COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US) (6 Viewers)

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I hate posting suspected cases, but this one looks like it's going to be confirmed.

 
China said today that 7 of the 17 deaths were from people with no previous health conditions so it appears to be more than just elderly and people with immune system issues.
 
China said today that 7 of the 17 deaths were from people with no previous health conditions so it appears to be more than just elderly and people with immune system issues.

The info (or lack thereof) is starting to piss me off - and it's starting to look really questionable. Case count is up modestly to 647 and fatalities have jumped a bit to 25. China comes out with this report that only old people are not surviving it (only one of the 17 was under 70 and he was 48 with a recent stroke and other health issues) - but that doesn't include the new deaths. But all in all, the numbers aren't necessarily alarming.

Meanwhile, there are images of overrun hospitals. There is various video of sick people on gurneys in the street. The city is being fogged with disinfectant. There are credible news accounts of doctors being out of supplies and overrun with patients. China is supposedly building a new structure for Wuhan patients that will be available in six days.

It doesn't make sense that there are still less than 650 cases. I'm guessing that they just don't have the capability to test everyone showing up with symptoms. So they're just trying to manage the situation, treat the symptoms. And based on reporting protocols, they're not going to report an unconfirmed case.
 
The info (or lack thereof) is starting to piss me off - and it's starting to look really questionable. Case count is up modestly to 647 and fatalities have jumped a bit to 25. China comes out with this report that only old people are not surviving it (only one of the 17 was under 70 and he was 48 with a recent stroke and other health issues) - but that doesn't include the new deaths. But all in all, the numbers aren't necessarily alarming.

Meanwhile, there are images of overrun hospitals. There is various video of sick people on gurneys in the street. The city is being fogged with disinfectant. There are credible news accounts of doctors being out of supplies and overrun with patients. China is supposedly building a new structure for Wuhan patients that will be available in six days.

It doesn't make sense that there are still less than 650 cases. I'm guessing that they just don't have the capability to test everyone showing up with symptoms. So they're just trying to manage the situation, treat the symptoms. And based on reporting protocols, they're not going to report an unconfirmed case.
I think we have to be careful with misinformation or information we don't have good context for.

How good is China's medical system? How many patients can they handle?

it is a bad respiratory illness. If you have bronchitis or pneumonia, shortness of breath and passing out isn't uncommon. Especially if untreated, or poorly treated.




WHO wouldn't recommend this, but China doesn't play and they like to make their people do what they want. In a way, I'm glad this originated in China, because they shut crap down. Might be overkill and it might bite them later, but we shall see...
 
I think we have to be careful with misinformation or information we don't have good context for.

How good is China's medical system? How many patients can they handle?

it is a bad respiratory illness. If you have bronchitis or pneumonia, shortness of breath and passing out isn't uncommon. Especially if untreated, or poorly treated.




WHO wouldn't recommend this, but China doesn't play and they like to make their people do what they want. In a way, I'm glad this originated in China, because they shut crap down. Might be overkill and it might bite them later, but we shall see...


It’s a fair point about information - and you have to be very discerning in the Twitter age, but we do have some quality information. The South China Morning Post (paper of record for Hong Kong) has fairly intense coverage. NYT and BBC are covering it in detail. I think the part about building a new infection unit has been confirmed.

This latest from BBC notes over 1,000 ‘suspected’ cases. I don’t know how the test works but If they’re having the make the test kits special for this novel virus, that means they probably don’t have huge supplies of it.


 
It’s a fair point about information - and you have to be very discerning in the Twitter age, but we do have some quality information. The South China Morning Post (paper of record for Hong Kong) has fairly intense coverage. NYT and BBC are covering it in detail. I think the part about building a new infection unit has been confirmed.

This latest from BBC notes over 1,000 ‘suspected’ cases. I don’t know how the test works but If they’re having the make the test kits special for this novel virus, that means they probably don’t have huge supplies of it.



I think China was covering it up until they realized they couldn't and now they are playing catch up. They can't come out and say there are more than 20,000 cases in Wuhan alone and still pretend like they've been transparent from the beginning. I mean, let's get real. 11 million people in Wuhan, 640 cases of the virus and of those 640 like 15 of them are from another country and 2 are American citizens? To make those statistics add up up there would have to be 35000 Americans in Wuhan, traveling to the US in a two week period. 6000 people a day travel from the US to China on an average day which would be 84,000 people in two weeks. This is happening at a time where travel is among the lowest of any time of the year. I can't imagine a scenario where almost half of them would end up in Wuhan when most Americans do not visit Wuhan when traveling to China. There are numerous cases of people catching the virus that had zero association with Wuhan or anyone else from the area. If I had to guess the real number is probably closer to 60,000 cases and the death count is probably well over 100. For China to shut down cities of that size, come out and publicly speak of transparency and cancel Chinese New Year celebrations they have to know either it's a major problem or they are overreacting to put on a show for the world that they are doing everything they can.

Sars happened before social media and the impacts of SARS was catastrophic on the economy. It put thousands of businesses into bankruptcy because people were scared to leave the house. I've been on the ground of disasters during the social media era and what I read on social media does not translate remotely close to what I see on the ground. It gets beyond absurd and the only thing that goes viral are the worst pictures/videos from the worst moments in the absolute worst areas. So I think we are seeing a combination of social media flaring combined with a panic that has set in among Chinese people who are being quarantined and have little trust of their government and they know the information they are getting is probably propaganda. So I would imagine the rumors on the ground are even worse than the rumors on social media. Best way to make people panic is to withhold information or give misleading information.

My best guess is this virus has spread out of control, there should be a health emergency issued and it appears as though this disease is extremely contagious and maybe even as contagious as the flu but it has a low mortality rate. I think the number of cases are far higher than what anyone is guessing but they mortality rate is probably lower than what is being suggested. Problem is, the Spanish Flu only had a mortality rate of 1-2% but it was super contagious and the incredible numbers created a very high death toll. Now that the virus has been identified I believe that people will show up to get treatment faster out of fear and it will result in an even lower death rate.

There is no way in hell this virus doesn't spread like wildfire since it's already been in damn near every major airline hub in the world. I think the only big questions at this point is how high will the final death rate be and will it undergo another major mutation. I think odds of a major mutation are extremely low but every case you have increases those odds just a little bit. I'm guessing in a few weeks we are looking at this thread with a worldwide outbreak but with considerably less panic.
 

What could go wrong....5 years later.

At this point there’s really no legitimate reason to find that anything other than an unfortunate coincidence. The virology is novel and substantially similar to other known coronavirus epidemics. It has all the same marks of a bat-originated (natural) coronavirus that mutated and spread to people.
 


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Yep, I saw it as well as a bunch of others of crowded hostpitals, people passing out or laying motionless on the street. Question is, how many times a day does this happen in a city of 11 million but it doesn't get attention because there is no virus? How many of the people crowding the hospital are in lines to get help because they have a cold or the flu and normally wouldn't even go to the doctor but they are piling in today because of fear? How many medical workers didn't show up today because of fear causing even more overcrowding? These are all questions that we don't really know the answer to because nobody trusts the Chinese Gov. Like with most cases, I'm guessing it's somewhere in the middle. Like I said, I think there is probably closer to 60k cases right now, a number 100x greater than the official number but truth is, we'll never know.
 
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