Daily Archives: March 24, 2020

An Italian doctor treating patients at the center of the worst coronavirus outbreak in Europe has issued a stark warning to other countries yet to be hit by the full force of the pandemic: lock down.

"We know what happens," Dr. Emanuela Catenacci told British broadcaster Sky News as she took a break from treating patients in an intensive care ward in Cremona Hospital in Lombardy. "Don't think it is happening here and it can't happen everywhere else ... because it will."

The death toll in Italy jumped by 793 to 4,825 on Saturday, by far the largest daily rise in absolute terms since the contagion emerged in the country a month ago. Last week, the number of those killed in Italy's outbreak surpassed those who died in China, where the disease emerged late last year.

While Lombardy, the center of the Italian outbreak, has been under lockdown for weeks, the central government has been criticized for not having acted quickly or forcefully enough to stem the outbreak. On Saturday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte described the crisis as the worst the country has faced since the end of World War II.

In the hospital in Cremona, east of Milan, Dr. Leonor Tamayo told Sky News, which, like NBC News, is owned by Comcast Corp., that the staff was being overwhelmed by a "tsunami" of patients.

The hospital has run out of space to store bodies and has been forced to keep them in a nearby church.

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Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

Comparing the outbreak to a "war," she said: "We are here 12 hours a day. Only, we are going home for a few hours and come back here for the work, because we are here for the patients."

As they struggled to cope with a huge number of patients, doctors said they are trying to dispel the myth that only the elderly are dying from coronavirus-related illnesses.

"Fifty percent of our patients in the intensive care unit, which are the most severe patients, are over 65 years old," Dr. Antonio Pensenti, the head of the intensive care crisis unit in the northern region of Lombardy, said Saturday. "But that means that the other 50 percent of our patients are younger than 65."

Pensenti said his team was treating "quite a few" patients ages 20 to 30, who were in a "severe" condition like the older patients, although he added that the younger patients were "usually healthier and survived more."

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Taking further restrictive measures to stem the outbreak, Attilio Fontana, governor of Italy's Lombardy region, signed a new order Saturday imposing even more stringent restrictions on residents, banning outdoor exercise and implementing temperature checks at supermarkets and pharmacies.

Pharmacies, supermarkets, banks and public transport will continue to operate.

After the announcement, national Finance Minister Roberto Gualtieri wrote on his social media accounts that it was "a necessary decision" that could "save human lives."

On Sunday, the Russian military will start sending medical assistance to help Italy battle the coronavirus after receiving an order from President Vladimir Putin, Russia's Defense Ministry said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Putin spoke to Conte on Saturday, the Kremlin said in a statement, adding that Putin had offered his support and help in the form of mobile disinfection vehicles and specialists to aid the worst-hit Italian regions.

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Act now, Italian doctor at center of outbreak warns the world - Yahoo News

A health worker checks a patient's temperature at a COVID-19 screening station at Watts Health Center. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist, began analyzing the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in January and correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its coronavirus outbreak long before many health experts had predicted.

Now he foresees a similar outcome in the United States and the rest of the world.

While many epidemiologists are warning of months, or even years, of massive social disruption and millions of deaths, Levitt says the data simply don't support such a dire scenario especially in areas where reasonable social distancing measures are in place.

"What we need is to control the panic," he said. In the grand scheme, "we're going to be fine."

Here's what Levitt noticed in China: On Jan. 31, the country had 46 new deaths due to the novel coronavirus, compared with 42 new deaths the day before.

Although the number of daily deaths had increased, the rate of that increase had begun to ease off. In his view, the fact that new cases were being identified at a slower rate was more telling than the number of new cases itself. It was an early sign that the trajectory of the outbreak had shifted.

Think of the outbreak as a car racing down an open highway, he said. Although the car is still gaining speed, it's not accelerating as rapidly as before.

This suggests that the rate of increase in the number of deaths will slow down even more over the next week, Levitt wrote in a report he sent to friends Feb. 1 that was widely shared on Chinese social media. And soon, he predicted, the number of deaths would be decreasing every day.

Three weeks later, Levitt told the China Daily News that the virus' rate of growth had peaked. He predicted that the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in China would end up around 80,000, with about 3,250 deaths.

This forecast turned out to be remarkably accurate: As of March 16, China had counted a total of 80,298 cases and 3,245 deaths in a nation of nearly 1.4 billion people where roughly 10 million die every year. The number of newly diagnosed patients has dropped to around 25 a day, with no cases of community spread reported since Wednesday.

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Now Levitt, who received the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing complex models of chemical systems, is seeing similar turning points in other nations, even those that did not instill the draconian isolation measures that China did.

He analyzed data from 78 countries that reported more than 50 newcases of COVID-19 every day and sees "signs of recovery" in many of them. He's not focusing on the total number ofcases in a country, but on the number of new cases identified every day and, especially, on the change in that number from one day to the next.

"Numbers are still noisy, but there are clear signs of slowed growth."

In South Korea, for example, newly confirmed cases are being added to the country's total each day, but the daily tally has dropped in recent weeks, remaining below 200. That suggests the outbreak there may be winding down.

In Iran, the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases per day remained relatively flat last week, going from 1,053 last Monday to 1,028 on Sunday. Although that's still a lot of new cases, Levitt said, the pattern suggests the outbreak there "is past the halfway mark."

Italy, on the other hand, looks like it's still on the upswing. In that country, the number of newly confirmed cases increased on most days this past week.

