6 ms·

I've been telling my wife and friends I expect this to last well over a year. I've been told I "sound like an idiot" and that my negativity isn't helping. We'll

by donatj 7y ago

I've been telling my wife and friends I expect this to last well over a year. I've been told I "sound like an idiot" and that my negativity isn't helping. We'll see.

zabana 7y ago
Well the Chinese have been able to successfully contain the disease after a 60day lockdown so it shouldn't take more than that. Unless of course there's an agenda we're not aware of.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  > Well the Chinese have been able to successfully contain the disease in 60days so it shouldn't take more than that. Though they did seem to delay action, when they took it they went hard. Some of the US is past the point that China threw the brakes on, and the rest of the country continues to accelerate. We can't expect the timeline to align in any way.
- leeoniya 7y ago
  did they contain the disease or the information?
  - jlmorton 7y ago
    The disease, obviously. When the disease was running rampant through Hubei, there were innumerable reports of it on social media. The WHO has had a large team of disease experts, public health experts and others in China since late January, and they say China has been totally transparent. The unfortunate truth is that authoritarian regimes are better suited to dealing with a pandemic, particularly competent, technocratic regimes like China's.
    - BatFastard 7y ago
      They were well suited AFTER the two months of trying to bury it. Once the cat got out of the bag, when keeping it in the bag was the whole point.
      - jlmorton 7y ago
        Not really a fair accounting at all. Everyone points to local efforts to control information about the disease, but that lasted a couple days, not two months. Genetic analysis indicates a single index patient sometime around mid-November. In late December, there was a large cluster of pneumonia cases with multiple patients at the same hospital in Wuhan, which were mostly linked to the Huanan Seafood Market. And this is exactly what you would expect. One case in mid-November, 2-3 cases a week later, 4-9 cases by early December, 16-81 cases by mid December, and maybe a couple hundred cases by late December. And among these cases, only a minority are going present to a hospital for treatment. Most will get sick, but simply stay home. On December 31st, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission became aware of the Huanan Seafood Market cluster and issued a notice to local hospitals. That same day, Li Wenliang made a statement to friends about the unknown pneumonia cases, which was shared by friends to social media. Local authorities arrested Li Wenliang and made him sign a statement acknowledging a misdemeanor, and ordered him not to talk about the illness publicly. Later that same day, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization of an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause. On January 1st, local authorities closed the seafood market. On January 7th, Chinese researchers identified SARS-CoV-2 as the causative agent in the outbreak. On January 12th, Chinese researchers shared the viral genome with the world health community. On January 22nd, with about 500 confirmed cases, China locked down Wuhan, and all of Hubei Province the next day. There were clearly some local efforts at suppressing information about the virus, but at a time that very little was known about it, and apparently all at the local level. Somehow this is seen by some in the West as state-sanctioned efforts at suppression, but the President of the United States saying it's just the flu, nothing to worry about, there are very few cases, most of them are getting better, it's totally under control - that's not suppressing information, just efforts to project calm. The reality is that China's response to this novel virus represents a new gold standard for emergent disease response. In terms of both speed and efficacy, it was the best response the world has ever seen.
- turbohz 7y ago
  The question is how long will it remain contained?
- mcormier 7y ago
  The chinese are also using mass surveillance to keep the problem under control. You need to show a qr code on your phone that proves you are allowed out at many checkpoints.
- pstrateman 7y ago
  There's some question of how successful they have actually been.
- dhritzkiv 7y ago
  There is nothing close to a lockdown currently in place anywhere in the US or Canada. Not to say that that's what's needed, just pointing out that China's policy was more extreme.
- Leary 7y ago
  Mild cases in America are being told to quarantine at home where they'll infect their families. Americans are not wearing masks universally. There are no bans on movements between hotspots like New York and the rest of the country. And Americans expect to successfully contain the disease in weeks.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  Western leaders aren't even trying to contain the disease, and they readily admit that. It's all about flattening the curve, and a flat curve stays flat a long time.
- tathougies 7y ago
