kiterboy said..
Well, it has a lower CFR than SARS did. Possibly, the jury is still out on that one.
But the transmission rate and stealth of it is what makes it definitely more dangerous.

More infectious, less deadly is what it looks like to me. And MASSIVELY over-represented in the media especially compared to SARS etc.

Social media. Worse that COVID19 for mind viruses.

Kamikuza said..

FormulaNova said..
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this makes it more serious than SARS was

It's objectively not more serious than SARS.

How is that? Not as serious if you already have them, but if you don't you are at more risk of catching Covid19t than SARS.

Even today, in the office, a colleague was saying that SARS was no big deal, but he is ignoring that scanners at airports were watching for people with higher than normal temperatures, because the symptoms were there before these people were able to pass on the virus.

Now, with Covid19, you can happily travel on the train, a bus, a plane, and pass on the virus, before you yourself know you have it. Therefore, less deadly if you are talking about the effects when you have it, but more likely for you to catch it? With any risk, you multiply these factors together to get the total risk, and the total will be higher with Covid19.

^^*wilson, jeeze the misinformation being spread on social media will cost lives.

Kamikuza said..

kiterboy said..
Well, it has a lower CFR than SARS did. Possibly, the jury is still out on that one.
But the transmission rate and stealth of it is what makes it definitely more dangerous.

More infectious, less deadly is what it looks like to me. And MASSIVELY over-represented in the media especially compared to SARS etc.

Social media. Worse that COVID19 for mind viruses.

It is because it's more infectious that makes it more deadly.

It already killed more people in it's first 8 weeks than SARS did in 8 months. How is that not more deadly?

Kamikuza said..
Again, many times more people have the flu, so despite how un-deadly it is, more people are dying daily that from COVID19.

Why do people keep saying "more people are dying daily from the flu"? Of course they are, the flu is everywhere. Forget how many people are dying from COVID19 today, take a look at the daily death rate and rate of infection and project the growth. In a week it will be 1,000 deaths a day, and it's going to get a lot higher than that if people keep ignoring it. The 500,000 that died from swine flu will be chicken feed. We're looking at many millions if people want to keep harping on about how we don't need to worry about it.

I'm curious, what daily death figure do we need to reach before people think this is a problem?

Kamikuza said..

kiterboy said..
It is because it's more infectious that makes it more deadly.

It already killed more people in it's first 8 weeks than SARS did in 8 months. How is that not more deadly?

More infectious but less likely to cause death, isn't it? The fatality rate of SARS etc is still higher, but less people actually contracted it.

Again, many times more people have the flu, so despite how un-deadly it is, more people are dying daily that from COVID19.

It's a game of numbers. Look at swine flu -- many times more people died from it, even though the fatality rate was so low...

www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2020/03/covid-19-charts-maps-200310163714493.html

You lost me when you brought up the seasonal flu. Talk about apples and oranges.
Check back in a month or two from now and let us know what you think then.

You do you bro.

I can't take credit for this explanation (copied from elsewhere), but it describes the situation really well:

"The crisis in northern Italy is what happens when a fast doubling rate meets a "threshold effect," where the character of an event can massively change once its size hits a certain threshold.

In this case, the threshold is things such as ICU beds. If the epidemic is small enough, doctors can provide respiratory support to the significant fraction of patients who develop complications, and relatively few will die. But once the number of critical patients exceeds the number of ventilators and ICU beds and other critical-care facilities, mortality rates spike.

A British health-care worker shared a message from a doctor in Italy, who alleged that covid-19 patients in their hospital who are over 65, or have complicating conditions, aren't even being considered for the most intensive forms of supportive treatment.

So everyone needs to understand a few things.

First, the virus is here, and it is spreading quickly, even though everything looks normal. Right now, the United States has more reported cases than Italy had in late February. What matters isn't what you can see but what you can't: the patients who will need ICU care in two to six weeks.

Second, this is not "a bad flu." It kills more of its hosts, and it will spread farther unless we take aggressive steps to slow it down, because no one is yet immune to this disease. It will be quite some time before the virus runs out of new patients.

There's an old brain teaser that goes like this: You have a pond of a certain size, and upon that pond, a single lilypad. This particular species of lily pad reproduces once a day, so that on day two, you have two lily pads. On day three, you have four, and so on. Now the teaser. "If it takes the lily pads 48 days to cover the pond completely, how long will it take for the pond to be covered halfway?" The answer is 47 days. Moreover, at day 40, you'll barely know the lily pads are there.

That grim math explains why so many people - including me - are worried about the novel coronavirus, which causes a disease known as covid-19. And why so many other people think we are panicking over nothing.

