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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"

#31

Post by cbsks »

This paper has more information: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6909e1-H.pdf

TLDR: "Since February 28, an increasing number of newly diagnosed confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases have been in patients with neither a relevant travel history nor clear epidemiologic links to other confirmed COVID-19 patients. However, despite intensive follow-up, no sustained person-to-person transmission of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 was observed in the United States among the close contacts of the first 10 persons with diagnosed travel-related COVID-19."

They tracked the first 10 people in the US with travel-related confirmed COVID-19, and followed up with 445 people who had close contact with them.

Over 14 days, 54 of those 445 people developed new or worsening symptoms and were tested for COVID-19.

Of the 54 people, only 2 tested positive for COVID-19. Both were household members of originally infected people.

"Both persons with confirmed secondary transmission had close contact with the respective source patient before COVID-19 was confirmed and were isolated from the source patient after the patient’s COVID-19 diagnosis."

"No other close contacts who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 had a positive test, including the five household members who were continuously exposed during the period of isolation of their household member with confirmed COVID-19. An additional 146 persons exposed to the two patients with secondary COVID-19 transmission underwent 14 days of active monitoring. Among these, 18 (12%) developed symptoms compatible with COVID-19 and were considered PUIs. All tested negative, and no further symptomatic COVID-19 cases (representing tertiary transmission) have been identified."

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

#33

Post by jcadam »

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.

IIRC, the crew was largely responsible for spreading the virus.

Not that I'm faulting them. They simply were neither trained nor equipped to do a specialized job that was essentially forced on them - operating a quarantine facility.

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

#34

Post by Barrin92 »

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.

Given that there are probably very few places that are worse for a disease outbreak than a cruise ship where everyone eats and drinks all day and touches everything and uses the same toilets I'll actually take the 20% as an encouraging number.

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

#35

Post by chaostheory »

mc32 wrote: post #29
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.

The way ship HVAC systems are designed, it helps limit costs while simultaneously increasing infections from anything that's airborne.

In regard to Diamond Princess though, there were no safety protocols that were followed, so we don't know if it was the ship or the failure to follow pathogen related protocols.

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

#36

Post by mantap »

knzhou wrote: post #6

This is important, because lots of internet commentators are just going with the most alarming possible statements: 28 day incubation periods, people can get infected twice, airborne transmission, asymptomatic transmission. These assertions are all based on outlier cases, sometimes even single cases, observed during the fog of war. Even if these accounts are correct, they aren't the typical case, which is what actual…

I don't share your optimism. The virus has been able to successfully evade e.g. testing people's temperatures in airports. It doesn't really matter if there are asymtomatic carriers or not, it doesn't matter whether people eventually get a high fever. What matters is whether people with non-specific/mild symptoms (a dry cough) can pass on the infection. And the answer is emphatically yes.

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

#37

Post by allovernow »

Just a reminder that this is coming from an organization that

1. Receives part of it's funding from China

2. Has been using China's clearly manufactured numbers since day 1

3. Has yet to officially call this a pandemic though it has met the criteria for weeks ($425MM in pandemic bonds would default) [0]

4. Is led by a man (the very director being quoted) who was accused by the NYT of covering up no less than 3 cholera epidemics in his home country of Ethiopia. [1]

So you're telling me China shut down it's entire economy [2] and put 700MM people under lockdown and/or travel restrictions because of something about as dangerous as the common flu? Note that the Chinese economy is still not back online - don't believe me? Check real time pollution maps for yourself. The air is still cleaner than it has been in decades.

The WHO and CDC are lying to you. You can verify all of this for yourself.

Hell, 8% of Iranian parliament members are infected. Look at the chaos gripping Iran, Italy, and SK. This is not the flu and I'm astounded that not only are official organizations misleading the public to this degree, but people are buying it en masse.

Finally, after a mass petition, a number of journals released all 2019ncov literature from paywall. You can find estimates for mortality and R0 from many sources, and I don't think I've seen a single one below 2. The Spanish Flu of 1918 was at 2. Of course take these with a grain of salt as they may be oversampling severe cases, but they all point to the same grave conclusions, and you can read them yourself. Do not rely on these agencies to digest this information for you when you have unprecedented access to the same information.

0. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pandemic-bon...

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/health/candidate-who-dire...

2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/at-least-...

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

#39

Post by d1zzy »

CyanLite2 wrote: post #20
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%

All Countries except for South Korea are NOT counting the mild or asymptomatic cases. When you look at the SK numbers, 5,621 confirmed cases and 35 deaths. That puts the death rate at 0.6% (same as severe influenza season). Everybody just needs to chill.

Even if COVID-19 fatality rate is _lower_ than the regular flu, if it infects people faster to the point where those very few severe cases cannot get the help they need because of health services being overwhelmed then it will potentially be resulting in a lot more deaths than the flu.

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

#40

Post by flukus »

function_seven wrote: post #12
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%

You're missing the # for "Unreported". That may be huge. For example, in China, are there another 100,000 people who contracted it, and recovered, without ever knowing they had it? You're looking at this data through the fog of war (as a sibling comment mentions).

TFA addresses this:

> Evidence from China is that only 1% of reported cases do not have symptoms, and most of those cases develop symptoms within 2 days.

They came up with this number by testing people who didn't have symptoms but were in some contact with someone who had the virus. The big question is how much the lockdown affected this, but there doesn't appear to be large swaths of asymptomatic people.

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