8 ms·

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.
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    Yes, and for Cononavirus, it will be even more.
    - DarthGhandi 7y ago
      I would love nothing more than to wager on that claim with anyone keen. This thread is full of cringeworthy doomsdayers and armchair epidemiologists throwing around unsubstantiated nonsense. When your only knowledge of this comes from the media people should be a bit more selfaware. The fact that qAnon folks are all over this and one day old accounts turning up saying millions will die speaks volumes for the level of discourse here. Bet on the above comment stands for anyone. $1000 USD sound ok? Put your money where your mouth is.
      - adele11 7y ago
        That's a good hedge bet for whoever takes it.
      - _-___________-_ 7y ago
        Is there any platform where this could be done, or any proxy that one could trade in order to place this bet? I would also gladly put US$1000 on this.
        aneesh297 7y ago
        Long Bets (longbets.org) would be one. Unfortunately, the minimum period there seems to be 2 years.
      - sushid 7y ago
        How are you any different than the other “armchair epidemiologists” in this thread? If anything, I’d say you’re worse than others as you want to profit over a potential pandemic where thousands may die. The stock market has taken a hit over this outbreak fear. Go place your contrarian bets there if you’d like.
fasthandle 7y ago
While infected to mortality is 3% according to official numbers, which is bad, recovered:dead is less than 50% by the same numbers. Ok have trouble with these reported numbers however, and believe recovered higher. We just don't know. Cross species infection vectors are never good.
reaperducer 7y ago
People keeps saying things like, "Yeah, well last year way more people died of the flu!" Yeah, well that was an entire year. This is a few weeks. The goal is to get ahead of things, not to wait until it's too late.
- renton 7y ago
  I'm still not sure I understand this. If US alone has ~60k deaths from the flu a year, that still works out to be much more (1153 deaths per week).
  - chupa-chups 7y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function
    - ufov2 7y ago
      The reported confirmed counts have grown by a factor of ~1.5 every day, fitting reasonably well with exponential growth. If this rate continued, in 35 days it would reach the world population. Obviously, in the real world the growth flattens out way earlier, from natural causes, and especially because of the attempts to confine it. Comparing the total number of cases or deaths to flu outbreaks from previous years does not make much sense at this point, when the numbers are growing rapidly, but in a month they probably are easier to compare. Neither does comparing average counts per week, because the growth is not linear. The data for the progression of flu (or any other disease) outbreaks exists, and comparing to their growth rate would put it better in perspective. Regardless of armchair analysis, the WHO declaration means it's something requiring unusual action, which flu is not.
      - pmoriarty 7y ago
        Something else to consider is that flu outbreaks aren't typically taken very seriously by most people, while the widespread fear and media coverage of the 2019-nCov all but guarantees more serious responses from both the general public and the government. Consider the recommendations to thoroughly wash one's hands during flu season as a precaution against getting the flu. How many people take that advice seriously? You can bet there'll be a lot more hand washing all around once this coronavirus hits people's local areas, not to mention all the mask wearing that'll happen (though unfortunately, most people will be wearing those dinky surgical masks which will be of dubious effectiveness), and people isolating themselves. On the other hand, we have vaccines for the flu that are available well in advance of flu outbreaks (though not nearly enough people take them), while we've got no publicly available ones for 2019-nCov. That's another confounding variable that makes it hard to compare the two.
cjbprime 7y ago
If nothing else, it's worse in that there's zero vaccination mitigation available. If the flu vaccine was 0% effective this year, that would also be a health emergency. On top of that, it seems to have worse mortality rate, transmissibility rate, and asymptomatic contagion -- so a little worse in every way, probably. As with the flu, you're very unlikely to be personally killed by it unless you're over 65, under 5, or in poor health.
- arielweisberg 7y ago
  I thought flu vaccine efficacy varies year to year and is frequently not that great.
  - mdorazio 7y ago
    You're correct. See [1]. It's usually less than 50% effective, and as low as 19%. A troubling fact is that effectiveness has been on a downward trend the last 4 years. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness-studies.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness-studies....
sdinsn 7y ago
> 290k-650k death Where are you getting that number? It a magnitude of 10 off
- erikbye 7y ago
  Global. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1213-flu-death-estimate.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1213-flu-death-esti....
- alamortsubite 7y ago
  Global deaths due to seasonal influenza are in that range.
bouncycastle 7y ago
Flu can be managed with vaccine, on-the-spot test kits and antiviral drugs.
- bra4you 7y ago
  AFAIK the flu vaccine is terrible ineffective. I would have to google numbers but the reliability is low.
  - bouncycastle 7y ago
    Although it's not perfect (you're not totally immune), it's still effective at significantly bringing down hospital visits & mortality rates. This is especially true for those with weak immune systems. As for a source, see the "Effectiveness" section https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/Influenza/Pages/young-children-flu-immun-evidence.aspx https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/Influenza/Pages/you... Quote "One European study in 2008 found a 66% vaccine efficacy (VE) against confirmed influenza for children aged 9 months to 3 years, while a Japanese study of children aged 6 months to 6 years found VE against influenza A ranged from 42% to 69% depending on the vaccine match" Another source with an effectiveness section has similar numbers: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/misconceptions.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/misconceptions.htm That's very far away from your "flu vaccine is terrible ineffective" statement.
