts describing government coverup of COVID-19. The bottom line is that taxpayer paid information is being intentionally hidden to enhance Trump's likelihood of reelection.
If we like it we should reelect Donald Trump in November. He can create any truth he wants just by saying so.
28
Three simple steps that could be taken today that would save lives.
1. Mandatory testing of those flying from a country with known outbreaks. (Why is this not happening?!!)
2. Every hospital should have test kits and they should not have to go through the CDC for them.
3. Mandatory quarantine for anyone who has had contact with an infected person.
Those are three non-starters that virtually every other nation in the world has put in place. It is a damning indictment of the dysfunction of our government that we still do not have any of these in place.
And this is precisely why you do not let a man as colossally incompetent as DJT in charge of anything. Millions of us raised the alarm when he waged war on cutting funding for the CDC, WHO, UN. We knew then that should something happen we would be in the deep trouble we are.
To prevent, curtail and contain pandemics takes planning. That's the one thing this nation chose not to do. DJT and his corrupt administration will bear significant responsibility for the ensuring deaths.
13
Because America' healthcare system runs like it is from 1890. The rest of the developed world has upgraded their systems. The U.S. has not.
The U.S. also needs an upgrade of its politicians too.
36
You're doing a heck of a job Pencie...
6
We are not ready for a pandemic, a terrorist attack or any climate or natural disasters. Guess we should always be in charge of ourselves and families. Don't depend on this current government to do the right thing or anything for that matter. Make a checklist including extra prescriptions if you can get them, pet food and well, you know the drill. Buy a few things at a time and check the dates. I'd prefer an alien visitation but can't be that lucky.
67
Time for us to donate to local food banks to assist these workers. Also donations to local low cost clinics. Healthcare is mandatory in California and for that I am grateful. We need healthcare for all across the country as well as sick days and living wages.
15
And how is that going to work out for the half of the population that can’t afford a $400 expense? Walmart is not giving out a month’s worth of free groceries, prescriptions and pet food. And these people are the most likely ones to not be able to work from home, either. Most service industry jobs cannot possibly be done by telecommute so those people will run out of cash very, very fast.
68
In promoting their conspiracy theories about Democrats and media,especially at rallies, Trump rallies threaten to become epicentres of thousands of people empowered to disbelieve the issues and spread or catch the virus at will. Will they seek treatment? Will they self-isolate? The extended allegory of all the damage done by this administration notwithstanding, his supporters don't deserve to get sick, die or spread the virus unwittingly.
14
Chinese leaders should be referred to The Hague for prosecution for their negligence and deceit for not sharing with the world that this Covid-19 virus was affecting their citizens so adversely and spreading throughout.
They hid this from the world and people have died and suffered from not knowing about the virus.
Too bad they have nuclear weapons, but they should be held responsible for their poor decisions.
5
Telemedicine: Might not TODAY be an excellent time for health care providers to begin to gear-up to offer this as the preferred form of nonemergency care until concerns about the virus are laid to rest?
5
This panic is ridiculous. I will never wear a mask out on the streets. I'll wash my hands as I normally do, nothing more. I can understand if this virus was killing a high percentage of people, but the symptoms appear like the flu, apparently. I can live with that. Also, your article title makes me wonder: we also really don't know how many people have the flu, do we? Hmm. Not critical to know.
41
How do we know the virus that has been going around this winter in Denver and other places with a 3 week long horrible cough and flu like symptoms isn’t Corona and it has just been treated like any other winter illness—rest, Advil, cough meds? No one seemed to be testing that pathogen....Just saying. It may have been here all along.
20
Please help. How accurate are the test for the Virus. What test can test so many people so fast . Nothing I have read is about the actual testing there is an assumption that the test is same all over and accurate and not complex. Most tests for virus are very complex so I don't understand. Can someone report on the actual test that we are basing all our fears on. I find it odd that we all accept that a test is a test without diving into the details. Thank you
8
You know. Doctors should be commenting NOW about the small but effective measures any individual can take to reduce the contagiousness of this virus, if an individual human being has become exposed to it.
1) Assume the worst. Assume that you may have been exposed to the virus.
Therefore, consider any runy nose a potential virus spreader.
However, here in Northern California and probably as far south as San Diego, spring has sprung and we have beautiful pollinating trees everywhere. These beautiful pollinating flowers could cause anyone to mistake allergic responses to airborne pollen to a virus infection.
BUT, 2) taking simple medicines can endanger others.
Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) and is derived from some tree barks (so "natural rememdies are including") cause viruses to concentrate in the mucous membranes of nasal passages.
A person with an ordinary cold is more contagious when having taken some aspirin, merely because the active viral load can be expelled with higher concentrations of the virus.
Similarly, the Corvid-19 may concentrate in specific bodily fluids, probably in the nasal passages. But that has not been confirmed - so this is a guess only.
Doctors state that the best way to cope with a viral infection that is flu like is to completely rest, consume warm - body temperature liquids - chicken or vege broth, not caffienated, and keep the amount of liquid constantly replenished.
Do not drink alcohol at all for many reasons.
4
Presuming that COVID-19 hasn't already spread through the US population, what is to prevent hostile countries or groups from intentionally spreading the virus here?
We already know that some carriers are asymptomatic.
4
@Captain Morgan
Intentionally spreading it? What?? Why? What would be the point? It's already spread. That's how viruses work. They spread.
Good grief. I can't believe the conspiracy theories people come up with.
17
@Captain Morgan
When will Pence prohibit rallies for Democrats? OR, standing on lines to vote in Blue states,which have the highest populations and airports where foreigners enter our country?
He can say that Trump won't do rallies either, as if it 's a measure to protect his supporters.
When we all know he is scared to death of germs, but will use this virus as a further attempt to stifle voting.
His gullible supporters will bray that Trump "cares" about them ( excuse me I spit my coffee out while I typed that)...
7
To prove once and for all that this is a hoax the president should invite all those who are infected to the WH for a photo op. How powerful it would be to see them all grouped around the president, praying, laying their hands on him, all the while confirming their devotion to him.
32
How can we accurately know how many people have Coronavirus (CoV)? It is like knowing how many birds are flying in the sky in real time or how many hair a person with a full head of hair has? The most important question is what we as individuals and/or community can do to prevent a fatality from occurring due to the CoV spreading or coming close to US? I have often commented on the complexity of staying safe and surviving and allowing the virus to pass over just like many epidemic, plagues and pandemics that have come and gone.
It is great news that most CoV cases are mild and 98% of the infections are naturally CURED in any person who has an immunocompetent immune system is not surprising. There are several factors that determine the severity of infections. Foremost among them is how much virus the respiratory track of a person is exposed to and the stage of the infection of the person or persons who are exposing others to the virus. There is a possibility of acquiring herd immunity to the virus with being gradually exposed to minute quantities of the virus. Those with low level of exposure could be a mild case. Numbers matter and therefore it is important to minimize the level of exposure with sensible hygienic practices.
Viruses are nano sized obligate intracellular parasites made up of proteins, nucleic acid and lipids. How viruses cause disease and in rare cases death is not a mystery. Since the dawn of civilization we know enough about viruses to survive CoV.
1
We only found out information about viruses when the electron microscope was introduced in the 20th century, before that no one knew about viruses.
5
@JRS rtp. How many years before the electron microscope was invented did Edward Jenner set in motion the eradication of the scourge, smallpox? Electron microscope is just a key tool that made visualization of viruses possible for those who think seeing is believing. Electron microscopy made advances in Virology and Immunology possible but the existence of viruses, previously called filterable infectious units smaller than bacteria was reported by In 1886. Adolf Mayer first described the tobacco mosaic disease that could be transferred between plants, similar to bacterial infections. In 1892, Dmitri Ivanovsky gave the first concrete evidence for the existence of a non-bacterial infectious agent, showing that infected sap remained infectious even after filtering through finest Chamberland filters. Later, in 1903, Ivanovsky published a paper describing abnormal crystal intracellular inclusions in the host cells of the affected tobacco plants and argued the connection between these inclusions and the infectious agent.This information is well documented in Wikipedia.
5
Data is the plural of datum.
8
Trump is doing his level best to play the part of the Chicom apparatchiks to the MSM’s Dr. Li.
2
If the author is a physician, why is she titled as Ms. and not Dr.???
4
Anyone fancy taking a bet on whether Trump will still be holding rallies right up to the point where social distancing becomes policy? There’s an election for him to consider and he seems to believe his re-election campaign is more important than a pandemic. Indeed, it rather looks like he is not going to pivot away from his reckless nihilism regardless of how many people have explained to him that calling it a hoax, a weaponised crisis and /or something that will just go away like a miracle, might not be the best way to gain supportive consent and compliance from individuals and communities that are about to be severely disrupted.
Thank god for our NHS. They’ve been tasked with managing this crisis. This is particularly useful given Boris has yet to even con-vine CONBRA (similar to your national security council). Though he has scheduled an emergency get together - for Monday. Its so depressing to realise that I cannot decide whether we should be thankful for his complacency. It at least means he can’t bugger up everyone’s preparations, though I’ve no doubt he could if a member of staff is reckless enough to let him out of his playpen.
6
Why does she go by Ms Rosenthal and not Dr Rosenthal?
3
Why is the author of this story referred to as Ms., rather than Dr., if she is a physician?
3
An American Evacuated From China Was Quarantined on CDC Orders, Then Got a Bill for It
by Robert Mackey
February 28, 2020
"AN AMERICAN MAN who was evacuated by the State Department from Wuhan, China — where his father-in-law died of the coronavirus this month — was forced to pay $2,200 for the flight and billed by a San Diego hospital for the six days he and his daughter spent in mandatory quarantine there, following an order from the CDC."
https://theintercept.com/2020/02/28/american-evacuated-wuhan-us-billed-flight-mandatory-quarantine/
15
Nature can we so naturally bizarre.. 60 million years ago a big rock landed on earth and allowed small mammals to evolve into today's humans and other animals. Just now, a very sociable and not too mean spiked punk little virus is uniting rich and poor, the different races, sexes and countries. We need to go back to revere and protect our Mother Nature.
2
What is the matter with you libs and the lamestream media, if you had watched our great leaders speech last night you would know this whole "Caronavirus"
is a hoax. We don't need to do anything the common cold is a lot worse.
3
It's time for Melania to go thru her closet and bring out her 'tell someone who cares' jacket.
7
A plea to my fellow citizens.
Please stop hoarding. Please. We are all worried and concerned but panic is the one sure thing to exacerbate this. Stop and think of those around you.
Do you really need every hand-sanitizer in the store just because you got there first? Who can possibly use twenty bottles of ibuprofen? Many are buying such vast quantities of things that not only is there nothing left for their friends and neighbors but the goods, themselves, will go bad before being used.
Please. Stop and think of your elderly neighbor, the child down the street having chemo, a colleague with asthma...the people who actually are more vulnerable and those caring for them.
The people who need face masks are our heroic healthcare workers and many of them cannot find them because Johnny On The (Internet) Spot decided to buy a thousand. "Just in case." If you are a healthy adult, chances are great that you will weather this fine. That may not be true of the person next door.
Please don't make unnecessary trips, but if you do and if you travel to a hot-spot, please self-quarantine. Above all, stop hoarding.
This virus need not bring out the worst in us. It could be a chance to demonstrate that we've learned from the past.
In the absence of leadership from our leaders, we can be the firewall they refuse to provide. We can take care of each other.
16
@AhBrightWings
Excellent and necessary comment. If only people would heed it. But of course they won't.
4
I'm glad to see someone finally articulate these questions so well. Although the situation is opaque, there are some things that we do know. First, we know that six people out of approximately seven hundred on the Diamond Princess have already died -- a first-world death rate of around one percent SO FAR. Second, a fatality rate of this magnitude is extremely serious if 100,000,000 Americans -- one-third of the population -- catch the illness, as seems possible from past epidemics, such as the 1918 flu. Third, this illness is highly contagious. Prudence would dictate that we all -- particularly older people -- stay inside and avoid public places to the extent possible.
3
Look to South Korea for the kind of information, Coronavirus tracking and apps you find lacking are lacking elsewhere. The first one I am listing is available in three languages including English: https://corona-live.com The next is Korean language only and allows users to see when they are nearing a location in which a corona patient spent any time: https://coronaita.com/#/
3
@Suzanne
How are the data updated?
If it’s old or incorrect, it could cause more damage.
Please help. Are accurate are the test for the Virus. What test is to that can test so many people so fast . Nothing I have read is about the actual testing there is an assumption that the test is same all over and accurate and not complex. Please someone report on the actual test that we are basing all our fears on. Thank you
1
When I try to put this epidemic in perspective I get lost.
On planet Earth every year:
- 1.35 million people die from traffic accidents
- 810,000 people commit suicide
- 390,000 die in murders
- 320,000 die from starvation
- 210,000 women die giving birth
- 160,000 die from Alzheimer’s
- 130,000 die drop drug overdoses
I’m not saying we shouldn’t wear masks and leave a room when someone sneezes.
But with 3.3 million people dying each year from these 7 issues, maybe they need more visibility?
3
Never mind the Chinese attempts to filter and censor fact reporting. Why do world-class scientists and public health experts like Dr. Fauchi,head of infectious diseases at the NIH, have to clear what they say publicly with Mike Pence? This situation is abnormal and intolerable in the United States.
9
‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’
Wash your hands often, don’t touch your face, cover your coughs and sneezes, and — most importantly — chill.
2
Trump is gambling with peoples lives....
5
Rigorous, scientifically-based, empirical data along with State and local leadership offers the best prospects for preventing covid19 from getting out of control in the United States. We have come to expect little leadership from the Trump administration and that is exactly what we are getting. Trump and many of his henchmen are treating the dangers posed by this particular deadly coronavirus, with thousands of deaths and ten of thousands infections, as a joke.
Look no further than the recent Trump rally in South Carolina as evidence of his lack of seriousness. Constantly referring to this deadly virus as a Democratic hoax is not just sad, but is also
wrong. It is criminal to withhold covid19 testing from people experiencing respiratory distress when tests are obviously available in other nations. How is it that some countries in Asia and Europe are able to tests tens of thousands, while in the U.S. less than five hundred tests have been conducted. Effective national leadership would ensure the availability of the resources needed to protect the nation.
4
Your President has been telling lie after lie after lie. Half the country doesn't care - his supporters. The other half simply accepted it condoning his behaviour, saying, "well, I guess we all need to get out and vote in 2020." Very very few reporters have ever called out the President to his face on it. Fox encourages the lies.
What does this have to do with the virus? Well, it means that ya'll are not gonna have a clue what's going on with this virus, until it's too late for you and yours.
Actions & inactions have consequences.
11
First, I’d wager it’s less than half of the voters that now support Trump. More than half supported Clinton in the last election but the electoral college system won Trump the election. It’s a bad system that many believe is outdated.
A lot of people are doubting Trump now on many fronts. A lot of people were shocked at the Senate’s failure to do what was right. However, nobody can be simply removed from office without a due process. I expect that Canada has a due process that takes many steps before your leader would be removed. By design.
What the US has now is a critical problem with poor leadership and a poor healthcare management system. Our government is broken. It will take an election with different outcomes to fix this and it will take a long time.
Not unlike the Chinese leader, Trump and leaders of other countries who are dodgy will cause their countries to face difficult outcomes with this pandemic - just as they have with other disasters.
Our fires, our storms - people are still recovering from 2017 and after, and fighting for federal help. Trump’s administration has many vacancies and his will is not to help citizens and others but to help himself. It’s one big hot mess. He has zero empathy nor an ounce of altruism.
Just to set the record straight you should not infer that since Trump won an election and the Senate is in his pocket that the whole of the US supported or now supports this. If we had our way, for most of us, he would be out.
1
I am a molecular biologist that uses the same techniques to diagnose diseases in plants. The "kits" require lab tools found in every biology lab and many hospitals, and the kit itself is easy to make (Primers and probes for taqman qPCR https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/testing.html).
Why does the CDC require that their kit is used as opposed to one I could buy and have shipped to me?
8
@John Henry
Mike Pence hasn't blessed it before shipping?
3
Less than 1,000 tests have been done in the US as of Feb. 28 due to lack of testing capability, now only increasing. As of Feb. 27, only 200 testing kits were available in CA according to Gov. Newsom. Early test kits were faulty. So of course, we have no idea how many people may be infected especially that 80% have no or mild symptoms. Also, people can transmit infections when asymptomatic.
The whistleblower reports that the HHS workers caring for the evacuees from Wuhan and the Diamond Princess were not protected. This may have been the source of spread. The first community case reported was in Solano County home of Travis AFB. On the CDC website until Feb. 27, only China was listed as a country to screen arriving passengers for greater scrutiny even though infections were reported in many countries; this changed Feb. 27.
Why no Federal leadership to deal with this health emergency? Trump:
1. Cut the CDC’s budget 3 yrs in a row
2. Fired the pandemic response team at HHS
3. Fired the pandemic response team at DHS
4. Fired the NSC coordinator for global pandemic events
13
According to the president,we have nothing to worry about. He has everything under control and the hoax perpetrated by the Democrats is the real issue at hand. But it takes only a few Typhoid Marys to be walking around to make matters worse. Unfortunately the president is more interested in his image than taking a serious look at the health issues we are facing.
3
If you don't take a temperature you can't find a fever.
This is our President's approach to this deadly threat apparently.
Instead of trying to get ahead of it as epidemiology demands, it appears that Trump plans to suppress testing and the spread of accurate information.
If we don't know people are sick dying, he can claim its a hoax.
Welcome to China-2. aka government-sponsored murder.
11
As President Trump bravely goes where none have dared to go before, like Daniel into the lion's den, he gathers his faithful supporters together for another affronting political Rally. Echoing FDR in the Dark days of the Great war, he tells his followers " You have nothing to fear(from the corona virus) but fake news itself."And one can imagine the cheers and applause. How he takes the fearful and makes them brave in the face of murdering migrants, and all the other things we must fear and get rid of to make America great again is a wonder itself. A man as afraid of germs as Howard Hughes to walk into a gymnasium full of, well who knows what, shows a bravery for which he will someday give himself a medal .
To all you raging capitalists out there take note that your preferred economic system is derelict and impotent in the face of this crisis. Unfettered capitalism encourages over-investment in “monetizable” technologies like Facebook and Uber, and underinvestment in health and medical technologies that in the end are much more valuable to society. In the end, good government will solve this crisis not corporate enterprise. You might want to reflect in this before going to the polls in November.
9
Good old FUD, fear, uncertainty and doubt as a sales tool. "This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." FDR - 1933
2
The WHO has on its website 2% mortality rate.
This reveals how inaccurate and biased the WHO.
This junk datum came from flawed Chinese stats, which is obvious to all reasonable observers.
2
Ok, I’ll bite. So the correct mortality rate that you have divined from tea leaves is?
5
It's ridiculous to think, that people in the middle of a calamity, would have good numbers on what's going on.
Even in the best of times, we have never know exactly how many people have any disease.
Creating headlines is good for the media, but it's not an aid in establishing good governance.
3
People are afraid that they will have it or that they will have to be quarantined. So, government must do it, to save us from ourselves. The trouble is, Trump is afraid it will make him look bad, so he is putting his head in the sand (which makes him look bad). I am afraid it will cost us. This is certainly not the leader we need.
2
So far there are several COVID-19 cases "of unknown origin," meaning authorities could find no direct contact with people who could have been exposed. Any ideas?
It's like "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Got rid of all the "useless" people who cleaned telephones
and died of a plague transmitted on dirty telephones
Trump actually said that people in pandemic unit were doing nothing, so he got rid of them
3
We really don't know? Just ask Trump. He will stick to 15 no matter how many people are infected.
2
We have a "bad news, kill the messenger" president who fires people for telling the truth he doesn't want people to hear. That all information relating to the coronavirus must be filtered through the mouth of Mike Pence should be enough to frighten all Americans concerned with staying fully informed about all aspects of the current health crisis.
5
A man who changed the weather map with a sharpie, put a whole lot of people like first responders in jeopardy. Now that same guy is calling the coronavirus a hoax. The man is putting the whole country in danger. Him and putin are having a great laugh together. Putin just poisons certain people, though.
4
As crazy as it sounds I wouldn’t put it past Trump or Pence to just not test people or disregard or lie about test results to avoid offending or contradicting our demented President.
I hope it doesn’t happen but the perverse disregard of science and best practices will surely result in lives being lost.
7
We can't deny the Covid-19 viral pandemic on Earth any more than we could ignore the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-20, or the HIV-AIDS pandemic of the 1980s through the turn of this century. We may never know how many people have the coronavirus now. We're facing the music during this marauding threat to life and limb from a novel virus on earth. This will pass, as all things on Earth pass, sooner or later. We do know that the Coronavirus isn't a "New Democratic Hoax", as our unfit and ignorant President proclaimed last night in Charleston, South Carolina, in the midst of his demented rallies for his re-election this year. If the new virus accomplishes anything other than fear and panic among the world's people, it may put paid to the worst presidency in American history.
4
Once again, if it comes to choosing between his citizens’ lives and welfare, and feeding his own gluttonous ego, for Trump, the penultimate narcissist, the choice is obvious. It’s a mystery to me how anyone supports this so called “president.”
3
No, we really don't know how many cases there are. Thank for the news flash, and the "we put men on the moon so why can't we..." whataboutism.
1
In industrialized Europe, if you get sick, you stay home. It is encouraged.
In the USA, if you get sick, you go to work. It is encouraged.
American Exceptionalism.
8
Can't help but wonder, if/when a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available, how the anti-vaxxers will respond.
1
Sadly, most people, even if they know about them, don't "believe" in microscopic things that transmit disease. When they are forced to acknowledge the problem and stop hugging and sharing doorknobs, schools, and workplaces, they are not informed but superstitious about it, freaking out and doing silly things like wearing masks which let the bugs through and should only be used once. Organized religion has a lot to answer for, as "prayer" is not a cure and gatherings don't help (see Iran, and yes there is a parallel, no matter how self-righteous one "religion" gets about another).
The knowledge deficit is emerging as a civilizational danger in this country in quite a variety of ways.
I hope that the truth and scientific facts will earn more respect. This does seem to be a threat that transcends the dislike of and/or barriers to reality and facts.
4
Trump, DJ, Ivanka, Eric, Hannity, Rush: since this is nothing but the media crying wolf, please to to Wuhan to help in the temporary hospitals set up to treat people who aren’t sick. You won’t need a mask, by the way.
4
You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus..
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vaccine/607000/
"Harvard epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch predicts that within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But, he clarifies emphatically, this does not mean that all will have severe illnesses. “It’s likely that many will have mild disease, or may be asymptomatic,” he said. As with influenza, which is often life-threatening to people with chronic health conditions and of older age, most cases pass without medical care. (Overall, about 14 percent of people with influenza have no symptoms.)"
4
As CDC warns of possible pandemic, Trump travels to South Carolina for a rally and Pence attends a Trump victory luncheon. Leadership?
3
I commend to you an article in the current BBC online Health section.
It gives excellent information about what is known and unknown about the virus without hysteria, politics, or click-bait headlines.
3
Trump is an incurious person who knows little or nothing about science or government, not the kind of leader the country needs in the face of a pandemic. Pence needs to double up on his prayers.
2
Why is the Johns Hopkins real time map showing only 1 case in San Antonio Texas when there are 11 confirmed cases per local reporting? I don’t get it.
1
@Karen
Because they update that map only Monday through Friday. Ridiculous, I know. But that's the deal. There are other places to go on-line to get more accurate information.
1
Wanted to share a funny story in all the gloom. A friend and colleague‘s in-laws are rabid Trump supporters. Yesterday he told me that his father in law had -for the first time in years- watched CNN instead of FOX for information on the virus whilst his wife was binge reading the NYT on the same subject. Need I say more?
8
trump knows more about this virus than the doctors.
Border monitoring is paramount in any pandemic. You just can’t have it both ways with travelers from affected countries.
1
A stigma is placed upon an ill person. People are afraid to seek medical help, primarily due to the high cost. The emotions of grief hold sway, especially bargaining ("It is just another cold...") and denial/ridicule ("You are not sick, sissy". "Men are weak...").
2
Johns Hopkins real-time live tracking map is showing 1 case in San Antonio Texas. We have 11 confirmed cases. Why the discrepancy? Can someone explain this?
I think we should seal our borders. We have no way of knowing how many people enter who may be virus carriers.
We need to take a page from the Middle Ages and the way they sealed off their cities during the black death. We must do the same.
We cannot count on technology as there is no known vaccine for Covid-19. Yes they are working on one, but it is at least 1 year away according to the CDC.
This is a time like no other for America First so seal the borders and let no one enter. Mandatory quarantine for all Americans who arrive from overseas travel. Do not allow any non-citizens to enter the country. We need to take the same approach as they did in the Middle Ages - it was brutal but it worked and right now we need something that works.
@Judy Weller
What's the point of "sealing" our borders?? The virus is already here. Have you been reading the news?
