Okay last one…Financial Times 2 days ago. Some of these will soar when testing catches up? Way to go Singapore and Hong Kong. 33% case growth line is numbers doubling every three days> 2,000 now= 4 Million in 33 days =exponential growth, unless we quit touching, breathing, and coughing on each other.
Okay that’s enough.
If you lock down, stay home, wipe everything down, wash your hands, you can slow the growth down to reasonable bad flu type rates. China, South Korea, Singapore show that it works, and maybe Japan and a hint the US data is starting to show that. 26 days to see the change.
Still estimated that 65 percent or more will be infected at some point, but this gets the time to work up meds and beds and more favorable weather. That will stretch things out as the models show into May and maybe more. .
If the growth rate can be driven from 1.59 to .35 it may not be sustainable and die down. At .5, it will probably reoccur this winter. 1.0 is exponential growth.
Exponential fight a little now is Thousands and Millions easier and cheaper than 6 month from now.
Mostly old farts like me with comorbidities have to worry about severe symptoms, but some young people too, and those constantly reinfected or worn down like medic folks.
But even if you have mild or no symptoms, you CAN be a carrier. So be kind, stay home, keep your distance, wash your hands, don’t touch your face, Vulcan peace sign instead of hugs, no.Spock mind melds.
I will post any new info on therapies that counter the worst respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms soon as I see them (cytokine driven ARDS and Vascular which can be mast cell driven). I will continue to look for inputs as to medication regimens that may predispose some of us to being predisposed.
I plan to watch all of Downton Abbey again, the complete Dr Who, clean out 40 years of technical papers, and straighten my tackle boxes out after the grandsons borrowed them.
You now have enough info and knowledge to weigh whether the locals and nationals are feeding you crap cornflakes or not.
Mostly be a good citizen and good neighbor. Look out for and check in on (by phone or at a distance) your neighbors and elderly to make sure they are okay. Share if you can (sanitarily).
In the Words of that esteemed and wise philosopher Theodore of San Dimas, “Be Excellent to Each Other”
Good source and daily updates on how well each country is doing. Bit laggy, another twitter site is data mining local reports in real time 4 hours lag…I’ll post it when I find it again.
Good up to date numbers and case statisitcs.
Micah, My MIT colleague and my hen scratching. Just after, Italy did lock down the whole country.
…
I would love for someone to prove me wrong, so please destroy my argument if you have statistical, mathematical, or epidemiological arguments or better data.
First, some assumptions (please feel free to find better sources):
- The infection fatality rate (IFR) is about 1%. It seems to be almost certainly in the range of 1%-2%, but 1% is a nice round number. [1]
- The time between infection and resolution (recovery or death) is average 26 days. [2][3]
- The growth rate is at least 22% in almost every country that has a significant case load. [4] This is equivalent to a doubling time of at most 3.5 days.
And now for what is really worrying me.
- For every person that dies today (250 in Italy) that means 100 were originally infected.
- Those 100 people were originally infected about 26 days ago.
- In the past 26 days, more than 7 doublings (7*3.5=24.5) have passed, meaning those 100 cases have doubled at least 7 times.
- 7 doublings is a multiplier of 128.
- So for every death on a particular day, that means there are (at most) currently 12,800 currently infected. (99 of which recover today.)
- This would imply that there are currently about 3.2 million current infections in Italy. That’s more than 5% of their population.
- Italy only reports 17,660 cases today [5]. That’s only about half a percent of my proposed infection rate.
What is going on? Are we only detecting a tiny fraction of the cases due to the exponential growth and the time delay? Note that this is not an argument that the disease is “mild”, because I already assumed a 1% IFR. Please someone explain it to me. I will accept hand-waving at this point. I just don’t see any decrease in their exponential growth.
Now here’s where it gets really bad. If President Italy (joke) waves a magic wand right now today and isolates every single person there in a magic bubble, then no matter what they do there would be an additional 32,000 deaths (1% of 3.2M). Put another way, if you take the most extreme isolation measures possible, you will end up 25x more deaths than you had when you pushed that button. Already, today, we are probably past the “worst flu season” in a century in Italy. In a week it will be 4x as bad. Already. Today.
When do we push that button? Because that button costs a lot of money. Many billions, or as we are seeing, maybe trillions. Any now here’s where I get super pessimistic. If the government (specifically the US) quarantines too early, then people get super pissed because “hardly anybody died” and they get thrown out of office. So they wait. They know what’s going on, but they wait until they predict the death count will be at least… 10,000? A number that’s big, but not too big. Big enough to say “wow, aren’t you glad we dodged that bullet”, but not so big that people say “you failed because too many people died!”
Here’s the kicker though… the economic cost is the about the same no matter when you push the quarantine button. Each day we delay is simply more American (and human) lives that will absolutely, guaranteed be lost. For political gain because unpopular decisions are not popular.
[1] Adjusted age-specific case fatality ratio during the COVID-19 epidemic in Hubei, China, January and February 2020
[2] DEFINE_ME
[3] The Incubation Period of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) From Publicly Reported Confirmed Cases: Estimation and Application - PubMed
[4] http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/
[5] COVID-19 pandemic in Italy - Wikipedia
Don’t try this at home, only professionals, working back to back 12 hour shifts.
