Don’t count your baby chicks before they mutate, Doc. Weed had enuff’ uh dat freak news 'round heah.
“Symptomatic” from 2 to (median) 5 to 12 days. Of course, there are a myriad of “official symptoms”.
Soon, borderline-anti-social-personality-disorder may be included on the ever burgeoning list of “signs”.
so technically 12 is the statistical flatline of not a clue… got ya
That’s a “95% confidence interval”, so they add-on a couple more days onto your “Quar. Costs” (to 14).
(BBC, May 23, 2020):
“Coronavirus: ‘Baffling’ observations from the front line”
More than viral pneumonia … Oxygen … Inflammation and blood clots … Immune system and other organs … Some people and not others … The best ICU doctors in the land have had to make educated guesses about a disease they have never encountered before. … they have had to base their medicine on observation, rather than on knowledge gained from previous experiments, existing data.
(N.Y. Magazine, May 22, 2020 - Economist Nouriel Roubini’s on post-Coronavirus economic effects):
“Why Our Economy May Be Headed for a Decade of Depression”
… there’s going to be a meaningful correction once people realize this is going to be a U-shaped recovery. If you listen carefully to what Fed officials are saying - or even what JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are saying - initially they were all in the V camp, but now they’re all saying, well, maybe it’s going to be more of a U. The consensus is moving in a different direction. … You’re going to start having food riots soon enough. Look at the luxury stores in New York. They’ve either boarded them up or emptied their shelves, because they’re worried people are going to steal the Chanel bags. The few stores that are open, like my Whole Foods, have security guards both inside and outside. We are one step away from food riots. There are lines three miles long at food banks. That’s what’s happening in America. You’re telling me everything’s going to become normal in three months? That’s lunacy. …
… Look at tech - there is complete decoupling. They just decided Huawei isn’t going to have any access to U.S. semiconductors and technology. We’re imposing total restrictions on the transfer of technology from the U.S. to China and China to the U.S. And if the United States argues that 5G or Huawei is a backdoor to the Chinese government, the tech war will become a trade war. Because tomorrow, every piece of consumer electronics, even your lowly coffee machine or microwave or toaster, is going to have a 5G chip. That’s what the internet of things is about. If the Chinese can listen to you through your smartphone, they can listen to you through your toaster. Once we declare that 5G is going to allow China to listen to our communication, we will also have to ban all household electronics made in China. So, the decoupling is happening. We’re going to have a “splinternet.” It’s only a matter of how much and how fast. … When you reshore, you are moving production from regions of the world like China, and other parts of Asia, that have low labor costs, to parts of the world like the U.S. and Europe that have higher labor costs. That is a fact. How is the corporate sector going respond to that? It’s going to respond by replacing labor with robots, automation, and AI. …
… But suppose you take production from a labor-intensive factory in China - in any industry - and move it into a brand-new factory in the United States. You don’t have any legacy workers, any entrenched union. You are going to design that factory to use as few workers as you can. Any new factory in the U.S. is going to be capital-intensive and labor-saving. It’s been happening for the last ten years and it’s going to happen more when we reshore. So reshoring means increasing production in the United States but not increasing employment. Yes, there will be productivity increases. And the profits of those firms that relocate production may be slightly higher than they were in China (though that isn’t certain since automation requires a lot of expensive capital investment). But you’re not going to get many jobs. The factory of the future is going to be one person manning 1,000 robots and a second person cleaning the floor. And eventually the guy cleaning the floor is going to be replaced by a Roomba because a Roomba doesn’t ask for benefits or bathroom breaks or get sick and can work 24-7.
The fundamental problem today is that people think there is a correlation between what’s good for Wall Street and what’s good for Main Street. … There’s a conflict between workers and capital. For a decade, workers have been screwed. Now, they’re going to be screwed more. There’s a conflict between small business and large business. Millions of these small businesses are going to go bankrupt. Half of the restaurants in New York are never going to reopen. How can they survive? They have such tiny margins. Who’s going to survive? The big chains. Retailers. Fast food. The small businesses are going to disappear in the post-coronavirus economy. So there is a fundamental conflict between Wall Street (big banks and big firms) and Main Street (workers and small businesses). And Wall Street is going to win.