1
Last two weeks I wrote that a random test should of been done in all major Chinatowns in the US. By testing 500 people in Chinatown. If none have the virus that would be great. However if 5% have it then the cities should have tried to stem the growth of Corona by shutting down the cities for 2 weeks. Commentators said this was divisive but now it has spread. Many mainland Chinese tourists visit Chinatown’s throughout the world and this is how it is spread. In addition , in China they burnt currency for they found the virus on currency . It is time to randomly test our currency.
1
Yes, definitely only spreadable by yellow and brown people.
You do know that a number of cases, if not all, in the US are not directly related to Chinese nationals who might have enjoyed a Chinese meal while away from home, right?
I read another comment earlier in the week about keeping people from Korea, Japan and Iran out. No mention of Italy though.
3
The Coronavirus Pandemic is a genuine worldwide disaster, and Trump has made it worse by denial and incompetence.
Trump is concerned that this looks bad for him. His natural response to any crisis is to lie, cover up his own mistakes, and blame others. VP Pence will do whatever Trumps says. We cannot trust anything they say.
Under Obama, the US government was prepared. But after Trump cut the budget of the CDC two years ago, experts predicted that this would hurt American preparedness:
“Why American could become vulnerable to the next major pandemic”
https://time.com/5177802/cdc-budget-cuts-infectious-disease/
Every American death will be on Trump’s head.
6
With Herr Trump's penchant for lies, deceit, and mis-information and even worse, an administration that has a total disdain for science and all the budget slashing that he has done to medical research agencies, this country will be in big trouble.
5
Does a MAGA hat qualify as personal protective gear?
3
@et.al.nyc
Only if they line it with tin foil
3
It's fast becoming Trumpavirus - the greatest virus ever! So great the Mexico will pay your health insurance premiums.
2
This administration will do all it can to conceal information about the coronavirus from the American people. Right wing media is already calling the coronavirus a liberal hoax. This reminds me of how the Soviets concealed Chernobyl from the Russian people. This administration cannot be trusted any more than the Chinese government.
6
One possible vector of transmission is consistently ignored:
Corona virus can live on surfaces for up to 9 days (compared to regular flu virus - 48 hours). (https://www.livescience.com/how-long-coronavirus-last-surfaces.html).
We receive millions of packages from China via super-efficient delivery suuply chain pioneered by Amazon.
There is nothing that prevents a recipient of such package which is packed by a sick worker from contracting the virus.
And yet, no one is quarantining the packages and CDC is not issuing any directions ot that effect.
2
Our own history has lessons to teach about this: information about the "Spanish flu" in 1918 was severely restricted, to no good avail. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-180965222/?fbclid=IwAR2Ie0DbgxUdtV_rI0mXuNVLpxWMDIZdmVW5LitzQLYEDg_oXPrvqaWS16E
1
The answer to the question posed in the subheadline is two words: Donald Trump.
1
A 62 year old man with the coronavirus was successfully treated with a combination of drugs used for AIDS treatment, namely, beta blockers, lopinavir and ritonavir. The treatment needs further study, but it shows some promise. Read about it (in Spanish) here: Un fármaco contra el sida tiene éxito en la cura del primer contagio por coronavirus
https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-02-28/un-farmaco-contra-el-sida-tiene-exito-en-la-cura-del-primer-contagio-por-coronavirus.html
1
Trump is like Xi opress all information and let disappear this way. Normal influenza. Nothing else. No tests necessary. Keep it under wrap . His followers don't care. The true believers will believe what FOX is telling them. And even it's hitting home send by the God anointed one.
2
Because Trump and his supporters want to believe this is all a ‘Democrat fake news hoax’, I encourage them to stop washing their hands and touch their faces a lot, and maybe lick the odd doorknob for good measure. Go on and show us “libs” how we really “have no clue,” and good luck.
6
Our lack of clear, definitive scientific data on this crisis (not surprising, it's a big world) allows for manipulation of the "facts".
Trump seems to be an idiot savant when it comes to preparing the ground for future excuses and dismissals.
He has been freakishly good and quite prescient at setting up (especially) his base of supporters to blame someone else for his future failures and criminalities.
Our legitimate lack of knowledge in Trump's hands is capable of being leveraged to protect himself and his cabal at the expense of everyone else. It's a terrible, terrible shame.
2
Why does the John Hopkins real-time, live map only show 1 confirmed case in San Antonio Texas when there are actually 11 confirmed cases according to the local news media??? I am so confused!
@Karen Data lag. It takes time to confirm numbers. Otherwise, garbage in/garbage out.
'Why ARE data on the new coronavirus so limited?'
Come on, NYT.
2
“President Donald Trump on Friday night tried to cast the global outbreak of the coronavirus as a liberal conspiracy intended to undermine his first term, lumping it alongside impeachment and the Mueller investigation.”
“Trump called the coronavirus “their new hoax.”” — Politico story dated 2/28/20
Insee a recent Politico news story where Trump, speaking to his Base in South Carolina, told the crowd that the coronavirus was a hoax.
The Man of Science speaks.
5
Quotes from Mike Pence in News Week: https://tinyurl.com/Pence-Myths
“The solution to the HIV epidemic: Pray on it!”;
“Smoking Doesn’t Kill”;
“Climate Change is a ‘myth’ and actually the planet is ‘cooler than it was 50 years ago’”;
“Condoms are very poor protection against sexually transmitted disease”;
Only the theory of “intelligent design” provides a rational explanation for the universe”.
“Resources should be directed toward institutions [Christian fascists!] that proved “assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior”;
“America has the cleanest air and water in the world”.
...The EPI measures a number of economic indicators, including "water and sanitation" and "air pollution" where the U.S. comes in 29th and 83rd respectively.
3
In Alabama there is a facility specifically built to quarantine people for this extreme situation. Trump has promised the Governor of Alabama that there will be no Covid-19 patients sent there and any Covid-19 patients that get it in Alabama will be sent to California(my apologies, just momentarily forgotten the name of the place). In that city Trump is planning to move Covid-19 patients out of the secure military quarantine they are in and to put them in the Community hospital. The city nor state was consulted.
It has been a bit curious why Trump has been so over the top about “Dems weaponising Covid-19”.
But Trump always accuses others of what he is doing.
It seems the plan is keep all the Vovi-19 patients in Blue States, and have none in Red States!
This is Sociopathic/Psychopathic!!
It is absolutely sick and malignantly sadistic.
1
Trump is scared for his political future, so puts the Administration idiot in charge of messaging and muzzles the experts. He claims that the democrats and media are exaggerating the risk. A perfect formula for national disaster.
4
How could we possibly know how many people are carrying (or are sick from) SARS-CoV-2 when there is a world wide shortage of test kits? And China probably makes the test kits anyway, and Chinese medical products are in jeopardy because of SARS-CoV-2.
But we don't need precise numbers to know that there are potentially millions of carriers, hundreds of thousands are sick and about 3,000 (and counting) have died.
We also don't need precise numbers to see that the appointment of Christian fascist Mike Pence as the Corona Virus Czar, is a cynical, political move by Trump. Mike Pence was the king of the HIV epidemic in Indiana who thought he could pray the disease away. How dangerous is that?!
As the Corona Virus Czar, Pence says nobody may speak about the pandemic without clearing it with him first.
Wrong! Pence should not be allowed to speak without being cleared by Dr. Anthony Fauci first!
Dr. Fauci is the nation's top medical expert on infections disease. Dr. Fauci has, and deserves to have, the complete respect and TRUST of the American people.
Pence is clearly clueless, politically motivated, a religious zealot and very dangerous on a Trumpian scale!
4
Trump gagged Dr. Anthony Fauci — the world’s premier Infectious Diseases specialist. He should have made Fauci the COVID19 czar.
Trump blocked the distribution of diagnostic kits, to prevent us from knowing the extent of the infection epidemic. Every state should have thousands of kits, to spot new cases ASAP.
Trump is a hypocrite: he bellows at his MAGA mob that the virus is a Democrat hoax, but his State Department cancels a conference with Asian diplomats.
His blue collar base is eating up his red meat rhetoric. But his nose-holding suburban voters just saw their 401ks drop by 12 percent — that’s 4 years of retirement income vanished in a week.
5
Trump gagged Dr. Anthony Fauci — the world’s premier Infectious Diseases specialist. He should have made Fauci the COVID19 czar.
Trump blocked the distribution of diagnostic kits, to prevent us from knowing the extent of the infection epidemic. Every state should have thousands of kits, to spot new cases ASAP.
Trump is a hypocrite: he bellows at his MAGA mob that the virus is a Democrat hoax, but his State Department cancels a conference with Asian diplomats.
His blue collar base is eating up his red meat rhetoric. But his nose-holding suburban voters just saw their 401ks drop by 12 percent — that’s 4 years of retirement income vanished in a week.
2
What we DO know is........... The Coronavirus so far has killed ZERO people in the US......and yet....on average 56,000 Americans die each year in the US of the FLU......Where is the terror of catching the flu... Normal People are conducting a normal life, no matter what the media or DEMS are trying get you to run in fear....Like the flu, unless your sick and quite elderly (which i am) your pretty much going to survive this with cough drops...
As a female doctor, I am bothered that next to the photo of Elisabeth Rosenthal and under the words "By Elisabeth Rosenthal" it says, "Ms. Rosenthal ...." rather than "Dr. Rosenthal." If she prefers to be addressed that way then I have no concerns but if someone else decided to write it like that then get with the program.
3
We need more information. Many of us have baseball, concert tickets, are training for a marathon etc. etc.
How likely is it that mass events will be canceled? If so, what's the timeline?
Answers, please.
1
Since we consumers are largely on our own in coping, a few important matters:
When you wash your hands remove rings and wash them too, then put them back.
Cell phones and laptops should be cleaned too. When you wash your hands and pick up your filthy cellphone and use it one inch from your mouth, you lose. Be smart. Maybe a health guru can explain the best way to thoroughly clean these items.
I've stopped dining out. You have no idea the status of those preparing that food.
The other day I watched people filling boxes from a salad bar, then tossing utensils into the foods. Run for your life!
39
@HotGumption:
Exactly. And people need to be trained in how to wash their hands. When they wash their hands in a public restroom, then immediately touch the faucet or doorknob afterwards, it’s all for naught. Take a paper towel, people, and touch the faucet and doorknob only with that.
Beyond that, I find it stunning that in this, the wealthiest country in the world, local and state health departments have already “been stretched thin”. That’s a direct quote from another NYT article today.
Stretched thin. Already. Yeah, we’re really prepared. Not.
24
@HotGumption
Good advice, and let’s also frequently wipe down (e.g., with Clorox or Lysol wipes) countertops, desktops, door handles, and toilet handles.
Don’t forget to use a disinfecting wipe on your grocery cart and gas pump handle, as well.
BTW, paper money is germy, but I don’t know if it can carry the Coronavirus. I rarely use it anyway. It might not hurt to wipe down a merchant’s card reader before using it.
6
Alright. The virus is here in the U.S. and, considering who's in charge, will probably spread to the general population. Maybe, instead of just trying to avoid the virus, emphasis should be on how to deal with the virus if (which is unlikely at this point) we are infected. And how do we do that? Get bed rest, drink plenty of fluids and treat the symptoms--just like we do with the common influenza. As mentioned, this is not cholera or the Black Death. The fatality rate is not 50%. It's not the end of civilization, except maybe the stock market. As with all other diseases, we will cope.
4
I find it to be more than concerning that a Korean flight attendant who was later diagnosed with the Coronavirus in Korea, had worked flights between Seoul, South Korea and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). She also recently worked a flight to Israel.
How many people were exposed, and of those, how many have the Coronavirus? How many took connecting flights to other parts pf the country? We don’t know the answer.
6
It is not likely information flow will improve. Trump, more than anything, is concerned for his image. He will vaporize anything ( the Mueller Report) or anyone (all the officials who testified in the House investigation) that stands in the way of his self attributed greatness.
5
Here in Japan, in saitama, all the stores in my area are sold out of toilet paper, tissues, and masks. IN the stations, I would say more than 90 % wear masks. I was most interested in trying to guess the kind of individuality of those I saw NOT WEARING masks. Many of my learners regret not investing in Japanese medical supply companies.
I suspect that there are a lot more people infected with the coronavirus in the US than we realize. Without testing equipment, there is no way to know. The unexplained cases in California and Oregon are just indicative of a potentially much larger problem.
4
@John A - Yes, and in Oregon, the infected woman worked in a school. Given the potential for a two-week incubation period when she asymptomatic but likely contagious, this could multiply out to hundreds of infections. Schools are petri dishes, kids don't wash their hands nearly enough, and everyone in that school, their families, and the people they had contact with during that time are all potentially at risk.
1
Here’s the thing: if we don’t/can’t know how many are infected, does it matter if we can’t do anything about it? After all, we know for certain that every living thing on Earth will be killed or adversely affected by global pollution/warming. All. And we can do plenty about it. But we do not. Too disruptive to the petro-consumer lifestyle.
So we can deduce that even if we knew all life would be adversely affected by Covid, and we could indeed stop it, we would not do so if it disrupted our lifestyle.
It comes from overpopulation. So does warming. The destruction/reduction of the overpopulating species is the answer, nature’s answer. Like it or not.
1
@John Tollefson
I do sometimes wonder -- and neither in a paranoid nor religious way -- if other inhabitants of this world, and I include viruses, are becoming so alarmed by our species's behavior that there is a steakthy winnowing underway.
This makes me wonder how many companies have a protocol in place TODAY for mass telecommuting; or otherwise handling the fact that there may be long periods of time, perhaps months, when it is not advisable for workers to go to the office?
Also, I know nothing about IT, but would internet service providers be able to handle mass telecommuting?
2
I’ve read all the NYT coverage and understand this much—it appears that this virus is less deadly than SARS or MERS but much more contagious; it appears that a big problem is that symptoms can be so mild or so long in incubation that contagious people don’t know they are spreading the virus; it appears that the U.S., at least, is not prepared with enough testing kits and containment supplies, and if we have a coherent plan for containment, it has not been communicated; Trump is the one politicizing this and being his usual clownish self, which is either at best, not helpful, at worst, dangerous.
I find it odd that in the coverage of the one “unknown origin” case in Solano County CA, very little emphasis was put on this county being the location of Travis Air Force Base, where so many affected people are quarantined. How can that be a coincidence? It leaves us to draw our own conclusions on how she got infected—wondering how many people who were in some level of contact with the quarantined are wandering around that community.
I hope this can be contained, but it seems the way things are going, it is only a matter of time that we will all need to understand what we can and should do.
9
@Kally
Throughout the world not everyone who becomes infected will necessarily be entirely forthcoming about their personal interactions.
"In an era when we get flash-flood warnings on phones and weekly influenza statistics from every state, why is data on the new coronavirus so limited?"
Do you even trust the influenza statistics in the US? Most people I know would not go to the doctor for even a bad flu - it's too expensive, and too hard to get an appointment! So they self-diagnose and self-medicate their way through it. So I think the influenza stats are rough estimates at best, the covid-19 estimates are about as helpful as thoughts and prayers - there could be a US epidemic already, and federal health officials (after years of budget and staff cuts) wouldn't have reliable data to say so.
7
Is anyone using the infected patients' Google Maps Timeline data? Seems to me if the data was collected, they can cross reference the patients' movements with other infected patient's and possibly warn others who where at the patients' locations at the same time.
4
@bmesc
Good grief, you're asking for a totalitarian government surveillance!
1
Speaking of lack of data and transparency, has the CDC or WHO published anything definitive that conclusively states that the virus’s biological makeup does not contain any indications of being engineered or weaponized? There was speculation weeks ago that the Wuhan seafood market was coincidentally close to the Wuhan laboratory that studies infectious diseases and that China’s military had been suspected of participating in biowarfare research. CDC should put to rest all of this speculation by declaring that the virus is clearly of natural origin.
Elizabeth, here are some reasons why we don't know how many people have been infected: 1) many infected and infectious people are asymptomatic; 2) testing for seroconversion to COVID-19 has not been available (you don't simply snap your fingers and have a test for antibodies); 3) infected people don't make antibodies immediately; and 4) many infected people present as if they have a common cold (also caused by coronaviruses).
6
@Edward Clark
So no conspiracy?
2
For-profit medicine is motivated to develop palliatives, not cures. Publicly-funded medicine is motivated to develop prophylactics and cures. Which would you prefer?
8
@Steve Bolger
For profit healthcare providers and their CEO’s and stockholders always prefer profit first and foremost. Whatever gives the best profits is where they invest. Public good is not a real consideration. Dr. Jonas Salk who created the polio vaccine refused to profit from it and his vaccine ended the worldwide polio epidemic.
1
I recall when the HIV virus began to appear in our country.
Its origin was initially blamed on sexual activity. It took years before medicine concluded it was transmitted by blood.
When it first was identified, medicine could only isolate the patient. Initially and erroneously the number of those afflicted was deemed small. Media would report a few (e.g., Rock Hudson). It took time before the world recognized that the numbers of victims increased geometrically into millions.
Following isolation, most who were diagnosed died, since no treatment was available (for years). Sound familiar?
So many factually incorrect statements here.
2
@Regards, LC: There have been enormous strides in genomics since AIDS was isolated. DNA can be snipped out or added in at will to precise locations on chromosomes now. It poses the ultimate medical ethics quandary of evolved animals.
1
@Regards, LC
Transmitted by FLUIDS, bodily fluids, including blood, but any bodily fluid
I fear that the test kits for the virus in the U.S. are not available, because the Trump administration doesn't want to know the actual number of people that have contracted the virus. Trump can keep falsely claiming that it is only 16 people. He doesn't want to see evidence to the contrary, even though we already know that the figure is over 60 and increasing every day.
5
Retired MD here.
Excellent article ... as usual for this reporter. She knows her stuff. And speaking of knowing her stuff, this old doc knows 10,000 times more than Trump does about infectious diseases. In turn, the CDC knows 10,000 times more than I do.
Memo to govt officials: Leave this to the real pros (CDC and WHO) or we’ll have a total disaster on our hands.
249
@Dr. Dixie
"And speaking of knowing her stuff, this old doc knows 10,000 times more than Trump does about infectious diseases. In turn, the CDC knows 10,000 times more than I do. "
10.000 times zero = zero !
100,000 times zero = zero !
I trust that you that you and the CDC know far more than
about coronavirus than zero !
Given that Trump has put Pence in charge of Coronavirus, and has ordered all health officials to go through Pence, it seems that the country will have a total disaster on it's hands unless there is some way that Congress can override Trump, in which case the Republicans would have to choose health and lives over their blind allegiance to Trump.
22
By comprehensively deregulating, including terminating key health security positions on the NSC, Trump has made himself a menace to society. By the end of his time in office, the nation will be engaged in ritualistic celebrations of his demise.
7
I find it hard to believe that less than 80,000 people to date in China have contracted COVID19, if it is as highly contagious as reported. The city of Wuhan alone has 11,000,000 residents, and Hubei Province has 77,000,000. Also, the Chinese government did nothing, and suppressed information for the first month or so.
I believe that hundreds of thousands or even millions in China have already been exposed to this contagion and contracted the virus and their own immune response kicked in quickly and they are not being counted at all.
I hope this is the case, but how do we count people that had contracted COVID19, and were either asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and recovered quickly on their own, but were never tested?
2
I'm not a medical professional, but one can get most answers to their questions from the "worldometers coronavirus" webpage as a starter (just search for it) -
1. We know how many have died.
2. We have some estimates of the fatality rate. Japan, Italy numbers seem reliable. China is most likely underreporting (for whatever reasons) the actual number of cases, so the fatality rate is possibly lower than reported.
3. As Wuhan was the epicentre, it seems people there contracted a more severe form of the infection, which would explain why it has a much higher fatality rate than elsewhere.
4. A Shanghai lab shared the covid-19 genome with the world in mid January. Australian scientists were able to replicate the virus in a lab - Jan 28.
5. We have some ideas of the risk factors - elderly, immuno-compromised, preexisting conditions.
6. A big threat now is community outbreak (as in Italy, S. Korea).
Saudi has cancelled Haj pilgrimage, Japan and Hong Kong have closed schools, Serie A games in Italy will be played behind closed doors, Switzerland has cancelled any event with more than 1000 people.
Lots of info online, if one knows where to look.
This needs a coordinated effort guided by logic and reason; not politics, panic, misinformation and denial. If not managed, it could potentially wipe out 1-2% of global population. For-profit healthcare, lack of coverage, and no paid sick days could be devastating.
The US response appears shambolic; sad, but not surprising.
10
It was Trump who said he wanted to bring manufacturing back to the US. He was right and said it long before it became obvious as a result of coronavirus how foolish it is to do so much manufacturing in China or any other foreign country. Trump's reasoning was not purely financial either, he did realize that we are vulnerable to shortages etc. if one allows a foreign country, like China, to take care of our basic essential needs. US firms manufacturing of medical supplies, drugs and essential goods in China began long before Trump began running for President and he is not a dictator so he can't force firms who manufacture in China to come back to the US. Now, I am sure, after the horse has left the barn, we will see manufacturing of drugs and medical supplies at least coming back to the USA with others to follow.
@NYChap
More likely to Mexico.
Cheaper labor.
President Trump does not have the leadership skills to steer us out of a pandemic; this is not about him, or politics, or even the stock market. Putting Mulvaney on the pulpit to say it's a hoax, lying about the number of confirmed cases in the U.S., asking VP Pence to "control the message," and spinning this as a need for security along our southern border will result in the death of thousands or even millions of Americans. I am begging governors, congresspersons, senators and anybody with influence to either sideline President Trump until the crisis is mitigated, or to put an uncensored scientist/physician in charge of the war against Covid-19.
5
At this point we are just going to have to let it run it’s course. We can’t stop the whole world.
5
I think this could be really bad. Given the state of our overall health and the expense of doctors visits and lack of health insurance as well as a leader who is incompetent and our excessive work ethic it could turn into a perfect storm of errors.
2
The deliberate misinformation coming out of the Administration, led by Trump is extremely dangerous and can cause needless deaths for which Trump Must be held accountable.Every word out of his mouth has to be scrutinized for truthfulness, It is his words, not, the medical officials, that must be examined for scientific validity.
carefully examined and monitored.
4
Interesting but there are many other countries besides US & China that are involved & have information including South Korea, Italy, Iran and Japan to name but a few.
2
Many governments are currently hiding the truth, this avoids difficult questions and therefore hopefully placates the citizens.
Obviously, our own government fires individuals that speak the truth and labels factual news as fake. It is wonderful to live in Oz but it could be dangerous to your life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.
Britain has tested thousands (1/5 population). The Nigerian patient was tested w/I 4 hours.
The California patient who is first evidence of community contagion was not tested for days as she had not travelled or met recent travelers.....meanwhile about a 100 hospital staff is now under voluntary quarantine who previously treated her.
Here in US most tests have to be sent to CDC and require 48 hours for results. Even worse, a patient received a $3000+ bill for the test (his copay $1200).
Anyone think our health system with its emphasis on patients as “clients” ( meaning billable) will only make this epidemic worse?
(When in hospital with new baby, there was only one breast pump connection available......because each set had to be charged to a patient.)
As a nation we are heading into a possible epidemic where the ability to self quarantine will be determined by our incomes and job status......and viruses LOVE societies where going to work mildly sick is not just tolerated, but expected.....and financially demanded.
6
@Susan
Work: true. At my former workplace I believe illness and being absent were viewed as moral failures. Lucky for me I never got colds or flu, but would have gone to work if I had them.
3
President Trump uses the stock market to take the "temperature" of his chances for re-election. Perhaps this last week will show him that even hedge fund managers fear for their health.
China shut down everything in cities with millions of people, quarantining everyone to put the breaks on transmission of the virus. That killed, and is still pounding, the GDP of China. Trump hasn't the guts to do something that difficult because, even though this virus is not his fault, he would be blamed for the crash of the economy and the stock market with it. He did not listen to the CDC when they recommended against repatriating the cruise ship passengers. Putting Pense at the head of the taskforce will not improve that decision making.
Brace yourself. We will hear much more of the "fabulous, never-before, heroic effort" he is making. But it's only puffery and reality will come crashing down because the virus is fact, and will not be cured with our current state of unpreparedness.
1
Infectious disease epidemiologists have been warning for decades that a repeat of the catastrophic 1918 influenza pandemic was not a matter of “if” but “when.” While billions of tax dollars have been spent on so-called “Homeland Security” with a pathological obsession on immigrants not like “us” we have been defunding our most important public health assets, including the CDC. This is shameful.
4
Because in a country with tightly controlled media i.e., China, you are only going to hear what the government wants you to hear. In countries where the media is obsequious to bloviators like Trump, like the USA, you'll kind of know, but any bad news is fake news.
Like the false story of CDC funding, the "hoax" story is another. Trump never called the virus a hoax but rather the false stories being spread about it. For people who claim to want the facts, it's amazing how quickly they'll latch onto a distortion of them.
1
@AACNY
He said it will be over in April , then he puts a bible thumper like Pence in charge, who is not a scientist and doesn’t believe in science.
That doesn’t make me feel reassured.
