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[Coronavirus] Thread - SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19
Mayabird
Pecking at the keyboardRegistered User regular
Pecking at the keyboardRegistered User regular
EDIT 10 March: I should have a superior OP ready for the next thread. It's basically done and I'm just trying to tweak it to be ready once this one hits 100 pages.
Just a generic coronavirus picture, first thing I could find.
It's in the news and spreading quickly, with confirmed cases in at least thirteen countries and counting, but the majority are in China, specifically centered around the city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China. Officially designed 2019-nCoV, it is a novel strain of coronavirus, possibly zoonotic and originating from bats. The other six known human-infecting coronaviruses range from some that cause common cold to MERS and SARS. Human-to-human transmission has been confirmed for at least four generations. As of the writing of this post (25 January) there have been over 1400 confirmed cases, likely a few thousand more, and 42 confirmed deaths. 35 million people are under quarantine in China with multiple cities locked down, though how effective that will be remains in question.
This thread is for:
1) Discussing the virus itself (origins, how transmissible it is, etc.)
2) Talking about impacts due to the outbreak, including political ones
3) Discussions about medicine, epidemics, and similar topics
This thread is absolutely not for:
1) Panic and declarations of the end of civilization. While I'm not sure humanity will make it through the coming climate crisis and that will entail, this little bug alone won't be enough to wipe us out.
2) Linking Twitter randos saying stupid crap, including that dumbass in the White House (unless he's saying something horribly actionable like locking up all Chinese-looking people or something).
We can keep the discussion here so the East Asia thread doesn't get completely clogged up. I'm sure there are lots of people wanting to talk about this.
EDIT: Added useful links from @boogedyboo
General Info
US CDC on nCov 2019
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/summary.html
WHO on nCOV 2019
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/novel-coronavirus-china
Good video summary from the Guardian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aerq4byr7ps
Situation Reports
WHO Daily Sit-reps
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/
US CDC Case count
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html
Visualization
Updated mapping visualization by John Hopkins University
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Real Time Tracking of cases in China (in Chinese)
http://3g.dxy.cn/newh5/view/pneumonia
Academic
Completed sequence of viral genome
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947
TWiV 584: Year of the coronavirus - Discussion panel of virologists about the outbreak.
http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-584/
Twitter thread keeping track of academic papers both published and preprint (biorxiv.org) on the virus.
Maintained by Dr Cevik of University of St Andrews
Edit: Feb 11 - added the official names just listed by the WHO
Edit: Feb 23 - BNO News in the Netherlands has been the best news aggregator keeping up with the outbreak/pandemic and monitoring cases.
For live updates: https://twitter.com/BNODesk
Their map and timelime page: https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/
Just a generic coronavirus picture, first thing I could find.
It's in the news and spreading quickly, with confirmed cases in at least thirteen countries and counting, but the majority are in China, specifically centered around the city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China. Officially designed 2019-nCoV, it is a novel strain of coronavirus, possibly zoonotic and originating from bats. The other six known human-infecting coronaviruses range from some that cause common cold to MERS and SARS. Human-to-human transmission has been confirmed for at least four generations. As of the writing of this post (25 January) there have been over 1400 confirmed cases, likely a few thousand more, and 42 confirmed deaths. 35 million people are under quarantine in China with multiple cities locked down, though how effective that will be remains in question.
This thread is for:
1) Discussing the virus itself (origins, how transmissible it is, etc.)
2) Talking about impacts due to the outbreak, including political ones
3) Discussions about medicine, epidemics, and similar topics
This thread is absolutely not for:
1) Panic and declarations of the end of civilization. While I'm not sure humanity will make it through the coming climate crisis and that will entail, this little bug alone won't be enough to wipe us out.
2) Linking Twitter randos saying stupid crap, including that dumbass in the White House (unless he's saying something horribly actionable like locking up all Chinese-looking people or something).
We can keep the discussion here so the East Asia thread doesn't get completely clogged up. I'm sure there are lots of people wanting to talk about this.
EDIT: Added useful links from @boogedyboo
General Info
US CDC on nCov 2019
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/summary.html
WHO on nCOV 2019
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/novel-coronavirus-china
Good video summary from the Guardian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aerq4byr7psSituation Reports
WHO Daily Sit-reps
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/
US CDC Case count
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html
Visualization
Updated mapping visualization by John Hopkins University
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Real Time Tracking of cases in China (in Chinese)
http://3g.dxy.cn/newh5/view/pneumonia
Academic
Completed sequence of viral genome
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947
TWiV 584: Year of the coronavirus - Discussion panel of virologists about the outbreak.
http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-584/
Twitter thread keeping track of academic papers both published and preprint (biorxiv.org) on the virus.