In places that have managed to recover from an initial outbreak, officials must still contend with the fact that the coronavirus may return. China is now fighting to stop new waves of infection coming in from places where the virus is spreading out of control. Other countries are bound to face the same problem.

Levitt acknowledges that his figures are messy and that the official case counts in many areas are too low because testing is spotty. But even with incomplete data, "a consistent decline means there's some factor at work that is not just noise in the numbers," he said.

In other words, as long as the reasons for the inaccurate case counts remain the same, it's still useful to compare them from one day to the next.

The trajectory of deaths backs up his findings, he said, since it follows the same basic trends as the new confirmed cases. So do data from outbreaks in confined environments, such as the one on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Out of 3,711 people on board, 712 were infected, and eight died.

This unintended experiment in coronavirus spread will help researchers estimate the number of fatalities that would occur in a fully infected population, Levitt said. For instance, the Diamond Princess data allowed him to estimate that being exposed to the new coronavirus doubles a person's risk of dying in the next two months. Most people have an extremely low risk of death in a two-month period, so that risk remains extremely low even when doubled.

Nicholas Reich, a biostatistician at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said the analysis was thought-provoking, if nothing else.

"Time will tell if Levitt's predictions are correct," Reich said. "I do think that having a wide diversity of experts bringing their perspectives to the table will help decision-makers navigate the very tricky decisions they will be facing in the upcoming weeks and months."

Levitt said he's in sync with those calling for strong measures to fight the outbreak. The social-distancing mandates are critical particularly the ban on large gatherings because the virus is so new that the population has no immunity to it, and a vaccine is still many months away. "This is not the time to go out drinking with your buddies," he said.

Getting vaccinated against the flu is important, too, because a coronavirus outbreak that strikes in the middle of a flu epidemic is much more likely to overwhelm hospitals and increases the odds that the coronavirus goes undetected. This was probably a factor in Italy, a country with a strong anti-vaccine movement, he said.

But he also blames the media for causing unnecessary panic by focusing on the relentless increase in the cumulative number of cases and spotlighting celebrities who contract the virus. By contrast, the flu has sickened 36 million Americans since September and killed an estimated 22,000, according to the CDC, but those deaths are largely unreported.

Levitt fears the public health measures that have shut down large swaths of the economy could cause their own health catastrophe, as lost jobs lead to poverty and hopelessness. Time and again, researchers have seen that suicide rates go up when the economy spirals down.

The virus can grow exponentially only when it is undetected and no one is acting to control it, Levitt said. That's what happened in South Korea last month, when it ripped through a closed-off cult that refused to report the illness.

"People need to be considered heroes for announcing they have this virus," he said.

The goal needs to be better early detection not just through testing but perhaps with body-temperature surveillance, which China is implementing and immediate social isolation.

While the COVID-19 fatality rate appears to be significantly higher than that of the flu, Levitt says it is, quite simply put, "not the end of the world."

"The real situation is not as nearly as terrible as they make it out to be," he said.

Dr. Loren Miller, a physician and infectious diseases researcher at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said it's premature to draw any conclusions either rosy or bleak about the course the pandemic will take.

"There's a lot of uncertainty right now," he said. "In China they nipped it in the bud in the nick of time. In the U.S. we might have, or we might not have. We just don't know."

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Why this Nobel laureate predicts a quicker coronavirus recovery: 'We're going to be fine' - Yahoo News

WASHINGTON Surgeon General Jerome Adams warned Monday that the coronavirus outbreak will worsen this week and said people across the country are not taking the threat seriously enough.

"I want America to understand this week, it's going to get bad," Adams said in an interview on the "TODAY" show.

The disease is spreading, he said, because many people especially young people are not abiding by guidance to stay at home and practice social distancing.

"Right now, there are not enough people out there who are taking this seriously," he said.

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Adams said young people are flocking to the beaches in California and people are still heading to the National Mall in Washington to view the cherry blossom trees that bloom each year. He warned that young people need to understand that they can contract COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and that they can be hospitalized and potentially die from it.

"Everyone needs to act as if they have the virus right now. So, test or no test, we need you to understand you could be spreading it to someone else. Or you could be getting it from someone else. Stay at home," he said.

Asked about growing pressure for President Donald Trump to use the Defense Production Act to force companies to mass produce critical supplies, Adams suggested that it's not necessary at this point.

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"Here's the thing that people don't understand. You don't need to compel someone to do something they are already doing," he said, adding that the administration is already working with companies like Honeywell and Hanes that are already producing large quantities of needed items.

"The other important point is that we're not going to ventilator our way out of this problem. We're not going to treat our way out of this problem," he said. "The way you stop the spread of an infectious disease like this is with mitigation measures and preventing people from getting it in the first place."

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'This week, it's going to get bad': Surgeon general says people need to take coronavirus seriously - Yahoo News

This is not the best time to check on your 401(k) account. The global coronavirus crisis has upended businesses and despite some drastic government action, the stock market is in shambles. After you reset your password to restore access, you will see nothing but very bad news.

The S&P 500 index (^GSPC) is down a coronary-inducing 31% off its February highs. That means if youre young and your 401(k) mostly has stocks (lets say you own S&P 500 index funds), youre probably down around 30%.

Read more: 401(k) plans and how they work

As you get older, financial advisers typically advise transitioning out of more volatile and risky assets like stocks and into the safety of bonds. For a retirement account like an IRA or a 401(k), younger people are very stock-heavy sometimes 100% invested in stocks, because they have a long way to go until theyll need the money and the market will have enough time to correct and move higher, which they almost always do.

