Coronavirus Crisis: Main Thread

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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Grizzly » Sun Mar 01, 2020 11:22 am

Bismillah! and Jumping Jesus! these last three or so posts are are terrifying.

Reminds me of Megadeth Countdown To Extinction





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Local fishwrap..

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lest ye forget: The PNAC’s seminal report, 'Rebuilding America’s Defences: strategy, forces and resources for a new century' called for a "catastrophic and catalysing event – like a new Pearl Harbor” AKA, 911 further, in the same paper, (you may want to sit down before reading further) Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces. And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sun Mar 01, 2020 1:53 pm

Via: https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-e ... our-stages

The Four-Stage Impacts of the Coronavirus

Mohamed A. El-Erian (background)

When it comes to the impacts that the coronavirus could have on economic well-being and corporate profitability, it may be useful to think of four stages. The first two are currently in play and legitimately worry many, from households, companies and financial markets to governments and central banks. They don’t just overlap but feed on each other in an unsettling manner.

The third phase involves forming a market bottom and, subsequently, an economic one providing the basis for a sustained though far from full recovery. The final one is potentially longer-term and could have elements of de-globalization and, in the case of financial regulation and supervision, greater focus on liquidity risks among non-banks.

Phase 1: Economic and corporate damage.

As I have detailed in earlier articles, the coronavirus is unusual in that it triggers at the same time large adverse supply and demand shocks that disrupt both the manufacturing and services sectors, while simultaneously involving multifaceted internal and external dislocations. It’s a dynamic that has been experienced in small developing countries, particularly among fragile and failed states, but not in large, interconnected economies such as China.

With fear amplifying things, the result is what I have called a series of cascading economic sudden stops that virtually paralyze impacted activities. Unlike financial sudden stops, where the spike in counter-party risk and resulting disengagement of banks can be overcome by strong central banks activating their balance sheets, there is no quick way of ensuring that the damage is transitory (i.e., contained, temporary and reversible). The risk of limited policy effectiveness is not just a central bank issue. It also applies to fiscal stimulus, albeit to a lesser extent.

The outlook for the global economy, with considerable likelihood not just of a significant slowdown but also several countries in recession, worsens at a time that already included fragile growth dynamics. With one exception, every component — consumption, investment and trade — of the gross domestic product growth equation is coming under pressure in a multiplicative fashion. The one that doesn’t is net government spending, due to likely fiscal policy responses and automatic stabilizers. Yet it risks adding to funding (and, in some cases, exchange rate) pressures in the most financially stressed countries.

For their part, most companies face challenges due to lower revenues, higher costs, complicated inventory management, staffing shortages, pricing power erosion and, therefore, profit margins and balance sheet positioning. These pressures are particularly acute for those operating in the affected areas, followed by multinationals with global supply chains and markets.

Phase 2: Financial contagion and feedback loops.

The market reaction at the outset is to frame the dynamics of such an initial exogenous shock as constituting a sharp V that can be “looked through.” In the case of the coronavirus, it encouraged “buy-the-dip” investment behavior, anchored by recent experiences such as the September attack on Saudi oil fields and the U.S. missile strike in January that killed a senior Iranian general. But the ability to brush off mounting inconvenient truths is subject to a tipping point. In this case, that occurred last weekend with the spread of the coronavirus to Iran and Italy and its growing presence in Japan and South Korea.

Once reached, the tipping point launches technical market dislocations that have their own dynamics. This includes sharp downward price moves, forced deleveraging, and panic selling. The market for new funding starts to freeze and pockets of illiquidity become more pronounced. Pressures build on central banks from many sides to cut rates and find other ways of injecting liquidity, even though this does not address underlying causes but instead targets the financial symptoms.

The longer these financial dislocations persist, the higher the risk of contaminating economic and corporate fundamentals. The resulting pressure is particularly acute for companies, households and governments that need short-term access to funding due to low cash balances and maturing debt obligations.

Phase 3: Bottom formation.

