
Is It a Pandemic Yet? - kgwgk
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/opinion/coronavirus-pandemic.html
======
mrb
I will probably be downvoted for saying this, but...

The seasonal flu alone kills half a million people every year. So any mild
disease that is as contagious and barely twice as fatal will kill 1 million.
And that's what's going to happen with COVID19. It is far more severe than the
flu.

We know COVID19 is as contagious, given how fast it's spreading and how
unstoppable it is (R0>2, asymptomatic transmission, airborne). And we now have
4 independent estimates that place the Infection Fatality Ratio at about 0.5%
to 1.7% which is between 5x and 17x deadlier than the flu (0.1%):
[https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1230977769795776512](https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1230977769795776512)
Incidentally, this makes COVID19 comparable to the 1918 Spanish Flu (IFR ~2%)
according to experts (see link above). And keep in mind the IFR, unlike the
CFR, is the metric that takes into account undetected mild cases. The Case
Fatality Ratio is around 9% right now.

So based on this, I predict it will go pandemic and will kill 1 million, and
probably a lot more.

COVID19 is the most severe (ie. contagious + fatal) airborne disease since the
Spanish Flu.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
[edited to change linked article]

Fortunately we know a lot more about viruses today than we did in 1918. The
virus has already been mapped genetically, and many labs around the world are
hard at work on an anti-viral treatment. We shouldn't get complacent of
course, but it's likely that this thing can be contained and treated
eventually.

I read today about a device[1] from Israel that helps the lungs quickly clear
phlegm, thus reducing the coughing behavior that spreads the disease. The
Chinese are starting to manufacture and deploy it, so hopefully it will cut
back on the spread at least a bit.

1\. [https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/New-Israeli-
invention-u...](https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/New-Israeli-invention-
used-to-treat-coronavirus-victims-in-China-617530)

~~~
gnulinux
In particular, chloroquine has been shown to be helpful in treatment and is
readily available in developing countries since it's used as a malaria
medicine (and there are replacements available in developed countries).

in vitro:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0)

practice:
[https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bst/advpub/0/advpub_202...](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bst/advpub/0/advpub_2020.01047/_article)

~~~
tim333
Yeah it's one thing that gives some hope. Recently:

>Chloroquine Phosphate, which has been used for more than 70 years, has been
tested in 135 cases in Beijing and southern China's Guangdong Province. Among
them, 130 patients have light and common symptoms, and five are severe
patients.

>None of the patients with light and common symptoms have developed severe
symptoms. Four severe patients have been discharged from hospital, and one has
seen severe symptoms mitigated to normal, Xu said.
[http://www.china.org.cn/china/2020-02/22/content_75732846.ht...](http://www.china.org.cn/china/2020-02/22/content_75732846.htm)

Which seems quite promising. Also it could be used prophylactically.

~~~
downerending
Also a good opportunity to ramp up on gin and tonics.

~~~
mrfusion
Is it really the same as the medicine?

~~~
downerending
Was joke. But yes, tonic water contains quinine, and that medicine is related
to the compound used to treat malaria. (I think they're both used, but unclear
on the specifics.)

------
est31
> Some 152 cases (and at least three deaths) were confirmed in Italy on
> Sunday, up from three cases on Thursday. The number of infected people in
> South Korea jumped to 763 (and six deaths) in just days.

To add an important point: In both countries, they have detected covid-19 only
well after it has spread inside the country. E.g. in Italy it started with one
severely ill patient who went to the hospital and got tested positive for
covid-19. Then they recursively traced people that person has been in contact
with and found over a hundred cases. They still haven't found "patient zero"
yet, the first person in that chain who entered Italy with the disease.
Before, it has been all in the dark. There are likely many such pools of
carriers all over the world. This aspect of covid-19 is its real danger: in
many cases the disease is asymptomatic so you don't get a test and keep
interacting with people normally, but it's still able to infect others.

~~~
burtonator
If this is asymptomatic do they eventually get sick or do they just harbor the
virus?

