7 ms·

Coronavirus may have spread undetected for weeks in U.S.

soonnow 7y ago
That is scary, not for the actual health risk implications but for the implication when it comes to the supply chain. (Unless you are a member of a risk group). I'm not trying to panic or fear monger at all, but I think it is a good time to point to this scientific american blog post that suggest to have food and water on hand for two weeks https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/preparing-for-coronavirus-to-strike-the-u-s/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/preparing-... That doesnt mean you need to stock up on ammunition and night vision googles, just have some food safety even just to not overload the supply chain
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  >>"That doesnt mean you need to stock up on ammunition and night vision googles..." An "I have the CoronaVirus and possibly Ebola" sign at the door will keep intruders away :). If kept safely guns are not a bad idea, if you are the type, and especially if you live in rural areas.
  - avs733 7y ago
    https://slate.com/technology/2015/01/good-guy-with-a-gun-myth-guns-increase-the-risk-of-homicide-accidents-suicide.html https://slate.com/technology/2015/01/good-guy-with-a-gun-myt...
    - aww_dang 7y ago
      Tautology followed by a spurious conclusion. "People who drive cars are more likely to be in car accidents, therefore car ownership is irresponsible"
      - outside1234 7y ago
        Car owners are more likely to get in car accidents. Gun owners are more likely to get in gun accidents. These are both backed by data.
        aww_dang 7y ago
        Tautology: Water is wet. Most drownings involve water. Spurious conclusion: Boating and swimming are irresponsible.
      - BuckRogers 7y ago
        Guns don't kill people, you're right. But they sure do make it a lot easier. Unless you're a ninja, I can run from a knife. It's basic logic that less guns equals less gun violence. I also want less grenades and rocket launchers, because I'd rather not have them used around me.
  - soonnow 7y ago
    I was just trying to imply that there is no need to go full prepper and build a bunker to survive the apocalypse. Sorry if that was not clear from my tongue-in-cheek comment.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    They might just torch your house with a sign like that. Wouldn't be the first time either that the victims of a disease would get victimized again by their fellow humans.
    - mygo 7y ago
      Not far-fetched at all. This has already happened in Iran this past week. They torched a clinic believed to be hosting coronavirus patients. https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iranians-burn-clinic-that-may-be-quarantine-for-coronavirus-patients-619343 https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iranians-burn-clinic-that-...
- rolph 7y ago
  the biggest issue to be concerned about is disruption to the knowledge experience supply chain. now why might that be? The journeymen, supervisors, government officials anyone else you can think of that is of elevated importance of function are at elevated risk. im talking about people that have critical knowledge or capabilities that are not cultivated by simply picking up a book and reading. how many surgeons, airtraffic controllers and nuclear technicians can we afford to suddenly loose?
- adrr 7y ago
  Why do we need to stock up on water? Even the CDC is recommending it. How does the virus put our water supply at risk? I have two weeks worth of water already stockpiled in case of an earthquake which could cause infrastructure damage to our water supply. Everyone should have that.
  - soonnow 7y ago
    I think that is exactly what is recommended. If you got two weeks of water then you are good. As you said people should have it anyway, but a lot of people don't (myself included).
  - war1025 7y ago
    > I have two weeks worth of water already stockpiled I assume you mean potable water and not a giant cistern dug into your back yard? How much water counts as "two weeks" worth?
