Merged 2019-nCoV / Corona virus

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Dr.Sid said:
Arcade22 said:
Since it's not a flu, and it with all likelihood originated in Bats, a better term would be "Bat borne disease". Apparently Bats can harbour countless nasty viruses and other infectious diseases without dying. One notable exception is Rabies.
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Wuhan coronavirus is being used on Wikipedia and I think it's good enough.
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Sure. What's in a name?

After all, Wiki redirects "1918 flu " to "Spanish flu" even though the reason it got that name was because the Spanish newspapers weren't being muzzled by their government like all the main players in the war and so that's where people saw the first honest reporting.

'Fort Riley flu' might have been more accurate.
 
Meadmaker said:
I go to the WHO web site. They give daily updates. So far, there doesn't seem to be a mass of cases outside China which, frankly, puzzles me. I just don't know how it could be running so rampant in China, but a few cases here and there everywhere else in the world. It just seems like those few cases here and there would turn into an outbreak.

However, IANAnEpidemiologist.
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This expert on tropical diseases states:

Britain could suffer a “major outbreak” of the coronavirus, which is likely to become a pandemic, according to
Professor Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said he was “increasingly alarmed” by the rapid spread of the virus #Coronavirustruth
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He should know..?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
We know there are more men dying than women.

Genetics? Maybe. With SARS there were families that had higher rates of disease.

But smoking can't be ruled out until we get more demographics on the fatalities.

Smoking in China

And there is this weird thing:Tobacco is a significant product in China.
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You would have thought the authoritarian regime would have cracked down on smoking. Perhaps they see it as a good population control.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Wow, just saw a piece on France 24. In China, drones are flying around being used to tell people in the streets to put masks on, to tell card game players to stop, calling them stupid. The drones are also going to balconies where people come out and the drone checks their temperature with a thermal detection device.

Also people that are in house quarantine are being told to wear monitors so their location can be tracked.
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Someone could patent an app that takes automatic body temperature...?
 
marting said:
What seems to stand out in comparison to SARs is the apparently long incubation period and fairly high infection rate. In particular, city lockdowns and people self isolating as much as possible has now been going on about 2 weeks. In those 2 weeks death totals have increased 20 fold. The increase in comparison to SARs is shocking. I also would have expected the new infections reported to start sloping downward with the strong measures China has taken but they are still pretty high. Perhaps under reporting is catching up or perhaps the damned bug is more easily spread and is closer to measles than Flu. On the positive side the number of recovered is finally increasing much more rapidly than deaths.

See post #405 for link to Johns Hopkin's tracker dashboard. Also, a google spreadsheet can be downloaded that list locations, dates, and times of infection/deaths/recovery reports.
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From what I've read of the symptoms, it seems to work in pretty much the same way as tuberculosis (TB) - which, of course, is caused by a specific bacterium - in which the severely afflicted drown in their own phlegm as the infected cells in the lungs haemorrhage one by one. OK, so maybe it's more like pneumonia, except pneumonia tends to be a secondary infection for those already weakened by other illnesses (flu, AIDS, etc.).
 
Roboramma said:
The number of cases outside of China has been growing exponentially as well, just from a smaller starting point. For example, confirmed cases:

Jan 20: 4
Jan 21: 6
8
14
25
40
57
64
87
105
118
153
173
183
188
212
227
265
317
Feb 9: 343

The growth rate seems similar outside of China to inside.

ETA: the number of confirmed cases within China has grown by a factor of 135 since Jan 20. The number of confirmed cases outside of China has grown by a factor of 86 in that same time. It's a slower rate, but not surprisingly so given quarantine efforts.
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That could just be due to people returning from China...?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Wow, just saw a piece on France 24. In China, drones are flying around being used to tell people in the streets to put masks on, to tell card game players to stop, calling them stupid. The drones are also going to balconies where people come out and the drone checks their temperature with a thermal detection device.

Also people that are in house quarantine are being told to wear monitors so their location can be tracked.
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Yeah, that has been going on for a while. I saw videos of the same thing here on Japanese news.
 
Vixen said:
These days, you're not allowed to name a virus after a place or the name of a person. So perhaps we should call it 'woke virus' :D:rolleyes:
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The official non-offensive name will be released next week. Then instead of blaming the Chinese direct through the name, people will have to remember something like, "The Procyon virus - ah yes that's the one that killed millions. It originated in Wuhan where the Chinese like to eat wild animals."

