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Every year we get bombarded by 'this is the next Black Death.'

Not to underplay the deaths, but at this point, I'll believe it's a national crisis when I see it.

(02-28-2020 11:53 AM)bronco89 Wrote:  

(02-28-2020 11:34 AM)BroncoPhilly Wrote:  

(02-28-2020 08:05 AM)bronco89 Wrote:  It is real from a business perspective. The supply chain at my company is in chaos and you can't change that on a dime.

Global travel has been eliminated and domestic travel is very restricted. I am OK with that because the last place I want to be right now is on a plane. I am in a senior customer facing position and typically travel about 50% of the time.

The markets will continue to drop due to the uncertainty of where this virus will hit next.

Travel for my company has been just about eliminated, it has been entirely eliminated for China and Korea.

I used to travel like you, ALL THE TIME. Been to Japan many times, Korea many times and China 7-8 times. But the last place I want to be right now is on one of those petri dishes with wings.

First time I went to Japan I caught a nasty cold and my ears were plugged up all the time I was over there-3 weeks. I'm sure I came down with the virus on the airliner. If you're flying now, good thing to bring some hand sanitizer wipes along with you and wipe down the arm rests, tray table and anything else you might touch. Risk is low in the USA, but why take any chances?

Completely agree. I'm lucky that now I just travel domestically. I lived in SE Asia for a year and also seemed to get sick when I traveled home. At some point they will need to look at the sanitation standards on planes. Planes really are disgusting and with more folks traveling abroad the risk for illness is higher than ever.

Absolutely agree. When you fly to Asia you are inside a pressurized aluminum tube for 14 hours (and longer if you go to Thailand). That's an awful lot of breathing, sneezing and coughing going on inside there. Each aircraft makes a flight a day. Doesn't take long for virus and bacteria to build up on the armrests, tray tables, Monitor screens and so on. The dry air at altitude does tend to kill some of the bacteria, but I don't believe the virus is impacted all that much.

It's always a good idea to wipe down your armrests and tables with an alcohol based wet wipe, even if it's just a domestic flight. And then wipe your hands down similarly. I do every time I fly now.

(02-28-2020 12:05 PM)WMUlaxer97 Wrote:  I read that Gilead has developed an antiviral drug ready for human trials in Nebraska. My company, not Gilead, put out a statement in January estimating a vaccine possibly ready for human trial by fall.

https://apple.news/AHgmg_t9bTY62TTri8xWWxw

I've been reading that today. The long delay is clinical trials, which they don't want to circumvent owing to safety concerns. But, the Chinese in Wuhan province may cut those short if their mortality rate doesn't start dropping fast. Let's hope they come up with drugs in the short term that can treat the symptoms of the virus, if not cure it. The vaccine might be longer term. Thank God we have companies like your working the wee hours on this crisis!

(02-28-2020 05:08 PM)Bronco14 Wrote:  Every year we get bombarded by 'this is the next Black Death.'

Not to underplay the deaths, but at this point, I'll believe it's a national crisis when I see it.

I hear your point. If nothing else this is good exercise for the BIG ONE. And it will come one day, guaranteed.

Europe suffered from plagues when the population in their cities got too big and their food supplies were challenged to keep up with population growth. Mother Nature has it's own insidious way of correcting over population. I hate to be that frank, but there it is.

We have what? 7 billion people on the planet right now? Airliners bringing us within hours of folks on the other side of the world, in nations with a history of virus generation. One day, not too far in the future, we will be hit with a high mortality virus. We need to plan better now to be ready for that day, as nations and as individuals. Time to liquidate investments and buy gold????

(02-28-2020 10:29 PM)BroncoPhilly Wrote:  

(02-28-2020 11:53 AM)bronco89 Wrote:  

(02-28-2020 11:34 AM)BroncoPhilly Wrote:  

(02-28-2020 08:05 AM)bronco89 Wrote:  It is real from a business perspective. The supply chain at my company is in chaos and you can't change that on a dime.

Global travel has been eliminated and domestic travel is very restricted. I am OK with that because the last place I want to be right now is on a plane. I am in a senior customer facing position and typically travel about 50% of the time.

The markets will continue to drop due to the uncertainty of where this virus will hit next.

Travel for my company has been just about eliminated, it has been entirely eliminated for China and Korea.

I used to travel like you, ALL THE TIME. Been to Japan many times, Korea many times and China 7-8 times. But the last place I want to be right now is on one of those petri dishes with wings.

First time I went to Japan I caught a nasty cold and my ears were plugged up all the time I was over there-3 weeks. I'm sure I came down with the virus on the airliner. If you're flying now, good thing to bring some hand sanitizer wipes along with you and wipe down the arm rests, tray table and anything else you might touch. Risk is low in the USA, but why take any chances?

