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Comment by DCKing | Hacker News Reader

Question for a virologist, but does it actually spread so easily between people? The article asks a loaded question, but is it "justifiably loaded"?

Given the background prevalence of influenza it might be hard to compare, but does it actually spread more easily than influenza does? Is that a conclusion we can already take? For sure it seems to be spreading faster than SARS did, but I don't know if SARS was considered "easy" in this regard either.

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The W.H.O. director said 4 days ago "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22488862). So, I'm also confused and unsure how to rectify this.

I saw that thread as well and there were so many comments about how he cannot be trusted and that they are an institution bought by the Chinese.

I don't know. I might just be horribly, horribly naive. That is not meant to be sarcastic, but an actual possibility. But I really do feel like if we cannot trust institutions like the WHO, then we have zero facts and everyone can just come up with their own facts/form their own beliefs about this disease. I guess the one thing everyone is on the same page about is that we should wash our hands more frequently ...

It appears China did actually donate $20 million to the WHO[1], but I'm not sure what this means. I've seen claims that they've walked back statements immediately following the donations, and whether or not that's true seems to be mostly opinion. I'm sure it influenced the WHO but how much is difficult to say.

Maybe I'm grossly naive too, but it seems incredibly myopic to assume that everything coming out of the WHO is now immediately suspect when the facts are pretty clear that we just don't know much about this virus and probably won't for quite some time. There have been one or two early papers coming out questioning how transmissible the virus is, but I think the data is just too limited.

Without the World Health Organization, we're left with the CDC... and not much else.

FWIW the Gates Foundation was also going to donate $20 million to the WHO[2].

[1] http://www.china.org.cn/world/2020-03/08/content_75787774.ht...

[2] https://observer.com/2020/02/bill-melinda-gates-donate-100m-...

HN can be very disappointing. Software developers in general can be disappointing because we usually have enough information to make us dangerous and we also succumb to conspiracy theories.

WHO currently represents the scientific consensus.

I'd rather be on the side of the scientific consensus rather than entertain unfounded accusations of corruption promoted by random weirdos on YouTube.

one of the features of influenza is the neuraminidase protien [sialidase].

our cells have a "fuzz" of molecules around them refered to as a glycocalyx, and the influenza virus can digest its way through the glycocalyx, using the neuraminidase.

coronavirus doesnt have this feature to assist in fusion and entry.

Are there any examples of Flu or anything else infecting a cruise ship in a short time period? That was the thing that stood out the most to me.

Norovirus (aka food poisoning) can spread incredibly quickly and is the usual example of "fast moving virus in isolated population".

e.g. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/norovirus-outbreak-hits-royal-c...

Norovirus is the bane of my existence as a parent of 3 small children. One kid throwing up? Great. Expect everyone in the family to have it within three or four days.

A better example would be norovirus; once that's on a cruise ship, it gets ugly fast.

The tricky thing about my comparing with influenza is that "it's just the flu". Even if an influenza infection would spread with comparable ease on a cruise ship (and maybe it doesn't), I'm guessing it would not be investigated, reported or even remarked.

Not all flus are alike. Some, like H5N1 or Swine Flu were investigated and tracked in great detail, to the point of individual transmission chains.

H1N1 pandemic from 2009 has infected 1.4 billion people, with only a 0.02% mortality rate.

Based on those numbers alone we can be pretty sure that it would have infected everyone on a boat.

If this coronavirus will have the same spread, we could be talking of 19,600,000 to 42,000,000 deaths, or even more if the infections happen all at once and overwhelm the hospitals.

So let's hope it's not as contagious as H1N1 or we're fucked.

I guess it could be worse. We could be talking of the Spanish flu, which killed more than 1% of the world population.

AFAIK cruise ships are notorious for spreading infections diseases between the thousands relatively tightly packed on board for weeks at a time. Though usually these are digestion related diseases and usually less severe.

With flu probably about 50% of passengers have been vaccinated. Another 30% or so may already have some level of immunity. With covid nobody (or relatively few people who have had it by now) has immunity and there is no vaccine.

We do have numerous examples of noroviruses infecting a lot of people on cruise ships.

The R0 of the disease is more of a statistical problem. IMHO the question is actually not straightforward. To answer that question implies that the data that we have is representative, or that the current disease model is accurate. The number of asymptomatic carriers, suspected, confirmed, false negatives, deaths, (deaths falsely attributed to other diseases), etc are not known at this point.

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