Markets will typically overshoot on the way down, providing the basis for a technical bottom. For it to prove a steppingstone to a large and sustainable recovery, rather than just what the marketplace terms a “dead cat bounce,” the dislocation’s initial cause needs to be addressed. In this case, that means successfully containing the spread of the disease and significantly increasing the patient recovery rate (best done via a vaccine). Economic expectations would pivot from an L to the brighter side of a U, resulting in significant comeback in growth and buoyant financial markets.

Phase 4: Longer-term effects.

This type of exogenous shock is likely to leave scars. These could well include a further push toward de-globalization, due to a less-open approach to travel and migration. More companies will assess the disruption risks of global supply chains, and not just their benefits of lower cost, just-in-time inventory management and greater efficiency. Financial regulators may more seriously evaluate the extent to which liquidity risk has migrated from banks to non-banks.

The initial romance with a quick “V” by markets and corporate/economic analysts has finally given way to a more realistic assessment of the seriousness and severity of the sudden stops unleashed by the coronavirus. Still to come is the required, more holistic understanding of the different stages of this consequential shock. The sooner this materializes, the better equipped we will be to handle the damage to economic prosperity and financial stability.


This is where "regulatory capture" truly fucks us. If we had serious regulatory bodies, they'd be working on this overtime instead of adopting a Wait And See stance and trying to avoid being noticed by Trump and Pence. Coronavirus disruptions represent an absolutely massive opportunity to rebuild our industrial base and create opportunities for American entrepreneurs. Alas, our financial markets are dominated by multinational behemoths who have no allegiance the nation they feed off, and Washington, DC has been a marketplace plaza to sell off our resources for decades now.

Parasites, everywhere you turn. Hopefully more than a few of them die altogether in the months to come.
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Cordelia » Sun Mar 01, 2020 4:47 pm

Iamwhomiam » Thu Feb 27, 2020 1:35 pm wrote:Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Wombat. It's frightening, envisioning what's to come, if any but the very best outcome possible is realized. 3-4% fatality rate in our population of 7.8 billion souls equates to the deaths of 234 to 312 millions. Certainly, those counts would be much higher in the areas of concentrated population and/or have high levels of air pollution, as you mentioned.

Change is coming. (If this is not soon contained and controlled)

Would you get vaccinated, should they claim to have created one?
Free. Just line up over there.


By TZVI JOFFRE MARCH 1, 2020

.....

Moderna Therapeutics, a biotech company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has shipped the first batches of its COVID-19 vaccine to the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which will prepare it for human testing as early as April, according to Time.

The new vaccine was made just 42 days after the genetic sequence of the virus was released by Chinese researchers with a new method that allows the vaccine can be scaled up quickly. The vaccine is filled with mRNA, the genetic material that comes from DNA and makes proteins, which codes for the right coronavirus proteins. Immune cells can process that mRNA and start making the protein in the right way for other immune cells to recognize and mark for destruction.

https://www.jpost.com/International/CDC ... -US-619337


Which is potentially more dangerous: Contracting The Virus or injecting a quickly developed, fast-tracked vaccine that could jump CDC testing protocols? :blankstare

Development of New Vaccines

The general stages of the development cycle of a vaccine are:

Exploratory stage

Pre-clinical stage

Clinical development

Regulatory review and approval

Manufacturing

Quality control

Clinical development is a three-phase process. During Phase I, small groups of people receive the trial vaccine. In Phase II, the clinical study is expanded and vaccine is given to people who have characteristics (such as age and physical health) similar to those for whom the new vaccine is intended. In Phase III, the vaccine is given to thousands of people and tested for efficacy and safety.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/basics/test-approve.html
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Cordelia » Sun Mar 01, 2020 4:51 pm

Does He or doesn’t He?

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Sunday made his first public appearance in four days following what the Vatican has called a “slight indisposition” that forced him to cancel some audiences and activities.

The 83-year-old Roman Catholic leader appeared at the window of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace to address thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly Sunday noon message and blessing.

It was his first public appearance since an Ash Wednesday Mass in Rome, during which he was seen coughing and sneezing.

The Vatican has not specified what was ailing Francis. However, amid fears in Italy over an outbreak of coronavirus, spokesman Matteo Bruni dismissed on Friday speculation that the pope was anything more than slightly unwell.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope ... SKBN20O1NC
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby liminalOyster » Sun Mar 01, 2020 9:29 pm

Cordelia wrote:Which is potentially more dangerous: Contracting The Virus or injecting a quickly developed, fast-tracked vaccine that could jump CDC testing protocols?


