The COVID-19 Thread and Hypothetical Boxing Predictions

mjmjr25

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So things keep changing. Independent reports from the ground in China are starting to paint a picture of what many have long suspected.

A recent report says URN deliveries to the 3 largest crematoriums in Wuhan were 30,000 higher than previous time period a year ago. Anonymous medical staff have suggested 3,000 healthcare workers died in Wuhan, not 3,000 total.

Another report says the test kits China is selling have a 70% fail rate (failed to detect 70% of positives). Whether poor / rushed design or intentional is another talking point.

Does this change anything? Probably not. It makes the numbers in Italy and Spain more understandable.

The mortality rate of confirmed cases is then closer to 10%. With an estimated 90% of mild and asymptomatic cases untested, it is still likely an actual 1% mortality rate, about 3x seasonal flu rate (across the world).

3x seasonal flu mortality rate combined with asymptomatic spreading and extremely long contagious periods is why the distancing is important.

If left unchecked the estimates are right - 3-5 million in the US would die (10% of the over 65 and immuno-compromised, significantly lower rates of the younger / healthy). There are still some who say even that scenario, 3-5 million dead, is better than tanking the economy, retirements, and watching military dictatorships take over in moderate democracies. I'm personally torn - I can see both arguments.

With that, there are some benefits we're seeing due to "stay at home" orders. I can only speak to my region (MN, WI, IL, SD, ND) and specifically to MN. Fatal car accidents are down almost 50%. DUI's are down over 60%. Property crimes down almost 50%. Violent crime is down negligibly, around 5%.

I suspect the 100K dead and lockdown is going to win out over 3 million dead and do what you do, but in either case, it's going to be an interesting spring and summer.
 
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Lastblade

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3 major cell phone carriers lost over 21 million subs, and there are stacks and stacks of cremated urns that people are waiting in line to pick up. I don't even know the estimates since the number keeps climbing. I don't think anyone other than WHO believes any of the Chinese statistics.
 

evil wasabi

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RAZO

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I think China is full of shit.
 

fake

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The number of infected people seems pointless as a statistic. We don't reliably know how many people have been tested, and we definitely don't know how many people are infected and spreading the virus but are asymptomatic. So we can only go by the number of deaths. The number of daily deaths has been very slightly slowing down in Italy and even more slightly in Spain and Germany - so little that it could just be an anomaly. China's numbers aren't even worth looking at. So I don't think anyone is seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. We should have spent March calmly distributing enough supplies to each household (easier said than done, obviously) and sheltering in place in April - no leaving your house / yard - for two or three weeks once everyone had enough food, water, and toilet paper.
 

StevenK

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It's been interesting to compare covid 19 to the spanish flu of 1918. There were between 17-100 million deaths in that pandemic, depending on who you ask, but however you look at it it was bad. The initial thought was some kind of mutated strain but subsequent investigation shows it was likely nothing more than normal flu hitting a war stricken malnourished global population.

Contrast with now, where it looks like the mortality rate is worst amongst fatties.

Damned if you do...

The absolute game changer for this will be a reliable 'who has had it test', which for at least the last week we've been told is days rather than weeks away.
 

StevenK

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We should have spent March calmly distributing enough supplies to each household (easier said than done, obviously) and sheltering in place in April - no leaving your house / yard - for two or three weeks once everyone had enough food, water, and toilet paper.

Problem is those three essentials are not enough to stop your home from being repossessed and your lease car being taken off your drive. People do activities with a circa 1% fatality rate for entertainment. You're not going to stop a man saving his livelihood for that level of risk. Now if this was some kind of bleeding out through the eyes ebola type shit we might be looking at a different situation.
 

mjmjr25

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StevenK is referencing this: (antibody test) https://www.newscientist.com/articl...y-test-for-covid-19-really-be-a-game-changer/

Agreed - we will likely find the mortality rate is lower than people are being led to believe by the 24/7 in-your-face coverage.

