5 ms·

I really hope it's simply poor diagnosis. It appears to be, so it's not yet time to be scared. But, if the virus is capable of mutating at the rate of the comm

I really hope it's simply poor diagnosis. It appears to be, so it's not yet time to be scared. But, if the virus is capable of mutating at the rate of the common cold and reinfect - I see no way out from under this other than a new way of life.

_bxg1 7y ago
Seeing as China's condition seems to be improving, instead of having cases just keep burning indefinitely, I doubt that's the case.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  China's still in lockdown, though, which would be that "new way of life" (until a vaccine) if re-infection is common.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    Not completely: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177964/apple-stores-china-reopened-coronavirus-covid-19 https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177964/apple-stores-chi... They aren't done with the virus, but the worst seems to be past. Whereas if it could easily re-infect then I would expect the case numbers to strictly increase.
    - soperj 7y ago
      Does it even need to re-infect? They had 80 thousand cases in a country of over a billion.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - malandrew 7y ago
    I'm wondering if China is shooting itself in the foot by being on lockdown because they may just be delaying the inevitable now that it's pandemic and at risk of becoming endemic. If we assume this will become endemic and a vaccine is a ways off, it would seem like the best approach is to flatten the curve just under the healthcare system capacity and get it to "pass through" most of society quickly (i.e. everyone who is at lower risk gets infected and quarantines until viral shedding stops). Doing this would allow us to return the economy back to normal as quickly as possible and prevent all the fallout from an indefinitely stopped economy. Once most people have had it, we'll essentially end up in a state of herd immunity and it becomes statistically less likely than other health concerns at-risk populations had before COVID-19 was even a thing. Meanwhile China, being on lockdown the entire time is still susceptible to having it become a pandemic within their own population as soon as they lift the lockdown and try to return to normal because they citizens haven't had the opportunity to develop antibodies as broadly.
    - peterwoerner 7y ago
      That seems to be what England is planning on doing. https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1238395750360461312 https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1238395750360461312
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        That sounds like a fascinatingly terrifying balancing act.
        malandrew 7y ago
        Even without it, we're doing a terrifying balancing act with the economy. We want a V-shaped recovery and the best way to achieve that is the swiftest resolution to pandemic. A U-shaped recovery would be bad for a lot of people, especially if prolonged. Last thing we want is an L-shaped market with no real recovery.
      - malandrew 7y ago
        Great find. Going to read up more on Patrick Vallance's plan. This was an interesting point from a Guardian article where he defends the plan: “If you suppress something very, very hard, when you release those measures it bounces back and it bounces back at the wrong time,” he said. The government is concerned that if not enough people catch the virus now, it will re-emerge in the winter, when the NHS is already overstretched. [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/coronavirus-science-chief-defends-uk-measures-criticism-herd-immunity https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/coronavirus-sc...
      - DanBC 7y ago
        But see this thread for some discussion of the risks of the strategy: https://twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/1238518371651649538?s=20 https://twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/12385183716516495...
        christoph 7y ago
        Thanks for posting this. I was initially very negative about the UK strategy yesterday, but on reflection today I think they may have a very sensible long term approach to the situation, although highly risky to balance correctly.
- yumraj 7y ago
  This is what I fundamentally don't understand. The condition can ONLY improve in terms of new cases, not deaths, 1) if there is a vaccine, 2) 40-50% people get infected and develop immunity, or 3) people start living in bubbles, including masks and gloves and stay away from each other, that there spread is controlled. We know 1 and 2 have not happened. So either China is still in lockdown and this lockdown is how the life will be till there is a vaccine, or the data is not correct.
  - postalrat 7y ago
    How do you know 2 hasn't happened?
    - yumraj 7y ago
      Based on the published data. Also, 40-50% of China's population would be 600-800 million, or so. With that even at 1% 6-8 million would have died. Even with filtered data, it is doubtful that they would have been able to hide so many dead.
      - abhorrence 7y ago
        That assumes the death rate is actually 1%. In the hypothetical where 40%+ have been infected, I think it’s be safe to assume the death rate might be lower than we suspect it is.
        zaroth 7y ago
        It was the same during the H1N1 hysteria. CFRs being quoted of 2-3% and it turned out much less deadly than an average flu. A few weeks ago we didn’t even know there were asymptomatic carriers. My prediction is that when all is said and done and the IFR is closer to 0.01% that this will all look very stupid. Experts in Ohio say they suspect that 1% of people are infected. OK, so where are the hospital cases?
