Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU • Hacker News Board

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#261

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

SteveHawk27 wrote: post #192

funklute wrote: post #190

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

[deleted]

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#262

Post by eveningcoffee » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #105

srik wrote: post #89

What can we do right now to increase our bio immunity for this?

Vector reduction. That's the principle mechanism of public health to epidemiological outbreaks: reduce the likelyhood and rate of transmission between people. This is why the appropriate response is to curtail transport, especially long-distance modes which occur faster than onset of symptoms (e.g., air flights from known epidemic zones). It's why locking down cities within epidemic zones, restricting mobility betwee…

One more data point.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51425702

Five Britons have tested positive for coronavirus in eastern France, the French health minister confirmed.

Four adults and a child were diagnosed with the virus after coming into contact with a British national who recently returned from Singapore.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#263

Post by irq11 » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #248

hef19898 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Chinese authorities are under reporting both, death and infections, inorder to drive "true" mortality up that would mean there more unreported people dying in relation to people being infected compared to the reported numbers. And yet every real expert out there is telling us the opposite is more likely because only the more severe cases tend to be reported. And mortality is expected to be lower if the unreported…

Every expert is not saying that the infection rate is much higher than the official numbers, but the death rate is reliable. They’re both unreliable and we just don’t know the true numbers. China’s reaction is not comforting though.

No, you misunderstood the parent, as well as the facts: experts are saying that the widely parroted “2%” number is an overestimate, and that the real infection rate is lower.

Deaths are easy to count. Minor cases of the virus are likely the most common sort, and never show up in a hospital at all.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#264

Post by oefrha » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

Laforet wrote: post #220

oefrha wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to a medical professional in my family who have close friends that have worked on the front line of epidemics, the high grade protective gears are like space suits, it takes close to an hour just to put them on and make sure they’re airtight, and taking them off takes even longer due to the significant risk of inflection (compared to when you put on a clean set) if you don’t take extreme care. Then there’s…

You are probably thinking of hazmat suits and it's not the most common type. Medical staff in Wuhan wear disposable protective overalls that are made of a thin layer of polypropylene (as intended so it would be light and cheap) and easily torn. Thus it's necessary to avoid taking them on and off between shifts because the act will probably rip it beyond repair. Some also took the additional step of strapping plastic…

> disposable protective overalls

I’ve asked for clarifications and was told that yes, the outer layer is indeed disposable, but medical staff need to wear multiple layers of protection, and the dressing and removal processes do take an hour or more each.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#265

Post by bullen » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

bredren wrote: post #256

bullen wrote: post #249

If you look at the graphs here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ And know that in 3 weeks everyone either dies or has recovered. Doesn't that mean we will see a large amount of total deaths in a couple of weeks? Those graphs are both exponential! Remember that cases are subjectively selected, while deaths have a fixed statistical variance!

Those graphs depict Total Cases and Total Deaths. (This presentation of data is sometimes used by startups trying to show their amazing growth off to potential investors.) If you look at the daily change in amounts of deaths from this data series, it is more of a wobbly straight line: https://i.imgur.com/gQajRT9.png I did a linear projection of this data series to see how long it would take for a 1000 a day to be per…

Ah, ok... thx!

I guess the number of serious condition jumping from 5000 to 6000 since last I looked yesterday or the day before was what startled me...

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#266

Post by DayDollar » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #230

rorykoehler wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno if you’ve seen any of the undercover videos from the hospitals? It’s entirely possible there are hundreds of deaths that haven’t been recorded. Many deaths are being recorded with viral pneumonia as death as they don’t have enough test kits to verify and are therefore not attributed to this coronavirus.

Undercover videos. Played to much Plague Inc. lately? As long as numbers from the epicenter in Wuhan don't deviate to much from international WHO numbers I will not go by "it is possible that...". I don't argue the situation in Wuhan is horrible. But taking some individual cases from area hit worst and build some BS theories out of that, going against every expert opinion out there, is just conspiracy theory shit. An…

Panic is - when your "independent" media, repeats propaganda nonsense word for word from chinese state media?

Test your information against samples from people with relations to ground-truth. Then you can panic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5VGPYtbTk8&t=739s

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#267

Post by eveningcoffee » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

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…

If you want to protect your loved ones then maybe it is better to stay where you are?

Traveling will increase the risk to become in contact with somebody who is infected.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51425702

Four adults and a child were diagnosed with the virus after coming into contact with a British national who recently returned from Singapore.

The five Britons, who stayed in the same ski chalet, were not in a serious condition, French officials said.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#268

Post by hef19898 » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

DayDollar wrote: post #266

hef19898 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undercover videos. Played to much Plague Inc. lately? As long as numbers from the epicenter in Wuhan don't deviate to much from international WHO numbers I will not go by "it is possible that...". I don't argue the situation in Wuhan is horrible. But taking some individual cases from area hit worst and build some BS theories out of that, going against every expert opinion out there, is just conspiracy theory shit. An…

Panic is - when your "independent" media, repeats propaganda nonsense word for word from chinese state media? Test your information against samples from people with relations to ground-truth. Then you can panic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5VGPYtbTk8&t=739s

Source being confirmed? Put into context?

But hey, you want to panic, go for it. But do it for yourself. Because now the "independent" media, the "propaganda" and the WHO numbers are more or less the same.

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#269

Post by hef19898 » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

irq11 wrote: post #263

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every expert is not saying that the infection rate is much higher than the official numbers, but the death rate is reliable. They’re both unreliable and we just don’t know the true numbers. China’s reaction is not comforting though.

No, you misunderstood the parent, as well as the facts: experts are saying that the widely parroted “2%” number is an overestimate , and that the real infection rate is lower. Deaths are easy to count. Minor cases of the virus are likely the most common sort, and never show up in a hospital at all.

Exactly that!

Re: Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU

#270

Post by kdumont » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #246

hef19898 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Official mortality rate is 2.1%. Deaths per confirmed infections. And yes, the WHO isn't that stupid to count cases that aren't decided yet. And yes, they are smart enough to take the appr. three weeks it usually takes until death into account. No idea where you got that 30% from. Even in Wuhan, with its medical infrastructure close to the breaking point, we are talking about 4.9%.

Just checked the last Situation Report from Feb. 7th from the WHO: 31,211 confirmed cases and 637 deaths in China. Makes a rate of roughly 2.04%. And I trust the WHO to get the calculation behind that right.

That's exactly what I don't understand. Logically, wouldn't deaths typically lag diagnosis by some amount? If so, we would expect the death rate to be higher than current deaths/cases because we need to use the confirmed cases from some number of days ago. That number of days being the average time between someone being diagnosed and dying.

Another stat is that there are roughly 700 deaths and 2400 recoveries, which would indicate a mortality rate of 23%. Of course, this suffers from the same delay issue as the 2% calculation (T_death https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#repro