Wuhan, nCV, germs....

Time to read The Stand again.

What makes this dangerous, from what I've heard, is the long incubation period and that it can be transferred before any symptoms show.
That is precisely what bioweapons developers want in such a virus

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fishgutzy said:
that it can be transferred before any symptoms show.
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Just to clarify, there is no evidence of this outside of China and reporting from WHO and CDC as of yesterday was that this is highly improbable.
 
Vyntage said:
(# deaths)/(# deaths + # recovered) remains above 50%;
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That number is meaningless right now, the bulk of the exposures are folks that wouldn’t be “recovered” even if the fatality rate was zero.

Lots of ways to report stats during this period when the number of reported cases is low and growing fast and the resolutions lag by weeks. I’m not saying that it’s not going to get worse than the 140 fatalities reported from something like 5,500 confirmed cases, but it’s not going to be 50% fatal, or 25% fatal, or even 5% fatal.
 
I know what you are saying; right now both numbers are meaningless.

You can expect (# deaths)/(# deaths + # recovered) to decrease over time, and (# deaths)/(# number confirmed) to increase. Both will converge to the actual death rate.
 
JimB said:
...it’s not going to be 50% fatal, or 25% fatal, or even 5% fatal.
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SARS was 11%; it's entirely possible this will end up over 5%:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome

"SARS was a relatively rare disease; at the end of the epidemic in June 2003, the incidence was 8422 cases with a case-fatality rate of 11%."

Note that there were 8422 total cases of SARS over nine months; this will likely exceed that number in a week or two.
 
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Locking down over 50 million.
Seems a bit extreme for a nothing burger.
It is either a show or it is worse than they are letting on.
Given that the CCP controls all of the news in China and is loath to report anything that reflects poorly on the party or Pingpong Pooh Bear, I'd guess the latter.
It is rare for China to act in the interests of anyone not a high party official.

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fishgutzy said:
Locking down over 50 million.
Seems a bit extreme for a nothing burger.
It is either a show or it is worse than they are letting on.
Given that the CCP controls all of the news in China and is loath to report anything that reflects poorly on the party or Pingpong Pooh Bear, I'd guess the latter.
It is rare for China to act in the interests of anyone not a high party official.

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You make a good point, they truly don’t care about people dying, so what is their motivation?

Seems to me that they want to taken seriously on the global stage, they want to be more than the giant that cheats to win economically. They don’t know how to do this, but an oversized response to this might seem like a good move, and it probably is. They don’t care if it saves lives, they care that we think they care about saving lives.
 
JimB said:
That number is meaningless right now, the bulk of the exposures are folks that wouldn’t be “recovered” even if the fatality rate was zero.

Lots of ways to report stats during this period when the number of reported cases is low and growing fast and the resolutions lag by weeks. I’m not saying that it’s not going to get worse than the 140 fatalities reported from something like 5,500 confirmed cases, but it’s not going to be 50% fatal, or 25% fatal, or even 5% fatal.
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Exactly. The confirmed cases are likely a tiny subset of infections, so using confirmed cases to calculate mortality is an exercise in futility and fearmongering. Most of the people in Chinese hospitals are elderly or people with other health conditions. Just like the respiratory viruses we are all familiar with, the flu. How many of you go to the hospital each time you get the flu? For all we know, millions of Chinese just stayed at home and rode out the coronavirus infection, just like most people all over the world do with the flu. I expect mortality rate to be lower than 5%, and fairly close to the common flu.

What is worrisome is that we are starting to see transmissions outside of China. Prior to a day or so ago, 100% of confirmed cases were a result of transmissions in China. No longer. There are now confirmed transmissions in Germany, Japan and Vietnam. All of these were transmissions from someone who had been in China. The next step toward a self-sustaining outbreak (i.e., independent of China) would be for transmission from someone who hasn't been in China. At that point, WHO will have to elevate their pandemic risk level.
 
The distribution of deaths has been interesting for the last couple of days - the number of deaths outside Wuhan's home province of Hubei have been stable at 6.
 
Vyntage said:
As of tonight, there is still exponential growth in the number of confirmed cases.
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I suspect if Hubei province had an unlimited number of medical personnel, lab techs and the necessary testing equipment, we would see at least a 10x increase in cases from today to tomorrow.

In other words, I don't think large daily increases over the next few days will tell us anything meaningful. It may just be a sign that those 6k medical personnel along with supplies sent to Wuhan are being put to use. Large daily increases a week from last Friday will be more meaningful.
 
gc70 said:
The distribution of deaths has been interesting for the last couple of days - the number of deaths outside Wuhan's home province of Hubei have been stable at 6.
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That is interesting, but I'm guessing it's just the lag effect of the virus spreading outside of Hubei only in the last few of weeks, whereas it's been in Hubei since maybe November.