1
Our country is going to suffer the worst effects of COVID=19 because politics is controlling our response to this infection...POLITICS, not science. Pres. Trump had some good ideas when first elected, but quickly put his personal and corny politics above helping the American people. It will be interesting to see what happens when someone on the White House staff contracts this virus. To where will he run?
I agree that what we need is information and a trusted calming voice to assure us that there is someone in charge dealing with this. And the last thing we need is blame and finger pointing. I don’t want to hear anyone, including the administration, the democratic candidates or the media, politicizing this.
I appreciate that the only US politician mentioned here is Bloomberg, as in “The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.”
Panic is almost as bad a problem as the disease itself. Thousands are dying in Asia, but when one person contracted the disease in the US, the markets went into free fall.
Just give us the facts and tell us what your doing about it!
@Steven Roth
The markets were already reacting before the first (community infected) person was diagnosed.
And the markets tanked even further when it became obvious that Pence was put in charge of the administration’s response and would be “filtering” or “censoring” info (when he lacks the expertise to do that, but is totally subservient to the wishes of Trump).
Nice effort to rewrite history, but here at the Times, commenters know a falsehood when they read it!
I think many people in the U.S. fear that the same type of political situation in China with suppressing information, or even massaging data will/is happen here in the U.S. under the Trump Administration. Trump has now called the Coronavirus a Democratic Party hoax intended to take him down.
I commented back when Trump was first elected that Trump is psychotic, meaning delusional. Yes, Trump lies all the time, but Trump also believes a lot of the ridiculous stuff that he says and tweets. Trump really believes that Hillary, Comey, McCabe, Schiff, Mueller, etc. have all committed illegal prison-able acts.
As COVID19 cases begin to pop up across the country the public pressure on Trump will be enormous even from his base. Sickness, death and especially fear and panic will cause even Trump's base to push back at him. What will happen then is that Trump will have a catastrophic meltdown as he does not have the emotional capacity to handle any crisis and his psychoses will be on full display, and this will be catastrophic for our country in dealing with this crisis. We are in big trouble with Trump at the helm.
4
Dr. Rosenthal spends too much ink criticizing China without acknowledging the many reports Chinese scientists have published on COVID-19. Anyone can go to the WHO link to published articles and read them.
Our own CDC has engaged in an almost total news blackout from Day 1. Three weeks ago, in trying to report for MedPage Today on the arrival of Wuhan evacuees in San Antonio, the CDC totally stonewalled my writtten questions about the diagnostic accuracy of tests, which tests are being done on evacuees, which federal contractors were cleaning facilities, what was their training, were the tests used in Japan comparable to US tests, and what was the specific legal basis for claiming privacy laws precluded identifying which San Antonio facilities would be used for those who became sick. A promise by the CDC's Amy Rowland to get the answers was never delivered.
Kaiser Health News and this paper have celebrity journalists who should be demanding the CDC answer questions about who is tested and how. Reports from China indicate virus is shed in feces and blood when nasal swabs are negative.
The CDC should be testing these fluids and if not, why not.
The US has imported the virus into the heart of major US metro areas but has published nothing, while China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Germany have published scientific papers.
One big reason we don't know much about the US is because of government suppression of data.
6
Thanks for the assessment.
Let me tie this in with another piece of information mentioned in another article about the Coronavirus. Trump said that the Democrats and many news outlets (such as CNN and the NYTimes) are “doing everything they can to instill fear in people”. WH Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney said that news coverage of the Coronavirus exaggerated the effects of the virus because “they think this will bring down the President, that’s what all this is about.”
The NYTimes app had nine articles that dealt with the Coronavirus on it’s main page. The CDC has over 20 on their main page. The NYTimes articles discuss many different aspects of the situation and do so in a reasonably rational manner, including one that was focused on comments of Trump and his administration about the situation involving the Coronavirus. This opinion piece gives good reasons for our never knowing the exact extent of the infection. It is presented rationally to give us an idea of the problems dealing with knowing the scope of the disease. I failed to detect any fear-mongering in it.
The only fear-mongering I found in all of the NYTimes articles was in the article mentioned above where Trump and Mulvaney are engaging in fear-mongering about Democrats and the press. Another episode in the vast array of fear-mongering engaged in by Trump and his close associates.
4
I’d rather we get a cure then alerts.
2
I heard on Washington Week that one of John Bolton's many disservices to our nation while he served in the WH was to shut down the group whose job it was to stay on top of such things as pandemics.
So that is probably why there is no existing leadership stepping up in this matter. And instead of admitting to yet another ignorance based decision the maroon brigade is claiming the facts are a false attack on the president who shouldn't even be commenting on the matter.
Those professionals who Bolton got rid of and republicans like to hate and call "deep state" should be doing their jobs informing us.
4
There seems to be a debate in our family as to the appropriate amount of worry to assign covid-19. This article helps fight the noise whirling around. You believe the mainstream media should shut up and quit fear-mongering, that is, if you regularly watch Fox News. They contend its a conspiracy of the Dems to make Trump look bad.
The lack of honesty and transparency with this administration helps feed the fear. Here is my take on the facts.
*The CDC doesn't yet know just how easily and sustainably the covid-19 spreads.
*The mortality rate is about 2% while that of the normal flu is about 0.1%. So it is about 200 times more fatal once it has been contracted.
*The stock market is fickle and easily swayed by perceptions just as much as facts. And perceptions can feed upon themselves. 401Ks make people bias.
*It is true that about 30,000 people die every year in the U.S. from complications of contracting the flu. Many of these have weakened immune systems. Yet, this number doesn't usually induce a panic in the streets.
*Spring and summer weather conditions typically reduce virulency.
*Scientists need to be free and open to discuss the facts with each other and the public without regards to political ramifications. Otherwise, rumors and fear rule.
*If covid 19 spreads super easily and no special actions are done to impede this spread in the U.S., a 10% infection rate could translate into 600,000 deaths just in this country. This could slam our health system.
4
Data instructs but has limits. Intel comes from interpreting. In November 2015 international researchers (including Zhengli-Li-Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology) were studying if different viruses could, if combined, become highly transmissible to humans via lung receptor cells. China and the U.S. funded that research but the U.S. stopped funding the research because it could produce a chimera virus that had bioweapon potential and was so highly contagious it posed a danger to humans everywhere. The study was published in Nature Medicine, V.21, No. 12, Dec. 2015. This BSL4 Virology lab is less than 1,000 feet away from the Wuhan wet market suspected of being the point of origin. The U.S. CDC must interview the American and foreign researchers who collaborated on this research. They are over a dozen and only two are Chinese nationals. When asked about the chance that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) leaked from her lab, she said “the virus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits”. This is a very odd statement coming from a scientist. She might as well said that Pandora’s Box was the cause but she did not open it. In the last few weeks Xi Jinping and other officials have cautioned its biolab researchers to be more careful. Odd.
1
My largest concern is that there has only been 1 (ONE) case reported in Africa - in Nigeria. Are there more cases in Africa - especially among countries that have a high number of Chinese workers (e.g., Kenya building a Chinese funded railroad to Uganda)?? If this virus cascades through Africa, there will be no stopping its global pandemic reach.
2
China is not transparent? What about us? We aren't even doing widespread testing, so we don't even know how widespread it is. In S. Korea, they have an app that people are downloading on their phones that shows where every infected person is, so you can avoid those areas. They are testing 12,000 people a day. In London they have drive in testing. This is ridiculous in this country.
193
@Patricia Yes, I agree. And, is anyone going to talk about the fact that Travis AFB (where the Diamond Princess cruise passengers were quarantined) is IN Solano County, California? NYT reports today, in reference to the "unexplained" case there, "Solano County, northeast of San Francisco, is a place of cattle ranches, biotechnology research facilities, a military base and vineyards." A military base? Try THE military base. Simultaneously, the WSJ reports "Coronavirus safety protocols not followed at federal quarantine sites, whistleblower says...The employees weren’t tested for the coronavirus before they left two California quarantine sites, the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside and Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, and flew home, the person familiar with the complaint said."
24
@Patricia California's governor reported the state had 200 test kits last Thursday. This is for a population 3/5 the size of South Korea. The kits would have to come from federal sources. Apparently nobody at the national level in the USA saw this coming.
13
@Patricia
Agree.
3
I am perplexed why there has been no reporting on the current state of diagnostics. The restrictive CDC guidelines on who to test are a simple byproduct that they don't have reliable test kits that could be deployed in the field.
The fact that we don't have these tools is a result of massive mismanagement at the highest political levels. It appears we are behind China and Italy in developing basic tools for dealing with this infection.
Why is there no attention to this issue from the reporters? I have at least one answer -- broad scientific illiteracy. Journalists reporting on health and science should have understanding of some basics, which include some idea for what goes into development of a new diagnostic test, a vaccine, a therapeutic.
2
Data on the new coronavirus are not limited. Italian media provide very detailed and regularly updated information on Italy’s outbreak 24 hours a day. We know that the health workers who were infected in Italy did not wear protective equipment. This is because it was the beginning of February and they were not aware they were treating people affected by this disease (and at that time no one thought of a possible outbreak in Europe). There is no evidence of any serious dangers for medical workers following the right procedures. A far as the death toll is concerned, in Italy it is about 2.6%, in France a little larger, but most those who died were already affected by previous conditions; 90% were over seventy and 60% over eighty. So far, there have not been any victims among healthy people. The difference in death rate found between Wuhan and other China's regions is astonishing, but something similar (even if at a lesser scale) happens in Italy. In the coronavirus epicenter (Codogno) the death rate is larger because most contagions occurred in hospitals and most infected people were old and already sick. People who were infected in other regions were usually exposed to the virus in different circumstances (parties, soccer games, discos, schools, etc.) and were generally younger and healthier.
108
@Lucio When you say not any victims among healthy people, what about the young doctor in China who first rang alarm bells and has since died? I must admit, doctors are known to be generally poor at hand washing, but I wouldn’t get too complacent about mortality only a concern amongst those who are older or already compromised.
37
@Lucio Factors that affect the mortality rate include people with other serious health issues (diabetes, cancer, auto-immune disorders) and smoking. Many of the elderly Chinese who died were men who had smoked for years. I'm assuming that those with asthma and bronchial conditions and possibly very obese people would also have a higher mortality rate.
18
@Voyageur
We really have no idea about the quality of medical treatment provided in China; nor do we know the government's influence on divulging such information.
I saw a video on-line of a woman crying in desperation because she knew if her family was infected, it would not be able to even get into a hospital. Why, she did not say. She was going public at great danger to herself out of frustration with being left to battle this virus on her own. Terribly sad to watch.
9
This reads like more China bashing, intentional or not. For example, suggesting that there is something amiss because there is a difference between the reported death rate at the epicenter vs other parts of China, is just silly. What else would you expect?
But that is beside the point for me, and I wish, for you as well. I really don't care about China right now. As an American, I am extremely concerned about the confusion, obfuscation, poor planning and human errors right here in the US. This is what puts me and my family at risk. We need to be calling out our leaders and holding them to account. It has been one fiasco after the next. The botched test kits, the restrictions on testing, amateur hour with the Diamond Princess passengers, and finally, establishing a path to censoring our scientists. Our response so far has been: 1) Don't test, don't tell 2)Ask Mikey. This is not okay. We have to fight this with science. We need data so that our scientists can learn. We need the voices of our scientists to guide our response. So, worry about China later, COVID is here now.
3
Additional info to the pevrious post
I am a Professor of Medical Genetics. Reading about the unexplained cases of coronavirus in the US and elsewhere raises the possibility that the Coronavirus was for a long time indigenous to humans where only recently a pathogenic variant or unknown co-factor. result in a flu. If true, asymptomatic carriers were for a long time present in the human population. I suspect that population wide screening will show that in every country a certain % of the population are corona virus carriers. The test kit just enables to quantitate indigenous coronavirus carriers that have been there long ago. Th botomline-Covid-19 is essentially a flu with low mortality rates that may have went molecularly undiagnosed for a long time. Caution and 14 days quarantine of carriers are a good approach until a vaccine is at hand, but all the hype and economical panic may have much more dangerous consequences than the virus itself
9
additional info to my previous post
I am a Professor of Medical Genetics. Reading about the unexplained cases of coronavirus in the US and elsewhere raises the possibility that the Coronavirus was for a long time indigenous to humans where only recently a pathogenic variant or unknown co-factor. result in a flu. If true, asymptomatic carriers were for a long time present in the human population. I suspect that population wide screening will show that in every country a certain % of the population are corona virus carriers. The test kit just enables to quantitate indigenous coronavirus carriers that have been there long ago. Th botomline-Covid-19 is essentially a flu with low mortality rates that may have went molecularly undiagnosed for a long time. Caution and 14 days quarantine of carriers are a good approach until a vaccine is at hand, but all the hype and economical panic may have much more dangerous consequences than the virus itself
..
2
Additional info to the pevrious post
I am a Professor of Medical Genetics. Reading about the unexplained cases of coronavirus in the US and elsewhere raises the possibility that the Coronavirus was for a long time indigenous to humans where only recently a pathogenic variant or unknown co-factor. result in a flu. If true, asymptomatic carriers were for a long time present in the human population. I suspect that population wide screening will show that in every country a certain % of the population are corona virus carriers. The test kit just enables to quantitate indigenous coronavirus carriers that have been there long ago. Th botomline-Covid-19 is essentially a flu with low mortality rates that may have went molecularly undiagnosed for a long time. Caution and 14 days quarantine of carriers are a good approach until a vaccine is at hand, but all the hype and economical panic may have much more dangerous consequences than the virus itself
2
@lieberma
This is a theory. The writer provides no proof!
When the World Health Organisation has proof of this theory, it will provide us with that information. Till then, pay attention to the Epidemiologists’ information coming from respected sources.
9
@lieberma
This is a theory. The writer provides no proof!
When the World Health Organisation has proof of this theory, it will provide us with that information. Till then, pay attention to the Epidemiologists’ information coming from respected sources.
5
For those of us over 70 the 80% frequency of mild cases is not very "comforting". Turning this figure around 20% of cases are severe meaning that these patients required hospitalization or have died. True we don't know the true frequency of mild cases, but it is likely that the cases designated as severe are concentrated in older age groups. In this cohort the frequency of severe or lethal disease is likely to be significantly higher than 20%. Very worrisome.
2
Panic, hysteria, and ignorance are friends of disease outbreaks. Mindfulness, good hygiene (especially hand hygiene), and avoidance of congested places are common sense measures. How in the world was it possible for members of the premier epidemiological watchdogs of the USA to ignore infection control protocol when examining incoming victims of this virus? Everyone in healthcare has at least basic knowledge of techniques to avoid the spread of infection. The equipment used is called Personal Protective Devices! What is confusing about that? It has not been determined exactly how Covid 19 is spread. That should have served as warning enough to approach the virus with extreme caution. Perhaps nurses ought to be in charge of this.
5
There are two reasons why we aren't being well informed about coronavirus. Either someone isn't saying, or they don't know.
Apparently this one presents like a common cold and it's highly transmissible. Also, unlike a common cold (aka a rhinovirus), no one has immune recognition for this virus. Apparently people's immune systems build up a knowledge base of rhinoviruses over time, and they learn to recognize and destroy most of them before the person even knows they've been exposed. No one has that advantage with coronavirus.
Simply put, you don't know when you have it, and if you're exposed, you catch it.
Meanwhile, there's a run on preventive supplies including hand sanitizer and masks. None of the local stores have any left, or any prospect of getting any soon.
I fight off colds fairly well, so if I catch this, the chances are I'll be allright. My wife seldom catches colds, but when she does, they hit her hard. She has medical issues, and fits the description of those who have a high probability of dying from this one. But if I catch it, "self quarantine" will involve staying at home, and she will catch it too. I don't know of any way to share a household and not expose the other members of the household.
2
@mlbex
There is no way.
1
I'm not sure we should accuse China of data hoarding just yet. They probably don't want to publish data that clearly makes them look incompetent. They're most likely just embarrassed. Their data collection has to be absolutely awful. You can understand why.
Dr. Rosenthal repeatedly describes covid as a pneumonia. Okay. How is that different than a flu? The general understanding is the flu causes pneumonia. The public doesn't understand the difference. The same thing goes for bronchitis and the common cold. They all have overlapping symptoms too. How is anyone supposed to know when to call a doctor?
Generally speaking, I'll just call out of work for a day or two and wait to see if I get better. It's very possible I had coronavirus already. I had a cold a week or two ago. There was something going around the office in a public health department. No one was wearing masks.
The alternative is a daycare where there was a known case of RSV. Common among young children but also a potentially life threatening pneumonia. What are the odds the pediatrician got the diagnosis right? I severely doubt the child was tested for covid.
So yea, we really don't know how far the virus has spread. China doesn't know. Nobody knows. What we need are standard protocols on data collection. Right now everything is the wild, wild west. Bad data are sometimes worse than no data.
1
With three confirmed cases of 'community spread,' it's inevitable that the virus is spreading throughout many communities more, in addition to those with known patients. For every patient who's ill enough to have met the CDC testing thresholds or for their medical team to request the test, as at UC Davis, the science tells us there are many more with the illness, many of whom likely just experienced a cold or flu. The trouble with this is that the most vulnerable are at much greater risk, but with no way to avoid contraction if we have no idea who is even infected. The CDC's incompetency and refusal to test in the communities-- something that was clear needed to be done starting weeks ago-- is shocking.
2
We know the virus will hit North America and we know it will spread. So far tactics of quarantine in China have not worked and we don't really know why.
And we also know that we have no medicine to prevent the disease or cure its victims. We are left with the basics, stay home, rest, get plenty of liquids and hope for the best.
For 80% of those exposed that has been enough. For 20% the virus has been severe and for about 2% it has been fatal.
The problem with that last figure is that if one hundred million people get this disease it means that two million could die. This could easily be the numbers for the US. Projected world wide and we could be facing twenty million deaths.
Researchers are doing everything possible to develop a vaccine. But best guesses are that this will take at least a year to perfect and more to manufacture.
So, like it or not, we are left with alternative therapies. Science based medicine has always ridiculed alternative therapies but evidence based medicine (evidence from actual patient treatment) has shown that many are very effective.
We would be fools not to examine alternative therapies. Corona acts like a flue and there have been herbal therapies, vitamin therapies, like massive doses of vitamin C that have been effective in strengthening immune systems and reducing the impact of many types of viral infections.
China already is doing these studies and so should we. The lives of 20 million people are worth it.
@Drspock
Those therapies, in general, have been shown to be no more effective than placebo. However, placebo is relatively effective so whatever works for you.
We really should be doing universal screening on everyone with any respiratory symptoms. I will bet the number of positive cases will be much higher. Given the shortage of testing kits, the expense involved and the economic impact of finding several community-acquired cases, this is not going to happen. We will never have accurate epidemiological data if there are restrictive criteria for testing. Vested economic interests trumps (pun intended) public health interest.
2
Death rates:
Why do you say the difference in death rates in two places in china makes no scientific sense? That is one of the most critical parameters of an epidemic.
You note the rate is highest in Wuhan, the origin of the epidemic, and lower in the rest of China. The obvious conclusion is that the same factors that caused it to be the starting point are causing it to have the highest death rate. Unsanitary conditions? Animal markets where the virus is "stored" and originated? Age structure and lower health of the population? Plenty of explanations for this. Scientists can explain it. No mystery. Plenty of scientific sense.
@Frank
One would think that those differences would average out when comparing cities of tens of millions of people.
Why are Americans expected to pay for this test? This is a public health issue with enormous impact to public safety and commerce (to name just a few areas). Should this epidemic spread because the burden on paying for testing and care falls on the public, there will be no more powerful argument made for M4A.
From what I heard, until now, CDC rules said no testing for this virus unless patients had contact with China. So it's not surprising all the cases confirmed were related to China travel. We just don't know who else are carriers. How should we prepare if we don't even know what we need to be protected from?
2
Of course not, and the prospects for an epi/pandemic remain high. The plan has to anticipate continued spread and frankly, some triage in the treatment protocols. This is not the plague and an approach making the most of 21st century medicine will justify any inconvenience involved. Yes, wash your hands.
The discrepancies between Wuhan and the rest of China in the death rate are due to the scarcities of medical resources. Wuhan has 70K cases, the rest of China had mostly 1K cases in the most severe provinces. So if you have few patients, you can use all the attention, the death rate is low. Also, in the early period of the outbreak in Wuhan, hospitals are overwhelmed and lots of patients could not be admitted and their cases developed at home without control. When China build more pop-up hospitals later on to admit them, many have entered advanced stage so the death rate is higher. So you see, the question is whether you will have a community outbreak that can overwhelm the system at a moment. All these information come from reporting from Chinese media. Unfortunately, we in the US does no translation about the reportings of their experience. There is little public attetion to what happened in China, so the results are lack of information. If one pays attention to China, none of it is mystery. I hope that this helps. As to medical worker infection, vast majority cases were infected early on, so far none of the doctors/nurses from other provinces came to Wuhan to help (30K+) has been infected with much stricter portocol today. But they do complain that the portocol make it difficult and exhausting to move around and do their work fast.
3
Let's let the Sackler family and others who profited from the oversale of opioids cough up some money to produce tests and distribute them. Perhaps the profit-engorged pharmaceutical companies could do some public service as well.
It appears all we regular people can do right now until further notice is follow the usual common-sense measures to avoid catching or spreading the flu. However, with the doomsday headlines in the NYT every day, I've had more trouble sleeping. Not good for staying healthy. I don't agree at all with the crazy Trump theory about this crisis being manufactured to bring him down, but I do think the media coverage in some cases has been tending towards the side of drama rather than providing useful information.
Slowly but surely everything is sliding towards Fox News hysteria - just look at the sorry excuse for a debate we just had. That was more like a night of professional wrestling. As a Democrat, I was embarrassed by it.
Some cool heads are needed on all fronts.
1
I looked it up, and the common cold is also a coronavirus. Do the tests differentiate between one coronavirus vs. another? Because, I imagine there are a lot of people with a common cold.
1
@rebecca1048
Over 80% of colds are caused by rhinovirus, from which very few people die. About 0.1% of people die from the flu (influenza virus), while the coronavirus covid 19 (which does have cold symptoms) appears to have a death rate of about 2%. In addition, it is looking like people can transmit covid 19 before they get symptoms.
1
@rebecca1048
The test for COVID-19 is specific to this corona virus ONLY.
A positive test means the person has COVID-19.
Of course it is always possible for a person to have both a cold and this novel virus. But the test is only for the novel virus.
1
Some folks who have the virus, have no symptoms, never will have symptoms, and will continue to shed the virus, will exist in our midst. These represent the most dangerous carriers and make it very difficult to detect and isolate from the community.
The famous case of Typhoid Mary demonstrated this difficulty over a century ago in the United States.
2
@WSF
Yes but that will show itself and the same detective methods will point to them.
@magicisnotreal
Some of these folks will not become suspect carriers, unfortunately. Even if everyone of them are finally detected, their damage will have been very significant, indeed.
Patients are advised not to take antibiotics for viral infections because they disrupt defensive microbiota communities without harm to the virus.
4
Data on this is as limited as people’s ability to seek knowledge. I went to cdc.gov to learn what human to human transmission is by definition. It is frustrating to go across multiple news platforms from different countries and not get common sense knowledge. At last NYT posted a thorough concise definition of origin, spread, means of transmission for all to see. I was going to post a hot link to that, now I can’t find it. I have this misconception that Homo Sapiens is an intelligent species, this preparatory process for disease landing in North America makes me all the more certain we’re weeding out the smart ones. Funny thing, as a younger man I participated in sweats, ritualistic redoing a native tradition of spiritual healing. Now go find what the temperature is that a virus can no longer thrive in a mammal.
1
@sly creek
The ignorance you see is malevolent and intentional.
The group responsible for dealing with pandemics and related matters in the WH had been shut down and removed by John Bolton while he was still in there. That is why the headless chicken dance you now see is taking place. No one knew who was doing what or who should be doing anything because the "deep state"professionals who were meant to be handling these tings had been intentionally removed.
1
An important aspect of this problem is that for reasons of pattern of human and animal life, the virus infections each year start in China. It seems to be the mix there of pigs, ducks, and people.
Each year, we get one or more flu virus infections sweeping across the world, and they start in China.
If China's politics makes it more difficult to get early warning, then the whole world is put at risk. This is not just China's problem. It is not just this year, it is every year.
3
@Mark Thomason Good point. They don't teach this in bidness schools when they talk about supply chains. So many products come from China, where, as you point out, there's the mix of pigs, ducks, and people. Among phones, computers, and toys shipped to countries, the viruses made in China travel each year.
1
@Mark Thomason: Recent studies of the Ganges River in India have found even its headwaters teeming with snippets of DNA from antibiotic resistant bacteria. Evolution never ceases.
1
What do flash-flood warnings on your phone have to do with the epidemiological spread of a virus? I don't get why one would assume we'd have more information on the latter because of the former. Weird way to frame it.
