Trump addresses the nation on coronavirus
I can’t find a good full text from which to cut-and-paste excerpts (that C-SPAN link doesn’t allow cut-and-paste), but he has banned travel from Europe (except the UK) for the 30 days starting Friday. He also is requesting 50 billion dollars in loans to states to help them respond, and an 8.3 billion dollar funding bill for the CDC and related agencies.
He added “No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States. We are all in this together.” Well, we may all be in this together, but those who hate Trump – and their numbers are legion – will criticize every single move he makes on this and those he doesn’t make. Russiagate didn’t work, Ukrainegate, impeachment didn’t work, but they have high hopes that COVID-19 will do him in.
I suppose I mean they would like to “do him in” politically. But probably some of them wouldn’t mind if it was literally.
[ADDENDUM: Ace has examples of some of the dissing of the speech. Predictably, they especially hate the travel ban. Do something, do something, but don’t ban travel (even temporarily) to or from affected countries. Open borders forever!
Although they probably can’t accuse him of racism for this particular travel ban, because this time it’s Europe.]
Big time drops in stock market futures.
ZOMG, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson test positive for COVID-19 down under. NBA season suspended after star player tests positive.
And, the NBA suspends the season after the Utah Jazz player tested positive. He wasn’t at the OKC arena, but reports indicate that they have quarantined both teams at the arena. I’ve noticed that the players usually shake hands and hug each other, both before and after the games. Ew, all that sweat.
During the Ebola concern, the OU Medical Center had just opened a new children’s hospital and were getting ready to do something with the old building. They ended up converting part of the hospital to handle any infectious patient in OK. They even had a plan to rotate medical staff from around the state. I wonder if they ever tore down the building or is it still mothballed . I’ll have to drive down to the area to check it out!
And – the visiting team usually stays at one of the downtown hotels that is said to be haunted.
It’s another manifestation of the TWANLOC problem. Amazing how virulent it’s gotten in the last 17 years. Looking at what the partisan Democrats among our circle of friends say on Facebook, it seems to go all the way down.
The details of the travel ban will be interesting. Since they exempted UK can you fly from Berlin or Paris to London then onto US? Would hope not. Wonder what the reasoning in exempting Uk is? Besides the obvious ever present racism.
Those $50B in loans are loans available from the SBA (Small Business Admin.).
Some GOP congressperson I didn’t recognize said today that he’d like to see stimulus targeted to entrepreneurs on main street and blue collar workers. Then at the meeting with bankers at the Whitehouse today, the guy in charge of the SBA said they already had $30B ready to lend. Maybe they found another $20B to add to it; an emergency transfer from Treasury perhaps.
Griffin,
My first thought after the Trump speech was over was that the market won’t like it much. It is becoming increasingly impossible to call this whole thing a big overreaction, at least in the markets. If people involved in the economy believe and behave like it is a big deal, then they make it a reality.
I did have a rare schadenfreude feeling about Trump banning flights from Europe except the U.K.
Communications technology being what it is, it is difficult to imagine who might be sorely inconvenienced bar a few who were due to take up employment here. Are Americans who need to return home permitted to do so if they’re quarantined? (NB, what does Norman Ornstein know about this subject? Zip.).
I gather Correct-the-Record figured Manju and Montage needed a rest so sent a replacement.
TommyJay,
Yeah it’s not an overreaction from a business/economic way at all. My point is it’s an overreaction from a public health standpoint. It’s not nothing but it’s also not the gravest threat ever.
The markets are really screwed up in times like this. We have seen examples of it in the Dec. 2018 drop which had some crazy moves and we saw it in the ‘volatility crash’ of early 2018. The ETFs, algos, machines whatever completely take over leading to these crazy swings in a matter of minutes for no reason. They need new rules for high speed trading but won’t do it.
what i was going to live on while unemployed is gone..
be homeless in the next few months..
whee!!
Earlier, the Dow plunged 1,464.94 points, or 5.9%, to close at 23,553.22, marking a bear market, widely defined as a drop of at least 20% from a recent record intraday peak. That ended the blue-chip gauge’s 11-year bull-market run.
On average, a bear market for the Dow lasts 206 trading days, while the average bear period for the S&P 500 is about 146 days, according to data from Dow Jones Market Data. The Dow is currently off 20.3% from its Feb. 12 record, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are 19% from their Feb. 19 peaks.
Usually bear markets brought on by a ‘shock event’ don’t last as long and have sharper rebounds. Usually. No guarantees but coming into this is strong shape may help cushion the blow. Low interest rates also should help.
Griffin: “The ETFs, algos, machines whatever completely take over leading to these crazy swings in a matter of minutes for no reason. They need new rules for high speed trading but won’t do it.”
High speed computer trading algorithms are the worst thing to happen to the stock market in recent times. The trading feeds on the slightest signal of buying or selling. Fundamentals mean nothing. Of course, if you’re a long term investor like Buffet, these drops provide tasty buying opportunities. If you’re just about to retire and need the portfolio gains to support you, well that’s another kettle of fish. I’ve been expecting this for a year now, but didn’t know what might trigger it. Felt dumb sitting in cash and bonds when the market defied gravity and fundamentals to set new high after new high. Now, I’m congratulating myself on my genius. 🙂
Trump is right. We will get through this. I was worried as a nine year old kid during the early months of 1942. We were losing the war, our economy was still recovering from the Great Depression, and we didn’t have enough beans or bullets to become a formidable fighting force. I saw the adults around me put on their game faces, roll up their sleeves, and set about the task t\hat lay ahead. That’s what’s needed now.
This viral epidemic isn’t going to be a walk in the park. People have died and more will die. Many will get sick. But it is something that we as a nation can overcome……….and I’m betting we will. Yes, it will seem that life is disconnected, or on hold, or chaotic for a time. But this too will pass, and we’ll be stronger for having done what needed to be done. And the market will recover. It won’t zoom up to where it fell from, but it will recover in its own time. Our economy is basically sound and can weather these shocks better than China, the EU, or just about any place you can name.
Lot of people are suggesting that Europeans can use UK as a conduit to US. That is unlikely to happen because US immigration has a reputation for thoroughness with this being a good example: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16810312
Most of you are probably saying, “look at the Southern border”. Yes, but airports are different. BBC News once had a list of 10 worst airports in the world and US made the list for the simple reason that international travelers are regularly harassed. I refuse to travel to US for that sole reason.
Since Neo wrote this post, the transcript of Trump’s speech has been published in a few places — e.g. https://tinyurl.com/yxxwjozx
I thought it was a pretty good speech. Brief and to the point. Don’t yet know enough to evaluate the policies he announced.
As an aside, from a basketball fan: I think the NBA has gone into full panic mode, but I have to admit there is some logic to their decision to suspend all games. Rudy Gobert is infected and quarantined. Should all the players on his team, the Utah Jazz, also be quarantined? What about all the players on teams that played against the Jazz during the last 10-14 days? If the NBA commissioner’s office says “yes,” then quite a few teams can no longer compete. If that’s the situation, then suspension of all games becomes inevitable. As more comprehensive virus testing finally becomes available, this kind of domino effect could become more common — and not just in sports.
CDC website lists, as of March 11, 938 cases of COVID-19 and 29 deaths in America. As more testing is done that death rate of around 3% will likely come down but it is still nothing to sneeze at. I mean, considering how many people die from the regular old flu, we should probably take it a lot more seriously. But the level of panic and naked partisan exploitation we’re seeing in the public discourse on this is beginning to become truly disturbing.