Hospital overcrowding may also be a factor. There's only so many ventilators in a hospital, so if you're a nCoV patient in Beijing, you're probably much more likely to get it than if you are in Wuhan.

The confirmation would be seeing deaths rising in other provinces with relatively high numbers of infected.
 
Vyntage said:
I think with first world hygiene and health care, countries like Japan, Germany, and the US have less to worry about.
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And now there’s a CNN video with a guy walking out of a hospital door and taking a leak against the building wall.
 
drypowder said:
Exactly. The confirmed cases are likely a tiny subset of infections, so using confirmed cases to calculate mortality is an exercise in futility and fearmongering. Most of the people in Chinese hospitals are elderly or people with other health conditions. Just like the respiratory viruses we are all familiar with, the flu. How many of you go to the hospital each time you get the flu? For all we know, millions of Chinese just stayed at home and rode out the coronavirus infection, just like most people all over the world do with the flu. I expect mortality rate to be lower than 5%, and fairly close to the common flu.

What is worrisome is that we are starting to see transmissions outside of China. Prior to a day or so ago, 100% of confirmed cases were a result of transmissions in China. No longer. There are now confirmed transmissions in Germany, Japan and Vietnam. All of these were transmissions from someone who had been in China. The next step toward a self-sustaining outbreak (i.e., independent of China) would be for transmission from someone who hasn't been in China. At that point, WHO will have to elevate their pandemic risk level.
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Same thing for viral meningitis. Almost every HC worker in the ED and acute care will get it at some time, but it presents just like any other viral illness, so almost no one gets diagnosed. "Mild" flu is the same way. There is decent reporting data that worse than mild flu gets seen, by someone, be it UC, PC, or the ED.
 
I think the situation in Hubei may be inflecting for the better. Confirmed cases in Hubei increased by only 840 from yesterday vs an increase of 1291 from the prior day. Maybe they just ran out of testing equipment. We'll have a better sense when we see tomorrow's numbers. Increases in total deaths in Hubei have also stabilized at 24-25 for the past 3 days.

Mainland ex-Hubei showed a large jump in cases, increasing by 721 (vs increases of 293 and 481 in the prior two days). Not clear whether these are all from either people who had been in Hubei or been in contact with someone from Hubei (remember, 5mm people left Wuhan before the quarantine went fully into effect, and most of those will have gone to other parts of China), or whether we are starting to get significant self-sustaining outbreaks outside of Hubei.

Still only 3 countries outside of China with transmission events, and all of those have been through contact with someone from China. So no sign of self-sustaining outbreaks.

Overall, a good sign for most, and a bad day for doomsayers.
 
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I'm waiting for the results a couple of weeks after the Chinese Holiday. :rolleyes:
 
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Vyntage said:
Another day, another point plotted on an exponential growth curve.

Over nine months SARS had 8422 confirmed cases; this will definitely exceed that tomorrow.
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doomsay all you want. Personally, I find the linear phase of a growth curve to be the most exciting time because you never REALLY know how much time you have left. Perfect time to sit with popcorn, which you won't be able to eat through your PPE.
 
1/30/20
Hubei +1032 +29%; 2 consecutive days of ~30% increase. Down from the +1291 increase of a couple of days ago.
Mainland ex-Hubei: +676 +28%
Mainland: +1708 +29%; last 3 days: +1708 +1561 +1584

Seems growth of confirmed cases in China is slowing, not accelerating, and not even sustaining at ~50% daily increases. Could be real deceleration or could be headfake due to some people who otherwise would have gone to the hospital opting out due to the increasingly crowded conditions (since confirmed case count is rising, I'm assuming the numbers with severe symptoms is also increasing and thus more crowded hospitals). Will have a better sense in coming days, and especially as the new hospitals in Hubei go online (+2k beds).

World ex-China +18 +21%. Growth here is also slowing. And for sure it's not due to logistics of testing because none of these countries is overwhelmed, and all have only been increasing, not decreasing, their measures to identify and isolate. Still only seeing the 3 transmission events outside of China. WHO's top brass is meeting today, but unless there is transmission data outside of China that I haven't seen, it seems difficult to justify escalating to Phase 5 (from Phase 4), though of course there will be a lot of emotional cries for them to do so.

We still have to see the impact of all those Chinese on holiday and the incubation period around that, but I think the measures China has taken in the last several days will more than offset.

