
Model built by researchers suggests coronavirus outbreak began in November - hardmaru
https://www.utoronto.ca/news/model-built-u-t-researchers-suggests-coronavirus-outbreak-began-november-has-yet-be-controlled
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lisper
I am writing this from a cruise ship in the south china sea. We have been at
sea for ten days because one port after another has been closed off to us.
Some have closed to all cruise ships, some have closed to use because we have
passengers who transited through Hong Kong. Every passenger now has to have
their temperature taken twice a day. We have been told that we will be able to
disembark in Singapore two days from now, but God only knows.

Corona virus has infected fewer than 100,000 people and killed less than 1000.
To put these numbers in perspective, seasonal flu results in 3 to 5 million
cases of severe illness every year, and kills 290,000 to 650,000. [1]

Personally, I am much more worried about public officials freaking out about
the corona virus than I am about the virus itself.

[1] [https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-
sheets/detail/influenza-(...](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-
sheets/detail/influenza-\(seasonal\))

~~~
orf
So what do you think would happen if no quarantine was in place (because “the
flu exists”), the virus spreads and suddenly that 1% mortality rate starts to
stack up.

Is your country ready to handle 1% of its population dying, and many more
falling ill? Flu is seasonal - predictable, known and accounted for. When flu
season hits the system copes. This virus? Not so much.

Sorry you’re stuck on a boat, but it’s for the best.

~~~
deepGem
I don't think the Corona Virus is as benign as a flu virus. Sure the mortality
rate is 1% but that is what we know today. No one knows what this Virus is
capable of, in terms of mutation etc, and it is because of these unknowns
organisations and public officials are on alert and taking quarantining steps
- rightly so.

It is foolhardy to undermine WHO's cause for concern.

I am sorry you are stuck on a ship and I do hope you get to disembark in
Singapore.

~~~
tim333
Yeah from the Singapore numbers, 45 cases and 7 in critical care. I don't
recall seeing those sort of numbers with flu.

edit - googling a bit the % going into critical care seems to be about 0.2%
for flu vs the above about 15% for coronavirus.

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tomlockwood
Not surprising considering for a few days there, after control was
implemented, the National Health Commission numbers adhered to an exponential
trend with an R __2 value of 0.995-9.

[https://twitter.com/whistle_posse/status/1221964216040509440](https://twitter.com/whistle_posse/status/1221964216040509440)

An exponential curve is a great way to catch up to the numbers of infected
that already exist.

The good news is this means the outbreak is less contagious and uncontrolled
than was reported.

Its also probably harder to hide deaths than recoveries, so the mortality rate
is likely lower.

The bad news is, people may be infectious for longer before they show
symptoms.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" The bad news is, people may be infectious for longer before they show
symptoms."_

There is evidence that the study claiming the virus can be transmitted by
people without symptoms was flawed.[1]

Also, according to that article, even if asymptomatic people transmit the
virus _" asymptomatic transmission likely plays a minor role in the epidemic
overall, WHO says. People who cough or sneeze are more likely to spread the
virus, the agency wrote"_

[1] - [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-
symptomati...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomatic-
patient-transmitting-coronavirus-wrong)

~~~
Accujack
>There is evidence that the study claiming the virus can be transmitted by
people without symptoms was flawed.

There's also a recent news story that a UK citizen is a "super spreader", and
that he had contact with all the cases in France while being asymptomatic. He
even went home and felt fine, carrying on his normal activities for four days
before becoming Ill and being confirmed with the virus.

------
sdiw
TLDR: A research by Uni Toronto suggests that the coronavirus epidemic started
one month earlier than is commonly reported (Nov 2019) and has yet to be
brought under control.

David Fisman, one of the model’s creators said: “You can’t get up to that
level of cases if the epidemic started in December. even if you pushed the
reproduction really high. The plausible start date seems to be mid-November,”

Wikipedia lists[1] start date to be Dec 1, 2019 and with Fever, cough,
shortness of breath etc as symptoms[2], I think it's difficult to predict even
for doctors exact date of the outbreak.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavirus_outbreak)

[2] [https://thestrife.co/wuhan-coronavirus-
resources](https://thestrife.co/wuhan-coronavirus-resources)

~~~
killjoywashere
Yeah, running a regression back to the Y intercept to get a 0 time is nice in
retrospect, but you'll never find the index patient, the cell or origin, etc.

------
beatle_sauce
There was an article in China News Weekly that investigated the origins of the
Virus and also pointed out that 1) the first cases were in November and 2)
that the first cases were not linked to the Huanan Seafood Market.

[https://chinachange.org/2020/02/09/the-regret-of-wuhan-
how-c...](https://chinachange.org/2020/02/09/the-regret-of-wuhan-how-china-
missed-the-critical-window-for-controlling-the-coronavirus-outbreak/)

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maho
If the blue dots represent the data and if the yellow line represents the
model -- doesn't the picture show an obviously bad fit?

------
adamleo
I'm in China and it's astonishing how different out lives changed with less
than 10 days.

Quarantine and lockdown came so quick a lot of people still haven't got used
to it.

I've made a video about it and you can see it for yourself:
[https://youtu.be/uxW7k5462Ms](https://youtu.be/uxW7k5462Ms)

This is something I've never experienced before.

~~~
topmonk
How many coronavirus articles are you going to post this to?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22294779](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22294779)

------
Taniwha
Remember ~15% of common cold cases are caused by a coronavirus, one that has
evolved so as not to kill it's host .... there's a good chance it started out
a lot like the current coronavirus

------
willis936
Oh good so the German scientist who visited for a few days last week, who was
working in Wuhan in December and caught a pathogen (“but it wasn’t the flu”)
may have been carrying coronavirus?

~~~
bangboombang
If he's been symptom free for 3+ days then no.

~~~
rasz
dont you mean 24 days?
[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.06.20020974v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.06.20020974v1)

"The median incubation period was 3.0 days (range, 0 to 24.0 days)."

~~~
bangboombang
I read it that the person got sick after the visit to Wuhan but recovered from
that before the visit to OP. Hence 3+ days should be enough to rule out a
possible infection of OP with whatever the scientist had.

Since they traveled to Wuhan in December, from then to last week, that
would've been more than 24 days, so in case they did not get sick yet and I
read that wrong, it should also be pretty much impossible, since that would be
the longest incubation period of ncov by quite a bit.

