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Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

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Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#81

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

eloff wrote: post #51
baxtr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm using his mortality rate of 1%. That's 20x the mortality rate of influenza in the US. If it's 2% like the media reports then it's 40x. It doesn't really matter to me, either way is too deadly for my liking.

You have to remember that when a virus is new and spreads quickly, resources and medical care around the area are strained.

Look at the mortality rate outside of Wuhan to see what the real mortality under a controlled environment look like.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#82

Post by lukaa »

I think we are dealing with black swan event. It's new disease, higly contagious and with 200 more deathly rate than flu. Since we don't know much about that disease and how much that virus can mutate being extra cautious is best strategy.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#83

Post by cycrutchfield »

baxtr wrote: post #47
eloff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Saying that it's an order of magnitude less deadly than SARS doesn't exactly allay any concerns when it's still at least an order of magnitude more deadly than the flu, and probably twice as communicable. "A severe form of the cold" is the understatement of the century.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#84

Post by franknine »

thedirt0115 wrote: post #73
kccqzy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been scouring the darker corners of the internet obsessively for every seemingly reputable bit of data under the assumption that virtually anything official out of China could not be trusted. I do the same. If you can read Chinese, I strongly recommend you read Sina Weibo, a micro-blogging social media in China, or Toutiao. Read them quickly before posts are inevitably deleted by the censors. There are some tr…

Are these posts archived anywhere?

Mostly screen-scraped and shared on Twitter among Chinese people who live in the west

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#85

Post by cycrutchfield »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #81
eloff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using his mortality rate of 1%. That's 20x the mortality rate of influenza in the US. If it's 2% like the media reports then it's 40x. It doesn't really matter to me, either way is too deadly for my liking.

You have to remember that when a virus is new and spreads quickly, resources and medical care around the area are strained. Look at the mortality rate outside of Wuhan to see what the real mortality under a controlled environment look like.

That's part of the problem though. Mortality rate outside of Wuhan reflects the mortality rate under ideal conditions (enough ICU beds, enough ventilators and ECMO, etc.) Mortality rate within Wuhan reflects the mortality rate under pandemic conditions.

If the rest of China looks like Hubei in a few weeks, we will be in pandemic conditions throughout all of China. If other countries start to look like China in a month or two, we will be in pandemic conditions throughout the world.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#86

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 »

franknine wrote: post #79
allovernow wrote: post #39

Honestly if there is truth to this article it is reassuring. I've been scouring the darker corners of the internet obsessively for every seemingly reputable bit of data under the assumption that virtually anything official out of China could not be trusted. This doctor is working on the absolute worst of cases and even they, it seems, have a high overall probability of survival. Also good to see some figures on the p…

We had a SARS outbreak in Taiwan since we trusted the statement from Chinese government back then. This time we assume coronavirus can do person to person transmission and blocked travel to WuHan back when CCP and WHO were downplaying its ability to spread. That's how we have less cases than Japan, Korea and Hong Kong now. Recently Taiwanese people in WuHan asked for evacuation. CCP denied our request at first, then…

> We requested to fly children, elderly and people with medical condition first, instead they flew wealthy businessmen with good connection to CCP and their China spouses.

Wow, that’s disgusting.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#87

Post by cycrutchfield »

mullingitover wrote: post #54

> That was why ICU medical staff were almost all sickened. This is a brilliant strategy for spreading the virus to any patients who might've come in with regular cold or flu and hadn't been infected with coronavirus yet. This is like a commercial for why we need to build medical telepresence robots.

If they were in the ICU in a severe or critical state, they already had the virus. ICU is not the same as the regular hospital admissions.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#88

Post by mhh__ »

_jal wrote: post #60
notkaiho wrote: post #24

Did you see Eric Raymond having a completely normal one about novel Coronavirus? http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8587

An excellent example of how expertise and reasoning ability in one domain does not necessarily transfer to another. That humility is hard for engineers is something I try to remind myself daily.

https://xkcd.com/1570/

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#90

Post by nabla9 »

If they screw up other measures, like hygiene for the sick and food delivery to 50 million people they can multiply the death rate.

Modern theory of Spanish flu[1] is that the flu itself was not that deadly. Combination of influenza with bacteria in the lungs caused most of the deaths. It was the World War I with lots of wounded in the same place, bad hygiene conditions, many with scarred lungs from poison gas and civilians suffering from malnutrition.

[1]: Bacterial Pneumonia Caused Most Deaths in 1918 Influenza Pandemic - Implications for Future Pandemic Planning https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/bacterial-pneu...

> However, it is possible that — as in 1918 — a similar pattern of viral damage followed by bacterial invasion could unfold, say the authors. Preparations for diagnosing, treating and preventing bacterial pneumonia should be among highest priorities in influenza pandemic planning, they write. "We are encouraged by the fact that pandemic planners are already considering and implementing some of these actions," says Dr. Fauci.

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