Covid-19 News

https://www.france24.com/en/20…-virus-with-drug-cocktail

max "Reglar flu. By late April it will peak with 1.5 -2M infected. With morality rate 2-3 percent.

Well not regular but mediaflu."

No. Regular flue has a Case Fatality Ratio of around 0.1%. nCov-2019 has a rate of around 3 to 10%. (Comparison SARS-Cov 9.6%, but with a much smaller infected population.)

Worse, the nCov-2019 CFR is much higher in individuals over 60 approaching 50% for the elderly.

Additionally, nCov-2019 has a daily growth rate in the 20% area.

Imagine if 5 to 10% of the world's population died of this outbreak. This is nothing like the seasonal flu in the past 50 years. Best wishes for the Chinese on their quarantine experiment in Wuhan. It may need to be repeated in other cities that have large infected populations. We will see in the next 10 days how the quarantine worked. We all wish them well.

https://www.dw.com/en/is-it-a-…the-difference/a-52233885

Quote from anonymous

No. Regular flue has a Case Fatality Ratio of around 0.1%. nCov-2019 has a rate of around 3 to 10%. (Comparison SARS-Cov 9.6%, but with a much smaller infected population.)

A week ago, most estimates put the fatality rate below 2%. I think it is considerably lower than that now, because the number of uncounted, non-fatal cases is much higher than previously reported, whereas deaths are usually accounted for. See:

https://www.nytimes.com/intera…-coronavirus-contain.html

Quote from JedRothwell

A week ago, most estimates put the fatality rate below 2%.

You are an optimist. Today 20'000 infected, 300 dead confirmed: Simple equation 1.5% mortality. But infection rates grows 20% daily. ---> discount the infected for 7 days incubation and you are way higher than 3% mortality that in fact could rise to 5% under bad conditions. Most confirmed first dead had a health problem - this is the other side of the story what will lower the overall death toll.

Only thing you can do: Take it serious! Be an optimist but act like a pessimist!

Quote from Wyttenbach

You are an optimist. Today 20'000 infected, 300 dead confirmed: Simple equation 1.5% mortality.

It is not simple, and this is not an optimistic estimate. It is realistic, taking into account two key factors: 1. The number of infections is probably underestimated, but 2. The numbers of deaths is probably much more accurate.

The number of infections is drastically underestimated according to many sources. It is very difficult to count everyone who has been infected, because: there are not enough test kits; there is widespread chaos; many people are unable to go to hospitals or (justifiably) afraid to go, people have been waiting for hours in crowded hospitals, so many of those who were not infected initially were infected while waiting; and because some patients had mild cases did not realize they had the disease. In contrast, the number of dead is relatively easy to count. There are many fewer. You can be sure someone is dead, and all of the dead are officially counted. Some of the deaths were ascribed to different causes, but most in recent weeks most were probably recorded correctly. Therefore, the number of illnesses is probably much higher than 20,000, perhaps an order of magnitude higher, but the number of dead is probably close to 300.

Quote from Alan Smith

Viruses are not immutable, they arise through mutation and continue to mutate as they are passed from person to person. Some mutations make little difference, some make it more benign, others make it deadly. SARS and Spanish Flu (1918) became more benign - though it took a few million dead before Spanish Flu lost its potency

Nearly all become more benign, because killing the carrier is bad for the virus. It makes it unable to spread farther, and kills it. In the U.S., some population groups were less susceptible to the Spanish Flu than others. Black people were more immune than other groups. Inuit people were particularly susceptible and died in the largest percentages in North America.

I do not know whether the Spanish Flu lost potency or went extinct. SARS and MERS apparently went extinct. They developed a vaccine for the latter but it was never needed.

The Spanish flu viruses were recovered and sequenced. The full DNA sequence was going to be published openly, but authorities thought twice about it and decided to keep it secret. That strikes me as a prudent decision.

With something as contagious as the Wuhan virus, only a vaccine can stop it. Without a vaccine it is like "trying to stop the wind" as one expert put it. A vaccine may take 6 to 12 months. Steps to slow down the infection rate should be taken in the meanwhile, to buy time.