new coronavirus outbreak China, Korea, USA - mod warnings in OP (updated 24/02/20)

I hate to say it but I think the only time we're going to get a proper RTE report on this is when someone shows up at an A&E in critical condition or drops dead. Judging by what I heard if you phone the HSE number and they establish that you were not in China or been in contact with Chinese people. If you actually explain to them that none of these things happened and that you are having trouble breathing, will they still send someone out to collect you, I'd like to think so anyway.

all about the mane wrote: »

Covid 19 has killed 2251 people so far. Influenza has killed around 10000 in the US alone this season. We need a bit of perspective here.

Covid 19 is still in its infancy so fairly new, influenza has been around for a long time, give the new virus time or very hopefully not, but very rash to make these comparisons at this early stage.

igCorcaigh wrote: »

LOL!

Viruses mutate all the time, nothing to worry about.

RNA viruses like the common cold change each season. Must mutations are harmless.

I find it amazing that in our cells that there is a copy check mechanism, because it has two copies. So

Indeed they do - and this site shows some of the mutations that have happened so far since the start of this outbreak:

https://nextstrain.org/ncov

Researchers looking at the diversity amongst different SARS-CoV-2 genomes isolated from individuals around the world can use this info to figure out how long the virus has been evolving in humans - i.e. when the outbreak began (estimated Dec 2019) - and also to help understand how the disease is spreading from place to place.

I don't know of any reason yet to think that any of the individual mutations seen may have any effect on viral antigens that could be targeted by a vaccine, or indeed by the immune response in the absence of a vaccine. Using the same website to look at other circulating pandemic viruses such as flu and dengue shows they have much higher genetic diversity because those viruses have been with us for far longer, and may indeed - as for flu - have crossed into humans multiple times from different sources. Vaccine development is therefore more complicated in these older diseases, because vaccines may not confer resistance to all strains.


Separately, and FWIW, I think the last couple of days' data on global case numbers do unfortunately give a sense that this virus is increasingly spreading from person to person outside of China.
This is based on:

• far eastern countries (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong) reporting daily or near-daily cases for weeks
• South Korea now showing a dramatic spike in cases
• more sporadic cases occurring over weeks in south-east asian nations (Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia)
• ongoing cases in the middle east including UAE and the out-of-the blue Iran clusters
• the new clusters in Italy

In many of these countries, new cases have been unsuspected, are geographically dispersed, and have led to detection of more extended clusters. We've also seen reports of possibly-infected people departing from these countries without being properly tested. And who knows what's happening in countries with little or no testing.

I would therefore go along with those anticipating a global pandemic taking off in the next few weeks to months. A hot-to-press & unreviewed modelling article estimated timing and maximum numbers infected for a prospective UK epidemic, finding that 60% to 80% of people could be infected by the end, and that the peak could come within 4 to 12 months depending on whether transmission varies seasonally.
(Link).

The fatality rate estimated by the Imperial College London epidemiology group (centred on 1%, though could be 4X lower or higher) looks very plausible, and seems to agree with the fatality rates outside of China once you allow for the contervailing effects of lag times to severe disease, and under-detection rates in mild cases.
Latest youtube update here.

Unless some of the hastily-arranged Chinese clinical trials of antivirals (anti-HIV protease inhibitors and the novel RNA replication blocker remdesivir), or other established drugs (e.g. chloroquine) yield encouraging results, then we could be looking at numbers of severe cases and fatalities of the order of 10 times those seen for the average seasonal flu epidemic, mostly affecting older people and those with immunodeficiencies or other conditions including respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

This isn't the end of everyone, but there will likely be very challenging times for high risk groups and for health services if it does go pandemic.

Ficheall wrote: »

https://www.contagionlive.com/news/cdc-reports-13-million-flu-cases-thus-far-in-201920-season

This says 6600 dead from flu out of 13000000, ie. if you catch it, the chance of dying is 1 in 2000. Whereas for the coronavirus, the chance of dying from it seems to be about 1 in 33.
Perspective, indeed.

That 1 in 33 number is way off

Ficheall wrote: »

Perhaps a bit, aye - how much closer to 1 in 2000 would you put it?

People are on here saying that the Chinese government are lying about the number dead. Yet they are happy enough to accept the infected numbers. Can't have it both ways.

Personally I would think the number is multiples of the 80,000 quoted. But we are all speculating at best, including the authorities.

Ficheall wrote: »

"Pretty obvious" based on what?

I think there are like 4 or 5 deaths under 30 in China out of 2500

Guardian piece on South Korea from 30 minutes ago.

Ficheall wrote: »

Perhaps a bit, aye - how much closer to 1 in 2000 would you put it?

Without knowing the true number of infections then no one knows or could even make a guess. We know from the cruise ship cases that a good number have no symptoms or ones that are comparable to a cold.

Ficheall wrote: »

Ah, so you are the one who wants to have it both ways.. I see. Carry on then.

No, I don’t. You don’t see...