11 ms·
Coronavirus outbreak likely now ‘gathering steam’
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ourmandave 7y agoIt's now officially named COVID-19 by the WHO.
- teeray 7y agoDespite that, I think it’s too late to rename this virus. People have called it “coronavirus” for weeks now and the name will likely stick, correct or not.
- justinzollars 7y agoIts actually been novel coronavirus, since day one.
- egdod 7y agoPeople have been calling it coronavirus since day one.
- Fomite 7y agoNot the epidemiologists, because "coronavirus" is way too vague.
- egdod 7y agoPeople. Not every person. Not epidemiologists specifically, obviously. But the name has now stuck.
- Fomite 7y agoYeah, but the WHO isn't naming things for "people". Any more than the fact that "people" call things stomach flu when they're not at all influenza related changes that things are called "norovirus" and "rotavirus".
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- spanxx 7y agoPeople without any knowledge of the topic, you mean.
- marshray 7y agoWhich is not any less ambiguous.
- hkmurakami 7y agonCOV-2019 seems okay. References to SARS in Hong Kong news were often accompanied with references with 2003, the year of the outbreak.
- gruez 7y agogreat, now what happens if another coronavirus epidemic hits? do you still call it "novel coronavirus", because it's novel? do whoever's in charge of naming get their act together and allocate a number in hours rather than weeks?
- rorykoehler 7y agoNovel novel coronavirus. The next one after will be novel novel novel coronavirus. Reminds me of some people I've worked with who insist on long email threads with attached words docs as their "project management" methodology.
- jobigoud 7y agoWhen the string of Re:Re:Re:Fwd:Re:Re: reach the line width of your email client you start a new thread.
- ourmandave 7y agoIt's to help coordinate a cure and containment if everyone (e.g. researchers, doctors, public officials, reporters.) knows it by one official name. Also COVID-19 is neutral, so it doesn't generate negative bias like the Spanish Flu. (Which didn't originate in Spain.)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- spanxx 7y agoIn fact, the only relationship that virus had with Spain is that the press was not censored as in the other European countries of that time (because of their involvement in the Great War).
- rriepe 7y agoAgreed. If this gets big, any mention of pre-2019 coronavirus will have to be qualified with "No, not that coronavirus."
- jumelles 7y agoCOVID-19 is the name of the disease caused by the virus, which is known as SARS-CoV-2.
- PeterisP 7y agoThe name is correct but vague, we've had coronavirus spreads before (like SARS) and will have in the future, so it'll be confusing whether we're talking about this one or something else.
- crazygringo 7y agoWhat's super-weird in all that coronaviruses are already an entire class of viruses that are the second most popular cause of the common cold, behind rhinoviruses: > "The common cold is a viral infection of the upper respiratory tract. The most commonly implicated virus is a rhinovirus (30–80%), a type of picornavirus with 99 known serotypes. Other commonly implicated viruses include human coronavirus (≈ 15%), influenza viruses (10–15%), adenoviruses (5%)..." [1] Someone you know probably has a coronavirus right now -- just not the one in the news. But somehow this basic fact has barely been mentioned in the media. Seriously, calling the new disease "coronavirus" is as silly as a chef calling their new very specific recipe "soup". Like... you've gotta come up with something more specific... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold
- mandelbrotwurst 7y agoWell, sure, except for the fact that we all know what soup is and a miniscule fraction of us had ever heard the word coronavirus a month ago.
- auspex 7y agoIf a chef came up with a super delicious recipe that was taking the world by storm and happened to be soup... I could see people using the generic encompassing term to identify it. By nature of popularity people would know what you were referring to.
- foxyv 7y agoIt would be more like calling this new super delicious soup that was world changing: The Soup
- bagacrap 7y agoNot if journalists uniformly switch over.
- ValentineC 7y agoPeople in Singapore, at least among my circles, still find it easier to refer to it colloquially as the "Wuhan virus".
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Aeolun 7y agoI guess we’ll keep calling it the coronavirus in casual conversation. I’m not sure if there’s a difference between calling it Ncov-2019 or COVID-2019 :/
- ars 7y agoIt's easier to pronounce COVID.
