The idea that having the this virus can create immunity has already been debunked. I think the Chinese downplaying the transmission and re-infection only feeds into the distrust of their reporting and assessment of the severity of the situation. This could cull the human herd if it goes through the population again and again and again. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/27/japanese-woman-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-for-second-time
6
Journalists keep using words such as "deadly" and "dangerous" but I'm beginning to think it's not, except for people who are otherwise compromised by immunity issues or age. It's killed few people from among those that have been identified and there are probably thousands more who have it but really are not too sick. Media does not know if it"s "dangerous" or "deady" any more than a very bad cold or the flu we already have or pneumonia. I now think it's being over-hyped and masks being sold are not even protective against coronavirus. Stop catastrophizing.
4
This summary out the health care system in the US is sobering.
We have less than a million hospital beds.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/27/1922487/-America-is-about-to-get-a-godawful-lesson-in-why-health-care-should-never-be-a-for-profit-business
4
So we now get critical information funnel through one of Donald’s flunkies?
He’s going to slant everything to Trumps and the GOP’s favor... followed by FOX news!
4
"I don't always expose myself to pandemics. But when I do, I prefer Coronavirus. Stay healthy, my friends."
6
The overall death rate means very little to me for I am 69 years old. I would like to know what the death rate is for people of my age.
6
I hope some research organizations are doing genome-wide association studies to investigate the possibility of genetically susceptible and resistant individuals. This virus has evolved pretty clever combinations of transmission mechanisms.
1
Wonder why we haven't heard much from Russia regarding the virus?
It would seem that the chaos that is resulting from infections occurring
in obscure locations would fit the approach that V Putin has been searching
for in his malevolent search for a bigger role. Has anyone been looking in the
corners for some conspiracy in the spread of the coronavirus?
1
Is it possible to mobilize world resources quickly and actually contain and eradicate this virus before it mutates like the flu and it becomes another constant scourge? We have eradicated viruses before.
Do we need a world czar?
Expect everyone with even mild colds to come to the nearest clinic and be diagnosed and treated free of charge? Nip it in the bud.
Some industries will suffer, some will get bailouts. We can rebuild those quickly if we are proactive.
1
Responsibility for transmission is at the individual level. Take responsibility for yourselves. This will protect all
1
There are now two known patients who "made a full recovery" and were released from hospital - only to return again sick with the same virus. This means (perhaps a very few) recovered cases are still carrying (and perhaps shedding) the virus.
They will walk among us, and there is nothing we can do about that. This will not be pretty.
1
The amount of anxiety and fear I am seeing in the comments section sickens me, do you realize that right now brave men and women are getting prepared to fight this pathogen on the front lines, where the true danger is, Doctors and nurses, people who work in hospitals, EMS, firemen, police officers, etc, while people , who all they have to do, is be preventive, and wash their hands, and avoid people who are coughing are here writing about how frightened they are. What has happened to our once courageous country, maybe bone spurs are just as courageous as Corona virus. If this thing does hit, I plan to join the fight and volunteer in any way I can, the rest of you can go hide in the cellar .
3
For the first time in nearly four years I actually agree with something Trump said, the media is over hyping all of this.
This is NOT the Blue Bonic Plague, it's basically the flu. Many who have had it and recover, don't even know it. Those who are elderly or with immune deficiencies are more compromised than others, just as with the flu.
The hype and hysteria is unbelievable. I'd like the media to focus more on the facts like those presented in this article vs. the hype that we're seeing nightly.
5
Actually, most coronaviruses don't confer long lasting immunity after infection. Available evidence suggests immunity lasts maybe 4 months. Vaccine development is going to have to take this into account
2
While it's reassuring that the majority of the patients affected by COVID-19 have mild manifestations of the disease, the photograph depicted in this article under the caption "More than 80 percent of cases are mild, one large study in China found" misrepresents that fact. This photographs depicts a young man supported with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) an advanced treatment modality used for the most severe forms of respiratory failure, typically employed when mechanical ventilator is unable to safely provide adequate oxygen or carbon dioxide clearance. We are lucky to have ECMO as an option for select cases of respiratory failure, however, its necessity highlights the severity of illness experienced by those infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
2
Hmmm... "...according to a large Chinese study." Can't say I'm feeling very confident that's a trusted source of data!
4
The way new cases are popping up here-and-there, nearly silultaneously all over the planet suggests that the virus may have been dispersed into the atmosphere (somehow)...
Serious lack of clarity about the real characteristics. What causes "the much higher fatality rate in Hubei Province, of 2.9 percent, compared with a rate of just 0.4 percent in the rest of the country"? Who is coordinating information, lab tests and methods of assessment? Who will validate the medical profile of this disease? Dr. Mike Pence?
If you are sick stay home. This simple advice could stop most transmission of flu and other infectious diseases as well as coronavirus. Also get the flu shot. If you don't you will get the flu and that can also be serious.
1
A minority of American voters elected politicians that promised to get government off their backs. In power, those politicians did as promised, cutting funds for public health. Public health agencies here in Thailand have long been viewed as an essential government function, and have been given adequate support to be proactive when epidemics threaten. Meanwhile, people in the USA have no idea even of the magnitude of what is already infecting them. Memo to Republican voters: Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it.
5
Dr. Lu Hongzhou might want to pay attention to a case in Japan where a woman (a tour bus conductor) is on her second round of the virus. It appeared she completely recovered in early February, but was tested and diagnosed to have it again three weeks later.
3
Surely this should read: "Most FIRST Coronavirus cases are Mild." We know that reinfections can happen and are often more serious, so the status of the first infection is somewhat immaterial.
2
It may be "good or bad", but I'll gladly take 80% mild cases. The flu is not so generous.
2
"mild symptoms could also make the epidemic harder to contain".
Actually mild symptoms mean this "epidemic" has been vastly over-hyped.
12
if I got it I would most likely be fine, however my mother in law who is recovering from an amputation would most likely die. not really overblown.
3
It’s 20 times more deadly than flu which kills about 20000 Americans each year. Corona could therefore kill 400000 Americans if it’s not brought under control.
3
They breathless daily headlines in this paper and others all across the world have been stoking hysteria. Here in Australia we're seeing Chinese restaurants going to the wall because people are stupid, citizens of Asian ethnicity but native accents are are being shunned because people are stupid. Newspapers and tv news are not helping.
2
The differences in information just seem to underline how much we don't know. Dr. Lu Hongzhou is quoted here as saying that recovered patients will have immunity and antibodies. However, I read another opinion (from a doctor whose name I unfortunately can't remember) warning that colds are caused by a different corona virus and no lasting immunity is achieved by anyone who suffers a common cold.
Seems that what we're getting is everyone's well-intentioned best educated guesses.
3
@gesneri the immunity would be to this strain of the virus. Not to a common cold, or vice versa. Point being that once this thing has made its way around the globe, the number of new infections will drop precipitously as everyone who already had it, even a very mild case, will be immune.
3
@NewEng Gal Afraid you're missing my point. In the same way that those suffering from the common cold don't achieve lasting immunity, so might people who have suffered covid-19 not achieve lasting immunity. This is based on the fact that both illnesses are caused by corona viruses, albeit different ones.
Why do children have mostly mild cases? We're in the earliest stages of trying to understand how this virus works. Our present conjectures may change.
1
"By Thursday, of the 78,487 confirmed cases in China, 32,495, or 41 percent, had been discharged from the hospital, according to China’s National Health Commission. About 8,300 of the remaining patients were in serious condition. More than 2,700 people have died in China".
The statistics is frightening.
Only 41% were discharged from the hospital, 8300 in serious condition and 2700 died out of 78,487. The mortality rate is much higher than the seasonal flu. This is a serious illness, many asymptomatic carriers can spread the infection unknowingly.
This illness is going to be as common as the seasonal flu but much more dangerous and there is no vaccine to prevent
6
We should not trust the Chinese government about anything having to do with the virus. They have too much to lose, if the world decides to shut down trade with the country.
8
@Greg
I agree that all information out of China should be taken with a grain of salt, but cutting off trade would do what the virus only threatens to do, wreck the world economy.
If the data so far show that the Wuhan coronavirus is far less lethal than SARS or MERS, why the global hysteria? We didn't lose our minds like this over SARS, which reached New York and had nearly a 10% fatality rate.
7
With Trump appointing Pence as the virus fix-it guy, and Pence saying that all scientists and medical personal etc have to clear information to be released through his office first, expect a certain amount of censorship and miss-information from the WH.
Especially after Trump has already said that America has the best people, the finest, working on it, that they are more prepared than any other country to handle it all the while cutting funding to the CDC.
We all know what Trump's words are worth, and Pence wouldn't be too far behind.
Let's hope the dedicated professionals who actually know what they are doing can find a way around the WH censorship and tell American's what they need to know.
But they must be prepared to be called traitors, unpatriotic and all manner of things Trump can make up to make them look bad and discredit them because, well, Trump knows everything about everything - including this virus.
11
81,000 cases, the Chinese population is about 1.4 billion, that's 0.005% of the population. Not sure "ravaged" is the appropriate word. "dangerous", also a bit of an overstatement. Pollution in China and around the world will kill way more people than the corona virus.
5
It concerns me that scientists and health officials can not speak freely to us Americans about this virus. Instead they must report it to Pence, whose office will then tell the rest of us. One, Pence is not a health expert. Secondly, this entire WH administration has repeatedly lied to us about numerous issues; important and unimportant issues, alike. I just can't trust them in any given scenario.
19
This wide spread panic seems so overblown to me. Most common sense people seem to know it's basically like a bad strain of flu and odds are very good that you ARE NOT GOING TO DIE. Yet the media coverage makes it sound like we are on the verge of a planet killing plague. Granted the stock market is slowly killing me.
12
Do you think any bad actors, not in any particular location, are watching how the world clumsily handles a massive pathogen outbreak? This thought alone should be enough to bring even the most ill-equipped president to humility. Knowing of whom I speak, any evidence, yet?
3
Regarding the very last point about antibodies and how there is no chance of contracting the virus again, well I saw a news report yesterday that proved otherwise.
A Japanese woman in her 40s who had been infected with the virus was admitted to the hospital, recovered, but then became infected again shortly after. She may be an anomaly but this virus is already evolving a lot more than we think.
5
A viral infection may not dissappear from your body after you recover from symptoms (chickenpox is the most common example) and symptoms can reappear later in life (as shingles in the case of chickenpox) perhaps when the immune system is weakened. The reported statement by the doctor that an recovered person will not be reinfected is valid because he/she will have antibodies specific to covid-19 to suppress further infection.
4
How effective should we expect most Americans to be with making decisions to go to a doctor or hospital to get checked out when the cost associated with the treatment could be as expensive as it is in the US? Even if some type of national emergency measures are put in place to pay for these bills, how effective should we expect most Americans to be with seeking help that could result on being put in quarantine in a market with little or none paid sick leave, hourly wages, or tips as basic income? These are factors mostly unique to the US that didn't hinder the outbreak response in Asia or Europe.
4
The danger of the disease is not well understood, but we'll babble on and on to make it seem like like we know more than we do.
6
Thanks. Excellent summary of trump’s last two press conferences, or whatever those were.
Looking at the global map of where the virus has spread, the number in Italy seems puzzling. Either other countries are under reporting or Italy had an early non-symptomatic carrier. Either scenario is concerning.
8
@ Tom
Venice is over run with tourists during Carnevale season, particularly large groups from China. Tourists are moving through airports in Northern Italy, as well as in the usual focal stops. Lots of people also arrive on cruise ships. Local authorities actually shut down the last 2 days of Carnevale.
An accompanying story says doctors at one New York hospital are studying scans of coronavirus patients in China, presumably to be able to better identify cases here. Is that because the federal government has made it so difficult to get permission to do the coronavirus test and, even if permission is granted, it takes many days to get test results?
5
CDC needs to get its act together and fast. They need to distribute test kits that actually work (unlike the initial set) to all hospitals. Anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness should be tested.
The UK has conducted many thousands of tests even though they have fewer cases than the US. By contrast, CDC has conducted a few hundred.
No, Mr. Trump, the situation is not under control.
17
Didn’t Trump cut funding for CDC?
3
People should realize that just because a certain percentage of cases are mild at this point, there’s no guarantee that will continue. As an RNA virus, this virus has the inherent feature of a high mutation rate, and there is the distinct possibility that it will adapt to become more efficiently transmitted and possibly become more virulent.
9
I’m curious, are there emergency plans to provide meals, medications, medical visits, toiletries, etc. in the future to those who are quarantined at home? If not, some might be tempted to break their quarantine, "Just once" and potentially expose others to the virus.
7
The roughly 3% mortality rate has been known for over a month. The world shouldn't panic.
Measles is more dangerous.
But, why should the world accept a respiratory infection and temporary ill health as a show of good faith that global big business and big profit can run rampant over humanities lives.
3
It is likely far more than 81,000 cases--more on the order of couple hundreds of thousands. People with mild symptoms are unlikely to seek medical attention, in a country like China-- with a billion people, where you have to wait in line hours to be seen for routine care. Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands!
9
With any infectious disease, catching it from someone with a mild case does not insure that you will have a mild case. That depends on many factors.
