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To help move this discussion along a bit, can you name the person who developed the hypothesis that "AIDS" was caused by HIV? If you wish to include the year, that is fine as well.

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“We are calling on every country to act with speed, scale and clear-minded determination,” the WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at the UN health agency’s Geneva headquarters.

Tedros voiced concern that “some countries have either not taken this seriously enough, or have decided there is nothing they can do,” Reuters reports. “This is not the time to give up. This is not a time for excuses. This is a time for pulling out all the stops,” he added.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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To help move this discussion along a bit, can you name the person who developed the hypothesis that "AIDS" was caused by HIV? If you wish to include the year, that is fine as well.

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Your very first response JSF was something about some sort of correlation, which YOU claimed was at 92%. (oh btw that would be 0.92, not percent.) You have to show what you're correlating to what (Kaposi's sarcoma correlated to cocaine use?) first, and provide that data behind that correlation. It seems to be central to your opinion that AIDS isn't caused by the HIV, and I'm not going to "move the discussion along" at your convenience because you want to skip past that point

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I Lived Through SARS and Reported on Ebola. These Are the Questions We Should Be Asking About Coronavirus.

For concerned civilians and journalists covering the coronavirus, the figures and projections can be overwhelming, frightening or confusing. Here’s what reporter Caroline Chen is focusing on to keep things as accurate and clear as possible.

by Caroline Chen March 5, 3:58 p.m. EST

Thai nurses and doctors check temperatures of travelers coming from Hong Kong at the Bangkok International Airport in April 2003, during the SARS outbreak. Reporter Caroline Chen lived through SARS, and she covered Ebola, Zika and, now, coronavirus. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
Series: Coronavirus

Is the United States Prepared for COVID-19?

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I grew up in Hong Kong and was 13 when SARS swept through the city, infecting about 1,750 people and killing nearly 300. As a teenager, the hardest part was being stuck at home and missing my friends. I only started to pay attention to the daily death toll after my parents decided that’s what would dictate when I could go back to school. But the experience shaped me. I picked up personal hygiene habits, like pressing elevator buttons with my knuckles. And I developed a deep respect for front-line medical workers, many of whom labored around the clock until they, too, succumbed.

That was only my first experience with an outbreak.

In 2014, I was a rookie reporter on the Bloomberg News health desk helping to cover the growing Ebola crisis in West Africa when we got word that the U.S. had its first diagnosed patient. My editor looked down his row of reporters and his eyes fell on me, the one with no familial obligations. “Hey Caroline,” he said, “want to go to Dallas today?” The experience gave me a deeper look into how governments and scientists grapple with a fast-moving, deadly target. I learned about contact tracing as I tagged along with CDC disease detectives. A colleague and I delved deep into how the government’s cumbersome contracting process delayed the development of a possible treatment for Ebola. I later covered Zika, reporting on Florida’s lonely fight against the virus, as Congress gave the state little assistance.

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Every time, I’ve seen the same gaps emerge in the public’s understanding of what’s really happening. On one side, I have epidemiologists and lab directors explaining to me, in excruciating detail, nuanced models and technicalities, like how PCR assays work. On the other side, I see oversimplified headlines and misleading statistics touted by government officials.

Now I’m on ProPublica’s coronavirus reporting team, speaking to dozens of sources every day, from epidemiology experts and worried medical workers to members of the public, who are not sure what to take from the headlines they’re seeing. ProPublica specializes in accountability journalism, and our goal is to find out what’s happening and let the public know of any shortfalls in emergency response.

Get Involved
We Want to Talk to People Working or Living on the Front Lines of Coronavirus. Help Us Report.

Are you a public health worker, medical provider, elected official, patient or other COVID-19 expert? We’re looking for information and sources. Help make sure our journalism is responsible and focused on the right issues.

Here’s what you need to know:
Testing Is Still Limited

On Tuesday, after days of growing clamor to make more testing available, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the administration was issuing new guidance that “will make it clear that any American can be tested” for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and said that 2,500 kits would be sent out this week, an equivalent of 1.5 million tests.

Lifting restrictions on testing criteria is a much-needed step, but if your takeaway was that hundreds of thousands of Americans will be able to walk into doctors’ offices by Friday and immediately get tested, you’d be wrong.

It doesn’t matter if boxes upon boxes of kits are available if labs are struggling to set up the tests or are short on staff to run them. At the end of the day, what I want to know (and I imagine, what everyone wants to know) is how many people can be tested. That’s the unit that I am pressing public health officials and lab directors for when I interview them.

