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[Coronavirus] Thread - SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19

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  • matt has a problemmatt has a problem Points to 'off' Points to 'on'Registered User regular
    The Globe and Mail is reporting that the original claim by the Chinese that the virus affected mostly the elderly and already compromised was... false. Also it was transmissible from person to person seemingly right out of the gate.
    Chinese authorities initially reported that the new 2019-nCoV coronavirus had most seriously affected the elderly and those left vulnerable by pre-existing health conditions.

    But an academic study published by Chinese researchers in The Lancet on Friday found that of the first 41 confirmed cases of the virus, which causes pneumonia-like symptoms, “less than half had underlying diseases.” Nearly half were 49 years of age or younger. And a third had not been exposed to the wild animal market identified as the source of virus, suggesting that even from the earliest days, it had begun to leap between people. Fifteen per cent of those first 41 people died.

    The national health minister has also stated cases have risen to more than 2700 and deaths to 80, with the virus showing an increased ability to spread despite containment efforts.
    China has warned the ability of the coronavirus to spread is getting stronger as the death toll increased to 80 and the number of confirmed cases reached more than 2,700.

    National Health Commission Minister Ma Xiaowei said the incubation period for the coronavirus can range from one to 14 days, and it is infectious during this time.

    "According to recent clinical information, the virus' ability to spread seems to be getting somewhat stronger," Mr Ma told reporters.

    https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-spread-getting-stronger-as-number-of-deaths-rise-to-80-11918934

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  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    edited January 2020
    The Globe and Mail is reporting that the original claim by the Chinese that the virus affected mostly the elderly and already compromised was... false. Also it was transmissible from person to person seemingly right out of the gate.
    Chinese authorities initially reported that the new 2019-nCoV coronavirus had most seriously affected the elderly and those left vulnerable by pre-existing health conditions.

    But an academic study published by Chinese researchers in The Lancet on Friday found that of the first 41 confirmed cases of the virus, which causes pneumonia-like symptoms, “less than half had underlying diseases.” Nearly half were 49 years of age or younger. And a third had not been exposed to the wild animal market identified as the source of virus, suggesting that even from the earliest days, it had begun to leap between people. Fifteen per cent of those first 41 people died.

    The national health minister has also stated cases have risen to more than 2700 and deaths to 80, with the virus showing an increased ability to spread despite containment efforts.
    China has warned the ability of the coronavirus to spread is getting stronger as the death toll increased to 80 and the number of confirmed cases reached more than 2,700.

    National Health Commission Minister Ma Xiaowei said the incubation period for the coronavirus can range from one to 14 days, and it is infectious during this time.

    "According to recent clinical information, the virus' ability to spread seems to be getting somewhat stronger," Mr Ma told reporters.

    https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-spread-getting-stronger-as-number-of-deaths-rise-to-80-11918934

    The claim was never that the virus was overwhelmingly infecting the elderly and immunocompromized. The claim was that the majority of deaths were among that group. Just like flu, its infectious to many people, but younger people or those in good health (espescially respiratory health) tend to have minor symptoms, if any.

    tbloxham on
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  • kimekime Queen of Blades Registered User regular
    More interestingly to me is that it does seem like the infection rate is still increasing exponentially? I haven't been keeping close track, but from just remembering it seems like it's been doubling every 2-3 days.

    But yeah, the fact that it infects everyone is not new. It's either disingenuous of the article to play it like this is a surprise, or maybe we were more tuned in to the facts than others?

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  • ZiggymonZiggymon Registered User regular
    Police and officials in the impact zone in Hubei and Henan provinces are now very keen to move us on wherever we arrive.
    They don't seem to mind where we go - as long as we leave their towns.
    We explain that the world wants to see the important, tiring work they're doing to combat the virus. But they're not interested.
    It could be that they're worried that our presence might imply to some that their patch is not handling this emergency well enough.
    One police officer at the entrance to a small town in Henan said to me: "We don't have a problem here any more so there's no need for you to be here."
    He said this at a checking station as cars were being pulled up behind him. Medical staff covered head to toe in protective clothing were then screening every passenger.
    They also checked the inside of all vehicles. I'm not sure what they were looking for - but it certainly didn't look like business as usual.

    Stephen McDonell BBC News in his most recent article.

  • JragghenJragghen Registered User regular
    People are already stockpiling face masks in the states, btw. Amazon, etc, sold out. Might want to check your local hardware stores if needed (amusingly, I got some functional but ugly ones when we were heading into volcano range a few weeks back).