14
Our boss is flying to L.A. for a week. I’m well over 50, with COPD.
If she picks this up, and spreads it around our office, and I get pneumonia, what legal recourse do I have?
She’s putting our entire office at risk.
10
@Dorothy
At this point, no one has any clue how far the disease has spread, if there are asymptomatic people able to spread the disease, whether folks with the virus dormant may suddenly start showing symptoms. So worrying whether your boss contracts the virus is unnecessarily stressful for you and quite pointless. Instead, you should take care of your health, eat healthy, perhaps wear a mask if it helps you. Wash hands, don’t share food, keep outside shoes and clothes separate. After all when you step outside your home today and into your office plenty of people and equipment with germs will come into contact with you. A lot of those germs are worse than the coronavirus. After all you live once and die once, no point in dying so many times..... (badly reworded quote by maybe the Dalai Lama).
4
@Dorothy I'd guess you'd have the same recourse as you would in catching the "regular" flu from a co-worker.
There needs to be more of an honest conversation about how this all came about. Clinging on to cultural practices and habits that are medically ineffective and that fuel the illegal wildlife trade, disregard for nature and other living species, ravaging the finite natural resources of this planet, and abusing the laws of nature is how this all came about. Like it or not, there are consequences when the planet is treated as a sewage and toxic waste dump while the forests, oceans, and wildlife are only seen as an economic commodity for human consumption.
11
A lot of people here are trying to talk down the death rate by saying that most people will have received an infection without any symptoms, or with only minor symptoms. Yet we have also seen that reinfection has been reported for at least a week in China https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/02/21/COVID-19-reinfection-cases-on-the-rise-in-China/4291582219521/
And now also in Japan (seeing as many people don't seem to trust any information coming out of China).
Worse still, reinfected patients might get sicker than they did on their first infection, with accelerated heart failure.
If there is no immunity after (first) infection, the presence of those who only get minor symptoms is largely immaterial.
6
UPI rates as unbiased and factual as does Reuters
I wonder what "Loyalty Pledge" Redfield signed before taking this position?
Now would a loyal Trump follower be willing to tell outright lies about the effects of the coronavirus?
The new CDC director was once accused of research misconduct
Robert Redfield also has no experience leading a public health agency. [VOX]
After a major shake-up at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with the resignation of its former director over her ownership of tobacco stocks, the Trump administration on Wednesday appointed Robert Redfield, a Baltimore-based virologist and physician, as the agency’s new leader.
Unlike previous CDC directors, the HIV researcher has no experience at the helm of a public health agency.
Just add this scenario to Pence being the Czar.
5
Question I have not seen answered:
The infected person in CA with no known contact with anyone with the virus: Could s/he possibly have acquired the virus from a package or shipment of some sort originating in China? Which begs the question, how long does the virus live outside of animal / human contact?
4
Watch how quickly Trump will use this crisis to advance his dictatorial ambitions.
8
NYT THANK YOU for all the great information regarding the coronavirus! How can we stop Trump of getting totally unqualified people for being in charge of this virus? Pence?! It's really a nightmare! I don't want to be mean (though with Trump how can we answer but with meanness?) but in order to have some rational and knowledgeable specialist taking charge of this worldwide virus, we have to wait until one of the GOP senators get infected?
1
Gee, it almost makes you want a solid public health system or something.
14
Stop projecting onto Trump any and all feelings of care and concern about this "pandemic". Trump can't care! He is a malignant narcissist.
Trump is incapable of care and what you consider "calm" is actually indifference.
--Perhaps the most terrifying symptom of malignant narcissism is the lack of empathy and may demonstrate kind facial or body language while simultaneously hurting another person. Because of the contrast in what is being said vs. what is being done, many people can feel as if they are losing their mind.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ ‘We’ll see.’ The Trump Doctrine is sounding more fatalistic every day. [WashingtonPost]
It was Feb. 27, 2004, and Donald Trump was on “Larry King Live” to talk about his new hit TV show “The Apprentice.” Eight episodes had already aired — including one titled “Ethics Shmethics” — and the real estate mogul seemed pleased to gab with King about his return to relevance. Near the end of the segment, a caller from Burlington, N.J., asked Trump how he handles stress. “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter,” Trump replied. “Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter — like you do shows, you do this, you do that, and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter.”
4
Public awareness that most cases are mild could help reduce panic.
However, there are still serious statistics that have important consequence to US health care if it spreads here. 19% are not mild, 14% are severe, and 5% are critical. Logically therefore, a large percentage of cases may need hospitalization and/or critical care.
The US health care system can be great for advanced critical care. US health care is expensive and therefore capacity of medical personnel and resources would reflect that.
Therefore if there are more than a handful of cases -- if there is a pandemic, the US health care system may find itself unable to scale to care for larger numbers. Emergency rooms may become inundated, and expensive hospital rooms may all become filled.
1
Most cases are mild. That is a good thing. It also probably suggests that the infection is much more widespread that the official stats show, and that the immunity antibodies are widely propagated to the entire population. That is another good thing.
2
@David I think it also means that the mortality rate is much lower than the official stats, which is a good thing.
But the panic? Not a good thing.
1
I was struck by the Japanese response to close all schools for a month. My kids are adults now. Parents with jobs can't go to work and risk jobs. it will devastate production and ripple throughout all our lives. Unless we plan better.
One thought: if all those children had computers, internet and teachers could teach class material in online streaming could we at least keep the kids engaged, learning and accountable? This would need infrastructure, investment, and social commitment.
Companies should limit travel for executives and employees, (for at least a month). Again conventions tradeshows and meetings could have at least a backup infrastructure to quarantine a virus for a month and still present their content
At the very least companies should restrict employees' "entertainment" perks for a time limiting exposure.
Business and tourist travelers are the likely main carriers.
In the worst case, we may need to bail out airlines for a time to encourage less exposure. Helps to have a Plan A, B, C, & D, etc and prepare. We used to need airRaid shelters.
2
Bejay,
Those who have mild or no symptoms are walking carriers of death to those of us with pre existing conditions especially those conditions that involve the respiratory system, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, immunosuppressive disorders, postoperative state, and a slew of other conditions; that was the problem with the selfish ones who traveled to areas that contained the virus then brought it here to America.
1
This is long overdue. It is time we finally give bees a chance.
1
I am not comforted by the fact that eighty percent of the cases of coronavirus are mild. That is another way of saying that twenty percent are serious. And if the death rate is in fact 2.3 percent (the lower rate in the rest of China being attributable to the fact that those individuals have been sick for less time), we are going to have an awful lot of dead Americans. If, like the 1918 influenza virus, one-third of the population catches this infection, a 2.3 percent death rate would mean that over 2,300,000 people would die in the United States alone. Of course, there is a lot we still don't know, but the country should bepreparing more than it apparently is.
8
"Though the virus can be deadly, the vast majority of those infected so far have only mild symptoms and make full recoveries."- Then why are we talking about this? Why did China even say anything?
2
The 2017 flu season killed around 80,000 Americans, and every year the flu kills thousands around the world, but we hear very little about it. Why the current international panic over this virus, whose symptoms are mild for the overwhelming majority of people?
11
First of all, we are depending on scientists and hoping that those who govern are too. But in a nation where the Governor of Texas once stood on the shores of the Gulf and tried to pray away the BP oil spill, right along side the ex Governor of Alaska, that hope is problematic.
Now add in the Trump selected Virus Czar; Praying Pense, and you can never be sure whether the science will be funded and followed, or denied and denigrated.
3
There is nothing wrong with saying a prayer, as it's true message is solidarity, strength, hope and overall unity...something you need to get through a rough situation and eventually get problems tackled and resolved. Additionally where you are misguided, Pence is not a Czar(Russian term we just remove from our American lexicon), just a coordinator of various medical, scientific and government types and groups to make sure we avoid this mega threat.
2
ugg "The government has also prescribed antiviral drugs and traditional Chinese medicine as treatment methods." "traditional Chinese medicine" China is such a bizarre mixture of middle-ages unenlightened thought and practice along with some of the most technological advances in the world. Still eating rare animals for their magical properties (that leads to outbreaks like this) and yet engineering 5G technology. Hoping the 'traditional Chinese medicine' in this case isn't going to cost more pangolins (or tigers or rhinos or...) their lives. Just common plants, one hopes.
5
So this article leaves out a relevant bit of information posted on Reuters and elsewhere - about 14% of people get sick more than once. Is the virus lingering in their systems? Or is it mutating rapidly so their developed immunity isn't protective? That is a very important thing to note.
5
Gotta clear it w Pence. Don’t wanna end up w our very own pesky Dr. Li.
4
In America sick = lazy. The only people who can afford to get sick are CEOs. The only people who dare get sick are retired.
Don't get sick! That is all the advice that they can offer us.
4
This is not so encouraging.
Just under 14 percent of patients were severe, and just under 5 percent critical. And a 2 to 2.5 percent mortality rate? Say 100 million are infected in the U.S., that's 2.5 million deaths and 5 million needing at some time or another intensive care or at least hospitalization. Are we set up for that?
7
This is why we say healthcare is a right and not a privilege. We don't just say that out of the goodness of our hearts.
7
I've always heard that with major viruses, virtually everybody gets infected, but not everybody develops the disease. Some people are just lucky, even when smallpox was around. With deadly viruses, untreated, it's just a question of what percentage will show no symptoms, what percentage will have mild symptoms, what percentage will get reall sick, and what percentage will die.
With 330,000,000 people in the US, no precautions taken, everyone infected, and a mortality rate of only 0.1%, that would be 330,000 killed. And 150 million people would never know they had it.
2
Thank you for the first qualitative assessment of the impact of the epidemic which I have. The quantitative numbers which are reported every day and even more frequently are much more meaningful if accompanied by qualitative assessment.
2
"and where the demand for care has overwhelmed medical staff. " This statement is the real reason to be concerned. Flu vaccines exist and it tends to move in waves over many months. Covid-19, if it strikes during a relatively short period of time, would not only strain the health care system but result in economic disruptions as ill workers stay home or work while sick and are less productive.
5
A lot of the discussion here seems to revolve around the mortality rate of ~2%. Was is being forgotten and not considered, but mentioned in the article, is that we do not know what the percentage of asymptomatic infected carriers is, because we do not have an assay to measure that yet.
Without an unbiased population-wide ELISA screen for antibodies against the virus we will not know who was infected, never showed symptoms and recovered unnoticed.
The silent transmissions mentioned in other articles here today suggest that this may be a large percentage. What we know about transmissibility agrees with a model in which the virus is already spreading widely, but may be mistaken for the flu. Only the most serious cases are actually being tested currently, since the current test is more elaborate than a simple ELISA.
As time goes on and an ELISA becomes available, the mortality rate may well go down to the same level of a typical seasonal flu.
Far more worrying is that Trump has now issued a gag order to government health officials, preventing from speaking about the epidemic.
THAT is a reason for panicking!
12
Epidemics are hard to cover up, as the Chinese discovered.
Almost from the start this is what WHO, the CDC, and respected medical publications have been saying about this virus. That most cases are very mild, that you can't get reinfected, that as it spreads it will likely become even less deadly, and the more people with the virus who recover, will increase the amount of antibodies in the general community, in short the worse the initial outbreak the quicker this will all be over. But social media has always been about amplifying the bad in any situation. On the list of positive things about the Corona virus is the fact that children seem immune. A vaccine ha already been coded, and the warmer more humid weather of spring and summer gives any virus a harder time to get a toehold., and lastly antiviral drugs already on the market are showing good success.
Th epicenter of any contagion is always going to be the point where world meets the worse case scenario and panic sets in, but as the rest pf the world learns from the valuable experience ongoing in Wuhan, the next wave gets much easier to deal with.
The fear mongers are always among us, there is always a turning of the tide in such things, and though we haven't reached it yet, nobody can say that we are taking the virus lightly. When the tide is turned let us remember the lessons learned, these viruses seems to be coming with more frequency, the next one may be far worse, let us elect leaders who are grounded in science and can make us ready if it does come. Elections matter.
8
In terms of
Several medical experts have said that those who have been infected with the coronavirus will not become infected again, as their bodies will produce antibodies that provide immunity.
Didn’t we see earlier today a case in Japan where a previously recovered woman tested positive a second time.
9
The 1918-19 “Spanish” flu pandemic had an estimated fatality rate of about 2.5%, was highly transmissible, and killed about 50 million people worldwide.
Including my then under-30 grandmother, leaving my own father an orphan.
While Covid-19 appear slightly less lethal, it too looks highly transmitable, with a long no-symptom incubation time.
Trump had already fired much of the U.S. pandemic chain of command and has substantially cut the CDC budget. Perhaps an incompetent response here is the GOP plan to slash the need for Social Security payouts?
7
On a recent comment board I wrote about the fact that the majority of serious cases/and higher mortality were in the groups of the elderly and health compromised. That was all that was written regarding this variable. The comments were off the charts calling me selfish, uncaring, horrible, immoral for minimizing the affects on these two groups, when in fact, all I did was point out the present science as we know it. I write here to ask people to please read comments carefully and rationally, and not to add emotional contact where none is either explicitly or implicitly implied. It is as if we have become trained to see a comments section in any venue as a place of emotion and fire, instead of a place where one can simply exchange facts as we know them.
