
WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency - colinprince
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/who-reconvenes-assess-latest-coronavirus-1.5445775
======
cheeseblubber
For those who are referencing the flu and it's mortality rate here are
estimates from the CDC for 2019

* 15,000,000 – 21,000,000 who had the flu

* 8,200 – 20,000 deaths from the flu

The morality rate ranges from 0.03% to 0.09% or 3/10000 9/10000

[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-
season-e...](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-
estimates.htm)

~~~
hanniabu
Any idea what the rates are for the corona virus?

~~~
twelvechairs
The official figures in China are 8,163 cases 171 deaths which is 2% right
now, but take these with a big grain of salt. They could go up (some of those
confirmed cases will be very recent and may get worse) or down (more cases
might have happened but be unreported). Its really hard to tell what it will
look like in a month or two.

~~~
Roritharr
I recommend everyone to watch this on-site commentary from the chinese human
rights lawyer Chen Qiushi:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AI3R41dGnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AI3R41dGnU)

Any numbers we've seen so far seem very tame to me, compared to the pictures
out of Wuhan.

~~~
netsharc
TL;DW/DR the subtitles: he saw a lot of chaos in Wuhan's hospitals. Not enough
testing kits, not enough government-requisitioned emergency taxis. Taxi
drivers were already talking to each other in December saying "avoid the
market".

If you don't want to read subtitles for 26 minutes here's all the subtitles
copy-pasted from the video:
[https://pastebin.com/6hJ4h4rm](https://pastebin.com/6hJ4h4rm)

(You can hit the "..." above the red subscribe button and select "open
transcript", but it shows up in a tiny window).

I suppose the WHO saying they're very impressed with how China is handling the
situation is because they felt the pressure to save China's face.

~~~
mantap
The way the central government is handling this _is_ impressive, quarantining
a city of that size is unprecedented and has bought the world extra time to
prepare.

Yes the WHO are playing politics when they focus on the good things China is
doing and ignore the bad. But personally I think they are closer to the truth
than those who present an entirely negative version of events. China's
response has been 70% good :)

~~~
heavyset_go
> _The way the central government is handling this is impressive_

Not really, they jailed the experts who told them that they needed to act
quickly, sat on it for a month, and finally did something about it when it was
already out of hand.

~~~
brigandish
> they jailed the experts who told them that they needed to act quickly

If you don't mind me asking, where did you see that info?

~~~
heavyset_go
I don't have the exact articles on hand right now, but here is a newer article
on the suppression: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/asia/china-
coronavi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/asia/china-
coronavirus.html)

------
abhisuri97
This is (imo) the right course of action to (at minimum) alert countries wrt
the gravity of this outbreak; however, I was disappointed to see the tiptoeing
around potentially offending China. From the press conference, it seemed that
Dr. Tedros made it painfully (maybe even unnecessarily) clear that this action
wasn't faulting China for their handling of this situation. It's just weird to
see that global politics is creeping into these public health decisions.

~~~
Rooster61
It's not just politics. This is matter of trying to placate China so that they
don't hide numbers from international/outside health organizations to save
face.

My understanding is that China was less than forthcoming about actual
infection/death rates when SARS was making it's rounds.

Disclaimer: I do not have a source for this. This is heresay from the hubub
around the current crisis so take it with a grain of salt.

~~~
unethical_ban
I was surprised by an NPR blurb yesterday talking about how China may have to
put off its annual Communist party planning meeting, and how that would be an
embarrassing concession by the Chinese.

I was so disappointed in them. How should it be embarrassing to take a deadly
and contagious pneumonia outbreak seriously? Do you _want_ them to feel they
should hide it?

(You being NPR). I know you don't mean anything bad by it.

~~~
throwawayhhakdl
I think you’re reading that incorrectly. NPR is likely not saying they should
be embarrassed, they’re saying they would be embarrassed. That’s just a fact.

------
michalu
Also good real-time chart:
[https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...](https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)

tracks confirmed cases and recoveries too.

~~~
mrtksn
>Last Update: Jan 30, 2020 11 am EST.