  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    kime wrote: »
    More interestingly to me is that it does seem like the infection rate is still increasing exponentially? I haven't been keeping close track, but from just remembering it seems like it's been doubling every 2-3 days.

    But yeah, the fact that it infects everyone is not new. It's either disingenuous of the article to play it like this is a surprise, or maybe we were more tuned in to the facts than others?

    The number of infections is increasing, and, because of the way viruses work (more exposures mean more infections) that means the rate is increasing, but, remember there is also a 2-14 day incubation period and more and more people will come into hospitals with any symptoms at all at this point. There's not really any evidence that the virus is becoming more infectious, just, that its level of infectivity is (or was, remember the incubation period means that cases coming in now could likely have been infected back on the 19th) still ahead of the countermeasures being deployed.

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  • TarantioTarantio Registered User regular
    The known cases being less concentrated among the elderly than originally thought would indicate a potentially lower number of unknown cases, right?

    Because people are less likely to go to the hospital if their symptoms aren't too severe, and younger people have stronger systems that would handle the disease better.

  • kimekime Queen of Blades Registered User regular
    Tarantio wrote: »
    The known cases being less concentrated among the elderly than originally thought would indicate a potentially lower number of unknown cases, right?

    Because people are less likely to go to the hospital if their symptoms aren't too severe, and younger people have stronger systems that would handle the disease better.

    Except I'm not really sure that first part is true. The more severe and deadly cases were among the elderly with pre-existing conditions, but I don't recall reading that the infected cases were overall.

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  • JaysonFourJaysonFour Classy Monster Kitteh Registered User regular
    Mayabird wrote: »
    A lot of countries are evacuating their nationals (diplomats and whatnot) from Wuhan. France for instance has openly stated that all evacuees will be put under a 14 day quarantine just to be safe, since 14 days seems to be the maximum incubation time for this coronavirus and there are reports of asymptomatic people spreading the virus.

    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.

    This is going to hit the detention camps, and when it mixes with both strains of the flu running rampant there, it is going to be an epic shitstorm. We ought to behave like it's already here and running through the populace, but well, given this "administration", I fully expect them to just ignore it and try to pray it away, or to just ignore it, or to hold out until the drug companies find a new way to milk us all for the pill to solve it.

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  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    edited January 2020
    So I saw a headline about a nurse in China who released a video claiming that the number infected is 90,000 and China is misleading the public. While trying to load the rest of the article it went away and I had to find it again.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/01/26/coronavirus-whistleblower-nurse-says-china-has-90000-sick/amp/

    I'm on mobile and have to take care of a few errands before I can watch the video. That's a pretty horrifying headline and introduction paragraph, I think I'm going to watch the video before I read all of the article. I don't really trust NY Post that implicitly.

    Edit: I don't really trust random videos on YouTube either. Hmmm.

    dispatch.o on
  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited January 2020

    The national health minister has also stated cases have risen to more than 2700 and deaths to 80, with the virus showing an increased ability to spread despite containment efforts.

    The containment efforts were closing the barn door after the horse was already raising hybrid foals with he neighbor's donkey. China's taken some harsh actions in Wuhan and at internal borders, but cases had already been reported in every part of China except Tibet and Taiwan, plus several other Asian countries and abroad, it was too late to contain it at the point of origin.

    Hevach on
  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    edited January 2020
    dispatch.o wrote: »
    So I saw a headline about a nurse in China who released a video claiming that the number infected is 90,000 and China is misleading the public. While trying to load the rest of the article it went away and I had to find it again.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/01/26/coronavirus-whistleblower-nurse-says-china-has-90000-sick/amp/

    I'm on mobile and have to take care of a few errands before I can watch the video. That's a pretty horrifying headline and introduction paragraph, I think I'm going to watch the video before I read all of the article. I don't really trust NY Post that implicitly.

    Edit: I don't really trust random videos on YouTube either. Hmmm.
    She does not reveal how she arrived at the sobering statistic.

    :-/

    The New York Post is known for sensationalism. An unsourced video from a random person making unverified claims doesn't mean anything.

    Quid on
  • Mild ConfusionMild Confusion Smash All Things Registered User regular
    Not advocating for eating bats or bush meat, but wouldn’t any virus inside contaminated meat be eliminated by proper cooking?