        Spare_account 7y ago
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  I keep having to make the same post again and again China's almost certainly faking their numbers. We know they fake every other number related to economics - so why would they tell the truth about coronavirus? This is what a "save face" culture does to you. It turns you into a serial liar
  - jdm2212 7y ago
    The stories from expats in China line up pretty well with enforced social distancing across the whole country on a scale even South Korea hasn't tried yet. That doesn't mean the numbers will stay low forever (once the restrictions lift, you'd expect it to come back), but it is consistent with the numbers being low for now.
  - throw_54367 7y ago
    That’s why you need to look at their actions. - The emergency hospitals in Wuhan have all been closed. - Factories are starting to ramp up production. - The Chinese government has donated millions of masks, testing kits, and other medical supplies to various countries. - Today, a team of Chinese doctors along with several tons of medical equipment just arrived in Italy to help. All of these actions suggest China has their internal situation under control now. > This is what a “save face” culture does to you. From my experience, this is an overly used trope. Besides, are you suggesting South Korea and Japan are also lying?
    - saberience 7y ago
      China's numbers don't pass any sort of "smell test." China is an absolutely massive country with a massive population. It's not possible to "totally lock down" a country this big and with so many towns and cities out in the boondocks. If you don't agree with me there I suggested you visit China and travel around and see the enormity of even their "provincial" cities. How does it make any sense at all that in the place where this started, a place with 1.4B people, that over the last few days, only handfuls of people have tested positive? Fewer people than tested positive in Iceland? A country of 300k in the middle of the Atlantic... One of my close friends is Chinese and her family live in the outskirts of Wuhan. I asked can her parents leave her house and so on and she told me they were never locked down so they couldn't leave home. So if people near Wuhan weren't "totally" locked down, how was the whole of China SO locked down that basically nobody got this virus in the past few days? Does it make more sense that there was some sort of perfect miracle lockdown where all 1.4B people in China were "locked down" and didnt infect anyone, OR that China realizes that there is little attention on them right now and are playing down their numbers OR simply not testing people and letting everyone gawk at Italy and South Korea? China is using this as a propaganda exercise to demonstrate the superiority of their top down authoritarian way of government, so Western media is now praising a dictatorship which also happens to have concentration camps for muslims and silences political dissenters brutally.
jobseeker990 7y ago
I'm thinking worst case we build 3x as many hospitals as we have now, and make sure we can accommodate anyone who needs intensive care. Not a useful short term solution but I don't see why not for the long term. It just becomes another infliction that we prepare for and handle the best we can.
- coding123 7y ago
  With the economy strangled, how would it be possible to build more hospitals. At some point you can't ask people that don't want to do it to work for free.
  - xur17 7y ago
    They don't have to work for free - the government can pay them.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    Well, the point of having a government at all is to be able to step in when businesses can't afford to do something, or aren't incentivized to.
  - mrfusion 7y ago
    you don’t seem to be suggesting an alternative.
- yumraj 7y ago
  Where are you going to find the doctors and nurses to staff the 3X hospitals? It's not just a bed problem.
  - jdm2212 7y ago
    Yeah, "beds" are a proxy for overall resources. If they just needed beds, they could just order some from Casper or Ikea or something.
    - 7y ago
makerofspoons 7y ago
On the bright side, that new way of life could help reduce the rate of climate change if it means fewer international flights, more local production of goods, the collapse of the cruise industry, etc.
snapetom 7y ago
The other possibility that few want to talk about is ADE, antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). ADE is a slim possibility, but it would be devastating if it is. Basically it's when the virus uses white blood cells, which are supposed to kill it, to replicate. HIV and Dengue uses ADE. MERS (a coronavirus) doesn't appear to use ADE, but the jury is out on SARS (another coronavirus). It means that you can get reinfected and a vaccine is near impossible. We won't know about ADE because of the strict lockdown conditions that are still going on in China. If we start seeing more and more reinfections when things are relaxed, then we're in trouble.
- narrator 7y ago
  Peer reviewed citation for the above: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X14013321 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X1... "We also generated monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV spike proteins and observed that most of them promoted SARS-CoV infection. Combined, our results suggest that antibodies against SARS-CoV spike proteins may trigger ADE effects. The data raise new questions regarding a potential SARS-CoV vaccine, while shedding light on mechanisms involved in SARS pathogenesis."