  This is a lie. China now has another outbreak, and several country's intelligence agencies have suggested that their original numbers were completely made up.
  - zabana 7y ago
    Would you mind providing proof ?
    - vkou 7y ago
      Anonymous non specific leaks from the most reputable, apolitical of sources, that has no vested interest in this - the White House.
    - tathougies 7y ago
      Here is a good overview: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871783 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871783 Proof: 1. China's numbers simply do not match models that take all their measures into account. 2. China only tested syptomatic people, and did not classify pneumonia sufferers as COVID: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-asymptomatic/china-to-focus-on-asymptomatic-coronavirus-cases-as-public-fears-grow-idUSKBN21I0VC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-... 3. Wuhan crematoriums are seeing way more deaths than reported: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/88435z/wuhans-crematoriums-are-filling-thousands-of-urns-with-coronavirus-remains-each-day https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/88435z/wuhans-crematorium... http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Wuhan,-endless-queues-for-ashes-of-coronavirus-dead-cast-doubts-on-numbers-49673.html http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Wuhan,-endless-queues-for-ash... China's new outbreak: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-fears-wave-covid-19-outbreak-200402143711728.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-fears-wave-covi...
- adrianN 7y ago
  You might want to compare the strictness of the Chinese lockdown to what western countries are doing. The goal of the lockdown must be getting the case numbers low enough that contact tracing works again. To do that you need to get the replication number well below 1 and hold it there for two months or so. The measures we're currently taking are totally insufficient for that. R is still closer to 3 than to 0.5.
- Tade0 7y ago
  My take is that if my government managed to successfully lie about the number of deaths (assigning COVID-19 as the reason only in cases where the patient had no chronic illnesses) then China is more than capable of doing the same and has a major incentive to do so.
- danans 7y ago
  China's can more effectively control people's movements than the US, which helps with containment. But at the same time, as in the US, reported infection rates are probably much lower than the actual rates, since both countries' administrations have an interest in minimizing the reported rates, or when that fails, minimizing the timeline for normalization of life. Public health authorities are the only people who have no incentive to exaggerate or suppress information.
  - gowld 7y ago
    US has some incentive to undercount, but US has lots of semi independent state/local governments and non government epidemiologists. In China, province/local government leaders would be jailed for speaking against the party line.
    - danans 7y ago
      I agree that the saving grace in the US is that we have independent state and local officials. Kudos especially to Ohio's governor for bucking the party line and declaring a lockdown in a timely way. Local officials have credibility right now from being the actual local boots on the ground. Their voices have cornered the administration into admitting, however begrudgingly, the scale of the problem. Given the administration's incentives, it's good that the institution aggregating the numbers right now is John's Hopkins, and not the administration's VP-led task force.
- ChrisClark 7y ago
  With mass surveillance and literally welding some people into their homes. The US isn't even near that level of containment. I'm scared for your guys. I'd also be scared if you were welding people into homes too. For a different reason. There really isn't a great solution here other than masks for all, and people behaving responsibly. Which isn't going to happen. :(
- spuz 7y ago
  The Chinese lockdown is much more severe than anything being enforced in the US. They track everyone's movements with their phones, large areas of the cities where cases have been reported are sealed off with checkpoints at the exit points. Your temperature is checked almost everywhere you go, the temperature of anyone working in food production is checked every 30mins, to board the subway you must scan the QR code in the specific carriage. It's very hard to explain just how drastically different the measures China are taking compared to the rest of the world but here is a good video that gives some insight: https://youtu.be/YfsdJGj3-jM https://youtu.be/YfsdJGj3-jM Can you imagine this happening in the US? What happens if this is what it takes to avoid the 60-80% infections required before herd immunity kicks in?
- stouset 7y ago
  Let’s say this is true. So what? The rest of the world is still a hot zone. As soon as one infected person slips through your net—tomorrow or six months in the future—you have an outbreak again.
GordonS 7y ago
Depends what you mean by "this" - do you really believe we won't be allowed to leave our homes for anything non-essential for over a year?
