Apologies. I will try to be better about posting sources tomorrow, but I didn’t keep track of them when I wrote this
2020.03.03
Official Numbers:
- 92,861 Confirmed Infected
- 3,162 Confirmed Deaths
- 48,272 Confirmed Recoveries
- 80,151 infected in Mainland China (I personally believe the real number is at least 10x this)
- 5,186 infected in South Korea
- 2,502 infected in Italy
- 2,336 infected in Iran (I personally believe the real number is at least 10x this)
- 293 infected in Japan
- 204 infected in France
- 196 infected in Germany
- 122 infected in US (I personally believe the real number is at least 5x this)
- 110 infected in Singapore
Personal:
- I have transitioned to full time work-from-home
- Temp 98, SPO2 99%
- Most recent exposure to someone who was visibly sick: 2020.02.25
Iran:
- Still really really bad. Highest end of death count estimates is 3000ish total. 8% of their governing MPs are infected.
- Apparently municipal water pressure is down. This implies a lot of people are washing their hands a lot. It also implies they’re not dead, which is reassuring
- Releasing prisoners from prisons to avoid prison spread. This is presumed to represent a general loss of state-governing capacity.
Korea:
- “State of war” declared (I believe this is rhetorical not formal)
- ~5000 documented cases
Italy:
- Death rate significantly higher than chinese numbers, WHO numbers, korean numbers, singaporean numbers. Unclear if real or sampling bias
- Getting ready to (already started?) full on no-in-no-out cordon sanitaire around epicenter towns
China:
- Not a lot of media coming out of China lately, leaks or otherwise
- Official numbers suggest China actually does have this under control. WHO confirms this
- At this time, I provisionally believe this, if for no other reason than that their draconian quarantines must have worked
Singapore:
- Appears to have it more-or-less contained.
- Does this lend evidence to ‘hotter weather will save us’? I hope so
WHO:
- WHO formally announced fatality rate of 3.5%
- WHO formally announced that this is worse than the flu
US:
- Our authorities are still so incompetent it looks like malice
- 9 are now dead, 8 in King County (Seattle), 1 in Snohomish County (Seattle Suburb). The official count of US patients is 102
- Georgia confirmed 2 infected
- North Carolina confirmed an infected
- Testing kits are still not being made available. Presumably they still don’t work.
- Some epidemiologist(?) went on CBS news to give a coronavirus primer and while he downplayed it he did say at one point that in all likelihood millions of Americans will die from this
- Man wearing mask apparently collapses on sidewalk in New York. OH GOD I HOPE THIS ISN’T REAL
Texas:
- San Antonio lost their lawsuit suing the federal government to prevent them from releasing all their quarantined people from the airforce base
- San Antonio declared state of emergency. I think this lets them use emergency powers to override the legal ruling
- Rumours of infection at Houston hospital
- At least one person awaiting test results in Austin. Knowing nothing about the case other than that they are waiting for test results, I would assume that they are infected
- SXSW is still not cancelled
- The following have pulled out of SXSW: Facebook, Jack Dorsey, Intel, Vevo, Mashable, TikTok, Tim Ferris
Tech:
- My employer continues to make aggressive WFH preparations while denying any explicit WFH plans at this time. I am inclined to believe them. Overall not super impressed with their response but it has been acceptable
- Google staged a WFH “drill” in Dublin today. They are extending the drill to tomorrow. Assumption is that it’s not a drill
- Google “cancels in-person attendance” at Google IO. This is a very big tech conference, if google’s doing this it’s serious
- Coinbase internal preparedness document leaked. It is shockingly reasonable. If other tech companies have similar internal documents, that is reassuring
Science:
- Prevotella rumours remain unaddressed (tldr virus somehow binds to a common gut bacteria and this helps spread it undetectibly). I am not a biologist and have no ability to judge whether this is plausible or insane
- Small children are starting to test positive but still do not ever show symptoms. Some experts wondering if this spreads undetected via kids as carriers
- People continue to test positive several weeks after being declared recovered. I am not yet aware of any case where this happens and the ‘recovered’ person gets sick again. My current belief is that this is bad tests
- Chinese doctors hypothesize unreliability of tests due to checking for lower respiratory tract virus via upper respiratory tract swabs
Market:
- The federal reserve cut interest rates by 0.5 percentage points
- This should have made the market go up
- The market did not go up. RIP my retirement
Politics:
- Possibility that Boris Johnson has been exposed to infection (Shook hands with people in a coronavirus hospital for PR like a fucking idiot)
- Possibility that Benjamin Netanyahu has been exposed to infection (extended close contact with a general that is currently in quarantine coming back from asia. Forget if general is diagnosed or not)
- Possibility that Mike Pence has been exposed to infection (Shook hands with a school student whose classmate has since been quarantined
- Vatican formally states that Pope had coronavirus test that came back negative. I am not sure I believe them. Even if true that he tested negative, I’m not sure it matters; the tests are very unreliable
Predictions:
- My city will have its first confirmed case in a matter of days. I assume that we will see an explosion of identified cases a few days after that, as we did in Washington state, but this depends on whether or not test kits are made available
- At least one tech company will go 100% mandatory work from home in at least one US city by the end of next week
- Some level of lockdown will be implemented in some location (likely WA) in the US by the end of next week (50% confidence) or by the end of the month (95% confidence)
- Some level of widespread lockdown that personally impacts me will be implemented by the end of the month (60% confidence)
Prescriptions:
- It may be time to put “do not go out into public for any reason at all unless your life depends on it” plans into action within the next 2-3 weeks
Misc:
- Currently there are questions regarding how many people who get this disease and are asymptomatic. We do not have good data on this
- Going by WHO report, the answer is 0%: “Asymptomatic infection has been reported, but the majority of the relatively rare cases who are asymptomatic on the date of identification/report went on to develop disease. The proportion of truly asymptomatic infections is unclear but appears to be relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission.”
- Going by what apparently happened on the Diamond Princess, assuming that everyone on board got infected, the answer is 60% are asymptomatic (I’m eyeballing it, looks like about 1/3rd of the passengers got sick?)
- Going by the weird cult church in Korea, about 40% of people who are confirmed positive by test show no symptoms