
WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza" - vanilla-almond
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---3-march-2020
======
knzhou
This is important, because lots of internet commentators are just going with
the most alarming possible statements: 28 day incubation periods, people can
get infected twice, airborne transmission, asymptomatic transmission. These
assertions are _all_ based on outlier cases, sometimes even _single_ cases,
observed during the fog of war. Even if these accounts are correct, they
aren't the typical case, which is what actually matters for policy and
prevention.

The typical case has been well-known for months: most people get fevers, the
incubation period is usually a few days, and most transmission is from
symptomatic cases and via droplets. The WHO has collected stats from tens of
thousands of cases and they've been straightforwardly pointing in this
direction the entire time.

There definitely is a serious problem, but misinformation helps nobody, even
if its spreaders are well-meaning. For example, I've seen a lot of people take
the inflated statements ("28 day incubation period!!") to mean that stopping
the spread is completely impossible, while we have seen by example that it
isn't.

~~~
fspeech
Analysis shows there might be two subtypes from the very early days:
[https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-
article/doi/10.1093/nsr...](https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-
article/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwaa036/5775463)

If the theory is correct, the L type is more aggressive and may be causing
explosive outbreaks as in Wuhan, while the S type is less aggressive but
harder to block from transmission. Interestingly, the S type is the ancestor.
It would be interesting to see what is more prevalent in the outbreaks of
South Korea, Italy and Iran.

~~~
cbsks
Thank you for providing a primary source! I'm sick and tired of getting
regurgitated information from the media (pun intended).

------
Sevrene
I've noticed a trend in the discussion of Covid-19 when talking to people.
They tend to either under estimate it; "it's just the flu", or they over
estimate it; "This is going to be really bad, time to buy all toilet paper".

There's a lot of confusing mixed messages, not even from just random people,
but from the WHO and different governments. They say they are fully prepared
and it can be contained yet doctors and health advisors are saying that's just
not true. I think there's a bit of play here between the negative effects from
the virus, versus the perceived negative effects from panic (I suspect the
economy plays a role in government's responses far more than people think).

So to me it seems there is a bit of a management or reaction to an over
reaction. Yet, in face of a pandemic, being worried is probably sensible
because it will lead you prepare and be conscious of good hygiene practises.
Telling people everything is okay in the face of possible emergency or
possible disaster is not good.

Are there people out there over reacting and over reaching with their analysis
of this? Sure. But that doesn't mean there's nothing worth reacting over. This
is a serious health issue, and calling it 'just the flu' could be considered
reckless in my opinion.

~~~
singularity2001
Where do you put Paul Grahams simple analysis that at the current rate within
one month we have 1 million cases?

Over estimation?

~~~
marvin
Doubling rate in confirmed cases is closer to 4 days than 3 unless you include
only the last week or so. A doubling rate of 6 days in the medium term has
also been estimated. This will obviously delay the time to reach one million
cases. However, confirmed cases are a lower bound for the total number of
cases, as cases only get confirmed when evaluated by healthcare personnel. It
is not credible that Iran and Italy have 3000 cases each, when lots of
tourists returning from there have been diagnosed. Did they just randomly bump
into one of the 3000 in a country of millions?

Uncertainties aside, the model of exponential growth is sound. Disease spread
follows exponential growth until it hits an inflection point, either due to
running out of viable hosts or due to quarantines and other countermeasures
reducing the transmission rate per infected below 1. China forcibly caused
this inflection on February 4th, by essentially stopping their economy through
strict quarantines.

A doubling rate of 4 days yields 1 million infected globally on the 29th of
March, and that's what we'll get unless the transmission rate somehow falls
before then. Plenty of assumptions in that statement though.

------
pezo1919
To me it seems WHO was downplaying it the whole time. First lie is China will
be able to contain it and now they don't even call it a pandemic. Also R0 is
much higher then for flu.

I really hope the new idea about transmissability is true but if it is I don't
get why China treats it as they do. Wuhan is locked for 40+ days.

I can't trust WHO now related to Covid-19, especially after what happened to
stock. Of course they have to lie more if that avoids "panic". Truth is
underrated in our civilization at the moment.

~~~
cyphar
> I can't trust WHO now related to Covid-19, especially after what happened to
> stock.

The stock market is an indicator of investor confidence. How investors feel
about a particular event is not necessarily accurate, and has basically no
direct relation to the WHO.

~~~
notahacker
Also, even a perfectly successful way of containing Covid-19 would depress
stock values [against a benchmark of _the virus not existing_ ] if it involved
containment actions such as isolating significant numbers of people and
cancelling events and flights.