It is not a real-time map, I find it bizarre that people believe that we can
track the population's wellbeing in real-time. Are you ready to be hooked up
to such a system?

~~~
ehsankia
That's being overly pedantic.

About the update rate: It's updated regularly. If you want to go down this
rabbit hole, is 1m update real-time? Is 1s update realtime? Where do you draw
the line? For most people, anything less than 12h, in the case of tracking
confirmed cases, is perfectly fine described as "real-time"

About the data: Obviously it's showing confirmed cases and not actual health
of people. The UI makes that pretty clear, it says "Confirmed cases" in big
font. No one expects the latter...

~~~
parliament32
No and no. "Realtime" has an actual definition, as in "data is immediately
available".

~~~
wolco
No information is available real time. There will always be a lag even with
stock trading. Determining what is acceptable for real time depends on the
context. A few seconds would be unacceptable for stock information but would
be more than enough for a 911 real time notification system to first
responders. 12 hours for global viral outbreak stats seems acceptable for real
time status.

~~~
parliament32
There's a difference between latency and delay.

If I "touch a.txt" then run "ls", and see "a.txt", I'd consider my filesystem
realtime. There's no point in being pedantic about "but there's a 50ms delay
when I hit enter after typing ls so it's not realtime!!!".

"Realtime virus outbreak" implies that the site is somehow automatically
identifying where the virus is and updating it's stats, rather than waiting
for a human to update it.

~~~
kevinstubbs
Since "implies that the site is somehow automatically identifying where the
virus is" is obviously impossible with current tech & infrastructure, the next
most "real-time" interpretation is that it has the most up-to-date data as it
becomes available... which it basically does AFAIK, assuming it automatically
pulls from its data sources, such as the WHO situation report feed.

What would you recommend calling it instead?

~~~
rnotaro
Just call it an "up-to-date" map that is often updated.

~~~
s1artibartfast
It is a real time map of data that has been reported.

~~~
mrtksn
I don't think that's the case, it is a map of data updated by an editor. The
website in question doesn't seem to fetch data automatically as the sources
are making it available.

------
throwaway846657
It seemed during the conference that they were trying their best to not step
on Beijing's toes. I wonder if they think China would stop cooperating if they
called them out on their poor containment procedures.

~~~
DarthGhandi
How is locking down an entire city "poor containment".

Find it staggering to insinuate that were it originating in Western countries
we'd do the same?

~~~
tenpies
> How is locking down an entire city "poor containment".

Because it followed a week of ignoring the issue and then another week of
arresting people who were reporting on the issue. This has been an issue since
December 28th, but China and the WHO are pretending it began just recently.

It's "containment" in much the same way that the Soviet Union just couldn't
stop lying about Chernobyl because people miles away were melting from the
inside, so they took drastic actions to pretend they were on top of things.

Those "hospitals" they are building (and selectively live streaming parts with
glorious Party tunes on the background)? Those were resorts that were almost
complete, but since tourism in the area is going to be dead for a decade,
they're turning them into hospitals and claiming they're brand new buildings.

What is staggering to me is not that China finally moved when it realized the
problem could not be swept under the rug, it's that the WHO is going along
with the doublespeak of saying "all is well" but then also declaring an
emergency, but don't cancel your trips to China!

~~~
DarthGhandi
Can you find me what the 8 people arrested for actually wrote?

5 have been arrested in Malaysia and 2 in Thailand also, have read the viral
fake news they wrote and have no problems with their arrest at all.

In the shadier parts of the internet I'm already seeing services for ruining
your competitors with viral social media fear campaigns.

r/Australia has a big sticky of all the nonsense being peddled in the country
and the NSW health department is constantly having to repudiate popularly
shared content. The bullshit asymmetry principle at work.

> China finally moved when it realized the problem could not be swept under
> the rug

Again, if this outbreak was in the US or Northern Europe, would they _move_ as
quickly? Would huge cities be quarantined? Find it incredibly hard to believe.

It's 2020, hiding things a la Chernobyl is not so easy. I think they are doing
a half decent job given the circumstances and it's just the usual China
bashing by people who have absolutely no idea about the country and only
knowledge comes from the newsmedia

~~~
gastlygem
> Can you find me what the 8 people arrested for actually wrote?

