Originally posted on jessy.io.

March 15 update: national lockdowns might happen, if we really want to contain this

March 11 update: the WHO has finally declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. It's been overdue, and honestly, we have missed the golden window for containing the outbreak.

As someone who has been following COVID-19 updates religiously since Jan 20, 2020, I have kept a close track of what happened since.

Even though my only association with Wuhan is my father and grandfather have both graduated in the universities in Wuhan, my heart goes out to those who have and are still fighting in the frontline.

DM me for updates or follow Telegram channels for the latest verified/unverified information. I realized why I am so crazy about this, it's because crisis gives me adrenaline.

Originally I had all my COVID-19 posts on this page, but they were way too long with too much info, so I split them into other pages by topics. TLDR, TLDR.

Talking about facts, some good posts: https://twitter.com/LizSpecht/status/1236095180459003909

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

COVID-19 vs Seasonal Flu (it's much worse):

• Yes, historically, flu has caused many more infected cases and deaths (between 5 to 6 digits) than COVID-19 (~4k reported deaths as of March 11th).
• COVID-19 is 10x - 50x (if hospital is overrun) deadlier than flu
  • COVID-19 fatality rate = ~1% - 5%, depending on the availability of medical resources
    • Current WHO listed fatality rate = 3.4%
    • Also large varies between age groups (e.g., 0.1% for age 0 to 25, 14% for age 80+) - if the data we have out there is representative and accurate (which would most definitely depend in the transparency of the country)
      • Though, it seems that there might be a trend where younger people (age ~40) are able to hold on while older people receive intensive care, but by the time the younger people can't hold on any more, the medical resources have been exhausted
  • Seasonal flu fatality rate = ~0.1%
• COVID-19 is 2x - 5x more contagious than flu
  • COVID-19 R0 = ~3 - 6.7, every infected person can on average infect 2.6 to 6.6 more people, depending on population density, travel restrictions, the permission of large gatherings, people's hygiene habits
    • This type of spread means cases are most likely going to 10x every 14 days
  • Flu R0 = 1.3
    • If R0 < 1, then cases will go over over time
• COVID-19 can spread in 4 ways, making crowded and enclosed areas like hospitals, elevators, public transport, restaurants and cruises the worst of all
  • Droplet - try keeping 7ft/2m away from people in open areas, or 16 ft/5m away from people in enclosed areas (e.g., buses), wear masks, goggles, gloves, and protective coveralls if you want to be extra, extra safe (or just extra, lol).
  • Contact - wear gloves, wash hands for 20s, don't touch your face (mouth, nose, eyes)
  • Fecal - close toilet lids when flushing
  • Aerosol - don't go to crowded and enclosed places, have good ventilation in your house. Try to avoid going to hospitals, elevators, cruises, conferences, large gatherings
  • Why wearing masks, protective glasses and washing hands are important? Because even if you catch the virus, you're able to catch it in smaller quantity (small inoculum) which gives your body extra time to adjust to the invader and lower chance of becoming a critical case
• SARS-Cov-2 (name of the virus) can attack and cause damages to many organs besides the lungs (even your central nervous system) and things can happen very fast. This could potentially explain the many cases of pedestrians randomly falling down on the streets without any warnings
  • Theoretically, the virus can potentially also damage the male sexual organs (Feb 22nd: still waiting for more clinical data)
  • It can lead to permanent damage to different parts of your tissues and organs (Feb 12th: still waiting for more clinical data)
  • Causes a routine loss of sense of smell and taste
• Unlike the flu, there is no immunity (~99.9% people won't have immunity, but some may naturally be immune to it), vaccines, or special drugs with COVID-19 as of now, as it is a novel virus
  • Proactively developing herd immunity (e.g., UK) is very risky and could lead to many ethical debates
• Expensive to test and treat (e.g., the ECMO machine, a common medical support for critical cases, would cost US$73k per procedure) for the government and patients (if not covered by the government or medical insurance)
  • Many would require 2-3 weeks of staying in hospitals to get cared for, which means resources are easy to exhaust, turnover rate is low, new patients can't be added in due to hospital bed shortage (or make hallways into ICUs)