2020.03.27

Official Numbers:

• 595,800 confirmed infections
• 27,324 confirmed deaths
• 131,006 confirmed recoveries
• 101,657 US
• 86,498 Italy
• 81,897 China
• 65,719 Spain
• 50,871 Germany
• 33,402 France
• 32,332 Iran
• 14,745 United Kingdom
• 12,928 Switzerland
• 9,332 Korea, South
• 8,647 Netherlands
• 7,657 Austria
• 7,284 Belgium
• 5,698 Turkey
• 4,682 Canada
• 4,268 Portugal
• 3,755 Norway
• 3,417 Brazil
• 3,143 Australia
• 3,069 Sweden
• 3,035 Israel
• 2,279 Czechia
• 2,200 Denmark
• 2,161 Malaysia
• 2,121 Ireland
• 1,610 Chile
• 1,605 Luxembourg
• 1,595 Ecuador
• 1,468 Japan
• 1,389 Poland
• 1,373 Pakistan
• 1,292 Romania
• 1,170 South Africa
• 1,136 Thailand
• 1,104 Saudi Arabia
• 1,046 Indonesia
• 1,041 Finland
• 1,036 Russia

Asia

• Evidence that China has dramatically undercounted their deaths?. China claims they’ve had about 3000 deaths, total, nationwide. This one single funeral home claims they have 6000 urns to give out. Note that the source is one that gives me an ambiguously bad feeling. I have no particular reason to question the reliability, but it’s just a hunch. Exercise appropriate skepticism. See also Bloomberg’s coverage

Europe

• Boris Johnson tests positive for coronavirus. I guess he’s leading from the front lines in the battle for herd immunity. Joking aside, I hope his case is a mild one. If his case goes mild, a lot of people will feel very reassured about this pandemic. If he dies in a week, then y’all better start stockpiling ammo because this shit is getting crazy
• Evidence that Italy has dramatically undercounted their deaths?. In this article is a graph showing, for one town, the average fatality rate for the past few years (blue), the coronavirus fatalities (green) and the actual fatality rate for right now (red). You’ll notice that the red line spikes quite a bit higher than the green one, and you’ll notice that the red line doesn’t look like the blue line at all (we would expect it to, unless some unique one-off event was killing a bunch of people). It’s suggestive, not evidence, but it sure looks like the “real” death count is the red line

USA

• The Army Corps of Engineers build a hospital for NYC in about a week. I bet this one doesn’t leak, unlike some one-week hospitals
• The US broke 100k infections today. I want off Mr Coronavirus’s Wild Ride

Science/Medical

• COVID-19 attack rate increases with city size. This is something of a no-brainer (denser population = more transmission opportunities) but it’s good to quantify it
• ACE-2 blockers associated to mitigation of disease severity This is somewhat to be expected. The virus attacks ACE-2 receptors. Blocking those receptors means they can’t be attacked
• Preliminary study showing convalescent plasma being a very effective treatment. Note that there is no control group. More investigation needed
• Something about the virus mutating to become more infective. I haven’t read the paper in full and I’m not sure I understand the practical implications
• Serology characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 infection since the exposure and post symptoms onset. This looks at the biochemical markers of immune response throughout peoples’ infections. If I understand this correctly, they are typical from what you’d expect in a disease. That means that a) antibody tests should be easy to make and work as normal; and b) the immunity situation should be normal (eg no weird ‘get it a second time’ stuff). As always, I am not a doctor
• Melatonin as a potential adjuvant treatment. I think this is theorizing more than it’s observing, but if so, good news; I take this stuff nightly as a sleep aid. For further good news, they say it would be helpful mostly because it’s an antioxidant. A lot of things are antioxidants, so if their conclusions are correct, this would recommend a lot of other things as effective treatments. Vitamin C, perhaps?

Markets

• There is a looming condom shortage. The world’s largest condom factory has been offline for a week now.