- Fomite 7y agoMy actual objection is that COVID is close to "corvid"
- jerf 7y agoIf you do find yourself or someone you love infected with corvids, I can, if nothing else, guarantee a very high karma HN post for you if nothing else. HN loves corvids.
- mc32 7y ago\enkov\ vs \kouvid\ is splitting hairs...
- ars 7y agoMaybe it's nee-kov? It's unclear, that makes it bad.
- joeyspn 7y agoYesterday I submitted this but it didn't get many upvotes.. https://towardsdatascience.com/modelling-the-coronavirus-epidemic-spreading-in-a-city-with-python-babd14d82fa2 https://towardsdatascience.com/modelling-the-coronavirus-epi... I think that reached this point is obvious that in our hyperconnected cities a containment is going to be very difficult if the R0 is 3+ and we don't shutdown commuting PS: for those interested in real-time info from experts I recommended following: https://twitter.com/DrEricDing https://twitter.com/MackayIM https://twitter.com/trvrb
- Fomite 7y agoPlease don't follow Eric Ding. He's not particularly qualified, and his statements to date have betrayed that he's not actually all that good at infectious disease epidemiology. I'd suggest, in place, Maia Majumder (@maiamajumder) and Tara Smith (@aetiology).
- jdhendrickson 7y agoCould you please flesh out your comment on Ding's skill in regard to infectious disease epidemiology ? I don't doubt you, I just like to know why people say things.
- Fomite 7y agoSure thing. First, note that Eric Feigl-Ding is a nutritional epidemiologist, not an infectious disease epidemiologist. Infectious diseases are weird for a lot of reasons, and require something of a different skillset. For example, in a Tweet of his he has now deleted: "never seen an actual virality coefficient outside of Twitter in my entire career." about the estimate for R0 for this novel coronavirus. Similar R0 estimates existed for SARS, and MERS. Measles, Rubella and a number of other diseases have vastly higher R0s. He also messed up some things like conflating R0 with secondary attack rates, and was generally very sensationalistic. Basically, the things that boosted him to prominence in this epidemic built on fairly sloppy reasoning from someone outside the field. He's calmed down now, but one might as well go to sources for people who are both good at science communication and actual outbreak scientists.
- haunter 7y ago>But there is some evidence — and we’re working on quantifying it — that coronaviruses do transmit less efficiently in the warmer weather. So it’s possible that we will get some help from that, but I don’t think that will solve the problem, as evidenced by the fact that there’s transmission in Singapore, on the equator. There have been several research about seasonal influenza and how it correlates with weather, like temperature but especially humidity https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1000316 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0163445315001061 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01634... https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/173/2/127/99316 https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/173/2/127/99316
- joeyspn 7y agoSingapore is having 30ºC days, yet the epidemic is progressing and the city is already bracing for the worse...
- kulahan 7y ago"warm weather may have an effect on transmission" and "a warm city is dealing with infections" are not mutually exclusive statements. And for the record, as of a little over a week ago, there were only a dozen cases in Singapore according to the WHO. Even if they were mutually exclusive, Singapore isn't exactly the best example. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200202-sitrep-13-ncov-v3.pdf https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...
- nosborn 7y agoAs of yesterday it’s 47 cases in Singapore. https://www.moh.gov.sg/2019-ncov-wuhan https://www.moh.gov.sg/2019-ncov-wuhan
- droithomme 7y agoHm, increasing 47/12 in 7 days is the same as doubling every 3.55 days.
- tim333 7y agoIt's interesting that chloroquine, an old anti malarial drug is "highly effective in the control of 2019-nCoV infection in vitro". I wonder if anyone's doing a study to see if that stops it spreading in the real world? I almost thought I could do a double blind study myself with a website and a bunch of chloroquine pills and aspirins and randomly post volunteers one or the other. Dunno if the post works in Wuhan though. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0.pdf
- ipsum2 7y agoNot a biologist, but "in vitro" isn't really that informative. Many things, including fire, are highly effective in stopping diseases in vitro.