------
deveac
It feels like all of the reporting I've seen from experts (not just mainstream
news outlets which are admittedly terrible)has indicated Covid-19's R0 is
worse than influenza.

It would have been awfully nice if The WHO tossed us a citation on their claim
that this is not the case. It was hard to read the entire piece with that
unsupported claim hanging so heavily.

And the containment claim...again...would have loved for them to argue the
case, because it is exceedingly easy to argue _against_ the case.

~~~
knzhou
Unfortunately R0 is a bit of a vague thing.

For seasonal flu, you could think of it as being very low, because most people
already have immunity. It's already endemic, so there isn't room for
exponential growth.

For a _new_ flu (like the 2008 swine flu) it is extremely high, which is why
people barely did anything to contain it back then -- it was just impossible.

What we have right now is in between.

~~~
usaar333
Isn't R0 by definition for a population that isn't immunitized?

------
MilnerRoute
I just want to highlight this quote from the WHO:

 _" With influenza, people who are infected but not yet sick are major drivers
of transmission, which does not appear to be the case for COVID-19."_

 _" Evidence from China is that only 1% of reported cases do not have
symptoms, and most of those cases develop symptoms within 2 days."_

~~~
ceejayoz
That's good news. Early-onset symptoms (in particular, a fever) was part of
what made tackling SARS possible.

~~~
MilnerRoute
Another quote from the WHO:

 _" We don’t even talk about containment for seasonal flu – it's just not
possible. But it is possible for COVID-19. We don't do contact tracing for
seasonal flu – but countries should do it for COVID-19, because it will
prevent infections and save lives. Containment is possible."_

------
thorum
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.

~~~
Barrin92
Given 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.

~~~
jsharf
Yeah, 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
There were reports that the actual procedures on the ship were extremely poor,
and the quarantine was half-baked at best.

------
victorlin
Please don't trust WHO, obviously they got heavily influence from Chinese
government.

Remember when COVID-19 out-broken in China, the WHO told us

"The Committee does not recommend any travel or trade restriction based on the
current information available. "

[https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/30-01-2020-statement-
on...](https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/30-01-2020-statement-on-the-
second-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-\(2005\)-emergency-
committee-regarding-the-outbreak-of-novel-coronavirus-\(2019-ncov\))

Then we saw China locked down all major city themselves. Now you tell me it's
fine not to ban flights from China?

And they also keep mentioning it's not a big deal. Obviously they don't want
to hurt Chinese economy. I won't trust anything they say, as their interest is
China government's interest, not people's health.

~~~
FabHK
Hindsight. At the time, nobody had travel restrictions. Were they all
influenced by China? No, with the then current information travel or trade
restrictions didn’t make sense.

This is the same lazy argument as with the 737 MAX - why wasn’t it immediately
grounded? Well, you can’t just shut down the world at any sign of trouble. You
have to make an informed judgement call with the information you have at the
time. Sometimes, ex post, it will turn out to have been the wrong call.
Doesn’t mean you need to revise or impugn the decision procedure.

~~~
victorlin
Well, allow me to remind you the timeline

> On 23 January 2020, the central government of the People's Republic of China
> imposed a lockdown in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province in an effort
> to quarantine the epicentre of an outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019
> (COVID-19)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hubei_lockdowns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hubei_lockdowns)

What do you mean nobody had travel restrictions? The report from WHO date was
on 30 January 2020, when they saw this and yet suggest not to put any
restrictions?

~~~
lovemenot
Imagine if Israel had taken the opportunity to lock-down West Bank in the name
of health, specifically prevention of novel coronavirus.

My artificial example is perhaps not accurate on its face, but I hope you can
see the principle. WHO was trying to prevent unnecessary border restrictions
in the world, until such time as they became justified for health reasons. In
China that was already the case.

~~~
victorlin
If you have no idea how bad it already was when WHO suggest not restrictions
needed, than I would suggest you watch this video

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-nv7j9HEgY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-nv7j9HEgY)

Many of the footage are before the Jan 30 WHO announcement, like the many body
moving in front of hospital.

WHO probably already know what's really happening there, but still given wrong
advice, so that many countries, like Korean, Japan follow the instruction by
WHO, not imposing the restriction on China. And now people in these countries
are suffering from the misinformation provided by WHO.

Another evidence WHO is controlled by China, that is when Taiwanese people
want to join WHO to get latest update about the virus and help from the world,
Chinese government doesn't want this to happen.