Here are some basics that may be useful to keep in mind: The CDC test kits can be thought of somewhat like a Blue Apron meal kit; there’s some assembly required before a lab can begin testing. It’s not like a protein bar, ready to eat straight out of the wrapper.

As of Wednesday, the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents public health labs across the United States, told me that each CDC test kit can run about 700 specimens. Note the “about” — you might have heard that each CDC test kit can run 1,000 specimens. That’s also true, but labs use up a certain amount of material in the process of setting up the kit and also to ensure that all the results from actual patient samples are accurate. So that’s where the “about 700” number is coming from.

None of those numbers, so far, are in units of what I care about — patients. We’re still talking about samples and specimens. APHL says the labs are running two specimens per patient, to double-check the result. So that means you actually can only test 350 people per kit.

Reporters, if an official gives you a number that’s in samples, I urge you to follow up.

Instead of asking: How many test kits do you have?

Ask this: How many samples are you running per patient?

So that’s the kits. Let’s turn to staffing.

APHL told me on Wednesday that each public health lab can run about 100 samples per day. One hundred public labs received test kits from the CDC. When they’re all up and running, they’ll have a cumulative capacity of 10,000 samples a day. Remember, since we care about patients and not samples, divide by two. That’s 5,000 patients a day. (As of Thursday morning, 67 labs were taking patient samples, so that would come out to 3,350 patients a day.)

Many experts say we need far more testing capacity. A former FDA commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, told me that he’d like everyone with an influenza-like illness who tests negative for the flu to be able to get tested for COVID-19, which, given that we’re still in the midst of flu season, means a massive ramp-up would be required. In order to do that, the U.S. urgently needs academic medical centers to also come on board. Under pressure to expand capacity, the FDA loosened restrictions on Saturday to allow academic hospital labs to start testing. Some have. You can read more about that here. Testing giants Quest and LabCorp are also aiming to be online next week, which will help tremendously.

I urge reporters to keep labor capacity in mind when talking to their local labs.

Instead of asking: How many samples can you run?

Ask this: How many samples is your lab testing per day right now? How about at maximum capacity? How many hours does it take to get a result?

One last thing that’s good to know: There are commercial manufacturers at work to create off-the-shelf versions of these tests — the microwavable meal equivalent, if you will. But those companies have not given a precise timeline. Last week, Cepheid, a manufacturer based in California, told ProPublica it’s targeting the second quarter of this year for the release of its test.

The Death Rate Is Only an Estimate

The mortality rate is an awfully squishy number that’s being reported as if it’s a stone-cold fact. On Tuesday, a number of headlines trumpeted that the World Health Organization was saying the death rate was 3.4%. Some hand-wringing ensued over how this number was higher than the previous estimate of 2%.

Here’s what WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died.” Let’s zoom in on the word “reported.” The WHO puts out a daily situation report that you can find here. It defines confirmed as “a person with laboratory confirmation of COVID-19 infection.” As of Tuesday, the total number of deaths reported globally (3,112) as a fraction of the total number of confirmed cases reported globally (90,869) was 3.4%.

Here’s the problem, though. That denominator is laboratory-confirmed cases. As we know, in the U.S., it’s pretty hard to get tested right now. In fact, based on this definition, as of Wednesday night, the U.S. mortality rate based on CDC numbers — 9 reported deaths and 80 laboratory-confirmed cases — was 11%. You know that’s bogus. You know that’s because there’s not enough data, the denominator is pitifully small and we need to be testing a whole lot more people.

Over the last few weeks, many more countries have realized that the coronavirus has hit their shores. Some, like South Korea, are doing tons of testing and generating lots of data. Others, like the U.S., aren’t, as ProPublica has reported. The rate will also depend, country by country, on demographics (this virus is more deadly to the elderly) and resources (like ventilators). It’s not surprising that the global mortality rate based on confirmed cases might fluctuate for a while.

When most people talk about fatality rates, they’re thinking: If I get this, will I die? The only way to actually answer that question is to know how many people have been infected, and for now, that’s nearly impossible. As Marc Lipsitch, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health points out, deaths are the most obvious and easy thing to catch, whereas infected people who stay at home and those with no symptoms are incredibly hard to account for. That tends to skew the fatality rate higher, especially earlier on in an epidemic.

What we do know for now is that it’s more deadly than the seasonal flu, which generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected, and less deadly than a disease like SARS, which killed about 10% of those infected during the outbreak in 2002-3.

