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Medicine United States

Worldwide Coronavirus Cases Surpass Half a Million (cbsnews.com) 100

According to Johns Hopkins University, there are now more than 510,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide and more than 22,000 people have died from the new coronavirus. While China still has the most confirmed cases, the United States and Italy are close behind. CBS News reports: In the United States, more than 1,000 people have died and more than 75,000 people have been infected. An unprecedented number of Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as the virus shuttered businesses and normal life across large swaths of the country came to a halt. Roughly 3.3 million people filed a claim for jobless aid in the week ending March 21 -- a nearly fivefold increase over the previous weekly record set in 1982. The Senate has passed an unprecedented $2 trillion relief package to help workers, businesses and the severely strained health care system survive the pandemic. UPDATE: The United States now leads the world with confirmed coronavirus cases. "[A]t least 81,321 people are known to have been infected with the coronavirus, including more than 1,000 deaths -- more cases than China, Italy or any other country has seen," reports The New York Times.
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Worldwide Coronavirus Cases Surpass Half a Million

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  • Looks like it might get there sometime today: https://coronavirus.1point3acr... [1point3acres.com]
    • According to worldometers, the US just passed Italy and China to reach #1 with 81,331 cases (versus 81,285 for China and 80,589 for Italy).

      • by jrumney ( 197329 )

        Top 3 reversed within one day (Italy will also pass China later today). Cue Donald Trump tweets about how the Chinese are faking their numbers (as if anyone believes the US figures are accurate - China already estimated that 60% of their cases have gone undetected).

        • Better to just go by deaths, cases are too easy to miss/fake.
          And the size of the country matters quite a lot too.

          Deaths per million [worldometers.info] is a more useful measure of how different countries are doing.
          Italy(136) and Spain(93) are still way out in front of America(4).
          America might be catching up on that measure, but it's still a long way to go.

    • Yes, the US is #1 in Covid-19. I thought Italy was going to get a turn as #1, but that's the problem with betting on explosive exponential growth

      And that's just the cases we know about. Anyone think America is doing enough testing yet? Anyone besides Trump and some delusional Libertarians?

      But the stock market is way up! All worship the great gawd PROFIT.

      We're #!. USA! USA! USA!

      So much for the jokes, but the stock market has been surging (at least for the last three days) on speculations about which companie

      • Sorry about the typo there. It should say "We're #1."

        Now about the trolls with censorious mod points. I see that comment has already gotten such a mod point. Please blast away. Please waste all your precious and gamed mod points.

        I'll just reply to the original and use the "Quote Parent" option. Actually, the more upset you trolls are, the more obvious it is that the comment in question is hitting home.

        • Your rabid fanboyism of Trump aside, only a moron would believe that the US Army created it, as the Chinese government would have you believe. It's also a fact that China attempted to cover it up, going as far as arresting, possibly even executing, people who spoke about it, during the most critical period. Nothing else needs to be said with regard to blame.

          That said, if you look historically at how the Chinese government has responded to anything that reflects poorly upon itself, it's pretty obvious what l

          • Either you [ArmoredDragon] misdirected your reply or you don't read well. Please feel free to clarify, especially what you were replying to, though overall you sound so confused that I might dismiss your response as terminal.

            However, your first few words did remind me of a (typically weak) joke: Xi's success in containing Covid-19 might be an argument in favor of authoritarianism, but Trump's flagrant incompetence is an infinitely louder argument against.

            (And no, I am not yet fully convinced that Xi has suc

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Already there now, and the number of new cases per day outstrips any other country by a considerable margin: 13,785 added since yesterday. That's more than twice as many as any other country.

      The rate of increase is also going up:
      March 25: 68211 (+13355)
      March 24: 54856 (+11075)
      March 23: 43781 (+10189)
      March 22: 33592 (+9400)
      March 21: 24192 (+4825)
      March 20: 19367 (+5588)
      March 19: 13779 (+4582)
      March 18: 9197 (+2853)

      This fits exponential growth pretty well, although the exponent seems to be going down slightly

      • That's because we're finally ramping up testing!*

        .

        .