If you have a five- or 10- or 15-year horizon, this is probably a blip in the road, said Great Hill Capital Chairman Thomas Hayes on Yahoo Finances The Ticker. You probably want to hang tight. If youre adding every single month, thats a good thing youre buying less expensively for the long-term.

For people at retirement age, the numbers are different its often 55% stocks and 45% bonds, but theres no hard allocation for everyone.

Some people also add real estate and cash to the asset allocation pie chart. (Getty Creative)

The point is, everyone usually chooses an asset allocation thats appropriate for their age, though many people do it via a target-date fund, which does it automatically. (You just give them your money, and they follow a glide path that unloads stock exposure slowly until you die.)

If you dont have a target date fund, its not automatic. Which brings us to probably the one reason you might want to peep your 401(k) if youre a long way from using it. The stock markets craziness could have completely thrown off your allocations. It might be time to rebalance.

One of the things that we like to do in these periods of dislocation is rebalance, said Hayes.

If youre trying to have your money 75% stocks and 25% bonds, but the stocks just got hammered 30%, you might be left with just 68% in stockswhich may not be where you want to be.

If youre looking long term, Hayes said, fixing your allocation when stocks fall means buying them inexpensively for the long term.

You may want to check in with your financial adviser and say does this make sense to rebalance some of the portfolio, Hayes said.

Rebalancing can be just as easy as exchanging one stock index fund for a bond index fund or selling a fund for cash. Most financial services platforms have a handy tool that can show you what your current allocations are.

Conversely, if your stocks are doing really well, your portfolio might hold 85% stocks, and need to swap a few of them out for bonds to get back to your target allocation.

Rebalancing, however, can be especially important for people close to retirement or in itpeople who will need to draw on their investments. Because stocks are more volatile, not planning properly and having a suboptimal asset allocation could mean being forced to sell when the market is low.

If youre coming up on retirement, definitely have a conversation with your financial adviser and have some things in safer positions so that you can have access to the income in the short term in the next 12, 24 some-odd months, Hayes said.

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Ethan Wolff-Mannis a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumer issues, personal finance, retail, airlines, and more. Follow him on Twitter@ewolffmann.

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The one reason you might want to check your 401(k) - Yahoo Money

Commuters pack a subway train in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday. (Paula Bronstein / Getty Images)

In January, as Singapore racked up the highest numbers of coronavirus infections outside China, an alarmed Shasta Grant searched for flights back home to Indianapolis.

The 44-year-old American writer, who moved to this island city-state with her family eight years ago, worried that their adopted home would be ravaged again by a runaway disease and that the school where her husband teaches and their 12-year-old son studies would be closed. She feared food shortages, overwhelmed hospitals and travel bans.

But her husband persuaded her not to flee. Two months later, Singapore and other Asian nations have largely corralled their outbreaks; meanwhile, the virus roars across North America and Europe, leaving Grant dumbstruck by how quickly the U.S. went from a distant spectator of the epidemic to one of its primary victims.

It feels very strange to say that I feel safer here than in my home country, Grant said. That sinking feeling that it was really going to get awful, that we were all going to get infected, that just didn't happen. Things never really got bad in Singapore, and obviously theyre a mess in America.

In Asian countries that initially faced the gravest risk from the coronavirus, the shambolic U.S. response to the pandemic has elicited confusion, horror and even a measure of pity. Suddenly, it seems, the U.S. is the basket case, an aloof, inward-looking power that had already weakened its alliances and failed to lead on global emergencies such as climate change, and now was shrinking in a crisis.

The U.S. was quick to restrict travel from China in the early weeks of the outbreak; now travelers from the U.S. and other Western countries are exporting a "second wave" of infections to China, Hong Kong and Singapore. President Trump, who once said the virus would disappear like a miracle, has watched it explode in California, Washington state and New York while vigilant testing and contact tracing brought it under control in Taiwan and South Korea.

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As commercial shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders grind life to a halt in the United States' biggest cities, restaurants, bars, shopping malls and subway trains have operated virtually without interruption in Singapore and Taipei, Taiwan the occasional mask and thermometer gun the only obvious signs of a pandemic. Emerging outbreaks in India and Indonesia, huge populations where little testing has been done, now worry experts more than China and its immediate surroundings.

Though the number of confirmed infections in the U.S. now exceeds 43,900, health experts warn that many more coronavirus cases are going unrecorded because of a scarcity of tests. Hospitals nationwide lack enough ventilators, beds and medication to treat an expected onslaught of critically ill patients.

Herv Lemahieu, an Asia expert at the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, drew comparisons to Hurricane Katrina, another calamitous emergency response that laid bare the cracks in the U.S. political system and the widening inequities in American society.

That was the first time that the world saw images broadcast from the U.S. that resembled those of a developing country, and thats something that for most of us was surprising, Lemahieu said. These kinds of moments have a psychological impact on the way the U.S. is perceived abroad.

They are having a financial impact, too, as fears of a prolonged U.S. slump drag down Asian stock markets, threatening to plunge some of the worlds fastest-growing economies into recession.

This stock market fall is serious, said Freddy Lim, a legislator in Taiwan, where the stock exchange has lost 20% of its value over the last month. So we hope the U.S. will get this under control as soon as possible.

That the U.S. would look riskier in a pandemic than parts of Asia would have been unthinkable not long ago.

