Coronavirus pandemic

[bing101]

https://www.ketv.com/article/11-people-test-positive-for-coronavirus-at-unmc/31029795#




https://www.texastribune.org/2020/02/20/coronavirus-quarantine-san-antonio/




https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/irving-newlyweds-back-in-us-quarantined-at-lackland-air-force-base/2313512/




Here are more in the Coronavirus Roundup.

[bing101]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-idUSKBN20F01P


https://abcnews.go.com/International/hundreds-chinese-inmates-infected-coronavirus-outbreak-spreads-prisons/story?id=69120484


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51591091

Here is an update for the fallout in China over Coronavirus.

[bing101]

https://ktla.com/2020/02/23/covid-19-cases-soar-in-italy-as-authorities-scramble-to-find-patient-zero/


A COVID-19 scare is reported in Italy.

[bing101]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-iran-toll/irans-death-toll-from-coronavirus-reaches-26-health-ministry-idUSKCN20L1E5



https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health/governments-ramp-up-preparations-for-coronavirus-pandemic-idUSKCN20L0AF


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-italy-death/two-more-people-die-from-coronavirus-in-italy-civil-protection-agency-idUSKCN20L1NC



Update there are 26 deaths reported in Iran due to COVID-19.

[Max Rockatansky]

Anyone else remember when everyone in the news was freaking out about; SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Anthrax, etc?  I get it that this is a big deal in China but everyone acts like the zombie apocalypse is upon us every time one of these diseases rolls around every couple years.  South Park more or less nailed it almost two decades ago with the SARS scare:

[hotdogPi]

Anyone else remember when everyone in the news was freaking out about; SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Anthrax, etc?  I get it that this is a big deal in China but everyone acts like the zombie apocalypse is upon us every time one of these diseases rolls around every couple years.  South Park more or less nailed it almost two decades ago with the SARS scare:

I thought the same thing at first, comparing it to the Ebola scare. (The 2009 swine flu actually was a big deal.) However, COVID-19 seems to be spreading to other countries, so this one is important.



I'm not going to do it, but I thought about making a Wikipedia article about a certain person's misspelling of "coronavirus" in a tweet:

"Caronavirus is a computer virus that infects the central servers of the stock market, causing the stock market to go down. It is not to be confused with coronavirus, although it is named after it."

[kalvado]

Anyone else remember when everyone in the news was freaking out about; SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Anthrax, etc?  I get it that this is a big deal in China but everyone acts like the zombie apocalypse is upon us every time one of these diseases rolls around every couple years.  South Park more or less nailed it almost two decades ago with the SARS scare:

This may be the most serious one lately. It definitely overdid SARS, and containment is much less successful so far. People expect an outbreak in Japan, among other things, and that can easily affect Tokyo Olympics, for example.
Not the end of the world, but may be more noticable than most of your examples.

[jeffandnicole]

Just to put the hype in perspective: About as many people have died from the flu compared to Coronavirus, and many more people have been sickened by it. 

But, Coronavirus is this year's hot-topic, so it will be in the news for a while, and have people freaking out.  I'm sure hospitals and doctor offices have been inundated with people believing they have this latest and greatest illness, only to find out they have, to use complicated medical terminology: "nothing".

[Max Rockatansky]

Regarding media sensation with the Coronavirus.  The only place I heard it even discussed in Mexico during two weeks was when I (along with my family) were asked if we had been to China in the last 14 days.  I kind of notice once you get away from the U.S. and to a lesser extent Canada media sensationalism tends to die down fast. 

Interestingly the City of San Francisco declared a state of emergency but I don't think that there has even been a confirmed case of Coronavirus there?  I was telling my wife we should probably go for a visit since that declaration probably will turn off a lot of tourism and drive hotel prices down. 

Regarding impactful infections on the global scale when was the last truly big one?  I want to say it was the Spanish Flu (ironically which is also what Swine Flu was) but there might be some Mid-20th Century examples that I'm forgetting about. 

[kalvado]

Regarding impactful infections on the global scale when was the last truly big one?  I want to say it was the Spanish Flu (ironically which is also what Swine Flu was) but there might be some Mid-20th Century examples that I'm forgetting about.