I’ve mentioned this before but the people who think this virus is a dagger aimed at Trump better understand that he will grab that knife out of their hands and slit their throat with it.
Mike
All sporting events will be completely called off by tomorrow I predict. We are heading for almost entire shut down of society in many areas. My question is what is the point when things restart. Declining new cases? Zero cases?
That 3% death rate, I think, is totally due to lack of testing and the lack of a framework for estimating mild cases which don’t get reported.
South Korea has done a lot of testing and their death rate is under 1%.
Here’s a prediction for an upper bound of US deaths: the US final total will be less than China’s final total.
China got it first. They mishandled it. Their medical system is less than ours. They have triple the population of the US. Their outbreak started around Chinese New Year. CNY is the consistent winner of the prize for “largest human migration of the year”. Vast numbers of people travel, party, socialize and generally indulge in behaviors that guarantee the spread of every infectious disease far and wide. For all those reasons the US will not exceed China.
So what are we looking at?
China, total cases: 80,000 and slowing
China, total deaths: 3,200
MBunge; JimNorCal:
Those US death statistics are tricky. I’ll explain why I say that.
Almost all of those deaths are in Washington state, many in a nursing home that had a huge outbreak. See this:
That is where the high death rate was, so it skews the numbers. That doesn’t seem to be the pattern anywhere else in the US, although it’s early yet. But these were exceptionally weakened, ill, very elderly people, and it was an outbreak that seems to have gone on for a while before it was realized what was happening.
The nursing home is near Seattle. Seattle was where the first patient in the US was diagnosed, having returned from visiting family in Wuhan. This was in mid-January that the person got to the Seattle airport.
CDC Dr Fauci (however his name is spelled) says fatality rate is 1%, NOT the 3.4% WHO published, although in fairness to WHO, they at the same time said they expected that rate to drop significantly. Media chopped that last bit in their “reporting”. Partisan hacks that they are.
Since it’s understood that the flu fatality rate is .1%, CNN lead today was “Coronavirus 10 times deadlier than flu”. Jackasses.
Anything to add to the panic. For clicks and to bring Trump down.
Bill:
Not only that, it depends what kind of flu.
It’s not 10 times deadlier than the 1918 H1N1 flu, or the 1957 Asian flu, which I recall.
Just saw that US citizens and holder of permanent residence will be exempt from the travel ban. Need more clarification though.
Yes, someone has already said that excluding the UK was racist.
Griffin on March 11, 2020 at 10:43 pm said:
The details of the travel ban will be interesting. Since they exempted UK can you fly from Berlin or Paris to London then onto US? Would hope not. Wonder what the reasoning in exempting Uk is? Besides the obvious ever present racism.
* * *
May depend on whether or not Brexit took them out of the Schengen zone already.
Why the exemption? Maybe because Trump trusts Boris to actually test travelers at the terminal?
This map shows 460 cases, 8 deaths.
https://infographics.channelnewsasia.com/covid-19/map.html
Personal note: my brother and his wife are on their way home today from a group trip to Israel. No idea if they will be quarantined when they get to the airport in the States.
They didn’t get to see Bethlehem, but otherwise seem to have followed most of their agenda.
As a comparison, here are the estimates for the “standard” flu for this 2019/2020 season starting October.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
Estimated cases: 34 up to 49 million
Estimated deaths: 20 to 52 thousand
Current US COVID cases: 1300
Current US COVID deaths: 38
Griffin on March 12, 2020 at 12:33 am said:
All sporting events will be completely called off by tomorrow I predict. We are heading for almost entire shut down of society in many areas. My question is what is the point when things restart. Declining new cases? Zero cases?
* * *
Well, politicians have never put a line on anything where they will say “enough, we’ve reached the goal.”
The only thing you can be sure of is that wherever Trump draws a line, no one will like it.
It’s tempting to say that China mishandled it, and that may be true. But it is also true that they were on the “front lines” as it were, and came at it cold, without the data to know how best to approach it. We have the chance to benefit from what they learned the hard way.
The Chinese New Year celebrations were not a major factor, simply because the outbreak had already started and the authorities shut it down in the affected areas. No New Years events, no movie theaters, etc.
As of tonight, 23 confirmed deaths out of 120 residents in the Kirkland nursing home (3 deaths unidentified) is a pretty high death rate to contemplate if you are in one the high risk categories. (And not all those 120 tested positive, so that an even higher death rate.) It’s only a twenty minute drive from where I live. I’m not in a high risk category, but my son (with several pre-existing health conditions) most definitely is high risk, and we are self-quarantining as much as is feasible. The panic buying hit 10 days ago and things are settling down for the moment, and retailers seem to be getting on top of things. Lots of people walking in the neighborhoods, as many people are WFH right now. Less traffic is a small silver lining.
My question is: when will the parties call off their political rallies and debates?
A typical mild corona virus case.
These are not counted, in general.
Note: next year, if/when the virus returns next there will be a reservoir of people who had it and have antibodies already. That should substantially slow future infections.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/seattle-woman-recovered-from-coronavirus-shares-her-story/281-126b5ec3-27f1-4e87-b488-2c7a9c67f34a
You guys all just swallow the CCP’s numbers, using that as your basis of how this is not so bad. I am amazed at how trusting you are, warms the heart that this event is bringing the political divide closer together.
That aside can these things not mutate to become worse?
Sure, tell us: what are the real numbers?
The Kirkland nursing home is horrible and I have no problem with any precaution they take in these kind of facilities. My mom isn’t in a nursing home but it’s a independent senior living and as of tonight they are confined to their apartments. Nobody has shown any symptoms just precautionary. My sister took her some groceries and supplies so she’s set.
“The Chinese New Year celebrations were not a major factor”
I think that is not correct.
It is true that CNY was cut short but it had a big effect on the early spread of the disease. The Chinese govt made huge efforts to track down residents of Wuhan who had fanned out across the country.
“The Kirkland nursing home is horrible and I have no problem with any precaution they take in these kind of facilities”
And the cruise ship situation, yike.
My wife’s parents are in a senior center in China. Across the country these centers have been basically isolated. The parents report their center workers are not allowed to go home. If they went out they might bring something back in. They’ve slept in chairs or on mats on the floor for, like, 6 weeks. Brutal. Seniors mostly stay in their units, meals are delivered to the door. No meals in the dining room. No visits from families.
I had not heard that regarding the senior centers in China. That is brutal. And highly psychologically stressful for all involved. I hope your in-laws come through it okay. All the caregivers in China have put in heroic efforts, IMO.
My DIL’s family isn’t from Wuhan, but her BIL is, and had visited just prior to the outbreak, so they were pretty panicked for a bit, until he tested negative.
I’ve been a proponent of sensible preparedness for decades now, so I got a little chuckle when my DIL earnestly called to make sure I had food and water, etc. I was less amused when I got caught up in the Costco frenzy for TP and disinfectant, while trying to do normal shopping.
“I got caught up in the Costco frenzy for TP”
What is this frenzy for buying toilet paper? Is it really that hard to find something with which to wipe? If you think you need enough toilet paper to last a month, there’s a bunch of other stuff you’re going to need a lot more.
Mike
JimNorCal on March 12, 2020 at 1:40 am said:
Sure, tell us: what are the real numbers?
