What's Happening with the Coronavirus

I think this Baidu map is updated faster as they have access to more China news compared to any Western news outlet. But they lag behind a bit for the international count. This link works mostly fine with Google auto translate. https://voice.baidu.com/act/newpneumonia/newpneumonia

And every other article on the main page pushes an email newsletter.

Growth still looks exponential and attempts at containment seem to have failed.

There were 6 cases in China 2 months ago now its closing to 20k.

Maybe that's why.

SARS killed approx 800 in span of 1.5 year.

There are over 300 confirmed deaths from Corona roughly after 2 months.

The numbers are growing quickly and I for one am starting to feel a bit uncomfortable about this.

Edit: Its 360 deaths, that pretty much half od SARS now :/

China will likely not be able to contain the virus at this stage.

it also could mutate and change it's behavior.

Because it's not at all under control, the numbers are rapidly growing, and if they do get big there won't be much you can do at that point.

Removed - I misread the table.

Uncertainty and exponential growth.

China went from <300 confirmed cases to 17k in two weeks. The actual number is probably 3-5x bigger as only a % of total cases are confirmed. And that's in spite of China taking very hardline measures including a travel ban affecting 50m people. Countries like the US probably can't take those kinds of strict measures.

The world is so interconnected now that once a virus like this gets a small foothold, it's very, very hard to contain. And it's unlikely there were be any vaccine for it for at least 12-18 months.

That means there's a good chance this turns into a world-wide epidemic that will kill millions or more over the next year. Even with it's relatively low death rate (1-2%), if it ends up infecting 100s of millions of people, that's millions dead.

Because yesterday there was 60 deaths, a 20% jump over the previous day. At this rate, it'll become way more deadlier than the Flu in only a few days. Considering that around 700 persons world-wide die from the flu everyday and these deaths are happening mainly in Wuhan, this virus is certainly a very deadly one.

Because of how outbreaks and pandemics normally progress. Essentially they run like a video game with horrible lag - you don't really see the results of what you do to contain them until one or more incubation periods for the disease have passed.

The first major action taken by the Chinese government was to quarantine Wuhan. Prior to that, people were traveling freely to other places for the lunar holiday. We're about to reach the end of the incubation period (by the 6th) for people who were infected prior to the quarantine being established.

That means if the quarantine of Wuhan contained the outbreak (it's looking less and less likely that it did) we should see some change in the rate of infection in China. That's going to be difficult because of the Chinese government.

The flip side of the incubation period ending is that after that point, all new cases should be from people traveling who infected other people. So far, almost all the people who are in quarantine world wide were physically in Wuhan.

We don't know yet how many people who have been infected by travelers there are because we haven't hit the end of the post-quarantine incubation period.

At present, there could be people all over the world who are infected, don't have symptoms or only mild symptoms, are contagious and spreading the disease, and who won't be discovered as carriers for another week.

This week is going to be telling... we may suddenly see a massive uptick in infected outside China (and outside quarantines elsewhere), and if we do it's likely that it's too late to contain the virus, all we can do is limit its spread somewhat and treat the infected.. world wide.

If it's really out of containment, given its apparent level of contagiousness it's likely that eventually a significant percentage of all humans alive right now will catch it, and that 2-3% of those people will die - quite possibly a lot more since the numbers of infected are going to overwhelm health care systems worldwide... too many people won't get treated even in western countries. In the third world, in places where people are packed together in slums and large cities, it'll be far worse.

For your consideration, if the virus only spreads through China and India, and if e.g. 20% of the people become infected, that means something like 13.6 million people could die, and the rest of us will be dealing with the impact to health care systems, reduced food production, lost wages, reduced military strength and attendant weaknesses in defense, and a host of other problems.

So... this virus is rather concerning, not because it kills lots of people (although it can) but because we likely can't control it, and even the number of people it will kill is far too many, and the rest of us are going to be dealing with the consequences for years.

Because 10 days ago the estimated # of cases was, while probably fudged lower by China, about 300. Now it's, as of this comment, about 17,000. If that number is underreported to the same magnitude, it's even more of a huge issue. Then consider that the symptoms mimic, at least for a time, cold/flu symptoms, and it's not hard to see how it could go undetected in an even larger group of people. Or not, but it's absolutely possible, hence the enormous scale of the reaction and precautions being taken. It's not panic, it's prudence. well, maybe it's also some level of panic, but I wouldn't say it's an over reaction. This is the sort of thing where I way more effort than actually required is a significant virtue as compared to even slightly less than required.

While the border between India and China may be long, it is sparsely populated. It’s not like the Canada-U.S. border, where the vast majority of Canadians live within a hundred miles of the border.

And Africa too. Zero cases, really?

You are not wrong to find this concerning.

Because they likely don’t have enough test kits yet.

2019-nCoV targets ACE2 receptor cells in the lung.

Current estimated death rate is 15% (based on now slightly out-of-date Lancet articles).

Asian men are the most susceptible group.

Male / female infection rate currently about 3:1 (but based on low statistics).

Ratio of ACE2 cells in Asian men to Asian women is about 4:1.

Ratio of ACE2 cells in Asian men compared to whites or African-Americans is 5:1.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1....

See some criticisms of the methods and results in the comments. Interesting correlation of ACE2 to stress and high blood-pressure, so could be strongly affected by some treatments for hypertension.

It is just about possible, in some qualitative hand-waving way, that reducing susceptibility by 80% could drop R0 from 5 to 1, hence reduce the threat of an epidemic in other regions.