12 ms·

Coronavirus – The Status of the Outbreak and 4 Possible Scenarios

68 points by joshuafkon 7y ago

jpseawell 7y ago
Scary shit.
McTossOut 7y ago
Doesn't really treat the facts so well. Coronavirus is known to be less transmissible in the warmer seasons. The long incubation period paused government intervention and bumped up the R0 value. sources: the news
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
camillomiller 7y ago
One point missing that I think could be important even in the more worrying scenarios is the average health condition or age of the people who develop severe stage infection. If the CFR is high but people dying are mostly old and not of working age, the pandemic will create a drag on global economy but not as bad as the CFR might lead to suppose. Don’t mean to sound cynical, just putting another element into the equation.
- Accujack 7y ago
  1) This is an ignorant statement, there are plenty of people in the 55+ age range who work worldwide. 2) Simply having workers get incapacitated is one of the smallest impacts the virus will have. Take a look at the present price of crude oil - the effects of the epidemic in China are already sending that crashing. Quarantines, the need for medical supplies, lost work hours, elimination of disposable income, an economic downturn worldwide as products become harder to get and more expensive to transport... there are lots and lots of impacts this will have, including vastly increased unemployment. Even if no one at all dies, a pandemic with the world getting sick all at the same time will have an impact bigger than any other event going back to World War II.
anonsivalley652 7y ago
From a reliable source, a Western journalist who was evacuated, this article's information seems accurate. It's difficult to tell what the current numbers are, or even what they will be because of censorship, but you can bet it's 2-5x what's reported. Also, it's compounded by the delay of information having to go to intermediaries before reaching international journalists. And, there are some isolated instances of bodies on the streets and in crashed cars of people not making it to the hospital before expiring, and then not being collected quickly because of fearful coroners/undertakers... which is expected in a minor pandemic in a densely-populated city. I would bet there are at least a dozen dead bodies on the street right now of the 400+ people who die in NYC's five boroughs every day. Even if it were Ebola-deadly and infectious as an airborne-mutated norovirus, sustained isolation of population members can kill any pathogen because its transmission rate drops to insignificant and then 0.
- ryanwaggoner 7y ago
  Where did you get 400+ deaths per day in NYC? That sounds really high; I bet it’s well under half that. Here’s all I could find with cursory search: https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/TriciaMui.shtml https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/TriciaMui.shtml
- ardy42 7y ago
  > It's difficult to tell what the current numbers are, or even what they will be because of censorship, but you can bet it's 2-5x what's reported. Definitely. IIRC, to be counted in the official statistics, an infected person has to have significant contact with the medical system, but the medical system in Wuhan has been so overloaded that people have been turned away in large numbers so that diagnostic work is not being done in many cases. There are reports of many people dying at home in Wuhan, which wouldn't be counted as part of the official statistics. I've also heard reports that the crematoriums in Wuhan are also overloaded, and aren't allowed to report any statistics except to the government. I don't think we'll know the full impact for a long time, until someone can some kind of excess mortality study with individualized vital records.
  - tim333 7y ago
_-___________-_ 7y ago
"[..] a study in the Lancet estimated back on January 25th that 75,000 people had already been infected and that the virus was doubling every 6.4 days — which would suggest that more than 300,000 people may now be infected with the virus." Doesn't this blatantly ignore the fact that the infection would have run its course in many of those people by now?
- tim333 7y ago
  If they run out of people to infect the rate of new infections will go down. There are a lot of people in China though. Obviously the 6.4 days thing is rough estimate.
  - _-___________-_ 7y ago
    But the last part of the sentence talks about the number of people who "may now be infected with the virus", which seems to ignore the fact that some of the early new infections are no longer infected.
pezo1919 7y ago
Sorry for not being upbeat! I am wondering why the world still does not seem to care about it. Why do we have to wait until every city gets infected? Why we can't stop travelling? Eventually, when it spreads to a city, the quarantine must be the only way... but why we aren't preventing that ourselves? The politicians does not really seem to care (in the bunkers)? Individual, consumer society with no interest and without resources, civil routine and real impact to the events is crazy to me. Even a couple of days ago WHO was thinking about restarting the flights to China. It's just WTF to me. In last days I can't even read any tech/HN news because it's not news to me compared to this unsolved terrible situation. I don't even understand how this topic is not more visible here in HN and on other places. We need to do something.
