Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

straitstimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 316 posts

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#41

Post by eloff »

Alex3917 wrote: post #5
lefstathiou wrote: post #2

I've learned more about the virus reading this article than anything else I've read over the past weeks.

I submitted this already, but this is worth reading also: https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTiiquwLa6tT-g/confere...

He's the expert, and I'm not. But I can do math. Influenza this year in the US: 19M infected and 10K fatalities. If you posit 1% mortality rate for coronavirus like he argues, that's 20 times more deadly. And it's twice that in China, it's unclear if that's a statistical anomaly or a structural feature of some difference in how things are tested/reported in China.

So I'm not going to just shrug and say it's no big deal. It could be. I'm a programmer, I know powers of 2 intimately. We're at 2^15 and doubling every 5 days. If that keeps up for a month we'll be at 1M infected and 16K dead. From there it's another 50 days to 1B infected and 1-2M dead. I'm keeping an eye on that, if it doesn't slow down before 2^20 (1M) then I've already planned to bug out with my loved ones to the mountains of Panama for a couple months until this blows over.

I think it won't come to that, but I'm keeping an eye on the progression and doubling rate. The thing with exponential growth is it always ends. The question here is does it end in time?

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#42

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 »

eindiran wrote: post #38
taneq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a something like 20% hospitalisation rate. That seems kind of scary compared to the flu which is "you have a sniffle, get over it."

Colloquially people talk about the flu as if its like a cold but a little worse. But the flu can be very serious: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/symptoms.htm Fevers of 5+ degrees F (lasting 3-5 days), chills, aches, chest pain, etc. And complications (eg pneumonia) are fairly common and can be deadly. I would wager that most "flu" cases people self-report aren't actually the flu.

People that talk this way about the flu most likely have not had the flu, or at least not a “full flu”. I came down with it in a year when the flu shot was particularly ineffective and that was enough to end any deliberation with the flu shot for me ever again.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#43

Post by eindiran »

> Doctors there were running "naked" as they knew they were set to be infected given the shortage of protective gear. They still worked there nonetheless.

That is so rough, especially since some healthcare workers are now among the dead: specifically, I saw that Li Wenliang had died.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/chinese-doctor-w...

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#45

Post by traek »

mindfulgeek wrote: post #37
2bitencryption wrote: post #11

I'm curious, for most of the infected, is it obvious from the symptoms whether they have novel coronavirus, or just the regular flu? That is, the tail end is clearly deadly -- but for the average case, are symptoms much worse than the yearly flu, or around the same?

From what I read, the coronavirus reduces lymphocytes and that is what ultimately causes the serious symptoms. For people who can keep their white counts up, they don’t get so sick. Edit: my thought is that maybe they could use blood counts to separate it from the flu

If one is to run tests, it would much easier to use the actual nCoV diagnostic panel. The question was whether differential diagnosis for nCoV based on (early-stage) symptoms exists, which to my knowledge it doesn’t yet.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#46

Post by jacquesm »

eindiran wrote: post #38
taneq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a something like 20% hospitalisation rate. That seems kind of scary compared to the flu which is "you have a sniffle, get over it."

Colloquially people talk about the flu as if its like a cold but a little worse. But the flu can be very serious: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/symptoms.htm Fevers of 5+ degrees F (lasting 3-5 days), chills, aches, chest pain, etc. And complications (eg pneumonia) are fairly common and can be deadly. I would wager that most "flu" cases people self-report aren't actually the flu.

How about paralysis?

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/guillain-barre-sy...

Not directly caused by the flu but correlated, fortunately quite rare.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#47

Post by baxtr »

eloff wrote: post #41
Alex3917 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I submitted this already, but this is worth reading also: https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTiiquwLa6tT-g/confere...

He's the expert, and I'm not. But I can do math. Influenza this year in the US: 19M infected and 10K fatalities. If you posit 1% mortality rate for coronavirus like he argues, that's 20 times more deadly. And it's twice that in China, it's unclear if that's a statistical anomaly or a structural feature of some difference in how things are tested/reported in China. So I'm not going to just shrug and say it's no big de…

You can only do the math right if you get counter and denominator right. The number of unreported cases is probably very high.

I found this in the article posted above:

”So the 20,000 cases in China is probably only the severe cases; the folks that actually went to the hospital and got tested. The Chinese healthcare system is very overwhelmed with all the tests going through. So my thinking is this is actually not as severe a disease as is being suggested. The fatality rate is probably only 0.8%-1%. There’s a vast underreporting of cases in China. Compared to Sars and Mers we are talking about a coronavirus that has a mortality rate of 8 to 10 times less deadly to Sars to Mers. So a correct comparison is not Sars or Mers but a severe cold. Basically this is a severe form of the cold.”

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#48

Post by dharmab »

taneq wrote: post #25
2bitencryption wrote: post #11

I'm curious, for most of the infected, is it obvious from the symptoms whether they have novel coronavirus, or just the regular flu? That is, the tail end is clearly deadly -- but for the average case, are symptoms much worse than the yearly flu, or around the same?

There's a something like 20% hospitalisation rate. That seems kind of scary compared to the flu which is "you have a sniffle, get over it."

Influenza is a serious disease that kills tens of thousands of people every year.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#49

Post by WillPostForFood »

seibelj wrote: post #36
codeulike wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that, it was interesting and quite anti-panic.

I have been telling everyone to relax, these mass media panics about some virus happen every few years like clockwork. We are primed as a society to fear China right now so a panic like this is right on schedule.

Do you think it is a mass media panic within China? Because if you look at what is going on, it doesn’t look like the response to a yearly flu. It looks like a gravely serious event.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#50

Post by eindiran »

jacquesm wrote: post #46
eindiran wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colloquially people talk about the flu as if its like a cold but a little worse. But the flu can be very serious: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/symptoms.htm Fevers of 5+ degrees F (lasting 3-5 days), chills, aches, chest pain, etc. And complications (eg pneumonia) are fairly common and can be deadly. I would wager that most "flu" cases people self-report aren't actually the flu.

How about paralysis? https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/guillain-barre-sy... Not directly caused by the flu but correlated, fortunately quite rare.

Interesting. I has heard the link between GBS and the flu vaccination before (since all the flu vaccine questionnaires mention it), but that article suggests there's evidence that the flu is more likely to cause it than the vaccination, which is supported by this article:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19025491

Post reply on HN