1. I'd try the vaccine if I felt I was in a high risk area, for sure.

2.Wombat's excellent analysis of process is best part of this thread but for those with worrying or hyoonchondrical tendencies, a CDC epidemiologist friend of friend says that it is almost certain that the number of asymptomatic and low symtomatic cases is so high that the idea of a 1.4% fatality rate is insane. She thinks it's probably lower than flu. Interesting sidenote too that children appear to be almost entirely unaffected.
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sun Mar 01, 2020 11:36 pm

liminalOyster » Sun Mar 01, 2020 8:29 pm wrote:a CDC epidemiologist friend of friend says that it is almost certain that the number of asymptomatic and low symtomatic cases is so high that the idea of a 1.4% fatality rate is insane. She thinks it's probably lower than flu. Interesting sidenote too that children appear to be almost entirely unaffected.


An important point, and in practice, a completely fucking exhausting one, too! In the past seven days I've had to change tacks from 1) explaining to people that the problem was the virulence and economic effects, not the fatalities, to 2) explaining that we're not "all going to die from this." And people will be much more frightened by Friday.

For folks reading along and just getting used to this, that virulence is measured in shorthand as "R0" -- that's a zero, not a capital O -- the basic reproduction number. The fatality is measured as "CFR," the case fatality rate. Due to the massive unknowns and poor surveillance (especially in poor countries) it's far too soon to know either at this point.

Some of the CFR estimates out there are really wild, and I've seen far higher than 1.4% make it past the editors at major websites and publications. (For example.) Even more insane is the folks who are freaking themselves out by assessing this only based on outcomes -- ie, taking the currently reported 3,039 deaths and 45,064 recoveries to claim a fatality rate of 6.31%, which is getting up towards SARS territory. If nCoV was really that deadly, things in South Korea and Italy would look a lot different by now.

Also, note that even those high-estimate studies are at pains to clarify most of the fatalities are "immuno-compromised" people, those who are already very sick and/or approaching death. "Metabolic cessation" was always my favorite bit of morgue/gallows humor -- it's not a real condition, but it is a real cause of death.

Still. A CFR lower than 0.1% is reassuring to think about, so naturally I have my doubts. In more grounded speculation, if nCoV is both more contagious than influenza and more likely to ravage the intensive care unit and senior citizens home, I don't see how it could shake out to be lower unless we develop some new containment measures. Especially in the absence of a vaccine or reliable treatment.

Edited to add: This resource page is excellent and I've shared this link & quote before:

Given all of the statistical noise in the data, Ferguson says that the uncertainty around these estimates of 1% mortality is about 4-fold in each direction. So bottom line, he thinks the true mortality rate lies between about 0.25% (1 in 400) and 4% (1 in 25).
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Mar 02, 2020 1:26 am

Wombaticus Rex » Sat Feb 29, 2020 7:43 pm wrote:Really, our best bet is banking on seasonal variability, and that's currently a total unknown. Cheers!


Correction: Not a total unknown. (Hopefully.)

Richard Neher, Emma Hodcroft, and co-authors have posted a paper (not yet reviewed by other experts) where they analyze the possible effects of seasonality on the extent of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. Their model assumes that the virus, owing to its transmissibility and the global mobility of people, will eventually become established globally. (That’s not certain at this time, but many experts think it is likely.) They begin by noting that four other coronaviruses that circulate in the human population (typically causing symptoms similar to the common cold) are more prevalent in the winter and early spring. The good news from their model is that this seasonal variation in transmission should slow the spread of the new coronavirus in the coming months. The bad news, though, is that SARS-CoV-2 infections are likely to reach a peak next winter (2020/2021). At least that provides more time for health-care systems to prepare. They also emphasize that health officials and others should not assume the virus is under control based on diminishing case counts, because seasonality (along with quarantines and other social-distancing efforts) may give a false impression that the virus has been brought under control.