Completely agree. I'm lucky that now I just travel domestically. I lived in SE Asia for a year and also seemed to get sick when I traveled home. At some point they will need to look at the sanitation standards on planes. Planes really are disgusting and with more folks traveling abroad the risk for illness is higher than ever.

Absolutely agree. When you fly to Asia you are inside a pressurized aluminum tube for 14 hours (and longer if you go to Thailand). That's an awful lot of breathing, sneezing and coughing going on inside there. Each aircraft makes a flight a day. Doesn't take long for virus and bacteria to build up on the armrests, tray tables, Monitor screens and so on. The dry air at altitude does tend to kill some of the bacteria, but I don't believe the virus is impacted all that much.

It's always a good idea to wipe down your armrests and tables with an alcohol based wet wipe, even if it's just a domestic flight. And then wipe your hands down similarly. I do every time I fly now.

Qantas and JAL are finally sanitizing their aircraft.

"I had the Coronavirus"...

IMHO

Assuming this information is accurate.

It's worth noting how this patient was treated after being diagnosed.

What are the implications?

Washington State and California are now experiencing cases spread through contact from unknown infected people. Unfortunately, the first person to die in the US from it was the WA patient. There are 2 new patients and a possibility that more residents and employees of a nursing facility of that state were exposed to the virus.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story...-officials

(02-29-2020 05:10 AM)Boca Rocket Wrote:  

(02-28-2020 10:29 PM)BroncoPhilly Wrote:  

(02-28-2020 11:53 AM)bronco89 Wrote:  

(02-28-2020 11:34 AM)BroncoPhilly Wrote:  

(02-28-2020 08:05 AM)bronco89 Wrote:  It is real from a business perspective. The supply chain at my company is in chaos and you can't change that on a dime.

Global travel has been eliminated and domestic travel is very restricted. I am OK with that because the last place I want to be right now is on a plane. I am in a senior customer facing position and typically travel about 50% of the time.

The markets will continue to drop due to the uncertainty of where this virus will hit next.

Travel for my company has been just about eliminated, it has been entirely eliminated for China and Korea.

I used to travel like you, ALL THE TIME. Been to Japan many times, Korea many times and China 7-8 times. But the last place I want to be right now is on one of those petri dishes with wings.

First time I went to Japan I caught a nasty cold and my ears were plugged up all the time I was over there-3 weeks. I'm sure I came down with the virus on the airliner. If you're flying now, good thing to bring some hand sanitizer wipes along with you and wipe down the arm rests, tray table and anything else you might touch. Risk is low in the USA, but why take any chances?

Completely agree. I'm lucky that now I just travel domestically. I lived in SE Asia for a year and also seemed to get sick when I traveled home. At some point they will need to look at the sanitation standards on planes. Planes really are disgusting and with more folks traveling abroad the risk for illness is higher than ever.

Absolutely agree. When you fly to Asia you are inside a pressurized aluminum tube for 14 hours (and longer if you go to Thailand). That's an awful lot of breathing, sneezing and coughing going on inside there. Each aircraft makes a flight a day. Doesn't take long for virus and bacteria to build up on the armrests, tray tables, Monitor screens and so on. The dry air at altitude does tend to kill some of the bacteria, but I don't believe the virus is impacted all that much.

It's always a good idea to wipe down your armrests and tables with an alcohol based wet wipe, even if it's just a domestic flight. And then wipe your hands down similarly. I do every time I fly now.

Qantas and JAL are finally sanitizing their aircraft.

About damn time, but I wonder what their 'sanitize' means? I'd still wipe down the arm rests, tray table, ear phones and the monitor screen/control.

Quote:In a report published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine, Chinese health officials said the death rate from the illness known as COVID-19 was 1.4%, based on 1,099 patients at more than 500 hospitals throughout China.

Assuming there are many more cases with no or very mild symptoms, the rate "may be considerably less than 1%," U.S. health officials wrote in an editorial in the journal. That would make the virus more like a severe seasonal flu than a disease similar to its genetic cousins SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or MERS, Middle East respiratory syndrome.

Hopefully that speculation is correct and the mortality rate is similar to the flu.

More to follow.

If continued weakness in the stock markets is demonsrated, the FED may weigh in with some rate cuts. That'd be good news for me!

Quote:While the economic fallout from the outbreak is not yet known, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker suggests the U.S. economy will remain insulated from the outbreak. Its latest reading on Friday forecasts 2.6 percent growth in the first quarter, up from the 2.1 percent pace in the three months through December.

