Corona Virus discussion

[bigbadwolf]

Toilet paper is becoming the new hard currency, just as cigarettes were in post-WW2 Germany.

Be prepared to fight for your toilet paper. Things are getting rather ugly out there. Gangs of heavily-armed toilet paper bandits are roving through the streets of Hong Kong robbing people of their toilet paper. An Australian man was tasered by the police at the Big W store in Tamworth Shoppingworld after “becoming aggressive” over the lack of toilet paper. In California, where a state of emergency is in effect (and presumably a full-scale lock-down is imminent), shoppers have been running amok at Costco, stripping the shelves of toilet paper, Kleenex, and feminine hygiene products. New York has just declared a state of emergency(possibly toilet paper-related). Italy has locked down the region of Lombardy, although it isn’t clear exactly why, as they mostly use bidets in Italy … but that’s not really important at the moment.

The Great Chinese Bat Flu Panic of 2020

 

[longgamma]

Maybe it’s time for adopting bidets around the world

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Maybe it’s time for adopting bidets around the world

It's a no brainer. It's a common toilet feature in Asia, Europe. Once you use it, hard to go back.
And it will cut down on these toilet paper run nonsense.
Get a revert osmosis water system under the sink and you can drink cleaner than the bottled waters. And this will stop the panic-buying of water.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Opinion | President Trump Is Unfit for This Crisis. Period. (Published 2020)

His narcissism is a grave danger to our health.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Starting tomorrow, all CUNY colleges will switch to online course until the end of semester. This is one of the many schools in NYC and around the world decided to cancel all in-person classes.
WHO declared this a pandemic.
Trump announces the US is in good shape.

 

[mez]

Starting tomorrow, all CUNY colleges will switch to online course until the end of semester. This is one of the many schools in NYC and around the world decided to cancel all in-person classes.
WHO declared this a pandemic.
Trump announces the US is in good shape.

UCLA, USC, UCI, The Claremont Colleges, all switch online too. Some schools asked all students who live on campus to evacuate. How much money is this going to cost all these schools? Are we expecting an increase in the number of admitted students next year to make up for it?

 

[IntoDarkness]

heard the biggest chinese export to this country is their ppl (travel and education) we are doomed because of corona

 

[taow]

idk wat u guys r smoking
assuming current data r accurate and comprehensive (Coronavirus Update (Live): 101,954 Cases and 3,466 Deaths from COVID-19 Wuhan China Virus Outbreak - Worldometer):
mortality = death / (death + recovered) = 3466 / (3466 + 54123) = 6%

As mentioned in other places, there are biases toward this particular estimate.

• due to limited test kits initially in China and fear of getting infected in hospitals. It's widely assumed that significant amount of people weren't tested/confirmed and could easily think they have the flu if symptoms are light. Hence, you got a sampling bias that people with worse symptoms are tested and become confirmed cases, and thus likely to die/elevate mortality rate.
• somewhat associated with sampling bias, there's a survival bias(or...the opposite). For patients to count as "recovered" in China, they'd have to past couple tests to confirm they no longer have virus over 3? days. Generally, they'd have to get infected, get sick, a couple weeks to get better, than wait to go through a couple tests over a few days, otherwise known as a long ass time. Where death strikes suddenly and is easily confirmed. As a result, the death rate calculated by death/(death+recovered) is skewed to overestimate due to time lag. A different way to look at this, given that a patient survived the first couple weeks of infection, the probability of the said patient to recover is significantly higher than current mortality rate. This is the reason if you calculate the same data in late January the mortality rate would be close to 50% instead of just 6%.

Hence, 6% is pretty much an upper bound for mortality where death/total confirmed(40ish bps) is your lower bound for a 90+CI.

Though as an individual, selling a 1% lottery ticket feels as bad as a 3% lottery ticket. Especially since "recovered" just means you are virus free, there could be numerous negative effect on your underlining health as a result of the virus/treatment you received.

 

[taow]

Starting tomorrow, all CUNY colleges will switch to online course until the end of semester. This is one of the many schools in NYC and around the world decided to cancel all in-person classes.
WHO declared this a pandemic.
Trump announces the US is in good shape.

Harvard and Cornell also switched to online plus a "you don't have to go home but you can't stay here" for students in dorms.

 

[IntoDarkness]

there are enough data now 6% has been around for several weeks already

but on another note, angela merkel recently cited expert estimate that 60-70% germans will get infected. given a middle ground 3% mortality, that's roughly 2% of the population going to be wiped out in the next few months

 

[noether-skolem]

What are the chances that these travel bans, state of emergency etc might affect international students coming in Fall 2020? Would visa applications get affected?