- markus_zhang 7y ago
  I don't think it can be comoletely ruled out. However I do believe that's a maximun as the vaccine will be well tested and released in under a year.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    Where are you seeing that? Every projection of which I'm aware has been in the range of 12-18 months. It's reasonable to hope for faster, but not to plan on that basis.
  - standardUser 7y ago
    You can safely rule out a one year lockdown because people will not tolerate it. They will violate the lockdown and the virus will spread.
  - imustbeevil 7y ago
    > the vaccine will be well tested and released in under a year. This is a bizarre misunderstanding of the vaccine development process.
  - TechBro8615 7y ago
    I'm just a layman, but my understanding of vaccine development is that the timeline has little to do with how long it takes to actually research, make or distribute the thing (although that's certainly part of it). The reason you need to wait so long is to prove its efficacy. By definition, you make a vaccine to give to everyone who is healthy and does not have the virus. So the absolute worst possible outcome would be to inject 95% of the population with a vaccine and discover in 6 months that it causes some horrible side effect.
  - beerandt 7y ago
    Well the other option is that everyone already catches it by then, and we move in without the immediate need for a vaccine, depending on length of natural immunity. Which I think is becoming the more likely outcome, given the increase in non symptomatic carriers. The catch will be if we attribute a drop off in hospital admits as successful containment or as the result of natural immunization/ herd immunity.
protonimitate 7y ago
I'm with you. Even if the 'shelter in place" restrictions get lifted, the economic fallout will last a while. I'm highly skeptical of the "economy will just unpause" theory.
umanwizard 7y ago
The current nearly total shutdown of retail businesses cannot and will not last for a year. If it needs to last for a year in order to contain the virus, it still can't and won't, and people will die from the virus.
vfc1 7y ago
I think it should last between 18 to 24 months too, but the confinement measures will be lifted much sooner. Once the epidemic curve is going down and its well under control, people will be allowed to go back to work with face masks, slowly industry by industry before the end of the year. This should only take a couple of months.
- gowld 7y ago
  There's no reason to expect "Once the epidemic curve is going down and its well under control" before there's a vaccine deployed or everyone has been infected and paid the personal cost of their viral lottery ticket. Best bet might be a modifier herd immunity plan, of infecting healthy people with a miniscule viral load and hoping the immune system can handle it better than a heavy load from getting sneezed on or spending all day at a hospital.
  - Balgair 7y ago
    That's just modified variolation with a flu virus. We don't use that method anymore for many good reasons. Controlling a viral infection is nearly impossible, let alone literally billions of people, all at once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
Back in January, my friends were trying to convince me to do a spring break type vacation in Miami in March. I said, I dunno if we should book just yet, this Coronavirus in China is certainly going to become a global pandemic. They thought I was a tinfoil hat lunatic. Then, in early March, right when SF starts it's social distance / lockdown, and SXSW and stuff like that starts getting canceled -- the Spring break thing we wanted to do in Miami is canceled, too. No surprise. Immediately after, my friends try to convince me that we should do this thing in Chicago in early May. Flights and hotels are stupid cheap right now, they say. We should take advantage. I'm like, guys, there is enough data from China, SK, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Italy, and Iran to know that this is going to be at its worst by early May. They think I'm insane. This will be over in a week or two at best, they say. Now there's yet another event in October. They're trying to convince me to do that now! I'm like, GUYS! Hopefully the world is somewhat back to normal by then, but who knows? Why don't we just wait a bit. The deals will be around for a while. It really seems like Fusion energy. Instead of always being 40 years away, everyone seems to think Coronavirus is always 2 weeks from just going away in its own.
- sershe 7y ago
  You can still go if you are not taking orthogonal risks. We just cancelled our rock climbing vacation because we intended to do some stuff that's hard for us and I don't want to end up in a hospital for unrelated reason and take up the capacity. Otherwise (e.g. if we were going for a beach vacation), viewing lockdown as hugely net negative I'd totally go. As far as I'm concerned, violating lockdown right now is basically civil disobedience - I normally run about once every 2-4 weeks, but if they close the park next to my house I'll make sure to go do it as often as my legs allow.

