^^^^This!! Thank you, Gantz. I don't want to start a flame over the severity of Covid 19, but the research out of China suggests that 20% of the known cases are considered "severe" enough to require hospitalization. Probably 10% of the hospitalized patients die. Most of the deaths are patients over 50 with additional health factors, but other hospitalized patients are often gravely ill for a period of two to four weeks. Even the less severe cases that don't require hospitalization can be quite incapacitating with high fever and severe bronchial symptoms that last around two weeks. Keep in mind that even "low risk" infected persons such as children require a minimum 14 day quarantine (usually at home) with minimal exposure to other persons. People that want to compare this to a flu epidemic are whistling in the dark.

And even if you are young and fit, odds are you interact with people who aren't. Do you want to kill them with your virus? My in-laws who generally watch my kids a lot are over 70 and one has a compromised immune system due to cancer treatments. They would be pretty much goners if I brought that virus around them.

There are absolutely way more people infected than is officially being reported. They had to retroactively update someone's cause of death in either Oregon or Washington because they realized it was COVID-19 after the fact. But the person died before they even suspected that there were people in the country who were infected other than those people evacuated from China and Japan.

Someone also posted a story on NYC Reddit about having flu-like symptoms after coming back from Japan in February, but the hospital was not authorized to test him for it by the CDC since Japan wasn't considered an outbreak zone at the time. They did rule out the flu and some other stuff, then released him. He said the hospital told him he could use public transit to go home, even though covid-19 was still a possibility. The day after he went to the hospital, Japan because one of the outbreak countries. His story was verified by the local news media.

And in early February I had a cough for about a week that I think was a mild case of bronchitis, which I've never had before. But the other day I was reading a summary of a mild covid-19 case that was observed on the Japanese cruise ship, and the symptoms were extremely similar to what I experienced. My symptoms were extremely mild so I didn't think much of it at the time. But, considering I've never had bronchitis before, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that I had a mild case of it.

Anecdotally, my girlfriend has been sick this week and went to the doctor. She has basic cold/flu symptoms (sinus problems, sneezing, general malaise). The doctor didn't suggest testing for coronavirus. I don't know if that is based on her professional medical opinion or a larger issue with the frequency and/or availability of testing, but it did seem odd that it wouldn't just be an automatic thing to test anyone who comes in reporting cold/flu symptoms.

Houston now has two confirmed Coronavirus cases and a third one in suburban Fort Bend County. A dozen or so people are in voluntary quarantine in Fort Bend County.

Minimal impact thus far, though our media - like everywhere else - is all about it.

The Mayor has said thus far there hasn't been any impact in terms of importing goods (which is, basically everything except chicken, turnip, potatoes, and seafood) to the island.

The Premier (equivalent of Governor, if you're American) has said the province is prepared should coronavirus be detected here. The most likely ways that could happen, for us, are unscheduled landings of international flights (Come From Away is set here, but it's a weekly occurrence with at least one or two planes), or via the ferry from Canada. There are detection and isolation measures in place at both.

There are almost no face masks left on the island so the health authorities are begging the public not to buy them and let healthcare professionals use them instead.

Lots of local seafood is no longer being purchased by China, and a major seafood expo in Boston (our most important one of the year) has been delayed. That's actually devastating, but mostly for rural communities, it's not a major deal in the capital city.

Oil dropping is lethal for us. We're very near bankruptcy anyway, and our budget for 2020 is oil at $63/barrel. It's currently barely above $50. Every dollar difference is about $25 million less to our government.

No students at local schools applied for exchange programs in China. This has caused a bit of a diplomatic incident because usually we send lots, China has still sent lots to us, and they've asked our government what's up.

Certain things are delayed. For example, we can't get monthly public transit passes in April because they're made in China and that factory is shut down.

There has been some racism towards Asians at the city's university campus, enough that the President of the university had to go to the media to tell people to go fuck themselves and grow up.

My wife was sick with a really bad respiratory infection a few weeks ago, and so did my 3 year old son. It was so bad that when she try and stand up she had problems breathing. I took her to the doctor and basically didn’t do anything but gave her a prescription. I personally think the virus has been here for a while undetected because the medical community has not done any widespread testing. My wife and her mom are convinced they had it simply by the symptoms they had. I can’t say for sure if’s that was the case but who know really unless they been tested.

everyone in my office got a delivery of purell today, which was nice I guess. No fewer people on the bus in the morning or anything like that though...

Portland-Dispatches from the hot zone!! So far the kahrona-cough appears to be less cataclysmic than we all thought. I don't doubt it's still serious but the PNW hasn't burned itself to the ground yet. Preppers cleaned out Costco of paper good and cleaner but they were still happy to paw over the free samples and there were MOUNDS of vegetables. People are still dining out but also must be working from home. Traffic is light and public spaces are a ghost town. I've been through a dengue fever outbreak in the jungle, a meningococcal disease outbreak in college and now this thing...weird times man. The conspiracy theorist in me is intrigued by all the fanfare but the pragmatist isn't impressed. 4000 dead on a planet of 7 billion??? I understand new is scary but 40,000 Americans die in car crashes every year and nobody gives a f#ck...

