SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

There is media click money to be made from dramatizing this disease newly in humans. Not a doubt of that. But at the same time, there is at least some useful information being promulgated. Not all may agree

In any case we simply cannot know yet how bad it will eventually be. The range from 'a really bad cold' to world's new leading infectious killer' is extremely wide.

At this stage, priorities are breaking infection chains, quantifying infections by testing, and medical support for severe cases that may represent 15% of total. Learning how to do all those things better will be durable knowledge.

At least 30 candidate vaccines are being developed. It is surely to be hoped that a few winners will emerge, and that 12-month timeline can be shortened. Recall that the plug was pulled on SARS vaccine, but that won't happen this time because this bad boy is substantially badder. Does not speak to the question of whether enough gets made at acceptable 'price of admission' and deployed where needed to create herd immunity.

I suppose that this vaccine will ultimately not resemble influenza H*N*. It does a reshuffle trick about annually that seems unique among viruses. Yet one cannot claim that vaccination will yield lifelong (or multiyear) immunity. Not know yet.

I expect it will become one of the defining events of early 21st century, and 1918 influenza was of that century. This is not a claim of similar body count, but of a major change in how humans interact with diseases.

For it to be displaced as a defining event, something even worse would need to happen. Mega-meteor or some such. Given that 2029 Apophis is supposed to miss, we'd be looking elsewhere.

 

H*N* influenza viruses are not genetically closely similar to corona viruses. There are structural similarities that appear strong to me. But differences argue that some treatments that are useful against influenza (e.g. tamiflu) are unlikely to be effective against coronas. Some studies about that have been published.

I expect we'll hear more about effective treatments in coming weeks, but internet influenza-cers ought not be your info sources.

Some new vaccine designs are related to SARS and MERS research - those are coronas.

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But what I came here to say now concerns WHO pandemic call on H1N1 (swine flu) in 2009. Because I continue to wonder why they have not yet dropped the 'P-bomb' this time. That pandemic was declared 2009 June 11. I do not find global case counts and fatalities at that time. Fifty days later (July 31 I could find), there were 1.7 times as many case counts and one-third as many fatalities compared to COVID-19 currently. Unable to dial those back 50 days, but certainly both were lower on 2009 June 11.

So, my perplexion* continues.

* perplexification? perplexed state of mind?

Later analyses of 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) assert substantial under-reporting in both metrics. This may remind you of what we are already hearing this time around.

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Finally I am pleased to report that sleepy Kunming now has zero cases under treatment (all moved to recovered column). We are still wearing masks and washing our hands. The latter at least y'all should also do. We use cell phones to check in and out of public situations. It would not surprise me if such personal movement monitoring spreads to other countries. But not first in USA where lungs still freely confer amongst themselves.