One of the doctors saw the initial cases before they were officially
confirmed. He told the news in WeChat groups to their friends who were also
doctors about a SARS-like virus that's being identified and warned their
doctor friends to beware. The other 7 just spreaded the message and they are
also doctors. They weren't arrested though. They were warned by the police and
forced to promise that they won't do it again.

The one who originally wrote the message were also later found to be infected
by the virus. Here is an interview in which he told the story:
[https://m.mp.oeeee.com/a/BAAFRD000020200130255882.html?&laye...](https://m.mp.oeeee.com/a/BAAFRD000020200130255882.html?&layer=2&share=chat&isndappinstalled=0)

------
ferest
apparently science is not working as "how things feel/look like", but about
evidence and proof. Same thing applies to gov or org, it's not guided by
message on social media, but according to the guidance and standard procedure.
This kind of practice are very normal cross every industry, from construction
safety guide to medicine testing. According to [1], WHO or CDC will only
report phase 2 and take actions when there is no evidence of human-to-human
infection, and declare phase 5 or 6 base on the information unveiled. And from
[2], declare PHEIC when there is human-to-human infection cross border.

> A PHEIC is defined in the IHR (2005) as, “an extraordinary event which is
> determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the
> international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated
> international response”. This definition implies a situation that is:

* serious, sudden, unusual or unexpected;

* carries implications for public health beyond the affected State’s national border; and

* may require immediate international action.

[1]:
[https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p...](https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_phase_descriptions_and_actions.pdf)

[2]: [https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/what-are-the-
intern...](https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/what-are-the-
international-health-regulations-and-emergency-committees)

------
splittingTimes
How is this worse than your normal influenza cycle with 3-5Mio infections and
290k-650k death to warrant such an emergency?

~~~
reaperducer
People keeps saying things like, "Yeah, well last year way more people died of
the flu!"

Yeah, well that was an entire _year_. This is a few weeks. The goal is to get
ahead of things, not to wait until it's too late.

~~~
renton
I'm still not sure I understand this. If US alone has ~60k deaths from the flu
a year, that still works out to be much more (1153 deaths per week).

~~~
chupa-chups
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function)

~~~
ufov2
The reported confirmed counts have grown by a factor of ~1.5 every day,
fitting reasonably well with exponential growth. If this rate continued, in 35
days it would reach the world population. Obviously, in the real world the
growth flattens out way earlier, from natural causes, and especially because
of the attempts to confine it.

Comparing the total number of cases or deaths to flu outbreaks from previous
years does not make much sense at this point, when the numbers are growing
rapidly, but in a month they probably are easier to compare. Neither does
comparing average counts per week, because the growth is not linear. The data
for the progression of flu (or any other disease) outbreaks exists, and
comparing to their growth rate would put it better in perspective. Regardless
of armchair analysis, the WHO declaration means it's something requiring
unusual action, which flu is not.

~~~
pmoriarty
Something else to consider is that flu outbreaks aren't typically taken very
seriously by most people, while the widespread fear and media coverage of the
2019-nCov all but guarantees more serious responses from both the general
public and the government.

Consider the recommendations to thoroughly wash one's hands during flu season
as a precaution against getting the flu. How many people take that advice
seriously? You can bet there'll be a lot more hand washing all around once
this coronavirus hits people's local areas, not to mention all the mask
wearing that'll happen (though unfortunately, most people will be wearing
those dinky surgical masks which will be of dubious effectiveness), and people
isolating themselves.

On the other hand, we have vaccines for the flu that are available well in
advance of flu outbreaks (though not nearly enough people take them), while
we've got no publicly available ones for 2019-nCov. That's another confounding
variable that makes it hard to compare the two.

------
UI_at_80x24
Coronavirus:

-5,974 confirmed cases

-170 deaths

[1]For comparisons the SARS outbreak of 2003:

-8,098 people worldwide became sick

-774 died

[1][https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-
sars.html](https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html)

~~~
burundi_coffee
There are already 8243 confirmed cases.