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  I think it's pretty clear that many people do care about it very much. Imposing travel restrictions, cancelling flights to major trading partners, etc, has a very significant cost and isn't taken lightly. I've heard many people say things along the lines of "it's just the economy, our health is more important" lately, but peoples' livelihoods literally depend on the economy. Say for example that your family operates a tiny tourism-related business in South East Asia. A prolonged shutdown of travel between China and your country could literally drive you into poverty, given how dependent some countries in the region have become on inbound tourism from China. Given your extremely remote chances of catching the virus, the risk of losing your entire family income is a much more significant risk to your health. Because of this, it's important to be balanced in thought and decisions, and not just panic because of what could happen. Where there is evidence to support restrictions, keep them in place. Where there is not, remove them. Outside of China this issue still remains far less serious than many other health-related risks. The "we need to do something" (anything!) mindset is actively harmful.
  - pezo1919 7y ago
    Even with the existing restrictions the virus spreads. Spread leads to quarantine as we've seen in many chinese cases. I don't see why should we hope for the better with less restrictions. Not being a huge problem outside of China is a fact for NOW. Does not mean it won't happen in weeks. The question is: do we want to solve the problem now, or we want to postpone the solution for later. There won't be "deus ex machina" which just makes it disappear. Many people will die if we're going to ignore the existing facts and make fun of the situation with these stupid heat scans checks which do prevent nothing on the long term based on existing experiences. What I see is because noone wants panic it prevents us calling the right moves. Because its "panicky".
BoiledCabbage 7y ago
> In the optimistic scenario, a month from now we can calculate, from data outside mainland china, that the CFR is perhaps .3% or below What so absurd is it will take the world a month to know how serious this virus is. By that point it's likely too late to do anything to stop it. It's beyond disgusting that China is putting the entire world's population at risk due to pride and ego. Essentially "we'd rather screw over potentially millions of lives everywhere rather than admit how poorly we handled this". ...and they just keep digging.
- watertom 7y ago
  This is a country the forced doctors at gun point to perform live delivery abortions in order to enforce the one child rule. A good friend's sister was a Obgyn in China, and when women were discovered with their second pregnancy they would be brought in for abortions even if the baby was full term. Doctors would either comply or have guns drawn and be threatened, doctors who failed to comply would be taken away, never to be seen again. At one point my friend's sister was performing twice as many abortions than she was delivering babies, and all of the abortions the mothers were being forced. Screaming, yelling, begging, pleading and crying hysterically. As my friend would say, "My country doesn't value human life in any way, people are just numbers, all people are just numbers."
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - hongloumeng 7y ago
    This account seems exaggerated. Forced late-term abortions in China were certainly a real thing, and the value of the life of a stranger is on par with that of livestock. However, guns are rarely seen in everyday life in China. This is especially the case with policemen and low-level enforcers. The exception are soldiers on duty, and security for transporting currency. Guns are kept in armories, brought out by specially trained "armed police".
- Accujack 7y ago
  Hint: If it's going to become a pandemic, then it's probably already too late to contain it.
tim333 7y ago
My guess is this thing is bad - keeps spreading, high mortality and the best we can do is slow it until we have a vaccine. I'm kind of optimistic people may be able to speed the vaccine stuff when they see how bad the situation is. Animal trials have started already >Shanghai-based Tongji University School of Medicine and Stermirna Therapeutics Co., Ltd. The vaccine samples were injected into more than 100 mice Sunday, the report said. and Imperial started animal trials yesterday. vid of the Shanghai lot: https://youtu.be/BymUKDp-omQ https://youtu.be/BymUKDp-omQ
- cpascal 7y ago
  There's also the ongoing Phase 3 Remdesivir trial. [1] Which was used in the treatment of Washington's 2019-nCoV case. The patient appears to have begun recovering soon after the remdesivir was administered and was released shortly after. [2][3] > Treatment with intravenous remdesivir (a novel nucleotide analogue prodrug in development) was initiated on the evening of day 7, and no adverse events were observed in association with the infusion. Vancomycin was discontinued on the evening of day 7, and cefepime was discontinued on the following day, after serial negative procalcitonin levels and negative nasal PCR testing for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. > On hospital day 8 (illness day 12), the patient’s clinical condition improved. Supplemental oxygen was discontinued, and his oxygen saturation values improved to 94 to 96% while he was breathing ambient air. The previous bilateral lower-lobe rales were no longer present. His appetite improved, and he was asymptomatic aside from intermittent dry cough and rhinorrhea. As of January 30, 2020, the patient remains hospitalized. He is afebrile, and all symptoms have resolved with the exception of his cough, which is decreasing in severity. This is obviously just a single patient’s outcome and not proof that Remdesevir is effective, but it’s just about the only positive news related to 2019-nCoV. Hopefully the trial yields good results. [1] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04257656 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04257656 [2] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191 [3] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/snohomish-county-man-with-novel-coronavirus-discharged-from-hospital/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/snohomish-c...
