
Oregon has first confirmed Covid-19 case - rediguanayum
https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/DISEASESCONDITIONS/DISEASESAZ/Pages/emerging-respiratory-infections.aspx
======
erentz
And two presumptive cases in Washington (Snohomish and King counties) just
announced at an 8pm press briefing. One a high schooler with unknown origin.
The other a person returning from Korea on Tuesday.

[https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2020/02/2-new-
coronavirus-...](https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2020/02/2-new-coronavirus-
cases-in-washington-state.html)

------
mperham
My son attends that school. We literally got the call while hosting an evening
party for him and several friends. Gonna be a rough week.

~~~
cm2012
You and your immediate family should be okay, but maybe don't visit
grandparents if you have them nearby.

~~~
stewbrew
The same is true for a normal flu. It seems the incubation time is rather long
with this virus which is why you might want to wait before visiting them
again.

------
empath75
I think pretty much anyone that’s not living in an isolated part of the us
should assume that it’s spreading near where you are.

The only reason we haven’t found cases in the us is that we haven’t been
testing. There’s probably 100 people for every person that they’ve tested
positive at this point, maybe more.

~~~
brewdad
I think this is 100% true for the west coast. We know this virus has been in
the wild for at least two weeks, likely more. It's more likely than not that
most large cities nationwide have been exposed at this point.

------
chvid
How does testing and quarantine work for people in the US who are not insured?

I am seeing stories around the web of people having to pay 2-3.000 USD for a
test and also facing major bills for hospital quarantine?

~~~
totalZero
If you make a working-class wage in the USA and you don't have health
insurance, it's pretty unlikely you'll check in to a hospital for any reason
that doesn't scare the hell out of you.

In addition to being expensive, medical costs in the USA vary wildly between
different hospitals, cannot be predicted based on symptoms alone, and are
essentially not discoverable during an emergency. Even if you have insurance,
some parts of the medical attention you receive will be covered but others may
not. For example, you may have a procedure that is covered by your insurance
company, but the diagnostics needed to address an urgent complication of that
procedure may not be covered.

More specifically to the present viral outbreak...imagine paying $3k for a
test just to find out that the result is negative. That happened to this guy
in Florida: [https://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-
care/article24047680...](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-
care/article240476806.html)

~~~
chvid
Given that. I don't understand how the US can fight a viral epidemic.

You have the best medical services in the world; but if a significant part of
the population is not going to use that because of the threat of financial
ruin, then you are never going to get on top of an epidemic.

~~~
thephyber
We don’t have the best medical in the world. That’s just marketing.

A doctor in the US can prescribe an expensive medication or a generic, but
they are completely unable to inform you of the price difference. And their
employer is contractually prevented from posting the prices that an insured
patient would pay. American patients probably suffer as much from dealing with
errors in hospital bills, debt collections, insurance companies denying
claims, etc as they do from disease. And our health care system is entirely
fee-for-service rather than optimized for outcomes. Doctors may be idealistic,
but I don’t see how they can do more good than harm in our current parasitic
industry.

~~~
viklove
Depends on how you grade "best medical in the world." If it's how many people
are covered and how easy it is to access healthcare, it's pretty low. If it's
access the specialists and quality care, regardless of cost, it's top of the
world easily. Problem is that only makes a difference for rich people.

------
hn_throwaway_99
With now 3 cases of unknown origin, it's pretty obvious that widespread
community transmission is inevitable - because it's already happening.

SXSW is scheduled to start in Austin in 2 weeks. There will be tens of
thousands of people flying into Austin, many of whom will be coming from
places where coronavirus is circulating in the community. They will hang out
with tens of thousands of _other_ people from around the world, often in
packed-to-the-gills music venues where they are at various levels of
intoxication. They will all fly home to their places of origin a week later.

~~~
abootstrapper
I haven't been in ages, but the "SXSW Crud" used to be a common concept. Too
much booze, lack of sleep, lots of handshaking, + cold and flu. It knocked me
out hard 2 years in a row. After that I started getting the flu shot yearly
and avoiding physical touching at events. Hosting SXSW during this inevitable
pandemic is a terrible terrible idea.

~~~
mike_d
We generically refer to this in the security community as "ConFlu," because it
happens at every conference.

