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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

#361

Post by feanaro »

chaostheory wrote: post #232
gruez wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are these "other studies"?

They’re on google. This took me less than a minute to find: https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/12/14-135590/en/ That WHO post argues against travel restrictions, yet: “In one simulation, border controls preventing 99.9% of cases entering any given country delayed epidemic spread by up to 35 days.” 35 days is a lot of time, assuming a vaccine rollout is inevitable and successful There are other papers which are p…

Thanks for this. Another excerpt I found particularly interesting:

> Internal travel restrictions in England, Scotland and Wales in the United Kingdom were predicted to have minimal impact on the magnitude of the peak and in delaying the spread of the epidemic – possibly because there are some densely populated urban areas and relatively high levels of population movement. However, in a recent review, it was estimated that a combination of internal and international travel restrictions could help to stagger the impact of a pandemic within a country such as the United Kingdom, by desynchronizing localized outbreaks.

This is exactly the kind of unforeseen interaction effects I had in mind a few comments above when I said I'm not convinced we are able to conclude that "travel restrictions do not work" from the present studies. This particular effect will quite obviously also depend on epidemiological factors such as the length of incubation period, whether the disease is transmissible during the incubation period and so on.

There are far too many variables to account for and far too little experimentation has been done so far to conclude anything firmly.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#362

Post by adventured »

malka wrote: post #358
rurp wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It would be good for the environment

Humans are part of the environment. Every bit as much as a tree or a koala is. So it wouldn't be good for all of the environment.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#363

Post by kabacha »

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.

> China’s medical system is primitive by comparison.

Comparison to what? Isn't US hostpitals notorious in that regard? Getting flu and either dying or being bankrupt.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#364

Post by krageon »

ecneladis wrote: post #74
goblin89 wrote: post #24

Running the official numbers, mortality rate is less than 3%. If we plug in estimative models claiming 25000+ unrecorded infections, mortality is less than 1%. Unless you are in a sensitive age group or have other health problems, data suggests you're most likely to get over it as a regular flu. It's not all perfect and is worse than a regular flu, but especially now after the announcement some people may way over-st…

These calculations assume that no one else infected dies. Seems overly optimistic, especially given that ~1200 patients are in serious or critical condition.

The hospital is where you go when you are dying for most people. I don't think it's a stretch to say that most dying people will be in the hospital.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#365

Post by mhandley »

mhandley wrote: post #217
mrb wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very good observation on these 10 provinces. But I would apply caution when interpreting a cherry-picked data subset. Nitpick: I don't claim "20-56%" death rate, but "9-56%", thus your observation of a 10% CFR is in line with my claim.

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,…

Just to update with the latest statistics, since 29th Jan, up to 30th Jan 9:30pm EST, for rest of world outside Hubei, there have now been 1 death and 33 recovered. So the trend seems to be that the death rate (calculated as deaths/recovered) outside Hubei is falling. Still early days and small numbers though.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#366

Post by mrtksn »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #261
rnotaro wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just call it an "up-to-date" map that is often updated.

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

I don't think that's the case, it is a map of data updated by an editor. The website in question doesn't seem to fetch data automatically as the sources are making it available.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#367

Post by mrtksn »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #272
mrtksn wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In other words, it is a plot of data that is regularly updated.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#368

Post by Brave-Steak »

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??

One could argue that thinning the population of the older demographic with pre-existing (and expensive) conditions could be a net benefit to governments with socialized healthcare. See Taiwan which has repeatedly had to refund their system because of an aging population and the related growing costs.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#369

Post by saberdancer »

goblin89 wrote: post #24

Running the official numbers, mortality rate is less than 3%. If we plug in estimative models claiming 25000+ unrecorded infections, mortality is less than 1%. Unless you are in a sensitive age group or have other health problems, data suggests you're most likely to get over it as a regular flu. It's not all perfect and is worse than a regular flu, but especially now after the announcement some people may way over-st…

You cannot calculate mortality rate as most people haven't recovered fully. We have 3% mortality rate at the moment, but we do not know how many of those infected are still in early stages and what will be the final number of deaths.

If we looked at deaths against reported recoveries than the rate is much higher (I am guessing a lot of recoveries are not reported).

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#370

Post by brigandish »

dchichkov wrote: post #328
koheripbal wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There was one interesting number though. The Japanese had been evacuating 200 people from Wuhan and found 3 cases. Assume that a plane of evacuees like that is somewhat random sampling. And that evacuees have similar or better hygiene. This puts infection rate at 1% of the population. Official population of Wuhan is 11 million, it is possible that it is larger. This puts the number to 100k cases.

On top of that, 2 of the returnees refused to be tested. Who knows what they're up to… work? Seeing family? Hanging around in the park with a Strong Zero for a chat?
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