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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

#271

Post by inferiorhuman »

twelvechairs wrote: post #70
hanniabu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?

The official figures in China are 8,163 cases 171 deaths which is 2% right now, but take these with a big grain of salt. They could go up (some of those confirmed cases will be very recent and may get worse) or down (more cases might have happened but be unreported). Its really hard to tell what it will look like in a month or two.

The official figures in China are 8,163 cases 171 deaths which is 2% right now, but take these with a big grain of salt.

I wouldn't even go that far. I've been using this as an excuse to figure out the D3 v5 API using the Johns Hopkins data. Most provinces outside of Hubei are not reporting deaths yet. It's possible nobody's died outside of Hubei, but that seems suspect to me. There is almost certainly strong federal and local pressure to under report deaths, but this sort of thing is much harder to hide in Hubei because it's the epicenter.

I don't believe for a moment that China would've attempted to quarantine 60 million people so quickly if the case fatality rate were only 2%. 2% is bad but SARS saw around 15% in many countries and things weren't locked down this tightly.

More to the point, Hubei is reporting 204 deaths and 5,806 confirmed cases which works out to about 3.5%. This is compared to 76 deaths and 1,423 confirmed three days ago (or 5%). If you'd like to look at death compared to known outcomes you're looking at about 64% of the outcomes being death (204 deaths, 116 recoveries). It's not clear which part of the equation is lagging more in Hubei.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#272

Post by inferiorhuman »

mrtksn wrote: post #173
ehsankia wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's being overly pedantic. About the update rate: It's updated regularly. If you want to go down this rabbit hole, is 1m update real-time? Is 1s update realtime? Where do you draw the line? For most people, anything less than 12h, in the case of tracking confirmed cases, is perfectly fine described as "real-time" About the data: Obviously it's showing confirmed cases and not actual health of people. The UI makes t…

I don't believe that the data on this website is gathered through automatic means. Real-time is not all about latency, live TV or a Skype call also has a latency but it is real-time for all means and purposes since it is automatically gathered, transformed and transported without human labour and immediately.

I don't believe that the data on this website is gathered through automatic means.

Almost all of it is done by hand by the folks at the Johns Hopkins University's CSSE department. It gets updated around twice a day and they're constantly fiddling with the layout and whatnot.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#273

Post by pmoriarty »

ufov2 wrote: post #157
chupa-chups wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function

The reported confirmed counts have grown by a factor of ~1.5 every day, fitting reasonably well with exponential growth. If this rate continued, in 35 days it would reach the world population. Obviously, in the real world the growth flattens out way earlier, from natural causes, and especially because of the attempts to confine it. Comparing the total number of cases or deaths to flu outbreaks from previous years doe…

Something else to consider is that flu outbreaks aren't typically taken very seriously by most people, while the widespread fear and media coverage of the 2019-nCov all but guarantees more serious responses from both the general public and the government.

Consider the recommendations to thoroughly wash one's hands during flu season as a precaution against getting the flu. How many people take that advice seriously? You can bet there'll be a lot more hand washing all around once this coronavirus hits people's local areas, not to mention all the mask wearing that'll happen (though unfortunately, most people will be wearing those dinky surgical masks which will be of dubious effectiveness), and people isolating themselves.

On the other hand, we have vaccines for the flu that are available well in advance of flu outbreaks (though not nearly enough people take them), while we've got no publicly available ones for 2019-nCov. That's another confounding variable that makes it hard to compare the two.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#274

Post by hatenberg »

ttul wrote: post #251
hurricanetc wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are US numbers only. The CDC estimates that 291,000 to 646,000 people die worldwide every year. You cannot take the US mortality rate and assume it would apply to any other country and especially not China. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1213-flu-death-esti...

Indeed. China’s medical system is primitive by comparison. They have shiny highways and trains, but hospitals are overcrowded and underfunded.

...because they are not for profit so people can actually afford to get help even if they are poor

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#275

Post by inferiorhuman »

wolco wrote: post #183
parliament32 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No and no. "Realtime" has an actual definition, as in "data is immediately available".

No information is available real time. There will always be a lag even with stock trading. Determining what is acceptable for real time depends on the context. A few seconds would be unacceptable for stock information but would be more than enough for a 911 real time notification system to first responders. 12 hours for global viral outbreak stats seems acceptable for real time status.

CSSE is manually aggregating data from official sources. It's updated, at most, twice a day so there is hefty lag from when the official numbers are updated and CSSE updates their site. It's about the best source of statistics that laypeople will have but it's hardly worth calling it 'real time'.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#276

Post by inferiorhuman »

lubujackson wrote: post #249
numpad0 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The flu is the influenza virus, period. The common cold is typically caused by a rhinovirus, but coronaviruses, adenoviruses, and influenza viruses can cause colds too.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#277

Post by chaorace »

hatenberg wrote: post #274
ttul wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. China’s medical system is primitive by comparison. They have shiny highways and trains, but hospitals are overcrowded and underfunded.

...because they are not for profit so people can actually afford to get help even if they are poor

Well, yes... but that's not really the point. There's plenty of better hospital systems, socialized or not.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#278

Post by zik »

jansan wrote: post #170
therealmarv wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NCOV (new corona) 2%, SARS (2012) around 10%, yearly normal flu around 0.01%-0.05% and Ebola 50-90%

During the SARS outbreak in April 2003 the reported rate was around 3.5% (58 deaths on 1622 "probable cases"). Source: https://www.who.int/csr/sars/press2003_04_01/en/

That SEARS really was the department store of illnesses.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#279

Post by jdkee »

mantap wrote: post #241
Roritharr wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that sounds like the thing China would do once it has perfected pattern recognition in 2023 or so.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#280

Post by headmelted »

nostrademons wrote: post #224
aqme28 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply because it has a mortality rate a couple of orders of magnitude greater than the flu's. Something like 8 percent of the world gets the flu in a given year. Millions will die if that happens for this one.

Assuming the CFR remains stable. Most new infectious diseases rapidly drop in mortality because of natural selection: those variants of the virus that make people sickest result in their hosts not surviving or not coming into contact with other people to spread the virus, so the strain that becomes endemic tends to become less virulent and more adapted to its host. This has happened with leprosy, syphilis, HIV, and E…

In fairness though, the containment ship has sailed for nCOV.

It’s scary to see it so close to home. I’m in Northern Ireland and saw two hazmat ambulances gunning it into the center of Belfast today.

I’ve never seen a hazmat ambulance in this country - wouldn’t have even known we had them or what they looked like.

I suspect we’ll get outbreaks in many more regions over the next few days.

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