[https://thewuhanvirus.com/](https://thewuhanvirus.com/)

~~~
Symmetry
The number of cases reported has been going up by 30% to 70% every day. People
in China are taking a number of measures to limit spread but given the
potentially long contagious incubation period of the virus it might be a while
for that to reduce the visible increase even if it has been relatively
effective.

~~~
vbezhenar
It seems that this virus spreading too easy, so it's not possible to contain
it, not now anyway. The best we can do is to slow it down and develop
treatment as soon as possible to reduce number of lethal cases. But it'll
infect the whole world anyway and poor countries with bad medicine system will
struggle a lot.

------
goblin89
Running the official numbers, mortality rate is less than 3%. If we plug in
estimative models claiming 25000+ unrecorded infections, mortality is less
than 1%.

Unless you are in a sensitive age group or have other health problems, data
suggests you're most likely to get over it as a regular flu.

It's not all perfect and is worse than a regular flu, but especially now after
the announcement some people may way over-stress themselves which doesn't do
good to your immune system.

~~~
ecneladis
These calculations assume that no one else infected dies. Seems overly
optimistic, especially given that ~1200 patients are in serious or critical
condition.

~~~
goblin89
I try to keep that in mind, but I also keep in mind that many people do not
report to the hospital when sick.

------
wyldfire
Stupid question: is it possible that hygiene practices contribute to outbreaks
like this?

I remember reading or hearing that one input to recent wildfires was the fact
that decades of controlled burns to limit the spread of wildfires left a lot
of available fuel that otherwise would have burned naturally.

So in that vein, do we have humans with compromised immunity thriving but
susceptible to inter-species mutations like this novel coronavirus?

~~~
akiselev
I think you're remembering the fire bit backwards. A _lack_ of controlled
burns due to discontinuation of indigenous practices and budget cuts combined
with increased fire fighting (preventing natural burns) caused fuel to build
up in forests that would have burned away in smaller fires. Many plants in
Australia are actually adapted to frequent fires like the eucalyptus tree
whose oils ignite during fires to wipe out all competitors near their seeds,
which also require fire to germinate. Because of the intensity of the fires
this year, it became too hot for many of those species and they now wont be
able to reestablish.

A similar problem developed in California due to overzealous fire fighting
that built up the forest floor over decades and led to some devastating fires.

~~~
cyphar
In Australia, a larger factor is that cotton farmers have literally been
stealing water from the Murray-Darling catchment system, resulting in the
entire bush becoming much drier for the past decade.

~~~
Gustomaximus
Do you have any source for that? Cotton farms have taken significant flow and
effected the river itself. But I've not seen anything that links these farms
to the bush around the region.

~~~
cyphar
The Murray-Darling river system covers most of NSW and Victoria, so it's not
hard to intuit that a drier river system will result in drier conditions in
NSW and Victoria. I don't have a source which says "the fires were
predominantly caused by the drying of the river system", but given the
geography it seems more unlikely (at least to me) that it didn't have a
significant impact.

------
BenS
Dr. Eric Ding has been tweeting timely and detailed information:
[https://twitter.com/drericding](https://twitter.com/drericding)

~~~
Fomite
No, Eric Ding has been tweeting pretty terrible misinformation, and is being
rightly dragged for it by pretty much every epidemiologist I know on Twitter,
including myself.

His takes are _bad_.

He's called this virus's R0 the worst he's seen in his career, which is
absurd. He's conflated R0 and attack rate. Familiar errors because no one pays
attention to ID epidemiology until there's an outbreak, and then suddenly
decides they're an expert.

If one must go to Twitter for ones epidemiology, I'd suggest Tara Smith
(@aetiology) or Maia Majumder (@maiamajumder), both of whom are actual ID
epidemiologists and science communicators.