———————————————————————
I don’t know. You don’t know. But apparently the W.H.O. is in on your conspiracy theory to undermine Trump. Because a day ago you guys were scoffing at the idea this is a pandemic. Now the W.H.O. has officially declared it’s a pandemic. Do we believe them now that they say it is serious, and the lack of action is “alarming”, or back when they say it is no big deal?
—————————
LJB on March 12, 2020 at 1:24 am said:
It’s tempting to say that China mishandled it, and that may be true.
————————–
If mishandling means welding people into their buildings to a point they are jumping off high floors to escape, or if it means arresting the first doctor who tried to draw attention to the virus (and who died from it, allegedly), and arresting any citizen journalist who dared to post information warning people it was serious, then maybe they mishandled it. Or maybe this robust type of response is worthy of the praise being heaped upon the CCP in western media. (Over a common cold, I am led to believe).
“Because a day ago you guys were scoffing at the idea this is a pandemic.”
I don’t think people were “scoffing.” Well, you can always find some idiots somewhere saying something stupid. I think there are objections to the blatant way this outbreak was being politicized to attack Trump.
I also think there’s a little pushback on the borderline panic that’s surrounding this situation. CNN just put up a story that said the U.S. has had 1,267 cases of COVID-19 with 38 deaths. In Minnesota alone, influenza has hospitalized 3,254 people with 95 deaths this season so far. This ain’t Ebola.
Mike
Regarding the toilet paper crisis:
I now understand why wealthy wokesters still subscribe to the print edition of The New York Times.
MBunge on March 12, 2020 at 2:37 am said:
“I got caught up in the Costco frenzy for TP”
What is this frenzy for buying toilet paper? Is it really that hard to find something with which to wipe? …
LeClerc on March 12, 2020 at 5:57 am said:
Regarding the toilet paper crisis:
I now understand why wealthy wokesters still subscribe to the print edition of The New York Times.
* * *
Guys, do an experiment for us.
Try some of your alternatives for a week and get back to us.
Anything other than TP will clog your toilet mucho pronto (kids will flush the darndest stuff), and disposal of contaminated wiping products will complicate your life when you are trying to be hyper-clean.
Paper towels can be okay texture-wise, but are too thick for the need, and so very wasteful – and you are going to need them for other things.
Ever handled newsprint for lengthy periods of time? You’re going to have to use some of your (now scarce) paper towels to get the ink off, which can be problematic in some areas of the body.
Do I really need to go into the hygiene of: soft stools, diarrhea, and hemorrhoid sufferers?
Don’t knock toilet tissue – it’s the best thing in the modern first world.
BBC said that travel was suspended just with the Schengen countries in Europe, not all but the UK. Fair enough – Schengen countries don’t control their borders with one another, and Italy is a Schengen country.
Well, now we know why Trump exempted the UK – nothing so mundane and reasonable as being out of the Schengen Zone (and thus able to better monitor travelers — see the end of the excerpt).
It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/12/trump-coronavirus-travel-europe-resorts-126808
BTW, I am long familiar with the news tradition of layering stories so that the essential points come first, then elaborations on them, then interesting but not critical details, devised in the days when editors would cut stories to fit the page make-up.
However, this is the most fractures, non-structured post I have read in a long time, even on the internet, where essentially no story-telling discipline is imposed at all.
It’s funny how journalists feel no shame when stoking the flames of fear, and then when something significant is done, they cry with indignation. My how easily their feelings are hurt even in the face of a pandemic. Must..attack..Trump..at..all..costs.
My fear is not the virus, but the mass psychosis that is being generated by this virus. By the numbers this new bug seems to lie somewhere between the common cold and seasonal influenza. And it maybe even less when the Seattle nursing home deaths are subtracted out. Yet, this virus may actually accomplish what an army could not do: reduce the US to nothing by the self-imposed shutting down of our economy with the resulting societal collapse.
physicsguy on March 12, 2020 at 9:33 am said:
My fear is not the virus, but the mass psychosis that is being generated by this virus
——————————————————————-
My fear is the strange behavior by various world authorities, starting with the shocking crackdown on the Chinese people in Wuhan. Followed by worldwide praise for how they handled it. You guys may be right that the virus itself is a big nothing. That makes the behavior of everyone from the W.H.O. down very, very strange. I have a very uneasy feeling about all of this.
John Hinderaker expresses an opinion I was trending toward myself.
Secretly, we all want to stay home in our jammies instead of going to work.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/self-quarantining-sounds-familiar.php
The S&P500 (SPY) just touched the 200-week moving average, still above the last low set 15 months ago. Since then the S&P500 gained a remarkable 40%. The market is adjusting folks. It’s not the Apocalypse that the media wants you to believe. If Trump were not president then this would be bottom-of-the-page news. They so desperately want to get rid of him that they are willing to do anything. Makes me wonder why that would be. Is it really because he hurt their feelings or is there something else going on?
JimNorCal said:
Sure, tell us: what are the real numbers?
————————————
Solrist said:
I don’t know. You don’t know.
OK, fine.
My point was to predict that the US deaths would not exceed China’s. IIUC, you are suspicious that China’s official numbers are manipulated lower than the actual count.
This is not really a conflict.
My opinion does conflict with this guy:
When pressed by lawmakers for an estimate of eventual fatalities in the U.S., Fauci said it will be “totally dependent upon how we respond to it.”
“I can’t give you a number,” he said. “I can’t give you a realistic number until we put into the factor of how we respond. If we’re complacent and don’t do really aggressive containment and mitigation, the number could go way up and be involved in many, many millions.”
MANY millions? No way.
Solrist, do you ever make out to Silicon Valley? If the US deaths exceed even the faked Chinese numbers I’ll buy you a beer … or a coffee … or whatever. If I’m still alive after “millions” of US deaths LOL
Rich Lowry explains why Italy became a basket case so quickly, and why early intervention is crucial.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/coronavirus-what-is-happening-in-italy/#slide-1
JimNorCal, I agree 100%. It’s the flu, people. Nothing more than a bad flu season. The numbers will be high among the elderly and those who are at risk like my wife who suffers from asthma. I have self-quarantined us to protect her.
We were losing the war, our economy was still recovering from the Great Depression,
By every metric, production and income levels had fully recovered by 1941. The labor market remained injured, with a lot of people still stashed in WPA work.
Brian, it may be just the flu. Have you any insight on the drastic measures therefore being adopted?
Has the NBA season been suspended before for whatever reason?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nba-suspends-remainder-season-coronavirus-spreads-n1156156
‘My fear is the strange behavior by various world authorities, starting with the shocking crackdown on the Chinese people in Wuhan. Followed by worldwide praise for how they handled it. You guys may be right that the virus itself is a big nothing. That makes the behavior of everyone from the W.H.O. down very, very strange.”
This. For those of us who have been following the story closely since mid-January, this is the most puzzling aspect of the whole situation.
Back when I first tuned in, when there were fewer than 300 deaths reported, I thought, Well, let’s see what happens when this gets out of China. Webasto gave us some early clues: transmits easily between people who don’t look or reportedly feel ill, and produces many minor cases that resolve without notice, much less heroic medical intervention. Diamond Princess reinforced that and offered reason to suspect – as I already did at that point – that the true case count in Wuhan was probably in the six or seven figures, but no one had noticed … or were able to notice … or wanted to notice. (Within much less time than the virus had been circulating in Wuhan, 19% of the passengers and crew on the DP were infected; how was there not at least 19% (of the 11 million people) in Wuhan infected?)
