Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 465 posts

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#101

Post by jcfrei »

2019-nCoV wrote: post #83
hanniabu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?

It's currently 171 deaths, 8,288 confirmed infected, which is 2% dead. However, what needs to be taken into consideration is that infected individuals don't die the day they are confirmed infected, there is a lag of several days. Assuming the average time from symptom onset and diagnosis to death is 7 days, we're looking at at 20% death rate (830 confirmed infected 1 week ago). Even a 5 day lag between symptom onset…

I'm not an expert on viruses by any means but that seems unnecessarily pessimistic. The number of infections is likely much much higher than the confirmed cases (laboratories have only so many test kits available per day) but most people stay asymptomatic. This would reduce the actual mortality rate, not increase it.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#102

Post by staticautomatic »

throwanem wrote: post #93
staticautomatic wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can a ban only on nonessential travel affect aid workers and experts, who are clearly essential?

Have you never seen a bureaucracy in a hurry? It is not, to borrow a word, agile .

I don't understand what your point is. Are you saying the bans are not limited to non-essential travel? Because everything I've read about them thus far has said they are.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#103

Post by alamortsubite »

guiomie wrote: post #22
splittingTimes wrote: post #13

How is this worse than your normal influenza cycle with 3-5Mio infections and 290k-650k death to warrant such an emergency?

I haven't heard of the flu shutting down a 11 million habitant city. The flu doesn't kill 290-650k per cycle, its more like 12-60k.

It sounds like a lot, but seasonal influenza does kill 290-650k people annually. The 12-60k range is for the U.S., alone.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#104

Post by jmccorm »

rwmj wrote: post #98
jmccorm wrote: post #97

Apart from more people falling sick (as bad as that is), is there a more fundamental concern that if it runs wild in a less developed country, it'll mutate into something more dangerous? As infections climb, the coronavirus (based on less stable RNA) gets more chances to mutate into something even more virulent or deadly?

Flu viruses get less dangerous over time. The more deadly strains literally kill off their hosts, making those strains less likely to spread.

Is that a universal truth, or is it historical? Situational? This virus is said to spread well before a person even knows they're infected. A mutation could simply extend that period. Or it could increase the degree to which it is contagious without affecting mortality, right? Or are you saying that this simply doesn't happen in the real world? Flu viruses only mutate with regards to lethality, and only in a way that works against its overall impact?

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#105

Post by fuj »

arkadiyt wrote: post #47
guiomie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you add the timeframe of each pandemic? I believe the coronavirus is 1-2 months old, but how long was SARS to get to 774? I feel like the comparaison isn't great without timeline.

Here are some graphs showing exactly that: https://ncov.r6.no/ It's also worth noting that the ~8k confirmed cases are bottlenecked by how fast China can perform tests. Here's an article guesstimating that there were up to 100k infections a few days ago: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-...

Interesting, that first link is blocked in facebook. Tried sending it to someone and couldn't

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#107

Post by themagician »

mrb wrote: post #35

It's about time... All early characteristics of the novel coronavirus indicate it's far more dangerous than SARS/MERS/seasonal flu (which kills 30-60k/year in the US) so, unless a cure is found soon, we should expect it to kill more people than these other diseases combined : https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/122263149332482867...

Stop spreading misinformation and getting your information from Twitter, and when you do—try reading it first.

Even when compared to SARS in that chart it looks like it has a lower R0 value and about the same fatality rate, minus some odd outliers and what it likely fake news (it doesn't have a fatality rate of 56%). And the citation for that 56% number is a link another link to Twitter… that is self referential. And actually I think YOU are also that person.

When people talk about "fake news" this is what they are talking about. This is like 3-layers deep of fake news. You are linking to yourself in a post that uses yourself as a citation.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#108

Post by segmondy »

WilTimSon wrote: post #26

The way all global superpowers and, by extension, their organizations have to babysit China's government has gone from ridiculous to ridiculously dangerous. Politicans pretend not to notice human rights abuses, ignore the fact that the regime is repressive and a danger to its own people, and now try to act like saying 'Hey, the virus originated in this country, hope they contain it' is some horribly offensive thing.…

Grow up. WHO is not an organization to talk about human rights or other things. It's HEALTH, that's what the H is in. China started of slow, but they have really stepped up in doing their part to help contain the virus. Nothing wrong with recognizing their effort. Let's not forget that the scientists working around the clock in that country are not "China" but individuals like you and me.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#109

Post by mrtksn »

michalu wrote: post #79

Also good real-time chart: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... tracks confirmed cases and recoveries too.

>Last Update: Jan 30, 2020 11 am EST.

It is not a real-time map, I find it bizarre that people believe that we can track the population's wellbeing in real-time. Are you ready to be hooked up to such a system?

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#110

Post by slumdev »

wyldfire wrote: post #99

Stupid question: is it possible that hygiene practices contribute to outbreaks like this? I remember reading or hearing that one input to recent wildfires was the fact that decades of controlled burns to limit the spread of wildfires left a lot of available fuel that otherwise would have burned naturally. So in that vein, do we have humans with compromised immunity thriving but susceptible to inter-species mutations…

Hygiene practices can prevent the spread of diseases like this. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, etc. Wear a surgical mask and limit interactions with others if you're sick.

But this virus spreads via droplet transmission, so just being within 6 feet of someone who's infected (and coughs/sneezes) is enough to spread it.

If you're referring to the overuse of hand sanitizer and other disinfectant agents, it might be reasonable to conjecture that their use contributes to the spread of pathogenic bacteria because they destroy non-pathogenic bacteria that could out-compete the pathogenic ones for resources. But this is a virus. It doesn't reproduce outside the body, so I don't think that train of thought applies here.

Post reply on HN