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/china-health-
coronaviru...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/china-health-coronavirus-
wuhan-virus-spreads-taiwan-no-say-who/)

So basically Taiwan was excluded from the global health system for long time
because that.

I am from Taiwan, I don't feel surprise at all that WHO is controlled by
China, as they have shown it that way long time ago on the issue of excluding
people from Taiwan. So that's obviously political over people's health in the
world.

------
DreamSpinner
It's interesting that the notes regarding transmission efficiency are _not_
present in the similar speach given on the 4th of March (as opposed to the
article link, which is the 3rd of March).

I'm not sure what to make of it. It might be pure paranoia on my part - but it
is an interesting change in the welcome statements that are otherwise
generally similar.

[https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-
general-...](https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-
opening-remarks-at-the-mission-briefing-on-covid-19---4-march-2020)

------
username90
Then how come we see cases where there were no symptomatic patients nearby?
Like this CDC screener, no cases where known in the entire state when the
person contracted the disease and it happened weeks ago:

[https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/medical-
screener-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/medical-screener-lax-
airport-tests-positive-coronavirus-n1149986)

And this is not the first such case in USA. So either there are a ton of
symptomatic Covid-19 patients in USA right now who are just thought to have
the flu, or Covid-19 can spread just fine from asymptomatic people and that
was how it spread to the well protected CDC personnel in the airport. And if
an expert who follows all hygiene standards and wearing gloves and N95
respirators got it from an asymptomatic person, imagine how many other people
at the Airport must have gotten it as well? And how many persons the carrier
infected after arriving in USA?

I am all but certain that the statement "We can contain it" is a lie at this
point, I don't see how anyone can believe that. At least not without
aggressively doing complete lockdowns of large communities before we even
confirm cases, but I feel it is too late even for that now.

------
ardit33
1\. I would not trust anything coming out of WHO at this point. Even Germany
called it a pandemic, yet they are not willing to call it such (perhaps due to
political influence/pressure, or just incompetence). This looks more like a
'panic containment' type of statement than the truth.

2\. The R0 of seasonal flu, is about 1.5, Covid-19 has a R0 between 2.6 and
3.5*. (yet to be determined), which is much more contagious than normal flu.
This article has no mention of it, hence has no credibility. By any account of
any data, Covid-19 looks to be 2x more efficient to spread as the normal flu.

3\. The major cases from the Diamond Princess, the cult in South Korea, and
the Eldery Care facility in Seatle, are an indication that the virus is very
easily spread in close quarters. That's not a normal flu type of virality, it
is much worse.

4\. We have many cases where people still tested positive even after 14 days
of quarantine, hence it is not going to be easy to contain. But we don't know
yet if a person is still contagious after testing positive after 14 days. No
mention to this as well.

TLDR: Don't panic, yet 3.4% of people are going to die, or 10-15% of your
parents/grandparents will perish earlier due to this virus.