But China firmly held on to its version of the story: that its numbers reflected truth, which indicated a difficult-to-transmit virus (only a tiny fraction of the population were counted as infected) that causes a high percent of very sick people. And even after the examples outside of China should have caused reconsideration of this idea, organizations like WHO and the CDC stuck to it. Testing guidelines that literally ruled out the possibility of casual community spread in the US produced casual community spread, because the virus doesn’t care what China, WHO and the CDC are saying. And it got into a nursing home in Washington, chock full of the people who truly are at serious risk, because our betters were too busy being on China’s side to think up intelligent testing and barrier strategies to protect our at-risk senior/health compromised population while this virus makes its way through the general population – which it was always going to do, once it made the jump to humans and hitched rides all over the world on travelers.
There’s just no way that I can see the actions of WHO/CDC/other similar health organizations in a positive light. Everything they’ve done has made the actual situation worse and increased public panic.
Rich Lowry explains why Italy became a basket case so quickly, and why early intervention is crucial.
Richard Lowry knows nothing you don’t know.
One suggestion I’ve seen (from a non-professional) was that deficient sanitary procedures may have made Lombardy’s hospitals a breeding ground for the virus, and that accounts for much of the disaster therein. Another factor might be the abnormally large elderly population in Italy; however, Italy’s no worse than Japan in that regard, and Japan’s suffering is comparatively modest. It’s been remarked as well that the tactile nature of human relations in Italy and Iran might help spread the disease. The problem with that thesis is that Arabs get disconcertingly close to each other but the Arab world isn’t suffering abnormally.
Solrist, we live in the Information Age and as grand as that is it is subject to manipulation for political purposes. It’s been said that history begins the moment a person is born. It’s never been more true than today. Students aren’t taught history properly, so they don’t have the mental acuity to put things into perspective.
I’m just saying that we are way over-reacting to this. It’s important to take protective measures as I have but it is no excuse to freak out. I suggest that you take JimNorCal’s offer for a celebratory “beer, coffee, or whatever.”
Brian, maybe you missed the point. I am not as concerned about the virus as about the reaction of the so called health experts and authorities. Perhaps you should go watch some footage of what happened in Wuhan that your own media has many times praised, as has the W.H.O. They feel this is the type of thing governments around the world should do from here on, for this crisis (whether it’s all hype or not) and the next.
An update on the OKC-Jazz non-game – I usually record the games so I went back to the warm-up period. The on court tv guy was doing his pre-game commentary and you can see a man in a suit RUN behind him to get to the refs. They show the refs talking, then the coaches come in and so on.
The player had first been tested for strep, URI, flu and when those were negative, they tested him for corona virus. (see espn.com for the extended story). So, I would have to give a lot of credit to the Thunder’s medical guys to be active in getting the game stopped.
And, the last 5 games for the Jazz were played in NY, Boston, Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit. All those players, staff, arena people will have to be checked. And if any of those people come up positive, then more teams/games will have to be tracked.
If you watch the games, the guys sweat a lot, but I haven’t seen any info if the virus sheds via sweat. Anytime there is a free throw, they have people run out to mop up the wet spots. The players will fall into the crowd during games, hug each other after the games, high five with fans as they walk out. Lots of chances for the bug to spread.
A second Jazz player is now positive and he had visited a local high school yesterday. And, they have shut down the hotel they are staying in to deep clean it. I think things are going to get crazy here in OKC!
Solrist, I understand and I repeat: “subject to manipulation for political purposes.” It’s anti-Trump, and will always be anti-Trump even after this crisis passes. They’ll just move on to the next. The Chinese may or may not be transparent about this but we can’t fix them. All we can do is look after our own. Whether we are over-reacting, only time will tell. I say do what you can to avoid sharing bodily fluids with strangers. The virus will run its course, many will live, some will die sadly. Do what is prudent and ride it out. Funny how NASA is interviewing candidates for Mars missions. If you or someone you know are basket cases then you aren’t cut out for interplanetary travel.
Slightly off topic:
Yesterday, “Our World in Data” published a good summary of what’s currently known about the Wuhan coronavirus disease. They plan to keep updating it, but I don’t know how comprehensively that will be done.
For now anyway, it’s a data-driven look at where we are. Good for those who want a bit more than what’s offered at the Johns Hopkins site.
Here’s a link:
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
A few points about this whole mess we seem to be in.
1) True death rate wont really be known for years. China is completely unreliable with its data. Iran also and now Italy. Which has an AVERAGE population age 11 years higher than the US. Along with it being a novel virus and erratic testing. None of those number are good. If i had to guess at this point its probably 3% with a giant U shaped curve.
2) The true scary number is the r factor or how readily it transmits. Flu is about 1.4-1.6 depending on strain. This is looking like a 2.4 to 2.6. That is a huge jump.
3) Trump did and said the right things. and will still get un-even coverage of how we are handling it. I work in 911 and can tell you the call volume this weekend will be through the roof. Primarily since the coverage seems designed to amp up paranoia.
4) Time to start getting back in the market. I figure by tomorrow we will be close to 20% correction. And several stock I am looking at will be at 5 year lows.
5) Hopefully you keep a good stock of essentials on hand. Just driveing to stores is like The Road Warrior now. If you keep your guns locked in the safe. You may want to keep one on hand just in case. And make sure everyone in the house is aware of how to SAFELY handle it.
Just keep calm and and dont buy into anything they have to say(its too early). Its primarily a bad flu that is more contagious than normal. Take sensible precautions an plan to eat in for awile.
A question for medical people – what is the time frame from initial exposure to the corona virus to having enough virus in your system to test for it? And would your general health condition impact the speed of virus replication?
If it takes 3-5 days for enough virus to produce a positive test on a nose or throat swab, then those people demanding testing without symptoms or reason for testing are just wasting time and money.
By the way, on the worldometers site – “Sweden which announced that testing for Covid-19 will cease unless you are hospitalized or belong to one of the risk groups. Even if you report corona-like symptoms.”
The JHU site is under stress. Only partial data loads on refresh. It’s been 3 hours since data was updated.
I’m not trying to be pessimistic here, but this is a new negative assessment from Dr. Fauci.
Did the CDC drop the ball? Maybe the Whitehouse should just contract with S. Korean test kit providers and fly a few 474 cargo planes back and forth.
I have noted previously that my biggest concern is that government at all levels will not relinquish the extraordinary powers they have seized once this passes. There is a history.
I have no idea how serious this is. My daughter, who is at the Executive Level in a major public hospital in SoCal, is alarmed. I point out that the numbers simply are not alarming compared to a rough flu season. She comes back and tells me that this is different, due to unique characteristics. So, that is what she is being told. (She is a PT by profession, not an MD, so though knowledgeable, she is still dependent on the experts.)
It is obviously sensible to follow good practices; and it is especially critical for we old folks–but, just how disruptive should society as a whole accept? I think that people who in charge are running scared of fall out; but, who knows?
