Unfortunately, the virus is slowly gaining traction outside of China; and trying to trace it's origins and spread are becoming more and more difficult.
Cases are spreading in South Korea, Iran, Italy, Lebanon, Singapore. And you have to imagine the resources needed in many of those countries aren't great.
In a new article on Washington Post today, this is a pretty ominous point by a Hopkins health scholar:
“I think we should assume that this virus is very soon going to be spreading in communities here, if it isn’t already, and despite aggressive actions, we should be putting more efforts to mitigate impacts,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and senior scholar the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “That means protecting people who are most likely to develop severe illness and die.” |
I think we are about to have a lot of our infrastructure and systems tested. Healthcare, transportation, employment, food, banking, etc.
Hopefully, we are up for it...
Corona - (
New Window )
Yeah me neither, and the resources needed in many of those countries isn't great? Outside of Lebanon which ones are you talking about? It's out and out fear mongering.
- this bug may be able to stay alive for ten days on inanimate surface (flu is one day)
- incubation period had not been determined can be as long as 24 days, not the 14 initially believed, which means there are likely to be far greater numbers shedding the virus who were thought to be contained.
But carry on.
- this bug may be able to stay alive for ten days on inanimate surface (flu is one day)
- incubation period had not been determined can be as long as 24 days, not the 14 initially believed, which means there are likely to be far greater numbers shedding the virus who were thought to be contained.
But carry on.
Thanks CHP
Some really irresponsible and uninformed posts on this thread
There also isn’t a vaccine yet, so if it spreads it could get ugly.
As SF points out, last year was a particularly virulent flu but still nowhere as deadly as this corona virus.
Right now, the death rate for the Coronavirus is about 15-20X > than seasonal flu.
Right now, the death rate for the Coronavirus is about 15-20X > than seasonal flu.
Barney Miller episode on the subject - ( New Window )
It is not a matter of how many people it killed - it is the percentage of infected people that die. I believe coronavirus is considerably more deadly and based on the age of at least two of the doctors who have died in China (assuming they died of the virus) it may not be just the very old and very young that are dying from it.
Unlike most instances of flu, the highest mortality was among healthy adults and not young children or the elderly, which some people have suggested that mortality was actually promoted by a vigorous immune response.
Unlike most instances of flu, the highest mortality was among healthy adults and not young children or the elderly, which some people have suggested that mortality was actually promoted by a vigorous immune response.
Those numbers are not accurate at all.
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In '18-'19 flu season, 61K died. How many have died from the Coronavirus?
Right now, the death rate for the Coronavirus is about 15-20X > than seasonal flu.
The death rate is misleading. It’s about 2% in Hubei province and almost neglible everywhere else. I’m not sure what’s special about Hubei; could be air quality, could be infrastructure, who knows. But you can’t use the overall death rate to project outside of China.
It looks like it could spread, but flu is inherently more dangerous as far as we know.
- this bug may be able to stay alive for ten days on inanimate surface (flu is one day)
- incubation period had not been determined can be as long as 24 days, not the 14 initially believed, which means there are likely to be far greater numbers shedding the virus who were thought to be contained.
But carry on.
Where’s 24 days coming from? Both CDC and WHO are still reporting incubation periods of 7-10 days, as did the early publications, with them saying “in some cases up to 14 days”. They’re still using 14 days as a quarantine period. I’d be curious to see the newer data.
There’s a conference call with CDC about this on Monday that my work participates in but unfortunately I’ll miss it. (I’ll be at a conference in a Fort Collins if anyone has restaurant tips)
That has been out there for a month, there’s a bio safety level 4 (BSL-4) facility in Wuhan, a lab designed to handle the most dangerous pathogens.
Let’s hope this is false, and that it’s an organic mutation rather than an engineered bio weapon.
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infected an estimated 1/3 of the world's population at the time. Approximately 500 million were infected an 20-50 million victims died (4-10% of those infected). The estimated death toll in the U.S was greater than 600,000.
Unlike most instances of flu, the highest mortality was among healthy adults and not young children or the elderly, which some people have suggested that mortality was actually promoted by a vigorous immune response.
Those numbers are not accurate at all.
Those are the numbers quoted by the CDC
CDC flu mortality - ( New Window )
Hi Terry...to follow up, “Coronavirus” is a type or species rather than this specific virus. There are 4 coronaviruses that fairly commonly infect people besides this one, SARS, and MERS. There’s a ton more that are in bats awaiting potential spillover.
This one is mostly closely related to SARS, being about 85% identical genetically. In fact, it’s name is SARS-CoV-2 with the original being SARS CoV-1. But, so far, it appears far less lethal than SARS-1
Yeah MERS is really bad. But IIRC, there’s not much human to human transmission. WRT SARS-2, like I said above, the numbers look really skewed. There’s close to a thousand cases outside China now and I think only 5 or 7 deaths.
So far, it looks like you have to be >60 and /or have some other disabling condition to be really worried.
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Good to hear that its lethality is less than SARS-1, which I think was around 15% and higher in people over 65. I think the lethality of MERS was greater than 1/3 of those infected.
Yeah MERS is really bad. But IIRC, there’s not much human to human transmission. WRT SARS-2, like I said above, the numbers look really skewed. There’s close to a thousand cases outside China now and I think only 5 or 7 deaths.
