Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/26/coronavirus-first-possible-pe.html
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Gotta wonder if this had something to do with the state of emergency declared in San Francisco earlier today. And yeah, the cat is out.
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Wash your hands people.
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Solano County would include Travis AFB which housed a few quarantined evacuees from Wuhan.
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Clearly, the US needs to stop building a wall at the Mexican border and start building a wall around China.
Hang on, there’s one already started!
/s
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And so it begins…
So, shoot, is it now too late for panic hoarding of supplies? I was planning to do that next week…
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For the California county illiterate like me, that’s somewhere between Valejo and Davis - like that part where when you’re driving out of the East Bay heading to I5 and you cross that toll bridge. There to Davis, which is past the 505 exit to go north, but before you get to Sacramento.
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That doesn’t help.
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Important thing epidemiologically is population density. If this is farm country, less likely to lead to lots more cases. More densely populated areas lead to more potential contacts. And yes, I am CA-illiterate. Are we in trouble here?
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Yes. Solano County does have a lot of farmland but it’s in between some sizable populated cities, namely Vallejo, Fairfield, Vacaville and Davis. Vacaville is a major employment center since Kaiser Permanente has a large campus up there along with Genentech so there are a lot of commuting between those cities and the Sacramento area. Davis is a college town (UC Davis). Fairfield has Travis Air Force Base.
IF (and it’s a Big IF) the virus jumped quarantine at Travis AFB and this person has no direct connection to Travis, then that may mean there might be someone infectious walking around out there who doesn’t know it.
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That is a very different story than was implied originally. Critically ill patient, 7 days in hospital prior to diagnosis. If they are intubated and sedated, they are not answering questions about contacts. 7 days for more spread before even beginning to trace. And the importance of the broken chain of transmission cannot be overstated. We have no clue where this came from or where it is going. New phase indeed.
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And transferred from another hospital, a whole other can of worms.
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I remain convinced based on the reaction in China that the mortality rate is much worse than they’ve stated - because most of the infections and deaths have been there - everyone is going with the official number. This one has me very nervous.
I mean - I’m not going to stop living my life - but I won’t be shocked if someone I know personally dies from this before it’s over. The ‘unofficial’ death numbers point to a 10% or higher mortality - which is holy crap the world is in trouble kind of scary.
And we have a clown president who thinks of California as the enemy.
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Totally does. It’s out near Fairfield and the Jelly Belly factory right?
/s (yolo county is my old stomping grounds)
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Somehow I get the opposite feeling about the fatality rate.
Considering we are really only identifying the worst cases and then counting the deaths among those, somehow I hope we find out, there are more mild infections, and if there are, that would mean the actual fatality rate is lower.
Probably wishful thinking on my part.
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First and foremost, people need to live their lives and not panic. At the moment, this is not an airborne disease, so transmission rates are going to be stunted by simple things like properly washing hands.
But, this is currently 1918 levels in the making. Yes, medicine has advanced greatly since then, which helps us with overall survivability. But the fact that the current official rate of death is pegged at 2% despite a century of medical improvements should give everyone pause. The death rate in 1918 was 2.5%. The death rate for the normal yearly flue is about 0.1%.
I do hope we find out the rate is inflated as previously unidentified cases are added. But I’m keeping an eye on it. We don’t know how much is being hidden by the Chinese and/or our own government now (because Donnie Chump apparently is greatly offended that a virus had the nerve to strike right now, as if it did so just to hurt him… I’m so sick of this pathetic douche bag).
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Correction: the human race is in trouble. The rest of the world’s population is probably rooting for COVID-19.
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That’s a good thing and a bad thing. If it causes a noticeable illness, than those people slow down, and ideally will isolate themselves. If you can have a unnoticeable case that’s still transmissable, it may spread more rapidly and widely, as those people don’t feel sick, so won’t take any precautions.
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