Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#21

Post by ajsnigrutin » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:08 AM UTC

contravariant wrote: post #9

netsharc wrote: post #7

Missing "[of Coronavirus]". Yeah the guideline doesn't say it, and we probably can assume what infection they're talking about, but.. Reports say the German man who got the virus after having a business meeting with a Chinese visitor said he had a mild fever in the weekend and slept it off, and came to work on Monday, which must mean he had recovered. Reading that makes me think the virus isn't a death sentence like…

It's only a 3%(-ish) chance of dying going by numbers published so far. That's much higher than a regular flu though.

But it spreads much faster... 3% of a billion people infected is quite a lot.

Otherwise most reports cite that the dead were people who were already on their "deathbeds", and would (probably) die from a normal flu + complications (eg. pneumonia) anyways... but there are a few cases of younger people who died, that wouldn't if this was a "normal" flu.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#22

Post by mikejb » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:12 AM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #7

Missing "[of Coronavirus]". Yeah the guideline doesn't say it, and we probably can assume what infection they're talking about, but.. Reports say the German man who got the virus after having a business meeting with a Chinese visitor said he had a mild fever in the weekend and slept it off, and came to work on Monday, which must mean he had recovered. Reading that makes me think the virus isn't a death sentence like…

> the German man [...] said he had a mild fever in the weekend and slept it off, and came to work on Monday, which must mean he had recovered.

Unfortunately, this isn't a valid assumption. Lots of people come in to work sick - just yesterday we had to ask our boss to send someone home because they showed up to work caughing and sneezing all day (Today, two other coworkers aren't coming in because they're not feeling well...)

But reports at sueddeutsche.de say that the (by now) 4 individuals in isolation are feeling very well, and are not showing any symptoms.

I also don't think the virus is a death sentence. I haven't done sufficient research to strongly support this opinion, but from what I've read across news articles is that most fatal cases were individuals with certain pre-conditions. That doesn't mean there's nothing to worry, but this isn't humanities downfall.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#23

Post by edejong » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #7

Missing "[of Coronavirus]". Yeah the guideline doesn't say it, and we probably can assume what infection they're talking about, but.. Reports say the German man who got the virus after having a business meeting with a Chinese visitor said he had a mild fever in the weekend and slept it off, and came to work on Monday, which must mean he had recovered. Reading that makes me think the virus isn't a death sentence like…

I am a bit more worried. There is a recent study that shows a mortality rate of diagnosed patients at 11% [1]. This is not the true case fatality rate, but a sample of patients seen in Wuhan hospital. The true percentage is probably lower due to bias.

We simply cannot calculate #fatalities / #cases, for a multitude of reasons. One, there is lag due to the clinical journey of the patients. Since both numbers rise exponentially, we really have to take that into account. Secondly, both numbers are most likely under-reported. In Wuhan, patients might not receive any treatment and might not be admitted to the hospital at all.

The short answer is: currently there is not enough information on the true mortality rate.

[1] Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 99 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a descriptive study https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#24

Post by edejong » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

mikejb wrote: post #22

netsharc wrote: post #7

Missing "[of Coronavirus]". Yeah the guideline doesn't say it, and we probably can assume what infection they're talking about, but.. Reports say the German man who got the virus after having a business meeting with a Chinese visitor said he had a mild fever in the weekend and slept it off, and came to work on Monday, which must mean he had recovered. Reading that makes me think the virus isn't a death sentence like…

> the German man [...] said he had a mild fever in the weekend and slept it off, and came to work on Monday, which must mean he had recovered. Unfortunately, this isn't a valid assumption. Lots of people come in to work sick - just yesterday we had to ask our boss to send someone home because they showed up to work caughing and sneezing all day (Today, two other coworkers aren't coming in because they're not feeling…

I would turn that around. There is a substantial amount of healthy individuals who end up in in ICU or worse due to the virus. This is certainly different from the common flu, for example.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#25

Post by allovernow » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #15

netsharc wrote: post #7

Missing "[of Coronavirus]". Yeah the guideline doesn't say it, and we probably can assume what infection they're talking about, but.. Reports say the German man who got the virus after having a business meeting with a Chinese visitor said he had a mild fever in the weekend and slept it off, and came to work on Monday, which must mean he had recovered. Reading that makes me think the virus isn't a death sentence like…

It was established pretty early that mortality is quite low (3-10X lower than SARS?), however it also seems to be transmitted more easily.

