7 ms·

This virus seems to be right at the cusp of something we should really fear. ~3% mortality rate and at least semi easily transmissible. The fact is that this co

by S_A_P 7y ago

This virus seems to be right at the cusp of something we should really fear. ~3% mortality rate and at least semi easily transmissible. The fact is that this could be a lot worse and we are already seeing some ugly behavior from it. I imagine chaos if mortality climbs by an order of magnitude. We need to keep our heads here and figure out how to stop this thing.

streetcat1 7y ago
As a programmer, there are two options: 1. quarantine. 2. vaccine. Given the fact that people will not self-quarantine mainly due to economic reason, the hope is to rush the vaccine as fast as possible through the FDA, and then to mass-produce it.
- sp332 7y ago
  As laid out by the actual expert at Trump's coronavirus press conference tonight (not Trump), American regulations on safety and efficacy mean that "rushing" a vaccine will take about one year. Quarantine isn't the only way to slow down the spread of a disease, and it's not unheard of for large changes in behavior to happen in response to large risks. Hand washing or even mask wearing could become more popular. E.g. https://zoomingjapan.com/life-in-japan/why-japanese-wear-surgical-masks/ https://zoomingjapan.com/life-in-japan/why-japanese-wear-sur...
- ncphillips 7y ago
  From what I’ve read “rushing” for vaccines means it will be ready in 2 years
  - streetcat1 7y ago
    Since this is the first time that the world is facing such a pandemic, this must and I assume will be changed.
    - xvilka 7y ago
      It will, thus bringing the ETA to 1 year or so.
    - Balgair 7y ago
      I'm not sure that it is possible to do so. Vaccines take a long time to develop; just throwing more money at it isn't a solution. You need to understand the pathogen, which just takes time. Getting the IGg out of horses or whatever takes time. Making sure you can use horse IGg versus rabbit IGg takes time. Trying it out on volunteers takes time. Mass producing it takes time. The officials aren't joking when they say 2 years. SARS still really doesn't have a vaccine, and that effort started in 2003. Heck, Malaria took ~50 years for a kinda-okay-ish vaccine. Fact is, there is a very low chance of a vaccine for this one. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, stay calm.
    - sp332 7y ago
      First there is a small safety trial of several months, followed by an efficacy trial of I think six months. We could possibly skip the efficacy trial at the expense of potentially loading up people with multiple not-very-effective vaccines. And getting through safety trials doesn't mean there are no side effects, so we'd have to deal with those compounded as well.
esturk 7y ago
Nah, the mortality rate is higher, around 9%, similar to SARS. Dividing total deaths by total cases is wrong. You need to divide by the sum of deaths plus total recovered cases. With that in mind it's already way higher.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- taneq 7y ago
  That doesn't work either because the definition of 'recovered' is something like 'symptom free for 40 days' and most people dying are doing so within 1-2 weeks. What you really need to do is divide the total deaths by the total known cases two weeks ago (roughly when the most recent deaths would have been infected). Last time I did this it looked like the overall death rate would come out at ~4.5%, reporting methods have changed since then and now it's coming out as more like 4%.
  - jrs235 7y ago
    Yes this is what people miss. There is a delay between known cases and deaths.
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    Even worse, we don't know how many people have actually been infected. The reported death rates aren't reliable either. All the estimates we're seeing are almost entirely from unreliable data coming out of China. So I'd take these estimates with a huge grain of salt for now. We should be in a much better position to have reliable estimates in a month or two.
    - taneq 7y ago
      True. On the plus side, the higher the actual number of infections, the lower the death rates that we should be expecting. There's a growing consensus that the virus can spread asymptomatically which (while not good for containment) means we're only seeing a small fraction of cases and the death rate is going to be much more like that of the flu (which isn't great but also hasn't destroyed civilization as we know it).
yellow_lead 7y ago
> At present, it is tempting to estimate the case fatality rate by dividing the number of known deaths by the number of confirmed cases. The resulting number, however, does not represent the true case fatality rate and might be off by orders of magnitude... > A precise estimate of the case fatality rate is therefore impossible at present. Taken from https://smw.ch/article/doi/smw.2020.20203 https://smw.ch/article/doi/smw.2020.20203
dpiers 7y ago
Mortality rate is much, much lower than 3% if you exclude the elderly and the critically ill. Based on the Chinese CCDC's report released last week, covering 72,314 confirmed infections, mortality rate for a young healthy person is an order of magnitude lower. 80+ years old: 14.8% 70-79 years old: 8.0% 60-69 years old: 3.6% 50-59 years old: 1.3% 40-49 years old: 0.4% 30-39 years old: 0.2% 20-29 years old: 0.2% 10-19 years old: 0.2% 0-9 years old: no fatalities I think most people are blowing it out of proportion. It's just a bad flu, and it seems to be responding well to remdesivir treatments in early trials. I also think that, with the news we're getting now about asymptomatic/minor cases, it's highly likely the real number of infections is much larger, which would mean the CFR numbers are way too high.
- bitxbit 7y ago
  You’re citing numbers from the Chinese govt. You can’t be serious.
- nostrebored 7y ago
  Another bad flu is a terrifying prospect. If this coronavirus becomes cyclical like the flu, it will be a gigantic driver of global mortality.
- allovernow 7y ago
  These numbers are bullshit and I'm tired of having to repeat this everywhere. The Chinese government is lying about infections and there are legal and infrastructural issues which prevent the vast majority of cases from being diagnosed and reported, even if there wasn't an ongoing official attempt at minimization. The virus has a ≈15% critical illness rate[1]. There are less than 100k ICU beds in the entire United States. They will very quickly be overwhelmed, exactly as they are in China, SK, Iran, Italy...the list is getting too long to keep up with. At that point the mortality rate approaches 15%. This is not the god damn flu and people who dismiss it as such are being hugely irresponsible. 1. I believe this article is referencing the published paper in Lancet that I was referring to https://coercioncode.com/2020/01/27/breaking-news-coronavirus-15-fatality-rate-83-infection-rate/ https://coercioncode.com/2020/01/27/breaking-news-coronaviru... Also bear in mind that the study is out of China, so it is most likely extremely conservative because the government has been publicly cracking down on anyone "spreading rumors" about the virus. The peoples' collective, deliberate obviousness at this point is unbelievable. Edit: wait a minute, I don't think I've even seen the paper I linked yet. This one reports 32% ICU admission rate and 15% death with lasting damage in recovered patients. Some 2 dozen Chinese authors to boot. Get your fucking heads out of the sand! https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
12thwonder 7y ago
mortality depends on the country in which the patient is treated in my view. according to WHO's situation report, Singapore has 91 confirmed cases and 0 death so far. in most developed country, mortality rate seems to be on much lower side. Of course these numbers can change at any minute. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200226-sitrep-37-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=6126c0a4_2 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...
- flukus 7y ago
  It's more patients vs resources than developed vs undeveloped, it's much easier to handle 91 cases at once than 900 or 9000. Italy is also a developed country and the mortality is around ~3% so far in Italy, Japan is developed and it's at ~1.5%. At the moment it seems like Korea is the biggest outlier with mortality under 1% but also with a lot of cases. I'd rather be in a developed nation, but you're cherry picking your example.

