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Comment by draugadrotten | Hacker News Reader

Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (Harvard): " HOLY MOTHER OF GOD - the new coronavirus is a 3.8!!! How bad is that reproductive R0 value? It is thermonuclear pandemic level bad - never seen an actual virality coefficient outside of Twitter in my entire career. I’m not exaggerating..."

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1220919589623803905.html

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Here is a tweet thread suggesting this guy is being histrionic:

https://twitter.com/ferrisjabr/status/1220963553911271424?s=...

If the link i post is more correct, it’s an interesting case of a science journalist correcting a Harvard public health scientist...

The public health scientists wrote in his first tweet that he's "never seen an actual virality coefficient outside of Twitter", i.e. he's admitting to not being a subject-matter expert. So getting corrected by someone who's done their research is not that surprising.

He had never seen one larger outside of Twitter. I think that’s different than how you just represented it.

It doesn't say "larger" in the tweet. Edit: or is "outside of Twitter" supposed to refer to a region in the space of possible coefficients that are past the values observed in the spread of viral information on Twitter?

He is an epidemiologist, you have to give the benefit of the doubt here that he has seen a virality coefficient before.

Probably trying to avert citing the official numbers that may have been classified.

Obscene level of fear mongering based on data that was later revised down. I can’t believe he thought that thread was a good idea.

Where is the updated version?

Revised down to 2.6:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1221132573340061697.html

Still very high.

No, it's middling at best. Measles in a totally unvaccinated population (R0 = 12-18) is very high [1]. An R0 of 2.6 is a relative cakewalk.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

Can we please avoid this types of response without citing source?

Spreading a tweet from a doctor who is acting like the world is about to end is a worse action than a rebuttal questioning his fear mongering that goes against both the WHO and CDC.

>data that was later revised down

Can we really trust reports that are coming out of China? From the CCP, no less?

China/CCP (same thing) has a history of being untrustworthy and a bad actor in situations like this, why will it be different this time?

Unlucky for their neighbours.

Reports I've seen suggest 1.4 to 2.5, but it's early days. Essentially if the R factor (number of people infected by a single case [0]) is less than 1, it'll die out, otherwise it'll grow.

However, that's very simplistic; one would like to think the R factor would be lowered by better hygiene.

Separately, it seems that (unlike say Spanish Flu) this tends to be worse for people who have pre-existing health issues.

There is concern that possibly people who are asymptomatic could still be infectious.

Time will tell. One number (that'll take quite some time to even have a stab at) is the mortality compared to, say, common flu.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

How do we know this won't be transmittable even after individuals recover?

Are you asking if there is a phase of the disease where the body temporarily wins most of the battle but the virus continues to inhabit the host? Sort of like hiv? Maybe even a phase where the immune system keeps the virus count so low only fluid transmission? Given the way the virus progresses this seems unlikely but new viruses can have new behavior...too early to tell.

Or before they are even ill (plus it's possible that some percentage of people will be infectious without ever having any symptoms).

Thermonuclear pandemic bad? Isn't that R0 similar to many other diseases?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

Other diseases are worse. Measles is a lot worse, with an R0 estimated at between 12 and 18. But R0 is a measure of propagation rate in an undefended population. For most highly infectious diseases with known R0 values, we have defenses, typically vaccination which leaves the population, as a whole, a lot less vulnerable. So, in those cases, R0 is a measure of how bad things can get. Not for this new thing -- there's been no time to put defenses in place, so R0, whatever its actual value, is a measure of how bad things are.

> An R0=3.8 means that it exceeds SARS’s modest 0.49 viral attack rate by 7.75x

but the wiki says SARS is 2-4

Yeah an R0 of less than 1 would mean it fizzled out with not much effect.

Probaly alot of shorthand writing, anything with an R0 rating below 1 tends to die out. therefore you compare the sars rating of 1.49 and the novel corona virus of 3.8 by seeing how many times .49 fits in 2.8 which is around 5.7 times more infectious instead of 7.75 mentioned in his tweet (He probaly divided 3.8 by .49 instead of 2.8)

Ratings are just approximations and i'm no expert in virology to say wether this means anything at all.

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