But no one will be offended, so the main problem will have been solved.

The Chinese are angling to have the thing renamed NCP - Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia - but I can't see that catching on. National Car Parks - the largest UK car park operator - is bound to object, for starters.
 
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ceptimus said:
The official non-offensive name will be released next week. Then instead of blaming the Chinese direct through the name, people will have to remember something like, "The Procyon virus - ah yes that's the one that killed millions. It originated in Wuhan where the Chinese like to eat wild animals."

But no one will be offended, so the main problem will have been solved.

The Chinese are angling to have the thing renamed NCP - Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia - but I can't see that catching on. National Car Parks - the largest UK car park operator - is bound to object, for starters.
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Such cynacism warms my heart!:thumbsup:
 
Latest numbers are a daily growth if only 7.7%

AND, cure rate vs death rate, 75% of hospitalized patients get better. So far.
 
casebro said:
Latest numbers are a daily growth if only 7.7%

AND, cure rate vs death rate, 75% of hospitalized patients get better. So far.
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Do you have a source for this?

If this is true, that's a terrible percentage.

I suppose it depends on how these cases are being counted.
 
Arcade22 said:
Since it's not a flu, and it with all likelihood originated in Bats, a better term would be "Bat borne disease". Apparently Bats can harbour countless nasty viruses and other infectious diseases without dying. One notable exception is Rabies.
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You can get rabies from bats.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rabies-in-bats

The reason there are so many viruses that arise from bats is there are an awful lot of bats (not just individuals but also species).
 
Roboramma said:
The number of cases outside of China has been growing exponentially as well, just from a smaller starting point. For example, confirmed cases:

Jan 20: 4
Jan 21: 6
8
14
25
40
57
64
87
105
118
153
173
183
188
212
227
265
317
Feb 9: 343

The growth rate seems similar outside of China to inside.

ETA: the number of confirmed cases within China has grown by a factor of 135 since Jan 20. The number of confirmed cases outside of China has grown by a factor of 86 in that same time. It's a slower rate, but not surprisingly so given quarantine efforts.
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Although the initial rate of new infections was exponential, doubling every day or two, the numbers after that are not growing at that exponential rate at all, and in fact suggest a substantial slowing down in the rate of increase of new infections. Going from doubling every day or two to doubling every 7 days or so is a big change in an exponential process. It does suggest that the public health actions are having a effect.
 
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Giordano said:
Although the initial rate of new infections was exponential, doubling every day or two, the numbers after that are not growing at that exponential rate at all, and in fact suggest a substantial slowing down in the rate of increase of new infections. Going from doubling every day or two to doubling every 7 days or so is a big change in an exponential process. It does suggest that the public health action are having a effect.
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ummm, that most rapid growth was all in China. It might have been not from new cases, but newly identified cases? Like suppose a news article brought people to hospitals ?

Hmmm, how has the death rate been doing? Dropping? Exponential growth? Somewhere in between?
 
casebro said:
Hmmm, how has the death rate been doing? Dropping? Exponential growth? Somewhere in between?
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There's a good graph on this page, which shows the logarithmic rate has slowed to almost flat line: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Considering all of China's data comes from the single source of the Chinese NIH, the numbers are as robust as they can be.

Meanwhile, Wired has an excellent piece on the stupidity of "The 'flu is worse!!" trope that some people are constantly playing: https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-is-bad-comparing-it-to-the-flu-is-worse/
 
casebro said:
ummm, that most rapid growth was all in China. It might have been not from new cases, but newly identified cases? Like suppose a news article brought people to hospitals ?

Hmmm, how has the death rate been doing? Dropping? Exponential growth? Somewhere in between?
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I was referring to the numbers in the post I quoted which are from outside China.

As you know the numbers from China are probably far from accurate due both to government restrictions on information and from the general chaos involved.

Death rate? I don't think I've seen any numbers that indicate an exponential rate outside China. Probably too few deaths outside China to obtain a reliable rate of increase.
 
Two pieces of news from different ends of the spectrum:

1 - the cruise ship quarantined in Japan has now been cleared of the virus, so it didn't spread further than the 61 cases found.

2 - the Singapore conference that was the origin of the British family's infection while on a skiing holiday seems to be a hotbed for infection, with several others traced to that meeting. It almost seems like there are two strains in play, one more infectious than the other.

As always, time will tell.
 
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