by donatj 7y ago

I've been telling my wife and friends I expect this to last well over a year. I've been told I "sound like an idiot" and that my negativity isn't helping. We'll see.

zabana 7y ago

Well the Chinese have been able to successfully contain the disease after a 60day lockdown so it shouldn't take more than that. Unless of course there's an agenda we're not aware of.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
> Well the Chinese have been able to successfully contain the disease in 60days so it shouldn't take more than that. Though they did seem to delay action, when they took it they went hard. Some of the US is past the point that China threw the brakes on, and the rest of the country continues to accelerate. We can't expect the timeline to align in any way.
leeoniya 7y ago
did they contain the disease or the information?
- jlmorton 7y ago
  The disease, obviously. When the disease was running rampant through Hubei, there were innumerable reports of it on social media. The WHO has had a large team of disease experts, public health experts and others in China since late January, and they say China has been totally transparent. The unfortunate truth is that authoritarian regimes are better suited to dealing with a pandemic, particularly competent, technocratic regimes like China's.
  - BatFastard 7y ago
    They were well suited AFTER the two months of trying to bury it. Once the cat got out of the bag, when keeping it in the bag was the whole point.
    - jlmorton 7y ago
      Not really a fair accounting at all. Everyone points to local efforts to control information about the disease, but that lasted a couple days, not two months. Genetic analysis indicates a single index patient sometime around mid-November. In late December, there was a large cluster of pneumonia cases with multiple patients at the same hospital in Wuhan, which were mostly linked to the Huanan Seafood Market. And this is exactly what you would expect. One case in mid-November, 2-3 cases a week later, 4-9 cases by early December, 16-81 cases by mid December, and maybe a couple hundred cases by late December. And among these cases, only a minority are going present to a hospital for treatment. Most will get sick, but simply stay home. On December 31st, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission became aware of the Huanan Seafood Market cluster and issued a notice to local hospitals. That same day, Li Wenliang made a statement to friends about the unknown pneumonia cases, which was shared by friends to social media. Local authorities arrested Li Wenliang and made him sign a statement acknowledging a misdemeanor, and ordered him not to talk about the illness publicly. Later that same day, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization of an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause. On January 1st, local authorities closed the seafood market. On January 7th, Chinese researchers identified SARS-CoV-2 as the causative agent in the outbreak. On January 12th, Chinese researchers shared the viral genome with the world health community. On January 22nd, with about 500 confirmed cases, China locked down Wuhan, and all of Hubei Province the next day. There were clearly some local efforts at suppressing information about the virus, but at a time that very little was known about it, and apparently all at the local level. Somehow this is seen by some in the West as state-sanctioned efforts at suppression, but the President of the United States saying it's just the flu, nothing to worry about, there are very few cases, most of them are getting better, it's totally under control - that's not suppressing information, just efforts to project calm. The reality is that China's response to this novel virus represents a new gold standard for emergent disease response. In terms of both speed and efficacy, it was the best response the world has ever seen.
turbohz 7y ago
The question is how long will it remain contained?
mcormier 7y ago
The chinese are also using mass surveillance to keep the problem under control. You need to show a qr code on your phone that proves you are allowed out at many checkpoints.
pstrateman 7y ago
There's some question of how successful they have actually been.
dhritzkiv 7y ago
There is nothing close to a lockdown currently in place anywhere in the US or Canada. Not to say that that's what's needed, just pointing out that China's policy was more extreme.
Leary 7y ago
Mild cases in America are being told to quarantine at home where they'll infect their families. Americans are not wearing masks universally. There are no bans on movements between hotspots like New York and the rest of the country. And Americans expect to successfully contain the disease in weeks.
im3w1l 7y ago
Western leaders aren't even trying to contain the disease, and they readily admit that. It's all about flattening the curve, and a flat curve stays flat a long time.
tathougies 7y ago
This is a lie. China now has another outbreak, and several country's intelligence agencies have suggested that their original numbers were completely made up.
