Coronavirus pandemic

[Rothman]

Smith College has entered the scare as a student has claimed the possibility of being on the same flight as the UMass Boston student and now having symptoms.

[kevinb1994]

Smith College has entered the scare as a student has claimed the possibility of being on the same flight as the UMass Boston student and now having symptoms.

Yeah that wouldn't totally surprise me.

[kalvado]

I was going to add in the numbers of cases of each to give some more context, but that information proved to not be a quick and easy find. Needless to say, it becomes more worrisome when you consider the ratio of cases to deaths.

According to the CDC's calculations, the mortality rate for influenza is 0.13%, or around 1 in 769 people. A 2.2% death rate means on average, 1 out of every 45 people who get coronavirus die from it. The reason more people have died from influenza is that far more people get it in the first place.
Put it this way: if those numbers are right, the coronavirus is 17 times deadlier than the flu.

The news seems to be playing it down saying the flu is worse.

That's what I was about to get to next, the cable news channels are obviously the worst offenders of this.

This just makes me even less worried about the coronavirus.  So many more people die from the flu than from the coronavirus, as I pointed out (and the news keeps pointing out too).  Well, if the coronavirus is so much more contagious than the flu, then that just means so-o-o-o so-o-o-o so-o-o-o SO-O-O-O many more people get the flu than get the cornoavirus to begin with.  Your chances are that much smaller of contracting the coronavirus than the comparative number of deaths makes it first appear.

I'm not trying to make you worry about the coronavirus. I'm just saying, if you did come down with it, then you should be worried. Much more worried than if you came down with the flu.

So, basically:
Flu: high chance of catching, low chance of it being fatal.
Coronavirus: low chance of catching, high chance of it being fatal.

What's more worrisome?
Take your pick, but I'll go with the coronavirus. I'm confident enough in my ability to fight the flu.

Problem is, coronavirus has a chance to spread - and a lot of current effort is on reducing the chance.
If it spreads, chances of getting infected can easily skyrocket...

[bing101]

https://www.ktvu.com/news/san-francisco-hospital-cares-for-two-coronavirus-patients


https://abc7news.com/health/san-francisco-hospital-caring-for-2-patients-with-coronavirus/5900896/


there are reports that a San Francisco area hospital is holding two patients who are reportedly victims of the Coronavirus.

[webny99]

What's more worrisome?

The one I actually have a statistically significant chance of contracting.
Your chance of surviving a gun shot to the head is even lower (5%), but I'm even less worried about getting shot in the head than I am of contracting the coronavirus–despite the fact that around 20,000 people in the USA die from a gun shot to the head every year.

Well, the problem with that comparison is that you have control over whether you shoot yourself in the head, but you don't have control over whether you contract the flu or coronavirus.

If I do get the flu, I know how to combat it - or at least can take some basic steps - because I and millions of others do it every year, and survive. Life goes on. I have no idea how to combat the coronavirus, by contrast, or how I'd even know I had it to begin with. That element of the unknown is another reason it's higher on the worrisome scale for me.

[vdeane]

Yeah, seriously.  There are steps you can take to limit your chance of getting the flu.  The same is NOT true of coronavirus because of the fact that one is contagious for two weeks prior to showing symptoms.  To make matters worse, a LOT of people traveled freely before such was known.  There's really no way to know how widespread it is right now except to wait and see, and by that point it will have spread further.

That's what makes it so hard to judge coronavirus.  It could be a brief scare like SARS was.  Or it could be the next pandemic, our generation's Spanish Flu.  And there's no way to even guess for at least two weeks.

[kphoger]

Well, the problem with that comparison is that you have control over whether you shoot yourself in the head,

I have much more limited control over whether someone else shoots me in the head.

but you don't have control over whether you contract the flu or coronavirus.

Sure I do.  Washing my hands, not making out with people recently arrived from Wuhan, etc, etc.  Saying you don't have control over that is like saying you don't have control over whether you get the flu.  Of course you do.  Not absolute control, of course (short of staying in your house all day every day), but quite a bit of control.

If I do get the flu, I know how to combat it - or at least can take some basic steps - because I and millions of others do it every year, and survive. Life goes on. I have no idea how to combat the coronavirus, by contrast, or how I'd even know I had it to begin with. That element of the unknown is another reason it's higher on the worrisome scale for me.

There are all sorts of wacky diseases that I don't know how to control if I contract them, but that doesn't make me worry about them.  I wasn't freaking out about Ebola either.

Yeah, seriously.  There are steps you can take to limit your chance of getting the flu.  The same is NOT true of coronavirus because of the fact that one is contagious for two weeks prior to showing symptoms.

Influenza is contagious for about a week before symptoms show, too, dude.

To make matters worse, a LOT of people traveled freely before such was known.  There's really no way to know how widespread it is right now except to wait and see, and by that point it will have spread further.

It's been about a week and a half now for 2019-nCoV.  The first US case was confirmed on January 21.

[bing101]

https://www.ocregister.com/2020/02/04/coronavirus-screening-misses-more-than-half-of-infected-patients-according-to-ucla-study/




https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2020-02-04/first-us-coronavirus-patient-released-from-hospital




Here is an update on Coronavirus. One patient was released at a Washington State hospital.

[Bruce]

The hospital is not a Washington State hospital, since WSU doesn't run hospitals.

