Coronavirus: Death toll climbs to 106 as China tightens measures

[Warpy]

Source: BBC

The death toll from the new coronavirus now stands at 106, with the number of infections almost doubling in a day.

The number of total cases confirmed by China rose to 4,515 as of 27 January, up from 2,835 a day earlier.

Japan is sending a plane to Wuhan to evacuate its citizens, as efforts to repatriate foreign nationals from the city at the epicentre of the outbreak gather pace.

The virus has spread across China and to at least 16 countries globally. S

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51275896

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So far hysteria is outpacing the disease, but not by much. It's not looking good.

[lapfog_1]

1. Given the rate of infection

if the containment fails... how long before people not in China are at risk and what is the risk?

Given that I am one of those most likely to get a more serious case (older with a number of pre-existing conditions)... I am just asking.

I did some simple calculations (which are likely way off), but within 300 days... half of the world's population could be infected ( daily compound rate of 58% starting with 4500 cases ) but this assumes the same current ratio of interactions between carriers and non-infected... which, of course, can't be true as the infections spread.

Anyway, we haven't seen a real pandemic in quite a while.

[nitpicker]

3. The last time there was a recognized pandemic

The H1N1 of 2009:

Wikipedia: "It is estimated that 11–21% of the global population contracted the illness, and 151,000–579,000 died.[4] "

[lapfog_1]

8. yeah 11 years is a while...

and why such large variability with the ascribed death count?

150,000 to 579,000?

[jberryhill]

9. Because many deaths are not from "the flu"

But get rolled into total pneumonia deaths.

[Squinch]

12. Really, we have no clue how many people die of flu each year. The only thing that seems evident

is that it's much less than that "total of flu and pneumonia" number that people always throw around as flu deaths.

[jberryhill]

13. How many people die of smoking?

Smoking increases the risk of mortality from lung cancer, throat cancer, various lung diseases and heart disease, as well as dying in a home fire. There are people who drop their cigarette while driving and die in a car crash.

What statisticians are good at doing is isolating the excess deaths from those causes which are likely due to smoking.

But no one actually dies from “smoking” either.

[Squinch]

21. No. When a little old lady falls and breaks her hip and gets pneumonia in the hospital and dies of

it, that is included in that yearly "flu deaths" number. It has nothing to do with the flu.

[Coventina]

6. The containment has already failed.

Here's the stat that worries me:

The outcomes on the Johns Hopkins page list 107 dead and 63 recovered.

[nitpicker]

2. Live thread from The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/live/2020/jan/28/coronavirus-first-death-in-beijing-as-us-issues-new-china-travel-warning-live-updates

[nitpicker]

4. From The Guardian live thread

3h ago
06:03


There are a few interesting sites tracking the increase in coronavirus cases. This one from John’s Hopkins university in the US is one of the best. It clearly shows the steep rise in confirmed infections each day in the past week, from around 280 on 20 January, to over 4,500 today.

[nitpicker]

5. Link to the Johns Hopkins tracking website

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

[lapfog_1]

7. thank you

nice... I have a home game on my Ipad called "Plague, Inc." and I entered as much data as I could (speculating a bit on some of the items like transmission vectors, symptoms, etc) and the result was both fascinating and frightening.

The game has had the help of the CDC in constructing the science of pandemics... obviously since you can quickly mutate the virus in the game you can make it spread very fast with complete lethal results.

When modeling this coronavirus, I didn't have it mutate at all.

Oh, you would be surprised at how well the world map in the game looks like the world map at this John Hopkins site.


Last postscript - if the next 24 hour report shows 7,000+ infections... that would be right in line with what my game predicts and would mean that we are at near 0% containment despite various places around the world shutting down transportation to/from mainland China, etc.

[icymist]

20. 0% containment doesn't take into account the incubation period

of up to two weeks. What we're seeing right now are people who probably got infected weeks ago. Those containment measures may very well be working. Here's a good article, an opinion piece, I found today in DW news:
https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-coronavirus-paranoia-is-outpacing-its-actual-danger/a-52179519

[dewsgirl]

10. Steve Lookner, the guy from Agenda Free TV on YT,

does a live stream for hours, every night on the virus. Which is great, since MSM is still trying to ignore it, for the most part. The researchers at HK University, think the number of infected is closer to 44,000 and that was two days ago, I imagine it's higher now.

[Squinch]

11. 106 dead, 63 recovered. Yeah, it's all just hysteria.

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

[3Hotdogs]

14. Significance of this would need to take into account the number of days needed for full recovery.

You might die in one day but be sick for 10 days or longer.

[Squinch]

22. So nothing to worry about. Not at all. People are just being hysterical.

[yaesu]

15. Case-fatality rate of 2.3% compared to 2.5% for the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, pretty close. nt

[Baclava]

16. Beijing, a city of 22 million, now in quarantine lockdown, empty streets, pics show ghost town

Creepy, ITEOTWAWKI!!!

[Talitha]

17. Do we need to worry about all the stuff being imported from China?

I imagine the virus can live on product surfaces, right?

[Baclava]

18. Flu Viruses cannot live outside the body for long

Flu viruses capable of being transferred to hands and causing an infection can survive on hard surfaces for 24 hours. Infectious flu viruses can survive on tissues for only 15 minutes.

Like cold viruses, infectious flu viruses survive for much shorter periods on the hands. After 5 minutes the amount of flu virus on hands falls to low levels. Flu viruses can also survive as droplets in the air for several hours.

https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/infections/how-long-do-bacteria-and-viruses-live-outside-the-body/

[Talitha]

19. Whew... thanks!!

[lapfog_1]

23. They also don't do well when exposed to ultraviolet light

or dry conditions.

I wouldn't worry about things shipped via cargo ships...

I might worry a bit about small packages air freighted over night.

[Warpy]

24. Most pathogens are killed by UV light

and some are killed by drying. Smallpox, for instance, can be kept intact on surfaces in carefully controlled laboratory conditions only for a matter of hours, it has to be grown in human tissue. HIV is also a very fragile virus, which is why no one has caught it from a toilet seat and transmission by needle stick is only three tenths of a percent.

All I could find about it concerned the SARS and MERS outbreaks of some years ago. Apparently one strain did survive drying on surfaces but was killed by the usual hospital disinfectants. This bug is a different strain from those, and I'm afraid its survival when dried is unknown, or at least unpublished.

Since the outbreak is so tiny, relatively speaking, I wouldn't be paranoid yet. It appears to be transmitted only by close contact with infected and symptomatic people. We just won't know more for a week or two, like whether or not sharing an airplane for 8 hours or more with someone who is infected but not symptomatic is adequate for transmission.

[Talitha]

25. Thanks - time will tell, I suppose.

I'm not paranoid, just thinking out loud.