    Not that everyone cooks properly and it only takes one fuck up to ruin things for everyone, I’m just curious.

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  • Gabriel_PittGabriel_Pitt (effective against Russian warships) Registered User regular
    edited January 2020
    Proper cooking and proper food handling measures that don't recontaminate cooked foods afterwards.

    Doesn't matter how well-cooked something is if you slap it down on the same cutting board afterwards.

    Gabriel_Pitt on
  • SmurphSmurph Registered User regular
    I don't think the point about people eating bats & other bush meat because it's the only meat source they have applies here. Wuham is a city of 11 million people and the outbreak is associated with an animal & seafood market in the city. This isn't poor people eating bush meat in rural areas, it's bush meat being brought to market and sold in the middle of a major city. People who eat bush meat because they have to probably get sick from it all the time, but they aren't in a major city so they probably aren't getting many other people sick.

    I don't know enough about Chinese culture to speculate on why city dwellers would eat bat when they probably don't have to, but whatever the reason it's probably not worth risking epidemics.

  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    Smurph wrote: »
    I don't think the point about people eating bats & other bush meat because it's the only meat source they have applies here. Wuham is a city of 11 million people and the outbreak is associated with an animal & seafood market in the city. This isn't poor people eating bush meat in rural areas, it's bush meat being brought to market and sold in the middle of a major city. People who eat bush meat because they have to probably get sick from it all the time, but they aren't in a major city so they probably aren't getting many other people sick.

    I don't know enough about Chinese culture to speculate on why city dwellers would eat bat when they probably don't have to, but whatever the reason it's probably not worth risking epidemics.

    It's probably more the case that bushmeat like this IS illegal to sell in China, but, the government hasn't been enforcing the law. So, the stalls are even less clean than they would be because they are effectively operating in a grey market environment.

    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • TastyfishTastyfish Registered User regular
    Not advocating for eating bats or bush meat, but wouldn’t any virus inside contaminated meat be eliminated by proper cooking?

    Not that everyone cooks properly and it only takes one fuck up to ruin things for everyone, I’m just curious.

    It's generally less uncooked food and more cross exposure from the live animals (as these are wet markets, where you're buying live animals rather than processed meat) or transferring blood borne diseases whilst preparing the meat (i.e you cut yourself).

  • Jam WarriorJam Warrior Registered User regular
    Corona virus is a respiratory virus. You don’t catch it when you eat it, you catch it when you breath it in and food prep will create all kinds of aerosols. By the time it comes to the cooking the damage is likely already done.

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  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    How is bush meat different from fishing

  • ApogeeApogee Lancks In Every Game Ever Registered User regular
    My partner is a doctor with a specialty in public health management, and she seems to think that the situation is pretty much goosed. Highly contagious virus + lax quarantine = bad times. The local government response has been lackluster at best, and they're either miscommunicating badly or downright lying, e.g. the official press conference with the Minister of Health claimed the first confirmed case was picked up by a prepared paramedic team (wearing masks/gowns/etc). The paramedic union says they only found out they had picked up a coronavirus case from the news afterwards - not so good for infection prevention...

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  • BloodySlothBloodySloth Registered User regular
    edited January 2020
    How is bush meat different from fishing

    My understanding is that it's more or less a lay term for harvesting atypical wild animals, normally ones not associated with food, and eating them. The equivalent in America would be folks who eat squirrel or opossum, I'd guess. It's a helpful term not for its specificity, because it really has none, but because these animals are typically totally unregulated by any sort of hunting management body and there's normally a good reason the animals aren't considered food animals. You often hear the term in association with threatened species, for example.

    In the case of bats, their populations are often pretty fragile and can't sustain the weight of human consumption. They also just don't have much meat, are really important for the ecosystem, and are world-famous for brewing up horrible diseases.

    BloodySloth on
  • EinzelEinzel Registered User regular
    How is bush meat different from fishing

    My guess would be that fish are so many branches further evolutionarily from us that their infections don't transfer as easily.

  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    How is bush meat different from fishing

    I think the huge difference is the piscine/mammal divide. Maybe I'm missing stuff but most virii/bacteria don't really cross that line. Just too much difference between us and fish instead of something like pigs or bats. Normal body temps that the virus would thrive in for one.

