I have the coronavirus. So far, it isn't that bad | Hacker News Reader

I have the coronavirus. So far, it isn't that bad

stamfordadvocate.com

64 points_wldu121 comments

Earlier discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22448502

Those who died from the virus aren’t writing in to tell us it’s very bad, so there’s that.

Edit: To be clear, I’m not being dismissive of this patient’s experience; just want to point out the element of survivorship bias.

I think this mans perspective is important. For the vast majority of people who get this it isn’t much different then having a cold or the flu. The large majority of people this is killing are elderly, whose immune systems are less likely to successfully defend.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

But that is not the picture painted by media day in and day out. There is so much hype and sensationalism with this story. They would have us believe it’s the zombie apocalypse out there, and I just don’t think that is the reality.

The media mostly ignored this story for 1 entire month despite its constant seriousness and despite it being clear that it was the biggest event of the year so far. Only this last week has it picked up on it. For people who have been following it from the start that fact was used as evidence that it was an actually serious problem given that the media was constantly downplaying it or just ignoring it.

In regards to the disease's lethality, even though most people will experience it as just a flu, between 10% to 15% of people experience it bad enough that they need hospital beds. If there's a generalized outbreak in the population like there was in China hospitals will be overloaded and general chaos will ensue, because hospitals in most countries aren't ready to deal with this kind of surge.

The media has been reporting on every detail of the coronavirus for over a month now. If you have only just started noticing, that is your fault. No one is ignoring anything.

Just to point out that this was already being well reported at least a month ago [0], and that at that point people on HN were projecting millions of deaths by yesterday [1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22167157 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22167881

So, my son had a really bad cold that resulted in an infected lymph node and a course of antibiotics. They never ran a test for covid-19.

So, how do we know that we have anywhere close to the right number of total patients?

Do you have any citations for these high numbers? Some statistical skepticism is important in matters of public concern.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.18.20024539v... This is a paper that looks at 50k Chinese patients and 18.1% of them are considered "severe cases", which China has been using to mean needing special care in the hospital.

And based on a WHO official's statements they found no evidence that there was a big number of unreported cases in China. https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/25/new-data-from-china-butt..., https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/123233479099875328.... Which would mean that these numbers coming out of there are likely more correct than wrong.

From your second link:

"“What [the data] support is that sure, there may be a few asymptomatic cases … but there’s probably not huge transmission beyond what you can actually see clinically,” Aylward said.

The claim was quickly challenged by an infectious diseases expert who serves on a committee that advises the WHO’s health emergencies program."

It's got a 2% fatality rate. It's going to overload medical facilities in many major cities, is already leading to medicine shortages for meds from China, and will close jobs and schools around the nation. It's not smallpox or anything, but it is major.

All mentions of fatality rate are accompanied by caveats that it may be much lower. I predict there are >10x more cases in China than currently reported, especially if it is really so infectious.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

2% seems to be the max rate, and it's coming down as we identify more people that have the virus, but are not even sick enough to go to the hospital.

I loved my grandparents, so I'm not downplaying this -- but the mortality rate for healthy people under 60 is much lower.

Okay, now that people are treating this worldometers.info page as gospel, some clarification is in order.

The fatality stats from that page is entirely from Table 1 of this paper, http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9..., analyzing 44,672 confirmed cases (including 1023 deaths) in China as of Feb 11. Apparently at that point most non-death cases haven’t been cured yet, but some of those people have died since, which would push the fatality rates up. Just compare the daily reported stats:

- Feb 11, 44,653 confirmed, 8204 severe (ongoing), 4740 cured, 1113 dead (I guess deaths data were lagging by a day in that paper);[1]

- Feb 28, 79,251 confirmed, 7664 severe (ongoing), 39002 cured, 2727 dead.[2]

Also, it is possible (in my layman’s opinion) that older people succumb to the virus faster, while some young people struggle for a long time before dying.

[1] http://www.nhc.gov.cn/yjb/s7860/202002/395f075a5f3a411f80335...

[2] http://www.nhc.gov.cn/yjb/s7860/202002/4ef8b5221b4d4740bda31...

Edit: Actually the worldometers page also lists some stats from another paper, but the point stands.

The message is clear to me: don't panic. And it is a good one, even if things were (or are) worse than this experience, panic won't help.