6
Do hospitals have separate air moving systems for various sections? I'm wondering if the air from places like the reception area and laundry are on the same system as patient rooms and ORs. Seems to me that reception and intake spaces are among the most likely to be places with the highest potential for cross infection. And if air from laundry rooms is reintroduced into the system providing recirculated air for the rest of the facility, I'd be nervous.
Maybe it's more than just face to face contact that we need to look at, and not just in hospitals, but all public buildings.
2
Modern hospital construction does take airflow from corridors and direct it to rooms as much as possible. The problem is that most hospitals add-ons of buildings and wings making interior pressure regulation difficult. Negative pressure rooms are specially designed rooms and most larger hospitals have a few of these beds.
1
"death rate in Wuhan was 2 to 4 percent, but only .7 percent in the rest of China — a difference that makes little scientific sense."
It makes perfect scientific sense if you check little more.
Indeed, in "80%" cases the virus does not attack the lungs. But in "20%" of the case it are "not mild". And 5-10%" of the cases needs oxygen, intubation or blood oxygenation.
In Wuhan the hospitals was unable to help everyone with about 1% of the city population infected. Even with the help of the tens thousand medics from rest of the China etc. Working round the clock in diapers to save time and the hazmat suits.
So the information that available now indicates that:
- 0.7% or less death rate is for the good situation with the hospitals.
- 4% or very likely higher death rate in case if the hospitals are unable to help at all.
So the critical for this outbreak is to keep it within the capacity of the hospitals. Most of the Chinese cities managed with this challenge by imposing multiply community measures.
9
Breaking, 123 people just died yesterday here in the U.S. from... lack of health insurance. 123, on average, will die today. 123 will die tomorrow and the day after and the day after. Forty five thousand of our neighbors succumbed to this health crisis every year. It's weird the disconnect between the actual health crisis that is, and has been, killing 123 people a day on average yet there seems no urgency in any of our policy makers, other than a few who consistently talk about the problem. Many Americans are more than happy to make small incremental improvements over years to decades. No rush, it's only 123 people dead even day. Besides, how are we going to pay for it? For the 30 million Americans without health insurance and the tens of millions more whose deductibles are so high they effectively might even not have insurance, the threat of getting sick and dying is their coronavirus threat every day.
8
@FXQ Although not the standard now - it seems that letting a hospital (or doctor) directly send requests for money directly to the government would help solve the problem. Then the issue of "insurance" could be reduced and those without insurance could still get care. Insurance is a middleman, not healthcare.
"death rate in Wuhan was 2 to 4 percent, but only .7 percent in the rest of China — a difference that makes little scientific sense."
It makes perfect scientific sense if you check little more.
Indeed, in "80%" cases the virus does not attack the lungs. But in "20%" of the case it are "not mild". And 5-10%" of the cases needs oxygen, intubation or blood oxygenation.
In Wuhan the hospitals was unable to help everyone with about 1% of the city population infected. Even with the help of the tens thousand medics from rest of the China etc. Working round the clock in diapers to save time and the hazmat suits.
So the information that available now indicates that:
- 0.7% or less death rate is for the good situation with the hospitals.
- 4% or very likely higher death rate in case if the hospitals are unable to help at all.
So the critical for this outbreak is to keep it within the capacity of the hospitals. Most of the Chinese cities managed with this challenge by imposing multiply community measures.
3
A “Suspect Coronavirus Reporting App” would be a useful tool in the early spread of infectious diseases to graphically show the potential spread. Healthcare professionals could use it to direct containment efforts & the general public could use it to understand when its time to self-quarantine. The App would feature a dichotomous key to evaluate your symptoms and determine a probability of flu, cold or COVID19. The App could provide all kinds of useful information, including access to an online physician for further evaluation. The information would be subject to error, but I think the mass of reporting would outweigh the high error rate.
3
Well, with at least seven articles listing "Coronavirus," on the New York Times page above the digital fold is worth it not to have to see an even deadlier virus that is named: "Trump." Yeah, worth it.
3
Most people are not panicked over the virus itself. Everyone I know is concerned about the growing signs that we are ill-prepared for and mismanaging this at every step of the way.
To my astonishment, a colleague at lunch yesterday announced she was just back from France and the region hard hit with cases. Another teacher asked if she had had her temp. taken at the airport. She laughed breezily and said that no one was tested.
What?! How, at this late stage, can we not be doing a simple temperature test at an airport especial when the person has been to a known outbreak center?
We are months into this and this is still the landscape:
1. No routine testing at airports
2. Allowing those who have had contact with patients back into the community without mandatory quarantine periods. 3. Shortages of masks (people stop hoarding! It's not just obscene, it's deadly. The people who need those masks are medical professionals.)
4. Appointing Pence as the czar. This is a man who ensured Indiana had one of the highest death rates from HIV and who thinks you can "pray away the gay." Those of us outraged by this step have every right to be.
5.No plans for how to handle the economic aspects of caring for a nation where millions are uninsured and millions more live paycheck to paycheck.
6. A president who thinks lining his pockets trumps investing in our health.
Let me repeat. I do not fear this virus half as much as I fear my own government's gross and inexcusable incompetence.
500
@AhBrightWings
Even in Haiti everyone deplaning gets a fever check. I had mine checked on Feb. 6th and the practice continues to the present.
35
@AhBrightWings
I AM concerned. I have had asthma since infancy (thanks US military for getting my dad hooked) and last winter pneumonia scared me.
And face masks don’t work to protect from getting the virus, the simple ones only help prevent the ill from spreading it.
See, misinformation everywhere.
12
@AhBrightWings : There's also been a panic run on hand sanitizer. If you don't have it by now, you can't find it.
10
My ex, a very smart woman and an exceptional nurse (specialty: wound care), has an interesting hypothesis about coronavirus based on the fact that the symptoms of influenza and coronavirus are similar. It is that coronavirus has long been among us, but only now, because of an unusual outbreak in a remote area of China, is being found elsewhere. Her argument runs that the 1918 influenza pandemic and annual influenza seasons since has led doctors to assume that patients with those symptoms were victims of influenza and treated them accordingly; they did not consider that some patients might be victims of coronavirus. Her hypothesis might explain the failure of flu shots to protect some thousands of people every year because shots for influenza could not prevent people from contracting coronavirus. If her hypothesis is right, people will have to get two shots (when one for coronavirus becomes available), and doctors will have to test ill patients to determine which virus, if not both, is responsible.
9
@lieberma, I take it that you largely agree with my ex's hypothesis. She will be pleased to know that someone in the field agrees with her. WaPo readers of my comment react as if her hypothesis is itself a virus.
@Michael L Hays
Sock puppets!
This guy made the mistake of thinking he was answering the other puppet.
They’re both trolls - working together to magnify the disinformation.
Experience with the data and refined testing take time. We've had 2 months since the first report.
In other words, it is impossible to make a good prediction about where we will be in 2 months. One can imagine worst case and best case quite easily. The question is what is the expected case. I can definitively say it will be worse than the best and better than the worst I can imagine. I can definitively say the amount of prognostication and worry will increase quite independent of good information and reasonable inference. We live in an age of unprecedented lies and phony ideas. Time to simplify. Let's meet in 2 months and then predict where we are headed.
4
If you want to understand how a communist dictatorship reacts on a local level to a crisis, watch the first episode of HBO's Chernobyl. China's reaction to the Coronavirus should be no surprise.
5
@Joe D
Similar to the U.S. reaction, you mean. (And yes, I've seen the excellent "Chernobyl" on HBO.)
It took an HHS whistleblower to reveal what went on with the people evacuated to California, how the workers who received them were unprepared, and when they expressed concern were basically told to just shut up and do their jobs.
Trump/Pence have muzzled the NIH and CDC, as you know.
So tell me how we're handling this any better than China.
12
Obfuscation of facts during a crisis is not limited to authoritarian governments. The past is full of examples of the US governments deliberate misstatements to the public in many instances
8
@Fred Terra: Cover-ups happen in all bureaucracies.
1
There is likely more community transmission in US. The whole world seems ably to test but in the US, we are told that the test kits send by CDC are “defective”. Testing via CDC remains cumbersome. It is almost that we do not want to know.
6
First of all, bravo on a very thoughtful piece medical science journalism. Dr. Rosenthal, in my opinion, brings a very real world sense of science/medicine/government interface that can be extremely problematic, especially when people in government are asked to do things that may make them very unpopular, like ordering quarantines and travel bans. It is an old story -- from An Enemy of the People to Jaws this has been the stuff of good storytelling, ideally in a fictional world. The real world equivalent that preceded coronavirus and which is still a slow motion catastrophe that challenges this interface is climate change. As Dr. Rosenthal notes, for all the problems with the Chinese government response, its scientific oommunity was rapidly establishing the scientific basis for combatting the disease -- describing the clinical illness, some of its epidemiology (gaps noted), isolating the virus and sequencing the DNA genome, which it rapidly published in international scientific journals, notably the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.
As for Trump/Pence, if I had a nickel for every time the word debunked appeared in an article about something Trump believes, I wouldn't care what the stock market is doing. From climate change denial to crazy Ukraine obsessions, he simply cannot reassure anyone living in.a fact based world about a threat like this.
12
What's' happening with this crisis is indicative of the issues we will face if the world moves toward authoritarian, nationalistic governance.
Such governance is invariably based on lies, myths, and victimhood. When you look at China's reaction to the virus, USSR reaction to Chernobyl, or Trump's attempt to control all communications via Mike Pence - they all stem from such governance extreme reliance on optics and alternate reality.
Such systems always rely on mind control and "stability" over chaotic democracy and transparency. That can work and be soothing until a real crisis erupts which encroaches on that narrative. You can't talk the population out of pandemic no more so than you can from reactor meltdown. Even if you do control the biggest media outlet in the country.
Then the facade crumbles and the every people who were pleased with their alternate reality have to confront harsh facts. hat can be a violent and extreme change. 15% drop of stock market is just a taste.
9
Taking Aim at Corona
Corona, get real, only older folks die -
Young ‘uns – (the rest) - will get well and fly
Off on their vaca to precincts exotic
To choose and indulge a boffo narcotic;
Or, if inclined, the world made to wander
For exploration with money to squander;
Cash money can stave off, cure an infection,
Buy the best meds at their doctor's direction;
Disease – say the virus, they’re safe as can be,
Can fly (private jet) to a land virus free.
1
Here in the US, only about 40% of the public even gets vaccinated for the annual flu virus variant(s).
I've taken vaccination for everything from pneumonia to shingles. A potentiated immune system is a good thing to have.
9
@Steve Bolger
I’m with you, Steve!
I get my flu shots without fail.
I’ve had both pneumonia vaccinations. And the shingles.
As soon as they’re available, I go and get it. Even if it costs me.
We need to eat well, exercise and use every available medical “tool” that boosts our immune system.
2
@TheraP: All vaccinations are more effective as the percentage of the population vaccinated rises. It is a pity that scare tactics deter a large fraction of the people from participating.
1
A pandemic is just what it states - it is a worldwide outbreak of a currently uncontrollable infection.
The last Big Bang came from the US (pig farm worker going soldier in a kitchen in early WW I) if what I read is right.
In total more dead from the virus than from the impact of the war.
What makes me worry is that your's (I'm Dutch) is a country without a functioning system of public health. And a more than doubtful leadership...
In plain words: those people who are not payed wages when ill - will attend to work if they need the money.
Ideal for spreading a virus and a dystopian nightmare.
The article hammers on disinformation of the public...
That is standard procedure - also in Europe.
The question is how well a society is really prepared to tackle a serious nationwide health problem.
Your's is not, I think.
14
@juf
Access to healthcare is meaningless if there is no viable treatment. It is unlikely a treatment will come from a country like yours but more likely it will come from one like ours.
4
The lack of access and the issue of affordability in the US will almost certainly keep the numbers seeking care lower than they would be than in, well, almost everywhere inter world, including The Netherlands. This reality will distort the information available about the spread of the disease and its impact.
The insult that a solution is more likely to come from the US rather than from a small European country is uncalled for. This disease is going to require a multinational effort. Dismissing any one country because it’s not “number one”is not helpful.
4
@Matt No insult intended. Just stating a fact and pointing out that different systems have different pluses and minus.
I am tired of the false equivalency trying be made with other countries and the US. Yes you can provide a thinner level of healthcare across a broader segment of your population than we can, but the Netherlands does not have the immigration challenges that we have nor the military needs we have developed over time to prevent totalitarianism from rising up and potentially ending our way of life.
I am glad though that you like where you live and what your government provides. Over here I like where I live but I'm tired of the constant the sky is falling by the out of power party.
SO FAR The corona virus is described as having a "very low" death rate. If course if there a one billion people infected, even a 1% birth rate would mean a loss of 10 million worldwide. The three top killers are ischemic heart disease, about 8 million; stroke about 6 million and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease about 4 million. By contrast, the most deadly communicable disease in the world is Tuberculosis, that kills 1.4 million per year on average. What we must look at is people who have been identified as having survived the corona virus, since their DNA will disclose what genetic factors will protect against the infection or defeat it using the body's natural defenses. The focus now should be to study DNA of survivors and of those who died from the corona virus in order to study the genetic differences in response. That should help in the development of a vaccine. Should China decide to take such a path they might develop a vaccine and test it on humans sooner than would be done elsewhere. Their results could be studied to modify the vaccine they develop. One thing is for sure: If well all dropped dead from the corona virus in the US, Trump would be oblivious to it, so long as the 1% gets another $1 trillion in tax cuts this year. Finally there is an issue that unites both parties! Fighting the corona virus. If that means Trump's losing the election, so be it.
Given the lack of leadership from the US government so far, one would hope that other organizations would better step into the information breach. This is not to detract in any way from the CDC and WHO, which are doing a fine job.
International infectious disease organizations, here in the US, the Infectious Disease Society of America, already have useful information, too. However, what they do not seem to have is a presence on major media, such as the NYTimes. One would think that the IDSA would have a working group of experts on COVID with their answers to key issues on a FAQ. The lay press should be reporting the expert opinions with updates daily. The comments to this article reflect many concerns that ID specialists could address. In addition, one notices many concerns about areas where we lack knowledge, and these could be discussed.
Readers may note a recent report on over 72000 cases through the Chinese CDC (Vital Surveillances: The Epidemiological Characteristics of an Outbreak of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Diseases (COVID-19) — China, 2020), available online.
Clearly, there was a time early during the COVID epidemic where some people thought "it can't happen here", but the lack of data may also reflect a system that was overwhelmed. Doctors cannot be expected to publish articles when they are exhausted.
6
@Jeff
PBS Newshour, nearly every day, has interviewed Epidemiologists, professors from various universities and other agencies.
If you missed them, their website has the video and even transcripts.
3
This week's Times Magazine includes an article about the over-worked and underpaid state of forensic medicine in the US. One suspects that new viruses that produce symptoms similar to those of old ones can go unrecognized for a long time.
Another article describes "originalist" judicial dogma the straps us all into the mindset of people who lived when human knowledge was one thousandth of what is is now.
7
Infections appearing in some with no known contact to carriers?
A mystery that is vital to solve. My speculative mind wondered if infected droplets could survive long enough, and if so on what surfaces, to possibly transfer COVID-19? My call to CDC yielded no new information, just basic information about the virus already widely distributed from reputable news outlets. One would certainly trust that each person infected with no known contact, has been carefully investigated to get to the bottom of possible causation.
4
Is there evidence to support Dr.Lipkin's claim that early cases are the most severe & that early mortality estimates tend to be high ? Were early cases of Plague, smallpox, polio, influenza , HIV , etc less severe than than later cases ?Are those who contract Coronavirus today less likely to suffer severe cases or to die than were those who contracted the first known cases of Coronavirus ?
Flash warnings are issued immediately , just tornado sirens wail , while calls for potential evacuation, then for mandatory evacuation come as hurricanes are about to make landfall, because the threat is imminent, because thepreparedness protocols and warning systems are put into place by competent government long BEFORE the disaster strikes, and because the actions that need to be taken are clear.
Firing the the person in charge of pandemic response, cutting back on & eliminating critical programs and funding, as Trump has done has had the opposite effect.
The information which had been released has created panic , in the absence of clear instructions as to what, if anything, Americans can do to protect ourselves, short of the advice to obtain 30 day supply of medications which I can not obtain, because insurance companies have not been instructed to approve 30 day emergency supplies in ill accordance with the advice,to wash hands frequently, and that there is no point to purchasing N95 masks, possibly because there are none available.
9
@DJS
It’s not that earlier cases are more severe, it’s that severe cases are the first identified, as they come to medical attention. Asymptomatic cases then need to be sought out, as they would never self-identify. Essentially, adding the milder cases into the denominator lowers the mortality rate (deaths divided by all cases).
10
@LJ
The Times should copy and past your brief explanation everywhere!
1
I must admit that having the vice president in charge of disseminating information on the coronavirus does not fill me with confidence. This administration insists on putting people, who have no expertise in the subjects they are expected to deal with, in charge of departments with which they are totally unfamiliar. Right now we don't know what to do or where to go to avoid contracting this new disease. If the vice president deals with this crisis like he has dealt with others in the past woe is us! One thing I am sure of is that Trump will take very good care of himself.
14
"In recent days the W.H.O. has complained that China has not been sharing data on infections in health care workers. "
Will the W.H.O complain that the Trump administration has restricted information on the virus from the U.S. and will be filtering it through a person who believes smoking is safe, there is no global warming, cannot be in a room alone with a woman doctor, and thinks prayers are the most effective cure for everything?
12
There is nothng like a global epidemic to wake up the world. Like an alien invader, the virus suddenly appears and threatens to rapidly and silently kill many of us. We are still learning about the new COVID-19 virus but already it has disrupted the world's economy. This invader, like others before it, can be defeated if nations collaborate globally and we let our health care experts do their job. Among those tasks is for the world to fund sustainable vaccine research on these and other viruses. We need to know more about these invaders before they strike again-- or face the consequences.
3
Mother Nature doesn't always conform to demands for rapid information delivered via smartphone. It appears we don't know the exact incubation period, nor do know precisely how the virus can spread. We don't know so much more than we do know, and that's no one's fault but Mother Nature, so blame her. Kinda like a Mississippi River flood. Every time it happens, we try finding fault with man when the explanation is much simpler: a lot of rain.
2
I have read that the difference in infection and death rates between Wuhan/Hubei Province and other parts of China is attributable to the impact of quarantines and early treatment.
The virus spread unconstrained at its epicenter (Wuhan/Hubei Province) early on. Provinces outside Hubei have been quarantined, reducing spread, and treatment has been undertaken earlier.
If quarantine and prompt treatment have reduced death rates, that is all to the good.
2
How do we know the respiratory illness currently ravaging our communities is not the COVID-19 if no one is testing it?
12
@JM The lack of widespread testing availability is preventing us from learning as much as we can, as fast as we can, about the epidemiology of this new virus. Every major health system clinical lab can easily do this testing if permitted to do so by the CDC and state authorities, using commonly available test systems already in use (pcr viral DNA tests). The obstacle to readily available, inexpensive, nationwide testing is bureaucratic, NOT technological, which is very troubling.
9
"why is data on the new coronavirus so limited?"
Well one reason may be that knowledge is power. For that reason it is often strategically shared. For instance the CDC reports that "an estimated 15 million have been stricken with the flu so far this year and killed some 8,200 in the U.S. alone. Overall, the World Health Organization estimates that the flu kills up to 650,000 people per year worldwide". While those statistics require a google search to obtain, each new case of Covid-19 is reported within nanoseconds. As of today, there are 65 cases in the US and none has died. Worldwide there are 85,000 reported cases and 2,800 people have died. Hardly a pandemic. Could those statistics change as testing and reporting improve? Certainly, but considering Chinese reports that Covid-19 emerged 3 months ago, but more likely months earlier, it's difficult to believe they will compare with the flu's statistics.
Unlike Covid-19 we are all familiar with the flu and accept it as a yearly event. The stock market doesn't crash, there are no dire warnings of global recession and epidemiologists don't speak of it as some lethal alien life form. We all simply carry on with our lives and wash our hands a bit more frequently. In time Covid-19 will be treated similarly. But that requires knowledge. In the meantime Wall Street will reap billions from panic selling, political consultants will blame incumbent administrations and researchers will get plenty of grant money.
3
The Trump administration has adopted the policy of denying bad news and has taken the extraordinary step to constrain all medical & scientific information through a political filter. Watching Pence and Azar quibble over who was in-charge of leading the propaganda parade was an astonishing embarrassment, especially as neither is capable. The Chinese morbidity / mortality reports are not believable for the same reason; i.e, the physicians and scientists are being muzzled or shot. The 5G 21st century of boastful advance of technology is being laid low by the medieval food and hygiene practices of superstitious people. Lies from our leaders will neither inform nor protect us.
7
@ladps89
The Trump Administration is just trying to tamp down the hysteria being promoted by the media and the politicization by the Democratic Party (ex., lies about cutting funds).
It is what any responsible Administration would do. Those who insist on using this to bash Trump will do so regardless of the data and outcomes. If anything, their response is also "viral."
1
@AACNY
The Trump administration would do a better job of tamping down "hysteria" by providing fact based information to the public. He should let the CDC and NIH do their jobs and support their efforts. That would help.
2
Basic epidemiological studies have not been done. We need population-based testing that would identify asymptomatic and very mild infections—especially important because covid-19 is known to be contagious before symptoms manifest. Fecal-oral spread has been identified as another potential route of infection, but no testing is being carried out. Children have been identified as being at low risk for severe disease, but they can be infected and infectious. At the moment, we have no idea where the virus is or how widespread it might be. Stop saying don’t worry, it’s just like the flu: one major difference is that this is a new virus, so by definition no one has any immunity. Please, put public health professionals in charge, and operate with complete transparency: to do otherwise encourages the spate of conspiracy theories and misinformation that are already circulating faster than the virus.
10
@LJ : Perhaps the CDC might have done that, but the GOP cut its funding so it could give tax cuts for the rich.
11
@gratis
The CDC's funding was never cut. Democrats, with the media's complicity, spread this lie.
1
@gratis
Couldn’t agree more
Never mind China. The US is glaringly incompetent. We do not have the surveillance to accurately determine the number of cases and appropriate epidemiology.
We likely have 1000 of cases right now because we lack diagnostic testing. The Milan contagion has been in place for weeks and we were never looking towards the east for transmission. Only towards the west.
"The World Health Organization (WHO) has shipped testing kits to 57 countries. China had five commercial tests on the market 1 month ago and can now do up to 1.6 million tests a week; South Korea has tested 65,000 people so far. The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in contrast, has done only 459 tests since the epidemic began. The rollout of a CDC-designed test kit to state and local labs has become a fiasco because it contained a faulty reagent. Labs around the country eager to test more suspected cases—and test them faster—have been unable to do so. No commercial or state labs have the approval to use their own tests."
16
Thank you. This was a great article.
4
Consumers do not need lengthy statistical material on coronavirus. We need information on how to protect ourselves. The obscure and mixed messages on masks, for instance, is insulting and lax.
People are told to wear masks to avoid SPREADING illness they may be exhibiting, but the rest of us are told we do not need to wear masks if we're feeling well.
Baloney. We're told this because there are none of the highly protective masks on the market (no, these are NOT the masks used for occupational uses.) The right ones are not available. Sold out. Unavailable. And wearing a plain surgical mask is pointless.
So, to say yes, protect yourself from the seemingly healthy guy next to you in the produce section, is not an option. We are all vulnerable at every step now. Period.
The truth is what we need and a reality check by Americans who consider themselves invulnerable to troubles experienced elsewhere in the world.
8
The lack of leadership on this, from anyone, is very upsetting to me. For all we know, many people who have been traveling/flying, could have been exposed/infected weeks ago. The fact that the president has not gotten on TV to give people guidance, rather than saying nothing's happening and it's a political hoax, just shows how out of touch and self concerned he is. For all we know, it is too late and this thing is working it's way through our country. I'm not being paranoid, just realistic. The time to get ahead of this was weeks ago.
6
The White House needs to get out of the way here and let professionals they have not fired yet handle this. Pence should confine his role to making public statements and being sure that resources arrive when needed.
Sure would help if they had not slashed budgets for precisely these needs.
11
Irony red alert. Dr. Rosenthal is exhibiting symptoms of the syndrome she is bemoaning. Not one mention in her article of how medical professionals in the US are being muzzled by our own authoritarian, anti-science government. When everyone including Anthony Fauci has to clear what information they're passing on with the likes of Mike Pence you can be certain that important information is being buried. Then there's the obvious self-interested manipulation by not my president.
Rather than helping to correct the self-interested authoritarian manipulation of information in our own country Dr. Rosenthal is instead "treading carefully" among the priorities and egos of our own "alternative facts" authoritarian government while bemoaning the same thing being done in China.
8
There are ~three hundred thousand who have The Coronavirus worldwide as of Feb. 29, 8.05 AM EST
2
@New World This is possible based on what we know so far, but it is just a guess. I would guess over 1000 in the US now, but we won’t know for quite a while, maybe weeks.
If coronavirus is the hoax that trump claims, he should go visit the people who have been diagnosed.
He can wash his hands, shake their hands, wash his hands again, and tell us how well they’re doing and that it isn’t serious.