I don't want to alarm anyone but the WHO posted to Twitter that while there are 100 or so deaths, there are 700ish in critical condition. The final numbers aren't even in yet. That'd be a 20% serious hospitalization proportion, but I'm not sure if that's the right way to make such a calculation - you may need to adjust the probability based on total uninfected population or something Bayesian like.

Edit: it was not the WHO official but an official looking WHO subsidiary. I'm trying to find the tweet.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#26

Post by thedufer » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #20

contravariant wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only a 3%(-ish) chance of dying going by numbers published so far. That's much higher than a regular flu though.

How do you figure that? Going off this source I see 170 deaths and 133 recovered. So of those 303 that have been infected with it, 170 have died which is 56%. You can't count the other 7783 that are currently infected since we haven't seen their outcome yet. https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

The estimate requires some extrapolation based on other epidemics. Dying from it isn't going to take as long as recovering so you should expect a particularly large skew this early. But more generally you'd expect more mild cases to go underreported, be a lower priority for testing (which seems to be the bottleneck for reporting cases in some areas), etc.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#27

Post by neuronic » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #21

contravariant wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only a 3%(-ish) chance of dying going by numbers published so far. That's much higher than a regular flu though.

But it spreads much faster... 3% of a billion people infected is quite a lot. Otherwise most reports cite that the dead were people who were already on their "deathbeds", and would (probably) die from a normal flu + complications (eg. pneumonia) anyways... but there are a few cases of younger people who died, that wouldn't if this was a "normal" flu.

Also depends on which demographic has been infected so there's of course some general bias as we don't have an even distribution across all age groups, sexes and profession, level of activity and and and ...

For example, if predominantly senior humans have been infected, the statistics may be skewed towards that group and you won't be able to make flat statements about younger people getting the virus.

I also still think that we don't really have solid numbers on the virus due to:

- unconfirmed sample characterization - likely false data spread on behalf of the Chinese government in order to save face/contain panic

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#28

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:19 AM UTC

eugenijusr wrote: post #5

Gravityloss wrote: post #2

Is testing fast now? Do patients who don't have symptoms spread it effectively? I'm not an expert, but I see two main possibilities: It can be contained. Or it will spread all around the world and only vaccines will later make it go away, if a large enough percentage of the population is vaccinated. How long does it take to create a vaccine nowadays? And mass production...

Here's a Twitter thread from an expert with thoughts on what we'll need to do if it's not contained: https://twitter.com/t_inglesby/status/1221434570714669056

It’s so infuriating to try to read that great info in a million disjointed tweets. I don’t get Twitter character limits at all in the year 2020.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#29

Post by neuronic » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:19 AM UTC

avery-dawn wrote: post #10

Gravityloss wrote: post #2

Is testing fast now? Do patients who don't have symptoms spread it effectively? I'm not an expert, but I see two main possibilities: It can be contained. Or it will spread all around the world and only vaccines will later make it go away, if a large enough percentage of the population is vaccinated. How long does it take to create a vaccine nowadays? And mass production...

> How long does it take to create a vaccine nowadays? https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/artic... From this article: “If the vaccine appears effective and safe in a number of animal species, it will go into clinical trials on humans. This takes at least one year even if expedited,” Yuen said.

Even fast-tracked development will take 1-2 years.

Edit: sorry, I basically repeated what the comment above said. Somehow I overlooked that...

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#30

Post by mytailorisrich » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:20 AM UTC

allovernow wrote: post #25

Reason077 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was established pretty early that mortality is quite low (3-10X lower than SARS?), however it also seems to be transmitted more easily.

I don't want to alarm anyone but the WHO posted to Twitter that while there are 100 or so deaths, there are 700ish in critical condition. The final numbers aren't even in yet. That'd be a 20% serious hospitalization proportion, but I'm not sure if that's the right way to make such a calculation - you may need to adjust the probability based on total uninfected population or something Bayesian like. Edit: it was not t…

They have already been reporting for some time that the estimate of this virus is 20-25% severe cases and about 3% fatality rate.

The number of severe cases is significant because that's initially what causes hospitals to be overwhelmed, not least because they'll obviously also want to isolate those patients from others.