Coronavirus - International stories and thoughts

The whole video is crazy. wall to wall people in the hospital, the seizures, what sounds like gun shots in the background......

 

I don’t know how a nurse would know the citywide number. And logistically many cases are unreported because if someone dies before they reach the hospital or the hospital is out of test kits, they aren’t gonna count.
But generally, I don’t think anyone believes the official numbers, I have been posting the view from the SCMP daily because they give insight hope to how China is viewing this. They are often considered the one China gets their story out to the west through and it’s interesting to see how they frame the story.

 

you can watch the vid in link 179 or 180

She says that 1 person can infect 14 people at once(I don't know how she comes up with that.) she does a little math......

 

While numbers and information can change, I posted this days ago. The first reputable study on the virus. The average person was infecting about 2.2 people.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316

 

I'm not the least bit concerned but this is my daily attire now:

 

Weeks after Ed Aschoff died from pneumonia and everyone was shocked, it was discovered that he had stage four cancer. You never know.
But the last survey I saw, and things can change, the average age of death was 75.

Updated understanding of the outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Wuhan, China. - PubMed - NCBI

 

The flu kills 3600 young, healthy teens to mid 20s every year in the US. Some years are cruel and that number can hit 35,000 - it all depends. The Spanish Flu killed more strong, young healthy people than sick people because the virus triggered an overreaction of anti-bodies that essentially burned the host up.

 

The mortality rate of the Spanish flu was close to 20%. That was an absolute beast.

 

I think people who think this is overly alarmist should read the book Plagues and Peoples and listen to this interview of David Quamann (and read his book). I think if folks will come to a better appreciation of how, perhaps, comparing the numbers can be an error how we should think about viruses and infectious disease. This is much more than just the numbers.

 

I think his point about the animal markets is particularly good, China needs to do more to shut those down, when you combine that with how densely populated they are and how slow their government is to admit an issue it’s a terrible mix. And he is of course right in saying that more of these, and likely bigger ones will come.
But to be fair on the alarmist front, his first quote in the article is:

“Well, it is very serious and needs to be taken very seriously. And yet it's not an occasion for panic; it's an occasion for calm, effective response.”

that has been the point of many of my posts here, some of the posts seem to be going out of their way to find worst case or particularly scary scenarios, this doesn’t warrant that yet based on the science. It needs to be taken seriously and still could get to that point, but not there right now.
For comparison, almost 2000 Americans die a day from heart disease, almost another 2k a day from cancer and over 100 die each day from the flu. This hasn’t killed a single american to this point.

but hopefully it’s a wake up call for the long term dangers viruses pose because the truly bad one will come again. And a good chance it comes in the lifetimes of some of us given how interconnected were are now. Just imagine the spanish flu today with modern travel.

 

No doubt. I wasn't trying to point any fingers and wasn't thinking your post specifically. I think it is important to understand those different numbers (such as heart disease, other virus pandemics etc...) so we can make rationale decisions, but in a sense how overly focusing on numbers can prevent us from considering why there is genuine alarm.

It's that infectious disease itself is not only about the numbers, but the potential of what can happen--and the rational fear of what can happen when we don't have a good grasp of how to fight the outbreak. This is why despite no American dying (yet), 10 pages on this thread kind of signifies that underlying real concern.

Sorry, in a sense I know you alluded similarly.

 

I think that flu deaths in the US this year are at like 9000, with 19 million cases. An above average year..
Didn't help that the seasonal vaccine missed the mark

 

Netflix has an interesting documentary on pandemics, they spent quite a bit of time on flu. Its a few years old. One interesting thing was a few years prior (I think it was with SARS) Vietnam decided to cull their entire chicken population to try to contain the out break. Something like 30 million chickens killed it seemed to help because they didn't have near the issue that China did.

 

China's got 100's of millions of people in the largest cities quarantined in their homes but this isn't a big deal, only 600 or so fatalities? Something is starting to stink but maybe it's just me.

 

Coronavirus doctor’s death a catalyst for ‘freedom of speech’ demands

 

The cruise ship is now up to 60 cases ....passangers posting on social media say they can hear their neighbors coughing a lot, but food is delivered door to door by the same crew... if that true, they are probably spreading it. They need to get people off the ship and quarantine them properly.

 

31,400 in 25 countries, cruise ships. ..
Coronavirus live updates: Outrage in China over death of whistleblower doctor - CNN

 

To those who are saying this is being overhyped because of so few cases/deaths compared to typical flu, it's really not. The difference between this and regular flu is potential. Flu is a known quantity. Coronavirus is totally unknown. It could peter out after a few more weeks or it could ravage the entire planet and kill millions. That is why people are so interested in it compared to flu.

 

it should certainly be watched, It could mutate, China could be drastically underselling things, and there’s nothing wrong with serious concern. But the coronavirus family generally is pretty well understood. Many viruses ove the past view decades came from this family. I posted this way back on page 2 of this thread on what to expect, to now he has been right about how it plays out. If people want to think of “what if” or worst case scenarios have at it, but it seems like wasted energy until something changes significantly.


“If you’re asking yourself the same thing right now, you’ll be relieved to know it’s probably not pandemic bad. “The only agent that can do that, that we know of today, is influenza,” says Mike Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Coronaviruses just don’t have pandemic potential. At most, they can cause multiple, geographically localized outbreaks.”

Could China's New Coronavirus Become a Global Epidemic?