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WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

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Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#241

Post by mantap »

Roritharr wrote: post #234
colinprince wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched the whole thing. It was riveting. Don't forget to turn on CC if you need translation. It is a volunteer transalation. The reporter, Chen Qiushi, describes his observations in Wuhan, a city of more than 10 million. His preamble: "My name has been flagged in China." "If the content contains 'Chenqiushi' or 'CQS', or my face, it will not be sent on Wechat. ... if you [share on wechat], your wechat account will…

I really wonder if I made myself unemployable in China because I posted this. How far does the censoring actually go?

China is an autocratic dictatorship so the rules can and do change at any time, retroactively and arbitrarily.

That said you aren't going to be blacklisted for a single comment on HN. That sounds like the kind of thing the US would do.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#242

Post by rnotaro »

kevinstubbs wrote: post #196
parliament32 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between latency and delay. If I "touch a.txt" then run "ls", and see "a.txt", I'd consider my filesystem realtime. There's no point in being pedantic about "but there's a 50ms delay when I hit enter after typing ls so it's not realtime!!!". "Realtime virus outbreak" implies that the site is somehow automatically identifying where the virus is and updating it's stats, rather than waiting for a hum…

Since "implies that the site is somehow automatically identifying where the virus is" is obviously impossible with current tech & infrastructure, the next most "real-time" interpretation is that it has the most up-to-date data as it becomes available... which it basically does AFAIK, assuming it automatically pulls from its data sources, such as the WHO situation report feed. What would you recommend calling it inste…

Just call it an "up-to-date" map that is often updated.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#243

Post by numpad0 »

koheripbal wrote: post #218
mrfusion wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the symptoms about the same as the flu? Does having it feel like a flu?

Basically, yes - it's an upper respiratory infection. Indistinguishable from seasonal influenza or a cold, until symptoms are severe. There may be some slight differences, but even seasonal influenza and a cold frequently present differently.

Isn’t coronavirus itself a kind of common cold?

I’ve heard that “the common cold” is actually a few completely different infections that isn’t worth strictly classifying for the most, and that coronavirus is one of them. If so, this is “a common cold” except maybe death rates are statistically higher.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#244

Post by mrb »

aqme28 wrote: post #214
mrb wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

« assume that when a case is confirmed the death or cured status is also determined at that moment » This is why epidemiologists (ref: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ebf2/48c9fc0a1a23d1778b9408... or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22195827 for my comment on the paper) prefer instead this formula which only counts patients for which the eventual outcome is already known: deaths / (deaths + recoveries) With thi…

Patient timelines still matter. It takes longer to recover than it does to die, so it would make sense to compare current recoveries with the number of deaths from several days ago. But without knowing the patient timeline, I couldn't tell you how many.

«It takes longer to recover than it does to die»

Citation needed. I am not aware of data supporting this (or the reverse.)

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#245

Post by tenpies »

DarthGhandi wrote: post #221
throwaway846657 wrote: post #28

It seemed during the conference that they were trying their best to not step on Beijing's toes. I wonder if they think China would stop cooperating if they called them out on their poor containment procedures.

How is locking down an entire city "poor containment". Find it staggering to insinuate that were it originating in Western countries we'd do the same?

> How is locking down an entire city "poor containment".

Because it followed a week of ignoring the issue and then another week of arresting people who were reporting on the issue. This has been an issue since December 28th, but China and the WHO are pretending it began just recently.

It's "containment" in much the same way that the Soviet Union just couldn't stop lying about Chernobyl because people miles away were melting from the inside, so they took drastic actions to pretend they were on top of things.

Those "hospitals" they are building (and selectively live streaming parts with glorious Party tunes on the background)? Those were resorts that were almost complete, but since tourism in the area is going to be dead for a decade, they're turning them into hospitals and claiming they're brand new buildings.

What is staggering to me is not that China finally moved when it realized the problem could not be swept under the rug, it's that the WHO is going along with the doublespeak of saying "all is well" but then also declaring an emergency, but don't cancel your trips to China!

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#246

Post by fctorial »

burundi_coffee wrote: post #32
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #21

Coronavirus: -5,974 confirmed cases -170 deaths [1]For comparisons the SARS outbreak of 2003: -8,098 people worldwide became sick -774 died [1] https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html

There are already 8243 confirmed cases. https://thewuhanvirus.com/

The ui of the map on this page is eerily similar to plague inc.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#247

Post by mrb »

nostrademons wrote: post #219
mrb wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not 50%, you misunderstand me. I edited my comment to clarify. What I meant is out of those who came out of the hospital (either dead or recovered), 26% died. So those remaining in the hospital are assumed to have a 26% chance of dying. Another way of looking at probabilities, out of the 57 patients left in the hospital: If 0 die (ie. all recover), the CFR is 11% (11 deads, 88 recovered) If 15 die (26% of 57 still ho…

Looking only at hospitalized populations creates severe selection bias when applied to the question people want answered here, namely "If I get nCOV, what's my chance of dying?" Only the most severe cases a physician sees end up hospitalized, and only the most severe cases within the general population end up being seen by a physician and confirmed as nCOV. You've already got two levels of selection bias (with an unk…

Correct there is a bias. However even when comparing the coronavirus to the seasonal flu (hospitalized patients only), the coronavirus still looks much more severe:

Only 7% of hospitalized flu cases died in 2018-2019 (34 157 out of 490,561): https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html The coronavirus would thus appear to be 4 times more deadly (26%.)

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#249

Post by lubujackson »

numpad0 wrote: post #243
koheripbal wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, yes - it's an upper respiratory infection. Indistinguishable from seasonal influenza or a cold, until symptoms are severe. There may be some slight differences, but even seasonal influenza and a cold frequently present differently.

Isn’t coronavirus itself a kind of common cold? I’ve heard that “the common cold” is actually a few completely different infections that isn’t worth strictly classifying for the most, and that coronavirus is one of them. If so, this is “a common cold” except maybe death rates are statistically higher.

Yes, coronavirus is a broad class of flus. SARS and MERS are both coronaviruses and there seems to be a lot of genetic similarity to SARS.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#250

Post by BoiledCabbage »

mrb wrote: post #163
mrtksn wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People mistakenly calculate %2 and %50 simultaneously because they assume that when a case is confirmed the death or cured status is also determined at that moment. In reality, though, people who are going to die don't die at the moment of infection confirmation and people who are going to live do lag in the log because it takes time to confirm if someone has recovered and virus-free. Some will suggest to simply comp…

« assume that when a case is confirmed the death or cured status is also determined at that moment » This is why epidemiologists (ref: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ebf2/48c9fc0a1a23d1778b9408... or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22195827 for my comment on the paper) prefer instead this formula which only counts patients for which the eventual outcome is already known: deaths / (deaths + recoveries) With thi…

The problem is that the method that you use and the paper referenced (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ebf2/48c9fc0a1a23d1778b9408...) only applies the calculation on data 3 weeks, 4 weeks and 5 weeks after the epidemic has peaked. Of course you can get valid data once things have peaked and are slowing down. The issue is trying to get valid data while still in the exponential growth portion. And it seems like this method would have all the same flaws as other methods on rapidly changing data (if not worse due to the lag between recovery and deaths.).

I'm not an epidemiologist, but I believe I see flaws in your application of the methods from the paper.

[1] At the bottom page 481 it clearly say the virus peaked on March 27th. The first date they use data for the e2 calculation is April 6th. Two full weeks past the peak.

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