32 ms·

WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

495 points by colinprince 7y ago

david927 7y ago
Finally
d1576009 7y ago
Could we perhaps solve this with Node.js?
feanaro 7y ago
WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation.
- gruez 7y ago
  >they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. >At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation. but it's true though. there's limited evidence that travel bans will stop the spread of the infection. the evidence ranges between "no effect at all" to "delayed infection by a few days". https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavirus-travel-ban https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavir...
  - emptysongglass 7y ago
    This doesn't make any sense if I step through it mentally. If you're a carrier of a virus and you have to hoof it to my end of the world, it's going to take you a whole lot longer to get there than if you flew. This is absolute fact. The faster vectors you give to something to transport a thing, that thing will move to its destination that much faster. You don't need science to grok this.
    - duckMuppet 7y ago
      It's vox. Don't look for intellect from such sources.
    - CamelCaseName 7y ago
      A few passages from the article: > But the trouble is, they don’t appear to be helpful. At best, travel restrictions, and even airport screenings, delay the spread of disease but don’t impact the number of people who eventually get sick. Instead, they make it harder for international aid and experts to reach communities affected by disease. They are also expensive, resource-intensive, and potentially harmful to the economies of cities and countries involved. On the H1N1 travel bans: > Again, reduced travel delayed (by three days!) but didn’t stop disease spread. The authors wrote, “No containment was achieved by such restrictions and the virus was able to reach pandemic proportions in a short time.” So, why? > It’s expensive and nearly impossible to seal off the borders of a country, the authors of the paper wrote. People will inevitably move — even indirectly from the countries that are quarantined. --- The article gives a number of examples as well.
      - staticautomatic 7y ago
        How can a ban only on nonessential travel affect aid workers and experts, who are clearly essential?
        throwanem 7y ago
        Have you never seen a bureaucracy in a hurry? It is not, to borrow a word, agile.
        staticautomatic 7y ago
        I don't understand what your point is. Are you saying the bans are not limited to non-essential travel? Because everything I've read about them thus far has said they are.
        topmonk 7y ago
  - feanaro 7y ago
    There are many variables when it comes to travel restriction. "Travel restriction" is simply not a binary category which you either have or do not have. Hence, I'm unconvinced by a universal conclusion of "travel restriction does not work" from a few retrospective studies of a few heterogeneous cases of past travel restrictions. I maintain that we should not give in to the conclusion that global spread of infections is simply inevitable, except by chance, and write off restricted mobility completely.
    - duckMuppet 7y ago
      While it's true you cannot prevent with certainty every possibility of the virus coming here, but by implementing travel restrictions you do inhibit and create barriers of it's spread. This can mean The difference between multiple cities being ravaged by a disease instead of smaller groups of infected individuals.
      - gruez 7y ago
        >This can mean The difference between multiple cities being ravaged by a disease instead of smaller groups of infected individuals. That sounds nice in theory, but there's no literature backing this up.
        feanaro 7y ago
        On the other hand, there simply cannot be literature to back it up unless it is tried systematically. These two things are in direct opposition. In any other experiment, we wouldn't treat the presently available level of evidence as indicative of the final state of knowledge on the matter.
  - chaostheory 7y ago
    Other studies say travel restrictions delay infection by 2-3 weeks which is precious extra time for vaccine development and rollout. An extra month matters
    - gruez 7y ago
      Where are these "other studies"?
      - chaostheory 7y ago
        They’re on google. This took me less than a minute to find: https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/12/14-135590/en/ https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/12/14-135590/en/ That WHO post argues against travel restrictions, yet: “In one simulation, border controls preventing 99.9% of cases entering any given country delayed epidemic spread by up to 35 days.” 35 days is a lot of time, assuming a vaccine rollout is inevitable and successful There are other papers which are proponents for controlling and restricting travel.
        feanaro 7y ago
        Thanks for this. Another excerpt I found particularly interesting: > Internal travel restrictions in England, Scotland and Wales in the United Kingdom were predicted to have minimal impact on the magnitude of the peak and in delaying the spread of the epidemic – possibly because there are some densely populated urban areas and relatively high levels of population movement. However, in a recent review, it was estimated that a combination of internal and international travel restrictions could help to stagger the impact of a pandemic within a country such as the United Kingdom, by desynchronizing localized outbreaks. This is exactly the kind of unforeseen interaction effects I had in mind a few comments above when I said I'm not convinced we are able to conclude that "travel restrictions do not work" from the present studies. This particular effect will quite obviously also depend on epidemiological factors such as the length of incubation period, whether the disease is transmissible during the incubation period and so on. There are far too many variables to account for and far too little experimentation has been done so far to conclude anything firmly.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. I wonder if they don't want to piss off China and make it say, "Fine, we're not going to cooperate with you. We'll handle it ourselves." From what I've read, China, and especially the Chinese government, doesn't seem to respond well to the sort of light criticism that people and governments in the west would blow off.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    True, China doesn't respond well to criticism. I don't often see them taking clearly stupid actions in response, though.
  - fasthandle 7y ago
    This was my interpretation also. From non-reporting through December to rapid change at the end of December to lockdown of any social venue from museums to restaurants throughout the country since Jan 25th, WHO are giving support to the policy awareness change. Source: Live in China. Watching the group in Imperial College closely as they've been giving closest analysis so far.
- totalZero 7y ago
  Restrictions on trade and travel discourage nations from being forthright about their infection and death data.
- MockObject 7y ago
  > WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. This was my favorite: > "The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Obvious cautious tip-toe is obvious.
  - Anon84 7y ago
    > Obvious cautious tip-toe is obvious. Yes and no. The guidelines for declaring a (Phase 5) outbreak is to have person to person transmission in 2+ regions of the world. https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_phase_descriptions_and_actions.pdf https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p... So, yes, it is about what's happening outside China.
  - dugditches 7y ago
    What about the next line? "Our greatest concern is the potential for this virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems which are ill-prepared to deal with it." I'd call it simply stating their reasoning rather than 'tip-toeing' or 'artificial praise'.
- m_alexgr 7y ago
  Some recent virus science for you: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.920249v1.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.920249v1.... "Notably, the new coronavirus provides a new lineage for almost half of its genome, with no close genetic relationships to other viruses within the subgenus of sarbecovirus. This genomic part comprises also half of the spike region encoding a multifunctional protein responsible also for virus entry into host cells[30, 31]. The unique genetic features of 2019-nCoV and their potential association with virus characteristics and virulence in humans remain to be elucidated." Hmmm... interesting. Edit, full title of article. "Full-genome evolutionary analysis of the novel corona virus (2019-nCoV) rejects the hypothesis of emergence as a result of a recent recombination event"
- jdlyga 7y ago
  You can get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit for it. The WHO wants to stop the spread of the virus. If buttering up China and praising them in public gets this done, then so be it.
pastor_elm 7y ago
Any good models that predict the peak of this?
- Anon84 7y ago
  You might want to give http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/ http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/ whirl. You can simulate any epidemic model on a real-life datasets of mobility and healthcare access around the world. The tricky part is know exactly what the "correct" epidemic model is: length of latent/infectious/etc periods, etc. Full disclosure: I was once one of the main developers of this epidemic modeling framework.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - defgeneric 7y ago
