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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

#301

Post by flukus »

rurp wrote: post #292
fctorial wrote: post #258

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??

The new world, post smallpox that wiped out up to 90% of the population. That's setting quite a low bar though, it would still be about on par with the black death.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#302

Post by dang »

zik wrote: post #278
jansan wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please don't.

We've fixed the typo in the GP comment.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#303

Post by dang »

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.…

Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. It makes discussion nastier and more predictable—the two things we're most hoping to avoid here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22194996.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#304

Post by dang »

segmondy wrote: post #108
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.

Please edit personal swipes like "Grow up." out of your posts to HN. They break the site guidelines. Your comment would be fine without that bit.

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

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#306

Post by yibg »

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…

Too many unknowns to say. We don’t know:

- how many infected but not confirmed. They could be asymptotic or mild enough not to seek medical treatment. This would increase the denominator.

- time between infection to first symptom to death. Therefore we don’t know which way the remaining confirmed cases will go. Probably increase the numerator over time but don’t know by how much.

- unclear how accurate the reported numbers are.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#307

Post by yibg »

avip wrote: post #145
hanniabu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?

Short answer: seasonal flu Long answer: wait a week or two.

Even this we don’t know yet. Could be worse than SARS, although most likely not lower than flu. Not enough data to tell yet.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#308

Post by yibg »

ekianjo wrote: post #298

An emergency yet planes are still flying in and out of China? It makes you wonder why travel has not been completely banned yet.

I’ve been seeing this type of reaction a lot lately, but isn’t locking down 1/5 of the worlds population a bit extreme? I mean it’s not like we have a zombie virus going on here.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#309

Post by serf »

linsomniac wrote: post #305

My daughter and I just had this conversation: Her: "They just declared a global health emergency over Coronavirus." Me: "Who did." Her: "The World Health Organization." Me: "That's what I said."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_on_First%3F

>The premise of the sketch is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team for Costello, but their names and nicknames can be interpreted as non-responsive answers to Costello's questions. For example, the first baseman is named "Who"; thus, the utterance "Who's on first" is ambiguous between the question ("Which person is the first baseman?") and the answer ("The name of the first baseman is 'Who'").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M

I imagine that kind of ambiguity has been 'played' with for forever, though.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#310

Post by mirimir »

fctorial wrote: post #258
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…

> 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.

Sarcasm doesn't do well on HN. Maybe for good reason.
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