“Another factor might be the abnormally large elderly population in Italy; however, Italy’s no worse than Japan in that regard, and Japan’s suffering is comparatively modest. It’s been remarked as well that the tactile nature of human relations in Italy and Iran might help spread the disease. ”
Italy allows products with only 15% Italian sources to be labeled as “Made in Italy”. there is a large chinese sweat shop community in Milano spreading the disease
The JHU site is still “Not Fully Configured”. I’m not attacking anyone in particular but if I managed this site I would be out of a job. Having “been there, done that,” I can tell you this is a small data set. I know that there is a data warehouse behind it, and that its data is coming from a transactional database. Medical professionals use an app that interacts with the transactional database, much like how you interact with Amazon when placing orders. The data warehouse should be on a timer that kicks off a process that builds a new instance of the data warehouse that creates a view of the transactional database. When all is complete, a software switch is flipped that makes that new instance instantly available for use. This is not rocket science. There should be no lengthy “not fully configured” periods.
2) The true scary number is the r factor or how readily it transmits. Flu is about 1.4-1.6 depending on strain. This is looking like a 2.4 to 2.6. That is a huge jump.
Here’s someone to dispute you:
https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2020posts/how-scientists-quantify-outbreaks.html
“I have no idea how serious this is.”
I have long realized that our public discourse is much dumber than it used to be. Go back and look at an interview with President Reagan in the 1980s and compare it to one with Obama. Which is why I’m not entirely surprised at how poorly our thought leaders are doing at informing us about this outbreak.
Why can’t someone, like Trump, just took in the camera and plainly say “The problem with COVID-19 isn’t getting it. It’s spreading it. Young and healthy individuals are overwhelmingly likely to survive infection but the more people spread this disease around, the greater the danger to the small part of the population that is more vulnerable. That’s why seemingly extreme actions are needed to contain a disease which is not incredibly deadly but is very easily shared from one person to another.”
It’s not rocket science.
Mike
Stores in the Raleigh area are completely out of disinfectant wipes and sprays, and also toilet paper. Goodness, people. Fortunately, I keep supplies in what my manufacturing guru husband calls a kanban — I always have a backup, and replenish when I pull the backup from the shelf. In our seventies but healthy, we are doing moderate social distancing. We wanted to go to ACC basketball games, but now they’re cancelled anyhow.
Oh, and we talked to our broker this morning and we’re making some modest stock buys.
Foreign Policy has an article titled:
It’s Time to Cancel the U.S. Presidential Campaign
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/11/cancel-us-president-primary-campaign-democrat-coronavirus/
I thought it was a satire site.
Can you imagine…
Oh, and I cannot express the depths off my disgust for the “get Trump” crowd in these circumstances. We’re trying to prevent the deaths of many of our vulnerable citizens. Problems and glitches in testing and diagnosis are being worked out. Serious attempts to prevent the spread from open borders and open airports are being made. Divisive name-calling is unacceptable.
We are no longer led by grownups. I don’t know if it’s the education system, social media, or going to an all-volunteer military.
Mike
The JHU site is finally back up but the dataset is still not updated. It’s now 4 hours old.
MBunge, agreed. The universities are a mess. Social media is a cesspool. I don’t know about the voluntary army. There is a pervasive lack of seriousness. We need another General George S. Patton to kick some butt.
‘Italy allows products with only 15% Italian sources to be labeled as “Made in Italy”. there is a large chinese sweat shop community in Milano spreading the disease.’ avi
Our son-in-law just happened to mentioned this to us about 3 months ago, as he knows I look at labels in terms of purchasing clothing, shoes and ceramics. It is the first thing I thought about when I heard about the disease progression in Italy.
Trump’s handling of this crisis, relative to the Dem hysterical criticism of “too much!” quickly followed by “not enough!”, is likely to help him in Nov.
But thousands of Americans will die. Maybe tens of thousands. And the Dem media will be, mostly wrongly, blaming Trump.
Further reduced social contacts will be called for before it gets better. In Slovakia, most schools are closed (16 confirmed cases, no reported deaths yet). Our son studying in Brno, in Czechia, needs to decide whether to come home because there might be a border closing, despite Schengen. Or, he and his new wife, both about to finish 6 yr Med school, might stay. And might get semi-drafted to do nursing assistant work in hospitals. This to replace the patient doctor work they had been watching to learn from which has been canceled.
ArtDeco: “By every metric, production and income levels had fully recovered by 1941. The labor market remained injured, with a lot of people still stashed in WPA work.”
So, you were there and the official government figures are always correct in all regions? I was there and the region I lived in (Colorado) was far from full recovery. Most people were still struggling to earn enough money to pay their bills every month. Many did not have full time employment. The biggest stimulus to our economy was a CCC camp. Those workers spent a few dollars in town on weekends, but it wasn’t much. The ramping up of wartime spending/production and enforced savings through rationing was what set the country up for full recovery. The powers that be expected a recession as the war ended and spending wound down. Didn’t happen. People had money in savings and were in a buying mood after four years of rationing and meager supplies of domestic goods.
Your ability to look up statistics is excellent. While statistics provide big picture insights, they sometimes mislead on the small picture details.
TommyJay: “Did the CDC drop the ball? ” The short answer is yes. Bureaucracy and red tape created a shortage of test kits. The nation’s labs and CDC are trying to get on top of it. Getting a test here in Washington has been difficult unless you have been in China or know you have had contact with an infected person. The reason: They don’t have enough test kits quite yet. That should change soon. If it doesn’t, the progs will use it against Trump.
Listen, I hear in the media and from the W.H.O. that China handled this all very well. What you do is, people who die of complications from the illness, you don’t credit that to the illness. Pneumonia caused by the virus? That’s a pneumonia death, not a Covid death. Worried about rates of infection? Don’t test people – make people line up around the block out front of one hospital to get a referral to another hospital (after about 3 days waiting out front of hospitals, the ones who die on the street are not confirmed Covid cases – no need to clutter up the stats with them!) Or make bunches of them wait in a government office filling out forms which request a test kit. This may or may not cause people who weren’t infected to get infected – who knows, it’s not like any of them will be tested. Lots of ways to make the numbers look good. The world should learn from the CCP just how healthcare ought to be done. And if personal liberties get in the way of treatment? You know what to do.
Solrist, I hear you. What’s your solution? I fall on the side of personal responsibility.
So, you were there and the official government figures are always correct in all regions?
The official figures are more reliable than your memory. Whether you’re in a Depression or not, you have damaged local economies here, there, and the next place. And you have families suffering economic problems without regard to the condition of the local or national economy.
Now 5 hours without an update at the JHU site.
It’s either really bad news that they are holding off releasing, or their IT people have fallen down.
Art Deco:
Statistics don’t lie but liars often cite statistics; sometimes even statistics that are not relevant to the point. Garbage in garbage out applies to government stats by the way.
Who you going to believe? Your lying eyes or my data? Statistically speaking, that is probably yellow rain on your leg.
Only true statistics don’t lie — and statistics don’t create or aggregate themselves. Mostly fallible, and often dishonest, people create the numbers which go into statistics.
My doctor wife likes these so far, for the world:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Trump’s America looking a lot better than many other places.
Uh Oh, no fist fights allowed. Remember we are all in this together.
Calculating the death rate for the virus is difficult, because we don’t have an accurate number for those infected. We only know how many were reported, which could be and probably is much less; both because governments lie and also because many infected people may not know that they’re infected.
Also, just to throw in an additional complication – we know that the people most at risk of death are the elderly, and people with other health problems. These same people are also the most at risk from a lot of other things, including regular flu (whatever “regular” might mean in this context).