        * And because Covid-13 is spreading like wildfire

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          Actually that is a fair point, but it only means things are probably quite a bit worse than the numbers show. I'm waiting for the rate of increase to go down, which will show social distancing is really having an effect; for now we just can't be sure.

          • by shanen ( 462549 )

            The way Trump and the GOT are handling things, the only thing that's going to flatten the S curve will be population saturation. And no, Trump is not capable of imagining the consequences if almost 100% of the US population gets exposed to the coronavirus.

            There are several key parameters that will determine where things flatten out. I think the most important is actually a ratio related to the speed of spread and the recovery time. If enough people recover from Covid-19, then you effectively get herd immuni

        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          So in reality the rate of infection has not changed much at all, they have just changed the rate of testing. Those world wide numbers reflect only a tiny fraction of those infected and who have already gotten over it.

    • yes number 1 with a bullet and in probably 1-2 days will pass the 100,000 mark. basically US seems to be the only country that isn't getting a handle on this.
    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      USA is #1. :(

  • While the curve is still rising, the actual numbers of infected are at probably over 16x the reported numbers. People don't get tested unless they show symptoms, it takes about two weeks before that happens, and the total seems to be growing at 4x per week.

    However, do remember that what matters to your health is the infection rate near you. My county of over a million people has panicked and shut down most businesses when there are 22 known cases in the county. Bit early for that, guys, as people won't p

    • Here in the Netherlands, you only get tested if the symptoms are severe or you are in a risk group. They gave up trying to test every suspected case weeks ago. The delay between infection and test confirmation is about 10 days (7x exponential growth), so one confirmed case probably represented 28 infections. But it seems that we're transitioning from exponential growth to linear growth thanks to measures taken 10 days ago, so the multiplier is decreasing from 28.

      • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        Here in Canada, you can get tested. You'll be waiting up to 9 weeks for the result though. And it took until today, [globalnews.ca] for our federal government to have mandatory quarantines for people arriving from hot spots. Also what's missing in this article from BC on the emergencies act? [globalnews.ca] Well they state 'reselling of supplies' is now illegal, what they don't tell you is that people of dual citizenship's were clearing out entire stores of product and trying to ship it to China. Australia has also had a similar prob

    • when there are 22 known cases in the county.

      The key word is "known". You only know about 22 people. But if those 22 people infect three other people, and those infect three other people, you can have over 10K cases in a short time.

      It takes over five days for someone to show symptoms, and if those symptoms are mild, they might not think anything of a slight cough or fever thinking it's "just the flu". They go around infecting others, and you're off to the races.

      • by lgw ( 121541 )

        The key word is "known". You only know about 22 people. But if those 22 people infect three other people, and those infect three other people, you can have over 10K cases in a short time.

        In the very post you're replying too I pointed this out. Nevertheless, the number of infected now is not 10k people. Everything's a trade-off. Closing eat-in restaurants and gyms and so on is the "low hanging fruit", the best payoff for the least cost, and everyone did that some time ago. But stricter measures have a larger cost, and they don't have much of a benefit until infection rates get within a couple weeks of the peak.

        The goal is to flatten the curve at the peak, and thus increase the number of

    • by Eloking ( 877834 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @05:11PM (#59875218)

      Why is this modded up?

      My county of over a million people has panicked and shut down most businesses when there are 22 known cases in the county. Bit early for that, guys, as people won't put up with that economic burden forever. You would have done better to wait until the infection rate was around 1% before you started to use up people's patience

      The recovery rate is linear, so the more people are infected, the longer the shut down will last. Hubei had 50 thousand infected at his peak and needed almost 3 months to recover. South Korea shut down faster with a peak of 7 thousand and will probably need about 2 months. Canada was even faster and may need even less time to recover.

      On the other hand, the US has pretty much decided to ignore the tread and the infection rate stays exponential while passing China for the first place for the number of infected.

      trying to lock stuff down now doesn't flatten the curve, it only moves the peak back a week or so.

      [citation needed]

      I don't know what trends you're looking for, but every single one I've looked at so far is slowing down about 2-3 weeks after complete shutdown. Without it, the curve stays exponential as long as nothing is done.