It's already been stated that for those it doesn't kill, this strain of coronavirus produces a rather mild flu.

The containment activity isn't intended to soothe the people who carry the virus symptom-free or with mild flu symptoms. It is to lower the mortality rate in the overall population due to the higher-than-typical death rate associated with the strain.

That's why it's so dangerous. For 80% of people it's a mild cold. - so they go to work like normal.

80% don’t require hospitalization, but a significant fraction of those still involve pneumonia (not to mention high fever, muscle soreness, etc.).

This is a time where it would be preferable to live somewhere that has good free/cheap health and social systems: if you're sick, you stay home and there are limited social or financial repercussions.

So many people where I am will just "soldier on" because they have no choice.

What do you mean by "social repercussions"?

Many people at offices in the US look at taking sick time as lazy and bosses will pressure you to come in anyway

You mean, normal employees? That's weird.

And the "bosses" seem especially dumb. If one person is sick and contagious, you risk to get your entire team sick and then have to shut down operations.

There's a difference between going to work when you're sick because "you have to" and going to work when you're sick because "you feel mostly fine".

This is a virus that in it's milder forms generally just causes a cold. I've never stayed home from anything because of a cold. Colds are just a fact of life. I imagine a lot of people feel similarly.

You never stayed home with a cold? Your co-workers, if they could identify that it was you all those times getting them sick, would like to have a word with you.

Is this going to become like the anti-vaxx shit? Demanding freedom to get everyone around you sick, no matter the illness? Do we now have 40% of the US thinking it's a conspiracy that people infect each other with disease or something?!!?

Are showers now an uncool thing? Soap, are we gonna go backwards on soap due to some insane conspiracies peddled by sub-humans? Is this how humanity ends, in an irrecoverable stupid-spiral?

Thanks for always spreading those colds you had throughout your life. I am suuuuure everyone was only ever affected by it in exactly the same way it affected you (ie, you could still go into work). I mean, empathy is for suckers, am I rite?

> Thanks for always spreading those colds you had throughout your life.

Oddly enough, I heard a man on the radio speculate that the reason kids seem to be less affected by this than expected is because they have terrible hygiene and have built up immunity to many other coronaviruses floating around out there, giving them a leg up.

But also I think we must have different definitions of what a cold is.

Is it realistic to stay at home to prevent colds spreading? People with a cold are infectious for around two weeks, and get up to 4 cold on average a year. You may not be able to do your job from home easily, so that's 8 weeks of sick leave per year just to stop your coworkers getting a runny nose. Assuming you work 47 weeks a year, that's 17% of your work hours spent on sick leave, ignoring other illnesses.

In the UK you would not be entitled to pay for that sick leave unless you had a note from a doctor stating that you are unfit for work, which you would not be able to get for a cold. Moreover it is legal for you to be fired for taking too much sick leave, so you would be putting your ability to pay rent and, over the longer term, your job at risk.

I'm living in such a place and if you have a cold it is normal to go to work even if you are sick, it's really hard to make people stay at home just because they feel a bit ill. Remote work has to be come more accepted.

There's still social stigma not being able to work 100%. Even if people were just clerks for eachother and total Waste, the stigma would still be there. People seem to not mind infecting others.. Except as dictated by political correctness.

>So many people where I am will just "soldier on" because they have no choice.

Soldiers, usually, don't go alone into the enemy territory. Commandos do. They go alone and fight against everyone.

"Soldier on" is a semi-commonly used phrase that I suspect most (at least Americans) reading the comment knew exactly what they meant.

Unsure if you were just unfamiliar with the phrase or wanted to point out something you felt was inaccurate about it.

> Soldier on

> v. To continue or persist, despite adversity or difficulty.

Commando would better fit the description of "Sabotaging the team, product and costumers"

The quoted text was:

> So many people where I am will just "soldier on" because they have no choice.

That seems to fit exactly with the definition you posted.

> v. To continue or persist, despite adversity or difficulty.

They don't have any choice but to go to work, so they go to work.

I honestly don't understand what you're getting at with your "commando" idea.

Could you BE any more pointlessly pedantic?

It kills the elderly, the immunosuppressed, those with heart disease, any pulmonary issues. You know people being treated for complicated diseases.

The Guardian today have another story titled “To hell and back”: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/to-hell-and-ba...

That's why it's important to have positive stories like this one, the media is only focusing on the negative ones even though they only count for < 1% of the real situations.