- jvm___ 7y agohttps://xkcd.com/1217/ https://xkcd.com/1217/
- flukus 7y agoThis is also the origin of the whole "alcohol kills brain cells" myth.
- goldenkey 7y agoNot really a myth. Alcohol depletes vitamin B12, eventually causing Korsikoff syndrome aka "wet brain" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korsakoff_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korsakoff_syndrome Korsakoff syndrome - Wikipedia
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tim333 7y ago>Chloroquine is widely distributed in the whole body, including lung, after oral administration. Can't say that about fire.
- devit 7y agoIs there any betting market that is taking bets and has good volume on whether there is going to be a novel coronavirus pandemic? That seems like the only way to get some clarity on this.
- mrfusion 7y agoStock markets are saying no, right?
- ethbro 7y agoStock markets dominated by semi-intetested participants are terrible at predicting unlikely events.
- thom 7y agoIf you can put aside morals for a moment, you could make a killing just buying and selling face masks for the next few months.
- thrwaway69 7y agoYou just gave me a good idea. Thanks! I am gonna open a site for giving free mask through crowdsourcing in many needed places.
- 7y ago
- nemonemo 7y agoIt appears US is better than Indonesia in reporting, but worse than Singapore, according to their preprint [1]. AFAIK, the coronavirus test is not being conducted for people who have no history of visiting China or traveling outside, and the virus can be transmitted before symptoms could appear. Based on the article, it is conceivable that the virus could soon be found from a person who has no travel history outside US, but only when the person gets dangerously sick. [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.04.20020495v2.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.04.20020495v...
- hurrdurr2 7y agoIn the US they also are not testing people who came from China even if they have mild symptoms. Unless you have a fever and a cough they won't test you. According to the latest research out of China there are many people who when admitted to the hospital had no fever but tested positive. Frankly a lot of cases are likely not being caught in the US and elsewhere.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoHow does this jive w/ the totals counted on this site: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/ ? I guess the source data could be fudged but surely China realizes by now that faking things is only going to make them look worse in the long run? Maybe I'm too optimistic.
- reustle 7y agoThat data looks quite delayed, I'd check this one out https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoThis is the data for mainland China, and it looks to be of an order with the data you cite. I think the main risk is whether the China data is accurate. I read the article subsequent to my comment and I realized that this interview accounts for the downward second derivative. The answer is: perhaps controls are working, or perhaps China is unable to test so many new cases. I'm inclined to believe the first hypothesis because apparently they were able to test 4.5k new cases in a day a few weeks ago. It doesn't really make sense to me that they would subsequently be able to test only 2.5k.
- droithomme 7y agoNumbers went down because they changed the method of counting. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3874490 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3874490 > In a notice issued by China's National Health Commission (NHC) on Feb. 6, it wrote that the classification of new Wuhan virus infections will be divided into four categories: "suspected cases," "clinically diagnosed cases," "confirmed cases," and "positive tests." Among these, "positive tests" refers to "asymptomatic infected patients" who test positive for the disease but have no symptoms. > There is also a clear stipulation in the official document stating that "If the reported 'asymptomatic infected patient' has clinical manifestations, their status shall be revised to 'confirmed case' in a timely manner" (highlighted text in Tweet below). This indicates that even if a person tests positive for the disease but does not exhibit any symptoms, they will no longer be included in the daily infection reports. (the notice cited: http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/2020-02/07/content_5475813.htm http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/2020-02/07/content_54758...)
- m3kw9 7y agoThe last I heard from Reuter, China was trumpeting an April date for this to end. I don’t know why they would pin a date when you are just extrapolating a graph that was in itself wildly inaccurate due to testing limits
- eric-hu 7y agoChina is looking at major economic damage from the quarantines. I think their concern is about people staying in, cancelling travel and other economic activity far past the end of the epidemic. I can see a logic to it, but I share your disapproval.
- kragen 7y ago“worst flu season in modern times” — would that be when https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu killed one out of every 15 to 30 people then living, mostly within a period of two months? That sounds pretty bad.
