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Medicine

Coronavirus Confirmed Cases Worldwide Climb To Over 100,000 (theguardian.com) 217

Posted by msmash from the where-things-stand dept.
The number of coronavirus cases has reached 100,276, with 55,694 recovered and 3,404 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering. From a report: The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, said it looked like the UK would face substantial disruption due to the coronavirus. He said: "It looks like there will a substantial period of disruption where we have to deal with this outbreak." When asked what help would be given to businesses struggling due to the outbreak, Johnson said next week's budget presented "a big opportunity" for the country. He added: "You will be seeing in the budget next week all sorts of ways in which we want to be using this moment, the UK coming out of the European Union. All the opportunities that we have -- but also dealing with this particular challenge, coronavirus, and set in the general low growth the world is seeing -- to make some fantastic investments in the long term."
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Coronavirus Confirmed Cases Worldwide Climb To Over 100,000 More

Coronavirus Confirmed Cases Worldwide Climb To Over 100,000

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  • Sharpie? (Score:4, Funny)

    by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @09:01AM (#59802818)

    I have a hunch those numbers aren't right. Does anyone have a sharpie I can use to fix the diagram?

    • Coronavirus mortality rate likely to drop (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sycodon ( 149926 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @09:22AM (#59802870)

      Experts warn that the figure from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus comes full of caveats and is likely to change as more people get tested and undergo treatment for the virus. [thehill.com]

      "I think it's lower because we are missing mild cases," said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "We should be preparing for [the worst] cases, it's true, but also going out to see what the real number is."

      They will apparently need a sharpie to correct that 3.4%

      • Re:Coronavirus mortality rate likely to drop (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @09:33AM (#59802932)

        Even if it's corrected down to 1% (incorrect by a power of 3) it's still a factor of 10 higher than the normal flu (0.1%).

        So instead of 18-46k deaths we'll "just" have 180k-460k (in the US), "no big deal".

        • Re:Coronavirus mortality rate likely to drop (Score:5, Insightful)

          by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @09:40AM (#59802970) Homepage

          That's only assuming the same infection rate as the flu. The infection rate might be 10-fold too because people don't always show symptoms. It could be 1-3 million in the US.

          • Re:Coronavirus mortality rate likely to drop (Score:5, Insightful)

            by atrex ( 4811433 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @10:37AM (#59803232)
            Other reasons it may be significantly higher in the US:
            • The US doesn't have guaranteed paid sick leave and people either can't afford to take time off unpaid or are at risk of losing their jobs if they do so.
            • Millions of people don't have health insurance coverage.
            • People with health insurance coverage don't go to the doctor because they are afraid of surprise medical bills.

            It's all well and good for the Microsofts of the world to announce massive work from home plans for their tech workers, but does anyone honestly think the likes of Amazon Warehouses, Walmart, McDonalds, Burger King, etc are going to close their doors and tell their service workers to stay home unless they're forced to by massive quarantines and even if they do, how are the employees going to afford it? Temporary unemployment benefits don't kick in until a couple weeks after people are laid off and half the country can't afford a $400 emergency and this is especially true of those working in the service industry.

          • Re:Coronavirus mortality rate likely to drop (Score:5, Informative)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @12:40PM (#59803660) Homepage Journal

            That's only assuming the same infection rate as the flu. The infection rate might be 10-fold too because people don't always show symptoms. It could be 1-3 million in the US.

            On the other hand, if people don't show symptoms, then we also don't know the actual infection rate, so the 3% CFR might be much higher than reality. It is quite possible that nearly every human being in Wuhan (11.08 million) has already been infected, which would yield a CFR of 0.03% — only slightly higher than seasonal flu.

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by Joce640k ( 829181 )

          Even if it's corrected down to 1% (incorrect by a power of 3) it's still a factor of 10 higher than the normal flu (0.1%).

          Says who?

          https://www.globalresearch.ca/... [globalresearch.ca]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Remember that the flu has both a vaccine available and there is a lot of experience with treating it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Estimates go down to as low as 0.3%. There are likely a lot of light and probably even asymptomatic cases and nobody has any idea how many of these are there. That testing at mass-scale is not possible is a key factor here. So only people that actually have strong symptoms are tested and some people that were exposed to known cases. But the regular flu and just the common cold are going around as well at this time.