In 2002 and 2003, an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, killed almost 800 people nearly all in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore and erased an estimated $40 billion from the global economy. Aggressive public health measures helped stop the disease before it spread in the U.S., while chastened leaders in China and Singapore pledged to invest in health infrastructure and epidemic surveillance.

Although China initially concealed the extent of this coronavirus outbreak as it did with SARS the Communist Party swiftly blanketed the epicenter of the virus, Hubei province, in a draconian lockdown that the World Health Organization praised as extraordinary in slowing the virus.

Through a mixture of strict quarantining, contact tracing, temperature checks and diligent testing, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong also bought time for other governments to prepare.

Health officials say the U.S. and other Western governments failed to anticipate the coronavirus reaching their shores.

Just because Singapore or Hong Kong experienced SARS while other places didnt, theres still lessons to be learned, said Dale Fisher, a Singapore-based expert on infectious disease who traveled to China last month as part of a WHO-led mission. You dont have to be in a car accident to know that car accidents happen. Im saddened that the world couldnt use that lead time to prepare better.

Others were blunter.

Trump was saying this virus is no big deal, and now suddenly hes changed his tune, said PN Balji, a veteran Singaporean journalist and commentator. It shows a callous disregard for your own citizens and, to a certain extent, the world.

Taiwan, less than 90 miles from the Chinese mainland and visited by as many as 2,000 Chinese tourists daily, had recorded 195 infections as of Friday or roughly 1 in every 120,000 people, among the lowest rates of any of the more than 170 countries affected by the virus.

Compare that with the U.S., where 1 in 7,500 Americans has tested positive for the virus, add universal healthcare, and its easy to see why Taiwans president, Tsai Ing-wen, urged her citizens this week to stay in Taiwan because it was safer than traveling overseas.

Taiwan has a very robust health system, said ruling party lawmaker Lo Chih-cheng. This is one area where I think the U.S. can learn from Taiwan.

Sean Kramer, a 32-year-old from the Seattle area who teaches at a junior high school in Taiwan, said friends and relatives messaged him in January to ask whether hed be safe there. For a while, he considered flying home.

But then he watched the numbers of infections in China skyrocket while those in Taiwan stayed flat. He saw people on the street instinctively don masks, the Taiwanese administration roll out a succession of helpful messages and authorities quickly decide to extend Lunar New Year holidays for three extra weeks in February.

All the steps that appeared to Kramer like overreactions seemed to keep a lid on the epidemic. As the virus spreads across his home state, he tries to do his part for his family by logging on to Amazon from Taipei to buy masks and hand sanitizer for his sister in suburban Seattle.

We never got the whole lockdown status, so seeing everyone react at home now, I cant relate to their emotions or their fear, Kramer said. Thats the scary part for me as an American.

The U.S. stumbles have also thrown a lifeline to Chinese President Xi Jinping, who was facing a rare spasm of dissent at home following his governments initial attempts to paper over the outbreak in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei.

As the total number of infections for the rest of the world has soared past those in China, Beijing has gone on a diplomatic and humanitarian offensive, pledging masks and medical equipment to dozens of countries including the U.S. in a bid to regain its global standing. Last week, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma sent a shipment of 1 million masks and 500,000 coronavirus test kits to our friends in America.

Such moves and Trumps repeated references to the Chinese virus highlight how the outbreak has become yet another arena of competition between the two leading global powers. Both countries appear to be covering up their mishandling of the crisis, said Lemahieu of the Lowy Institute, who called the war of words pathetic and unappealing on both sides.

Yet many Asian leaders retain faith that the U.S. will get a handle on its outbreak once social distancing orders and ramped-up health measures take hold, allowing it to resume a position of leadership in the global response.

The United States has got enormous resources at its disposal, Singaporean Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told CNBC last week. Its a matter of getting it organized and getting it delivered. So lets wait and see. You know, I would never count the Americans out.

Special correspondent Ralph Jennings in Taipei contributed to this report.

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'A mess in America': Why Asia now looks safer than the U.S. in the coronavirus crisis - Yahoo News

After years of trying to conceive a child, Dustin and Jennifer Sanders were excited to celebrate their pregnancy with family and friends at their gender reveal party. But asglobal coronavirus cases have reached the hundreds of thousands, the Arkansas pastors decided it was best to cancel the big event.

However, the couple didnt expect the parade of cars driven by friends toting pink streamers, hats and confetti showering them with love on Saturday after they discovered they would be having a baby girl.

It was very, very, very emotional, Sanders, whose friends got together via email and text and planned to meet up in their vehicles for the drive-by celebration, told Yahoo Lifestyle. To see that kind of outpouring of love is incredible.

Sanders posted a video of the parade to Facebook and Twitter, and watched it amass over 25,000 retweets by Sunday afternoon.

YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS!!! Sanders posted on Facebook, along with the video of the main event. We decided not to do a gender reveal because of COVID-19. After the live video we got a call from Mrs.Charlotte Edwards asking us to step outside. Some of our incredible church family ... cant even put into words. Love you all!!

The couple originally planned to have a large gender reveal party at their church, where the couple serves as pastors. But when the governor made it clear that large gatherings werent a good idea, Sanders knew they had to listen.

As a pastor, we always talk about submitting to authority, so were trying to do the same thing, said Sanders. It hasnt even hit our town, but were abiding by the rules.

With their church community so deeply involved in their journey to become parents, everyone had been looking forward to the reveal.

Related Video: How Concerned Should Pregnant Women Be About Coronavirus?