If you will, epidemiologists being on a constant watch is a important part of it. While not global, local outbreaks do happen, and can be pretty nasty. What we see, IMHO,  is just professional "panic" of those who know how quickly things can go wrong and trying to get them right - something general public doesn't really remember.

[nexus73]

Regarding media sensation with the Coronavirus.  The only place I heard it even discussed in Mexico during two weeks was when I (along with my family) were asked if we had been to China in the last 14 days.  I kind of notice once you get away from the U.S. and to a lesser extent Canada media sensationalism tends to die down fast. 

Interestingly the City of San Francisco declared a state of emergency but I don't think that there has even been a confirmed case of Coronavirus there?  I was telling my wife we should probably go for a visit since that declaration probably will turn off a lot of tourism and drive hotel prices down. 

Regarding impactful infections on the global scale when was the last truly big one?  I want to say it was the Spanish Flu (ironically which is also what Swine Flu was) but there might be some Mid-20th Century examples that I'm forgetting about. 

California has reported a case in NorCal.  What city this is was not mentioned.

Rick

[Mapmikey]

Just to put the hype in perspective: About as many people have died from the flu compared to Coronavirus, and many more people have been sickened by it. 

But, Coronavirus is this year's hot-topic, so it will be in the news for a while, and have people freaking out.  I'm sure hospitals and doctor offices have been inundated with people believing they have this latest and greatest illness, only to find out they have, to use complicated medical terminology: "nothing".

In terms of raw numbers this is currently true. 

However, the fatality rate is in the range of 20-80 times higher for Corona (depends on how you define death rate - https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) so if everyone allowed it to take its course naturally the number of deaths are potentially 20-80 times higher than the flu (16,000-41,000 in this flu season for the U.S. alone source: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm ) for a potential range of 320,000-820,000 deaths (for 20x).

For comparison the Asian Flu of 1957-58 killed 110,000 Americans.

Once a vaccine is developed I assume the draconian quarantine measures could revert to general flu precautions for future outbreaks of this strain. 

It really comes down to this (as it does for many things): what level of lethality are we comfortable with before disrupting daily life significantly for many people.  Things like the flu and driving kill tens of thousands a year here and while we have things (vaccines, more safety features in cars and in road design) to try to reduce these, we don't do things that would severely impact most people's lives (Coronavirus level quarantines or outlawing cars/reducing max possible speeds to 10 mph, etc.)

Just one man's opinion...

[Max Rockatansky]

^^^

I want to say it's either Salono County or Humboldt County. 

Regarding impactful infections on the global scale when was the last truly big one?  I want to say it was the Spanish Flu (ironically which is also what Swine Flu was) but there might be some Mid-20th Century examples that I'm forgetting about.

If you will, epidemiologists being on a constant watch is a important part of it. While not global, local outbreaks do happen, and can be pretty nasty. What we see, IMHO,  is just professional "panic" of those who know how quickly things can go wrong and trying to get them right - something general public doesn't really remember.

I've kind of found that they tend to be the more rational when these outbreaks happen.  Most of the public concern seems to be coming from either media sources or public media officials making declarations or public announcements.  I even had to read an issued statement at work, all it did was get people spun up over nothing.

[US71]

https://ktla.com/2020/02/23/covid-19-cases-soar-in-italy-as-authorities-scramble-to-find-patient-zero/


A COVID-19 scare is reported in Italy.

There was a scare in Maumelle, Arkansas which turned out to be someone trying to get out of court.

[1995hoo]

....

Interestingly the City of San Francisco declared a state of emergency but I don't think that there has even been a confirmed case of Coronavirus there?  I was telling my wife we should probably go for a visit since that declaration probably will turn off a lot of tourism and drive hotel prices down. 

....

Does San Francisco have a large Chinese community? If so, maybe that's the reason for it–more or less assuming that travel to and from China will pose a high risk there. I could see the same occurring in Vancouver for the same reason.

[kalvado]

^^^

I want to say it's either Salono County or Humboldt County. 

Regarding impactful infections on the global scale when was the last truly big one?  I want to say it was the Spanish Flu (ironically which is also what Swine Flu was) but there might be some Mid-20th Century examples that I'm forgetting about.