When I write about the mortality rate, I try to use caveats like “estimated” or “scientists understand it to be around” so readers understand it’s not fixed in stone.

Instead of saying: The mortality rate is X%.

Say this: Scientists estimate the mortality rate is X%, based on the information they have.

Be Careful with Projections

Another slippery number out there is what’s known as the basic reproduction number, R0 (pronounced R-naught). It’s a measure of contagion, the average number of people who will catch the disease from a single infected person. For similar reasons as above, this number is currently a moving target, as more data is gathered from around the world. So far, estimates have largely been in the range of 2 to 3.

What this means for reporters is that if someone tries to say something like, there’s going to be X number of cases by a certain date, that can’t be a hard and fast number. I’d want to know what assumptions were used to calculate that forecast. What was the R0 presumed? How about the serial interval, the duration between the onset of symptoms between one case and its secondary cases? Tweaking either of those numbers by just a bit can result in very different forecasts, which you can see by playing around with this interactive tool by the University of Toronto. Generally, I shy away from putting a projection in a headline, where any hope of nuance might be lost, but if I have to, a range is safer than a single number that readers might interpret as somehow immutable.

Furthermore, as of early March, there are many fundamental questions about the novel coronavirus that scientists still don’t fully understand. For example, while it’s clear that the primary method of transmission is via droplets, drops of fluid from the mouth or nose emitted when an infected person coughs or sneezes, it’s not clear if it can transmit as an aerosol, meaning it is airborne and floats around (this is considered to be unlikely). It’s also not conclusive if the virus can be spread by infected people before they present any symptoms.

Instead of asking: How many cases will there be at X point in time?

Ask this: What assumptions were used to calculate your prediction? What’s the upper and lower range of your projection?
Information Is Changing Quickly and May Soon Be Out of Date

One last thing I’d like to add: Even more so than usual, things are moving quickly. I’ve been on interviews where the information I was given was outdated — as in just plain wrong — by the time I filed my draft 12 hours later. This is, of course, terrifying as a reporter. So I’m trying my best to put information like “as of Wednesday morning” alongside facts and figures in my stories, and I’m encouraging my sources to update me as often as they can.
OK, but How Do I Protect Myself?

Over the last two days, I’ve gotten numerous DMs over Twitter from concerned members of the public, asking me what they should do to be safe. Honestly, this breaks my heart and speaks to a failure of local health officials to educate them. I’m having the same conversations over and over again, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts here. I’m not a medical professional, so this is not medical advice.

Start by knowing yourself. Are you elderly or immunocompromised? Young and healthy? Your risk varies depending on your personal profile. If you’re concerned about your health, I encourage you to talk through your fears with your doctor. I’m 29; I know there’s little chance that this virus would kill me given the information I’ve seen. (In data published last month by the Chinese CDC, out of more than 72,000 diagnosed cases, 8.1% were 20-somethings, and the fatality rate in that age bracket was 0.2%.) That said, given my personal medical history and tendency to get bronchitis, I would really prefer not to get infected.

Read More
House Democrats Probe Faulty Test Kits’ Role in Delaying Coronavirus Response

The House Oversight Committee cited ProPublica’s reporting in requesting documents from the Trump administration.

So how does that translate into action? Here have been my personal choices so far. I’m still flying; I just got off a plane to attend a reporting conference in New Orleans. (I would not attend a conference in the Seattle area, however, given how signs are pointing to widespread community transmission.) I don’t see how being on a plane increases my personal risk any more than being on the New York City subway. That said, I am not shaking any hands at this conference, and I’m ramping up my hygiene game: washing my hands more frequently and encouraging my colleagues to do so as well.

I’m aware of the possibility that I may need to work from home in the near future, if I or my husband get sick, or if there’s an explosion of cases in New York City and social distancing measures are encouraged. So we are slowly but methodically picking up a little bit of extra food with every grocery run (for our two cats as well!), just so that we’d have enough at home if we need to be indoors for a few weeks. I’m not panicked, nor should you be. I’d encourage you to check on your neighbors — especially the older ones, or those with young children, and see if you can pick up some additional groceries for them.

Even if we have to stand a little farther apart from one another, the best way to get through this is with a bit of extra compassion to bridge the gap.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You know how many people are going to die from smoking in America by the end of December this year?
Half a million.
That's hardly a drop in the bucket, and we're doing it to ourselves.
Allegedly, 41,000 of those will be innocent by-standards who didn't do it to themselves and are going to die from 2nd hand exposure.
Total cases of Coronavirus in America after a month is under 200?