  - tim333 7y ago
blackrock 7y ago
There are those that dreamed of this happening. Those that wanted the massive decoupling between the United States and China. Those that wanted to see China suffer, fail, collapse, and devolve into another destructive civil war; while the United States remains ascendant. Well, their dreams might be about to come true. This coronavirus was the perfect economic weapon that was dropped in the heart of China. And not even a bullet was fired. The economic backlash from this virus is going to be monstrous. But the reality might be even worse than they imagined, where even they themselves cannot escape the fallout, and that they would reminisce of better days. But there will also be opportunities. Companies will fail, but others will succeed. The Fed had better keep on printing that money, because the bubble in a lot of sectors will pop, especially Real Estate. Then automotive. Then aerospace. Then tourism. This house of cards is going to come crashing down. The moment of the black swan event is about to arrive. Time to place your bets.
- anacrolix 7y ago
  ok boomer
  - euranno 7y ago
    rekt
- Accujack 7y ago
  You know what I find really interesting? If Trump screws up the response to this virus (like by cutting the CDC's budget in the middle of a crisis) then the people most vulnerable are the same demographic as Trump's supporters.
  - blackrock 7y ago
    The interesting thing is that the Trump supporters benefited the most, but they just didn’t realize it. They blamed China for taking their jobs, and Trump capitalized on it. A foreign country with people that don’t look like yourself, or even speak the same language, and with a different political system was an easy target to scapegoat. What they failed to realize was the impact that technology and automation had on their lives. Do you see people working inside the heart of a car manufacturing factory anymore? No, it’s all robotic. What used to take hundreds of men, is now streamlined into an assembly line of 10 robots. First, in the 80s and 90s, Walmart came and killed off the small businesses, but at least they provided some minimum wage jobs in their stores. Then, Amazon came and killed off the remaining smaller retailers, and tried to kill off Walmart. No more minimum wage cashier jobs, but more jobs for delivery people and warehouse workers. Then, the software and hardware got better, that it started to replace those minimum wage cashiers jobs. Then robots got better, that they even started replacing the warehouse jobs. But the United States had the benefit of creating technology over the past 70 years, and massively benefiting from the royalties that followed. Qualcomm doesn’t physically make any phones or computer chips, but 50% of their revenue comes from China. Other jobs in technology like software, engineering, design, QA, project management, etc., were created in relation to technology, but these are not celebrated. Microsoft spawned a lot of software companies. Apple spawned a lot of smaller software businesses vying for space in their app market. But it seems none of these are celebrated in the world of Trump supporters. Meanwhile, the Trump supporters benefited handsomely in one area: farming. Massive windfalls were made in selling grains and soy to China, who eagerly bought it all. The industrialized farms were literally printing money. And they thought they deserved that business, as if it was a god given right to them. Maybe they got greedy, but more likely, they fell for the charm of a charlatan, and voted Trump into office, to take on the China problem. You know, the exact foreign customer that was buying up all their farm products. This baffles the mind on how they couldn’t make this connection. Then in one fell swoop, Trump took that all away. Farm bankruptcies went higher and higher under Trump. He came in and demonized the very customer that was buying their products. And now we have the coronavirus, and those dreams of decoupling the two economies of China and the United States, are about to come true. The question is: are those Trump supporters ready for the ensuing fallout?
sam_goody 7y ago
There will _definitely_ be a worldwide epidemic. China is losing millions every day, aside from psychological credit, as people want nothing to do with China. (Anecdotally, the local shoe outlet claims that the kids shoes for at their brand will be manufactured in Thailand from next week.) The Chinese can solve their disadvantage by either eliminating the virus, or by making sure other countries have it as well. (No point in going to Thailand if they are also getting sick.) Elimination doesn't seem to be going as well as hoped for. The Chinese government doesn't have a reputation of caring about other people, or human rights. What are the chances it won't be breaking it out worldwide?