That "second wave" was also the worst part of the 1918 outbreak. Getting a vaccine ready by then is going to be a Manhattan Project scale undertaking, ideally one with fewer casualties and long-term consequences. Then again, maybe Trump will just give the contract to some campaign donors in Tel Aviv and we'll have to buy bootleg South Korean stuff from sketchy Amazon vendors.
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Mar 02, 2020 1:46 am

Good summary here: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspect ... -suspected

(Keep an eye on that site, they've become the best single spot for vetted updates in the past week. Remember, most American news outlets, even "real" ones, are dogshit, hack political platforms run by dumbfucks who get hired on the basis of college connections and nepotism, in order to generate sensational, enraging headlines in order to sell advertising. Don't perpetuate the stupid.)

Last night and so far today, four states have reported more COVID-19 cases, including two more in Washington state, where a new gene finding is fueling concerns that the virus may have been circulating in the community for as long as 6 weeks.

Also, Rhode Island reported its first case, California's Santa Clara County reported another, and Illinois' Cook County reported a presumed positive, raising the number of cases detected by the nation's public health system to 27.

Testing likely to unmask more community spread

Public health experts expect US cases of the novel coronavirus to increase quickly in the days and weeks ahead, now that state public health labs are able to test for the virus and with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sending out more test kits.

A lengthy delay with the CDC-developed test kit had hobbled state testing for the virus until late last week, which, along with a narrow case definition, tied public health's hands for casting a wider net for the virus, which is known to spread easily in the community.

Also, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn, MD, announced last night on Twitter that the FDA has granted an emergency use authorization to COVID-19 virus diagnostic tests developed by two public health laboratories in New York City.

On Face the Nation today, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, said in 2 weeks, the US will able to test nearly 20,000 samples a day.

Gene analysis points to silent Washington spread

Meanwhile, the gene sequence from a Snohomish County, Washington, high school boy whose illness was announced on Feb 28 as a community spread case has already been uploaded to a public database, and an early analysis hints that it is related to a Snohomish County case reported in January, suggesting that transmission has been underway in Washington state for the last 6 weeks.

The earlier case was a man in his 30s, the first to be detected in the United States. The Snohomish County man had traveled to Wuhan at a time when there were only 300 cases in China. He was seen at a clinic, where his specimens were collected and sent to the CDC. After his COVID-19 infection as confirmed, he was taken to Providence Regional Medical Center for treatment.

Trevor Bedford, PhD, in Twitter comments from the open-source pathogen genome analysis project Nextstrain, said the sequence from the new case descends on a branch from the earlier Snohomish County sequence, strongly suggesting transmission in the area over the past 6 weeks, which could have resulted in a few hundred cases. Bedford is a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

He said the two sequences could also reflect separate introductions, though highly unlikely. "I believe we're facing an already substantial outbreak in Washington State that was not detected until now due to narrow case definition requiring direct travel to China."

Two new Washington patients in critical condition

Today, Public Health–Seattle & King County reported two more cases, based on state lab testing. One of the patients is a man in his 60s who is hospitalized at Valley Medical Center in Renton. He has underlying health conditions and is in critical but stable condition.

The second patient is also a man in his 60s with chronic health conditions. He is hospitalized at Virginia Mason Medical Center, where he is listed in critical condition.

Also, the health department addressed a report of an infected US Postal Service worker, noting that the patient is one of four cases reported yesterday. Media reports said the postal employee worked at a package handling facility in Seattle.

Infections in Rhode Island, California, Illinois

The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDH) said today that the patient is in his or her 40s and had traveled to Italy in the middle of February. It added that the patient had traveled little since returning from Italy and had not returned to work. Nicole Alexander-Scott, MD, MPH, said today at a media briefing that the patient had also been in France and Spain.

The person is isolated in the hospital, and family members are in home quarantine. Health officials are in the process of identifying other contacts.

Last night, California's Santa Clara County reported another case, an adult woman who is a household contact of a community-spread case it announced on Feb 28. The newly reported patient is not hospitalized or sick.

Also last night, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and Cook County announced a presumed positive, but had no other details about the patient, pending CDC final confirmation. Public health officials are tracing contacts and have asked the CDC to deploy a team to help with the efforts.

