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Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

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191–200 of 316 posts

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#191
post #63

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…

> 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…

Well, isn't that the very definition of anecdotal data? Not saying these cases didn't happen. But to use them to build a model of the Corona virus epidemic doesn't fly, IMHO. I for my part stick to WHO data.

One general point so. That WHO has now a te dedicated to counter false rumours and theories on the internet is telling. And HN would be best served if we, educated, critical thinking people, would stick in that with the experts. Who are the WHO.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason now is that the confirmation method of infection is still under debate and improvement. The current method is nucleic acid detection, which only has about 50% accuracy, so obviously a huge number of people out there cannot be diagnosed, and they won't be added to the official number. And there are also rumors out there saying the lack of medical resources. Sick people couldn't get proper medical treat…

Just as an aside: "accuracy" is a pointless measure if you don't also know the ratio of true cases to false cases. The metrics you really want is the True/False Positive rates - without that you can't gauge the quality of a test like this.

Quite so.

The data I got is that among the people who really got the virus, positive rate of the test is only 30% - 50%. So false negative rate is as high as 50-70%.

The news report (in Chinese):

http://www.caixin.com/2020-02-07/101512517.html

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as an aside: "accuracy" is a pointless measure if you don't also know the ratio of true cases to false cases. The metrics you really want is the True/False Positive rates - without that you can't gauge the quality of a test like this.

Quite so. The data I got is that among the people who really got the virus, positive rate of the test is only 30% - 50%. So false negative rate is as high as 50-70%. The news report (in Chinese): http://www.caixin.com/2020-02-07/101512517.html

Ouch, that is pretty disappointing numbers :(

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#194
post #173

My wife is mainland Chinese, and she has been saying that it a worse than what the government is saying. Also, since Li Wenliang died, well, frankly a lot of people are pissed at the CCP. Anyway, I feel like it’ll be an epidemic ( it already is, I believe ) in China, and be much better controlled outside of China. Unfortunately my wife is also stuck in Chongqing; Taiwan is essentially closing up its borders and we do…

I don’t understand what it is that the Chinese authorities are supposedly misreporting? The mortality rate of 2% is consistent with the number of cases and deaths reported by other countries. Is it that there are a large number of undiagnosed cases? That is kind of a given and is probably also the case in other countries. The timespan between first case and until it gets reported to who and quarantines start is less…

Lots of undiagnosed cases and under reporting of deaths is a possibility.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite so. The data I got is that among the people who really got the virus, positive rate of the test is only 30% - 50%. So false negative rate is as high as 50-70%. The news report (in Chinese): http://www.caixin.com/2020-02-07/101512517.html

Ouch, that is pretty disappointing numbers :(

Yeah. It's not that bad outside Wuhan, people who infected will get top level treatment, there will be best experts doing the diagnostics. But for Wuhan, where medical resources are extremely in short, we can only pray for the people there. Hope it's gonna be better.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#197
This was the most valuable piece of info for me, which I shared among my social circle:

Doctor observed that three weeks seemed to determine the difference between life and death.

- Patients with stronger immune systems would start to recover in a couple of weeks

- Second week, some cases would take a turn for the worse.

- In the third week, keeping some of these acute patients alive might require extraordinary intervention. For this group, the death rate seems to be 4 per cent to 5 per cent.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#198

Great article all around, worth reading as it's one of the only I've seen that are actually talking about disease progression and timeline. Some key info from the article: ---- Caixin: Based on your clinical experience, what's the disease progression of the new coronavirus? Peng: Lately I've been spending the daytime seeing patients in the ICU, then doing some research in the evenings. I just wrote a thesis. I drew o…

I find it so strange that even people who should know better say yeah there is 30k cases and 600 deaths so only 2% die. They should look at the clinical progression of the disease, if it takes 2 weeks from hospitalization to death - how many cases where there 2 weeks ago: those were the people that died.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#199
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand what it is that the Chinese authorities are supposedly misreporting? The mortality rate of 2% is consistent with the number of cases and deaths reported by other countries. Is it that there are a large number of undiagnosed cases? That is kind of a given and is probably also the case in other countries. The timespan between first case and until it gets reported to who and quarantines start is less…

Chinese authorities at some level -- it's not clear that this was CCP or local Wuhan decisionmakers -- clearly tried to shut down initial reports of the outbreak, as evidenced by Dr. Li Wenliang's detention and citation. As a new disease, with the first cases possibly being acquired as early as late November 2019, it wasn't until mid to late January 2020 that city and national authorities appeared to start taking the…

Thank you so much for this comment. I feel it quite balanced and Lola at the topic from multiple angles.

However I would like to inquire why you see Dr.Li's detention as evidence of "shutting down initial reports of the outbreak"?

First of all we do not have any kind of real insight on what Dr.Li was actually saying, and what was the severity of his reprimandation.

When something is on the lose that has the potential to kill millions, you need to be quick and purposeful in controlling the message. Wrong information can make people underprepare, but it can also make people overprepare.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#200
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the internet originally was funded almost exclusively by public money (US military and CERN being some of the biggest contributors), and there is basically no such thing as "privately funded defense researchers" - almost by definition, defense research is funded by public money, or at least by private investors looking to get their money back by selling to the state. Universities also tend to do research funded b…

I think GP was being sarcastic.

Oops, you may be right...
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