The man from my county did indeed leave the hospital to be held in isolation at home, having mostly recovered. He does not wish to be in the public eye (for good reason, given the racist attacks against Asians caused by the coronavirus hysteria).

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/first-u-s-coronavirus-patient-released-from-everett-hospital/

[kphoger]

One patient was released at a Washington State hospital.

The hospital is not a Washington State hospital, since WSU doesn't run hospitals.

I think he just meant it wasn't Washington, DC.

[bing101]

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article239991138.html


https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/350-coronavirus-evacuees-land-Travis-Air-force-bas-15032013.php


https://www.kcra.com/article/evacuees-fleeing-coronavirus-travis-air-force-base-california/30777303#


https://fox40.com/2020/02/04/evacuees-from-wuhan-to-land-at-travis-afb-wednesday/


https://abc7.com/health/coronavirus-ca-base-to-house-more-china-evacuees/5904762/


Update Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, CA is holding the Coronavirus Quaratine patients.

[bing101]

https://fox5sandiego.com/news/flight-carrying-american-coronavirus-evacuees-arrives-at-mcas-miramar/


https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/plane-carrying-us-citizens-from-china-arrives-at-mcas-miramar/509-87ee21f9-63bc-497f-a9cd-6448b07fa6bf


Update San Diego is also holding evacuees of Coronavirus.

[bing101]

The CDC and Travis Air Force Base does a Press Conference

[Bruce]

The Washington state fire training academy (which has its own exit on I-90) will be a quarantine site for people coming back from Hubei Province but with no visible symptoms.

https://www.kuow.org/stories/fire-academy-near-seattle-picked-for-coronavirus-quarantine-site

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I have major doubts about another Spanish Flu type epidemic ever happening (barring a major collapse of society) between much more advanced health systems and knowledge, plus no global scale conflict on the level of World War I that allowed that pandemic to grow, mutate, and spread.

[vdeane]

I have major doubts about another Spanish Flu type epidemic ever happening (barring a major collapse of society) between much more advanced health systems and knowledge, plus no global scale conflict on the level of World War I that allowed that pandemic to grow, mutate, and spread.

There are a few things to keep in mind, though:
-It's contagious before people have symptoms or its presence can be detected
-We have air travel, and while we're quarantining people from China, that doesn't mean anything if someone who was let in before we started doing that is contagious and doesn't know it.
-The Communist Party's first response to reports of the virus was not to take preventative measures but to pretend nothing was happening and punish anyone who said otherwise to anyone (even in private communications).  That allowed the virus to spread far, far more than it otherwise should have.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I have major doubts about another Spanish Flu type epidemic ever happening (barring a major collapse of society) between much more advanced health systems and knowledge, plus no global scale conflict on the level of World War I that allowed that pandemic to grow, mutate, and spread.

There are a few things to keep in mind, though:
-It's contagious before people have symptoms or its presence can be detected
-We have air travel, and while we're quarantining people from China, that doesn't mean anything if someone who was let in before we started doing that is contagious and doesn't know it.
-The Communist Party's first response to reports of the virus was not to take preventative measures but to pretend nothing was happening and punish anyone who said otherwise to anyone (even in private communications).  That allowed the virus to spread far, far more than it otherwise should have.

My point of contention is that exactly one person outside of China has died, and even the proportion of infections to deaths within China is about .02% (550/30000). I'm not saying this is a joke or something that should be dismissed, this is something that needs to be stopped. But we're a long way from 1918.

[hotdogPi]

.02% (550/30000)

That's 2%, not .02%.

[bing101]

https://www.3newsnow.com/plane-carrying-passengers-from-wuhan-china-to-arrive-at-eppley-airfield
Update Eppley Field in Nebraska might take some of the evacuees from Wuhan for coronavirus screening

[webny99]

-The Communist Party's first response to reports of the virus was not to take preventative measures but to pretend nothing was happening and punish anyone who said otherwise to anyone (even in private communications).  That allowed the virus to spread far, far more than it otherwise should have.

Uh, yeah, this just cannot be stated enough. We still really have no idea how bad it actually is, but with the Chinese New Year extended and factories keeping their doors closed for weeks, if not months, it's safe to say it's really bad. Think about the kind of sickness/disease/infection it would take to shut a US manufacturing hub down, and ours are doing nothing compared to what China is pumping out.
It's scary too that we may never know how bad it actually is over there, because the Communist Party's #1 priority is keeping the whole thing under wraps to save face. It's too bad, because what's the point? It's not like it's a secret that most/all viruses like this one originate from China.

[kalvado]

Think about the kind of sickness/disease/infection it would take to shut a US manufacturing hub down, and ours are doing nothing compared to what China is pumping out.

6" of snow is all you need...

[bing101]

https://apnews.com/905489d29a3d4f8788f17a40003548a0


now a reports of a Whistle blower of the coronavirus to be in critical condition in china 

[US71]

https://apnews.com/905489d29a3d4f8788f17a40003548a0


now a reports of a Whistle blower of the coronavirus to be in critical condition in china 

He's dead, Jim

https://www.foxnews.com/health/doctor-sounded-alarm-coronavirus-dies

[Rothman]

I have friends in China.  It seems we're actually getting accurate news from there.

[thspfc]

It's in my county now. Uh oh.