True to form with what may cause Economics to sometimes referred be to as the “dismal science”:
… then there’s the pandemics. These are also man-made disasters. You’re destroying the ecosystems of animals. You are putting them into cages - the bats and pangolins and all the other wildlife - and they interact and create viruses and then spread to humans. First, we had HIV. Then we had SARS. Then MERS, then swine flu, then Zika, then Ebola, now this one. And there’s a connection between global climate change and pandemics. Suppose the permafrost in Siberia melts. There are probably viruses that have been in there since the Stone Age. We don’t know what kind of nasty stuff is going to get out. We don’t even know what’s coming.
(Forbes, May 24, 2020):
“How Long Does Covid-19 Coronavirus Last On Different Surfaces?”
Did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) actually “change their minds” this week about the potential risk of Covid-19 coronavirus being spread by contaminated surfaces? Not really. Not even on the surface. …
… Take a closer look at what the CDC has been saying specifically. Compare a previous version of a CDC web page (cited by the Fox News article accompanying the tweet above) with the current version. The exact wording may have evolved a bit. Nonetheless, in both versions, the CDC stated, “It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes.”
Yes, both versions did include the following: “this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.” However, this statement does not say that contaminated surfaces cannot spread the virus. This statement does not imply that you should not worry about contaminated surfaces. In fact, the latest version added the following kicker, “but we are still learning more about how this virus spreads.” Just because something is not the “main way” doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen or that you shouldn’t be concerned about it. It’s just an issue of what may be more frequent. … the CDC statements can simply mean that a majority of the Covid-19 coronavirus transmissions that have occurred so far have likely been via direct person-to-person contact.
UW-IHME United Sates COVID-19 Model Projections (posted on May 24, 2020):
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Newly Infected - Peaks at 172, 271 (on July 8, 2020)
Currently Infected - Peaks at 2,570,987 (on July 15, 2020)
Daily Deaths - Peaks at 1,289 (on August 2, 2020)
Total Deaths - 180,880 (on August 4, 2020)
Total Infected - 24,219,462 (on August 4, 2020)
Deaths as Percentage of (known on August 4, 2020 to be) Infected - 0.746837 %
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As of mid-May, we estimate the true number of infected individuals in the US is ~5x higher than the reported cases.
A simplified numerical extrapolation using projected data on May 16, 2020:
Using Total Deaths (88,751) divided by Total (presently actually known to be) Infected (12,058,191), then all divided by a Factor of 5 yields a (possible) Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of 0.1472 % (~1/679).
According to the US Census Bureau, the population of the United States on May 16, 2010 was ~329,655,139, yielding a total Population Fatality Rate equal to Total Deaths (88,751) divided by population, or 26.922 cases per 100,000.
The subject of what defines an “epidemic threshold” for a particular disease at a particular time of year (as compared to any existing records of previous infections, which does not exist in the case of SARS-CoV-2 infections) relates to some set “threshold” quantity (between around 1.6 to 2 standard deviation units above the reference mean, which is usually the prevalence of a known disease in previous year).
In the case of the infectious respiratory illness Tuberculosis (the most numerically deadly pathogen on earth, surpassing HIV), present CDC data indicates around 2.7 verified cases per 100,000 population in the United States. That level (a factor of ~10.36 smaller in magnitude than that predicted for SARS-CoV-2 infections on May 16, 2020) results in vigorous reporting and enforcement (on the level of state, county, and municipal public health departments). Influenza is (estimated) to have a roughly 0.1% IFR.
CDC: In 2017, the most recent data available, 515 deaths in the United States were attributed to TB. That works out to a TB IFR of ~0.158 cases per 100,000. Note this takes treated cases into account. Around 1 in 4 of the world’s population are exposed to TB, and have a 5-15% chance of developing an active (usually pulmonary) case of TB. The much lower rate in the US is entirely due to rigorous public health surveillance and treatment regimens. Something that is not at all lost on those epidemiologists.
While COVID-19 (may) be only ~1.5 times more deadly than Influenzas, it is (presently, with only a small fraction of the populace having become infected) a bit more than 10 times more prevalent than Tuberculosis, and significantly more infectious and easy to contract (where the composite multiple may steadily growing over time as rate of infection increases). Without known treatments (in the form of vaccines or effective medications), COVID-19 is (presently) ~170.4 times more deadly within the US population as is the case for (the usually relatively treatable using antibiotics) disease Tuberculosis.