10
It is troubling that the administration is placing a muzzle on the government authorities with the best, most current information. It appears that Trump is gearing information to his reelection campaign: Dampen anxiety so as to maintain financial markets.
That is not the way a free society is supposed to operate.
We need articles such as this to keep us informed. Hopefully Trump won’t impose a muzzle on the free press in the “interest” of the nation.
2
@Zev This is what Iran just did: distort or suppress information about the virus so that voters would still go to the polls.
That's one thing you can always say about Trump: he's a quick study when it comes to imitating other dictators.
3
My earlier comment questioning the credibility of the some of the claims in this article seems to have vanished into the ether.
In an attempt to balance the reporting here--and this is absolutely my area of expertise--I will say:
(1) There is no reason for us to expect the virus to become less virulent with time. The effective severity could drop as immunity accumulates, but that's not usually what scientists mean when they talk about virulence.
(2) The durability of protective immunity after natural infection with this virus (and seasonal coronaviruses) is highly uncertain.
3
@Scientist
Yes, but you also should say that there are no data to show how virulent the virus actually is, since we do not know how many of the infected actually develop severe disease.
Consider for a moment that last year 10x more people died from the flu in the US alone than have so far died from C-19 world-wide. If we showed the same pictures of patients dying from the flu in the proper proportion, C-19 would not even register.
If trump's so confident that U.S. won't have an increase of cases of coronavirus and its impact is like that of the common flu, let's have him, pence, kudlow and limbaugh agree to be inoculated with it, and show us first hand how they fare.
1
Pence was made head of command for Coronavirus because he was the only one available who speaks "Trump". He of course will have a learning curve to understand all of the science talk about public health and communicability but his translation to Trump won't be "deep state infused" and Trump can rest assured he won't have to learn anything.
1
Isn’t it possible that this virus was already disseminated across the globe before the outbreak in China, and we are just now able to test for it? I’d appreciate more reporting on the history of virology— and more explanation of the why certain people may get sick while others’ (immune) systems shrug things off. And, how long does it take for populations to get “herd immunity”? Historically, how many people in a “herd” die from a novel, or activated, infectious organism’s effects on their bodies before the “herd’s” immunity grows much stronger? There are so many questions.
Also, it seems like science also speaks of viruses and illness as factors in “thinning herds.” Although it sounds heartless to say it, we are indeed animals too; and certainly Earth’s carrying capacity has been far exceeded. I would never wish harm on any person or living thing— and of course I feel heartbroken for the loss of life and all those who have lost loved ones.
But shouldn’t we also address our own problem of population and the harm we have done to the earth?
4
the bottom line...
"Much about the virus remains unknown, and the danger could intensify as it travels through the rest of the world."
1
Mild, go tell that to the more than 3,000 death and the future death in our country that were infected because of criminal negligence by a few laughing leaders in yesterday's press conference. Criminal.
2
Let's stop referencing the bogus infected and casualty numbers. China really shut down for something that has less casualties then the flu? Something is wrong and we should stop being a mouth peice for the Chinese government.
5
Why, on earth should we believe anything coming out of China concerning the Coronavirus? Their numbers and definitions change by the day. They expelled foreign journalists. This isn’t information,it’s propaganda.
4
A case of reinfection by the same Covid-19 virus has been reported in a woman in Japan. There is concern that her apparent recovery was, in fact, a case of the virus going dormant for a time before becoming reactivated.
If this is true, it's deeply concerning.
2
0.000010909090909 is the percentage of the world population that have been infected by the corona virus.
Furthermore, very little information is provided how many of the 84,000 people are still sick and how long are people sick for?
If you are a believer of the Chinese government numbers. They really shut down the whole cities and paralyzed the whole country for less then 100,000 sick people, a number that is dwarfed by flu numbers. Something does not add up....
5
I trust the Chinese about as little (minuscule) as I trust Trump and Pense.
2
Doctors Inside Iran Believe Coronavirus Is More Serious Than Reported, and Getting Worse
By Tara Kangarlou
February 27, 2020 7:54 AM EST
Since it first announced the presence of COVID-19 last week, Iran has so far reported a total of 245 cases and 26 deaths, a far higher fatality rate than seen elsewhere.
https://time.com/5791516/iran-doctors-coronavirus-middle-east/
1
I don't understand. The map says there have been 2,744 deaths among 78,497 known infections in China: 3.5%. But the article says the overall mortality rate in China is 2.3%.
That's a pretty big difference. Is there an assumption in the official rate about the number of undetected, mild cases? This would lower the rate. I guess this could be estimated by extrapolating from the number of confirmed cases among asymptomatic people (who were tested because of known exposure?)
But presumably there is also a time lag between diagnosis and outcome (recovery/death), which would increase the true rate...
Please explain.
2
@Miker Applying the official rate to the number of known deaths suggests that there are about 120,000 (2,774/0.023) infected people in China total. This would mean that only 2/3 of cases have been diagnosed, or equivalently that there are 50% more undiagnosed cases out there.
I think we have to first build up our own immune system for the injuries caused by many biased "scientific" studies. From this article, which primarily relied on one study and one expert, we have no way to tell who funded the research, whether there was a conflict of interest (meaning interference by the party and the government), and whether the statistics on which the studies were based were accurate.
Before all these questions are answered, I would take it as a view point rather than a guidance.
1
It clearly stated it was a Chinese study. I believe this study as I believe the official chinese numbers on infected and deaths from the virus. This study is an attempt to descalate a crises that is causing major economic issues in China....which will lead to civil unrest......something central bureau communist types finds unacceptable...an existential threat.
1
If China is using traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to treat Corona patients, does the TCM include wild animal parts? If so, that would only exacerbate the danger. If China is serious about wanting to spare the world from future pandemics like 1918 (the "Spanish flu" actually originated in China), SARS in 2003, and today's Corona, then it has to shut down its wet markets where people buy the exotic wild animals whose viruses easily jump to people, and household pets killed with great cruelty, which is assumed to magnify their magical properties. China should also be pressed hard to block the importation of endangered animal parts thought to increase male virility; the overwhelming share of this illegal trade goes to China.
Focusing on quarantines and long-term vaccine development ignores the source of these pandemics. Why is there so little attention to changing Chinese eating habits when their consequences are so devastating to humans and animals?
3
Don't try to combine how to solve handling sars with animal rights for African Rhinos. Don't let how we handle this get held up because someone wanted to save African Rhinos. There is a time and place for dealing with both issues. But you may cause a solution to Sars getting held up and it will kill people.
1
@Martha
The 1918 flu almost certainly originated in Kansas, at a military training camp where there were many pigs in close proximity. Should we stop eating pigs?
@Julian That's the way flu gets around. Geese migrate, associate with pigs and the virus gets to humans. Of course, it's just been reported that China will be sending geese to some countries to help control and overabundance if insects. It would be interesting to see if any illness occurs as a result.
Living in Italy as I do at this time of year, I can tell you that the US is not ready for the storm that is coming... and appears there's no interest in doing anything other than repairing damage to the stock market....looking at who has been appointed as advisers is evidence of that. Here, no one leaves an airport without screening. The reports in the US are under reports to be sure. There will be a mad scramble coming later. But this is an administration that has never lent any credence to science
33
The "advisors" are all physicians or people experienced in handling infectious disease. If you look up their names, you will find they are not political appointees. Most served under previous Presidents including Obama. The Vice President, Mike Pence, who is basically a moderator, is not an advisor. I don't understand why some people insist on politicizing a potential pandemic. Viruses are not blue or red. The blame, if there is blame to be assigned, belongs to China. I would suggest reading previous articles in the NYT about how the Corona virus has been spreading for more information. I would end by saying that whipping up virus hysteria will make things worse, not better.
2
@Pete We shall see won't we... BTW as a back drop... https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/?fbclid=IwAR1XGVIdyGWTvN32S5ay2DFSZF1DXRCWPKGMvq7r0TedcdBXrTfaO8bQu4M
2
Gee, I don't look at it quite the same way. I look at the statistics to say I have a 1 in 5 chance of having a severe respiratory event, and a 2-3% chance of actually dying, a mortality rate over 20 times that of flu. To me that's high risk.
11
@chuck choi
That's not what the statistics say. They say that of the people who have been diagnosed to have the virus 1 in 5 have had a severe respiratory event.
You are succumbing to confirmation bias here. To know how high the risk is, you have to know how many people are infected, but never show symptoms or are never diagnosed. At the moment, the test is too elaborate to deploy in an unbiased population-wide manner. Only the severe cases, or those who have been in contact with severe cases, are being diagnosed. There may well be 10 or even 100x more who never get ill or have such mild symptoms that they are never diagnosed.
Your reasoning is akin to assessing the risk of dying in a motor accident by only counting the people who show up in the ER, while discounting the 99% of fender benders, where the people involved never seek medical treatment. The fatality rate would seem very high in that case, too.
3
@Captain Nemo True this is working from incomplete data. But the number of people truly exposed to any disease is always an extrapolation. There will never be perfect information. Meanwhile, if you assume a comfortable margin of error, it’s still a serious situation that exceeds flu.
1
Your digs seem like a cozy place to ride this out, and your reassurance is appreciated! I’m a wonderful cook and entertaining company. Perhaps the underwater landscape of the Black Sea intrigues you?
This article is either long overdue or coming at just the right time. I agree with the overall sentiment offered by other commenters that the virus is constantly evolving, more info is needed in order to offer a high degree of certainty - but no one has said anything about the thousands of people who got the virus and recovered just fine. What about them? Cold-like symptoms or asymptomatic! Why not do an interview? We like to home in on the worst case scenarios, but the majority of people have survived just fine.
If we get to speculate about the fatality of COVID-19, we also get to speculate about the recovery rates of COVID-19. That’s balanced journalism.
2
@Alex
Since it first announced the presence of COVID-19 last week, Iran has so far reported a total of 245 cases and 26 deaths, a far higher fatality rate than seen elsewhere. The doctor, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said the official tally vastly underestimates the true number of cases. “We didn’t have a way to test people earlier and don’t have the capacity to screen everyone,” he said, in a telephone interview. “Let me put it this way, if in general two out of 100 corona patients die, in Iran, if we now have 20 deaths that means we have 1,000 infected patients.”
https://time.com/5791516/iran-doctors-coronavirus-middle-east/
1
I'm pretty sure the next 1-2 weeks will tell the tale. If cases continue to multiply rapidly, we'll know it will probably be a very long, hard slog to get through this. If they level out, then hopefully within 1-2 months we'll be through the worst of it. If the number of new reported cases declines (though I admit that's unlikely), then we can all breathe a big sigh of relief.
4
@Liz
so Mike Pence has approved your message...that was his message as governor when his policies kicked off the first AIDS outbreak in decades.
1
Accurate numbers on incidence and prevalence won't be know until there is widespread case-finding with testing for SARA-CoV-2 in asymptomatic as well as symptomatic individuals. It's likely that many more people are infected with the virus than is currently appreciated. No matter how severe the pandemic becomes, we can be confident that President Trump will have our backs and toss packages of tissues to us in our time of need (at least during press conferences).
6
Seems to be the take people want to believe is true.
So why did China effectively shut the country down for a month for this nuisance?
And Japan suddenly shuts down schools for a month?
I'm watching the cruise ship laboratory sample of 705 infected. So far 4 dead and 10 recovered.
12
@James
OK, but how do you calculate the rate? Is it 4/705 (0.5%) or is it 4/14 (29%)? The latter is the correct calculation (deaths/(deaths+recoveries)) but we will only know for sure when all the infected are either dead or recovered. It must be said that the sample of the cruise ship was significantly older than the population average, which might increase the mortality rate.
One of the few articles which are not beating up on China - clamoring on underreporting, overwhelming medical facilities, underperforming officials, the US always knows best about the epidemic, free press and transparent reporting in the US despite it had grossly under-reporting H1N1 infection and death rate. Good reporting such as this one can extend our knowledge and understanding when NYT set politics aside.
3
“As long as the virus doesn’t evolve, there is no chance of being infected again,” Dr. Lu Hongzhou, a public health professor in Shanghai, said.
Well, just red an article that Chinese authorities say that up to 14% of those who recovered from Covid-19 can get reinfected and tested positive again.There is also report from Japan about that.
Which information should I believe?
12
"Just under 14 percent of patients were severe, and just under 5 percent critical." Just imagine how many of those severe cases would be critical if hospitals are stretched thin, or people don't seek treatment because they can't afford it.
Rush Limbaugh compared coronavirus to the common cold. True, it's not Ebola or SARS, but 1.4 out of 10 people having severe or critical symptoms under the best of conditions is a serious health issue.
4
Is it fair to guess that the death rate/critical symptom rate is much lower because there are likely so many asymptomatic and light symptom people who have never been tested? We've stoked so much fear about this virus. It seems like it's turning out to have a profile closer to most annoying community spread diseases. We will see, but it is a shame that we don't have the tests available to see how many people actually have it.
9
@Kay Hayes I think that is correct. There are likely many asymptomatic or mildly ill people not taken into account in the statistics. Those people are a lot easier to be overlooked than a dead body.