Therefore, it’s reasonable to assume that at least some of these people would die from some other cause during any given time period, if they hadn’t died from the coronavirus.
IOW, without the virus we would have had x number of deaths; with the virus we have x+y. The virus is responsible for the “y”, but we can’t really know what that is because we don’t know “x”.
What
Now going on 6 hours without a data update at the JHU site.
I’m not a great believer in conspiracy theories but there is a possibility that their IT department released a new version of the software which broke due to inadequate end-to-end (e2e) testing. They could have gone to Udemy.com and purchased a quality 3-hour course on Continuous Integration (CI). Courses are frequently on sale for $11.99 per person. A small price to pay.
There is a possibility that there is a lot of “counting hanging chads” going on right now as they try to piece together the lost data from today’s log files.
The “No Ban Act,” introduced by Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) and co-sponsored by 219 House Democrats, would have prevented Trump from immediately implementing a travel ban on China once the outbreak of the coronavirus spread past its origins of Wuhan.
Instead, the No Ban Act would have allowed travelers from Wuhan to continue to arrive in the U.S. while the president received guidance from Congress.
“This bill imposes limitations on the President’s authority to suspend or restrict aliens from entering the United States and terminates certain presidential actions implementing such restrictions,” a summary of the legislation reads.
Who you going to believe? Your lying eyes or my data?
The data is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, stalker.
TommyJay: “Did the CDC drop the ball?”
Even before the WuFlu I recall reading mocking articles about CDC branching out to other issues. I don’t recall the issues, maybe Global Warming or transgender or how many genders. It’s possible they took their eyes off their actual job ….
The “No Ban Act,” introduced by Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) and co-sponsored by 219 House Democrats, would have prevented Trump from immediately implementing a travel ban on China once the outbreak of the coronavirus spread past its origins of Wuhan.
Always disconcerting. Are they playing to their SJW constituency, or do they actually fancy open borders is so important that it trumps control of an epidemic? The Democratic Party would prosper if they could just manage to be non-awful.
“The official figures are more reliable than your memory.”
SO WHAT?
JJ was talking about his personal experience, and he gave us a helpful pep talk from within the context of that very interesting historical memory. That’s what matters here, not some data point.
I don’t recall the issues,
One line of business they tried to develop was treating gun ownership as a public health problem.
Artfldgr I’m shocked that Rep. Judy Chu was thwarted in her just and noble cause upholding the travel rights of those with Han ethnicity! We must all fight the rampant xenophobia and racism in Orange Man Bad! Open borders for all! 🙂
Cough, cough, I’m feeling much better! 😉
Stalker? Hoot! Where are the data?
Are the data reliable and are they relevant? Do they comport with historical reality? Were they compiled by a self serving agency?
Don’t ask Art Deco he has the numbers.
What did Elon Musk say the other day? Something like in today’s age no one needs a college education — what you need is already available online. Today a university degree just shows that you toughed out the distractions of university life. Short of that there is no real learning going on, just a lot of partying.
IMO, not like it was 60 years ago when a degree meant something. Of course, access to cadavers for medical students are not (yet) available online but you can become an accomplished computer software engineer online. I would imagine that there are other disciplines that fall into this same category.
JJ was talking about his personal experience,
The phrase, “our economy was still recovering from the Great Depression” is not a reference to his personal experience. His discussion of his personal experience was spare in that comment, more detailed in the next. It wasn’t his personal experience I was disputing, but his characterization of the situation at large.
ArtDeco: “One line of business they (CDC) tried to develop was treating gun ownership as a public health problem”
Thanks
I made that snide comment in reaction to the JHU site coming under the direction of “The Center of Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.” Don’t get me wrong, there are fine people there. Many years ago I was invited to a lecture by the inventor of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), now known as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). They dropped NMR because it contained the word “nuclear” which was thought to frighten people. You know, “China Syndrome”, and all.
IMO, not like it was 60 years ago when a degree meant something.
A degree still means something, just not precisely what it once meant. You’ve had a number problems:
(1) baccalaureate granting institutions hoover up a larger share of each cohort (45% rather than 25% as they did 60 years ago);
(2) They hoover them up not to grant 48 credits or 60 credits of vocational training, but some training padded with the degenerate descendant of 19th century liberal education. (About 65% receive unnecessarily padded vocational degrees, 30% unnecessarily padded academic degrees, and 5% unnecessarily padded arts degrees). Allan Bloom complained about the amount of time youths spend in school, and recommended a two-year program if schools weren’t going to set up a core curriculum worthy of the name; it was the most sensible and least noticed thing he had to say.
(3) Institutions are corrupt six ways to Sunday, they mollycoddle their resident head cases, and they abuse the sensible.
(4) A number of the occupational schools provide pseudoprofessional training, in as much as the ‘profession’ or the training requirements are a pure function of guild lobbying buttressed with state regulation. Social work programs, teacher training programs, and library administration programs are the worst offenders.
(5) A number of ‘academic disciplines’ are patronage programs for privileged political interests (the victim studies, for example).
(6) A number of others are authentic disciplines, but have decayed in various ways which have ruined them in most departments, making them vulgar apologetical exercises. It varies from place to place, but you hunt for those truffles and you commonly find them in sociology, cultural anthropology, American history, English literature, geography, political science…
Something like in today’s age no one needs a college education — what you need is already available online.
I’m recalling the wag who said he’d replaced his wife with a home-engineered blowjob machine he called his ‘head research assistant’. What you’d benefit from and what he’d benefit from are two different things.
Brian Morgan
What did Elon Musk say the other day? Something like in today’s age no one needs a college education
From what I could find, he said you don’t need a college education to work at Tesla. Which is fine because it’s his company and his rules. But many other companies may not do this. A degree still means something. I’m not sure a resume that shows an applicant spent a lot of time online would qualify them for much – unless they had an online degree. On the job experience in certain fields is valuable but attending a university and getting a degree is one step closer to getting into many of those fields. The reason a college education doesn’t have the same meaning it did 60 years ago is because there are so many more people who have degrees.
That said, people can definitely educate themselves online. Getting employers to understand that is a bit tougher.
Re: ‘head research assistant’, there is definitely a need for PhDs and MS’s leading technology innovation at SpaceX but the hard core programming does not require legions of college graduates. Instead any high school graduate will suffice as long as they are careful, detail-oriented coders, who rigorously test their code. It’s definitely not a field for just anyone, contrary to what Joe Biden thinks.
Montage, certifications are awarded by reputable online learning firms but it is the interviewer’s job to thoroughly test the applicants skills before hiring them. Learning coding is not the same as “spending a lot of time online”. Technology innovation in programming advances at a rapid pace. Reading a resume that describes proficiency in not just one but ten technologies is impressive particularly if they test well. It shows a deep desire to learn which is a desirable quality.
Art Deco and Montage, each of you are extremely well-spoken, likely having multiple degrees. My experience shows that some disciplines simply don’t require 4+ year degrees. Computer Programming is one of them. I’m sorry but it is true.
Still no data updates from JHU after 7 hours. The site is live but the data is woefully old.
“Testing guidelines that literally ruled out the possibility of casual community spread in the US produced casual community spread, because the virus doesn’t care what China, WHO and the CDC are saying.” – KyndyllG
Theory once again getting mugged by Reality.
Reminds me of the advertising story: the dogs just didn’t like the food.