- zabana 7y ago
  Would you mind providing proof ?
  - vkou 7y ago
    Anonymous non specific leaks from the most reputable, apolitical of sources, that has no vested interest in this - the White House.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    Here is a good overview: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871783 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871783 Proof: 1. China's numbers simply do not match models that take all their measures into account. 2. China only tested syptomatic people, and did not classify pneumonia sufferers as COVID: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-asymptomatic/china-to-focus-on-asymptomatic-coronavirus-cases-as-public-fears-grow-idUSKBN21I0VC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-... 3. Wuhan crematoriums are seeing way more deaths than reported: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/88435z/wuhans-crematoriums-are-filling-thousands-of-urns-with-coronavirus-remains-each-day https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/88435z/wuhans-crematorium... http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Wuhan,-endless-queues-for-ashes-of-coronavirus-dead-cast-doubts-on-numbers-49673.html http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Wuhan,-endless-queues-for-ash... China's new outbreak: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-fears-wave-covid-19-outbreak-200402143711728.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-fears-wave-covi...
adrianN 7y ago
You might want to compare the strictness of the Chinese lockdown to what western countries are doing. The goal of the lockdown must be getting the case numbers low enough that contact tracing works again. To do that you need to get the replication number well below 1 and hold it there for two months or so. The measures we're currently taking are totally insufficient for that. R is still closer to 3 than to 0.5.
Tade0 7y ago
My take is that if my government managed to successfully lie about the number of deaths (assigning COVID-19 as the reason only in cases where the patient had no chronic illnesses) then China is more than capable of doing the same and has a major incentive to do so.
danans 7y ago
China's can more effectively control people's movements than the US, which helps with containment. But at the same time, as in the US, reported infection rates are probably much lower than the actual rates, since both countries' administrations have an interest in minimizing the reported rates, or when that fails, minimizing the timeline for normalization of life. Public health authorities are the only people who have no incentive to exaggerate or suppress information.
- gowld 7y ago
  US has some incentive to undercount, but US has lots of semi independent state/local governments and non government epidemiologists. In China, province/local government leaders would be jailed for speaking against the party line.
  - danans 7y ago
    I agree that the saving grace in the US is that we have independent state and local officials. Kudos especially to Ohio's governor for bucking the party line and declaring a lockdown in a timely way. Local officials have credibility right now from being the actual local boots on the ground. Their voices have cornered the administration into admitting, however begrudgingly, the scale of the problem. Given the administration's incentives, it's good that the institution aggregating the numbers right now is John's Hopkins, and not the administration's VP-led task force.
ChrisClark 7y ago
With mass surveillance and literally welding some people into their homes. The US isn't even near that level of containment. I'm scared for your guys. I'd also be scared if you were welding people into homes too. For a different reason. There really isn't a great solution here other than masks for all, and people behaving responsibly. Which isn't going to happen. :(
spuz 7y ago
The Chinese lockdown is much more severe than anything being enforced in the US. They track everyone's movements with their phones, large areas of the cities where cases have been reported are sealed off with checkpoints at the exit points. Your temperature is checked almost everywhere you go, the temperature of anyone working in food production is checked every 30mins, to board the subway you must scan the QR code in the specific carriage. It's very hard to explain just how drastically different the measures China are taking compared to the rest of the world but here is a good video that gives some insight: https://youtu.be/YfsdJGj3-jM https://youtu.be/YfsdJGj3-jM Can you imagine this happening in the US? What happens if this is what it takes to avoid the 60-80% infections required before herd immunity kicks in?
stouset 7y ago
Let’s say this is true. So what? The rest of the world is still a hot zone. As soon as one infected person slips through your net—tomorrow or six months in the future—you have an outbreak again.