If the situation doesn't get better I'm wondering if the universities will resort to online classes for the upcoming batch of students.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

What are the chances that these travel bans, state of emergency etc might affect international students coming in Fall 2020? Would visa applications get affected?

If the situation doesn't get better I'm wondering if the universities will resort to online classes for the upcoming batch of students.

The rules are not yet in place for this situation yet. Nobody has an answer for a situation they haven't planned yesterday.
You are allowed to take one online course per semester but if all courses are online, I image the immigration rules would have to be rewritten.
This is not normal time so hopefully things will get better in couple of months if the govt worldwide takes the right approach.

 

[noether-skolem]

The rules are not yet in place for this situation yet. Nobody has an answer for a situation they haven't planned yesterday.
You are allowed to take one online course per semester but if all courses are online, I image the immigration rules would have to be rewritten.
This is not normal time so hopefully things will get better in couple of months if the govt worldwide takes the right approach.

Thanks Andy, I really hope they can limit the spread over there and all of you are safe.

 

[taow]

there are enough data now 6% has been around for several weeks already

but on another note, angela merkel recently cited expert estimate that 60-70% germans will get infected. given a middle ground 3% mortality, that's roughly 2% of the population going to be wiped out in the next few months

agreed, though the rate in China is a bit lower, and corona is pretty new for the rest of the world. Despite this, the sampling bias still exists.

Honestly any number in that range is somewhat reasonable, could be 3% or even higher. I can't stress enough how serious this is and the numerous implications it could bring. Stay safe out there!

 

[longgamma]

agreed, though the rate in China is a bit lower, and corona is pretty new for the rest of the world. Despite this, the sampling bias still exists.

Honestly any number in that range is somewhat reasonable, could be 3% or even higher. I can't stress enough how serious this is and the numerous implications it could bring. Stay safe out there!

As you correctly mentioned, there could be secondary health issues - loss of lung capacity, scarring of lung tissues etc - which we don't know of. Its really frustrating to see so many people nonchalantly dismissing this as a "bad flu".

This virus could do what the Eurozone debt crisis could not - sink the world economy.

 

[taow]

As you correctly mentioned, there could be secondary health issues - loss of lung capacity, scarring of lung tissues etc - which we don't know of. Its really frustrating to see so many people nonchalantly dismissing this as a "bad flu".

This virus could do what the Eurozone debt crisis could not - sink the world economy.

yep, and we are already half way there, good time to be longgamma.

 

[noether-skolem]

The rules are not yet in place for this situation yet. Nobody has an answer for a situation they haven't planned yesterday.
You are allowed to take one online course per semester but if all courses are online, I image the immigration rules would have to be rewritten.
This is not normal time so hopefully things will get better in couple of months if the govt worldwide takes the right approach.

Seems like the government has made a special provision to allow international students to maintain F-1 visa even with all of their courses are shifted online. Hopefully the situation will improve in the next few months.

 

[bigbadwolf]

What are the chances that these travel bans, state of emergency etc might affect international students coming in Fall 2020? Would visa applications get affected?

If the situation doesn't get better I'm wondering if the universities will resort to online classes for the upcoming batch of students.

India has already stopped issuing visas and I expect other countries, including the USA, to follow suit. How long this will continue isn't clear but since any vaccine is at least a year or 18 months away, I expect this to be ongoing crisis of public health. As such, mitigation measures will probably become increasingly draconian.

On a side note, we're not going to go back to the pre-coronavirus world. How this will play out economically and financially isn't yet clear.

 

[ApolloChariot]

Glad they're moving to online classes, safety comes first. Must suck for people who are in the middle of looking for full time job and graduating soon though. Damn.

 

[longgamma]

India has already stopped issuing visas and I expect other countries, including the USA, to follow suit. How long this will continue isn't clear but since any vaccine is at least a year or 18 months away, I expect this to be ongoing crisis of public health. As such, mitigation measures will probably become increasingly draconian.

On a side note, we're not going to go back to the pre-coronavirus world. How this will play out economically and financially isn't yet clear.

Feels so eerie like 2008 - people were so sure that house prices will never fall, AAA rated stuff would never default. In some respects it’s worse than 2008 if not contained. About 10% or Italy’s banking assets are stressed so how would they even manage months of quarantines without defaults. Better to pay the price by containing this now rather than have it blow up in our faces this fall. The second wave of 2018 Spanish flu did most of the damage and I really hope we don’t see something similar this time around.
Bill Gates has estimated it would cost roughly half a billion dollars to maintain ventilators, trained staff and other measures for dealing with pandemics. With benefit of hindsight, it seems it’s quite a small price to pay.