My guess is the mortality rate for a healthy non-smoker is <1%, not much worse than normal flu.
4
I work in the travel industry and I can just say it is killing us because people are panicking needlessly in ways. I wish someone would post out there for MOST to see on ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN news that you can get sick going to the grocery store from the cart. Or many other ways people do daily and do not even think about. There needs to be something put out there by the Media in a positive way and not feed off of this for ratings. We do need peace of mind and we do need someone to point out there is need for mild concern but we always have some sort of illness out there from Zika virus, Nora virus, FLU and other things. It is must being mindful in general. Yes, if you are elderly or respiratory issues already, take extra caution. I have MS and a compromised immune system, but I am not going to live my life without enjoying it.
7
@Sadiez It's not necessarily panic. It's responsible to reduce contacts at a time like this. It's a good thing to do.
10
Morbidity and mortality may be worse in China because air pollution and smoking have damaged the lungs of many Chinese.
7
@Kenneth J. Dillon - Good point tying the disease as a respiratory phenomenon to the quality of the regional environment. Air pollution has got to be a major fact, as well as morale and physicality.
I understand the need to not incite panic. But 4.5% critical is 1 in 22-ish people getting something similar to septic shock or multi-organ failure.
1 in 22.
I want officials to understand this reality--really let that sink in-- before they set public policy for schools, gatherings, etc.
3
@Independent
OK, I need to correct my own mistake:
Thanks for this article.
I'm assuming that in public health policy you have to consider possible worst case bounded probability based on current data. But for public consumption, you don't want people to assume worst case bounded probabilities when it is probably no where near that severe. So how to present things?
For example: It is very likely that __WAY LESS__ than 1 in 22 people will go into septic shock or organ failure. But it seems possible that 1 in 22 people presenting at hospital will. How does __that__ compare with seasonal flu? This is the kind of subtle reasoning that doesn't fit in a tweet. It's a 3-tweet preamble.
2
I don't believe that a virus like this comes out of a live animal market. The fact that children do not get sick but people with immune deficiency and the elderly are mostly affected makes me think that China was probably once again trying to control its population but things got out of hand. It also doesn't help that one of their own version of the CDC sits in the middle of where the outbreak started.
@Jonathan Fortunately for all of us science is not based on what you "think".
4
Interesting thought
I am very concerned, on a normal year durning flu season where eighty million people get the flu the CDC has said 150 million infected by January eighteenths of this year. Was it here already or will the people who just got over the flu get again and due to their weaken state will they be the first to die. How long does it last and how long will it take before minimum wage earners take there sick bodies back to work and infect a new wave. A lot of questions and the beginning of month long sicknesses that need rules and laws put in place for years illness to come.
Perhaps children are doing better due to to medics reluctance to lower their fevers because of the fear of Reyes Syndrome which killed children given aspirin for low level fevers following chicken pox.
Since so many health care professionals around the world have been infected with big pharma thinking, none are now willing to question lowering fevers with OTC drugs.
Remember Legionnaires Disease? The lucky victims whose fevers could not be lowered survived!
2
Yes, thanks for objective tone of the article. Of note: Pence is the second least qualified person to handle this matter. Plus, how will he find the time what with his work on the Space Force and perpetually standing behind Trump with a Mona Lisa smile? Is there anyone with actual experience coordinating the US response?
13
So glad that in the last sentence they mention traditional Chinese medicine. We got into this mess because they eat bats, and civits, and pangolins as part of their bogus traditional medicine. The one thing a top down authoritarian government could help them with is to force them to stop eating these ridiculous endangered critters that harbor the virus. These wildlife markets are not secret, and the state has the heavy artillery to shut them down. We're stuck with this virus. But there are more to come because some people think bats are traditional medicine. Tell them Chairman Mao said no bats.
3
Sorry, but China covered up the first cases of COVID-19 and now downplaying it all? I think they have no credibility in this issue any longer. A cautious approach is still recommended.
3
I hope their traditional treatment methods don't include eating live bats.
4
Look. The virus must already be here.
All around me, people have an unusually high level of hacking coughs. We live in a town with a lot of Chinese immigrants but also people who travel to Europe.
If we were routinely testing anyone with a cold or flu symptoms, I would have some degree of comfort. But we are not. It apparently takes some very strict parameters to get tested and I don't think that is the case in other countries. Perhaps I am misinformed.
But it seems to me that you can't say "the virus is in Milan" but not in New Jersey if apples to apples testing is not happening. Are the cases in Milan symptomatic? Acutely ill? Or are they just people who went to the doctor with cold symptoms and found out they had this?
It would be useful to know....
Because my sense grin where I sit is this: Trump the narcissistic con man, is going to try and pull a fast one on us all to hold on to his precious stocks.
A "It is not happening if we can't verify it."
If 100 people go into the doctors in Milan with a cold and 100 people go to the doctors in Newark and Milan gets tested and Newark doesn't you get to say "No cases have been confirmed in NJ" and that is truth.
We are on our own here folks.
The only silver lining is that Trump the grifter will finally be exposed. I keep imagining scenarios with WH staffers fake coughing to get his attention. Because until it happens to him, or the subterfuge fails broadly, he will never give a rip about anyone other than himself.
14
Let's put it into perspective this is the 2019-202 flu season states: 29,000,000 – 41,000,000 flu illnesses; 280,000 – 500,000 flu hospitalizations and 16,000 – 41,000 flu deaths here in the good ole US of A. I am more concerned about getting the flu especially strain B than the coronavirus. My sister-in-law ended with pneumonia from the second strain.
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
1
Yes, I trust the Chinese numbers with threats to my health, said no one.
3
There've been a couple cases of recurring infection, I think. One woman in Japan and another person in Wuhan, right?
1
Dear Mr. Pence
If you want to stop the spread of COVID-19 this is what we have to do.
1. People should be allowed to stay home if they have any kind of virus, from a tickle in the throat to a cough. They will get paid their salary and it will not count to their sick day totals. This will keep the contagious off subway and buses and out of the workplace
2. People should be able to stay home to care for a sick child, under no circumstances should a sick child be sent to school. People will be paid and it will not count to their sick days
3. Go on the air and tell people to
a. Not spit on the sidewalk
b.not walk within 6 feet of other people on the street
c. Stay home if you have a cough
d. Create a quarantine room in your house to prepare in case anyone gets sick
e. Create an emergency supply of food to last 3 weeks.
4. Make rules against hoarding, especially batteries,face masks, hand sanitizes, Lysol.
5. Ban flights from countries with corona virus clusters, like Japan, Italy, south Korea
6. Make rules so that people cannot simply get around a travel ban.
7.prepare a food delivery system in which the food can be delivered and the delivery person will be safe. Pay in advance by credit card, and the food is left outside the door.
8. Have daily updates at 6pm everyday.
9. Be completely honest about everything.
Mr. Pence i am an expert in disease control, and will gladly volunteer my services in this time of crises when we must all work together.
9
@Lonnie People who are hourly workers can't afford to stay home when ill. If they are "mildly" ill - fever and symptoms contrilled or masked with OTC meds - they show up at work.
1
Lonnie the expert in disease control? And I’m the Queen of Sheba. But you do come across as someone Pence would hire.
N95 face masks are largely sold out on the internet. I found some at Home Depot yesterday, but the clerks said they were disappearing from the shelves. One guy said Asian people were buying them and he thought they were mailing them to their relatives overseas.
1
Considering the case of the Japanese tour bus driver who has now tested positive (after being cleared of infection), for a second time, experts elsewhere are now considering Coronavirus may remain dormant in your system and reappear. Why is there a disconnect between the rest of the world and the US with regards to information? I mean, why are we getting old and irrelevant information while the rest of the world is better supplied with what is happening right now? The illness appears mild, but if it remains in our system like shingles, it is never being eradicated and worse, it will be able to appear when we are at our weakest.
1
Now that "pray it away" Pence is in charge, we should be feeling much better about this.
234
The worst part of it is, he may be “successful “. No stopping him after that.
6
@Captain Nemo
Gottcha. You have just admitted to the destructive ethos of the disgruntled dissent. You are hoping your unwanted leadership fails, just so your side wins. No matter the consequences of widespread destruction.
I'm no Trump/Pence fan, but for the sake of the greater good, I hope for their "success" in " leading" towards the health and welfare of all. We will sort it all out in November, obviously.
19
@John Becich I don't think you read the subtext of Trump and Pence's message on TV correctly- they tried, through reality TV methods to assert themselves as strong, knowledgeable leaders, not to calm our fears, but to boost stock market drops; meanwhile, the epidemiologists were telling us the truth about the dangers of a pandemic in order to actually allay public panic. And you've swallowed the reality TV poisoned pill.
28
Three weeks ago I returned from an overseas trip with stops in Sydney, Melbourne and Los Angeles. I took off or landed at LAX airport three times and twice at O’Hare. Upon arriving in customs at LAX I encountered what must have been several large plane loads of Asian people mostly wearing face masks. It felt a bit dystopian but I had taken extra precautions like wiping down all of my airline seating with antibacterial wipes, washing my hands frequently and wearing a face mask for some of the journey. I developed a cough, fever and extreme fatigue in the last week and am, fortunately, on the mend. It has crossed my thoughts that this could be a mild case of coronavirus. Of course I will never know since the ability to accurately test for it is so limited in the USA. In the meantime I am taking all of the precautions necessary to avoid spreading whatever it might be.
3
Covid-19 is an RNA virus which tend to mutate faster than a DNA virus like the flu. The common cold is caused by RNA viruses and that is one reason we keep getting it and we have no vaccine - it mutates too fast.
So the question with Covid-19 is whether we will develop lasting immunity to it, or will it become more like a super-cold to us in which if keeps circulating round and round, mutating a bit along the way? I think it is too early for us to know which way it will go. Of course it could disappear altogether like SARS did.
At this point we should hope for the best but make no assumptions about what it will do.
8
With any communicable illnesses there are risks and benefits of treating the individual patient and to the society as a whole. In order to successfully contain a communicable illness, you have to isolate all infected individuals and the only way to know the asymptomatic infected individual is with mass testing. Such drastic measures are financially costly to individuals as well as to the society because isolating infected workers shuts down the economic engine that supports the society.
We obviously would not take drastic measures for the common cold, but for Ebola (or 16th century native americans who had a case fatality rate close to 90% for common European viruses) it would be worthwhile.
There is a huge gray zone between the two extremes. Who makes the call?? What criteria are used? We need reliable data to make these decisions. That is what science is about, the best available data.
The republican cult does not believe in science.
As a society, do we really want ignoramuses running our governing bodies?
What percentage of republicans don’t believe in science.
@Chris
By looking at their voting in Congress over the past 20 plus years on issues such as NIH funding, CDC policy and funding, NASA policy and funding, climate change, EPA, etc ..., I would estimate close to 100%.
The 'republican' moniker is so contaminated by do-nothing, troglodytes that if there are science believing republicans, they should form their own small party and disown the majority of the cult.
I really appreciate articles like this. Figuring out who to blame for inadequate responses can come later, when we're out of worry mode. Right now we need facts and we need practical advice on what to do. People get scared when they 1) don't know what's happening and 2) don't know what they should do about it.
Yes, a 2.9% fatality rate is not good, but likely the worst of this happens when facilities are overstretched, a lot of weakened people are in one place, and they don't have access to the kind of supportive respiratory care that would help them through the worst of the symptoms. Younger, healthier people will overwhelmingly be spared the vast majority of bad symptoms. We should focus on making sure the elderly and chronically ill get first dibs on critical care. The rest of us will be largely okay.
4
Having read the study cited by Ms. Wang yesterday, I was a bit dismayed by the gaps in this reporting.
Yes, it's true that most cases are mild. And that's a good thing, for the most part. But it's also true that 5% are critical, and 49% of critical cases result in death.
Furthermore, critical cases are concentrated in the elderly and those with underlying conditions. So, for example, nearly 15% of cases involving people in their 80s are fatal. For those in their 70s, it's also alarmingly high - 8%.
People with cardiovascular disease see fatality rates of 10.5%, diabetes see 7.3%, chronic respiratory disease see 6.3%, and cancer see 5.6%.
No deaths in children under 9 were observed.
These are critical pieces of information to certain affected groups. They most certainly should have been included in this reporting. We need facts to plan our own courses, and the government isn't providing them.
8
@retired physicist
It's too early to make definitive statements that you suggest. Data is incomplete and sources of data vary in credibility. Treatment provided is not uniform in all countries, expertise varies, date reflects differences in care available. For a disease emerging a scant 3 months ago, a longer period of data collection is needed before definitive statements can be made.
This article seems too focused on the morality rate of this virus. Look at the other number: 20% of patients need critical care. 20%. In the 8 million strong NYC metro area alone, even if only 5% people became infected, this would mean an additional 80,000 hospital beds would be needed. At once. Just to care for critically ill patients with coronavirus. And what would happen to the other people who needed care? Pregnant women, cancer patients? Accident victims? Their deaths won't be part of the tally of this study, but they're also casualties of this epidemic. If more than 5% of our population is infected at once, I can't even fathom the outcome.
We're nowhere near equipped for this.
