China's numbers had been getting better for a few weeks. BUT, they're up a bit this past weekend. This probably reflects people starting to come out of quarantine, but also perhaps rushing it a bit.
Of course, you've probably all heard that we've now had a death from SARS-CoV-2 in the U.S. (in Seattle, which is up to 5 as of 12:45 on Monday). Also, we're starting to see some pop-ups in various locations, suggesting that community transmission is taking place. Some panic buying was reported at stores in Brooklyn, and northern Virginia. There was also a genomic study out of Seattle indicating that the viruses from two separate people there had been in circulation in Washington for about 6 weeks.
CDC levels are up: South Korea and Italy are now at the highest level.
As BD brought up the other day, San Francisco announced a state of emergency before they had any confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2. We've talked in class about how the incentive systems for lower level government in China (a micro thing) lead to badly overstated GDP at the national level (a macro level thing). In the U.S., one of our goofy incentives is that declaring a state of emergency at the local level allows you to claim additional funding from the federal level. I don't really think the claims are abused. But, it has become a thing to claim them before anything bad happens (especially with hurricanes).
The State of Washington declared a state of emergency on Saturday. This is different (from San Francisco) in an important way: national guard units report to governors, and can be tasked to perform non-military roles within a state.
Here's the problem in Hubei (definitely) and other places potentially. Roughly 16% of those diagnosed require a hospital bed at some point. Roughly 4% of those diagnosed require an ICU state (in Italy right now, that's 9%). Those numbers will overwhelm hospitals if enough people get infected. When that happened in Hubei, the death rate went way up.
Pollution images from NASA tell us a lot about China's economy:
Two points. First, nitrogen oxides break down more quickly in warm weather, so it's not like there was no pollution in southern China before (and who knows, maybe Beijing is having a heat wave in the later image). Secondly, while there is still no official list of quarantined regions in China, there are reports that quarantines are far less pervasive to the north and east of Wuhan, than to its southeast. That isn't supported by these images, giving support to the idea that China's economy is largely shut down everywhere, whether or not there is a quarantine in a particular location.
It's definitely a form of "epidemic porn", but you may want to start consulting the map, and focusing in on the U.S., on the Johns Hopkins dashboard (BTW: that site is deep linked and can be very hard to find with a search engine). BUT, while viewing this, keep this map handy too:
This shows the location of the quarantine centers in the U.S. They correspond to many of the current sites on the map at the dashboard. But, having said that, we worry about the community transmission cases in Sacramento, and in Seattle, and now Chicago, and now Providence because they are not in those centers.
On a good note, this map was published last October:
It shows epidemic preparedness as a chloropleth. Do note that the big COVID-19 problem countries so far — China, Iran, Japan, and Italy — are all orange. South Korea is supposed to be better (ranked 9th best, perhaps because they've had learning experiences with MERS). On the other hand, I doubt that the map's creators envisioned roughly 2K confirmed and 9K suspected cases from a single church. Also, the government of South Korea is considering bringing murder charges against the leaders of that church, who are suspected of having OK'd public services after becoming aware of contagious members. Also note from this that the U.S. is # 1, and by a large margin ... I'm not a Trump fan, but we apparently have to filter for "Trump derangement syndrome" in the news about this too (our huge healthcare spending does pay for an awful lot of good stuff).
The situation in Iran is crazy: they have a bunch of national leaders sick with SARS-CoV-2. This indicates community transmission at a government meeting, or something like that. Of course, last week I noted that their head of the medical response was sick. This week it's a Vice President (they have 4), two members of their parliament, the mayor of Tehran, the guy in charge of epidemic management in the holy city of Qom, and one of the ayatollahs (that's a common, but high-ranking religious designation, but this particular one is involved with decisionmaking). Also, a representative of the WHO working in Iran has contracted the virus.
Xinqi Su reports that Xi Jinping made some visits for photo-ops to places organizing COVID-19 response. He still has yet to go anywhere near Hubei province. She also reported that gambling in Macau is off 88% from last February.
South Korea is considering murder charges against leaders of the Shincheonji church. Recall that membership is secret. However, they take attendance at each meeting, digitally. Yet for 10 days they were unable or unwilling to provide a list of members to the government to track down infections, while the epidemic advanced and people died.
Emily Feng reports that some factories are opening in China. In many cases, workers are being shipped in, and housed in quarantined hotels.
Dave Yin reports that data from China shows that 1 in 6 people who test positive do not display any symptoms yet. That's a real problem for containment.
Paul Mozur reports in the New York Times that Alibaba has developed a phone app that can be checked by anyone to check your quarantine status. If it shows red, everyone will know you're not cleared to be outside.
France has closed the Louvre.
Daegu (South Korea) is starting to sound like Wuhan (China):
The difference between South Korea, and say Italy, Iran, or the U.S., is that in South Korea the outbreak is being generated by clusters, rather than community spread.
The situation in Iran is crazy: they have a bunch of national leaders sick with SARS-CoV-2. This indicates community transmission at a government meeting, or something like that. Of course, last week I noted that their head of the medical response was sick. This week it's a Vice President (they have 4), two members of their parliament, the mayor of Tehran, the guy in charge of epidemic management in the holy city of Qom, and one of the ayatollahs (that's a common, but high-ranking religious designation, but this particular one is involved with decisionmaking). Also, a representative of the WHO working in Iran has contracted the virus.
Xinqi Su reports that Xi Jinping made some visits for photo-ops to places organizing COVID-19 response. He still has yet to go anywhere near Hubei province. She also reported that gambling in Macau is off 88% from last February.
South Korea is considering murder charges against leaders of the Shincheonji church. Recall that membership is secret. However, they take attendance at each meeting, digitally. Yet for 10 days they were unable or unwilling to provide a list of members to the government to track down infections, while the epidemic advanced and people died.
Emily Feng reports that some factories are opening in China. In many cases, workers are being shipped in, and housed in quarantined hotels.
Dave Yin reports that data from China shows that 1 in 6 people who test positive do not display any symptoms yet. That's a real problem for containment.
Paul Mozur reports in the New York Times that Alibaba has developed a phone app that can be checked by anyone to check your quarantine status. If it shows red, everyone will know you're not cleared to be outside.
France has closed the Louvre.
Daegu (South Korea) is starting to sound like Wuhan (China):
"About 2,000 coronavirus patients were waiting for hospital beds in Daegu as of Monday morning, according to the city authorities.” https://t.co/6mslVK1UPn— Carl Zimmer (@carlzimmer) March 2, 2020
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