klhjweoiru 7y ago
You mixed up your numbers. 3-5 Mio SEVERE CASES, not overall infections. > Worldwide, these annual epidemics are estimated to result in about 3 to 5 million cases of severe illness, and about 290 000 to 650 000 respiratory deaths. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(seasonal) https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(... > The flu has resulted in 9.3 million to 49 million illnesses each year in the United States since 2010. Each year, on average, five to 20 percent of the United States population gets the flu. https://www.healthline.com/health/influenza/facts-and-statistics https://www.healthline.com/health/influenza/facts-and-statis... Let's assume 10 mil Corona cases in US (like flu lower bound), with 2% mortality. That's 200k deaths. If we assume 49 mil cases (flu higher bound), it's 1 mil deaths just in US.
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  This 2% number that keeps being thrown around is based on dividing the number of confirmed deaths (which is likely to be relatively accurate) by the number of confirmed infections (which is almost certainly a massive underestimation). It's basically meaningless.
Accujack 7y ago
Because: * Coronavirus has no vaccine * Coronavirus infected can be contagious for longer than flu patients * The longer incubation period means more chances for people to get sick, especially since the disease comes on gradually. People will think they have an ordinary cold, go to work, and infect people. * We understand the progression of the flu in most variants. We don't know all the effects of the Coronavirus, we just have descriptions of the symptoms. * Flu is basically everywhere already, Coronavirus is not. It's not a choice between one or the other, it's a choice between one or both. If we could declare an emergency and have some chance of stopping flu from getting to some part of the population, we would. * People with compromised immune systems like the elderly, or babies, or people with existing illnesses or lung problems know to avoid people infected with influenza. Since it's possible for people capable of infecting others with Coronavirus to not even know they carry it, it's harder to avoid for those vulnerable to it. It's much cheaper to respond to a virus like this in early stages than it is to wait until we see "how serious" it is. All in all, getting things moving now is a good idea.
csomar 7y ago
It's not, for now. The problem is that you'll never know if the virus is serious or not until it's too late.
swader999 7y ago
The rates of those requiring ICU seem a lot higher for one.
haxle 7y ago
I used to think commenters on this site were somewhat smart.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. If you know more than others, share some of what you know so that we all can learn, or simply don't comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
aqme28 7y ago
Simply because it has a mortality rate a couple of orders of magnitude greater than the flu's. Something like 8 percent of the world gets the flu in a given year. Millions will die if that happens for this one.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  Assuming the CFR remains stable. Most new infectious diseases rapidly drop in mortality because of natural selection: those variants of the virus that make people sickest result in their hosts not surviving or not coming into contact with other people to spread the virus, so the strain that becomes endemic tends to become less virulent and more adapted to its host. This has happened with leprosy, syphilis, HIV, and Ebola, and there's no reason to believe it wouldn't happen with nCOV (if the outbreak isn't contained entirely, as SARS was).
  - headmelted 7y ago
    In fairness though, the containment ship has sailed for nCOV. It’s scary to see it so close to home. I’m in Northern Ireland and saw two hazmat ambulances gunning it into the center of Belfast today. I’ve never seen a hazmat ambulance in this country - wouldn’t have even known we had them or what they looked like. I suspect we’ll get outbreaks in many more regions over the next few days.
    - baobrain 7y ago
      It's highly unlikely that those ambulances are related to the virus. There are 0 confirmed cases in Northern Ireland, and if it was a suspected case the government and media would be all over it to find people who were potentially infected.
      - headmelted 7y ago
        I’m afraid you have more faith than I do in local government. I wouldn’t expect them to try to “cover it up” but I’d very much expect them to act slowly in notifying and not take it as seriously as they should.
ericb 7y ago
The measure of transmissibility seems to be as high as the Spanish Flu, and the mortality rate is still an open question. The Spanish flu killed 50-100 million people. Worth reading about it.
KnightOfWords 7y ago
Because it has a higher lethal rate than Influenza and it has the potential to evolve and become much more infectious than it is currently.
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  "it has a higher lethal rate than Influenza" That is not known at this point.
adrianmonk 7y ago
Maybe the emergency is less about severity and more about the urgency of attempting containment. The possibility has been raised that if this goes global, it could become an illness that, like the flu, just sort of continually floats around and we're stuck dealing with it. We don't really want another such illness. If freaking out about it right now can even move the needle on the odds of avoiding that scenario, it might be a good plan.
SSSDFRO 7y ago
It’s not. It’s not even worse than deaths caused from medical errors.