The other story the source article tells is that the young aren't getting this disease as severely as the 50+ demographic. The 2% mortality isn't spread evenly-- this disease is a bit more deadly than this even for those 50-69, productive adults in their working lives, who are often caregivers of both their children and parents. It gets worse the older you get, with 15% mortality in those over 80, and I can't just shrug off the prospect of those massive human losses.
9
I'm curious what impact standard inoculations are having on outcomes. The basic flu shot doesn't appear to do anything. However, what about the super flu or pneumococcal vaccines?
I would think pneumococcal in particular would provide protection against serious lung ailments regardless of the virus type. The vaccine is required in young children for exactly this reason.
I'm not so sure about the super flu.
The regular flu shot won't work because the regular flu shot is designed to activate specific antibodies which target specific flu viruses. If the antibodies don't see a flu they recognize, they fail to activate and you get sick.
The way the immunizations specialist explained the super flu shot was extremely different. What the doctor said was unlike the regular flu shot, the super flu shot didn't actually activate antibodies. At least not primarily.
Viruses infect you by grabbing onto the little hairy bits that stick out from your animal cells. Remember high school biology? Animal cells? Plasma membranes? What the super flu shot does is make your animal cells less grabby. The virus can't get a grip onto your cells. They just slide right off.
It therefore shouldn't matter whether your antibodies recognize the virus. The virus is just going to float around not doing anything. At least in theory. We don't know yet. That's why I'm asking.
I have a 7-week old infant at home. How worried do I need to be? It's been reported that in China fatalities were highest among older men, but what are the risks to young infants?
@M No deaths were reported in children uder the age of 9.
Hope that's reassuring, M. Children seem to be safer than any other group.
you may missed some points of the report, it said that the coronavirus is also dangerous for people under 10. You may care more of your baby.
“As long as the virus doesn’t evolve, there is no chance of being infected again,” Dr. Lu Hongzhou, a public health professor in Shanghai, said on Tuesday in an interview with Beijing News.
Other scientists take a more cautious approach and steer clear of saying "there is no chance of being infected again" They rather say we don't know whether or not the immunity will last.
Another point worth considering when speaking of mild cases is how the virus could behave in different countries with different set of circumstances. Countries with aging population, high rates of diabetes, high rate of blood pressure, high rates of obesity, high rates of people with transplants, high rate of cancer survivors, kidney disease etc. are more at risks of experiencing the severe case of the virus in greater numbers. When these factors are combined with a fragile healthcare infrastructure, the results could be a higher mortality rate in some countries than others.
4
I wonder if there's solid data about which segments of the population are most at risk of dying as a result of coronavirus infection. Anything?
1
@PF Me (that is, old). All reports are -- from everywhere -- that kids are not even affected that much at all
@PF Same as SARS really, since is this is like its "cousin". People who are elderly, who already have respiratory issues..low immune systems...
Appreciating that most people have mild cases is good. Panic and overreaction does not help. For all practical purposes this is a pandemic now. It is in 44 countries and there are cases popping up with no contact to the original sources. The US is not testing and that is keeping our counts low. South Korea is testing hundreds and is coming up with many cases. 1766 cases to date. Hawaiian Airlines only now stopped flights in and out of South Korea to Hawaii yet Hawaii has not tested at all. They won't have test kits until mid March. How can we do surveillance of community spread if we are not testing? The important factors to understand is that this virus though many cases are mild, is easily spread. Very contagious and the lethality is rather high. 2-3%. Yesterday one of the WHO members who visited China concluded the rate of mortality matches what we are seeing in Italy, Iran and South Korea. 2-3% is what the Spanish Flu mortality was. That is not the same as the seasonal Flu which is 0.05%. Contrary to what our President may say, this is not like the Flu. It is a novel virus and therefore unpredictable. It can mutate quickly and we don't have protection against it.
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Before people take too much comfort in substantial numbers with mild COVID-19 illness, the same study from China reports roughly 1 out of 7 had severe enough infections to require hospitalization, and another 1 out of 20 were critically ill requiring intensive care. Based on those numbers, the actual societal burden will depend on how many eventually get infected in the first place. We don’t have unlimited hospital beds, and we’re particularly short of extra ICU beds.
As noted, mild illnesses make spread more likely. Too many of us can’t afford to keep their mildly ill kids home or take time off work if we’re not that sick.
Assuming the virus is circulating, you still don’t want end up in the infected group. Of course 4 out of 5 rolls of a 5-sided die will turn out ok. But, once infected, you or some of your close friends or family face the real possibility they’ll be less fortunate. For the population at large, it all comes down to how widely the virus circulates, and that’s the biggest unknown right now.
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This is consistent with what has been reported so far and is thus no surprise.
The take home message is the critical importance of very aggressive Chinese-style containment. A lot of folks are going to get it and, in the end, most will pull through, but we must stagger the cases. This will be absolutely catastrophic if everyone gets it at once.
For example, there are 8 million plus souls in NYC. Say even only 1 million are simultaneously ill. With that we would expect 200,000 severely ill. If you have ever been to a NYC ER you know what the wait is like on a random no-epidemic day. It will look a lot worse than Wuhan and we will never get an emergency hospital up in Central Park in 2 weeks. We need to begin planning for social distancing/containment measures NOW!
3
I am a bit worried about catching the COVID-19. I am interested to know how it affects those with compromised immune systems and especially the elderly and young.
However, COVID-19 has the same implications as other infamous ills of yore...typhoid, the black plague to name a few.
Perhaps the lethality rate depends on the number of people infected and the health care system. In that case, the more people in severe condition, the less well treated they are and the more likely they are to die, due for example for a lack of resuscitation rooms... . This is worrysome because it would mean that we might need severe containment measure, just like around Wuhan.
2
On the one hand, 80% don't have critical symptoms, but on the other hand, 20% do. So we know what will happen if the virus takes off.
Regular flu affects 5 to 20% of the US population, or 9 to 49 million people, and requires 200,000 hospitalizations every year. And that's with a vaccine.
If the Coronavirus were to infect 5% (the low end of ordinary flu) that's 9 million people, 20% of which, or 1,800,000, would have critical or severe symptoms. There are only 924,000 hospital beds in the whole country, most of which are occupied.
We must start taking prudent measures to diagnose and contain all infected people to minimize the spread. As in China, there aren't enough tests to definitively diagnose Coronavirus, so lung scans will have to do. Otherwise there is a very good chance of mayhem, sorry to say.
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The first piece I've seen in the Times attempting some perspective which is necessary to lessen fear. A good start. Don't stop.
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the Chinese reported SARS at a death rate of 7%. Worldwide it was 14%.
The Chinese cant be trusted.
I'm not saying this virus will be worse then SARS , it's just largely unknown what could happen.
The Chinese took some harsh steps to curb it. They forced people into quarantine. They fogged public areas.
Is America ready to do that?
5
This article begins to correct some of the borderline hysteria you see in other pieces. Even so, it still fails to address important questions; who is becoming critically ill? Is it almost exclusively those with other serious health issues? Could the number of unreported, self-limiting cases be much, much higher than estimated?
People choose to skip the flu shot even though tens of thousands of people die in the US from the flu every year. Consider the coronavirus in this context.
8
Thanks for this article.
There is very little reporting on mild cases symptoms, ability to transmit the virus and how long recovery takes in these cases. With restrictive testing criteria, counting mild cases in the general population from "community" transmissions does not happen.
When 100% screening occurs, a large number of people infected has little external signs of being sick. The number of case on the cruise ship may indicate that a lot of the people with mild cases were able to pass on virus.
So, the fact it is mild for most is good but it makes it more likely the virus will reach at risk populations.
A practical implication could be deciding to stay away from elderly or people in weak health when showing any symptoms that resemble the flue. That is not a message we are hearing and may be it should be.
3
I have to wonder whether coronavirus isn't already spreading in its mild iteration through the US. Only a few states truly have accurate testing, and we've now identified a first patient who has had no international contact...where did he/she pick it up?
I traveled at the start of last week, and a woman wheeled off the plane I traveled on (originating in Denver) had a deep cough. She was set up in the waiting area and administered oxygen, while she complained she had a fever. I transferred through O'Hare twice on my way to Boston and back. Chicago has had a couple confirmed cases.
Sure enough, one week later to the day I developed a heavy chest cold..nothing super concerning in an average winter. But you never know - it could be a mild iteration of coronavirus, and meanwhile I've flown with over 400 people across 4 flights, met with 20 people at a large corporation, stayed at a huge hotel, and went to the mall and a couple coffee shops when I got back before ever developing symptoms.
Anyone thinking that containment is a realistic option just needs to read this "day in a life" and multiply it by thousands of businesspeople doing the same thing I did last week.
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@Joy: My spouse is a traveling consultant, who spends a lot of time in major coastal cities, and the scenario you've described above has been on my mind continually. I myself had a cold last week that kept me on the couch for a few days. I cannot fathom how we will effectively keep this virus contained, and I worry about those who are vulnerable to major complications should they become infected.
I've begun outfitting my house for a self-quarantine with extra food in the freezer and pantry, along with getting routine health care visits out of the way and filling prescriptions early. It seemed prudent given the possibilities, and if the worst doesn't come to pass, no loss; the food will still get eaten.
6
@Joy Its not even traveling. I stopped by the public library....two of the four senior citizen patrons near me at checkout there had deep wet chest coughs and remarked they 'just had to get out of the house' as they hacked without covering. The ignorance and lack of concern for spreading their illness to others is typical of their generation.
1
One stat that China won’t publish anytime soon is the number of people who have died from heart attack, stroke and other causes because the hospitals are full of and focused on COVID-19 patients.
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Today's manufacturing processes based on JIT (Just-in-Time) principles may actually exacerbate the shortages of medical supplies that can result from the coronavirus. JIT processes minimize low ROIs from idle inventory investments and the buildings needed to store such inventories. As a result of relying on lean inventories of medical supplies, and the reduced capacity to make new supplies because of greater reliance on very efficient global logistics supply chains, many medical suppliers are less prepared to meet an unanticipated bounce in demand.
With smaller inventories at each stage of the production process, the margin of error at each step in this process is reduced. As a result, if this demand for supplies keeps increasing and shifting rightward, actual price increases may be difficult to separate, from gouging.
As examples, Japanese car makers were hit with low production for a lengthy period after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Too much single source production of essential car parts and shortages created by JIT processes added to the shortages. Past high jumps in drug prices have also been attributed to hurricane damage to effected plants, with JIT processes increasing the degree and time period of the shortages.
Public health planning includes preparing for unexpected developments such as coronavirus and Ebola outbreaks. We may soon discover how prescient our leaders have been in this vital aspect of their jobs.
2/27 Th 10:08a Greenville NC
2
NYTimes - Please follow-up on this statement: “As long as the virus doesn’t evolve, there is no chance of being infected again,” Dr. Lu Hongzhou, a public health professor in Shanghai. What is the basis of this statement? Does SARS or another corona virus behave this way? The common flu does not, but it’s not a corona virus. It would be important to know if this statement is conjecture or based on a history of other similar viruses. A year from now, we can test the ability of those previously infected to mount a response by comparing their ability to produce antibodies a year post infection. At this point, these statements need to be further qualified to be understood properly
4
The CDC predicts that at least 12,000 Americans will die from the flu in any given year. As many as 61,000 people died worldwide in the 2017-2018 flu season, and 45 million were infected. There's no widespread panic about that illness every year. The government doesn't appoint a "flu czar" to deal with it. We just accept it. This new virus has so far infected 81,000 and killed only 3,000 worldwide. Keep some perspective, people.
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@Ms. Pea
Put your comment in a tickler file, and come back and report to us in one year's time. The number killed by the Coronavirus will most certainly reach into the millions.
6
While the case fatality rate for the coronavirus appears low at around 2 percent, it's important to know the age-related mortality risk as well as that for those with pre-exisiting conditions like impaired pulmonary function. With an aging population here (and I'm 79) such additional information is clearly important.
6
To be honest, in the 1970's we had the Swine Flu, it was about the same as now, people panicking. In the end a quick vaccine was released and life went on. The annual flu has killed plenty of people this year and there wasn't such a panic. The elderly, young kids and the sick should be extra careful as a rule anyway, the rest of us probably don't need to be hoarding face masks and stressing to the point of getting sick.
4
In the 1918 avian flu the pandemic smoldered through 1917. Seemingly less virulent than it would ultimately become. The virus evolved into a killing machine for mostly men in their late 30’s to mid 40’s. In the book, “Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It,” the census in the USA showed that the life expectancy for men during the time went from the early 50’s to 40 in a matter of just 30 months. I’m interested and following the info on this bug. It is truly curious how this flu travels a similar path as the 1918 flu when the travel venues are so different.
3
But that number was inflated by the much higher fatality rate in Hubei Province, of 2.9 percent, compared with a rate of just 0.4 percent in the rest of the country. The seasonal flu, by comparison, has a mortality rate of about 0.1 percent.
But how about the senior people with age of 65 and older with prior conditions such as high blood pressure, heart and lung disease, and other diabetes? What is the fatality rate of this group? Most of the death based on published news are come from this group.
