WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency • Hacker News Board

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#121

Post by moralestapia » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

2019-nCoV wrote: post #83

hanniabu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?

It's currently 171 deaths, 8,288 confirmed infected, which is 2% dead. However, what needs to be taken into consideration is that infected individuals don't die the day they are confirmed infected, there is a lag of several days. Assuming the average time from symptom onset and diagnosis to death is 7 days, we're looking at at 20% death rate (830 confirmed infected 1 week ago). Even a 5 day lag between symptom onset…

IMHO assuming a 2% rate this early is a bit disingenuous. This due to the 8,288 confirmed cases not having registered an outcome yet. If you look at people cured vs. people dead, the picture looks much worse, but yeah a lot of variables still come into play (they were prob. the most vulnerable, they were the first ones so treatment may not have been the best, etc.).

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#122

Post by Waterluvian » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:30 PM UTC

postalrat wrote: post #112

Waterluvian wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're off by a few orders.

Like one order? You might be more wrong than him.

Isn't it like 0.09% of deaths vs 2% of deaths? I certainly could be misunderstanding the data!

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#123

Post by klhjweoiru » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:30 PM UTC

goblin89 wrote: post #24

Running the official numbers, mortality rate is less than 3%. If we plug in estimative models claiming 25000+ unrecorded infections, mortality is less than 1%. Unless you are in a sensitive age group or have other health problems, data suggests you're most likely to get over it as a regular flu. It's not all perfect and is worse than a regular flu, but especially now after the announcement some people may way over-st…

The 3% number is with severe cases (aparently 20% of the cases) treated in ICU. What happens when you ran out of ICU beds?

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#124

Post by therealmarv » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #59

cheeseblubber wrote: post #43

For those who are referencing the flu and it's mortality rate here are estimates from the CDC for 2019 * 15,000,000 – 21,000,000 who had the flu * 8,200 – 20,000 deaths from the flu The morality rate ranges from 0.03% to 0.09% or 3/10000 9/10000 https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...

Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?

NCOV (new corona) 2%, SARS (2012) around 10%, yearly normal flu around 0.01%-0.05% and Ebola 50-90%

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#125

Post by baq » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

mrb wrote: post #118

hanniabu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?

Ignore the people telling you it's 2-3%. The case fatality ratio is between 9 and 56% according to proper epidemiological methods, such as using the formula "deaths / (deaths + recoveries)": https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/122242770872387993... Disclosure: no I'm not an epidemiologist. But for a reference to a paper by actual epidemiologists see https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ebf2/48c9fc0a1a23d1778b9408..…

couldn't believe these numbers, read the link. correctness is obvious in retrospect, numbers are trivial to calculate by hand by just looking at daily data.

still can't believe them.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#126

Post by colinmegill » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

mrb wrote: post #118

hanniabu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?

Ignore the people telling you it's 2-3%. The case fatality ratio is between 9 and 56% according to proper epidemiological methods, such as using the formula "deaths / (deaths + recoveries)": https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/122242770872387993... Disclosure: no I'm not an epidemiologist. But for a reference to a paper by actual epidemiologists see https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ebf2/48c9fc0a1a23d1778b9408..…

That's you touting your own feed, and you don't appear to be an epi scientist

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#127

Post by jcfrei » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #113

jcfrei wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert on viruses by any means but that seems unnecessarily pessimistic. The number of infections is likely much much higher than the confirmed cases (laboratories have only so many test kits available per day) but most people stay asymptomatic. This would reduce the actual mortality rate, not increase it.

The number of infections is likely much much higher than the confirmed cases (laboratories have only so many test kits available per day) but most people stay asymptomatic. Do you have evidence of that in this case? Viruses vary widely on how many are asymptomatic. My understanding is that having people be infectious and asymptomatic only happens with diseases that are well-adapted to their hosts. Which this one, hav…

There have been quite a few cases covered in the press about patients which carried the virus but didn't show any symptoms. Most recently: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus-outbreak/Three...

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#128

Post by akiselev » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #99

Stupid question: is it possible that hygiene practices contribute to outbreaks like this? I remember reading or hearing that one input to recent wildfires was the fact that decades of controlled burns to limit the spread of wildfires left a lot of available fuel that otherwise would have burned naturally. So in that vein, do we have humans with compromised immunity thriving but susceptible to inter-species mutations…

I think you're remembering the fire bit backwards. A lack of controlled burns due to discontinuation of indigenous practices and budget cuts combined with increased fire fighting (preventing natural burns) caused fuel to build up in forests that would have burned away in smaller fires. Many plants in Australia are actually adapted to frequent fires like the eucalyptus tree whose oils ignite during fires to wipe out all competitors near their seeds, which also require fire to germinate. Because of the intensity of the fires this year, it became too hot for many of those species and they now wont be able to reestablish.

A similar problem developed in California due to overzealous fire fighting that built up the forest floor over decades and led to some devastating fires.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#129

Post by mrtksn » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #59

cheeseblubber wrote: post #43

For those who are referencing the flu and it's mortality rate here are estimates from the CDC for 2019 * 15,000,000 – 21,000,000 who had the flu * 8,200 – 20,000 deaths from the flu The morality rate ranges from 0.03% to 0.09% or 3/10000 9/10000 https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...

Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?

People mistakenly calculate %2 and %50 simultaneously because they assume that when a case is confirmed the death or cured status is also determined at that moment.

In reality, though, people who are going to die don't die at the moment of infection confirmation and people who are going to live do lag in the log because it takes time to confirm if someone has recovered and virus-free.

Some will suggest to simply compare the deaths to the confirmed case from a week? ago but this assumes that the patients are admitted at the same stage of their infection and all cases at the time are accounted for(deaths are probably much better tracked than the infection and the publicity has a huge impact on the reporting). It would be a guesstimate at best.

I would say, let's stick to official numbers since the calculation requires each patients timeline. Surely an educated guess can be constructed by modelling the patient prognosis and virus behaviour but that also requires much more data than what the public has.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#130

Post by goblin89 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

mrb wrote: post #118

hanniabu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?

Ignore the people telling you it's 2-3%. The case fatality ratio is between 9 and 56% according to proper epidemiological methods, such as using the formula "deaths / (deaths + recoveries)": https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/122242770872387993... Disclosure: no I'm not an epidemiologist. But for a reference to a paper by actual epidemiologists see https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ebf2/48c9fc0a1a23d1778b9408..…

If hospitals err on safe side and do not report recoveries promptly (they probably have other business to deal with), applying this method at such early stage would not result in correct numbers, even supposing the virus is well-studied enough to tell when a patient has recovered.