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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"

#91

Post by FabHK »

pezo1919 wrote: post #43

To me it seems WHO was downplaying it the whole time. First lie is China will be able to contain it and now they don't even call it a pandemic. Also R0 is much higher then for flu. I really hope the new idea about transmissability is true but if it is I don't get why China treats it as they do. Wuhan is locked for 40+ days. I can't trust WHO now related to Covid-19, especially after what happened to stock. Of course…

Well, the conventional wisdom, as it were, was that R0 is much higher than with influenza, but here the WHO appears to contradict that. I don’t see what’s gained by just repeating the conventional wisdom.

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

#92

Post by wbhart »

ardit33 wrote: post #42

1. I would not trust anything coming out of WHO at this point. Even Germany called it a pandemic, yet they are not willing to call it such (perhaps due to political influence/pressure, or just incompetence). This looks more like a 'panic containment' type of statement than the truth. 2. The R0 of seasonal flu, is about 1.5, Covid-19 has a R0 between 2.6 and 3.5*. (yet to be determined), which is much more contagious…

It's clear the WHO message is trying to present the bad news in the best possible light. The sentences about transmissibility are very obviously constructed extremely carefully. However, I do take away from the report that Governments should get serious about containing this, because the experience of China shows that this is possible, whereas with the flu it's known to be impossible.

I think that is the right message at the moment. Simply acquiescing to some undetermined percentage of the elderly and random people of all ages dying is not a good strategy, and I think that is what he is trying to communicate.

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

#93

Post by rolph »

fspeech wrote: post #58
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…

Analysis shows there might be two subtypes from the very early days: https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nsr... If the theory is correct, the L type is more aggressive and may be causing explosive outbreaks as in Wuhan, while the S type is less aggressive but harder to block from transmission. Interestingly, the S type is the ancestor. It would be interesting to see what is more prevalent in the…

yes its about time we start looking at the very real phenomenon of co-circulation of strains and co-infection.

The model of one virus in circulation is simple for providing an explanation of how things work at a basic level but the real picture is somewhat more interactive.

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

#94

Post by cbsks »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #85
cbsks wrote: post #31

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 symptoma…

So... what? These people are picking up something that looks like COVID-19, but isn't? The COVID-19 tests are missing something like 90% of the people who have it? Or what?

> These people are picking up something that looks like COVID-19, but isn't

> The COVID-19 tests are missing something like 90% of the people who have it

As far as I know (I'm not an expert) either of those are possibilities, and it's too early to know for sure.

Edit: This comment mentions the possibility of there being 2 types of the virus that spread at different rates: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22489599 Maybe the 10 people monitored in the US had the less contagious version? There are a lot of unanswered questions right now.

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

#95

Post by blhack »

tylerhou wrote: post #44
mantap wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bypassing airport temperature tests is an incredibly low bar because it rarely catches other diseases. Anecdotally, I've travelled multiple times with people who have had fevers and entered countries with routine temperature screening and haven't been stopped. Human body temperature is also so variable that a small fever is masked by the margin of error.

I've been somewhat shocked at seeing these forehead thermometers being used for screening. Forehead thermometers are not accurate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24127699

I challenge HN's readers to devise ways to defeat a forehead thermometer. IF we had a hackathon around this idea, how long until somebody devises a method of communication via forehead thermometer reading manipulation?

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

#96

Post by roywiggins »

flukus wrote: post #89
roywiggins wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They tested everyone on the Diamond Princess and seemed to find a lot of asymptomatic cases. I don't know how to reconcile this, but there it is. The mortality rate was worse than seasonal flu but not 3%, either. https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality-r...

> I don't know how to reconcile this Multiple strains might explain it along with other conflicting information and differing results between countries: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/04/coronavirus-chinese-scientis... As you said, we're still looking at it through the fog of war.

Mutation would do it, so would demographic differences, level of treatment, who knows. Data out of South Korea indicate a similar CFR as the cruise ship.

https://mobile.twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/12352115846...

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

#97

Post by roywiggins »

joshgachnang wrote: post #62
roywiggins wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The confusing thing is that the Diamond Princess data points in the other direction: more asymptomatic cases, and a significantly lower case fatality rate, than the WHO numbers. https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality-r... The WHO says they haven't found many asymptomatic cases (despite looking), but apparently lots of the cruise ship cases were. The WHO estimates a mortality rate over 3%, but much…

The Diamond Princess is a pretty small sample size to be extrapolating the mortality rate.

Statistics out of South Korea look similar: https://mobile.twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/12352115846...

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

#98

Post by lovemenot »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #74
jcadam wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard it said that you have an almost 50% of catching something if you go on a cruise.

(AnimalMuppet surreptitiously crosses "take a cruise" off of his bucket list...)

Instead, just append it to the end of the list.

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

#99

Post by whotang »

On January 23rd, 2020. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declines to declare China virus outbreak as a global health emergency. As we all know, the Coronavirus is not treatable at the moment. The number of infected and deaths has risen more than ten times (infected from 800 - close to 10,000) within only 5 days. Part of it is related to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus under estimated the coronavirus. We strongly think Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is not fit for his role as WHO Director General. We call for the Immediate Resignation of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

A lot of us are really disappointed, we believe WHO is supposed to be political neutral. Without any investigation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus solely believes on the death and infected numbers that the Chinese government provided with them.

On the other hand, Taiwan should not be excluded from WHO for any political reasons. Their technologies are far more advanced than some of the countries on the “selected WHO list”.

https://change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the-resignation...

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

#100

Post by jsharf »

Barrin92 wrote: post #34
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.

Yeah, but as soon as they were aware of a single case on board, everyone single person on the ship was informed, told to stay in their room, and became paranoid about further transmission. I don't know if we'll have similar levels of obedience in the rest of the world.
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