caulfield12

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/should-mlb-guard-against-coronavirus-and-play-opening-day-in-empty-ballparks-224235397.html What a mess. Delay the season? Play without crowds? Play until “significant numbers“ of fans/players/coaches/umpires get sick first? There’s already lawsuits flying back and forth, like the men’s and women’s Ivy League basketball teams denied a postseason...the San Jose Sharks feuding with local officials in Santa Clara County, CA. LeBron’s comments expressing a desire to not play in empty stadiums, etc. There were even rumors that Gary Sanchez of the Yankees already has the virus. Should there be league-wide decisions...or should the leagues leave it up to the government and/or health care experts to decide for them first?

In some countries, including China, the SARS outbreak in 2003 was a formative experience. For many it felt like a close call. Even if the number of victims was limited, the impact on the regional economy was severe, and everyone had to wonder: What if this happens again, with a more contagious virus? At peak shedding, scientists say, people with coronavirus are emitting more than 1,000 times more virus than was emitted during peak shedding of the SARS infection. The SARS virus sits deep in your lungs. The coronavirus is in your throat, ready to spread. https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-clash-civilizations-175402475.html German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Parliament on Tuesday that 60% to 70% of the German population could contract the coronavirus. Merkel's dropping the figure at the outset of a parliamentary meeting left the room silent, according to a report from Bild, a German newspaper. Germany already has more than 1,400 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease resulting from the virus. https://www.yahoo.com/news/angela-merkel-just-estimated-60-184506028.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/26/coronavirus-raises-fears-us-drug-supply-disruptions/ Couldn’t find anything more recent. That said, Xi Jinping was here yesterday and there are rumors the airport could open...at least domestically...as early as Thursday. So we’re on the cusp of getting QR Health Codes on our phones that will set Red, Yellow and Green levels for intra-Hubei Province travel. I know there’s quite a bit of drug production here...unfortunately, we also have one of the biggest fentanyl manufacturers in the world, as well.

Rays continue to set the industry model for small market clubs. Will be fascinating to see the on field MLB results of the Sox and Padres play out over the next decade...two quite distinctive models for team-building. Padres have traded more guys in the last 18 months than the White Sox have across an entire decade. All the Central teams are doing well in the rankings, minus the Royals (which we will likely end up behind with the graduation of Kopech, unless we have a series of breakouts in our system from unexpected places.)

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield said state and local public health labs are underequipped and understaffed. "The truth is we've not invested, we've underinvested in the public health labs," Redfield said at a House Appropriations hearing for the 2021 CDC budget. “There's not enough equipment, there's not enough people, there's not enough internal capacity, there's no surge capacity,” Redfield added. Source: cnn.com

All that sounds eerily like what the hospitals went through in Wuhan...except Italy should have had a sense of what was coming if anyone was paying attention to the news developing on an hourly basis here. But it could easily be a word for word translation...doctors and nurses cutting off all their hair, the facial and head wounds from the mask straps, the never-ending shifts with adult diapers because PPE was so hard to supply/resupply those first 2-3 weeks. Watching co-workers get ill right and left around you, fighting just because there was no alternative, even with people dying in the hallways all around...meanwhile, hundreds if not thousands of patients wandering around with loved ones in the cold and rain, unable to find a single hospital that would accept them...but shunned by communities deathly afraid of getting contaminated themselves should a potentially sick person enter. Hundreds if not thousands of dogs and cats on the streets, as there was a rumor in the beginning they could easily transmit the virus.

Sure...well, one of the costs here was nobody could see loved ones when they died as their bodies were taken away by men in hazmat suits like a scene out of ET. No funerals or mourning music. Just hundreds of bodies bring cremated, day after day. Can Americans live with that type of sacrifice and surrender having a feeling of closure if relatives die in isolation wards in hospitals? Hard to imagine it...it’s what they tried to do at Kirkland and the families started flipping out.

Which would be fine if the mortality rate wasn’t 20-30x higher and there was a known vaccine to fight back with...in a way, it might not matter at this point. There’s likely to be a second or third wave and Covid-19 could easily be added to the annual flu season line-up each year as it mutates. But here’s the problem with this approach... A leading epidemiologist suggested that the coronavirus could infect 60% of the world's population, based on its estimated "attack rate," if it's left "unchecked." Dr. Gabriel Leung told The Guardian's Sarah Boseley on Tuesday that "60% of the world's population is an awfully big number." Leung's estimate was based on the rate at which people with the virus are passing it on, which experts have said could stand at 2.5 people per infected person, according to Reuters. Leung, a SARS expert who also managed Hong Kong's response to the swine-flu outbreak of 2009, spoke to The Guardian en route to a global research forum convened by the World Health Organization in response to the coronavirus outbreak. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-could-infect-60-percent-of-world-unchecked-gabriel-leung-2020-2 Even if he’s off by a magnitude of 5-6x lesser spread (based on Chinese initial projections of 500,000 vs. 83,000), it would ultimately kill roughly 6-10 million people around the world. And, for every “success” like China, Singapore and South Korea...the risks for the rest of the globe go up with every potential failure like Italy or Iran.