~~~
potatoFam
Could you let us know what ID epidemiologists are? I'm not familiar with the
field and am wondering what the ID stands for.

~~~
Fomite
Infectious Disease epidemiologists.

------
brigandish
We all seem to be talking about guesstimates and data we can't be sure of, but
I see little talk of what we can _do_.

If this were a tech problem - a big problem that seemed insurmountable - I
would break it down into chunks as best I could, look at all the parts of the
chain, and ask myself which I could be most effective in tackling first. Treat
it like a sprint. Which part of the chain would that be?

With the caveat I'm not a domain expert, obviously, I'd go for the lack of
testing kits - what makes testing for something like this so hard and so hard
at scale?

Maybe it isn't and it's the supply of kits. Is this not something that is also
"fixable"? There's a lot of intelligent and capable people on this forum, why
not throw some pasta at the wall?

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Well, as far as throwing pasta at the wall - it sounds a little bit like
Engineer's disease to think that we can come up with a solution by thinking
hard on the problem
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812975)

Obviously I'm as arrogant as the the next guy, but I think that arrogant next
guy is probably already working on this issue and has a bunch of background in
domain expertise and specific knowledge of the logistics I won't manage in a
side project while commenting in between fixing bugs on the Equity/Credit
analysis app I'm working on right now.

Just my 2 cents, and 2 cents is not worth much in this economy.

~~~
brigandish
Throwing pasta at a wall implies that the idea of coming up with an idea is
unlikely, thus not being _arrogant_ , but also points out that it is
_possible_ , which it is.

As it is, I'd prefer the focus moved to solutions from speculation, at least
it's an attitude I'm more comfortable with.

------
killjoywashere
One of the downstream incentives for this action is that folks like the CDC
can point to it as a reason to make more resources available. Concretely, they
can order the production of the oligomers needed for PCR testing.

------
ekianjo
An emergency yet planes are still flying in and out of China? It makes you
wonder why travel has not been completely banned yet.

~~~
yibg
I’ve been seeing this type of reaction a lot lately, but isn’t locking down
1/5 of the worlds population a bit extreme? I mean it’s not like we have a
zombie virus going on here.

------
pastor_elm
Any good models that predict the peak of this?

~~~
Anon84
You might want to give
[http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/](http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/)
whirl. You can simulate any epidemic model on a real-life datasets of mobility
and healthcare access around the world.

The tricky part is know exactly what the "correct" epidemic model is: length
of latent/infectious/etc periods, etc.

Full disclosure: I was once one of the main developers of this epidemic
modeling framework.

~~~
defgeneric
This is really cool!

Are there any existing models to start with?

~~~
Anon84
I've been disconnected from GLEaM for a while now, so I might be missing
something better, but the user manual
([http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/GLEAMviz_client_manual_v7....](http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/GLEAMviz_client_manual_v7.0.pdf))
guides you thorough an example on Sec 4

------
vackosar
here is simple intraday real-time coronavirus infected count predictor with
log scale. If I am right it goes up every minute or so
[https://www.coronaviruschart.com/](https://www.coronaviruschart.com/)

------
jmccorm
Apart from more people falling sick (as bad as that is), is there a more
fundamental concern that if it runs wild in a less developed country, it'll
mutate into something more dangerous? As infections climb, the coronavirus
(based on less stable RNA) gets more chances to mutate into something even
more virulent or deadly?

~~~
rwmj
Flu viruses get less dangerous over time. The more deadly strains literally
kill off their hosts, making those strains less likely to spread.

~~~
jmccorm
Is that a universal truth, or is it historical? Situational? This virus is
said to spread well before a person even knows they're infected. A mutation
could simply extend that period. Or it could increase the degree to which it
is contagious without affecting mortality, right? Or are you saying that this
simply doesn't happen in the real world? Flu viruses only mutate with regards
to lethality, and only in a way that works against its overall impact?

~~~
bra4you
"Is that a universal truth, or is it historical? Situational?"

It it experience based on historical data. A virus jumping to a new host
(species) will be more aggressive in the beginning until it has adopted
(mutated) to his new host.

While this is not a universal truth, it is experience and could also be backed
up mathematically (>host dies to soon, virus can not spread) and by game
theory.

------
Amarok
Do we have accurate figures for the mortality demographics?

------
feanaro
WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial
sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they
advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally
boggles the mind.

At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The
science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of
teleportation.

