Merged 2019-nCoV / Corona virus

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Skeptical Greg said:
In other news, at least 3,000 other people will die in the US today.. A lot of them medically high risk.
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Very good point! :)

I wonder how long it will be before the US has its first "Li Wenliang"^1 death?

^1 A doctor, died at the age of 33, in Wuhan, of Covid-19
 
JeanTate said:
As already noted, not possible.

Furthermore, even a quick skim of even the first few pages of this thread will turn up examples of posts that are clearly political^2

In a broader context, how would it be possible, even in principle, to discuss public health policy without politics? Or do you propose to ban discussion of public health policy in this thread?

^1 Perhaps even at least one by you?
^2 Unless, of course, it's political to bash Trump and Pence, but not Xi Jinping (to take but one example; there are plenty more)
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The management will be the deciders.

If this pandemic becomes as huge as The Atheist predicts then I will propose a dedicated subforum strictly to discuss the virus and virus politics and everything related.
 
JeanTate said:
Very good point! :)

I wonder how long it will be before the US has its first "Li Wenliang"^1 death?

^1 A doctor, died at the age of 33, in Wuhan, of Covid-19
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While he was young, we have no idea if he had health issues that might have impacted on his chances.

Even then, we have the example of the Mexican swine 'flu, which killed a number of young and healthy people.

Different people have different susceptibilities to viruses.
 
The Atheist said:
Even then, we have the example of the Mexican swine 'flu, which killed a number of young and healthy people.

Different people have different susceptibilities to viruses.
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That was a vastly different thing. Medical professionals were saying that the stronger your immune response, the more likely you were to die.

Most of the USA acted like nothing happened, but those of us in small towns along the mexican coyote corridor had a lot of shocking deaths of our healthy young high schoolers and college kids
 
Oregon Live said:
Oregon coronavirus patient likely had little close contact with students at Lake Oswego school.

Only a few people at Forest Hills Elementary School had contact with the sick employee and they will be asked to stay home for two weeks, monitor themselves for symptoms and report their temperatures every day, Superintendent Lora de la Cruz wrote in an email.

The employee lives in neighboring Washington County and first developed symptoms Feb. 19, state health officials said. They have not released the person’s age, gender or condition but said the patient is at Kaiser Permanente Westside Medical Center in Hillsboro...
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https://www.oregonlive.com/news/202...tact-with-students-at-lake-oswego-school.html
 
pipelineaudio said:
That was a vastly different thing.
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No, it would be exactly the same.

The reason people died of H1N1 isn't relevant, it's the fact that it killed healthy people, as covid-19 appears to.

pipelineaudio said:
Most of the USA acted like nothing happened, but those of us in small towns along the mexican coyote corridor had a lot of shocking deaths of our healthy young high schoolers and college kids
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As we did here.

At least we can be thankful covid-19 seems to be a bit fat nothing for kids and none have even been seriously ill so far.
 
I suggest Chinese study mentioned before, which covers miscellaneous factors of 1011 cases.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.06.20020974v1.full.pdf

Start with the tables near the end of the PDF, the rest is just different points being brought up which are based on these.

Out of 1011 cases 67 died, 59.2% of which had 'any coexisting disorder', compared to 23.2% of such people in the whole set. So it certainly is significant. But it's far from 'healthy people will be fine'. Out of those 1011, 28 died with no coexisting disorder.

There are also age groups, occurrence of symptoms, and lots of other useful info.

Edit: that 67 number is not just deaths, this number is called 'composite endpoint' and it also includes people taken into intensive care. Problem is again, it can take long time (weeks) to die of this.
 
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Capsid said:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...se-antibody-test-track-coronavirus-infections

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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Right, I posted a different link to that report, and the US is close to development.

But those tests are not widely distributed and in use, and they especially are not in use in the US.

Meanwhile:

More cases here in WA State:
https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health/news/2020/February/29-covid19.aspx

Public Health – Seattle & King County and the Washington State Department of Health are announcing new cases of COVID-19, including one death. The individual who died was a man in his 50s with underlying health conditions who had no history of travel or contact with a known COVID-19 case. Public Health is also reporting two cases of COVID-19 virus connected to a long-term care facility in King County.
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Probably been circulating for a while now.
 
The world's governments appear to have one of two basic reactions:

1) Whoa! This epidemic has potential to reflect badly on us!

or

2) Whoa! This epidemic has potential to kill many of our citizens!
 
As this outbreak is now over 2 months old, I'm trying to use a bit of hindsight, along with a sceptical appraisal of where this bloody virus is actually headed, because I have a suspicion using the day-by-day numbers are giving an incorrect impression. The spread of cases unconnected to previous case or China is the clue, for me.

13 January:

Thailand reports first case of covid-19.

On 29 February they have 42 cases.

22 January:

USA finds first case.

On 29 February, USA has 68 cases identified, most of which are ex-China.

22 January:

Above, a photograph shows queues at Wuchang train station in Wuhan, China. [Ahead of the lockdown]
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22 January:

First case hits the Philippines

On 29 February, Philippines have had zero more cases.

23 January:

Researchers from the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London now estimate that there have probably been about 4,000 cases in Wuhan. [Official number was 400 at the time]
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25 January:

Four cases identified in Australia.

On 29 February, Australia has 25 cases.

31 January:

William Parcher said:
When does this go exponential?

I saw 6,000 then up to 7,000 and now 10,000? If this was going exponential then we should now be in the millions.

I mention this because there was talk of exponential spread upthread.
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Pandemics are discovered when the serious cases show up. Prior to that, nobody's looking, so the infection can spread by mild cases long before those serious cases are seen, and we know for certain covid-19 not only produces mild cases, but also completely asymptomatic ones.

Imperial College London has always maintained actual numbers are at least ten times the officially identified cases. I suggested at the start that it could be as high as 100 times more, and the way cases with no contacts in China are now springing up gives a strong likelihood of under-reporting. This was noted all the way back on 17 January, when people started applying maths to the situation.

Based on a r0 of 2.6, we would be seeing something in the order of 1,000,000 cases right now.

And maybe we have that, but haven't counted 90% of them because those people aren't sick enough to bother going to the doctor.

I'm going to say that's where we actually are, and it's going to be impossible to control or even limit the spread now it has clear traction.

I think we're over-estimating the deadliness by under-estimating the spread and there seems to be no other way the virus could be spreading internally in cases with no connection to past cases, other than wrong input.

It's still going to be a nightmare for health systems, but I think attempts to slow the spread are futile and we're stuck with this as an extra human pathogen until someone strikes a vaccine. (which may not work if the virus mutates)
 
Ulf Nereng said:
The world's governments appear to have one of two basic reactions:

1) Whoa! This epidemic has potential to reflect badly on us!

or

2) Whoa! This epidemic has potential to kill many of our citizens!
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3) Whoa! This epidemic has potential to cost me some money! Best keep all the international travel running so I can keep making money while my country burns!
 
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