Loading ...Covid19 Taking Hold – Global Shock Unfolding
I’m afraid this really isn’t looking good. We’re getting clusters and outbreaks all over the planet now. It looks like the attempts to contain it have failed. I pray I’m wrong.
If this becomes a global pandemic the number of deaths will be huge and the impact to global GDP will be staggering . To avoid a simultaneous global economic collapse, there would need to be unprecedented financial intervention by governments and world banks.
1-2% mortality rate is what we’ve been told (based on the experience in China). But just how trustworthy are the Chinese statistics ?
As of now there are approximately 50,000 cases, with over 9000 classified as serious or critical (data from worldometers.info)
Towns and cities across Europe are now seeing measures being put in place, as well as the Far East, the Middle East and I’m sure everywhere else soon. As a precaution I’d recommend having enough provisions to see you through an extended period when it’s not easy to get hold of the things that you take for granted in daily life. I really hope it’s not necessary.
Is your thesis still to see metals/miners climb higher out of a panic and economic slowdown due to rates mechanically being lowered by the markets, or will we see a major deflation scare? Maybe the $USD is key to that answer?
Is anybody considering the possibility this virus will fade away in March as the Flu Bug Usually Does ?
Is that not a possibility ?
Let’s all keep the faith.
We don’t know is the answer to almost everything. According to ZH the gov’t in SKorea has recommended that people keep their housing warm (77degreesF or more — sorry I forget the C but you can convert) since the bug doesn’t do so well in the heat. There are cases in Singapore, which is warm, but there’s lots of air conditioning there.
From what I’ve read so far it hasn’t mutated much if at all. That is good and it is bad I (not in the slightest bit an expert) think. It is good in that it in theory means that a vaccine might be easier than if it were a moving target, though there are some nasty aspects to the bug that make it easier to slip past an immune system than most, thus making it much more difficult to create a vaccine than for many bugs. The bad thing about it not having (supposedly) mutated much if at all is that viruses will tend to mutate to become milder. A virus that kills people doesn’t reproduce well, and even one that makes you stay at home doesn’t reproduce as well as one that just makes everyone sniffle and not much else.
It apparently has some extremely nasty epidemiological characteristics. These include that many people who spread it don’t feel sick at all, have minimal symptoms, or have symptoms that mimic a cold or at most influenza. It has some other dirty tricks.
In summary, we do not know, and perhaps we in the N hemisphere might not get it as much as we could over the summer if we don’t use maximal A/C is my pure ***guess*** but all bets are off. We just don’t know.
There is some speculation that this virus is a man-made biological weapon.
Mortality rates could be much higher than 1 or 2 percent, especially in China.
Also, the number of cases in China is likely to be much higher.
The late George Carlin once said, my first rule in life is to not believe anything the government says.
It is hard to know the truth about anything these days.
This virus is a man-made bioweapon.
It is SARS with HIV components designed specifically to spread when hosts are asymptomatic
There will be no vaccine.
Angiotensin receptor blockers may help prevent spread. If you have hypertension you may be one already.
https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m406/rr-2
Protease inhibitors may be of benefit to those that have the disease as it will inhibit virus replication.
I expect lots of off label use of that class of drug in the coming months as virus rampages through our civilization.
“I expect lots of off label use of that class of drug in the coming months”
Not if its only being produced in China, and their factories are offline.
I expect lots of empty shelves soon.
Appreciate the line of analysis though …. and yes, to the “don’t test then no infection” refrain …. have a friend in Thailand where that’s the prevailing nationwide philosophy!
dadoc1, I have no expertise. I have seen the assertion from someone who likely knows even less than I that Vitamin D may tend to act as an ACE2 blocker. On a quick-quick-quick skim of stuff coming up from an internet search I am highly skeptical but do have the impression that low levels of circulating vitamin D (quite common) *might* predispose to increased susceptibility to virus latching on. Any ideas? Do you know?
I’ve seen that chloroquine has been used in China. Do you have any idea whether it actually does anything useful? Do you have any knowledge-based idea whether related substances — hydroxychlorquine or even quinine water would serve in a pinch???? I have no idea personally how or why or whether chloroquine would do anything.
Yes there is data on chloroquine:
http://www.natap.org/2020/newsUpdates/s41422-020-0282-0.pdf
Without longer trials we really don’t know true effectiveness. I expect these drugs will be used based on availability on many hospitalized Covid-19 patients.
Iran – 15 deaths out of 95 confirmed cases. That’s a death rate of over 15%. Something concerning going on there, unless they’ve got the numbers wrong https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5474869
Numbers are likely wrong. There are likely many more cases that haven’t been tested yet.
Please forgive the following long quotation and preface. I thought it interesting when I came across it from PavewayIV in comments in an open thread in Moon of Alabama. [Moon of Alabama amounts to something like an extraordinarily well informed propaganda or near-propaganda site hostile to elites dominating the US/UK, and conversely remarkably willing to overlook any problems in China, Russia, North Korea, etc. Thus MoA seems to be remarkably and unrealistically supportive of the PRC’s stance on the epidemic. PavewayIV, the commenter, many people may remember from when he used to comment on ZH. He seems to have worked before retirement with the US military, perhaps as a contractor, in the middle east, probably with expertise in radar. He is not as far as I know a medical expert, but I think he is tuned in and personally tend to consider his comments reliable until proven otherwise.]
“I’ll only emphasize the part about how few people have been tested in the U.S. The CDC criteria, stated another way, for NO TESTING REQUIRED/NO RISK : 1) Did the person travel from China? If they didn’t then, 2) Did they have contact with a lab-confirmed case of COVID-19?
“If the answer to both is ‘NO’ then the person is not currently considered at risk, and health care providers CAN NOT send samples to the CDC for testing. Think of the implications of that. If you’re in the ICU in the U.S. for flu/pneumonia and were not in contact with one of the 14 confirmed cases, then you just have the flu.
“It doesn’t matter if the person was flying or on any other public transportation everywhere except China or was in any public setting where they may have contracted corona virus. It doesn’t matter how many bowls of bat or pangolin soup they may have enjoyed recently. It does not matter what clinical symptoms are present or if a CAT scan shows pneumonia consistent with that found in other COVID-19 cases. In the U.S., those patients are not and will not be tested by the CDC today and have not be counted as COVID-19 ‘cases’. Today, they can only count as regular, ‘seasonal’ influenza-related pneumonia cases (or deaths) regardless of what the doctors suspect.
“The CDC itself has only been testing for COVID-19 since January 21, and only claims to have done 426 tests as of February 24 for the entire U.S. They claim they’re not behind, so the criteria are so restrictive that only a handful of patients qualify for testing. So maybe 200 or so tests for the U.S. (14 confirmed) in addition to a couple hundred for the U.S. citizens evacuated from Wuhan and the Diamond Princess in Japan (39 confirmed).
“The CDC distributed COVID-19 test kits (700-800 tests per kit) to state labs starting on Feb. 3rd, but one of the reagents was found to be flawed so the kits are unusable. The CDC intends to produce and send out a replacement – someday. So far, nothing.
“Expect the count of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. to explode when state labs are finally able to test whichever patients they want vs. the CDC ‘approved’ high-risk cases. It will be to late and useless to do contact histories at that point. “Gosh, I had a long layover at Chicago-O’hare, but didn’t get everyone’s name in the terminal that day. Sorry!”
Posted by: PavewayIV | Feb 25 2020 4:43 utc |”
from http://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/02/the-moa-week-in-review-open-thread-2020-14/comments/page/4/#comments