If you will, epidemiologists being on a constant watch is a important part of it. While not global, local outbreaks do happen, and can be pretty nasty. What we see, IMHO,  is just professional "panic" of those who know how quickly things can go wrong and trying to get them right - something general public doesn't really remember.

I've kind of found that they tend to be the more rational when these outbreaks happen.  Most of the public concern seems to be coming from either media sources or public media officials making declarations or public announcements.  I even had to read an issued statement at work, all it did was get people spun up over nothing.

They are more rational - but often large-scale actions are requested. Think weeks in quarantines here or mandatory immunizations in other cases.
While this can be just another day at work for professionals, there is definitely a need to justify those unusual things for general public support. Unfortunately, people do get agitated as a result.

[US 89]

Just to put the hype in perspective: About as many people have died from the flu compared to Coronavirus, and many more people have been sickened by it. 

But, Coronavirus is this year's hot-topic, so it will be in the news for a while, and have people freaking out.  I'm sure hospitals and doctor offices have been inundated with people believing they have this latest and greatest illness, only to find out they have, to use complicated medical terminology: "nothing".

See my post a few pages up for why it's a big deal:

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.

That 2.2% figure appears to still be valid a month later. Worth noting that although it's less deadly than other similar diseases like SARS or MERS, this actually makes it more dangerous because it's more likely to be spread around - this is also part of why the flu is more common and has killed more people than the new coronavirus has. With something like SARS or MERS you'd probably die before you could give it to many other people.

[kalvado]

Just to put the hype in perspective: About as many people have died from the flu compared to Coronavirus, and many more people have been sickened by it. 

But, Coronavirus is this year's hot-topic, so it will be in the news for a while, and have people freaking out.  I'm sure hospitals and doctor offices have been inundated with people believing they have this latest and greatest illness, only to find out they have, to use complicated medical terminology: "nothing".

See my post a few pages up for why it's a big deal:

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.

That 2.2% figure appears to still be valid a month later. Worth noting that although it's less deadly than other similar diseases like SARS or MERS, this actually makes it more dangerous because it's more likely to be spread around - this is also part of why the flu is more common and has killed more people than the new coronavirus has. With something like SARS or MERS you'd probably die before you could give it to many other people.

Some people questioning death percentage as asymptomatic or light cases may not be counted; that would drive actual death rate lower than reported numbers.
Some people (a different group, though) believes that China underreported death rate. Even from the bare reported numbers, China has 3.5% death rate, at it will likely increase as there are still many  people in serious or critical condition as new cases go down.
One thing for sure - at the peak of it, healthcare system in Wuhan was running multifold over capacity.  Not sure how that would work elsewhere, especially in country-wide epidemics when no spare capacity or supplies are  available elsewhere.

[jeffandnicole]

And that's an important possible stat. Many people will like to say that many people that have died may not have been counted. But likewise, many people that contracted the illness, didn't get diagnosed and didn't die could have just as likely not been counted as well.

It's important to note that if it's true the death rate is higher, it's possible that not as many people even get the illness in the first place, which is a very important statistic. If we wanted to look at worst case scenarios, would you rather have 30 million get sick and 1 million die, or 2 million get sick and 500,000 die?  The death rate is higher for the second possibility, even though overall it's the better outcome.

[nexus73]

^^^

I want to say it’s either Salono County or Humboldt County. 

Regarding impactful infections on the global scale when was the last truly big one?  I want to say it was the Spanish Flu (ironically which is also what Swine Flu was) but there might be some Mid-20th Century examples that I’m forgetting about.

If you will, epidemiologists being on a constant watch is a important part of it. While not global, local outbreaks do happen, and can be pretty nasty. What we see, IMHO,  is just professional "panic" of those who know how quickly things can go wrong and trying to get them right - something general public doesn't really remember.

I’ve kind of found that they tend to be the more rational when these outbreaks happen.  Most of the public concern seems to be coming from either media sources or public media officials making declarations or public announcements.  I even had to read an issued statement at work, all it did was get people spun up over nothing.

