Coronavirus Thread: Worldwide Pandemic

[newworldafro]

Coronavirus live updates: Number of confirmed U.S. cases jumps to 53

12:08 p.m. 8,000 in California now self-quarantined: Some 8,000 people across the state have quarantined themselves, the California Department of Public Health told The Chronicle. That’s up from 6,700 last week. The federal government has asked people who returned from China, which has the highest number of coronavirus cases, to stay home from work and avoid big crowds.

 

[ORDER_66]

Coronavirus live updates: Number of confirmed U.S. cases jumps to 53

12:08 p.m. 8,000 in California now self-quarantined: Some 8,000 people across the state have quarantined themselves, the California Department of Public Health told The Chronicle. That’s up from 6,700 last week. The federal government has asked people who returned from China, which has the highest number of coronavirus cases, to stay home from work and avoid big crowds.

 

[newworldafro]

If a bunch of infections show up in South America it is going to throw a huge monkey wrench into the dynamics of immigration debate.

That part.

 

[Red Shield]

I got texts from my friend at the CDC today. He said some of his colleagues are expecting 55-65% of the world population gets it this year or next year. At 1% mortality rate that’s still a lot of people. He said he wasn’t panicking but that they all think it’s going to be a big deal.

He also predicted it would impact the election this year. He’s not an alarmist guy and he’s the smartest friend I have.

*insert that one martin writing gif that I can't find*

55% of 7.7billion people=4,235,000,000
1% of that is...42,350,000 million deaths

 

[Red Shield]

Depends on how he handles it

It helps some of his immigration/travel policy stances if he can spin it right. If it doesnt spread much to the US then he looks good

If it makes it here in large numbers and the markets crash then hes fukked

If a bunch of infections show up in South America it is going to throw a huge monkey wrench into the dynamics of immigration debate.

Yeah if it shows up and explodes in latin america, then yeah... he will be able to do whatever he wants with immigration/travel.


Market wise..I don't even think it has to make it and explode here for the markets to crash. Don't forget pretty much all of the worlds manufacturing is in Asia/China. So if China and Asia in general grind to a halt...

 

[nyknick]

Italian authorities are investigating the skyrocketing online prices for hygienic masks and sanitising gels after the coronavirus outbreak in northern Italy, according to two senior magistrates.

“We have decided to open an investigation after media reports of the insane prices fetched up by these products on online sales websites in the last two days,” Milan deputy chief prosecutor Tiziana Siciliano told Reuters.

The biggest outbreak in Europe has hit Italy, with more than 260 cases and seven deaths reported, most in the north of the country.

Many pharmacists have run out of hygienic masks and hand sanitizers, with people going online to buy them. “The price of masks online has risen from one cent to 10 euros each and a one litre bottle of disinfectant that last week was on sale for 7 euros, was up to 39 euros yesterday,” Siciliano said.

As the emergency has spread, police have also issued warnings that criminals posing as health inspectors have been using false identity papers to try to gain access to people’s houses to steal money or other valuables.

 

[NkrumahWasRight Is Wrong]

Yeah if it shows up and explodes in latin america, then yeah... he will be able to do whatever he wants with immigration/travel.


Market wise..I don't even think it has to make it and explode here for the markets to crash. Don't forget pretty much all of the worlds manufacturing is in Asia/China. So if China and Asia in general grind to a halt...

I know that. But if it DOES come here in big numbers then the markets are really fukked

 

[Dave24]

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, around 14 percent of people with influenza have no symptoms.)

Lipsitch is far from alone in his belief that this virus will continue to spread widely. The emerging consensus among epidemiologists is that the most likely outcome of this outbreak is a new seasonal disease—a fifth “endemic” coronavirus. With the other four, people are not known to develop long-lasting immunity. If this one follows suit, and if the disease continues to be as severe as it is now, “cold and flu season” could become “cold and flu and COVID-19 season.”

At this point, it is not even known how many people are infected. As of Sunday, there have been 35 confirmed cases in the U.S., according to the World Health Organization. But Lipsitch’s “very, very rough” estimate when we spoke a week ago (banking on “multiple assumptions piled on top of each other,” he said) was that 100 or 200 people in the U.S. were infected. That’s all it would take to seed the disease widely. The rate of spread would depend on how contagious the disease is in milder cases. On Friday, Chinese scientists reported in the medical journal JAMA an apparent case of asymptomatic spread of the virus, from a patient with a normal chest CT scan. The researchers concluded with stolid understatement that if this finding is not a bizarre abnormality, “the prevention of COVID-19 infection would prove challenging.”

With so little data, prognosis is difficult. But the concern that this virus is beyond containment—that it will be with us indefinitely—is nowhere more apparent than in the global race to find a vaccine, one of the clearest strategies for saving lives in the years to come.

Over the past month, stock prices of a small pharmaceutical company named Inovio more than doubled. In mid-January, it reportedly discovered a vaccine for the new coronavirus. This claim has been repeated in many news reports, even though it is technically inaccurate. Like other drugs, vaccines require a long testing process to see if they indeed protect people from disease, and do so safely. What this company—and others—has done is copy a bit of the virus’s RNA that one day could prove to work as a vaccine. It’s a promising first step, but to call it a discovery is like announcing a new surgery after sharpening a scalpel.

Overall, if all pieces fell into place, Hatchett guesses it would be 12 to 18 months before an initial product (read: vaccine) could be deemed safe and effective. That timeline represents “a vast acceleration compared with the history of vaccine development,” he told me. But it’s also unprecedentedly ambitious. “Even to propose such a timeline at this point must be regarded as hugely aspirational,” he added.

