Is sunlight the missing variable

There are weird differences in the numbers being generated by the Wuhan virus. The Italian numbers are concerning, but Germany remains well below a 1% fatality rate.

Transmission rates also vary enormously with very few cases in Africa and South America, but enormously high transmission rates in Iceland.....much higher than in the parts of the USA in the same temperature zone.

A new theory being explored suggests the intensity of sunlight may be a factor. Iceland is so far north, the duration and angle of sunlight in the northern winter in Reykjavic is minimal. 

Sunlight, temperature, humidity,  treatments and a vaccine.....will all play a role.

Mozart

You be quite frank - nobody really knows what the situation in China is - a dictatorship with no press freedom - so the figures are likely manipulated,   

Nobody has a clue as to how many cases there are in SA,  as only circa 13 000 has been tested,  

No clothing, liquor or tobacco products to be sold anywhere in SA while the lockdown is in effect. 

We will have to see on Friday what happens as to shops being open,    Only 50 people will be allowed into stores at any given time and a two meter space between them is to be maintained.  I normally shop at Pick and Pay and Spar - and buy meat at a Butcher who provide quality meet to shops from Swellendam in the west to Knysna in the east and inland to Barrydale, Ladismith and Oudtshoorn,   Wonder whether they will be open.

I spoke to Joy Barendse by phone yesterday - she and her family now live in Sydney.  She is already 98 years old and she and her daughter told me that they are fine, but as bad as things are here so bad is it in Australia.                .                 

No - they would have taken no action until 11 000 are dead - like Obama did  with the swine flue epidemic in 2009,   

Trump is trying his utmost to steer the country through this malaise and that is also to keep peoples hopes up.  He gets expert advice all the time and  is not dependent  on the BS spouted in the media - so one can assume he knows what is happening,        

Let’s stick with the facts....which are very elusive as Mike suggests. I just read a major piece in the Wall Street Journal by 2 top Stanford medical experts. Their assertion is that the infected population is much higher, bringing down the % of serious cases dramatically.

They cite a number of examples including Italy, where they believe the infected population in epicenter towns was underestimated by a factor of 10.

In an unrelated study experts at Oxford university believe the infected population in the U.K. is also hopelessly underestimated....concluding that perhaps as few as 1 in a 1000 may be dying.

 Increasingly we are seeing informed, trained observers questioning the WHO model. 

It was tragic that the Arizona old couple self -administered one of Trumps cures- with the Husband dying.

They took an additive used to clean fish tanks, not even a pharmaceutical version of the drug. Bloody stupid.

@Pakie, it was stupid- but they were from Arizona...

It was chloroquine- but a variation used for cleaning fishtanks.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/coronavirus-cure-kills-man-after-trump-touts-chloroquine-phosphate

Or everybody else is just aping everybody else.....each month the US economy is down is a Trillion dollars. For that reason alone it’s crucial to understand the magnitude of the real risk.

"Or everybody else is just aping everybody else"

Indeed, even the same catch phrases and "target dates". Surreal, I wonder who wrote the script...

Let's assume that through much staying at home and sanitizing every other minute, we manage to bring down the number of known infected to 10.

What then?

We hope to find an effective treatment or else the cycle starts all over again?

And here's the other problem.

Through all of this we are also managing to prevent the spread of regular colds and flus.

As  understand it, the regular attacks one's immune system are what allow you to upgrade you defence software.

So isn't all of this just chucking the rhythm out of sync and ultimately exposing us to greater danger further down the line?

I think that the next stage will be that they realise it's impossible to indefinitely squeeze the economy.

The solution will probably be to isolate the high risk age groups and those with medical conditions that cause them to be vulnerable. 

The rest of us will be told to continue as normal.  

Once everyone else has caught it and built immunity, the high risk groups will be less likely to catch it as those with immunity won't be spreading it on the second pass.

SB

Despite the fake news agencies like CNN stated Trump will always act on the advice of experts and when he says something it is immediately misrepresented,  I also watch CNN occasionally, but they are incredibly bad.

Take the Arizona case.  Many doctors  used a mixture of malaria and other drugs to try and save the lives of patients.   The drugs they use are administered by specialists and under monitored conditions.    Instead of warning the public not to do what that Democratc idiot (likely an illegal migrant illegally registered by the Democrats to vote)  did and advising the public not to try and get away with anything not proscribed by doctors, they go on the attack on Trump because he mentioned various methods doctors use for treatment,              

CleverMike, your opinion is just regurgitating Fox News- and Trumps Twitter page.

I have seen Trump talk about Corona over the last 2 months. He claims to know more than scientists and doctors

A new study suggests the temperature band of maximum transmission is 5 to 11 degrees centigrade. It also suggests sunlight is a factor. All of which suggests N Europe and N USA may have a difficult April, but things should improve after that.

scientists and doctors have been all over the map....and 2 months ago the only person who took action was Trump while all these ‘experts’ were essentially missing in action.

99% of all scientists got it wrong....again. But by the time it’s all over that will be forgotten.

