Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now • Hacker News Board

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#391

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

irq11 wrote: post #389

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the fatality rate is deaths divided by current infected. But the people dying are those that contracted the disease 4-5 days ago (folks don't die the instant they get sick). So the death rate on folks ultimately reaches nearly double the reported rate? But draw your own conclusions: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

No. This is completely incorrect. The case fatality rate is the number of deaths divided by confirmed infections. This is what is being reported. Infection Fatality Ratio changes the denominator to a model for the currently infected population. This is a smaller number, because the denominator is much larger. There is no mortality metric being reported by reputable sources that is multiples higher than the CFR, as yo…

Or, look at the timeline for infection vs eventual fatalities. As I said, draw your own conclusions from the reported data by Johns Hopkins (do they pass the filter for 'reputable'?).

The most useful number I know is, survival chances. How many in 100 stand to be alive say 2 months later. The numbers seem worse than 98, by a good margin. At least worldwide.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#392

Post by texorcist » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

irq11 wrote: post #348

lliamander wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we have vaccines for the flu, and as far as I can tell this is far more contagious. Even with a lower mortality rate, the death toll could be much higher. If things do start getting bad, I expect it might happen rather suddenly.

It is about as contagious as the flu. Stop fear-mongering. Also, not for nothing: most people don’t get the flu vaccine, despite endless begging on the part of health officials.

Stop being dishonest. Comparing the flu to the Corona virus is comparing apples to oranges. They don't even share transmission rates.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#393

Post by Engineering-MD » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #366

Engineering-MD wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So scaling of ICU is already possible to a degree. In most hospitals in case of a major accident (eg terror isn’t attack with many injured) theatres are used as ICUs and all non emergency surgery is stopped. I suspect this will happen in these cases. The main issue is going to be sufficient nursing staffing (ICU requires 1:1 nurse:patient ratio usually).

That trick doesn't work when you're talking about infectious diseases. You need to isolate your patients from each other to avoid re-infection and you need to stop rotating your ICU personnel between units or they themselves will become vectors for infection to people who would otherwise recover or may be mis-diagnosed.

Theatres are isolated from each other and often adjacent to the main ICU for this reason. So the trick should be effective.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#394

Post by arcticbull » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 11:44 PM UTC

hajile wrote: post #351

WaltPurvis wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the mortality rates aren't all that high (a few percent) That's about the same mortality rate as the pandemic flu of 1918, which wasn't exactly a walk in the park.

We don't actually know mortality. By the numbers, 2,470 deaths, 23,419 recoveries, and 53,105 undecided cases. 10% of all settled cases resulted in death. That is far higher than the 3% of Spanish Flu and reasonably close to SARS. Median time to death is around 12 days which is similar to time to recovery meaning the 10% seems likely to be an accurate metric. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/clinical-features.htm…

I'm seeing current numbers show 41,490 active and 45,112 resolved. Between your numbers and mine, the number of deaths increased by 507 and the number of recoveries increased by 21,693. This means the fatality rate for this set of resolutions is still lower, 2.2%. This trend is fairly pronounced downward as the WHO report on the matter calls out, we've learned a lot about the disease and are identifying a lot of totally asymptomatic cases [1]

[1] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi...