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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

#261

Post by s1artibartfast »

rnotaro wrote: post #242
kevinstubbs wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is a real time map of data that has been reported.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#262

Post by pmoriarty »

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…

Not only that, but Wuhan's hospitals and health care system in general seem to be overwhelmed.

In other places that are better prepared and which have more resources the outcomes will likely be better, in worse prepared places with fewer resources the outcomes will likely be worse.

Let's keep that in mind before we extrapolate from Wuhan to the rest of the world.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#263

Post by koheripbal »

bart_spoon wrote: post #253
sliken wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scary part is that of the official 8,200 or so people that have been confirmed to have the virus there's been 171 deaths, and 143 recoveries. So more people dead than recovered, does make one wonder about the 8,200. Seems few believe the official numbers, people visit numerous hospitals without being able to seen, and even those that get seen have problems getting tested, and people who posts about the situation…

Well there is something to be said for both potential biases in those counts. First of all, those being hospitalized are obviously among the most severe cases. And presumably people with the mildest cases will potentially not even be diagnosed, so the mortality rates would be skewed higher. And secondly, that more people have died than have recovered doesn't say much other than that it takes longer to recover than to…

The numbers we're getting out of China are a mess and almost entirely useless.

There are reports of hospitals turning people away unless they a very sick, and also not testing every ill patient because they're overwhelmed.

I've see death certificates posted online with "viral pneumonia" because they aren't able to test everyone - and certainly don't bother testing those who have already died.

The errors are both ways and huge.

The only thing we can conclude is that it's contagious, deadly, and more deadly than the seasonal flu.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#264

Post by dpark »

lgl wrote: post #195
dpark wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like extremely wishful thinking. Is there some support for this claim?

Yes, it's called evolution. But since this is hn, here're a few articles/papers on the subject. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/071201_adenov... https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2014/11/26/141333911... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2639916/pdf/896... http://hedrick.ucsd.edu/BICD136/PDF-links/Galvani-Epid-evol....

I was asking specifically about this claim: “Viruses tend to become less deadly as they spread“

I understand the basics of evolution. I also don’t have any trouble understanding the trades between transmission and virulence. However, this is not the same as saying that the typical virus becomes less virulent over the short term during a major outbreak.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#265

Post by koheripbal »

DarthGhandi wrote: post #223
cheeseblubber wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't absolute numbers. We don't know the deadliness of the current outbreak. Lets take the flu for example. According to CDC https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... . The death rate is around 0.09% at the worst according the numbers on the cdc estimates (Which is a very pessimistic estimate). If the coronavirus has a mortality rate of 1/100 it would make 10x more deadly than the flu…

That's the mortality rate in the US. Worldwide it's much higher and goes up to 600,000 deaths annually.

Yes, and for Cononavirus, it will be even more.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#266

Post by s1artibartfast »

forever_spring wrote: post #235
DarthGhandi wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

On timeline of events, there was a week or so of delay between first death + ICL paper and the city lockdown. It can be argued the lockdown was very late. The OP might also mean poor containment within China - which is only relying on other countries right now.

Very late relative to what?

Certainly later than one would hope, but is there a real world benchmark for the handling situations like this that they fell short of? Have similar viruses crossed over in other countries and been handled better?

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#267

Post by sudosysgen »

nostrademons wrote: post #227
mhandley wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One other observation, for what it's worth. According to the John Hopkins site, between 29th Jan and 30th Jan updates (that's the data I happen to have access to), we have worldwide: * 29th: deaths 133, recovered 126 * 30th: deaths 171, recovered 143 But for Hubei, we get: * 29th: deaths 125, recovered 88 * 30th: deaths 162, recovered 90 Which looks like the death rate is going up in Hubei. Subtracting Hubei though,…

It's consistent with natural selection. Cases inside Hubei likely have fewer viral generations (= less mutation) than cases outside. Additionally, every case outside has a population bottleneck in that it was transmitted through a host that was well enough to travel. The most virulent cases would be expected to sicken their hosts and discourage travel or extensive social contact.

Hubei is estimated as being max at the 5th generation, and genomes so far have indicated less than 0.02% genetic variance. I don't see evolution playing a succincts) significant role in this timescale.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#270

Post by sliken »

svara wrote: post #82
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...

I think it would be more helpful to cite actual epidemiology research and public health professionals rather than people who seem to use people's fears to garner attention. Edit: In order to make this a little less dismissive, the actual argument in that Twitter post is that due to lag between first symptoms appearing and death, you can't divide fatalities by total cases to get the mortality rate, and should instead…

Well keep in mind that China, at least Hubei is overwhelmed. But if anywhere else on earth it ramps up to 100k sick quickly will be overwhelmed as well.

It remains to be seen if the rest of the world can keep the infection rate low enough to not repeat the Hubei progression.

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