That is indeed true.
As an example, 3% of the current world population would be around 225 million and that is in fact a lot of people even if it’s a very small percent of the total. 3% of China is about 41,400,000. 3% of Europe is about 22 million. 3% of North American is about 17 million. And so on.
I doubt it would get that bad, but it does give a certain perspective on statistics.
I don’t believe it. Just from my own experience watching hurricane evacuations. This article is claiming that ~40 percent of a city 50 percent again as big as the entire San Francisco Bay Area metropolitan arrea, was able to leave over, what, a week or two? Without titanic traffic jams and massive social chaos? You’d be able to see the traffic snarl from space.
Bullshit. I swear, our pundit class must think foreigners are ants or something.
Chinese are human beings. They don’t get to defy the laws of physics or human behavior because they live in a dictatorship. Just think about what 5 million people on the move would look like. Hell, 500,000 people evacuating sounds like garbage if the public transportation links are severed.
OTOH, and feel free to look back on page 1 at the epidemiology study I cited, I have no problem believing the actual number of cases in Wuhan and elsewhere are far greater than officially stated.
I guess I’m getting a bit touchy because so much of the discussion on other forums, youtube comments etc, is people actually getting angry that the Chinese government is acting too slowly, or hiding information or whatever. So essentially they are guessing about what is happening, based on their conception of China, then their own guess is making them angry.
I’m not suggesting anyone just take the government’s word at face value. I don’t.
But we do have ways of verifying the accuracy; we’re here on the ground seeing it. Foreign disease centers are working closely with Chinese scientists.
And, there’s no benefit to lying about the numbers; if what they’re saying is thousands of people are infected, large areas have been quarantined, it’s spread to all provinces, and transport hubs abroad have been notified of the symptoms so we can know very accurately what proportion of people leaving have the disease, and the mortality rate…what benefit could there be at this point to saying there are fewer cases than the real number?
ETA: it’s possible some of the numbers are not accurate just because the medical systems in the most affected regions are swamped and some people are just riding it out at home. But that’s a separate issue to Chinese secrecy.
It’s scaring the bleep out of me. If panicking would do any good, I would be panicking at this time.
There are two things about this that are especially nasty. The first is that this disease spreads before any symptoms are evident. So you can meet with a friend or relative who is symptom free and share your fears - never realizing that you had just contracted the disease while you thought you were safe and sharing your fears with a friend.
The second is that it has been reported that people who die spend several hours writhing in pain and agony before they die. I know that most all fatal diseases are pretty nasty. But this one seems to be near the top of the list.
I’ll ask it again: how is mortality rate determined for a bug like this? Is it: dead/number of sick? Or is it: dead/(dead+fully recovered)? Or is it some other method?
Because, assuming we have 2,200 sick or so, and only 50 dead, we don’t know that the virus will only kill 50/2200 of the remaining cases. We only know that, in cases that have run their course, X died, and Y lived. The far larger pool of Z that are sick? We don’t know what’s going to happen to them.
Of course, this is all reliant on official numbers, the vast, vast majority Chinese, and well, you know.
Aside, for those of you skilled in Mol. Biology, and genetic informatics, how fast could your group sequence a novel coronavirus using the methods described in, e.g., the New England Journal of Medicine article, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001017
Is a few days typical, crazy fast, slow, what?
ETA: Once again, got ninjad on this post.
It might be a little premature to extrapolate the fatality rate.
While the number dead is currently approximately 3% of infections, the number of patients reported as fully recovered is also a similarly low number right now.
So AIUI there is still a large number of ongoing infections where we don’t have good data to know the proportion of people dying slowly vs in the process of recovering.
I’ll take this one. Because if China actually has 200,000 cases of this bug, and not 2,000, the rest of the world is going to collectively lose their shit and start blocking travel of Chinese people and imports and exports of Chinese goods. Both of which will crater the Chinese economy (along with the rest of the world’s), and probably topple the Chinese government.
As one guy I read pithily put it, “The country that makes all our shit, is going offline for awhile.” No one has an interest in seeing that happen. Not comforting in a world of just-in-time logistics.
I really hope you guys get a hold on this, Mijin, and this turns out to be just another bird flu scare…
The situation is moving much faster than would be required for this kind of ruse to be sustainable for long enough to be economically worthwhile. Meanwhile, in the shorter term, the government has extended the CNY holiday, so factories are going to be closed for longer and we’re accepting the economic hit.
And like I say, the rest of the world is going to know approximately how prevalent this disease is by how many cases they detect coming out of China.
Thanks 
BTW, the CDC is calling it 2019-nCoV. That’s short for “novel Coronavirus 2019”. Not very catchy, tho. Unless we pronounce it enkovee (ehn kō vee); that kind of flows.
I was 12 years old when Legionnaire’s Disease was discovered, and being a kid, I was frightened of getting it even though I had never been anywhere near Philadelphia (and still haven’t). But the thing was, WE JUST DIDN’T KNOW. I have always believed that it was a major contributor to the swine flu fiasco a few months later. That vaccine really WAS more dangerous than the disease it was intended to prevent, and my parents were right when they refused to let us kids get it, or take it themselves.
ITA 95%. The 5% disagreement is because I do own a thermometer, and probably use it once or twice a year, when I’m in doubt and want to find out for myself if I have a fever.
Mijin, where is there news that the government has extended the CNY holiday for factories? I see the standard holiday has been extended to 2 Feb, but factories are typically shut for a 10-15 day period over Chinese New Year, while the official CNY holiday is only 5 days (right?).