    This is really cool! Are there any existing models to start with?
    - Anon84 7y ago
      I've been disconnected from GLEaM for a while now, so I might be missing something better, but the user manual (http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/GLEAMviz_client_manual_v7.0.pdf http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/GLEAMviz_client_manual_v7....) guides you thorough an example on Sec 4
  - benji_is_me 7y ago
    Coincidentally I was just looking at gleamviz the other day (I was googling around for accurate modeling programs). Sadly when I tried the linux version, it segfaults after some Qt error.
- woutr_be 7y ago
  Not a prediction, but if what I'm reading in the news is true, it's supposed to peak within two weeks.
- 7y ago
splittingTimes 7y ago
How is this worse than your normal influenza cycle with 3-5Mio infections and 290k-650k death to warrant such an emergency?
- rococode 7y ago
  Without delving into any of the numbers here since they're still mostly speculation (we don't know how many people are really infected / dead), I think it's safe to say that two deadly seasonal illnesses is worse than one and is an outcome worth trying to prevent.
- guiomie 7y ago
  I haven't heard of the flu shutting down a 11 million habitant city. The flu doesn't kill 290-650k per cycle, its more like 12-60k.
  - alamortsubite 7y ago
    It sounds like a lot, but seasonal influenza does kill 290-650k people annually. The 12-60k range is for the U.S., alone.
- cheeseblubber 7y ago
  The issue isn't absolute numbers. We don't know the deadliness of the current outbreak. Lets take the flu for example. According to CDC https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e.... The death rate is around 0.09% at the worst according the numbers on the cdc estimates (Which is a very pessimistic estimate). If the coronavirus has a mortality rate of 1/100 it would make 10x more deadly than the flu.
  - DarthGhandi 7y ago
    That's the mortality rate in the US. Worldwide it's much higher and goes up to 600,000 deaths annually.
durpleDrank 7y ago
Can we PLEASE collectively put our manners aside and confront people who are not covering their mouths when they cough? I'm very aggravated that people don't. What is going through the mind of a person who deep coughs, open mouth, without cover, in public transport? It's depressing.
- Velofellow 7y ago
  Go for it. See if your action pulls us towards collective action. Do you chastise every person you see breaking this social norm?
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    Do you chastise every person you see breaking this social norm? It's not a "social norm." It's a public health issue. When I see a little kid in a public bathroom go straight from stall to door without looking at the sink, I'll shout at them. 100% of the time they turn around and do the right thing.
    - crysin 7y ago
      I hope you do the same to the adults, cause there's no shortage of adult (men) that do the exact same. It's honestly distressing.
  - burundi_coffee 7y ago
    If I see anyone even trying to go for the bathroom door without washing their hands I'll definitely be shouting at them until they wash their hands and follow them (at a sanitary distance) in order to ruin their day and make sure everyone they come in contact with knows they've got significant amounts of fecal matter on their hands. I wish I was only joking.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Or people who don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom. I'm tired of dumb people saying, "Well, I don't pee on my hands!" Yeah, but you touched your junk, rocket surgeon. Even worse are people who use their phones while going to the bathroom or even at the urinal, then bring their nasty phones back into the office and put them on other people's desks. Gross. On the other hand, there are a few people in the office who go all Lady MacBeth every time they flush. Good for them.
abhisuri97 7y ago
This is (imo) the right course of action to (at minimum) alert countries wrt the gravity of this outbreak; however, I was disappointed to see the tiptoeing around potentially offending China. From the press conference, it seemed that Dr. Tedros made it painfully (maybe even unnecessarily) clear that this action wasn't faulting China for their handling of this situation. It's just weird to see that global politics is creeping into these public health decisions.
- TurkishPoptart 7y ago
  It's almost as if the more authoritarian a country is, the thinner its skin becomes (i.e. tolerance of criticism). I'm tired of kow-towing to Communists.
- Rooster61 7y ago
  It's not just politics. This is matter of trying to placate China so that they don't hide numbers from international/outside health organizations to save face. My understanding is that China was less than forthcoming about actual infection/death rates when SARS was making it's rounds. Disclaimer: I do not have a source for this. This is heresay from the hubub around the current crisis so take it with a grain of salt.
  - projectileboy 7y ago
    “Save face”. Unfortunately there is a LOT to unpack in that statement, and will continue to be a difficult problem throughout the coming century.
    - Rooster61 7y ago
      That wasn't necessarily meant to be derogatory. And you are right, there is indeed a lot to unpack. My wording there might be a bit too glib.
  - unethical_ban 7y ago
    I was surprised by an NPR blurb yesterday talking about how China may have to put off its annual Communist party planning meeting, and how that would be an embarrassing concession by the Chinese. I was so disappointed in them. How should it be embarrassing to take a deadly and contagious pneumonia outbreak seriously? Do you want them to feel they should hide it? (You being NPR). I know you don't mean anything bad by it.
UI_at_80x24 7y ago
Coronavirus: -5,974 confirmed cases -170 deaths [1]For comparisons the SARS outbreak of 2003: -8,098 people worldwide became sick -774 died [1]https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html
- guiomie 7y ago
  Could you add the timeframe of each pandemic? I believe the coronavirus is 1-2 months old, but how long was SARS to get to 774? I feel like the comparaison isn't great without timeline.
  - arkadiyt 7y ago
    Here are some graphs showing exactly that: https://ncov.r6.no/ https://ncov.r6.no/ It's also worth noting that the ~8k confirmed cases are bottlenecked by how fast China can perform tests. Here's an article guesstimating that there were up to 100k infections a few days ago: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-could-infect-100000-globally-experts-warn https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-...
    - alamortsubite 7y ago
      > It's also worth noting that the ~8k confirmed cases are bottlenecked by how fast China can perform tests. Do you have more info on this? I thought the test was a simple swab deal that a country like China could crank through like nobody's business. Like, at least for a few more orders of magnitude.
      - alamortsubite 7y ago
        Replying to myself, this article linked in a sibling comment discusses the issue: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/30/asia/chinese-health-care-virus-intl-hnk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/30/asia/chinese-health-care-...
    - fuj 7y ago
goblin89 7y ago
Running the official numbers, mortality rate is less than 3%. If we plug in estimative models claiming 25000+ unrecorded infections, mortality is less than 1%. Unless you are in a sensitive age group or have other health problems, data suggests you're most likely to get over it as a regular flu. It's not all perfect and is worse than a regular flu, but especially now after the announcement some people may way over-stress themselves which doesn't do good to your immune system.
- andrewflnr 7y ago
  1% mortality would still be pretty substantial as these things go.
  - goblin89 7y ago
    That's true. Still as someone with anxieties I find it a useful perspective to assess personal threat level. First reaction is "I need to avoid becoming infected at all costs". However, the costs are steep. An extreme plan to “sit at home with a month’s worth of supplies” seems plausible, but it would not be healthy to reduce movement so much and if everyone suddenly starts doing that there will be issues with food availability in the area (I live in HK). If I am statistically so unlikely to die from this infection, I am going to take measures that prevent me from spreading it to someone who isn’t, but I won’t e.g. panic and call police if someone without a mask is near me.
  - bra4you 7y ago
    Yes. But not threatening for the human population at all.
- ecneladis 7y ago
  These calculations assume that no one else infected dies. Seems overly optimistic, especially given that ~1200 patients are in serious or critical condition.
  - goblin89 7y ago
    I try to keep that in mind, but I also keep in mind that many people do not report to the hospital when sick.
WilTimSon 7y ago
The way all global superpowers and, by extension, their organizations have to babysit China's government has gone from ridiculous to ridiculously dangerous. Politicans pretend not to notice human rights abuses, ignore the fact that the regime is repressive and a danger to its own people, and now try to act like saying 'Hey, the virus originated in this country, hope they contain it' is some horribly offensive thing. It's unjustifiable in my eyes.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- segmondy 7y ago
