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Is It a Pandemic Yet?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#111

Post by Swizec »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #64
Swizec wrote: post #12

We were looking into Covid-19 at the office and after digging through the scariness we realized mortality rate for healthy 30-somethings is around 0.1%. Then we said screw it and stopped worrying. We’re most likely gonna be fine. Even if it becomes widespread the odds are ever in our favor. Plus there’s already a few confirmed cases in SFBA so ... Edit: for the downvoters, I’m not say spread disease with wonton aband…

sure, but you probably know some old people, and the hospital will be over-whelmed. Even if you're not dead you might find yourself organising funerals (who are also overwhelmed). So even if you are not directly at risk of death, you will almost certainly affected by secondary affects from the infra demands or your extended family.

See that’s what I’m saying. There’s higher mortality than usual but the numbers don’t support a “funeral services will be overwhelmed, dead lying in the streets” levels of panic. It’s gonna be fine, more people still die every day from fatness, car crashes, and guns than they do from Covid-19.

And being a transplant I in fact don’t know any old people I’d come into contact with unless I explicitly went out of my way to see them.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#112

Post by theanalyst »

0xff00ffee wrote: post #70
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and we can expect 10X to 20X that number at risk when this virus spreads.

Why stop at 10x or 20x? Why not 1,000x? What's the science behind that?

0.5% mortality vs 2-3.5% mortality, look the number of recovered cases is still small, so we can't actually count the in progress numbers just yet

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#113

Post by KineticLensman »

asiachick wrote: post #56
danmaz74 wrote: post #8

I read a lot about this virus lately, and it looks like the mortality rate depends a lot on the availability of intensive care. If that's the case, slowing down the diffusion of the infection could be really important in keeping down the total number of deaths.

Dumb question but what intensive care? Do people need to be on respirators? Need access to drugs only available at ICU? Just curious if any of the things done at an ICU to prevent death really need to be only at the ICU.

The most extreme consequences of infection include acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and sepsis, which may require ICU-type treatment. See [0] for World Health Organisation guidance on critical management of severe acute respiratory infection when novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infection is suspected. The majority of patients don't experience such severe consequences.

[0] https://www.who.int/publications-detail/clinical-management-...

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#114

Post by trengorilla »

thedance wrote: post #22
Swizec wrote: post #12

We were looking into Covid-19 at the office and after digging through the scariness we realized mortality rate for healthy 30-somethings is around 0.1%. Then we said screw it and stopped worrying. We’re most likely gonna be fine. Even if it becomes widespread the odds are ever in our favor. Plus there’s already a few confirmed cases in SFBA so ... Edit: for the downvoters, I’m not say spread disease with wonton aband…

It can be a major pandemic and still almost everyone will survive it. If it kills 1% that would be huge, but 99% of you will still be here.

Well so far 9% of fully resolved cases have ended in death. It's nearly all old people so I'll take some comfort in that though :D

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#115

Post by JshWright »

daxorid wrote: post #80
asiachick wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dumb question but what intensive care? Do people need to be on respirators? Need access to drugs only available at ICU? Just curious if any of the things done at an ICU to prevent death really need to be only at the ICU.

Yes, mechanical ventilators and in most cases, supplemental oxygen for roughly 18% of patients. We can expect CFR in the US to be fairly low (approx 2%) as long as the availability of these resources permits treatment for all who need it. After saturation, however, the CFR will move asymptotically toward approx 15%. Medical system saturation is believed to be the main reason the CFR in Hubei is much worse than other…

CPAP is definitely a viable intervention for ARDS. Some percentage of patients will still end up needing intubation/ventilation, but CPAP is a good way to prevent that in some percentage of cases (esp if used pretty "aggressively" to support the patient while they're still able to breathe on their own, if they get to the point where they can't breathe for themselves effectively enough, then CPAP isn't going to do anything for them)

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#116

Post by ducttape12 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #98
ducttape12 wrote: post #76

