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Comment by lurquer | Hacker News Reader

Serious question...

In light of the fact that this virus has never been tested for before, how does one know the virus hasn't been part of the popilation for centuries? How do you know your last flue wasn't in fact Covid-19?

With some illnesses -- say smallpox -- you can 'count' the number of cases by symptoms alone.

But for this, it seems the symptoms in the majority of cases are inonsequwntial... similar to the flu or cold.

I don't know what happened in Wuhan. But, as far as the rest of the world, there does not appear to be any significant increase in actual illnesses requiring hospitalization. At least nothing that wouldnt otherwise manifest itself during flu season.

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The entire COVID-19 genome has been sequenced and compared to known viruses.

"Phylogenetic analysis of the complete viral genome (29,903 nucleotides) revealed that the virus was most closely related (89.1% nucleotide similarity) to a group of SARS-like coronaviruses (genus Betacoronavirus, subgenus Sarbecovirus) that had previously been found in bats in China" [0]

"This phylogeny shows evolutionary relationships of HCoV-19 viruses from the ongoing novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. All [148] samples are still closely related with few mutations relative to a common ancestor, suggesting a shared common ancestor some time in Nov-Dec 2019. This indicates an initial human infection in Nov-Dec 2019 followed by sustained human-to-human transmission leading to sampled infections."[1]

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32015508 [1] https://nextstrain.org/ncov

According to this very report, 80% of cases are "mild or moderate". This can mean anything from getting the sniffles for a while, to full on pneumonia (but not enough pneumonia to have to go to the hospital).

Yes it is technically correct that the majority of cases are mild. I wouldn't call that "inconsequential", or "similar to the flu". Maybe "Similar to the worst flu you've ever had", although the important distinction (need hospital vs get better on your own) remains the same. But that statement is true in roughly the same way (and with roughly the same probability(+)) as saying "the majority of people who play Russian Roulette win". Yes, I have an 83% chance of living. I still don't want to play that game

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(+) According to this very study that we are all commenting on right now, ~20% of cases need hospitalization, and a majority of those cases will be fatal without it

Thanks for the response.

But, my question remains... what evidence is there that this virus is new as opposed to something that has been in the milieu -- causing pneumonia and deaths in the elderly -- for decades?

Put aside the 'confirmed cases' and the like, and focus on sheer symptoms: is there any statistically significant uptick in the number of seriously ill people in the non-Wuhan populations? (I exclude Wuhan because, frankly, neither I now anyone else knows what the hell is going on there.) I keep hearing of one or two 70- or 80-year olds dying here and there... In the same time-frame thousands in this same cohort have died from, presumably, influenza and any other number of respiratory illnesses.

How do we know that the elderly haven't been getting Covid-19 and dying of it at these rates for decades?

I'm genuinely curious. At this point, the story is being driven by politicians and bureaucracies with incentives to plan for the worst... I don't expect a logical and rational analysis from them. But, I do from HackerNew posters. Surely I'm not the only one looking at these numbers, the dearth of information about the test's false-positive rates, the utterly inconsistent data coming from Wuhan vs. the rest of the world, and scratching my head? Am I?

I dont have much to add I’m afraid (feel free to downvote me) but I’m quite intrigued of the HN reaction to this thing. The smartest people in the world (kind of) are also just scared I guess. The usual coolheaded rationalism seems for the first time skewed towards ”its bad I just know it”. I look at the numbers and still cant quite understand what they’re seeing that I dont. I guess its the fear doing it, because we really dont know, and thats just plain scary. And maybe a tinge of satisfaction to be part of this huge drama plays a part too :)

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