Maintained by Dr Cevik of University of St Andrews
Edit: Feb 11 - added the official names just listed by the WHO
Edit: Feb 23 - BNO News in the Netherlands has been the best news aggregator keeping up with the outbreak/pandemic and monitoring cases.
For live updates: https://twitter.com/BNODesk
Their map and timelime page: https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/
Mayabird on
+10
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
Have you seen some of the warning labels people have ending up needing? Hot coffee might be hot, "Do not drink' on bleach, etc rofl
edit: Do not eat for Tide Pods
So on the one hand, it would be really really good if this situation finally forced China to enforce some proper food sanitation laws and actively banned consuming unsafe animal parts based on superstition; not only would this keep people from getting sick from eating wild animals, it should hopefully make a really impact on people doing stupid shit like paying for rhinos to get slaughtered so they can eat fucking powdered rhino horn.
On the other hand, that regulation is going to mean a lot of people in China going without a meat source and will probably result in a fair number of people starving to death.
So this whole situation sucks, top to bottom. Yeah, people need to not eat wild animals, but try not to judge those people too harshly for trying to stay alive.
China, especially central and southern China, have a long cultural history of eating, well, anything that "walks, swims, or flies with its back to the sky".
This isn't in and of itself bad. Lots of cultures eat lots of things other cultures find gross. It becomes an issue when tradition takes a back seat to things like safe handling of food.
The use of parts from endangered species like rhino horn, or bear spleen, or totoaba swim bladders for nonsense reasons should also be regulated and discouraged, but that’s irrelevant to the present discussion of zoonotic disease outbreak.
Also, the best way to increase your chances of surviving a respiratory illness is to do you darndest to make sure you dont have another serious one at the same time.
Edit - also, with Flu you should say infecting tend of millions and killing tens of thousands.
I'm flying back to the USA today instead of next weekend, booked the flight last night. It's not really for my own safety. I'm young/healthy enough that the chances of me having any severe effects from this virus aren't too great. It hasn't even reached as far north as I was yet.
It's mostly a concern that I won't be able to fly back next week. There have been talks in both the US and Australia that I've heard of so fast about just banning all flights from China into the country. So, while the odds of anything happening still aren't too high, it's more of trying to figure out the best choice in a weighed average sort of way. And, well, by the time it's obvious to leave, it's too late haha.
There's a very solid possibility we'll see some exponential increase in the numbers of infected this next week (it seems to be more contagious that SARS, for example), so I'm just worried what the kneejerk reaction would be at those numbers.
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No, I've played this game. The virus is too visible too early, we'll be fine. :P
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
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Ozzy Osbourne.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Most of the realistic "estimates for actual people who have been infected" I've seen, rather than the confirmed cases have been around 10-15000. This is actually a good thing at this stage, because it means that ~90% of people who get the virus dont get sick enough to see a doctor.
It's kinda scary stuff though. I do hope we some signs of control over the next week, otherwise we'll be almost certain to see international transmission etc.
This is a beautifully designed virus, it's perfect for at least spreading across the globe.
At this point we don't know how it spreads, so we don't know what PPE will be effective in dealing with it. The possibility of a vaccine is months away, and by then this will be over. I remember by the time SARS hit Ontario, we already had a vaccine ready to go, now there has been no time.
Dealing with one to two small outbreaks a year, it requires a lot of resources to treat sick people. I dread them. We'll probably have to unlock our "Pandemic room", which is full of supplies for cases like this.
Treating Pneumonia(which is the main cause of death in this it seems) is pretty expensive-it cost me 250$ in medicine here in Canada, which I wasn't prepared for, so I'd make sure you have some money tucked away for the medicine.
Interesting map thing: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Well, the long incubation period with no symptoms, and symptoms that seem similar to the cold or flu, definitely seem perfect for getting the hosts to mingle with other potential hosts for extended periods of time. I think that a lot will depend on how infectious it is, and what the vector is.
Going by the case in Seattle and the one in Chicago since they know the travel time and time before symptoms got reported it looks like 7-12 days. The R0 seems to be similar to the 2003 SARS outbreak, this one just happened to occur in a major international travel hub so it's been spread wider.
Long as nobody selects organ failure in the late game, yeah.
That's good info, thanks. I needed to know how long to isolate myself for :P
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As somebody with a generally stellar immune system and a couple few autoimmune issues I'll be biting my nails with this one again until I hear otherwise. Great time to be attending three conferences in the next few months I'll tell you hwhat.
Edited first part because the next post seems to have more accurate data.
There's concerns about how accurate that is because China is completely quarantining Wuhan, in the middle of Lunar New Year, which is making even the not typically paranoid perk up and take note.
