New coronavirus in/from China

Mean Mr Mustard II · Post by **Mean Mr Mustard II** » 27 Jan 2020, 19:32

clv101 wrote:I wonder how realistic it is to try and avoid getting infected, is it better to be infected sooner (while there might still be some health care available) rather than latter? If you manage not to get it in the first wave, aren't you just going to get in a year or two later - as it'll still be around and you'll not have any immunity?

One thing about the official cases / deaths / recovered numbers, is how low the 'recovered' total is.

I'm diabetic, so staying in my bunker and will only emerge once the vaccine is available. Hopefully.

Recovery rates, much like the confirmed vs death rates, are lagging indicators. But if there are 100 thousand others out there - the unseen part of this iceberg - they'll mainly be milder cases or asymptomatic. Only when you've got serious problems and very little to lose would you take your chances joining an infected hospital queue. Which suggests to me that the circa 3% death rate is overstated, but still a valid indicator of the growth trend.

Mean Mr Mustard II · Post by **Mean Mr Mustard II** » 27 Jan 2020, 19:47

WHO Sitreps 21 Jan 22 Jan 23 Jan 24 Jan 25 Jan 26 Jan
Confirmed 282 314 581 846 1320 2014
Deaths 3 6 17 25 41 56

Not sure if this will tabulate properly, but you can see the numbers all the same.

Not really enough data points as yet.

A friend has a degree in molecular biology and will know how to apply a logistic function to generate a Sigmoid curve, and spot when it's flattening out, and extrapolate from that. Way beyond my limited maths.

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 27 Jan 2020, 20:22

You had better collect the figures for flu as a comparison. Were the deaths in healthy people, or those who already had problems? The common cold is a corona virus too. Donâ€™t expect to be coming out any time soon, the chances of a vaccine is small, and the chances of an effective vaccine is vanishingly small.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 27 Jan 2020, 20:47

Mean Mr Mustard II wrote:WHO Sitreps 21 Jan 22 Jan 23 Jan 24 Jan 25 Jan 26 Jan
Confirmed 282 314 581 846 1320 2014
Deaths 3 6 17 25 41 56

Not sure if this will tabulate properly, but you can see the numbers all the same.

Not really enough data points as yet.

A friend has a degree in molecular biology and will know how to apply a logistic function to generate a Sigmoid curve, and spot when it's flattening out, and extrapolate from that. Way beyond my limited maths.

A straightforward eyeball of the data suggests the death rate is already flattening out. At least for this variant of the virus.

Though, what is still missing is:

(a) the number of cases not reported due to their severity being insufficient for people to present to the medical services. If this unknown number is high, the mortality rate would need adjusting downwards. Possibly significantly.

(b) What pattern may exist in the deaths. In other words, whether they are the very young, the very old, the already very sick etc.

(c) What the longer term health prognosis is for those who do not die.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 27 Jan 2020, 21:15

So long as the death rate of 3% or thereabouts pertains and so long as the long term health prognosis for those who do not die is otherwise positive, I would sooner get this variant of the virus right now. The reason being:

(a) the medical services would not be overrun and so I would be likely to get the best of medical attention

(b) if the virus mutates then, presumably, having recovered from an earlier version of it would provide at least some degree of immunity to any new variant. Though, I am less sure of this last point as my knowledge of how these viruses specifically work is not adequate.

Mean Mr Mustard II · Post by **Mean Mr Mustard II** » 27 Jan 2020, 21:23

Good questions. Another distortion of the confirmed total is the (non) availability of test kits, and before too long, path lab capacity. Death rates in isolation may show an accurate trend, but only to the point when reporting breaks down from weight of numbers or more pressing needs - urgent burial pits rather than recording of data.

Chris observed earlier that there's no close correlation between daily 'confirmed' and fatalities on that same day. As the real infection rate is higher, it therefore suggests the true death rate is lower.

Post by **clv101** » 27 Jan 2020, 21:46

Little John wrote:So long as the death rate of 3% or thereabouts pertains...