  Grow up. WHO is not an organization to talk about human rights or other things. It's HEALTH, that's what the H is in. China started of slow, but they have really stepped up in doing their part to help contain the virus. Nothing wrong with recognizing their effort. Let's not forget that the scientists working around the clock in that country are not "China" but individuals like you and me.
  - WilTimSon 7y ago
    a) 'Grow up' is not useful discourse, please leave that stuff on social media. b) Recognizing their effort is fine and the right thing to do. Saying 'oh, we don't need travel blocks' when the virus seems to mainly be spread from one province is dangerous. And this following part is just wildly misleading and a clear attempt to babysit the Chinese government's feelings: "The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please edit personal swipes like "Grow up." out of your posts to HN. They break the site guidelines. Your comment would be fine without that bit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 7y ago
throwaway846657 7y ago
It seemed during the conference that they were trying their best to not step on Beijing's toes. I wonder if they think China would stop cooperating if they called them out on their poor containment procedures.
- DarthGhandi 7y ago
  How is locking down an entire city "poor containment". Find it staggering to insinuate that were it originating in Western countries we'd do the same?
  - forever_spring 7y ago
    On timeline of events, there was a week or so of delay between first death + ICL paper and the city lockdown. It can be argued the lockdown was very late. The OP might also mean poor containment within China - which is only relying on other countries right now.
    - s1artibartfast 7y ago
      Very late relative to what? Certainly later than one would hope, but is there a real world benchmark for the handling situations like this that they fell short of? Have similar viruses crossed over in other countries and been handled better?
      - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
        International Conventions on Quarantines were basically established at a time when the most common global transmission of viruses was by sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine#International_conventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine#International_conve...
    - DarthGhandi 7y ago
      > containment within China I find it incredibly hard to believe if this happened in other countries they'd simply ban all travel into and out of the nation. Would your country do that given the same circumstance?
mrb 7y ago
It's about time... All early characteristics of the novel coronavirus indicate it's far more dangerous than SARS/MERS/seasonal flu (which kills 30-60k/year in the US) so, unless a cure is found soon, we should expect it to kill more people than these other diseases combined : https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1222631493324828672 https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/122263149332482867...
- treis 7y ago
  Viruses tend to become less deadly as they spread because dead people don't spread disease. Typically it mutates slightly into a less deadly strain. Then that strain spreads more quickly and gives the population some level of immunity against the more deadly one.
  - munificent 7y ago
    > Viruses tend to become less deadly as they spread because dead people don't spread disease. This is why the longer incubation time of this coronavirus is such a concern. It gives a potentially fatal disease more time to spread before it self limits. Also, I've heard reports that some infected are asymptomatic, so it may continue to spread even while taking out some people.
  - dpark 7y ago
    This sounds like extremely wishful thinking. Is there some support for this claim?
    - lgl 7y ago
      Yes, it's called evolution. But since this is hn, here're a few articles/papers on the subject. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/071201_adenovirus https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/071201_adenov... https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2014/11/26/1413339111.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2014/11/26/141333911... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2639916/pdf/8969242.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2639916/pdf/896... http://hedrick.ucsd.edu/BICD136/PDF-links/Galvani-Epid-evol.pdf http://hedrick.ucsd.edu/BICD136/PDF-links/Galvani-Epid-evol....
cheeseblubber 7y ago
For those who are referencing the flu and it's mortality rate here are estimates from the CDC for 2019 * 15,000,000 – 21,000,000 who had the flu * 8,200 – 20,000 deaths from the flu The morality rate ranges from 0.03% to 0.09% or 3/10000 9/10000 https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...
- hanniabu 7y ago
  Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?
  - cheeseblubber 7y ago
    It seems to be too early to tell. There are most likely a lot of undocumented infected cases as well as the incubation period for the virus might be different than the flu. Which can move mortality rate both ways.
  - yelnatz 7y ago
    Well 170/~7000 is ~2.4% which is about 8x deadlier.
    - Waterluvian 7y ago
      I think you're off by a few orders.
      - postalrat 7y ago
        Like one order? You might be more wrong than him.
        Waterluvian 7y ago
        Isn't it like 0.09% of deaths vs 2% of deaths? I certainly could be misunderstanding the data!
vackosar 7y ago
here is simple intraday real-time coronavirus infected count predictor with log scale. If I am right it goes up every minute or so https://www.coronaviruschart.com/ https://www.coronaviruschart.com/
michalu 7y ago
Also good real-time chart: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... tracks confirmed cases and recoveries too.
- brockwhittaker 7y ago
  Here’s another chart that’s more mobile responsive: https://flu.io/ https://flu.io/
- rococode 7y ago
  BNO has a helpful timeline with a timestamp for each individual case update (and links to reputable sources): https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/01/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/ https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/01/the-latest-coronavirus...
- InterestBazinga 7y ago
  Anyone know what APIs is the map hooked onto?
- mrtksn 7y ago
  >Last Update: Jan 30, 2020 11 am EST. It is not a real-time map, I find it bizarre that people believe that we can track the population's wellbeing in real-time. Are you ready to be hooked up to such a system?
  - starpilot 7y ago
    Nothing is real time due to the finite speed of light.
    - mrtksn 7y ago
      I would say flightradar24 is real-time plane tracking and wouldn't say that Reddit is a real-time news source. The difference would be that there's a system in place that consistently and automatically updates the information by gathering data from other real-time systems.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jmccorm 7y ago
Apart from more people falling sick (as bad as that is), is there a more fundamental concern that if it runs wild in a less developed country, it'll mutate into something more dangerous? As infections climb, the coronavirus (based on less stable RNA) gets more chances to mutate into something even more virulent or deadly?
- rwmj 7y ago
  Flu viruses get less dangerous over time. The more deadly strains literally kill off their hosts, making those strains less likely to spread.
  - jmccorm 7y ago
    Is that a universal truth, or is it historical? Situational? This virus is said to spread well before a person even knows they're infected. A mutation could simply extend that period. Or it could increase the degree to which it is contagious without affecting mortality, right? Or are you saying that this simply doesn't happen in the real world? Flu viruses only mutate with regards to lethality, and only in a way that works against its overall impact?
    - bra4you 7y ago
      "Is that a universal truth, or is it historical? Situational?" It it experience based on historical data. A virus jumping to a new host (species) will be more aggressive in the beginning until it has adopted (mutated) to his new host. While this is not a universal truth, it is experience and could also be backed up mathematically (>host dies to soon, virus can not spread) and by game theory.
wyldfire 7y ago
Stupid question: is it possible that hygiene practices contribute to outbreaks like this? I remember reading or hearing that one input to recent wildfires was the fact that decades of controlled burns to limit the spread of wildfires left a lot of available fuel that otherwise would have burned naturally. So in that vein, do we have humans with compromised immunity thriving but susceptible to inter-species mutations like this novel coronavirus?
- slumdev 7y ago
  Hygiene practices can prevent the spread of diseases like this. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, etc. Wear a surgical mask and limit interactions with others if you're sick. But this virus spreads via droplet transmission, so just being within 6 feet of someone who's infected (and coughs/sneezes) is enough to spread it. If you're referring to the overuse of hand sanitizer and other disinfectant agents, it might be reasonable to conjecture that their use contributes to the spread of pathogenic bacteria because they destroy non-pathogenic bacteria that could out-compete the pathogenic ones for resources. But this is a virus. It doesn't reproduce outside the body, so I don't think that train of thought applies here.