      • by lgw ( 121541 )

        The recovery rate is linear, so the more people are infected, the longer the shut down will last. Hubei had 50 thousand infected at his peak and needed almost 3 months to recover. South Korea shut down faster with a peak of 7 thousand and will probably need about 2 months. Canada was even faster and may need even less time to recover.

        Not sure what you mean by "recover" here? Individuals who get sick take a certain amount of time to recover that basically fixed - good care helps you live through it, but doesn't change when you recover (well, mostly, some people will get opportunistic secondary infections which might be prevented).

        On the other hand, the US has pretty much decided to ignore the tread and the infection rate stays exponential while passing China for the first place for the number of infected.

        Ignore how? Most places have "stay at home, essential businesses only" by now.

        don't know what trends you're looking for, but every single one I've looked at so far is slowing down about 2-3 weeks after complete shutdown. Without it, the curve stays exponential as long as nothing is done.

        A virus can only spread exponentially until it burns itself out. There is no other curve, only exponential until it tops out. Wha

    • trying to lock stuff down now doesn't flatten the curve, it only moves the peak back a week or so

      That is not in even remote agreement with the number of deaths in various nations - Japan, South Korea, China. Australia as a whole has had all of 13 deaths.

      https://www.nytimes.com/intera... [nytimes.com]

      • by lgw ( 121541 )

        That is not in even remote agreement with the number of deaths in various nations

        Did you read the entire paragraph you replied to. I mean, I think it would fit in a tweet.

        In my county where there are only 22 confirmed cases it's too early to lock stuff down. Each local government needs to act according to their situation.

    • While the curve is still rising, the actual numbers of infected are at probably over 16x the reported numbers. People don't get tested unless they show symptoms, it takes about two weeks before that happens, and the total seems to be growing at 4x per week.

      Assuming the death counts are somewhat accurate, one should be able to get a good estimate of the number infected. The basic idea is that the infection curve implies the death curve; therefore, it should be possible to use the death curve to learn somet

  • That's almost as many people as were killed by the flu this year... truly terrifying.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 )

      That's almost as many people as were killed by the flu this year... truly terrifying.

      Were you out sick on the day they taught about exponential functions in your school?

      • by bblb ( 5508872 )

        No, I was there for that... I was also there for the days they taught critical thinking, individual freedoms, virology, epidemiology and loads of other subjects that you scared kids apparently missed. When it's all said and done, you lot are gonna feel pretty stupid for inciting terror and ranting about millions dying.

        But tell me more about how a virus that's infected fewer people than the flu has killed is such a threat we need to surrender our freedom and lock ourselves away from the world... I'm sure it'

        • This is the debate I hate.

          Both of you morons are right. True, we should not be overplaying the risks that covid-19 creates, but we should not be underplaying it either. All we have left now is vapid panic on both sides all over the place.

          Everyone failed from Trump down. Congress could have acted, but I think they were busy trying to fuck over Trump to care. Trump could have done something but he was too busy being Trump.

          Now we all have a problem, hope everyone is happy!

        • But tell me more about how a virus that's infected fewer people than the flu has killed is such a threat we need to surrender our freedom and lock ourselves away from the world...

          It's the same exponential functions that you say you were taught but are apparently too stupid to comprehend.

        • No, I was there for that... I was also there for the days they taught critical thinking

          Sleeping in class don't count boyo.

        • No, I was there for that... I was also there for the days they taught critical thinking, individual freedoms, virology, epidemiology and loads of other subjects that you scared kids apparently missed.

          You were there, but you're demonstrating here that you didn't actually learn anything from those classes. Were you one of those kids who sat at the back and only ever answered present.

        • Your critical thinking skills stop in the present it seems.
        • Name one recent affliction/virus/flu that overloaded the hospitals like this is doing.
      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        You're feeding a troll and helping it muddle the discussion. I urge you to ignore the sock puppet and post your substantive comments elsewhere and to an actual human being.

