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Keep in mind that almost 20% of the Diamond Princess cruise ship's passengers and crew (700+ of 3711) were infected with the coronavirus. However its infection
by thorum 7y ago
Keep in mind that almost 20% of the Diamond Princess cruise ship's passengers and crew (700+ of 3711) were infected with the coronavirus. However its infection rate compares with the seasonal flu (which is a much less dangerous illness overall), it clearly has the potential to infect a large number of people in the coming months.
- jcadam 7y agoIIRC, the crew was largely responsible for spreading the virus. Not that I'm faulting them. They simply were neither trained nor equipped to do a specialized job that was essentially forced on them - operating a quarantine facility.
- Trasmatta 7y agoI feel like the Diamond Princess is an atypical case and it's maybe a mistake to extrapolate too much from it.
- mc32 7y agoIsn’t a cruise ship a special case because it’s all self contained and there is almost no way to avoid contact with other infected people? Unless they had access to disposable Kevlar jumpsuits, masks, gloves and disinfectant, they’d be hard pressed to slow its spread in cramped conditions.
- chaostheory 7y agoThe way ship HVAC systems are designed, it helps limit costs while simultaneously increasing infections from anything that's airborne. In regard to Diamond Princess though, there were no safety protocols that were followed, so we don't know if it was the ship or the failure to follow pathogen related protocols.
- cyphar 7y agoThis virus isn't airborne. It's spread through respiratory droplets.
- sveng 7y agoThere have been reports that aerosol spread can occur in limited cases: https://youtu.be/xWj9OUAfTLQ https://youtu.be/xWj9OUAfTLQ
- knzhou 7y agoAs this and all other reports indicate, it can become aerosolized in certain invasive hospital procedures, which involve sticking stuff into people's lungs. This holds for a lot of diseases, we've known that for decades, and it doesn't have anything to do with how spread occurs in public.
- Barrin92 7y agoGiven that there are probably very few places that are worse for a disease outbreak than a cruise ship where everyone eats and drinks all day and touches everything and uses the same toilets I'll actually take the 20% as an encouraging number.
- jcadam 7y agoI've heard it said that you have an almost 50% of catching something if you go on a cruise.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago(AnimalMuppet surreptitiously crosses "take a cruise" off of his bucket list...)
- jsharf 7y agoYeah, but as soon as they were aware of a single case on board, everyone single person on the ship was informed, told to stay in their room, and became paranoid about further transmission. I don't know if we'll have similar levels of obedience in the rest of the world.
- alteria 7y agoThere were reports that the actual procedures on the ship were extremely poor, and the quarantine was half-baked at best.
- microcolonel 7y agoThe case fatality rate is in the tens of times higher for the novel coronavirus, when compared with common seasonal influenza.
- carterehsmith 7y agoWhat, where is the source for that? I've read "2x" and "3x" but never "tens of times".
- microcolonel 7y agoThe current figure provided by the WHO is 3.4%, typical figures for seasonal influenza being about 0.1. 3.4 / 0.1 = 34.
- the_watcher 7y agoUsing the infection rate on a cruise ship (pretty close to a perfect petri dish) is not at all representative.
- furyofantares 7y agoYeah -- as a result of them all being quarantined on the ship together for nearly a month.