If he can’t do that, he should shut up and the scientists do their work to find a treatment and a vaccine.
32
Sincere question to all those who claim that this virus is no big deal, is just another flu, no more than a bad cold, etc.:
Why do you think China has gone to such extraordinary lengths to contain it? Why has the Chinese govt thrown its country into chaos (albeit organized chaos), disrupted its economy, shut down entire regions? Why are workers walking around fully garbed in PPE, still? Why was Dr. Li Wenliang so concerned?
You think they're just being hysterical? Overly dramatic?
What about WHO and the CDC? Why are they taking this so seriously? Same reasons?
This is an honest question, and I'd like to hear from some of the naysayers out there.
19
I’m not a naysayer at all. This is a very serious situation. However, the Chinese authorities may have quickly leaped into extreme containment measures because they feared this virus would be similar to SARS or MERS, which have much higher fatality rates. It now appears this virus is less deadly than those.
@Lisa Simeone: Not to mention that dr. Li Wenliang, a presumably healthy younger man, died of the virus.
@Anna and @Lobelia:
Yes, as I said, Dr. Li Wenliang was immediately concerned, and, along with other of his colleagues, paid for his heroics with his life.
I will say that he and his colleagues were on the front lines, being exposed to a massive viral load, and surely overworked and exhausted. I can understand how their immune systems would be overwhelmed.
Here are the names and ages of the Chinese healthcare workers who have so far died, only the ones whose names I have been able to find. I don't know the names of the others. These people were all heroes. So is every healthcare worker out there:
Dr. Xia Sisi, 29
Dr. Wang Wenjun, 42
Dr. Liu Zhiming, 51
Dr. Peng Yinhua, 29
Dr. Li Wenliang, 34
Dr. Wang Tucheng, 37
A nurse, Liu Fan, was 49.
Song Yingjie was a pharmacist; he was 28.
Xu Hui was 51.
3
The answer to the question in the headline is a simple one. Because our president has declared the corona virus a hoax and is limiting the dissemination of information. This has gone beyond a medical crisis. It has become a political one.
8
It's disgraceful that a gag order as been put on the experts in this field. They do that sort of thing in Banana Republics. The public has an absolute right to know and understand exactly what is happening. This virus sounds very scary and not to be taken lightly, unlike trump who says it's a Democratic Hoax. Well, he should know, after all he's a self-declared stable genius. We desperately need someone intelligent at the helm to guide us.
8
The rest of the world is getting information and is trying to contain the virus. Here, all we get is Trump’s agenda which is to blame the Democrats. Pence and Stephen Miller’s new wife handle the information, hardly scientists or physicians. No test kits, no guidelines....nothing. When did our country become so backward?
12
I don't know if it will come to America like it has in China, but there are definite stages of the outbreak that happened.
Here in Zhengzhou where I live we have face recognition in the city and the subways, but they don't use that so much - or maybe they do, I don't know. The main thing they use to track is the residence card and the QR code of your phone. But here's how it played out over the past 5 weeks:
1. First, you heard stuff about Wuhan. If you had VPN, you started hearing things of a new virus. I think I first was worried in early January. But my first text on WeChat to my boss was on 1/23, asking where I could get N95 masks.
2. A day later, she didn't seem that worried about the virus. Two days later SHE SEEMED REALLY WORRIED.
3. In China, there's lots of cops. They guard our apartment buildings and they're nice guys (and gals). But I think around 1/24 they shut off all the entrances to our buildings. I live in a huge apartment complex with ten thirty story towers. So then you had to go out just one main entrance (the exit) and come back in one main entrance (the entrance!). And now just had to get your temperature taken.
4. A few days later they -they required a new residency card and a QR code on your phone to leave the complex. Also, all classes were cancelled for my university - it would be online.All restaurants, gyms, movie theaters, anything but a simple market were closed. And that's our life now.
10
"Dr. Lipkin noted that because cases noted early in an epidemic are the most severe, early mortality estimates tend to be high."
Multiple experts are now saying that the mortality rate will turn out to be much lower than the current guesstimate of 2-3%.
Even if it's less than 1%, it's not nothing. And if someone is immune compromised, it could be especially deadly, just as the flu is every year.
Things to do: Practice good personal hygiene, maybe reduce non-essential social interaction, and definitely listen to the experts
Things not to do: Overreact
4
@John If overact means pressuring our Elected Officials for better public health policy, funding and testing then I say the more overreaction the better!
8
Proper planning for something one is unsure about is difficult. Because this new virus is new, there are few precedents about how to protect everyone, contain the disease, or even yet determine readily who has the disease. Since the disease does kill people this creates concern and even fear in almost everyone.
It does not help that proper leadership appears to be lacking. Trump can admit to no failure and is treating the crisis only defensively. He does not see any need, nor would he be able to, turn over leadership control to the qualified doctors and medical staff that are best qualified to handle it.
If his inability to effectively preside over this threat helps the spread of the disease and people here in the US actually start dying, it may be very difficult for him to win re-election this November, and this too is likely to make him even more defensive, blaming his non-supporters for the disease's spread.
Just like the rest of us, he is frightened about the potential threat, but unlike us, he has the responsibility to try to contain it. Good luck, Mr. Trump. I think you may well end up needing it.
1
The Spanish flu was so named because World War I correspondents were subjected to military censorship regarding widespread deaths of soldiers, except in neutral Spain, where newspapers were free to report deaths. Trump is now suppressing coronavirus information.
Let's call it Trump flu.
28
@Mark I'd go one step further and call him Typhoid Trump since he and Pandemic Pence seem bent on spreading this thing by denying its a problem.
1
The virus is out and there is no way to stop it. We only have statistics that result from tested individuals. If 80% have mild symptoms, how many of those people get tested? Probably very few. Why would they? They think they have a cold and that's the end of it. But these infected individuals pass the virus to two or three people (we think anyway) who in turn pass it on to others. That's an exponential growth pattern and when that progresses past the knee of the curve, this thing goes to millions really fast.
The infection is truly global and that only took three months. We can't shut the planet down and keep 7 billion in their homes for a month.
It's going to take at least one year before a vaccine is ready for global distribution, that is if we can make one. That should be determined in about six months. If the virus starts mutating like the flu does, big problem.
Since it will take year for the vaccine, that gives the virus the time to spread everywhere due to its exponential growth.
This is no hoax or media hype. The flu kills 0.1% of infected individuals. Current estimates for the lethality of coronavirus are between 0.7% and 2%. That's seven to twenty times more lethal. That's millions of Americans.
12
You miss the mark. E.g., it's EXTREMELY unlikely that "Does the pattern of infection suggest a role for transmission via plumbing on the ship?"
More generally, medical researchers are working hard and publishing preprints quickly. Right now there are 168 articles on www.medrxiv.org about COVID-19.
4
We may never have a good idea as to who’s had this virus due to the many asymptomatic people who are carriers. Welcome to the real world to all the anti-vaxxers who eschewed vaccinating their children (while they were probably vaccinated themselves) and assumed some cohort of scientists somewhere in an underfunded federal lab would always keep them safe. New viruses have been creeping out of the animal kingdom for millennia and mostly in the past those that crossed the zoonotic border killed many many people. Having survived certain diseases and thus mounted an immune response used to be a qualification to become a nurse. It is only recently with newly developed weapons that we can isolate and sequence a new pathogen’s genome so quickly and try to figure out how to fight it before too many of our neighbors die. Budget cutters armed by tax haters’ votes have been hacking at our ability to mount a robust public health response since Reagan came into office, assuming it wouldn’t happen here. A last minute few billion dollars to a federal agency cannot create a trained team of experts overnight. It’s like an emergency room- you have to be willing to pay them to be on call all the time just in case. Hopefully this virus ends up milder than many recent coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS but if America as a society doesn’t start prioritizing its budget better we need to get used to this new normal.
18
@Djr perhaps the anti-vaxers can rely on homeopathic cures, while the rest of us rely on allopathic cures. Very reminiscent of Jude Law’s character in the movie “Contagion”, trying to push his snake oil, while a scientist, Jennifer Ehle, actually came up with a cure.
The lack of widespread testing availability is preventing us from learning as much as we can, as fast as we can, about the epidemiology of this new virus. Every major health system clinical lab can easily do this testing if permitted to do so by the CDC and state authorities. The obstacle is bureaucratic, NOT technological.
10
Incidents so far suggest the virus can be transmitted when the source is asymptomatic and that the virus has a gestation period of days. Therefore, since we have not been testing in this country and the various travel restrictions came weeks after the onset of the virus, it is reasonable to expect that there are many undetected cases already in this country.
The three cases detected in the last few days are the tip of the iceberg.
Running the numbers: If 30% of Americans get the virus, as some have estimated worst case, that equates to about 100 million people. With mortality rates of 1-2 %, 1-2 million people would die. Much more than in a typical flu year.
These are potentially catastrophic numbers as a worst case but they illustrate why we need unfettered communication from the experts and we need it now.
12
There are two big lessons here, both of which point to the inadequacy of the Trump administration. And the GOP in general.
First is the importance of keeping open -- and investing in -- federal offices that work to protect American health and the environment. When Trump said he could easily reopen any of the offices his administration had routinely closed, and call back employees they had fired, we know that is not true. The kinds of questions Dr. Rosenthal asks are the kinds of questions the federal government right now are not prepared to answer because they simply do not have the expertise available to work on them.
Second, and even more important, is the critical need for universal health coverage and worker-oriented protections on the job, including paid family and sick leave. Workers throughout America right now are no doubt going to work even though they are feeling under the weather because they cannot afford to take a day off or to go to a doctor. Even Republicans are putting their lives at risk when they deny people the right to quality healthcare.
Their philosophy of "I've got mine, and you are on your own" is not enough to keep the economy afloat, and a country healthy and productive.
32
The Coronavirus (CoV) situation is complex and close to 99.99% of the country is ignorant of what viruses are and how they spread, what are their sizes, how they differ from bacteria, how viruses vary in the kind of infection they cause, how long after a person is exposed or tested +ve does the person's bodily secretions carry the virus, how does one optimally protect oneself etc.
How many people have CoV? Is a loaded question and at best there can be only a very rough estimate because even after CoV invaded our planet for a few weeks now there are several unknowns due to the state of flux and motion of the inhabitants of the world traveling by land, air and sea constantly across borders and barriers. On top of the complexities of not knowing how many people a single infected person can transmit the infection and who came in contact with the infected person and at what distance. It is mind boggling especially because the CoV is a moving target of trillions of complete nano sized virus particles (virions) each with a potential for infecting a human being and it is hard to figure out where all the CoVs are. Then if that is not complicated enough, we still are not sure as to where the original non human source of the COVID-19 is and how far that source has been distributed to. Let us say a precise wild animal that was consumed in Wuhan, China was also allowed to be exported to S. Korea or Iran or Italy or to the China town in San Francisco, CA. TRUMP we have a HUGE PROBLEM.
5
The many hours I had to spend to be FEMA certified in order to volunteer for disaster intervention with my Federal agency...all the endless repetitions of who was in charge, the chain of command structure, the contrived jargon for management of a situation. And this corona situation is already far out of control. FEMA hasn't ordered sufficient plastic coffins to manage the death toll so I guess we'll all be buried in a far greener way, thrown into large trenches like the aftermath of the 1918 famines in Ukraine. We are told not to worry and even my Homeland Security officials have no policy, no contingency planning, no clue, no direction. The billions that my department sucks down in general revenue and this is the best we can offer?
11
One reason why not, is this an event, or series of them that humans can actually take control of to alter their course. Unlike a flash flood, an earthquake, or tornado, we can't truly control the after-effects. Other then building safer structures, evacuating and bolstering emergency responses, but even those are subject to the whims of the natural disasters magnitudes and pathways.
A disease that can be passed along by humans, even animals, we can control those interactions, but we refuse. Outside of hastily enacted and ill-formed "travel bans", that are usually after a fair amount of carriers have already passed thru the "city gate." Humans are elusive, and very resistant to control and health organizations wrangling. No one wants to turn themselves in to authorities as potential carriers. "No, I'll go home and weather this alone...but first let me do some shopping..."
Plus, we have a government, not only this Admin, that is wholly reactive to just about everything. The US population is equally so. How many of us are prepared for a solid week long shut-down, and stay-in-cation? I'm not. I have maybe 4 days worth of food that could barely hold me...and no bottled water should the municipal water system be compromised. I have filters on my incoming system, so no more bottled water. No generator, either.
Our Gov'ts are reactive not preparatory.
Compounded by an Admin only concerned with the fragile Ego of POTUS.
Public safety be damned, don't make him feel bad.
4
We've done about 450 tests, last I looked. The test itself was produced faultily, and apparently in the best of situations, when the CDC hasn't screwed up its one chance, which it did, isn't that sensitive to begin with, leaving a lot of false negatives. A lung scan is apparently far more sensitive which is why Laurie Garrett, who knows her stuff, is begging, screaming for all scans since December to be looked at again to determine COVID-19, then the contact tracing, etc.
We're flying nearly blind, is the answer, at least here. Not to the exclusion of these other issues raised by Rosenthal, but I note that the above is not mentioned.
Where is the educational push at all levels to let people know *how* and under what circumstances to: wash hands; wear or not wear masks; distance themselves; to wear gloves (not necessarily latex, which can cause allergies; when to go to the hospital and when not to; what supplies to get now and what not to get--all of it? Where is it?
The NYT and apparently all other papers are still keeping COVID-19 coverage behind a paywall. You guys can make videos on recipes and whatnot fast--I work in instructional design; I know. Do it, already. Get it done. Work with the CDC. Amplify what's already done. Get it coordinated.
It won't happen. We'll stagger along. None of this should be unknown to anyone: a sane society would already have a plan, would have an educated public ready for this inevitable occurrence.
I know: that would be communism.
11
@Doug Tarnopol
The lack of information in the US, now that the first "community transmission" in the US has been identified, was hobbled at the gate when Trump put Pence in control, and CDC and other public health agencies are required to get Pence's permission before going public with any information. The NY Times cannot simply sit down with the CDC and get all of the detailed recommendations you mentioned, unless Pence gives permission. The biggest concern in the White House and right wing media (Fox, Limbaugh) is to downplay the predictions of seriousness so as to minimize the reduction of profits for business, and to stock prices.
5
For some of us, recovering from the flu epidemic, it is even more scary, for we figured we are fighting something that is a common enemy. We can, you know, just tough it out.
But with very few tests in the US, and being sick with a hacking cough making us pariahs in absolutely every environment including our main transportation, public transport, we sit in front of our tv's and hope.
I have every confidence in American medical science, and wish it would really get into gear, both for a test for Coronavirus, and of course, for a damn flu shot that works.
The last is because this is the second year in a row I got the flu shot and got sick months later.
Hugh
2
@Hugh Massengill
Hugh, every year the people who produce the flu shot are doing the equivalent of the “best crap shoot” they can envision.
The flu mutates all the time. And the flu shot is a “best guess” about several flu viruses they think may be circulating in any particular year.
Keep getting your shots. But know that the “protection” is uncertain.
Also think that you have no idea how often the protection is working! Because all of us encounter several flu viruses and only come down with one of them.
1
when i had crap or no insurance going to the doctor was only done if we were VERY sick. Early reports are the tests are quite expensive and if the cost is passed to the patient, that patient will avoid the test. Simple economics.....
Good reporting in a land of high deductibles and lack of universal coverage? Good luck with that. This has to potential to be very bad and very under reported.
23
Here you go! The nation that many praise as the next nbr. 1 in the world has exposed its appalling limitations, politically, structurally, scientifically and last but not least socially. The mere fact that over 1400 health workers have died of the disease proves that China has no clear protocols and structures to deal with a major epidemic. The disease was probably already circulating in China in October/November, yet China opted for the cover up as long as it went. A totally reckless and irresponsible behavior! Because “it’s China” nobody raised the issue (the WHO least of all) in a timely manner.
2
@Paul Eckert:
And how, exactly, is the U.S. any better? Trump/Pence have already muzzled Tony Fauci and the CDC. All information now has to go through the Trump propaganda machine before it can be disseminated to the public. The entire federal pandemic chain of command was gutted by Trump in 2018. State and local health departments are under-funded. It took an HHS whistleblower to reveal what went on with the passengers evacuated to California. And you're criticizing China?
1
@Lisa Simeone if you prefer the “muzzling” that’s going on China as well as their health and sanitary system to the one in the US, I suggest you go live there for some time...and God forbid, get treated in their superb hospitals...
@Paul Eckert
Why the scolding retort to Lisa who is simply pointing out that this country also has issues? We do. Most horrifying is the White House silencing of free speech.
2
Trump is correct, we have good people to handle this health care crisis. He should know, he fired them.
20
Remember when the death toll in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria remained at 16 for weeks? Months later after a couple of studies it was revealed that 3000 had died? Was the truth suppressed in order to politically protect Trump? Is testing being deliberately suppressed by the Trump administration to delay a rise in the reported victims of Coronavirus? Ultimately could we find out that thousands of people currently are infected? And what percentage of the public knows/believes today that 3000 died in Puerto Rico?
20
I've heard Trump and his surrogates talk about the mortality of this disease. Only 4% may be killed by it, they say... No big deal, it appears. But doing the simple math, that's over 13 million just in the U.S., given our current population estimate. I think that's a pretty big deal!
8
@Patrick Stevens You are assuming everyone in the US gets infected. Current data (as of Feb 23) from the CDC MMWR report has the case fatality rate (CFR) of 3-4 per 100 persons infected. Using simulations Harvard scientists estimate that 40-70% of US will become infected. US population ~330 million. Using lower bound of infected (330 million x .4 = 132 million infected). Applying CFR, (132 million x .03 = 3.96 million; 132 million x .04 = 5.28 million). So, roughly 4-5 million infected people in the US are expected to die from covid-19 assuming lower bound of infection and CFR holds up. Granted these are fictitious numbers (i.e., estimates) but the scope of the problem is still large from a public health perspective.
1
"In an era when we get flash-flood warnings on phones, why is data on the new coronavirus so limited?"
As absurdities go, the one that underlies this question is a whopper.
The assertion that we can ever know a correct number for such a question is simply ridiculous, i.e.: worthy of ridicule.
The spectrum of severity and symptom response to this virus is so broad as to obviate any accurate assessment, ever.
This isn't like smallpox or shingles, where severity and obvious visual cues make the counting process simpler - yet still unreliable, because even if you can see it, you still can't be sure you've seen every case.
Add to that the measurement error currently seen in the lab testing process, and the question becomes, well, silly.
1
@Objectivist
She's a physician, Objectivist. She knows that. She gets it. It's a rhetorical question, not a literal one, written as an opening to her column. She's taking on the persona of the average Jane or Joe who might well ask a question like that, and then she goes on to show why it doesn't make sense.
Good grief.
6
@Objectivist
So, your answer to the challenges in predicting the course of infection, etc. for coronavirus is to just stay silent? Don't you think that the public health requires regular updates, and even common sense instructions on how people can minimize the risk of infection? Stay silent - now that is, well, silly.
1
I'm curious as to why South Korea can test some 5,000 people a day for COVID-19, but the U.S. cannot? Short on proper testing apparatuses? Why? With regards to the Diamond Princess debacle, why was there no follow-up on ship and plane manifests to see which Diamond Princess passengers continued their cruise/vacation 'journeys' to Milan, Rome or even Tehran from either the Haneda or Narita airports in Japan? Who is monitoring the latitudinal and climate "walk" of this virus into the southern hemisphere come spring in the northern hemisphere? And finally, who has been able to discern the difference(s) [and what are they?] between COVID-19 and the rampant, type-A and B influenzas that have ravaged the U.S. and the rest of the world during the past year? Are information providers and medical professionals following the money or following the data?
7
When it comes to an effective health medical biological science response to the coronovirus crisis 'America first' means America last with our ignorant, immature, immoral, incompetent, inexperienced, intemperate and insecure President of the United States and his swarm of sycophants focused on his political Electoral College stock market future along with the profits of the Trump Organization.
11
I worked at CDC in HIV for many years. The first report of gay men with rare skin lesions (Kaposi’s sarcoma) was in the June 5, 1981, MMWR. In fairly short order, scientists at CDC and NIH, as well as institutions in other countries, identified a common culprit virus. Now we know it as HIV, and we know it wasn’t new, just newly recognized.
Corona viruses aren’t new, either, but variants like covid-19 take a while to be recognized when patients present with signs and symptoms common to a number of pathogens. Science has come a long way since 1981. We can do genetic sequencing in hours now. More accurate tests will be developed for this variant. Drugs and vaccines will, too. It will take time, though. Viruses are clever things, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if covid-19 mutates and those interventions are outmoded by the time they’re ready to be deployed.
9
Yes, we need more information. But less propaganda, i.e. statements that are not true, and are intended for a political effect. Expect truth from Donald Trump and the Chinese Communist Party? Are you kidding
10
This requires citizen action. Put a pressure on. Ask YOUR community hospital if they have test kits and if not why not. Everyone with a fever and cough should be tested. (Not runny nose, that’s silly). We need to know our baseline, and isolate these people at home. i’m in Southeast mass and I can’t believe there are protocols in place with test kits available. 
3
@SMS
There ARE protocols and test kits? Or did you mean tto write "are no..."
Dr Li Wenliang & seven other physicians are now known in China as the "Eight Heroes," celebrated on national TV during the Spring Celebrations. In spite of being warned by local-yokel cops for "spreading rumors" they went right back to work. Dr Li Wenliang lost his life to the disease. Dr Liu Zhiming President of Wuhan Wuchang Hospital also lost his life working on the front lines of his hospital. (Can we count the number of scientists in the US doing an honest day's work but were fired by the US administration?).
Please, some sympathy for the hardworking health care providers, from cleaners to professionals!
As for the difference in death rates between Wuhan and the rest of the country, it is not surprising at all. Wuhan had a 'critical mass' of infected people leading to exhausted medical workers, and (speculation) a robust strain of virus that gained momentum.
The headline is misplaced because the COVID-19 can easily be masked by concomitant factors since the death rate is primarily among the elderly, in particular Chinese men who are heavy smokers.
Is Ms Rosenthal suggesting that the population of any country has the ability to self-report into system that track disease? Maybe someday, but that day is not this year.
7
We have seen the damage done by Chinese officials trying to quarantine information. We are seeing the same effort here with the president attacking the news media and putting blame on the democratic debates plus all information has to go through the Vice President who has been put in charge. Should the virus spread here, one wonders how this administration will respond.
5
Are we (USA) that much different? Today, I read in the NYT about another "unknown source" case in Oregon. I have been watching cdc.gov , specifically, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html
So I went there. But nothing about Oregon. Their "map" of Oregon is blank. Then I read the fine print. The page is updated only on M, W, F and only based on information from the prior day at 4pm. Really?
So "the media" is more up to date (in terms of notification) than CDC.gov
Sad - and time for a change when a pandemic is essentially here.
7
@Doug CDC funding has been cut by the current administration.
1
Thanks, Can you please track side by side estimates from CDC, White House, China, and foreign governments so we can sort through the spin?
1
Saying that smoking doesn’t kill is not preacher it is talk show host. It is Limbaugh. It is not a judgement from on high. Limbaugh was saying the same thing at the time.
Saying smoking doesn’t kill is not anti-science it is anti-doctor. All he had to do was ask a doctor.
But deception got him noticed. Quitting smoking saves live. How many people died because of unapologetic Mike Pence?
Mike Pence is also anti-birth control. No birth control because that is for God to decide. In this case God's will lines up exactly with the Evangelicals will. Abstain or else. No anti-cervical cancer vaccination either, because disease is punishment for sin.
These people!
Who appointed Mike Pence to tell people what to do? God?
In the end Mike Pence is just Mike Pence a man without a hair out of place.
Who gave this Mike Pence the right to decide what doctors and scientist-based medical professionals can and cannot tell the American people? Trump?
Evangelicals think that God causes disease hurricanes and floods. Look at Katrina. They said Katrina was caused by sin and sinners. Serves them right. Are you kidding me?
Mike Pence the Evangelical cannot be in put charge of disaster management.
He should not be in charge of a single other persons life.
8
What we need is a massive insurrection in the scientific community against the deliberate campaign of misinformation being rolled out by the Trump administration. Pence in charge of scientific solutions and administration? No one, not even the staunchest Trump supporters will believe this is anything more than a political cover up...especially when this thing races around the country affecting every community, no matter your political stance. Spin is not gonna win this one.
12
Oregon just announced its first community-acquired coronavirus patient, on the evening of Friday, Feb.28. The patient is an elementary school employee, and has been experiencing symptoms since **Feb. 21**.
(The patient is a resident of Washington County, where I live with my daughter; she is a student at another local elementary school, so this hits close to home, literally.)
So...we've had the novel coronavirus circulating in our community for at least a WEEK, and we're only finding out now because Oregon started testing for it today.