    • Re: Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Alessiof ( 705540 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @04:50PM (#59875138)
      Writing from Italy. We have problems disposing corpses right now. Exactly like the last seasonal flue, right.
      • I do feel sorry for you, but you're not going to find any sympathy from the trolls of today's Slashdot. ("Don't feed 'em" is my advice.)

        Anyway, America is going to be in much worse shape soon enough. Again the trolls don't care. I think most of them are not Americans (and not Italians), but the ones who are cannot possibly believe they are about to die.

        However, I'm curious how the Italians feel about the blame. Any consensus developing in Italy? Do most Italians feel the politicians failed to respond quickl

        • by Cederic ( 9623 )

          I'm curious how the Italians feel about the blame

          They don't. They have the maturity to accept that blame is not appropriate.

          • by shanen ( 462549 )

            While I wasn't talking to you, it obviously was a public comment and open to your reply. Do you have any verifiable basis for your superficial and dubious statement?

            For examples, do you live in Italy, do you speak Italian, or have you met a large number of Italian people and determined that all of them were exceedingly "mature" and kind as saints, immune to the human proclivities to seek explanations and reasons and even assign blame for the bad stuff. Or perhaps you have some relevant survey results to cit

    • That's almost as many people as were killed by the flu this year... truly terrifying.

      You people are very amusing. Keep licking those elevator buttons.

  • Dr John Lee suggests that we might be paying too much attention [spectator.co.uk] to covid-19. Yes: it is nasty, but are we sure that it is killing as many as we think ? If someone dies who has covid-19 we record that as the cause - in a way that we do not always record as cause of death just because someone has it.

    What do you think of this interpretation ?

    • I think that the numbers being hospitalised indicate that it is serious:

      https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/20/london-hospitals-struggle-to-cope-with-coronavirus-surge [theguardian.com]

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51714498 [bbc.co.uk]

      I imagine it's not just London either.
      • With media telling you millions are going die 24/7 and widespread panic, it's shocking that every hospital isn't packed. They've worked to create a panic, so now people are panicking, and they're saying "look at our healthcare system being overwhelmed".

        Same thing with goods... nobody was worried about buying toilet paper until everybody started screaming that there was no toilet paper to buy... now everyone is buying as much as they can find.

    • The death rate is probably lower than being reported per capita. But it doesn't change the fact that hospitals are being filled with COVID-19 patients, crowding out other uses. And people are dying. Does it matter what the rate is if its above our capacity to deal with it.

      • "The death rate is probably lower than being reported per capita."

        it has to be... because many experts are saying that the currently reported numbers are far short of actual cases by 6 or 16 times right?

        So that means that many people have already recovered so the death rate is far lower than being reported.

        • I said per capita, not per infected person. That is, the estimated rates in the population are probably going to be off. But it doesn't matter what the rate of people who catch it die - it matters if the rate at which people need hospitalization exceed the hospital beds. Which is definitely the case.

    • My brother treats people who have COVID-19 and he says it's not affecting just the elderly, it's going to leave long lasting or permanent damage in severe cases, resources are almost down to where they need to start making triage decisions and this is with strong "flatten the curve" measures. Generally speaking, only a few got it so far and virtually nobody is immune, so not doing anything is just accepting that the load on the hospitals will be several times what they can bear and that will make the mortal
    • We don't know the impacts of letting it run wild.

      We don't know the efficacy of our counteractive measures, nor the costs of them.

      And still, even if we knew all the above with total precision and certainly, opinions would differ wildly on what to do (and not do).

    • by belthize ( 990217 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @05:54PM (#59875398)

      I'm astonished at the rather obvious and simple systematic math mistake he makes given his apparent credentials. It takes roughly 7 days to show symptoms and be counted and 14 days from first infection to death for those cases that result in death. So when he looks at the total cases data (e.g. 8000) and the total deaths to date (e.g. 400) and comes up with a mortality rate of 5% that's fundamentally flawed. Given the exponential growth in cases it would be more accurate to compare deaths to date with total cases a week ago.

      In his example 400 deaths to date and UK had ~2000 reported cases one week ago which gives an *apparent* death rate of 20%, if you then factor that only 10% of cases are reported (as he does) then that gives a realized death rate of 2%. Obviously there's a lot of fudging going on, the actual number will never be known.