I am sorry, but that's war-zone like statistics.... and this should be treat
as such. (it needs a true war like mobilization to be combated, and talks like
this to minimize the impact are just irresponsible).

~~~
allovernow
[https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pandemic-
bon...](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pandemic-bond-debate-
inside-look-world-bank-coronavirus-relief-investment-2020-2-1028906657?op=1)

> The [class a] bonds default if pandemic-related deaths reach 2,500 in a
> single nation with an additional 20 or more deaths confirmed in an overseas
> country, according to the bank's prospectus.

> The [class b] bonds pay 11.5% annually, but reach default after 250 deaths.
> The bonds' payout rate scales with the number of additional countries that
> experience than 20 confirmed deaths.

Well? Why are they dragging their feet? Even the official numbers have seen
more than 2.5k die in China and more than 20 in Iran. The only question now is
whether this is incompetence or maliciousness.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
I don’t see it. Pandemics are objectively defined. The bonds’ principal pays
for relief in the event of a pandemic, meaning a venal WHO would lean towards
categorising non-pandemics as pandemics.

------
mrb
" _First, COVID-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza, from the
data we have so far._ "

Ok let's look at the data he summarizes in the next sentences:

" _With influenza, people who are infected but not yet sick are major drivers
of transmission, which does not appear to be the case for COVID-19. Evidence
from China is that only 1% of reported cases do not have symptoms, and most of
those cases develop symptoms within 2 days._ "

That's 1% of _reported_ cases. But evidence shows there are many more
_unreported_ cases, and these cases tend to be asymptomatic, or very mild.
Peer-reviewed research has estimated there are 11x to 38x more cases than
detected:

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30260-9/fulltext)

[https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/9/2/419](https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/9/2/419)

Another study estimates there are 19x to 26x more cases than detected:
[https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-
college/medicine/s...](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-
college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-2019-nCoV-
severity-10-02-2020.pdf)

These 3 studies are all the studies I know of that try to estimate the rate of
underascertainment. I did not cherry-pick these to make a point.

Anyway, this suggests the vast majority of cases might be, in fact, just like
influenza: asymptomatic or very mild. And there are no reason to believe they
are not major drivers of transmission.

" _Some countries are looking for cases of COVID-19 using surveillance systems
for influenza and other respiratory diseases. Countries such as China, Ghana,
Singapore and elsewhere have found very few cases of COVID-19 among such
samples – or no cases at all._ "

China: the only reason they find so few new cases in March (only 100-200 new
cases per day) is not because COVID-19 is less contagious than the flu, but
because they implemented extreme response measures including the complete
shutdown and isolation of whole cities, cancellation of public events, closing
all schools nationwide, prohibition of attendance at work, etc. So of course
COVID-19 is spreading slower than the influenza. If China implemented these
measures during influenza season, they would likely drastically reduce the
number of influenza cases.

Singapore: COVID-19 has, so far, been contained (less than 110 cases country-
wide) with strict isolation procedures for patients. I am not sure this is
evidence that COVID-19 is less contagious than influenza.

Ghana: it is not even a country rated "high risk" by
[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30464-5/fulltext)
but just "moderate risk". And there are no known cases of COVID-19. So in my
opinion, it is insufficient evidence to suggest COVID-19 is less contagious
than the flu.

" _The only way to be sure is by looking for COVID-19 antibodies in large
numbers of people, and several countries are now doing those studies. This
will give us further insight into the extent of infection in populations over
time._ "

That's the only statement from the WHO Director-General that makes sense: we
need more evidence to be sure we can correctly quantify COVID-19's
contagiousness.

------
cbsks
This paper has more information:
[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6909e1-H.pdf](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6909e1-H.pdf)

TLDR: "Since February 28, an increasing number of newly diagnosed confirmed
and presumptive COVID-19 cases have been in patients with neither a relevant
travel history nor clear epidemiologic links to other confirmed COVID-19
patients. However, despite intensive follow-up, no sustained person-to-person
transmission of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 was observed in the United States among
the close contacts of the first 10 persons with diagnosed travel-related
COVID-19."

They tracked the first 10 people in the US with travel-related confirmed
COVID-19, and followed up with 445 people who had close contact with them.

Over 14 days, 54 of those 445 people developed new or worsening symptoms and
were tested for COVID-19.

Of the 54 people, only 2 tested positive for COVID-19. Both were household
members of originally infected people.

"Both persons with confirmed secondary transmission had close contact with the
respective source patient before COVID-19 was confirmed and were isolated from
the source patient after the patient’s COVID-19 diagnosis."

"No other close contacts who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 had a positive test,
including the five household members who were continuously exposed during the
period of isolation of their household member with confirmed COVID-19. An
additional 146 persons exposed to the two patients with secondary COVID-19
transmission underwent 14 days of active monitoring. Among these, 18 (12%)
developed symptoms compatible with COVID-19 and were considered PUIs. All
tested negative, and no further symptomatic COVID-19 cases (representing
tertiary transmission) have been identified."

~~~
AnimalMuppet
So... what? These people are picking up _something_ that looks like COVID-19,
but isn't? The COVID-19 tests are missing something like 90% of the people who
have it? Or what?

~~~
cbsks
> These people are picking up something that looks like COVID-19, but isn't

> The COVID-19 tests are missing something like 90% of the people who have it

As far as I know (I'm not an expert) either of those are possibilities, and
it's too early to know for sure.

Edit: This comment mentions the possibility of there being 2 types of the
virus that spread at different rates:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22489599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22489599)
Maybe the 10 people monitored in the US had the less contagious version? There
are a lot of unanswered questions right now.

------
Tilian
... "from the data we have so far."

There are still a lot of unknowns, as stated in the media briefing.

------
jcadam
"To summarize, COVID-19 spreads less efficiently than flu, transmission does
not appear to be driven by people who are not sick, it causes more severe
illness than flu, there are not yet any vaccines or therapeutics, and it can
be contained – which is why we must do everything we can to contain it. That’s
why WHO recommends a comprehensive approach."

Ah, so there aren't hordes of asymptomatic carriers out there, which is both
good and bad (the death rate really is high)

~~~
roywiggins
The confusing thing is that the Diamond Princess data points in the other
direction: more asymptomatic cases, and a significantly lower case fatality
rate, than the WHO numbers.