Everybody was disappointed, since they walked with us through the heartache of miscarriages, said Sanders. So behind the scenes without us knowing, a bunch of our friends and church members got together.

The couple streamed their announcement live on Facebook with a couple thousand people watching.

When we got done with that, we changed clothes, sat down on the couch and were receiving phone calls and texts, said Sanders. By that time, my secretary at church called me and said Hey, can you come outside real quick? We walked out of the front door, what you saw began. That video was only a fraction of it.

Jennifer and Dustin Sanders discover they're having a baby girl. (Photo: Dustin Sanders)

While the couple is overjoyed to have a healthy pregnancy, theyre also focused on helping people during this time. Thats why theyre actively working within the community to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

As pastors, its our job is to spread the love of Jesus and God throughout the community, said Sanders, who pointed out that his church is going above and beyond to help those in need. This past week, their church partnered with teachers to deliver close to 1,500 meals to the children who are on reduced lunches, dropping off each one at the front door to maintain a safe distance. Theyve also provided several hundred dinners and groceries delivered to senior citizens. Thats who we are. We try to support love, to spread love and reach more people with the love than we have.

While their daughter, who they plan to call Madilynne Grace, isnt born yet, Sanders says he still believes shes brought joy to those around them during this trying time.

Getting a little of hope in this dark time, said Sanders. Its incredible to know shes already done that.

For the latest news on the evolving coronavirus outbreak,follow along here. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please reference theCDCandWHOsresource guides.

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Friends surprise couple with drive-by gender reveal party after coronavirus concerns forced cancellation - Yahoo Lifestyle

Executive Summary

Right now 2 million Americans are infected with the coronavirus. The total U.S. death toll by April 15th will be more than 20,000.We estimate that 80 thousand of the 2 million infected Americans will be hospitalized over the next 2 weeks. Thats why we are short-term bullish on hospital stocks.

Thesis:

Everything I said about the Coronavirus COVID-19 in February happened, Now Im telling you this:

Since my last few newsletters to you, I have updated our models, done more research and we now have better estimates.

Three parameter estimates are needed to predict the number of infections and number of deaths over the next 3 weeks: infection fatality rate, infection growth rate, and the number of days between initial infection and resolution (either death or recovery) of the infection.

1. We now estimate that the coronaviruss fatality rate is ~0.8%. This means 1 out of every 125 infected people will die. We know that almost all countries had problems with testing and identifying all infected people. There are two exceptions to this: South Korea and Japans Princess Diamond cruise ship.

South Korea tested more than 320,000 people and identified 8652 infections. The total number of deaths was 94. This means South Koreas case fatality rate is 1.09%. We believe there are still a considerable number of South Koreans who were asymptomatic and weren't tested. So, we estimate that the actual fatality rate is anywhere from 0.5% and 1%.

In early February the Princess Diamond cruise ship was quarantined in Japan after one of the passengers tested positive. This was a bad idea for passengers as a total of 712 passengers were eventually infected and 7 of these people died. As far as I know all 3000+ passengers of this cruise ship were tested, so we have a reliable dataset with pretty accurate number of infections and number of deaths. The case fatality rate on Princess Diamond is 0.983%. We know that the fatality rate is higher among older people. Assuming that the median age of passengers on Princess Diamond is greater than Americas, which is 39, we can estimate that the new coronavirus fatality rate will be around 0.8% in America (maybe a little lower, but this is a nice round number).

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2. This paper estimates that an infection takes around 23-24 days to resolve. The first 5-6 days the patient doesnt show any symptoms. It takes an average of 5 days between the onset of symptoms and hospitalization. Finally it takes about 2 weeks between hospitalization and death (about 10 days in ICU).

3. There is no accurate direct way of calculating the infection growth rate because there is a huge variation in the number of people we are testing. [We were testing only a few people a couple of weeks ago, so we identified only a small number of infections. In recent days we started testing a large number of people (especially in New York) and now our case count is growing at alarming rates.] However, we can assume that the death rate is constant and we use the change in deaths to estimate the infection growth rate. There is a 23-24 day lag between an infection and the resolution of that infection. This means the growth rate in the number of deaths today is a very good estimate of the infection growth rate 23-24 days ago.

On March 19th, the U.S. reported a total of 205 deaths. That figure was 85 on March 16th and 47 on March 13th. This means the number of deaths doubles about every 3 days. This also means that the number of infections were doubling every 3 days on February 25th (the people who are dying today were infected on February 25th).

So, here is my simple mathematical model.

For the sake of argument, I am going to assume that all 205 American deaths occurred on March 19th and all of these people were infected on February 25th (this assumption simplifies calculations, we dont need a complex model to have a thorough understanding of what is going on).

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Our estimate for the fatality rate is 0.8%; this means for every death we have 125 infections. Since we have 205 total deaths, there must have been 205 times 125 total infections on February 25th. Thats 25,625 infected people. If you understand this part of the calculation, the rest of our analysis is pretty straightforward.

The number of infected people doubles every 3 days. So, on February 28th the number of infected people doubled to 51,250 (lets round it down to 50,000). Three days later, on March 2nd, the number of infected people doubled again to 100,000.

Do you see start to see the gravity of the situation? There were 100K infected people on March 2nd in America. We know that 0.8% of these people will die by March 26th. That means our death toll will be 800 on March 26th [you can verify the accuracy of our model on March 26th by comparing the actual death toll to our estimate].

Our model tells us that the number of infections doubled again on March 5th, reaching 200,000.

Our model also tells us that the number of infected people was 400,000 on March 8th, 800,000 on March 11th, and 1.6 million on March 14th.