  - mherdeg 7y ago
    Jeez, you stock 14 gallons of water per person in your house? Where do you keep it? Do you periodically re-freshen it or what?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - almost_usual 7y ago
      Do you have a hot water heater? Common knowledge among SFFD to have some bottled water and access the hot water heater when that runs out.
      - mherdeg 7y ago
        Interesting, our hot water heater is "tankless" and it hadn't occurred to me until this thread that this makes emergency prep a little more complicated.
    - adrr 7y ago
zaroth 7y ago
There’s almost nothing new in this article, for what it’s worth. A genetic analysis of two infections show a mostly identical genome. This does not definitively tell you anything about how those two people were infected. Everything else is speculation wrapped in clickbait. For the vast majority of people, an infection of this coronavirus would be more mild than catching the flu. A reasoned analysis (such as what was provided yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine) puts the fatality rate of COVID-19 on the same order of magnitude as the flu. It is new and very sensationalized. I think it’s absolutely imperative to try to maintain a rational stance of the actual relative impact of this coronavirus versus a typical flu season.
- akmarinov 7y ago
  If it’s that harmless why is China crashing the world economy over it?
  - zaroth 7y ago
    China very well may be using an excuse to test their ability to control their population. They may be performing whatever acts they think they need to do based on analysis of how people will perceive it, and not based on the expected actual effect it might have. Or any other number of reasons. “Because China” is not an argument that holds any scientific merit in an analysis of the severity of COVID-19. Up to 3,000 have died from COVID so far, mostly in Hubei. Hubei has a population of ~60 million, which is ~18% of the US population. About 60,000 people died from flu-related illness last year in the US. The same proportion in Hubei would be 10,800. So it seems it is demonstrably less harmful than flu. Why China or the World is reacting the way is it will be a great question 3-6 months from now in retrospect.
    - magicsmoke 7y ago
      It could be due to the criticism they got over covering up the 2003 SARS epidemic. If under responding gets you global condemnation let's try over responding instead.
0xff00ffee 7y ago
Seeing as how the latest percentage-du-jour claims "80% of infected people will have no to mild symptoms"[0] I'm not surprised. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/asia/coronavirus-treament-recovery.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/asia/coronavirus-tr...
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Honestly it seems like that would be a huge relief? Last I heard the fatality rate is 1%. If that's actually 1% of the 20% who show any symptoms at all, it's now 0.2%.
  - war1025 7y ago
    This is something I've been wondering about since people seem to be playing fast and loose with percentages. If you start multiplying small numbers together, they get real small real quick.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    The most recent data I have seen (yesterday in the NEJM) indicates 1.4% fatality in lab diagnosed cases. This of course will only include more serious symptomatic patients, as mild or asymptomatic patients are told to stay home and are not getting tested. No one wants to stand up and call hysteria for what it is. It’s easier to go with the flow and cancel events out of an “abundance of caution.”
    - _bxg1 7y ago
      I think cancelling events is still a good idea. There's still a wide radius of unknown and none of these "events" are of any life-and-death importance to anybody. Hysteria is bad, but for other reasons.
    - altcognito 7y ago
