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WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza"

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Re: WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza"

#21

Post by droithomme »

knzhou wrote: post #16
fractal618 wrote: post #9

They're trying to avoid a panic, so I'm just looking at the data from now on.... Numbers from https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus... As of March 4th. 6:22 pm eastern standard In China: Deaths: 2,981 recoveries : 49,856 Death/recovery : 5.98% Outside of China... Deaths: 272 Recoveries : 1205 Deaths/recoveries : 22.6%

There are a lot of things that make calculating a straightforward percentage hard: - not all cases detected - deaths are a laggy indicator - recoveries are an extremely laggy indicator - impact of demographics, healthcare quality - sizes of effects of all 4 previous things depends on the country and the time This has led to internet commentators coming up with wild numbers, ranging from 0.1% to 20%. At the risk of so…

> defer to the expert numbers (2-3%)

Latest expert estimate of global mortality rate, as published by WHO, is 3.4% as reported here:

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/WHO-global-mortality-...

And also as reported in OP's link.

https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...

> "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died."

Re: WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza"

#22

Post by thorum »

Keep in mind that almost 20% of the Diamond Princess cruise ship's passengers and crew (700+ of 3711) were infected with the coronavirus. However its infection rate compares with the seasonal flu (which is a much less dangerous illness overall), it clearly has the potential to infect a large number of people in the coming months.

Re: WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza"

#23

Post by MilnerRoute »

ceejayoz wrote: post #19
MilnerRoute wrote: post #17

I just want to highlight this quote from the WHO: "With influenza, people who are infected but not yet sick are major drivers of transmission, which does not appear to be the case for COVID-19." "Evidence from China is that only 1% of reported cases do not have symptoms, and most of those cases develop symptoms within 2 days."

That's good news. Early-onset symptoms (in particular, a fever) was part of what made tackling SARS possible.

Another quote from the WHO:

"We don’t even talk about containment for seasonal flu – it's just not possible. But it is possible for COVID-19. We don't do contact tracing for seasonal flu – but countries should do it for COVID-19, because it will prevent infections and save lives. Containment is possible."

Re: WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza"

#24

Post by chaostheory »

Trasmatta wrote: post #18
himinlomax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've not been saying that for months, that's completely absurd. The disease started spreading in November at the earliest. Just a month ago very little was known about its transmission rate and lethality; estimates from reputable sources ranged from 1 to 20%.

> estimates from reputable sources ranged from 1 to 20%. What reputable sources have said anything close to 20%?

The highest estimated r0 in a non-peer reviewed paper that I've seen is 6.6.

himinlomax may be referring to individual cases like the one involving a cult in South Korea where one lady was confirmed to have infected approximately 70 people

Re: WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza"

#25

Post by flukus »

heyitsguay wrote: post #4

Interesting... i wonder what the data is to back up that assertion? Another interesting tidbit in there was that very few cases (1%) appear to be totally asymptomatic, and that most infections apparently start showing some symptoms after a couple days. So there are a few assertions in total that seem to depart from what was previously understood, at least through mass and social media.

> Another interesting tidbit in there was that very few cases (1%) appear to be totally asymptomatic

I believe this was based on mass testing in China well into the lockdown period, so it's a reason to be optimistic but may not be they case in other parts of the world, particularly during the early outbreak phase. Even more complicated because they now know there are multiple strains.

Re: WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza"

#26

Post by Trasmatta »

thorum wrote: post #22

Keep in mind that almost 20% of the Diamond Princess cruise ship's passengers and crew (700+ of 3711) were infected with the coronavirus. However its infection rate compares with the seasonal flu (which is a much less dangerous illness overall), it clearly has the potential to infect a large number of people in the coming months.

I feel like the Diamond Princess is an atypical case and it's maybe a mistake to extrapolate too much from it.

Re: WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza"

#29

Post by mc32 »

thorum wrote: post #22

Keep in mind that almost 20% of the Diamond Princess cruise ship's passengers and crew (700+ of 3711) were infected with the coronavirus. However its infection rate compares with the seasonal flu (which is a much less dangerous illness overall), it clearly has the potential to infect a large number of people in the coming months.

Isn’t a cruise ship a special case because it’s all self contained and there is almost no way to avoid contact with other infected people?

Unless they had access to disposable Kevlar jumpsuits, masks, gloves and disinfectant, they’d be hard pressed to slow its spread in cramped conditions.

Re: WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza"

#30

Post by blablabla123 »

knzhou wrote: post #7
heyitsguay wrote: post #4

Interesting... i wonder what the data is to back up that assertion? Another interesting tidbit in there was that very few cases (1%) appear to be totally asymptomatic, and that most infections apparently start showing some symptoms after a couple days. So there are a few assertions in total that seem to depart from what was previously understood, at least through mass and social media.

> i wonder what the data is to back up that assertion? The data is the tens of thousands of cases the WHO has stats on. You can read any of their reports, they've been saying the same thing for months. The main sources contradicting them are random internet commentators.

> The main sources contradicting them are random internet commentators.

Yup and these are stating the opposite, as well since months but based on much more unreliable assumptions and data.

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