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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

#291
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DW/DR the subtitles: he saw a lot of chaos in Wuhan's hospitals. Not enough testing kits, not enough government-requisitioned emergency taxis. Taxi drivers were already talking to each other in December saying "avoid the market". If you don't want to read subtitles for 26 minutes here's all the subtitles copy-pasted from the video: https://pastebin.com/6hJ4h4rm (You can hit the "..." above the red subscribe button…

The way the central government is handling this is impressive, quarantining a city of that size is unprecedented and has bought the world extra time to prepare. Yes the WHO are playing politics when they focus on the good things China is doing and ignore the bad. But personally I think they are closer to the truth than those who present an entirely negative version of events. China's response has been 70% good :)

> The way the central government is handling this is impressive

Not really, they jailed the experts who told them that they needed to act quickly, sat on it for a month, and finally did something about it when it was already out of hand.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#292
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…

> 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. It isn't that bad. It means that this virus won't kill more than 50% of population even if we were to shut down all research right now.

Uh, in what world is wiping out half a population not that bad??

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's highly unlikely that those ambulances are related to the virus. There are 0 confirmed cases in Northern Ireland, and if it was a suspected case the government and media would be all over it to find people who were potentially infected.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#294
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay here's an answer: the whole thing is misinformation. Mashing together incomplete data sets to make a point is… nothing. That's not a thing. That's not science or data. That's garbage. If you're not a troll you should take a step back and actually THINK about what you are doing. You are creating misinformation, posting it, then reposting it elsewhere and citing yourself. Stop it. Stop being a garbage human trying…

« the whole thing is misinformation » Another non-answer. It is perfectly valid to compare various epidemiological characteristics like I did, and like Dr. Melvin Sanicas did (are you going to criticize him too?) A lot of us on HN are sufficiently educated to have decent discussions about topics we are not experts in. If you have constructive criticism, give it to me instead of your non-answers.

Q: “Yes I made the table, but which part of this table is misinformation?”

A: The entire table is misinformation.

It is not valid to do what you did. You are wrong. You are misleading people. The “question” is whether you are doing it intentionally or not. I don’t have that answer, only you do.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#295
post #292

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. It isn't that bad. It means that this virus won't kill more than 50% of population even if we were to shut down all research right now.

Uh, in what world is wiping out half a population not that bad??

Thanos Did Nothing Wrong /s

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#296

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.

I felt the same way. They went over and over and over stating that WHO endorsed every Xi Jinping's decisions so far.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#297
post #251

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.

Especially away from the large cities.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#299
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend everyone to watch this on-site commentary from the chinese human rights lawyer Chen Qiushi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AI3R41dGnU Any numbers we've seen so far seem very tame to me, compared to the pictures out of Wuhan.

Totally off topic but... Chinese seems like a very efficient language. The guy doesn't seem to be speaking so fast but the subtitles are conveying a lot of information really fast.

It's a tonal language, which enables multiple use of a single letter/tone. Evidently English speakers have trouble detecting proper tone..

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#300
post #282

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

I used to think commenters on this site were somewhat smart.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. If you know more than others, share some of what you know so that we all can learn, or simply don't comment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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