Overall, another day of disappointing news for the doomsayers. If WHO doesn't raise to Phase 5, there will be a lot of conspiracy theories of global coordination by governments to coverup a real pandemic. I have several tinfoil hats in my wardrobe (and buy into some conspiracy theories [facts] that are too far outside the Overton window to be even discussed here), but I don't see the need to wear any of them in response to this situation thus far.
 
DrScaryGuy said:
doomsay all you want. Personally, I find the linear phase of a growth curve to be the most exciting time because you never REALLY know how much time you have left. Perfect time to sit with popcorn, which you won't be able to eat through your PPE.
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I am reporting facts, not doomsaying.

The only predictions I've made about the future are that first-world countries are probably fine and that if it gets to Africa or India then it could get ugly there.

doomsay -
Verb (intransitive) To make dire predictions about the future.
 
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drypowder said:
Lot of people making a lot of hay out this, while conveniently ignoring all the factors that are going to break down this growth. But nothing gets clicks and views like fear porn.
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There are a lot of people saying ITEOTWAWKI, and there are a lot of people saying it's absolutely nothing.

As is usually the case, the truth is probably somewhere between those two extremes.
 
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I may have missed it somewhere, but a question regarding the number of confirmed deaths:
Does anyone know if most dead are the elderly with underlying medical issues and or infants? Similar to a regular flu?
Or is this taking healthy people of all ages?
 
News this morning of transmission incident in South Korea (like the others, it spread via contact with someone who had been in China). Given this has now happened in 4 countries and will likely happen in others before the next WHO meeting, I think the odds are decent they will update to Phase 5 even though we don't have any evidence AFAIK of transmissions from a person who was never in China.
 
Roland! said:
I may have missed it somewhere, but a question regarding the number of confirmed deaths:
Does anyone know if most dead are the elderly with underlying medical issues and or infants? Similar to a regular flu?
Or is this taking healthy people of all ages?
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From what I've seen, victim death profile is similar to the regular flu - mostly elderly and/or pre-existing conditions. Which also means many can ride this out at home, as most of us do with the flu.
 
Vyntage said:
There are a lot of people saying ITEOTWAWKI, and there are a lot of people saying it's absolutely nothing.

As is usually the case, the truth is probably somewhere between those two extremes.
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I haven't seen the latter. Seems everyone on alt news and social media is blowing this up. Dunno what MSM is saying - maybe that
Trump is the index case and that's reason enough to impeach him. [emoji16]
 
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Vyntage said:
I am reporting facts, not doomsaying.

The only predictions I've made about the future are that first-world countries are probably fine and that if it gets to Africa or India then it could get ugly there.

doomsay -
Verb (intransitive) To make dire predictions about the future.
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Speaking of India, first confirmed case - Indian student studying in Wuhan and back in India. Identified and quarantined.
 
Looks like it could be Spanish flu part deux
36c09671538d5ad66e1baa6e0b8e1fab.jpg
 
Ikarus1 said:
Looks like it could be Spanish flu part deux
36c09671538d5ad66e1baa6e0b8e1fab.jpg
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that fearmongering chart made the rounds yesterday and has already fallen short.

As I pointed out earlier today, the case count growth is already below 50%.

That said, there are so many unknowns, including whether hospitals in Hubei even have enough capacity to test everyone - likely they do not. Also, it is very likely that the measures China has taken will significantly reduce the R0.
 
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Roland! said:
I may have missed it somewhere, but a question regarding the number of confirmed deaths:
Does anyone know if most dead are the elderly with underlying medical issues and or infants? Similar to a regular flu?
Or is this taking healthy people of all ages?
Click to expand...
I can't find the article immediately, but I did read that all deaths at the time of the article had involved people over 50.
 
drypowder said:
News this morning of transmission incident in South Korea (like the others, it spread via contact with someone who had been in China). Given this has now happened in 4 countries and will likely happen in others before the next WHO meeting, I think the odds are decent they will update to Phase 5 even though we don't have any evidence AFAIK of transmissions from a person who was never in China.
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Make that 5 countries.

First case of H2H transmission in the US confirmed a few minutes ago. Spouse of someone who had been in Wuhan.

Edit: 6 - Taiwan too, also spouse of someone returning from China.
 
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WHO press conference following today's meeting about to start.



edit: public health emergency declared. No mention of phase change, so I assume still Phase 4.
 
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Very interesting color from someone in Hong Kong.

Not sure how much is plausible if the guy haopens to be anti-CCP. He's mentions severe limitations on driving, and I've heard that elsewhere, but I've also heard there aren't restrictions on driving inside the city you're quarantined in - you just can't leave the city.

 
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