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[Frumple]

Oh, neat. CDC is apparently saying the virus might have a base-line R0 of around... 6. 5.7 or something. Or in other words it might be two to three times more infectious than previously thought, if nothing mitigates the spread.

Now whether that's being distorted by reporting or just how colossally fucking poorly the US has responded to the pandemic or something, I'unno. But it's apparently a thing!

[misko27]

Two studies (geneticists) have independently arrived at the conclusion that the virus in New York spread for several weeks before the first confirmed cases, and overwhelmingly came from Europe, before the shutdowns there started.

As someone in New York, a mild urge to chastise is beaten out by an overwhelming desire to point out how much this makes a mockery of our (read: global) attempts to keep a grip on this. We never had this under control. Half-measures instituted long after it was too late to stop it, this virus was perfectly suited to exploit our weaknesses, our global hubris that it wouldn't effect us. China underestimated it, Europe underestimated it, the US underestimated it, Latin America underestimated it, the Middle East has underestimated it (150 Saudi Royals are infected!)... its "not our problem" up until it is, and by then it's too late.

Also 4 am philosophy apparently. Guess I'm stir crazy or something.

[Starver]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cum#Etymology_1

(And, for anyone seriously confused about my usage*, check the Usage Notes to
Ety2 as well.)

* - Probably no-one. When I wrote it I only anticipated gutter minds deliberately misteading it. I toyed with the hyphenated conjugation form, to make it clearer, but decided it didn't work properly with the unhyphenated "music festival" on one side. Besides, it still wouldn't have stopped depraved people pushing in-u-end-o.

[ChairmanPoo]

Two studies (geneticists) have independently arrived at the conclusion that the virus in New York spread for several weeks before the first confirmed cases, and overwhelmingly came from Europe, before the shutdowns there started.

As someone in New York, a mild urge to chastise is beaten out by an overwhelming desire to point out how much this makes a mockery of our (read: global) attempts to keep a grip on this. We never had this under control. Half-measures instituted long after it was too late to stop it, this virus was perfectly suited to exploit our weaknesses, our global hubris that it wouldn't effect us. China underestimated it, Europe underestimated it, the US underestimated it, Latin America underestimated it, the Middle East has underestimated it (150 Saudi Royals are infected!)... its "not our problem" up until it is, and by then it's too late.

Also 4 am philosophy apparently. Guess I'm stir crazy or something.

A lot of people are talking about this. There were anecdottal reports of people who had strange flus and fevers back in January or even earlier and they tested positive for covid antibodies afterwards.
In fact there are a lot of reports of odd respiratory illnesses in Europe back in december. In Italy they're investigating old swabs from November onwards, testing for covid because of this.

I can tell you that in my own family my mother had a strong pneumonia that kept her in hospital around New Year's Eve. High fever, exahustion, dry cough.... all cultures and swabs negative. Improved after a week. In hindsight highly suspicious

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I too am part of "had a strange and suspicious illness before official cases" gang, but I'm still skeptical. It did fit to a certain degree, came on extremely fast and had a very different feeling to anything I can remember, but it was mostly constant fatigue with chills and some coughing. I was never completely certain if I was sick or if something else was wrong.

I suppose it's possible, but I'm still not going outside.

[martinuzz]

Meanwhile in the UK, the government has become a bit more open about the condition of Boris Johnson's health.
Where the past few days reassuring news like 'not much to worry about', 'he is just getting some tests', and 'he gets extra oxygen but is not on respiration' was prevalent, the new status quo is 'he is now stable, seems to be out of the woods, he can sit up in bed again and speak to the nurses but he is still in the ICU', 'he will probably survive', and 'how long it will take for him to recover is not known, it is not expected that he will be able to resume working until at least the end of the month'.
He is not allowed any visitors, no government officials, not even his fiancee.
Meanwhile, nearly half of the UK government are ill, 4 ministers and a bunch of advisors are showing corona-like symptoms.

[McTraveller]

An interesting thing about R0 is that it isn't an inherent attribute of an infectious agent, like say its mass.  It's an emergent descriptive property, a complex interaction between the infectious attributes (incubation time, robustness of the infectious agent against degradation in the environment outside a host) and social aspects like how many people an infected individual contacts within a given time period, general hygiene aspects of the population, etc. etc.

So R0 changing is not surprising - it depends not just on the characteristics of the infectious agent but also a characteristic of the population in which it acts.