      R0 value is roughly 4-7. Upwards of 5% of the cases require the ICU, 15% require support breathing. Medical personnel are coming down with it frequently, and Italy is trying to bring in newly graduated nurses and retired nurses to fill the gap. This is NOT hysteria. While it isn't a death sentence for most, it is imperative to slow this thing down.
29athrowaway 7y ago
I have read reports saying that the CDC won't test you unless you have fever, shortness of breath and chest pain. By the time you get to that point you already passed the virus to a bunch of people.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Fever and shortness of breath are the symptoms of the disease - how else would they figure out who to test?
  - 29athrowaway 7y ago
    What are your thoughts on this story: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/fayko1/my_covid19_story_brooklyn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/fayko1/my_covid19_stor...
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  I think it's worse than that; they wouldn't test Carl Zha's family because they hadn't had direct contact with Chinese travelers recently. https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1231745522123202561 https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1231745522123202561 Everything about this looks like an ordinary flu-like virus with massive oversampling at the lethal end of things. Aka since Corona-chan testing is expensive compared to the normal flu screen, you only get it when you're on death's door, which makes it look much worse than it is.
wuwuno 7y ago
I created a throwaway account because, well you'll see why. My wife just told me that two of her co-workers were in Wuhan in Late November visiting a factory and they both got the flu in Wuhan. One guy A, tested negative for the flu, he was sick for 6 weeks, he would start to feel better than get sicker. His doctor told him that he had no idea what was wrong with him. The guy A, said it was the strangest flu he ever had. Over the 6 weeks he was sick he worked from home the entire time and was only working part time for most of those 6 weeks because of how bad he felt. The other guy B, I don't know if B was tested for the flu, was sicker than A, and he was sick for 8 weeks. He also worked from home for the entire time, my wife doesn't work closely with B, so she's not sure how much time he missed during those 6 weeks.
- oceanghost 7y ago
  > One guy A, tested negative for the flu, he was sick for 6 weeks, he would start to feel better than get sicker. I really think there's something to this. In my part of So Cal, people have been talking about a "recurrent flu" that keeps getting better and relapsing at about 2-week intervals. Everybody I know has had something like that. I think we're going to find out that we've already had covid-19, or there's another very nasty bug out there.
  - fspeech 7y ago
    There are (at least) two strains of flus circulating this season.
    - oceanghost 7y ago
      Of course, there are, there would have to be dozens if not hundreds?
  - jimmux 7y ago
    That sounds like what I had during the southern hemisphere's flu season last year. It started in late March, before the shot was ready, and just kept coming back over a number of months.
- 7y ago
ackbar03 7y ago
Yea I'm pretty sure it's out and about in the US now. Your patient numbers are always 0 if you don't test for it
rawfan 7y ago
1. Don't panic, COVID19 won't harm you. 2. No wonder it spreads undetected, with the messed up US medical system, I wouldn't go to the hospital either if I had to fear a huge medical bill [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/upshot/coronavirus-surprise-medical-bills.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/upshot/coronavirus-surpri...
rawfan 7y ago
Fun story: a friend of mine works as an engineer in critical infrastructure (for a large utility in Germany). He wanted to spend his vacation in northern Italy (which currently has a COVID19 outbreak). When his employer got wind of it they offered to pay him extra to choose a different destination. If he went, they told him, he couldn't come back to work for another 2 weeks after his vacation (unpaid leave).

That is scary, not for the actual health risk implications but for the implication when it comes to the supply chain. (Unless you are a member of a risk group). I'm not trying to panic or fear monger at all, but I think it is a good time to point to this scientific american blog post that suggest to have food and water on hand for two weeks https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/preparing-for-coronavirus-to-strike-the-u-s/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/preparing-... That doesnt mean you need to stock up on ammunition and night vision googles, just have some food safety even just to not overload the supply chain

onetimemanytime 7y ago
>>"That doesnt mean you need to stock up on ammunition and night vision googles..." An "I have the CoronaVirus and possibly Ebola" sign at the door will keep intruders away :). If kept safely guns are not a bad idea, if you are the type, and especially if you live in rural areas.
- avs733 7y ago
  https://slate.com/technology/2015/01/good-guy-with-a-gun-myth-guns-increase-the-risk-of-homicide-accidents-suicide.html https://slate.com/technology/2015/01/good-guy-with-a-gun-myt...
  - aww_dang 7y ago
    Tautology followed by a spurious conclusion. "People who drive cars are more likely to be in car accidents, therefore car ownership is irresponsible"
    - outside1234 7y ago
      Car owners are more likely to get in car accidents. Gun owners are more likely to get in gun accidents. These are both backed by data.
      - aww_dang 7y ago
        Tautology: Water is wet. Most drownings involve water. Spurious conclusion: Boating and swimming are irresponsible.
    - BuckRogers 7y ago
      Guns don't kill people, you're right. But they sure do make it a lot easier. Unless you're a ninja, I can run from a knife. It's basic logic that less guns equals less gun violence. I also want less grenades and rocket launchers, because I'd rather not have them used around me.
- soonnow 7y ago
  I was just trying to imply that there is no need to go full prepper and build a bunker to survive the apocalypse. Sorry if that was not clear from my tongue-in-cheek comment.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  They might just torch your house with a sign like that. Wouldn't be the first time either that the victims of a disease would get victimized again by their fellow humans.
  - mygo 7y ago
    Not far-fetched at all. This has already happened in Iran this past week. They torched a clinic believed to be hosting coronavirus patients. https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iranians-burn-clinic-that-may-be-quarantine-for-coronavirus-patients-619343 https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iranians-burn-clinic-that-...
rolph 7y ago
the biggest issue to be concerned about is disruption to the knowledge experience supply chain. now why might that be? The journeymen, supervisors, government officials anyone else you can think of that is of elevated importance of function are at elevated risk. im talking about people that have critical knowledge or capabilities that are not cultivated by simply picking up a book and reading. how many surgeons, airtraffic controllers and nuclear technicians can we afford to suddenly loose?
adrr 7y ago
Why do we need to stock up on water? Even the CDC is recommending it. How does the virus put our water supply at risk? I have two weeks worth of water already stockpiled in case of an earthquake which could cause infrastructure damage to our water supply. Everyone should have that.
- soonnow 7y ago
  I think that is exactly what is recommended. If you got two weeks of water then you are good. As you said people should have it anyway, but a lot of people don't (myself included).
- war1025 7y ago
  > I have two weeks worth of water already stockpiled I assume you mean potable water and not a giant cistern dug into your back yard? How much water counts as "two weeks" worth?
- mherdeg 7y ago
  Jeez, you stock 14 gallons of water per person in your house? Where do you keep it? Do you periodically re-freshen it or what?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - almost_usual 7y ago
    Do you have a hot water heater? Common knowledge among SFFD to have some bottled water and access the hot water heater when that runs out.
    - mherdeg 7y ago
      Interesting, our hot water heater is "tankless" and it hadn't occurred to me until this thread that this makes emergency prep a little more complicated.
  - adrr 7y ago

zaroth 7y ago

There’s almost nothing new in this article, for what it’s worth. A genetic analysis of two infections show a mostly identical genome. This does not definitively tell you anything about how those two people were infected. Everything else is speculation wrapped in clickbait. For the vast majority of people, an infection of this coronavirus would be more mild than catching the flu. A reasoned analysis (such as what was provided yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine) puts the fatality rate of COVID-19 on the same order of magnitude as the flu. It is new and very sensationalized. I think it’s absolutely imperative to try to maintain a rational stance of the actual relative impact of this coronavirus versus a typical flu season.

akmarinov 7y ago
If it’s that harmless why is China crashing the world economy over it?
- zaroth 7y ago
  China very well may be using an excuse to test their ability to control their population. They may be performing whatever acts they think they need to do based on analysis of how people will perceive it, and not based on the expected actual effect it might have. Or any other number of reasons. “Because China” is not an argument that holds any scientific merit in an analysis of the severity of COVID-19. Up to 3,000 have died from COVID so far, mostly in Hubei. Hubei has a population of ~60 million, which is ~18% of the US population. About 60,000 people died from flu-related illness last year in the US. The same proportion in Hubei would be 10,800. So it seems it is demonstrably less harmful than flu. Why China or the World is reacting the way is it will be a great question 3-6 months from now in retrospect.
  - magicsmoke 7y ago
    It could be due to the criticism they got over covering up the 2003 SARS epidemic. If under responding gets you global condemnation let's try over responding instead.

0xff00ffee 7y ago

Seeing as how the latest percentage-du-jour claims "80% of infected people will have no to mild symptoms"[0] I'm not surprised. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/asia/coronavirus-treament-recovery.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/asia/coronavirus-tr...

_bxg1 7y ago
Honestly it seems like that would be a huge relief? Last I heard the fatality rate is 1%. If that's actually 1% of the 20% who show any symptoms at all, it's now 0.2%.
- war1025 7y ago
  This is something I've been wondering about since people seem to be playing fast and loose with percentages. If you start multiplying small numbers together, they get real small real quick.
- zaroth 7y ago
  The most recent data I have seen (yesterday in the NEJM) indicates 1.4% fatality in lab diagnosed cases. This of course will only include more serious symptomatic patients, as mild or asymptomatic patients are told to stay home and are not getting tested. No one wants to stand up and call hysteria for what it is. It’s easier to go with the flow and cancel events out of an “abundance of caution.”
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    I think cancelling events is still a good idea. There's still a wide radius of unknown and none of these "events" are of any life-and-death importance to anybody. Hysteria is bad, but for other reasons.
  - altcognito 7y ago
    R0 value is roughly 4-7. Upwards of 5% of the cases require the ICU, 15% require support breathing. Medical personnel are coming down with it frequently, and Italy is trying to bring in newly graduated nurses and retired nurses to fill the gap. This is NOT hysteria. While it isn't a death sentence for most, it is imperative to slow this thing down.

29athrowaway 7y ago

I have read reports saying that the CDC won't test you unless you have fever, shortness of breath and chest pain. By the time you get to that point you already passed the virus to a bunch of people.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
Fever and shortness of breath are the symptoms of the disease - how else would they figure out who to test?
- 29athrowaway 7y ago
  What are your thoughts on this story: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/fayko1/my_covid19_story_brooklyn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/fayko1/my_covid19_stor...
scottlocklin 7y ago
I think it's worse than that; they wouldn't test Carl Zha's family because they hadn't had direct contact with Chinese travelers recently. https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1231745522123202561 https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1231745522123202561 Everything about this looks like an ordinary flu-like virus with massive oversampling at the lethal end of things. Aka since Corona-chan testing is expensive compared to the normal flu screen, you only get it when you're on death's door, which makes it look much worse than it is.

wuwuno 7y ago

I created a throwaway account because, well you'll see why. My wife just told me that two of her co-workers were in Wuhan in Late November visiting a factory and they both got the flu in Wuhan. One guy A, tested negative for the flu, he was sick for 6 weeks, he would start to feel better than get sicker. His doctor told him that he had no idea what was wrong with him. The guy A, said it was the strangest flu he ever had. Over the 6 weeks he was sick he worked from home the entire time and was only working part time for most of those 6 weeks because of how bad he felt. The other guy B, I don't know if B was tested for the flu, was sicker than A, and he was sick for 8 weeks. He also worked from home for the entire time, my wife doesn't work closely with B, so she's not sure how much time he missed during those 6 weeks.

oceanghost 7y ago
> One guy A, tested negative for the flu, he was sick for 6 weeks, he would start to feel better than get sicker. I really think there's something to this. In my part of So Cal, people have been talking about a "recurrent flu" that keeps getting better and relapsing at about 2-week intervals. Everybody I know has had something like that. I think we're going to find out that we've already had covid-19, or there's another very nasty bug out there.
- fspeech 7y ago
  There are (at least) two strains of flus circulating this season.
  - oceanghost 7y ago
    Of course, there are, there would have to be dozens if not hundreds?
- jimmux 7y ago
  That sounds like what I had during the southern hemisphere's flu season last year. It started in late March, before the shot was ready, and just kept coming back over a number of months.
7y ago

ackbar03 7y ago

Yea I'm pretty sure it's out and about in the US now. Your patient numbers are always 0 if you don't test for it

rawfan 7y ago

1. Don't panic, COVID19 won't harm you. 2. No wonder it spreads undetected, with the messed up US medical system, I wouldn't go to the hospital either if I had to fear a huge medical bill [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/upshot/coronavirus-surprise-medical-bills.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/upshot/coronavirus-surpri...

rawfan 7y ago

Fun story: a friend of mine works as an engineer in critical infrastructure (for a large utility in Germany). He wanted to spend his vacation in northern Italy (which currently has a COVID19 outbreak). When his employer got wind of it they offered to pay him extra to choose a different destination. If he went, they told him, he couldn't come back to work for another 2 weeks after his vacation (unpaid leave).