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Comment by tarkin2 | Hacker News Reader

It's symptoms are pneumonia-like and it mainly kills the elderly. Is this is a new strain of pneumonia? If so, this seems like an overreaction?

Edit:

Not sure what the downvotes are about. I asked a question. So you can't fight it with drugs, it's highly contagious, hard to initially detect, its long-term effects are unknown, most have recovered and it's largely fatal to the elderly or those with existing conditions.

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A 1% death rate in people without known complications (even 0.2% which seems pervasive in every age group) is orders of magnitude higher than for instance flu. And it spreads easily and is contagious before symptoms. Sounds like something you should be aware of.

Actually, multiple orders of magnitude...The Flu has a mortality rate of 2 per 100k [1].

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/flu.htm

[edited - reformatted numbers to avoid localization issues]

Commas and decimals are not interchangeable

They are if you switch between Spanish and English.

Don't design planes.

And US doesn’t set worldwide standards for their use.

That's 2 per 100k of the overall population, not 2 per 100k who get sick.

>The Flu has a mortality rate of 2 per 100k Nope, it doesn't. Mortality rate is not the same as annual deaths per capita. The number you quoted refers to the same context as traffic-related deaths per 100,000 population, which is 3.1 per 100,000 in the UK. This doesn't mean that if you are in traffic-related incident, you only have a 0.0031% of dying! Same with influenza - the mortality rate is 0.1%-0.15% (average season) up to 1.25%-5% (pandemic flu) [1]

[1] https://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/hsc-scen-3_flu-p...

The mortality rate may seem very low, but the symptoms are far more severe. When you get the flu it's rare you get pneumonia, not so much with this virus. The biggest problem is that it spreads without symptoms. That is, you can be infected & contagious for days (some Dr's suspect up to 3 weeks) and not have a clue because you seem perfectly healthy. So this has the potential to spread like wild fire. Further, 2 days ago some numbers out of China stated that up to 14% of previously infected became infected again. Lastly, a recent report also mentioned that detections in hospital were only able to detect 45% of the cases on the first try. So many are given clean bill of health and go on to infect many more.

Watch Italy and South Korea carefully, this thing is about to spread like crazy, even if mortality rates are negligible for young and healthy.

Lastly, SARs supposedly left some people with lung and brain lesions, it is unknown what the long term effects of this one will be.

> Lastly, SARs supposedly left some people with lung and brain lesions, it is unknown what the long term effects of this one will be.

This is in itself just unnerving too. A few weeks ago I was overlooking this too, but the more and more that comes out, the more concerning it becomes.

The mortality figure being shared in this thread is a baseline of 2 per mille. That's not what I'd call negligible.

And that's with proper healthcare, and functioning food/water/electric .. if 40% of is need hospitalisation and the rest daren't leave the house; how long until food supply chains are broken?

> Further, 2 days ago some numbers out of China stated that up to 14% of previously infected became infected again.

The numbers weren't that 14% became infected again. They were that 14% were found to still have the virus after being declared recovered. Many are speculating this doesn't mean reinfection, but could be an indicator that the tests have a higher false-negative rate than previously believed, or that people's bodies purge the virus in spurts as recovery takes place.

yeah, I couldn't find a source for this either. There are a few cases apparently, and there's still a lot about the virus that is unknown, but it doesn't look to be that high.. it could also be false-negatives that might explain this.., but it could theoretically also be that the virus is "bi-phasic", "meaning the disease appears to go away before recurring."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-japan/japane...

It's more severe and the ease of how it spreads is what is alarming.

Any virus that really cannot be controlled other than quarantine is never an over-reaction, infact often is the case people under-react to them.

People are dying, at a low rate, but they are dying, so it's much better to be pro-active.

Outcomes are worse. While we had a pandemic of flu last year (really!) the death rate among those hospitalized with pneumonia was something like 10%. This one is 14% among some groups, and not just those sick enough to be hospitalized. Those stats are for the elderly (who also matter). Its a similar multiplier for other age groups.

stats: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht...

Yes, and maybe? It's very similar to seasonal flu, but seemingly with a longer incubation period and more dangerous. On the other hand, seasonal flu also kills a lot of old people.

Another aspects not so much raised is that, where people can afford it, most people at risk are vaccinated against the seasonal flu.

Take a nursing home with people in the 80 to 100 years old range, all residents and staff are vaccinated against the flu. Even if the protection is not perfect there is some sort of herd immunity at play<

Now take the same nursing home, and for some reason someone from the staff is bringing the Coronavirus in, you are likely looking at a very high death rate.

Whatever the estimation of the death rate is, this is not a flat 1%, this is highly non linear depending on the context.

Pneumonia isn't a disease in the same sense as any specific virus or bacteria. It's a condition brought forth by various things. Covid-19 sometimes causes pneumonia.

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