OT: more from the resident alarmist

[Jeroen Belleman]

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
[Snip...]

What ultimately ends an epidemic? Maybe most of the suceptable people
have had it and died or got immune. Seems to me like the sorts of
measures taken now just change the time scale of the infection curve.

I suppose it's the environmental conditions that make the
transmission rate drop below unity at some point. Dry sunny
weather should help. RNA doesn't stay intact for long
under such conditions. I think it will be over come spring.
In the mean time, slowing down the rate of infection is
useful.

I wonder how much the systematic use of copper door handles,
levers, handrails, buttons, etc, might contribute to lower
the transmission rate. Copper (and silver) tend to kill
microscopic pests in short order.

Jeroen Belleman

 

On Mon, 17 Feb 2020 17:19:26 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
<jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
[Snip...]

What ultimately ends an epidemic? Maybe most of the suceptable people
have had it and died or got immune. Seems to me like the sorts of
measures taken now just change the time scale of the infection curve.


I suppose it's the environmental conditions that make the
transmission rate drop below unity at some point. Dry sunny
weather should help. RNA doesn't stay intact for long
under such conditions. I think it will be over come spring.
In the mean time, slowing down the rate of infection is
useful.

Will the pathogen vacation in South America for our winter?

I wonder how much the systematic use of copper door handles,
levers, handrails, buttons, etc, might contribute to lower
the transmission rate. Copper (and silver) tend to kill
microscopic pests in short order.

Jeroen Belleman

There is supercomputer simulation of this and other epidemics, but
they seem to be not very predictive early in an epidemic.

If extreme public policies reduce the R0 rate modestly, it will delay
the growth rate until a vaccine is available.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[John S]

On 2/17/2020 12:10 PM, John S wrote:

A couple of videos from China:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XuHXnEiQD0&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot1ejwUeFpI&feature=youtu.be

Another:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RsA0FUeRo0

 

[John S]

A couple of videos from China:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XuHXnEiQD0&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot1ejwUeFpI&feature=youtu.be

 

John S <Sophi.2@invalid.org> wrote in news:r2eljm$mnl$2@dont-
email.me:

On 2/17/2020 12:10 PM, John S wrote:
A couple of videos from China:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XuHXnEiQD0&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot1ejwUeFpI&feature=youtu.be

Another:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RsA0FUeRo0

Another interesting thing about China... but you already knew and
expected... Communism at its best...

<https://tinyurl.com/rls4uck>

It's a google search on china imprisoning its own people...

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 9:09:49 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 12:41:55 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 8:13:33 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 2:11:54 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 5:03:27 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:37:32 PM UTC+11, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:
Whoey Louie <trader4@optonline.net> wrote in
news:d1772020-7f15-4deb-b47a-a941e7f4afdd@googlegroups.com:

On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 8:49:50 PM UTC-5,
edward...@gmail.com wrote:

snip

It seems to kill about 20% of the people who catch it. That gets attention pretty quickly.


WTF? Another total failure at math. You're off by an order of
magnitude. Good grief.

Whoey Louie thinks my estimate is wrong. but doesn't bother to post a link to what he imagines is better evidence.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

says that 1,776 have died and 11,421 have recovered. That's closer to 14%.

Some 71,447 peope have got the disease so far, and only 1,776 have died, which is only 2.5% of the people who have caught the disease, but 58,250 still have the disease of whom 11,421 are in a serious or critical condition, which is to say, may die.

Whoey Louie is the total failure at math here, which doesn't come as any surprise at all.

Google broken again? You're off by an order of magnitude, no credible
sources are saying the death rate is 20%, stupid. 70K+ have come down
with it, 1700 deaths. And factor in that there are likely a lot more
people who had it, it was mild, they didn't wind up in a hospital to
be recorded.

Comparing deaths with recoveries has a similar sort of error built in (if a much smaller one) - as it can take longer to recover than it does to die, so the 14% may be a small over-estimate.

This is a well known problem when looking at the early stages of epidemic, and one Whoey Louie clearly hasn't got a clue about.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 2:43:11 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 17 Feb 2020 04:15:10 -0800 (PST), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

On Thursday, 13 February 2020 11:13:56 UTC-5, edward...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 7:19:07 AM UTC-8, Rick C wrote:
On Wednesday, February 12, 2020 at 8:54:03 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 11:54:30 AM UTC+11, edward...@gmail.com wrote:

<snip>

What ultimately ends an epidemic? Maybe most of the susceptible people
have had it and died or got immune.

