
Substantial undocumented infection facilitates rapid dissemination of SARS-CoV2 - doener
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/science.abb3221.full
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svara
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22598803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22598803)

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systemvoltage
Any virologists here? Is it possible that we may have a grave future where a
virus emerges with R0 value of 6-7 (such as measles virus), long incubation
period (10 days, contagious on 2nd day) and a death rate of 50-100% (such as
Ebola)?

A virus with the combination of all of the aforementioned properties would
guarantee complete extinction of humans (or we get very close to it). Should
we consider ourselves lucky?

Edit: my intent wasn't to incite panic, but to learn about the virology,
molecular biology and the physics of transmission.

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sbuttgereit
How many past events of rapid, steep population decline have we seen in the
historical/archaeological record? Assuming that, historically speaking, travel
isn't what it is today, I would expect such cases to be localized, but still I
think it can go some distance to answering your question. We see instances of
civilizations falling apart, but I'm certainly not aware of any where a top of
your range disease was considered a reasonable possibility. Of those that come
within your range, the only instances I can think of were in combination with
other pressures... a large portion of the population gets very sick while at
the same time the society comes under attack from outside peoples.

How many times do we see this sort of thing in nature? We do see infestations,
like beetles destroying forests, but I'm not so sure we have many cases where
we expect viral infections to be the likely candidate.

Of all the disease related scenarios I'm worried about, none match your
scenario. I do think in some ways humans are "tuned" to apocalyptic thinking
moreso than is perhaps is helpful. I think we're more prone to accept
emotional arguments than we should be, causing us to possibly be more a danger
to ourselves in the face of a terrible disease than the disease itself. I'm
much more afraid of what we'll do to each other and ourselves, willingly,
under pressure, than I am about even the most deadly viruses will do.

Having said all of this: it's all opinion and none of it comes from expertise.
Others may point out evidence to the contrary.

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systemvoltage
Isn’t this is literally survivorship-bias? There are a lot of events that can
happen in future which has no precedence. But I generally agree with you, it’s
hard to speculate.

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sbuttgereit
I don't think it is; assuming the questions of the original commentator asked
can be read as a "how likely" sort of thing. I'm not saying look at the people
here and you have your answer (aside from extinction level epidemics, which we
can exclude because we are here), but complex life has existed for quite a
while and even humans have on a relative basis. If the sort of thing the
commentator is thinking is at all likely, it very well is likely to have
happened before (assuming viruses more easily evolve than more complex
lifeforms do). I'm saying that we should be able to learn from what isn't
here, from what didn't survive... not from what did. When we look back at what
didn't make it, I don't know of many (any) cases where we say that the sudden
appearance of an extremely virulent pathogen likely did in this species or
that civilization. This isn't to say its impossible, but unlikely... if you
perform a historical study of random individuals that play the lottery, you'll
find that it's just parting a sucker from their money... yet there is
nonetheless usually a winner.

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adventured
Is there a reason why China hasn't done massive randomized blood testing in
the city of Wuhan, to see what the real spread was? Surely that is data they
would desperately want.

We know their infections were radically beyond the 80,000 they claim. For
exmaple we know they changed their qualifications in late January / early
February, to hide infection numbers by dropping non-severe results (which
produced a fake taper off in their case expansion at that time). However, it
would be an immense service to the world, if we could find out just how
widespread the virus really is in populations. If anyone could do a million
blood tests in a short amount of time, it would be China.

Did herd immunity help China bring the outbreak under control in Wuhan,
because it had hyper spread there? It's crazy that we still don't know basic
things like this.

Has Italy really had 500k-1m cases of it, not 47,000? Such that it took that
many cases in the general population, most undocumented, to generate the ICU
overload they're seeing.

It changes everything about how we handle the virus over the coming months, if
it has already spread in large numbers across the population. Some large
population country with a lot of infections needs to do this asap. China, US,
France, Spain, Italy, Germany. Even Switzerland at this point might give us
the data we need. Do they really have 60,000 cases, rather than 6,000?

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rwmj
_> We know their infections were radically beyond the 80,000 they claim. [...]
they changed their qualifications in late January / early February, to hide
infection numbers [...]_

I think you answered your first question right here. It may not be convenient
for the CCP to get to the truth.

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jpxw
Wouldn’t it be in the CCP’s favour to report that the virus has a lower CFR?

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MikeAmelung
Not if they're gleefully watching "the West" crush themselves in mass panic...

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cc81
They have shared a lot of data and I've heard scientists in the west to be
very thankful over that.

Does the tests for antibodies even exists yet? I heard it was some weeks away?

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MikeAmelung
Well sure, you don't just lay all your cards out on the table when you've got
a good hand going.

There are already rapid antibody tests available. It's extremely curious to me
why they haven't been used or we at least aren't seeing any data that they
have.

This isn't about a rapid test, but is still interesting:
[https://globalbiodefense.com/headlines/singapore-first-to-
te...](https://globalbiodefense.com/headlines/singapore-first-to-test-out-
covid-19-serological-assay-in-outbreak-contact-tracing/)