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Output data is only as good as the input data. Here is where UW-IHME lists sources / assumptions:
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The knowledgeable epidemiologist Trevor Bedford (published on April 23, 2020):
Note that Bedford’s estimate of the IFR is around 7 times larger than the ~0.15% figure derived above.
(NEJM, May 20, 2020):
“How to Discover Antiviral Drugs Quickly”
The SARS-CoV-2 genome encodes approximately 25 proteins that are needed by the virus to infect humans and to replicate (Figure 1). Among these are the notorious spike (S) protein, which recognizes human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 in the initial stage of infection; two proteases, which cleave viral and human proteins; the RNA polymerase, which synthesizes viral RNA; and the RNA-cleaving endoribonuclease. Finding drugs that can bind to the viral proteins and stop them from working is a logical way forward and the priority of many research laboratories. …
… The laborious, decade-long, classic pathway for the discovery and approval of new drugs could hardly be less well suited to the present pandemic. … in the surreal, accelerated world of Covid-19 research, advances are quickly out of date. … None of this guarantees success within any given time frame, but a combination of rationality, scientific insight, and ingenuity with the most powerful tools available will give us our best shot.
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(Ars Technica, May 25, 2020):
… announcements pleased politicians trying to offer hope to citizens desperate to leave lockdowns and investors eager for economic activity to return. But many scientists feel a duty to damp the enthusiasm. They say a vaccine could take much longer because little is known about the disease and how bodies will react to attempts at immunization. In fact, some warn we may never create a vaccine for Covid-19. …
… To fight a war, it helps to know your enemy. Originally considered solely a respiratory disease, Covid-19 has launched surprise attacks from our eyes to our toes. It appears to use different tactics in children, with reports of some suffering from a serious inflammatory condition. …
… There are big questions about how long an immune response protects patients for. Most scientists think having had the disease confers some immunity - but we don’t know how long it lasts. Immunity to Sars only lasted a couple of years.
So far, the virus behind Covid-19 has not mutated significantly, so it shifts shape less rapidly than the flu. But we have only been following the virus for months, so there is a risk that it will still mutate. Most vaccine makers are focusing on the ‘spike’ protein, which it uses to invade cells. They try to teach the body to recognize this protein and produce antibodies. If the spike changes, many of the potential immunizations would miss their target. …
… Scientists have still not ruled out the grim prospect that a vaccine could make the disease worse. In some conditions including dengue fever, and the common childhood respiratory infection RSV, vaccines have actually enhanced the disease. In the first attempts at making a Sars vaccine, there was some immune enhancement in animal testing. So far, there is no evidence that this is a problem for Covid-19 - but the early trials are on tens, rather than hundreds or thousands of people. …
… Political leaders will declare victory if a vaccine maker manages to move safely at speeds more suited to science fiction. However, the mass inoculation that could speed up the return to normal life is further away. The first vaccines will probably be given to healthcare workers who will be studied closely, as if they were still part of a trial.
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, says we must remember there is still a chance we do not get a vaccine at all. It is not a “slam dunk,” he says. He is concerned that people are not taking other public health measures to stop the spread because of the “optimism and enthusiasm” about a vaccine. “People will just assume it’s like a Hollywood movie and at the very last minute, someone will swoop in their helicopter with a new vaccine that was only made a day ago. And the whole world is saved,” Mr. Osterholm says. “It’s human behavior. When you’re faced with such a serious challenge, you want any good news you can get.”
Dr. Seheult’s (and other’s) hypothesis seems to be confirmed in a new article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Also, hope for long term immunity (T-cell involvement) - even for those that hasn’t been infected with SARS-CoV-2… (But other coronaviruses). Turns out that it is possible that you have protection from SARS-CoV-2 if you have been infected with a cold-causing coronavirus - that explains why some are completely (or nearly) asymptomatic.
If that is the case, then perhaps we could identify which cold-causing coronavirus (there are only 3 or 4 human cold-causing ones), then infect ourselves with that and produce T-cells that protect us from SARS-CoV-2 - that would almost be too easy 
Lars, thanks for posting references to the Seheult video, referencing this NEJM paper.
Good to keep in mind that merely ingesting NAC (and it’s possible incorporation into Glutathione primarily synthesized in Liver) does not in itself mean that Glutathione (or precursor NAC) will necessarily be available to be “delivered” to various sites within organs/tissues.