68 points by joshuafkon 7y ago

Scary shit.

Doesn't really treat the facts so well. Coronavirus is known to be less transmissible in the warmer seasons. The long incubation period paused government intervention and bumped up the R0 value. sources: the news

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

camillomiller 7y ago

One point missing that I think could be important even in the more worrying scenarios is the average health condition or age of the people who develop severe stage infection. If the CFR is high but people dying are mostly old and not of working age, the pandemic will create a drag on global economy but not as bad as the CFR might lead to suppose. Don’t mean to sound cynical, just putting another element into the equation.

Accujack 7y ago
1) This is an ignorant statement, there are plenty of people in the 55+ age range who work worldwide. 2) Simply having workers get incapacitated is one of the smallest impacts the virus will have. Take a look at the present price of crude oil - the effects of the epidemic in China are already sending that crashing. Quarantines, the need for medical supplies, lost work hours, elimination of disposable income, an economic downturn worldwide as products become harder to get and more expensive to transport... there are lots and lots of impacts this will have, including vastly increased unemployment. Even if no one at all dies, a pandemic with the world getting sick all at the same time will have an impact bigger than any other event going back to World War II.

anonsivalley652 7y ago

From a reliable source, a Western journalist who was evacuated, this article's information seems accurate. It's difficult to tell what the current numbers are, or even what they will be because of censorship, but you can bet it's 2-5x what's reported. Also, it's compounded by the delay of information having to go to intermediaries before reaching international journalists. And, there are some isolated instances of bodies on the streets and in crashed cars of people not making it to the hospital before expiring, and then not being collected quickly because of fearful coroners/undertakers... which is expected in a minor pandemic in a densely-populated city. I would bet there are at least a dozen dead bodies on the street right now of the 400+ people who die in NYC's five boroughs every day. Even if it were Ebola-deadly and infectious as an airborne-mutated norovirus, sustained isolation of population members can kill any pathogen because its transmission rate drops to insignificant and then 0.

ryanwaggoner 7y ago
Where did you get 400+ deaths per day in NYC? That sounds really high; I bet it’s well under half that. Here’s all I could find with cursory search: https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/TriciaMui.shtml https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/TriciaMui.shtml
ardy42 7y ago
> It's difficult to tell what the current numbers are, or even what they will be because of censorship, but you can bet it's 2-5x what's reported. Definitely. IIRC, to be counted in the official statistics, an infected person has to have significant contact with the medical system, but the medical system in Wuhan has been so overloaded that people have been turned away in large numbers so that diagnostic work is not being done in many cases. There are reports of many people dying at home in Wuhan, which wouldn't be counted as part of the official statistics. I've also heard reports that the crematoriums in Wuhan are also overloaded, and aren't allowed to report any statistics except to the government. I don't think we'll know the full impact for a long time, until someone can some kind of excess mortality study with individualized vital records.
- tim333 7y ago

_-___________-_ 7y ago

"[..] a study in the Lancet estimated back on January 25th that 75,000 people had already been infected and that the virus was doubling every 6.4 days — which would suggest that more than 300,000 people may now be infected with the virus." Doesn't this blatantly ignore the fact that the infection would have run its course in many of those people by now?

tim333 7y ago
If they run out of people to infect the rate of new infections will go down. There are a lot of people in China though. Obviously the 6.4 days thing is rough estimate.
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  But the last part of the sentence talks about the number of people who "may now be infected with the virus", which seems to ignore the fact that some of the early new infections are no longer infected.

pezo1919 7y ago

Sorry for not being upbeat! I am wondering why the world still does not seem to care about it. Why do we have to wait until every city gets infected? Why we can't stop travelling? Eventually, when it spreads to a city, the quarantine must be the only way... but why we aren't preventing that ourselves? The politicians does not really seem to care (in the bunkers)? Individual, consumer society with no interest and without resources, civil routine and real impact to the events is crazy to me. Even a couple of days ago WHO was thinking about restarting the flights to China. It's just WTF to me. In last days I can't even read any tech/HN news because it's not news to me compared to this unsolved terrible situation. I don't even understand how this topic is not more visible here in HN and on other places. We need to do something.