~~~
gruez
>they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which
personally boggles the mind.

>At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The
science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of
teleportation.

but it's true though. there's limited evidence that travel bans will stop the
spread of the infection. the evidence ranges between "no effect at all" to
"delayed infection by a few days".

[https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-
coronavir...](https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavirus-
travel-ban)

~~~
emptysongglass
This doesn't make any sense if I step through it mentally. If you're a carrier
of a virus and you have to hoof it to my end of the world, it's going to take
you a whole lot longer to get there than if you flew. This is absolute fact.
The faster vectors you give to something to transport a thing, that thing will
move to its destination that much faster.

You don't need science to grok this.

~~~
CamelCaseName
A few passages from the article:

> But the trouble is, they don’t appear to be helpful. At best, travel
> restrictions, and even airport screenings, __delay the spread of disease but
> don’t impact the number of people who eventually get sick __. Instead, they
> make it harder for international aid and experts to reach communities
> affected by disease. They are also expensive, resource-intensive, and
> potentially harmful to the economies of cities and countries involved.

On the H1N1 travel bans:

> Again, reduced travel delayed (by three days!) but didn’t stop disease
> spread. The authors wrote, “No containment was achieved by such restrictions
> and the virus was able to reach pandemic proportions in a short time.”

So, why?

> It’s expensive and nearly impossible to seal off the borders of a country,
> the authors of the paper wrote. People will inevitably move — even
> indirectly from the countries that are quarantined.

\---

The article gives a number of examples as well.

~~~
staticautomatic
How can a ban only on nonessential travel affect aid workers and experts, who
are clearly essential?

~~~
throwanem
Have you never seen a bureaucracy in a hurry? It is not, to borrow a word,
_agile_.

~~~
staticautomatic
I don't understand what your point is. Are you saying the bans are not limited
to non-essential travel? Because everything I've read about them thus far has
said they are.

------
WilTimSon
The way all global superpowers and, by extension, their organizations have to
babysit China's government has gone from ridiculous to ridiculously dangerous.
Politicans pretend not to notice human rights abuses, ignore the fact that the
regime is repressive and a danger to its own people, and now try to act like
saying 'Hey, the virus originated in this country, hope they contain it' is
some horribly offensive thing. It's unjustifiable in my eyes.

~~~
segmondy
Grow up. WHO is not an organization to talk about human rights or other
things. It's HEALTH, that's what the H is in. China started of slow, but they
have really stepped up in doing their part to help contain the virus. Nothing
wrong with recognizing their effort. Let's not forget that the scientists
working around the clock in that country are not "China" but individuals like
you and me.

~~~
dang
Please edit personal swipes like "Grow up." out of your posts to HN. They
break the site guidelines. Your comment would be fine without that bit.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
linsomniac
My daughter and I just had this conversation:

Her: "They just declared a global health emergency over Coronavirus." Me: "Who
did." Her: "The World Health Organization." Me: "That's what I said."

~~~
serf
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_on_First%3F](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_on_First%3F)

>The premise of the sketch is that Abbott is identifying the players on a
baseball team for Costello, but their names and nicknames can be interpreted
as non-responsive answers to Costello's questions. For example, the first
baseman is named "Who"; thus, the utterance "Who's on first" is ambiguous
between the question ("Which person is the first baseman?") and the answer
("The name of the first baseman is 'Who'").

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M)

I imagine that kind of ambiguity has been 'played' with for forever, though.

~~~
linsomniac
It was only after typing this up that I realized the parallel with Who's on
first. Brilliant bit.

------
mrb
It's about time... All early characteristics of the novel coronavirus indicate
it's far more dangerous than SARS/MERS/seasonal flu (which kills 30-60k/year
in the US) so, unless a cure is found soon, we should expect it to kill more
people than these other diseases combined :
[https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/122263149332482867...](https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1222631493324828672)

~~~
svara
I think it would be more helpful to cite actual epidemiology research and
public health professionals rather than people who seem to use people's fears
to garner attention.