I’d like to think that my intentionally “hermetic” lifestyle of avoiding Rhinoviruses and Influenzas over the last few years has been “all good”. (Perhaps) it may be that “corona-wiser” T-Cells - from immune reactions to the 4 Coronaviruses that are Rhinoviruses: 229E (alpha coronavirus); NL63 (alpha coronavirus); OC43 (beta coronavirus); HKU1 (beta coronavirus) - might possibly be helpful. Since people who contract Rhinoviruses are rarely (if ever) tested in order to identify such specific Coronaviruses by clinicians, there may well not exist data with which to confirm the T-Cell hypothesis. Those 4 types of Rhinoviruses, MERS, SARS, and SARS-Cov-2 are all different pathogens - so it may hard as well as overly optimistic to generalize T-Cell functionalities.
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One other interesting recently reported finding is the (said to be highly) unusual way that SARS-CoV-2 may act to neutralize the production/presence of Interferons in lungs:
Interestingly, Interferons stimulate the ACE2 gene that produces the ACE2 protein. It appears to be unclear whether relative quantities of ACE2 proteins affect susceptibility to COVID-19:
(Business Insider, May 24, 2020):
Scientists involved in one of the world’s leading studies into finding a vaccine for the coronavirus say there is currently only a 50% chance of success because the number of people in Britain with the virus is falling too quickly. The Oxford University mission to find a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus is in “a race against the virus disappearing, and against time,” Adam Hill, director at Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, said this weekend. “At the moment, there’s a 50% chance that we get no result at all,” he said.
(Nature, May 19, 2020):
… it’s not at all clear whether the responses are enough to protect people from infection, because Moderna hasn’t shared its data, says Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. “I’m not convinced that this is really a positive result,” Hotez says. He points to a 15 May bioRxiv preprint (3) that found that most people who have recovered from COVID-19 without hospitalization do not produce high levels of ‘neutralizing antibodies’, which block the virus from infecting cells. Moderna measured these potent antibodies in eight trial participants and found their levels to be similar to those in recovered patients.
Hotez also has doubts about the Oxford team’s first results, which found that monkeys produced modest levels of neutralizing antibodies after receiving one dose of the vaccine (the same regime that is being tested in human trials). “It looks like those numbers need to be considerably higher to afford protection,” says Hotez. The vaccine is a made from a chimpanzee virus that has been genetically altered to produce a coronavirus protein.
Hotez says that the vaccine being developed by Sinovac Biotech in Beijing seems to have elicited a more promising antibody response in macaque monkeys that received three doses, as reported (2) in a 5 May paper in Science. That vaccine is comprised of chemically inactivated SARS-CoV-2 particles.
No one yet knows the precise nature of the immune response that protects people from COVID-19, and the levels of neutralizing antibodies made by the monkeys in the Oxford Study might be enough to protect people from infection, says Michael Diamond, a viral immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who is a member of Moderna’s scientific advisory board. If not, a second injection would probably boost levels appreciably. “What we don’t know is how long they’ll last,” he adds.
By getting lead injections, 9 folks (so far) this holiday weekend have totally avoided getting Covid-19.
Thank goodness most people stayed home. 
I recommend an infusion of Mr. T cells STAT
“…I pity the virus!”
(NPR, May 25, 2020):
“Stockholm Won’t Reach Herd Immunity In May, Sweden’s Chief Epidemiologist Says”
Sweden’s Public Health Agency last week released the initial findings of an ongoing antibodies study that showed that only 7.3% of people in Stockholm had developed antibodies against COVID-19 by late April. Tegnell later described the study’s figure as a “bit lower than we’d thought,” adding that the study represented a snapshot of the situation some weeks ago and he believed that by now “a little more than 20%” of Stockholm’s population should have contracted the virus. It’s the same figure that he mentioned in the CNBC interview over a month ago. …
… Nearly half of the country’s more than 4,000 COVID-19 deaths have occurred in elderly care facilities. …
… With 39.26 deaths per 100,000, Sweden’s mortality rate is not only higher than that of the U.S. (29.87 deaths per 100,000) but also exponentially higher than those of its neighbors Norway (4.42 per 100,000) and Finland (5.56 per 100,000), which both enacted strict lockdown measures, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
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The calculated number of fatalities thought to be due to (or associated with) COVID-19, normalized to the Population Density (per unit geographical area) yields the following interesting data:
Relative Risk of Death
Normalized to Sweden with 29.87 deaths per 100,000 and density of 25 people per square Kilometer:
Norway - 0.187638 (5.32941 times safer than Sweden, per square Kilometer)
Finland - 0.196694 (5.08403 times safer than Sweden, per square Kilometer)
Denmark - 0.044329 (22.5585 times safer than Sweden, per square Kilometer)
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Notes:
Denmark calculation uses May 25 data from Johns Hopkins database (deaths equal 9.69 per 100,000).