The death rate is 2-2.5% so how do you suggest that the negative cases are <1%?? At least every death is a 'negative story' and something tells me you don't want ARDS or secondary infection, so that's probably negative too.

Yeah, and a couple of days ago LinkedIn got spammed by "Supply Chains will die" posts. Well, at least my feed. So yeah, a hell of a load of clickbait all over the place. And only minority is trying to calm things down.

Fear is better click bait

But to dismiss all fearful articles as clickbait is erroneous.

From this story sounds like a moderate flu. Fever, coughing, body aches, and congestion.

It does seem like the media is click-baiting the world for profit.

Yes! Fear media is money. And for people in the public health infrastructure, this is their moment to shine! Who wants to poo poo the situation?

And it wouldn't be so bad for me either. But I am taking care of my 88yo Mom and for her it might be lethal.

And I had the flu.. it nearly killed me.

Can we please stop this nonsense

what nonsense?

Downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic.

First there was nothing to worry about because it was localized to Wuhan, then there was nothing to worry about because it was only spreading in China and surely would not spread to $YOUR_COUNTRY, then there was nothing to worry about because it was only a few isolated cases that were easily dealt with, and now we seem to be moving into how there's nothing to worry about because, even though the containment has completely failed and it's conceivable that most people in most countries will be infected, you still have a pretty good chance of surviving the infection.

I think it is already here and we just don't have a real view into it because of limited testing. The community transmissions that keep popping up are indications of that. I expect we will see an exponential increase in those in the next few weeks.

No one is downplaying anything. If anything, people are overemphasizing the danger. Even in Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, less than half a percent of the population has contracted this thing, and of that half percent, 4 out of 5 have mild symptoms. And the outbreak there seems to be stabilizing.

That isn’t to say it isn’t serious, or that we shouldn’t be taking measures to guard against it. But a large contingent of people are acting as if it’s the Walking Dead outside, and the apocalypse is just around the corner. But irrationally overblown fear and misinformation is just as likely to result in suffering and loss of life as the disease right now. An increase of unemployment of 1% is estimated to result in anywhere from 1500-40000 deaths in the US, and vague fears over this disease have been driving some of the biggest free falls in the market in decades. Part of an appropriate response to something like this means not overreacting just as much as it means not undereacting.

Excellent comment. The rush on supplies and goods means that people in need may not have access to care. THAT worries me quite a bit more than the disease itself.

I think after the success of the media in respect to this virus (massive amounts of clicks and TV view time), I firmly believe that every new flu will have it's own name and similar coverage from now on.

They just made too much money off this, fear is a big seller.

Even if one was this cynical, do you not think a novel (not influenza) virus with an unusually high mortality rate spreading internationally is worthy of news coverage?

The media didn't name this thing, nor SARS, nor avian bird flu.

SARS (the syndrome) is actually caused by the corona virus so it's not really new.

But I see my karma won't be healthy in this discussion so I guess I'll shut up :p

Please do.

It's caused by different strain, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

It is worthy of coverage, but it’s only interesting because it’s new. It really not the super virus they make it out to be. The news coverage does not paint a realistic picture.

The height mortality rate is mostly due to the novelty and the fact we haven’t developed drugs for it yet. Also, it is killing almost exclusively elderly people. People who don’t have fully functioning immune systems. I’m willing to be the common flu killed a similar percentage of elderly before we developed a vaccine for it.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

This is not the message the news tells us though. They would have us believe it is some unstoppable virus, killing anyone who comes in contact with it. But there really isn’t any evidence to back it up. Fear mongering certainly does drive traffic.

This is a rather high mortality rate for hospitalized patients.

People with the new coronavirus have a very wide spectrum of symptoms which can be harmless, remain almost unnoticed up to very deadly syndromes. How can you justify that people spread the virus with almost 0 symptoms, killing basically other people. People respond differently to certain diseases, its normal. I had a relative early January in Bangkok hospitalized due to the coronavirus. Some patients do not even develop fever, where some other have to hang on artificial respirators for more than a week. Although my relative survived the illness after a very severe situation for 10 days on artifical respirator, he also now has permanent damages of the lungs. Would've probably died without rapid hospitalization rather quickly. After seeing that in real life I feel like many more people actually died without proper diagnosis of this new type of virus.