[Starver]

It sits atop a dynamic Small World Network. There are now far less superspreaders by dint of having a lot of well-off family and friends from your Oxbridge years and a holiday chalet on the continent you can meet at but, now that it is semi-endemic, various service personel (shopworkers, base-level medical staff, delivery drivers, etc) are potentially far busier and (when any enhanced procedures for each still get inevitably overwhelmed by external pressures or slip-ups) could be temporary 'pop-up' reservoirs.

And, like Whack-A-Mole, if you bash down one such hotspot a seemingly random different one will poke its head up soon after.

(Do WAMs ever have different points for striking/penalty for reaction time, though? Our situation does. Hence the changing consequences, plus if we sit idle then even more moles stick up needing whacking.)

[Inarius]

About early cases in New York : the same thing happened in Italy where apparently the first cases were very very early, even in January. I think it's quite logical considering the % of invisible cases.

[Iduno]

A big free music festival cum fundraiser event surrounding the city like Woodstock mixed with Live-Aid.

That sounds like a fun event for the whole family.

Of course. Where do you think families come from?

Oh, neat. CDC is apparently saying the virus might have a base-line R0 of around... 6. 5.7 or something. Or in other words it might be two to three times more infectious than previously thought, if nothing mitigates the spread.

Now whether that's being distorted by reporting or just how colossally fucking poorly the US has responded to the pandemic or something, I'unno. But it's apparently a thing!

A semi-recent set of numbers I heard was something like 300k cases, 15k dead, and 100k recovered. Obviously 100+15 doesn't equal 300, because there are still people who have it, but a bit over 5% die from it (5% have currently died, and half of the people are still fighting between life and death). That's not taking into consideration people whose lungs won't ever properly recover.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cum#Etymology_1

(And, for anyone seriously confused about my usage*, check the Usage Notes to
Ety2 as well.)

* - Probably no-one. When I wrote it I only anticipated gutter minds deliberately misteading it. I toyed with the hyphenated conjugation form, to make it clearer, but decided it didn't work properly with the unhyphenated "music festival" on one side. Besides, it still wouldn't have stopped depraved people pushing in-u-end-o.

I'm familiar with Latin, but we also need a laugh. Although "pushing in-u-end-o" isn't helping your case.

As someone in New York, a mild urge to chastise is beaten out by an overwhelming desire to point out how much this makes a mockery of our (read: global) attempts to keep a grip on this. We never had this under control. Half-measures instituted long after it was too late to stop it, this virus was perfectly suited to exploit our weaknesses, our global hubris that it wouldn't effect us. China underestimated it, Europe underestimated it, the US underestimated it, Latin America underestimated it, the Middle East has underestimated it (150 Saudi Royals are infected!)... its "not our problem" up until it is, and by then it's too late.

It's partly underestimation, and partly intentional. Remember that, in the US anyway, congress had begun preparing themselves back in January by selling off stocks and stockpiling. Several governments have said that people are just going to die, and it's better to let more people die than let this affect the economy (because large death tolls are good for the economy?). In many places, we're being told that we don't matter, because we aren't the ruling class.

[TamerVirus]

In many places, we're being told that we don't matter, because we aren't the ruling class.

“Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I am willing to make!”

[andrea]

Lets be fair however: Boris Johnson at least is sacrificing in first person as well.

[Teneb]

In many places, we're being told that we don't matter, because we aren't the ruling class.

“Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I am willing to make!”

"Royston! Rooooyston! The poor are getting uppity again! Fetch me the lobbyists!"

[nenjin]

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it was here as early as late November. I too had Corona-like symptoms over Christmas as I've talked about before. The only thing that doesn't jive is the fact I had some close personal contact with several people while I was sick and no one, not my brother, roommate, mom (who is 65 and a smoker), or another friend (52 and a smoker) got anywhere near as sick as I did. With how infectious it's supposed to be, you'd have thought they'd all have gotten sick in some way. The most anyone reported was a mild sore throat for like, a day. Meanwhile, I was completely fucked up for two weeks. So maybe I created a couple asymptomatic super spreaders, or I had some variant of Corona that wasn't infectious.

But yeah, when I finally went and got tested for Influenza, they said what I had wasn't the flu. If it wouldn't be a huge inconvenience right now, I'd love to get tested for Corona antibodies to know for sure.

So maybe it was too little, too late for most governments. That still doesn't excuse the attitude that it was "no big deal" by guys like Trump and Boris Johnson.

[Frumple]

Lets be fair however: Boris Johnson at least is sacrificing in first person as well.

I mean, he's not dead yet. Not unemployed, not facing potential homelessness, not... y'know, actually sacrificing something. Just suffering a bit so far, which I guess is more than some of the folks that have consigned thousands to the grave with their horseshit.