Still, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell felt the need to reassure investors on Friday afternoon, releasing a statement saying the central bank is “closely monitoring developments” and will “act as appropriate to support the economy.”

Michelle Meyer, U.S. economist at Bank of America, sees the Fed cutting its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points -- double the typical size of a change -- to a range of 1 percent to 1.25 percent at its March 18 meeting as a “way to stem panic.” She says an emergency rate cut is “on the table,” but believes the Fed would prefer to wait “in order to have some data and greater cover to justify the cut.”

Traders agree. Fed fund futures traded at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange show a 91.5 percent chance the Fed cuts by 50 basis points at its March meeting and an 8.5 percent probability of a 25-basis point reduction. On Feb. 19, the market was pricing in just a 6.6 percent chance the Fed would lower rates at all.

The safe-haven appeal of U.S. Treasurys coupled with expectations of a rate cut have caused traders to plow into the securities, driving the benchmark 10-year yield to a record low 1.127 percent. There’s a chance they could even go lower.

(02-29-2020 08:15 PM)BroncoPhilly Wrote:  

Quote:In a report published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine, Chinese health officials said the death rate from the illness known as COVID-19 was 1.4%, based on 1,099 patients at more than 500 hospitals throughout China.

Assuming there are many more cases with no or very mild symptoms, the rate "may be considerably less than 1%," U.S. health officials wrote in an editorial in the journal. That would make the virus more like a severe seasonal flu than a disease similar to its genetic cousins SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or MERS, Middle East respiratory syndrome.

Hopefully that speculation is correct and the mortality rate is similar to the flu.

More to follow.

According to WHO, the average reproductive rate (r0) of coronavirus ranged between 1.4 and 2.5. That meant, on average, each confirmed case of coronavirus would infect between 1.4 and 2.5 other people.

With a mortality rate currently estimated at around 2 per cent (a range of 0.7 to 3), it is less deadly to those who become affected than Ebola, Sars or Mers.

It is more contagious than some of the most deadly airborne viruses, however. Mers has an r0 of between 0.3 and 0.8, and a fatality rate of around 35 per cent. 

At the other end of the scale, chicken pox is very contagious, with each case on average infecting between 10 and 12 others, but with an extremely low fatality rate.

https://apple.news/Auue8gpSvTMqL9jP7idRXKQ

(02-28-2020 08:05 AM)bronco89 Wrote:  It is real from a business perspective. The supply chain at my company is in chaos and you can't change that on a dime.

Global travel has been eliminated and domestic travel is very restricted. I am OK with that because the last place I want to be right now is on a plane. I am in a senior customer facing position and typically travel about 50% of the time.

The markets will continue to drop due to the uncertainty of where this virus will hit next.

94% of the Fortune 1000 are seeing coronavirus supply chain disruptions: Report

https://apple.news/AFUQm5P6BTWuasxhmyLNteg

At UC Davis Medical Center in California, at least 124 registered nurses and other health care workers were sent home for “self-quarantine” after a Solano County woman with the virus was admitted, National Nurses United, a nationwide union representing registered nurses, said Friday.

The case “highlights the vulnerability of the nation’s hospitals to this virus,” the union said.

https://apnews.com/f175d89567a26d59cab27725c9e8a0d7

That’s a sizeable amount of the workforce at UC Davis our for at least 2 weeks. I’m sure they have a plan to backfill the nurses, assistants, & techs that have to be out but if this happens at a widespread rate it’ll be hard keep healthcare workers quarantined.

This is a very unsettling turn that we’re seeing on the west coast.

Shortages in the supply chain are starting to effect pharmaceutical production.

“The shortage is due to an issue with manufacturing of an active pharmaceutical ingredient used in the drug. It is important to note that there are other alternatives that can be used by patients. We are working with the manufacturer as well as other manufacturers to mitigate the shortage. We will do everything possible to mitigate the shortage,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement.

https://endpts.com/why-fda-cant-disclose...-shortage/

What do R0 values mean?

Three possibilities exist for the potential spread or decline of a disease, depending on its R0 value:

If R0 is less than 1, each existing infection causes less than one new infection. In this case, the disease will decline and eventually die out.

If R0 equals 1, each existing infection causes one new infection. The disease will stay alive and stable, but there won’t be an outbreak or an epidemic.

If R0 is more than 1, each existing infection causes more than one new infection. The disease will spread between people, and there may be an outbreak or epidemic.