        • Re:Coronavirus mortality rate likely to drop (Score:4, Interesting)

          by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @10:03AM (#59803084)
          The WHO seems to think [who.int] that asymptomatic cases are rare, and further that they rarely *stay* asymptomatic. And we already know that 80% of symptomatic cases are mild. Those are not the ones that should worry us, of course, aside from transmission to yet-uninfectedpeople

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Yes, they _think_ that. They do not know. And it is their task to make sure this thing is not underestimated and countries prepare for it. Hence their estimates are very likely an upper bound, but they may also vastly over-estimate things here. They need to do that because they are in a bind: If they publish low estimates (or even more average ones) people will be less careful and the medical infrastructure might get overwhelmed in places. That would drive the death-rate up. For preparations, you need an up

          • Re:Coronavirus mortality rate likely to drop (Score:4, Informative)

            by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @04:57PM (#59804772)

            The WHO seems to think [who.int] that asymptomatic cases are rare, and further that they rarely *stay* asymptomatic. And we already know that 80% of symptomatic cases are mild. Those are not the ones that should worry us, of course, aside from transmission to yet-uninfectedpeople

            The report says, "People with COVID-19 generally develop signs and symptoms, including mild respiratory symptoms and fever. ... Asymptomatic infection has been reported, but the majority of the relatively rare cases who are asymptomatic on the date of identification/report went on to develop disease. The proportion of truly
            asymptomatic infections is unclear but appears to be relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission."

            Of course, this is a guess. Since testing is currently severely constrained, the observability by experts is limited to only those that either have symptoms or have reason to suspect infection. That's why the report states that "The proportion of truly asymptomatic infections is unclear", because there is no scientific way for the experts to test or model their theory. They are hypothesizing at this point.

        • Re:Coronavirus mortality rate likely to drop (Score:4, Informative)

          by cnaumann ( 466328 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @11:27AM (#59803438)

          We do have some idea. Everyone on The Diamond Princess was exposed, everyone was tested, and we know how many died.

          On that ship there were 3711 passengers and crew. 705 contracted the virus (19%). Of 705, six people died, all over age 70. That is a 0.85% death rate overall (About 1 in 120).

          This may be a reasonable upper bounds for the disease.

          • The rate of deaths to diagnoses is irrelevant to the general population unless we test the full population as occurred for Diamond Princess passengers.

            The rate of deaths to all passengers may be more relevant however.

          • Everyone on the Diamond Princess was the kind of person who 'goes on cruises.'

            Evacuate all the 'cruisers' to quarantine islands, then burn the 'cruise' plague ships to the waterline and scuttle the hulks.

        • Re:Coronavirus mortality rate likely to drop (Score:4, Insightful)

          by thereitis ( 2355426 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @11:37AM (#59803464) Journal

          This article [slate.com] states

          A quarantined boat is an ideal—if unfortunate—natural laboratory to study a virus. Many variables normally impossible to control are controlled. We know that all but one patient boarded the boat without the virus. We know that the other passengers were healthy enough to travel. We know their whereabouts and exposures. While the numbers coming out of China are scary, we don’t know how many of those patients were already ill for other reasons.

          And concludes with:

          On the Diamond Princess, six deaths have occurred among the passengers, constituting a case fatality rate of 0.85 percent. Unlike the data from China and elsewhere, where sorting out why a patient died is extremely difficult, we can assume that these are excess fatalities—they wouldn’t have occurred but for SARS-CoV-2. The most important insight is that all six fatalities occurred in patients who are more than 70 years old. Not a single Diamond Princess patient under age 70 has died. If the numbers from reports out of China had held, the expected number of deaths in those under 70 should have been around four.

          The mainstream media seems to be having a field day amping up the fear (that's how they get eyeballs and revenue, after all). Stock short sellers are making billions [msn.com] over the market's slump.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        I think it is higher due to countries not wanting to report the truth. There, we have dueling "think"s so the result is a wash.

        Just admit you don't know squat about the real rates, we have estimates and attempting paint rosier or blacker pictures is ridiculous.

  • seems like 100,000 /. front page stories already.

    virophages will fix it soon, eliminate Monday mornings and Friday afternoons...

  • Means failure is assured, from his track-record. At least it is predictable...

  • The official numbers are difficult to believe because every country seems to have their own interests in mind when it comes to reporting real numbers.
    While the reasons differ between countries, it all leads to the same outcome of bad information.

    I had some hope that once it started in the US, we would be able to get a better picture of what the REAL Infection and Mortality rates were since China
    and Iran are basically doing everything in their power to hide it. ( Can't let their own people think their Gove

    • I had some hope that once it started in the US, we would be able to get a better picture of what the REAL Infection and Mortality rates were since China and Iran are basically doing everything in their power to hide it.

      To compute accurate statistics on mortality you need a lot of cases that have run their course, with the patients dead or recovered. This takes weeks.

      As of today (per worldometer [worldometers.info]) the US has 239 known cases, a quarter of them discovered in the last two days.

      Want accurate numbers of something

  • Like most virus their infection rate slow or stall once we reach spring/summer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Like most virus their infection rate slow or stall once we reach spring/summer.

      Quite probably. That is one of the reasons the experts try to slow this down as much as possible. The seasonal flu (actually there is always several variants) usually gets basically wiped out when summer comes.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The have spring/summer in the South hemisphere. It does not slow down.