I can’t say too much, but the company I work for has morning and evening coronavirus war room concalls. I join the morning concall, and in all of our China factories, no one has tested positive or put under quarantine (knock on wood). It’s in our own self interest to test, because if we have infected workers then at best that whole shift goes into quarantine. At worst, the entire factory goes into quarantine. My point being that the Chinese government couldn’t stop the flow of information even if they wanted to as there are simply far too many foreigners, foreign ventures in China. Not to mention that Weibo, WeChat and the rest can only be edited after the fact and can’t be managed to the degree that some folks think they can.
A global blockade of Chinese citizens, and Chinese imports and exports, with a toppled government and anarchy will probably not help a global pandemic. Pithy guy might want to rethink that strategy. D’oh!
Again, there is zero reason for the Chinese government to be minimizing the number of cases. Of course, there may be some local officials as outliers, but it sure as hell isn’t condoned nor policy. And it should be no surprise that given the panic by those actually living in what is effectively a state wide quarantine, every person with a cough or fever is frantically trying to see a doctor, so shouldn’t be a surprise that there is undercounting while the system tries to catch up with the cases. You’ll see the same thing in the US if thousands of people in Seattle suddenly try to get into the ER. That’s a separate issue from deliberately trying to cover up the number of cases.
Furthermore, since everyone in China by definition lived thru SARS, they are taking it really seriously.
Ah I didn’t know that. I only knew about the across the board extension of CNY and didn’t realize the factories don’t start that soon anyway. Ignorance fought.
Agreed, and you put it better than I did.
Mijin, must have been announced this morning. I see reports now that Suzhou (a huge manufacturing center) has extended CNY holiday to 8 Feb (vs the original 30 Jan).
The phone lines to my customers tomorrow morning are going to be burning…
Assuming adequate starting material, decent techs, a reasonable informatics pipeline (all of which good research clinical institutes would have access to), a few days is plenty of time to sequence, assembly, verify, and probably re-run the novel findings to make sure you didn’t do anything dumb.
FWIW, the lab reporting the findings in the linked paper was clearly aware the entire world was likely to second guess them - their methods section is surprisingly detailed and clearly written… especially for an NEJM article…
One of my friends in Taiwan went back home to China for CNY. She says it’s crazy there and she’s coming back to Taiwan.
Wuhan does have one thing American cities don’t have: High speed rail. As you can see on this map, Wuhan is a major railroad hub, with high speed rail lines leading to Changsha, Jiujiang, Hefei, Zhengzhou and Xiangfan. If they brought in additional trains from other parts of the country, they could run a train every few minutes on each rail line, each carrying over 1200 people.
Panicking will do no good at any time. If you are really concerned acquire sufficient bottled water, food, and other items to see you through 2 weeks so if you need to hunker down (which I think is highly unlikely) you’ll be able to do so in relative comfort, or at least not too much discomfort. Wash your hands, try to get sufficient rest and eat properly and that’s about as much as you, as an individual, can do.
This may shock you but “contagious before symptoms show” is nothing particularly unusual for a disease. The common cold and influenza both have that trait. So does the measles.
If you’re outside of China it’s unlikely such a contact is going to result in an infection at this point. If you’re that concerned stick to the internet and texting.
Yes, well, when a disease destroys your lung function things will get ugly. Again, not the only disease to bring a nasty death. Also, curious where you got this information because, not to put to fine a point on it, you tend towards the alarmist.
True.
On the other hand, despite all the scrutiny, we aren’t seeing a sudden spike in the death rate. I am fully aware that might change but I choose to see the current 3% level as… well, not sure I’d describe it as a positive but it’s certainly better than some other diseases.
Only time will tell. But until the death rate starts to go up I’m not going to become more alarmed. I have better things to spend my energy on. I’ll keep paying attention, but at this point I’m not expecting that I, personally, will be endangered.
I’m not sure there would be a need to block material goods at the border. If it is transmitted by bodily fluids then imports that do not contain bodily fluids are no risk. How long does this virus survive outside the human body? A day? Two days? A week? If it is only viable outside a human host for, say, 36 hours then just hold any imports in transit less than 36 hours for awhile in port, isolated, until sufficient time elapses. And why would exports TO China be blocked? Even in the most stringent quarantines you let necessities into the area. This is alarmist and doesn’t make sense.
Now, blocking the travel of people might become necessary, that is a possibility at this point. Absolutely that would be disruptive. You know what else is disruptive? A world-wide pandemic. Either way, you get a large economic impact but I’d rather live through the impact of a quarantine than just throw up our hands and say “whatever” and NOT impose quarantines or travel restrictions where appropriate.
I suspect it will NOT topple the Chinese government. It might topple some other, less stable governments.
Too bad.
So it will take 2-3 days to get stuff, or a week, instead of a single day. You know what? That used to be the norm. It will be annoying but only that - annoying. Adjustments will be made and the world will go on. There would probably be some interruptions and spotty shortages but no one is going to starve to death over this. So sorry if dealing with a possible pandemic, whether trying to prevent it or dealing with it if it gets started, might be inconvenient. :rolleyes:
Thanks! Ignorance fought. Both your post and ChinaGuy’s. I had no idea one way or the other, nor that NEJM articles aren’t usually the clearest when it comes to the Methods section… It’s been a very long time since I had to do a literature review to verify a proposed lab procedure.
Amazing how fast it can be done these days. Now to spin up a vaccine…and hope the bug doesn’t in the interim mutate too far away from the vaccine target.
Excellent advice. Thank you much, Broomstick.
P.S. I think you may have made a mistake with the quoting function. I never posted some of the text you seem to have attributed to me. It was some text contiaining “pithily”. I never use that word. Heh Heh.
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