COVID Series

While China remains largely in lockdown, covid-19 cases in the rest of the world are at a key juncture.

To-date, confirmed cases have been lower than feared. Though increasingly, we’re suspecting that’s due to inadequate testing & reporting.

And the cases we *do* know of (now at ~1,000) appear to be growing at an exponential rate. So the next two weeks will be critical in telling the tale.We’ll soon know whether the spread is indeed slower than initially feared, or we’ll start to see huge increases in the number of infected ex-China.

Good updates on the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic (aka covid-19) are becoming harder to obtain as governments tighten their grip on news sources.

The data being shared, particularly by the Chinese are increasingly hard to believe, as they don’t match the massive response the government is undertaking.

Likewise, outside of China, reported cases remain lower than we would expect given the powerful R0 (i.e., infectiousness) of the virus, as well as its long asymptomatic incubation period.

Are we being intentionally kept in the dark?

Oh, boy…the scientific research on covid-19 (the new name of the Wuhan coronavirus) continues to reveal what a huge challenge containing this virus is.

A new report from Los Alamos Labs calculates its R0 at between 4.7 to 6.6. That is massively contagious!

A full-blown pandemic looks increasingly unstoppable at this point.

The coronavirus continues its spread through China and surrounding Asian countries.

The data increasingly show that this virus is wickedly contagious, especially in crowded environments where population density is high — like the densely-packed buildings in cities.

A new report finds that the incubation period for the coronavirus may be as long as 24 days, 10 days longer than previous expected.

That means that the potential size of “infected & contagious yet unaware” masses walking around (outside of China’s quarantine borders) could be substantially larger than feared.