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.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Yes, and for Cononavirus, it will be even more.
  - DarthGhandi 7y ago
    I would love nothing more than to wager on that claim with anyone keen. This thread is full of cringeworthy doomsdayers and armchair epidemiologists throwing around unsubstantiated nonsense. When your only knowledge of this comes from the media people should be a bit more selfaware. The fact that qAnon folks are all over this and one day old accounts turning up saying millions will die speaks volumes for the level of discourse here. Bet on the above comment stands for anyone. $1000 USD sound ok? Put your money where your mouth is.
    - adele11 7y ago
      That's a good hedge bet for whoever takes it.
    - _-___________-_ 7y ago
      Is there any platform where this could be done, or any proxy that one could trade in order to place this bet? I would also gladly put US$1000 on this.
      - aneesh297 7y ago
        Long Bets (longbets.org) would be one. Unfortunately, the minimum period there seems to be 2 years.
    - sushid 7y ago
      How are you any different than the other “armchair epidemiologists” in this thread? If anything, I’d say you’re worse than others as you want to profit over a potential pandemic where thousands may die. The stock market has taken a hit over this outbreak fear. Go place your contrarian bets there if you’d like.

fasthandle 7y ago

While infected to mortality is 3% according to official numbers, which is bad, recovered:dead is less than 50% by the same numbers. Ok have trouble with these reported numbers however, and believe recovered higher. We just don't know. Cross species infection vectors are never good.

reaperducer 7y ago

People keeps saying things like, "Yeah, well last year way more people died of the flu!" Yeah, well that was an entire year. This is a few weeks. The goal is to get ahead of things, not to wait until it's too late.

