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Coronavirus

Started by bacardiandlime, January 30, 2020, 03:20:28 PM

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Caracal

Quote from: bacardiandlime on February 08, 2020, 06:35:18 AM
I'm wondering if this thing is more contagious than they're telling us. One person who had travelled to Singapore spread it to the other people in their ski lodge in France. The numbers on that cruise ship in Japan keep rising.

They've been saying it is about as contagious as the flu for quite some time and those things seem pretty consistent with that. You aren't usually going to get the flu just from walking by someone on the street, but if you're in close proximity to people you can get it pretty easily. This is the problem with the way media coverage of something like this works. 700 people dying in China seems terrifying, and obviously it is awful, but 20k people in the US this year have died of the flu. This does seem quite a bit worse than the flu, but it also is pretty clearly that the vast majority of people who get this, get better. It also seems clear that, like the flu, it is most dangerous to people with compromised immune systems and the elderly. It seems to be barely effecting children at all.

spork

Traveled cross-country for a conference and on the return flight started feeling terrible, with respiratory symptoms. I did not eat bat soup however, so I feel confident that it's not the Wuhan coronavirus. I did see some people on planes wearing N95 masks, which was odd.
It's terrible writing, used to obfuscate the fact that the authors actually have nothing to say.

Hegemony

The Guardian reports that the death rate from the current coronavirus seems to be about 2%, where the death rate from the flu is less than 1%. Or more precisely:

We don't yet know how dangerous the new coronavirus is, and we won't know until more data comes in. The mortality rate is around 2%. However, this is likely to be an overestimate since many more people are likely to have been infected by the virus but not suffered severe enough symptoms to attend hospital, and so have not been counted. For comparison, seasonal flu typically has a mortality rate below 1% and is thought to cause about 400,000 deaths each year globally. Sars had a death rate of more than 10%.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/10/what-is-coronavirus-how-worried-symptoms-how-spread

Anselm

I am Dr. Thunderdome and I run Bartertown.

clean

"The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am"  Darth Vader

fuwafuwa

Glad to be working at middle-of-nowhere university! 

Morris Zapp

Attended a graduation planning meeting the other day. We have online students so participants will come from all over even overseas. Odds that all graduations all be cancelled this year?

mamselle

There are 3 threads running on this topic.

Is there a way to get some convergence?

M.
Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding.

Reprove not a scorner, lest they hate thee: rebuke the wise, and they will love thee.

Give instruction to the wise, and they will be yet wiser: teach the just, and they will increase in learning.

Anselm

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/asia/japan-schools-coronavirus.html

Japan Shocks Parents by Moving to Close All Schools Over Coronavirus



Oh, dear Lord, please let this happen here.  I can use a vacation.  Amen.
I am Dr. Thunderdome and I run Bartertown.

backatit

Quote from: Morris Zapp on February 27, 2020, 05:42:31 AM
Attended a graduation planning meeting the other day. We have online students so participants will come from all over even overseas. Odds that all graduations all be cancelled this year?

I'll take pretty high for $10. The UK is doing some pretty strong pre-planning in the school system (and my partner's company just announced a travel ban - no travel, necessary or unnecessary, and not even to Asia. We are having to cancel our usual Spring trip).

marshwiggle

Quote from: mamselle on February 27, 2020, 07:15:21 AM
There are 3 threads running on this topic.

Is there a way to get some convergence?

M.

The threaduality is spreading as fast as the virus.
It takes so little to be above average.

backatit

Quote from: backatit on February 27, 2020, 09:14:21 AM
Quote from: Morris Zapp on February 27, 2020, 05:42:31 AM
Attended a graduation planning meeting the other day. We have online students so participants will come from all over even overseas. Odds that all graduations all be cancelled this year?

I'll take pretty high for $10. The UK is doing some pretty strong pre-planning in the school system (and my partner's company just announced a travel ban - no travel, necessary or unnecessary, and not just to Asia. We are having to cancel our usual Spring trip).

magnemite

What might be interesting is that the covid-19 cases will ramp up at ~same time as seasonal pollen allergies do, and the respiratory and other effects of pollen allergies seem to parallel who folks react mildly (for all we know) to this novel virus. So, a mix of pollen mistaken for virus, and of viral cases being overlooked (thinking it is pollen) might be a complicating factor. So, let's hope a good, reliable, and plentiful set of test kits can be produced and distributed.

A related thought is that folks (like me) who have bad pollen allergies may well be at risk for a more severe reaction to the covid-19, given that the severe respiratory symptoms are an over stimulated immune system response (as with pollen allergies).

** take the above with a giant grain of salt, as I'm the wrong sort of Dr. to really know what's what about viral infections...
may you ride eternal, shiny and chrome

zyzzx

So, I have tried to look for this, and have not found such an analysis, but shouldn't the Diamond Princess cruise ship fiasco give us a pretty definitive idea of the mortality rates (at least for that demographic)? From my understanding of all the news articles, everyone on the ship ended up getting tested, right? So here's a population in which every case, mild/asymptomatic or not, would be caught. So according to the Johns Hopkins website, there were 705 cases, 5 deaths, and 690 cases not yet resolved. So with at least 5 deaths, that's at least 0.7% mortality rate, and that number can only go up. I guess cruise ship passengers likely skew older, but still, this seems like a pretty obvious case study where we really do know the denominator in the mortality rate equation. I am somewhat surprised that these numbers are not discussed more; I hope that some epidemiologists are closely following this population, as it seems like a very useful source of data.

At any rate, I am headed off for a Europe-US trip in a few days, and I admit that I routed my flights with an eye towards not getting stranded by border restrictions or flight cancellations. It would really suck to get stranded/quarantined away from home in a country where I don't have health insurance. 

clean

QuoteFrom my understanding of all the news articles, everyone on the ship ended up getting tested, right?

I dont think so...

"Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Monday that it might be difficult to test everyone aboard the ship.

Only 336 passengers had been tested as of Monday, according to the health ministry."

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/10/national/japan-test-all-passengers-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-coronavirus/#.Xll2U6hKjIU


The inability to test the passengers was linked to a shortage of the testing supplies. 

Recently California's Governor indicated that they had only 400 kits, if I remember the number.  That is a big part of the weakness in the response. It is hard to identify who has the illness, and it has taken some time to get the results back... it is not a quick test.
"The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am"  Darth Vader