_-___________-_ 7y ago
I think it's pretty clear that many people do care about it very much. Imposing travel restrictions, cancelling flights to major trading partners, etc, has a very significant cost and isn't taken lightly. I've heard many people say things along the lines of "it's just the economy, our health is more important" lately, but peoples' livelihoods literally depend on the economy. Say for example that your family operates a tiny tourism-related business in South East Asia. A prolonged shutdown of travel between China and your country could literally drive you into poverty, given how dependent some countries in the region have become on inbound tourism from China. Given your extremely remote chances of catching the virus, the risk of losing your entire family income is a much more significant risk to your health. Because of this, it's important to be balanced in thought and decisions, and not just panic because of what could happen. Where there is evidence to support restrictions, keep them in place. Where there is not, remove them. Outside of China this issue still remains far less serious than many other health-related risks. The "we need to do something" (anything!) mindset is actively harmful.
- pezo1919 7y ago
  Even with the existing restrictions the virus spreads. Spread leads to quarantine as we've seen in many chinese cases. I don't see why should we hope for the better with less restrictions. Not being a huge problem outside of China is a fact for NOW. Does not mean it won't happen in weeks. The question is: do we want to solve the problem now, or we want to postpone the solution for later. There won't be "deus ex machina" which just makes it disappear. Many people will die if we're going to ignore the existing facts and make fun of the situation with these stupid heat scans checks which do prevent nothing on the long term based on existing experiences. What I see is because noone wants panic it prevents us calling the right moves. Because its "panicky".

BoiledCabbage 7y ago

> In the optimistic scenario, a month from now we can calculate, from data outside mainland china, that the CFR is perhaps .3% or below What so absurd is it will take the world a month to know how serious this virus is. By that point it's likely too late to do anything to stop it. It's beyond disgusting that China is putting the entire world's population at risk due to pride and ego. Essentially "we'd rather screw over potentially millions of lives everywhere rather than admit how poorly we handled this". ...and they just keep digging.

watertom 7y ago
This is a country the forced doctors at gun point to perform live delivery abortions in order to enforce the one child rule. A good friend's sister was a Obgyn in China, and when women were discovered with their second pregnancy they would be brought in for abortions even if the baby was full term. Doctors would either comply or have guns drawn and be threatened, doctors who failed to comply would be taken away, never to be seen again. At one point my friend's sister was performing twice as many abortions than she was delivering babies, and all of the abortions the mothers were being forced. Screaming, yelling, begging, pleading and crying hysterically. As my friend would say, "My country doesn't value human life in any way, people are just numbers, all people are just numbers."
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- hongloumeng 7y ago
  This account seems exaggerated. Forced late-term abortions in China were certainly a real thing, and the value of the life of a stranger is on par with that of livestock. However, guns are rarely seen in everyday life in China. This is especially the case with policemen and low-level enforcers. The exception are soldiers on duty, and security for transporting currency. Guns are kept in armories, brought out by specially trained "armed police".
Accujack 7y ago
Hint: If it's going to become a pandemic, then it's probably already too late to contain it.

tim333 7y ago

My guess is this thing is bad - keeps spreading, high mortality and the best we can do is slow it until we have a vaccine. I'm kind of optimistic people may be able to speed the vaccine stuff when they see how bad the situation is. Animal trials have started already >Shanghai-based Tongji University School of Medicine and Stermirna Therapeutics Co., Ltd. The vaccine samples were injected into more than 100 mice Sunday, the report said. and Imperial started animal trials yesterday. vid of the Shanghai lot: https://youtu.be/BymUKDp-omQ https://youtu.be/BymUKDp-omQ

cpascal 7y ago
There's also the ongoing Phase 3 Remdesivir trial. [1] Which was used in the treatment of Washington's 2019-nCoV case. The patient appears to have begun recovering soon after the remdesivir was administered and was released shortly after. [2][3] > Treatment with intravenous remdesivir (a novel nucleotide analogue prodrug in development) was initiated on the evening of day 7, and no adverse events were observed in association with the infusion. Vancomycin was discontinued on the evening of day 7, and cefepime was discontinued on the following day, after serial negative procalcitonin levels and negative nasal PCR testing for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. > On hospital day 8 (illness day 12), the patient’s clinical condition improved. Supplemental oxygen was discontinued, and his oxygen saturation values improved to 94 to 96% while he was breathing ambient air. The previous bilateral lower-lobe rales were no longer present. His appetite improved, and he was asymptomatic aside from intermittent dry cough and rhinorrhea. As of January 30, 2020, the patient remains hospitalized. He is afebrile, and all symptoms have resolved with the exception of his cough, which is decreasing in severity. This is obviously just a single patient’s outcome and not proof that Remdesevir is effective, but it’s just about the only positive news related to 2019-nCoV. Hopefully the trial yields good results. [1] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04257656 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04257656 [2] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191 [3] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/snohomish-county-man-with-novel-coronavirus-discharged-from-hospital/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/snohomish-c...
- tim333 7y ago

