2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2407868 28-Jan-2020 00:06

networkn:

To give some perspective, 1700 people die a week in China from the "regular" Flu....

This is probably a true figure - but it's not China's official figure.

Just some quick back of envelope calculation / guesstimate, that's still pretty close to standard flu mortality rates of about 1 per 1000 cases.

mattwnz

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#2407871 28-Jan-2020 00:40

Imo that should be restricting travel and preventing people coming in from China. But money talks. I hope it doesn't become another swine flu where it comes in and they just let it spread. The problem with this virus is how it mutated because it wasn't that long ago when they said that there hadn't been any human to human transmission

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#2407886 28-Jan-2020 07:45

As a parent I'm quite concerned about my kids starting high school on Friday, The school has a significant population of international students. I'm glad to see 4 schools in Auckland asking those that traveled to infected countries recently to skip the 1st week

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#2407888 28-Jan-2020 07:55

And now there's an unconfirmed claim of the first case in NZ: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/408279/wuhan-coronavirus-unconfirmed-reports-of-infected-person-in-queenstown

tdgeek

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#2407893 28-Jan-2020 08:05

jonathan18:

And now there's an unconfirmed claim of the first case in NZ: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/408279/wuhan-coronavirus-unconfirmed-reports-of-infected-person-in-queenstown

Quite bizarre, no one seems to know anything but its been reported that someone has the virus at a specific hotel. heard through the grapevine? Maybe someone has a cold, and they have some vague contact with someone from China, so its made the news

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#2407896 28-Jan-2020 08:16

tdgeek:

jonathan18:

And now there's an unconfirmed claim of the first case in NZ: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/408279/wuhan-coronavirus-unconfirmed-reports-of-infected-person-in-queenstown

Quite bizarre, no one seems to know anything but its been reported that someone has the virus at a specific hotel. heard through the grapevine? Maybe someone has a cold, and they have some vague contact with someone from China, so its made the news

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case.

Anyone with a head cold that knows someone from China will be "Patient Zero" in the press at this point in time.

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Fred99

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#2407926 28-Jan-2020 09:46

jonathan18:

And now there's an unconfirmed claim of the first case in NZ: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/408279/wuhan-coronavirus-unconfirmed-reports-of-infected-person-in-queenstown

More from RNZ:

Director of Public Health, Dr Caroline McElnay, told Checkpoint health authorities were preparing for the arrival of the illness in New Zealand, as there is a high likelihood of cases here.

"We've been looking at our risk assessment, and I think it is fair to say that… there is a high likelihood that we will see a case here in New Zealand, and that's what we're planning for."

She said it was not as infectious as other viruses like measles or seasonal influenza, and the fatality rate is around three to four percent. The mortality rate for the SARS virus was 10 percent.

"This virus doesn't have a particularly high mortality rate and it's not particularly transmissible, but of course what we're seeing is a number of cases popping up across [China] and that comes back to our assessment of risk.

I'm not comfortable with this response. A mortality rate hasn't been confirmed - if it is "three of four percent" it's horrific, and saying it's "not particularly transmissible" flies in the face of what many overseas experts are stating.

While it's true to say that measles has a very high r0 of 12-18 (one infected person would be expected to pass on the infection to 12-18 persons - in a population with zero immunity), it's an invalid comparison - because we don't have a population with zero immunity to measles. What we've seen with measles is an epidemic because herd resistance dropping below 90% due to anti-vaxxers and the past protocol of giving only one vaccination instead of two, so with ~10% of the population susceptible and such a high R0, then limited epidemics happened in NZ.
Seasonal flu is also not a good comparison, R0 may be similar to Wuhan virus, but there's immunity or partial immunity in the population, either due to past exposure to the same strain, due to flu vaccine, and possibly due to past exposure or vaccination with similar strains - which may provide cross-immunity. There are also anti-virals for flu available - which may work, and mortality rate is much lower. (10-50 times lower?)

There is presumably zero herd immunity to Wuhan virus, r0 is supposedly similar to "spanish flu" for which herd immunity would be much lower than for seasonal flu today, Spanish flu apparently infected 1/3 of the world population.

