Another recent R0 estimate.

R0 probably between 1.5 and 4.

Any decent society has to do all it can to look after all its citizens. 

Going purely on the figures in today's papers, the suggestion is that the mortality rate is somewhere around 2.1%.

You get about 2% if you divide the deaths by the confirmed case, but you can't do that because at the point a prospective death became a confirmed case there were fewer confirmed cases. So you have to account for the lag from confirmation to death. Studies that have done this report figures much much higher than 2%.

So crudely, if it takes about 7 days to kill you from being confirmed which seems to be about the right ball park performing the same crude calculation gives you a mortality rate of about 13%.

Another crude thing you can do is look at the recovered cases. It takes even longer to recover than it takes you to die, therefore using the recovered ratio provides an upper bound.

So 2% should be viewed as a lower bound, while the upper bound is 50%. The 50% figure assumes no lag between death and recovery, while the 2% assumes no lag between confirmed and death. The reality is it will be somewhere in between those two figures. No one knows exactly where though; probably much closer to 2% than 50%.

Is anyone going to up Quantum's 50%? Going..going...

I never said it was 50%, I only mentioned that figure because it has the same problems as the 2% figure, does not account for the lag time.

50% assumes that it takes the same amount of time to recover as it does to die, which is not true. It takes longer to recover

2% assumes that a death happens instantly on the point of confirmation which is also not true.

Note that if you performed the same death/current confirmed calculation during the earlier part of the SARS epidemic you would also have got the 2% figure. SARS ended up being 10%.

I don't understand why you are mocking this. Doesn't seem all that funny to me.

That's not what I'm mocking.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51358742 

I considered writing you a limerick, Ulric, but it was too dire to post!

Roger

Another  2.3k or so cases in Hubei.

Showing no signs of slowing down there, although it still isn't exponential either.

The impression I get is that things are very bad in Hubei, less bad in other parts of China and the rest of the world. Number of new cases outside china declines for the 3rd day in a row.

Wow this is potentially a gamechanger (in a good way)

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomatic-patient-transmitting-coronavirus-wrong

Some of the evidence of asymptomatic transmission is under dispute.

I should point out that the authors of the paper cannot be blamed, because in a rush to get the study out there mistakes are liable to be made.

So the evidence of asymptomatic transmission is weaker than originally thought. However this adendum shouldn't be taken to definitively show the opposite either. We should still assume it is transmissable without symptons.

Will clarify that the response in light of this seems to be that asymptomatic transmission is still 'highly likely'

Macao shuts down its gambling industry for it least 2 weeks 60% of its economy, it only has 10 confirmed cases.  It wouldn't do this for nothing,  obviously genuinely scared of what this virus can do if it gets out of control.

Also South Korea reporting a new case of a women who travelled to Thailand not China.  Is Thailand under reporting cases, obviously a major outbreak would devastate its tourist  industry. 

But the first death in Hong Kong reported this morning

For now anyway. But we should not be complacent.

If we look at Germany there are 12 cases. All of them seem to be related to the same independent case in Bavaria. The single spanish case in Gran Canaria is also related to the Bavarian ground zero.

If you want some good news the proportional increase in cases has decreased for the 7th day in a row. Now at 19% from a high of 64%.

This is in no small part to the stringent management of the Host, ourselves. It does not suggest the Agent is any less virulent or capable of a flare up if we relax our grip on our own behaviour. Nevertheless, we have bought ourselves useful time. I hope we manage to use it wisely.

Roger

An unanticipated consequence of coronavirus - a slump in crude oil prices:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51353146

Every cloud!

Suggestions hong kong could become a big risk as it's easily acessible to people trying to escape from the pandemic.

Surely the first thing they should have done would have been to ban cruise ship holidays - an ideal breeding ground for the virus:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/japan/index.html

"...

Japan has quarantined a cruise ship with 3,711 people on board after a former passenger was infected with coronavirus. 

Passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess were being tested for the virus today with eight people showing symptoms such as fever. 

An 80-year-old passenger who left the ship in Hong Kong on January 25 has since tested positive for the virus, which has killed 425 people in China. 

Quarantine specialists in hazmat suits boarded the vessel today in Yokohama Bay where the ship is expected to remain for at least 24 hours.

..."

Anticipated since they shut down Hubei to be fair!

20 odd cases confirmed outside China today including 6 in Singapore and 6 in Thailand.  Apparently Thailand is the top international destination for Chinese tourists. The new Thai cases include a couple that went to Japan and two taxi drivers none of which went to China.