Art Deco on March 12, 2020 at 10:59 am said:
Rich Lowry explains why Italy became a basket case so quickly, and why early intervention is crucial.
Richard Lowry knows nothing you don’t know.
* * *
LOL – maybe so.
Put people pay him to put it all together, and other people pay to read what he’s written.
(Not me, I’m an internet free-loader, except for certain well-regarded, value-added sites (makes note to hit Neo’s tip-jar again soon)).
Solrist on March 12, 2020 at 11:12 am said:
…They feel this is the type of thing governments around the world should do from here on, for this crisis (whether it’s all hype or not) and the next.
Solrist on March 12, 2020 at 2:11 pm said:
Listen, I hear in the media and from the W.H.O. that China handled this all very well. What you do is, people who die of complications from the illness, you don’t credit that to the illness. … Lots of ways to make the numbers look good. The world should learn from the CCP just how healthcare ought to be done. And if personal liberties get in the way of treatment? You know what to do.
Brian Morgan on March 12, 2020 at 2:21 pm said:
Solrist, I hear you. What’s your solution? I fall on the side of personal responsibility.
* * *
That was an interesting list of how to fudge the mortality numbers; I suppose there is no way of finding out whether or not it’s actually happening (I would put my bet on “yes”). Also a reminder that numbers other than death-by-COVID can be, and often are, fudged by governments, business, and individuals.
AesopFan; Kyndyll G:
I’ve not seen anything that indicates they ruled out the possibility of casual community spread. I think they concentrated the resources they had – that is, limited number of test kits – on those with close contact with infected people and/or travel histories that indicated exposure.
To test everyone with flu symptoms would require many millions of kits.
Kate on March 12, 2020 at 1:31 pm said:
… Fortunately, I keep supplies in what my manufacturing guru husband calls a kanban — I always have a backup, and replenish when I pull the backup from the shelf. In our seventies but healthy, we are doing moderate social distancing.
* * *
Thanks for the new word – I had to look it up because I wondered what keeping backup supplies had to do with banning cans, or kans.
I “retired” (left the paid work-force long before becoming Social Security bait) before the JIT inventory systems became big, and didn’t work anywhere they would be used anyway.
Watch out with the dancing – I here it’s a close-up and personal sort of thing.
Our Number-2-Son is a big Swing & Lindy-Hopper, and went out to his regular group just last night.
He is being cautious, but expects they will cancel their meetings pretty soon.
Brian Morgan
Computer Programming is one of them.
I wouldn’t disagree with that. I don’t know enough about online sources in those fields. I do know experience on the job is always more valuable than a degree and I have known guys working IT jobs with no specific computer related degree.
Montage on March 12, 2020 at 1:31 pm said:
Foreign Policy has an article titled:
It’s Time to Cancel the U.S. Presidential Campaign
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/11/cancel-us-president-primary-campaign-democrat-coronavirus/
I thought it was a satire site.
Can you imagine…
* * *
Some people think FP verges on satire at times, but I get your point.
Personally, I don’t think much would be lost by the Democrats if they canceled their convention and probably even some preceding campaign events.
By that time, Biden will have the nomination sewn up, and he can only benefit by not being seen in public.
Trump feeds on his massive rallies, though, and would miss having the pictures and attendance numbers to troll the Democrats with.
But, there will always be Twitter.
Voting in person is going away in a lot of places anyway; maybe this will be the final nail in the coffin — although vote-by-mail is a lot more susceptible to fraudulent voting by people already in theirs. However, I don’t think we should radically extend the lead-time before polling day except for logistics (out-of-country citizens should still get theirs much earlier than we do in-country).
(IMHO, I strongly suspect that some of Biden’s surprise victories were not that big a surprise to the people counting the ballots.)
((And there was some fraud going on with mail ballots in at least one election that I remember, where they were not sent to the armed forces nearly soon enough to get them returned on time)).
One more slightly off-topic bit:
At the economics blog “Marginal Revolution,” Alex Taborrak just wrote about COVID-19 event risk assessment planning. The critical issue is the size of the group, not the number of carriers.
(Of course, as always, garbage in, garbage out.)
Here’s an example:
“The mathematics for calculating the probability of exposure given the number of carriers in a population and group size aren’t difficult but they can be surprising. Even a low number of carriers can generate a relatively high probability for reasonably sized groups. For example, assume you run a firm of 1000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area (population 8 million.) Let’s suppose that there are just 500 carriers in the area. In this case, assuming random draws, the probability that at least one of your employees is a carrier is 6%. You can run your own calculations at Wolfram Alpha following this format:
p=8000000, c=500, g=1000, 1-1(1-c/p)^g //N
where p is the population size, c is the number of carriers, g is the group size and the //N at the end isn’t a division but a command to Wolfram Alpha to give you a numerical answer.”
More at this link, including a useful graph.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/covid-19-event-risk-assessment-planner.html#comments
AesopFan, I am expecting the Trump campaign to come up with virtual rallies. All they need is a big enough server.
Cornflour, that’s correct: 6.06%.
A 6% chance that one employee out of 1000 in your firm might be a carrier.
As the business owner I would take that seriously. I would look into the possibility of (1) testing for fever before entry, (2) company-provided meals at your workstation, (3) expanding telecommuting where possible, and (4) move out of the Bay Area (high-priority)
Kate, YouTube offers something like that during Trump rallies but it is awful. There is a single panel to the side that captures comments made by YouTube users. The problem is that when you get hundreds or thousands of people the comments scroll by so quickly that you can’t read them. Something else needs to be designed to handle yuge crowds. YouTube is owned by Google. They have the technology but probably not the will to solve the problem especially for Trump.
Brian Morgan:
There’s an enormous flaw in that statistic, typical of the sort of thing that’s thrown around and repeated these days.
It’s the original assumption about “carriers.” “If there are 500 carriers…” So, what’s a “carrier” of COVID-19? An infected person? Certainly not. A symptomatic infected person, even if only mildly symptomatic, is aware of being sick and unless that person has been on Mars recently, knows he or she should not be at work.
There is no evidence yet of asymptomatic carriers – “Typhoid Mary” types – and there is certainly no reason to assume 500 of them.
Okay, one more off-topic bit.
I’ll openly admit to this being beyond speculative, maybe childish. Oh well.
Somewhere, I read that many coronaviruses have a protective lipid outer coat. In hot weather, the coat melts. This partly accounts for the “seasonal” aspect of seasonal flu. Is this the case with the Wuhan coronavirus?
If so, shower/sauna/shower once a day?
Hi neo, some people are more “body aware” than others, plus I think that some people don’t give a flying you-know-what as evidenced by those who have already violated quarantine because they “felt better”. (That happened a couple days ago. I’d have to track it down.) Some people are very self-centered. You and I would not violate quarantine but others might. Maybe 6% is too high but let’s say it is 1%. Is it something to be concerned about?
Dyer comments on the Trump address, and makes this amusing quip.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/03/12/president-trump-suspends-travel-from-europe-proposes-measures-to-ease-financial-hardship/
Yeah! JHU is back up after 10 hours.
Here are the numbers for the US:
As of 9:33am EDT (10 hours ago): Confirmed:1,323 Deaths:38 Recovered:8
As of 7:44pm EDT (current): Confirmed:1,663 Deaths:40 Recovered:8
IMHO, I was expecting a greater number.
Good news, I think.
Brian Morgan:
If there are that many people walking around sick, then short of becoming a complete hermit there’s nothing you can do.
