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Comment by twostorytower | Hacker News Reader

I think this virus is getting sincerely underestimated in our echo chamber, and it's only because the reported cases in the US have been low. If Italy has multiple quarantine zones, think about how many travelers are coming back from Italy who are probably infected but don't even know it yet. I hope I'm wrong.

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I was laughing at Sars and Swineflu/Birdflu. I was laughing at this 3-4 days ago. I am not laughing anymore

What China is doing in Wohan is insane, even for China. The only way it makes sense is if they are looking at numbers several magnitudes higher than we are (e.g if you are looking at Black Death/Spanish flue numbers, not less than normal flue numbers), which would indicate that the Chinese government is lying.

Cases in Italy are exploding and the US are only testing people who are showing up with symptoms who have recently traveled from Wuhan (ie not China in general, not Vietnam, not Hong Kong), despite good evidence that the decease can travel from human to human (which does not quite mean it is aerosolized) so we simply do not know how bad the US is doing at the moment.

Supply lines are already under pressure. In some places in China vehicular traffic is less than 5% of what it normally is.

I don't think the world is ending, and this is not going to be another Black Death or even a Spanish Flu (we have much better tech, world citizes are not filled with rats and all sources indicates that this Flu is mostly bad for the old and the inferm, unlike 1920) but I expect this one to be really bad.

People don't worry about that because it'd be good news. The virus has been circulating for a while now - if there were a huge number of currently unknown infections, that would strongly suggest that the virus isn't as severe as currently believed. There's no way we could fail to notice disease clusters hospitalizing as many people as in Wuhan.

I don’t believe it is, the virus can be quarantined efficiently if the country is responsive to the outbreaks. Vietnam had early outbreaks, quarantined areas via a ring system, and the country has contained the virus very well.

This is a country that is poorer than South Korea, Japan, or Italy and shares a border with China.

I'm not trying to fear-monger here, so please don't read that as my intent.

Are you sure though? An "outbreak" is detected by someone having symptoms, by which time they've infected others. If you're an in area with lots of travelers, by the time you have an outbreak, it's already moved on.

I'm watching South Korea - they have plenty of travel, a good population, and an effective government. If they can contain it, that's a good sign, if not, likely a portent of what the western world can expect if carriers become more numerous. So far too early to say, but that's where I'm looking. (And I'm no expert at all, so if anyone has reasons that I'm looking in the wrong place as a bellweather, please share).

My real issue is the lack of good info. We've gotten an R0, but I've not heard anyone express confidence in the results of infection (another commenter suggested 20% require respiratory assistance, but is that of flat infected or of those that are detected as infected in part BECAUSE their symptoms are serious?)

Vietnam detected a presence outside of Hanoi and quarantined an entire town of 10,000 over a week ago. There haven’t been any new cases since.

https://news.yahoo.com/vietnam-quarantines-village-10-000-07...

They are now quarantining all travelers from South Korea or denying them entry.

The country is known for operating a ‘brutal’ but efficient quarantine.

> another commenter suggested 20% require respiratory assistance, but is that of flat infected or of those that are detected as infected in part BECAUSE their symptoms are serious?

The latter. Unfortunately we don't know what fraction of cases are detected, but it's believed to be around 10%.

Interesting in this context is to look at the postmortem of the previous pandemic in 2009, the number of cases initially confirmed and the final tally over the same period once all the facts were in.

The relevant wikipedia bit:

"A flu follow-up study done in September 2010, found that "the risk of most serious complications was not elevated in adults or children."[31] In a 5 August 2011 PLoS ONE article, researchers estimated that the 2009 H1N1 global infection rate was 11% to 21%, lower than what was previously expected.[32] However, by 2012, research showed that as many as 579,000 people could have been killed by the disease, as only those fatalities confirmed by laboratory testing were included in the original number, and meant that many of those without access to health facilities went uncounted. The majority of these deaths occurred in Africa and Southeast Asia. Experts, including the WHO, have agreed that an estimated 284,500 people were killed by the disease, much higher than the initial death toll."

From:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

It is far too early to conclude that Vietnam has contained "very well" and very possible that cases in a very poor country like Vietnam could be missed

Vietnam was the first country to end SARS and is known for operating a very efficient but ‘brutal’ quarantine. You live or die staying where you are.

Maybe it’s easier in a poor country. People just don’t travel as much.

There are a ton of tourists that travel to Vietnam.

Yes, but it doesn’t impact the tourists very much if they can’t travel there as someone who relies on travel for business or to meet their family.

True, and I’m surprised the POTUS has yet to announce the closing of air traffic from and to Italy.

Although, the zones under lockdown are 10 towns in Lombardy (the region where Milan is), and I guess they’re not the cities most visited by tourists.

Also, there is no information about the patient zero, but Lombardy (and especially Milan) has a huge presence of Chinese citizens and I am not surprised it all started there.

Viruses do not discriminate based on race and not all travellers who have brought the virus abroad have been Chinese. Saying things like “there are a lot of Chinese so I’m not surprised” is a very dangerous path to go down. Sad to see this on HN

Viruses don't discriminate, but immigrants (and descendants of immigrants) do tend to visit their original home countries (and/or ancestor's home countries) more than the rest of the population. People of Chinese descent living in Italy are more likely to visit China than people of Italian descent in Italy (or Irish or whatever non-Chinese descent). Areas with high concentrations of Chinese people are thus more likely to have been exposed to a traveler than some other areas. There's nothing racist about this.

Of course hot spots for transmission like airports will spread it beyond the Chinese communities.

Viruses can discriminate by race.

Indians got wiped out by Smallpox, for instance.

It's not about race at all -- China isn't exactly a vacation destination; very few non-Chinese visit China. Considering the lunar new year was timed right with this outbreak (and the Chinese tradition to visit relatives on LNY), it's not ridiculous to assume that areas with higher Chinese populations have a higher chance of having the virus.

This whole outrage culture thing needs to go away.

> I guess they’re not the cities most visited by tourists.

https://www.businessinsider.nl/coronavirus-italy-spread-deat...

Milan and Venice are in that region.

>True, and I’m surprised the POTUS has yet to announce the closing of air traffic from and to Italy.

You're surprised that the guy who tweets every all time high in the DJIA would be hesitant to do anything that might compromise the only thing (confidence and irrational exuberance) that is holding up a bubble trading at a Shiller PE of 32?

>I think this virus is getting sincerely underestimated in our echo chamber

this is an incredibly hot take. It seems to me that the majority of the media along with hackernews consistently contribute to unsubstantiated fear mongering

I've commonly heard people comparing this virus to the flu. There's a pretty good post on reddit comparing them. The summary is that Covid-19 is 20x as deadly, requires 10x as many hospitalizations, and is more transmissible.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/f8k2nj/why_sar...

But that's only if you believe that the number of measured cases are the number of actual cases. They would need to randomly sample the population for that to be true. My guess is that most people just get a small cold from this virus -- and some have a big reaction. So we really don't know the death rate.

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