Color me unperturbed.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
I felt normal for a few hours yesterday after being sick 8 weeks ago. If they ever come out with a serology test (a blood test for antibodies) for COVID-19, and it's not over $1000 I'd consider getting tested, just to see.

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A Trump administration official tells CNN that the US Department of Health and Human Services "is in the process of doing targeted outreach to the elderly community and those that have serious underlying health conditions."

The CDC guidance comes as two top infectious disease experts with ties to the federal government have advised people over 60 and those with underlying health problems to strongly consider avoiding activities that involve large crowds, such as traveling by airplane, going to movie theaters or concerts, attending family events, shopping at crowded malls, and going to religious services.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Is that with or without sales tax?

Just kidding!

And, Jack, fwiw, as much excellent work as you've done on your house, I wouldn't get your kit. Just sayin'.

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Cuomo Declares State Of Emergency As 21 More Coronavirus Cases Confirmed In New York...
Across the US, there are more than 300 cases reported (though not yet 'confirmed' by the CDC) and at least half of all states have confirmed cases. On Friday, Hawaii, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Nebraska, Indiana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and South Carolina all confirmed their first cases of the virus.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Case case case cluster cluster BOOM!

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lockdown Hubei province
banning factories from opening after the Lunar New Year holiday
travel bans
people forced into isolation
self-quarantine
people are stopped and given random health checks. Restaurants are mostly closed and do takeout. Many people simply have not left their apartments for a month
in China, where no one is allowed in public spaces without surgical masks
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/03/06/coronavirus-impact-l
essons-from-china-and-south-korea-for-the-us/#e9eaeea64751
Chinese authorities have allegedly started forcefully taking away people suspected of having coronavirus from their homes... and taken to camps
China’s central government ordered Wuhan to round up all suspected patients and anyone they are thought to have been in close contact with in mass quarantine camps.
https://thenationonlineng.net/coronavirus-china-in-mass-arrest-of-suff
erers/

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Coronavirus lingers in rooms and toilets but disinfectants kill it: Study

New research from Singapore's National Centre for Infectious Diseases and DSO National Laboratories has found that patients with the coronavirus extensively contaminate their bedrooms and bathrooms, underscoring the need to routinely clean high-touch surfaces, basins and toilet bowls.

The virus was however killed by twice-a-day cleaning of surfaces and daily cleaning of floors with a commonly used disinfectant - suggesting that current decontamination measures are sufficient as long as people adhere to them.

The research was published on Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association and comes after cases in China where the pathogen spread extensively through hospitals, infecting dozens of healthcare workers and other patients. This led scientists to believe that, beyond catching the infection through coughing, environmental contamination was an important factor in the disease's transmission, but its extent was unclear.

The Singapore researchers looked at cases of three patients who were held in isolation rooms between late January and early February. They collected samples from their rooms on five days over a two-week period.

The room of one patient was sampled before routine cleaning, while the rooms of the other two patients were sampled after disinfection measures.

The patient whose room was sampled before cleaning had the mildest symptoms of the three, experiencing only a cough.

The other two had moderate symptoms: both had coughing and fever, one experienced shortness of breath and the other was coughing up mucus.

Despite this disparity, the patient whose room was sampled before cleaning contaminated 13 of 15 room sites tested, including a chair, the bed rail, a glass window, the floor and light switches. Three of the five toilet sites were also contaminated, including the sink, door handle and toilet bowl

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- more evidence that stool can be a route of transmission.

Air samples tested negative, but swabs taken from air exhaust outlets were positive - which suggests that virus-laden droplets may be carried by air flows and deposited on vents.

The two rooms that were tested after cleaning had no positive results.

The results, the authors wrote, "suggests the environment as a potential medium of transmission and supports the need for strict adherence to environmental and hand hygiene."

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Fauci: Coronavirus Spread In America 'Not Encouraging'; Says Americans Should Avoid Large Gatherings, Especially If Vulnerable

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The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, recommended on Sunday that elderly and vulnerable Americans avoid travel and large crowds as coronavirus gains a foothold in the United States.

In an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," Fauci emphasized that the elderly and people with "underlying conditions" are "overwhelmingly" more likely to be hit worse by coronavirus, according to NBC News.

"If you are an elderly person with an underlying condition, if you get infected, the risk of getting into trouble is considerable. So it's our responsibility to protect the vulnerable," he said, adding "When I say protect, I mean right now. Not wait until things get worse. Say no large crowds, no long trips. And above all, don't get on a cruise ship."