I don't understand how the virus can be asymptomatic? How does it reproduce
and what triggers it to become symptomatic?

~~~
theseadroid
As other people said, most viral diseases have a asymptomatic period. What's
unique about Coronavirus is that the patient can be infectious during the
asymptomatic period. This makes coronavirus so hard to be controlled.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
My understanding is that most viruses have some short period of infectiousness
before symptoms develop, like the flu
[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/spread.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/spread.htm)
[https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/infections/how-
lo...](https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/infections/how-long-is-
someone-infectious-after-a-viral-infection/)

Coronavirus however has a really long infectious period before symptoms can
appear. Which I guess is to its evolutionary advantage and thus unlikely to
disappear (just guessing on this part)

------
danmaz74
I read a lot about this virus lately, and it looks like the mortality rate
depends _a lot_ on the availability of intensive care. If that's the case,
slowing down the diffusion of the infection could be really important in
keeping down the total number of deaths.

~~~
asiachick
Dumb question but what intensive care? Do people need to be on respirators?
Need access to drugs only available at ICU? Just curious if any of the things
done at an ICU to prevent death really need to be only at the ICU.

~~~
daxorid
Yes, mechanical ventilators and in most cases, supplemental oxygen for roughly
18% of patients.

We can expect CFR in the US to be fairly low (approx 2%) as long as the
availability of these resources permits treatment for all who need it. After
saturation, however, the CFR will move asymptotically toward approx 15%.

Medical system saturation is believed to be the main reason the CFR in Hubei
is much worse than other provinces.

The US has about 62k mechanical ventilators, about half of which are already
occupied at any given time, and half of the available ones are purpose-built
for infants in NICUs. So let's assume we begin to have a real problem above
(62k/4)/0.18 == 86k simultaneous US cases.

I'd assume oxygen supplies should be easy to scale up. No idea about scaling
up the manufacture of ventilators, or if the (much more numerous, and cheaper)
CPAP machines in the US could be used as stand-ins. Perhaps someone more
familiar with these devices can chime in.

~~~
paganel
> After saturation, however, the CFR will move asymptotically toward approx
> 15%.

> Medical system saturation is believed to be the main reason the CFR in Hubei
> is much worse than other provinces.

This would practically be a Denial of Service Attack on any health system, no
matter the country in which that health system is based in. Which is why it is
so important to try to contain the virus spread before we get to the "move
asymptotically toward approx 15%" phase.

------
cletus
So Italy having an arguably uncontained cluster is probably the most troubling
part. The EU has extremely porous borders. The chances of this spreading to
the other EU members (and the UK) got a lot higher.

At least in the US you largely have to come in by air. Yes of course there are
land borders. Canada is one but fits the same description of most cross-border
travel (apart from to the US) is by air. The border with Mexico is... probably
more of an issue.

Anyway, the benefit of this is that it gives you a central screening point.
Given that carriers can be asymptomatic it's not impossible someone will slip
through but it's more difficult for someone to convince themselves they just
have a cold and they need to go home, to work or otherwise move across a
border and spread the infection.

The Northern hemisphere summer really can't come soon enough.

~~~
pier25
> The border with Mexico is... probably more of an issue.

AFAIK there are no confirmed cases in Mexico. It wouldn't surprise me if that
was because of the inability of the government to detect it.

I live in Mexico and I believe if it gets here it will be unstoppable. The
government doesn't have the resources China has to contain and track infected
people.

~~~
ASalazarMX
Mexico did well in containing the H1N1 flu in 2009. Granted, COVID19 seems
much more infectious, and our current government has repeatedly cut funding to
public health, so you're maybe right.

~~~
pier25
Hopefully I'm wrong, but COVID2019 is a much different beast than H1N1. Time
will tell.

------
pstadler
A couple of excellent sources for COVID19:

[https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-
coronavirus...](https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-
cases/) (most up-to-date counter and news aggregator which includes a source
for each reported number)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/)
(strictly moderated, lots of links to scientific reports and papers, no hoaxes
and fake news)

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z7VQ5xlf3BaTx_LBBbls...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z7VQ5xlf3BaTx_LBBblsW4hLoGYWnZyog3jqsS9Dbgc/htmlview?sle=true)
(spreadsheets with interesting charts)

~~~
topkai22
I’ll through out the daily who situation reports:

[https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-
coronavirus-2...](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-
coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/)

------
James_Henry
> And what should each of us do, beyond staying informed and washing our hands
> frequently? Keep calm and rational. It might be worth stocking some reserve
> of critical medications, for example — but not too much, because hoarding
> could create shortages.

> We, as individuals, can also try to plan for basic contingencies. Companies
> can cross-train key staff members so that one person’s absence won’t derail
> the business. Family members and friends should be watchful of one another’s
> health and welfare, and stand prepared to care for the moderately ill if
> hospitals become overtaxed.