I'm generally quite fit and healthy, as is my child, but we've both been fighting a respiratory infection for several weeks (I've taken my child to the doctor for her cough three times this month, and she's missed over a week of school. I had a temp as high as 102 and keep coughing up green goo..(sorry if TMI, yeah it's gross!) Point is the thought of catching the coronavirus on top of whatever we're already fighting off is a pretty scary prospect.
375
@DC I agree 100%!!! I found this evening's press conference with Kate brown (Oregon's governor) and members the coronavirus task force she's assembled encouraging. They seemed to take the situation very seriously, and promised to share updates on an ongoing basis, as soon as they're available.
As far as our national response...I'm just so mad. It's hard to imagine a worse choice than pence to lead ANYTHING. As if trump hadn't done enough damage to our country over the past three years already, now he's literally endangering millions of Americans' lives.
Watching this play out is absolutely horrifying, and heartbreaking.
Obama, I miss you so very, very much.
189
@emily I live in Oregon too and I am immuno-suppressed so I share your concerns. But what really scares me, even more than my very high risk for COVID-19, is that the person "in charge" of US action on the coronavirus has stated that smoking doesn't kill people, was responsible for a huge spike in HIV cases by refusing to allow needle exchange, and doesn't believe in science, just prayer (I believe we need both). We need a medical professionals and scientists in charge, not sycophants and Pence.
636
@emily based on the emerging epidemiology date Covid-19 is not a serious threat. For each detected case, over one week there should be hundreds of infected already and yet there are no community outbreaks above the usual incidence. This in retrospect will become a historical example of mass hysteria.
11
We need to know that the CDC is in charge and has a plan it has disseminated to all public health departments in the country for giving every case the best care available.
Does the CDC have someone in charge?
Does every public health department chief know what to do as reports of cases come to him/her?
Has every public health department issued instructions to the doctors and hospitals in its area?
Has every health care worker in the country learned the difference between flu and coronavirus' first symptoms so they can answer questions?
3
We do in France. The government here is very organized (French bureaucracy!) and even on Facebook, we are receiving government-sponsored public health updates as well as tips for prevention and how to report suspected illness. There are currently 57 cases in France and no hiding of information. President Macron also visited with the medical team at the Paris Hospital to get their input, thank them for their service, and encourage them to continue their good work. This is leadership.
589
How would an English speaker access those updates?
I've noticed many people distrust their own government but are more ready to trust info from foreign governments.
16
You also have universal healthcare which puts you in a far better position to fight this.
54
@Tom - A retired American
If our county only had to worry about one state, say California's whose GDP is similar to France's, I'd expect it to have the process buttoned down too. Somehow I doubt Macron would manage all of Europe's outbreak.
7
In an infectious disease crisis, our cell phones' location history might prove useful to each of us as individuals, to our physicians, and to epidemiologists. As one example, our phone could know we were near someone who was symptom-free but who was exposed to others with the disease. I recently wrote a piece called, "Thought Experiment re: Novel Corona Virus and Location Tracing," (Linkedin and my website) and I think it's time for us to get a grip on (i) exactly how to do use this location data in the least privacy-intrusive ways, and (ii) to stockpile the needed apps just in case the disease gets even more wide-spread. No doubt this is a challenge for the western democracies, but it's one worth thinking about.
2
@Alfred Spector
Apps aren’t the answer to everything. The prospect of using location tracking is as worrisome as the government’s delayed response to the virus. The opportunities for misuse of data would be high, and it’s difficult to image a more privacy-sensitive activity than widespread monitoring of individuals’ health data.
1
Actually I am amazed at how quickly data has come online with COVID-19. The genome of the virus was almost instantly put in the web. There are now pre-print servers where researchers can put up preliminary results without waiting for prolonged journal peer-review. Journals are rapidly bringing articles to press like never before. There are over 100 registered clinical trials ongoing in China- details of which are online. Hopkins created a real time visual representation of the outbreak early on, etc., etc.
The real problem is there are not enough hours in the day to keep up with all the data being released.
6
One of the reason for the confusion and fear is the plethora of unsubstantiated anecdotal speculation. Scientists are not gods and like other humans sometimes err both intentionally and unconsciously. That is what peer review is necessary. Reproducibility and testing of hypotheses and assumptions is what separates Science from Religion. So stop asking for dissemination of untested fata.
I don't want to hear from Trump, Pence, Sanders, Warren, Biden, Bloomberg, Pelosi, or any other perosn in politics. I want to hear from expert doctors, medical professors and all the best and the brightest who have the knowledge and interest in this dire situation.
762
@Mike Well the CDC Head tried to talk sense and she was denied her valid comment by Trump, with another colleague then trying to placate him. As to the other politicians, yes, leave them out -- except, we should find out what the others think so we can vote smart! We already know after 4 dreadful years what Trump & Pence think and it is not what makes scientific sense.
83
@Mike
The SOLUTION is for Congress to swiftly pass veto-proof legislation to FREE the CDC from censorship.
The CDC must be freed to do its job without political interference! That means to do research, to disseminate accurate information and provide wise advice.
99
@Mike That would be lovely except that Pence told the head of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, that he had to cancel his appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows this weekend. Five appearances canceled. https://thehill.com/homenews/media/485147-rep-garamendi-nih-director-fauci-cancelled-on-five-sunday-talk-shows-after
But if it's any comfort, multiple friends who are doctors and have attended workshops or conferences in NYC this week on the coordinated effort have all come away with the same take: this is not nearly as big a deal as it's being made out to be. They said the medical community is not worried at all. They're more worried about the panic and misinformation and the hoarding of supplies.
27
It would help if we had better leadership.
I get that one function of an administration is to qualm fearmongering and the spread of misinformation, but this administration seems to be taking that to unreasonable levels. And in the case of spreading misinformation, calling it a Democratic hoax is contributing.
OTOH, taking a marketing-based approach only does nothing to address the problem. We need knowledgeable people to be leading a task force, not a theist-based Young Earth Creationist.
We need targeted funds, not only for this health issue, but for the inevitable health issues in the future. Instead, this administration is cutting funds and stifling research (and researchers).
Science, not marketing.
For the record, and unequivocally, the current approach is NOT how to make a nation great.
6
The NYT reported the other day that there be many cases so mild they pass without being diagnosed. It is therefore possible there are millions of people with no symptoms spreading the disease, and countless infections are not included in the statistics. The utility of quarantines is thrown into question. Without an accurate count of the total number of infections the percentages of cases reported as mild, severe, critical or resulting in death are incorrect. We are dealing with the unknown here,
4
It doesn't help when seemingly credible new sources publish questionable facts. One such source says the oft reported figure of mild cases in China, 81%, does not include pneumonia. Yet I read in more detailed reports that "walking " pneumonia is included in the "mild" 81%. That's a big deal because the severity of the non-fatal cases will bear significantly on the disease's impact here, including economic. If most everyone in the "severe" category gets pneumonia and a significant minority of the "mild" cases get pneumonia, that's a lot of pretty sick people.
Same source quoted someone as saying the Chinese had an "excellent" health care system, to support the alarmist prediction that our experience of the disease will be as bad s theirs. Yet a 2108 article in the NYT described how lousy and overwhelmed China's hospital system was even back then. Which is it?
5
The problem seems to be more with "transmission" than with the actual virus itself, which seems to be on a par with the flu. True, we could easily overwhelm our health care system with a 1,00-fold increase in the number of sick patients, but at the same time, many who get the virus might just get through it on their own. It is being reported that one might actually not even know one has it.
2
I completely agree with this. I am on the frontlines seeing cough and fever all day long-40 pediatric patients today in 12 hours. We had to search for our N95 masks today and found only 5 PPE gear for our entire urgent care-that would last for maybe one patient. We also had to go to youtube to remind ourselves how to don the gear-where is the CDC leadership! Meanwhile, patients with fever and cough keep coming in without wearing masks and sitting next to 6 week old babies. I have also seen a few extra cases of pneumonia today-might this be Coronavirus? We will not know because unless a patient has traveled to one of the 5 main countries AND has fever and lower respiratory tract infection (i.e. pneumonia), the CDC won't test. I would offer that on the new CDC algorithm for whom to test, healthcare workers might need to be up at the top since we now seem to be the canaries. We are not wearing N95s though most of us use our surgical masks for everyone. I honestly think until we get sick or more patients get severe illness, we will not really know who has this. The best answer is to LOWER THE THRESHOLD FOR TESTING. Give us the data on the cruise ship patients or South Korea please. Otherwise this virus will quickly get out of hand.
858
@Maria Saavedra your narrative/experience is extremely troubling. As I understand it, testing for the virus is still under the purview of the CDC rather than state, county
or city health departments. This has to change. Give local authorities more leeway in testing and reporting the virus extent.
122
@Maria Saavedra
Your perspective is right on as well as deeply troubling. They should be doing way more testing then they are and I suspect the main reason they are not is because the CDC does not have every state on board with testing kits. This is not looking good at all.
79
@Maria Saavedra I am so sorry that you and the other dedicated medical professionals have to risk your own health to such a degree to care for others. For so many years we have been bombarded with attacks on government agencies and have seen so many cuts in funding that now when you need support there is a scarcity of information and materials. Thank you for your service.
85
This needs to be attacked like it is a war we need to fight. The federal government may now have only a few weeks before the US is affected severely. How can we do that when the "BOSS" Donald Trump enforces messaging that it is a plot against him personally and a hoax? Is the whole federal bureaucracy and Mike Pence acting on that message or the true threat? The dearth of testing kits is a fact that supports the former. What can we do about it?
6
I guarantee Mike Pence is doing what he's told to do and that's scary as hell.
3
Echoing a few other comments to this column, we in the US do not have an understanding of the extent of covid-19 in this country. We do not know - at least here in the public - what is the estimated burden of virus distribution in the US? Some lab testing is underway in terms of surveillance; what are the results? Mapping of cases would also be useful information to distribute.
2
In the absence of real, verifiable, actionable data that can only come from the kind of rigorous and extensive testing we seem to be nowhere near, citizens basically have three options: Assume the best, assume the worst; or assume somewhere in between, and act on that. I believe in hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. Better safe than sorry. Moreover, different people maybe should take different actions depending on what we do believe we know: the virus seems to be more lethal to the elderly, and people with certain pre existing conditions. Where practical, perhaps they should start self isolating, or whatever it’s called; stay out of crowds, stay off airplanes and cruise ships. Particular focus should be on senior complexes, nursing homes, etc. and the people who live and work there. And everybody must up their hygiene and become obsessive about washing hands, covering mouths when sneezing, coughing, not shaking hands, etc. Oh, and there is one other assumption: it’s better to seek out information from experts, and not certain politicians or business owners, who are often guided by interests other than public safety.
10
In the United States the grocery cart can now be considered a huge way that this virus could spread.
China is the number manufacturer in every aspect; their sharing in data means very little even if they’re willing to.
1
@Olnpvx Here in the US, we just dont worry about data at all. Dont test dont tell. Bungled test kits, restrictions on who gets tested, and now, only Pence is allowed to speak about it.
Seems that in the US, if we can't shoot or bomb it, we dont believe it's real. Unfortunately, this is very real...
10
@Pigsy What you stayed about US ( as USA government and us Americans?) applies to some 44%. Do you think China and Chinese people are any better?
What data does Google have? Big data should be a real contributor to understanding the scope of human health.
2
The biggest problem is people get mild cases of this disease, they are not tested because they generally recover on their own. These people never show up in the stats. This has the effect of overstating the mortality percentage. Further, many of the deaths in China occurred in elderly people who died at home because they couldn’t get admitted to a hospital. In the US most of these people would have received supportive care and might well have survived.
7
Not an easy task given for many the symptoms are apparently mild. I had a bad cold, fever. Could be I hadit -- Iceland never stopped the flow from China and now from Northern Italy? Who knows?
6
What about the ethnic distribution of coronavirus infection and serious illness from it? There seems to be a link of coronavirus to the ACE2 polymorphism, a genetic difference which has a very different pattern of distribution for individuals of East Asian versus individuals from other ancestral groups such as Europeans and Africans. What proportion of coronavirus infections and serious illness from the coronavirius, outside China, are in people of East Asian background? That needs to be addressed more carefully and analyzed statistically.
3
I am not a medical professional, but rather a chemical engineer, so take my comments in that light. I can only relate to what happened by comparing what occurs in the large oil refineries or petrochemical plants that I have worked in as a major upset works its way through the system. At first, the information may be contradictory as alarms start going off all around the plant. The reality is that it often takes us some time to piece together all the disparate information to understand how to mitigate an event. And we understand the environment well.
I can only imagine that is what has happened as this virus event unfolded. They must have been totally overwhelmed as it was occurring – especially as they started to realize the depth of the problem they were discovering. The stress must have been unbelievable.
I’ve worked in many international environments. Asia is a hierarchical culture, where admitting that something has gone wrong isn’t as easy as here in America.
So, for a variety of reasons, I would cut the health care workers slack. I’m sure it wasn’t easy. Hindsight when you are sitting relaxed is always better than 20/20.
7
@American Expat
I trust you more than Boeing engineers (LOL) but the Chinese intentionally lied. That's not quite the same as a learning curve problem. And the Chinese still aren't sharing crucial information.
"Earlier this week, a joint W.H.O.-China mission announced that the death rate in Wuhan was 2 to 4 percent, but only .7 percent in the rest of China — a difference that makes little scientific sense."
It may not make perfect intuitive sense to some but it makes perfect scientific sense. My good doctor, when I was in medical school, we had classes to help us understand such differences. Why do infant mortality rates differ in different communities in the US? Does that make scientific sense? Of course, because things are not the same everywhere. The observed differences in COVID-19 death rates are easily understood, even expected, and make perfect "scientific sense". Think about it. Are conditions at the epicenter different than elsewhere? Are the samples different?
1- When very many are sick, only the sickest manage to get tested. Those who are sickest are more likely to die.
2- While China did a great job mobilizing, new hospitals and all, overwhelmed medical services deliver delayed and suboptimal care. People die as they wait. People die when they can't get a vent.
Facing a pandemic, thinking critically and scientifically *is* of utmost importance. We can't just rely on gut and intuition (often based on preconceptions and prejudice) but need logic and reason. We have all read the comments about testing everyone in US Chinatowns and stuff like that. Makes gut sense but not necessarily scientific sense. Science *is* now we beat this.
18
Great article. Clearly shows what information we need and what is beginning to come out. And it points out that we need to get good information out quickly.
The next op-ed needs to be about the politics of this -- how government should work in this situation, whether it is working that way, and what needs to change.
Who is in charge -- what is Pence's actual role, what is he doing.
What scientific work is being done and what more needs to be done -- whether the government is advancing this or acting as a hindrance.
What we the people should do about our government's actions and inactions.
What we should do as citizens and as people.
We don't have time for a trickle of advice and information, but we also cannot afford bad information coming out.
In other words, we need a knowledgeable effective leader spearheading a group of sophisticated scientists, doctors, epidemiologists, and managers, putting together the best information as fast as possible and getting its conclusions implemented as efficiently as possible -- in other words, we need good government now!
5
@Just Thinkin’
No, the last thing we need is the "politics" or should I say "realpolitik". The incessant political squabbling is not doing anyone any good.
1
@AACNY
"Politics" does not mean partisanship in my remarks. It means political action -- action by our representatives in our government -- those who formulate and carry out the necessary policies. And we the citizens need to know this and oversee it. That's all -- no screaming.
Our Federal response has been lacking, and remiss because our CDC and healthcare professionals did not respond quickly to the out break. That is because of the cut backs Trump put in place in both agencies. Why has testing for the virus been difficult to obtain and take three days to report out? Why were the tests not available sooner in local facilities? The only reason Trump is responding now is because it is costing his friends lots of market money. That 4% of our elderly could be killed by this disease seems to be small potatoes in Trump's circle.
16
Because many people have sub-clinical cases with no symptoms. However they are to pass it on to others.
Impossible to track those people because we don't know who they are and who they have come in contact with.
12
It is possible even China itself doesn't have the data.
One may respond: how is it possible, since China is a command & control country after all.
The problem with China is its unbalanced approach of development and even governing. It may be able to hunt down every single dissident and by and large black out negative news but the same attitude has made its citizens of coming forward. The recent bounty of cash for people to come in from the cold for testing is an anecdotal evidence it doesn't have full command and control of the situation. Another indication is the recent flip-flopping of reporting of cases.
China needs to de-politicize the epidermic to get a handle of the pandemic. That applies to the outside world, including the HKSAR protesters and the Trump Admin as well. After all, the COVID-19 virus doesn't care about human's petty politics. It cares only about proliferation. People fear about nuclear armageddons but maybe the cockroaches and the microbes end up inheriting the earth
5
Rosenthal focuses on China and leaves out the USA -- which is the biggest black hole of all. Because so little testing has been done, we have NO IDEA how dispersed the virus is in the USA. It could be in dozens of areas and thousands of people. Until testing starts for real, we have no idea.
22
@Susan not testing keeps the stats low.
1
The reporting of bad news is often hidden by many institutions. And what worries me more than the virus itself is the lying, covering up and projecting of blame by this current White House and its mentally unstable Occupant.
People can cope with information. Even scary or very sad information. But it is extremely difficult to cope with uncertainty, particularly if the uncertainty is due to mistrust of those tasked with organizing a response to a scary and unpredictable situation.
Donald Trump appears to have no conscience and no ability to inhibit himself from blaming, telling lies and spreading overly optimistic and wildly untrue reassurances that “everything is under control.” His need to protect, even glorify, himself is dangerous at this moment.
I sit here gob-smacked by the speed with which cases of the COVID-19 virus are coming to light in the West Coast. My heart goes out to all those involved, whether patients or healthcare workers or first responders as well as family and friends of all of them.
What a dangerous time for our nation to be holding primaries and an election! What a dangerous time to have an unstable person at the helm of the Ship of State!
Every State MUST rapidly ensure that all voters can do that by mail. This is becoming a necessity. To protect us all.
20
@lieberma
And I am a retired Ph.D. clinical psychologist.
What you say is possible. But you have NO PROOF yet. At the moment, it’s only a theory.
Many epidemiologists have said COVID-19 is not the flu. And the WHO is not spreading your theory.
It is absolutely necessary to protect the populace. And your theory may not protect them. People need information, even it’s scary. We’re a tiger loose in a neighborhood, you tell people. Even if it scares them.
I see you over and over trying to rebut comments, which are excellent. Which makes me suspicious of your motives.
5
@lieberma. Thank you for this. Your explanation makes more sense than any other I have come across. (Penn?)
1
@lieberma
This is a theory. The writer provides no proof!
When the World Health Organisation has proof of this theory, it will provide us with that information. Till then, pay attention to the Epidemiologists’ information coming from respected sources.
1
There are things we can't know and things we can know with relative confidence.
Here is what I know. We are at the start of an outbreak in northern California. The outbreak started at a military base in northern California. It started there because an incompetent administration was unable to conduct a competent quarantine of evacuees from China. An incompetent government made things worse rather than better. Trump failed at the basics.
Here is what I know. The incompetence should be acknowledged without recrimination. We should be telling everyone in northern California to stay home for a week. No school, no public events, no work. The week after will be too late.
5
Our game show president believes that if he lowers his voice to a lulling drone his appearance will be one of instilling calm. This simple minded approach at what Communist China outlawed "rumor mongering" against the state is a perfect portrait of our self centered authoritarian regime occupying our Oval Office.
When doctors and scientists are deemed the enemy and the press is vilified as rumor mills the United States will have leveled itself to the agencies of our cold war enemies.
11
Because you can see the rain, but can't see the virus.
5
This virus forces the world to realize we are all on the same planet and stop caring only about the country we live in. This is a global problem just like climate change.
Let’s come up with solutions for everyone!
10
I also wonder about the people who traveled to China and then returned home, before the scope of outbreak and travel bans occurred. Could there be people who died in from pneumonia over the past month or two that actually somehow came across a traveler without realizing it and caught it. Without testing we'll never know.
5
It looks like everyone will be exposed, most will be infected, and many of them will get sick, but usually only slightly. So far the only known defense is to have a healthy immune system. If we want the maximum number to survive we need to put everyone on vacation or part time status, so they can stay home and rest, and make sure they have healthy food to eat. But of course this would conflict with the interests of the few people who profit from out labor, and it might even put subversive ideas about how to live in peoples minds, so it can't be done. So all we can do is hope that the death rate will not be too heavy.
4
@Paul Easton
Additional info to the pevrious post
I am a Professor of Medical Genetics. Reading about the unexplained cases of coronavirus in the US and elsewhere raises the possibility that the Coronavirus was for a long time indigenous to humans where only recently a pathogenic variant or unknown co-factor. result in a flu. If true, asymptomatic carriers were for a long time present in the human population. I suspect that population wide screening will show that in every country a certain % of the population are corona virus carriers. The test kit just enables to quantitate indigenous coronavirus carriers that have been there long ago. Th botomline-Covid-19 is essentially a flu with low mortality rates that may have went molecularly undiagnosed for a long time. Caution and 14 days quarantine of carriers are a good approach until a vaccine is at hand, but all the hype and economical panic may have much more dangerous consequences than the virus itself
1
@lieberma: Ignore "lieberma" - it's a Bot!
1
While we are waiting for perfect science and perfect communication between cultures, governments, institutions, professional disciplines, and individuals worldwide we can do the following...
We will never get answers to those questions because it is impossible to answer them based on information from China.
It's unlikely China has the type of health monitoring systems in place to detect and measure viral outcomes, and even if it did, would it disseminate that information in a timely manner? Unlikely.
1
@AACNY So true.. Sadly, even harder to get accurate data from the US, at this point. With bungled test kits and restrictions on testing, our policy so far has been "dont test dont tell"
3
@AACNY
Before you blame China, you should remember that in May of 2018, Donald Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down. That's right.
In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure.
In fact, the global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off & the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. Its budget was cut 80%, & the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated!
In 2017 & 2018, Bill Gates was running around with his hair on fire, meeting repeatedly with H.R. McMaster & then John Bolton & warning them that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.”
So perhaps you should start worrying about the US heath monitoring systems rather than Chinas.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/
@Pigsy
The US is not China. To compare them is silly.
1
A real, practical dilemma for folks, once faced with the presence of the virus in their area, is when to stay home. The common cold still exists. There is no (known) virus in the Chicago area at this time (a woman diagnosed early who infected her husband, had been to China - both are long since home and well). I have had a minor cold the past week, but have felt a bit awkward about it in public. If I had such a cold with the virus about would I cancel all of my commitments 'just in case' and sit home for two weeks? Many would say 'yes, definitely,' but that is a hard choice for anyone - especially when not really feeling sick... Testing would, of course, help, but will we be able to test everyone who has a cold (and many will be just that) - for how long?
14
@Anne-Marie Hislop
As of now, the recommendation from the World Health Organisation is to ALWAYS test for the coronavirus.
I know that the subpar health care system in the US is right now not even able to do much less than that. That's the reason why I am very worry for your country.
31
@Anne-Marie Hislop
I live in the Chicago area as well. I am over 80 with several serious conditions that affect the outcome of the disease.
As soon as it becomes apparent in the Chicago I will sell quarantine myself so I don't get it. And it will have to be more than 14 days, until I am sure it has been contained. Not sure how I will get food.
Too many people walking around never show symptoms.
7
@TM The Swiss are great people, but in WWII, while technically neutral, they really did a lot to aid the Axis powers.
South Korea has this right. They had tested 66,652 people by Thursday afternoon. Aggressive testing is the best way to know the scope of the virus and prevent its further spread.
I also saw in Italy, there was a fight over whether to test aggressively, and the side fighting for the widespread tests was right.
If people can pass the virus but be asymptomatic, we MUST test liberally to prevent the spread of the virus. If you’re only testing someone after they meet a very high threshold, then you’re probably testing them after they’ve already spread it to god knows how many other people.
61
@L
Trump disbanded the US’s pandemic capability against all advice from all sides of politics, medical and scientific advice.
The US has an great shortage of testing capacity.
36
@Gracie
And a great shortage of equipment to treat the disease and that shortage will become more severe when there are a great number of cases in the United States.
5
@L
This does not make that much sense. Reports have surfaced with people having over 6 tests run before turning positive: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51491763 . We cannot be sure that testing information is entirely accurate at early stages , precisely how long virus shedding persists and other things.
There is a lot to learn yet and we do not know the denominator of how many people have been infected: false negative tests, mild or asymptomatic cases, the tendency (as mentioned here) to focus on the most severe cases early and possibly further issues.
We are six or seven times the size of South Korea. We do not aggressively test for influenza this way, and a flu epidemic can cause 3-5 million severe cases worldwide and 300-500 thousand deaths.
It is reasonable to have these discussions, but we should leave the decision to public health experts and keep politics out of as much as possible. As for panicking people, you can do that any way you go.
Many Americans who do have respiratory symptoms will be left in the dark without any accurate testing because the corona virus test kits are not accessible and will not be available country wide for an unknown length of time.
There is no question that this country is ill prepared for a pandemic crisis if you are unable to test for this virus on all patients who have respiratory symptoms and not just those who were exposed to people from China and other countries at risk. Right now, we are guessing whether a patient has the flu or the corona virus?
