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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

#351

Post by bra4you »

jmccorm wrote: post #104
rwmj wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flu viruses get less dangerous over time. The more deadly strains literally kill off their hosts, making those strains less likely to spread.

Is that a universal truth, or is it historical? Situational? This virus is said to spread well before a person even knows they're infected. A mutation could simply extend that period. Or it could increase the degree to which it is contagious without affecting mortality, right? Or are you saying that this simply doesn't happen in the real world? Flu viruses only mutate with regards to lethality, and only in a way that…

"Is that a universal truth, or is it historical? Situational?"

It it experience based on historical data. A virus jumping to a new host (species) will be more aggressive in the beginning until it has adopted (mutated) to his new host.

While this is not a universal truth, it is experience and could also be backed up mathematically (>host dies to soon, virus can not spread) and by game theory.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#352

Post by potatoFam »

Fomite wrote: post #205
BenS wrote: post #106

Dr. Eric Ding has been tweeting timely and detailed information: https://twitter.com/drericding

No, Eric Ding has been tweeting pretty terrible misinformation, and is being rightly dragged for it by pretty much every epidemiologist I know on Twitter, including myself. His takes are bad . He's called this virus's R0 the worst he's seen in his career, which is absurd. He's conflated R0 and attack rate. Familiar errors because no one pays attention to ID epidemiology until there's an outbreak, and then suddenly de…

Could you let us know what ID epidemiologists are? I'm not familiar with the field and am wondering what the ID stands for.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#353

Post by dredmorbius »

pastor_elm wrote: post #7

Any good models that predict the peak of this?

If containment measures begun on January 22 are effective, cases should begin falling from trend over the next few days (27th through Feb 5 or so). We're at about 10,000 identified cases, I expect that will climb to ~50k, with about 1,000 - 2,000 deaths.

I'm not an epidemiologist, but rather a space alien cat, so factor accordingly.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#354

Post by adele11 »

DarthGhandi wrote: post #313
koheripbal wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would love nothing more than to wager on that claim with anyone keen. This thread is full of cringeworthy doomsdayers and armchair epidemiologists throwing around unsubstantiated nonsense. When your only knowledge of this comes from the media people should be a bit more selfaware. The fact that qAnon folks are all over this and one day old accounts turning up saying millions will die speaks volumes for the level of…

That's a good hedge bet for whoever takes it.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#355

Post by phreeza »

potatoFam wrote: post #352
Fomite wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Eric Ding has been tweeting pretty terrible misinformation, and is being rightly dragged for it by pretty much every epidemiologist I know on Twitter, including myself. His takes are bad . He's called this virus's R0 the worst he's seen in his career, which is absurd. He's conflated R0 and attack rate. Familiar errors because no one pays attention to ID epidemiology until there's an outbreak, and then suddenly de…

Could you let us know what ID epidemiologists are? I'm not familiar with the field and am wondering what the ID stands for.

Infectious disease, I think.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#356

Post by hybrid_cluster »

bra4you wrote: post #348
alasdair_ wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that “chance of dying” varies based on treatment, and that treatment in an overwhelmed Wuhan hospital is likely not the same as treatment as, say, the first patient in France to get the disease.

"I suspect that “chance of dying” varies based on treatment, " I doubt this. WHile this may be true for a known disease, we have to ask, how much can the hospital do in this cases? It is a little bit like HIV in the beginning. Watch them die? Interestingly, China is trying HIV medications on the infected.

One of the main causes of death of the new coronavirus seems to be Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). This can be treated fairly effectively with ventilation, but such treatment would obviously require a bed, ventilation system, and attentive nurses, at the very least. It's easy to imagine how these requirements may currently not be met for all patients with ARDS symptoms in Wuhan.

For more info on ARDS and treatment in the context of the current pandemic, see this informative explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okg7uq_HrhQ

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#358

Post by malka »

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??

It would be good for the environment

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#359

Post by DoctorOetker »

cheeseblubber wrote: post #43

For those who are referencing the flu and it's mortality rate here are estimates from the CDC for 2019 * 15,000,000 – 21,000,000 who had the flu * 8,200 – 20,000 deaths from the flu The morality rate ranges from 0.03% to 0.09% or 3/10000 9/10000 https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...

I would like the WHO to be as transparent as we demand China to be (and perhaps they are):

At

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...

, you can see the standardized protocols for the hospitals dealing with 2019-nCov, such as the anonymizing CRF (Case Record Form):

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-nco...

Which describes both the CORE and DAILY forms for an electronic database.

Some selected sentences from the pdf:

===

* The CRF is designed to collect data obtained through examination, interview and review of hospital notes. Data may be collected retrospectively if the patient is enrolled after the admission date.

* DO NOT INPUT ANY PATIENT IDENTIFIERS: THIS INCLUDES NAMES, ADDRESSES, DATE OF BIRTH OR PLACE OF BIRTH.

* Step 1: Contact EDCARN@who.int to become a contributor to the nCoV global platform.

* Step 2: You will be contacted by ISARIC, platform manager, for assignment informational pack and instructions on how to use the REDCap nCoV platform.

[...]

* If your site would like to collect data independently, establishment of locally hosted database is possible.

* Standard reports will be provided on regular basis to all contributors. Additional analysis for operational public health purposes will be determined by an independent WHO clinical advisory group.

===

As you can see, the only way to get this anonymized data, is to be a contributor, and to be a contributor, you'd have to be a hospital, or somehow be granted access by WHO.

Remember the live outbreak map by John Hopkins? It also displays the number of people that recovered, the dates and definition of recovery duration are helpful in estimating mortality. Note that the other maps and graphs online only publish contaminations and deaths, which is not useful for calculating mortality. Why does John Hopkins deserve access, and why can I not get access, if I wish to fit a statistical model to the epidemic observations?

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#360

Post by acqq »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #334
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…

> deaths / (deaths + recoveries) How does that produce a meaningful number? If you got 1000s of infected people, and 1 dies... The formula would be 1 / (1 + 0) = 100%. What does that mean?

You simply have to have the known numbers of confirmed dead and recovered patients.

The way you used it "1 / (1 + 0) = 100%" means just "the knowledge used in the formula is that one patient died, zero recovered." In that case, yes, the fatality rate is "everybody dies." But using the sample of 1 is of course not meaningful for any statistics, not only for that formula.

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