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Comment by thijsvandien | Hacker News Reader

As a side observation: most reporting seems rather binary, i.e. you either die or survive, period. What interests me the most, however, is how often survival means full recovery, especially now that the nervous system comes up. Are there any long term effects? Should one generally expect to come out of it worse, the same, or stronger? I'm much less afraid to die from this than to end up with chronic respiratory and/or neurological issues.

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There's a "nice" damage report here:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/here-is-w...

If it gets to the point of causing pneumonia, you may end up with permanent loss of lung tissue. If it spreads to the rest of the body, liver and kidney damage are also on the menu.

Well, careful what you wish for... :)

There are reasons why Asian jurisdictions that ran into SARS previously is acting a lot more seriously.

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

There were plenty of them that still remember the residual effects of SARS, resulting in bone loss and other symptoms.

This is also something I'm curious about.

SARS caused permanent lung damage in a large proportion of the survivors, sometimes to a debilitating extent. How common is that with nCov?

it is very likely the same circumstance.both those virus conserve the same cell fusion machinery, to the end of causing the same effect. The host may be variable and there is a basis for the range of morbidities observed. the central problem with lung damage involves disruptions to the RAS system that will lead to accumulations of extracellular fibres in the lung tissue

It has only been around for a few months so nobody knows. It is also too early to know about reinfection. My advice would be to avoid getting infected if you can but please be mindful that a lot of people won't have the privilege of avoiding it, and they do not need to be unduly stressed from the prospect.

By reinfection they must really be alluding to reanimation

There are patients that have been hospitalized in Wuhan for weeks or potentially months. Will they ever recover? Will that compound the already-critical lack of medical infrastructure?

EDIT - Just to be clear, I'm not saying that people shouldn't take precautions or that it's not worth protecting vulnerable groups. I'm simply suggesting that perhaps there is news coverage about other things (remember the whole Hong Kong situation that we aren't hearing about suddenly?) that might still deserve some air time.

The media is profiting off this story big time. It's like when the plane went missing and a news station actually put some moron on the air who said there's technically a chance a black hole swallowed the plane. It's disgraceful, to be honest.

That said, it looks like the rate of fatalities is overblown significantly [0](0.2% in a healthy population (COMPARED WITH THE 3.4% NUMBER BEING SPOUTED ALL OVER THE PLACE). I've yet to see coverage that is remotely reputable about long-term health effects after recovery.

EDIT 2 - Case in point about premature statements being made.

> [1]“I think it is likely we’ll see a global pandemic,” said Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “If a pandemic happens, 40% to 70% of people world-wide are likely to be infected in the coming year. What proportion of those will be symptomatic, I can’t give a good number.”

followed by:

> [2]"Because I am now less certain of where the R0 will end up (and how it may vary geographically) I am going to revise downward the range of outcomes I consider plausible to 20%-60% of adults infected. This involves subjectivity about what range of R0 may turn out to be true."

[0] https://institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV-public/an...

[1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-many-people-might-one-perso...

[2]https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464

I would like to see more details about those affected, age, immuno compromised or not, asthma or not. Its hard to really draw any comparison to flu or anything else as things stand right now.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-... is quite good, WHO.int have publications on it if you want a more trusted source (but this one seems good to me).

Hard to find numbers on asthma, specifically.

I have mild persistent asthma, for example, which for me means if I take a daily (low) dose of an inhaled corticosteroid, I can generally go about my business like a normal person and almost never need to use my rescue inhaler.

I've only seen stats for COVID-19 fatalities for people with "respiratory conditions." Which could be anything from mild asthma on up to stuff like emphysema and cystic fibrosis.

I know, insufficient data.

SARS, which is closely related to Covid-19, has caused chronic problems in some patients. Here's a reputable source on that from 2010: https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2010/09/02/sars...

I appreciate the source. I'm still hopeful that the long-term effects of Covid-19 will turn out to be less dramatic than SARS but only time will tell I suppose.

It is getting annoying that people keeps comparing different numbers to make their points. If you are using 0.2% mortality rate in a healthy population, you have to compare it with the flu mortality's rate in a healthy population, which is still a magnitude lower. It's disgraceful, to be honest, to compare mortality rates on different population at all. And I'm just gonna quote your link directly to make my point, I'm fairly upset at people calling it a bad flu at this point.

"While this correction does not change the assessment that COVID-19 exhibits severe pandemic potential in the absence of effective interventions, the shift in framing brought about by this three-fold revision from ‘possibly comparable to the 1957 flu but not 1918’ to ‘possibly comparable to 1918’ may meaningfully impact risk perception."

So, in your opinion, the news coverage is totally justified and the lack of coverage for every other subject is okay? There's already 'effective interventions' being discussed openly from n95 masks to quarantines and travel restrictions.