Edit: In order to make this a little less dismissive, the actual argument in
that Twitter post is that due to lag between first symptoms appearing and
death, you can't divide fatalities by total cases to get the mortality rate,
and should instead use total cases N days ago. Makes sense superficially, but

* cases that get reported are biased towards people who get more sick

* the 20-56% mortality rate claimed based on guessing N=6 is inconsistent with the mortality rates outside of China, where no one has died so far.

But I'm no epidemiologist, so don't believe me either.

~~~
mhandley
The rates for Chinese provinces except for Hubei seem inconsistent with 20-56%
mortality too. The ten provinces outside Hubei that have the most confirmed
infections are:

* Zhejiang: 428 confirmed; 0 deaths; 4 recovered

* Guangdong: 354 confirmed; 0 deaths; 10 recovered

* Henan: 278 confirmed; 2 deaths; 2 recovered

* Hunan: 277 confirmed; 0 deaths; 2 recovered

* Anhui: 200 confirmed; 0 deaths; 2 recovered

* Chongqing: 182 confirmed; 0 deaths; 1 recovered

* Jiangxi: 162 confirmed; 0 deaths; 5 recovered

* Shandong; 158 confirmed; 0 deaths; 1 recovered

* Sichuan: 142 confirmed; 1 deaths; 1 recovered

* Jiangsu; 129 confirmed; 0 deaths; 1 recovered

Although there's a clearly a lag between confirmed cases and death, there's
likely to be less lag in outcomes between patients who recover and patients
who die.

On this admittedly small sample, we get 29 recovered and 3 deaths, or about a
10% death rate. That's still pretty high, but it's nowhere near the 20-56%
death rate.

If people go from being infected to dying more quickly than they go from being
infected to being declared to have recovered, then that would lower the rate.
The recovered rate seems to have been increasing faster than the death rate in
the last couple of days, which might indicate this is the case. In addition,
these cases obviously only include patients who present with symptoms. If some
people are asymptomatic, that would also lower the death rate.

~~~
mrb
That's a very good observation on these 10 provinces. But I would apply
caution when interpreting a cherry-picked data subset.

Nitpick: I don't claim "20-56%" death rate, but "9-56%", thus your observation
of a 10% CFR is in line with my claim.

~~~
mhandley
One other observation, for what it's worth. According to the John Hopkins
site, between 29th Jan and 30th Jan updates (that's the data I happen to have
access to), we have worldwide:

* 29th: deaths 133, recovered 126

* 30th: deaths 171, recovered 143

But for Hubei, we get:

* 29th: deaths 125, recovered 88

* 30th: deaths 162, recovered 90

Which looks like the death rate is going up in Hubei.

Subtracting Hubei though, for the rest of the world (but mostly China) we get:

* 29th: deaths 8, recovered 38

* 30th: deaths 9, recovered 53

* difference: deaths 1, recovered 15

Of course these numbers are too small to have real significance, but they're
worth watching over the next day or two. It looks like outcomes are very
different outside of Hubei from in Hubei.

~~~
nostrademons
It's consistent with natural selection. Cases inside Hubei likely have fewer
viral generations (= less mutation) than cases outside. Additionally, every
case outside has a population bottleneck in that it was transmitted through a
host that was well enough to travel. The most virulent cases would be expected
to sicken their hosts and discourage travel or extensive social contact.

~~~
mhandley
Surely all current cases have experienced roughly the same number of viral
generations? A death outside Hubei today will be caused by a virus with
roughly the same number of generations as a death inside Hubei. Yet a smaller
fraction seems to be dying outside Hubei.

Other possible explanations are that the healthcare system in Hubei is
overwhelmed, so more patients die, or alternatively they're just too busy to
accurately report recoveries.