      There are different models one can take for onset, estimates of detected vs real etc but his methodology is quite simply wrong.

      • Replying to myself to clarify the math. Given the vast majority of cases at a given time have an indeterminate outcome we have to take the known cases of death and extrapolate from the state of the system when those cases were added. So counting the deaths today reflects the state of known cases 1 week ago.

        His method of determining percentage is only valid if 100% of remaining cases result in no death.

        Lastly, sure the record of death is kind of interesting but my understanding from doctors is that the o

      • It's even worse than you're suggesting Data shows [ourworldindata.org] it takes 2 weeks to get better for a mild case, But 2-8 weeks to die from a bad case.

        On average the disease lasts two weeks. The WHO reports that “the median time from onset to clinical recovery for mild cases is approximately 2 weeks

        For severe and critical cases it is 3 to 6 weeks according to the same study.

        And for those who eventually died, the time from symptom onset to death ranged from 2 to 8 weeks.

        A lot of the cases he is calculating with, just haven't had time to die yet.

    • If someone dies who has covid-19 we record that as the cause - in a way that we do not always record as cause of death just because someone has it.

      We don't. Cases for COVID-19 deaths recorded are limited to acute respiratory distress syndrome, heart failure, and renal failure. If it's not one of those 3 it doesn't get recorded as a COVID-19 death.

  • Undercount (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn@ear ... .net minus punct> on Thursday March 26, 2020 @05:17PM (#59875236)

    It's worth noting that this is a severe undercount, as due to the limited testing mild cases are not tested and many who die of COVID-19 aren't tested, and are given an alternate cause of death. Yeah, in many places doctors are supposed to report suspicious cases, but they're busy, so they do the minimal paperwork. Besides, the tests are more vitally needed elsewhere.

    So there's a severe undercount. One may hope that most of the undercount are the milder cases, but reports from various places make that not at all certain. All that's certain is that it's a very severe undercount. I'm not even sure of the plausible range. I'm hoping it's around 20%, mainly mild cases, but I really suspect that it's a whole lot higher, and wouldn't put 200% beyond the bounds of reason. And a whole lot of those would be people who died without being tested.

  • After posting my comment on PROFIT (plus China and the Koreas) I looked over the rest of the discussion to see all the cheering for Covid-19. Amazing, even for Slashdot.

    I just wonder if any of the trolls are sincere or all of them are paid to fake it. Can't actually believe that any sane human being would say such things. Even less believe that they would say these things in person, face to face with REAL people.

    Maybe that's the real threat of social distancing? In a cloud of sock puppets, no one cares if y

  • I wonder if it's possible for all those affected around the world to sue the pants off China? Perhaps a world class action lawsuit? It's being called SARS 2 for a reason.
    • SARS is Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. MERS is Mid-East Respiratory Syndrome EBOLA, after the river where it "started" the black death river or something like that. I think this one should be called CARS. CHINA Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
  • So what! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by p51d007 ( 656414 )
    half a million "have/had" the virus GLOBALLY. Twenty three thousand have died, over one hundred and twenty thousand have RECOVERED. Out of around 8 BILLION people. that's 0.0000625 percent.
    • half a million "have/had" the virus GLOBALLY. Twenty three thousand have died, over one hundred and twenty thousand have RECOVERED. Out of around 8 BILLION people. that's 0.0000625 percent.

      So you're saying 8,000,000,000 - 500,000 = 7, 999,500,000. So out of about 8 billion we still have about 8 billion left to go then.
      Barely even started with this...
      That's what!

  • You think they have 1bn test kits ready?

  • Based on 505M people, 22,000 deaths would be roughly a 4% mortality rate; however, and this is a huge HOWEVER, the half a million coronovirus cases are probably the tip of the iceberg and not an accurate number due to the severe lack of testing. Also, according to Johns Hopkins' numbers, the mortality rate in the U.S. is 1.5%, vastly lower than the worldwide average (of course, again based on confirmed cases and to real numbers).

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