3 ms·

Anyone have a sober perspective of how bad this is likely to get? Is this comparable to a bad but forgetten-by-the-next-year flu strain? To SARS? To the Spanish

Anyone have a sober perspective of how bad this is likely to get? Is this comparable to a bad but forgetten-by-the-next-year flu strain? To SARS? To the Spanish Flu?

bart_spoon 7y ago
I don't think we can know yet. It's infected around 300 people, 6 of whom have died, putting a mortality rate of around 2%. Thats not as bad as SARS, which was 10%, but its early. SARS ended up being restricted to around 8000 people, mostly concentrated in China, though eventually spreading to dozens of countries, but its impossible to say how far and wide this one could spread, especially given that the outbreak is occuring on the eve of Chinese New Year. According to some of the sources I've found online, coronaviruses tend to be much less easily spread from human to human than something like the flu, but just a few days ago officials were saying they didn't think this virus was transmissible between humans, which they now have confirmed is in fact possible, so clearly its a very fast developing situation.
- Fomite 7y ago
  That mortality rate isn't at all reliable at this point - we have lots of unconfirmed cases which messes with the denominator, and we haven't had all the people who do have it develop their outcome. 2% is very much a best-case estimate right now.
redis_mlc 7y ago
SARS was about as lucky as you can get without pandemic. With the availability of international airline travel, there's no limit to how far and fast a disease can travel now. Toronto had a big SARS scare when one of the patients who was told to quarantine himself instead went to work ...
clanged 7y ago
On the average-case risk, it is unlikely to get "bad." (if bad is defined as being similar to SARS or MERS.) However, its current worst-case risk is similar severity, with n=(500-1000) individuals who may pass away fatally if it does get "bad."
Fomite 7y ago
I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist who has worked on Ebola and MERS (along with some other stuff). I'd peg it, right now, at SARS-levels of bad. Most early modeling estimates, from people who know their stuff, are estimating the number of infections at a few thousand. Bad in China, likely sporadic outbreaks elsewhere due to infection control failures treating hospitalized patients (i.e. the South Korean MERS cases).

Anyone have a sober perspective of how bad this is likely to get? Is this comparable to a bad but forgetten-by-the-next-year flu strain? To SARS? To the Spanish Flu?

bart_spoon 7y ago

I don't think we can know yet. It's infected around 300 people, 6 of whom have died, putting a mortality rate of around 2%. Thats not as bad as SARS, which was 10%, but its early. SARS ended up being restricted to around 8000 people, mostly concentrated in China, though eventually spreading to dozens of countries, but its impossible to say how far and wide this one could spread, especially given that the outbreak is occuring on the eve of Chinese New Year. According to some of the sources I've found online, coronaviruses tend to be much less easily spread from human to human than something like the flu, but just a few days ago officials were saying they didn't think this virus was transmissible between humans, which they now have confirmed is in fact possible, so clearly its a very fast developing situation.

Fomite 7y ago
That mortality rate isn't at all reliable at this point - we have lots of unconfirmed cases which messes with the denominator, and we haven't had all the people who do have it develop their outcome. 2% is very much a best-case estimate right now.

redis_mlc 7y ago

SARS was about as lucky as you can get without pandemic. With the availability of international airline travel, there's no limit to how far and fast a disease can travel now. Toronto had a big SARS scare when one of the patients who was told to quarantine himself instead went to work ...

clanged 7y ago

On the average-case risk, it is unlikely to get "bad." (if bad is defined as being similar to SARS or MERS.) However, its current worst-case risk is similar severity, with n=(500-1000) individuals who may pass away fatally if it does get "bad."

Fomite 7y ago

I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist who has worked on Ebola and MERS (along with some other stuff). I'd peg it, right now, at SARS-levels of bad. Most early modeling estimates, from people who know their stuff, are estimating the number of infections at a few thousand. Bad in China, likely sporadic outbreaks elsewhere due to infection control failures treating hospitalized patients (i.e. the South Korean MERS cases).