(I originally wrote this in early February 2020 as a Faceboook and Nextdoor post for some friends and neighbors who were asking ... since then, I've updated and reposted a few times to Nextdoor, Facebook, LinkedIn and a few other sites ... I had about 26K+ reactions, comments and questions all in ... I created this blog since many of those engaging with me wanted the info a collected single place - I hope this helps)
Droppin' some knowledge about CoVID-19 - Whod’ve thunk that my wasted years pointlessly studying in the bowels of Yale Laboratories of EPIDEMIOLOGY and Public Health at the School of Medicine and getting a near useless MPH would have actually resulted in any real world utility?! ;-) … I can finally credibly pontificate about something! ;-) ... So now, for those few of you who care about what an actual Epidemiologist and Biostatistician with decades of work in health data science/big data/data modeling has to say about CoVID-19, please listen up
CoVID-19 is the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 ... SARS-CoV-2 is a novel zoonotic coronavirus - fancy words basically meaning 1. its new 2. it comes from non-farm animals and 2. it looks like a "corona" under magnification … the only numbers about it that most folks need to concern themselves with really are CFR and R0 - most of the rest of the stats are for health data wonks like me (I use them to tell the actuaries, who typically work for me, how to model the outbreak and estimate the mortality for different populations - sorry, but it's a living ;-)
CoVID-19 has an undetermined CFR (Case Fatality Rate - ”how many, out of 100 who get it, are going to die within a year”) and R0 (R Nought – “infective potential”) ... as of this post, precaution is warranted, mass hysteria is not … Global Public Health authorities think that CoVID-19 has a CFR between around .7 (China - likely not true) and 3.8 (Italy/Iran) and an R0 of around 2.2 – that is not good, but on a relative basis, this is not the zombie apocalypse/hoard TP/bottled water/wear masks ... more on this later, but importantly, the CFR is very age and underlying disease dependent - older (80+) & sicker (COPD, Diabetes, Asthma, Hypertension) folks need to be extra careful ... also, I can't believe I'm saying this, but Trump is prolly right about the CFR being lower (although we all know he has NO idea what a CFR is) ... once the CDC releases testing that can definitively diagnose the "prevalence" of disease, we're going to see that the denominator ("who has the disease") is going to be order of magnitude larger than what is currently reported, thus the CFR will be far far lower … as a reference: Influenza – CFR=~.2 and R0=~1.5, Ebola - CFR=52-90 (based on strain), R0=18, HIV(untreated) – CFR=~94, R0 (unprotected sexual intercourse)= 2.5 … you can look up these values for most diseases and see that CoVID-19 rates fairly low on the deadly/infective analysis
You can't trust the reporting from China at all - they *do not* have this under control and have changed the criteria for reporting infection several times to make their "Dear Leader" look good ... S Korea, Iran and Italy seem to have a version of CoVID-19 that has a higher CFR than the one in Wuhan, but that is likely due to better diagnostic testing and truthful reporting than any difference in the underlying disease ("vector segmentation") ... When we get reporting out of Africa and India, its going to be an unmitigated shitshow - the combo of dense, poor, dirty urban areas with little health delivery infrastructure is going to be a disaster ... the WORLD is going to need ingenuity (most likely American ingenuity) to rush a vaccine to market ... meditation, herbs, bleach and prayers aren't going to do it
Based on the disease profiling so far, we are NEARLY ALL going to get this infection unless we find an effective vaccine – full stop … it would be nice if our leaders understood that "Health Care for some" is sort of pointless in the face of Pandemic disease like this … self quarantine, hand washing and recs to stop touching your face are just a speed bump and will slow the transmission, but again, we will nearly all get this eventually … Nursing homes are going to be a horrorshow - WHO reporting seems to indicate a CFR of 22+ in 80+ yo populations (that's *more* than 1 out of 5 who get it in Nathaniell Witherell & Parsonage Cottage)?!! ... FWIW - I'd urge leaders to cut off all visits to nursing homes/convalescent centers until a vaccine is developed ... CoVID-19 is going to kill many more than Influenza and is likely to become a endemic seasonal disease - sorry ... Mother Earth (and Pangolins) have had enough
What is worrisome is the Public Health response that is increasing the CoVID-19 CFR … what you DO NOT WANT TO DO with a Coronavirus, is assemble folks with a wide variety of underlying infections (e.g. TB, Malaria, Ebola, Dengue, Yellow Fever, etc…) into large quarantined populations in enclosed spaces and let CoVID-19 run its course- e.g. Chinese Hubei/Wuhan effort, Cruise ships, etc… the CoVID-19 virus can pick up gene snippets from these underlying chronic diseases and become deadlier ... Short version - you want to be infected with CoVID-19 1.0, you really really really want to avoid CoVID-19 4.0
STOP with the N95 masks already ... they only filter down to 5 µm ... This virus is about 1 µm ... LEARN how to wash your hands - seriously, we all think we know, but take the time to YouTube this ... it takes 20 seconds MINIMUM of rubbing, hot water and plain soap ... any deviation from the protocol makes whatever effort spent wasted ... Purell is a DISTANT second best option
Stay tuned ... I'll be editing and updating this blog over the next few days as folks ask questions ... Link to this rather than snapshot it for current info ... Also, feel free to share, crosspost, tag as you see fit ... Credit me if you feel it's important, but it's not critical to me