~~~
Izkata
At fan conventions (gaming, anime, etc), "Con Crud".

~~~
stordoff
"PAX Plague" is a common one for PAX.

------
edoceo
Some in WA too.

If you're a hot news junkie Reddit has a dedicated sub

[https://www.reddit.com/r/coronavirus/](https://www.reddit.com/r/coronavirus/)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Can you link to a piece about WA? I'm in Washington.

Edit: I found this:

[https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/2-new-coronavirus-cases-
co...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/2-new-coronavirus-cases-confirmed-in-
washington/ar-BB10xIwv?PC=EMMX20)

~~~
jwilber
Recent link (as of this time): [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
news/health/2-new-coron...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
news/health/2-new-coronavirus-cases-emerge-in-washington-in-king-county-and-
snohomish-county/?amp=1&??twitter?impression=true)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thank you to everyone replying to me.

For those (like me) not super familiar with Washington:

The two reported cases are in King County and Snohomish County. King County is
where Seattle is. Snohomish is the county bordering it to the north.

So this is basically "in and around the Seattle area."

I'm around two hours or so by car from there. We get a lot of weekend
vacationer traffic from that general region. This is not comforting news for
me.

Edit: as of about twenty minutes ago, I have an email from Washington
Department of Health saying in part:

 _Two people from Washington state treated for COVID-19 at Providence Sacred
Heart Medical Center in Spokane have been discharged and are now resting at
home._

------
burgerzzz
Live in the Portland area and am coming down with a bad cold that started this
morning and is getting progressively worse. I know I’m in a state of paranoia,
from checking the news too often, but I can’t help but to have fears of the
worst.

~~~
kebman
Over here in Norway, people who suspect Covid-19 are urged to call the doctor
instead of visiting the emergency room. If there are any local phone numbers
for information, I'd call those first. They'll give you a check-list of stuff
to verify if you're even a candidate. And if you are, then most likely a
health crew will come and visit you with tests. Note: How they go about this
may be different depending on your local area's response plan for the disease,
though, so listen to local media, or official announcements, or find official
information online if you know where. Anyway, if you haven't visited areas
known for having outbreaks, then you're most likely just suffering a regular
flu. Media coverage of this thing really spreads more anxiety than it's worth.
Even in China there's only cases in the tens of thousands, and China has a
total population of 1.4 _billion_ people, so the chance of you actually having
it is still pretty small. ^^

~~~
_bxg1
> I live in the Portland area [U.S.]

> most likely a health crew will come and visit you with tests

Pahahahahahahahaha

I'm sorry, but that's not how things work here. A man in Miami had to _pay_
$3000 for being administered a Coronavirus test. At a hospital he'd driven
himself to.

~~~
cma
Sounds like he is in a communist medical system. Pandemic prevention is
something each person should price in, paying to test themselves individually,
in a free market. Externalities are really just regulatory capture from being
communist in one way or another, and don’t exist once truly free as in Ayn
Rand. /s

~~~
kebman
Dude! I live in Norway! Bernie speaks highly of my country _all the time!_ xD

On the other hand, even in the USA, it is in the interest of the state, and
not least your many _companies,_ to defend against this epidemic. Without
workers, or much less _customers,_ then I'm afraid a lot of companies are
going to go bankrupt. Moreover, supply chains may break down, and you might
see shortages. The implications are pretty serious, and so testing shouldn't
be a matter of who can afford it. With such a disease, it's _everyone 's_
business.

~~~
cma
/s is meant to indicate sarcasm

------
nodesocket
So far it seems to be isolated to the west coast. Unfortunately I don't expect
it to stay there. At some point (if not already happened), somebody will get
on a plane headed to the midwest, south, or east coast and spread it.

~~~
UncleOxidant
In this case the person was showing symptoms back on the 19th - 9 days ago.
They could have been exposed up to 2 weeks before that. No way this is
isolated to the West Coast now.

------
yodsanklai
I really don't get why people get so worried about this. Especially on a
science oriented forum like HN.

 _At this moment_ , even if we assume that there are 100 times more unreported
cases than reported cases, the odds are so low that there is simply no reason
to be worried, even if attending an international conference. It's true that
people do get sick, and die, and it can happen to anyone. But people also get
into all types of unlikely accidents, and we don't let this affect our daily
life. Besides, symptoms are mild for most people. We're not talking about
Ebola here.

