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Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

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Re: Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

#21

Post by fourstar »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #6
m23khan wrote: post #4

I will counter: How can you not feel bit of panic when you see coronavirus cases being reported daily from all parts of the World where travel is common or where there is large population? Then you have excellent leadership in Iran which knowingly hides their coronavirus situation and thus have exported the virus to poor and incapable places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq? Heck, compared to Iran, even Pakistan is b…

Because the curve is almost not rising, even in linear form ( I thought it was logarithmic even before yesterday). The amount of casualties seem to be in control. Okay, Iran is acting stupid. But we don't even do business with them. Tourism is minimal. Hell, I'd even prefer to get it, so I'm over it ( 32 years old)

> Hell, I'd even prefer to get it, so I'm over it ( 32 years old)

32 years on Earth and you're unfamiliar with mutation?

Re: Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

#22

Post by JeanMarcS »

m23khan wrote: post #4

I will counter: How can you not feel bit of panic when you see coronavirus cases being reported daily from all parts of the World where travel is common or where there is large population? Then you have excellent leadership in Iran which knowingly hides their coronavirus situation and thus have exported the virus to poor and incapable places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq? Heck, compared to Iran, even Pakistan is b…

I think it's the point of OP. Because there are reports EVERY day, even every hours, it looks worse.

(I still haven't decided if this point is true or not)

Re: Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

#23

Post by raxxorrax »

There is a dilemma. Nobody knows beforehand how bad things are going to get. Perhaps this is just a cold, perhaps an aggressive virus that can kill a lot of people.

For public institutions responsible for health, you would never say that things aren't that bad. There is nothing to gain here. If it isn't too bad, you would have been too careful, no big deal. If you are downplaying the issue, you can get in a lot of trouble because you are suddenly responsible for every single person who died from this if the outbreak is worse than previously assumed.

Of course there are some other options like hiding the outbreak completely. Those fail as the information cannot be contained anymore.

Re: Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

#24

Post by moultano »

Loughla wrote: post #19
moultano wrote: post #9

The author is not an epidemiologist, and does not appear to have any other relevant expertise to assess the situation. The people who do have that expertise consistently say that it is very serious. Cases have declined in China only because of the extreme measures they undertook to stop it. (In other words, "hysteria.")

>Cases have declined in China only because of the extreme measures they undertook to stop it. I mean, you can't really say the author can't assess the situation because of a lack of expertise, and then immediately assess the situation with a lack of expertise. I'm assuming that the quarantine helped, but also it might not have helped. That might have just been the natural progression of this disease. We don't know, a…

> I mean, you can't really say the author can't assess the situation because of a lack of expertise, and then immediately assess the situation with a lack of expertise.

This is the assessment of the WHO, not mine. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi...

Re: Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

#25

Post by seanieb »

Anyone who doesn’t think this has the potential to be a big deal and worth worrying about doesn’t understand numbers. Couching this in some facts about the seasonal flu is all you need to reveal those that are ignorant. I’m not even going explain why. The comparisons to the flu have been eviscerated so many times in the month or more.

Re: Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

#26

Post by robjan »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #6
m23khan wrote: post #4

I will counter: How can you not feel bit of panic when you see coronavirus cases being reported daily from all parts of the World where travel is common or where there is large population? Then you have excellent leadership in Iran which knowingly hides their coronavirus situation and thus have exported the virus to poor and incapable places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq? Heck, compared to Iran, even Pakistan is b…

Because the curve is almost not rising, even in linear form ( I thought it was logarithmic even before yesterday). The amount of casualties seem to be in control. Okay, Iran is acting stupid. But we don't even do business with them. Tourism is minimal. Hell, I'd even prefer to get it, so I'm over it ( 32 years old)

This isn't like the common cold. There have been cases of reinfection reported already.

Re: Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

#27

Post by AlchemistCamp »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #6
m23khan wrote: post #4

I will counter: How can you not feel bit of panic when you see coronavirus cases being reported daily from all parts of the World where travel is common or where there is large population? Then you have excellent leadership in Iran which knowingly hides their coronavirus situation and thus have exported the virus to poor and incapable places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq? Heck, compared to Iran, even Pakistan is b…

Because the curve is almost not rising, even in linear form ( I thought it was logarithmic even before yesterday). The amount of casualties seem to be in control. Okay, Iran is acting stupid. But we don't even do business with them. Tourism is minimal. Hell, I'd even prefer to get it, so I'm over it ( 32 years old)

Healthy doctors your age have already died from it.

Re: Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

#28

Post by drewg123 »

beamatronic wrote: post #16

Anecdotally, I see attitudes among friends and family towards Coronavirus split along the same lines as whether they support or despise Trump.

Which way does the split go? Trump supporters are panicking about the virus, or not panicking?

Re: Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

#29

Post by moultano »

war1025 wrote: post #17
moultano wrote: post #9

The author is not an epidemiologist, and does not appear to have any other relevant expertise to assess the situation. The people who do have that expertise consistently say that it is very serious. Cases have declined in China only because of the extreme measures they undertook to stop it. (In other words, "hysteria.")

There is a difference between an epidemiologist doing their job and the media over-hyping the situation to deal with a slow news week. The medical community should absolutely be in high gear right now. That doesn't mean the rest of us need to act like its an end of the world situation.

The medical community is asking us to prepare. You should be changing your behavior to reduce contact with other people, learning the necessary sanitation techniques, and preparing to be self sufficient in your home for a few weeks.

Re: Mass hysteria is making coronavirus worse than it is

#30

Post by scott_s »

This is a claim from the submitted article with no evidence:

> In all likelihood, however, given the one-off infections that are being detected in disparate locations, thousands if not millions have already had mild or asymptomatic SARS-CoV2.

An assistance director general and epidemiologist for the WHO, Bruce Aylward, makes the opposite argument in a recent Vox interview (https://www.vox.com/2020/3/2/21161067/coronavirus-covid19-ch...):

> Bruce Aylward: ... More of a surprise, and this is something we still don’t understand, is how little virus there was in the much broader community. Everywhere we went, we tried to find and understand how many tests had been done, how many people were tested, and who were they.

> In Guangdong province, for example, there were 320,000 tests done in people coming to fever clinics, outpatient clinics. And at the peak of the outbreak, 0.47 percent of those tests were positive. People keep saying [the cases are the] tip of the iceberg. But we couldn’t find that. We found there’s a lot of people who are cases, a lot of close contacts — but not a lot of asymptomatic circulation of this virus in the bigger population. And that’s different from flu. In flu, you’ll find this virus right through the child population, right through blood samples of 20 to 40 percent of the population.

> Julia Belluz: If you didn’t find the “iceberg” of mild cases in China, what does it say about how deadly the virus is — the case fatality rate?

> Bruce Aylward: It says you’re probably not way off. The average case fatality rate is 3.8 percent in China, but a lot of that is driven by the early epidemic in Wuhan where numbers were higher. ... This suggests the Chinese are really good at keeping people alive with this disease, and just because it’s 1 percent in the general population outside of Wuhan doesn’t mean it [will be the same in other countries].

I find Aylward's arguments cogent and backed with evidence from the ground. I also don't see "mass hysteria." The evidence points to COVID-19 being more severe than the seasonal flu, we have an opportunity to contain it, and we're trying to do so. Canceling large events and unnecessary travel seems reasonable.

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