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1/I've been reading a bit about historic diseases, and holy shit was smallpox scary. It was spread the same way as coronavirus but was twice as contagious or more. And it had a 30% mortality rate. That's fucking terrifying.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox
2/In the 1700s, smallpox killed 400,000 Europeans per year. In per capita terms that was about the same as 1 million Americans PER YEAR today.

It killed 10% of all infants in Sweden. ALL infants. Every year.
3/George Washington got smallpox when he was 19, and almost died.

mountvernon.org/library/digita…
4/Smallpox is also thousands of years old. Thousands of years provided Europeans, Africans, and Asians with some partial immunity but that didn't prevent smallpox from causing coronavirus-level deaths every year!
5/But if you think it killed a lot of Europeans, you should see what it did to Native Americans. Some people estimate that Eastern Hemisphere diseases killed 90-95% of the population of the Americas! Smallpox was by far the worst killer.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o…
6/Thanks to vaccines and test-and-trace approaches, smallpox, the scourge of humanity for thousands of years, was eradicated in 1979.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o…
7/One of the epidemiologists who helped stamp out the last vestiges of smallpox offers his thoughts on coronavirus here:

wbur.org/hereandnow/202…
8/Anyway, I find it reassuring to remember that we've beat worse opponents than coronavirus before. We're going to kick this one's butt too. Eventually.

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More from @Noahpinion see all

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We need #TestAndTrace 🐇
@Noahpinion
U.S. coronavirus testing fell again today. Safe to say it's no longer on an upward trend, despite a rising number of cases.

This is not going to get it done, folks. We're back in the danger zone as far as testing is concerned.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
California, sadly, has the biggest testing problem in the country. Part of the reason is that one of its big private test companies, Quest, simply can't seem to get the job done:

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
The continuing shortage of PPE also appears to be a big bottleneck (though reports still don't say exactly which PPE items are in shortest supply).

I haven't heard anything about continuing shortages of reagents, extraction kits, or swabs.
Read 3 tweets
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We need #TestAndTrace 🐇
@Noahpinion
My colleague @tylercowen predicts that coronavirus will massively damage the cause of progressivism in the U.S...

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
I think on social issues (openness of borders), he's probably right. Also he didn't mention it, but I think I've read that epidemics increase support for authoritarian government. I think we're also seeing a "rally round the flag" boost for Trump.
But on economic issues, I think he's probably wrong. The economic devastation of coronavirus makes govt. assistance a necessity instead of a luxury. And the epidemic itself makes public goods a necessity instead of a luxury.
Read 5 tweets
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We need #TestAndTrace 🐇
@Noahpinion
1/OK, to take a break from coronavirus, here's a brief thread about the future of the American Left.

To some this will seem like concern-trolling, and to others it will seem stupid, but hear me out and see what you think...

2/The Bernie Sanders Revolution is over, but Bernie has generated a wave of enthusiasm for leftist ideas and causes among the youth. The danger is that electoral losses dissipate that enthusiasm and the youth go back to waxing their moustaches and making small-batch chocolate...
3/Some of the leaders who emerged from the leftist moment that Bernie created will choose to work within the Democratic Party and push it leftward, as Ted Kennedy did. That is a perfectly legitimate and admirable strategy, but it's not the only one.

politico.com/news/2020/03/3…
Read 14 tweets

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Dr. Lucky Tran 🐨
@luckytran
#Coronavirus lessons from the past: In the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, St. Louis cancelled its public events while Philadelphia proceeded with a 200,000 person parade.

This was the result:
Within 72 hours every bed in the city’s 31 hospitals was filled. This & other public health fumbles by city authorities lead to a much higher death rate than those cities which implemented multiple interventions were implemented at an early phase

Source: pnas.org/content/104/18…
Right now many of the largest cities in the US (Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and New York City) are preparing to hold parades for #StPatricksDay.

City leadership should listen to public health experts and cancel these events.

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sᴛᴀʀᴛᴜᴘ ᴅᴀᴇᴍᴏɴ
@startupdaemon
What do we REALLY know about the Wuhan #coronavirus?

Let’s cut through the lies and disinformation, and quickly recap what we really know about the coronavirus from the doctors on the frontline and from medical research.

It's a lot more than you think.

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The current case fatality rate (CFR) for #coronavirus is 6%. For every 100 closed cases of coronavirus, six people have died globally.

That makes it 60x deadlier than the flu, which kills 0.1% of those diagnosed.

1/n
The coronavirus is extremely contagious. Some estimates for R0 range up to 8 or even 9. That’s 6x the contagiousness of the flu.

Multiply 60x the mortality times 5-6x the contagiousness and you get that coronavirus can kill more than 300x what the flu does every year.

2/n
Read 16 tweets
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World Health Organization (WHO)
@WHO
LIVE: Daily media briefing on #COVID19 with @DrTedros #coronavirus pscp.tv/w/cS0kVjI2MTAy…
@DrTedros "We have now had 2 weeks without a single reported case of #Ebola in 🇨🇩 & there are currently no patients receiving treatment. This is very good news for the whole 🌍 & especially for the thousands of #healthworkers who have sacrificed so much in the fight against it"-@DrTedros
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Dr. Rob Davidson
@DrRobDavidson
#Coronavirus Thread>>> I am seeing many patients with respiratory “flu-like” illness as I have every “flu” season for the past 2 decades. With mixed messages from the @realDonaldTrump administration and reports of cases without known exposure, people are concerned that they 1/7
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countries listed on the CDC website. Even as this outbreak evolves and we have more cases in more communities, the risk of serious illness with young healthy people is very low. The concern now is for the elderly and chronically ill population for whom the mortality rate 3/7
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EVent Horizon
@evdefender
Think someone is lying to you?

First check to see if they bothered to add any variability whatsoever in the model they are using to supposedly report actual numbers from a complex system.

#coronavirus
The mortality rate they want you to report is the - 0 day rate: Today's Confirmed Death total minus Today's Confirmed Case total.

This has not varied outside of 1/10th of 1% in the last 5 prints.

#coronavirus
But even a minor adjustment of a few days in the mortality rate paints an entirely different picture

#coronavirus

Read 386 tweets
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Dank🧠
@synapse_doc
#coronavirus
Enveloped , single stranded RNA viruses.
Corona - crown like structure (as seen in image below)

Causes diseases in mammals like cats, bats, pigs, camels, cows and also in birds.

Almost all of these are eaten in #China
#Coronavirus strains known before latest epidemic :
1.Human coronavirus 229E (HCoV-229E)
2.Human coronavirus OC43 (HCoV-OC43)
3.SARS-CoV
4.Human coronavirus NL63 (HCoV-NL63, New Haven coronavirus)
5.Human coronavirus HKU1
6. Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV)
The new strain of #coronavirus is named -
#NovelCoronavirus (2019-nCoV),
a.k.a #WuhanPneumonia or #WuhanCoronavirus.

This new strain though initially spread from animals to humans, now the human to human transmission is suspected by chinese authorities.
Read 18 tweets

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