Conoravirus ...

[Benno von Humpback]

I think he was just managing expectations.

And trying to fend off massive, potentially wasteful and harmful off-label use of drugs that are currently essential to people with malaria and connective tissue diseases.

[Jamie]

I think he was just managing expectations.

And trying to fend off massive, potentially wasteful and harmful off-label use of drugs that are currently essential to people with malaria and connective tissue diseases.

So, ah...you're under quarantine?

[Ajax]

I cannot believe the horseshit going on in Congress, on both sides over the relief bill. Term limits, for the love of God, term limits.

[Tigger]

Today's black humour ...

Me: Hey--apparently there's hope that hydro-chloroquine may help in ameliorating the effects.

Her: I'm already taking it for Systemic Lupus.

Oh, the irony. Stay safe all.

Hopefully there is not a run on the stuff as she needs it.

[JoeP]

I spoke to my office mate today.

First, he is at work but feeling pretty afraid. For himself and his live-in mother in law, who has the ubiquitous "underlying conditions."

He says that plenty of people are still working simply because they don't want to use their vacation. This is just stupid, we are a large, global defense contractor with paid leave, not a dry-cleaning service. The Gov. of Maryland just announced that all non-essential businesses will be shut down, beginning at 5pm today. In his decree, there were some exemptions, specifically Paragraph E, section ii: Civilian contractors supporting defense and intelligence agencies.

Yes, that aptly describes my employer but the REALITY of the situation, is that we could function with a skeleton crew of 4 people indefinitely, instead of asking 166 people to come in every day. The company says that they will be drafting "hall passes" to hand out to employees to show police, should they be stopped and questioned about their activities.

Received my hall pass from the head office today, all 12 pages of it.

[Tigger]

Opera during a pandemic. Famous duet from Mozart's 'Don Giovanni' re-written for the times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S5WnAI ... kbVHc5O9Fk

[Benno von Humpback]

I think he was just managing expectations.

And trying to fend off massive, potentially wasteful and harmful off-label use of drugs that are currently essential to people with malaria and connective tissue diseases.

So, ah...you're under quarantine?

Yes. Day 8 and feeling well.

[LarryHoward]

I spoke to my office mate today.

First, he is at work but feeling pretty afraid. For himself and his live-in mother in law, who has the ubiquitous "underlying conditions."

He says that plenty of people are still working simply because they don't want to use their vacation. This is just stupid, we are a large, global defense contractor with paid leave, not a dry-cleaning service. The Gov. of Maryland just announced that all non-essential businesses will be shut down, beginning at 5pm today. In his decree, there were some exemptions, specifically Paragraph E, section ii: Civilian contractors supporting defense and intelligence agencies.

Yes, that aptly describes my employer but the REALITY of the situation, is that we could function with a skeleton crew of 4 people indefinitely, instead of asking 166 people to come in every day. The company says that they will be drafting "hall passes" to hand out to employees to show police, should they be stopped and questioned about their activities.

Rich,

I’m dealing with a similar situation. As long as the base is open, I need to provide on site techs. Because I have put the office on max telework, I’m getting kickback from a a few techs who think they should be teleworking as well, despite their hands on status. Because they haven’t been exposed or ordered into quarantine, they are not eligible for the additional 2 week sick leave under the federal relief legislation yet I’m building a telework plan of training, document reviews, etc to carry them through a few weeks of enforced shut down and believe this will be 6-10 weeks before we are even close to a normal schedule. Given test results pending for a number of folks on the base (not mine), I expect the base to lock down any day and that will lock them out and it’s not clear of that qualifies for the sick leave.

Basically, some are happy for the hours. Others are angry that they are “at risk”.

Migraine material, I tell you.

[Ajax]

Ouch. 6-10 weeks? You think it will be that long?
I shouldn't bitch. I have 8 weeks of leave and I can go back to work any time I want to... if I want to risk exposure.