It seems to be a bit more infectious, and a bit less dangerous than either of those (SARS and MERS)
SARS killed ~10% of those it hospitalized, and hospitalized around 8000. It is seemingly gone.
MERS killed ~30% of those it hospitalized, and has hospitalized around 3000. It is still existing, but seems to typically be very uninfectious.
SARS and MERS seem to send most of those they infect to the hospital
This one seems to kill ~4% of those it hospitalizes. However, it seems (judging by infection rates) that it is likely that there are MANY more infections which never present with hospitalization. It seems a lot more like a really nasty flu virus in terms of severity than SARS/MERS.
There is no evidence as of yet that this is posing a greater risk to young healthy people, or the middle aged. It seems to simply be a virus which is capable of infecting deeper in the lungs than most, and thus presenting the possibility of more serious temporary lung injury which can set you up to die from pneumonia. Most of the reports I read are saying that most of the people who have died (for a very strong value of most, but, it is low numbers at this point) are over 60, and most of them have been men with pre-existing conditions. Remember also that the disease is highly active in china at this point. where 53% of men are smokers. Smoking places you at greater risk of death from anything which causes pneumonia.
The virus seems to be at an infections per infection rate of around 2, which means it is growing. But, it's life in a patient seems to be around 2 weeks. So, if that '2' is over the whole 2 weeks, there may be some time where the virus spreads slowly across local areas of china, giving more and more time for people to prepare in advance of it.
The thing I haven't seen much information on is how well the people are doing who did go to hospital for the most part. Pneumonia can take many days of care to clear properly, so, everything may be progressing normally and none of the overseas patients seem to have indicated any different than that.
Once again, there is not a complete quarentine anywhere in China right now.
Mass transit facilities have been closed to all but essential operations. You can still leave Wuhan by car, bike, walking, boat, or any number of other means. Just not planes, ferries, or trains without increased scrutiny. Flights are still arriving and leaving, they just have to be cleared and generally are only those small planes with charters that have been verified or those delivering goods and essential needs. The idea here isn't "NOBODY LEAVE WUHAN" but to keep people from congregating en masse at transportation facilities to lower the likelyhood of spreading the disease in a crowded place and THEN sending those people to more cities.
Press can get into and out of the city quite easily, assuming they are within Chinese borders and have credentials anyhow.
This disease is less deadly than SARS already, and both the Chinese government and WHO acted much faster with this outbreak. Most places not hyping up the situation as a game of Pandemic for ratings expect it to be about the same timetable with a lower death count. The risk factors here are being primarily very young, very old, or having an already compromised immune system. Most healthy people manifest little more than a common cold. Compare to H1N1 where most people were in real, signifigant health risks once infected regardless of status, and this whole thing is much less worrisome.
Which is not to say it isn't worrisome! 50 people have died already. But China has taken a lot of very measured and sensible precautions to slow the spread of the disease, including suspending the start of the school year for all levels of education, to keep people home until the disease burns out. They are also using state resources to build a ton of temporary hospitals to house and quarantine those identified positively with the disease until the danger passes.
However if that's the case, it would argue that either it's not very infectious on a per exposure basis or create more argument that there is a very large fraction of cases which just never present serious symptoms. It's certainly bad for containment, but, if true it changes the character of the outbreak a little, making it even more like flu.
Saw this elsewhere on the interwebs..."Wuhan Flu ain't nuthin' to fuck with"
Seems that genetically it's closer to snake viruses and it's not the season for bats (they're hibernating), but it would be a first.
There's not really any evidence of this virus itself being hard to clear. What seems to be the case is that it infects deeper in the lungs than the usual cold virus, which causes more lung damage and massively increases the chances of you getting pneumonia. It's more lethal than the flu, but we aren't seeing any causes of death other than "got pneumonia and died after lung damage from the virus"
China does not have a great history of bowing to outside national pressure
Did see some information on the john Hopkins map about people starting to recover and be discharged (about 60 so far), so it seems that the pneumonia they are getting isn't some special pneumonia and people are recovering, but, it is still taking the week or so you might expect. We'll really start to get more confidence in what this virus means once we learn more about the fraction it sickens and peoples path back to health.
This isn't a game of Pandemic where there's a malevolent godlike being behind the virus actively trying to kill everyone off.
Managed wild populations are less safe, but still better than bush meat, which is usually literal mystery meat - whatever animal the dealer managed to catch that day. Minimum food safety, maximum environmental impact.
Notably lacking in all coverage from the US side is any talk of quarantine. Apparently lots of people will just be flown in and released to wherever. *looks at the wreckage of the State Department and the screaming imbecile in charge of it* If the US epidemic starts from this, it would serve us right.