> “Pandemic” isn’t just a technical public health term. It also is — or should
> be — a rallying cry.

I would add that it is helpful to have a stock of at least 3 or so weeks of
food and supplies so that you can, if needed, quarantine yourself and take
care of yourself and your family/relations well. There isn't enough hospital
space for everyone and a lot of people with the virus aren't sick enough to
take that space from the those that really need it.

~~~
JulianMorrison
You don't need to stock up if you can get food delivered. They can leave the
delivery on the doorstep.

~~~
i_am_nomad
That might be what the other 1.5 million people in my city are counting on.
Which means, I’m not going to count on that.

~~~
JulianMorrison
If your city's supermarkets can feed people with in-person shopping, they can
feed people with deliveries as easily, it's the same number of people buying
food.

~~~
mishac
That's assuming that every supermarket has enough delivery staff. That's not a
valid assumption in many places.

------
joobus
Why is hacker news censoring covid-19 articles? This article just disappeared
from the front page despite having more upvotes than most articles on the
first page after being submitted an hour ago. Another covid-19 article over
the weekend disappeared from the front page also.

~~~
LyndsySimon
I'm not aware of HN itself actively "censoring" anything, as long as I've been
here. If articles are disappearing from the front page, then it's likely due
to them being flagged by users.

I'll also note that I use an alternate front-end for HN - hckrnews - which by
default sorts by time, so the only way I'm ever aware of this sort of
complaint is when someone brings it up in the comments.

As for this topic in particular, there has been a lot of coverage about
COVID-19/2019-nCoV recently, but there hasn't been a lot of new information. I
suspect people are flagging the topic because they're getting their regular
updates on it from other communities and want HN to remain a place where
topics that are of particular and specific interest are posted. Once I
realized that's how the majority of the community sees it, I stopped thinking
of the rise and fall of topics here as being based on whether or not they are
"newsworthy" and it started making a lot more sense.

------
SirensOfTitan
I feel fairly uncertain as to how seriously I should /personally/ take COVID19
living in a large American city as a healthy young person with no upcoming
travel. I see some friends seriously taking precautions (like buying masks)
already, which up-to-this-point I've found a little absurd. Could anyone who
knows better perhaps enlighten me on how I ought to be reacting to this?

~~~
WillPostForFood
Buy extra food so if you get sick you don't have to go out and infect other
people, or if you are in an area with a lot of sick people you don't have to
go out to bu food and get infected.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's a socially-conscious act and I applaud it. But in truth, before this is
over every person on earth will have experienced the virus.

The reason to control the spread and delay infection (not avoid it; that's
probably impossible) is to allow the health-care infrastructure critical time
to manage the flow of sick. If we all got sick at once, there'd be no capacity
to treat 99.9% of us. If we spread it out over a year or more, we can treat
more people and have a better outcome.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
That's not typically how it works. Historical pandemics have only infected
about 30% of the population.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
This one is air-borne with many days of no initial symptoms. That's the whole
deal right there, why this is especially problematic.

~~~
0xffff2
This is not correct. The virus is _not_ airborne.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Carried in a sneeze or cough? What do we call it then?

~~~
0xffff2
Aerosolized. The difference is important because the aerosolized virus only
survives in the bodily fluids expelled by the sneeze/cough, which gives it a
much, much shorter range than if it was actually airborne, which would imply
that the virus could survive long enough to spread without the need for a
bodily fluid to host it.

------
remote_phone
A study from Germany said that by day 10, all patients had produced antibodies
against coronavirus. The key to treatment is to make sure that the patients
don’t have severe symptoms before then and then the body will naturally fight
it off. If the body gets overwhelmed before day 10 then it becomes more severe
and possibly fatal.

~~~
suoinguon
can you link me to the source?

------
aww_dang
Last week google had a promoted 'fact check' snippet for searches about
covid-19 being released from a lab. Predictably, it was an article debunking
the story as a crack-pot conspiracy theory. Today stories about covid-19 being
released from a lab are front page at news.google.com.