For now, take these WHO-stats with a grain of salt and wait for stats in European countries. Currently it is roughly above 2% fatal. Which is similar to the Spanish Flu from 1918. FML. I don't want to know how SARS-CoV-2 would have wrecked in 1918 compared to healthcare in 2020.

Except that this is significantly more dangerous than the seasonal flu. 6 people already died on the Diamond Princess out of about 600 detected positive cases, this is one to two orders of magnitude more than the seasonal flu.

Those numbers are skewed. It’s only more dangerous for elderly people. For most age groups below 50 is 60, the numbers are inline with common flu.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

It is more dangerous, but you shouldn't extrapolate too much from the Diamond Princess case either.

A vacation and also the associated travel is a special event that also affects the immune system, a cruise ship is a special and foreign "habitat" to passengers and crew and usually a lot more cramped than they experience in their every day lives, the demographics of people taking a cruise will differ from the demographics of most "normal" area as well. Cruise ships are a bit notorious for outbreaks of all sorts, from E.Coli and noro to legionella and even measles, and corvid-19 too.

And on top of that a study[1] found that the total quarantine the Japanese government imposed didn't help either, but actually worsened the situation, to 700+ infected while the study estimates that if people were let off the ship (but still monitored and treated of course) then only about 76 would likely have been infected. This decision was likely fueled at least in part by over-the-top news coverage and the political pressures this created.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/jtm/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jtm...

This is about 20x deadlier (rate, not absolute numbers) than the seasonal flu as of midweek (numbers may have changed a bit in last few days). It is a more apt comparison to compare to the 1918/19 Spanish flu than the seasonal flu.

edit: yes, I know the age breakdowns of deaths. But young people can still transmit the virus to their elderly loved ones etc. I don't understand why people are dismissive about the fact that "oh its just the old people dying, nbd".

I guess in general, while I understand that the death rate may come down etc, I see a far bigger risk in making people think that it isn't a big deal. I'm not suggesting we should freak out, but I just don't understand downplaying it either.

That is a terrible talking point. It paints a picture that is not inline with reality. It’s the only ‘evidence’ anyone can grasp to as to why this is any more concerning than the common flu. Meanwhile the numbers are HIGHLY skewed by age group.

It is almost exclusively killing elderly people. For anyone less than 50-60 years old, the numbers are in line with flu. And the old people will be better protected once the vaccine comes out.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

Yes, but honestly why does that matter when talking about the implications of it spreading? Are you saying that old people's lives are worth less? It doesn't diminish the general threat just because you or I are less likely to die. You or I may not be too affected, but what if I unknowingly transmitted (as is happening) to my grandparents when I got dinner with them?

Spanish flu killed people aged 20-40. This doesn't.

It's not. This season's flu is linked to killing 14,000 people in the US alone (according to the CDC), corvid-19 has been diagnosed in 2,835 deaths worldwide.

The death rate is about 0.1% for a normal flu (0.05% for the current season) and corvid-19 about 3.4%[1]. So it is indeed a lot more deadly than the flu for those who contract it, which makes it important to prevent infections. And as pointed out elsewhere, the vast majority corvid-19 related deaths happen to the elderly (tho the same is true for the flu).

[1] https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

That number is skew by the Chinese Hubei Province, the epicenter, which was hit first and hardest and most widely and reported a death rate of ~4.1%, while other Chinese provinces reported a death rate of ~0.8%. The death rates for most other nations are not meaningful because of the tiny number of infections so far. South Korea, with 3,150 cases and 21 death had a death rate of ~0.7% so far, Italy at 889 infections and 21 deaths a rate of ~2.3%

The flu is a pretty well known illness at this point.

This is a serious issue as it has a higher mortality rate than the flu, is spreading quickly and has the potential to evolve into a strain with a much higher mortality rate.

I agree people shouldn't panic, but I don't agree this is just something to be dismissed... The pandemic of 1918 has some lessons to be learned here.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/reconstruction-19...

I almost died from the type 2 strain of flu two years ago. Was out for almost 2 weeks straight. Wife found me under every blanket in the house wearing two coats with a 104.5 fever. I understand how this could be fatal to the elderly. We take care that no one is sick when we visit community centers.

Humans are bad at gauging low probabilities. I for one cannot wrap my head around the actual badness of an event that has 2 percent chance of getting me killed. Taking the "average" approach, i.e. 2% loss of my expected remaining life time doesn't seem very good.

