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Xd the great

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9 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Well, if I drink too many Mexican cervezas at night I end up with coronavirus the next morning ... :cool:

I’m looking forward to contracting the caronavirus tonight while watching the super bowl.

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1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

It's not a rule of thumb, mind.

Black Death was both incredibly deadly and contagious.

Thankfully, we've learned couple of things about medicine and health care since that time :)

Incidentally, it is also a reason why i find 99% of Zombie Apocalypse scenarios, well... moronic.

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Just now, Scotius said:

Black Death was both incredibly deadly and contagious.

When they were washing on occasion, sleeping side by side, selling clothes from the dead ones, and killing the anti-rat cats, so making ideal conditions for spreading.

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2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

When they were washing on occasion, sleeping side by side, selling clothes from the dead ones, and killing the anti-rat cats, so making ideal conditions for spreading.

True. But still... it was a massive outbreak. It wiped out a significant portion of population of Europe, after sweeping through Asia and Northern Africa. It took centuries to recover from long-term aftereffects on demographics, economy and culture. To this day Black Death is a yardstick we apply to similar disasters... and for good reason.

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Wash your hands.

The current mortality rate for Coronavirus is substantially higher than the usual flu that goes around, which is obviously concerning. The flu kills on the order of 50,000 people per year in the US alone.

50,000.

From what I have read, the usual people need to be concerned about this new virus: The chronically ill, and the elderly. I think all the fatalities have been in those groups so far.

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4 hours ago, tater said:

From what I have read, the usual people need to be concerned about this new virus: The chronically ill, and the elderly. I think all the fatalities have been in those groups so far.

Primarily, but there's always a distribution, even with common flu, and since this disease has mortality rate that's orders of magnitude higher, we will see deaths across the demographic spectrum.

Latest I've seen (Feb 1 data) is 300 deaths against a little under 15k confirmed. Modeling suggests about 75k infected in total at that time, with about 2 weeks lead time. The confirmed cases are doubling roughly every 3 days. So we're talking about something closer to 2,400 people having been infected at the same time as the 300 that died. That puts mortality rate at about 12%. Keep in mind, this is a conservative estimate. I really do hope that it's significantly lower, but the 2-3% that people get by taking dead/confirmed ratio is way too low.  The new virus is likely nearly as dangerous as SARS or even a little worse with faster spread. It's definitely not in world-ending category, but it's going to have very significant impact anywhere it's not contained.

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4 hours ago, tater said:

From what I have read, the usual people need to be concerned about this new virus: The chronically ill, and the elderly. I think all the fatalities have been in those groups so far.

You forgot one more thing. There are currently no non-Asian, even non-Chinese infectees. This may not be a mere correlation.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1.full

The conspirologist rabbit hole is very deep. Let's leave it at that.

6 minutes ago, K^2 said:

It's definitely not in world-ending category

Neither was the first wave of the Spanish flu. Corona's mutating pretty quickly, I hear.

Edited by DDE
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32 minutes ago, DDE said:

You forgot one more thing. There are currently no non-Asian, even non-Chinese infectees. This may not be a mere correlation.

The virus first made the jump to a Chinese person in China. It would not exactly be surprising for it to have that sort of preference. There's likely a whole lot of similar viruses which never got their chance due to other ethnicities either not frequenting that particular market, should a tourist wander in there, not contacting enough of their own people to spread the disease. This is a perfectly normal thing, jumping the species barrier is hard enough without having to affect every kind of human from get-go.

This thing here is broadly similar to SARS, the big scare from several years ago, only much less lethal and somewhat faster spreading. Coronaviruses do like to mutate, but neither SARS nor MERS were particularly world-ending, and this isn't looking any worse. 

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The confirmed cases will also be low compared to the actual number of cases. I'd honestly be surprised if the actual cases at any given time so far have not been, heck, 10X the confirmed number.

I have gotten the flu several times in the last couple decades (and I get flu shots). I've sought out medical care for the flu exactly zero times.

If you are not in a high risk group, or very, very sick, there's not really a reason to seek medical care for any virus---it's not like they do more than supportive care. In a typical year in the US, they estimate something like 15-30 million cases of flu. The % that goes to the hospital is pretty low. From a public health standpoint, even a tiny number going in puts many hospitals on divert, however (my wife sorta likes flu season for that reason, she doesn't have to admit people when she's on call, because there are no beds, lol).

OK, here's the current take in the US on flu impact:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

19 - 26 million cases

8.6 - 12 million medical visits

180,000 - 310,000 hospital admissions.