by S_A_P 7y ago

streetcat1 7y ago

As a programmer, there are two options: 1. quarantine. 2. vaccine. Given the fact that people will not self-quarantine mainly due to economic reason, the hope is to rush the vaccine as fast as possible through the FDA, and then to mass-produce it.

sp332 7y ago
As laid out by the actual expert at Trump's coronavirus press conference tonight (not Trump), American regulations on safety and efficacy mean that "rushing" a vaccine will take about one year. Quarantine isn't the only way to slow down the spread of a disease, and it's not unheard of for large changes in behavior to happen in response to large risks. Hand washing or even mask wearing could become more popular. E.g. https://zoomingjapan.com/life-in-japan/why-japanese-wear-surgical-masks/ https://zoomingjapan.com/life-in-japan/why-japanese-wear-sur...
ncphillips 7y ago
From what I’ve read “rushing” for vaccines means it will be ready in 2 years
- streetcat1 7y ago
  Since this is the first time that the world is facing such a pandemic, this must and I assume will be changed.
  - xvilka 7y ago
    It will, thus bringing the ETA to 1 year or so.
  - Balgair 7y ago
    I'm not sure that it is possible to do so. Vaccines take a long time to develop; just throwing more money at it isn't a solution. You need to understand the pathogen, which just takes time. Getting the IGg out of horses or whatever takes time. Making sure you can use horse IGg versus rabbit IGg takes time. Trying it out on volunteers takes time. Mass producing it takes time. The officials aren't joking when they say 2 years. SARS still really doesn't have a vaccine, and that effort started in 2003. Heck, Malaria took ~50 years for a kinda-okay-ish vaccine. Fact is, there is a very low chance of a vaccine for this one. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, stay calm.
  - sp332 7y ago
    First there is a small safety trial of several months, followed by an efficacy trial of I think six months. We could possibly skip the efficacy trial at the expense of potentially loading up people with multiple not-very-effective vaccines. And getting through safety trials doesn't mean there are no side effects, so we'd have to deal with those compounded as well.