  - wyldfire 7y ago
    > If you're referring to the overuse of hand sanitizer and other disinfectant agents I'm thinking more generally: I was thinking along these lines because the news report I heard [1] described 'wet markets' as a place where disease spread. I'd never heard of it before. But it occurred to me that centuries ago, this kind of thing might have been more common. Processes and regulations for handling of animal products are a net benefit but I wonder if there are any drawbacks. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/01/29/800725826/why-wet-markets-are-the-perfect-place-to-spread-disease https://www.npr.org/2020/01/29/800725826/why-wet-markets-are...
    - Symmetry 7y ago
      Oh, eating of bushmeat is certainly how this made the jump from bats to humans in the first place. But it doesn't really have anything to do with its spread among humans.
BenS 7y ago
Dr. Eric Ding has been tweeting timely and detailed information: https://twitter.com/drericding https://twitter.com/drericding
- Fomite 7y ago
  No, Eric Ding has been tweeting pretty terrible misinformation, and is being rightly dragged for it by pretty much every epidemiologist I know on Twitter, including myself. His takes are bad. He's called this virus's R0 the worst he's seen in his career, which is absurd. He's conflated R0 and attack rate. Familiar errors because no one pays attention to ID epidemiology until there's an outbreak, and then suddenly decides they're an expert. If one must go to Twitter for ones epidemiology, I'd suggest Tara Smith (@aetiology) or Maia Majumder (@maiamajumder), both of whom are actual ID epidemiologists and science communicators.
  - el_benhameen 7y ago
    I’ve seen your comments on several CoV articles here, and this one, like the others, has really helped me contextualize the information I’m seeing and feel a little less nervous. Thanks for taking the time to add your input here.
    - Fomite 7y ago
      My pleasure.
  - potatoFam 7y ago
    Could you let us know what ID epidemiologists are? I'm not familiar with the field and am wondering what the ID stands for.
    - phreeza 7y ago
      Infectious disease, I think.
    - Fomite 7y ago
bulutsuzku 7y ago
What to do EXACTLY if a person has symptoms and the Hospital is full?
ferest 7y ago
apparently science is not working as "how things feel/look like", but about evidence and proof. Same thing applies to gov or org, it's not guided by message on social media, but according to the guidance and standard procedure. This kind of practice are very normal cross every industry, from construction safety guide to medicine testing. According to [1], WHO or CDC will only report phase 2 and take actions when there is no evidence of human-to-human infection, and declare phase 5 or 6 base on the information unveiled. And from [2], declare PHEIC when there is human-to-human infection cross border. > A PHEIC is defined in the IHR (2005) as, “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response”. This definition implies a situation that is: * serious, sudden, unusual or unexpected; * carries implications for public health beyond the affected State’s national border; and * may require immediate international action. [1]: https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_phase_descriptions_and_actions.pdf https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p... [2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/what-are-the-international-health-regulations-and-emergency-committees https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/what-are-the-intern...
deleted 7y ago
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ekianjo 7y ago
An emergency yet planes are still flying in and out of China? It makes you wonder why travel has not been completely banned yet.
- yibg 7y ago
  I’ve been seeing this type of reaction a lot lately, but isn’t locking down 1/5 of the worlds population a bit extreme? I mean it’s not like we have a zombie virus going on here.
linsomniac 7y ago
My daughter and I just had this conversation: Her: "They just declared a global health emergency over Coronavirus." Me: "Who did." Her: "The World Health Organization." Me: "That's what I said."
- serf 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_on_First%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_on_First%3F >The premise of the sketch is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team for Costello, but their names and nicknames can be interpreted as non-responsive answers to Costello's questions. For example, the first baseman is named "Who"; thus, the utterance "Who's on first" is ambiguous between the question ("Which person is the first baseman?") and the answer ("The name of the first baseman is 'Who'"). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M I imagine that kind of ambiguity has been 'played' with for forever, though.
  - linsomniac 7y ago
    It was only after typing this up that I realized the parallel with Who's on first. Brilliant bit.
- topmonk 7y ago
  You were incorrect. Your daughter said “The W.H.O.” where as you only said “Who”
  - linsomniac 7y ago
    Sooo... You're asserting initialism vs acronym and I'm asserting comedy? Sorry if I took you away from fact checking open mic night. :-D
    - topmonk 7y ago
      I'm not asserting initialism vs acronyms. I'm talking about the grammar of "Who did". If you actually meant the World Health Organization, you'd have to interpret that as "World Health Organization did". This is obvious incorrect, and rather should be "The World Health Organization did". So there is no way for your daughter to have interpreted what you said as talking about the World Health Organization, whether initialism or acronym. > Sorry if I took you away from fact checking open mic night. :-D No, I wasn't distracted at all. Thanks for the concern, though.
killjoywashere 7y ago
One of the downstream incentives for this action is that folks like the CDC can point to it as a reason to make more resources available. Concretely, they can order the production of the oligomers needed for PCR testing.
hybrid_cluster 7y ago
Just trying to keep up with the developments via Twitter and Youtube over the past few days has been detrimental to my mental health. People are supposedly falling over on the streets in pools of blood; dead people are lying in hospitals unattended; cremation facilities are operating in overdrive and cremation fires can be seen from space - all of it backed up by footage that, at first glance, seems legit but is mostly taken out of context. I'm a mild hypochondriac and every time one of these posts pops up, I can feel my cortisol spiking. I'm sure I'm not the only one in this regard, and I wonder whether the health costs associated with the spread of misinformation (panic attacks, anxiety, and long term effects) will not outweigh the actual costs of the virus in many countries other than China.
brigandish 7y ago
We all seem to be talking about guesstimates and data we can't be sure of, but I see little talk of what we can do. If this were a tech problem - a big problem that seemed insurmountable - I would break it down into chunks as best I could, look at all the parts of the chain, and ask myself which I could be most effective in tackling first. Treat it like a sprint. Which part of the chain would that be? With the caveat I'm not a domain expert, obviously, I'd go for the lack of testing kits - what makes testing for something like this so hard and so hard at scale? Maybe it isn't and it's the supply of kits. Is this not something that is also "fixable"? There's a lot of intelligent and capable people on this forum, why not throw some pasta at the wall?
- fendy3002 7y ago
  If true, it's mainly because nCov can spread before showing any symptoms. And if true, that testing before 1 week after infection showing negative sign makes it worse. Now imagine how to prevent a net virus from spreading, where it doesn't show any symptom and scanning it before 1 week shows negative result, while during that time it can easily infect other. Testing in real people isn't cheap, and currently there is no proven cure either (afaik). Vaccine is the best solution but it hasn't been found yet.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  Well, as far as throwing pasta at the wall - it sounds a little bit like Engineer's disease to think that we can come up with a solution by thinking hard on the problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812975 Obviously I'm as arrogant as the the next guy, but I think that arrogant next guy is probably already working on this issue and has a bunch of background in domain expertise and specific knowledge of the logistics I won't manage in a side project while commenting in between fixing bugs on the Equity/Credit analysis app I'm working on right now. Just my 2 cents, and 2 cents is not worth much in this economy.
  - brigandish 7y ago
    Throwing pasta at a wall implies that the idea of coming up with an idea is unlikely, thus not being arrogant, but also points out that it is possible, which it is. As it is, I'd prefer the focus moved to solutions from speculation, at least it's an attitude I'm more comfortable with.
Amarok 7y ago
Do we have accurate figures for the mortality demographics?

