Coronavirus (No Politics)

Nope. Let's do some numbers.

Ordinary flu has a reproduction rate of ~1.3, i.e. one infected person infects 1.3 others. Mortality is ~0.1%. Mathematically, the spread will stop when (1.3-1)/1.3 of the population have acquired herd immunity, i.e. 25%. In a country like the U.S., that's 75 million people, of which 0.1%, i.e. 75.000, will die. That's on the high side, but in the ballpark for an aggressive strain of flu, like in 2017/2018 (61.000 recorded deaths in the U.S.).

SARS-Cov-2 has a reproduction rate of ~3, mortality is estimated to be ~3%. Spread stops at (3-1)/3 = 2/3 of the population, that's 200 million in the U.S., of which 10% will need hospitalization (20 million), and 3% will die (6 million).

And if these 20 million need hospitalization at more or less the same time… well, tough luck, there will be no spare beds and respirators, so mortality will shoot up towards 10%.

The difference between 75.000 and 6 - 20 million is substantial enough not to trivialize this as a "bad flu". The population of RPGWatch, which has been established to consist mostly of octogenarians, has reason to be concerned. So hunker down at home and finally get to reading "A la recherche du temps perdu". Stretch the progression of the epidemic so hospitals operate within their limits and can give everyone good care to keep mortality down, and give researchers time to come up with a vaccine.
Mortality rate is very unlikely to be 3%

Very few places have tested properly. The only example that has substantial testing is south Korea and the mortality there is around 0.5%.

Even then its lilely to be lower as people better understand how to deal with it.

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Staying at home? Social distancing? Eating can food?
We gamers underwent the perfect training for that.

We'll live.
 
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Through the posting in another forum I've learned today that Corona is in fact not a single virus, but a family of viruses - some of which can be deadly for pets as well. This one, I read, for example : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feline_infectious_peritonitis
Additional information : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feline_coronavirus

This could perhaps explain, I think, why some people get ill, don't show symptoms and go through the illness with relative ease : They had contact to this family of viruses through their pets before.

This would make sense. Sort of like immune-carriers. People who have lived in toxic environments can develop immunities.
 
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Our gov declared a 'national emrgency' last night - all inbound arrivals from badly affected countried suspended, banned gatherings of 100+, etc etc. My university had its first covid case revealed yesterday (but they won't tell us exactly which dept/group - staff though, not a student). They suspended all teaching today - 21,000+ students have been ordered home. Staff have also been asked to work from hom where possible…I'm goingto venture forth later to see what I can scrounge after the locusts have swept through the shops ;) People are going crazy. And all hand santizer etc has been bought up… very frustrating. They really need to enforce limits on purchases since people can't moderate their behaviour. So far we have 54 reported cases, and no fatalties…but I am asure this is a large underestimate.

Copy and paste here in the UK. Yesterday my university also announced a positive Cov case with online teaching to start next week (and minimising any face-to-face contact this week).
 
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tl;dr: Nobody knows.

We've known about the SARS coronavirus 2 for about 3 months. Which means that there is a lot we don't know about it. Which also means that concerning the best way of controlling it - nobody really knows.

Everything we do to contain the virus has a cost (and by that I don't mean only economical cost). In Norway we have closed down schools and a lot of businesses and we've implemented strict border control. No doubt it will contribute to contain the virus. But as a result we also see that for instance SAS (our main airliner) has grounded almost all of it's planes, and will (hopefully temporally) send home 10.000 employees (90%) of the stock. Other airliners have let a similar number of employees go. In addition to unemployment, this also may severly affect an important part of our infrastructure, air transportation. Hotels are already closing and when summer comes, sorry to tell, not many touristswill come. A lot of businesses run the risk of bankruptcy within a couple of weeks. Unemployment will of course rise, perhaps enormously. This is a huge experiment, nothing like anything we've done before, and we've no way of knowing what the outcome will be. And for the record, we don't know how efficient any of the different actions we take are for this particular infection, and that includes border control now.

Finding the optimal balance between what we gain and what we lose is extremely difficult It may very well be that it's better to accept more infections, that the total outcome would be better. Or we should impose much stronger restrictions. Seems like China's got control of the Wuhan outbreak now, but by using very harsh methods. I'm not sure that's the way to go.

So, deciding what to do takes time. It's not something that can be decided upon in an hour. Which inevitably means that actions will be implemented later than what is optimal. And I suspect, implementing harsh restrictions very early run the risk of the restrictions not being taken seriously and even sabotaged by the public, because the epidemic doesn't seem to be that serious. So, when should they implement restrictions? I don't know, but it seems that most countries started taking action last week or within the last two weeks.