Current growth rate of infection and mortality numbers for Italy. The WHO page shows a sharp slope increase in infection cases as it spreads in western countries and testing and admittances start to catch up with the reporting.
From Prof. Mark Headley. No axe to grind just numbers to churn.
From Micah, my Fellow Mad Scientist, Death Ray’s, chemical warfare, MIT PhD type. He and I spent 4 days running this model to ground…and he has a lovely maniacal scientist laugh…
…
Okay, I have been mostly posting on other people’s posts, but sh*t’s getting nuts so I suppose I should stand on my own soapbox.
I model nonlinear systems for a living. I have a BS in math, a PhD in physics, and I am an expert in computer modeling of physical phenomena.
My (shitty) model of this disease spread shows that Italian cases are under-reported by more than 10x, maybe as much as 100x.
We are not better here in the US. Our testing is less. Our infection rate per capita will be the same as they are now with a 1 week lag. (We have caught up to them because nobody here is doing sh*t.)
In this coming week (or two) we will probably approach 1% infection, which is a f*cking disaster.
There are 1 million hospital beds in the US. At least (at least!!!) 10% of CV19 cases require hospitalization. At a 3% infection rate, every single bed in every single hospital will be consumed by CV19 patients. But our bed occupancy is already at 87%.
If you can provide childcare for someone who is a healthcare provider, now may be the time to help.
Stay home. Don’t have friends over. If you can avoid it, don’t go to the store for as long as possible. Wear a mask and gloves when you have to be in public. Starting right now.
This is going to suck, mostly economically for most people, but there is a very good chance that millions of US deaths will result in the next months if we do nothing.
This is not a drill.
Dr. Lawrence Afrin & Kendra Neilsen Myles of Mast Cell Research are hosting a Live Community Q&A & video webinar in honor of the 4-year publishing anniversary of ‘Never Bet Against Occam: Mast Cell Activation Disease and the Modern Epidemics of Chronic Illness and Medical Complexity.’
While this live broadcast was previously planned prior to the COVID-19 outbreak & the resulting global pandemic, we felt it was still important to connect with the MCAS community and celebrate the impact of Dr. Afrin’s successful book.
Dr. Afrin will be answering your MCAS questions in real-time - both on Zoom & on Facebook. We will also attempt to stream on IG live as well. Our focus will remain MCAS-specific, including pertinent medical articles, MCAS research, and general information; however, we do understand that there are naturally a lot of questions and concerns surrounding questions and concerns related to MCAS & COVID-19.
We will do our best to handle questions, but please remember this broadcast isn’t specific to COVID-19 & MCAS
Date: Sunday, March 15th, 2020
Time: 7PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join us virtually! The Zoom registration link is provided below, for those who do not wish to participate via Facebook. The Facebook event page link is also included below, which will share event-related announcements and more. The actual Facebook LIVE broadcast will be streamed onto the Mast Cell Research FB page (Redirecting...). All event details will also be posted on the
FB event page - https://www.facebook.com/events/73354998038359
All questions should be directed to & asked on the live stream post on the Mast Cell Research page or through registration on Zoom in the chat section. You can also email us questions to info@mastcellresearch.com.
Please sign up for our email list & newsletter to make sure you are notified of upcoming events and specific event details. Go to KNeilsen, LLC/Sisters Media, LLC/EDS Wellness, Inc.
Join us tonight! 7pm EST! Zoom registration is also available (see link in bio); however, we will be streaming live onto the Mast Cell Research Facebook page as well. The edited recording will also be shared.
US.Covid 19 tracking project on Twitter I mentioned yesterday, updates 1 or 2x per day. Each state and totals.
A simplified basic read.
Allergic Response to Metabisulfite in Lidocaine Anesthetic Solutiion
Jeffrey R. Campbell,DDS, et.al.
https://europepmc.org/articles/pmc2007334/pdf/anesthprog00013-0027.pdf
Complement Activation Contributes to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Pathogenesis
Lisa E. Gralinski,a Timothy P. Sheahan,et. al.
The anaphylatoxins produced by the activated complement pathway, C4a, C3a, and C5a, have important immunostimulatory roles in vascular permeability and inflammatory cell recruitment (35, 48).
C3a and C5a in particular are noted for their roles in causing mast cell degranulation, initiating a cytokine storm, promoting vascular permeability, and contributing to acute lung injury (36, 49, 50). Furthermore, a C5a antibody blockade was recently shown to protect in a model of highly susceptible MERS-CoV mice (16).
Although there are no reports of mast cell activation following SARS-CoV or MERS-CoV infection, activation has been observed both in vitro and in vivo following infection with influenza virus (51) and may occur following other severe respiratory infections, including coronaviruses.
Mast cells release cytokines, including IL-6, IL-1, and TNF-, consistent with the inflammatory profile observed following SARS-CoV MA15 infection.
While this work cannot definitively conclude that the complement anaphylatoxins and mast cell activation contribute to SARS-CoV MA15 pathogenesis, the data are consistent with this possibility, and the concept warrants further investigation.
Mast cells release cytokines, including IL-6, IL-1, and TNF-α, consistent with the inflammatory profile observed following SARS-CoV MA15 infection. While this work cannot definitively conclude that the complement anaphylatoxins and mast cell activation contribute to SARS-CoV MA15 pathogenesis, the data are consistent with this possibility, and the concept warrants further investigation.