# Yup, I know getting the virus is more than just a chance to die - you possibly infect others, get quarantined, etc.

Please keep in mind that the 2% rate does not apply to you. Check your own risk here:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

Part of the reason humans are bad with probability is because they are bad at conditional probabilities. There is likely much less than a 2% chance you die from this. First that is assuming you will catch this disease. Even the most gloom and doom projections I’ve seen are saying that this virus will infect 40-70% of the worlds population. Which means the chance that you catch this and die from it is more like 1-1.5%. Outside of Wuhan, the death rate has been more like .7-1%, so now it’s more like .3-.7% chance you actually catch this and die. The numbers are far lower if you are not elderly, and have no pre-existing conditions.

That isn’t to say the virus isn’t concerning, especially on a societal level. We absolutely should all be taking precautions to prevent the disease from spreading. But for a given individual, the probabilities of dying from this is very low.

By the "event" I neant specifically contracting the virus. The practical question is how far should I go to prevent getting it, which obviously depends on how bad this is.

> So now it’s more like .3-.7% chance you actually catch this and die

Speaking of people being bad at probabilities..

A .3-.7 chance of death is still VERY dangerous. Your odds of dying of a car crash in any given year is 1 in 10,000. Your odds of dying from Coronavirus is 1 in 333 (at your best estimate). Yes this is absolutely serious at a societal level, and yes, you can die from this.

I suppose any disease isn't that bad when you have round the clock medical care pumping you full of medicine.

No, in fact lots of diseases are incredibly bad even with round the clock medical care pumping you full of medicine.

Sure but you can bet that CDC is caring for those few that are infected. Meaning among the best doctors in the world so it's very unlikely that he will die for inadequate care.

What will happen in a third world country? Or in the USA if million and millions are infected, overwhelming the health care system?

Well there are plenty of painful diseases without a cure or effective pain mitigation short of euthanasia.

He mentioned he’s participating in the clinical trial so there’s a chance he received Remdesivir treatment.

Why do we still call it "The Coronavirus", despite the fact that the common cold is caused by coronaviruses and rhinoviruses [1]? Like, with the H1N1 flu we had a more specific name.

Isn't it morally important to provide the public with nuance? i.e., "there is a bad version of the common cold this year, so watch out, especially if you are over 60".

[1] Falsey, A. R., Walsh, E. E., & Hayden, F. G. (2002). Rhinovirus and coronavirus infection-associated hospitalizations among older adults. The Journal of infectious diseases, 185(9), 1338-1341.

Because "journalism".

SARS-CoV-2 is that "more specific name". I agree that it didn't help that it went without a specific name for a long period of time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...

Why not? The name is easy to use and to pronounce and there is zero chance to confuse it with something else in the current context.

About 2 months ago people had no idea what this new pneumonia-related disease is. It was called "The Mystery Flu" by NYT... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/world/asia/china-SARS-pne...

It is not related to the "seasonal flu". It has been sequenced by chinese scientest very rapidly and it has been found to be a completely new virus. That why everyone is so excited about it. We don't know yet if its coming from bats, pigs, dogs, chicken or whatever.

Bam! Its not fucking "seasonal flu". We already have that also.

This is a pretty dismissive thread and P.O.V. The point is the combination of all characteristics of it is bad. No one has a resistance to it because it’s novel. It looks to have an infection rate of 2 for 1 infected. It will likely reach huge numbers of people and kill orders of magnitude more than the usual flu. If it gets to a billion people we’re talking tens of millions dead.

To add to this, what some people apparently don't realize is that those who get mild symptoms and ignore them or don't get tested and quarantined will almost certainly infect others who might die from it. It could be your elderly neighbor, your parents, grandparents, or an acquaintance with a compromised immune system.

Yep and there are far too many people who will gladly come to work very sick. I’ve suffered far too many examples in corporate America.

R0=2.2 and CFR=2.5% is all you need to know to realize this is not the “seasonal flu”. Look at the visualizations in this article[0] that compare the average number of people infected by each sick person and the fatality rate of various historical epidemics.

[0] https://nyti.ms/38Xc1ho

Still hard to believe to me that with the current numbers at least 30 million people will die. And we are not even at 3000 yet.