blackrock 7y ago

There are those that dreamed of this happening. Those that wanted the massive decoupling between the United States and China. Those that wanted to see China suffer, fail, collapse, and devolve into another destructive civil war; while the United States remains ascendant. Well, their dreams might be about to come true. This coronavirus was the perfect economic weapon that was dropped in the heart of China. And not even a bullet was fired. The economic backlash from this virus is going to be monstrous. But the reality might be even worse than they imagined, where even they themselves cannot escape the fallout, and that they would reminisce of better days. But there will also be opportunities. Companies will fail, but others will succeed. The Fed had better keep on printing that money, because the bubble in a lot of sectors will pop, especially Real Estate. Then automotive. Then aerospace. Then tourism. This house of cards is going to come crashing down. The moment of the black swan event is about to arrive. Time to place your bets.

anacrolix 7y ago
ok boomer
- euranno 7y ago
  rekt
Accujack 7y ago
You know what I find really interesting? If Trump screws up the response to this virus (like by cutting the CDC's budget in the middle of a crisis) then the people most vulnerable are the same demographic as Trump's supporters.
- blackrock 7y ago
  The interesting thing is that the Trump supporters benefited the most, but they just didn’t realize it. They blamed China for taking their jobs, and Trump capitalized on it. A foreign country with people that don’t look like yourself, or even speak the same language, and with a different political system was an easy target to scapegoat. What they failed to realize was the impact that technology and automation had on their lives. Do you see people working inside the heart of a car manufacturing factory anymore? No, it’s all robotic. What used to take hundreds of men, is now streamlined into an assembly line of 10 robots. First, in the 80s and 90s, Walmart came and killed off the small businesses, but at least they provided some minimum wage jobs in their stores. Then, Amazon came and killed off the remaining smaller retailers, and tried to kill off Walmart. No more minimum wage cashier jobs, but more jobs for delivery people and warehouse workers. Then, the software and hardware got better, that it started to replace those minimum wage cashiers jobs. Then robots got better, that they even started replacing the warehouse jobs. But the United States had the benefit of creating technology over the past 70 years, and massively benefiting from the royalties that followed. Qualcomm doesn’t physically make any phones or computer chips, but 50% of their revenue comes from China. Other jobs in technology like software, engineering, design, QA, project management, etc., were created in relation to technology, but these are not celebrated. Microsoft spawned a lot of software companies. Apple spawned a lot of smaller software businesses vying for space in their app market. But it seems none of these are celebrated in the world of Trump supporters. Meanwhile, the Trump supporters benefited handsomely in one area: farming. Massive windfalls were made in selling grains and soy to China, who eagerly bought it all. The industrialized farms were literally printing money. And they thought they deserved that business, as if it was a god given right to them. Maybe they got greedy, but more likely, they fell for the charm of a charlatan, and voted Trump into office, to take on the China problem. You know, the exact foreign customer that was buying up all their farm products. This baffles the mind on how they couldn’t make this connection. Then in one fell swoop, Trump took that all away. Farm bankruptcies went higher and higher under Trump. He came in and demonized the very customer that was buying their products. And now we have the coronavirus, and those dreams of decoupling the two economies of China and the United States, are about to come true. The question is: are those Trump supporters ready for the ensuing fallout?

sam_goody 7y ago

There will _definitely_ be a worldwide epidemic. China is losing millions every day, aside from psychological credit, as people want nothing to do with China. (Anecdotally, the local shoe outlet claims that the kids shoes for at their brand will be manufactured in Thailand from next week.) The Chinese can solve their disadvantage by either eliminating the virus, or by making sure other countries have it as well. (No point in going to Thailand if they are also getting sick.) Elimination doesn't seem to be going as well as hoped for. The Chinese government doesn't have a reputation of caring about other people, or human rights. What are the chances it won't be breaking it out worldwide?