So far, it looks like you have to be >60 and /or have some other disabling condition to be really worried.
I hope those low rates hold true, especially as I now meet that first risk group.
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infected an estimated 1/3 of the world's population at the time. Approximately 500 million were infected an 20-50 million victims died (4-10% of those infected). The estimated death toll in the U.S was greater than 600,000.
Unlike most instances of flu, the highest mortality was among healthy adults and not young children or the elderly, which some people have suggested that mortality was actually promoted by a vigorous immune response.
Those numbers are not accurate at all.
The numbers are accurate. From Wikipedia:
In the U.S., about 28% of the population of 105 million became infected, and 500,000 to 675,000 died (0.48 to 0.64 percent of the population).[67]
Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill the very young and the very old, with a higher survival rate for those in-between. However, the Spanish flu pandemic resulted in a higher than expected mortality rate for young adults.[8]
Link
"The Great Influenza" is an excellent book on this subject.
Link - ( New Window )
Seems really far-fetched (but t does sell papers). The Chinese published the sequence super fast and I would guess that, if it was an engineered bug, they wouldn’t have done it. The sequence is also extremely close if not identical to one already found in bats we already know that tons of diseases caused by viruses, including SARS and MERS (other pathogenic Coronaviruses) originated in bats. We know that the type of bats with this virus are endemic to Hubei. Occam’s razor says....
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In comment 14816398 Terry in CO said:
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Good to hear that its lethality is less than SARS-1, which I think was around 15% and higher in people over 65. I think the lethality of MERS was greater than 1/3 of those infected.
Yeah MERS is really bad. But IIRC, there’s not much human to human transmission. WRT SARS-2, like I said above, the numbers look really skewed. There’s close to a thousand cases outside China now and I think only 5 or 7 deaths.
So far, it looks like you have to be >60 and /or have some other disabling condition to be really worried.
I hope those low rates hold true, especially as I now meet that first risk group.
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Good to hear that its lethality is less than SARS-1, which I think was around 15% and higher in people over 65. I think the lethality of MERS was greater than 1/3 of those infected.
Yeah MERS is really bad. But IIRC, there’s not much human to human transmission. WRT SARS-2, like I said above, the numbers look really skewed. There’s close to a thousand cases outside China now and I think only 5 or 7 deaths.
So far, it looks like you have to be >60 and /or have some other disabling condition to be really worried.
I should note that the number of deaths is slightly higher because 5 were just added in Iran. But Iran, like China, is a little sketchy, so, it’s hard to extrapolate that to a true mortality rate, especially in western countries.
As SF points out, last year was a particularly virulent flu but still nowhere as deadly as this corona virus.
I’m curious about these numbers. The very low Flu percentage I’m sure includes the many cases that are very treatable in the US. But I feel like the higher percentage with CV is mostly in other countries where denial is high and medical capabilities are low.
Is it possible that it’s just really hard to compare it to the flu right now? At least the death rate percentages. I feel that if there were this many cases in the US, we may find the death rate percentage to be much lower due to our medical capabilities. Not that I really want to find out. Just curious about these numbers.
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So far 2363 have died of 78,000 reported cases of Corona virus
As SF points out, last year was a particularly virulent flu but still nowhere as deadly as this corona virus.
I’m curious about these numbers. The very low Flu percentage I’m sure includes the many cases that are very treatable in the US. But I feel like the higher percentage with CV is mostly in other countries where denial is high and medical capabilities are low.
Is it possible that it’s just really hard to compare it to the flu right now? At least the death rate percentages. I feel that if there were this many cases in the US, we may find the death rate percentage to be much lower due to our medical capabilities. Not that I really want to find out. Just curious about these numbers.
I pointed out why that death rate is misleading. As for the US specifically, it’s probably more helpful to look at absolute numbers. According to CDC so far in this season there have been a minimum of 29 million infections and a minimum of 16,000 deaths. So, if you’re just thinking about you, the risk from flu is greater and, what’s more, you can actually do something to better protect yourself from flu. Not true for SRS-2 and the chances of you being exposed to that anyway is, at least as of today and for the near future, remote.
We were musing about this yesterday and wondering if air quality in China might also contribute to mortality. Anecdotally, tons of people who visit come home with some sort of respiratory inflammation. Maybe people living there have some chronic distress that makes the added burden of infection more dangerous.
Healthworkers everywhere are exposed to flu and other common ailments daily and yet they aren't in the risk groups commonly identified as most susceptible to dying from the flu. They're educated/equipped to take the appropriate precautions and some of those that have died were among the earliest trying to sound the warnings (so they took it seriously).
That will give medical labs all over the world some breathing time to adjust vaccines and work toward a cure. Tank goodness for big pharma.
None out of China that I've seen.
- Hubei province and its healthcare workers are really stressed contributing to rate of death there.
- Death rate is likely many times higher than flu but lower than the 2% because of unreported cases. In US with top notch medical care death rate will be lower yet
- warmer weather will likely do more to slow spread
- stock market will still tank from this and will play out for many more months yet
Agreed. The best hope right now is that the virus fades as summer arrives, but that is a long time from now.
It’s only on pace to kill 2% of the worlds population if it continues to spread.
Nothing to see here.