_bxg1 7y ago

Seeing as China's condition seems to be improving, instead of having cases just keep burning indefinitely, I doubt that's the case.

ceejayoz 7y ago
China's still in lockdown, though, which would be that "new way of life" (until a vaccine) if re-infection is common.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Not completely: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177964/apple-stores-china-reopened-coronavirus-covid-19 https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177964/apple-stores-chi... They aren't done with the virus, but the worst seems to be past. Whereas if it could easily re-infect then I would expect the case numbers to strictly increase.
  - soperj 7y ago
    Does it even need to re-infect? They had 80 thousand cases in a country of over a billion.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- malandrew 7y ago
  I'm wondering if China is shooting itself in the foot by being on lockdown because they may just be delaying the inevitable now that it's pandemic and at risk of becoming endemic. If we assume this will become endemic and a vaccine is a ways off, it would seem like the best approach is to flatten the curve just under the healthcare system capacity and get it to "pass through" most of society quickly (i.e. everyone who is at lower risk gets infected and quarantines until viral shedding stops). Doing this would allow us to return the economy back to normal as quickly as possible and prevent all the fallout from an indefinitely stopped economy. Once most people have had it, we'll essentially end up in a state of herd immunity and it becomes statistically less likely than other health concerns at-risk populations had before COVID-19 was even a thing. Meanwhile China, being on lockdown the entire time is still susceptible to having it become a pandemic within their own population as soon as they lift the lockdown and try to return to normal because they citizens haven't had the opportunity to develop antibodies as broadly.
  - peterwoerner 7y ago
    That seems to be what England is planning on doing. https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1238395750360461312 https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1238395750360461312
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      That sounds like a fascinatingly terrifying balancing act.
      - malandrew 7y ago
        Even without it, we're doing a terrifying balancing act with the economy. We want a V-shaped recovery and the best way to achieve that is the swiftest resolution to pandemic. A U-shaped recovery would be bad for a lot of people, especially if prolonged. Last thing we want is an L-shaped market with no real recovery.
    - malandrew 7y ago
      Great find. Going to read up more on Patrick Vallance's plan. This was an interesting point from a Guardian article where he defends the plan: “If you suppress something very, very hard, when you release those measures it bounces back and it bounces back at the wrong time,” he said. The government is concerned that if not enough people catch the virus now, it will re-emerge in the winter, when the NHS is already overstretched. [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/coronavirus-science-chief-defends-uk-measures-criticism-herd-immunity https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/coronavirus-sc...
    - DanBC 7y ago
      But see this thread for some discussion of the risks of the strategy: https://twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/1238518371651649538?s=20 https://twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/12385183716516495...
      - christoph 7y ago
        Thanks for posting this. I was initially very negative about the UK strategy yesterday, but on reflection today I think they may have a very sensible long term approach to the situation, although highly risky to balance correctly.
yumraj 7y ago
This is what I fundamentally don't understand. The condition can ONLY improve in terms of new cases, not deaths, 1) if there is a vaccine, 2) 40-50% people get infected and develop immunity, or 3) people start living in bubbles, including masks and gloves and stay away from each other, that there spread is controlled. We know 1 and 2 have not happened. So either China is still in lockdown and this lockdown is how the life will be till there is a vaccine, or the data is not correct.
- postalrat 7y ago
  How do you know 2 hasn't happened?
  - yumraj 7y ago
    Based on the published data. Also, 40-50% of China's population would be 600-800 million, or so. With that even at 1% 6-8 million would have died. Even with filtered data, it is doubtful that they would have been able to hide so many dead.
    - abhorrence 7y ago
      That assumes the death rate is actually 1%. In the hypothetical where 40%+ have been infected, I think it’s be safe to assume the death rate might be lower than we suspect it is.
      - zaroth 7y ago
        It was the same during the H1N1 hysteria. CFRs being quoted of 2-3% and it turned out much less deadly than an average flu. A few weeks ago we didn’t even know there were asymptomatic carriers. My prediction is that when all is said and done and the IFR is closer to 0.01% that this will all look very stupid. Experts in Ohio say they suspect that 1% of people are infected. OK, so where are the hospital cases?
        Spare_account 7y ago
Der_Einzige 7y ago
I keep having to make the same post again and again China's almost certainly faking their numbers. We know they fake every other number related to economics - so why would they tell the truth about coronavirus? This is what a "save face" culture does to you. It turns you into a serial liar
- jdm2212 7y ago
  The stories from expats in China line up pretty well with enforced social distancing across the whole country on a scale even South Korea hasn't tried yet. That doesn't mean the numbers will stay low forever (once the restrictions lift, you'd expect it to come back), but it is consistent with the numbers being low for now.
- throw_54367 7y ago
  That’s why you need to look at their actions. - The emergency hospitals in Wuhan have all been closed. - Factories are starting to ramp up production. - The Chinese government has donated millions of masks, testing kits, and other medical supplies to various countries. - Today, a team of Chinese doctors along with several tons of medical equipment just arrived in Italy to help. All of these actions suggest China has their internal situation under control now. > This is what a “save face” culture does to you. From my experience, this is an overly used trope. Besides, are you suggesting South Korea and Japan are also lying?
  - saberience 7y ago
    China's numbers don't pass any sort of "smell test." China is an absolutely massive country with a massive population. It's not possible to "totally lock down" a country this big and with so many towns and cities out in the boondocks. If you don't agree with me there I suggested you visit China and travel around and see the enormity of even their "provincial" cities. How does it make any sense at all that in the place where this started, a place with 1.4B people, that over the last few days, only handfuls of people have tested positive? Fewer people than tested positive in Iceland? A country of 300k in the middle of the Atlantic... One of my close friends is Chinese and her family live in the outskirts of Wuhan. I asked can her parents leave her house and so on and she told me they were never locked down so they couldn't leave home. So if people near Wuhan weren't "totally" locked down, how was the whole of China SO locked down that basically nobody got this virus in the past few days? Does it make more sense that there was some sort of perfect miracle lockdown where all 1.4B people in China were "locked down" and didnt infect anyone, OR that China realizes that there is little attention on them right now and are playing down their numbers OR simply not testing people and letting everyone gawk at Italy and South Korea? China is using this as a propaganda exercise to demonstrate the superiority of their top down authoritarian way of government, so Western media is now praising a dictatorship which also happens to have concentration camps for muslims and silences political dissenters brutally.