~~~
chc4
Those new articles have basically the same exact conspiracy theory reasoning
behind them as the ZeroHedge and friends ones from last week, so this isn't as
much of a slam dunk as you make it sound like.

~~~
aww_dang
Not sure why you need to characterize it as a slam dunk. That wasn't my
intention. It is simply an observation of a contradiction.

If we're capable of consuming news from a variety of sources, digesting them
and coming to our own conclusions, that should be enough. If not, hand holding
isn't going to help.

------
ducttape12
Can someone explain to me why coronavirus is getting so much coverage?
According to Wikipedia, Coronavirus has killed about 2000 people. Each year
smoking kills 480,000 people in the US. In two days smoking will have killed
more people in the US than coronavirus has worldwide.

Shouldn't we have headlines about this every day? Or any of the other far more
deadly things (traffic accidents, heart disease, suicide, etc.)?

(I'm not trolling, I honestly don't understand why this is different.)

~~~
wonderwonder
It has the ability to affect the global economy in ways that the others dont.
If people don't want to go to work due to an increased risk of mortality,
business will shut down. If everyone is forced to go to work and they all get
sick and are unable to work for several weeks, business shuts down. Finally if
everyone gets sick and 3% of your workforce then dies, that again causes
massive economic disruption. This is also occurring on a time scale far
shorter that people getting sick from smoking or heart disease.

~~~
ducttape12
But couldn't the same thing apply to traffic deaths? In 2018, in the US, over
36,000 people died in car accidents. That's higher than coronavirus deaths, so
logically shouldn't we all stay off the roads and quit going to work? Wouldn't
that have the same impact?

Source: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-traffic-
deaths-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-traffic-deaths-
idUSKCN1TI231)

~~~
wonderwonder
Sure, and I think it is a good comparison in that the numbers are large and it
is unexpected. The difference is that we as a society have come to regard them
as an acceptable risk. In addition, they are isolated, so while they are
common, the odds of 10 people you know dying in a car crash are very low. With
a virus, an entire office could get sick or even worse an entire school. For
me this is my primary fear. My kids entire school gets infected and kids start
dying or being hospitalized in large numbers.

This also adds to the economic impact. Its the clustering aspect of this that
drives fear and uncertainty.

------
0xff00ffee
As someone flying through Europe for the past three days and the next six, I'm
just pushing that out of my mind while I flinch every time someone around me
coughs...

------
mothsonasloth
For those who are worrying, don't bother with medical masks.

A decent DIY rebreather for spray painting, sanding or house clearance should
work.

I have stockpiled gloves and goggles along with a rebreather FFP3 level.

Total cost along with sanitization wipes and alcohol gel - £49

Piece of mind - priceless!

------
antisthenes
NY Times would do well to let people read at least this article for free.

It potentially concerns the health of every person on the planet, so sticking
it behind a paywall/accountwall seems like particularly...poor taste?

------
beamatronic
What is the worst case? 15% of the worlds population dies ?

~~~
tim333
Nearer 2%.

~~~
seren
2% is the number of death when you have Intensive Care Unit beds to provide
oxygen, fluids, anti viral drugs to serious case.

15% is the number of serious cases on average.

So once you have filled all your ICU, you cannot take any serious case
anymore, so I would say the most apocalyptic case is that all hospitals are
overwhelmed, and you cannot address any serious case, so 15% is still possible
in the most horrific case. (But not the more likely if you quarantine
everyone)

However in poor countries without any healthcare infrastructure we could have
quite a number of serious case dying.

~~~
beamatronic
So we can stop this right now if everyone goes home and stays there

------
pgt
Non-paywalled link?

~~~
EdwinHoksberg
[https://archive.is/8xopJ](https://archive.is/8xopJ)

~~~
RandomGuyDTB
Blocked at my school :/ you can use Firefox's (probably Chrome's as well)
reader mode to bypass the paywall though.

------
victor106
Can someone ELI5?

Why is it so hard to produce a vaccination for this virus? We have
vaccinations targeting viruses all the time, isn’t it?

~~~
robjan
Vaccines are being worked on as we speak but the testing and approval process
takes a long time.

~~~
vidanay
IMO, if testing shows a good effectiveness, approval will be fast-pathed.