No, we' can't calculate a death rate of ~3% by dividing current deaths by current cases, because the infection is still spreading at an accelerating rate. The current 80 or so deaths are a fraction of the much lower previous number of cases. Of the current ~2,800 cases (as very few have 'recovered' yet) we can expect a lot more than 3% to die.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 27 Jan 2020, 21:58

Ah okay. So, you mean that perhaps the current death rate of, say, 52, is out of the initial confirmed cases of, say, 252. Which would, of course, be a bit more on the biblical side of things....

Post by **clv101** » 27 Jan 2020, 22:09

Yep, the additional 800 or so new cases confirmed on the 26th for example, haven't had time to die yet - so shouldn't be considered as the population from which 80 have died.

It would be interesting to see the data relating to the specific 198 cases on the 19th. How many of those, have died in the following week to the 26th?

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 27 Jan 2020, 22:13

All of which might go some way toward explaining the Chinese government's race to complete lock-down of what is rapidly becoming large swathes of the country.

That is to say, if it is as bad as it could be due to the factors we have just discussed, they have already worked this out and are responding accordingly.

Okay, maybe an Aldi shop is back on the cards.....

Post by **clv101** » 27 Jan 2020, 22:27

The case data is remarkably smooth so far (almost looks like an undergrad has made up their data!).

From Wikipedia:

Date Cases
16/01/2020 45
17/01/2020 62
18/01/2020 121
19/01/2020 198
20/01/2020 291
21/01/2020 440
22/01/2020 571
23/01/2020 830
24/01/2020 1287
25/01/2020 1975
26/01/2020 2744

Sticking that in Excel gives the exponential function: y=33.1e^0.4094x
Taking us to 23,000 cases by Fri 31st. Seems unlikely?

I guess we have no idea at all of what proportion of total infections are actually identified and confirmed to make it into these stats, and that proportion may change over time.

What to WHO know that we don't, not to declare a global public health emergency?

This is interesting:
WHOâ€™s decision to not declare a global public health emergency explained

Mean Mr Mustard II · Post by **Mean Mr Mustard II** » 27 Jan 2020, 22:40

But all that relates is those admitted to hospital - already triaged as the most severe, and the unknown wider numbers who have varying severity of symptoms. If it's now actually 100000, as some professionals are suggesting of which 2500 are in hospital, suspected, another 2000 confirmed and 80 dead, then the fatality percentage may be well under 3% even allowing for projected deaths. But the climbing death rate, when viewed in isolation, may correlate to the increasing infection, doubling every two days. In other words. 200000 on Wednesday, 400k by Friday.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 27 Jan 2020, 22:53

I am reading reports of testing kits running out as are places in hospitals. so, reported cases are going to be bollocks round about form now anyway.

There are also some videos turning up on youtube. No way of knowing how much bollocks they are, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQRunC3 ... e=youtu.be

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 27 Jan 2020, 22:58

CORONAVIRUS Update by Chinese Nurse in Wuhan, China

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8aloXm ... e=youtu.be

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 27 Jan 2020, 22:59

As for the global emergency,

To date, there have been five such public health emergencies declared by WHO: the 2009 H1N1 â€œswine fluâ€� pandemic, a 2014 declaration following the resurgence of wild poliovirus, the 2014 West African Ebola epidemic, the Zika emergency of 2015-16, and, after much deliberation, the 2018-19 outbreak of Ebola in Kivu.

and what has happened to these diseases? They seem to be just staggering along not doing much, and appear to have been around before, long ago, and mostly the reaction was just an ineffective attempt at panic initiation.

As an example, H1N1 swine flu meant the health services were panicked into buying huge stocks of Tamiflu vaccine, which proved to be useless. Any adverse effects? Well itâ€™s a vaccine, so itâ€™s an answer that canâ€™t be questioned. Any good effects? Yep, manufacturers made a packet, with no liability. Whatâ€™s not to like?