[Benno von Humpback]

We are on max telework and shutdown of all noncritical activities on site until 1 May at the earliest.

[LarryHoward]

Ouch. 6-10 weeks? You think it will be that long?
I shouldn't bitch. I have 8 weeks of leave and I can go back to work any time I want to... if I want to risk exposure.

Yeah, I do. Even if we get the testing Hogan promised, we are early in the cycle of this disease. We won’t know when we can start to return to normal for at least a few weeks.

As you may have heard, Newport-Bermuda race scheduled for 19 June got cancelled today due to CV-19. 19 June. Let that sink in.

[Benno von Humpback]

Ouch. 6-10 weeks? You think it will be that long?
I shouldn't bitch. I have 8 weeks of leave and I can go back to work any time I want to... if I want to risk exposure.

Yeah, I do. Even if we get the testing Hogan promised, we are early in the cycle of this disease. We won’t know when we can start to return to normal for at least a few weeks.

As you may have heard, Newport-Bermuda race scheduled for 19 June got cancelled today due to CV-19. 19 June. Let that sink in.

Well, the marine industry is basically shut down, so boat prep is at a standstill.

[Panope]

Status Report:

14 days since Me, Laura and daughter showed mild symptoms (of something).

Daughter as been symptom free for 7 days.

7 days ago Laura's runny nose dried up but then began 5 days nasty coughing. She's better today (and yesterday) with almost normal engery.

I have been slowly improving for the past 7 days. Only a slight feeling of "tightness" in my abdomen and a sore throat remains. Energy level is probably still low, but since I am remaining sedentary, I really do not know.

I got tested 7 days ago for Covid 19. My specimen was sent to the University of Washington. No results for me yet. Last estimate was 7 business days from test.

For my county of 30K, here are the current test Numbers: 8-positive, 162-negative, 211-test results pending, 381-total patients tested. Today, I got thru (phone) to the test center and asked if they are giving higher priority to patients who were "sicker" than others - they said yes. Given my mild symptoms, I will not be surprised if I never find out if I have/had CV.

We've been on a self quarantine for 14 days. Today I arranged for a neighbor to pick up Milk, Bread, Cheese and Bananas. They left it on the porch.

2 years ago, Laura left Boeing and started working for a Global Medical Supply Company (Natus). She works entirely from home, busy as ever. 3 years ago (inauguration) she pulled almost all of her 401K out of stocks. Her decisions are proving to be very wise.

Steve

[BeauV]

Hey, All.

Kim, what extraordinarily miserable bad luck. I'll hold you in the light. Hope everyone else has been doing well.

Eric

We've all been speculating on what kind of TSA agent you had for your body cavity search. I hope she was a hot, Amazonian.

She had huge hands.

Eric,

It's great to have you back. We've had a shortage of your unique and highly enjoyable sense of humor around here.

[Jamie]

I think he was just managing expectations.

And trying to fend off massive, potentially wasteful and harmful off-label use of drugs that are currently essential to people with malaria and connective tissue diseases.

So, ah...you're under quarantine?

Yes. Day 8 and feeling well.

So you’ve got that going for you...which is nice (genuinely))

Some yards are still working, “with precautions” so I sent them the data on the half-life of COVID19 on surfaces.

[Ajax]

Ouch. 6-10 weeks? You think it will be that long?
I shouldn't bitch. I have 8 weeks of leave and I can go back to work any time I want to... if I want to risk exposure.

Yeah, I do. Even if we get the testing Hogan promised, we are early in the cycle of this disease. We won’t know when we can start to return to normal for at least a few weeks.

As you may have heard, Newport-Bermuda race scheduled for 19 June got cancelled today due to CV-19. 19 June. Let that sink in.

I heard about the race but large events like that have a lot of inertia. I'm contacting my office mate to get a read on just how many people are in the office and what my level of risk is, if I go in. We all received robocalls from the company saying "Ignore the governor, go to work, we're exempt."

