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First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

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Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

#81

Post by aodin »

tptacek wrote: post #57
aodin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While SARS does have a longer incubation period, typically 2-7 days compared to the common flu's 1-4 days, the "slow transmission" that you've witnessed is more likely the successful work of national and international public health agencies preventing its spread. Especially by means of contact tracing and quarantine. Seasonal flu variants have a lethality of around 0.1%. The Spanish flu of 1918 was around 2%. SARS ha…

Just according to superficial stats, it looks like the flu kills orders of magnitude more people than SARS and MERS. Is the public health response to these diseases really so effective as to account for most of this difference? I don't pay close attention but also wouldn't off the top of my head be able to describe anything that, say, Washington State does to effectively respond to CoV incidents to keep it from propa…

Yes, seasonal flu in the US alone kills around 30,000 each year, and may have killed as many as 60,000 during the 17-18 flu season alone [1]. MERS and SARS have each killed less than 1,000 worldwide.

A few things that may interest you:

* The rate of transmission for a disease is estimated by its R0 or basic reproduction number. R0 estimates the number of new cases from the unaffected population that one infection will cause. A disease with R0 * Seasonal flu predominantly kills the young, the elderly, and the immunocompromised. Interestingly, some strains, such as the Spanish Flu, have very different mortality curves that kill healthy middle aged adults far more than average [4]. I would expect a dramatically different public health response compared to normal seasonal flu if a future pandemic had a similar mortality curve.

* In the US, the "tip of the spear" for disease response would be the CDC's Division of Global Migration and Quarantine [5].

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19545404 [3] https://web.stanford.edu/~jhj1/teachingdocs/Jones-on-R0.pdf [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#/media/File:W_curv... [5] https://www.cdc.gov/ncezid/dgmq/quarantine-fact-sheet.html

Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

#82

Post by autokad »

koheripbal wrote: post #60
glofish wrote: post #17

I feel like it has been so long since the swine flu, bird flu, H1N1 flu, and other flu scares that we are due for one. Like the recessions the flu scares are cyclical.

Recessions happen somewhat cyclically because imbalances build up in the economy that ultimately cause some sort of dislocation. The same is not true in virology. There is no "pent up" mechanism that needs to periodically release an outbreak. It is entirely random and in these types of outbreaks simply becomes more likely when many animal species exist in close proximity, allowing virus cross-over. It's no coincidenc…

black plague in England was on a 20 year cycle I hear.

Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

#83

Post by lazyasciiart »

yingw787 wrote: post #38

I read on Reddit that Chinese New Year is the largest regularly occurring human migration event in the world. Millions of Chinese people gather on public transport and planes To go home to celebrate. It’s in a few days I think. Also I’m not sure how the CDC is preparing for this under 45, but given the state of the federal government I would guess it’s less prepared than the days of the Ebola scare. Hopefully things…

It'll be on January 25th.

Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

#84

Post by papreclip »

munificent wrote: post #63
glofish wrote: post #17

I feel like it has been so long since the swine flu, bird flu, H1N1 flu, and other flu scares that we are due for one. Like the recessions the flu scares are cyclical.

The Spanish Flu was almost exactly 100 years ago. Recent enough that we think of it as being in modern times with relatively modern medicine and hospitals. My grandmother lived through it, so this isn't the distant past. Current estimates are that it killed up to 100,000,000 million people, as many as the black plague. We have much better medicine now, thankfully. But we also live in a much more deeply connected worl…

imagine the impact on global warming, or real estate prices

Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

#85

Post by aodin »

ping_pong wrote: post #70
aodin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While SARS does have a longer incubation period, typically 2-7 days compared to the common flu's 1-4 days, the "slow transmission" that you've witnessed is more likely the successful work of national and international public health agencies preventing its spread. Especially by means of contact tracing and quarantine. Seasonal flu variants have a lethality of around 0.1%. The Spanish flu of 1918 was around 2%. SARS ha…

SARS has a higher fatality rate than 10%. It's more like 25%. The reason why the numbers are so low is because China underreported the number of deaths. Look at Canada for a more reliable number. And that's not including any long term problems the infected people got even after recovering. My dad was in China during the SARS time. He said they shut down entire hospitals and basically let people die from it. These are…

Having looked through more stats in the last hour, it appears I also dramatically underreported the lethality of the Spanish Flu. Some sources put it at 10-20%. It may have killed 3-6% of the world's population.

Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

#86

Post by eindiran »

yingw787 wrote: post #38

I read on Reddit that Chinese New Year is the largest regularly occurring human migration event in the world. Millions of Chinese people gather on public transport and planes To go home to celebrate. It’s in a few days I think. Also I’m not sure how the CDC is preparing for this under 45, but given the state of the federal government I would guess it’s less prepared than the days of the Ebola scare. Hopefully things…

Wow, I had been under the impression that the Arba'een Pilgrimage[0] was the largest human annual migration but the Lunar New Year easily surpasses it. This article has some good info on the sizes of a few recurring migrations and their size: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/02/14/chines...

The infographic is absolutely crazy: https://blogs-images.forbes.com/niallmccarthy/files/2018/02/...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arba%27een_Pilgrimage

Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

#88

Post by tenpies »

yingw787 wrote: post #38

I read on Reddit that Chinese New Year is the largest regularly occurring human migration event in the world. Millions of Chinese people gather on public transport and planes To go home to celebrate. It’s in a few days I think. Also I’m not sure how the CDC is preparing for this under 45, but given the state of the federal government I would guess it’s less prepared than the days of the Ebola scare. Hopefully things…

> Also I’m not sure how the CDC is preparing for this under 45, but given the state of the federal government I would guess it’s less prepared than the days of the Ebola scare.

Despite "45" apparently being such a comic book villain as to warrant "guess[ing the CDC is] less prepared", the CDC has actually had guidelines out since August 2019: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/preparedness/checklist-...

This is part of how we even know of this case: the CDC under "45" was prepared, a local HCP was informed about what to watch for, and the system worked as intended. We have literally been through a very similar situation already with SARS and those protocols worked very well.

Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

#89

Post by at-fates-hands »

0xff00ffee wrote: post #55
satokema_work wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish wearing hospital masks was more accepted. Out of the listed reactions, it's probably the least overreaction possible, especially if it's a fashionable one and not actually hospital color...

I always thought wearing hospital masks was for infected people, not the other way around.

This is probably why it would carry a negative stigma here since that's been the norm in this country where the sick people have to wear masks, not the healthy people.

I remember being in Urgent Care and having to wear a mask when SARS broke out and I had a cough that wouldn't go away. People wouldn't come near me. One guy came over, saw that I was wearing a mask and gave me a look as if to say, "Oh hey man, that's cool, I'll just stand here." and kind of side stepped away from me.

In China, the pollution is so bad, people have been wearing masks for so long, seeing them in public isn't a big deal anymore. Here, in the US, you're right, its always been the sick people wear masks, not the healthy ones. I feel it would be incredibly hard to get people to overcome this ingrained idea since its so uncommon to see people out in public with surgical masks on.

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