renton 7y ago
I'm still not sure I understand this. If US alone has ~60k deaths from the flu a year, that still works out to be much more (1153 deaths per week).
- chupa-chups 7y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function
  - ufov2 7y ago
    The reported confirmed counts have grown by a factor of ~1.5 every day, fitting reasonably well with exponential growth. If this rate continued, in 35 days it would reach the world population. Obviously, in the real world the growth flattens out way earlier, from natural causes, and especially because of the attempts to confine it. Comparing the total number of cases or deaths to flu outbreaks from previous years does not make much sense at this point, when the numbers are growing rapidly, but in a month they probably are easier to compare. Neither does comparing average counts per week, because the growth is not linear. The data for the progression of flu (or any other disease) outbreaks exists, and comparing to their growth rate would put it better in perspective. Regardless of armchair analysis, the WHO declaration means it's something requiring unusual action, which flu is not.
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      Something else to consider is that flu outbreaks aren't typically taken very seriously by most people, while the widespread fear and media coverage of the 2019-nCov all but guarantees more serious responses from both the general public and the government. Consider the recommendations to thoroughly wash one's hands during flu season as a precaution against getting the flu. How many people take that advice seriously? You can bet there'll be a lot more hand washing all around once this coronavirus hits people's local areas, not to mention all the mask wearing that'll happen (though unfortunately, most people will be wearing those dinky surgical masks which will be of dubious effectiveness), and people isolating themselves. On the other hand, we have vaccines for the flu that are available well in advance of flu outbreaks (though not nearly enough people take them), while we've got no publicly available ones for 2019-nCov. That's another confounding variable that makes it hard to compare the two.

cjbprime 7y ago

If nothing else, it's worse in that there's zero vaccination mitigation available. If the flu vaccine was 0% effective this year, that would also be a health emergency. On top of that, it seems to have worse mortality rate, transmissibility rate, and asymptomatic contagion -- so a little worse in every way, probably. As with the flu, you're very unlikely to be personally killed by it unless you're over 65, under 5, or in poor health.

arielweisberg 7y ago
I thought flu vaccine efficacy varies year to year and is frequently not that great.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  You're correct. See [1]. It's usually less than 50% effective, and as low as 19%. A troubling fact is that effectiveness has been on a downward trend the last 4 years. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness-studies.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness-studies....

sdinsn 7y ago

> 290k-650k death Where are you getting that number? It a magnitude of 10 off

erikbye 7y ago
Global. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1213-flu-death-estimate.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1213-flu-death-esti....
alamortsubite 7y ago
Global deaths due to seasonal influenza are in that range.

bouncycastle 7y ago

Flu can be managed with vaccine, on-the-spot test kits and antiviral drugs.

bra4you 7y ago
AFAIK the flu vaccine is terrible ineffective. I would have to google numbers but the reliability is low.
- bouncycastle 7y ago
  Although it's not perfect (you're not totally immune), it's still effective at significantly bringing down hospital visits & mortality rates. This is especially true for those with weak immune systems. As for a source, see the "Effectiveness" section https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/Influenza/Pages/young-children-flu-immun-evidence.aspx https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/Influenza/Pages/you... Quote "One European study in 2008 found a 66% vaccine efficacy (VE) against confirmed influenza for children aged 9 months to 3 years, while a Japanese study of children aged 6 months to 6 years found VE against influenza A ranged from 42% to 69% depending on the vaccine match" Another source with an effectiveness section has similar numbers: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/misconceptions.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/misconceptions.htm That's very far away from your "flu vaccine is terrible ineffective" statement.

klhjweoiru 7y ago

You mixed up your numbers. 3-5 Mio SEVERE CASES, not overall infections. > Worldwide, these annual epidemics are estimated to result in about 3 to 5 million cases of severe illness, and about 290 000 to 650 000 respiratory deaths. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(seasonal) https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(... > The flu has resulted in 9.3 million to 49 million illnesses each year in the United States since 2010. Each year, on average, five to 20 percent of the United States population gets the flu. https://www.healthline.com/health/influenza/facts-and-statistics https://www.healthline.com/health/influenza/facts-and-statis... Let's assume 10 mil Corona cases in US (like flu lower bound), with 2% mortality. That's 200k deaths. If we assume 49 mil cases (flu higher bound), it's 1 mil deaths just in US.