Let me know on day 8 or 9. That’s when you find out if you’re one of the lucky ones to develop pneumonia.

He has already had it with symptoms for 2 weeks.

He’s been sick for at least 11-12 days.

This is dangerous. Take every precaution you can not to get infected for as long as you can and that you don't infect anyone else. This is not the flu. The flu makes you more susceptible to a material pneumonia and that's how it kills. SARS-CoV-2 is NOT the flu. COVID-19 is the disease, by the way.

Here is the list of complications: -ARDS in 29% (Acute respiratory distress disease, this needs mechanical ventilation to survive) -acute cardiac injury in 12% (this potentially kills your heart tissue which leads to arrhythmia and then a heart attack) -secondary infection in 10%

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31986264-clinical-features-o...

This is something you should be very mindful of. A Cavalier attitude can get you or people you care about killed.

Here's the current list of symptoms to know if you're infected with SARS-CoV-2:

fever in 98.6% fatigue in 69.6% dry cough in 59.4% anorexia in 39.9% myalgia in 34.8% dyspnea in 31.2% expectoration in 26.8% pharyngalgia in 17.4% diarrhea in 10.1% nausea in 10.1% dizziness in 9.4% headache 6.5% vomiting in 3.6% abdominal pain in 2.2%

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32031570-clinical-characteri...

Is it more appropriate to say that Covid-19 is dangerous if you are elderly or have pre-existing conditions?

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

Median age of admitted patients in the article above was 49. That’s not elderly. Also, only half of them had pre-existing conditions.

Your numbers aren’t matching other published statistics. For one, 81% of cases are considered mild. I don’t know how that is supposed to square with your statistic that 30% of patients need mechanical ventilation to survive.

I agree that the disease is something to take seriously, but pushing incorrect information to fear monger is just wrong.

These are the most common complications that leads to death. The clinical presentation is very different here. And yes, my source backs everything I said.

Also, the Lancet is one of the most respected medical journals in the world. I'm giving your primary literature that I took from the current medical guidelines from what's published. I'm a medical student and, although not a board certified physician, I'm going to be apart of the care team that is going to be diagnosing this.

What's with this dismissive attitude?

I think if I had said this in person it would have sounded a lot less dismissive, but the way I typed it up came off as mean which was not my intention.

The article is fine, but you're not reading it correctly.

> Here is the list of complications: -ARDS in 29% (Acute respiratory distress disease, this needs mechanical ventilation to survive) -acute cardiac injury in 12% (this potentially kills your heart tissue which leads to arrhythmia and then a heart attack) -secondary infection in 10%

Those percentages say how many out of 41 admitted hospital patients have those serious complications.

But of course they have serious complications, that's why they were admitted to the hospital.

Those percentages say nothing about the health risks to the average person who is infected.

Let me try to rephrase what you're saying just to understand where you're coming from. "these are cool numbers, but what's the chance that the average person is going to actually have any of these complications?". I don't have any cogent numbers on that, but the current deaths/(deaths+resolved) percentage is 8%.

> what's the chance that the average person is going to actually have any of these complications?

Yes, that's the question we'd all like to have the answer to.

But we don't know how many mild or asymptomatic cases have resolved, so the deaths/(deaths+resolved) calculation is a known divided by an unknown.

I didn't even think of how many people are asymptomatic carriers when I said that number. More data, like all science, is the answer here.

Honestly, someone I highly respect who is high up on the medicine food chain is very concerned that a lot of people are going to die and that's been making me very concerned.

If you are going to flex your (yet unearned) credentials, I will flex mine. I’m a statistician, and your source is a perfect example of an egregious statistical fallacy: sampling bias. Yes, it says 30% had ARDS, but it was based on the first 40 cases, all of whom were identified before January 2nd. It’s literally just a sample of the the cases that were so severe that they popped up on the radar before people were even aware that there was an epidemic of a novel virus occurring. Even now many of the mild cases may be being undercounted. Back at the beginning of January, all of the mild cases were being missed.

Being a medical student gives you no authoritative expertise, especially when it is clear you need to hit the books a little harder. That you will be part of a care team diagnosing the disease doesn’t make me trust you more, it makes me trust the competence of our medical professionals less.

Let me ask you a question: what is the intention of responding to me in a condescending way? What do you get out of it? My intention right now is for people not to down play how serious this will become and that this isn't just the flu.