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  • ZavianZavian universal peace sounds better than forever war Registered User regular
    edited January 2020
    How is bush meat different from fishing

    The majority of zoonosis diseases are from wild mammals, though there are ones that come from fish as well as birds and livestock.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis#Lists_of_diseases
    Smurph wrote: »
    I don't know enough about Chinese culture to speculate on why city dwellers would eat bat when they probably don't have to, but whatever the reason it's probably not worth risking epidemics.

    The Chinese word for bat is 'fu,' pronounced the same as the word for good fortune, which is one reason it's believed eating bat will bring about good fortune.

    Zavian on
  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    edited January 2020
    How is bush meat different from fishing

    Lots of different ways. Saltwater and freshwater meat can have some different hazards, but the ultimate difference is that basically everything we eat from the water is very very different from us, biologically speaking. Most things that can infect a fish and a human are actually parasites and the like, not bacteria/viruses, and such parasites can easily be dealt with during cooking or processing. Waterborne food animals also live in a completely different environment than bush meat, adding a further barrier to anything trying to jump species. Something adapted to cold salt water has a really really hard time surviving in the relatively hot, arid environments humans favor.

    Bush meat, however, can carry, and be exposed to, a limitless number of exposure sources. While a bat itself may not be as nasty dirty as a sewer rat, it's still a high-temperature communal creature constantly exposed to a wide variety of contaminating sources. On top of that, there's no telling how that creature has been prepared or cleaned prior to reaching a market. And because bush meat is inherently not a domesticated food source, any immunities in the human population to potential pathogens are going to be entirely local; somebody in Nebraska is just not going to have an immunity that a small river village in China has where people have been eating bats for hundreds or thousands of years.

    Just for ecological concerns alone, I'd personally want to see bushmeat get a global ban; wild populations are often poorly counted, and this whole thing where humanity eats species to extinction is pretty fucking old and it's time to stop it. When you add in that several of the major deadly diseases from the last century or so have come from wild sources and bushmeat, it doesn't paint a pretty picture for the practice either.

    Unfortunately, it would also mean a lot of people probably starving for simple lack of meat. We do have a solution to that (there is actually enough meat to go around, just not enough to make piles of cash by giving it away to impoverished areas), but nobody is going to implement it. So we're stuck with this situation where people either keep getting sick from bushmeat or people starve to death.
    Zavian wrote: »
    Smurph wrote: »
    I don't know enough about Chinese culture to speculate on why city dwellers would eat bat when they probably don't have to, but whatever the reason it's probably not worth risking epidemics.

    The Chinese word for bat is 'fu,' pronounced the same as the word for good fortune, which is one reason it's believed eating bat will bring about good fortune.

    Ugh, I was really hoping there wasn't some stupid superstition attached to this, I'm pretty tired of superstitious food nonsense fucking up the world for the rest of us.

    Ninja Snarl P on
  • CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    edited January 2020
    How is bush meat different from fishing

    There has been a decent amount of criticism of the term because it including basically any animal besides like insects that are hunted for food in tropical forests. I think the term itself was first used by Africans but the way it is used now definitely has kind of racist connotations. Wikipedia says ye wei is the Chinese term for that sort of thing.

    I think the UN uses the term "wild meat."

    The most obvious difference is that there are huge problems with the people hunting the animals not understanding the dangers of potential diseases and how to avoid them. In the US, a lot of wild animals that could be hunted for meat are often reservoirs for various diseases. Armadillos can have leprosy, for example. Bat-borne viruses are pretty common and have a wikipedia page about them.

    With the relatively few animals hunted for food in the US, a lot of care is taken to prevent them from being much of a health problem. Deer are fairly heavily managed and governments make sure to prevent tuberculosis and brucellosis from being a major problem in deer populations and information on how to avoid getting infected from handling the deer is probably at least slightly better disseminated than in a lot of less developed countries. Hunting animals for food is rare enough and usually expensive enough in the modern US that the people who do hunt for food are likely to be better informed on how to more safely butcher meat and whatnot because they aren't doing it as just a way to get food (possibly with little way to get protein elsewhere if they are in rural parts of some countries) or to sell it as food to people who don't know.

    Couscous on
  • VishNubVishNub Registered User regular
    I would support a restriction on selling unregulated wild game. I would support heavy regulations of hunting endangered or threatened species. I would support banning harvest of animals known to harbor readily transmissible diseases.

    Where you lose me is a blanket ban on “Bush meat” because I don’t know what that means, and frankly neither do the people proposing it.

  • VishNubVishNub Registered User regular
    All of that is basically the state of play in the US.

  • CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    edited January 2020
    Wild animal as food in a lot of urban places appears to be a wealth thing often for similar reasons to "natural" stuff in the west, and I assume those areas are where it would be easier to cut down on the trade as opposed to much more rural consumption.

    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10745-019-0061-z
    Interventions targeting consumer behavior may help to reduce demand for bushmeat in urban areas. Understanding the drivers of urban bushmeat consumption is crucial to guide such interventions; however the cultural and socio-psychological factors driving consumer behavior remain understudied. Through qualitative interviews with urban bushmeat consumers in Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo, we investigated perceptions of bushmeat and other animal proteins, and social norms regulating urban demand for bushmeat. The perception of bushmeat as natural, tasty and healthy, and a rare luxury product functioning as a symbol of social status, underpins social norms to provide bushmeat. The main barriers to purchasing were cost and availability. Locally produced fish, meat, and poultry were positively perceived as organic and healthy, whereas frozen imported animal proteins were perceived negatively as transformed, of poor quality and taste, and unhealthy. Our findings provide an initial baseline understanding of social-psychological drivers shaping consumption that can inform the design of bushmeat demand reduction campaigns.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/virus-sparks-soul-searching-over-chinas-wild-animal-trade-11580055290
    Beijing now faces uncomfortable questions over its failure to clean up the wildlife trade in recent years. It is also confronting unusual public calls in China for a permanent ban on wild meat, something it has been reluctant to impose for fear of angering its relatively wealthy aficionados.
    “Why do I eat it? It is delicious,” said Terry Gao, a 30-year-old businessman from Guangxi, where he usually eats wild meat. He said he had a particular taste for civets.
    The market at the epicenter of the current outbreak, officially known as the Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale market, was home to vendors selling a range of wild meat.

    One of them, called Dazhong Livestock and Game, boasted that it could provide more than 100 wild animals, freshly slaughtered or flash frozen, on site or via home delivery, according to a price list published online. Among the most expensive items were a live ostrich for 4,000 yuan (about $580) and a small live deer for 6,000 yuan. The list also included baby crocodiles, wolves and hedgehogs. The owner couldn’t be reached for comment.

    The Wuhan Market Regulation Administration inspected the market in November and December but found nothing wrong, according to documents published on its website. It didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    In September, local officials also inspected some eight stalls selling wild animals and checked their business licenses but found nothing illegal, according to the website of a newspaper run by Wuhan’s Communist Party committee.

    In a rare admission for a senior Chinese official, Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang told the official Xinhua News Agency that local authorities had failed to properly regulate the market—one of 400 in the city.
    I kind of assumed the wild meat trade in China is as poorly regulated as much as the rest of the Chinese economy.

    The pictures allegedly of bat soup very much make it look like a stupid wealth thing.

    Couscous on
  • ZavianZavian universal peace sounds better than forever war Registered User regular
    VishNub wrote: »
    I would support a restriction on selling unregulated wild game. I would support heavy regulations of hunting endangered or threatened species. I would support banning harvest of animals known to harbor readily transmissible diseases.

    Where you lose me is a blanket ban on “Bush meat” because I don’t know what that means, and frankly neither do the people proposing it.

    when we're talking about "bush meat" we aren't talking about rural families hunting for survival, we're talking about urban exotic bush meat markets, a massive commercial enterprise that is ruining ecosystems and endangering many animal species

  • VishNubVishNub Registered User regular
    Zavian wrote: »
    VishNub wrote: »
    I would support a restriction on selling unregulated wild game. I would support heavy regulations of hunting endangered or threatened species. I would support banning harvest of animals known to harbor readily transmissible diseases.

    Where you lose me is a blanket ban on “Bush meat” because I don’t know what that means, and frankly neither do the people proposing it.

    when we're talking about "bush meat" we aren't talking about rural families hunting for survival, we're talking about urban exotic bush meat markets, a massive commercial enterprise that is ruining ecosystems and endangering many animal species

    Which is why I support regulation of those things. As I said.

  • davidsdurionsdavidsdurions Your Trusty Meatshield Panhandle NebraskaRegistered User regular
    I have learned a lot in this thread and it’s only two pages long.

    You folks never cease to impress. And thank you. Proceed.

  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally

    The market might not have been the source - the first cases were from earlier than has been reported and had no connection to the market.

    Now, this isn't the same as "it might not have come from bush meat" because the virus has been positively ID'd as a previously known bat virus. Cases being identified before the assumed jump means it actually crossed species earlier and was spreading in humans longer. Which in turn means the containment system is even worse.

