2020.03.15

In the past 24 hours I did a review of what was posted on /r/covid19, which is the science-based coronavirus subreddit. Lots of interesting papers. Most are cause for mild optimism, some are concerning. Keep your eyes on the Science/Medical section today.

Keep in mind that many of these are preprints, and haven’t been peer-reviewed yet. Like literally everything else on this website, the situation is chaotic and fluid. Things can be wrong, and are subject to change. But this is what’s going around, and I bring it back to you, the people. Judge the papers for yourselves

Official Numbers:

• Total confirmed infected: 162, 687
• Total confirmed deaths: 6,065
• Total confirmed recoveries: 75,620
• 81,003 China
• 21,157 Italy
• 13,938 Iran
• 8,162 Korea, South
• 7,798 Spain
• 5,426 Germany
• 4,511 France
• 3,244 US
• 2,200 Switzerland
• 1,207 Norway
• 1,144 United Kingdom
• 1,135 Netherlands
• 1,022 Sweden
• 886 Belgium
• 875 Denmark
• 800 Austria
• 773 Japan
• 696 Cruise Ship
• 428 Malaysia
• 337 Qatar
• 297 Australia
• 252 Canada
• 245 Portugal
• 243 Finland
• 231 Czechia
• 228 Greece
• 226 Singapore
• 219 Slovenia
• 210 Bahrain
• 200 Israel
• 162 Brazil
• 161 Iceland
• 140 Philippines
• 135 Estonia
• 131 Romania
• 129 Ireland
• 119 Poland
• 117 Indonesia
• 114 Thailand
• 113 India
• 112 Kuwait
• 110 Iraq
• 110 Lebanon
• 110 Egypt
• 103 Saudi Arabia

Website Updates

Sites/Links

• Twitter account tracking US testing capacity

Asia

• The Epoch Times with some in-depth reporting suggesting that China lies about numbers
• Twitter user’s wife talking to people from Wuhan on WeChat. Their blanket shutdown appears to have destroyed their society. Get ready, that’s coming here soon

Europe

• Austria on full lockdown.

US

• THE FIRST MANDATORY LOCKDOWN MEASURES IN THE US HAVE BEEN IMPLEMENTED. Hoboken, NJ to implement curfew. Nobody to leave their houses between 10pm and 5am. Lockdowns are coming sooner rather than later. I strongly urge everyone to pause all travel plans indefinitely, as if you travel you may not be permitted to return home if a lockdown is implemented while you are gone
• New York Hospitals getting slammed real fast.

Science/Medical

• Potential false-positive rate among the ‘asymptomatic infected individuals’ in close contacts of COVID-19 patients. I am not statistically literate enough to understand what this page says, but it think it’s saying that four out of five tests are false positives.
• Real estimate of mortality following COVID-19 infection. This paper points out that the correct denominator for the death rate isn’t total cases, it’s total cases three weeks ago, because it takes about 3 weeks to progress to death. Using this, this paper estimates a 5.7% fatality rate. Obviously this is highly sensitive to assumptions about the “real” case count
• Letter written by Italian doctor suggesting that smoking is a SERIOUS comorbidity. TBH this reads to me like anti-smoking propaganda, but it makes sense
• The convalescent sera options for containing COVID-19. Basically, inject blood plasma from recovered patients, and the magic antibodies or whatever that are inside save peoples’ lives.
• Estimating the asymptomatic proportion of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, Yokohama, Japan, 2020. Using the Diamond Princess as a natural experiment, they estimate that approximately 15-20% of all cases are asymptomatic
• Of Chloroquine and COVID-19 looks at the data about using Chloroquine to treat COVID-19. It works in vitro but historically in-vitro results did not translate into in-vivo for this drug. More study is needed
• Reinfection could not occur in SARS-CoV-2 infected rhesus macaques. People have been worrying about reinfection after recovery but this study suggests that this will not happen, at least on the order of weeks
• Twitter thread about younger infections. This guy claims there is data that the entire course of disease is milder in younger people on average. However, there is still no actual data demonstrating this, only claims. Maybe there is in the primary source, but I don’t speak Korean. Note that in the chart he posted, “critical rate” is a mistranslation and it is clearly the death rate.
• Another Twitter thread of someone talking to a Seattle doctor. Concerning claim that it’s not actually respiratory distress that is killing people, but acute myocarditis that happens shortly afterwards. There were rumours of this a month ago but they never came to much.
• Twitter thread doing a roundup of some research papers. Specifically, the genes present in the coronavirus predict that it should interfere with heme groups in your blood. This is bad.
• Breakthrough by German scientists analyzing the specific protein the coronavirus uses for cellular entry. Extremely good news, as it predicts that an existing drug, one that is pretty cheap too, blocks coronavirus entry. And it seems that that is exactly what happened in their experiments. THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE, but if you have a favourite ‘not for human consumption’ website for ordering drugs, you might want to order some Camostat
• Sobering reminder: Risk of Vaccine Research and Development Quantified. “The average vaccine, taken from the preclinical phase, requires a development timeline of 10.71 years and has a market entry probability of 6%.”
• This Week In Virology episode interviewing Dr. Ralph Baric about coronavirus. Medium post summary with link to the episode. Lots of stuff here but the interesting new data is that, for complex and well-thought-out reasons, this doctor believes that once the initial pandemic is over (noting this may take years), the coronavirus should quickly evolve to be less deadly, eventually becoming just another common cold. However, this might be less a “virus becomes less lethal” and more a “the children who survived are more-or-less immune for life, and pass that on to their children”
• First 12 patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United States. Research paper with some interesting stats about the first twelve identified cases in the US. Overall interesting, and I think somewhat good news.

Markets

• The fed did a bunch more stuff that probably won’t work and that I don’t understand. This remains really really bad