Is It a Pandemic Yet? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#91

Post by guramarx11 » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

ducttape12 wrote: post #76

Can someone explain to me why coronavirus is getting so much coverage? According to Wikipedia, Coronavirus has killed about 2000 people. Each year smoking kills 480,000 people in the US. In two days smoking will have killed more people in the US than coronavirus has worldwide. Shouldn't we have headlines about this every day? Or any of the other far more deadly things (traffic accidents, heart disease, suicide, etc.)…

smoking is not contagious, a smoker can't infect or kill you directly with cigarettes

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#92

Post by burpsnard » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

yulaow wrote: post #75

nickjj wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if needed, quarantine yourself and take care of yourself and your family/relations well How would that work in practice? The last I heard you can catch this virus pretty easily just by having air touch your eye. A lot of people live in either a city or a suburban area and most apartments and houses aren't air tight. Wouldn't your breath get circulated out of your apartment, mixed in with the outside air and drift o…

The virus is not airborne, it propagates via aerosol so it is very short lived "in the air" and over surfaces.

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

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#93

Post by paganel » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

asiachick wrote: post #56

danmaz74 wrote: 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.

As far as I could see in some Twitter videos coming out of China some people need to be on respirators and in a horizontal position. At the limit you can also do that in sports- and concert-halls, which is what the authorities seemed to have done in Wuhan.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#94

Post by ro-_-b » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

rimliu wrote: post #28

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…

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.

I've been reading la Repubblica a lot today since I live pretty close to where the disease is spreading. They always reiterated that patient 0 who started spreading the virus in Italy is not yet identified. They had a "suspicious" person identified but that person later on was tested negative.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#95

Post by mrb » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

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, airborne). And we now have 4 independent estimates that place the Infection Fatality Ratio at about 0.5% to 1.7% which is between 5x and 17x deadlier than the flu (0.1%): https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1230977769795776512 Incidentally, this makes COVID19 comparable to the 1918 Spanish Flu (IFR ~2%) according to experts (see link above). And keep in mind the IFR, unlike the CFR, is the metric that takes into account undetected mild cases. The Case Fatality Ratio is around 9% right now.

So based on this, I predict it will go pandemic and will kill 1 million, and probably a lot more.

COVID19 is the most severe (ie. contagious + fatal) airborne disease since the Spanish Flu.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#96

Post by bthrn » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

ducttape12 wrote: post #76

Can someone explain to me why coronavirus is getting so much coverage? According to Wikipedia, Coronavirus has killed about 2000 people. Each year smoking kills 480,000 people in the US. In two days smoking will have killed more people in the US than coronavirus has worldwide. Shouldn't we have headlines about this every day? Or any of the other far more deadly things (traffic accidents, heart disease, suicide, etc.)…

If you touch a smoker, you don’t get lung cancer and risk death.

The hype for this is part media sensationalism, part risk of it spreading everywhere.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#97

Post by itchyjunk » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

ducttape12 wrote: post #76

Can someone explain to me why coronavirus is getting so much coverage? According to Wikipedia, Coronavirus has killed about 2000 people. Each year smoking kills 480,000 people in the US. In two days smoking will have killed more people in the US than coronavirus has worldwide. Shouldn't we have headlines about this every day? Or any of the other far more deadly things (traffic accidents, heart disease, suicide, etc.)…

Not smoking might be a solution to one of those problems but not coronavirusing isn't for the other.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#98

Post by wonderwonder » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

ducttape12 wrote: post #76

Can someone explain to me why coronavirus is getting so much coverage? According to Wikipedia, Coronavirus has killed about 2000 people. Each year smoking kills 480,000 people in the US. In two days smoking will have killed more people in the US than coronavirus has worldwide. Shouldn't we have headlines about this every day? Or any of the other far more deadly things (traffic accidents, heart disease, suicide, etc.)…

It has the ability to affect the global economy in ways that the others dont. If people don't want to go to work due to an increased risk of mortality, business will shut down. If everyone is forced to go to work and they all get sick and are unable to work for several weeks, business shuts down. Finally if everyone gets sick and 3% of your workforce then dies, that again causes massive economic disruption. This is also occurring on a time scale far shorter that people getting sick from smoking or heart disease.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#99

Post by jonplackett » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

asiachick wrote: post #56

danmaz74 wrote: 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.

I read an article a while back where they said there are a few bands of severity (this was how they treating in China). First level of seriousness was oxygen / respirator. Then for even more serious cases they had to actually oxygenate the blood outside their body. Basically the problem was people can’t breath because of fluid or maybe it’s damage in their lungs so all the treatments of the severe patients were to help that.

Re: Is It a Pandemic Yet?

#100

Post by Udik » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 3:17 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #63

Udik wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're referring to him as "patient one". Patient zero (i.e. someone who is or was ill and has recently come back from China) hasn't been found yet.

Why does it have to be China? Couldn't it be Thailand/Singapore/S.Korea/Japan/Israel/Iran etc?

True, that would have been more correct. However, keep in mind that these people who are found ill now in Italy probably have contracted the virus weeks ago, before it started spreading substantially to other countries. Or before we knew it was already spreading anyway.