There are three ways it can happen. You can contain the infection - which is what is being attempted at the moment - so that people who might be infected don't come in contact with people they might infect.

You can let it run it's course - so that enough people has either died, or been infected, survived and become immune to cut the chances of anybody with the disease infecting anybody else to a level where the infection dies out.

Or you can develop a vaccine that makes enough of the population immune to mean that anybody who gets infected is unlikely to infect more than one new victim before they die or recover.

Seems to me like the sorts of
measures taken now just change the time scale of the infection curve.

If the infection curve can be modified to look like a logistitic curve, rather than an exponential, where the total number of people infected eventually levels off at - say - 150,000, that's a useful change in the time scale.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

does suggest that this might be happening. Even the number of deaths - which lags the infection rate by the number days an acute case takes to die - has stopped increasing exponentially.

Since most of the cases are currently in Hubei Province, these numbers don't tell us anything about infections in other places. No other country has more than 77 cases at the moment, so keeping track of the people who have been exposed is manageable. The Diamond Princess cruise ship now has 454 cases - but managing their contacts is particularly easy.

There don't seem to be non-human vectors, like rats or mosquitoes,
that we can eradicate to eliminate the infection locally.

Absent a vaccine, it would take extreme, worldwide, sustained (ie
impossible) action to actually kill off the virus.

Nobody is aiming kill off the virus. They are aiming to stop each case from infecting more than one new victim. Ideally they want to stop each new case from infecting anybody else at all, which would kill off the virus (except in the bats or whatever it came from).

We will have a vaccine in a few months, and following up and isolating every contact of everybody who has developed the disease may buy us enough time to prevent the disease from becoming pandemic.

As usual, John Larkin hasn't thought through what he is saying.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[whit3rd]

On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 7:43:11 AM UTC-8, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

What ultimately ends an epidemic?

Absent a vaccine, it would take extreme, worldwide, sustained (ie
impossible) action to actually kill off the virus.

A vaccine won't do it, unless you have a way to inoculate the animal population
that was the original host. To stop anthrax, a LOT of animals had to be
destroyed. Swine flu, same story.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 3:28:42 PM UTC+11, whit3rd wrote:

On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 7:43:11 AM UTC-8, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

What ultimately ends an epidemic?

Absent a vaccine, it would take extreme, worldwide, sustained (ie
impossible) action to actually kill off the virus.

A vaccine won't do it, unless you have a way to inoculate the animal population that was the original host. To stop anthrax, a LOT of animals had to be destroyed. Swine flu, same story.

Not true. You need to vaccinate enough people to produce herd immunity - which is to say anyone who catches the virus from the animal source isn't going to give it to more than one person they run into.

You may not kill of the virus, but you kill it's capacity to start an epidemic.

Anti-vaxxers have messed this up recently with measles, but the outbreaks generate enough reaction to put the anti-vaxxers back in their padded cells for quite a few years.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 9:22:02 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 9:09:49 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 12:41:55 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 8:13:33 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 2:11:54 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 5:03:27 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:37:32 PM UTC+11, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:
Whoey Louie <trader4@optonline.net> wrote in
news:d1772020-7f15-4deb-b47a-a941e7f4afdd@googlegroups.com:

On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 8:49:50 PM UTC-5,
edward...@gmail.com wrote:

snip

It seems to kill about 20% of the people who catch it. That gets attention pretty quickly.


WTF? Another total failure at math. You're off by an order of
magnitude. Good grief.

Whoey Louie thinks my estimate is wrong. but doesn't bother to post a link to what he imagines is better evidence.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

says that 1,776 have died and 11,421 have recovered. That's closer to 14%.

Some 71,447 peope have got the disease so far, and only 1,776 have died, which is only 2.5% of the people who have caught the disease, but 58,250 still have the disease of whom 11,421 are in a serious or critical condition, which is to say, may die.

Whoey Louie is the total failure at math here, which doesn't come as any surprise at all.

Google broken again? You're off by an order of magnitude, no credible
sources are saying the death rate is 20%, stupid. 70K+ have come down
with it, 1700 deaths. And factor in that there are likely a lot more
people who had it, it was mild, they didn't wind up in a hospital to
be recorded.

Whoey Louie has completely missed the point - as usual.

The interesting death rate is the one that applies to you, if you get the disease. The sample that is interesting in this context is limited to those who have caught the disease and either died from it or recovered from it.

In that group 14% have die and 86% recovered.

People who have the disease at the moment aren't all that informative - they can still die or recover, and we don't know which.