Even if that idyllic year-long projection were realized, the novel product would still require manufacturing and distribution. “An important consideration is whether the underlying approach can then be scaled to produce millions or even billions of doses in coming years,” Hatchett said. Especially in an ongoing emergency, if borders closed and supply chains broke, distribution and production could prove difficult purely as a matter of logistics.

Fauci’s initial optimism seemed to wane, too. Last week he said that the process of vaccine development was proving “very difficult and very frustrating.” For all the advances in basic science, the process cannot proceed to an actual vaccine without extensive clinical testing, which requires manufacturing many vaccines and meticulously monitoring outcomes in people. The process could ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars—money that the NIH, start-ups, and universities don’t have. Nor do they have the production facilities and technology to mass-manufacture and distribute a vaccine.

Italy, Iran, and South Korea are now among the countries reporting quickly growing numbers of detected COVID-19 infections. Many countries have responded with containment attempts, despite the dubious efficacy and inherent harms of China’s historically unprecedented crackdown. Certain containment measures will be appropriate, but widely banning travel, closing down cities, and hoarding resources are not realistic solutions for an outbreak that lasts years. All of these measures come with risks of their own. Ultimately some pandemic responses will require opening borders, not closing them. At some point the expectation that any area will escape effects of COVID-19 must be abandoned: The disease must be seen as everyone’s problem.

You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus

 

[Dave24]

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, around 14 percent of people with influenza have no symptoms.)

Lipsitch is far from alone in his belief that this virus will continue to spread widely. The emerging consensus among epidemiologists is that the most likely outcome of this outbreak is a new seasonal disease—a fifth “endemic” coronavirus. With the other four, people are not known to develop long-lasting immunity. If this one follows suit, and if the disease continues to be as severe as it is now, “cold and flu season” could become “cold and flu and COVID-19 season.”

At this point, it is not even known how many people are infected. As of Sunday, there have been 35 confirmed cases in the U.S., according to the World Health Organization. But Lipsitch’s “very, very rough” estimate when we spoke a week ago (banking on “multiple assumptions piled on top of each other,” he said) was that 100 or 200 people in the U.S. were infected. That’s all it would take to seed the disease widely. The rate of spread would depend on how contagious the disease is in milder cases. On Friday, Chinese scientists reported in the medical journal JAMA an apparent case of asymptomatic spread of the virus, from a patient with a normal chest CT scan. The researchers concluded with stolid understatement that if this finding is not a bizarre abnormality, “the prevention of COVID-19 infection would prove challenging.”

With so little data, prognosis is difficult. But the concern that this virus is beyond containment—that it will be with us indefinitely—is nowhere more apparent than in the global race to find a vaccine, one of the clearest strategies for saving lives in the years to come.

Over the past month, stock prices of a small pharmaceutical company named Inovio more than doubled. In mid-January, it reportedly discovered a vaccine for the new coronavirus. This claim has been repeated in many news reports, even though it is technically inaccurate. Like other drugs, vaccines require a long testing process to see if they indeed protect people from disease, and do so safely. What this company—and others—has done is copy a bit of the virus’s RNA that one day could prove to work as a vaccine. It’s a promising first step, but to call it a discovery is like announcing a new surgery after sharpening a scalpel.

Overall, if all pieces fell into place, Hatchett guesses it would be 12 to 18 months before an initial product (read: vaccine) could be deemed safe and effective.

That timeline represents “a vast acceleration compared with the history of vaccine development,” he told me. But it’s also unprecedentedly ambitious. “Even to propose such a timeline at this point must be regarded as hugely aspirational,” he added.

Even if that idyllic year-long projection were realized, the novel product would still require manufacturing and distribution. “An important consideration is whether the underlying approach can then be scaled to produce millions or even billions of doses in coming years,” Hatchett said. Especially in an ongoing emergency, if borders closed and supply chains broke, distribution and production could prove difficult purely as a matter of logistics.

Fauci’s initial optimism seemed to wane, too. Last week he said that the process of vaccine development was proving “very difficult and very frustrating.” For all the advances in basic science, the process cannot proceed to an actual vaccine without extensive clinical testing, which requires manufacturing many vaccines and meticulously monitoring outcomes in people. The process could ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars—money that the NIH, start-ups, and universities don’t have. Nor do they have the production facilities and technology to mass-manufacture and distribute a vaccine.

Italy, Iran, and South Korea are now among the countries reporting quickly growing numbers of detected COVID-19 infections. Many countries have responded with containment attempts, despite the dubious efficacy and inherent harms of China’s historically unprecedented crackdown. Certain containment measures will be appropriate, but widely banning travel, closing down cities, and hoarding resources are not realistic solutions for an outbreak that lasts years. All of these measures come with risks of their own. Ultimately some pandemic responses will require opening borders, not closing them. At some point the expectation that any area will escape effects of COVID-19 must be abandoned: The disease must be seen as everyone’s problem.

You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus

 

[Poetical Poltergeist]

Fun times

 

[Ku$h Parker]

welp, ive played enough Last Of Us and watched The Walking Dead to know how to survive

 

[AndroidHero]

The incompetency of the Iranian regime is something else.

 

[AndroidHero]

 

[ExodusNirvana]

If this shyt gets into NYC, specifically the subway system, it's a wrap

 

[88m3]

The Hill
BREAKING: Nancy Messonnier, a top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. appears to be inevitable.

"It’s not a question of if this will happen but when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illnesses," she said. “Disruption to everyday life might be severe."

The agency expects to see community spread of the disease.

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Top health official warns coronavirus spread in US is inevitable: 'It's not a question of if this will happen'