2020.04.05
This is a placeholder. I was lazy and did not do updates today. I will do them tomorrow morning
Official Numbers
- 1,289,380 confirmed infections (Δ 97,352)
- 70,590 confirmed deaths (Δ 6,274)
- 270,372 confirmed recoveries (Δ 24,319)
- 484 confirmed infections in my city (Δ 54)
- 18 confirmed infections in my ZIP code (Δ -1 (????))
- 6 confirmed deaths in my city (Δ 2)
- 337,971 US
- 135,032 Spain
- 128,948 Italy
- 100,186 Germany
- 93,780 France
- 82,665 China
- 60,500 Iran
- 48,451 United Kingdom
- 27,069 Turkey
- 21,652 Switzerland
- 20,814 Belgium
- 18,917 Netherlands
- 15,940 Canada
- 12,206 Austria
- 11,730 Portugal
- 11,298 Brazil
- 10,284 Korea, South
Updates
- More from the “cats can catch it” files: Bronx Zoo says one of its tigers has tested positive
- Boris Johnson has been taken to the hospital ‘as a precaution’. If he dies of this thing I expect the world to go crazy. On the one hand, a highly visible person dying, showing us that nobody is immune. On the second hand, a highly polarizing person dying, which fuels all kinds of political BS. And on the third hand, a world leader dying, which will make all the other western leaders think “that could happen to me” and proceed accordingly
- ACE2 variants underlie interindividual variability and susceptibility to COVID-19 in Italian population. TL;DR: they’re doing genetics to see if they can predict who will have severe disease, and it turns out genetic markers related to ACE2 expression are predictive
- A bunch more evidence coming out seeming to confirm the “it attacks blood” hypothesis. I forgot to save the links to these things but, if true, big. TL;DR: Virus messes with hemoglobin in blood, preventing it from carrying oxygen. Lungs work fine but blood deoxygenates anyway. Patients present with severe hypoxemia symptoms. Eventually lungs are damaged by all the iron free radicals that have been kicked off of the hemoglobin, causing the pneumonia we see.
- Another no-link update: it seems that the initial disease control attempts in Singapore and South Korea have failed (though they claim it’s due to infected foreigners coming to their countries), and I understand that both nations intend to enact significant lockdown measures this week. No update on Taiwan; as far as I know, they’re still all clear
- Reminder that everyone should have personal self defense plans, and guns are the best if you know how to use them. I see a lot of people online snarking about how ‘stupid americans stockpile guns in a crisis’. Things like this are why. Police departments across the country have already made credible public pre-commitments to not enforcing a bunch of crimes (to avoid potential exposure). Jails are releasing inmates to avoid them getting infected. Crime will rise dramatically, and in a crisis if you want to be safe you have to protect yourself. It might be unfortunate, it might even be deserving of internet foreigner mockery, but the mockery should be aimed at the criminals who insist on burglarizing people, not on the crime victims who want to be safe. In any case, absent full on army-enforced martial law, I expect European crime waves to catch up with us by 1 month into lockdown anyway. Nobody is escaping the consequences of this pandemic