  • TastyfishTastyfish Registered User regular
    Zavian wrote: »
    VishNub wrote: »
    I would support a restriction on selling unregulated wild game. I would support heavy regulations of hunting endangered or threatened species. I would support banning harvest of animals known to harbor readily transmissible diseases.

    Where you lose me is a blanket ban on “Bush meat” because I don’t know what that means, and frankly neither do the people proposing it.

    when we're talking about "bush meat" we aren't talking about rural families hunting for survival, we're talking about urban exotic bush meat markets, a massive commercial enterprise that is ruining ecosystems and endangering many animal species

    In this case, it's generally not the case when people talk about it in Africa. The threats the gorillas and chimps face is more local consumption.

  • SmurphSmurph Registered User regular
    I started paying attention to this last Monday when there were ~250 confirmed cases. They fact that it jumped up 10x in a week makes me feel like it'll get a lot worse before it gets better.

    One thing that doesn't seem to be happening yet is the virus spread from person to person outside of China. So far every case outside of China is someone who had been in China recently and probably picked it up there. So China quarantining cities might be overkill for a low-lethality disease like this, but it might end up being the thing that prevented the virus for becoming a true pandemic.

  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    Smurph wrote: »
    I started paying attention to this last Monday when there were ~250 confirmed cases. They fact that it jumped up 10x in a week makes me feel like it'll get a lot worse before it gets better.

    One thing that doesn't seem to be happening yet is the virus spread from person to person outside of China. So far every case outside of China is someone who had been in China recently and probably picked it up there. So China quarantining cities might be overkill for a low-lethality disease like this, but it might end up being the thing that prevented the virus for becoming a true pandemic.

    I mean, if this thing is on the 'high side' of reasonable risk and poses a real risk of killing say 1% of people exposed to it (by causing dangerous infections in 20% of people exposed to it who are over 60 and commensurate deaths, 5% of people 40-60 with a smaller fraction of deaths) then the quarantine (if succesful) stands to save like 10 million lives in China alone. Possibly a couple of 100 million worldwide Now, China probably loses 1-2 million a year to normal flu and seasonal respiratory illness, so that number has to be considered in context, but thats still an enormous number of potential deaths to be prevented.

    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • nexuscrawlernexuscrawler Registered User regular
    Smurph wrote: »
    I started paying attention to this last Monday when there were ~250 confirmed cases. They fact that it jumped up 10x in a week makes me feel like it'll get a lot worse before it gets better.

    One thing that doesn't seem to be happening yet is the virus spread from person to person outside of China. So far every case outside of China is someone who had been in China recently and probably picked it up there. So China quarantining cities might be overkill for a low-lethality disease like this, but it might end up being the thing that prevented the virus for becoming a true pandemic.

    In cases like this its not always the current disease they're really worried about.

    The more people get infected the higher the chance this mutates into something worse.

  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited January 2020
    Skeith wrote: »

    Old guy sitting on the red table/throne with the giant blade is kind of badass. There's also two guys just standing by a table with a big stick and a sign on it, and I want to believe the sign says, "Come too close and we beat you with this stick."
    Smurph wrote: »
    I started paying attention to this last Monday when there were ~250 confirmed cases. They fact that it jumped up 10x in a week makes me feel like it'll get a lot worse before it gets better.

    One thing that doesn't seem to be happening yet is the virus spread from person to person outside of China. So far every case outside of China is someone who had been in China recently and probably picked it up there. So China quarantining cities might be overkill for a low-lethality disease like this, but it might end up being the thing that prevented the virus for becoming a true pandemic.

    The article that the first cases were at least days earlier than previously thought means that at least part of the explosion is identification catch up - cases in the early stage of an outbreak will have a period where they're identified much faster than they're actually occurring, because resolved or ongoing cases will be confirmed to be coronavirus, cases from early on or before the outbreak will be identified ex post facto (such as the cases identified going back to December 1), and a spike in admissions will identify cases who were initially just staying home but who have been scared into the ER now.

    Hevach on
  • Mild ConfusionMild Confusion Smash All Things Registered User regular
    Yeah, that dude sitting like he’s Conan the King on his throne is pretty badass.

    That kid holding the rifle was shocking at first, but I’m pretty sure that’s just a toy based on how small it is and China’s gun laws.

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    Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
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