3
So basically the Chinese committed economic suicide of their country by overreacting. Hope we won't do the same in the west. Seems at worst some elderly patient won't make it which might even be good for retirement funds in some countries. And since getting it gives immunity it would be far better to spread it quickly so that we all get it while it's still mild and does not mutate.
Finally a big "pangolino party" crowded like a rock concert might be the best way to deal with it.
So please tell the politicians to stop with their coward "precaution principle" and simply act rationally. Which sometimes means not acting at all. Don't cancel shows, trade, just wait for nature to do it's job.
Washing one's hand after pushing a grocery cart is a nice idea.
Wearing gloves before hand would be a better idea.
4
This is the first mention of gloves tat I have seen. It has seen so obvious to me that gloves would be a much better first step than masks.
7
If you're older or have any underlying health condition, this "don't worry, be happy" article" is not calming -- it's infuriating.
As the pandemic spreads, it's estimated that half the population will come down with it. Of those who contract the Coronavirus, 20% will have severe cases that require a lengthy hospitalization or die. So 10% of the total US population will either die or be stuck with a hospital bill that sends them into bankruptcy. Moreover, not everyone who "recovers" is restored to health. Severe cases can lead to permanent organ damage such as kidney failure.
11
It appears to me that a lot of people have their head in the sand. The issue isn't the number of deaths. With an R0 of 2.6 without controls, it has the potential to infect half the population of the US by summer. 80% of those would be mild (120 million) but even if 10% require a hospital visit, we're talking 15 million hospital beds required. Any idea how many hospital beds the US has? 924,000. Assume a one week stay, if the rate of infection cooperates and everyone doesn't need a bed the same week. Even spread out over 20 weeks, this means the infected serious cases would take up all hospital beds. What about people with cancer, heart attacks, car accidents and going into labor? Is all that supposed to stop? So we're looking at a shortage of medical facilities if we let the R0 stay at 2.6. This is why a coordinated local, state and government response is required to drive R0 down closer to 1.
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I am curious as to why the mortality rate in Hubei Province is so much higher than elsewhere in China: 2.9% versus .4%. Off hand, I can't think why location would have such a significant effect. Is this a reporting problem?
1
Two reasons: 1 The mortality highly depends on the availability of care, including medicine, nutrition and emotional support. Hubei is more in shortage of resources than the other parts of China. Hence the difference in mortality. 2 It is harder to find all the mild patients in Hubei than in the other provinces. The real mortality rate in Hubei might be a bit lower than the reported number.
2
@Peter Fisher why would Hubei be so disadvantaged in medicine, nutrition, etc? I can see that across countries but not within a country. Second, why is it more difficult to find the mild cases in Hubei? In fact, I'd think the prominence given to the disease there would have more rather than fewer people testing.
I so much want to believe these findings but a Chinese study conducted by a Chinese research centre and the results are backed by Chinese governement officials and medical experts? Hmmm...tough to distinguish right from wrong when it comes to the Chinese government. Sorry China, I know you are lovely people but that`s the perception your government has created.
2
Unfortunately, the response is "wild" regardless of whether the symptoms are "mild."
2
@AACNY
It depends on what you focus on, the 80% of cases that are mild, or the 20% that are severe to critical. Trump et al are focusing on the 80%, and saying, "No worries!" But prudent people would have been a month ago quickly and calmly making some reasonable assumptions based on that 20% so as not to recklessly and irresponsibly ignore the risk that high number poses.
What I've not read in any of these updates, and I think would be helpful is:
If I have the sniffles (seems like a mild cold) or a sore throat, should I be going to my doctor to be checked? Or should I go straight to a hospital...to an emergency room?
It's hard to know where acting responsibly (for the good of the community) starts and overblowing things and needlessly taxing doctors/emergency rooms begins.
A little more guidance would be good. I was feeling like I was 'fighting off a little bug' about a week ago. One day fine, next day ever so slight ear ache. Then bad headache, or slight sniffles. Next day fine. But this has been going on for about a week. Should we be going to the doctor or emergency room for such mild symptoms?
6
No. No. No. Obviously not.
if you have the sniffles, your first response should NEVER be go to to the ED, unless you are simultaneously bleeding or having chest pains. be realistic. use your common sense. call your doctor, do a virtual/telemedicine visit, or send a MyChart message via the EMR. do NOT go to the ED. honestly.
check the CDC and WHO websites. there is plenty of practical guidance there.
Article fails to mention that, according to China's CDC figures, comorbidity also plays a significant role in clinical outcomes. Most of those who have died had other conditions, such as diabetes, cancer or CV disease, and the highest percentage of fatalities have been among elderly patients with such comorbidities. No children have died from this new virus.
6
I appreciate the information and the tone of this information. Very helpful.
At the same time, I wish the media would take some of its time to report the same kind of straight information included here. Understandably, we need to acknowledge that the moderation of most cases carries risks -- but we must take heart that the moderation does exist.
Nonetheless, the human tendency is toward anxiety leading to panic, especially with media's inclination to build audience by leaning into emotion and a fraught perspective.
I resented Trump's light touch yesterday on television. I hope Ms Wang's type of approach can come to dominate the airwaves, and give us balance and some peace of mind in coming months.
226
@SGK However, yesterday EVERY democratic politician pushed to create fear about the virus in order to devalue the stock market - their only weapon against Trump. Any party that would mess with my only source of retirement money to push its way into the White House will never get a vote from me.
7
@Jane Doe
And you know for a fact that Democratic politicians had, as their intended plan, the devaluation of the stock market to minimalize Trump? I saw Democrats pushing for more money than Trump had asked for to deal with this issue. Furthermore, I saw Democrats using this virus not to diminish Trump but, to point out that universal healthcare is invaluable particularly at time like this when immediate diagnosis, treatment, and preventive care for the entire population are paramount.
No, I think Mr. Trump, by himself, has done enough to talk the stock market up and down these days. Considering the stock market has been stagnant since January 2018, I think you may be worried but, it shouldn't be about the Democrats.
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@Jane Doe
Hey, if this a politically motivated fake bear market it will not last. Grab that buying opportunity while it lasts! Such bargains don't come often, put your money where your mouth is.
8
What I find a bit frustrating is that when this all started to manifest itself, the people coming back from Hubei Province areas, whether in normal modes or, perhaps especially, evacuated, ALL were not tested.
Why would one simply ask "hey, how do you feel? Okay? Well, get on home then."
It is really beyond irresponsible, and it is exactly how one spreads an illness.
We live in a world where we like to believe that personal freedoms are primary, and they are. BUT, personal freedom amount to nothing if not accompanied by persona responsibility.
If one is in or has been in a situation where, e.g., sickness is a high possibility, then one should be responsible enough to take all precautions. And if that means locking oneself in one's home, putting on a mask and going to a hospital for a check, etc., one should do it.
But no, we want to continue on with OUR lives and pretend we won't get sick nor will sicken anyone else.
Utter selfishness, utter ego, and utterly unacceptable.
87
@DKM the problem is the test is cost prohibitive for most. I would support higher taxes towards medicare for all so that all potential carriers could be tested in situations such as these.
8
@DKM - The majority of Americans literally cannot afford to self-quarantine. 60% of the country can't afford a surprise $1,000 bill. 60% are paid hourly, so missing work means losing money.
8.5% don't even have health insurance to see a doctor without wildly unpredictable costs.
This is one of the real costs of a system so without empathy that we trade the financial security of the entire working class for stock market gains they'll never see.
Let's not trade the health of the nation so the 0.01% can each own the wealth of a nation.
23
@Alasdair
Yes, lots of changes need to happen. Nonetheless, to say that my needs are more important than everyone else's needs is unacceptable, just as it is to say that your/anyone else's needs are more important than mine. We don't want teachers teaching kids when sick. We don't want the coffeeshop barista working when sick. We don't want the bus driver working when sick.
We know this.
And FYI, I worked in kitchens for a good decade or so. I understand the issue all too well. But when I am sick, my health is priority, which means I stay home to get better. My co-workers' health is important too, which means I say home and don't get them sick. Let's not forget about the rest of society too.
We all have bills, are coerced (yes) to go to work "or you're fired", and more. I understand. So we need to change it.
Meanwhile, we all just need to do what is right, regardless of how difficult it may be.
And then vote.
Vote smart.
Don't vote by party line.
Vote for what makes sense for us all, for The People, for the USA.
All.
12
This also means that we don't really know how many cases are in the U.S., especially since the U.S. has been less proactive in testing international travelers than other countries.
132
@tanstaafl What will patients have to pay for the testing of the virus in the US since our health care system is private and not run by the government as in China? This will spread faster in the US than China because people will not have the money to be tested etc.
11
It will be interesting to see how the virus discriminates between Democrats and Republicans when it starts spreading in the U.S.
8
@Aweesker Teddy
I especially loved your post. Funny. There should be a cartoon for that one.
3
Part of why we have so few cases reported is that we don’t have the capability for mass testing....compared to other nations we’re in the dark ages. I am guessing that we have more undiagnosed cases than the ones we’ve identified. Thanks to Trump’s gutting of the government, there is no way that we can adequately respond to this.
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@Cathlynn Groh
Many countries not only have a national healthcare system but a national medical/health database. It is all interconnected for efficiency (if not commonsense). Yes, this is exactly what fear-mongers scream about because they are concerned that one's personal health data can be used against him/her. But guess what? That info can be used for unethical purposes regardless, once known.
There would be no health insurance companies denying treatment because we'd all be in the system.
And relevant here, all medical facilities would have access to the same information and, in time, testing abilities.
Healthcare should not be a competitive business. It should be something that serves the People, equally, and promotes good health and personal responsibility.
44
@Cathlynn Groh Some portion of American voters elected the politicians that promised to get government off their backs. Those politicians did as promised, cutting funds for public health. Public health agencies here in Thailand have been given adequate support to be proactive when epidemics threaten. Meanwhile, people in the USA have no idea even of the magnitude of what is already infecting them. Memo to Republican voters: Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it.
7
It's the transmissibility that's the problem. The flu has a death rate of 0.1% and it kills several tens of thousands a year in the US. The flu pandemic of 1918-19 had a death rate of just under 2% and it killed tens of millions around the globe. This virus appears to have a death rate of about 2%, but that figure is evolving as we learn more about it.
As with most respiratory illnesses, the elderly, the very young and the weak are the ones who fall victim to it. So the infection is a real concern for them as there are a lot of elderly, very young and weak people in the world.
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@Bruce Rozenblit
"This virus appears to have a death rate of about 2%, but that figure is evolving as we learn more about it."
Agreed. The article seems to suggest it could be as low as 0.4% in China outside of the Hubei province.
In France, doctors told on the TV yesterday or the day before that it's around 1%. The death rate is probably also dependent on other factors, such as pollution, and it will also depend on the quality of the healthcare system. It seems to reach 10% in Iran.
We will only know the correct figure, by country, after the epidemic. 2% is only a rule of thumb, given the current data.
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@Bruce Rozenblit Curiously, the young seem to be least affected. Information is scant, as you implied, and we'll soon know better... unfortunately.
35
@Bruce Rozenblit
@John Becich is correct. The old and weak are more at risk but early studies (from China) are suggesting that the young may actually fare better than the general population.
38
Timely reporting. Unfortunately or fortunately, China provided some priceless lessons from this epidemic thus far and the rest of the world should learn more from China's experience.
2
Does this end the Democrat's dream of open borders?
4
@clarity007
I think it begins their dream for medicare for all.
14
If we had better medical care and stronger labor laws people might be more liable to seek care when they're sick. But, too many workers are docked pay if they leave for a doctor's appointment, or aren't paid if they take a day off when they're sick. And, we all know the state of medical care in this country. It's no wonder we're all at risk.
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@Ms. Pea
Food workers in restaurants in particular.
Not only do they not have health insurance that encourages them to see a doctor, but if they don't show up to work they don't get paid. So they're more likely to get sick & stay sick & more likely to show up & work when they are sick, handling the food that we then eat.
It's a bit like cholera (if memory serves). The big outbreaks were in large crowded cities, such as London, due to open sewage & unclean water. In order for the rich to not become infected by the poor, they had to pay to make sure that poor neighborhoods as well as rich were given modern sewage systems & potable clean water.
I lived in S. Korea where the system encouraged cheap but frequent visits to the Doctors office. A trip to my doctor was a 7 minute walk, a 5 minute wait & a 5 minute conference with him. I spent more time waiting for my prescriptions in the pharmacy.
(It's not unusual for a Koreans to drop by a doctors office to get a note excusing them from work when they have a nasty hangover from the night before when they were expected to drink & keep up w/ their boss until he decided to leave. The next day they see the doctor, get a note, then return home to sleep it off. In Korea's case Doctors absorb & resolve a lot of the dichotomies of Korean society. For instance abortion is illegal but doctors perform them anyway. All of this is about saving face & the value their society has on this all made possible because it's cheap & easy.)
12
The first French person to die from the illness was a middle school teacher. He was on sick leave from February 12, 12 days before his death. I used to be a teacher in France and we were constantly criticized for absenteeism (I can attest to catching way more respiratory diseases when I was teaching). I think a lot of people must now be happy that we have strong social laws and that the teacher wasn't put in a position to spread the disease considerably more. Considering his discipline, my guess is he must have had at least 200 students.
