addon to above:

We need to keep in mind when speaking about Italy that they have a high percentage of citizens 65 or older, around 23-25% are 65 or older. Most of Italy's fatalities were between 80-90 years old.

Stats are easily skewed and easily misled:

Within Wuhan the mortality rate was around 5.8% (currently down to 2% and falling), while the rest of China was only 0.7% according to W.H.O..

In South Korea the mortality rate is around 0.6%.

Both China and South Korea initially had high mortality rates, at one time Wuhan was around 12%, however, as more people were tested the overall numbers of infected goes up, numbers of recovered also goes up and the number of deaths decreases as a percentage (increases as total number). This is why a knee-jerk reaction or rush to judgement, media sensationalizing the virus and the full picture not being given to the public is not only an injustice its dangerous.

and then there is Japan: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world...it/ar-BB11pQg8

Taiwan is beating it. They were exposed to SARS and MERS (from what country?). They had the skills in place. https://www.wired.com/story/taiwan-i...s-do-the-same/

My niece in Singapore had to have her temperature recorded and reported each day to government. I'm amazed that places like Japan and Taiwan are such limited places. There are some of the most crowded places I've ever been to.

At last! A sensible explanation for the toilet paper mania.

A colleague of my sister's was working in Egypt and contracted the virus. She did not make it and probably had some underlying condition.

I have extended family living in Italy but they are all younger and in the age group least affected. I have not heard that anyone or their neighbors have caught the virus yet.

My nephew was on vacation in South America and just caught the last plane back before the border was closed. I have heard that other Americans around the world are trapped.

That doesn't surprise me. It's been going on in a quieter way for years. As medicines get more and more expensive, treatment has to be more and more selective. In America, selection is by ability to pay. If you're poor, you die. In the UK, we're more civilised and select by age.

The operative word is QUALY: Quality Adjusted Life Years. In other words, how many years of life of reasonable quality will a certain treatment give a patient? That's what determines if it's worth the cost to the NHS. For an old person, the answer is usually, "Not many. They'll just die of something else and probably within the same time span." So expensive cancer drugs are reserved for young people who will contribute to the economy for many years and so pay back the cost of curing them. The difference now (when it's actual intensive care beds and that are rationed and not just money) is that doctors are having to make those decisions rather than hospital bureaucrats in back rooms.

This might be of interest to those in the UK, although it's only tracking confirmed cases. From a quick look it's clear that London is the worst affected by far with a bit less than half of all England's cases, and more cases than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined.

That explains why the more London-centric parts of the media are suffering underwear torsion, and puts Lysander666's friend's experience in perspective. I don't mean to belittle that in any way, it is a serious situation in its own right quite apart from the fact it's spreading further out, but so far the rest of the country isn't as bad. Whether the measures being put in place will do much to keep it that way remains to be seen.

We are now in a similar situation to Italy a few weeks ago. They had a lot of covid in Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna but not much elsewhere. So their government decided to prevent people from leaving those areas and spreading the infection. What was the result? The public got wind of the plan and everyone bolted like a flood of plague-stricken rats leaving a sinking ship. Now the whole of Italy is an infection zone.

I wonder if Londoners can show more public spirit.

Latest News: A 103-year old woman has been discharged from a Chinese hospital after recovering from Covid-19. She was in a critical condition when admitted.

As ever so often, big cities are making it worse.

I can see loads of (hopefully lasting) AHA effects from this pandemic:
- people consume less, drive around less, planet gets better almost immediately!
- countryside is safer than city, better in almost eevry way
- being cooped up in tight places is not healthy
...

Definitely promising, but this paper points out that similar claims have been made for chloroquine treatment of other viral diseases, with no good results in real life. It even names one virus that was made worse by chloroquine in primates despite promising results in vitro.

The difference here is that China has reported a high success rate, but they haven't released any clinical data so far. On balance I'd say Trump's approach (make it available under the "compassionate use" program and get on with a controlled trial) is the right one.



As for AHA effects - more working-from-home would be good in a lot of industries, and hopefully more people will keep their own houses well-stocked in future. I also wonder how this will affect education, now most British schools have been told to close. Some are saying it demonstrates how vital school teachers are, but while I have the utmost respect for most of that profession, I hope it will give a boost to the various types of home education and weaken the "one-size-fits-all" approach.

In the news today:

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4...ed-over-8-week
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/19/cali...y-evening.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronav...ca-11584618703
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...ed/ar-BB11pYY1
https://www.thehour.com/news/article...n-15143405.php
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronav...f-of-patients/
http://www.anews.com.tr/economy/2020...virus-hits-web
https://apnews.com/2c7a28aae24ec5f4bb8a79022ac92e5c
https://www.wsj.com/articles/grocery...and-1158453393
https://theweek.com/articles/903343
https://news.yahoo.com/low-test-rate...173039467.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yor...ad-11584626666
https://apnews.com/67ac94d1cf08a84ff7c6bbeec2b167fa
https://dnyuz.com/2020/03/20/chillin...ach-their-max/
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/se...ets-2020-03-20
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/coron...arges/2093876/

At least for me, i personally havent been affected yet. Work is still going with the number users working remotely growing. Stores supply lines have not been affected other than the crazies buying all the meat. traffic and pollution are down with everyone quarantined.

There's a lot of useful info in this week's New Scientist.

Well, that's just about the best explanation I've seen. And very funny. We could do with a few laughs.

"selective. In America, selection is by ability to pay. If you're poor, you die"
That is wrong. Stop saying that.
No one gets denied medical. In fact the most poor have the BEST medical insurance in the US. Medicaid foots the bill.

Medical costs wouldn't be so high if people took better care of their body and crooks weren't out to scam the system.

Agreed jefro, it's tiresome to hear people spread this oft repeated lie about the USA medical system. If anyone gets shafted its the middle class not the poor. Hospitals are required to treat those who cannot pay. The options for reimbursement for the hospital are: Medicaid, sliding scale with discounts, and more often then not they waive all fees and use the hospitals trust account (donations) to pay the bill and cover the doctors fees. In other words, if someone is poor the still get world class treatment and free (for them).

I know quite a few people that after receiving medical bills they could not repay, received letters from the hospital showing a zero ($0) balance that was paid from the hospitals donations.