"Trump changes his story each day."

Which is exactly what intelligent people are able to do when new information comes to light.

And it certainly beats hanging onto the same opinion out of arrogance and ego even when mounting evidence points to that opinion being incorrect.

Take for example the resident anti-Trumpers on here. They said he'd be a failure. Now, despite undeniable evidence to the contrary on practically every front, you still see them scraping the barrel for shit to fling at him.

All because they're too egotistical to admit that they were wrong and Trump's America is winning.

Perhaps you should change your story once in a while Shark. Might do ya sum gud.

SB

He banned people from China entering the country when it became clear there was going to be a problem if carriers of the virus gets uncontrolled access into the USA,   It limited potential infections.   What else could he do at that stage - with near to knowledge of the scientific impact  the virus could have.   

What did the EU do about it?   Bugger-all and  they are in a worse  condition  at present than the USA,   It reminds me of the swine flue epidemic that hit the  USA in 2009,.   Obama did zero  until more than 11 000 deaths have already been recorded,]

So as more scientific info comes to the fore Trump may not comment on it?                 

Bill Gates is an American that I have a world of respect for. If he ran for president I would certainly support him. He is super intelligent and should be involved in some way- his IQ is rated similar to Einstein. 

There is a documentary on Netflix created in early 2019 where he Gates predicts the wet markets in China could create a pandemic. (before Corona current version). 

He disagrees with Trump - and believes China showed that a 6-8 week lockdown is the best way to deal with the issue.... 

He is obviously much smarter than any of us - and Trump... That does not mean it is fact, but certainly worthy of consideration.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8156283/Bill-Gates-says-Donald-Trump-needs-lockdown-SIX-WEEKS-flatten-curve.html

@clevermike

What could the EU do, they don't control the borders of EU countries. The European response to the Covid 19 situation disproves the notion that the EU is this all powerful entity that controls its member states. All the EU member states implemented their own systems to deal with Covid 19, with bugger all coordination. Member states started closing their borders on their own accord.

I think the major problem for the likes of Italy, is the virus was there for a long time undetected before they really started to look for it and by then it had got out of control, the Italians are a particularly sociable people with a very elder population and often live in relative small apartments. The health system in the North of Italy has collapsed.  Given how interconnected Europe is, not a massive surprise to see Spain, France and Germany badly hit given their proximity to Italy.

Over here in Ireland where we have a caretaker government, the feeling is the handling of the situation wasn't good for the first 2 weeks. Particularly with say the 6 Nations games with Italy that was cancelled here, something like 5,000 Italians still traveled to Ireland anyway as a holiday. Many felt that they should have been stopped from coming. When the first cases arrived there was also a lack of information of were about they occurred. All the initial cases in Ireland where from Irish people returning from holidays.

However the government here has really got it together here in the last few weeks. Information is a lot better, clear, consistent and wildly available. Big push to recruit more medical staff and bring medical staff from abroad back home (50,000 have signed up in 2-3 days), increase in police numbers to record levels, social welfare payment increases, freeze on evictions, freeze on mortgage payments, closing of non existential businesses, ramping up of testing, social distancing measures etc etc. We seemed to be slightly ahead of the curve compared to the rest of Europe in some of the measures we introduced while the virus got here a little later as well. We also have a strong medical sector, apparently Ireland produces 50% of the worlds medical ventilators. We are hopeful we can avoid Italy and Spain's faith.

Looking across the pound either way and the expectation is the US and UK have got this terribly wrong.

I'm not attacking Trump from blocking flights from China, in fact his decision came to late. By the time he implemented it didn't matter that much. Same for all countries in the world effectively by the time they acted it was too late. But I'm not really blaming any of them because no country in the world at the time would of have had the political will to do so. No country really understood the gravity of the situation before it was too late. Even with full restrictions on flights and closing borders for many countries it would of only delayed the inevitable.

There seems to be far too little testing in the US and conflicting messages from the Trump administration who seem to be prioritizing the economy over peoples lives. I'm not saying the economy isn't important, thousands to millions being unemployed will kill many people in a different way but at the same time I don't think they truly understand how bad its going to be and how many people will die if it doesn't take action. It may already be too late, with the WHO saying America may shortly overtake Europe as the center of the pandemic. High costs of medical care in the US might stop people with virus from seeking care as well.

Meanwhile the UK got it even more wrong. Its strategy was basically to let it pretty much let the virus spread uncontrolled around the country, so the country would develop herd immunity and be immune from second waves. It would recover quicker than other countries and do less damage to economy. Apparently the UK government was listening to a very small circle of scientists who advised them that in Wuhan the population had achieved something like 20% herd immunity already (this was two-three weeks back). This was apparently seized upon by the special advisor to Boris Johnson , Dominic Cumming's who thought it was a great idea even though Johnson himself and the UK's chief medical adviser where squeamish on the idea. However such is Cummings influence (who is pretty much the ultimate un-elected bureaucrat) they went along with this assume a few thousand people would die. But pretty much every other countries medical view was this was insane, and that at best Wuhan had achieved 5% herd immunity, but more likely 1-2%. As more and more data came in and as the UK date rate per cases started to go above Italys they realized they weere wrong and that the death toll would be in the hundreds of thousands with this strategy, they started to backtrack frantically. But they have lost weeks of time of valuable time where they could of being slowing it down.

