Not relevant to this thread, but Brexit happens to be something both you and Beast voted for in 2016.

True, but I was suffering from a virus called nationalism

How were you cured? Antiviral treatment, psychotherapy or electroshock?

I came off Facebook and joined Twitter

I thought Iran had ruled out quarantine for cities or regions, but the following is being reported by the WSJ:

"...

About 1,000 other people with coronavirus-like symptoms are being examined, Iranian health officials said Monday.

Iranian officials have asked people not to leave Qom, one of the country’s main pilgrimage sites about 75 miles south of the country’s capital, which the health ministry said has reported the highest number of confirmed infections.

— Aresu Eqbali and Sune Engel Rasmussen"

They should issue a fatwa and start executing them like they do with homosexuals. 

First infection in Greece, a 38 year old woman who had travelled to north Italy. She had no symptoms at all.

I wonder why she was tested? The advice here is only to contact the NHS if you have any symptoms, unless you had been in the 11 locked down towns (none of which are anywhere near ski resorts). So many were skiing in Italy last week, my daughter's best friend and her parents included, but they are well and therefore not intending to be tested.

EDIT: She had mild symptoms according to the BBC.

My understanding is that she voluntarily asked to be tested because she had been in northern Italy last week, I could be wrong though.

Just got back from the gym. Definitely a change of mood. People are using the sanitiser gel frequently. 

One would hope that slightly better hygiene in the long run might be a good outcome from this.  

Pretty sensible stuff from the WHO director:

"The increase in cases outside China has prompted some media and politicians to push for a pandemic to be declared. We should not be too eager to declare a pandemic without a careful and clear-minded analysis of the facts. WHO has already declared a public health emergency of international concern – our highest level of alarm.

Using the word pandemic carelessly has no tangible benefit, but it does have significant risk in terms of amplifying unnecessary and unjustified fear and stigma, and paralyzing systems. It may also signal that we can no longer contain the virus, which is not true. We are in a fight that can be won if we do the right things."

A counterpoint though is that there may be people that do have the virus but can't transmit it. I suspect anyone with a positive saliva test is far more likely to transmit than someone who tests negitive but still has the virus at a low level.

Unfortunately the French man who died had not travelled to either China or Italy.

One thing I'm interested in seeing a a resolved CFR for cases in countries outside of China (that we can trust, so not Iran for example). Currently resolved CFRs are still very high (33% in SK, 8% in Japan, 86% in Italy) but should more quickly converge than a naive CFR. The Resolved CFR for all cases (including China) is holding steady at 9%. This is what the mortality rate might look like if the Chinese data is reliable and there are not a significant amount of mild, undetected cases.

Essentially the naive CFR might be 'accidentally' right because the lag and mild cases cancel out.

Not so accidental though, there was always a reasonable chance of that happening. Still early days though.

Interesting stats from BBC:

The diamond princess should also enable us to determine a resolved IFR (i.e taking the mild cases into account). Although I would expect it to be rather higher than the true figure due to the demography of the cruise ship being quite different to the general population.

It did not happen with SARS or MERS. Usually the lag dominates. For these effects to cancel out there needs to be alot of mild undetected cases, which is very concerning in of itself.

This virus is probably quite different from SARS or MERS though and I made that very point to you a month ago when there was already evidence from China that the majority of cases had only mild symptoms. 

Incidentally the naive CFR is starting to rise now. In the chinese data it's currently at 3.5% rather than 2%. This is not unexpected towards the end of an outbreak.

I noticed also that China has started 14-day quarantines for people who have been in infected countries and that the WHO has called for 'all countries to access and use China's expertise'.

Some forum experts though still think that the data from China is dodgy. We'll know I guess by summer.

One way in which it's different is that there is more lag because of how long it takes to kill you. The resolved CFR will probably end up being something like 7-8% based on the Chinese data which is what we would expect the naive CFR to rapidally rise to. Assuming it's about 8%, that means for every 1 case in China there needs to be 3 undetected mild ones for the true mortality to end up at 2%.

That does not reassure me.

Exactly! 3% discount on Monday, another 3% or so yesterday and - at the time of writing - just under a percent today. Obviously people aren't going to stop buying deodorant, booze etc in the long term, so those prices will just pop back up once this whole scare is over (I fully expect this new version of flu to go worldwide, then like regular flu it'll cease being newsworthy).

I've been drip-feeding my SIPP this week: £1,000 on Monday, another £800 yesterday and £400 today. I fully expect in 18 years (when I can draw on it), those investments will have done me well!