495 points by colinprince 7y ago

david927 7y ago

Finally

d1576009 7y ago

Could we perhaps solve this with Node.js?

feanaro 7y ago

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation.

gruez 7y ago
>they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. >At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation. but it's true though. there's limited evidence that travel bans will stop the spread of the infection. the evidence ranges between "no effect at all" to "delayed infection by a few days". https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavirus-travel-ban https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavir...
- emptysongglass 7y ago
  This doesn't make any sense if I step through it mentally. If you're a carrier of a virus and you have to hoof it to my end of the world, it's going to take you a whole lot longer to get there than if you flew. This is absolute fact. The faster vectors you give to something to transport a thing, that thing will move to its destination that much faster. You don't need science to grok this.
  - duckMuppet 7y ago
    It's vox. Don't look for intellect from such sources.
  - CamelCaseName 7y ago
    A few passages from the article: > But the trouble is, they don’t appear to be helpful. At best, travel restrictions, and even airport screenings, delay the spread of disease but don’t impact the number of people who eventually get sick. Instead, they make it harder for international aid and experts to reach communities affected by disease. They are also expensive, resource-intensive, and potentially harmful to the economies of cities and countries involved. On the H1N1 travel bans: > Again, reduced travel delayed (by three days!) but didn’t stop disease spread. The authors wrote, “No containment was achieved by such restrictions and the virus was able to reach pandemic proportions in a short time.” So, why? > It’s expensive and nearly impossible to seal off the borders of a country, the authors of the paper wrote. People will inevitably move — even indirectly from the countries that are quarantined. --- The article gives a number of examples as well.
    - staticautomatic 7y ago
      How can a ban only on nonessential travel affect aid workers and experts, who are clearly essential?
      - throwanem 7y ago
        Have you never seen a bureaucracy in a hurry? It is not, to borrow a word, agile.
        staticautomatic 7y ago
        I don't understand what your point is. Are you saying the bans are not limited to non-essential travel? Because everything I've read about them thus far has said they are.
        topmonk 7y ago
- feanaro 7y ago
  There are many variables when it comes to travel restriction. "Travel restriction" is simply not a binary category which you either have or do not have. Hence, I'm unconvinced by a universal conclusion of "travel restriction does not work" from a few retrospective studies of a few heterogeneous cases of past travel restrictions. I maintain that we should not give in to the conclusion that global spread of infections is simply inevitable, except by chance, and write off restricted mobility completely.
  - duckMuppet 7y ago
    While it's true you cannot prevent with certainty every possibility of the virus coming here, but by implementing travel restrictions you do inhibit and create barriers of it's spread. This can mean The difference between multiple cities being ravaged by a disease instead of smaller groups of infected individuals.
    - gruez 7y ago
      >This can mean The difference between multiple cities being ravaged by a disease instead of smaller groups of infected individuals. That sounds nice in theory, but there's no literature backing this up.
      - feanaro 7y ago
        On the other hand, there simply cannot be literature to back it up unless it is tried systematically. These two things are in direct opposition. In any other experiment, we wouldn't treat the presently available level of evidence as indicative of the final state of knowledge on the matter.
- chaostheory 7y ago
  Other studies say travel restrictions delay infection by 2-3 weeks which is precious extra time for vaccine development and rollout. An extra month matters
  - gruez 7y ago
    Where are these "other studies"?
    - chaostheory 7y ago
      They’re on google. This took me less than a minute to find: https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/12/14-135590/en/ https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/12/14-135590/en/ That WHO post argues against travel restrictions, yet: “In one simulation, border controls preventing 99.9% of cases entering any given country delayed epidemic spread by up to 35 days.” 35 days is a lot of time, assuming a vaccine rollout is inevitable and successful There are other papers which are proponents for controlling and restricting travel.
      - feanaro 7y ago
        Thanks for this. Another excerpt I found particularly interesting: > Internal travel restrictions in England, Scotland and Wales in the United Kingdom were predicted to have minimal impact on the magnitude of the peak and in delaying the spread of the epidemic – possibly because there are some densely populated urban areas and relatively high levels of population movement. However, in a recent review, it was estimated that a combination of internal and international travel restrictions could help to stagger the impact of a pandemic within a country such as the United Kingdom, by desynchronizing localized outbreaks. This is exactly the kind of unforeseen interaction effects I had in mind a few comments above when I said I'm not convinced we are able to conclude that "travel restrictions do not work" from the present studies. This particular effect will quite obviously also depend on epidemiological factors such as the length of incubation period, whether the disease is transmissible during the incubation period and so on. There are far too many variables to account for and far too little experimentation has been done so far to conclude anything firmly.
reaperducer 7y ago
WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. I wonder if they don't want to piss off China and make it say, "Fine, we're not going to cooperate with you. We'll handle it ourselves." From what I've read, China, and especially the Chinese government, doesn't seem to respond well to the sort of light criticism that people and governments in the west would blow off.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  True, China doesn't respond well to criticism. I don't often see them taking clearly stupid actions in response, though.
- fasthandle 7y ago
  This was my interpretation also. From non-reporting through December to rapid change at the end of December to lockdown of any social venue from museums to restaurants throughout the country since Jan 25th, WHO are giving support to the policy awareness change. Source: Live in China. Watching the group in Imperial College closely as they've been giving closest analysis so far.
totalZero 7y ago
Restrictions on trade and travel discourage nations from being forthright about their infection and death data.
MockObject 7y ago
> WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. This was my favorite: > "The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Obvious cautious tip-toe is obvious.
- Anon84 7y ago
  > Obvious cautious tip-toe is obvious. Yes and no. The guidelines for declaring a (Phase 5) outbreak is to have person to person transmission in 2+ regions of the world. https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_phase_descriptions_and_actions.pdf https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p... So, yes, it is about what's happening outside China.
- dugditches 7y ago
  What about the next line? "Our greatest concern is the potential for this virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems which are ill-prepared to deal with it." I'd call it simply stating their reasoning rather than 'tip-toeing' or 'artificial praise'.
m_alexgr 7y ago
Some recent virus science for you: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.920249v1.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.920249v1.... "Notably, the new coronavirus provides a new lineage for almost half of its genome, with no close genetic relationships to other viruses within the subgenus of sarbecovirus. This genomic part comprises also half of the spike region encoding a multifunctional protein responsible also for virus entry into host cells[30, 31]. The unique genetic features of 2019-nCoV and their potential association with virus characteristics and virulence in humans remain to be elucidated." Hmmm... interesting. Edit, full title of article. "Full-genome evolutionary analysis of the novel corona virus (2019-nCoV) rejects the hypothesis of emergence as a result of a recent recombination event"
jdlyga 7y ago
You can get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit for it. The WHO wants to stop the spread of the virus. If buttering up China and praising them in public gets this done, then so be it.

pastor_elm 7y ago

Any good models that predict the peak of this?