Trump’s decision was made early and bravely, against the advice of the establishment.  The problem was the Chinese connection was pouring into Italy. If Europe had made a parallel decision to the US the NY outbreak would have been way smaller.

The East Coast was infected from Europe, not China.

As for Trump prioritizing the economy over people’s lives.....absolute nonsense.

Stav

As far as I could make out the fact os that the virus was carried from China by visitors and somehow or other hot Italy first,  Maybe it had to do with the age of Italians and their way of life.  However, I believe the spread from there stemmed from visa free travelling through EU countries.  Bu the time the individual countries was hit it was already too late and he pandemic was in full swing. 

The first cases  identified in SA all came from people who travelled to EU countries, Switzerland and the UK and then got out to the general public,  They thus far have tested near to 20 000 people  and of those 732 were positive.   No deaths recorded thus far,

The problem in SA is that the Government gear that the virus would spread into the Black communities and hat would cause a massive death toll because of high HIV and TB, as well as poor dietary regimes that causes high blood pressure and diabetes.   If it does it could elads to a massive death toll running into millions of people.  

In the meantime we are under total lock down and I will probably not leave the house for the next three weeks.   Tonight was the last night one could go out  and I went to the bank to draw some money.

Keep safe please - I know it is unpleasant and since one of my main interests is watching sport on TV  I am having a dreadful time on that regard,               

@mozart

Trump makes decisions on gut feelings. I'm not a fan of him in general but in this case he may have been right, but by the time the decision was made the virus had already made its way to the US and the ban on flights from China made little difference.

I see where your coming from about had Europe done the same but at the time European countries didn't really understand what they where dealing with and were going by established WHO guidelines. Really with the world being so interconnected we needed close to an entire global shutdown of borders, but that was never going to happen.

But from what I can see America's response to the virus once it arrived on its shore has not been up to scratch. Testing has been far too slow.

As for suggesting Tumps not prioritizing the economy I can only retort...absolute nonsense.He needs to stop wanging on about re-opening the country in just a few weeks and start making sure testing is ramped up massively, treatment for it is made free and his countries medical staff have all the equipment and protection they can get.

@clevermike

Freedom of movement in the EU have contributed to the spread of the virus though it would of spread anyway, maybe not as quickly. But you could say American's freedom to travel between US states will contribute to the spread of the virus there as well.

We have 1,819 cases and 19 deaths of today. As of two days ago we had tested 18,000 so I'd imagine we are also around the 20,000 test mark. We are in a partial lockdown for the last week or so though we expect further restrictions here in the next week or so.

I hear what your saying about the spread of the virus among black communities in SA. I hope it can contained and the transmissions rates slowed until a vaccine is ready.  A while back I looked and Ireland and South Africa's economies where about the same size. We are directing our resources at protecting 4.6 million lives, SA has the direct its resources at protecting almost 57 million. I can see a year of lockdowns but the severity of the lack downs will vary in different places and times.

@sharkbok

Yeah, he's got a huge degree of power in the UK, apparently when it comes to advise Johnson only really listens to him and his girlfriend. You hear jokes that its really Prime Minister Cummings in charge.

Trump has done 3 things about the virus which has drawn criticism:

1 He closed down China far earlier than Europe....he was right, eventually even Germany closed it’s borders to neighbors. If anything he was slow to ban European flights, but he received no support.

2 He promoted off label medicines which had worked elsewhere and in a small test at the Mediterranean Institute for infectious diseases. It was risky, but hospitals  and doctors in NY backed that endorsement by using the product, with anecdotal success. When people are going to die do whatever has some chance of success.

3 He said he would like to see the economy open up by Easter. He never said all the economy or under any circumstances. He put the idea in people’s minds that we have to get back to work. Which is of course what Xi said to general approval a month ago.

....

The ‘accepted’ model is we socially distance, stop working and bend the curve. This has been driven largely by the prospect of overwhelmed hospitals. But as much by the notion that eventually a vaccine saves us.

But vaccines don’t always pan out....especially if the virus evolves. It could be two years. In that case finding treatments looms large....and doing it quickly is a priority.

The big question remains, how deadly is the virus. We are well short of testing the whole population. So the numbers from the Diamond Princess looms large. Right now we have a 1.3% death rate amongst a older population group ...it could go higher, but will likely be under 2%. Not good, but not an existential risk.

SB

You have parroted the nonsense spread on CNN faithfully and without question, while people like Mozart and myself have read and taken into account factual information provided by experts,  Please do not always carry on with the reports of fake news agencies like  CNN and China apologists and propagandists,      

Oom Mike, don't waste your breath on the airhead. The rude prick isn't worth the time.