Going by the warmer weather theory, Greece would seem to be at an advantage. But that doesn’t necessarily account for countries like Iran or Singapore...Spain, as well.

We don’t know” how many coronavirus tests have been done, says US health secretary From CNN’s Amanda Watts US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar says his department isn’t sure how many tests for the novel coronavirus have been performed in the United States. Speaking to CNN’s John Berman on New Day Tuesday, Azar said: “We don't know exactly how many because of hundreds of thousands of our tests have gone out to private labs and hospitals that currently do not report in to CDC. "We're working with the CDC and those partners to get an IT reporting system up and running hopefully this week where we would be able to get that data to keep track of how many we're testing,” he added. Azar went on to say: “We think we've got probably 10,000 a day could be getting tested by the end of the week -- 20,000 a day according to a study by AEI that I've heard about. We've got 2.1 million tests available, 1.1 million have shipped. We actually have a surplus at the moment that are awaiting orders to be shipped.” “A private vendor shipped most of those 1.1 million that shipped were from a private vendor selling to their customers, and those entities that used their tests do not have to report back to CDC. But we're trying to set up a reporting system where they would in effect do that,” Azar said. Not exactly encouraging. Somehow Johns Hopkins can track what’s going on...along with most of the countries in the world...but with all the Cal Tech and MIT whiz kids we don’t even have a rudimentary IT reporting system??? Yet I guess one shouldn’t be that surprised after all the delays in counting with the Iowa and Nevada caucuses, California primary results, etc. Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea seem to have this down. Japan’s definitely a question mark with the Olympics looming and needing to make a final decision sometime in late April or early May.

This is one of the biggest factors for the spread in China. Everyone goes to the doctor for common ailments, especially if its their kids. All of the sick and non-sick and health care workers crowded together without full knowledge of the disease the first 4-6 weeks turned every hospital into the Diamond Princess. That said, can you use build hospitals to sequester those critical/severe patients from the general population within 10-14 days? Probably not. On the plus side, the weather in the US is far better than China was, and you don’t have lots of people wandering around in the cold and rain from hospital to hospital, since most Americans have their own cars. That works the other way too, shut down all the subways, buses and taxis (Uber/Didi and public) and it’s far easier to keep everyone quarantined inside.

I’m just happy I took 25% out last year when we were at 27,000 and put it into a two year CD at 3.8%. Of course, I also missed the peak at around 29,600. That said, I still don’t expect a remarkable change in this touch-and-go situation in the near future. For now, the off hours trade is up mid 500’s. At any rate, my father had a saying, no profit is a bad profit. But selling anything now, after holding for twenty plus years, except for tax losses to offset gains, is ill advised.

I think it has more to do with extensive travel among Chinese tourists in Europe in late December and the first 2-3 weeks of January before countries started shutting down travel with China. When you see you videos of Rome, Milan...around the touristic areas, even today, the majority of tourists in the background shots are Asian/Chinese. Basically, countries like Italy, Thailand, South Korea and Japan, more dependent on Chinese tourism...waited longer or refused to pull the plug on flights in and out of China. As China’s case load ran from a couple thousand to tens of thousands in a matter of weeks, countries like Italy and South Korea were still zipping flights in and out of China. And now both countries have more cases outside of China than any other country. Italy has become the virus’ hub in Europe, with France and Germany surpassing 1,000 cases this weekend. Two weeks ago, they had maybe 22 cases. source: forbes.com

"We have a very strong economy but this came — but this blindsided the world, and I think we've handled it very, very well. I think they've done a great job," he said. Minus the six or seven weeks of advance warning...okay. In fact, you can argue earlier than that, but I guess we can give the government that China was deliberately hiding the truth from Trump for at least one full month. This was on February 6th. President Trump on Thursday spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinpingabout the coronavirus after officials said more than 600 people had died from the disease in China. "President Trump expressed confidence in China’s strength and resilience in confronting the challenge of the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak," a White House spokesman said in a statement. "The two leaders agreed to continue extensive communication and cooperation between both sides." The correspondence marked the first publicized call between the two leaders since the outbreak began in the Wuhan province (actually Hubei Province, Wuhan is the city.) https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/481970-trump-discusses-coronavirus-with-chinas-xi

Which is why the assumption that shutting down travel with China was going to be sufficient...proved to be foolhardy. That and pushing to develop their own unique test in the US instead of quickly adopting ones already in use in China/HK, Korea and Germany, then botching that rollout and setting the entire process back of getting reliable test kits out there by at least two full weeks.

