Merged: 2019-nCoV / Corona virus

[Giordano]

Originally Posted by catsmate

That is, a vast amount of hype? There were less than ten thousand SARS infections and under eight hundred deaths. Measles killed six thousand in the Congo.

That is a very high death rate even if it does not compare to some of the most deadly viruses. Measles (a paramyxovirus) has long been established as a particularly nasty virus. Nipah and Hendra viruses are also very deadly paramyxoviruses, with mortality rates over 70%.

I don't think we yet know accurately the lethality of 2019-nCoV.

[Venom]

Originally Posted by a_unique_person

....Apparently they have a super immune system that is always turned up to 11. In Australia they have spread a disease via horses to vets who go to treat the sick horse. The Hendra virus has a 100% fatality rate.

None of this appears to be true, save for transmission from bats, but that's neither here nor there.

[Arcade22]

According to Swedish tabloids the feared Death Virus has now reached American shores at Seattle, Washington where a hospitalized patient with pneumonia was tested positive. They had recently been in Wuhan, where they presumably contracted the infection.

Prepare yourself.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Roboramma

But SARS could potentially have been much worse if it's spread hadn't been controlled. It seems to me that people were right to be alarmed enough to take action. The fact that they were successful doesn't suggest that they weren't right.

There's nothing wrong with being alarmed. It's a novel coronavirus and that means the population likely has no immunity against the virus. It's very likely to spread through populations like the Aussie bushfires. And we probably will fail at stopping it for the very reason were were successful stopping SARS. There will be mild cases and they will slip through the cracks.

As I mentioned, we stopped SARS because every case was severe, every case was visible.

Most third world countries have little to no public infrastructure. They won't be able to stop it.

The one good thing about this virus so far is the fatality rate is very low. The 4th fatality was a man in his 80s with other health problems. The preexisting health issues of the first three fatalities wasn't known yesterday though obviously someone knows.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Giordano

That is a very high death rate even if it does not compare to some of the most deadly viruses. Measles (a paramyxovirus) has long been established as a particularly nasty virus. Nipah and Hendra viruses are also very deadly paramyxoviruses, with mortality rates over 70%.

I don't think we yet know accurately the lethality of 2019-nCoV.

SARS not only had an extremely high death rate, it threatened to overwhelm the health care capacity. We didn't have enough ventilators, a nightmare.


As for not knowing the fatality rate yet, that's true to some extent, but we have a reasonably good idea it's nothing like SARS or the 1917-1918 influenza pandemic.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

According to Swedish tabloids the feared Death Virus has now reached American shores at Seattle, Washington where a hospitalized patient with pneumonia was tested positive. They had recently been in Wuhan, where they presumably contracted the infection.

Prepare yourself.

That person isolated himself because he knew he had come from Wuhan and suspected he had contracted it. He is currently in isolation in the hospital. It will be an interesting test to see if it is contained.

Though I suspect it will eventually spread here.

[Dr.Sid]

Time to order some stuff from China.

[arthwollipot]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

I was going to go with a humorous title, as I did with the famous "MERS Attacks" thread, but used the scientific name of the virus instead, which seems appropriate in the science & medicine section.

How the hell is that vague?

As it happens, I agree with you that it is an appropriate title. But for people who hadn't encountered a particular piece of information, "2019-nCoV" is a more or less meaningless collection of characters. I think the combined title is clearer though.

[The Atheist]

[quote=arthwollipot;12961914I think the combined title is clearer though.[/QUOTE]

Clearer, but wrong.

It's a coronavirus, not a corona virus and definitely not a Corona virus.

The beer jokes are driving me nuts.

[rjh01]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

Clearer, but wrong.

It's a coronavirus, not a corona virus and definitely not a Corona virus.

The beer jokes are driving me nuts.

Then I suggest you report your own OP and ask that they remove the space before the word virus. And any other changes to make the title of this thread correct.

Because you are right, that space should not exist. Ditto to anything else that needs amending.

[Ziggurat]

Great. I've got to travel to China in a few weeks. Not looking forward to that.

[Myriad]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

The beer jokes are driving me nuts.

I was considering making a typewriter joke instead. Would that be better?

[catsmate]

Originally Posted by Roboramma

But SARS could potentially have been much worse if it's spread hadn't been controlled. It seems to me that people were right to be alarmed enough to take action. The fact that they were successful doesn't suggest that they weren't right.

The same is true of most diseases.

Originally Posted by The Atheist

1 - the death total is already six, and that's a whole week after the story broke. It does appear to be a less deadly coronavirus than MERS or SARS, but it's still far too early to say with any certainty where this will end up.

