Corona Virus - How bad is it going to be?

[bornontheblue]

Do we have any infectious disease experts on the board? 

I think we are headed into a recession, probably mild one. International commerce is significantly affected by this. 

[bsu_alum9]

There's talk of cancelling the Tokyo Olympics if there is still an outbreak in May.

80,000 cases and 2700 deaths so far.  If it hit the US at that same rate it would infect about 19,000 with around 600 deaths (I'd assume US death rate is less than China due to superior treatment and not being the guinea pig on how to treat it.) 

The fear still may have quite an impact on the economy due to shutting down travel and being overly cautious. But I doubt it alone could cause a serious global recession.

[CV147]

2 hours ago, bsu_alum9 said:

There's talk of cancelling the Tokyo Olympics if there is still an outbreak in May.

80,000 cases and 2700 deaths so far.  If it hit the US at that same rate it would infect about 19,000 with around 600 deaths (I'd assume US death rate is less than China due to superior treatment and not being the guinea pig on how to treat it.) 

The fear still may have quite an impact on the economy due to shutting down travel and being overly cautious. But I doubt it alone could cause a serious global recession.

You can't trust the Chinese on those numbers. They only counted those they could test before they died. And test kits were sparse.

It's probably 20 times more deadly than the flu, at least almost as infectious as the flu, and a vaccine for wide-scale distribution is at best around a year out. My guess is it's going to make headlines throughout the summer.

[CV147]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/25/health/coronavirus-pandemic-frieden/index.html

Quote

Former CDC director: A coronavirus pandemic is inevitable. What now?

Covid-19 will become a pandemic. We don't yet know how severe it will be, nor do we know if the virus will spread to all continents, but it's already spreading widely in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran and elsewhere -- and thousands of undetected and infectious patients have been and continue to travel around the world.

This is unprecedented. Other than influenza, no other respiratory virus has been tracked from emergence to continuous global spread. The last moderately severe influenza pandemics were in 1957 and 1968; each killed more than a million people around the world. Although we are far more prepared than in the past, we are also far more interconnected, and many more people today have chronic health problems that make viral infections particularly dangerous.

 

[I am Ram]

5 hours ago, bsu_alum9 said:

80,000 cases and 2700 deaths so far.  If it hit the US at that same rate it would infect about 19,000 with around 600 deaths (I'd assume US death rate is less than China due to superior treatment and not being the guinea pig on how to treat it.) 

I don't think it's possible to use the Chinese numbers to predict outcomes in the US. Unlike China, which has been able to contain the vast majority of cases at its origin, the virus in the US will spread (or is currently spreading) from various ports of entry. The US doesn't have the same capabilities of tracking and controlling the movement of its population; under normal circumstances that's a good thing obviously, but it does make containing the spread of disease much harder. Also, many sick people simply won't stay home because they can't afford to. Or they won't seek treatment because they can't afford to. We see this every year with the seasonal flu, and we saw it during the swine flu epidemic.

On the other hand, our population density is much lower, communication between agencies is probably better, and as you said, we have the advantage of learning from China's experience. I think when it comes to predictions, we're pretty much flying blind at this point. 

[IanforHeisman]

On one hand it worries me, on the other doesn’t the flu kill like 500k every year? 

[soupslam1]

37 minutes ago, IanforHeisman said:

On one hand it worries me, on the other doesn’t the flu kill like 500k every year? 

You are correct world wide there were 650,000 deaths. The US had about 15,000

[thelawlorfaithful]

43 minutes ago, IanforHeisman said:

On one hand it worries me, on the other doesn’t the flu kill like 500k every year? 

It does, but most of those are elsewhere. If you have 1 in 1000 chance of dying of the flu, not that big of a deal. If it’s 25 in 1000 that’s a lot more worrisome, but still not anthrax or anything. I don’t think we can draw any conclusions from the early numbers, but 27 deaths for every 800 cases is alarming. China isn’t shutting down entire cities, and all the world economy connected to those cities for nothing. They’re also lying about how bad it is.

[IanforHeisman]

1 minute ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

It does, but most of those are elsewhere. If you have 1 in 1000 chance of dying of the flu, not that big of a deal. If it’s 25 in 1000 that’s a lot more worrisome, but still not anthrax or anything. I don’t think we can draw any conclusions from the early numbers, but 27 deaths for every 800 cases is alarming. China isn’t shutting down entire cities, and all the world economy connected to those cities for nothing. They’re also lying about how bad it is.