So medical visits fewer than half (and people go to the doctor for dumb stuff too often, in "medical families" (people with a doc in the family), we usually only seek medical care if it isn't better on its own in 2 weeks). Most illnesses are self-limiting, and viral illnesses are not treated aside from support except in dire cases.

So the "confirmed cases" are the coronavirus version of those hospitalizations for sure, plus some % of medical visits I assume. Many would get seen with flu like symptoms, and be sent home (it's flu season, after all).

Long story short, I'm assuming the mortality is if anything lower than the deaths over total cases, since I am assuming that the vast majority of people who are/were infected never sought medical care at all.

Wonder who the best outfit to follow on this is...

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1 hour ago, tater said:

If you are not in a high risk group, or very, very sick, there's not really a reason to seek medical care for any virus---it's not like they do more than supportive care.

If and only if you are sure it is a virus.  If it might be strep throat, you need to test it.

I'm pretty sure there are some actual means to attack a virus, I don't believe they are a good idea for otherwise healthy individuals...

51 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_Inc.

Everybody knows that you make the disease communicable, spread it around, *then* you turn it deadly.

Diseases that survive become less deadly over time.  I suspect that more of this is to the disease mutating than the hosts.

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1 hour ago, tater said:

So medical visits fewer than half (and people go to the doctor for dumb stuff too often, in "medical families" (people with a doc in the family), we usually only seek medical care if it isn't better on its own in 2 weeks). Most illnesses are self-limiting, and viral illnesses are not treated aside from support except in dire cases.

Medical care is one thing, but people in many cases show up just to get a slip of paper allowing them not to show up at work/school/whatever. Most people know how to deal with flu, and in my experience at least, getting one-two weeks worth of medical leave is an important part of it (I tried ignoring that, once, and was stuck at home for nearly a month).

2 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I'm pretty sure there are some actual means to attack a virus, I don't believe they are a good idea for otherwise healthy individuals...

Antiviral drugs exist, and there are a number of viral diseases which can be very lethal if left untreated. There are vaccines for most of those, though, and that's the best way of protecting oneself against viral diseases. Antivirals are not universal, they don't help with every virus and can't take care of an infection by themselves.

Another important thing, which is a major concern with some diseases, is preventing your own immune system from killing you. This is actually how quite a few viral diseases tend to kill people. The immune system overreacts, goes berserk, and tears the body apart. Ironically, this can cause otherwise strong individuals to die more often than young and elderly, if a virus is particularly prone to triggering this. Fortunately, there are drugs to help with that, and these can be quire effective.

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Yeah, asked my wife and she said they (GPs, she's a surgeon) will give tamiflu to people who show up because it reduces the effects of the flu, and doesn't hurt if they turn out to not have it.

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8 hours ago, DDE said:

Neither was the first wave of the Spanish flu. Corona's mutating pretty quickly, I hear.

There is no evolutionary pressure to make the virus more deadly. Only to be more infectious, and there's a hard limit on that for this type of virus. We're just as likely to get a deadlier form as we are to get one that is less deadly and effectively inoculates you against the deadly form. Anything can happen, of course, but current trajectory is not a doomsday one.

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15 hours ago, tater said:

I'd honestly be surprised if the actual cases at any given time so far have not been, heck, 10X the confirmed number.

I think King's College London is on your side with that regard.

13 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Medical care is one thing, but people in many cases show up just to get a slip of paper allowing them not to show up at work/school/whatever.

To be fair, isolation is preferable.

*gorges on ice-cream ahead of exams*

13 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Another important thing, which is a major concern with some diseases, is preventing your own immune system from killing you. This is actually how quite a few viral diseases tend to kill people. The immune system overreacts, goes berserk, and tears the body apart. Ironically, this can cause otherwise strong individuals to die more often than young and elderly, if a virus is particularly prone to triggering this.

Spanish Flu being the prime example. 

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Any notorious flu is an example, because the flu virus, on its own, doesn't usually do enough damage to kill someone, except perhaps when the immune system is completely knocked out. The nasty thing is, any strain can possibly become that lethal, if it mutates in a form particularly prone to causing a cytokine storm.

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12 hours ago, DDE said:

I think King's College London is on your side with that regard.

To be fair, isolation is preferable.

*gorges on ice-cream ahead of exams*

Spanish Flu being the prime example. 

Yes I agree that infection rates is very under reported. This is an bad flue, think pig flu. 
Its not Spanish flue or Sars, granted if Spanish flue hit today we has way better tools  but it would still be an serious blow. 
For some realistic horror movie stuff in this time.

Your helpful nightmare fuel gas pump attendant
An spoiler https://youtu.be/QSxaojFNAsU?t=392

 

Edited by magnemoe
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