When something dangerous is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until it doesn't. In the early days of the Wuhan epidemic, when no one was taking precautions, the number of cases appears to have doubled every four to five days.

(Edited version of Washpo article https://www.washingtonpost.co?m/opinion?s/2020/03/10/coronavirus-what-matters-?isnt-what-you-can-see-what-you-cant/??)"

Harrow said..
Why do people keep saying "more people are dying daily from the flu"?

Because they are.

The point I was making (can't speak for others) is that it's a numbers game, and the numbers are being ...tickled. My personal opinion is that there's a lot of click-baitery going on, but I'm quite cynical so YMMV.

Once again:billions of people get the flu (regular seasonal flu) and while the mortality rate is 0.01% ... it still means hundreds of thousands of people die.SARS had an "infection rate" (R0, see below) similar to flu, but the mortality rate was 10%-- fewer people caught SARS but of those, a higher number died. Ebola has a 50% mortality rate, but a lower rate of transmission -- a smaller number of total people died.

So far, COVID19 is what, <3% mortality rate? But fewer than 100,000 people have it. And the mortality rate is -- just like flu -- dependent on the health of the subject.

R0 is the next thing to look at. It's not terrible, so far it's close to flu.
sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2020posts/how-scientists-quantify-outbreaks.html

It's just not as simple as is being prevented. It's possible that R0 may be even higher, with more people infected but only the sickest being diagnosed -- which would drive the mortality rate down even further.
fortune.com/2020/01/30/wuhan-coronavirus-transmission/

That's it. That's all I'm saying.

I think the reality of it will hit harder to some when it is their own dads, mums, grandparents that are in ICU.

Lets hope our relaxed " meh, just a flu virus" attitude doesn't see us in full lock down like Italy.

I hope we learn from Italy who are now saying they should have locked down earlier, that they left it too late.
Im glad Im not a doctor in an Italian hospital atm, 65 ICU beds and respirators and 300 who need them to survive picking who lives and dies everyday. That is their reality today........but its just a media hype, its not actually happening.

Lotta bowel actions can be louder than words too.

Is that why the dunny roll aisle is empty?

bobajob said..
Well its had a direct impact on me - The Pixies cancelled!

I thought they were already dead??

lotofwind said..
I think the reality of it will hit harder to some when it is their own dads, mums, grandparents that are in ICU.

Lets hope our relaxed " meh, just a flu virus" attitude doesn't see us in full lock down like Italy.

I hope we learn from Italy who are now saying they should have locked down earlier, that they left it too late.
Im glad Im not a doctor in an Italian hospital atm, 65 ICU beds and respirators and 300 who need them to survive picking who lives and dies everyday. That is their reality today........but its just a media hype, its not actually happening.

Well of course. But those are always the people most at risk which is why we should be getting vaccinations for the seasonal flu.

65 ICU beds? Really?
www.ft.com/content/34f25036-62f4-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68

Italy -- older, and smokers. Same as Wuhan, plus more respiratory illnesses. There's a pattern there...
abcnews.go.com/Health/number-coronavirus-cases-rises-italy-hit-hard/story?id=69513697

lotofwind said..
was talking of a single hospital in Italy.
Like the biggest hospital in Melbourne has 45 ICU beds, If they get 100 people who need one to live????

Okay. Which one?

So work backwards -- how many people would need to have caught it to create enough critical cases to fill those beds? And how many other hospitals are there?

We still could do something , to make virus outbreak looks marginal.
What about small nuclear conflict somewhere, to start with?
With politician closing now trave; between continents, countries shutting down whole industries we are already not fat away from the worst sci-fi predictions.
By comparison, Nuclear weapon are already there, but don't pose any danger if not used.
Virus scare also by itself more harmless then introduced measured to stop the progress,One may observe that all those measures are totally useless as pandemic is going their own path regardless, but our actions only excarberate damage.Few day ago Turkish premier just wiped 2500 young Syrian soldiers in single day amd world didn't even blinked. Soldiers that only defended their own country on their own soil.
Few thousands virus victims may seems a lot but in the same time more people died in car accidents around the world.Planned military conflicts around Iran or North Korea are going to wipe few millions within one day.

lotofwind said..
was talking of a single hospital in Italy.
Like the biggest hospital in Melbourne has 45 ICU beds, If they get 100 people who need one to live????

We could easy convert our empty hotels and apartment buildings into temporary hospitals.
Gold Coast alone could handle few hundred thousands patients in empty now appartements.
Simple view of ocean from your window could heal .