I'm blaming the media. They make a "good" job at reporting each new individual
case, making you feel that "this could be you" but IMHO this is noise. What I
want to know is, how are countries prepared, what steps will be followed if
this gets out of control, what is currently the probability of catching the
virus, what do we know about the virus, how could the situation evolve in one
week, one month and so on....

There are effective ways to mitigate the virus propagation other than
canceling all events and stopping our economy, with all the adverse
consequences we can imagine. For instance, starting by following the
recommendations from health organisations. Such as stay home when showing
symptoms, washing hands and so on. This is _not_ followed by most people in
Europe (and I suspect the US too). I see people coughing all the time in
public transportation (compared with Asia where people wear masks).

EDIT: I'm not saying that we shouldn't be concerned or prepared, but I
wouldn't go beyond the recommendations from the CDC, and I think that catching
the virus _now_ is extremely unlikely.

~~~
jnbiche
Go check out the case fatality rate and estimated r0 for the Spanish Flu of
1918-the deadliest pandemic of the past several centuries. You'll note that
its characteristics are fairly similar to what we know of Covid-19. The only
break we get is that young adults don't seem nearly as susceptible to Covid-19
as they were to Spanish Flu. But everything else points to the possibility of
a pandemic along the lines of Spanish Flu. _That 's_ why we are so concerned.

Media aside, the CDC isn't prime to exaggeration, and China isn't prone to
completely shutting down the economy of entire provinces of millions of people
without dire need.

And there's every reason to believe we will have a similar experience to
China's.

~~~
themagician
Everything else doesn’t point to that. Media FUD points to that.

If we have a similar experience to that of China it seems like it won’t be a
big deal.

In 2018-2019 80,000 people died from the flu in the United States. 80,000. No
one really cared.

The death rate for the current coronavirus seems to be about 2%, but it’s
likely even lower than that since so many cases are going unreported since the
symptoms are so mild in most people.

I see this whole thing as some kind of bizarre media externality. The disease
here is a social one. It’s like the media has evolved in such a way that FUD
has manifested into something that is almost tangible.

It’s not the coronavirus you need be worried about, but the meta-coronavirus.
It’s making people crazy.

~~~
allannienhuis
Agree with you 100%. I have a family member that specializes in communicable
disease - she's got 25+ years of experience working on the front lines
specializing in responding to disease outbreaks like this. She literally
writes the policies and training material for professionals in this area.
She's absolutely livid at the way the media and politicians are dealing with
this. The CDC and WHO are being forced to respond the way they are because of
the political and social pressure. They're trying to keep people from
panicking but they just get accused of trying to cover up 'the truth' if they
try to downplay the media driven frenzy.

~~~
candybar
I've never really been worried about disease outbreaks in the past but this is
different.

> she's got 25+ years of experience working on the front lines specializing in
> responding to disease outbreaks like this. She literally writes the policies
> and training material for professionals in this area.

This isn't the right set of qualifications when it comes to understanding the
total impact. Aside from the front line staff often not having a high-level
understanding of epidemiology, I also don't think she understands the economic
costs of containment.

Early on, there was a huge amount of complacency because we've been successful
in the past and nothing like this ever came to pass. Expertise in some narrow
field can only go so far - unless they are familiar with this particular case,
how different it is from other pathogens they have experience and sufficiently
mathematically inclined to be able to extrapolate beyond the existing data. We
have a once-in-a-life type of pathogen IMO and 25-years of experience may not
matter much if they are merely looking back in their experience to find
similar situations.

> She's absolutely livid at the way the media and politicians are dealing with
> this. The CDC and WHO are being forced to respond the way they are because
> of the political and social pressure. They're trying to keep people from
> panicking but they just get accused of trying to cover up 'the truth' if
> they try to downplay the media driven frenzy.

How people tend to respond to events like this is part of the reality of the
situation. You can't simply hand-wave away the social, political and economic
consequences of the expected responses and how that affects the disease-
fighting efforts.

