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I would be more concerned if the ones that are outside of China were dying at high rates. So far I haven’t heard any of those quarantined people actually dying.

by tempsy 7y ago

I would be more concerned if the ones that are outside of China were dying at high rates. So far I haven’t heard any of those quarantined people actually dying. The ones in the US have been listed in fair condition and recovering.

SomewhatLikely 7y ago
The deaths are mostly among older ages, 60s, 70s, 80s. This group is probably less likely to be traveling.
- djmips 7y ago
  But does that matter when young infected people are traveling.
ComputerGuru 7y ago
Dying at a high rate doesn’t matter if they do so quickly. That’s why Ebola has failed to become a global pandemic: it’s too potent and kills hosts before they have a chance to infect enough others.
- adrr 7y ago
  Ebola is also not airborne it’s spread by bodily fluids. You can’t get it from someone coughing. People flew on planes infected with Ebola and didn’t spread it. It was overhyped by the media. In 1st world nations, it had no means to really spread like cholera.
  - Scea91 7y ago
    Ebola was also contained because of tremendous effort of many people, often risking their own lives. Thanks to them you now have the luxury to call it overhyped.
tunesmith 7y ago
General consensus so far seems to be about twice as fatal as the annual flu. (Which says nothing about transmissibility rate / R0, which they are still figuring out.) Really rough numbers, annual flu is around 0.1% , while the spanish flu was more like 2.5% So, not a pandemic in terms of fatality. General sense so far seems to be it's more of a big deal than the (run-of-the-mill) flu, less of a big deal than SARS. (Keep in mind that the run-of-the-mill flu is kind of a big deal.)
- mrb 7y ago
  Care to quote a source for "twice as fatal as the flu"? Everything indicates it's way worse. 6 of the first 41 identified patients have died. That's a mortality rate of 15%. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Caveat: 41 is a very small sample, and the first patients are likely to have been the most severe cases (pre-existing conditions, weak immune systems, etc). And when you take publicly reported statistics, 42 deaths out of 1441 confirmed cases, that's a mortality rate of 2.9%. But the confirmed cases are probably under-reported (but so are deaths)... 15% or 2.9% are 150-30 times worse than the flu mortality rate.
  - ggm 7y ago
    Need better data to get better mortality rate. Stop hyperbole, let the epidemiologists call it.
    - mrb 7y ago
      Of course, we need better data. But tunesmith was downplaying numbers with unsourced claims, so he needed to be corrected. The latest stats: 54 deaths out of 1764 cases → 3.1% mortality rate https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/01/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/ https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/01/the-latest-coronavirus...
      - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
        All things considered, it's highly likely that there are more unreported cases than unreported deaths, which means that the actual mortality rate is lower. What we need is stats on cured vs died for confirmed cases, but I haven't seen recent figures on that for a while, plus there's an inevitable delay on declaring somebody cured.

by tempsy 7y ago

SomewhatLikely 7y ago

The deaths are mostly among older ages, 60s, 70s, 80s. This group is probably less likely to be traveling.

djmips 7y ago
But does that matter when young infected people are traveling.

ComputerGuru 7y ago

Dying at a high rate doesn’t matter if they do so quickly. That’s why Ebola has failed to become a global pandemic: it’s too potent and kills hosts before they have a chance to infect enough others.

adrr 7y ago
Ebola is also not airborne it’s spread by bodily fluids. You can’t get it from someone coughing. People flew on planes infected with Ebola and didn’t spread it. It was overhyped by the media. In 1st world nations, it had no means to really spread like cholera.
- Scea91 7y ago
  Ebola was also contained because of tremendous effort of many people, often risking their own lives. Thanks to them you now have the luxury to call it overhyped.

tunesmith 7y ago

General consensus so far seems to be about twice as fatal as the annual flu. (Which says nothing about transmissibility rate / R0, which they are still figuring out.) Really rough numbers, annual flu is around 0.1% , while the spanish flu was more like 2.5% So, not a pandemic in terms of fatality. General sense so far seems to be it's more of a big deal than the (run-of-the-mill) flu, less of a big deal than SARS. (Keep in mind that the run-of-the-mill flu is kind of a big deal.)

mrb 7y ago
Care to quote a source for "twice as fatal as the flu"? Everything indicates it's way worse. 6 of the first 41 identified patients have died. That's a mortality rate of 15%. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Caveat: 41 is a very small sample, and the first patients are likely to have been the most severe cases (pre-existing conditions, weak immune systems, etc). And when you take publicly reported statistics, 42 deaths out of 1441 confirmed cases, that's a mortality rate of 2.9%. But the confirmed cases are probably under-reported (but so are deaths)... 15% or 2.9% are 150-30 times worse than the flu mortality rate.
- ggm 7y ago
  Need better data to get better mortality rate. Stop hyperbole, let the epidemiologists call it.
  - mrb 7y ago
    Of course, we need better data. But tunesmith was downplaying numbers with unsourced claims, so he needed to be corrected. The latest stats: 54 deaths out of 1764 cases → 3.1% mortality rate https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/01/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/ https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/01/the-latest-coronavirus...
    - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
      All things considered, it's highly likely that there are more unreported cases than unreported deaths, which means that the actual mortality rate is lower. What we need is stats on cured vs died for confirmed cases, but I haven't seen recent figures on that for a while, plus there's an inevitable delay on declaring somebody cured.