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The Spreading (And Potentially Deadly) Coronavirus Epidemic....


jonebone

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So, media tends to hype these things way out of control (see Swine Flu, every annual Flu discussion, etc.) but it feels like there's something a bit different about this one.  China is really staying tight lipped about this and putting a lot of areas on lockdown. 

The attached graphic is already outdated, I saw it yesterday when counts were around 17 deaths out of 500 infected.  Today news outlets are reported death count at 26 of about 887 infected.

What is new is that previously it was not thought to be airborne or through air to air human contact.  Now it is confirmed that it is. At first it was only animal (tainted snake meat is thorught to be the source) to human, then human to human through direct sharing (kissing, utensils, etc.) and now human to human through airborne cough or sneeze in a close vicinity.

China is clearly not being truthful with all of this and there's more to come.  Unfortunately my gut feeling leads me to believe this is only the beginning, though I sure hope not.

And for a history lesson, the 1918 Spanish Flu is one of the most deadly full blown epidemics on record. It killed about 50,000,000 to 100,000,000 people that was 3-5% of the entire world population at the time.  Modern medicine wouldn't allow such staggering death counts but the point being that you have to take rapidly spreading stuff seriously.  There's been some leaked rumour about this Coronavirus causing kidney failure which is NOT a typical effect from normal flu.  Something isn't right about this one...

coronavirus.PNG

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27 minutes ago, jonebone said:

 

And for a history lesson, the 1918 Spanish Flu is one of the most deadly full blown epidemics on record. It killed about 50,000,000 to 100,000,000 people that was 3-5% of the entire world population at the time.  Modern medicine wouldn't allow such staggering death counts but the point being that you have to take rapidly spreading stuff seriously.  

The 1918 outbreak had some other characteristics that made it stand out in comparison to other flu outbreaks.   One of the primary groups it killed was young healthy people (the first US outbreaks were in military bases in the states - where you would expect people to be in peak health). The flu initiated a very strong immune response and people with a strong immune system tended to have too strong a response which overtaxed the body.

It also spread extremely rapidly in an era when there was virtually no air travel.

You may be overestimating the ability of modern medicine to cope with  a widespread outbreak (of any disease) - it takes time to develop, produce and distribute a vaccine - assuming one can be discovered (if at all) in a practical time frame,  And there is an extremely limited number of total hospital beds to treat severe cases - especially if you have to institute isolation of sick individuals - and there is always a danger of medical personnel getting the very disease they are trying to deal with.

The other factor beyond the total number of deaths in a pandemic is the effect that those large number of deaths hitting in a short time frame would have,  Due to the increased sophistication of our modern society the effects of that many deaths would be more magnified  than they were in 1918  - and it is quite possible that such an outbreak today might kill a higher percentage than what occurred in 1918.

Governments (not just the Chinese one) will go to great lengths to avoid panicing the populace - so it is likely that if it becomes a larger problem it will be downplayed as much as possible with lots of platitudes about being the government(s) being able to cope with things.

With any luck it will be contained - until the next outbreak of something occurs. 

.

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I am certain that both numbers (infections and deaths) reported from China are falsified, as is any number/statistic of any kind that they provide.

If it manages to stay largely contained to China we will probably never know how bad or benign it ultimately was.

 

The particularly disconcerting part of this virus is that they can't just screen with thermal cameras at ports of entry, like is done in Asia for most other quarantined viruses.

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I only have room in my heart for one irrational fear of a global catastrophe. That has been, and always will be a really, REALLY big solar flair. 

That is to say, I'm not really worried.  Being an air borne illness is worrisome, but I'm also not opposed to just laying low and staying inside.

Even though a 3-5% death rate might sound high, keep in mind this is usually the very young or very old.  "Normal" people, with moderate-to-excellent immune systems tend to just get a bad case of the flu and survive what is just a "really bad experience".

Edited by RH
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12 minutes ago, RH said:

I only have room in my heart for one irrational fear of a global catastrophe. That has been, and always will be, really, REALLY big solar flair. 

That is to say, I'm not really worried.  Being an air borne illness is worrisome, but I'm also not opposed to just laying low and staying inside.

Even though a 3-5% death rate might sound high, keep in mind this is usually the very young or very old.  "Norma" people, with moderate-to-excellent immune systems tend to just get a bad case of the flu and survive what is just a "really bad experience".

Usually yes, but not always the case, especially with the Spanish Flu of 1918.  See @Wandering Tellurian response... it killed a lot of healthy people too.  The terminology is that is causes a "cytokine storm" that ravages the healthy immune system of young adults.  Worth a read or google.

This is how the death rates looked, notice the large spike in the typically healthy part of the population.  