They can’t do that yet...simply because outside of NYC, California and Seattle...right now, there’s just no real sense due to lack of testing results where the potential second/third generation of clusters will develop. That would induce panic that’s unnecessary. They just to get those in the most endangered areas to start taking this more seriously...and expedite the allocation of resources there like we did here to get two emergency hospitals built in 10-14 days. That allowed the critical cases to be sequestered from the rest of the moderately ill population.

Or read The Cactus League new fiction work for further motivation...

Now the most important calculations are simply hospital capacity and mitigating risk for critical and severe cases (+/- 20%)...and Option B/C/D plans when X percentage of doctors and health care workers inevitably get sick.

I think he means the rate was 21 out of 45, with one conclusive. The reality is that after EVERYONE is tested....a few hundred passengers and roughly half the 1100+ crew members will have contracted it if it’s anything like what we saw in Yokohama.

The entire COUNTRY of Italy is now on lockdown. That wasn’t priced in at the end of the day. Or what can go wrong in the press conference about to transpire when a certain someone releases his pent-up frustration about the falling stock market and four GOPers already on self-quarantine. Short of MBS and Putin calling off their game of chicken...

Pretty hard to jump back into the market when a Wuhan/Italy outbreak promises another 10-15% fall in the market. Yeah, yeah, dollar cost averaging from here on out the next year.

Reports of Italian hospitals being overrun just like here in the first month...patients in hallways, chaos. One can only guess how bad Iran is, we know there are stacks of corpses piling up because of the burial rites that are specific to Islam. If you watch the reporting in Italy, most people there are still on the streets, public buses running, etc. America also doesn’t have the ubiquitous mobile/e-payments apps system like S.Korea, Singapore and HK to force everyone to use QR Health Pass Codes for mass movement...so you have massive lines for manual temperature checks. Instead, you get the honor system for now, which has already been exploited, like the Missouri case where a family member of someone who returned from Italy and tested positive, the father of patient went to Father/Daughter dance and potentially exposed the entire school.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074351/coronavirus-can-travel-twice-far-official-safe-distance-and-stay The actual rates for the entire world are 3.5-5.9% (deaths/recovered plus deaths for the higher range, lower ranges is deaths/total cases.) Even if you go with 3%, that still 30x more dangerous the flu. The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can linger in the air for at least 30 minutes and travel up to 4.5 metres – further than the “safe distance” advised by health authorities around the world, according to a study by a team of Chinese government epidemiologists. The researchers also found that it can last for days on surfaces where respiratory droplets land, raising the risk of transmission if an unsuspecting person touches it and then rubs their face and hands.

The common flu typically runs at a mortality rate of 1/10th of 1%. The coronavirus has been running at 3-4% consistently here in Wuhan. If we were as effective as South Korea and Singapore, it MIGHT be closer to 1%. But we can’t come close to getting a handle on it without testing and isolating clusters and Patient Zeros in each outbreak area. The numbers in the US are going to be similar to Italy...because of the pressure to work even when ill and the lack of people willing to risk not being charged $1400 USD per test, not to mention attendant hospitalization, which won’t be covered under many health care policies. Keep in mind, they take two swabs, so two tests and that’s over the course of 2-3 weeks if someone is hospitalized, so that’s a minimum of 5-6 tests over the course of treatment, plus meds. You can argue the denominator (deaths/total verified infections) should be lower due to limited testing, but then 12-14 already died at Kirkland before they could even be tested, so you quickly go from 22 to 34-36 deaths in a simple ststistical adjustment. You had 3 staffers trying to save 90 elderly because everyone working there was suck or afraid to get sick and expose their family. 1) There is no vaccine and won’t be for 12-18 months 2) The average person gives it to 2.6 others 3) Asymptomatic transmission...and potential to get sick again or infect others even with negative or inconclusive tests 4) Transmission can occur over a 14-23 day period 5) Spread was 4X the rate of SARs in 2002-2003

Nope. But at least I would have gotten decent food in the hospital. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/08/politics/coronavirus-washington-nursing-home-life-care-center-kirkland-cnntv/index.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-coronavirus-proves-enemy-cant-121123555.html