[https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-
mortality-r...](https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality-
rate-lower-than-we-think.html)

The WHO says they haven't found many asymptomatic cases (despite looking), but
apparently lots of the cruise ship cases were. The WHO estimates a mortality
rate over 3%, but much less 3% of the Diamond Princess infected died.

I don't know how to reconcile these other than to suppose the virus has
mutated (possible) or the asymptomatic cases were false positives (maybe?) or
some demographic factor on the cruise ship was different.

~~~
servercobra
The Diamond Princess is a pretty small sample size to be extrapolating the
mortality rate.

~~~
roywiggins
Statistics out of South Korea look similar:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/12352115846...](https://mobile.twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/1235211584600932352)

------
Congeec
The title is just one of those many points made.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
It's arguably the most interesting/novel of the points, and HN titles have
strict length limits.

------
all_blue_chucks
You are all interpreting this wrong. In a population with no preexisting
immunity to either virus, flu would spread faster than COVID.

But there is widespread immunity to flu (from both vaccines and exposure).
There is ZERO immunity to COVID.

So IN PRACTICE, this new disease spreads MUCH faster than flu.

------
allovernow
Just a reminder that this is coming from an organization that

1\. Receives part of it's funding from China

2\. Has been using China's clearly manufactured numbers since day 1

3\. Has yet to officially call this a pandemic though it has met the criteria
for weeks ($425MM in pandemic bonds would default) [0]

4\. Is led by a man (the very director being quoted) who was accused by the
NYT of covering up no less than 3 cholera epidemics in his home country of
Ethiopia. [1]

So you're telling me China shut down it's entire economy [2] and put 700MM
people under lockdown and/or travel restrictions because of something about as
dangerous as the common flu? Note that the Chinese economy is _still_ not back
online - don't believe me? Check real time pollution maps for yourself. The
air is still cleaner than it has been in decades.

The WHO and CDC are lying to you. You can verify all of this for yourself.

Hell, 8% of Iranian parliament members are infected. Look at the chaos
gripping Iran, Italy, and SK. This is not the flu and I'm astounded that not
only are official organizations misleading the public to this degree, but
people are buying it en masse.

Finally, after a mass petition, a number of journals released all 2019ncov
literature from paywall. You can find estimates for mortality and R0 from many
sources, and I don't think I've seen a single one below 2. The Spanish Flu of
1918 was at 2. Of course take these with a grain of salt as they may be
oversampling severe cases, but they all point to the same grave conclusions,
and you can read them yourself. Do not rely on these agencies to digest this
information for you when you have unprecedented access to the same
information.

0\. [https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pandemic-
bon...](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pandemic-bond-debate-
inside-look-world-bank-coronavirus-relief-investment-2020-2-1028906657?op=1)

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/health/candidate-who-
dire...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/health/candidate-who-director-
general-ethiopia-cholera-outbreaks.html)

2\. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/at-
least-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/at-least-two-
thirds-of-china-s-economy-to-stay-closed-next-week)

~~~
Shank
> The WHO and CDC are lying to you. You can verify all of this for yourself.

In a case like this, where you're basically saying that two massive government
organizations are broken, and one of which is an international organization
which is _designed_ to transcend national borders (and thus includes different
member countries, including China), the burden of proof lies with the person
making the claim.

As a general response: of course the WHO is going to use China's numbers. If
you don't establish some baseline for reporting then what are you going to do?
Guess? The WHO does not have people to drop into China and start testing
everyone. If China is under-reporting numbers then that's a great shame the
world needs to deal with, but in typical situations involving bad data, you
exclude the bad data entirely. Are we to exclude all of the numbers reported
by China? Multiply by a scale factor to adjust? Pick a random number?

There are many problems in the world and the WHO is not free of problems.
Every director of every organization has some random set of things people
don't like about them. In cases like this, again, it's important to provide
evidence to support your claims (even if that's just basic links to overviews
by reputable sources). From there, people can make informed decisions and
judgement calls. I don't particularly think you're lying or telling the truth,
I just think that not making evidence backed decisions is dangerous,
especially in times like these.

~~~
Shank
Replying to my own comment because the author has retroactively added
citations. Cheers!

