Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

blogs.sciencemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 262 posts

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#211

Post by asdfman123 »

jennyyang wrote: post #130
the_af wrote: post #74

I see a lot of panicky comments, both in real life and in this very thread. I know COVID19 is different from a regular flu, but is it more serious? "Regular" flu is very contagious and kills lots of people every year. It's ok to study coronavirus and to try to find ways to effectively manage it, combat it or prevent the disease -- but why are we panicking? Nobody panics about the flu and it's proven to be fatal for a…

A single individual getting coronavirus isn't a big deal. Chances are they will be fine. The problem is that it's very infectious, R0 could be 6+ where the flu is about 1-2. That means it's 3-6 times more contagious than the flu, so it spreads very very quickly. At the same time, it causes severe symptoms in 15-20% of cases. When these people have access to medical care, they will likely survive. But if they don't ge…

I believe the only thing a hospital can offer is a ventilator -- in the worst cases, the disease slashes your lung capacity and a ventilator will keep you oxygenated.

Hospitals will only help if you feel like you can't breathe (and we do not have anywhere near the amount of ventilators that we'll need for this), so the vast majority of people should self-quarantine, take pain killers for fever and wait for it to pass.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#212

Post by cygx »

the_af wrote: post #191
shawabawa3 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish flu was also "just a flu" and killed between 17 and 50million people world wide Covid19 is more contagious and more deadly than "regular flu"

But that's what I'm saying. The flu is already a serious deal and nobody panics. In any case, surely there are some differences between the 1918 world of the Spanish flu and the current world, both in actual medicine and what we learned about how to manage contagious diseases? Maybe the Spanish flu today (I mean, if it started today and hadn't happened before) wouldn't have as many victims.

On the flip side, we're traveling farther in greater numbers than in 1918.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#213

Post by fspeech »

makomk wrote: post #115
kfarr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, the article says "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died." The issue is with reporting (the denominator). The bar for "reporting" COVID-19 positive is very high relative to the flu, especially as some countries (ahem USA) don't / didn't even permit testing of all symptomatic patients. So yes maybe it is orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu but it doesn't seem clear at all that…

Not just the US. Crucially, Wuhan and I think also the rest of Hubei pretty much only tested patients who showed lung abnormalities on CT scans, so only the more severe cases were diagnosed. The WHO knows this. In fact, they've been appearing in the pages of the New York Times and anywhere else that'll have them and gushing about how great this Chinese testing methodology is and how everyone should copy it.

They test much more widely but only those with pneumonia are counted as confirmed. But this is a viral pneumonia. So the undercounting is not that much.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#214

Post by ceejayoz »

owlninja wrote: post #142
aazaa wrote: post #82

For those suggesting that a COVID-19 vaccine can somehow be fast tracked, consider what happens if something goes wrong during deployment to the population. The US has an active, very vocal anti-vax community. They've been growing and gaining ground for decades. The first sign of trouble of any kind with a new COVID-19 vaccine would result in a backlash of biblical proportions. It could be so strong as to derail any…

I hear more people talking about anti-vaxxers than I do from any actual anti-vaxxers. I don't think they are all that powerful.

They're powerful enough.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/16/vaccines-mea...

> More than half the states in America have seen a decline over the past decade in the take-up rates among kindergarten children of vaccines against diseases such as measles, mumps, hepatitis B and polio, as unfounded anti-vaccination theories have spread.

> The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR), which is the focus of much activity by the so-called anti-vaxxer movement, is especially vulnerable. Alarmingly, the study finds that more than half of the states – 26 in total – have vaccination rates that have fallen below the target of 95% which experts state is needed to provide maximum protection against the diseases.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#215

Post by ceejayoz »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #127
partingshots wrote: post #119

Given that this is so similar to the previous SARS epidemic, how did that whole thing eventually end? Was a vaccine created? Did it just naturally fizzle out?

Summer hit the Northern Hemisphere.

This theory is silly.

SARS spread in Singapore, where the average high temperature stays at 87-90 degrees twelve months out of the year. They don't have a winter/summer cycle.

SARS was stopped because infectious people were readily identifiable by checking for a fever.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#217

Post by sarakayakomzin »

dekhn wrote: post #184
pkaye wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure they take more precautions like make sure women who take the medications are not pregnant.

Yes, exactly. Seems better than a blanket ban. As pointed out elsewhere, the FDA is basically trying to keep dramatic risks/outcomes low, to maintain confidence in approved drugs, but tends to have a high false negative rate. What's interesting is that Vioxx was approved, but later appeared to have huge negative impact when it was given to large numbers of people (and apparently, it was also evident in the raw clinic…

>Yes, exactly. Seems better than a blanket ban.

and yet somehow you don't concede that a non-blanket ban should have been the conclusion prior to opening it up to the public?

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#218

Post by tilt_error »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #29

I know Derek Lowe is an expert. However, sometimes, experts think that because things have always been a certain way throughout their career, they will always be like that. Drug development has been very conservative especially in the US for the past several decades. The FDA is all about making sure they never have a thalidomide incident and would rather lose a lot of good drugs than approve a bad drug. This is the s…

The Pandemrix vaccine against the latest pandemic (the swine flu) caused narcolepsy in some individuals -- seemingly with a propensity for affecting young people and possibly related to the choice of adjuvant.

We're in a similar situation now. Early vaccines may have side effects and a forced introduction of a vaccine may increase the risk.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#219

Post by ouid »

pier25 wrote: post #198
wooly_bully wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the linked figure in the article, the SK tests have about 5x more per million people so their denominator is likely a better idea of the true number of cases.

I don't disagree with the idea that the total number of cases is unreported but the WHO said yesterday it's actually 3.4% globally. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/who-says-coronavirus-death-r...

The WHO is reporting the Case Fatality Ratio. This is a well defined number, just not a very useful one in the early stages of an outbreak.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#220

Post by anthonypasq »

chrisco255 wrote: post #79
the_af wrote: post #74

I see a lot of panicky comments, both in real life and in this very thread. I know COVID19 is different from a regular flu, but is it more serious? "Regular" flu is very contagious and kills lots of people every year. It's ok to study coronavirus and to try to find ways to effectively manage it, combat it or prevent the disease -- but why are we panicking? Nobody panics about the flu and it's proven to be fatal for a…

It's 1-2 orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu. Some estimates are between 2 and 4% fatality rate for the Covid-19. Flu is 0.1%. That fatality rate average masks that it is far deadlier for the elderly and high risk patients, with as much as 10-20% fatality rate for that demographic.

you are getting that number by dividing reported infections by reported deaths.

The reported infections number is not accurate. Its a major underestimate of the actual number of infected

Post reply on HN