No, not hugely, to be honest. Unless you care to extrapolate the mortality rates to a CFR or an IFR for each?
Corona Virus 2019-nCoV
- Thread starter Quantum Quack
- Start date
25th, February, 2020
Using WHO situation reports:
Daily Transmission growth outside of China was est:
Total global confirmed cases (80239) increased by only 1.14% last 24 hours.
Total: 908 new, (518 China, 390 or 42.95% Outside of China)
USA : 53 confirmed, 18 new = 51.42% increase over last 24 hours.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02...inister-is-infected-with-coronavirus/12000840
Using WHO situation reports:
Daily Transmission growth outside of China was est:
- 2020-02-21 : 11.84%
- 2020-02-22 : 16.83%
- 2020-02-23 : 26.17%
- 2020-02-24 : 16.97%
- 2020-02-25 : 18.84%
Total global confirmed cases (80239) increased by only 1.14% last 24 hours.
Total: 908 new, (518 China, 390 or 42.95% Outside of China)
USA : 53 confirmed, 18 new = 51.42% increase over last 24 hours.
====
The head of Iran's counter-coronavirus task force has tested positive for the virus, authorities have said, amid concerns the outbreak may be far wider than officially acknowledged.
The news of deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi's infection came after he gave a news conference in Tehran about the virus just a day earlier, seeking to downplay the danger posed by the outbreak.
The news of deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi's infection came after he gave a news conference in Tehran about the virus just a day earlier, seeking to downplay the danger posed by the outbreak.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02...inister-is-infected-with-coronavirus/12000840
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Gotta feel pretty sorry for Lebanese who can't protect their country from getting wiped out by this thing because Hezbollah's keeping their connections to Iran open, and the Iranians are handling it about as competently as the Persians would have handled a medieval plague 1000 years ago.
Lebanon will not "get wiped out by this thing."
No one actually knows how bad it could get, correct? If nothing else it can definitely cause a crisis, like they don't have anything else they need to worry about right now.
Literally correct. But that is true of every disease out there; Lebanon could just as easily be "wiped out" by a variety of the common flu.
It sounds like this virus is much more lethal than a common flu. They're lucky it's not ebola, one flight from Iran and the whole country would be screwed.
Mass Hysteria will kill far more people than the virus.
At the moment the virus is proving to be less than 20% as dangerous as the common flu.
But all this talk in the media is so hyped that it may as well be Ebola they are hysterical about.
Put it in perspective:
According to CDC the death of the vulnerable patient occurs approximately 6-8 days and as many as 14 days after confirmation.
We have currently 80000 people confirmed but a death toll of only 2708.
27879 have recovered ( over a total 70 days )
That leaves only 50k still symptomatic. The vast majority of such are well outside the < 14 day terminal window and are expected to recover.
or
Only a very small percentage of that 50k fall in that <14day terminal morbidity window. The severity of the illness is mainly dictated by the patients per-existing health status.
Maybe billvon or Sarkus could explain it better...cause I am only a novice when it comes to this sort of thing and I lack the specialist language skills.
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I have an Italian friend who is stuck in Iran and am hoping for objective news about conditions there. Information is currently distorted too much to make any realistic assessments.
Let's say it was as bad as Ebola. Ebola killed 11,000 people. Lebanon has 6 million people. That would be .18% of the country, leaving 99.82% of the country - far from "wiping out" Lebanon.
And that's assuming that Lebanon has healthcare that's no better than Guinea, which isn't really a valid assumption.
Compare Ebola to the epidemic that wiped out 55,000 people worldwide about five years ago. Do you remember that one?
Excellent point. Yes, much of the damage this virus will do is completely up to us.
COVID-19 is worse than Ebola, in terms of the number of people it will kill.
One of Ebola's problems is precisely its high mortality rate. From a virus's point of view, it's no good if its hosts all immediately get sick and die. For the virus to spread widely, the ideal case is that a lot of hosts have mild or even no symptoms. Those hosts keep moving around and interacting with other potential hosts, thus ensuring the widespread transmission of the virus. Even better if some hosts (not to mention authorities trying to control the virus's spread) don't realise they are carriers of the virus.
It seems likely that the mortality rate for COVID-19 is 1 to 2%. In Lebanon, for example, with its 6 million people, we might then expect 60,000 to 120,000 deaths, assuming that the entire population contracts the virus. Those deaths are very unlikely to happen all at once. They will be spread over time. The same applies in every other nation.
If you want a reasonable comparison to COVID-19, consider ordinary influenza. COVID-19 is likely, over time, to become another kind of "flu" that we will all have to deal with on a regular basis. Initially, though, there will be a lot of deaths because most people won't have any immunity.