esturk 7y ago

Nah, the mortality rate is higher, around 9%, similar to SARS. Dividing total deaths by total cases is wrong. You need to divide by the sum of deaths plus total recovered cases. With that in mind it's already way higher.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
taneq 7y ago
That doesn't work either because the definition of 'recovered' is something like 'symptom free for 40 days' and most people dying are doing so within 1-2 weeks. What you really need to do is divide the total deaths by the total known cases two weeks ago (roughly when the most recent deaths would have been infected). Last time I did this it looked like the overall death rate would come out at ~4.5%, reporting methods have changed since then and now it's coming out as more like 4%.
- jrs235 7y ago
  Yes this is what people miss. There is a delay between known cases and deaths.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  Even worse, we don't know how many people have actually been infected. The reported death rates aren't reliable either. All the estimates we're seeing are almost entirely from unreliable data coming out of China. So I'd take these estimates with a huge grain of salt for now. We should be in a much better position to have reliable estimates in a month or two.
  - taneq 7y ago
    True. On the plus side, the higher the actual number of infections, the lower the death rates that we should be expecting. There's a growing consensus that the virus can spread asymptomatically which (while not good for containment) means we're only seeing a small fraction of cases and the death rate is going to be much more like that of the flu (which isn't great but also hasn't destroyed civilization as we know it).

yellow_lead 7y ago

> At present, it is tempting to estimate the case fatality rate by dividing the number of known deaths by the number of confirmed cases. The resulting number, however, does not represent the true case fatality rate and might be off by orders of magnitude... > A precise estimate of the case fatality rate is therefore impossible at present. Taken from https://smw.ch/article/doi/smw.2020.20203 https://smw.ch/article/doi/smw.2020.20203

dpiers 7y ago

Mortality rate is much, much lower than 3% if you exclude the elderly and the critically ill. Based on the Chinese CCDC's report released last week, covering 72,314 confirmed infections, mortality rate for a young healthy person is an order of magnitude lower. 80+ years old: 14.8% 70-79 years old: 8.0% 60-69 years old: 3.6% 50-59 years old: 1.3% 40-49 years old: 0.4% 30-39 years old: 0.2% 20-29 years old: 0.2% 10-19 years old: 0.2% 0-9 years old: no fatalities I think most people are blowing it out of proportion. It's just a bad flu, and it seems to be responding well to remdesivir treatments in early trials. I also think that, with the news we're getting now about asymptomatic/minor cases, it's highly likely the real number of infections is much larger, which would mean the CFR numbers are way too high.

bitxbit 7y ago
You’re citing numbers from the Chinese govt. You can’t be serious.
nostrebored 7y ago
Another bad flu is a terrifying prospect. If this coronavirus becomes cyclical like the flu, it will be a gigantic driver of global mortality.
allovernow 7y ago
These numbers are bullshit and I'm tired of having to repeat this everywhere. The Chinese government is lying about infections and there are legal and infrastructural issues which prevent the vast majority of cases from being diagnosed and reported, even if there wasn't an ongoing official attempt at minimization. The virus has a ≈15% critical illness rate[1]. There are less than 100k ICU beds in the entire United States. They will very quickly be overwhelmed, exactly as they are in China, SK, Iran, Italy...the list is getting too long to keep up with. At that point the mortality rate approaches 15%. This is not the god damn flu and people who dismiss it as such are being hugely irresponsible. 1. I believe this article is referencing the published paper in Lancet that I was referring to https://coercioncode.com/2020/01/27/breaking-news-coronavirus-15-fatality-rate-83-infection-rate/ https://coercioncode.com/2020/01/27/breaking-news-coronaviru... Also bear in mind that the study is out of China, so it is most likely extremely conservative because the government has been publicly cracking down on anyone "spreading rumors" about the virus. The peoples' collective, deliberate obviousness at this point is unbelievable. Edit: wait a minute, I don't think I've even seen the paper I linked yet. This one reports 32% ICU admission rate and 15% death with lasting damage in recovered patients. Some 2 dozen Chinese authors to boot. Get your fucking heads out of the sand! https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

12thwonder 7y ago

mortality depends on the country in which the patient is treated in my view. according to WHO's situation report, Singapore has 91 confirmed cases and 0 death so far. in most developed country, mortality rate seems to be on much lower side. Of course these numbers can change at any minute. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200226-sitrep-37-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=6126c0a4_2 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...

flukus 7y ago
It's more patients vs resources than developed vs undeveloped, it's much easier to handle 91 cases at once than 900 or 9000. Italy is also a developed country and the mortality is around ~3% so far in Italy, Japan is developed and it's at ~1.5%. At the moment it seems like Korea is the biggest outlier with mortality under 1% but also with a lot of cases. I'd rather be in a developed nation, but you're cherry picking your example.