Getting irritated at me for pointing out that the average person is not at severe risk of death, contrary to what the media is currently saying, seems a bit of an over-reaction.

That's not much consolation if someone close to you dies. I'm frustrated with the lack of empathy on display in discussions about this virus. People see 2% and then blow it off because "it probably won't happen to me". Those numbers represent real people with loved ones that will be 100% dead.

I'm pretty sure the figures I read were 1% mortality with Covid19, 1:400,000 for flu (in UK). It was that order of magnitude.

So perhaps like saying chlorine is harmless because people drink it. It's a "well yes, but no ..." situation.

https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...

Its CFR is 3.4% according to WHO (actual number may be be higher than this because it is an early statistic and does not take into account patients that are still struggling and may eventually die).

Also is Australia still burning? A burning continent seemed important before the virus, not anymore.

No, I think they switched to flooding now:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/03/australia/new-south-wales...

We've got the plague of locusts in Africa, though. Really been a rough half year.

This subthread reads like an excerpt from the Bible.

Not really anymore, no

https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/

Given there's no herd immunity, and the virulance of the strain, estimates are 40-70% of the population will contract the virus within a year

0.2% of 40% of the US Population is 260,000 deaths within a year[1]

"it's just the flu" greatly underappreciates just how deadly influenza actually is

If the mortality rate is more in the 2%+ range, we're looking at millions of deaths in the US alone.

[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.2%25+of+40%25+of+US+...

I've seen very different estimates. I'm gonna go off on a limb and say that there's probably more misinformation out there than real information. People should remain calm, take [0]reasonable precautions, and make decisions based on the latest information from credible sources such as the [1]CDC - rather than the media.

[0]https://twitter.com/eugenegu/status/1235247642814214145

[1]https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/related-stig...

The 40-70% number is from a Harvard Professor of Epidemiology

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-many-people-might-one-perso...

> “I think it is likely we’ll see a global pandemic,” said Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “If a pandemic happens, 40% to 70% of people world-wide are likely to be infected in the coming year. What proportion of those will be symptomatic, I can’t give a good number.”

"If", then he goes on to give a huge range, and then goes on to say that he can't give even an estimate of what percentage would be symptomatic.

Then, he goes on to give an entirely different range on Twitter, including another statement that he should have said "without effective controls" - https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464?s=2...

So, basically, you proved my point that everyone is so damn eager to talk about this that they'll make claims without sufficient evidence and scare people into distress.

He has since revised his estimate down to 20-60%. Which is still a lot, of course, but I think reflects the uncertainty here. He's also been very clear about mitigating factors and the uncertainty on his twitter account.

https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464

Influenza has a CFR of 0.1% COVID-19 has CFR of 2-3% (20-30x higher). Officially the CFR for COVID is ~3.3% but it is thought that is too high because there is thought to be many people who have it who are asymptomatic or have a mild reaction. FTR - 2% of 40% is 2.6 million.

The R0 is the highest driving factor for how many people will end up getting it the first year (aka R-Naught, is how many people on average an infected person spreads the infection to).

R0 for flu is 1.3. R0 for COVID is estimated to be 2.6, but I just read that the R0 is thought to be overestimated. and closer to 2.0. An R0 of 2.6 => closer to 70% of people. R0 of 2.0 => closer to 40% of people.

This is frightening as hell.

I think people forgets that if the ordinary flu would have caused this outbreak the counter measurements would probably be the same. But now it’s too late and too complex to stop it. Having two such viruses would probably very problematic and expensive. And which I believe many who compares this to the flu, forgets that we don’t know what this virus does and can cause. A person that had their lungs destroyed because, if true, the coronavirus still will have a miserable life than just dying. Assuming that the death rate is 1% there perhaps be 10% who will have major issues after an infection. That’s not dying but still bad enough.

As someone who is in Hong Kong, there's a good reason you don't hear about the Hong Kong situation. A lot of people in Hong Kong are in pseudo self quarantine, working remotely, going to school remotely, avoiding any areas with a lot of people, wearing masks all the time,...

This doesn't lead to protesting easily. It doesn't stop the fact that pretty much everyone here is unhappy with Carrie Lam.

And to be fair, the relatively slow growth of the number of cases we have in Hong Kong might be due to all the precautions people take (although I haven't found any information on the total number of people tested in Hong Kong so it might be because not enough people are tested)

If you're below 50 your chances of dying after contracting the virus are similar to that of being in a car accident if you got in a car over the course of one year (I think a car accident is higher). https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

I'm not sure exactly how they evaluate risk, but they probably estimate the error based on populations where very few people are studied (probably most people below 50), so it's likely if you're below 50 the chances are actually lower, I'm not sure.

Risk factors for immune disorders and car accidents are probably similar if I were to conjecture (just in: sick people tend to die), so most people on this subreddit will just get the fever. 15% of people don't even present with a fever, so it seems like the immune system can typically fight it off.

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