Can someone explain to me why coronavirus is getting so much coverage? According to Wikipedia, Coronavirus has killed about 2000 people. Each year smoking kills 480,000 people in the US. In two days smoking will have killed more people in the US than coronavirus has worldwide. Shouldn't we have headlines about this every day? Or any of the other far more deadly things (traffic accidents, heart disease, suicide, etc.)…

It has the ability to affect the global economy in ways that the others dont. If people don't want to go to work due to an increased risk of mortality, business will shut down. If everyone is forced to go to work and they all get sick and are unable to work for several weeks, business shuts down. Finally if everyone gets sick and 3% of your workforce then dies, that again causes massive economic disruption. This is a…

But couldn't the same thing apply to traffic deaths? In 2018, in the US, over 36,000 people died in car accidents. That's higher than coronavirus deaths, so logically shouldn't we all stay off the roads and quit going to work? Wouldn't that have the same impact?

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-traffic-deaths-...

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#117

Post by tharne »

ducttape12 wrote: post #76

Can someone explain to me why coronavirus is getting so much coverage? According to Wikipedia, Coronavirus has killed about 2000 people. Each year smoking kills 480,000 people in the US. In two days smoking will have killed more people in the US than coronavirus has worldwide. Shouldn't we have headlines about this every day? Or any of the other far more deadly things (traffic accidents, heart disease, suicide, etc.)…

It has to do with catastrophic risk and the fact that pandemics follow a power law distribution instead of a normal one. The deaths from things like smoking or auto accidents are normally distributed with very very small deviations around a known mean. Smoking may kill 480,000 Americans per year, but there's never a year where it will kill 10X 100X or 1000X that number.

Pandemics tend to follow a power-law distribution, like earthquakes, where you have small outbreaks here and there and then one comes along at 100X or 1000X the magnitude of anything ever seen before.

Even people who don't have a statistical understanding of power law vs. normal distribution usually have a good intuition of it, which is why most people worry about terrorism more than one would if they were just looking at just the total number of deaths vs. something car accidents or smoking.

What makes the coronavirus so terrifying is power-law component and the unknown unknowns. We still don't have a good handle on basic things like how exactly how contagious it is, how deadly it is, and how long it will take to run its course. Sure, it could end up being equivalent to a "bad flu", but it could also become a repeat of the 1918 Flu or worse.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#118

Post by mywacaday »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #50
rimliu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our media is referring to "patient zero" in Italy as a 38 years-old man. So either he is known or our media is full of your-know-that. Which would not be surprising. Edit: a commenter below correctly pointed out that that 38yo man is being referred to as "patient one" not "patient zero". My bad.

Things are developing very fast, expect that distortions from the chinese wispers games that is modern media to be worse than ever. I've seen report that the first case was in contact with a person that had been in China but showed not symptoms and even might have tested negative at some point. If they get re-tested and show positive now, or some of their possessions do, that solves the mystery.

Didn't China changed how they were confirming cases to an MRI scan as people were still testing negative on tests 2-5 before testing positive.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#119

Post by [deleted] »

aww_dang wrote: post #67
chc4 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those new articles have basically the same exact conspiracy theory reasoning behind them as the ZeroHedge and friends ones from last week, so this isn't as much of a slam dunk as you make it sound like.

Not sure why you need to characterize it as a slam dunk. That wasn't my intention. It is simply an observation of a contradiction. If we're capable of consuming news from a variety of sources, digesting them and coming to our own conclusions, that should be enough. If not, hand holding isn't going to help.

[deleted]

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#120

Post by rimliu »

est31 wrote: post #58
rimliu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our media is referring to "patient zero" in Italy as a 38 years-old man. So either he is known or our media is full of your-know-that. Which would not be surprising. Edit: a commenter below correctly pointed out that that 38yo man is being referred to as "patient one" not "patient zero". My bad.

That 38 year old man was the one I talked about above, the person who went to the hospital on whom they first found the disease, but not necessarily the person it originated from. Likely they have asked him (as well as anyone else affected) whether he's been outside of the country and he answered no (otherwise they'd say they have found the origin). I'm not an expert, so I looked up what "Patient Zero" is defined as.…

Well, then our media is wrong.
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