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Washington State Warns Mail-In Ballot Voters Not To Lick Envelopes

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Fed quarantines U.S. dollars repatriated from Asia on coronavirus caution

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Coronavirus Supply Chain Effects: What to Expect

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https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa-coronavirus/
As of March 07, 2020
373

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#
376

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
OMG!!! I have to wash my hands!!!!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
OMG!!! I have to wash my hands!!!!

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fixed it for you.




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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa-coronavirus/
As of March 08, 2020
464

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#
466

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https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa-coronavirus/
As of March 07, 2020
373

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#
376

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DC Priest Who Shook 500 Hands At Communion Has Coronavirus

DC priest who shook the hands of 500 worshippers during communion has announced he’s contracted coronavirus.

“BREAKING: A D.C. priest has Coronavirus. He offered communion and shook hands with more than 500 worshippers last week and on February 24th,” tweeted ABC7’s Sam Sweeney.

“All worshippers who visited the Christ Church in Georgetown must self-quarantine. Church is cancelled for the first time since the 1800’s.”

The hand shaking took place despite many other Catholic churches changing their worshipping practices in an effort to stop the spread of the virus.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Looking at how the national numbers are going up, I'd say that there's a rate-limiting step in the reporting. In other words, there's something that can go only so fast, and no faster, and so the numbers are only going up so fast.

I'd say that rate-limiting step is testing, and that there are clusters (we're beyond cases) that are saturating out the testing capacity of their respective areas. I think that ACTUAL cases are going up far faster.

There's the Chinese study that indicates fairly robust aerosol transmission.

And then there's the first case of community spread in LA County. Considering how mobile we all are, I'm not sure if neighborhood has much meaning.

Given that ... I'll be thinking about my approach to shopping. It's not yet time to hunker down, but I need to think about where I'll draw the line to upping my precautions, and where I'll draw the line to isolating myself.

This requires some thinking.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Coronavirus Can Stay In Air For 30 Minutes, Travel Twice 'Safe Distance' According To Study
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/coronavirus-can-stay-air-30-minutes-t
ravel-twice-safe-distance-according-study

Aerosolized coronavirus can hang in the air for at least 30 minutes and travel up to 14 feet - approximately twice the "safe distance" recommended by health officials, according to SCMP.

The study, conducted by a team of Chinese government epidemiologists from Hunan province, also found that the virus can survive for days on a surface where respiratory droplets land.

The length of time it lasts on the surface depends on factors such as temperature and the type of surface, for example at around 37C (98F), it can survive for two to three days on glass, fabric, metal, plastic or paper.

These findings, from a group of official researchers from Hunan province investigating a cluster case, challenge the advice from health authorities around the world that people should remain apart at a “safe distance” of one to two metres (three to six and a half feet). -SCMP

The researchers warned that the virus could survive over five days in human feces or bodily fluids, and that it could remain floating in the air after a carrier had left a public bus.



"It can be confirmed that in a closed environment with air-conditioning, the transmission distance of the new coronavirus will exceed the commonly recognised safe distance," the researchers wrote in their paper, published in peer-reviewed journal, Practical Preventive Medicine.

"Our advice is to wear a face mask all the way [through the bus ride]," the researchers recommended.

They said the study proves the importance of washing hands and wearing face masks in public places because the virus can linger in the air attached to fine droplet particles.
...
Their work was based on a local outbreak case on January 22 during the peak Lunar New Year travel season. A passenger, known as “A”, boarded a fully booked long-distance coach and settled down on the second row from the back.

The passenger already felt sick at that point but it was before China had declared the coronavirus outbreak a national crisis, so “A” did not wear a mask, nor did most of the other passengers or the driver on the 48-seat bus. -SCMP

Because China requires closed circuit television cameras to record all long-distance us rides, researchers were able to reconstruct the spread of the virus on the bus, which had no open windows.

Lead author Hu Shixiong said that the camera footage revealed patient "A" did not interact with anyone throughout the four-hour ride, yet the virus infected seven other passengers by the time the bus stopped at the next city. Infected passengers included not only those sitting relatively close to "patient zero," but people six rows away - or 4.5 meters (14.76 feet).

All seven tested positive, including one passenger who displayed no symptoms. Then, 30 minutes later, another group of passengers got on the bus - one of whom was sitting in the front seat when they also became infected. Patient "A" meanwhile, got on another minibus and infected two other passengers.

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