The case is the third to be detected in Illinois; the earlier two involved a woman who got sick after a Wuhan trip and her husband, who didn't travel but contracted the virus from his wife.


Expanding the parameters of travel-based screening was a big factor in the EU explosion in the past week -- once everyone realized that Italy was a vector, sure enough, those cases started stacking up. (A lot, too: Austria, Croatia, the lovely Czech weirdos, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Netherlands, Romania, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland...)

This is the real nightmare of nCoV. It's a wakeup call, and a merciful wakeup call. If this was SARS-type deadly, we'd be fucked-type fucked, instead of just facing a global recession which was, of course, incoming anyway due to over-valuation bubbles and too much helicopter money.

My main concern is the only lesson that gets taken away from this, in country after country, will be "Thank God That's Over With."
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Mar 02, 2020 1:39 pm

The nCoV shock has also been very illuminating in terms of the conspiratainment ecosystem. So much of what we've grappled with here over the years has been utterly opaque stuff, plausibly deniable black ops often enacted by actors who don't even officially exist. This, though? You can follow some of the lead researchers on Twitter. They're just talking shop with other epidemiologists, or supply chain policy wonks. (The supply chain people, actually, haven't done that well with this so far, very complacent & slow to understand.)

Go to the source material. It's out there, available right now and almost entirely for free, too.

In fact, really the biggest "info-hazard," as the PR poodles like to put it, is that same open source conversation, an international network of institutional expertise and over-educated amateurs all trying to hammer out some basic collective sense-making. For us, it's a boon, a blessing, but for leadership attempting to hammer out a messaging roadmap and control / coordinate / conceal information, a waking nightmare.

In an era where narrative control is the last real power governmental authorities have left, I expect that to come under fire, both covertly (new policies at institutions, pressure from the executive level) and overtly (expect a lot of op-eds from concerned dipshits about whether or not we should be letting genomics sequencers, microbiologists and emergency management thinkers share information in public). I expect that to happen quite soon, too -- like, March 2020.

Have some sympathy for the devils, though. It's fundamentally true that most people are simply quite stupid, and equally so that mass panic is not only counter-productive, but likely to do just as much damage to society as the actual pandemic. The problem is agency, after all, and people in cities have very little agency; you're woven into a fabric of mutual dependency that can unravel very quickly.

What's more, even in the first world, emergency resources are rather limited. What happens when America's approximately one million available hospital beds are over-run? Bad things. Which is why it's important to keep these concerns out of the minds of, as limnalOyster gently put it, "those with worrying or hypochondrical tendencies." CDC's bounded estimates put influenza hospitalizations at between 140,000 – 810,000 per year.

The system can, sort of, handle that over the course of a flu season, it cannot handle that in the course of one month. And remember, back when nCoV was just a fixation of terminal paranoids like me, we were already balls deep in a high volume flu season -- this after the 2018-19 flu season, which went down as "the longest on record." The system was already creaking.

Via: https://www.outbreakobservatory.org/out ... 020-season

Each year, public health authorities and healthcare providers prepare in anticipation of the inevitable arrival of flu season. The past several flu seasons in the US have been particularly difficult, with the 2017-18 season proving to be especially deadly and the 2018-19 season lasting considerably longer than others in a decade. This week, Outbreak Thursday will cover the current status of the 2019-20 flu season, which appears to be unfolding in an unusual manner, with an early start and an unanticipated dominant strain circulating, that is worrying health officials due to an early rise in cases.


And that's not even the biggest part of why US leadership (and leadership anywhere else) are so hesitant to pull the trigger on things like school closures or quarantines: most Americans (most people anywhere) live financially precarious lives, "paycheck to paycheck," and they cannot afford any disruption to their weekly routines. These measures will have dire long-term economic consequences; stated less obtusely, it will destroy millions of people's lives. Immediately, as soon as it happens.

And that's almost entirely thanks to the fragile, shitty system our ruling classes have built. "If the truth would kill them, let them die." Civilization: somewhere between a feeding trough and a gun to our heads.