It also has to be said that in this case most, perhaps all we watchers are amateurs. I may, because of my education, claim to know a bit more about microbiology and infections than most of you, but compared to people who has specialized in and worked for years in epidemiology, I'm definitely an amateur, they certainly know significantly more about this than I do. Doesn't mean that I have to agree with everything that's being done. I do for instance think that Sweden should close schools, but that's mostly because most other countries have chosen to do that. And I don't subscribe to the view that it's best to let the infection run it's course so that we all become immune. But I have to aknowledge, I can't claim that I know much/enough about it. And by extension, neither can you.

The actions we have taken will (probably) "flatten the curve", so that, if we're lucky, the number of infected won't exceed our capacity to treat them. One important question remains: Will we be able to eradicate the virus? I don't know, but I think not. For three reasons.

1. Animals have it. We have managed to eradicate smallpox, but the only host for that virus are humans. So, when no more humans are infected, the virus will be gone. That won't be the case with this coronavirus.
2. Insufficient infrastructure in many countries.
3. We have very little immunity against it, billions of us are susceptible.

So, personally, I think that no matter what we do, we will battle this virus for years to come. OTOH, we have the original, closely related SARS virus which doesn't bother us much now. We haven't had any (according to Wikipedia) reported cases of SARS since 2004. But compared to the 8000 SARS cases in 2002 and 2003, this new virus has after just 3 months infected close to 200.000 people (official number, real numbers are probably higher), so it seems to be much more contagious than SARS. So, no, I don't think it will disappear anytimne soon. Which of course begs the question: For how long can we maintain all these restrictions? Months? Years?

Hopefully we will eventually find a vaccine. And several groups are testing the drug Remdesivir, which seems to work against other coronaviruses (I may say something about this in another post). But at the moment, nobody knows if this will work.,

a pibbur who aknowledges that there may be watchers who know more about this than him.

PS. It's somewhat fascinating (to me) that such a tiny bugger, measuring up to 200 nm (0.0002 mm) can create so much havoc on a planet measuring 12.700 km. DS.
 
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Mortality rate is very unlikely to be 3%

Very few places have tested properly. The only example that has substantial testing is south Korea and the mortality there is around 0.5%.

Do they test post-mortem in South Korea?
 
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Mortality rate is very unlikely to be 3%

Very few places have tested properly. The only example that has substantial testing is south Korea and the mortality there is around 0.5%.

Even then its lilely to be lower as people better understand how to deal with it.

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It's hard to know. There are factors which will indicate that the mortality rate is lower, such as underreporting/lack of testing.

But there are also factors that may indicate a higher mortality rate:
1. People dying from covid-19, but not diagnosed.
2. People die around 2-3 weeks after becoming infected. When the number of in fected increases rapidly, comparing the number of deaths to the current number of infected may give too low estimates.
3. If the number of infected exceed the capacity for treating patients (respirators), mortality will increase.

Another issue is of course that the risk of dying depends on the general health of the patient, which may result in different mortality rates in different countries.

a pibbur who still thinks (guesses) that at the moment we overestimate the mortality rate, but not by much.

PS. Regarding 2): In Norway we have more than 1000 infected now, 3 deaths. But a week ago, we had 192 infected, and the 3 patients who died were probably infected before that. DS
 
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Do they test post-mortem in South Korea?
I don't have an article to hand that says so but I believe I read they did a while ago.

Anyway even if they don't it's easy to compare even with the UK which has a much lower mortality rate than the 3 percent.

I believe it was 21 deaths to over 1100 confirmed cases.
3 or 2 percent may not sound like a lot but it actually is a massive 33 percent reduction in fatalities.

And the UK has also already said they haven't been testing enough plus many people who may have it with milder symptoms are just staying at home.

The 3 percent is almost certainly over inflated by any measure used.

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But I think that you need to be careful. Somehow it's all looks dangerous. I will now stay at home.
 
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The 3 percent is almost certainly over inflated by any measure used.

I believe that you are right in assuming that the number may be biased high by underreporting of the number of infections. That certainly seemed to have been the case in Iran at the beginning. There are conflicting estimates regarding the number of asymptomatic carriers that never get tested, but still acquire immunity.

According to some studies quoted by CNN, 1/2 to 2/3 of infections are transmitted by a- or presymptomatic carriers, who enter the statistics late or not at all. That might push the mortality rate down to 1-2%

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/14/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic-spread/index.html

On the other hand, according to worldometers, South Korea stands at 75 deaths with 8236 total cases, which would be a little shy of 1%. Plus, there is another bias at work that goes the other way: You can't calculate mortality by dividing deaths by total cases, because many of those cases don't have an outcome yet.