National Population Density (population per square Kilometer) data was provided in this recent article:
I calculated the risk ratio (Sweden vs Denmark) at ~17.5 on April 28, 2020. In the last ~29 days, Sweden has become an (additional, relative to one month ago) ~29% more deadly than Denmark.
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Total ICU Hospitalizations:
Total Confirmed COVID-19 Deaths:
We may be showing our age with the “Mr. T” memes. Dig this wig, DarcBo:
Information: T cell - Wikipedia
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I see that some other well known and respected “luminaries” are stepping forth to lead the cheers:
Source: https://i.imgflip.com/40pxcx.jpg
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Just a little bit of “nostalgia” (from only 68 days ago) - before that turned into a mere ~100,000:
(March 18): “Here’s what we know about the 100 people who’ve died in the US from coronavirus”
That works out to an (approximately) 10.7% increase in fatalities on each and every calendar day.
It is truly unfortunate if people consider the difference between this (CDC, March 4, 2020) statement:
Spread from contact with contaminated surfaces or objects: It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.
… and this (CDC, May 22, 2020) statement to be at all significant in terms of meaning (whatsoever):
The virus may be spread in other ways: It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes. This is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, but we are still learning more about how this virus spreads.
Read whatever you may choose, but the metric is accurate exactly as it has been clearly described - a measure of relative risk of death from COVID-19 infection proportional to populations residing per unit geographical areas of countries considered. (Obviously), metric is derived from averaged population densities. Relevant data (no matter how presented) does not seem to portray Sweden very favorably.
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Perhaps another (not population density normalized) item on the “data smorgasbord” appeals to you ?
Looks like Norway, Finland, and Denmark (reporting 9.69 deaths per 100,000 on May 25, 2020) are so relatively low, they were not even included in the above data. Yet, all three countries surround Sweden.
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If data presentation designed to perhaps inspire people to feel a certain way, or to believe a certain thing, is such a grievous occurrence, then who, pray tell, among us has “pristine and clean hands” ? 
Now this is rather “rich” (as they sometimes say). Here is the French press (France has a 7.87% higher incidence of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 than Sweden) criticizing Sweden’s bold, hallowed approach:
(France 24, May 17, 2020):
“Sweden’s Covid-19 strategy has caused an ‘amplification of the epidemic’”
Sweden is famously one of the few countries to have opted against a lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus. But given that the country has a much higher death toll per million than its Nordic neighbours, many observers have suggested that the Swedish approach has failed. …
… Figures compiled by data analysis website Statista show that the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Sweden has been increasing steadily since the beginning of April - and now stands at more than 29,000.
Statistics suggest that Sweden has performed poorly compared to its Scandinavian neighbours, which imposed strict lockdowns. Experts say the other Nordic countries are the most apt points of comparison, given their similar healthcare systems, socio-political cultures and levels of connected-ness.
Reported coronavirus deaths per million in Sweden stand at 358, according to Statista - even higher than the hard-hit US, at 267. The Swedish figure is dramatically worse than those of Denmark (93), Finland (53) and Norway (44). In Sweden, “we’re seeing an amplification of the epidemic, because there’s simply more social contact”, said Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University in the US. …
… Many Swedish experts have lambasted the government’s response to the pandemic. … As in many other countries, nursing homes have been a particular source of anguish. Although visits were banned on March 31, half of those 70 and older in Sweden who have died from Covid-19 were living in nursing homes, according to figures released at the end of April. Staff have warned that they lack personal protective equipment. …
… “There are things which could have been done, and should be done, that would have altered the picture radically,” said Lena Einhorn, a Swedish virologist and critic of the government’s policy. If Sweden had implemented “a broad testing programme, and especially in elder care”, she continued, the authorities would have “known who is infected, and now, with antibody testing, who was infected”.