[kdh]

Here's a basic modeling perspective. The process which is: I get sick, make others sick, they do the same, and so on, describes exponential growth. On a log scale an exponential looks like a line. Here's a count of US COVID-19 cases on a log scale.

Screen Shot 2020-03-24 at 8.21.21 AM.png

There are data problems associated with testing but it's less credible that testing availability is growing exponentially than the epidemic is.

For now, we're fucked. We need the line on the log scale to flatten.

[Ajax]

I agree but we're running something like 10-14 days behind Europe. There hasn't been enough time. I've only been out of work for 4 days, isolated for 6.

I just read that they found the virus in cabins 17 DAYS after passengers had disembarked from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/c ... 905924001/

THAT is not good.

[SemiSalt]

I did a quick and dirty calculation this morning. New cases per day in the US are increasing in the US 31% each day. In Italy, it's been 13% increase per day for most of March. So the isolation schemes do have a big effect.

[LarryHoward]

I did a quick and dirty calculation this morning. New cases per day in the US are increasing in the US 31% each day. In Italy, it's been 13% increase per day for most of March. So the isolation schemes do have a big effect.

Without widespread testing, it's impossible to draw conclusions. One of my managers'daughter is in NYC (and has been laid off). She reports that they are being told they won;t be tested unless they are hospitalized. Just stay home.

[kdh]

I did a quick and dirty calculation this morning. New cases per day in the US are increasing in the US 31% each day. In Italy, it's been 13% increase per day for most of March. So the isolation schemes do have a big effect.

Without widespread testing, it's impossible to draw conclusions. One of my managers'daughter is in NYC (and has been laid off). She reports that they are being told they won;t be tested unless they are hospitalized. Just stay home.

It is not impossible to draw conclusions without widespread testing. The testing is not perfect, but this doesn't make it useless. For one, we can look at a slowing of death rates as an indicator of our efforts having an effect. Deaths, I imagine, are being counted.

Semi has the right approach. The percent increase in infections or deaths is the statistic we should be tracking, regardless of when infections started. If journalists were any good at math they wouldn't be journalists, but their coverage sucks. "Big increase overnight" means nothing.

[LarryHoward]

I did a quick and dirty calculation this morning. New cases per day in the US are increasing in the US 31% each day. In Italy, it's been 13% increase per day for most of March. So the isolation schemes do have a big effect.

Without widespread testing, it's impossible to draw conclusions. One of my managers'daughter is in NYC (and has been laid off). She reports that they are being told they won;t be tested unless they are hospitalized. Just stay home.

It is not impossible to draw conclusions without widespread testing. The testing is not perfect, but this doesn't make it useless. For one, we can look at a slowing of death rates as an indicator of our efforts having an effect. Deaths, I imagine, are being counted.

Semi has the right approach. The percent increase in infections or deaths is the statistic we should be tracking, regardless of when infections started. If journalists were any good at math they wouldn't be journalists, but their coverage sucks. "Big increase overnight" means nothing.

Don't disagree. Deaths are a reasonable statistic as we believe they are being reasonably tracked. New cases? Here a case is only counted with a positive test result and tests are slow. We have several "presumptive positive" patients not hospitalized. If they recover at home, they may eventually be serum tested for data gathering but there are no plans to test them at present and they won't show up on a "case list." Unfortunately, a lot of decisions are being made based on positive test results and IMHO are seriously under-counting actual cases.

[BeauV]

I did a quick and dirty calculation this morning. New cases per day in the US are increasing in the US 31% each day. In Italy, it's been 13% increase per day for most of March. So the isolation schemes do have a big effect.

Without widespread testing, it's impossible to draw conclusions. One of my managers'daughter is in NYC (and has been laid off). She reports that they are being told they won;t be tested unless they are hospitalized. Just stay home.