This reminds me of the financial crisis - if you did a top-down analysis, it
pointed to an unprecedented situation and it was easy to see how the market
actors would response in a way that would compound the crisis but but most
experts had never seen something like this, didn't have a comprehensive
understanding of how things work, had never seen true panic and had some
flawed models telling them that in some perfect world, things are fine and
some of the earlier market movements were irrational overreactions.

------
unityByFreedom
Wash your hands often, don't touch your face, and carry alcohol sanitizer.
Maintain your mental health as well. Remember you have _far_ less chance of
catching this than the common flu, and most people will recover from both.

~~~
adrianN
You have a much lower chance of catching in _right now_. Wait a few weeks and
that might change.

~~~
unityByFreedom
Most likely you'll be aware of any increased risk, from reports like this,
before you come near it.

Control the things you can, wash your hands and keep a healthy mental state.

~~~
adrianN
I'm a lot more worried about the economic effects of the pandemic than about
the actual disease as I'm young and healthy. But I think now is the time to
buy a big sack of rice and beans, just in case.

~~~
unityByFreedom
If your portfolio is diversified, e.g. via an index following the S&P 500, I
don't see a reason to worry. Trying to time the whole market with short-term
bets is a gamble, not a long-term strategy.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
The stock market is not the economy. Many businesses and schools will be
closed down. That massively impacts people who often don't even have a few
hundred dollars on hand for an emergency.

~~~
unityByFreedom
> Many businesses and schools will be closed down

Nobody can predict the future. As of right now, the risk to Americans remains
low.

------
runawaybottle
Does anyone know what the official criteria is for Pandemic classification?

~~~
protomyth
Read the Risk Assessment part
[https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/summary.html](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/summary.html)

------
finaliteration
I live in the Portland area and I’m doing my very best to not panic. My family
has stocked up on a couple weeks worth of food and medicine gradually over the
last few weeks and we have an “earthquake kit” that we already had in place. I
feel like we’re relatively prepared for a quarantine situation if it comes
down to it.

The main reason I’m anxious, however, is that I have asthma and one of my
biggest fears is suffocating to death. I remember going to the ER as a kid and
blacking out because I basically stopped breathing. I still have nightmares
about it.

This is not a great time for someone with anxiety. If you’re like me, please
remember to take deep breaths, get enough sleep, and remember that in the vast
majority of cases things will be okay.

But also please, please, please wash your hands.

~~~
otachack
Wash your hands for 20 seconds*!

~~~
Aachen
I read that somewhere (couple weeks before the first reports from Wuhan
actually, a toilet in our office building in Germany had it on a poster) but I
don't know why this works. Why isn't it sufficient to rub over every part
(between fingers, back of your hand, etc.)? Soap isn't anti-viral, what does
longer exposure do? Am I supposed to just rub over every part of my hand N
times until 20-30s have passed or does it just need to sit there for the time?

~~~
thinkingemote
Soap is mechanical. So you need to rub every part of surface it's not about
time.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
The soap also takes time to work. Soap binds to or encapsulates nonpolar
molecules in a polar envelope, allowing nonpolar things to be washed away by
water. That encapsulation takes a little bit of time.

------
anonsivalley652
And, at the present time:

76 under monitoring (people who may have been exposed)

2 under investigation (similar symptoms but unconfirmed)

------
marklacey
[removed due to state change]

~~~
anonsivalley652
No, it's confirmed.

[https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/DISEASESCONDITIONS/DISEASESAZ/...](https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/DISEASESCONDITIONS/DISEASESAZ/Pages/emerging-
respiratory-infections.aspx)

------
Taniwha
I have a feeling that at this point more people have put more time into
planning for zombie virus attacks than real actual virus attacks ... it may be
we have to study zombie attack plans to figure out what to do next .....

In related news, apparently I don't have enough shotguns

------
joering2
At this point I wonder why won't the government mail everyone a N95 mask to
slow down the spread. I mean IRS knows everyone address with the price of each
mask of 65 cents it would be few million buck at the most. But would raise
awareness across the US.

~~~
pfdietz
Because they don't have 370 million N95 masks.

~~~
belltaco
They actually do.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2018/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2018/04/24/inside-the-secret-u-s-stockpile-meant-to-save-us-all-in-
a-bioterror-attack/)

~~~
pfdietz
The US Strategic National Stockpile currently has 12 million N95 masks and 30
M surgical masks.