One of Ebola's problems is precisely its high mortality rate. From a virus's point of view, it's no good if its hosts all immediately get sick and die. For the virus to spread widely, the ideal case is that a lot of hosts have mild or even no symptoms. Those hosts keep moving around and interacting with other potential hosts, thus ensuring the widespread transmission of the virus. Even better if some hosts (not to mention authorities trying to control the virus's spread) don't realise they are carriers of the virus.
It seems likely that the mortality rate for COVID-19 is 1 to 2%. In Lebanon, for example, with its 6 million people, we might then expect 60,000 to 120,000 deaths, assuming that the entire population contracts the virus. Those deaths are very unlikely to happen all at once. They will be spread over time. The same applies in every other nation.
If you want a reasonable comparison to COVID-19, consider ordinary influenza. COVID-19 is likely, over time, to become another kind of "flu" that we will all have to deal with on a regular basis. Initially, though, there will be a lot of deaths because most people won't have any immunity.
Yes and what I've been saying here is that, even if it turns out to be a mild situation as opposed to an epidemic, one should have great sympathy for Lebanese who have no control over their borders right now because of the animals who control Beirut's airport and take their orders from Tehran, where the virus is currently running amok and the Iranian government practically pretends it doesn't exist.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Yes, I have to say it was jolly funny, if a bit macabre, to see that Health Minister, at a televised press conference, denying there was a problem, while himself almost collapsing from the symptoms of the disease! So now, having infected everyone at that press conference, he has locked the empty stable door by isolating himself. Brilliant!
LaurieAG
Registered Senior Member
Lucky it's not Hendra virus, which goes from from Bats to Horses to Humans.
https://www.business.qld.gov.au/ind...welfare/pests-diseases-disorders/hendra-virus
ya never know ... we may actually see the end of the war in Syria because of this virus...
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
On the contrary it would be a good thing if it was, since Hendra virus is incapable of causing a pandemic, due to its ridiculously convoluted and improbable mode of transmission.
So let's stop trying to talk about something so irrelevant, shall we?
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Confirms my theory about people who put "ya" in their posts.
Time to get picky...
The mortality rate, as I understand it, is much lower than that. The mortality rate of something is the number of people likely to die in a given population over a given time. So the mortality rate of flu per year in the US might be seen to be c.80k deaths divided by 250m people etc. The mortality rate takes into consideration how pervasive the disease is as well. Ebola, for example, currently has a mortality rate of zero in the UK.
The 1 to 2% figure for COVID-19 is, it seems, the case fertility rate (CFR), i.e. the chance of dying if you have a confirmed case of the virus. However, even with that there is some question as to its accuracy or meaningfulness: if you have 100 initial cases, and 2 deaths so far, then the CFR would seem to be 2%. If a further 4 people die from this group then the CFR you would think would be 6%, but if in that time there have been another 200 cases, you have 6 deaths and 300 cases, so the CFR is back to 2%.
To understand the true CFR you really need to look at the number of people who are diagnosed with a case, those who have died, and those who have recovered (at least past the risk of death). If in those initial 100 cases you have 2 who have died, 48 who have recovered past the risk of death, and 50 still unknown, then a more accurate CFR would seem to be 2/(48+2) I.e. 4%. If the remaining 50 all recover, then the CFR would be 2% based on that group. If the remaining group all die, however, then you would have a 52% CFR based on this sample.
Then you have the IFR which is the fatality rate from those infected, which needs to include the asymptomatic and those symptomatic cases not serious enough to have been confirmed as a case. And it is not known what the ratio of these is to confirmed cases. The IFR is going to be somewhat lower than the CFR for this coronavirus.
For diseases like Ebola I would imagine it to be unlikely that you will be infected and not have it registered as a case, so the IFR is probably the same as (or very close to) the CFR for that disease.
Well, if we knew everyone contracted the virus we would have better understanding of the asymptomatic infections, and those with mild symptoms that would not otherwise have been identified as a case. Thus we would have a better understanding of the IFR of the virus.
And if the CFR really is 2% then the IFR will likely be much less.
If it is like ordinary influenza and mutates then you will not only have a lot of deaths initially, but each year that it mutates as well (assuming that it does). Given how many people die from a virus that has a CFR or c.0.1%, a similar virus, spread in the same manner, with a CFR of 2% will likely kill 20x as many people. This assumes that it is as contagious as ordinary flu, and that people don’t alter their habits for this higher risk virus.
I would like to think, though, that more people will take flu-shots if that is the case, more people will have an improved hygiene regimen for hand washing etc, and by looking to reduce the chances of picking up the coronavirus the population will also reduce the chance of picking up ordinary flu.
So who knows, it may be that the overall mortality rate of this and the flu combined remains the same, only we’re needing to be more vigilant and hygiene conscious etc.
Even luckier it's not the Rage virus, the one that created all those zombies in World War Z.
I was thinking about that. Lebanon and Iran would be beyond $@!@ed and Hezbollah would be standing guard the whole time insisting on letting all the pilgrims and terrorists through.