Seventeen actually. I'm reminded of the last EVD panic.

Originally Posted by The Atheist

2 - pretty sure there's a good vaccine for measles.

And yet stupid people still don't vaccinate themselves and their children against it.

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by rjh01

Then I suggest you report your own OP ...

It's not mine. I'm quite happy with the part I had up.

Originally Posted by Myriad

I was considering making a typewriter joke instead. Would that be better?

Wow, old school! Yes, they'd be much more preferable.

___________________________________


Now presumed to be 4000 infections and total deaths almost certainly under-estimated at the 17 official count: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51202000

And NZ still not screening.

At least rate of infection tends to indicate it's not hugely contagious, but WHO will be making an announcement within the next couple of hours.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by rjh01

Then I suggest you report your own OP and ask that they remove the space before the word virus. And any other changes to make the title of this thread correct.

Because you are right, that space should not exist. Ditto to anything else that needs amending.

TBF, that wasn't his title, it came from the merged thread.

[rjh01]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

TBF, that wasn't his title, it came from the merged thread.

Irrelevant. He has the first post in the thread. He either reports it and asks for whatever changes to the title he wants or he is complaining about stuff that he can fix, yet refusing to fix.

[William Parcher]

Originally Posted by CNN

Public transportation will be suspended in Wuhan starting tomorrow, according to an announcement from the city's coronavirus command center.

All city transportation will halt, including local buses, ferries, long-distance buses and subways. Wuhan's airport and railway stations will be “temporarily closed” for departing passengers.

When these services will re-open remains to be determined...

https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/w...hnk/index.html

[Venom]

The Journal of Medical Virology has a paper out today that suggests that snakes are the natural reservoir of the novel coronavirus.

I can't access the full article through my school login.

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by rjh01

... he is complaining about stuff that he can fix, yet refusing to fix.

Can you point to a complaint, please.

I said it was wrong.

Stick to the facts, mate.

Originally Posted by William Parcher

https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/w...hnk/index.html

Too late - if it's even reasonably contagious, that cat is well and truly out of the bag.

Originally Posted by Venom

The Journal of Medical Virology has a paper out today that suggests that snakes are the natural reservoir of the novel coronavirus.

I can't access the full article through my school login.

That's it, no more eating snake for me.

Here's an open source link for that story: https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...reak-in-china/

The WHO has made no decision to call an emergency, mainly through lack of data, so they're getting more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/h...rus-china.html

[William Parcher]

Daily Mail reports that Chinese authorities are focusing on a snake seller at a local market.

[Skeptic Ginger]

There was a public health conference here today. Wow! They picked this guy up from his home and transported him in a "pod" to an isolation unit at a nearby hospital where robots are providing much of the care!

The patient is doing fine BTW and they aren't doing any contact tracing before his symptoms developed, like on the plane or in the airport.

I'd hope as a matter of routine epidemiology they might want to know who he sat next to on the plane from China. It would be a good indicator of infectiousness or not before symptom onset.

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I'd hope as a matter of routine epidemiology they might want to know who he sat next to on the plane from China. It would be a good indicator of infectiousness or not before symptom onset.

Well, they'll find out if there's an explosion of cases in the next week.

I'd have to say, three weeks after the announcement, the number of cases isn't increasing as fast as it looked a week ago, but it's still probably a week away from knowing one way or the other with certainty.

It's also possibly a bit reminiscent of Mexican 'flu - where lots of people had it so mildly they never got counted. With the range of symptoms so far, there could be a lot of people thinking they just have a cold. Being winter, they wouldn't be too surprised, and it is a first cousin to one of the cold viruses.

[The Atheist]

Aaand we've gone from "thousands of times less dangerous than influenza" to "armed lockdown of three Chinese cities and 18 million people..."

https://www.greenwichtime.com/news/a...r-14997682.php

[Roboramma]

A friend just told me they closed down the movie theatres here in Shanghai.

[Armitage72]

The company I work for makes cleaning products, including hard surface disinfectants. Our sales reps in the US and Canada are already getting asked about products effective against this. I've been asked to put together a letter for them detailing which of our products are effective against coronaviruses. Fortunately, the answer is "nearly all of them."
The CDC website just says "Use a diluted bleach solution or a household disinfectant with a label that says “EPA-approved.”" to treat surfaces. That obviously won't help with direct person-to-person transmission, of course.

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by Armitage72

The company I work for makes cleaning products, including hard surface disinfectants.

I'd say shares in companies manufacutirng face masks are a good bet right now.