Just heard on the news that the coronavirus victim is in Solano County.  They are being treated at UC-Davis.  This person has not been outside the USA recently.  How did they get the virus?  Unknown at this time.

Rick

[bing101]

^^^

I want to say it's either Salono County or Humboldt County. 

Regarding impactful infections on the global scale when was the last truly big one?  I want to say it was the Spanish Flu (ironically which is also what Swine Flu was) but there might be some Mid-20th Century examples that I'm forgetting about.

If you will, epidemiologists being on a constant watch is a important part of it. While not global, local outbreaks do happen, and can be pretty nasty. What we see, IMHO,  is just professional "panic" of those who know how quickly things can go wrong and trying to get them right - something general public doesn't really remember.

I've kind of found that they tend to be the more rational when these outbreaks happen.  Most of the public concern seems to be coming from either media sources or public media officials making declarations or public announcements.  I even had to read an issued statement at work, all it did was get people spun up over nothing.

Just heard on the news that the coronavirus victim is in Solano County.  They are being treated at UC-Davis.  This person has not been outside the USA recently.  How did they get the virus?  Unknown at this time.

Rick

Solano County, CA was expected to get hit by Coronavirus due to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, CA have been the lead quarantine facility of COVID-19 in the USA. 


https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article240604346.html


https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-patients-Travis-AFB-must-move-15079843.php

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article240688726.html

[Bruce]

We really shouldn't downplay the spread of COVID-19, which has a much higher fatality rate than the normal flu (around 2%) and seems to spread quite fast. Japan and South Korea have both started their own quarantines to try and contain the spread, Italy has its outbreak, and there's only so much we can learn out of China. Even the "underreported" figures are quite significant, and it's also having an impact on the world economy as more and more man-hours are lost in China.

That being said, the media hype is causing its own problems. Locally, there's been an uptick in anti-Asian racism, including harassment that I have experienced myself on the street.

[bing101]

https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/02/27/suspected-covid-19-patient-in-semarang-died-of-swine-flu-minister.html


Now there is a report in Indonesia that a person died of H1N1 Flu while the hospital was investigating the patient of COVID-19.

[Max Rockatansky]

^^^

I want to say it's either Salono County or Humboldt County. 

Regarding impactful infections on the global scale when was the last truly big one?  I want to say it was the Spanish Flu (ironically which is also what Swine Flu was) but there might be some Mid-20th Century examples that I'm forgetting about.

If you will, epidemiologists being on a constant watch is a important part of it. While not global, local outbreaks do happen, and can be pretty nasty. What we see, IMHO,  is just professional "panic" of those who know how quickly things can go wrong and trying to get them right - something general public doesn't really remember.

I've kind of found that they tend to be the more rational when these outbreaks happen.  Most of the public concern seems to be coming from either media sources or public media officials making declarations or public announcements.  I even had to read an issued statement at work, all it did was get people spun up over nothing.

Just heard on the news that the coronavirus victim is in Solano County.  They are being treated at UC-Davis.  This person has not been outside the USA recently.  How did they get the virus?  Unknown at this time.

Rick

Solano County, CA was expected to get hit by Coronavirus due to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, CA have been the lead quarantine facility of COVID-19 in the USA. 


https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article240604346.html


https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-patients-Travis-AFB-must-move-15079843.php

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article240688726.html

Well there goes easy lodging at Travis AFB for awhile...   I'll have to ask my Wife's Cousin how things are over there with the quarantine procedures. 

[kevinb1994]

We really shouldn't downplay the spread of COVID-19, which has a much higher fatality rate than the normal flu (around 2%) and seems to spread quite fast. Japan and South Korea have both started their own quarantines to try and contain the spread, Italy has its outbreak, and there's only so much we can learn out of China. Even the "underreported" figures are quite significant, and it's also having an impact on the world economy as more and more man-hours are lost in China.

That being said, the media hype is causing its own problems. Locally, there's been an uptick in anti-Asian racism, including harassment that I have experienced myself on the street.

That racism towards Asians and Asian-Americans (myself included–my mother and her family are from Taichung, Taiwan) really is disgusting when you get down to the nitty-gritty. I keep telling this to my friends that I have talked to on FB and whatnot.