The fact that 58,250 still have the disease of whom 11,421 are in a serious or critical condition (which means that the people who are treating them thinks that they are at an appreciable risk of dying - some say about 50%) means that Whoey Louie hasn't thought about what his numbers mean.

Newspaper reports don't want to be alarmist, and most oif them are written by reporters who don't know any more about the subject than Whoey Louie.

Whoey Louie wants to think that there are many more cases of the disease than get recognised and counted. This may be true, but it is a guess and not evidence.

And if you've got a mild enough case of the disease not to get sick enough to go to the doctor, you aren't going to worry about dropping dead from it, though you may infect other people who may not be so lucky.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 7:06:15 AM UTC+11, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:

John S <Sophi.2@invalid.org> wrote in news:r2eljm$mnl$2@dont-
email.me:

On 2/17/2020 12:10 PM, John S wrote:
A couple of videos from China:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XuHXnEiQD0&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot1ejwUeFpI&feature=youtu.be

Another:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RsA0FUeRo0

Another interesting thing about China... but you already knew and
expected... Communism at its best...

https://tinyurl.com/rls4uck

It's a google search on china imprisoning its own people...

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries>

The US imprisons a whole lot more (655 per 100,000 population in 2016) than China (164 per 100,000 in 2015). Whether this includes Uyghurs in re-education camps is an open question. About 1 million of them have been interned, so they might push the number up to 240 per 100,000 which is still way less than the US rate.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
news:c2559a3a-b7ae-4422-b6f1-ed5f0278e66e@googlegroups.com:

The US imprisons a whole lot more (655 per 100,000 population in
2016) than China (164 per 100,000 in 2015).

Not based on religion, dumbfuck. Learn to read. Then learn to
properly interpret.

 

[speff]

On Monday, 17 February 2020 10:43:11 UTC-5, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 17 Feb 2020 04:15:10 -0800 (PST), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

On Thursday, 13 February 2020 11:13:56 UTC-5, edward...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 7:19:07 AM UTC-8, Rick C wrote:
On Wednesday, February 12, 2020 at 8:54:03 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 11:54:30 AM UTC+11, edward...@gmail.com wrote:
What is the significance of this data?

They agree with my numbers now. The official number went up 30% overnight to 60,000.

snip

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

"Surge in number of cases and deaths due in most part to the adoption of a new diagnosis classification.

In conformity with other provinces, starting today, Hubei Province will include the number of clinically diagnosed cases into the number of confirmed cases.
Of the 14,840 cases added, 13,332 are due to the new classification while 1,508 are new cases."

That explains the jump in reported cases, but what about the reported deaths? That also has jumped. Were they not counting some deaths because they were not certain they were due to this new virus? So the death rate all along was higher than the numbers we've been seeing?

If the case met the clinical diagnosis criteria prior to death they can retroactively reclassify it. If they never got the patient to a CT scanner, for example, then it can't be. That's my interpretation anyway.


One of the reason is that Xi ordered people back to work. Don't know how that's going to work with public transits also shutdown at the same time. So, with more movements, infected and death rates are both going up.

The local governments (presumably with direction from the provincial and central governments and their epidemiologists) have been *delaying* back to work permission until health and safety supplies and materials are in place. In some places, the governments have not been as strict and the employees are being pushed to return by their companies because the government-imposed delay is voluntary. As well, with schools implementing distance learning for the next weeks it's difficult for moms to get out.

Below notification some of my peeps got- it is only valid a week after all the paperwork is electronically submitted. The landlord is also imposing restrictions on entry to the building (have to be on a list of approved people with clean background of no (admitted) visits to the most affected area, temperature check and their own supplies of hand disinfectant and masks)..

https://i.imgur.com/gO6mbaZ.png

This is from the municipal level government. They were asking another Dutch-owned company for some ridiculous requirements to re-open- they eventually backed off to something practical, but they're still not open AFAIK.

AFAIK public transit is only shut in one city (Wuhan) out of hundreds in China, but they're doing additional checking in the subways. For example, my Shenzhen transit card wouldn't be accepted (temporarily) now because I paid cash for it, and it's not linked to my ID. They have passenger lists from long distance trains going to and from Hubei so they can cross check ID ("RealID") and keep people who have been in the most affected area off the crowded subway at least. Particularly important for a major city like Shenzhen where most of the people are from elsewhere in the country.

Xi reasoning is that it's better to have some people dying from the virus, than most people suffering from economic set backs. Of course, he and his elites are the most affected by the economic down-turn.

