Merged 2019-nCoV / Corona virus

Status
Not open for further replies.
Skeptic Ginger said:
Coming from the WHO or not, those are simply not scientific evidenced based numbers.



It will take antibody testing of a representative group to determine the actual numbers of infections. Even without underreporting, you have to find the unrecognized cases.
Click to expand...



The diagnosis of infection is by PCR. I don’t think an antibody test has been developed yet.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Capsid said:
The diagnosis of infection is by PCR. I don’t think an antibody test has been developed yet.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
I was wondering about that; I hadn't read that an antibody test was developed.


I'm surprised China has the lab capacity for that many PCR tests.
 
Last edited:
This was interesting:

NPR: China Hurriedly Building Quarantine Center In Effort To Contain Wuhan Virus

Hurried is an understatement. They expect to finish it in 2 more weeks!
Construction of the special hospital with a capacity of 1,000 beds for patients with #nCoV2019 has begun in Wuhan, according to the model of the hospital built in seven days in Beijing to deal with #SARS in 2003. The construction is scheduled to be completed by February 3.
Click to expand...
It looks akin to ants building a nest.
 
Last edited:
Hospitals are overflowing. A new, 1,000-bed hospital is being built on the Wuhan's outskirts, to be ready by February 3.:jaw-dropp

I don't know if this is a tent hospital like a sort of MASH unit, or an actual modern hospital like the Chinese are making it sound, but constructing a real 1000 bed hospital in that short a time period is crazy. The concrete wouldn't even be fully cured yet!:boggled:

That's sounds a lot like an emergency response in a war time...

So maybe it is over reacting, but for certain somebody is literally scared to death of this virus and in a position of power in the Chinese bureaucracy.

None of this sounds good at all.

edit to add: OOPS got ninja'd
 
Last edited:
Fear of the unknown, or reasonable fear?

If, in 2020, the flu kills faaaaaar more people than this new coronavirus does, what will the vast fortune spent of face masks, the locking down of a major city, etc have been for?

Maybe the widespread wearing of face masks (etc) will reduce the incidence of colds, the flu, ... and the new coronavirus?
 
JeanTate said:
Fear of the unknown, or reasonable fear?

If, in 2020, the flu kills faaaaaar more people than this new coronavirus does, what will the vast fortune spent of face masks, the locking down of a major city, etc have been for?

Maybe the widespread wearing of face masks (etc) will reduce the incidence of colds, the flu, ... and the new coronavirus?
Click to expand...

Look at the precautions people take for handling Ebolavirus, Marburgvirus, smallpox virus, hantavirus, etc in labs.

And then look at the much more lax standards for even the worst influenza viruses.
 
Dr.Sid said:
Well China is either over-reacting, or under-reporting. My bet would be the second. They are scared poopless.
Click to expand...

I think we can just about say the latter with a good bit of confidence at this point. Understandably so, after SARS.

And it's not so much under-reporting as a simple lag between testing and results, combined with horrendously busy hospitals.
 
Flu has mortality rate about 0.1%. Sars had almost 10%, but wasn't spreading so easily. This has about 3% (based on very poor reports), but it seems to spread better. And the main reason for caution with infections is simply when it's new.
 
Red Baron Farms said:
I don't know if this is a tent hospital like a sort of MASH unit, or an actual modern hospital like the Chinese are making it sound, but constructing a real 1000 bed hospital in that short a time period is crazy. The concrete wouldn't even be fully cured yet!:boggled:
Click to expand...

Pre-fabricated buildings, no problem.

Dr.Sid said:
Flu has mortality rate about 0.1%. Sars had almost 10%, but wasn't spreading so easily. This has about 3% (based on very poor reports), but it seems to spread better. And the main reason for caution with infections is simply when it's new.
Click to expand...

Just to correct the record, influenza's mortality rate is a lot less than 0.1%.

The mean annual global influenza-associated respiratory mortality rate per 100,000 people was 5.9.
Click to expand...

That's 0.0059%. You're almost 20 times higher than what seems to be a fairly rigorous number.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6815659/

The communicability might well be overstated as well. Given the infected people found overseas so far, either there are mass numbers with very mild illness, or it's not that easy to catch.

Give it three or four more days.
 
Latest numbers from China are 2000 confirmed cases and 56 deaths.

That's ostensibly 2.8% mortality rate, but I'm sticking with cases being 100 times more than the confirmed number and 0.03%.

We have Chinese people wearing masks in public in NZ right now, despite zero cases in the country.

Great fun at the moment is to cough or sneeze loudly near groups of Chinese - they scarper like you're wearing a suicide vest.
 
Red Baron Farms said:
Hospitals are overflowing. A new, 1,000-bed hospital is being built on the Wuhan's outskirts, to be ready by February 3.:jaw-dropp

I don't know if this is a tent hospital like a sort of MASH unit, or an actual modern hospital like the Chinese are making it sound, but constructing a real 1000 bed hospital in that short a time period is crazy. The concrete wouldn't even be fully cured yet!:boggled:
Click to expand...

It's made of prefabricated concrete.
 
JeanTate said:
Fear of the unknown, or reasonable fear?

If, in 2020, the flu kills faaaaaar more people than this new coronavirus does, what will the vast fortune spent of face masks, the locking down of a major city, etc have been for?

Maybe the widespread wearing of face masks (etc) will reduce the incidence of colds, the flu, ... and the new coronavirus?
Click to expand...

There is an immense infrastructure in place to try to mitigate the impact of 'flu. There are monitoring stations throughout the world looking for the strains of circulating 'flu virus. Because of continued mutation by the 'flu viruses, new vaccines need to be produced twice a year to match what are predicted to be the circulating strains. Millions of doses of the new vaccine have to be produced in a few months, and transported round the world. Governments have to put in place vaccine programs and persuade people to be vaccinated. Modelling siggests that if one could achieve high rates of vaccination with an effective vaccine in children 'flu epidemics could be halted. There are effective drugs for 'flu if you have it but there is a reluctance to use them because of the cost

Every year there is information put out about good hygiene practices to minimise transmission of respiratory viruses.

For some other viruses
 
One thing I do not understand. Many countries are telling their residents to come home. Yet they could be bringing in the virus. So help spread it. They should be saying stay in China. Just do not go to China.
On the other hand, as I think others have pointed out, the virus will slowly spread throughout the world and there is not much that can be done about that.
 
rjh01 said:
One thing I do not understand. Many countries are telling their residents to come home. Yet they could be bringing in the virus. So help spread it. They should be saying stay in China. Just do not go to China.
On the other hand, as I think others have pointed out, the virus will slowly spread throughout the world and there is not much that can be done about that.
Click to expand...

Evacuating specific nationals makes it easy to put them up in quarantine. And the earlier you do that, the bigger the chance that they will be unaffected.
 
BBC reporting that it is infectious in its incubation period, before symptoms show.

That will make it difficult to screen for.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom