Model built by researchers suggests coronavirus outbreak began in November
utoronto.ca
utoronto.ca
Corona virus has infected fewer than 100,000 people and killed less than 1000. To put these numbers in perspective, seasonal flu results in 3 to 5 million cases of severe illness every year, and kills 290,000 to 650,000. [1]
Personally, I am much more worried about public officials freaking out about the corona virus than I am about the virus itself.
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(...
This to me seems ridiculous by any reading of even the reported numbers.
Is your country ready to handle 1% of its population dying, and many more falling ill? Flu is seasonal - predictable, known and accounted for. When flu season hits the system copes. This virus? Not so much.
Sorry you’re stuck on a boat, but it’s for the best.
We have been denied entry to the Philippines, Taiwan, Viet Nam and Guam (despite the fact that our last landfall was in Guam). How many airlines have suspended service to those destinations?
You are under quarantine firstly. As a consequence of this you are also being restricted with travel. A boat makes it very easy to do both.
Generally closing borders are bad for the sentiments you give: it's unjust, I'm not infected. People will cross a closed border illegally and officials will not be able to know. If you had the opportunity you would leave, right?
Open borders allow officials to track those coming in and if necessary quarantine them. Leaky borders have people actively avoiding quarantine and surveillance which could lead to much worse effects
No, we're not. But even if we were, it would be a moot point. Taiwan, Philippines and Guam are closed to all cruise ships. But the airports are still open.
What were the start / destination ports?
https://www.businessinsider.com/westerdam-cruise-ship-denied...
The Westerdam has been in effective quarantine for two weeks, no one on board has the virus, and they are STILL being refused permission to dock just because they came from Hong Kong.
We are still en route to Singapore, scheduled to arrive this afternoon. No hint of anything more going awry for us so far, but I'm not going to count any chickens until I've cleared customs back home in the U.S.
I'm hoping this doesn't happen on the Crystal Symphony.
Also with the H2H transmissions from Singapore (UK & Korea), it might become difficult to get back from Singapore if they go to Code Red.
The US has a travel ban for foreigners who have been in China, but they also ask people to self quarantee if they've been in contact with those from areas where the virus is more widespread, which is everyone on your ship.
It's unfortunate to be stuck on a ship and it's unfortunate that your captain didn't anticipate these measures.
Those deaths are from the lower outbreak figures from weeks ago, as people typically don't die in the first two weeks of infection. According to doctors dealing with this in China, it's the third week that is where patients are dying.
The questionable official numbers have us at 40,171 infections with 908 dead. That's a 2.2% mortality rate off the max figures. More realistically let's go back in time, conservatively, two weeks ago: on 1/27 there were only around ~4,500 infections.
That's a mortality rate a lot closer to 20% (even if you inflate the infection numbers, it's high). Those 4,500 people are the ones that have overwhelmingly contributed to the 908 dead figure that exists today. Unless one assumes there were a lot more than 4,500 infections two weeks ago; or people are dying a lot faster than reported.
With tens of thousands of infections in the last two weeks (again, at the supposed numbers), how many will be dead at the given rate, in a few more weeks? Something obviously doesn't add up with these figures, one direction or another.
It is foolhardy to undermine WHO's cause for concern.
I am sorry you are stuck on a ship and I do hope you get to disembark in Singapore.
Sure, this is a new strain, but the flu is a new strain each year too
edit - googling a bit the % going into critical care seems to be about 0.2% for flu vs the above about 15% for coronavirus.
It's simply too early to say whether we're overreacting or not compared to how we handle the common flu.
It's nothing like the flu -- coronavirus death rates are 2%, flu 0.01 -- it's 200 times as deadly and it can spread before any symptoms.
So perhaps just 20x as deadly as the seasonal flu.
Wikipedia states:
Asian (1956–58) flu ~ 0.1% [44] Hong Kong (1968–69) flu ~ 0.1% [44] Influenza A, typical pandemics < 0.1% [44]
So 2% would be roughly 20x Asian or HK flu, or in terms of of a typical Influenza A pandemic at the very least 20x harder...
CFR Case Fatality Rate: fraction of people diagnosed with an affliction that eventually died.
For example if the Sniffles has a CFR of 1%, then 99% of people diagnosed with Sniffles will survive.
Mortality rate: fraction of all deaths in a group, that are attributed to a specific affliction.
For example if mortality rate of Sniffles in Belgium is 4%, then 96% of deaths in Belgium are attributed to other afflictions.
For a comparison check out the following lists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...
consider how mortality rates are extensive quantities i.e. proportional to the number of people infected while CFR's are intensive quantities i.e. independent of the number of people infected
That's understandable given the circumstances you are personally encountering. I hope you are allowed docking somewhere soon, followed by a suitable period of quarantine in comfort, and a confirmation of no infection.
[1] https://www.academia.edu/41743064/Systemic_Risk_of_Pandemic_...
I heard this bogus reasoning so many times in the last weeks. You're comparing a disease that's global and reached pretty much everywhere to the one that's at its initial stages of spreading.
Coronavirus is highly contagious, at least 50-200 times more deadly than flu. It's exactly the virus you should be worried about.
When you walk with a flu into a doctor's office, he doesn't bat an eye. Coronavirus is treated in hazmat suits.
This virus is a stress test for many aspects of our globalized society. There’s a risk in both overreacting, and under-reacting. Both carry costs.
It’s also a test of how we can all align interests in an age where trust in institutions is being eroded. We’re awash in information, and disinformation — and we’re experiencing in real-time the effects of that.
Of the 42,638 who have caught coronavirus, 1,016 have died, and 3,996 people have recovered.
Because it's not simply ongoing but accelerating, we can't say the fatality rate is simply 1k/42k = 2.4%. The overwhelming majority of the people who have caught the disease still have the disease, and we can't say for sure that it is not going to kill them. We can say for sure that the mortality rate is significantly higher than 2.4%.
https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus...
https://twitter.com/whistle_posse/status/1221964216040509440
An exponential curve is a great way to catch up to the numbers of infected that already exist.
The good news is this means the outbreak is less contagious and uncontrolled than was reported.
Its also probably harder to hide deaths than recoveries, so the mortality rate is likely lower.
The bad news is, people may be infectious for longer before they show symptoms.
How do you figure? If you're juicing the numbers presumably you're doing so to make things look better than they are. An optimistic curve is going to catch up to reality only if reality stays the same (or improves). About the only thing we know is that the data from China are suspect.
If they are requesting 100 body bags per day how does that’s square with the official death count?
http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/pdf/govpub/6551as_2010_final...
There is evidence that the study claiming the virus can be transmitted by people without symptoms was flawed.[1]
Also, according to that article, even if asymptomatic people transmit the virus "asymptomatic transmission likely plays a minor role in the epidemic overall, WHO says. People who cough or sneeze are more likely to spread the virus, the agency wrote"
[1] - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomati...
There's also a recent news story that a UK citizen is a "super spreader", and that he had contact with all the cases in France while being asymptomatic. He even went home and felt fine, carrying on his normal activities for four days before becoming Ill and being confirmed with the virus.
1) you obviously mean Case Fatality Rate, instead of mortality rate, since the latter is independent of number of recoveries when keeping deaths fixed (unhideable).
2) What would China's motive be to hide recovered infection counts with the result of reporting a higher than truthful case fatality rate? Do you actually believe China wants local panic and fear, or that it actually wants to loose 2% annual productivity per week in quarantine?
1) Sure! I don't think that really changes my points though. 2) That's only true if the rate correlates with panic, and if the Chinese government knows that would be the effect. They may be sacrificing panic, over a higher case fatality rate, in order to retain an illusion of competence in identifying and addressing the outbreak. I don't think it'd be out of character for an authoritarian government to care about appearances in that sort of way.
David Fisman, one of the model’s creators said: “You can’t get up to that level of cases if the epidemic started in December. even if you pushed the reproduction really high. The plausible start date seems to be mid-November,”
Wikipedia lists[1] start date to be Dec 1, 2019 and with Fever, cough, shortness of breath etc as symptoms[2], I think it's difficult to predict even for doctors exact date of the outbreak.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavi...
I find it a little irresponsible to make such an extreme claim from such a limited modelling tool... Small changes to the assumptions can account for the discrepancy seen, and it's unrealistic to expect a basic model like this to accurately represent reality in such an unusual situation as in Wuhan.
https://chinachange.org/2020/02/09/the-regret-of-wuhan-how-c...
Quarantine and lockdown came so quick a lot of people still haven't got used to it.
I've made a video about it and you can see it for yourself: https://youtu.be/uxW7k5462Ms
This is something I've never experienced before.
"The median incubation period was 3.0 days (range, 0 to 24.0 days)."
Since they traveled to Wuhan in December, from then to last week, that would've been more than 24 days, so in case they did not get sick yet and I read that wrong, it should also be pretty much impossible, since that would be the longest incubation period of ncov by quite a bit.