- bdcravens 7y agoFor purposes of discussion, I think they consider 102 years outside the range of “modern times”
- kragen 7y agoReally? Early modern Britain is roughly the 16th to 18th century. Postmodernism and Other Essays was published in 1926. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_era https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_era is 1500 CE and later. If they intended to refer to such a nonstandard definition, don't you think they'd have been explicit about it rather than leaving readers to argue about it? Either they meant specifically that pandemic or they were just bullshitting with no concern for the truth-value of their utterance. Note that the mortality figures they're bandying about do intersect with the 1918 flu pandemic mortality rates at the high end.
- samatman 7y agoAlternately, when they said "worst flu season in modern times", they said it specifically to exclude the Spanish Flu. It's not a well-defined phrase, I think this is the more likely interpretation.
- koheripbal 7y agoThese semantic debates are absolutely worthless
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago"Postmodernism" may have been in 1926, and it was post-modern... from the viewpoint of 1926. 94 years later, or boundaries have shifted somewhat... (Even that article that you linked says, 'The definitions of both terms, "modern history" and "contemporary history", have changed over time, as more history has occurred, and so have their start dates.')
- eyegor 7y agoToday the cdc had a press conference announcing the quarantine release of 195 people who flew into the US from Wuhan, based on the assumption that being asymptomatic for 14 days is good enough [0]. Last I heard, WHO is calling the upper limit on incubation 24 days. This release is being done without any actual testing. Edit: seems all I can find from WHO is 14 days, the 24 day estimate was from this paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.06.20020974v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.06.20020974v... (thanks to u/pmorici below) [0] https://youtu.be/JW1ntWFiZNI https://youtu.be/JW1ntWFiZNI
- viraptor 7y agoHave you got a link for the 24 days? The best I could find is that we're totally guessing things at this point. CDC says: > CDC believes at this time that symptoms of 2019-nCoV may appear in as few as 2 days or as long as 14 after exposure. This is based on what has been seen previously as the incubation period of MERS viruses.
- eyegor 7y agoApologies, I'm not sure if I misremembered, misattributed, or if that was an actual previous estimate from WHO. Everything I can find now seems to be around 14 days, with the Japanese govt using 16 as a lower bound for the cruise ship. I swear WHO was publishing 24 in a sitrep last week, maybe I just haven't found it yet. From the WHO Q&A page, > Current estimates of the incubation period range from 1-12.5 days with median estimates of 5-6 days. These estimates will be refined as more data become available. Based on information from other coronavirus diseases, such as MERS and SARS, the incubation period of 2019-nCoV could be up to 14 days. WHO recommends that the follow-up of contacts of confirmed cases is 14 days. https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses
- remote_phone 7y agoWHO never reported a 24 day incubation period. There was a paper that talked about 24 days but that was a single patient and the more likely scenario is that the person was wrong about the timing or got infected at a later time period.
- dghughes 7y ago>But there is some evidence — and we’re working on quantifying it — that coronaviruses do transmit less efficiently in the warmer weather. So it’s possible that we will get some help from that, but I don’t think that will solve the problem, as evidenced by the fact that there’s transmission in Singapore, on the equator. The temperature of a human body is 37ºC it's odd a virus would be incapacitated or slowed by "warmer" weather. I know to kill viruses a fever is what our bodies use along with the immune system. And I know this is referring to it outside a body but it seems odd. I would have expected warm, moist weather to make transmission easier like an incubator.
- AnotherGoodName 7y agoViruses don't survive at all in open air due to uv. They need some protection, usually in the form of a water droplet. If that evaporates sunlight will kill it.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoViruses in general are propagated more efficiently in cooler drier conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season The causes section lists many potential explanations.
- Digory 7y agoThere's an observed fall in flu transmission where humidity is greater -- which usually accompanies warmer weather. One theory is that water encapsulates the virus before it is breathed in, cutting aerosol transmission. [0] [0]https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/flu-weather-its-not-cold-its-humidity https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/flu-weather-its-not-cold-i...