File:W curve.png

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1 hour ago, arch_8ngel said:

I am certain that both numbers (infections and deaths) reported from China are falsified, as is any number/statistic of any kind that they provide.

If it manages to stay largely contained to China we will probably never know how bad or benign it ultimately was.

 

The particularly disconcerting part of this virus is that they can't just screen with thermal cameras at ports of entry, like is done in Asia for most other quarantined viruses.

It's highly likely that Coronavirus deaths in China are being under-reported, either through mis-identification or government suppression:

 

 

Edited by Teh_Lurv
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1 minute ago, Teh_Lurv said:

It's highly likely that Coronavirus deaths in China are being under-reported, either through mis-identification or government suppression:

https://twitter.com/DPAQreport/status/1220023852757147650

It is a near certainty.

It is also a near certainty that the actual infection rate is under-reported, because it strikes me as incredibly unlikely that China is willing to lock down a city of 20 million people over 900 illnesses.

So the ratio (death to infection) is completely unknowable since both numbers are almost certainly falsified.

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There are some indications that the 1918 flu actually existed in a milder form in 1916/17 and mutated into the more severe strain - and that anyone who had contracted the earlier form did not gain immunity to the later.   IIRC (it has been awhile since I read into the subject) there was a wave of a milder flu  in late 1917 and the more severe emergence came as a surprise.   

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10 hours ago, Wandering Tellurian said:

There are some indications that the 1918 flu actually existed in a milder form in 1916/17 and mutated into the more severe strain - and that anyone who had contracted the earlier form did not gain immunity to the later.   IIRC (it has been awhile since I read into the subject) there was a wave of a milder flu  in late 1917 and the more severe emergence came as a surprise.   

1918 must have been the worst year of the 20th century by far. Casualties in WW1 spiked again after the war became more mobile again on the Western Front, Russia was a total mess,  most of the rest of the world wasn't much better, and then 3-5% of the population dies from the Spanish flu.

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11 hours ago, Wandering Tellurian said:

There are some indications that the 1918 flu actually existed in a milder form in 1916/17 and mutated into the more severe strain - and that anyone who had contracted the earlier form did not gain immunity to the later.   IIRC (it has been awhile since I read into the subject) there was a wave of a milder flu  in late 1917 and the more severe emergence came as a surprise.   

Heh - getting addled - quoting myself.   Actually I wanted to correct a few things since I was going off memories of a few books I read a long time ago.   The first wave of infections occurred in the early months of 1918 and the second wave started in the late summer of 1918 (such timing was very unusual).  If you were fortunate enough (odd as it may sound) to get sick in the first wave (and survived - the first wave was not as deadly as the second) you were immune to the second wave.   So the second strain was very likely a variant of the first.

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1 minute ago, Estil said:

Please tell me that's just a video game map or something.  If this epidemic gets anywhere close to spreading that far we are in baaaaad trouble.

That would be Plague Inc.

Interestingly, the best strategy for full human infection in that game is to choose China as your starting location.

I'm not concerned about this. It looks to me like nothing more than what we saw with Bird Flu, SARS, Swine Flu, ect.

What does concern me is how the media, both social and otherwise, are going out of their way to make people panic.
 

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Well I hope we never have anything close to what we've seen in some movies/TV and so on.

Fun fact: The first ever movie me and my then future wife ever watched together (on her portable DVD player) was Outbreak.  How I am still able to remember that, as well as the fact that the first DVD I ever watched/rented (on my then new "fat" PS2) was Thirteen Days, don't ask.

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7 minutes ago, Estil said:

You mean in that game the object is to purposely start an infection/epidemic???  Wow don't let Joe Lieberman hear about that!!

Yeah dude, it's a great game. Maybe not the best to play right now if you're anxious about this whole thing though. Apparently they studied how global pandemics work and used that information to help make the game.

 

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The scariest thing to me about an epidemic in China is the fact that they pump their live stock full of antibiotics and vaccines, giving the diseases a chance to adapt to them and ultimately diminishing their overall effectiveness.  They're doing this with antibiotics we haven't even really started using yet because we're trying to stretch their lifespan as much as possible.  It's the epidemic equivalent of a ticking time bomb.

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1 hour ago, Jono1874 said:

Yeah dude, it's a great game. Maybe not the best to play right now if you're anxious about this whole thing though. Apparently they studied how global pandemics work and used that information to help make the game.

 

The tabletop adaptation of this game is very good as well!

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14 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Yeah it's scary, living in Taiwan and thus in relatively close proximity, but a doctor friend of mine (from the Philippines, living in Taiwan for 20+ years) sent me the following, which sort of puts things into perspective a bit I think.

 

 

IMG_20200123_074332.jpg

This is why I reserve my fears for solar flares. Outbreaks will never happen... Yeah. Yeeeeaaaah.

 

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