~~~
0xffff2
The fast path for vaccine approval is 2+ years.

~~~
elpatoisthebest
It looks like it was fast tracked quite a bit faster than 2 years during the
H1N1 pandemic.

I don't have a better resource right now than Wikipedia, but I guess we could
follow the links for more.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic#Vaccines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic#Vaccines)

But according to this page by 19 November 2009 the vaccine was distributed to
16 countries. I think it was first really noticed in April 2009.

Not making any claims about what to expect for COVID-19, just that they have
fast tracked vaccines faster than 2 years in the recent past.

------
cs702
Yes. Definition of "pandemic":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic)

Even though the fatality rate in developed economies seems relatively low (on
the order of 1%, perhaps lower), significant economic and logistical
disruption appears inevitable in the short run, judging by the reaction of
financial markets.

Please don't overreact -- there's no need to blow things out of proportion --
but don't be stupid and dismiss this as unnecessary fear-mongering either.
It's best to be prepared, just in case.

For more details, see:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22403200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22403200)

* [https://apnews.com/32540d09ec101aac057660ef1b0aa970](https://apnews.com/32540d09ec101aac057660ef1b0aa970)

* [https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-we-know-about-the-wuhan-vi...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-we-know-about-the-wuhan-virus-11579716128)

* [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/coronaviru...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/coronavirus-china-live-updates/2020/02/24/58bdab58-56ad-11ea-ab68-101ecfec2532_story.html)

* [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/business/stock-market-cor...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/business/stock-market-coronavirus.html)

By the way, the OP's headline appears to be an exception to Betteridge's Law
of Headlines:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

------
bla3
For perspective, numbers from the regular flu this winter: "At least 14,000
people have died and 250,000 have already been hospitalized during the
2019-2020 flu season, ..."

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yes, and we can expect 10X to 20X that number at risk when this virus spreads.

~~~
0xff00ffee
Why stop at 10x or 20x? Why not 1,000x? What's the science behind that?

~~~
cm2012
Death rate of .1% for the flu and 1% for Corona.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
2.5-3.5%? In China anyway.

------
remote_phone
Of course it is. The officials at WHO failed us because they are more worried
about the politics than the truth. This type of behavior will make us not
trust them in the future.

~~~
mytailorisrich
It's still actually quite limited according to official data.

They have to consider the reactions of the public and also the potential
effects of declaring pandemics too often if it is not necessary.

I don't have many comparison points but a quick Google shows that we are still
very far from the 2009 flu pandemic, for example.

Of course that may change...

~~~
pmoriarty
The problem there's very little testing being done for this novel pathogen.

New tests can't just be created by hospitals and labs out of thin air, and
they can't be used without undergoing a lengthy bureaucratic approval process.

For a novel pathogen like this the tests are still in the early phases of
being manufactured and approved, so most people who go in with symptoms just
aren't going to be tested.

There's also a manpower issue that has to be taken in to account: if everyone
with flu-like symptoms came in to get tested the hospitals and labs would be
overwhelmed even if they had enough tests available and those tests were
already approved. Many labs and hospitals are already close to being
overwhelmed from seasonal flu.

So I really wouldn't consider official data to be very reliable at this point.
We really need to wait and see.

Meanwhile, though, it would be prudent to err on the side of caution.

------
irq11
Thankfully, this is a relatively mild virus. Part of what makes it hard to
detect is that most cases (>80%) are mild, and many are actually asymptomatic:

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-
asia...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-
china-51540981)

The vast majority of people who have died have been elderly and/or infirm. The
death rate under 60 is well under 1%. If you’re young and healthy, _this is a
chest cold._

The biggest thing the media needs to do is to walk back as much of the panic
and overreaction that has been circulating as possible.

(edit: thanks to HN’s overbearing moderation system, I am unable to respond to
replies. The censor-downvoting of factual information is apparently not a
problem for HN mods, however.)

JoeAltmaier, to respond to your comment, unless you know hundreds of elderly
people, about the same number of people you know will die as in the average
flu season. Do you find yourself regularly worried about the flu? Perspective
is important.

~~~
pmoriarty
We actually don't know how bad this disease is.

