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

141–150 of 159 posts

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#141

Post by tristanj »

hnarn wrote: post #108

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'…

> If you are under 60 years old, the lethality of Covid19 is only 2-3x that of the regular flu.

That does not pass the smell test. According to the CDC, in the 2017-2018 flu season, there were an estimated people 14.4 million cases of the flu for people 18-49 years old, of which 2,803 died. That's a fatality rate of 0.02%.

The latest fatality rates coming out China show a 0.2% to 0.4% CFR for that age group. Which is 10-20x higher.

It seems like you reached the 2-3x lethality factor by comparing against the flu's overall CFR of 0.1%, which includes a lot of elderly people.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm

[2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#142

Post by pbourke »

akvadrako wrote: post #128
conradev wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of cases per day outside of China is still growing exponentially: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/... Until that changes it’s a fair assumption that a lot more people will get it

If you look at the log graph on that link it’s clear it won’t get 50000x more severe unless the course drastically changes.

Looks like doubling every 5-6 days. So a million cases in 35-40 days if trend continues?

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#143

Post by nyolfen »

hnarn wrote: post #129
nyolfen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

many people have beloved family members who are older than 60. even if you are young, the symptomatic infection can be very severe and disabling for a week or two. it's also extremely contagious. > especially not since lethality goes down with spread there is no guarantee of this

How is any of this different from seasonal flu? It's also potentially lethal for the older population and can also knock you out for a week or two. I'm not disputing that flu viruses are bad, I'm just pointing out that the mass hysteria that seems to be brewing is not based in facts.

it's much, much deadlier and more contagious than the flu, there is hardly any research into treatment, no vaccine and no herd immunity. if this gets into serious exponential takeoff, which seems increasingly likely, we're talking about potentially millions of deaths. even if you're at low risk of death, you probably know a few people that aren't.

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#144

Post by throwaway3157 »

vidanay wrote: post #89
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who doesn't have to do business travel very often, I enjoy the trips to go meet with long-lost colleagues. But at the same time, it's pretty clear at least to me that most of these things are a waste of company money and don't really move the ball forward much compared to typical electronic collaboration. Selfishly, I'd be sad if business travel suffered a large permanent reduction. But it would be better…

I just got done planning a 20 person meeting in Germany for July. It will cost almost $5k USD per participant for travel, lodging, and food. We were only half joking when we said the company could FedEx us each a top of the line video conference setup, and then throw it in the trash afterwards, and it would still be cheaper.

$5k per person? Are these business class seats? this can certainly be done for cheaper.

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#145

Post by vidanay »

throwaway3157 wrote: post #144
vidanay wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got done planning a 20 person meeting in Germany for July. It will cost almost $5k USD per participant for travel, lodging, and food. We were only half joking when we said the company could FedEx us each a top of the line video conference setup, and then throw it in the trash afterwards, and it would still be cheaper.

$5k per person? Are these business class seats? this can certainly be done for cheaper.

Nope. Just premium economy seats. Summer flights from US to Germany with no weekend stay are really expensive.

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#146

Post by triangleman »

nemonemo wrote: post #140
triangleman wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For point of reference, the clinic where my wife works has been testing for coronavirus since January 25. There are many private institutions with the ability to test patients as they saw fit. I know the protocol was more focused on travel but it seems like there would have been more reports since then. With that said, my family has indeed suffered from the same kind of persistent cough you describe, so I don't know…

Do you know how many the clinic has tested since then? The ratio between the confirmed cases vs the test count seems about 3% in US, and the total tested number in US is 472 according to CDC.

I don't know but my wife helped out with a few tests, all negative. The number from the CDC seems low, maybe it's only the tests that were shipped to them?

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#147

Post by triangleman »

dkarl wrote: post #139
conradev wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mortality in people under 40 for Covid-19 is only 0.2% according to the CCDC study: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... We’d be seeing a number of deaths in older people who would have otherwise been fine

In either demographic the mortality is so much higher than the flu that it would be noticed. Otherwise we wouldn’t be worried; it would be like just another strain of the flu.

To be fair, even if this new virus was equally deadly as the flu, it would be concerning. We don't have a "tamiflu" to treat it, it's more contagious than the flu, and could therefore overwhelm our health care systems.

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#148

Post by LyndsySimon »

pmlnr wrote: post #65
learc83 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother's wife is also an ESL teacher. She had multiple students who traveled home to Wuhan during the winter break. Shortly after school starting she came down with a cold, gave it to my brother, and he had a pretty bad cough for a month. He's just now getting over it.

Last winter in Cambridge, UK, both me and my wife went through something labelled the Queen's Cough. In theory, that was an adenovirus: apart from the brutal cough that got worse if you rested and layed down, it regularly resulted in inner ear inflammation. We suffered from it for nearly a month, we had to take mild tranquilizers - valerian extract - to fall asleep, only to get up coughing for 10-20 mins non stop in…

> the Queen's Cough

I wonder if that name is derived from "the King's Evil".

The King's Evil was scrofula, which is basically infected/inflamed lymph nodes cause by tuberculosis.

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#149

Post by eqdw »

simonh wrote: post #96
craftyguy wrote: post #62

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. Oh please. There's likely absolutely nothing the CDC could have done to prevent it from entering and spreading within th…

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…

What differences in behaviour would you have expected to see in the CDC if their budget wasn't cut? I'm not seeing it. This thing spreads too fast to meaningfully stop it, China, Korea, Singapore, Japan, are all examples of this

Re: Seattle-Area Patient With Coronavirus Dies

#150

Post by eqdw »

hnarn wrote: post #108

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'…

I don't know how you can rationalize "this was so bad that China cut off half the supply chains in the world" with "its just a flu bruh"
Post reply on HN