This is the only data we have right now and it's saying this is really bad. You can talk selection bias here, faulty statistics, etc. but right now the death rate is 8% (deaths/(deaths+resolved) not deaths/total infections) and the list of complications is the check list for an intense ICU (no pun intended) visit.

I wasn’t condescending until you were. I initially questioned your claims, and you responded by asserting that you were correct and I was not because you are a medical student and I am not. It had nothing to do with the validity of what I was saying, it was an appeal to your own authority. If you do not wish to make an argument personal, then you should refrain from using your person as an argument.

Secondly, it isn’t the only data we have. The data in the sources you linked are dated. There has been weeks worth of data and tens of thousands of cases since January 2nd, so to rely on papers focusing on 40 cases from 2 months ago is inexplicable. And even our current estimates of the death rate are still very likely over estimated for the same reason: sampling bias. It appears that it takes longer to recover than it does to die from this disease, and so deaths / (deaths+resolved) will be biased high. It also fails to consider that mild cases are less likely to be detected and therefore won’t be included in the calculation, further skewing the death rate higher. And lastly, the overwhelming number of cases so far have been from a single province in China, overwhelming their capacity. Outside of that province, the death rate is far less. That isn’t to say that other provinces/nations can’t also become overwhelmed, but there is something to be said for the fact that having several months of preparation and notice will improve readiness remarkably compared to Hubei province, which only was able to react to the outbreak after it had been occurring for several weeks.

This is all to say that, yes the virus is concerning, and yes people should prepare themselves, but it is also incredibly irresponsible and dangerous to spread immaculate and misleading information based on long outdated studies and statistical malpractice, and then do further damage by stamping it with unearned medical expertise.

> something to be said for the fact that having several months of preparation and notice will improve readiness remarkably compared to Hubei province

Do note though that the system is already getting strained in some parts of Italy, and it sounds like Iran is in very serious trouble. Despite what seems like a pretty aggressive response, South Korea has had very rapid spread through a cult church.

Elsewhere in China the virus has been largely contained, but the Chinese have imposed extreme quarantine measures at unprecedented scale, which are just now easing a bit (hopefully without a regression in virus spread).

Developing countries are going to have a really bad time with this virus, and even in the US and Western Europe it seems plausible that healthcare systems could be overwhelmed, since to date in many places the carefulness of quarantines, the level of testing, the extent of contact tracing, etc. has been quite limited in comparison to e.g. Singapore or South Korea.

The US response seems disorganized, and anecdotally healthcare workers I have talked to have received little guidance or training so far.

Supply chain disruptions and spikes in demand are having a substantial effect on the availability of personal protective gear and some pharmaceuticals (e.g. antibiotics used for treating secondary bacterial infections in viral pneumonia patients).

Yearly flu season already strains the medical system. This virus seems from available evidence to be both substantially more contagious and substantially more dangerous (higher rates of severe symptoms) compared to the typical flu. When it reaches epidemic scale in a particular place it could make every other kind of medical emergency quite a bit riskier. In Wuhan there are many stories of people with e.g. cancer or heart problems being unable to obtain medical care, because medical resources were fully devoted to coronavirus patients.

As stated elsewhere, I lacked tact towards the person who I was condescending towards and it was not my intention. But my behavior towards someone else does not mean it's ok for you to now treat me poorly.

I'm not going to argue with you any more because this doesn't seem worth it, and justifying bad behavior is just not something I'm into. This looks like SARS 2002-2004's cousin. The virus is actually called SARS-CoV-2, the disease is COVID-19. The transmission rate is astounding, the fatality rate is also looking like SARS 2002-2004 [1]; this is something you should take very seriously. And no, I don't need a medical degree to recognize a pattern. But I'm guessing you're not immunosuppressed or elderly so it's not a big deal for you. Do whatever you want, bud, because your actions will only get the people around you killed.

I just want to say it's making me laugh to myself how ignorant people are as to what my education actually entails and the nuances between every step of the medical education hierarchy. Like how in a few months I'm going to magically know what I'm doing because I have a piece of paper.

[1]https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.17.20023630v...

> Do whatever you want, bud, because your actions will only get the people around you killed.

So you say you lacked tact, I shouldn't treat you poorly, and then a paragraph later say this?