Some highly disturbing news out of Scotland, of all places - bloody long way from China - where they have four suspected cases: https://www.theguardian.com/science/...y-matt-hancock

If that turns out correct, and that likelihood seems fairly high, it must be fairly easily communicated, because they will have caught it just in everyday life in Wuhan, which means that there must be tens of thousands of cases.

Hmmm.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

Aaand we've gone from "thousands of times less dangerous than influenza" to "armed lockdown of three Chinese cities and 18 million people..."

https://www.greenwichtime.com/news/a...r-14997682.php

Despite China's reaction:
Vox: The coronavirus outbreak is not yet a global health emergency, WHO says

Quote:

It’s also possible that as officials find more patients with the virus, we’ll learn it is milder than it appears to be right now, Frieden said. “There is still an enormous amount we don’t know about how and how readily it spreads and how often it causes severe illness.” He added, “The fact that hundreds of millions of people will be traveling right now in China, let’s just say, is not great timing.”

[The Atheist]

And it's not tracking that far off SARS.

SARS was 8000 cases & 776 deaths, the 2019-nCoV is sitting at 800 cases & 26 deaths, so a rate 1/3 of SARS.

Plus christ knows how many infected and not picked up.

Chinese lockdown now sitting at 10 cities and 60,000,000 people: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51230011

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's nothing like SARS.

It's more like a really nasty cold no one has immunity to spreading around the world.

[The Atheist]

Really?

This doesn't sound like a bad cold: https://www.theguardian.com/science/...ect-25m-people

Quote:

Facilities are reportedly running out of beds and diagnostic kits for patients who present with fever-like symptoms.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

Really?

This doesn't sound like a bad cold: https://www.theguardian.com/science/...ect-25m-people

Yes it does.

[The Great Zaganza]

I've been to Chinese Night Markets were you can usually find multiple places that have live snake that they will kill and drain the blood before your eyes - drinking warm snake blood is, ironically, considered great for your health.

[Planigale]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's nothing like SARS.

It's more like a really nasty cold no one has immunity to spreading around the world.

I think this is not an appropriate description. This virus appears to cause a severe occasionally fatal pneumonia in a proportion of people infected. The common cold does not cause fatal pneumonia.

The actual fatality rate does not need to be high to cause problems for modern health care systems. If you just have a surge in people with pneumonia requiring hospital care e.g. oxygen this can be crippling for the care system. If the infection is transmissible then this leads to a huge need for isolation facilities which may be limited.

Some actual facts.
https://www.who.int/docs/default-sou...-novel-cov.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/public...nical-features

[angrysoba]

33 million people now under lockdown. Scary stuff whatever the severity of the illness itself because of the strain it will put on people’s lives and medical infrastructure.

[Arcade22]

Oh no! Two Chinese tourists in Finland from Wuhan are suspected of being suspected of being infected with the Death Virus.

[Trebuchet]

I've just been to the doctor. They asked if I'd been to China in the past two weeks.

[Venom]

It sounds like bad influenza rather than a bad cold, a few pegs higher.

[Segnosaur]

Originally Posted by deadrose

This one is new to science, though, and appears to have come from bats, which are eaten in the area where it first occurred.

Bruce Wayne remains unavailable for comment.

Bats... chicken of the cave! I will never watch Anchorman 2 the same way again!

[Venom]

An interesting entry about bats:

Quote:

Molecular studies have demonstrated that bats are natural host reservoirs for several recently emerged high-profile zoonotic viruses, including sudden acute respiratory syndrome–like coronaviruses (4); Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever filoviruses (5,6); rabies and rabies-related lyssaviruses; and many paramyxoviruses, including rubulaviruses and Nipah and Hendra viruses (7–9).

....

In a recent comparative analysis, Luis et al. (3) showed bats to be more likely to be infected with more zoonotic viruses per host species than were rodents, thus adding weight to the suggestion that bats might in some way be unique as sources of emerging zoonoses. In areas where these viruses have been studied, some viral groups (e.g., coronaviruses, astroviruses, paramyxoviruses) have much higher viral diversity and prevalence in bats than in sympatric species of rodents (9,11).

Also it made me wonder whether the preliminary study that traced the virus to snakes means maybe snakes got it from bats by eating them.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Planigale

I think this is not an appropriate description. This virus appears to cause a severe occasionally fatal pneumonia in a proportion of people infected. The common cold does not cause fatal pneumonia.