How many people will die because there was no planning by Trump's dysfunctional administration for such a crisis? The blame for this falls on Trump who prioritized his useless wall and tax cuts to the rich over the importance of the CDC and other public safeguards.
If we start to see a high mortality rate due to the corona virus, this will be Trump's legacy. He will no longer be able to down play this threat or hide the facts by Pence.
75
@MSS
And many Americans with symptoms will not see a doctor because they don't have insurance. Many will not see a doctor because they can't afford the copay even though they are already paying for insurance.
Well--at least we've got "choice".
26
@MSS
He has niw started moving to keep Covid-19 patients only in Ue states and to move any from Red states to Blue states. The Governor of the first Red state, Alabama, has just been promised this by Trump.
Science, politics, and pride did not conspire to create the problem. Arrogance and a failure of morality may be preventing scientists from collaborating and utilizing science correctly - science, itself, is simply, the best way to learn what something is, how it works, and predict what it will do. Likewise, the political failings are because of corrupt, immoral politicians, and the fools that voted the narcissists into office -narcissism being the prototypical American personality of the 21st Century. Politics do not have to be corrupt, nor murderous.
If we are to rise above our self-serving amorality, the most powerful tool we have to limit the harm that is bearing down on us, is science. Like all tools, we can use it, or abuse it.
34
I am no fan of Donald Trump, but I am beginning to wonder if he and that lapdog Mulvaney may actually be right (for once) when they accuse the media of intentional excessive hyperbole concerning coronavirus?
With the vast, vast majority of coronavirus cases presenting as a cold or the normal flu (and the severe cases seeming to hit hardest on the demographic that already suffers most in flu season) I now ask the question: "If the media had never uttered the word "coronavirus", would anyone have noticed the difference between this and a bad flu season"?
I fear the answer to my question will, in the long run, turn out to be "no".
I also wonder if the CDC and NIH folks want to hit back for the budget cuts that should not have happened?
But if the stats end up looking like nothing more than a bad flu season, the media will have to explain if its over-reaction was for politics and/or reader eyeballs. The medical community will have to explain if it was exacting payback for stupid budget cuts.
My sister (with her doctorate in nursing) is a pediatric nurse practitioner, who sees runny-nosed kids every day, and she thinks the hyperbole is very overblown.
Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater used to be considered a violation of public trust. Query: is it now just marketing?
16
@Angry Liberal Efforts in increase awareness of this spreading disease is not shouting "fire". The incubation period of COVID-19 is 14-days (much longer than influenza and a cold), and the data is showing that the period of virus shedding may be a week or two longer post virus symptoms. Given this increased window of variance, heightened awareness is imperative and not hyperbole. Moreover it is statistically significant that the death rate from COVID-19 is around 2%, while the death rate from influenza this season is 0.9% this season. Vigilance is warranted, not conspiracy theory.
46
@Angry Liberal: I suppose Japan, where I live, is in on the anti-Trump conspiracy, too. Schools will close next week--three weeks early, and all manner of precautions are being advised or mandated. Perhaps it is all an overreaction. But those who know the most seem to be the ones taking it most seriously.
65
@Michael Bodner based on what I have read, you don't know that the covid-19 death is 2%. With so many covid-19 cases passed off as merely a cold or normal flu, it seems many mild covid-19 cases are not counted as such. Thus artificially inflating the mortality rate.
1
I cannot imagine a worse person to handle a crisis like this than Trump. Even as an atheist, I say that prayers are all we have left at this point.
25
@Jim Anderson
It is quite possible, given a couple of events of the last 2 days, that Trump is definitely weaponising Covid-19 and is/will try to keep all of them in Blue states, and shift Red state cases to Blue States.
1
@Jim Anderson
Bless you, Jim. Bless us all!
1
Math might help you come closer to the truth. For example, Iran reports 210 dead. With an estimated 3.1% death rate, that's 6,700 people infected. And, it's estimated that every person with the virus infects 2 or 3 people, with up to a 14 day incubation period... Well, you get the idea.
It is extremely unfortunate that the US government has decided to try to politicize the epidemic. Let's hear from the CDC! Oops, I forgot, Pense put the kibosh on that. The president, instead of taking effective actions (such as open information flow, free masks, testing, etc), has instead tried to blame the Democrats and the press.
And we are in for a rough ride financially. The coming recession/depression will be quite severe. (Can you imagine the US shutdown?). The only silver lining in it all is that we will finally switch national governments in November.
45
@Cal Page
When one looks at the death rate, one also has to take into consideration what kind of medical treatment and facilities are available to the general public.
Care in rural areas would be more difficult to obtain in the United States because many of these areas have NO hospitals.
Likewise, the same could be said in urban areas because of a lack of hospital beds to treat cases.
7
We need a cheap, quick serology test and fast. Where are we on that?
7
@Super
Well, we'd be a lot farther along if in 2018 Donald Trump hadn't ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, hadn't dramatically cut the global health section & budget of the CDC, & hadn't fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure.
1
"And yet, despite over 80,000 infections worldwide (most of them in China), the world still doesn’t have a clear picture of some of the most basic information about this outbreak."
See the Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0mHnzvlJ5cFD1zHHNdDPm7qr7kxdUatW2YaRtveGuR3ia0mcevySnUOx8
"W.H.O.-China mission announced that the death rate in Wuhan was 2 to 4 percent, but only .7 percent in the rest of China — a difference that makes little scientific sense."
It makes a lot of sense. The healthcare system in Wuhan was completely overwhelmed. it was not overwhelmed in other places, so the mortality rate was lower due to better care.
"In recent days the W.H.O. has complained that China has not been sharing data on infections in health care workers."
This data was shared two weeks ago by China CDC and updated data was shared in preparing the report I referenced above.
"In an era when we get flash-flood warnings on phones and weekly influenza statistics from every state, why is data on the new coronavirus so limited?" There is a lot of data out there in places like JAMA , WHO and the China CDC if you bother to do your research.
"Of the more than 1,700 health workers who were infected in China, did those infections occur before they knew to wear protective equipment?" See page 11 of the article referenced above and published before this.
18
@DWes Thank you for this. Other good sources of information include WebMD, the Mayo Clinic, and our own CDC. Despite the fact that two high-ranking healthcare officials have been muzzled, the CDC website still provides comprehensive, up-to-date information on Covid-19. It also upholds the medical consensus that the virus is likely to spread.
I worked as a researcher at a healthcare center for 35 years, so my instinctive response when I hear about something like the virus is to go straight to the CDC website. Most of my friends and acquaintances, however, rely on newspapers and, especially, on interviews with physicians by TV newscasters for information about epidemics. Such information, infortunately, is often fairly limited. Most newspapers do not provide daily updated coverage (the Times' coverage of Covid-19 is an execption), and most TV interviews are rather brief and the information imparted depends mainly on what the interviewer asks, rather than on what the interviewee may think is important to say.
Accordingly, whenever I now find myself in a conversation about Covid-19, which now is every day, I make it my business to pass along the sources of information we have listed. One needn't be a physician to do this (I'm not), and it can be enormously helpful to people who seek information but aren't sure where to look.
2
@DWes
Thank you for including the link to the WHO report. It is most informative.
1
@DWes A worthwhile read.
The data is limited because it seems the Chinese have once again cracked down on the release of accurate data (to the extent it was ever accurate).
Once President Xi could no longer simply blame subordinates, the number of new infections “miraculously” leveled off. Further, as cited here, the disparity in reported mortality rates between the Wuhan area and the rest of the country seems unlikely.
In the rest of the world there is a combination of suppression of data (Indonesia, Thailand) and simply trying to catch up. In the US, there are likely more cases still in incubation, so we are only seeing the earliest returns.
4
HK Phoenix news publishes four sets of Coronavirus data daily: new patient, total patient, total recovered patient, and total death. These data basically cover all the major cities & provinces in China. One can see a lot of details. They are consistent, which WHO is quite satisfied with that. In essence, one can draw the conclusion that Coronavirus is under control in China. Only city of Wuhan still has potential problem due to daily new patients are still in the range of three to four hundreds. But the city is in lockdown mode, keeping Coronavirus disease inside the city.
I see more data than we can digest. But one has to search. No single news media can cover all aspects of the virus. Just like Influenza flu, not until WSJ published the news on Feb. 4, 2020, I didn't know the total death in US is more than 10,000 this season, including 68 pediatric flu related deaths. Just be alert, and read news every day.
4
Sentinel chickens.
What?
When I was in residency in family medicine, I learned the Wisconsin Department of Health kept chickens in cages scattered throughout areas of the state. Periodically they would be bled to look for the presence of novel diseases.
Proper disease management requires proper surveillance. The most important thing we need for COVID-19 is information. We are in desperate need for the denominator for this illness. How many people have the virus without being sick? How many sick people have something no worse than a cold? We now know polio, for example, the dread disease of my youth, causes illness in only 5% of those who could be shown to acquire the virus and only half of these, or 2.5%, show any paralytic features.
Counting only the dead or hospitalized will give us little comfort and less knowledge. In 1912 when the RMS Titanic struck its fateful iceberg it was the part beneath the water which sank the ship and not the visible part. For 106 years the International Ice Patrol has scanned the sea lanes in the North Atlantic and now the Arctic Ocean with the resources of the USCG but the funding from many nations. Surveillance matters even more now as more glaciers are calving at an increasing rate.
Archimedes said if he were given a fulcrum and a long enough lever he could move the earth. For COVID-19 the lever is surveillance and the fulcrum is a proper public health infrastructure even though we have replaced sentinel chickens with people.
18
This appears to be the equivalent to the climate change denial in certain parts of the population and is following the same logic: why prepare for something that might not be as bad as predicted - especially if it is expensive to do so? The current administration is judging everything from the “owner’s perspective” and the preparation to deal with the Coronavirus costs simply money that Mr.Trump and his “business” administration decided not to spend. Instead they are “betting” on some unknowns to have help out that come for free - including the upcoming warmer seasons Mr.Trump mentioned as the ultimate cure for the problem. That would be in part understandable - if there would be enough knowledge gathered about the novel virus. But that knowledge does not exist at this time - which makes Mr.Trump’s approach nothing else but a gamble... as normal for him with other people’s “money” - but this time the “currency” is the well being and the lives of anyone living in this country.
23
"Science, politics and pride have all, in various ways, conspired to keep potentially vital, lifesaving knowledge under wraps."
From all the articles I've read on this virus, it appears that the lack of coordinated knowledge about it has been the most alarming--in hindsight, clearly. That isn't unusual, for it takes time for illness to be identified as something new when so many COVID-19 symptoms mimic the usual respiratory winter syndromes.
I really wish all communications about coronavirus could be communicated by medical professionals---folks not motivated by hysteria, political imperatives, or making predictions unless supported by scientific data.
Politicians should back off when they know little to nothing or wish to weaponize public concern.
Let our nation's doctors give the public assurance about what's known and not known and how Americans can alter behavior to lessen their risk.
20
@ChristineMcM
Yes, let the medical professionals provide timely, factual updates. The "sky is falling" rhetoric from talking heads on TV is not helping.
8
@ChristineMcM has anyone investigated why we seem to have no reliable testing method in this country? Until we fix that we are not just unprepared but blind
Who is working on fixing it?
1
@dc: The medical experts should be free from interference from this administration. That the esteemed Dr. Fauci, a medical hero in this country, has to run his statements past Pence is appalling. You simply can't mix politics with medicine. That is the real abomination, not the "talking heads" who generally have spoken to experts before they make predictions. None of the channels I watch are saying the sky is falling, but they do have genuine concerns as I do, which simply aren't being addressed by the government. For God's sake, let the doctors talk to us directly, not after "clearing" statements with Pence. What does Pence know, except for the 'spin' the president wants on the reality of the situation, not to reflect truth to slant language to make Trump appear better in the public eye.
9
I am curious about one thing that has not been mentioned in anything I have read nor brought up on TV by any of the chattering "talking heads" who are mightily lathered up these days: Given that it is being estimated by CDC and other authorities that 14 days is a sufficient quarantine length for persons who have possibly been exposed, is ANYBODY monitoring patients who "graduate from quarantine and are well" to determine precisely how many, if any, subsequently succumb to infection by this virus? This is an extremely important question and the relevant data should be easy to garner since patients being quarantined are automatically in registry (i.e. name, address, etc.).
What is the answer here?
20
Thank you, Dr. Rosenthal. Excellent questions! Hope the CDC reads this article and answers all your questions. We need answers and fast.
5
For those of us buying hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes, there is lot of data out there that we don't understand.
What is the total number of infections? Since we only test those seeking treatment, all the infection rates are really statements like "of those tested, 2 to 4 percent have died." We don't actually have much information on how many people did NOT seek treatment and did not need to. All of our data is skewed.
It is a very different scenario if the disease is wildly transmissible, everyone gets it, with flulike severity rates; or somewhat transmissible, but everyone who gets it dies. The way the health system responds is different.
We don't have much information on who is at risk, although elderly people, immune compromised and people with pre-existing lung conditions likely head the list. We don't know if smoking and air quality put people at higher risk.
We don't have much data on method of transmission: droplets from coughing and sneezing; hand to hand and on objects; fecal oral, putting food service strongly in the loop (think norovirus.)
It is the holes in the data that create panic - people don't know what is coming down the pike, and what response is necessary.
11
Considering I leave my phone off for days at a time so that it doesn't ring non-stop with corporations spamming me with Mandarin robo-calls, I don't see how a phone alert is going to do anything.
I have all the data I need from the local news stations who have up-to-date reports on their website. I know everything about the latest Washington cases including gender, age, what school they were at, where they did or did not travel, symptoms they did or did not show, which case has been released because they completed quarantine, how many people are being watched, preventative measures I can take, how many are shown negative, etc. The only thing missing is how many stars they gave in their review of the local Thai restaurant. I'm don't need someone in Washington, D.C. to tell me what is going on in Washington.
Come on, you just need something to write about and your ex-boyfriend isn't dating Lady Gaga so this all you got:))))
4
Why is data so limited? In our country it certainly is. Trump is betting on that thousands infected will just go through it on their own, untested, even if it means infecting thousands more. That's why the professionals in charge of the hands on containment have so many restrictions on testing and relying information to the general public. In Trump's twisted mind, the attack of this virus on his watch is somehow personal.
17
As the author points out, Governments are often weary of disclosing bad news to their citizens . Having said this, I only know of one Government actively engaged in downplaying the gravity of this outbreak, and it is the Government of the United States, through its President, its White House chief of staff , his president's son, and his chief economic adviser who went so far as to advise people to "buy on the dip" in the stock market .
On the other hand, there is also some misinformation from other sources . Look at the illustration for this article : the red blot on top of Bangkok is of approximately the same size as that covering Japan . Yet, 40 cases have been counted in Thailand, as against several hundreds in Japan . I have so far heard from several people that they consider this a evidence that the Thai Government are hiding the truth . There is no such evidence . There is also a complete lack of information in the Times as to how many people have been released from hospitals and quarantines when declared virus free . These numbers exist, and they are readily available to anyone interested enough to seek them . Again, in the case of Thailand, 22 ill people have been released, leaving the net number of affected people (thus far, of course, and this number might increase in the future) at 18 .
3
I guess this article was written some time ago, so it's not really valid... Now the virus is everywhere, and in the USA we still need whistle blowers to get some of these answers.
11
The data is being limited because Trump is afraid that bad news concerning the coronavirus will impact his reelection. The reverse is true. That's why he put Pence as the point person. He has the opportunity to show the public that he either has the ability to handle this domestic crisis or not. So far it's business as usual. Do very little, but blame the Democrats. Maybe this time around when some of his followers get sick that they will realize that Trump is a very dangerous man, but I doubt it.
14
The virus previously known as 2019 novel coronavirus is now officially named SARS-CoV-2, and the disease it causes is referred to as COVID-19. It would be nice if the media could start using these terms, to be consistent with the WHO.
5
Seems like everyone is piling on Italy. US consulate sends out daily warnings....not just virus but also terrorism...Fact is, Italy is testing more people as a % of population than any other country - obviously if you test you will find positives. The city of Bologna tested 400 people - none positive. USA only has 100 testing kits for the whole country..... Italy is quarantining the towns, checking everyone at airports, closing schools as precaution....The Italian CDC is scientifically monitoring the situation and probably has the best data on the virus. The virus is arriving in other European countries and USA - world. Lets see how the authorities react there. Italy is an example to follow. I live in Italy and feel safe.
16
With the current death percentage compered to confirmed cases full outbreak to US population would mean around 10 million deaths in the nation. Of course we do not know all the people, who have the virus, but show no symptoms or do not get seriously ill, so total number of cases would be probably smaller.
Containing the virus from spreading to global epidemic should be a priority and the current activities of trying to hush the messagers has not helped building confidence, which also shows in the way markets react at the moment. Uncertainty in even facing a global virus epidemia, is the worst thing.
7
Why is it that we really don't know how many people are infected? Because authorities and healthcare officials don't really know the absolute true numbers, only abstractions. In many ways, they are just as lost and searching for answers as the rest of us. And to make matters worse, they are doing are bidding and even dying for it, all without a nod of gratitude from the mob. Expect this dynamic to only worsen as this virus spreads and worsens.
One other thought: Apropos another Op-Ed in today's Times, perhaps it is time to go "medieval" on the coronavirus by instituting marshal law and quarantining the entire population of the United States.
Give citizens a week or two to prepare---buy the groceries; fill the prescriptions; travel to a place of your choosing if necessary, but then...total lockdown. Nothing but couch potatoes and Netflix bingers for two weeks, perhaps three. No travel, no socializing, no going to work or out to dinner. Why, the federal government may even reimburse us for lost wages during this period.
But do it we must.
I am confidant the people in charge are thinking the same thing. For them, I'm sure it's only a matter of 'if' and 'when'.
4
@Dave Bartlet - What about people who don’t have the money to buy two week’s worth of food? Where would the homeless go?What about essential workers like those who work in hospitals, police and fire fighters?
Here in St. John’s,Newfoundland, we had a storm in January the was so severe and dumped so much snow that civil officials declared a state of emergency and shut down the city for eight days. All stores closed. No vehicles on the roads so snow clearing could clear the street.
After four days, people began to notice that some of their neighbours had run out of food. People started organizing pop up pantries for sharing food. The feder government called in the Army to help dig people out. Locally, we called it Snowmagedden.
We learned a lot as a city and as a community and we were lucky no fires started because fire trucks could not have responded because the streets were blocked with snow.
We learned a lot from the experience - mostly about how little we were prepared for such an emergency. Whatever we all end up having to do to get through this coming threat of COVID-19, there has to be a lot of planning in place. There will be problems you can’t even imagine until you are in the thick of it.
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@MJM
I'm well aware of the problems; there would be many. But as imperfect as a plan might be, it may be your best or only option.
Regarding the homeless and poor, I'm sure we can figure out a way to help them during a time of crisis such as a mass quarantine. Put another way, we would not avoid a quarantine because of the circumstances of the homeless or those who cannot afford groceries a mere two weeks in advance. Rather, we'll find a work-around to help them.
In some cases, through the very conscientiousness, foresight and generosity of people just like you.
@David Bartlett I have no confidence we would find a workaround from the feds. Cities and states might but will not be able to look for help.
Roar! That is the sound of the airplanes passing overhead. Do you suppose that they are carrying coronaviruses that are incubating in their human passengers? Airplane travel speeds up a pandemic. It allows pathogens to leap to every major human settlement. Humans have the idea they can live anywhere and travel anywhere at any time and be safe from disease and scourges. That is an illusion. The coronavirus distributed by airplanes might become the source of the largest pandemic ever experienced by humans. The pandemic is gonna be worse because people have forgotten how to live independently and rely on only local resources. Trade has always put some people at a disadvantage. Today the reliance on international trade might be putting the whole human race at a life-threatening disadvantage.
5
Even with a global pandemia affecting every one on the planet the total number of deaths would not pass 100 million. Big number yes, but not show stopper to a planet that's population grew by 80 million last year. No need to find your survival gear and start hunting rabbit in the forest.
As for information, why are testing kits not being distributed for every county in the country? Is this an attempt to hide the disease from us? Look at the number of tests that have been given in South Korea; yet in the U.S. we are absolutely slow walking any attempt to make testing available freely. This is the most scary aspect of the situation and the Trump administration's attempt downplay the matter will cost many lives.
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@Harcourt
Look here. The important thing is that President Trump is not unfairly criticized by the media for the great efforts he's made and that the media doesn't exaggerate the threat and that President Trump can continue to go to his re-election campaign rallies and seek re-election and talk about how great the economy is. Stock market crash? Fake news. Everything is secondary to the potential for the victimization of Donald J. Trump. We just have to get our priorities straight. It's not about us. It's about him.
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@Cornflower Rhys You are living in a right wing fantasy land. The motivation for filtering the comments of the medical experts is purely political. It is also immoral if it has the potential to cost us lives. How you can worry about the victimization of a man as immoral as Trump, I do not know.
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@Harcourt : Cornflower was being satirical.
3
Many cases are out there already. As a matter of fact in Italy, where testing has been done on a much larger scale than in other countries, many more cases have been found.
And about 50% of those cases were with mild or no symptoms at all.
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But does the risk of serious illness rise with age? I’m seeing info that this is true. For example, children have mild cases, while those over 60 are at much higher risk of complications or death.
1
@Kvj like with many respiratory diseases, the risk of pneumonia is higher for older people.
4
@Kl 80% of cases in Italy are mild.
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A careful examination of the available information so far suggests the coronavirus is bound to affect everyone, sooner or later. The only question is how severe the infection will be. Even recovered patients are now getting reinfected.
Politicians will never reveal the full truth even if they know it.
Scientists are still divided and too often muzzled by politicians.
WHO is overwhelmed and totally incapable of handling the situation. It can only sound the alarm for what it is worth.
What to do?
Keep our fingers crossed until a vaccine is developed..that's many months -maybe years -away alas.
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@AR
"Even recovered patients are now getting reinfected."
Proof, please?
The two most recent Covid-19 patients in California are especially ominous because the source of their viral inoculation cannot be determined. That is a real big deal because it means that the virus is almost certainly replicating undetected in the community and cannot be contained. When there is community spread of a virulent disease without a specific effective treatment, as is the case with Covid-19, the only effective way to control the disease is with strict quarantines and lockdowns.
Covid-19 would therefore continue to spread in the US unless Draconian quarantine measures, like those deployed in China, are used. The Chinese people, being accustomed to obeying an authoritarian government, can handle it. The American people, who are intrinsically given to disoblige being told what to do especially if it is onerous, cannot. There are few things more onerous than quarantines and lockdowns. If the Democrats try to use Covid-19 as a political weapon, widespread fear, panic and civil disobedience would likely ensue.
Merely throwing money at this pandemic, WILL NOT, by itself, effectively control it. The American people have to be persuaded to comply with major unpleasant—but hopefully temporary—lifestyle changes. If Mr. Trump cannot persuade the American people to comply with what must be done, the virus will spread unchecked, the US healthcare system will melt down (it is not as robust as many people think), and there would be major political and economic consequences.
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@JTS i am more than insulted about another accusation of the possibility of Democrats using this as a political. Honest communication is all that is needed.
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@JTS
Trump’s reassurances will never be believed, nor his advice on anything. (Not by those paying attention.)
He has burned his bridges to honesty long ago.
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@JTS
With respect...
Please, please let’s keep politics out of this. The virus is the `common enemy’. Let’s agree about this Nd be kind to each other.
By early April, we will be having opening day of the baseball season, and the New York Auto Show. (out of concern for the health of their fans, the Knicks will not be having post season playoff games).
The point is, will the sponsors of these events do anything, or will it be "business as usual"? Will any public agency take on the responsibility to order otherwise?
And if these events are run as business as usual, will any significant sector of the public decide it would be prudent to just not go?
We are in for some interesting times.
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@RM - I gave up crowds years ago due to guns in this country. Whether its a gay nightclub, an Ariana Grande concert, a church, a school, what have you, the more folks in one place the greater the chance of someone pulling out their weapon to make a statement.
And my health has greatly improved by lack of exposure to everyone's ills. At a bi-annual blood draw, a specialist once said, "We never see you. It would be good to see you more often". So, I asked him out on a date and his nurse had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. They kept bugging me to get a primary care doctor but I asked why? I never need one. I grudgingly went but for the life of me, I can't remember his name. I don't get colds, flus, or other ailments that a primary doctor covers. I see 2 specialists twice a year. They ask how I'm doing. I say great. And they don't see me again for another six months. Not bad for a guy who has had HIV for 19 years now along with severe epilepsy. I exercise religiously (at home), I eat well, I avoid crowds, and I have not been shot yet:)) But, its about time for labs again and I dread walking in the front door of the hospital and sitting in the waiting area and being exposed to everything under the sun.
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Medicare for all would facilitate testing and mobilization of resources needed to confront this contagion. In the atomized and for profit system we have, the short term selfish is going to cost for the long term social solutions needed.