Importantly, a disease’s R0 value only applies when everyone in a population is completely vulnerable to the disease. This means:

no one has been vaccinated
no one has had the disease before
there’s no way to control the spread of the disease

This combination of conditions is rare nowadays thanks to advances in medicine. Many diseases that were deadly in the past can now be contained and sometimes cured. For example, in 1918 there was a worldwide outbreak of the swine flu that killed 50 million people. According to a review article published in BMC Medicine, the R0 value of the 1918 pandemic was estimated to be between 1.4 and 2.8. But when the swine flu, or H1N1 virus, came back in 2009, its R0 value was between 1.4 and 1.6, report researchers in the journal Science. The existence of vaccines and antiviral drugs made the 2009 outbreak much less deadly.

Things to be encouraged about:
-r0 value is dropping from initial estimates
-Chinese cases are slowing and maybe they are getting back to work, alleviating concerns about supply chains for medicine and other items
-Quarantines have been generally "working" to slow spread
-US has relatively superb medical care
-US doesn't have as much air pollution and smokers as China

Things to be discouraged about:
-People are still babbling about the flu and not taking this seriously
-We don't know if warm weather will lessen spread
-This coronavirus like others doesn't seem to confer long-term immunity (this is unconfirmed). That means you can catch it again, and that could impact the success rate of a vaccine
-Cases details indicate it's probably spreading right now and we're going to have a "uh oh" moment like Italy, any day now
-It's so spreadable and leaves enough people well that it may be with us forever, or seasonally

Things to really be worried about:
-Even if the death rate is lower, 20% of people develop symptoms needing hospitalization in some form. At any one time, there are about 300,000 open hospital beds in the US. Part of the reason is was deadlier in Wuhan is the hospitals were totally overwhelmed. There are only so many ventilators to go around. We won't put up with the same quarantine procedures China employed, so if this goes wide, it could overwhelm our (or any) health system. That means more regular flu deaths, etc.

(02-28-2020 05:08 PM)Bronco14 Wrote:  Every year we get bombarded by 'this is the next Black Death.'

Not to underplay the deaths, but at this point, I'll believe it's a national crisis when I see it.

It's not a national crisis, but the concern about the virus did light the fuse which caused the stock market correction. Until that concern is addressed, we'll reside at 15-17% below our recent highs on the indexes.

I part ways from other conservatives in that I accept this is a genuine CONCERN. But I agree it has been hyped by the news media-for their own reasons. 100 or so contaminated people and one death nationwide should hardly make the bylines in a local newspaper, but the uncertainty about the virus at this stage of the issue is what gives it force projection. The CDC must lead the transparency and keep Americans informed.

(02-29-2020 08:58 PM)WMUlaxer97 Wrote:  

(02-28-2020 08:05 AM)bronco89 Wrote:  It is real from a business perspective. The supply chain at my company is in chaos and you can't change that on a dime.

Global travel has been eliminated and domestic travel is very restricted. I am OK with that because the last place I want to be right now is on a plane. I am in a senior customer facing position and typically travel about 50% of the time.

The markets will continue to drop due to the uncertainty of where this virus will hit next.

94% of the Fortune 1000 are seeing coronavirus supply chain disruptions: Report

https://apple.news/AFUQm5P6BTWuasxhmyLNteg

We've lost from 2 weeks to a month on programs I am working on, mostly due to component disruptions in or near Wuhan province China. Most of China is back to work now, but we haven't seen corrected timelines which show that 2-4 weeks being reduced, yet. We'll see what happens.

(03-01-2020 04:46 AM)WMUlaxer97 Wrote:  What do R0 values mean?

Three possibilities exist for the potential spread or decline of a disease, depending on its R0 value:

If R0 is less than 1, each existing infection causes less than one new infection. In this case, the disease will decline and eventually die out.

If R0 equals 1, each existing infection causes one new infection. The disease will stay alive and stable, but there won’t be an outbreak or an epidemic.

If R0 is more than 1, each existing infection causes more than one new infection. The disease will spread between people, and there may be an outbreak or epidemic.

Importantly, a disease’s R0 value only applies when everyone in a population is completely vulnerable to the disease. This means:

no one has been vaccinated
no one has had the disease before
there’s no way to control the spread of the disease

This combination of conditions is rare nowadays thanks to advances in medicine. Many diseases that were deadly in the past can now be contained and sometimes cured. For example, in 1918 there was a worldwide outbreak of the swine flu that killed 50 million people. According to a review article published in BMC Medicine, the R0 value of the 1918 pandemic was estimated to be between 1.4 and 2.8. But when the swine flu, or H1N1 virus, came back in 2009, its R0 value was between 1.4 and 1.6, report researchers in the journal Science. The existence of vaccines and antiviral drugs made the 2009 outbreak much less deadly.

Interesting information. Thanks.

China getting back to normal after virus transmission slows:

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/29/810334985...-reopening