The unknown though is if you can contract the disease again. I haven't seen any reputable outlets definitively say you can't become infected again. Our assumption is you are immune once you defeat it a first time, but we don't know that for certain yet.
 

mjmjr25

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Why are Germany's death numbers so low?

Less restrictive testing requirements; better healthcare. There are probably some genetic / age things at play as well. Northern Europe is a non-contact culture; France / Spain / Italy are contact cultures.

So a 70 year old in Italy contracts it and hugs / kisses on 5 other 70 year olds...that is going to spread in a hurry to a vulnerable population.

I'm in Minnesota, my community is 90% Finn. There's a meme circulating around our state, "Eh there Toivo, the Governor says we should be 6' apart when we get together there. Oh yah Oivo, that's getting pretty close there, dontcha think?"
 

StevenK

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StevenK is referencing this: (antibody test) https://www.newscientist.com/articl...y-test-for-covid-19-really-be-a-game-changer/

Agreed - we will likely find the mortality rate is lower than people are being led to believe by the 24/7 in-your-face coverage.

The unknown though is if you can contract the disease again. I haven't seen any reputable outlets definitively say you can't become infected again. Our assumption is you are immune once you defeat it a first time, but we don't know that for certain yet.

Yeah the most I've seen someone commit to is that it would be normal to receive some level of immunity for an indeterminate length of time. Not exactly precise.

Why are Germany's death numbers so low?

Germans are already dead inside.

Joke my schnitzelchums :)
 

StevenK

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I'm in Minnesota, my community is 90% Finn. There's a meme circulating around our state, "Eh there Toivo, the Governor says we should be 6' apart when we get together there. Oh yah Oivo, that's getting pretty close there, dontcha think?"

Ha, I like that.

One of the things that has made me laugh is the 30 minutes of exercise per day allowance the government has given us during isolation. Most of the country haven't done 30 minutes of exercise since they left school.
 

DevilRedeemed

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We have been in lockdown for 10 days now. But contagion and death toll are low for now. For the time being warm weather, fast action on behalf of the gov and a large country with relative low population density has helped
Who knows what winter will bring?
Especially in the poor areas where life is fucked on a good day.

How about places like India? Wondering if this will massacre large swaths of the population. The more well off over there seem particularly cuntish
 
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StevenK

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We have been in lockdown for 10 days now. But contagion and death toll are low for now. For the time being warm weather, fast action on behalf of the gov and a large country with relative low population density has helped
Who knows what winter will bring?
Especially in the poor areas where life is fucked on a good day.

How about places like India? Wondering if this will massacre large swaths of the population. The more well off over there seem particularly cuntish

India: population 1.3 billion

"Everyone stay in your homes"

300 million: "we don't have homes"
 

joe8

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I was listening to an official from the World Health Organisation talk on the radio. They were saying that from all the evidence they have (from the behaviour of other coronaviruses, and from studying COVID-19), they can say that it generally doesn't spread through the air (it isn't an airborne virus). It is only spread when someone coughs or sneezes, which produces droplets. So, it's not as contagious as I originally thought.
 
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Marek

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Reposting Super PAC ads, lulz. Big money buys Poppy.

Do you believe the data from China?

I believe the numbers that say 3k health workers alone may have died in China and that total deaths are well over 20k.

Those are all direct quotations from Trump. You can play your hurr durr skeptical libtardtarian schtick all you like and it doesnt change the timeline nor context of Trump's commentary.
 

LoneSage

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...carriers-lose-15-million-users-as-virus-bites

I would be interested to see if China tries to hide this next month.

Hide it? Why would they hide it? Here's a Chinese article about it: http://tech.hexun.com/2020-03-26/200777354.html

I translated their explanations for this dramatic decrease:
Some people have analyzed, is it because many people stayed in other places for a long time during the epidemic, and stayed at home, only using a mobile phone or WIFI to surf the Internet, which caused many numbers to be directly abandoned to continue to pay fees and shut down?