These calculations imply that the American death toll will be 12,800 on April 7th. To put that in perspective, yesterday, the total death toll in Italy was 3400 and 3000 in China.

I know that these are just estimates, but even if my estimates are off by 50%, we will have still twice as many coronavirus deaths as China 2.5 weeks from now.

Enter social distancing. On March 14th, various municipalities and agencies started introducing social distancing. The practice eventually began to be suggested or required in the hardest hit parts of the nation.

The good news is that we started cancelling schools and closing down restaurants around March 14th. So, the number of total US infections isnt doubling every 3 days anymore. Unfortunately, the horse is already out of the barn. As of March 14th, one out of every 200 Americans is already infected.

Italy put the entire country under lockdown 12 days ago, yet its death toll is still increasing exponentially. Thats because there is a 24 day lag between an infection and its resolution. We havent put our country under a lockdown yet.

Except a few educated people, no one has any idea that there are already around 2 million infected people in America today and the American death toll will exceed 15,000 in just 24 days. If we dont take strict measures, we will be reporting 1000 deaths per day in just 3 weeks.

The attacks on 9/11 killed around 3000 people. We will be reporting a 9/11 every three days. Thats why we say hell is coming.

This is a mathematical certainty. It is inevitable.

China taught us how to contain the coronavirus outbreak. We have to put the entire country under a strict lockdown.

We dont think Donald Trump can postpone this decision beyond the middle of April. I am certain the entire country will be under quarantine in the next four weeks, and hopefully much sooner than that.

In terms of the stock market, we dont think stock prices are currently reflective of the possibility of a daily death toll of over 1,000 and a national lockdown for a period of a couple of months.

Assuming that we were able to put an end to the coronavirus outbreak after a 2 month lockdown, we will still have to implement strict quarantine measures towards international travelers. Tourism accounts for 2.9% of our GDP. We will have to deal with high unemployment figures, bankruptcies, and ballooning budget deficits for some time to come.

Donald Trump is already trying to shift the blame to China. The virus was a surprise for the Chinese, yet they managed to limit its death toll to 3000. Donald Trump knew about the virus in early January. He had weeks to prepare for it, yet he failed to protect us.

Biden doesnt have to be a marketing genius to blame Donald Trump for the death of 20,000+ Americans. He could very well label the recession as the Trump Recession. Thats why I believe Trump will lose the election and the stock market will start pricing the possibility of corporate tax rate increases pretty soon.

The bad news is that almost every country in the world will experience a recession. China was able to contain the virus, but its economy will probably experience a recession as well. Even if China bounces back quickly from being shut down for a number if weeks, its economy works in collaboration with the world economy. When individual countries falter economically, the worlds largest economy in China will also fall. In February, retail sales in China declined more than 20%, industrial production fell 13.5%, and fixed investments plunged 24.5%. Now, the U.S., Europe, India, Russia, Mexico, Canada, and Brazil will go through the same process.

In an average recession the S&P 500 Index declines by 32%.

Do you think this is going to be an average recession?

Another obvious but not yet utilized way of hedging your portfolio is hospital stocks. We estimate that 80 thousand of the 2 million infected Americans will be hospitalized over the next 2 weeks (a hospitalization rate of 4%). There are 46,825 medical-surgical intensive care beds in the U.S. according to American Hospital Association. This means we are going to hit the ICU bed capacity especially in the counties that already account for most of the cases in the U.S.

Hospital stocks will financially benefit from near 100% utilization rates because usually their utilization rates hover around 50%. AHA already started lobbying the Congress for a $100 billion spending package to help hospitals with fighting the coronavirus outbreak. Thats why we are short-term bullish on hospital stocks like Tenet Healthcare (NYSE:THC), HCA Healthcare Inc (NYSE:HCA), and Universal Health Services, Inc. (NYSE:UHS). If you don't want to expose your portfolio to individual stock risk, then the simplest way of hedging is a short position in SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) or Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ).

Update 1 (March 21, 2020): The number of deaths on the Princess Diamond cruise ship increased to 8. The case fatality rate for this group is 1.12%. This doesn't change any of our parameters or estimates. We still expect to see around 800 coronavirus deaths in the U.S. by the end of March 26th.

Disclosure: Long THC and net short SPY through put options. This article is first published at Insider Monkey.

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Hell is Coming: Here is the Mathematical Proof - Yahoo Finance

There is a wide disparity between beliefs and behavior when it comes to the novel coronavirus, despite public health experts, government officials, and business executives urging Americans to stay home. Californias Bay Area has mandated a shelter in place policy for some 7 million residents, which requires them to remain at home barring essential activities. New York City may be expected to follow suit.

Seventy-four percent of Americans are afraid of accidentally spreading the virus to vulnerable people even if they are asymptomatic, according to a new survey from Harris Poll. But theyre not changing their daily patterns to actually mitigate risk to other people, according to the survey of 2,050 U.S. adults between March 14 and March 15.

NOVATO, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 14: Hundreds of customers wait in line to enter a Costco store amid the spread of coronavirus. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Eighty-nine percent of Americans are still going to coffee shops and 58% have not changed how often theyre inviting people over, according to the Harris Poll survey respondents, whose age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region, and household income were weighted to bring them into line with their actual proportions of the U.S. population.

Half of respondents have not altered their hygiene behavior with house guests (e.g., asking friends and family to wash their hands immediately upon entering). As recently as this past weekend, social distancing has become ubiquitous in talk but not practice.

