How deadly is the coronavirus really?

I'm don't have any medical training (unless you count a first aid certificate), and I'm certainly not a medical expert, but I do have post-grad training in industrial mathematics, and something seems very wrong with the current media (and even medical professional) discussions regarding how lethal the coronavirus actually is.

It is often reported that the death rate is "around 2%", which is, on the face of it, lower than the 6.5% fatality rate for SARS back in 2002-2003 (when there were 348 deaths and 5327 people diagnosed as having SARS).

However, given the incubation period of the new coronavirus is apparently 1-14 days (before symptoms appear), surely the current death toll (as deaths are known/reported almost immediately) needs to be compared to the number of cases that existed when the victims were infected (on average about 7 days ago?). Even allowing for a delay of a couple of days from when symptoms appear to when a case is detected/reported, the current death toll needs to be compared to the number of people that were infected when those that just died were actually infected (ie. not today, but several days previously).

Hence, rather than divide the death toll at any particular date with the reported cases at that same time, the death toll needs to be compared with the number of cases reported several days ago?

Looking at how the death rate changes if you compare figures with the number of cases reported at that time, vs. the number of cases known 1, 2 or 3 days previously seems to suggest that the death rate may be a lot higher than 2%. I suppose we won't know the true figure until the spread of the disease ends and we can get final figures for the total number of people that were infected and how many of them eventually died. That rate may also change over time if the virus mutates (often ease of transmission increases while virulence declines - I'm not sure if there is any theoretical reason for that, or if it is just a 'rule of thumb'?). Fortunately the spread of the disease appears to be linear rather than geometric at this time - possibly due to isolation/containment efforts?

JAN   CASES   DEATHS   T0     T1     T2     T3
24     651      18    2.8%
25     941      26    2.8%   4.0%
26    1438      42    2.9%   4.5%   6.5%
27    2116      56    2.7%   3.9%   6.0%   8.6%
28    2794      80    2.9%   3.8%   5.6%   8.5%
29    4474     107    2.4%   3.8%   5.1%   7.4%

T0 denotes death tally compared to known cases as at that date, T1 denotes deaths compared to the number of cases known as at the previous date etc.

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Health vs. Fitness - when might it not be such a good idea to go to the gym?

Continuing to work out when you are sick or injured can be counterproductive, but for regular gym goers there is often a temptation to continue to work out even if it isn't really such a good idea. A less common (OK, pretty damn unlikely) situation is when attending the gym might actually be bad for you health.

Having missing Monday's gym session (the gym was closed for the public holiday, and we were out of town anyhow), I decided that DS2 and I would also skip today's planned gym session and also this coming Friday's session. We'll decide whether or not to attend the gym next week over the coming weekend.

Why? My rationale is that gyms are notorious for being a great place to get sick during 'flu season in normal circumstances, so I didn't think it was a great idea to go to the gym when a) there have just been five confirmed cases of coronavirus in Australia in the past few days, with four of them living here in Sydney, and b) the gym we attend happens to be located in Chatswood, which has a high Chinese population (according to the 2016 census, 34.1% of Chatswood's population is of Chinese ancestry, with 20.7% of the population born in China). So there's a good chance that some of the passengers on the flights into Sydney from Wuhan last week live in Chatswood.

The chances of someone contagious attending the gym we attend is obviously very low, but not zero, so I've decided to play 'better safe than sorry' for a few days, and see if there are any more cases reported in Sydney. In any case, we have some weights at home, so avoiding the gym for a few days won't make any significant impact on our weight training progress.

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Diet 2020 Wk 4 - week ending 26.JAN.2020

I was doing well during the week, and then on the Australia Day long weekend we visited my parents up at the lake house and I had some (slightly) large meals and a small amount of excess carbs, and I didn't do much walking. I did do an hour or so kayaking on Saturday (not as much as I'd intended over the weekend), but didn't much else in terms of exercise. My overall stats for the week still look OK, but as the high cals/low exercise came at the end of the week it will probably mean that this week also won't show much/any progress and will instead be focused on getting back into my keto diet and exercise routine. My weight was a bit higher this morning, probably due mostly to extra fluid retention due to the larger meals eaten over the long weekend.

I did get in my three gym sessions last week and continued to increase volume (reps x wt) slightly, but the rate of increase in progressive overload is starting to slow down a bit. I stick to my current weekly routine for the next couple of months until I reach my target weight, then look at varying my routines to try to add muscle once my caloric intake has increased back to maintenance level (allowing for some extra calories required for the weight training to add some lean mass over time).

As yesterday was a public holiday (and I was driving back to Sydney for 3.5 hours in the evening) I didn't get to the gym, so this week I will only have two gym sessions (but I'll be doing another Kendo training session on Saturday). My weight currently seems 'stuck' around the 88/89kg level and my body fat seems to be hovering around 17.5%. I'll just have to wait for some more progress to become apparent. Doing three sessions of weight training per week and restricting caloric intake to around 1,200 kcals/day *must* eventually result in weight loss (and should be predominantly fat rather than lean mass). I just have to be patient and stick with 'the plan' even when there is no obvious improvement day-to-day.

I have to focus on the fact that I've already got back down to the 'best' weight I've been since 2016, and should soon be down to the lowest I've been this century, and closing in on my target weight *80 kg) within a couple of months.

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Movie Review: Color out of Space

Somehow I came across this entire movie on Youtube, before it's even been released in Australia and possibly even before it hit cinemas in the US? Anyhow, I watched the first half two days ago (in between waiting for Fortnite matches to begin and watching Athlean-X weight training clips on Youtube), and finished it off last night (the fact that I was quite happy to pause in the middle of watching this movie and only bothered with the ending because there was nothing much on TV the next night says a lot about this movie). Overall, I'd have said this was a poor mashup of 'The Blob'/'The Thing' and 'Altered States' - except that this is based on an century-old H P Lovecraft short story.

Anyhow, the movie is full of disgusting special effects of mutant wildlife, farm animals, and, eventually, the family that is the focus of this movie. All the result of some random piece of space debris (a meteorite?) that crashes to Earth in the family's back yard (conveniently close to the front porch and well). Aside from Nicholas Cage in full manic mode, the movie has little to recommend it IMHO. Overall I'd give it 2/5 stars.

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