I don’t think there are that many people walking around knowing they have COVID-19. But even if there aren’t, but there are a lot of people walking around who think they just have colds or something but actually have COVID-19, then it really usually is a mild mild disease and pretty soon a great many people will have immunity and the spread will go way down.
Brian Morgan,
Regarding Computer Programmers : I used to be one, and I recall a saying from the period – “When it becomes possible to write a computer program in English, it will be discovered that programmers cannot write in English”.
Just returned from a small local ACME grocery store. Two days ago was the last time I was there. Slight uptick in tensions but for those of us who struck up a conversation we all agreed it was due to media hype. No one knows anyone who is sick. Also, stopped by the pharmacy. Today there was a run on hand sanitizer. More arriving tomorrow. Nothing is different in these people’s lives except the constant fear-mongering of the media.
Hi richf, that saying is new to me, thanks! Programming is a lonely craft that gets little respect. In the good ole days you could write a “Hello World!” application with just a few lines of code. These days it can take a hundred lines of code spread out over half a dozen files. Everyone learns to write this way. We do it to ensure that applications can scale as user demand grows. Sure, it’s a stupid “Hello World!” program but it is best to develop good habits early. I’m not sure they are teaching this at universities.
The people in my sleepy coastal California community are aware of the news but hadn’t changed their behavior at all, in my estimation; until today. Because yesterday the newspaper informed us that the state of CA decided to insert a small number of people from a covid-19 hot spot into a quarantine at a state owned property just off one of our beaches. With armed guards outside.
These several folks have very mild virus symptoms, but it is unknown whether any of them have actually contracted covid-19. You know, because test kits are more precious than gold. So it is better to scare the entire community instead of being sorry later. Because these people don’t have acute medical conditions they did not remain in the SF Bay area where those quarantine facilities are located.
Now, the stores are being depleted, all large gatherings are cancelled (that was going to happen anyway), and restaurants, hotels, and tourism are being hammered.
Brian Morgan on March 12, 2020 at 4:35 pm said:
Art Deco and Montage, each of you are extremely well-spoken, likely having multiple degrees. My experience shows that some disciplines simply don’t require 4+ year degrees. Computer Programming is one of them. I’m sorry but it is true.
* * *
Brian is correct.
I taught community college students to code in the seventies & eighties in two years. Good enough for business applications — a knowledge of the actual user requirements was more important — but not to the level of a systems designer or truly geeky application.
Sometimes you need a surgeon (geek) and sometimes a CNA (routine coder) is just fine.
“Sure, it’s a stupid “Hello World!” program but it is best to develop good habits early. I’m not sure they are teaching this at universities.” – Brian
Depends on the uni. I have two sons in the field, although with very different deep-geek specialties, and they told me that their design classes were very good.
That was a bit before the real deep dive into PC curriculum control, though.
* * *
richf on March 12, 2020 at 8:34 pm said:
Regarding Computer Programmers : I used to be one, and I recall a saying from the period – “When it becomes possible to write a computer program in English, it will be discovered that programmers cannot write in English”.
* * *
And that was before most of them were from India and China.
However, I did have a t-shirt that read: FORTRAN Jock – I speak in GOTOs.
I love it when a comment thread comes together.
https://babylonbee.com/news/nations-nerds-wake-up-in-utopia-where-everyone-stays-inside-sports-canceled-social-interaction-forbidden
Read the whole thing for the punchline.
Here is what I can piece together about how the JHU COVID service is structured:
The web address, arcgis.com, is one of many related GIS products offered by California-based ESRI. (GIS is short for Geographic Information System).
ArcGIS Online is cloud-based GIS mapping. Anyone with a credit card can open an account. ESRI maintains the servers and web application, you provide the data.
John Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) most likely has an account with ArcGIS Online. So, no actual coding of the web application is required by CSSE.
Apparently ArcGIS offers an administrative user interface that CSSE uses to layout the site’s appearance. More importantly the layout of the data file that feeds ArcGIS is designed using said user interface.
It is not far-fetched to think of ArcGIS as something similar to WordPress for bloggers. For my personal blog of astrophotography I use WordPress hosted by a company who is responsible for the servers and integrity of the system. I log into an administration interface and key-in a blog entry according to a set of rules imposed by WordPress. When I am done I click the Publish button. ArcGIS is similar.
JHU CSSE is responsible for collecting the COVID-19 data from dozens of worldwide sources and normalizing it into a format that is agreeable to ArcGIS. CSSE may have developed software to automate some or all of the task.
JHU CSSE makes their data available to the public through a GitHib repository. I’ve perused the “Issues” tab. There appears to be only one or two contacts at CSSE who handle an absolute avalanche of requests and bug reports. Many of the issues this past day were related to the site not being available.
With respect to today’s problems with the site It is unclear where the fault lies. Clearly CSSE is responsible for the drop-off in the update rate. At one point I measured a delay of 10 hours between updates.
On the other hand the site was exhibiting behavior that indicated the ArcGIS servers were having difficult meeting demand. Another possibility is that CSSE uploaded a file that was incompatible with what ArcGIS expected. One would hope that the file would have been flatly rejected without breaking it.
The latest word from CSSE at GitHib is that they are down for maintenance tonight. This is a bit disconcerting. If I were responsible for the project I would insist on having a “staging” server. All significant changes should be sent to staging so it can be vetted before rolling out to the public. The production servers should never miss a beat. If you break production you lose customers. Very simple.
Just a reminder that there still is beauty around us. Here are the latest images from my suburban New York backyard:
https://astrotuna.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/M35-NGC2158_L540x15s_R300x14.3s_G300x8.4s_B300x13s_calAignChannels_luminance100_S15-3-0_G94_SA35-25.jpg
https://astrotuna.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/M81_L250x90s_R90x85.3s_G90x50.2s_B90x77.8s_Rx0.83_Gx0.90_Bx1.00_S15-3-25_SA25-25_G92_SGB2_SH70_2020-02-24.jpg
Brian Moran:
Many years ago, I used ArcGIS and a few other ESRI products, and your comments are consistent with my experience. I’ve never worked at ESRI and have no knowledge of their servers, but I’d imagine the current load is far more than they ever expected. I’d guess it’ll get even worse.
Here is a page I added to one of my Astrophotography websites that I will update daily:
https://snrcalc.now.sh/covid19
Each day I’ll visit JHU’s GitHub repository and download the time series data for USA Confirmed Cases, Deaths, and Recoveries. I’ll import it into Excel and build Pivot Tables and Charts, then take a screenshot and upload it to my site.
Ideally I would import just the time series data to my website and then let you visualize it with charting software. One step at a time.
A friend just alerted me to this website:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
It contains the same time series data as mine so I’ve decided to make this the first and last day that I update my site.
Cornflour, thank you. Several years ago I had a software engineer on my team just out of university who was well-versed in GIS. He performed a proof-of-concept using ArcGIS for senior management.
Kate – back to the virtual rallies – Trump would need a huge server, Joe & Bernie not so much.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/12/nobody-shows-up-anyway-donald-trump-jokes-about-democrats-canceling-political-rallies/
Brian Morgan on March 13, 2020 at 3:40 am said:
Just a reminder that there still is beauty around us. Here are the latest images from my suburban New York backyard:
* * *
Beautiful – thanks for reminding us that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of when we get overwhelmed by our mundanity.