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Is It a Pandemic Yet?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#181

Post by gumby »

burtonator wrote: post #105
est31 wrote: post #9

> Some 152 cases (and at least three deaths) were confirmed in Italy on Sunday, up from three cases on Thursday. The number of infected people in South Korea jumped to 763 (and six deaths) in just days. To add an important point: In both countries, they have detected covid-19 only well after it has spread inside the country. E.g. in Italy it started with one severely ill patient who went to the hospital and got teste…

If this is asymptomatic do they eventually get sick or do they just harbor the virus? I don't understand how the virus can be asymptomatic? How does it reproduce and what triggers it to become symptomatic?

A virus doesn’t “want” to kill its host; just use the minimum change to propagate (e.g. induce a cough). In face some symptoms are your own body trying to dislodge it, such as fever, and the cough itself for that matter.

Some viruses of course have gone so far as to become part of our genome. Is that asymptomatic?

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#182

Post by adventured »

empath75 wrote: post #142
mrb wrote: post #95

I will probably be downvoted for saying this, but... The seasonal flu alone kills half a million people every year. So any mild disease that is as contagious and barely twice as fatal will kill 1 million. And that's what's going to happen with COVID19. It is far more severe than the flu. We know COVID19 is as contagious, given how fast it's spreading and how unstoppable it is (R0>2, asymptomatic transmission, airborn…

Let’s say 40% of the people in the world get it and a 1% fatality rate: That 30 million dead, and probably another 300 million hospitalized and maybe 50 million that need icu care. Should probably go without saying that we don’t have the ICU beds to handle that in the western world, let alone in developing countries. We also haven’t had anything like the Spanish flu in the US since we’ve had the modern health insuran…

And the West is very old, I would expect that to offset the highly developed healthcare systems and resources there.

Median ages:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world...

Countries in the West over 40 at the median:

Germany, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Portugal, Austria, Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia, Spain, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, Czech, Finland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Romania, Denmark, Poland, Canada, Slovakia, France, Belgium, Ukraine, Sweden, Belarus, UK, Russia

Germany has half its 83 million population over 48 years of age. Italy is the 5th oldest country at the median. Covid will hit very hard against older populations.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#183

Post by theseadroid »

burtonator wrote: post #105
est31 wrote: post #9

> Some 152 cases (and at least three deaths) were confirmed in Italy on Sunday, up from three cases on Thursday. The number of infected people in South Korea jumped to 763 (and six deaths) in just days. To add an important point: In both countries, they have detected covid-19 only well after it has spread inside the country. E.g. in Italy it started with one severely ill patient who went to the hospital and got teste…

If this is asymptomatic do they eventually get sick or do they just harbor the virus? I don't understand how the virus can be asymptomatic? How does it reproduce and what triggers it to become symptomatic?

As other people said, most viral diseases have a asymptomatic period. What's unique about Coronavirus is that the patient can be infectious during the asymptomatic period. This makes coronavirus so hard to be controlled.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#184

Post by JoeAltmaier »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #155
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #133

I feel fairly uncertain as to how seriously I should /personally/ take COVID19 living in a large American city as a healthy young person with no upcoming travel. I see some friends seriously taking precautions (like buying masks) already, which up-to-this-point I've found a little absurd. Could anyone who knows better perhaps enlighten me on how I ought to be reacting to this?

Buy extra food so if you get sick you don't have to go out and infect other people, or if you are in an area with a lot of sick people you don't have to go out to bu food and get infected.

That's a socially-conscious act and I applaud it. But in truth, before this is over every person on earth will have experienced the virus.

The reason to control the spread and delay infection (not avoid it; that's probably impossible) is to allow the health-care infrastructure critical time to manage the flow of sick. If we all got sick at once, there'd be no capacity to treat 99.9% of us. If we spread it out over a year or more, we can treat more people and have a better outcome.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#185

Post by oska »

ducttape12 wrote: post #107
nathanyukai wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well because people are used to those figures and it won't grab people's eyeball anymore. While coronavirus can potentially kill a lot more people if it becomes a global break out.

So it's what I'm thinking, it's the news hyping it up to get clicks, ad impressions, etc? Seems kind of irresponsible to get the public into a frenzy just to make money.

> it's the news hyping it up to get clicks, ad impressions, etc?

No. You've already had several good answers on the difference between multiplicative & systemic risk vs additive risk. That's the reason that people are taking this outbreak seriously and why it is getting significant media coverage.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#186

Post by WaltPurvis »

jonplackett wrote: post #108
burpsnard wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i read last week that it is indeed airbourne, not only from cough/sneeze but also from flatulence, out to 200 meters

A claim like this needs a source

I think OP might be confusing "airborne" with "aerosolized" because the latter is transmitted through the air, just over very short distances. Although, in the case of aerosolized fecal transmission due to buildings with decrepit/faulty plumbing, the distances can be fairly large. And it does appear Covid-19 can be spread that way:

https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-may-spreading-so-fast-b...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1...

https://www.vox.com/2020/2/20/21143785/coronavirus-covid-19-...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-20/fecal-tra...

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#187

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

oefrha wrote: post #179
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, it’s gonna happen if health authorities take the same defeatist attitude as you and do nothing. how long can they get away with locking people up in their homes? There will be tipping point when those who are supposed to deliver the first-response and do the policing will also become a vector for spreading the disease. Things will escalate quickly no matter if the attitude is "defeatist" or optimistic.

Long enough for the virus to die out? Let’s just check back in July.

what would change things is a vaccine, guess time alone won't do it.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#188

Post by 7loopscom »

Swizec wrote: post #111
tlarkworthy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure, but you probably know some old people, and the hospital will be over-whelmed. Even if you're not dead you might find yourself organising funerals (who are also overwhelmed). So even if you are not directly at risk of death, you will almost certainly affected by secondary affects from the infra demands or your extended family.

See that’s what I’m saying. There’s higher mortality than usual but the numbers don’t support a “funeral services will be overwhelmed, dead lying in the streets” levels of panic. It’s gonna be fine, more people still die every day from fatness, car crashes, and guns than they do from Covid-19. And being a transplant I in fact don’t know any old people I’d come into contact with unless I explicitly went out of my way…

The problem is that the number of people who need intensive care is quite high (10-20%) if good health care can be provided to them the mortality stays low, however, if the hospitals are overrun a lot of people would not get it and could potentially die (yes even younger people). And trust me no health care can survive a 300% spike in people needing ICU. So it is not that harmless.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#189

Post by robjan »

victor106 wrote: post #144

Can someone ELI5? Why is it so hard to produce a vaccination for this virus? We have vaccinations targeting viruses all the time, isn’t it?

Vaccines are being worked on as we speak but the testing and approval process takes a long time.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#190

Post by oefrha »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #187
oefrha wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long enough for the virus to die out? Let’s just check back in July.

what would change things is a vaccine, guess time alone won't do it.

Air temperature could possibly do it or at least contribute, as was the case with SARS in 2003.
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