Footage of the beaches of Clearwater, Florida, nightlife on Bourbon Street and Chicagos St. Patricks Day festivities show throngs of people socializing as if the situation were normal.

Still, since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States was reported on January 20, conditions have only escalated, with the virus reaching all 50 states and taking over 100 lives in the U.S.

The unknown and unprecedented nature of the disease is stoking fear among Americans. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said drastic headlines about how society is changing is the No. 1 reason they are fearful. Seventy-eight percent said they are primarily scared because of the deluge of news about people fighting over products at the grocery store; 75% pointed to the constant stream of reactions to the outbreak on social media.

Its the kerosene on the fire of the news cycle. Every hour, some news event is coming out thats creating a lot of fear and anxiety among Americans. Weve never had a crisis in America with the sophistication of social media in this participative way, amplifying fear. Social media can also amplify good news when it comes, but there doesnt seem to be good news yet, said John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll.

The poll also found, unsurprisingly, that work is being disrupted to some degree for all Americans. The biggest changes workers have seen from their employers are postponing work travel and remote work. Eighteen percent of respondents said COVID-19 has decreased their productivity.

In light of store closures and reduced hours, those working in the service industry are hit the hardest, while tech and business workers benefit the most from work from home policies, which is not an option for many employees across retail, hospitality, transportation and the like.

Adults with household income of at least $100,000 are three times more likely than families that make $50,000 or less to say they are working from home more often as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Twenty-three percent of the affluent group say their employer has mandated a remote work policy compared to 13% of those in households making $50,000 or less.

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Some employers are scrambling to implement policies to care for their employees amid such extenuating circumstances. Seventeen percent of adults whose households make $100,000 or more say their employer has explicitly offered to cover out-of-pocket healthcare costs for preventative care, (e.g., C19 testing, PCP visits), compared to six percent of those families making less than $50,000.

This is a fluid situation. Some of us are caregivers, tutors, remote workers, daycare providers. And life has completely changed for many Americans, Gerzema said. There are big frustrations that their employers are lagging. Businesses have been caught flat footed. From the workers point of view, there hasnt been a strong cadence of communication or demonstration of actual policies.

________

Melody Hahm is Yahoo Finances west coast correspondent, covering entrepreneurship, technology and culture. Follow her on Twitter@melodyhahm.

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Americans fear the coronavirus but most aren't changing their behavior, poll finds - Yahoo Finance

Joggers are pictured running next to a deserted Tower of London. The UK has had 3,269 confirmed coronavirus cases since the outbreak was identified. (Getty Images)

The coronavirus death rate may be lower than the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated, research suggests.

With the virus virtually unheard of at the start of the year, experts have been racing to uncover how dangerous it really is and the patients most likely to succumb to complications.

At the beginning of March, the WHO announced the virus had killed 3.4% of patients worldwide, which other experts called a likely overestimate.

To learn more, scientists from The University of Hong Kong looked at the 48,557 confirmed cases that had arisen as of 29 February in the Chinese city Wuhan, where the outbreak emerged.

They found the average death rate among patients under 30 was 0.3%, rising to 0.5% for those between 30 and 59, and 2.6% for people aged 60 or above.

Overall, they calculated the fatality rate to be 1.4%.

Although promising, experts have stressed estimating death rates in the midst of an outbreak is fraught with difficulties.

Latest coronavirus news, updates and advice

Live: Follow all the latest updates from the UK and around the world

Fact-checker: The number of COVID-19 cases in your local area

Explained: Symptoms, latest advice and how it compares to the flu

The coronavirus is thought to have emerged at a seafood and live animal market in Wuhan at the end of last year.

It has since spread to more than 160 countries, across every inhabited continent.

Since the outbreak began, more than 246,000 cases have been confirmed, of whom over 86,000 have recovered, according to John Hopkins University data.

Cases have been plateauing in China since the end of February, with Europe now the epicentre of the pandemic.

Italy alone has had more than 41,000 confirmed cases and over 3,000 deaths.

In the UK, 3,269 people have tested positive for the virus, of whom 145 have died.

Globally, the death toll has exceeded 10,000.

The new coronavirus was officially identified as the cause of an outbreak of illness in Wuhan on 9 January.

Story continues

In an attempt to combat the infection, scientists quickly got to work uncovering how severe the infection could be.

Using public and published information, the Hong Kong scientists looked at the 48,557 casesin Wuhan, of whom 2,169 died.

Based on this, the scientists calculated the overall symptomatic death rate in Wuhan at the start of the outbreak to range from 0.9%to-2.1%, averaging at 1.4%.

Compared to those aged between 30 and 59 , the patients aged 60 or over were on average 5.1 times more likely to die after developing symptoms, according to results published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Patients without symptoms would likely have gone unreported and not been included in the analysis.

This is a detailed epidemiological analysis and the results are cautiously encouraging, in that they indicate a lower fatality rate from [the coronavirus] than has thus far been estimated, said Professor Robin May from the University of Birmingham.

Using patient data from the original epicentre of the outbreak, Wuhan, they show an overall death rate of around 1.4% of symptomatic cases, which is lower than previous estimates.

They also show that mortality rates appear to be very low for people under 50 (around 0.3-0.5%) which is, again, promising.

He stressed, however, the same results may not apply to other areas of the pandemic.

Death rates can vary according to the strength of the countrys health service.

One important caveat, is this study is based primarily on data from Wuhan and therefore does not necessarily reflect mortality rates that may be seen in other areas of the world, said Professor May.