So, if you're Extremely Online, or have the ears of people in policy circles, keep hollering at them about DIRECT DEPOSIT STIMULUS to citizens instead of helicopter money for markets. The demand-side destruction is going to be massive and the sooner governments get in front of this, the better. It's for their own good.
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Mar 02, 2020 4:33 pm

NPR just reported six dead in US from corona virus. No Details yet.

edited to ask, Rex, have you seen any mortality figures for those who had survived their initial infection but had a recurrence?
Last edited by Iamwhomiam on Mon Mar 02, 2020 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Mar 02, 2020 4:44 pm

Iamwhomiam » Mon Mar 02, 2020 3:33 pm wrote:NPR just reported six dead in US from corona virus. No Details yet.


As in, six total. All elderly/ill people. Five deaths all from the same Washington state cluster which is located at "LifeCare," an elder care facility in Kirkland, WA. One more in an adjacent county. Nursing homes will be driving almost all of the early casualties. Expect tons more; it's not a surprise or a disaster. Florida will be reporting deaths in elder care spots this week, too -- the older folks on military quarantines may get announced this week, but FedGov can control things better there so it might get held for the weekend press dump.

I think a big part of why we're hearing reports out of WA state on a Monday is pure politics; that's Inslee's turf. Dems are going to politicize this every bit as much as the GOP.
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Mar 02, 2020 5:14 pm

Yeah, I checked the JH site and noted the number. NPR didn't give details until a few moments ago. Yes, it makes sense, as you mentioned earlier, the most vulnerable, our infirm aged are among the few populations most likely to succumb to this disease and die. I'm curious to find mortality rates among those suffering a recurrence after surviving a first bout.
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Mar 02, 2020 8:44 pm

8bitagent » Wed Feb 26, 2020 6:09 am wrote:Can someone point out the last time entire large countries were placed under total lockdown and the world began to look like something out of a dystopic sci fi movie? Just the optics of hazmat soldiers patrolling empty sprawling metropolis cities is quite strange.


Yeah, the optics are really tripping me out too. Here's a few examples:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHkN_7CfPig


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5PXh4U8CJs


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSyQvrb-caQ

Getting hard to separate fact from fiction!
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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby Grizzly » Tue Mar 03, 2020 12:19 am

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Re: Manufactured 'Contagion' - Coronavirus Edition

Postby 8bitagent » Tue Mar 03, 2020 6:05 am

I remember reading The Hot Zone around the time Outbreak and other virus movies came out. And I remember of course the Ebola cases that dominated the news in Africa a couple years later. But I'm way behind on information of all this modern virus stuff.
I have a few questions though:

1. The media and pundits say H1N1 2009 had between 150,000 and 500,000 deaths globally(what??) Ok I definitely don't remember the mass hysteria and military quarantine zombie apocalypse optics we're seeing on the news the last few weeks in 2009. Someone on tv said 36,000 people died in the US from H1N1 in 2009...what? Yeah 3100 people dying globally from COVID-19 is bad, but are the H1N1 numbers correct? Why wasnt there apocalyptic end time paranoia and worst-case-pandemic insanity in the media in 2009? I read 14,000 people died from Ebola 2014? Again, these numbers seem much more massive than what's going on so far.

2. And the name. Is this a case of "ISIS vs ISIL vs DAESH" name branding? CORONAVIRUS, COVID-19, nCOV, SARS 2020. I'll stick with Covid-19.

3. A lot has been made about fatality rates. The fatality to infection rates seem horrific in America, Iran, Italy, and South Korea taking reported deaths against reported cases. Sounds more than just 2% mortality rate and closer to SARS.

4. How come the fully recovered cases(39,000-ish?) are rarely mentioned? Tonight the media keeps talking about 89,000-90,000 global cases of Covid-19, but if almost 40,000 people are recovered...the numbers don't seem as scary.

I sadly do think a mix of recommendations and hysteria is going to lead to a much broader mass disruption than people have ever seen in North America, Asia, Africa, Europe, etc. Sucks for people about to travel or had expensive tickets for events. I have no prediction on what's going on. As it feels like it could level off by Summer...or EVERYTHING gets cancelled, from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, to most travel to everything in between. Even if the number of infected/deaths doesn't quite reach 2009/2014 "pandemic" levels
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