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Is It a Pandemic Yet?

nytimes.com

51–60 of 289 posts

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#51

Of course it is. The officials at WHO failed us because they are more worried about the politics than the truth. This type of behavior will make us not trust them in the future.

It's still actually quite limited according to official data. They have to consider the reactions of the public and also the potential effects of declaring pandemics too often if it is not necessary. I don't have many comparison points but a quick Google shows that we are still very far from the 2009 flu pandemic, for example. Of course that may change...

[deleted]

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a highly virulent flu with the same risk factors and no vaccine for those that are at high risk. It may not be something to worry about, but I'd think we should do something to prepare.

Absolutely, but the news is causing a low level panic as they do report numbers, but don't emphasize what the numbers mean. I guess that's also the viewers fault as the math is grade school simple.

Someone need to prepare explanation of numbers for them, but nobody did.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#53
post #12

We were looking into Covid-19 at the office and after digging through the scariness we realized mortality rate for healthy 30-somethings is around 0.1%. Then we said screw it and stopped worrying. We’re most likely gonna be fine. Even if it becomes widespread the odds are ever in our favor. Plus there’s already a few confirmed cases in SFBA so ... Edit: for the downvoters, I’m not say spread disease with wonton aband…

Yeah, I stopped worrying a few weeks back after I saw the mortality rate. It's basically a highly virulent flu with the same risk factors. Not on the same level as sars and the like.

Mortality rate is 3.2% for COVID-19, 0.05% for the flu. That is a massive difference. That means that for every 100,000 people that get the coronvirus COVID-19, 3,200 will die vs 50 for the flu. Sars was a coronavirus just like COVID-19. While Sars did indeed have a higher mortality rate than COVID-19, far more people have died from COVID-19 to date than during the entirety of the SARS run.

Edited: as my math was wrong, I had 500 deaths for flu when as @vatueil pointed out, it should be 50

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#54
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…

There are several dark pools of concentrated yet totally unexplained and even implausible coronavirus being detected, with no clear discernible path from China. It leads me to wonder if the virus is a lot more long lived on surfaces or maybe in foods or on food packaging that came from China. How else to relatively cut off towns get an infection, but cities are not? Is there something that towns got from China that these cities may not have? Food stuff? agricultural supplies? Produce? … I am open to suggestions.

We have people who have never been and have no contact with anyone who has been to China, been in the vicinity of Chinese (e.g., tourist centers chocked full of Chinese tourists), or are Chinese; developing infections with Coronavirus. I am more than open to other suggestions and theories, but small towns in remote areas of Italy that have very little if any direct contact with the rest of the country, let alone China, especially over winter, seems quite peculiar; unless we simply have not identified (or officials are keeping secret) a far larger outbreak in cities.

And please don't try to tell me that western governments would not keep secrets or be dishonest. We are all adults and smart here, let's act like it.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#55
post #33
post #21

For perspective, numbers from the regular flu this winter: "At least 14,000 people have died and 250,000 have already been hospitalized during the 2019-2020 flu season, ..."

The difference is we know what the flu can do and how bad it usually gets. And it's less lethal -- it's just more cases that's why there are lots more deaths with flu. But that wont necessarily the case if there's a corona pandemic.

We don’t though. It varies wildly.

2018-2019 flu season saw 50 million infected and 80,000 deaths in the United States.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#56
post #8

I read a lot about this virus lately, and it looks like the mortality rate depends a lot on the availability of intensive care. If that's the case, slowing down the diffusion of the infection could be really important in keeping down the total number of deaths.

Dumb question but what intensive care? Do people need to be on respirators? Need access to drugs only available at ICU? Just curious if any of the things done at an ICU to prevent death really need to be only at the ICU.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#57
post #21

For perspective, numbers from the regular flu this winter: "At least 14,000 people have died and 250,000 have already been hospitalized during the 2019-2020 flu season, ..."

Some worst possible case models predict 15 million people dying from this in the US; making it 1000x worse than flu in the worst case.

E.g.: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/f850n6/a_worst_cas...

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#58
post #28
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…

Our media is referring to "patient zero" in Italy as a 38 years-old man. So either he is known or our media is full of your-know-that. Which would not be surprising. Edit: a commenter below correctly pointed out that that 38yo man is being referred to as "patient one" not "patient zero". My bad.

That 38 year old man was the one I talked about above, the person who went to the hospital on whom they first found the disease, but not necessarily the person it originated from. Likely they have asked him (as well as anyone else affected) whether he's been outside of the country and he answered no (otherwise they'd say they have found the origin).

I'm not an expert, so I looked up what "Patient Zero" is defined as. Wikipedia [1] defines it as the case that has been detected first, but also says that media has used the term to refer to the source of the disease. So the Italian media's use actually matches the Wikipedia definition, while my use in the post above, as in this CNN post [2] matches the other definition. Sadly the term is a bit vauge.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_case

[2]: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/23/europe/italy-novel-corona...

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't once the quarantine is in effect

A quarantine that tries to prevent people getting food is a quick way to get riots. No government would be stupid like that.

Indeed. If a whole city is under quarantine then the supply of food has to be managed by the authorities.
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