If of the 7024 active cases, only 0.5% were to die (the number you quoted), that would add another 35 to the death toll, so all of a sudden it's back up to 1.33% again. If you use THAT number to predict the deaths among the active cases, you arrive at 2%… And so on.

With the published numbers, this iteration converges at slightly more than 6% mortality.

If you assume that 2/3 of the South Korean carriers are asymptomatic and never enter the statistics of active cases (and don't die either), convergence occurs at a MUCH more comfortable 0.4%. That would be nice (relatively speaking), but may, on the other hand, be too optimistic, given the very widespread testing in South Korea that you quoted.

So the calculations are indeed VERY sensitive to a number that we don't know much about yet. It's a statistician's dream (or nightmare).
 
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I heard an interesting figure last night, though I'm not sure how it was derived: For people 80 years of age or more, the mortality rate is being estimated at 15 to 20 percent.
 
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Dude, stop making everything specifically political, this is a public health issue and all governments are winging it as much any other. The experts are just treating it like a science experiment and many experts will have slightly different approaches to their experiment. And as for anti-globalism, LOL, the only way you'll ever beat any disease completely is via global co-operation.

Wanting your government to set aside a specific reservation for just you and people you approve of is an absurd way to go about life and going around taking every event as a means to bash your drum is extremely distasteful, let alone absurd. You should be celebrating how modern technology and understanding and social attitudes have combined to allow your mother to live so well and for so long in her current state, not sitting around looking for the next opportunity to use her as a political football.
 
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I don't.. the leading expert here (Anders Tegnell); Just a FEW things;

* made a speech about how it's important to not cough in your hands. coughs in his hands during the same speech.

To be fair, it's incredibly hard to avoid these kind of mannerisms, even if you rationally understand the need.

[edit: Don't really want to discuss the politics. Deleted.]
 
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The OP has stated it in her post, I have stated it at a later post again, when I edited a post: NO POLITICS!

I didn't even bother with editing posts this time and just removed the posts and reactions on those posts with quotes. Probably removed to much and some reactions are out of place perhaps, but whatever. it takes too much time otherwise.

You can discuss politics in P&R. The next one gets an official warning. A few of those gets you banned for a month.
 
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Dude, stop making everything specifically political, this is a public health issue and all governments are winging it as much any other. The experts are just treating it like a science experiment and many experts will have slightly different approaches to their experiment. And as for anti-globalism, LOL, the only way you'll ever beat any disease completely is via global co-operation.

Wanting your government to set aside a specific reservation for just you and people you approve of is an absurd way to go about life and going around taking every event as a means to bash your drum is extremely distasteful, let alone absurd. You should be celebrating how modern technology and understanding and social attitudes have combined to allow your mother to live so well and for so long in her current state, not sitting around looking for the next opportunity to use her as a political football.

In a situation like this we can't just think about ourselves, there are tons of people with respiratory issues, its not just elderly people either. Clearly shows what an absolute **** you are, only thinking about yourself because you happen to be healthy and you would most likely survive it. My example is just one of many, obviously. As for globalism, yeah right, which country will suffer the most from this you think, a country with some common sense (like Hungary) or open-borders hippie mentality-Sweden :p We'll have tons of undeniable evidence after this incident of what an absolutely horrible idea globalism really is.

Again, i'm amazed at the absolute stupidity on this forum. I won't return. Have fun.
 
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All schools in the Netherlands are closed,
So i gave all my lesson online (I am a chemistry teacher). I was pleasantly surprised.
All my student logged in on time, even the ones who are always late...
Sometimes Bad Times brings out the best in us.

Let’s try to do our best, and help each other!
 
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I suspect the television ratings are going to go through the roof as millions of people rediscover that age-old time occupier. Of course, the quality has long since gone and there's barely anything of interest on any more, so... eek, we could get a sudden upsurge of 'elderly and youthful internet users' all day every day...

… which will be fun?
 
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I suspect the television ratings are going to go through the roof as millions of people rediscover that age-old time occupier. Of course, the quality has long since gone and there's barely anything of interest on any more, so… eek, we could get a sudden upsurge of 'elderly and youthful internet users' all day every day…

… which will be fun?

Well, Steam saw it's most concurrent users yesterday so it's already happening.

I contributed by staying home Friday, Saturday and Sunday and pretty much gamed the whole time. Reminded me of when I was a kid.

I bought my wife the sims 4 to free up my time. :biggrin:
 
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