They can't delay indefinitely, the local company owners are going to start disobeying the law just from the financial pressures. Even though they know if there is an outbreak at their factory they'll be severely punished.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

What ultimately ends an epidemic? Maybe most of the suceptable people
have had it and died or got immune. Seems to me like the sorts of
measures taken now just change the time scale of the infection curve.

I don't think everyone got MERS, SARS or Ebola so it can be stopped, though this one is pretty infectious and had a long enough incubation that it got a deep foothold with opportune timing. When there are only a few hundred people in hospital they can trace all their close contacts and get them to at least self-quarantine and it appears to be stopping (though that's not for sure yet).

There don't seem to be non-human vectors, like rats or mosquitoes,
that we can eradicate to eliminate the infection locally.

Yes. It's possible there is a (as-yet undiscovered) reservoir in some other species but it's clearly not the primary mode of infection.

Absent a vaccine, it would take extreme, worldwide, sustained (ie
impossible) action to actually kill off the virus.

That seems to be the view the professionals are taking, that travel restrictions will only affect the time scale. But maybe it can be almost completely stopped (like SARS, MERS and Ebola). Maybe it will mutate into something less harmful.

Maybe it can be delayed until a vaccine can be deployed as part of the usual flu vaccinations, if it's going to be another part of our usual flu season.

And if you get 300 large cities at once in rough shape rather than 3, the total number who get sick may be similar but the death rate difference could be an order of magnitude worse.

Based on the official numbers (usual caveat), the number of unresolved cases appears to have peaked. Red=confirmed Orange =suspected

https://i.imgur.com/thV4tX6.png

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 10:08:24 PM UTC+11, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
news:c2559a3a-b7ae-4422-b6f1-ed5f0278e66e@googlegroups.com:


The US imprisons a whole lot more (655 per 100,000 population in
2016) than China (164 per 100,000 in 2015).

Not based on religion, dumbfuck. Learn to read. Then learn to
properly interpret.

Who cares why the people get imprisoned? The US puts a whole lot more behind bars than China, perhaps because they worship the almighty dollar.

Getting fussed about the explanations people come up with for their bad behaviour may be a necessary part of "proper interpretation" to somebody who has been indocrinated in the American way, but it looks silly from outside.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in news:4d72306a-6292-4975-
b824-5e0ea325e1ba@googlegroups.com:

> but it looks silly from outside.

You constantly make yourself look like an idiot, from all sides.

Fuck a bunch of silly, boy... you be dumb, fucker.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 1:02:11 AM UTC+11, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
news:4d72306a-6292-4975-b824-5e0ea325e1ba@googlegroups.com:

Who cares why the people get imprisoned? The US puts a whole lot
more behind bars than China, perhaps because they worship the
almighty dollar.


No, because there are a lot more freeloading criminal assholes in our
GREAT nation. Over there, the way they "rule" keeps folks in line and
the death sentences they carry out unreported keeps the incarceration
numbers low.

You are truly in the dark about it if you think otherwise.

You are truly in the dark if you think that the US has more criminals, and thus more people in prison.

The usual comparison is with other advanced industrial countries, and what makes the US different is that it puts people in prison for longer for the same offenses.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
news:4d72306a-6292-4975-b824-5e0ea325e1ba@googlegroups.com:

Who cares why the people get imprisoned? The US puts a whole lot
more behind bars than China, perhaps because they worship the
almighty dollar.

No, because there are a lot more freeloading criminal assholes in our
GREAT nation. Over there, the way they "rule" keeps folks in line and
the death sentences they carry out unreported keeps the incarceration
numbers low.

You are truly in the dark about it if you think otherwise.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 1:03:45 AM UTC+11, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in news:4d72306a-6292-4975-
b824-5e0ea325e1ba@googlegroups.com:

but it looks silly from outside.

You constantly make yourself look like an idiot, from all sides.

Fuck a bunch of silly, boy... you be dumb, fucker.

You may like to think that, but your judgement isn't exactly famously sound.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 8:42:09 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 10:08:24 PM UTC+11, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:
Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
news:c2559a3a-b7ae-4422-b6f1-ed5f0278e66e@googlegroups.com:


The US imprisons a whole lot more (655 per 100,000 population in
2016) than China (164 per 100,000 in 2015).

Not based on religion, dumbfuck. Learn to read. Then learn to
properly interpret.

Who cares why the people get imprisoned?

Typical lib fool. It makes no difference to you if someone gets
imprisoned for murder, political dissent, or being a Jew. All about
the same. Thanks for representing for the crazy libs.

