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Comment by danek_szy | Hacker News Reader

Symptoms as described by WHO:

- https://i.cbc.ca/1.5496615.1584111464!/fileImage/httpImage/i...

- https://sm.mashable.com/mashable_sea/photo/default/coronavir...

What's alarming and kind of ironic is that COVID 19 has a lack of symptoms compared to the common flu. Aches and pains sometimes for COVID 19 as opposed to aches and pains common for the common flu. Runny nose sometimes for COVID 19 but runny nose common for the Common Flu. Its almost to say if you feel really bad you probably don't have COVID 19 unless you really start having trouble breathing. It's helps me appreciate the need to stay home if I just start getting SOME of the symptoms for the flu like a fever. Don't wait for body aches or a runny nose.

The important thing is that achy muscles don't spread disease (quite the reverse) but coughing does. So people with a recent bad cough should stay at home.

Even if it's only flu people should try and avoid spreading it around at the moment.

The February report from WHO did not list runny nose as a symptom. If you do have a runny nose, though, that increases the riskiness of hand-nose contact as an infection pathway.

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi...

Those two tables contradict each other. The first says runny nose is not a symptom of COVID-19, the other says "sometimes".

This just shows how little we know (and/or how much misinformation there is about it), and that a differential diagnosis based on symptoms is basically impossible (at least for a non-expert).

it's also quite possible that some people suffer both from covid-19 and the flu or a cold at the same time and the symptoms are being mixed up.

Then maybe this [1] clears things out. Probably differences in understanding what "sometimes" means. This shows specific frequency/percentages.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-sympto...

Are there any major differences between this and the annual, regular flu?

It's essentially a somewhat more intense flu with no herd immunity, which means instead of spreading itself nicely throughout the year it comes in at once in a massive exponential spike that blows out the medical system

I'm kinda curious though if this quarantining is also gonna significantly help with any other diseases already out in the wild. Would be nice if we ended up also clearing out some of the regular flu stains too

Flu season is already at the tail end so it would be hard to tell. Colds and flu spread in similar ways as CV19 so isolation should help that too.

I read somewhere the rate of colds and flu has fallen in Hong Kong.

I seem to recall that during the svine flu, kindergardens and schools emphasized better hygiene (wash hands, hand sanitizer, cough in elbow) - with a (at least anecdotal) dramatic reduction in sick leave. As kids didn't get sick at the same rate, did not infect parents who did not spread it in the work place at the usual rate.

Death rate is between 5x-25x higher, hospitalization rate even higher than that. Regular flu has a .01 death rate, Covid is at .08 right now in Korea and like 4% in Italy.

> Regular flu has a .01 death rate, Covid is at .08 right now in Korea and like 4% in Italy.

Dude. You can’t mix units like that. The flu has a 0.095% death rate, S. Korea’s current Covid-19 death rate is 0.7%, and Italy’s rate is around 5%.

You made both the flu and South Korea’s situation out to be ten times worse than they were.

Actually think they just forgot the % sign, and added extra zeros to flu and Korea numbers. I think they meant to say 0.1% and 0.8%, which isn’t far off.

It’s worth noting Italy’s much higher death rate is because the hospitals are full, and this is likely to happen in other countries soon. The proportion of Covid-19 patients that require intubation is much higher than that of flu.

Several other European countries and the US are on roughly the same infection rate trajectory as Italy, just a few weeks behind. Unless they significantly slow it down, it seems likely their health systems will be overwhelmed too, and their death rates could start looking more like Italy’s.

In addition to that, I read that there are more old people in Italy too -- another factor contributing to the higher numbers there.

Italy is probably also just not testing people who don't have serious symptoms. They've been hovering around a 15% positive rate on tests, about half of which have to be hospitalized, which is a lot compared to other countries.

https://i.imgur.com/lFWUCZv.png

Apparently Switzerland surpassed other countries and is now #2 for no of cases per million people...

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

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