China's reporting on it absolutely can not be trusted, because:

\- their health care system is overwhelmed, so they're not testing everyone
who may have been infected (a lot of sick people don't even go to the
hospitals because they know they'll get turned away)

\- they seem to have run out of testing kits in many places

\- their testing may be faulty anyway (which could account for the many
reports of people testing positive then negative then positive again)

\- their media is tightly controlled so there's no independent verification of
what they tell us

\- they've changed their reporting criteria multiple times

Outside of China there have been too few cases to know yet either, and the
countries where it has spread seem to face some of the same issues as China
(such as not testing enough people), so their reporting is likely to be skewed
as well.

~~~
irq11
So basically, you’re choosing to ignore everything we actually know, and
replace it with your theories and FUD.

For the record? China is definitely, absolutely, positively under-reporting
the infection rate. They have admitted it. They know that there are many mild
cases that are not being counted.

Among other things, this means that the _commonly cited fatality rates are a
gross overestimate_ , and would be much lower if we could count all of the
mild and asymptomatic cases.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" China is definitely, absolutely, positively under-reporting the infection
rate."_

They also seem to be underreporting the fatalities, by (for example) counting
them as not caused by COVID-19 when they may well be.

Because both infection rates and fatalities are likely being underreported,
and because we don't know by how much they are being underreported, it's
premature to draw conclusions as to the severity of this disease.

~~~
irq11
No, this isn’t likely at all. The reason they are undercounting cases is
because the cases not being counted are _mild_. If some of those mild cases go
on to die, it’s pretty unlikely that it’s due to misdiagnosed severe atypical
pneumonia.

Absolutely no reputable sources have advanced this theory, just people who are
scaring each other on HN and reddit.

To summarize: undercounting mild cases is definitely happening. Undercounting
of covid deaths is extremely unlikely to be happening. Therefore, we know that
the current death rates are _overestimates_ of the real values.

These are facts.

~~~
pmoriarty
You are stating your own probability estimates. Those aren't facts except to
the extent that it may be a fact that you do believe them.

Otherwise probability estimates and guesses about what China is or isn't doing
and why aren't facts... they're just that: guesses.

Thanks for sharing them, though. It's always nice to hear the reasons for
another person's opinion.

------
Swizec
We were looking into Covid-19 at the office and after digging through the
scariness we realized mortality rate for healthy 30-somethings is around 0.1%.

Then we said screw it and stopped worrying. We’re most likely gonna be fine.
Even if it becomes widespread the odds are ever in our favor.

Plus there’s already a few confirmed cases in SFBA so ...

Edit: for the downvoters, I’m not say spread disease with wonton abandon, I’m
saying don’t worry about dying. You should obviously be always careful of
proper containment procedures even if you just hve the sniffles. At the very
least wash your hands after blowing your nose.

~~~
ropiwqefjnpoa
Yeah, I stopped worrying a few weeks back after I saw the mortality rate. It's
basically a highly virulent flu with the same risk factors. Not on the same
level as sars and the like.

~~~
Blahah
That's a pretty cavalier attitude even if we take your assumptions to be true.

If it's a virulent flu, the last time we had a pandemic with comparable stats
was 1918, when we had much less global travel but much worse medical
infrastructure. The 1918 Spanish flu infected potentially 1/4 of the world
(500 million people at the time) and killed around 2% (variable depending on
sources) of the _global population_ \- ~40 million.

It's on a different level than SARS/MARS, because this seems to incubate
without symptoms in the young and healthy (for now) and then kill when it
breaks out in populations of the old and sick. It's spreading faster and being
reported differently than anything before.

Some basic advice that everyone should apply during every global outbreak they
don't really understand:

\- don't travel if you don't absolutely have to

\- don't go to hospital unless you absolutely have to

\- try to stop touching your face

\- wash your hands and face frequently

It's a pandemic, definitely (source - me, I'm working on coronavirus). Don't
panic but don't be complacent. Just look after yourself and your family and
avoid exposure to potentially high risk.

~~~
soared
Absolutely incomparable to the Spanish flu. Back then we knew literally
nothing about the flu, we sent sick soldiers on public trains to hospitals
which very quickly spread the virus to other sick/injured people. We took the
exact opposite actions of what we now know is correct. We did everything
wrong. It’s not even remotely comparable. Scientists learned about the corona
virus category in the late 1960s, 40 years after the Spanish flu.

It’s also not spreading unlike anything before? You can look at the graphs of
SARS/MERS/etc and see at times it’s spreading quicker, but not remotely in the
realm of never before seen.

Good advice I suppose, but traveling is still fine according to the WHO.

~~~
Blahah
My point about the Spanish flu was that this is a complex comparison.
Statistically it's similar so far. But with very different social parameters
(massively increased global travel, vastly better understanding of
epidemiology). We are still doing so many things wrong, given what we know. I
think it's comparable.

The public numbers are not the same as the ones on GISAID.