8
The most despicable part of this for me is listening to people dismiss the risks because the fatal complications are most likely to affect the elderly. All four of my children's grandparents are over the age of eighty, and three of them have chronic or serious health concerns.
As my youngest prepares to graduate from high school, I'm already thinking about whether its responsible to encourage them to attend his graduation ceremony, which they would be heartbroken to miss.
Similarly, I looked around my church last night and noted that several members of the parish are undergoing chemotherapy. Most of the members of my church choir are over the age of seventy. These are people I love, and I imagine most of us have vulnerable people in our lives about whom we care deeply.
Yes, the seasonal flu apparently has a higher incidence of fatal complications, but I can receive a flu shot each year to minimize the risks. I can't do anything about this, and that's what is keeping me up at night.
43
I agree Allison. A 2% mortality means we would all know somebody who dies from it if it were to spread. So we should all make the effort to be proactive in containing the virus.
But also to correct something you said. This virus has a much higher mortality rate than the flu
3
@bubs: Thank you for the correction. This is all rather confusing, and last night's train wreck of a press conference did nothing to help clarify matters for me.
1
@Allison
I’ve considered that all my beneficiaries might get the virus and not survive. So I’m going to advising the company that holds my assets, should we all be deceased, how to dispose of them to charity.
We all need to think and plan ahead. For quarantining ourselves, caring for ourselves if sick or in quarantine, and what should be done if we and our beneficiaries are no longer alive.
1
As much as we want to minimize severe illness or death from this virus, if you're an older person, you simply can't take unnecessary chances.
It's prudent to pay attention, brush up on your hand-washing skills and take fewer chances with travel and large crowds.
I pray there's not a lockdown response if this virus gets out of hand. We Americans aren't used to this sort of thing. It appears we might find out soon what the rest of the world is enduring.
5
A crucial bit of data is missing from this article: how do the percentages of "serious" and "critical" cases for COVID-19 compare to those for flu of various strains?
1
We should trust anything China reports on this? We know they hid info on this virus earlier.
"published recently by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention"
So we are being led to trust what the Chinese government says in a study?
Give me a break.
Countries don't shut down their entire school system, lock down entire cities, and quarantine people for weeks on end....for just a "mild" situation like the common cold.
4
I have to say your publications role in sparking panic is pretty disgusting. It’s very reminiscent of the Ebola scare that the media whipped up a few years back.
9
There is good reason to believe the mortality rate is even lower than 0.4 percent, and may be comparable to seasonal flu. The rate of 0.4 percent is calculated based on all cases diagnosed in China outside of Hubei Province, but far more cases have gone undiagnosed. After all, mild symptoms resemble those of the common cold and flu, and China is not testing everyone who experiences cold and flu symptoms. China's citizens may also be reluctant to come forward to be tested, given the government's draconian treatment of infected patients.
Why are governments taking such extreme measures in response to a virus that is highly contagious but may not be particularly lethal? China's authoritarian President Xi Jinping has consolidated power to the point that he fears any failure to control the outbreak will weaken the public's confidence in him. An unduly strong response is better than a measured response.
And now other governments are mirroring China's measures. Better to be cautious than to be blamed later by an anxious public. Except we are not taking into account the harm caused by closed schools and travel restrictions. H1N1 was also a global pandemic, with unknown risks when it surfaced in 2009. But because US health authorities were the first to confront the virus, the world's response was more proportionate.
3
Trump has little or no interest in the virus. He regards it as a variant of the common cold, which at worst might produce a few thousand more deaths in the U.S. this year in what remains of the flu season.
The deaths themselves would mean nothing to him.
What matters to him is the stock market because the continuation of his Presidency now almost totally depends on it.
When Trump came along, businesses and many well-to-do people saw a con- artist who would give them lower taxes; was promising to spend lavishly on the military and the infrastructure; had no interest in controlling budget deficits and inflation; would cast a cold eye on the need for health and safety measures in the workplace; and would ignore the effects of climate change.
Well, the chickens have come home to roost; and what he and Americans foolish enough to believe in his methods have succeeded in producing are vastly overheated stock prices that -- to the surprise of no one familiar with the ups and downs of the stock market -- are now collapsing.
The coronavirus is guilty of nothing more than being a virus.
We will survive it.
Trump -- virtually single-handed -- has collapsed the stock market.
When and if it will ever recover keeps him up at night.
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So the big panic is all about a "chance" of getting a mild cold, caused by the same virus that causes mild colds every year. Ridiculous! The media should stop focusing on this blown up crisis and get back to public heath issues that have a much bigger impact - deaths or injuries caused by guns, poor nutrition, lack of affordable health care, drug abuse. The continued focus on this virus only exasperates the economic costs, which will hurt people much more than the virus itself. Enough is enough.
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The podcast "Science Vs." had an episode in October 2019, depicting a dramatized version of a global pandemic starting in China with flu like symptoms and a 2% mortality rate.
Every single thing in that podcast has so far become reality - the closed borders, the slow responses, the ineffectiveness of closed borders. The only consolation is we do not yet have a million death. And quite possibly--we are not there yet--the disease will come back in the Fall.
The United States need to be better prepared. Preparedness, not prays or a con man's words, is ultimately what saves lives.
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What about Trump being responsible for the pandemic and Sanders offering a plan, paid for by a tax on billionaires, to end the pandemic ?
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I would also love to see a breakdown of the recovery/fatality rates for smokers vs non smokers. China has a significantly higher rate of smokers than the majority of the US, which will automatically increase the severity of this infection. How well are nonsmokers recovering in general?
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@Kat
Also it hits men much harder than women there, but it is also true that men smoke much more than women in that country. Your point is a good one. I doubt such statistics are recorded there.
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@Kat This has been documented in some of the early studies. Smokers actually have lower fatality rate--although this could be confounded with aging and self-selection (those who smoke are healthier and younger).
Let’s not try to rush out a vaccine untested because of the panic. So far it’s not clear if it will be a pandemic. MERS and SARS (both Coronaviruses) had a higher associated mortality. This will end up like the swine flu vaccine situation.
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All media outlets, especially those with nation-wide readership, like the NYT, need tone down the rhetoric and give readers greater perspective with each and every story about the COVID19 epidemic. In today’s papers I’ve seen coronavirus deaths worldwide have now reached 3,000. A disturbing number for sure. However, according to the CDC, annual deaths in the US from influenza are estimated to be between 12,000 and 60,000. Should the NYT stop reporting on the coronavirus outbreak? Absolutely not. The Times however should do a much better job of reporting the story in a broader context.
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If anything, they are underreporting the risk.
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@Lynn Shuck 12,000-60,000 deaths from a disease that infects about 45 million people vs. 3,000 deaths with 85,000 infected...it doesn't take a genius to understand how much more dangerous COVID19 is than the flu.
Of course, as mentioned in the article, it is likely a significant amount of mild infections have happened and if so would change the risk...but we have no idea yet.
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Those annual deaths are for the 50 million or so infected every year with other flus in the USA. This has killed 3 k with roughly 100k infections. Do the math. At this death rate there could be 1 million dead in the USA. A much greater number will need intensive care which we might not have space for. I actually think there isn't enough alarm and I'm a pretty rational person.
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If you think you're getting sick be responsible. Don't go to work or school and isolate from family members. At this stage it most likely isn't Covid but best to be cautious.
US employers need to take employees at face value if they call in sick. now is not the time to pit profits over people.
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It is great news that most Coronavirus cases are mild and 98% of the infections are naturally CURED in any person who has an immunocompetent immune system is not surprising. There are several factors that determine the severity of infections. Foremost among them is how much virus the respiratory track of a person is exposed to and the stage of the infection of the person or persons who are exposing others to the virus. There is a possibility of acquiring herd immunity to the virus with being gradually exposed to minute quantities of the virus. Those with low level of exposure could be a mild case. Numbers matter and therefore it is important to minimize the level of exposure with sensible hygienic practices.
Viruses are nano sized obligate intracellular parasites made up of proteins, nucleic acid and lipids. How viruses cause disease and in rare cases death is not a mystery. As I have said before when a person is exposed to the Coronavirus, there is a race in the body of the exposed person to mount an immune response and the virus rapidly multiplying in the respiratory track. If the virus multiplies faster before a robust immune response to clear the virus and cure the infection, than there could be morbidity (symptoms of the disease) and mortality. When the immune system of an exposed person is triggered when the presence of the virus is detected in the body and adequate immune response is mounted, it has sufficient time to clear the virus completely within a month.
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@Girish Kotwal - Thank you for this must informed post - best and most accurate perspective I've seen. If we can take extreme measures over the next two months to slow the spread of Covid-19, it provides the opportunity for people to prepare via diets, exercise, and so forth. Worst scenario is a mass-contagent stage that overwhelms local populations, possibly shutting down universities, businesses and even health facilities to the point where a bounce back would fail to cover those in a marginal position. Such negative results would involve people and small businesses that won't be able to recover, ever. So lets consider restrictions for the next two month for travel, conferences, and the like.
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We need leaders who can do the math or at least who realize they need people who can do math and science and actually listen to them and execute on what they say.
Math problem #1 - Geometric progression. Remember the old hair product commercial where she told two friends and they told to friends and so on. That is how this virus is progressing. It multiplies 10X every month. 800 cases mid December, 8000 cases mid January, 80,000 cases mid February. Extend that out, and you have 800,000 cases mid March, 8MM cases mid April, 80MM cases mid May, 800MM cases mid June, everyone by mid July.
Math Problem #2 - Mortality Rate. In a completed pandemic you calculate this as number dead divided by the number infected. But, when the pandemic is just getting started, you can't included new infections in the mortality rate as you don't know of active cases who will live or die. So, you calculate it based on resolved cases only (dead or recovered). Number Dead divided by the sum of (dead plus recovered). That is 2,810 div (33,212 plus 2,810) = 7.8%. Now, it may be lower than that as some number of the unrecovered my be past the point where death is a risk. But, it certainly isn't 2% meaning everyone unrecovered will live. And both are far greater than the 0.1% of seasonal flu.
So, you want a war on the deep state from Trump. The reason we spend on other countries protection is to protect ourselves. Gutting our national security, diplomacy, and science has left us vulnerable.
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@Irish - Excellent points. I would add that absent a solid finding that this virus becomes less severe each time it is transmitted to a new host, by the time we reach your projected 800,000 cases in March, we will likely see the fatality rate start to rise, as healthcare systems are completely overwhelmed and find themselves only able to treat the most critical cases - leaving those in the severe category to fend for themselves. Without the intervention of modern medicine, that "severe" category of patients is certainly going to see a significant increase in fatality rates.
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With the possibility that a large number of cases are nearly asymptotic or so mild individuals do not seek medical attention, your estimated mortality rate may be overblown by several orders of magnitude.
We may be looking at a bug that hits mis/mal-nourished populations or persons with damaged immune systems exclusively.
Those in the latter category, in developed nations outside the US, and most in the US know their situation.
Can we have some real research please? Has anyone even bothered to sequence the thing yet - and are all outbreak sequences identical?
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You don’t need 33,000 or 2800 to determine a mortality rate.
You diagnose 100 people with the disease and then you follow THAT 100 and see what happens with them. Then you do it with another 100, preferably in a different location and average the results. If you have the resources, do it with a 1000 people. It’s called a prospective study.
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If this is meant to be reassuring it isn't. Putting aside that many doubt that China has accurately reported the number of fatalities, the way the numbers are positioned here is troubling, making things seem much better than they are.
19% of all those infected were Severe, meaning nearly 1 out of every 5 who get Coronavirus are Severely infected.
Those who contracted pneumonia as a result of Coronavirus are lumped-in with the 81% classified as mild as long the pneumonia could be classified as "mild", so how many of those 81% contracted pneumonia?
Even more troubling is learning that among the 19% of those infected and classified as "Severe" there's a second category included within Severe: "Critical".
Severe cases as described are worse than any infection most people ever encounter, or survive, in a lifetime, yet "Critical" cases with respiratory failure, septic shock, and multiple organ dysfunction are the type of infections rarely survived.
While the seasonal flu has a mortality rate of only about 0.1%, in sharp contrast the fatality rate in Hubei Province, was 2.9%. The overall fatality rate in China may have been 2.3%, yet the study shows that fatalities are much higher in an area with a massive outbreak.
Nearly 20%, or 1 out of 5, of all infected were Severe and in great peril of dying, and the 5% who were Critical usually died. Finally, of the nearly 20% how many actually fully recovered, and how many who managed to survive have permanent organ damage?
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Keep in mind that the further out from the Hubei province it spreads, the lower the chances of contracting severe or critical symptoms becomes, as stated in the article. Their medical system is overwhelmed in that relatively little area and China is keeping people contained within it. That exacerbates the problem within the area.
Also, I've read elsewhere that the majority of those who were critical and/or died from it were already in poor health, had a weak immune system, and/or were old. Unfortunately the first two categories disproportionately includes children, too, but overall I think being as measured as possible is vital.
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@Robert B I believe the actual figure was 49% death among those defined as Critical. That's not good, but it not "usually died" either.