Anon84 7y ago
You might want to give http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/ http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/ whirl. You can simulate any epidemic model on a real-life datasets of mobility and healthcare access around the world. The tricky part is know exactly what the "correct" epidemic model is: length of latent/infectious/etc periods, etc. Full disclosure: I was once one of the main developers of this epidemic modeling framework.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- defgeneric 7y ago
  This is really cool! Are there any existing models to start with?
  - Anon84 7y ago
    I've been disconnected from GLEaM for a while now, so I might be missing something better, but the user manual (http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/GLEAMviz_client_manual_v7.0.pdf http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/GLEAMviz_client_manual_v7....) guides you thorough an example on Sec 4
- benji_is_me 7y ago
  Coincidentally I was just looking at gleamviz the other day (I was googling around for accurate modeling programs). Sadly when I tried the linux version, it segfaults after some Qt error.
woutr_be 7y ago
Not a prediction, but if what I'm reading in the news is true, it's supposed to peak within two weeks.
7y ago

splittingTimes 7y ago

How is this worse than your normal influenza cycle with 3-5Mio infections and 290k-650k death to warrant such an emergency?

rococode 7y ago
Without delving into any of the numbers here since they're still mostly speculation (we don't know how many people are really infected / dead), I think it's safe to say that two deadly seasonal illnesses is worse than one and is an outcome worth trying to prevent.
guiomie 7y ago
I haven't heard of the flu shutting down a 11 million habitant city. The flu doesn't kill 290-650k per cycle, its more like 12-60k.
- alamortsubite 7y ago
  It sounds like a lot, but seasonal influenza does kill 290-650k people annually. The 12-60k range is for the U.S., alone.
cheeseblubber 7y ago
The issue isn't absolute numbers. We don't know the deadliness of the current outbreak. Lets take the flu for example. According to CDC https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e.... The death rate is around 0.09% at the worst according the numbers on the cdc estimates (Which is a very pessimistic estimate). If the coronavirus has a mortality rate of 1/100 it would make 10x more deadly than the flu.
- DarthGhandi 7y ago
  That's the mortality rate in the US. Worldwide it's much higher and goes up to 600,000 deaths annually.

durpleDrank 7y ago

Can we PLEASE collectively put our manners aside and confront people who are not covering their mouths when they cough? I'm very aggravated that people don't. What is going through the mind of a person who deep coughs, open mouth, without cover, in public transport? It's depressing.

Velofellow 7y ago
Go for it. See if your action pulls us towards collective action. Do you chastise every person you see breaking this social norm?
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Do you chastise every person you see breaking this social norm? It's not a "social norm." It's a public health issue. When I see a little kid in a public bathroom go straight from stall to door without looking at the sink, I'll shout at them. 100% of the time they turn around and do the right thing.
  - crysin 7y ago
    I hope you do the same to the adults, cause there's no shortage of adult (men) that do the exact same. It's honestly distressing.
- burundi_coffee 7y ago
  If I see anyone even trying to go for the bathroom door without washing their hands I'll definitely be shouting at them until they wash their hands and follow them (at a sanitary distance) in order to ruin their day and make sure everyone they come in contact with knows they've got significant amounts of fecal matter on their hands. I wish I was only joking.
reaperducer 7y ago
Or people who don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom. I'm tired of dumb people saying, "Well, I don't pee on my hands!" Yeah, but you touched your junk, rocket surgeon. Even worse are people who use their phones while going to the bathroom or even at the urinal, then bring their nasty phones back into the office and put them on other people's desks. Gross. On the other hand, there are a few people in the office who go all Lady MacBeth every time they flush. Good for them.

abhisuri97 7y ago

This is (imo) the right course of action to (at minimum) alert countries wrt the gravity of this outbreak; however, I was disappointed to see the tiptoeing around potentially offending China. From the press conference, it seemed that Dr. Tedros made it painfully (maybe even unnecessarily) clear that this action wasn't faulting China for their handling of this situation. It's just weird to see that global politics is creeping into these public health decisions.

TurkishPoptart 7y ago
It's almost as if the more authoritarian a country is, the thinner its skin becomes (i.e. tolerance of criticism). I'm tired of kow-towing to Communists.
Rooster61 7y ago
It's not just politics. This is matter of trying to placate China so that they don't hide numbers from international/outside health organizations to save face. My understanding is that China was less than forthcoming about actual infection/death rates when SARS was making it's rounds. Disclaimer: I do not have a source for this. This is heresay from the hubub around the current crisis so take it with a grain of salt.
- projectileboy 7y ago
  “Save face”. Unfortunately there is a LOT to unpack in that statement, and will continue to be a difficult problem throughout the coming century.
  - Rooster61 7y ago
    That wasn't necessarily meant to be derogatory. And you are right, there is indeed a lot to unpack. My wording there might be a bit too glib.
- unethical_ban 7y ago
  I was surprised by an NPR blurb yesterday talking about how China may have to put off its annual Communist party planning meeting, and how that would be an embarrassing concession by the Chinese. I was so disappointed in them. How should it be embarrassing to take a deadly and contagious pneumonia outbreak seriously? Do you want them to feel they should hide it? (You being NPR). I know you don't mean anything bad by it.

UI_at_80x24 7y ago

Coronavirus: -5,974 confirmed cases -170 deaths [1]For comparisons the SARS outbreak of 2003: -8,098 people worldwide became sick -774 died [1]https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html

guiomie 7y ago
Could you add the timeframe of each pandemic? I believe the coronavirus is 1-2 months old, but how long was SARS to get to 774? I feel like the comparaison isn't great without timeline.
- arkadiyt 7y ago
  Here are some graphs showing exactly that: https://ncov.r6.no/ https://ncov.r6.no/ It's also worth noting that the ~8k confirmed cases are bottlenecked by how fast China can perform tests. Here's an article guesstimating that there were up to 100k infections a few days ago: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-could-infect-100000-globally-experts-warn https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-...
  - alamortsubite 7y ago
    > It's also worth noting that the ~8k confirmed cases are bottlenecked by how fast China can perform tests. Do you have more info on this? I thought the test was a simple swab deal that a country like China could crank through like nobody's business. Like, at least for a few more orders of magnitude.
    - alamortsubite 7y ago
      Replying to myself, this article linked in a sibling comment discusses the issue: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/30/asia/chinese-health-care-virus-intl-hnk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/30/asia/chinese-health-care-...
  - fuj 7y ago

goblin89 7y ago

Running the official numbers, mortality rate is less than 3%. If we plug in estimative models claiming 25000+ unrecorded infections, mortality is less than 1%. Unless you are in a sensitive age group or have other health problems, data suggests you're most likely to get over it as a regular flu. It's not all perfect and is worse than a regular flu, but especially now after the announcement some people may way over-stress themselves which doesn't do good to your immune system.

andrewflnr 7y ago
1% mortality would still be pretty substantial as these things go.
- goblin89 7y ago
  That's true. Still as someone with anxieties I find it a useful perspective to assess personal threat level. First reaction is "I need to avoid becoming infected at all costs". However, the costs are steep. An extreme plan to “sit at home with a month’s worth of supplies” seems plausible, but it would not be healthy to reduce movement so much and if everyone suddenly starts doing that there will be issues with food availability in the area (I live in HK). If I am statistically so unlikely to die from this infection, I am going to take measures that prevent me from spreading it to someone who isn’t, but I won’t e.g. panic and call police if someone without a mask is near me.
- bra4you 7y ago
  Yes. But not threatening for the human population at all.
ecneladis 7y ago
These calculations assume that no one else infected dies. Seems overly optimistic, especially given that ~1200 patients are in serious or critical condition.
- goblin89 7y ago
  I try to keep that in mind, but I also keep in mind that many people do not report to the hospital when sick.