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My husband had never spent even half a day in bed due to illness in the 25 years we have been married. We are now at day 3 of bedridden barking cough, mild fever /headache etc. While it is probably unlikely that it is due to Covid-19 there is really no way to know. He has been vaccinated for flu and does not have that typical "hit by a truck" flu feeling. We have okay insurance so a doctor visit is not beyond our personal financial scope, but what can they do? Tests are scarce and seemingly unavailable except for those who are hospitalized and ventilated with a history of recent travel. Lots of hand-washing going on in our house and we are sleeping in separate bedrooms. It is easy for him to self quarantine, and I may have to if he gets worse and not better; my part time library job would put many patrons at risk. I'd hate for him to be "patient zero" in our small Midwest town.
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@annieb3 NOT having the "hit by a truck" feeling of the regular flu is a sign it might be the other thing
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@annieb3 - A local case here started feeling bad on Monday with body chills, aches, and a headache (no barking cough) but felt well enough to go back school by Friday. Another case spent a few weeks in South Korea and felt bad but soon returned to work before they tested her positive. But, she is improving without any complications. And the first case here has already been released from quarantine and is all healthy and back to normal. Sounds like your husband has a normal midwest winter illness. (born and raised in the midwest). You stand a far better chance of winning the powerball this week than having coronavirus and dying from it. Here is a link to a local news station so you can read more about the cases.
https://komonews.com/news/local/two-new-cases-of-coronavirus-including-student-in-snohomish-county
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@tom harrison
I disagree. We know nothing about how many cases are in the USA because people aren't being tested. Once the test becomes available, Annieb3's husband can find out. But more to the point Annieb3 may already be a carrier even if she doesn't show symptoms. Since she works in a public location, it is worrisome. I hope both of them can be checked soon.
13
I tend to disagree with the author of the article.
We know enough already and more knowledge would hardly make any difference.
We know that :
- the virus is very transmissible,
- the infection is very difficult to detect in early stages
- many cases are mild and most likely will not be detected
So, conclusion is that we will have an epidemic.
... and that health care system will be overloaded with severe cases, in all countries.
So, this is what the world is preparing for ( or should).
´exact’ mortality rate (always a rather inaccurate but essential) is not needed for any decision making, the preliminary figures are bad enough.
Medics , if protected against infections in a standard way, don’t get infected.
Unprotected get infected (case of Italy).
Of course from scientific point of view there is a lot more to know, and will be certainly very usefull for the next pandemic.
But IMHO all actionable information is here already (and was already for weeks).
29
There’s no time for us to do much beyond what you have suggested. This thing will sweep the planet in a few months. It’s just too contagious and since is evidently spread by those who have no symptoms it’s going to be impossible to contain. At best, we might slow it down a little and give us a little more time to prepare.
11
@Smilodon7
Agree, the measures that slow down the pandemic are essential in order to spread the load on the health system.
3
@Cuisinier
There seems to be near compulsion to believe everything is actually worse than it is.
The problem with this virus seems to be more with "transmission". If you can have the virus and not even know it, then surely it's safe to assume we can survive it. The real challenge seems to be in containing it.
1
Conservatively, the R0 is 2.5 and case fatality rate (CFR) something like 1%. This means it's several times more deadly and transmissible than seasonal flu. Flu has R0 of 1.3 and CFR of .2%. These estimates are of course imperfect but enough to understand why China has cratered its economy and locked down millions of people. COVID-19 is not existential to humanity but it is very bad. The rest of the details are noise I'm afraid... One will find the precise estimates of R0 and CFR in the history books written after this is all over as COVID-19 will be studied in medical schools for decades after this. From my perspective, the US public health response will be characterized in this future history as INADEQUATE.
92
@Melanie I'm a physician but could not recall what these numbers are....
I see that R0 is the basic reproduction number, called the “R naught,” or R0.
The figure refers to how many other people one sick person is likely to infect on average in a group that’s susceptible to the disease ...
CFR is spelled above
Yes, amazing we haven´t numerous Apps on Coronavirus tracking etc. And still plenty of disinformation and over exaggeration going around leading people to either become totally paranoid or the extreme opposite and accept this virus as a variant to the common flu.
5
Technology doesn’t work that way! No app is going to be able to do that.
Authoritarian regimes like Russia or China will never flourish as great leaders of the world. Even their own citizens realize their tragic social cultural shortsightedness, and moral shortcomings. Other than pocessing atomic arsenals, neither are capable of real worldly leadership, and should not be heralded as such. This event will be the deathknel for these regimes, especially China.
1
US authorities have tested 451 persons in total.
South Korea tests 1000 a day.
US authorities admit that test kits are not working. Maybe by the end of next week they will.
It is fair to assume that the US are heading for a massive public health disaster. My hunch is that this is already out of control.
And given that the government has chosen denial as approach to the problem better prepare for the worst.
Journalists should focus on that and not on what Chinese authorities did or did not.
191
I fear you are right. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
28
@Ronald Grünebaum - how much does a test cost? Testing 1,000 people a day isn't going to work in the US because too many people either don't have health insurance or will find that their insurance doesn't cover the costs of the tests.
If you are poor then, if you have a job you will have to keep working if you want to eat and pay the rent.
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@Edmund Cramp
Tests are free of charge in Europe.
The profit driven nature of US health care will surely make the problem much bigger.
A perfect storm coming.
Unfortunately, economic problems in the US will affect the whole world.
247
Yeah, I think we are close to producing some therapeutic candidates of existing drugs that could potentially be repurposed. We've been working on it for a month and actually normally it'd only take us a few hours or so but working through some issues/bugs.
So far what has been tested (HIV protease inhibitors which we first predicted for SARS in 2003, remdesivir) show up on our lists so that's a good enough start but hopefully by next week we'll have a few more alternates to test.
And indeed, the author is right - some of our collaborators who can test are in China and they are the most desperate. NIH has opened up funding supplements to add to existing grants to work on COVID-19 but there have been a bunch of weird rules about working with the Chinese on a variety of matters.
My plan is to just to put our predictions on our website and whoever wants to test them can, so our Chinese collaborators can try them out quickly and we can continue to do the science with the local groups.
5
@RamS - As someone who has lived with HIV going on 19 years now, I would rather get the coronavirus than take one of these protease inhibitors. Sometimes the cure is worse than the ailment.
3
That’s a good plan. Anything that we can do that will help NOW is what we really need. By the time most of the solutions I have heard proposed are able to be implemented, this will have swept through the population. Concentrating most of our efforts on locking the barn door after all the horses have left really isn’t helping much.
I worry though, that even if we do find some of these drugs work, there won’t be enough for everyone who needs it.
I am a Professor of Medical Genetics. Reading about the unexplained cases of coronavirus in the US and elsewhere raises the possibility that the Coronavirus was for a long time indigenous to humans where only recently a pathogenic variant or unknown co-factor. result in a flu. If true, asymptomatic carriers were for a long time present in the human population. The botomline-Covid-19 is essentially a flu with low mortality rates that may have went molecularly undiagnosed for a long time. Caution and 14 days quarantine of carriers are a good approach until a vaccine is at hand, but all the hype and economical panic may have much more dangerous consequences than the virus itself
18
@lieberma I suspect you are correct but as to your last sentence, that train has left the station. (Would your advice of quarantine then also apply to the flu itself?)
7
@Dennis Byron
NO .Flu due to other viruses may not warrant quarantine.
3
@lieberma this makes no sense. If it was indigenous to humans it would have been discovered a long time ago. Virologists found a virus over 4 years ago that match the DNA of covid19 98% in bats. There are plenty of people that have came here from wuhan and other infected areas and it is passing around several communities in the US right now. The only reason we dont know thisbis because of the overly strict guidelines for testing from the CDC (travel to china required before testing)
This week is going to bring the biggest panic you've ever seen in your life.
5
In the movie "A Beautiful Mind" Russel Crowe played the brilliant game theorist John Nash who wisely advised his friends to avoid the beautiful blonde. He reasoned that competition among members for a scarce resource tends to produce a sub-optimal outcome for the whole group. Instead of tripping over each other to get the blonde, the men ignore her and choose plainer mates because in this way there is a greater chance that everyone gets a girl and the group as a whole is happier. The Nash equilibrium is an optimum group response to any challenge involving multiple parties with similar aims. It occurs when each member can reliably predict the individual strategies of all the other members. It is just a fancy way of saying cooperation is good for the group.
Insurance policies are another example of group cooperation. Implicitly, members of an insurance contract all agree to pay a little premium for the assurance that if anyone suffers a loss, then the group will take care of the individual. In this way, legitimate claims are incentivized, not penalized.
In the case of a pandemic, an analogous insurance policy would be a health treaty among many nations that underwrites the potential economic and healthcare deficit that may arise from a pandemic.
The idea is that by providing treaty assurances of support, nations like China will be more likely to cooperate with the world health community and less likely to hide critical information necessary for controlling an epidemic.
10
@Thomas You seem to have missed the point of the article...which to me is that how can we co-operate in the way you suggest with a President who is bent on lying or hiding the truth in the US? He is just like Ji I would say. And of course now that the market has plunged to such an extreme, but that is also worldwide I hasten to add, he is too late with his blame the Democrats & media strategy. If we ask for co-operation we have to lead the way in co-operating and Trump has not led the way in any issue the world over, it is always all about what he wants or demands and everyone better listen as he demands we listen to his phony blame.
33
@JHM I'd say you are 100% right, especially about advanced economies leading the way towards cooperation. Our blameshifting president and his colleagues disgust me. They are essentially taking a "sharpie" to the facts on this and this time it is no game. It's fair to say that Trump has seeded a pandemic in the US by his total incompetence and decision to underfund the CDC in 2018.
No he is not just like Xi. Xi is at least a functioning adult.
Months? I remember it as years before the HIV virus was identified... and more years before the blood supply could be regarded as safe. I also remember HIV being spread via dental equipment.
What bothers me is if the Corona virus takes hold... so far as the very sick people -- will they have insurance// will their illness be covered.
We live in a country where tax cuts for the rich and selling national treasures, developing ridiculous weaponry is considered more impt. than medical care for all -- free (more or less) is considered too costly and we don't have the money for that. I'm no longer sure that seniors - no matter what their income/asset level deserve medicare either. Why should my cousin have 4 million in the bank and have Joe Public pay for his 100K cost of dialysis annually??
I hope the Corona Virus will spread light... but there are many who prefer to live in the dark.
20
This virus is an excellent example of why we need to cover everyone in this country. People who do not have access to healthcare, either from not having insurance at all or not being able to afford the deductibles and copays won’t get the care they need and they will spread the disease. It’s a matter of public health that everyone needs to be able to go to the doctor when they are sick.
205
@Anna - It was several decades before HIV had a name. Post mortum tests of bodies going back to the 40's and 50's in this country are now proving that.
1
@Anna
Medical care and insurance access are not about "deserving it" but about the health welfare of the nation, workforce, and next generation. It should not be a "for profit" loser in this damaged system. Lacking a national health insured system is a sign of institutional failure right in there with a failing infrastructure etc.
12
Today, California announced they're going to be test specimens from recently hospitalized and/or dead respiratory disease patients. I will not be surprised if it turns out it has been here longer than anyone thought because nobody's been testing for it.
When I spent a week struggling with a severe fever in late January, it was obviously the flu, right? I didn't go to the hospital because I only maxed out at 103.8 degrees (0.2 degrees below the limit I negotiated with my spouse, who was very worried, because the last thing I wanted in that moment was to deal with that hassle. I knew I'd likely be admitted and poked and prodded and it would make an already miserable situation even worse). I recovered, mostly, after a week's lost work (and by extension my company's productivity), but my lungs are still not happy.
We have significant cross-pollination each day with people traveling between here and China (and the rest of Asia and around the globe). I just attended the RSA conference this week at the Moscone with participants from all over the world.
We now have two apparent cases here in the Bay Area which appear to be untraceable to any known transmission vector.
I think it's likely been here for longer than we know.
125
I suspect there are a lot of people who caught it and never showed symptoms, or whose symptoms were very mild that have no idea they have Coronavirus
26
@Fullonfog Agreed! There was a spate of severe, flu-like illnesses around late Jan, early Feb., hitting people who had had the flu vaccine. Symptoms were headache, high fever, and lingering cough. This was in L.A., a city with constant travelers from China. If early cases were conflated with 'the flu' it has already gotten here.
11
Have you been to a doctor yet? Perhaps you also need to be tested.
3
Many sites quote statistics that about 80% of cases are mild. But potentially 20% needing health care or hospitalization is terrifying!! Even if the "death rate" is closer to 2%, this country is not prepared to care for that many sick. That rate seems to presume that the sick can be promptly treated, which will become more and more of a problem if hospitals are overwhelmed and health care workers are exposed and infected.
21
The biggest problem in the US response is the tiny amount of testing for the virus. South Korea does thousands of tests a day. This country apparently has only done a few hundred. Few medical sites have the test available right now. Why hasn't the CDC aggressively made the test available on a much larger scale? It is not even clear if people might be billed for the test, even though that increases the risk that people won't be tested, and the virus would spread faster. This is something where the federal government should be cutting red tape removing the obstacles to more testing being available.
The cynical side of me thinks of a possible reason that testing is slow in the US. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
102
@Steve B There is nothing cynical about naming the core issue here: it will hit the elderly, poor and uninsured harder than the rest of the population and what level of support these groups are receiving from the Trump administration is well known by now: none.
19
I completely agree that better information sharing is critical. I'm skeptical, however, that many physicians and scientists are withholding their scientific work due to perfectionism, fear of peer reviewers, or career strategy. Those things all do occur in science, but it sure looks to me like they are less common right now.
Many authors have been submitting unreviewed manuscripts to the Biorxiv and Medrxiv repositories. Some are rough drafts. That does not seem strategic to me, and it surely does not suggest perfectionism. Several governments around the world have actively suppressed critical biomedical information or even disseminated intentional falsehoods. I haven't seen any signs that ambitious medical researchers are choosing to do this for personal reasons.
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Maybe a good reason health officials both here and elsewhere have been afraid to share information about the virus is that in it's early stages it can be hard to correctly diagnose, and the overwhelming number of cases are mild and difficult to distinguish from other common seasonal respiratory infections therefore, knowing and fearing the speed with which the news media spread both accurate and inaccurate information, they fear to exaggerate. For example: in this country we're already seeing the media gearing up to make the virus 'Issue #1' of the upcoming political campaign. What was the 'spin' they immediately put on the designation of the Vice-President to head up the containment effort? Ridicule! when in fact the appointment of such a high official was meant to indicate the seriousness of the government's concern. In fact, it's probably true that, overall, the virus is less serious and less widespread than the media make it appear to be and their handling of the issue has so far been mostly inflammatory and politically colored.
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@Ronald B. Duke
Maybe appointing the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service won't have met with so much ridicule...along with not focusing on the economy and another tax break. You know, appointing someone who knows smoking kills you and needle exchanges save lives.
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The ridicule might have something to do with the fact that Pence presided over an HIV epidemic in his state that he exacerbated greatly by closing down needle exchanges. He makes decisions based on his interpretation of his religion, not on the basis of the science needed to deal with infectious diseases. I’d feel much better had Trump appointed someone with actual knowledge of infectious diseases beyond Biblical accounts of plagues.
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You know full well who is politicizing the growing global pandemic. Instead you and your party are sacrificing the health and wellbeing of the American people. Your ignorance and denial of science will be your own demise as your one party president worries about his wealth and political future over all else. Appointing Pence as gatekeeper to prevent the public from knowing about the tremendous threat of this virus is further proof of the profound corruption and threat to our nation and the world, you and your party are.
As a person who does medical translation on infectious disease articles I must disagree somewhat with the idea of just ‘more information’. Many people are ill-equipped to correctly interpret medical findings, especially incomplete or interim data. Such data need interpreting so that the numbers’ (potential) significance can be correctly understood; also a general-public reader has to understand that quickly evolving data, and therefore rapidly changing or even contradictory information, is a normal phase of data-gathering in such a situation rather than a plot or a lie.
The recent piece in this newspaper by a mathematician said it well : that numbers are only as useful as they are correctly understood. Otherwise - and as an MD you know this well - information which the public doesn’t understand or trust can have precisely the opposite effect : more confusion, more panic, and less compliance with professional or official directives designed to protect the population.
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@MChristensen "The purpose of calculation is not numbers but understanding." Richard Hamming.
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@MChristensen "The purpose of calculation is not numbers but understanding." Richard Hamming.
@MChristensen There is nothing so comforting as a voice of sanity.
With the estimated 2% mortality rate and 20% severely sick rate, for the one very sick patient in Northern California, there should be 4 to 49 infected people in the community with asymptomatic to mild disease for at least a week. Why have no other people been diagnosed, especially among the contacts of the sick patient? Just how good are the diagnostic test kits at picking up infected people. Also, can the diagnostic kits distinguish between the Covid-19 vs other benign coronavirus that are ever present. There is a serious lack of information and technology in dealing with this problem and the lack of information is leading to major economic damage that can have greater effect on the population than this potential "epidemic".
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@Qcell
Americans work through flu--because they do not want to be seen as not committed to the job--or they are hourly workers.
Other people have not been diagnosed because they have not been tested. The CDC test is of poor quality, and requires the results to be shipped back to headquarters to be accurately read (taking 48 hours or more). The tests are also in short supply, with just 200 tests for all of CA.
The Vacaville virus patient showed obvious symptoms, but the hospital staff had to beg for many days before they were allowed to test, plus two more to get the results.
The consequence of this test taking protocol is that others with the virus who were still able to function nearly normally could infect people for almost 2 weeks after doctors identified the need to test. Because there was no diagnosis, all of the semi or unprotected medical staff who had been with or near the patient have bee asked to self-quarantine for 14 days, leading to about 125 of the medical staff being on leave.
This is clearly not a scalable solution.
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@Mark Johnson Yes, it is irrational, sloppy procedures, and dangerous to many of us but we are told "don't panic" over and over.
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@Mark Johnson Yes. My husband had never spent even half a day in bed due to illness in the 25 years we have been married. We are now at day 3 of bedridden barking cough, mild fever /headache etc. While it is probably unlikely that it is due to Covid-19 there is really no way to know. He has been vaccinated for flu and does not have that typical "hit by a truck" flu feeling. We have okay insurance so a doctor visit is not beyond our personal financial scope, but what can they do? Tests are scarce and seemingly unavailable except for those who are hospitalized and ventilated with a history of recent travel. Lots of hand-washing going on in our house and we are sleeping in separate bedrooms. It is easy for him to self quarantine, and I may have to if he gets worse and not better; my part time library job would put many patrons at risk. I'd hate for him to be "patient zero" in our small Midwest town.
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Here in New Zealand, we have had our first confirmed case of Coronavirus.
They did three tests - throat and nasal were the first two, both came back negative.
The third - the positive one - was a test taken in the lungs, I guess similar to a pneumonia test.
My point is, how many tests are needed before someone tests positive?
It seem like even the professionals don't know the tests to perform conclusively. It may show up on a throat swab in some, and not others.
It may take more than three tests in some case - who knows? If it hadn't been for a dedicated medical professional here, they may have stopped after the first test, or even the second, and sent the infected person home still infected to infect others.
I think the spread of information, or lack of, is because no-one knows anything really.
It's not helped by China where all this started not sharing information and being open, and it's not helped by Trump using Pence to censor everything before it gets made public.
This is a serious thing, China needs to co-operate more, and Trump needs to stop politicising this by blaming the media and Democrats.
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I think the likelihood of those two things happening is so close to zero that it makes no difference. Trump thinks he can make his own reality.
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@Shane Lynch No, no, and no.
Yes there are a bunch of things that are not known about the virus.
No, saying "no-one knows anything really" is misinformation.
Go to the webpage of the World Health Organisation and inform yourself first hand. The full, unabringed report of the Join Mission on the Coronavirus is now available for all to read.
I highly recommend to read this in full - because the information you get from the sanitary authorities in your country could very well be misinformed, overall simplistic, inexact - and even worse, disingenious or fallacious.
In my country here in Switzerland, even if I see now finally some action, I don't see that the public is being fully informed about what is known and not known about the virus.
Stay safe.
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@Volutes am here also in Switzerland and will do that. thanks.
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Not much here about the djt administrations cutbacks on public healthcare dollars and US participation in international infectious disease entities. Also nothing said about the defective test kits distributed by CDC, general paucity of testing done in the US even on people who obviously need it, or lack of public preparation or support for needed health materiel.
Also nothing said about political hacks leading the charge on fighting the virus. Seems as though the hacks are fighting the communication of facts on the illness that the administration is withholding from the public.
Overall disappointing from a public information piece.
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@kirk The scarcity, and poor accuracy of the CDC test kits will help keep the published diagnosis numbers artificially low. The fact that the public's official information will be filtered through the mouthpiece of the administration via Pence will be further complicated /assisted by the actual lack of data. How convenient.
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@kirk This is an op ed, not a psa.
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@kirk Yes, this article is from almost exactly one YEAR ago... it is not like we didn't see this coming. But too many people are in denial about the responsibility this administration bears... https://time.com/5177802/cdc-budget-cuts-infectious-disease/
I wish writers stop using the "in an age when we can do X on the iPhones, why can't we do...", it shows how profoundly they not understand limit of technology and its interaction with the real world. Here, she expects that every COVID 19 virus's equipped with a GPS hooked up to Siri? or that leaders now must act more transparent because their citizens have smart phones? The problems she writes about are cultural, politically, and scientific, they are not relevant with apps on phones.
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@wlieu This is the the writer's full sentence: "In an era when we get flash-flood warnings on phones and weekly influenza statistics from every state, why is data on the new coronavirus so limited?" Her point is that information must be reported (pretty basic stuff), not that an app is required.
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@wlieu To date, I have heard essentially nothing about this virus from anyone in a position to know unless I try to hunt it down. I get notifications on my phone when the temperature is going below freezing! Why are we not getting notifications about how to protect ourselves, or even moreso, protect others? And any other information on this.
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@Kim
Your phone notification is not the world, I know, hard to believe. Make an effort and look up, look around, the phone can't save you. Your brain can, if you decide to use it.
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The reason that you don't know how many people have Coronavirus is that there are not enough people and equipment to test an entire population. We have no idea what percent of the population has the virus nor how many have disease, particularly of mild severity. It may be that new diagnoses are becoming less frequent in China because almost the entire population has contact with the virus and there are few susceptible people left. If that is true, it takes about 3 months for the virus to run through the population.
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@turbot
The test is simple, and easy to administer and use when done right. South Korea can (and does) test 10 to 20 thousand people per day. One of their test makers will sell tests in lots of 100000 for fast delivery.
The US relies on a very scare test made by the CDC with a defective reagent that leads to false positives when tested locally, so it must be shipped out to be verified (in a 48 hour process). California has 200 tests for the entire state as its allotment.
With so few test kits, screenings are not feasible.
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Think about that: 200 tests for a population of 40 million people.
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10-20,000 people a day is still not many when there are a billion and a half people in China alone. It would take over two centuries at the rate of 20,000 a day to test the whole Chinese population.
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Upwards to five million people left Wuhan before the lockdown.
How many were active vectors is unknown.
The majority of those people went back to other major Chinese population centers. Data will be wildly skewed until world wide measures are taken to effectively limit transmission.
Here in the US, our president is blaming media and political opposition while down playing any real threat.
Big pharma' in the meantime isn't going to share anything until our businessman-president ensures a windfall profit for any vaccine, or treatment.
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@Bill
Huh? Where did you get this number? I understand that Wuhan is a transportation hub, so many people go through the town every day, then on their way. I don't understand when the virus started to spread and how many people were exposed to it, then transported it around China.
Does that focus on Wuhan matter now? Not to disrespect your point, but this is a game we're losing and we can't replay the beginning. I wish I knew the stock market would crash this past week. I coulda shorted for big bucks. But, I didn't. I wish we had competent leadership. But, we don't. What are we going to do now? It's tough to think every little thing is a matter of great consequence. But, it is.
@Bill
Ah yes, the greedy CEOs and shareholers… and do they consider themselves ethical and moral people??
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"Over 80,000 infections" leaves a lot of room. China's reports are not trustworthy, especially where CCP politics are involved. The 80,000 figure is certain to vastly undercount the infections in China. Estimates of the undercount can be derived from death counts and an evaluation of the likely fatality rate. If the 0.7% rate for China outside Wuhan (which would be about 7 times the fatality rate for influenza) holds true the number of cases is undercounted by a factor of 3 or 4 times.
Yes, we don't really know how many people have coronavirus. There is a lot more we don't know about it, too, including the origin. (It appears certain it did not come directly from bats.)
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There is significant data to explain the crossover from eating and handling wild animals infected with the virus much like SARS...
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@dairubo I wonder how do you count “the number of cases is undercounted by a factor of 3 or 4 times”? Any source? China has been updating the cases everyday in every city in a daily basis, I think the 80,000 is quite a big figure and believable.
In the contrary, the cases number in US is more suspicious to me, they have a ridiculous testing criteria and only tested less than 500 people until yesterday (according to CDC), there might be more hidden cases in our communities.
US is not as transparent as China in this outbreak, that’s really worrying me.
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