------
Leary
"To summarize, COVID-19 spreads less efficiently than flu, transmission does
not appear to be driven by people who are not sick, it causes more severe
illness than flu, there are not yet any vaccines or therapeutics, and it can
be contained – which is why we must do everything we can to contain it. "

------
heyitsguay
Interesting... i wonder what the data is to back up that assertion?

Another interesting tidbit in there was that very few cases (1%) appear to be
totally asymptomatic, and that most infections apparently start showing some
symptoms after a couple days. So there are a few assertions in total that seem
to depart from what was previously understood, at least through mass and
social media.

~~~
knzhou
> i wonder what the data is to back up that assertion?

The data is the tens of thousands of cases the WHO has stats on. You can read
any of their reports, they've been saying the same thing for months. The main
sources contradicting them are random internet commentators.

~~~
himinlomax
They've not been saying that for months, that's completely absurd. The disease
started spreading in November at the earliest. Just a month ago very little
was known about its transmission rate and lethality; estimates from reputable
sources ranged from 1 to 20%.

~~~
Trasmatta
> estimates from reputable sources ranged from 1 to 20%.

What reputable sources have said anything close to 20%?

~~~
chaostheory
The highest estimated r0 in a non-peer reviewed paper that I've seen is 6.6.

himinlomax may be referring to individual cases like the one involving a cult
in South Korea where one lady was confirmed to have infected approximately 70
people

~~~
tylerhou
himinlomax was claiming that reputable sources reported a 20% lethality rate,
which is absurd (about as high as SARS).

~~~
himinlomax
I didn't talk about reports, I said "estimates." And yes, early estimates
included the perfectly reasonable though eventually disproven hypothesis that
it could turn out to be as deadly as MERS (SARS was not that deadly).

------
fractal618
They're trying to avoid a panic, so I'm just looking at the data from now
on....

Numbers from [https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-
coronavirus...](https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-
cases/)

As of March 4th. 6:22 pm eastern standard

In China:

Deaths: 2,981

recoveries : 49,856

Death/recovery : 5.98%

Outside of China...

Deaths: 272

Recoveries : 1205

Deaths/recoveries : 22.6%

~~~
CyanLite2
All Countries except for South Korea are NOT counting the mild or asymptomatic
cases. When you look at the SK numbers, 5,621 confirmed cases and 35 deaths.
That puts the death rate at 0.6% (same as severe influenza season).

Everybody just needs to chill.

~~~
d1zzy
Even if COVID-19 fatality rate is _lower_ than the regular flu, if it infects
people faster to the point where those very few severe cases cannot get the
help they need because of health services being overwhelmed then it will
potentially be resulting in a lot more deaths than the flu.

~~~
umanwizard
I don't understand people downplaying this by saying it's only as bad as the
flu. The flu is really fucking bad!

Before widespread flu vaccination, it killed 50 million people in just one
outbreak (Spanish flu). That's more than have been killed by HIV/AIDS combined
in history. And we have no vaccine against COVID-19.

Even nowadays, it still kills tens of thousands of people every year.

~~~
drewcon
To be fair. Seasonal flu usually induces secondary sickness (bacterial
pneumonia) that causes mortality in the elderly and very young population.

Spanish flu wiped out the young and elderly but also the middle aged directly
with things like cytokine storms. Something we are not seeing with Covid 19.

~~~
bcrosby95
Correct. Note that there were multiple waves of the Spanish Flu. First wave
was fairly mild and hit the young and elderly. Second wave hit the middle aged
and wiped out a chunk of the population.

The third wave was slightly worse than the first but much less deadly than the
second - I couldn't find much detail about it when I last tried.

Several theories on why it turned out this way, none of them relevant to the
current situation though.

------
whotang
On January 23rd, 2020. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declines to declare China
virus outbreak as a global health emergency. As we all know, the Coronavirus
is not treatable at the moment. The number of infected and deaths has risen
more than ten times (infected from 800 - close to 10,000) within only 5 days.
Part of it is related to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus under estimated the
coronavirus. We strongly think Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is not fit for his
role as WHO Director General. We call for the Immediate Resignation of Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

A lot of us are really disappointed, we believe WHO is supposed to be
political neutral. Without any investigation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
solely believes on the death and infected numbers that the Chinese government
provided with them.

On the other hand, Taiwan should not be excluded from WHO for any political
reasons. Their technologies are far more advanced than some of the countries
on the “selected WHO list”.

[https://change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the-
resignation...](https://change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the-resignation-
of-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus-who-director-general)