Even some people pointed out that due to the outbreak of the situation, the number of fraudulent activities via the Internet and telephone dropped sharply, and this part of the gray numbers lost the need for survival.

Others believe that during the entire February period, operators were unable to set up sales outlets, the number of new users was not enough, and there were many lost users. Some even said that the KPI assessment indicators of the operators have changed?

Regarding the decrease in mobile users, Wang Guoquan, executive vice president of China Telecom, stated on China Telecom's 2019 results conference call yesterday: "Mainly due to the large number of physical business halls closed during the epidemic caused the decline in new users. But according to data in March, Overall sales have recovered to pre-holiday levels, and user growth has stabilized in March. "China Telecom Chairman Ke Ruiwen added:" There are multiple factors that cause customer churn in February. The epidemic situation is still the most important factor; the second is The month coincides with the Lunar New Year and is in the stage of 4G and 5G upgrade development. Operators will consider more factors such as win-win situation. "

Han Xia, director of the Information and Communications Administration of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, responded that the number of mobile phone users in operators has decreased. It is understood that there may be two reasons: First, many physical channels of telecommunications companies were unable to operate normally in February, although the line was opened. Services, but many users are still used to going to the physical business hall for new account opening and other services, so the speed of new development users has slowed down. In addition, some of the existing users cancelled their temporary numbers because they were unable to resume work and production, and the demand for socio-economic activities decreased. Second, with the nationwide implementation of number portability and the promotion of speed reduction and fee reduction, some users who originally had dual cards no longer need separate data cards, and have cancelled their numbers. She said that she believes that with the gradual recovery of economic and social activities, the number of mobile communication users may increase in the future.

In short, this drastic decline in user numbers may be short-term behavior, but more like a long-term trend. In the 5G era, the decline in the number of users is inevitable, and the economy of scale will come to an end. The decline in the number of operators is the early warning of the Internet industry's reversal. The ceiling of the number of users and the growth bonus period are over. With strong operational capabilities, solid technology, and good talent reserves, whoever will be the winner of the second half of the Internet.
 

Takumaji

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Why are Germany's death numbers so low?

They are very low now but will probably rise considerably during the next few weeks. Germany is comprised of 16 states that have their own health care infrastructure and data gathering methods, sometimes the numbers you get from a certain state are more than a week old which leads to a delayed rise of the death numbers (source).

What's more, there is a shit ton of testing going on and there already was shortly before the big outbreak in Italy. Lots of testing means you also have lots of mild cases that lower the average number of deaths.

However, not all states do heavy testing, some also only test people who show symptoms so the actual numbers in these states are higher which will have an impact on the total numbers.

Thirdly, Germany has a comparably high number of ICU beds (around 30k, source), which means 33.something beds per 100k citizens while countries like Italy have 12.something beds per 100k.

In short, the current very low death percentage will probably rise to around 3.5-ish % when all data has been gathered and evaluated.

It should also be added that we were among the first in our hemisphere to introduce serious measures to stem the virus spreading, including shutdowns of public life and lockdowns. Bavaria, the state I live in, was the first German state to do it, we have borders to Austria/Italy, Switzerland and Czech Rep so swift action was needed. On the whole, most people who live here do their part in getting ahead of the curve and keep contacts to an absolute minimum.

Oh, and what StevenK said. :p:)
 

oliverclaude

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There's also the Gleichschaltung mindset we've cherished for generations, which comes in handy right now. As it always does.
 

norton9478

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I'm surprised that more people aren't talking about the possibility of a Covid-19 mutation that makes people sicker.

Normally, a virus gets weaker as it mutates. The sickest people stay home while the least affected travel about spreading a weaker form of the virus.

But now, we have a situation where everybody is staying home (especially those with weak symptoms) and the only people going about are the most affected.
 
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