The actual fatality rate does not need to be high to cause problems for modern health care systems. If you just have a surge in people with pneumonia requiring hospital care e.g. oxygen this can be crippling for the care system. If the infection is transmissible then this leads to a huge need for isolation facilities which may be limited.

Some actual facts.
https://www.who.int/docs/default-sou...-novel-cov.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/public...nical-features

I said, "a really nasty cold no one has immunity to spreading around the world."

If you hear that as "the common cold" then you don't understand what I mean. And if you believe, "The common cold does not cause fatal pneumonia," you are mistaken.

RSV causes common cold symptoms. https://www.cdc.gov/rsv/research/us-surveillance.html

Quote:

Each year in the United States, RSV leads, on average, to—

2.1 million outpatient visits among children younger than 5 years old-1
57,527 hospitalizations among children younger than 5 years old-1
177,000 hospitalizations among adults older than 65 years-2
14,000 deaths among adults older than 65 years-2

Why aren't people panicked about that?

Pertussis reemerged in epidemic proportions more than a decade ago.
https://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/countries/index.html

Quote:

In 2018, the World Health Organization external icon (WHO) reported 151,074 pertussis cases globally. Based on 2008 data WHO estimated that there were 89,000 deaths. However, a publication modeling pertussis cases and deaths with data from 2014 estimates that there were 24.1 million pertussis cases and 160,700 deaths in children younger than 5 years worldwide.

Why aren't people panicked about that?

Current influenza status:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/?deli...DC_7_3-DM17996

Quote:

CDC estimates that so far this season, there have been at least 15 million flu illnesses, 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths from flu.

Why aren't people panicked about that?



This new virus strain is going to spread around the world. There's a certain point where it is too late to put the genie back in the bottle and this has passed that point. It will be severe in some populations, especially the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions.

We've not heard yet about cases in India, and countries in Africa.
https://africatimes.com/2020/01/22/t...w-coronavirus/

Quote:

Most of the top destinations from Wuhan Tianhe airport are in Asia, with the exception of two Australian airports and one in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, according to a rapid report for the Journal of Travel Medicine. Dubai has long served as a travel hub for passengers to and from the African continent, surpassed only by Addis Ababa in 2018. Among others, Air China operates flights between Shenzhen and Johannesburg, while China Southern flies between Nairobi and Shenzhen, according to Forward Keys industry analysts.

China has had a growing financial interest in Africa for a couple decades. It is unlikely there are no cases in African countries yet. One thing we learned in extensive planning when H5N1 flu threatened to explode into a pandemic was the lack of public health infrastructure in many African countries and major cities. India had similar problems.

It was suggested that if a novel fu outbreak wasn't stopped in the first few weeks, we would not be able to stop it. The reason and why that differed from SARS was, with flu one has millions of mild cases that go under the radar.

Assessment of US hospital capacity including ICU capacity was done during flu pandemic planning. With a novel coronavirus there could be a problem but it won't likely be a total disaster.



From WHO

Quote:

On [22 Jan 2020], the members of the Emergency Committee expressed divergent views on whether this event constitutes a PHEIC or not. At that time, the advice was that the event did not constitute a PHEIC, but the Committee members agreed on the urgency of the situation and suggested that the Committee should be reconvened in a matter of days to examine the situation further.

ProMed Moderator comment:

Quote:

[The suggestion of the committee of the need for a more graded system of alerts to replace the current black-or-white "it's a PHEIC" vs "it's not a PHEIC" is an excellent suggestion. The current system permits politics to enter into the equation, leading to direct economic impacts on the countries are confronting the binary choice of "bad" versus "good" rather than "not so bad", "cautionary bad".... - Mod.MPP]

Given all that, what is it you expect me to post? I look at the media hype and my past experience with these threats and want to point out the media is very much hyping this story. Yes, they should be reporting about the attempts of China to isolate whole cities. That's a huge story. The cases showing up in different countries is an important story.

But they continue to call it "the deadly coronavirus" Do they call influenza, "the deadly influenza"? The deadly pertussis outbreak? The media might commonly add those adjectives from time to time, generally about clusters of deaths that occur intermittently.

This is a bad pathogen. No one has immunity. It is going to spread around the world like a wildfire. The fatality rate will not be in the millions, maybe 10s of thousands worldwide, but not millions. It will be high among older people and people with preexisting conditions. I fit that category because I'm on a high dose of prednisone.

I already checked, waterless hand cleaners with high enough alcohol content will destroy the virus on your hands. I already wash my hands all the time. I will be making sure I have waterless hand cleaner in my car and purse. I'll be more conscientious about all that for a while.

There is nothing to panic about. And it is going to spread.