_-___________-_ 7y ago
This 2% number that keeps being thrown around is based on dividing the number of confirmed deaths (which is likely to be relatively accurate) by the number of confirmed infections (which is almost certainly a massive underestimation). It's basically meaningless.

Accujack 7y ago

Because: * Coronavirus has no vaccine * Coronavirus infected can be contagious for longer than flu patients * The longer incubation period means more chances for people to get sick, especially since the disease comes on gradually. People will think they have an ordinary cold, go to work, and infect people. * We understand the progression of the flu in most variants. We don't know all the effects of the Coronavirus, we just have descriptions of the symptoms. * Flu is basically everywhere already, Coronavirus is not. It's not a choice between one or the other, it's a choice between one or both. If we could declare an emergency and have some chance of stopping flu from getting to some part of the population, we would. * People with compromised immune systems like the elderly, or babies, or people with existing illnesses or lung problems know to avoid people infected with influenza. Since it's possible for people capable of infecting others with Coronavirus to not even know they carry it, it's harder to avoid for those vulnerable to it. It's much cheaper to respond to a virus like this in early stages than it is to wait until we see "how serious" it is. All in all, getting things moving now is a good idea.

csomar 7y ago

It's not, for now. The problem is that you'll never know if the virus is serious or not until it's too late.

swader999 7y ago

The rates of those requiring ICU seem a lot higher for one.

haxle 7y ago

I used to think commenters on this site were somewhat smart.

dang 7y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. If you know more than others, share some of what you know so that we all can learn, or simply don't comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

aqme28 7y ago

Simply because it has a mortality rate a couple of orders of magnitude greater than the flu's. Something like 8 percent of the world gets the flu in a given year. Millions will die if that happens for this one.

nostrademons 7y ago
Assuming the CFR remains stable. Most new infectious diseases rapidly drop in mortality because of natural selection: those variants of the virus that make people sickest result in their hosts not surviving or not coming into contact with other people to spread the virus, so the strain that becomes endemic tends to become less virulent and more adapted to its host. This has happened with leprosy, syphilis, HIV, and Ebola, and there's no reason to believe it wouldn't happen with nCOV (if the outbreak isn't contained entirely, as SARS was).
- headmelted 7y ago
  In fairness though, the containment ship has sailed for nCOV. It’s scary to see it so close to home. I’m in Northern Ireland and saw two hazmat ambulances gunning it into the center of Belfast today. I’ve never seen a hazmat ambulance in this country - wouldn’t have even known we had them or what they looked like. I suspect we’ll get outbreaks in many more regions over the next few days.
  - baobrain 7y ago
    It's highly unlikely that those ambulances are related to the virus. There are 0 confirmed cases in Northern Ireland, and if it was a suspected case the government and media would be all over it to find people who were potentially infected.
    - headmelted 7y ago
      I’m afraid you have more faith than I do in local government. I wouldn’t expect them to try to “cover it up” but I’d very much expect them to act slowly in notifying and not take it as seriously as they should.

ericb 7y ago

The measure of transmissibility seems to be as high as the Spanish Flu, and the mortality rate is still an open question. The Spanish flu killed 50-100 million people. Worth reading about it.

KnightOfWords 7y ago

Because it has a higher lethal rate than Influenza and it has the potential to evolve and become much more infectious than it is currently.

_-___________-_ 7y ago
"it has a higher lethal rate than Influenza" That is not known at this point.

adrianmonk 7y ago

Maybe the emergency is less about severity and more about the urgency of attempting containment. The possibility has been raised that if this goes global, it could become an illness that, like the flu, just sort of continually floats around and we're stuck dealing with it. We don't really want another such illness. If freaking out about it right now can even move the needle on the odds of avoiding that scenario, it might be a good plan.

SSSDFRO 7y ago

It’s not. It’s not even worse than deaths caused from medical errors.