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 18 Feb 2020 05:43:54 -0800 (PST), speff <spehro@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Monday, 17 February 2020 10:43:11 UTC-5, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 17 Feb 2020 04:15:10 -0800 (PST), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

On Thursday, 13 February 2020 11:13:56 UTC-5, edward...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 7:19:07 AM UTC-8, Rick C wrote:
On Wednesday, February 12, 2020 at 8:54:03 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 11:54:30 AM UTC+11, edward...@gmail.com wrote:
What is the significance of this data?

They agree with my numbers now. The official number went up 30% overnight to 60,000.

snip

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

"Surge in number of cases and deaths due in most part to the adoption of a new diagnosis classification.

In conformity with other provinces, starting today, Hubei Province will include the number of clinically diagnosed cases into the number of confirmed cases.
Of the 14,840 cases added, 13,332 are due to the new classification while 1,508 are new cases."

That explains the jump in reported cases, but what about the reported deaths? That also has jumped. Were they not counting some deaths because they were not certain they were due to this new virus? So the death rate all along was higher than the numbers we've been seeing?

If the case met the clinical diagnosis criteria prior to death they can retroactively reclassify it. If they never got the patient to a CT scanner, for example, then it can't be. That's my interpretation anyway.


One of the reason is that Xi ordered people back to work. Don't know how that's going to work with public transits also shutdown at the same time. So, with more movements, infected and death rates are both going up.

The local governments (presumably with direction from the provincial and central governments and their epidemiologists) have been *delaying* back to work permission until health and safety supplies and materials are in place. In some places, the governments have not been as strict and the employees are being pushed to return by their companies because the government-imposed delay is voluntary. As well, with schools implementing distance learning for the next weeks it's difficult for moms to get out.

Below notification some of my peeps got- it is only valid a week after all the paperwork is electronically submitted. The landlord is also imposing restrictions on entry to the building (have to be on a list of approved people with clean background of no (admitted) visits to the most affected area, temperature check and their own supplies of hand disinfectant and masks).

https://i.imgur.com/gO6mbaZ.png

This is from the municipal level government. They were asking another Dutch-owned company for some ridiculous requirements to re-open- they eventually backed off to something practical, but they're still not open AFAIK.

AFAIK public transit is only shut in one city (Wuhan) out of hundreds in China, but they're doing additional checking in the subways. For example, my Shenzhen transit card wouldn't be accepted (temporarily) now because I paid cash for it, and it's not linked to my ID. They have passenger lists from long distance trains going to and from Hubei so they can cross check ID ("RealID") and keep people who have been in the most affected area off the crowded subway at least. Particularly important for a major city like Shenzhen where most of the people are from elsewhere in the country.

Xi reasoning is that it's better to have some people dying from the virus, than most people suffering from economic set backs. Of course, he and his elites are the most affected by the economic down-turn.

They can't delay indefinitely, the local company owners are going to start disobeying the law just from the financial pressures. Even though they know if there is an outbreak at their factory they'll be severely punished.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

What ultimately ends an epidemic? Maybe most of the suceptable people
have had it and died or got immune. Seems to me like the sorts of
measures taken now just change the time scale of the infection curve.

I don't think everyone got MERS, SARS or Ebola so it can be stopped, though this one is pretty infectious and had a long enough incubation that it got a deep foothold with opportune timing. When there are only a few hundred people in hospital they can trace all their close contacts and get them to at least self-quarantine and it appears to be stopping (though that's not for sure yet).

There don't seem to be non-human vectors, like rats or mosquitoes,
that we can eradicate to eliminate the infection locally.

Yes. It's possible there is a (as-yet undiscovered) reservoir in some other species but it's clearly not the primary mode of infection.

Absent a vaccine, it would take extreme, worldwide, sustained (ie
impossible) action to actually kill off the virus.

That seems to be the view the professionals are taking, that travel restrictions will only affect the time scale. But maybe it can be almost completely stopped (like SARS, MERS and Ebola). Maybe it will mutate into something less harmful.

Maybe it can be delayed until a vaccine can be deployed as part of the usual flu vaccinations, if it's going to be another part of our usual flu season.

And if you get 300 large cities at once in rough shape rather than 3, the total number who get sick may be similar but the death rate difference could be an order of magnitude worse.

Based on the official numbers (usual caveat), the number of unresolved cases appears to have peaked. Red=confirmed Orange =suspected

https://i.imgur.com/thV4tX6.png

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

A cynical approach would to save the economy at the cost of 2% of the
population.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com