Yeah I’m sure we aren’t getting the truth.. There’s never been a worldwide pandemic in my lifetime, I’m just not sure when it’s time to panic about it. Will it die off before it hits the US? Or will it keep getting stronger and become an issue here? These things have always worked out in our favor before, I’m not sure I can fathom the seriousness.

[thelawlorfaithful]

6 minutes ago, IanforHeisman said:

Yeah I’m sure we aren’t getting the truth.. There’s never been a worldwide pandemic in my lifetime, I’m just not sure when it’s time to panic about it. Will it die off before it hits the US? Or will it keep getting stronger and become an issue here? These things have always worked out in our favor before, I’m not sure I can fathom the seriousness.

Nobody knows. Nobody can know because China are such lying bastards about anything that reflects badly on the party. We’re not sure about how it’s transmitted, how bad it is, how to treat it, how to vaccinate. 

This is not the end times. China definitely screwed the pooch addressing it in order to preemptively save face. Once we get some transparent data I’m betting the early death toll to case ratio will come down to something flu like, but this is not a good situation. 

[IanforHeisman]

As serious as it seems they’re taking it, it can’t be good. Can’t imagine the man power it takes to quarantine a city with the population close to NYC. 

[Nevada Convert]

10 hours ago, bornontheblue said:

Do we have any infectious disease experts on the board? 

I think we are headed into a recession, probably mild one. International commerce is significantly affected by this. 

The fact that we have so many travellers to that part of the world with many coming back before the quarantines kicked in, the fact that we still have no deaths tells me this is a completely overblown crisis, at least for Americans. Some are saying an outbreak is inevitable? So in other words, people are going to get sick like they do every year from other pathogens. How many people are dying that are exposed to the flu viruses in China? A hell of a lot more than the deaths coming from CV over there, and gazillions have been exposed to it, and the death rates are very low. Elderly, weak people, etc. are always the majority of the victims of any pathogen. This is a nothing-burger crisis. 

Of course, the wildcard is if this was actually a Chinese military project of bio-warfare that leaked out. That would be embarrassing on a number of levels for China. Now go watch the movie "Contagion" and this will look like nothing. 

[thelawlorfaithful]

33 minutes ago, IanforHeisman said:

As serious as it seems they’re taking it, it can’t be good. Can’t imagine the man power it takes to quarantine a city with the population close to NYC. 

They’re not free. The party tells a ceo at a company to shut the factory down, it shuts down. Or else he disappears and a new ceo is appointed that will. That’s not even the State Owned companies, that’s everybody. Nobody has to go to work? Nobody has to leave the house. Close of the highways and the railways and the airports, nobody can leave the city. 

Authoritarianism has its benefits, I’ve been told in recent days.

[Los_Aztecas]

[robe]

4 hours ago, Nevada Convert said:

The fact that we have so many travellers to that part of the world with many coming back before the quarantines kicked in, the fact that we still have no deaths tells me this is a completely overblown crisis, at least for Americans. Some are saying an outbreak is inevitable? So in other words, people are going to get sick like they do every year from other pathogens. How many people are dying that are exposed to the flu viruses in China? A hell of a lot more than the deaths coming from CV over there, and gazillions have been exposed to it, and the death rates are very low. Elderly, weak people, etc. are always the majority of the victims of any pathogen. This is a nothing-burger crisis. 

Of course, the wildcard is if this was actually a Chinese military project of bio-warfare that leaked out. That would be embarrassing on a number of levels for China. Now go watch the movie "Contagion" and this will look like nothing. 

The Spanish Flu killed millions and hit the young healthy population. At some point something like this is coming back. So far this doesn’t look like the Spanish flu. Life expectancy dropped 12 years in US. A lot of theories on why it was so deadly. Some claim malnutrition. But hitting young adults and the US so hard I have my doubts as that being the main cause. No doubt it made a deadly flu more deadly. 
 

comparable it would infect 2.5 billion people and kill up to 500 million People today.

[BSUTOP25]

4 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

Authoritarianism has its benefits, I’ve been told in recent days.

Hey, now you’re starting to see things through a similar lens as me. I’ve been fighting folks with this attitude for years:

[Fowl]

It's overblown.

The fatality rate for those under 50 is 0.2%.  For those over 80 it is 15%.

[alum93]

10 minutes ago, Fowl said:

It's overblown.

The fatality rate for those under 50 is 0.2%.  For those over 80 it is 15%.

Can you post the link where those numbers were pulled from?

[Rocket]

No doubt some right wing propaganda outlet.

[soupslam1]

3 hours ago, Fowl said:

It's overblown.

The fatality rate for those under 50 is 0.2%.  For those over 80 it is 15%.

C’mon the media would never over state things and try and put people in a panic, would they?