GordonS 7y ago

Depends what you mean by "this" - do you really believe we won't be allowed to leave our homes for anything non-essential for over a year?

markus_zhang 7y ago
I don't think it can be comoletely ruled out. However I do believe that's a maximun as the vaccine will be well tested and released in under a year.
- throwanem 7y ago
  Where are you seeing that? Every projection of which I'm aware has been in the range of 12-18 months. It's reasonable to hope for faster, but not to plan on that basis.
- standardUser 7y ago
  You can safely rule out a one year lockdown because people will not tolerate it. They will violate the lockdown and the virus will spread.
- imustbeevil 7y ago
  > the vaccine will be well tested and released in under a year. This is a bizarre misunderstanding of the vaccine development process.
- TechBro8615 7y ago
  I'm just a layman, but my understanding of vaccine development is that the timeline has little to do with how long it takes to actually research, make or distribute the thing (although that's certainly part of it). The reason you need to wait so long is to prove its efficacy. By definition, you make a vaccine to give to everyone who is healthy and does not have the virus. So the absolute worst possible outcome would be to inject 95% of the population with a vaccine and discover in 6 months that it causes some horrible side effect.
- beerandt 7y ago
  Well the other option is that everyone already catches it by then, and we move in without the immediate need for a vaccine, depending on length of natural immunity. Which I think is becoming the more likely outcome, given the increase in non symptomatic carriers. The catch will be if we attribute a drop off in hospital admits as successful containment or as the result of natural immunization/ herd immunity.

protonimitate 7y ago

I'm with you. Even if the 'shelter in place" restrictions get lifted, the economic fallout will last a while. I'm highly skeptical of the "economy will just unpause" theory.

umanwizard 7y ago

The current nearly total shutdown of retail businesses cannot and will not last for a year. If it needs to last for a year in order to contain the virus, it still can't and won't, and people will die from the virus.

vfc1 7y ago

I think it should last between 18 to 24 months too, but the confinement measures will be lifted much sooner. Once the epidemic curve is going down and its well under control, people will be allowed to go back to work with face masks, slowly industry by industry before the end of the year. This should only take a couple of months.

gowld 7y ago
There's no reason to expect "Once the epidemic curve is going down and its well under control" before there's a vaccine deployed or everyone has been infected and paid the personal cost of their viral lottery ticket. Best bet might be a modifier herd immunity plan, of infecting healthy people with a miniscule viral load and hoping the immune system can handle it better than a heavy load from getting sneezed on or spending all day at a hospital.
- Balgair 7y ago
  That's just modified variolation with a flu virus. We don't use that method anymore for many good reasons. Controlling a viral infection is nearly impossible, let alone literally billions of people, all at once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

Back in January, my friends were trying to convince me to do a spring break type vacation in Miami in March. I said, I dunno if we should book just yet, this Coronavirus in China is certainly going to become a global pandemic. They thought I was a tinfoil hat lunatic. Then, in early March, right when SF starts it's social distance / lockdown, and SXSW and stuff like that starts getting canceled -- the Spring break thing we wanted to do in Miami is canceled, too. No surprise. Immediately after, my friends try to convince me that we should do this thing in Chicago in early May. Flights and hotels are stupid cheap right now, they say. We should take advantage. I'm like, guys, there is enough data from China, SK, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Italy, and Iran to know that this is going to be at its worst by early May. They think I'm insane. This will be over in a week or two at best, they say. Now there's yet another event in October. They're trying to convince me to do that now! I'm like, GUYS! Hopefully the world is somewhat back to normal by then, but who knows? Why don't we just wait a bit. The deals will be around for a while. It really seems like Fusion energy. Instead of always being 40 years away, everyone seems to think Coronavirus is always 2 weeks from just going away in its own.

sershe 7y ago
You can still go if you are not taking orthogonal risks. We just cancelled our rock climbing vacation because we intended to do some stuff that's hard for us and I don't want to end up in a hospital for unrelated reason and take up the capacity. Otherwise (e.g. if we were going for a beach vacation), viewing lockdown as hugely net negative I'd totally go. As far as I'm concerned, violating lockdown right now is basically civil disobedience - I normally run about once every 2-4 weeks, but if they close the park next to my house I'll make sure to go do it as often as my legs allow.