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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 11 2020, @08:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe-it-is-not-such-a-bad-time-to-be-living-alone-in-someone's-basement dept.

[Editor's note: We had been gathering together COVID-19 stories for eventual release as a round-up story. I lack time at the moment to personally gather all those together with this most recent submission. We will run the next round-up in the next few days. But given the significance of this submission, I wished not to delay it from being immediately released to the community. --martyb]

World Health Organization declares the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic:

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on Wednesday as the new coronavirus, which was unknown to world health officials just three months ago, has rapidly spread to more than 121,000 people from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

“In the past two weeks the number of cases outside China has increased thirteenfold and the number of affected countries has tripled,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva. “In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries to climb even higher.”

Tedros said several countries have demonstrated the ability to suppress and control the outbreak, but he scolded other world leaders for failing to act quickly enough or drastically enough to contain the spread.

“We’re deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” he said, just before declaring the pandemic. “We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear.”

[Ed. addition follows.]

Also at Ars Technica and cnet.

For those who might not be aware of the distinction, Wikipedia helpfully provides these summaries:

An epidemic (what we have had up to now with COVID-19):

An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί epi "upon or above" and δῆμος demos "people") is the rapid spread of infectious disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time, usually two weeks or less.

[...]An epidemic may be restricted to one location; however, if it spreads to other countries or continents and affects a substantial number of people, it may be termed a pandemic.[1] The declaration of an epidemic usually requires a good understanding of a baseline rate of incidence; epidemics for certain diseases, such as influenza, are defined as reaching some defined increase in incidence above this baseline.[2] A few cases of a very rare disease may be classified as an epidemic, while many cases of a common disease (such as the common cold) would not.

By comparison, a pandemic (which has just now been announced for COVID-19):

A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" and δῆμος demos "people") is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic. Further, flu pandemics generally exclude recurrences of seasonal flu. Throughout history, there have been a number of pandemics, such as smallpox and tuberculosis. One of the most devastating pandemics was the Black Death, which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century. The current pandemics are HIV/AIDS and Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).[1][2] Other recent pandemics are the 1918 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu), and the 2009 flu pandemic (H1N1).


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Sulla on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:15PM (4 children)

    by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:15PM (#969878) Journal

    There were a lot of factors that prevented early testing

    1. China's lack of cooperation and active crackdown on information about the virus. Refusal of any outside researchers including the WHO.
    2. Inaccurate tests used globally, 30-80% false negatives
    3. Laws in the US preventing testing by non-CDC affiliated testing sites (no longer a barrier)
    4. Original three-part CDC test failed because one of the three tests caused bad results
    5. Lack of US based manufacturing facilities for both test kits and drug components (remdesivir testing slowed down because of this)
    6. Red tape preventing quick approval of remedies to fight virus and length of trials for testing vaccines. SARS vaccine in China caused re-infected persons immune systems to overreact and die.

    CDC said that the lack of information from China early enough cost us at least two months. CDC test issues was three weeks. Remdesivir is a few weeks to a month out. Had it not been for the law on the CDC testing requirement people could have tested earlier by doing blood tests and looking for antibodies.

    I think it is Washington State University that is doing drive-thru tests for students and staff and will expand to first responders and others shortly, Quest Diagnostics and others say they are not far behind with a goal to get these to pharmacies. Would have been nice to have known about this in November because we definitely were not prepared. I would like to see the stats on how accurate the tests are in SK. Insane it took until now for the WHO to say this is a pandemic.

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    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Aegis on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:51PM (3 children)

    by Aegis (6714) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:51PM (#969906)

    Say we had the China data.

    At what point would the Trump administration have listened to the warnings of scientists?

    Pretty sure it would have been when the stock market crashed and we were already infected....

    • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday March 11 2020, @11:46PM (2 children)

      by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @11:46PM (#969930) Journal

      Reasonable question.

      The travel ban on areas from China was more than any other President would have done, and every other President would have also been hamstrung by the same lack of progress made since SARS in preparing for this kind of event. The only way this could have been different is if Trump closed the borders earlier (he likes doing that) based on having the information earlier. Ron Klain was the tzar for the Ebola Crisis, so far all he has said is we need testing kits faster, but its all the same workers that would have been below him dealing with the same failed test. He isn't wrong about the test kits, but he also isn't a fan of shutting down travel. I bet he would have done a better job than Azar though, but thats a low bar.

      If we had the information the stock market would have crashed two months ago. Until Iran and Italy collapsed it looked like China might have actually managed to control it, SK death rate was low and probably over-estimated due to asymptomatic persons, and Singapore results told us it would be seasonal. If Italy and Iran are as bad as they are, how bad was Wuhan?

      We did cut off travel with Wuhan and begin screening (ineffectual as it might have been) travelers from China before anyone else, and received complaints from the WHO about taking such an aggressive action when it was not needed. Dr. Fauci said in a press briefing that this was something that he suggested early, and the President followed his suggestion. This action alone would have been enough to insult the Chinese and cause them to cancel any trade talks had the virus ended up being under control as they had claimed. There have been several times that Fauci said he wanted to do something, Trump would have a speech somewhere else saying he had the opposite opinion, and then Trump would go with whatever Fauci wanted. The response got significantly better the more Fauci has been involved in it, hell even Gavin Newsom is currently satisfied with the response.
      https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/gov-newsom-praises-president-trump-for-federal-support-on-coronavirus/ [californiaglobe.com]

      The determination to focus on the stock market is a concern to me, and I am wondering if that decision was made to give the government time to stock up on facemasks before the public goes crazy and wants them for personal use. The strategic strockpile is already quite low but it appears the CDC was able to get enough to get them through until production can get ramped up domestically. Because Americans are so independent and anti-authoritarian any feeling of weakness from the feds would make them want to bug out, production falls, and we might not be able to service the parts of the economy that we need to keep running. If people got scared and stayed home before protections were put in place, they would lose pay, their jobs, and miss payments. I imagine public sentiment and fear level will ratchet up as the disease spreads, but should be met in time with the laws on employee protection and federal sick leave that we should see out of the Senate soon. EG Walmart temporarily got rid of their absence policy telling people to stay home if they are afraid and they can use their leave, if someone is sick or told to stay home they have two weeks of paid leave, if someone is still sick past that they get 24 weeks (or something like that) of paid leave. Do I agree with how it is being handled? On many points no, but I also don't think we know enough yet about what the strategy is.

      If we had the information the stock market would have crashed two months ago. Until Iran and Italy collapsed it looked like China might have actually managed to control it, SK death rate was low and probably over-estimated due to asymptomatic persons, and Singapore results told us it would be seasonal. If Italy and Iran are as bad as they are, how bad was Wuhan?

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      Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @08:26PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @08:26PM (#970368)

        The travel ban on areas from China was more than any other President would have done

        Which was fucking idiotic as China had by then already banned travellers to *leave* China.

        And, uhhm, Italy was one of the first nations to ban travel from China.. That worked out sooo well.

        • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday March 13 2020, @01:37AM

          by Sulla (5173) on Friday March 13 2020, @01:37AM (#970498) Journal

          China's quarantine against Wuhan did nothing to stop the five million people who left the city before the quarantine but after the outbreak. Good shilling for the CCP though.

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          Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam