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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.
  - pergadad 7y ago
    As if China cares about global condamnation. they wouldn't do any of this if it wasn't serious.
- dennisgorelik 7y ago
  It looks like the main reason why almost all COVID cases reported in Hubei - is because only in Hubei they consistently test for COVID. In other provinces (and countries) they practically do not test for COVID, and therefore they do not detect COVID in other provinces.
- mygo 7y ago
  > 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. How do you come to that conclusion? This is not an apples to apples comparison. You’re looking at the annual deaths in the US and comparing them to 2 months of deaths mostly in Wuhan, and those Wuhan deaths were largely curbed due to extremely draconian policies enacted to slow the spread. If you want to begin to try to compare annual deaths to Wuhan deaths so far, then if ~3,000 people died in 2 months in Wuhan, then you’d have 18,000 deaths in Wuhan in a year assuming a linear distribution (which has its flaws). But that’s still not apples to apples, since that’s with the extreme mitigation policies that are in effect in Wuhan, and seasonality comes into play for the flu over the span of a year (more deaths in the colder months) but we don’t know how seasonality will impact coronavirus yet. If Coronavirus is to become widespread and uncontainable, then it is still ramping up to whatever “normal” levels you’d expect to see (if it becomes a recurring seasonal bug like the flu), and that’s also assuming that Wuhan’s absolute death count isn’t impacted by its total population size —- there’s a larger population in the US, and different healthcare practices, population density, travel patterns, authoritarian-draconian policies, all with positive and negative effects onto the R0. I don’t see how you can definitively say that the flu is demonstrably more harmful. But it may be helpful to say that the flu makes things worse, since they have similar symptoms and not everybody has their flu shots. A big threat to mitigation would be maxing out the healthcare infrastructure. If more people got their flu shots then less people would be showing up to the hospital with flu-like symptoms that aren’t covid-19.

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.
- pergadad 7y ago
  As if China cares about global condamnation. they wouldn't do any of this if it wasn't serious.
dennisgorelik 7y ago
It looks like the main reason why almost all COVID cases reported in Hubei - is because only in Hubei they consistently test for COVID. In other provinces (and countries) they practically do not test for COVID, and therefore they do not detect COVID in other provinces.
mygo 7y ago
> 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. How do you come to that conclusion? This is not an apples to apples comparison. You’re looking at the annual deaths in the US and comparing them to 2 months of deaths mostly in Wuhan, and those Wuhan deaths were largely curbed due to extremely draconian policies enacted to slow the spread. If you want to begin to try to compare annual deaths to Wuhan deaths so far, then if ~3,000 people died in 2 months in Wuhan, then you’d have 18,000 deaths in Wuhan in a year assuming a linear distribution (which has its flaws). But that’s still not apples to apples, since that’s with the extreme mitigation policies that are in effect in Wuhan, and seasonality comes into play for the flu over the span of a year (more deaths in the colder months) but we don’t know how seasonality will impact coronavirus yet. If Coronavirus is to become widespread and uncontainable, then it is still ramping up to whatever “normal” levels you’d expect to see (if it becomes a recurring seasonal bug like the flu), and that’s also assuming that Wuhan’s absolute death count isn’t impacted by its total population size —- there’s a larger population in the US, and different healthcare practices, population density, travel patterns, authoritarian-draconian policies, all with positive and negative effects onto the R0. I don’t see how you can definitively say that the flu is demonstrably more harmful. But it may be helpful to say that the flu makes things worse, since they have similar symptoms and not everybody has their flu shots. A big threat to mitigation would be maxing out the healthcare infrastructure. If more people got their flu shots then less people would be showing up to the hospital with flu-like symptoms that aren’t covid-19.