WilTimSon 7y ago

The way all global superpowers and, by extension, their organizations have to babysit China's government has gone from ridiculous to ridiculously dangerous. Politicans pretend not to notice human rights abuses, ignore the fact that the regime is repressive and a danger to its own people, and now try to act like saying 'Hey, the virus originated in this country, hope they contain it' is some horribly offensive thing. It's unjustifiable in my eyes.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
segmondy 7y ago
Grow up. WHO is not an organization to talk about human rights or other things. It's HEALTH, that's what the H is in. China started of slow, but they have really stepped up in doing their part to help contain the virus. Nothing wrong with recognizing their effort. Let's not forget that the scientists working around the clock in that country are not "China" but individuals like you and me.
- WilTimSon 7y ago
  a) 'Grow up' is not useful discourse, please leave that stuff on social media. b) Recognizing their effort is fine and the right thing to do. Saying 'oh, we don't need travel blocks' when the virus seems to mainly be spread from one province is dangerous. And this following part is just wildly misleading and a clear attempt to babysit the Chinese government's feelings: "The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
- dang 7y ago
  Please edit personal swipes like "Grow up." out of your posts to HN. They break the site guidelines. Your comment would be fine without that bit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang 7y ago

throwaway846657 7y ago

It seemed during the conference that they were trying their best to not step on Beijing's toes. I wonder if they think China would stop cooperating if they called them out on their poor containment procedures.

DarthGhandi 7y ago
How is locking down an entire city "poor containment". Find it staggering to insinuate that were it originating in Western countries we'd do the same?
- forever_spring 7y ago
  On timeline of events, there was a week or so of delay between first death + ICL paper and the city lockdown. It can be argued the lockdown was very late. The OP might also mean poor containment within China - which is only relying on other countries right now.
  - s1artibartfast 7y ago
    Very late relative to what? Certainly later than one would hope, but is there a real world benchmark for the handling situations like this that they fell short of? Have similar viruses crossed over in other countries and been handled better?
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      International Conventions on Quarantines were basically established at a time when the most common global transmission of viruses was by sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine#International_conventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine#International_conve...
  - DarthGhandi 7y ago
    > containment within China I find it incredibly hard to believe if this happened in other countries they'd simply ban all travel into and out of the nation. Would your country do that given the same circumstance?

mrb 7y ago

It's about time... All early characteristics of the novel coronavirus indicate it's far more dangerous than SARS/MERS/seasonal flu (which kills 30-60k/year in the US) so, unless a cure is found soon, we should expect it to kill more people than these other diseases combined : https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1222631493324828672 https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/122263149332482867...

treis 7y ago
Viruses tend to become less deadly as they spread because dead people don't spread disease. Typically it mutates slightly into a less deadly strain. Then that strain spreads more quickly and gives the population some level of immunity against the more deadly one.
- munificent 7y ago
  > Viruses tend to become less deadly as they spread because dead people don't spread disease. This is why the longer incubation time of this coronavirus is such a concern. It gives a potentially fatal disease more time to spread before it self limits. Also, I've heard reports that some infected are asymptomatic, so it may continue to spread even while taking out some people.
- dpark 7y ago
  This sounds like extremely wishful thinking. Is there some support for this claim?
  - lgl 7y ago
    Yes, it's called evolution. But since this is hn, here're a few articles/papers on the subject. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/071201_adenovirus https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/071201_adenov... https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2014/11/26/1413339111.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2014/11/26/141333911... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2639916/pdf/8969242.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2639916/pdf/896... http://hedrick.ucsd.edu/BICD136/PDF-links/Galvani-Epid-evol.pdf http://hedrick.ucsd.edu/BICD136/PDF-links/Galvani-Epid-evol....

cheeseblubber 7y ago

For those who are referencing the flu and it's mortality rate here are estimates from the CDC for 2019 * 15,000,000 – 21,000,000 who had the flu * 8,200 – 20,000 deaths from the flu The morality rate ranges from 0.03% to 0.09% or 3/10000 9/10000 https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...

hanniabu 7y ago
Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?
- cheeseblubber 7y ago
  It seems to be too early to tell. There are most likely a lot of undocumented infected cases as well as the incubation period for the virus might be different than the flu. Which can move mortality rate both ways.
- yelnatz 7y ago
  Well 170/~7000 is ~2.4% which is about 8x deadlier.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    I think you're off by a few orders.
    - postalrat 7y ago
      Like one order? You might be more wrong than him.
      - Waterluvian 7y ago
        Isn't it like 0.09% of deaths vs 2% of deaths? I certainly could be misunderstanding the data!

vackosar 7y ago

here is simple intraday real-time coronavirus infected count predictor with log scale. If I am right it goes up every minute or so https://www.coronaviruschart.com/ https://www.coronaviruschart.com/

michalu 7y ago

Also good real-time chart: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... tracks confirmed cases and recoveries too.

brockwhittaker 7y ago
Here’s another chart that’s more mobile responsive: https://flu.io/ https://flu.io/
rococode 7y ago
BNO has a helpful timeline with a timestamp for each individual case update (and links to reputable sources): https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/01/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/ https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/01/the-latest-coronavirus...
InterestBazinga 7y ago
Anyone know what APIs is the map hooked onto?
mrtksn 7y ago
>Last Update: Jan 30, 2020 11 am EST. It is not a real-time map, I find it bizarre that people believe that we can track the population's wellbeing in real-time. Are you ready to be hooked up to such a system?
- starpilot 7y ago
  Nothing is real time due to the finite speed of light.
  - mrtksn 7y ago
    I would say flightradar24 is real-time plane tracking and wouldn't say that Reddit is a real-time news source. The difference would be that there's a system in place that consistently and automatically updates the information by gathering data from other real-time systems.

deleted 7y ago

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jmccorm 7y ago

Apart from more people falling sick (as bad as that is), is there a more fundamental concern that if it runs wild in a less developed country, it'll mutate into something more dangerous? As infections climb, the coronavirus (based on less stable RNA) gets more chances to mutate into something even more virulent or deadly?

rwmj 7y ago
Flu viruses get less dangerous over time. The more deadly strains literally kill off their hosts, making those strains less likely to spread.
- jmccorm 7y ago
  Is that a universal truth, or is it historical? Situational? This virus is said to spread well before a person even knows they're infected. A mutation could simply extend that period. Or it could increase the degree to which it is contagious without affecting mortality, right? Or are you saying that this simply doesn't happen in the real world? Flu viruses only mutate with regards to lethality, and only in a way that works against its overall impact?
  - bra4you 7y ago
    "Is that a universal truth, or is it historical? Situational?" It it experience based on historical data. A virus jumping to a new host (species) will be more aggressive in the beginning until it has adopted (mutated) to his new host. While this is not a universal truth, it is experience and could also be backed up mathematically (>host dies to soon, virus can not spread) and by game theory.

wyldfire 7y ago

Stupid question: is it possible that hygiene practices contribute to outbreaks like this? I remember reading or hearing that one input to recent wildfires was the fact that decades of controlled burns to limit the spread of wildfires left a lot of available fuel that otherwise would have burned naturally. So in that vein, do we have humans with compromised immunity thriving but susceptible to inter-species mutations like this novel coronavirus?

slumdev 7y ago
Hygiene practices can prevent the spread of diseases like this. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, etc. Wear a surgical mask and limit interactions with others if you're sick. But this virus spreads via droplet transmission, so just being within 6 feet of someone who's infected (and coughs/sneezes) is enough to spread it. If you're referring to the overuse of hand sanitizer and other disinfectant agents, it might be reasonable to conjecture that their use contributes to the spread of pathogenic bacteria because they destroy non-pathogenic bacteria that could out-compete the pathogenic ones for resources. But this is a virus. It doesn't reproduce outside the body, so I don't think that train of thought applies here.
- wyldfire 7y ago
  > If you're referring to the overuse of hand sanitizer and other disinfectant agents I'm thinking more generally: I was thinking along these lines because the news report I heard [1] described 'wet markets' as a place where disease spread. I'd never heard of it before. But it occurred to me that centuries ago, this kind of thing might have been more common. Processes and regulations for handling of animal products are a net benefit but I wonder if there are any drawbacks. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/01/29/800725826/why-wet-markets-are-the-perfect-place-to-spread-disease https://www.npr.org/2020/01/29/800725826/why-wet-markets-are...
  - Symmetry 7y ago
    Oh, eating of bushmeat is certainly how this made the jump from bats to humans in the first place. But it doesn't really have anything to do with its spread among humans.

