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Comment by jbverschoor | Hacker News Reader

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

Can we please stop this nonsense

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...

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%

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