Aside from Ultra being cancelled (which brings 100s of thousands of visitors), local companies are feeling the hurt as well. Royal Caribbean Cruise lines has seen its stock drop 50% this month. Carnival Cruise lines stock lost about 50% as well. Local airline Spirit Air has seen its stock drop from 44.58 on 2/13 to 21.54 today. Basically every local tourism based business has flatlined.

I've seen one person with a mask (an older guy).

but if it's as virulent as "they" say, you didn't get sick...its still normal flu season too..

I’ve been working too hard to notice. Plan to swing by Borough Market tomorrow though so will see. Otherwise I haven’t been out and it’s seemed quiet, but the weather has been truly horrendous so that’s probably the main driver.

Quite a few upcoming conventions and trade shows in San Francisco have been cancelled. The hotel/tourist industry is being decimated. My best friend, who works at a major hotel, had his hours basically cut to zero and he is applying for unemployment. I suspect the unemployment office is going to be very busy. I'm not in the city right now but he tells me the major commercial streets are much emptier than usual and businesses are closed or have shortened hours.

Then of course, the news has reported the Grand Princess cruise ship being held off the coast but likely soon to dock in SF. I have not read what they are going to do with the passengers some of whom are going to test positive and others of whom may have been exposed but haven't yet developed a positive test. I doubt the US authorities will emulate the Japanese who have been widely criticized for keeping everybody aboard the Diamond Princess, leading to many additional exposures and some deaths. But the question becomes where will they quarantine the people. The nearest military base, Travis AFB, has already been used and I don't know if it has additional capacity.

You will soon be able to get them tested if they still want to be. The PCR test they will be able to get, though, will reveal current infection only, not past infection (you need a serology test which is under development but not yet ready for that). In fact, that's how they are determining now if people are safe to leave quarantine: A series of negative tests.

If she thought she had coronavirus, I hope she self-quarantined for 14 days. If she didn't, I hope she didn't really think she had "it" because she would have been exposing others as would anybody today who suspects they have coronavirus. And yes, the coronavirus illness apparently does last quite a while--typically 10-14 days (based on what Chinese patients are describing)--so if she was sick for only a couple of days that makes it very unlikely she had "it".

One virologist was on TV today saying he thought most Americans--in fact most people around the world--would eventually be exposed. In the US, with an overall mortality rate of even 1% (less than half what we are seeing in China which takes into account a large number of undiagnosed cases there and here and better average medical care here) and a population of 327 million, that's over 3 million deaths.

I am 74. I don't mind admitting I am pretty worried (and I'm a doctor--I am realistic about these things). At least one participant here has posted he is not bothered by the likelihood of millions of older people dying--we are an expense for social benefit systems. But the prospect isn't alluring.

Better average medical care or not, is the throughput of our medical system better than China? I have no idea...

I'm sure the government elite get medical care as good any in the world. There are many excellent Chinese doctors.

But we are talking about what's available for the average man on the street.

https://www.aetnainternational.com/e...-far-east.html

That's what I've read. China is nominally a Communist country so we assume the government provides health care. But as in the old Soviet Union, the government care for "regular" citizens, especially outside major cities, has been pretty rudimentary and middle class people often go to private clinics and hospitals and pay out of pocket. This is one reason China has a high savings rate--people budget for such expenses.

In this case the government has built prefab hospitals as we've seen and brought in thousands of "military doctors" to Wuhan and possibly other centers of illness. I'm putting that in quotes because I doubt China can have thousands of fully trained (by western standards) physicians to spare for this work and I'm equally sure they aren't going to strip their military of medical capability. I suspect these "military doctors" are much like we call "medics" in many cases--people with a few months of practical medical training (the Soviets also used such people). In the early days of this epidemic we all saw photos and video of people in waiting rooms and hallways with IVs running. The medical system, however good it may be in normal times, was clearly overwhelmed. Perhaps that has now been improved. Hard to know. And the US system is vulnerable to being overhelmed also if we get sick people in the numbers experienced in Wuhan. But that won't be the case for a while.

Finally, there's this:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-we-f...&page=1&pos=18

Reported cases of COVID-19 is like a cockroach. If you see even one in your house, you should just assume there are at least 20 more that are hiding about. I’m in Santa Clara, the epicenter of California’s outbreak. Nothing’s changed. The shelves at Safeway are still full.

I'd be careful in that Safeway even in normal times. I too am forced to shop in Safeway ('cause of the limited number of other options where I am right now) and more times than not I find overaged and expired items still on the shelf (not to mention the "pink slime" of a few years ago they were putting in their meat).