> The transmission rate is astounding, the fatality rate is also looking like SARS 2002-2004

The fatality rate is not looking like SARS 2002-2004, its looking far less. Again, you are spouting incorrect information.

> this is something you should take very seriously

I am taking it seriously. Part of taking something seriously is relying on accurate information.

> And no, I don't need a medical degree to recognize a pattern

And what pattern is this that you are recognizing? So far you've only cited dated medical papers and interpreted them incorrectly.

> I just want to say it's making me laugh to myself how ignorant people are as to what my education actually entails and the nuances between every step of the medical education hierarchy. Like how in a few months I'm going to magically know what I'm doing because I have a piece of paper.

You are right, at this point it seems safe to assume that even if you receive your medical degree you won't actually know what you are doing. Pity for your future patients.

I am an ex physicist and how statistics are handled by people who do not have the right expertise is exhausting.

He (or she, I do not know) wanted to show you that numbers you base your conclusion on must be carefully vetted.

I was once a reviewer of a PhD thesis in biology. The statistics part was dreadful, from someone who was otherwise a very serious student. She just would not know how to properly handle her data. After a review of the methodology the conclusions were different.

So do not get upset, being challenged by someone knowledgeable is fantastic and does not happen often.

Good luck with your degree.

I was in the wrong here and could have worded this more tactfully. I do appreciate your insight.

> This is dangerous.

How? He is not advocating to take things likely. He is not promoting dangerous practices nor a cavalier attitude.

This is just some person sharing his first hand experience.

"Hey it's not as bad as people making it out" will make people complacent. People need to self quarantine if we want this to be well contained. We need people to understand that if they don't take this seriously people will die, people they care about.

Panicking is also dangerous and has real costs.

How about we agree to be diligent but also not overreact.

Right now the Deaths/(Deaths+resolved) is 8%, which is on par with SARS in 2002-2004. This affects most demographics, but mostly the elderly. I'm not here to advocate for panic, but we need to take this very seriously now while the outbreak is still young. The more we can slow this the less dangerous the virus will become.

Just to be clear, the percentage of those infected with the virus who will have ARDS is far, far lower than 29%. This is a percentage of those who were admitted in this one case study, in one hospital in Wuhan before January 2.

If most people don't care to prevent infection, the hospitals and medical resources will soon be overwhelmed, the death rate will surge from 0.5-4% (no exact figure at the moment) to 10-20% like earlier in Wuhan. When viral load in the environment becomes sufficiently high, some young people will be taken away by it too, as in the case of several Wuhan doctors who sacrificed themselves under that circumstance.

Among the ~16-19% who are hospitalized and recover, you may suffer through weeks of pneumonia and your lungs could be damaged long-term.

Even if you're lucky to be among the 80% who survive without hospitalization, you could still be the vector who directly or indirectly infect someone you care about.

^This is exactly why we should take this seriously. Even if this "isn't a big deal" that attitude will get people you love and care about sick potentially leading to their death. I'm advocating that people be mindful and try to take this very seriously.

Very true, the low end stats are for regions with few infections. If say, 1 million ppl get in NYC, expect a lot higher rates, as the health system cannot do much with that many people.

>the death rate will surge from 0.5-4% (no exact figure at the moment) to 10-20% like earlier in Wuhan

Those percentages come from different samples altogether and cannot be compared. 10-20% is heavily biased toward people who were admitted before there were even reliable tests for the virus or a recognition that it's novel and serious. Now you're comparing that to 0.5-4% which includes a bunch (though by no means close to all) of mild cases who got picked up by the tests but may not have required a hospital visit at all. What's the point of mentioning two numbers that aren't just unreliable and biased, but unreliable and biased in different ways?

Yes, I think I might have mixed up stats of different kinds (Posting too late at night, sorry).

However, the point stands that fatality rates will likely go up a lot if medical resources are overwhelmed. Long-term lung damage is also another risk for younger people and its rate will also go up.

I, personally, appreciated the words of warning a lot. I'm a reasonable enough person to not panic and will stay pragmatic about it (I'm not going to go into quarantine now, obviously) but it's very nice to see and hear people in the know are taking it seriously to prevent the spread of a horrible disease and many unnecessary deaths.

Thank you for the warning signs, I will keep an open eye. :)

Anecdotal. One data point shouldn't mean much to anyone.

It's called "survivorship bias".

When >98% are surviving it, it's not much of a bias.

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