Coronavirus Concerns

Hey all. Curious if anyone is taking extra precautions because of this outbreak in China? I realize there’s only a handful of cases in the US but there are some.

@DYSPHORIC JOY any professional opinions?

 

That’s why you don’t drink Mexican beer! I heard Lyme disease goes well with it.

All cheesy dad jokes aside, I’m not SUPER concerned yet but as the baby comes closer I may get worried.

 

I’m aware, alert, and mildly concerned.

No panic, no extra precautions yet.

Just monitoring at this point.

 

Just watching.

Also wondering how truthful the Chinese government is being with everyone on how bad it really is, that’s my biggest concern.

 

Having kiddos I’m a little more cautious with following this story but not really worried at the moment. To put it into context for folks that might bring it up I crunched some numbers and I’ll share them below. All in all based on current info the numbers don’t look relatively that bad... Feel free to correct my numbers if I screwed up the math.

Again for context purposes...

Rounding down on estimates this is what I calculated. From CDC estimates.

US CDC say that at-least 15,000,000 people have contracted the seasonal flu in 2019-2020 flu season. Of the 15,000,000 cases there has been at-least 8,200 death from the seasonal flu in 2019-2020. That is a rate of approximately 1 fatality per 1,829 cases

With the Chinese Coronavirus the most recent figure I have seen says that there has been about 8,100 confirmed cases with 171 fatalities. That puts a fatality rate at 1 fatality per 47 cases. Or approximately 39 times more fatalities with the Chinese Coronavirus then with the 2019-2020 seasonal flu.

For a little more context if there was only 8100 total cases of the seasonal Flu for 2019-2020 like there is estimated for the Chinese Coronavirus. Using the estimated 1 per 1,829 there would be less then 3 deaths.

What does that start to mean?

The USA has a approximate population of 331,000,000 people.

If the 2019-2020 seasonal flu has affected 15,000,000 that means there is approximately 1 case of the flu for every 22 people in the USA.

Here is were the numbers get very blurry as you have to ASSUME a lot..

Without knowing the actual infection rate of the Chinese Coronavirus all we can use is the infection rate of the 2019-2020 season flu being 1 in 22 people.

If you then stretch the Chinese Coronavirus to 1 in 22 of the USA population like the seasonal Flu you get that original 15,000,000 infection number.

If you use the current estimated fatality rate of 1 per 47 cases..... of those estimated 15,000,000 cases you would get a estimated potential for 319,147 fatalities.

Multiple factors would obviously effect these numbers most importantly China has a long history of releasing incorrect Data. For example the alleged coverup involving SARS being WAY worse then they said.

 

Additionally in the time it took me to type all that info out..
China released updated numbers that state their are now 9,692 cases with with 213 confirmed fatalities.
This brings up the fatality rate to 1 per 45.5 cases.
Using the original 15,000,000 potential case number you would get 329,670 fatality’s if it ever effected the USA at the current rate of the 2019-2020 seasonal flu. That is a increase of over 10,500 potential fatalities over the previously reported fatality rate.

 

Further context courtesy of CNN of Wuhan Corona Virus(Current strain) versus SARS. If SARS had followed 2019-2020 Seasonal flu infection rate there could have been a potential 1,440,000 fatalities.

 

I ate Chinese food today and had the craps for an hour afterwards. Should I be worried?

 

I vote NO.. But did you crunch your numbers???

 

Absolutely not... that's perfectly normal.

 

There was a case reported in India today. I can easily see it exploding in that environment. It's tough because you don't want to be an alarmist, but you also want to take it seriously...

 

Just go read “demon in the freezer” or “The Hot zone” and you will have a who new appreciation for Viruses. I Haven’t read it yet but “Crises in the Red Zone” which is the sequel to “The Hot Zone” might be worth the read also.

Like @DYSPHORIC JOY said Wash your hands and stay healthy. So little has been released so far about the Virus to make any real verdict yet...

And don’t trust the Chinese numbers... The have a poor track record of transparency with disease “outbreaks”

 

Didn't World War Z start in China?

 

No that was India.

 

i'm watching it closely since i take the nyc subway to work now...close contact with strangers is unavoidable unfortunately.

there's gotta be a few infected in flushing, queens by now. hard to imagine other cities have it but none in queens at all?

 

Updated numbers are
14,300 Confirmed cases..
305 Fatalities...

Still averaging between a 1 in 45 to 1 in 47 fatality rate..

To many family and friends work in Healthcare to not be watching this closely.

What I’m watching for:
I’m not particularly concerned at the moment about The fatality to case ratio improving.( It would be nice thou) While the 1-45 to 1-47 ratio is not great.. It could also be FAR worse!
I’m really watching for the number of new cases each day to start dropping. If they can cut it even in half of what it has been they stand a chance of making progress. 2-4,000 new case a day in a city / providence of 60 million people bad news!

 

You can't really draw conclusions on its fatality rate like that until those cases have recovered. Too many are still active, and it's final death toll will be much higher.

 

I agree that it’s really hard to focus on fatality rates reliably. That’s why I am more interested in the total number of cases and new cases.
I couldn’t get a good graphic to load so I posted a link below by The NY Times that has some good explanations and graphics to go with it.


https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/asia/china-coronavirus-contain.html