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

Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 159 posts

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#101

Post by conradev »

craftyguy wrote: post #62
erentz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concern is people have not been taking this seriously for the past two months. This has resulted in the US being on the back foot and only acting in a reactive manner. The CDC has fallen flat on its face and now state public health departments need to try to pick up the slack. I hope they do. Other countries are already trying to slow down spread via cancellation of events and closures of schools. The same needs…

> The concern is people have not been taking this seriously for the past two months. This has resulted in the US being on the back foot and only acting in a reactive manner. The CDC has fallen flat on its face and now state public health departments need to try to pick up the slack. I hope they do. Oh please. There's likely absolutely nothing the CDC could have done to prevent it from entering and spreading within th…

Since fixed, but this was Thursday: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/health/coronavirus-testin...

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#102

Post by rolph »

klohto wrote: post #57
progman32 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you asking?

Are we forbidden to even ask this?

this is one of the problems with research or any sort of policy. we all have different physical properties but we all have a human consciousness in common.

So some people may have different constituative expression of particular properties such as a cellular receptor protien [eg ACE2] and this information could be used to predict the degree of deleterious effect a virus may have for any one person.

with that being said, there is no need to suspect this is a bioweapon, as a serial passaging of mutable pathogens will begin to create a selective effect [naturally of its own ].

ordinarily communicability is the direction of drift as lethality or debilitating morbidity inhibits communicability [in the simplest scenario]

a bioweapon cant be quite so communicable to everyone that has ACE2 receptors as it must be strategically controlled so its lethel effect will only go so far.

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#103

Post by walterlb »

daenz wrote: post #70

Personally, I believe most people should just accept that they are going to get COVID-19. It's going to get spread around, and it's not containable. You're likely going to get it. That's the bad news, but the good news is that we have immune systems and we know how to take care of each other and ourselves. Yes it's going to kill some people, no it is highly probably not going to kill you. People will be sick and goin…

I agree about avoiding hysteria, but IF "most" people got the virus...

Let's take "most" people to be 50% of the population. The Seattle Metro area had ~3.9 million people in 2017. The virus death rate is currently estimated at 2%.

So just accepting that 3.9m * 0.5 * 0.02 = 39,000 people will die in the the Seattle area alone seems a bit extreme

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#104

Post by rolph »

knzhou wrote: post #51
war1025 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been speculation I've overheard that the virus is particularly deadly to Asian people. Seems like a bogus theory to me, but I suspect that was the reason for the question. Largely plays into the "escaped bioweapon" theory.

This is a great example of how misinformation spreads. All of the speculation comes from a single non peer reviewed paper, which had literally one data point. That paper was posted to a preprint server where scientists could comment on it. And the first comment was somebody doing a quick followup study with 100x more data, which found no significant difference. Source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.…

this preprint needs a pass with occams chainsaw to get rid of some loaded terms that verbally modify the data

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#105

Post by pbourke »

knzhou wrote: post #100
jp57 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, I guess, unless there are many unreported mild cases where infections don't result in pneumonia. Also, it's only been two months since christmas, not three, and many schools' winter breaks last into January, so maybe more like 1.75 months for it to spread from the hypothetical vector of returning Chinese students?

Sure, but just trace the exponential growth curve China started with two months ago, without the flattening out due to quarantine measures. If this were true, we would have more infections than China by now, people would have noticed.

We will know more when/if widespread serology testing ramps up. As I understand it, this tests for the presence of antibodies for the coronavirus and thus gives a snapshot of recent infections across the population.

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#106

Post by erentz »

craftyguy wrote: post #99
simonh wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the last 3 years the CDC funding for participation in international epidemic detection and management programs was cut by 80%. In addition the several most senior positions responsible for pandemic preparation and response were cut. The budget proposed just a few weeks ago again included significant cuts in CDC funding, so the governments eye has not been on the ball for quite some time. Having said that you’re…

Care to explain what "on the ball" would realistically look like for this specific situation we are in right now? Because everyone else seems to be avoiding the question.

If you're genuinely interested go read how other countries such as Singapore have been handling it. For example Singapore has done a thorough job of testing, tracing, and quarantining individuals and it's slowed the spread dramatically there. They've also been communicating opening and honestly with the public so that the public knows what is happening, knows the right things are being done, and knows what their role is to play.

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#107

Post by simonh »

craftyguy wrote: post #99
simonh wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the last 3 years the CDC funding for participation in international epidemic detection and management programs was cut by 80%. In addition the several most senior positions responsible for pandemic preparation and response were cut. The budget proposed just a few weeks ago again included significant cuts in CDC funding, so the governments eye has not been on the ball for quite some time. Having said that you’re…

Care to explain what "on the ball" would realistically look like for this specific situation we are in right now? Because everyone else seems to be avoiding the question.

The CDC used to have a unit in China coordinating with local health care experts to identify and manage epidemics and new diseases. This was cut a few years ago.

Also there used to be a CDC expert on the National Security Council until 2018. Of course you can bring in an advisor as needed, but that’s not the same as having someone you know, and that knows you and how you work, and knows the resources and capabilities you have right there on staff in the NSC.

On the ball would be treating the CDC and pandemic response as national defence, not charity welfare.

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#108

Post by hnarn »

If you are under 60 years old, the lethality of Covid19 is only 2-3x that of the regular flu. Why are people spreading these types of news and commenting on them like it's the end of days? We may yet see a severe pandemic in our time but I don't see anything indicating this would be it, especially not since lethality goes down with spread. The biggest concern so far people should have regarding this virus is what it's going to do to your portfolio seeing as the supply chain of half the companies in the world seems to be disrupted in the coming months.

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#109

Post by pbourke »

BooneJS wrote: post #6
cheeze wrote: post #2

Amazon recently announced that all non essential work travel is cancelled. Friend who works there said they are taking it very seriously - any "essential" travel must be approved from the highest levels. They also announced that interviews will be conducted via VC going forward during the outbreak. I wonder if they 'shut down' campus and encourage everybody to work from home after this, self quarantine kind of thing.…

I wonder if this “temporary alteration” will impact the way business is conducted long-term. Instead of choosing between conference calls or flights, choose VC.

This pandemic will likely play out over a months to years timescale, so it very well might alter patterns like this.

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#110

Post by hnarn »

walterlb wrote: post #103
daenz wrote: post #70

Personally, I believe most people should just accept that they are going to get COVID-19. It's going to get spread around, and it's not containable. You're likely going to get it. That's the bad news, but the good news is that we have immune systems and we know how to take care of each other and ourselves. Yes it's going to kill some people, no it is highly probably not going to kill you. People will be sick and goin…

I agree about avoiding hysteria, but IF "most" people got the virus... Let's take "most" people to be 50% of the population. The Seattle Metro area had ~3.9 million people in 2017. The virus death rate is currently estimated at 2%. So just accepting that 3.9m * 0.5 * 0.02 = 39,000 people will die in the the Seattle area alone seems a bit extreme

Saying that the death rate is 2% is extremely dishonest since it ignores one of the most important factors: age. For most people reading this you're off by an entire decimal.
Post reply on HN