Containment measures might work, then again they might not.

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#2407944 28-Jan-2020 10:27

Fred99:

I'm not comfortable with this response. A mortality rate hasn't been confirmed - if it is "three of four percent" it's horrific, and saying it's "not particularly transmissible" flies in the face of what many overseas experts are stating.

I'm assuming that either

1. They have more information than is available to the public (doubt it..)

2. They are downplaying the severity and playing a numbers game because they look small, despite those numbers actually being cause for great concern - in order to prevent panic

3. They are incompetent.

Either way, what ya gonna do? Keep an eye on the situation, keep your emergency supplies up to date, continue on with life..

Beccara

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#2407952 28-Jan-2020 10:37

It's still early days, Human to human transmission outside of China hasn't been seen yet. Keep in mind that high R0's typically burn out far smaller than low R0 flu's.

SARS for example is looking to have the same R0 as this virus and infected 8-9k people, Killing ~700 with a fatality rate of 9%. Compare this with the 2009 Swine flu with it's R0 of 1.2-1.6 that infected 10-20% of the global population and killed upto 500k, A fatality rate of below 0.02%. SARS was also a Coronavirus so I feel it's a fairly good comparison

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#2407965 28-Jan-2020 10:45

Beccara:

As a parent I'm quite concerned about my kids starting high school on Friday, The school has a significant population of international students. I'm glad to see 4 schools in Auckland asking those that traveled to infected countries recently to skip the 1st week

This has also been stressing us out a bit as our sons school has a very large presence of international students and we were considering keeping him home for another 2 weeks, they have however just sent an email email containing the below.

"We will require that any of our school families who have been to, or had a family member in any part of mainland China, must not come on to our school campus for at least 14 days after their arrival back in New Zealand."

On another note, my wifes uncle is trapped in a city that neighbors Wuhan that has also been locked down he said they are running out of food and water there, there is no bottled water left in the city and they are having to compromise with the likes of juices, coke, red bulls etc.. the army is everywhere and he said said there is a lot of "fear" in the air.

Fred99

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#2407966 28-Jan-2020 10:48

Beccara:

It's still early days, Human to human transmission outside of China hasn't been seen yet.

Yes it has. Confirmed in Vietnam (son of first confirmed case) and possibly in Canada (spouse of first confirmed case).

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Beccara

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#2407967 28-Jan-2020 10:50

I haven't seen anything to confirm their lab results, just that they had fevers

edit:// Best I can find is this quote from WHO " This suggests an instance of human to human
transmission that occurred in Vietnam."

Fred99

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#2407968 28-Jan-2020 10:52

Beccara:

I haven't seen anything to confirm their lab results, just that they had fevers

Vietnam: https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/vietnam-confirms-first-acute-pneumonia-cases-in-saigon-4046310.html

Canada: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-canada-idUSKBN1ZQ1NS

Beccara

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#2407971 28-Jan-2020 11:03

Interesting, I wonder if the WHO sitrep today will conclude H2H transmission. Still all signs are pointing to a SARS like outbreak rather than a 2009 swing flu like outbreak, It's just too lethal at the moment.

The only scary thing about it right now is the whispers of being contagious during it's symptom-free incubation period

Fred99

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#2408013 28-Jan-2020 11:12

WHO explained that it had stated "incorrectly" in its previous reports on Thursday, Friday and Saturday that the global risk was "moderate".

27 Jan 2020 11:00PM(Updated: 28 Jan 2020 03:43AM)

GENEVA: The World Health Organisation, which has sometimes been criticised for its handling of past disease outbreaks, admitted an error on Monday (Jan 27) in its risk assessment of China's deadly virus.

The Geneva-based UN agency said in a situation report late on Sunday that the risk was "very high in China, high at the regional level and high at the global level."

In a footnote, the WHO explained that it had stated "incorrectly" in its previous reports on Thursday, Friday and Saturday that the global risk was "moderate".

Link
(Edit - found on the WHO site PDF - see bottom of P1 and footnote)

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