BenS 7y ago

Dr. Eric Ding has been tweeting timely and detailed information: https://twitter.com/drericding https://twitter.com/drericding

Fomite 7y ago
No, Eric Ding has been tweeting pretty terrible misinformation, and is being rightly dragged for it by pretty much every epidemiologist I know on Twitter, including myself. His takes are bad. He's called this virus's R0 the worst he's seen in his career, which is absurd. He's conflated R0 and attack rate. Familiar errors because no one pays attention to ID epidemiology until there's an outbreak, and then suddenly decides they're an expert. If one must go to Twitter for ones epidemiology, I'd suggest Tara Smith (@aetiology) or Maia Majumder (@maiamajumder), both of whom are actual ID epidemiologists and science communicators.
- el_benhameen 7y ago
  I’ve seen your comments on several CoV articles here, and this one, like the others, has really helped me contextualize the information I’m seeing and feel a little less nervous. Thanks for taking the time to add your input here.
  - Fomite 7y ago
    My pleasure.
- potatoFam 7y ago
  Could you let us know what ID epidemiologists are? I'm not familiar with the field and am wondering what the ID stands for.
  - phreeza 7y ago
    Infectious disease, I think.
  - Fomite 7y ago

bulutsuzku 7y ago

What to do EXACTLY if a person has symptoms and the Hospital is full?

ferest 7y ago

apparently science is not working as "how things feel/look like", but about evidence and proof. Same thing applies to gov or org, it's not guided by message on social media, but according to the guidance and standard procedure. This kind of practice are very normal cross every industry, from construction safety guide to medicine testing. According to [1], WHO or CDC will only report phase 2 and take actions when there is no evidence of human-to-human infection, and declare phase 5 or 6 base on the information unveiled. And from [2], declare PHEIC when there is human-to-human infection cross border. > A PHEIC is defined in the IHR (2005) as, “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response”. This definition implies a situation that is: * serious, sudden, unusual or unexpected; * carries implications for public health beyond the affected State’s national border; and * may require immediate international action. [1]: https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_phase_descriptions_and_actions.pdf https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p... [2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/what-are-the-international-health-regulations-and-emergency-committees https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/what-are-the-intern...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ekianjo 7y ago

An emergency yet planes are still flying in and out of China? It makes you wonder why travel has not been completely banned yet.

yibg 7y ago
I’ve been seeing this type of reaction a lot lately, but isn’t locking down 1/5 of the worlds population a bit extreme? I mean it’s not like we have a zombie virus going on here.

linsomniac 7y ago

My daughter and I just had this conversation: Her: "They just declared a global health emergency over Coronavirus." Me: "Who did." Her: "The World Health Organization." Me: "That's what I said."

serf 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_on_First%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_on_First%3F >The premise of the sketch is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team for Costello, but their names and nicknames can be interpreted as non-responsive answers to Costello's questions. For example, the first baseman is named "Who"; thus, the utterance "Who's on first" is ambiguous between the question ("Which person is the first baseman?") and the answer ("The name of the first baseman is 'Who'"). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M I imagine that kind of ambiguity has been 'played' with for forever, though.
- linsomniac 7y ago
  It was only after typing this up that I realized the parallel with Who's on first. Brilliant bit.
topmonk 7y ago
You were incorrect. Your daughter said “The W.H.O.” where as you only said “Who”
- linsomniac 7y ago
  Sooo... You're asserting initialism vs acronym and I'm asserting comedy? Sorry if I took you away from fact checking open mic night. :-D
  - topmonk 7y ago
    I'm not asserting initialism vs acronyms. I'm talking about the grammar of "Who did". If you actually meant the World Health Organization, you'd have to interpret that as "World Health Organization did". This is obvious incorrect, and rather should be "The World Health Organization did". So there is no way for your daughter to have interpreted what you said as talking about the World Health Organization, whether initialism or acronym. > Sorry if I took you away from fact checking open mic night. :-D No, I wasn't distracted at all. Thanks for the concern, though.

killjoywashere 7y ago

One of the downstream incentives for this action is that folks like the CDC can point to it as a reason to make more resources available. Concretely, they can order the production of the oligomers needed for PCR testing.

hybrid_cluster 7y ago

Just trying to keep up with the developments via Twitter and Youtube over the past few days has been detrimental to my mental health. People are supposedly falling over on the streets in pools of blood; dead people are lying in hospitals unattended; cremation facilities are operating in overdrive and cremation fires can be seen from space - all of it backed up by footage that, at first glance, seems legit but is mostly taken out of context. I'm a mild hypochondriac and every time one of these posts pops up, I can feel my cortisol spiking. I'm sure I'm not the only one in this regard, and I wonder whether the health costs associated with the spread of misinformation (panic attacks, anxiety, and long term effects) will not outweigh the actual costs of the virus in many countries other than China.

brigandish 7y ago

We all seem to be talking about guesstimates and data we can't be sure of, but I see little talk of what we can do. If this were a tech problem - a big problem that seemed insurmountable - I would break it down into chunks as best I could, look at all the parts of the chain, and ask myself which I could be most effective in tackling first. Treat it like a sprint. Which part of the chain would that be? With the caveat I'm not a domain expert, obviously, I'd go for the lack of testing kits - what makes testing for something like this so hard and so hard at scale? Maybe it isn't and it's the supply of kits. Is this not something that is also "fixable"? There's a lot of intelligent and capable people on this forum, why not throw some pasta at the wall?

fendy3002 7y ago
If true, it's mainly because nCov can spread before showing any symptoms. And if true, that testing before 1 week after infection showing negative sign makes it worse. Now imagine how to prevent a net virus from spreading, where it doesn't show any symptom and scanning it before 1 week shows negative result, while during that time it can easily infect other. Testing in real people isn't cheap, and currently there is no proven cure either (afaik). Vaccine is the best solution but it hasn't been found yet.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
Well, as far as throwing pasta at the wall - it sounds a little bit like Engineer's disease to think that we can come up with a solution by thinking hard on the problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812975 Obviously I'm as arrogant as the the next guy, but I think that arrogant next guy is probably already working on this issue and has a bunch of background in domain expertise and specific knowledge of the logistics I won't manage in a side project while commenting in between fixing bugs on the Equity/Credit analysis app I'm working on right now. Just my 2 cents, and 2 cents is not worth much in this economy.
- brigandish 7y ago
  Throwing pasta at a wall implies that the idea of coming up with an idea is unlikely, thus not being arrogant, but also points out that it is possible, which it is. As it is, I'd prefer the focus moved to solutions from speculation, at least it's an attitude I'm more comfortable with.

Amarok 7y ago

Do we have accurate figures for the mortality demographics?