It is not impossible to draw conclusions without widespread testing. The testing is not perfect, but this doesn't make it useless. For one, we can look at a slowing of death rates as an indicator of our efforts having an effect. Deaths, I imagine, are being counted.

Semi has the right approach. The percent increase in infections or deaths is the statistic we should be tracking, regardless of when infections started. If journalists were any good at math they wouldn't be journalists, but their coverage sucks. "Big increase overnight" means nothing.

There are certainly some places which are not reporting the death rate accurately (EG: Iran, China, etc...), but in general, I agree that it's a real number we can count on here.

I also think that without testing we can back into a pretty good idea of how many are infected by applying the confirmed ration of 80% of the population who has the disease is only mildly affected. Given we're dealing with an exponential curve, and don't actually know what the exponent is, all our guess are just that: guesses. If we take the current confirmed cases, assume that they are only 20% of the total cases at any point in time, and then apply the exponent of choice, then I think we're good enough.

The answer is quite discouraging. US: 50,000 cases. Times 5 = 250,000 people currently have the disease. The Infection rate is (R0) is 2.3. So, within the gestation period, about 7 days) from today we'll see 575,000 folks infected.

The key is to knock the R0 number down, that's what the lockdown will do for us.

Keith, did I get this right.

[Ken Heaton (Salazar)]

Here's a basic modeling perspective. The process which is: I get sick, make others sick, they do the same, and so on, describes exponential growth. On a log scale an exponential looks like a line. Here's a count of US COVID-19 cases on a log scale.

There are data problems associated with testing but it's less credible that testing availability is growing exponentially than the epidemic is.

For now, we're fucked. We need the line on the log scale to flatten.

Canada's is a bit flatter than the US line right now, but we're not in much better shape than the US. We're at about half the cases per population of the US but that might just be a time lag thing. Total Coronavirus Cases in Canada https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... ry/canada/

[kdh]

Looks good to me, Beau. The basic way to look at it, as Semi points out, is rate of growth. If we're consistently underestimating the number of infected by a factor of 5 the growth rate we get is the same--all counts should just be multiplied by 5 to get the true number of cases from the subset we're capturing.

increase 100 cases by 10% and we get 110 cases

increase 500 = 100*5 cases by 10% and we get 550 = 110*5

The key is to reduce R0, the average number of people infected by one sick person, or the rate of increase in cases, or the slope of the line in log scale of cases or deaths --they're the same thing up to a scaling factor.

[kdh]

Cuomo, a voice of reason in all this, said the N.Y. Infection Rate Is 'Doubling About Every 3 Days.' This is what we should be reporting. Progress would be "infections are now doubling every 5 days." Hopefully at some point the average number of people infected by one person will be less than one, and we can start describing the half life of the disease.

Edit: I just noticed that what he meant to say is that "infections are doubling every 3 days," not the rate. Oh well, if he were good at math he wouldn't be a governor!

[Olaf Hart]

Tasmania is in a strange place.

If you look at the national data, we are on the same curve as the rest of the country, with a one to two week lag.

The state closed its borders over a week ago, and has a total of 36 confirmed cases as of this morning, but all of them have brought the virus back from overseas or from a notorious cruise ship that docked in Sydney a couple of weeks ago without testing people on board.

So at the moment, officially we have no cases of community acquired Infection.

Of course, the data is suspect because of restrictions on community testing due to limited test availability, but the outbreak here is still able to be managed with traditional public health strategies of contract tracing and isolation.

Interesting to see how this pans out over the next few weeks....

[Olaf Hart]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-25/ ... s/12084974

[Tigger]

78 new cases here, which is about the same as late last week. So far, at least, the number is staying about the same. Fingers crossed.

677 total cases, 59 in hospital, 23 in ICU, 13 deaths--mainly at a couple of senior care homes. 173 recovered. 32 cases associated with the dental conference that was here two weeks ago. One of the local dentists has passed away.

[Olaf Hart]

The Ruby Princess debacle...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-25/ ... 0/12086196