jobseeker990 7y ago

I'm thinking worst case we build 3x as many hospitals as we have now, and make sure we can accommodate anyone who needs intensive care. Not a useful short term solution but I don't see why not for the long term. It just becomes another infliction that we prepare for and handle the best we can.

coding123 7y ago
With the economy strangled, how would it be possible to build more hospitals. At some point you can't ask people that don't want to do it to work for free.
- xur17 7y ago
  They don't have to work for free - the government can pay them.
- knzhou 7y ago
  Well, the point of having a government at all is to be able to step in when businesses can't afford to do something, or aren't incentivized to.
- mrfusion 7y ago
  you don’t seem to be suggesting an alternative.
yumraj 7y ago
Where are you going to find the doctors and nurses to staff the 3X hospitals? It's not just a bed problem.
- jdm2212 7y ago
  Yeah, "beds" are a proxy for overall resources. If they just needed beds, they could just order some from Casper or Ikea or something.
  - 7y ago

makerofspoons 7y ago

On the bright side, that new way of life could help reduce the rate of climate change if it means fewer international flights, more local production of goods, the collapse of the cruise industry, etc.

snapetom 7y ago

The other possibility that few want to talk about is ADE, antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). ADE is a slim possibility, but it would be devastating if it is. Basically it's when the virus uses white blood cells, which are supposed to kill it, to replicate. HIV and Dengue uses ADE. MERS (a coronavirus) doesn't appear to use ADE, but the jury is out on SARS (another coronavirus). It means that you can get reinfected and a vaccine is near impossible. We won't know about ADE because of the strict lockdown conditions that are still going on in China. If we start seeing more and more reinfections when things are relaxed, then we're in trouble.

narrator 7y ago
Peer reviewed citation for the above: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X14013321 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X1... "We also generated monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV spike proteins and observed that most of them promoted SARS-CoV infection. Combined, our results suggest that antibodies against SARS-CoV spike proteins may trigger ADE effects. The data raise new questions regarding a potential SARS-CoV vaccine, while shedding light on mechanisms involved in SARS pathogenesis."