    • Like most virus their infection rate slow or stall once we reach spring/summer.

      I also think this will be the case.

      However, I read one interview where a virologist said they thought the virus would come back much stronger next winter (October/November), so everyone should probably try to prepare for that...

      It could be the case by then we have a vaccine despite some saying such a thing is 16 months away. There already seem to be some promising developments on a vaccine already.

  • Compared to how many for the flu, or the cold?

    Also: Compared death tolls?

    And: Death tolls, harm and damage purely due to the anxiety epidemic causing people to overreact and panic, in a way that would have been unthinkable except in the lowest educated of places on the planet?

    I predict it's gonna look grim for the perpeteators of this for-profit act of global terrorism and the ill. And I'm not talking about the virus or non-mental illness.

    • Compared death tolls?

      The numbers in the summary literally tell you this. 3.4/55.7 ~ 6.1% It doesn't mention the flu fatality rate, but it's around 0.1%. So this thing is 60 times more fatal than the flu.

      Death tolls, harm and damage purely due to the anxiety epidemic causing people to overreact and panic

      There is no such thing as over-reacting when the reaction is justified. A strong reaction is very, very, very justified in this case. People who call this a "panic" are actually themselves a threat to public safety.

      You are proposing denial. You may start claiming that you are not proposing denial, but you are.

      The only

      • That is such bullshit. It's like the US death rate - highly inflated because it hit an old folks home, and because it hit China first.

        The death rate for people under 60 is very low, and it's much higher for those over 60 (or otherwise ill). I am not saying it's OK for the elderly or the immunocompromised to die at all, and if you are one of them then this should be pretty worrying. However, hording toilet paper and shitting yourself are pretty irrational responses.

    • Compared to how many for the flu, or the cold?

      I'm curious why you think that's a valid comparison? The flu and cold have been around a long time, so the number of cases is at its asymptote. In contrast the number of known Coronavirus cases is shooting up with no ceiling in sight.

  • Some Data Perspective (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @11:00AM (#59803322) Homepage Journal

    41% of all cases of COVID-19 that have been reported are *still active*. We are at what Winston Churchill would call "the end of the beginning". Expect the overall mortality rate to fall as it reaches countries more prepared for it, but also for mortality rate to vary between countries according to *how well* they prepare and respond, and other local factors.

    For example Germany reported its first case on January 18, Italy on January 30; this may not reflect the precise arrival of the virus in either of those countries, but in any event the progress of the diseases has gone dramatically different in each of those countries. Italy now has 3858 cases and 148 deaths for a 3.8% death rate so far, with 85% of cases still active. Germany, with about 1/3 more population, has had only 578 cases with zero fatalities, but with 98% of cases still active.

    The differences in recovery rate and earlier detection may well be due to better testing in Germany, where the WHO tests was originally developed. For whatever reason, the trajectory this has taken in Germany is very different than in Italy

    3 weeks ago: 3 cases in Italy, 13 in Germany
    2 weeks ago: 21 cases in Italy plus 1 death, 16 in Germany
    1 week ago: 889 cases in Italy plus 21 deaths, 60 in Germany
    Today: 3858 cases in Italy plus 234 deaths, 578 in Germany with still no deaths.

    When this is over with the situation may look very different, but for now it looks like the disease is proceeding very differently in Germany and Italy. Some of this may be due to circumstances out of Italy's control (e.g. the higher incidence of winter season tourism).

    In the US, I would expect considerable disparities between states, and between populations within states. This reflects disparities in circumstances, health care delivery systems, and government public health agencies. There are also disparities in *access* to health care between states; the uninsured rate in the United States runs from a low of 2% to over 10% depending on state. This may only affect mortality rates, it may also affect transmission rates.

  • There are direct deaths known by testing, other deaths unknown but potentially COVID-19 , which seems two strains a stronger L and milder S, can get both. Then there are indirect deaths due to COVID-19 over utilization of health care so folks die of other causes as well as unemployed. Economically will be devastating to many. Not just the sick but laid off workers.
  • This comes out to the death rate of ~6.1% (3.4/55.7). That's twice the 3% that the people, who think there is nothing to worry about, are insisting on.

  • Come on Slashdot (Score:3)

    by Xenna ( 37238 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @02:38PM (#59804124)

    You guys are smart. You must realize that the biggest danger of this virus is that it will overrun the medicalsystem. No nation has enough hospital beds, ICU units and ventilators to deal with the number of patients Corona is going to throw at them.

    This will lead to a much larger death rate than the 1 or 3.4% people are now talking about because up to 20% of the Corona will require hospital care, ICU & medical ventilators of which we have pathetically few.

    In this pandemic, it's not the quality of health care that will make a difference, but the quantity.

    Be very afraid and prepare yourself for large scale disruptions.

    Oh, and try not to get infected.
    This is not just a flu.

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