As with all epidemiological models, it also relies on various assumptions which, since we still know relatively little about the course of this infection in human populations, may not be entirely accurate.

That said, however, this is a very important new piece of data that will help guide the public health response to this pandemic.

The Hong Kong research comes after WHOs director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on 3 March: Globally, about 3.4% of reported [coronavirus] cases have died.

Death rates are defined as the percentage of cases that die.

This is different from the death toll, which is the total number of deaths.

On 29 January, the WHO cited a likely death rate of 2%.

Just a few days later, the Chinese National Health Commission reported it appeared to be 2.1%, based on 425 deaths among 20,438 confirmed cases.

On 20 February, a WHO-China joint statement put the death rate at 3.8% based on 2,114 deaths among 55,924 cases.

The UK is only routinely testing hospital patients for the coronavirus, who are severe by definition.

With early research suggesting the infection is mild in four out of five cases, many non-serious incidences in the community will likely go unreported, skewing the death rate.

We do not report all the cases, Professor John Edmunds from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine previously said.

In fact, we only usually report a small proportion of them.

If there are many more cases in reality, then the case-fatality ratio will be lower.

Asymptomatic infections similarly confuse how the death rate is calculated.

Since subclinical [an infection not severe enough to cause observable symptoms] and asymptomatic infections have been reported, [the] true case-fatality ratio cannot be estimated until population surveys can be undertaken to estimate the proportion of individuals that were infected but did not manifest symptoms, Dr Toni Ho from the University of Glasgow previously said.

Taking into account those with mild or no symptoms, Dr Christl Donnelly from Imperial College London estimated a 1% fatality rate appears more likely.

In an unfolding epidemic it can be misleading to look at the nave estimate of deaths so far divided by cases so far, she previously said.

The infection-fatality ratio is the proportion of infections (including those with no symptoms or mild symptoms) that die of the disease.

Our estimate for this is 1%.

Death rates can also change if countries alter how they define a case.

Cases spiked in China when it started defining a patient as definitely infected if they presented with symptoms, alongside a CT scan showing a chest infection.

Beforehand, patients were confirmed via a nucleic acid test. Nucleic acids are substances in living cells, making up the NA of DNA.

As a result, cases appeared to spike overnight in mid-February, despite one expert stressing it was solely an administrative issue.

Quarantines and other interventions can also make the population less exposed to the infection, driving death rates down.

A lack of awareness at the start of the outbreak may have meant patients only sought treatment when their symptoms became severe.

Death rates could also reduce as patients start self-identifying their symptoms earlier on.

The best estimates of case-fatality rates would have to occur once an epidemic was over, Dr Tom Wingfield from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine previously said.

Estimating in real time during the epidemic is fraught with difficulties.

The coronavirus is a strain of a class of viruses, with seven known to infect humans.

Others include the common cold and severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which killed 774 people during its 2002/3 outbreak.

The coronavirus tends to cause flu-like symptoms initially, such as a fever, cough or slight breathlessness.

It mainly spreads face-to-face via infected droplets coughed or sneezed out by a patient.

There is also evidence itcan be transmitted in faeces and urine.

While most cases are mild, pneumonia can come about if the infection spreads to the air sacs in the lungs, causing them to become inflamed and filled with fluid or pus.

The lungs then struggle to draw in air, resulting in reduced oxygen in the bloodstream and a build-up of carbon dioxide.

The coronavirus has no set treatment, with most patients naturally fighting off the infection.

Those requiring hospitalisation are offered supportive care, like ventilation, while their immune system gets to work.

Officials urge people ward off the infection bywashing their hands regularlyandmaintaining social distancing.

Original post:

Coronavirus' death rate found to be lower than World Health Organization estimates - Yahoo Sports

Jameis Winston bade farewell to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers following the signing of Tom Brady, with the outgoing quarterbacktelling fans hewould see them at February's Super Bowl.

The Bucs completed the marquee acquisition of Brady on Friday, the 42-year-oldhaving left the New England Patriots earlier in the week after winning a record six Super Bowl rings.

Winston led the NFLin passing yardage in 2019 but the first overall pick in the 2015 draft also threw a league-high 30 interceptions as Tampa Bay missed the playoffs for a 12th successive season.

His inconsistency and Brady's availability meant the Bucs did not re-sign Winston and sohe will be playing for another team in 2020, a campaignwhich ends with a Super Bowl at Tampa Bay's Raymond James Stadium.

"It's been a great 5 seasons as a Buccaneer," Winston wrote on Twitter alongside a picture of the night he was drafted five years ago.

"All love and respect, I love Tampa and I look forward to seeing y'all again in February. #SBLV #2020Vision #Dreamforever."

Winston threw for 19,737 yards, 121 touchdowns and 88 interceptionsacross five seasons with the Buccaneers. He is the team's all-time leaderfor both passing yardage and touchdowns thrown.

With top free agents Brady and Philip Rivers having found new homes at the Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts respectively, and Ryan Tannehill re-signing with the Tennessee Titans, there appears to no obvious landing spot for Winston.

His gunslinger mentality means he is unlikely to be a fit to replace Brady in New England, while the Los Angeles Chargers, having reportedly missed out on the former Patriots quarterback themselves, could roll the dice with Tyrod Taylor or select a rookie quarterback such as Justin Herbert with the sixth overall pick in the draft.

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Jameis Winston bids Tampa Bay farewell: See you at the Super Bowl! - Yahoo Sports