WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza" • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by himinlomax » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 9:45 AM UTC

tylerhou wrote: post #50

chaostheory wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

himinlomax was claiming that reputable sources reported a 20% lethality rate, which is absurd (about as high as SARS).

I didn't talk about reports, I said "estimates." And yes, early estimates included the perfectly reasonable though eventually disproven hypothesis that it could turn out to be as deadly as MERS (SARS was not that deadly).

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

#152

Post by himinlomax » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 9:47 AM UTC

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%?

That was the high end of the early estimates, though they all said it was highly unlikely.

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

#153

Post by username90 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 10:19 AM UTC

Then how come we see cases where there were no symptomatic patients nearby? Like this CDC screener, no cases where known in the entire state when the person contracted the disease and it happened weeks ago:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/medical-screener-...

And this is not the first such case in USA. So either there are a ton of symptomatic Covid-19 patients in USA right now who are just thought to have the flu, or Covid-19 can spread just fine from asymptomatic people and that was how it spread to the well protected CDC personnel in the airport. And if an expert who follows all hygiene standards and wearing gloves and N95 respirators got it from an asymptomatic person, imagine how many other people at the Airport must have gotten it as well? And how many persons the carrier infected after arriving in USA?

I am all but certain that the statement "We can contain it" is a lie at this point, I don't see how anyone can believe that. At least not without aggressively doing complete lockdowns of large communities before we even confirm cases, but I feel it is too late even for that now.

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

#154

Post by makomk » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 10:33 AM UTC

roywiggins wrote: post #45

jcadam wrote: post #10

"To summarize, COVID-19 spreads less efficiently than flu, transmission does not appear to be driven by people who are not sick, it causes more severe illness than flu, there are not yet any vaccines or therapeutics, and it can be contained – which is why we must do everything we can to contain it. That’s why WHO recommends a comprehensive approach." Ah, so there aren't hordes of asymptomatic carriers out there, whic…

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 WHO seemed to be relying on Chinese flu surveillance data, which is basically useless - even the figures it produces for flu infections are implausible and probably wrong. Between this and their other comments it might be best to treat anything the WHO says as just Chinese propaganda at this point.

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

#155

Post by mrow84 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 11:16 AM UTC

allovernow wrote: post #37

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 choler…

I find your point 3 confusingly worded: the trigger conditions for the pandemic bonds are specific and essentially transparent, but have not yet been met. They are independent of any statement the WHO may or may not make about whether a particular outbreak can reasonably be called a "pandemic". This independence should be unsurprising, because investors want some kind of "clarity" about what it is they are investing in.

Whether or not the trigger conditions are too stringent for the bonds to be useful in dealing with the targeted crises, and whether or not the additional "clarity" provided by having well-defined trigger conditions is sufficient to manage risk for investors, are both separate concerns.

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

#156

Post by singularity2001 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

Sevrene wrote: post #87

I've noticed a trend in the discussion of Covid-19 when talking to people. They tend to either under estimate it; "it's just the flu", or they over estimate it; "This is going to be really bad, time to buy all toilet paper". There's a lot of confusing mixed messages, not even from just random people, but from the WHO and different governments. They say they are fully prepared and it can be contained yet doctors and h…

Where do you put Paul Grahams simple analysis that at the current rate within one month we have 1 million cases?

Over estimation?

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

#157

Post by eveningcoffee » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

omarhaneef wrote: post #130

wahern wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure the fatality rate is based on the number of patients who present themselves to a doctor. I've seen estimates of influenza fatality rate of 0.2%, which corresponds with the ~61000 deaths over ~20700000 medical visits for the 2017-2018 influenza season documented here: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm The fatality rate would obviously decline with a larger denominator which includes total…

> Pretty sure the fatality rate is based on the number of patients who present themselves to a doctor. I don’t think this is right. I believe it’s based on an estimate. Your own numbers bear me out. The flu death rate is estimated to be around 0.1% and we can come to that number by a division here: “ The overall burden of influenza for the 2017-2018 season was an estimated 45 million influenza illnesses, 21 million i…

Actually 21 million or 45 million does not make much difference. There will be still order of magnitude between influenza and covid-19 (CFR 0.2% vs 3.4%, and mind you, 3.4% is an early estimate and subject to change in the situation where new cases are still coming in and people are still dying, if you observed then CFR for covid-19 was around 2% when it was rapidly growing in China and did rise to current level when the new cases started to slow down; many people warned that it will be much higher actually but these people were hushed down; you have to use your own analytical mind to choose what is more closer to the truth).

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

#158

Post by eric-hu » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

Scarblac wrote: post #149

eric-hu wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't an accurate representation of how the number got to 700. The numbers were low when the ship docked. I recall in the single digits. Everyone was put on cabin quarantine, though people could leave their rooms for a window of time each day. It was quarantine and they were testing symptomatic people. I was watching mostly HK and Taiwanese news sources on it multiple times every day. That makes me very skeptica…

They all got served food by the ship's crew, who still shared bunk beds and weren't really quarantined.

This is true. Do you think under those conditions, the ship would have symptomatic employees serving food or sharing bunks with asymptomatic employees? That really goes against the idea of quarantine, so I'd like to see evidence of that instead of assuming it.

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

#159

Post by eveningcoffee » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

dpau wrote: post #70

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…

Thank you for this. Something that confuses me is, why would governments minimize the risk and not take necessary steps to slow the virus? It seems obvious that the short-term economic gains resulting from such an approach are vastly outweighed by the negative consequences of an extended and prolonged outbreak. I'm missing something.

It is possible that people in relevant positions are clueless cowards or calculating psychopaths.

My initial impression leans towards the first option.

Taking measures needs courage. You have to take very disruptive steps in the environment where popular opinion still calls it not worse than flu and before that you have to be smarter than popular opinion.

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

#160

Post by BoiledCabbage » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

allovernow wrote: post #37

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 choler…

Point #3 on the Bonds doesn't seem relevant. From the Bloomberg article you linked:

> Funds can only be released from the PEF for non-flu epidemics 12 weeks after the "start of the event," according to a World Bank document. The novel coronavirus strains were first reported on in late December, leaving funds locked up until late March.