Thank you for a well written and informative article. Need more of this type of reporting in lieu of the mass hysteria we are seeing from our news organizations.
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In no country are the death rate and number of persons infected figures sufficiently validated to allow for rational projections. We can but hope that as more and more countries with robust health professionals especially trained epidemiologists will ameliorate the uncertainties involved.
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I read elsewhere an expert's comment that large numbers of people with the virus were probably never tested, so the current mortality rates are likely overstated.
Another indicator that the perceived risk exceeds the actual risk.
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It is not like the flu, as yet, as we don’t have an immunization shot. It may take a year after identification for mass distribution. So the risks are greater. Especially for those of us in healthcare with greater exposure.
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Thank you Ms. Wang for your reporting. The best antidote to panic is reporting like your piece. Fear and panic will only make things worse, and reporting like this allows us to understand the crisis and impact, and hopefully, save lives. Keep reporting and stay safe in Hong Kong.
Good Journalism Saves Lives!
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@SparkyTheWonderPup Agreed. This is some of the only coverage I've read (and as a very anxious hypochondriac, I've read most of it) that has helped me remain rational and calm about the situation.
While I'm scared of the virus, I think I'm more afraid of the scenes of doomsday quarantine we've been seeing in China and other parts of the world. All those empty streets and people in masks--it's creepy. It's nice to be reminded that we will handle this virus, and that while it is justifiably scary, it should not be cause for deep panic.
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@SparkyTheWonderPup Yes, and good science and good journalism saves lives. It would have been most interesting to have gotten a medical researcher report from China.
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Finally a sane assessment of the situation!
Hopefully that panic subsided soon.
If we had that same panic every year when the flu season starts, we could shutter the planet for 6 months at a time.
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@Captain Nemo
If the flu killed 10 to 20x more, maybe we would pay attention. 20% of cases of coronavirus are severe, 1 to 3% are lethal. For the flu it's 0.1%. See the difference?
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@Captain Nemo The whole year actually because when it's summer here, it's flu season down under
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@Jean-Claude Arbaut
In general, your point is correct.
But it is very likely that many cases of Covid 19 were never diagnosed due to a lack of testing, so the actual mortality rate is lower than the 1-3%.
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During the SARS epidemic, Toronto was hit hard and the city went into a state of near panic. But the statistics looked less alarming than the media portrayed. So, my wife and i took advantage of the cheap hotel rates and spent a wonderful weekend there. Reality check.
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@MWR
Anecdotal is not accepted in a scientific field of study.
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@MWR
I was at the epicentre of the SARS outbreak in TO. All I can say is it took a while to figure out how the disease spread and how to prevent. Turns out contact tracing and quarantine were very effective, and were responsible for our ability to contain it. Not sure that will work for this virus as it seems to spread quickly and perhaps when patients are not symptomatic.
One thing we did, we learned from it and are much better prepared. Also, we didn’t then, and do not now muzzle our scientists and healthcare professionals. When health issues are addressed by the government, it is the professionals speaking, and our politicians generally know enough the keeps their mouths buttoned lest they look like fools.
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As of today, two patients have been infected TWICE by the virus. One in Japan and the other in China. So your premise of antibodies precluding reinfection is sadly incorrect.
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@Larry Kay - Perhaps the issue is immunocompetence. Some persons' immune systems may be compromised and unable to produce antibodies effectively, leading to subsequent infection. Another possibility might be that the virus has begun to mutate in situ and antibodies produced against the original strain aren't effective against the mutated strain. Perhaps viral mutation has thus far not been widely explored.
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@Larry Kay Right. And some people get chicken pox a second time too. Some people’s tonsils grow back. So what is your point?
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There's a modicum of mass hysteria going on here. We are, by all accounts, dealing with something closer to the flu than the bubonic plague.
Most importantly, this is not going away. So, for example, closing the schools for a month, or 2 months, won't solve anything. Like trying to stopping the wind, once kids go to school again, someone will get sick (and then get better).
The dearth of information and the alarmism is quite frustrating, and leading to rush and irrational decisions
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It would be interesting to know if those with mild symptoms share a generic advantage in fighting COVID-19
5
The main issues are the mortality rate and the ease of transmission. If the mortality rate were, let's say 2% and if most of the people of the planet get it at some point because it spreads easily, then the math is scary.
We have much more to learn about it, though.
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No doubt less developed counties will be harder hit.
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Coronavirus is 'mild' as compared to what and for whom, when, why and where?
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@Blackmamba - Perhaps compared to historical pandemics like the Spanish Flu and the Black Plague, and more recently, the Ebola outbreak in Africa?
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@Blackmamba start reading at “More than 80 percent of cases are mild, one large study in China found” and you'll find answers.
The most useful piece yet on this infection. More like it, please.
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This is reassuring, but then why did two young doctors in China die? That would be highly unlikely with the flu.
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@Rita I thought about this too, but perhaps they were smokers.
2
2 reasons:
1. Their works were so stressed that compromises their immune system. In general, people with weak immune system will have more severe cases.
2. They contact patients carrying higher amount of viruses.
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@Rita You can't dismiss that the virus may be mutating and there may be more virulent forms around in the same environments
10
All these bare hands and no gloves touching, touching, touching is driving me crazy!
So if it hits New York, and the theaters close down, do we get refunds? Madison Square Garden, Billie Joel? Hotels?
3
Far more people die or are injured in car crashes every day but we don’t think twice about it. Yet a virus like this sends the global economy on a wild bender and everybody panics. Seems a little over-hyped like west nile and bird flu.
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Car crashes are not contagious and mutable
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My point is that we don’t freak out about daily imminent danger yet panic over something that so far has infected 1 person in the US and has proven to be mild for most people infected. Good to be judicious but no need for the media scare in my humble opinion.
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@Gilad C
People operating motor vehicles feel like they have control over the outcome, and thus can save themselves from a crash. Contagion from infectious disease has always caused a special dread. Few people are aware of the statistics that give us the odds of dying due to various causes, and sometimes more mundane accidental causes of death are counterintuitive.
Moreover, while the number of deaths caused by CoV-19 are NOW quite low compared to average annual deaths caused by Seasonal Influenza or by vehicle accidents, that isn't necessarily true over a longer time frame. In a couple of months, the number of people dying from being infected with this Coronavirus could far exceed the annual figures of those dying from car crashes.
Why not sound the alarm for the flu which has sickened and killed more people in the US tha corona virus world wide.. This whole story is stoking fears and anxieties that seem to me to be overblown. How would I know if I had corona virus as opposed to the flu or the common cold?
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@Ericka because of possible, plausible outcomes. Do you think the Chinese government went into quarantine mode because this really isn't a threat? Does that make any sense at all? How does it make sense to downplay the risk of something far more lethal than the flu, which seemingly spreads just as easily as the flu, by pointing to the flu?
If as a global community we are able to contain the spread so that overall infection numbers stay lower than flu infection patients within the United States, that will be a massive victory and a credit to the efforts you are currently dismissing.
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@Ericka
Two reasons:
1) Populations have been exposed to the seasonal Influenza for Centuries. With few exceptions, the scope and morbidity of seasonal flu falls within expected parameters. Moreover, every year, people are encouraged to take the flu vaccine, which can serve to minimize the risk of becoming critically ill. Significant resources are already allocated to dealing with the flu each year. For what it is worth, I do believe that we as a society underestimate the risks of another 1918 "Spanish Flu" type Pandemic. We'lre a particularly deadly strain of flu to emerge, it would be quickly apparent, and would be treated with much the same concern as is Cov-19.
2) The Mortality rate from being infected by CoV-19 seems to be significantly higher than that of the Seasonal Influenza. If the Coronavirus manages to infect the same number of people as does the average annual seasonal flu, then based on what we know now, then instead of tens of thousands of deaths caused by the flu, we could see Millions of deaths worldwide, caused by this CoV-19.
4
We probably need to see more data before wee celebrate. I am not sure this report is absolutely true. It will take some time.
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This column should relieve a lot of the anxiety about the coronavirus. Unfortunately, too many people with just a sore throat or other minor cold symptoms who have read this or similar articles instead may immediately rush off to see a doctor to be tested for the coronavirus. Our healthcare system will then be overwhelmed. What needs to be discussed is at what point, if at all should someone with minor cold symptoms who has no reason to believe that they have been exposed to someone with the virus nevertheless have themselves tested for the virus.
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The NYT has just reported what appears to be a case of community spread at the Univ. of CA hospital in Davis (near Sacramento). Doctors suspected C19 but CDC didn’t test right away because the patient didn’t meet their criteria for testing (no recent travel to China or know carrier contact). Reports of asymptomatic spread are also being reported in by NYT. Based on those pieces, it appears that C19 is here and will be spreading.
5
yes-this is good reporting.
8
If most cases are mild, and it’s limited to a few places, why the hysteria?
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@Michael Livingston’s
I don't see hysteria. But:
* Limited to a few places? Right now, yes. But it will likely spread.
* The virus is much more deadlier than the seasonal flu (maybe 10-20x). It could mutate and become even more deadlier (or less).
* While 80% of cases are mild, 20% are severe. It's a lot. If the virus spreads, that will cause a serious strain on the healthcare system.
* The crisis will also have economic consequences, and it already does.
Sure, it's not the apocalypse, but there are some reasons to be concerned. Not hysteric, but maybe a bit tense.
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@Michael Livingston’s
Because the death rate is 20 times higher than the flu.
Once this spreads and infects large segments of the population there will be millions left dead.
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@Michael Livingston’s exactly.. and why not get hysterical over the cold virus or the flu?? Other than what the virus looks like under a microscope what’s the difference to someone who actually is sick?
2
It would be ironic -and telling- if it turns out that Covid 19 is no more dangerous than the common flu. I suspect this may well be the case. If it is the case that less than 3000 people have died in Hubei province of C19 over the past two months, I would like to know how many people died in the same province - a place with a population of 50 million - of the common flu in the same time period. If memory serves, last year about 32,000 people in the US died from the flu. That probably means that 15-20,000 have died from the flu so far this winter in one country. The fact that the C19 fatality rate in China outside Hubei is only .4 % is also highly relevant. I realize the need for caution, but I would not be at all surprised if, in the end, we find that the world economy shut down over something that was no more than serious case of the flu.
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The flu IS serious, but we have gotten used to it. Flu sounds harmless, Covid19 sounds dangerous, that’s the difference.
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@Shaun Narine
The difference if the death rate, which is at least four times higher, and likely twenty times higher, for Covid 19 than the common flu.
14
@Captain Nemo Sounds dangerous? Nothing deadlier than dangerous sounding illnesses. What about rhinovirus or acute coryza? Do those sound dangerous to you? What about gingivitis or halitosis? Will somebody please compile a list of dangerous sounding illnesses we can promote?
5
"The body’s natural immune response is the reason the Chinese authorities have asked recovered patients to donate blood plasma, in the hopes that their antibodies could be used to treat sick patients."
Antibodies prevent the initial infection, but don't do much (if anything) to eradicate an established infection. T cells (and perhaps NK cells) are what tamp down an active infection, eliminating infected cells and short-circuiting the viral replication cycle.
9
The mainstream media needs to be reporting more of this information to reduce anxiety and fear.
Further, I read an article early on about those people most likely to succumb to severe symptoms. The article stated elderly men were most at risk. I'd like to know if that is still the case and see more reporting about that. this would help the general public know more about self-diagnosing and when to seek help.
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@Me - I read the initial information as; there is a high incidence of older male smoking in China, hence greater suceptability to the viruses extreme outcome.
It strikes me that this virus might be extremely well established already. If, for example, 80% of those infected only have sore throat and a cough for a couple of days, those people will not see a doctor--and here, they wouldn't be tested. The only people who would see a Doctor would be those will flu-level symptoms... and again, here, they are not being tested unless they've travelled to an "affected area" or know someone who has. The case in California yesterday might be 1/100--or even 1/1000. There's just no way to know without probability-based sampling of the population.
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@purpledog
But 20% of cases are severe, and those cases would be detected. So it's probably not 1/100 or 1/1000.
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@Jean-Claude Arbaut
The issue with the current statistics (e.g., 20% are severe) is that they are based on known cases. I think purpledog's point, which is a good one, is that we don't appear to know how many unknown cases there may be because the patient is completely asymptomatic. 20 severe cases out of 100 is different than 20 out of 1000.
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@Tom
We have data on regions that were widely tested, but that's right, we may not know all cases.
The good news is, if it's 20 of 1000 cases because many are not known, it also means the severity rate and the death rate are lower than expected.
Random sampling may still be useful.
Thank you for this.
I’d like to understand how and when people are being tested. I have a strong suspicion that people are not being an eater here in US.
2
@GWE It was announced weeks ago that in the United States if you present with flu symptoms but tests indicate that you do not have the flu you are then tested for this virus (just another little tidbit left out of all the Democratic Party propaganda on the subject)
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@Dennis Byron That would be great if it were true. As of yesterday, CDC reported only 445 Americans have been tested for COVID-19.
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@Dennis Byron Then why wasn't the infected person in California promptly tested? There were or are other criteria for testing that delayed testing that person. The criteria-for-testing factor could result in false data with respect to how many people in No America are actually infected.
2