Coronavirus Outcomes Range From Pandemic to a New Flu, Experts Say

[Ubiquitous]

It’s already spread wider than SARS in 2003. It may not sweep the globe as
swine flu did in 2009, but is more dangerous. It doesn’t kill at anywhere
near the terrifying pace of Ebola in 2014, but it can be passed through the
air.

Even as the number of new coronavirus cases in China appears to ebb, experts
say they’re preparing for a future with a disease that past pandemics have
only hinted at.

China’s lockdown of Hubei province, where the outbreak began, gave the world
several weeks to throw up its defenses, global health officials said Tuesday.
But it hasn’t stopped the virus, with new cases popping up around the globe,
potentially seeding a pandemic to come.

“Every virus is different,” said University of Michigan medical historian
Howard Markel, who has studied influenza epidemics. “If anything the study of
past epidemics has taught me is that anyone who predicts the future based on
that is either a fool or lying because we don’t know.”

The virus has brought together elements that scare public health experts as
well as average citizens. In less than three months, it’s infected tens of
thousands of people. Humans have never faced it, leaving their immune systems
vulnerable. And there are no vaccines to prevent 2019-nCoV, as the virus is
called, or to treat the disease it causes, Covid-2019.

One certainty is that new cases will continue to emerge. On Saturday, an
American passenger from a cruise ship that docked in Cambodia tested positive
for the virus. It raised new worries that disembarked passengers from the
boat, previously thought to be virus-free, would seed new pockets of disease.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that it
will begin screening patients with flu symptoms for 2019-nCoV in five major
U.S. cities. The effort is meant to detect whether the virus has slipped into
the U.S. despite robust travel screening and quarantines that have caught the
less-than-20 American cases identified so far.

The aspects the new coronavirus does share with other outbreaks are mostly
human failures, not biological advantages.

In 1892, authorities in Hamburg, Germany—worried about impact cholera would
have on their thriving port—initially kept quiet about some cases, allowing
the disease to spread, said Markel. More than 8,000 eventually died in the
city. And the disease soon arrived in New York. In Wuhan, local Chinese
officials have been accused of minimizing the threat from the virus in the
early weeks, when it could have been more easily stopped.

Willingness to endure economic disruption is another factor, said Markel.
Epidemics are always enormously costly. Stopping trade and movement can slow
a disease’s spread, but grind economies to a halt.

In a study published this month, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and
Prevention warned that even with new infections in decline, they could rise
again as the economy restarts, after an extension of the national Lunar New
Year holiday and shutdowns of workplaces and public gathering spaces.

“Huge numbers of people will soon be returning to work and school,” a group
of researchers at the Chinese agency wrote in their analysis. “We need to
prepare for a possible rebound of the Covid-19 epidemic in the coming weeks.”

People rest at a temporary hospital in Wuhan on Feb. 17.Photographer: Xiao
Yijiu/Xinhua via Getty Images
On the virus biology side, researchers still don't know many basic
parameters. One of the most crucial unknowns is whether the virus can spread
when people aren’t showing symptoms. If a large fraction of people can catch
and transmit the virus before becoming seriously ill, the odds of halting it
with existing measures plummet, according to computer simulations run by the
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

“This virus has a firm foothold,” said Steven Riley, professor of infectious
disease dynamics at Imperial College London’s MRC Centre for Global
Infectious Disease Analysis. “There are many more people with it than there
ever was with SARS. We don’t want this virus to become an established human
pathogen. If it takes off in other parts of the world and remains a
relatively severe virus, it would become a new kind of thing.”

The world should get a better view of how significant the outbreak will be in
the next few weeks, as additional surveillance gives clearer insights into
the virus's spread by mid-March, said Michael Osterholm, an expert on
infectious diseases at the University of Minnesota.

“We are just getting started,” he said. “If this spreads around the world,
this will be just south of the 1918 pandemic,” he said, referring to the
pandemic flu that killed millions a century ago. “The next three weeks are
going to be critical.”

--
Watching Democrats come up with schemes to "catch Trump" is like
watching Wile E. Coyote trying to catch Road Runner.

[BeamMeUpScotty]

On 2/21/20 8:05 PM, Ubiquitous wrote:
> It’s already spread wider than SARS in 2003. It may not sweep the globe as
> swine flu did in 2009, but is more dangerous. It doesn’t kill at anywhere
> near the terrifying pace of Ebola in 2014, but it can be passed through the
> air.

It's easily spread and if you notice, it seems to be killing about equal
to 10% of the new cases so when the news reports 2000 new cases they
also report about 200 new deaths from the old virus cases. Which means
the death rate is maybe 1/10 the rate at which is spreads so if it's
spreading at 2000 new infections every two days then the sick are also
dying at a rate of almost 200 every two days.

SO as it spreads is seems to kill more than the 1%-2% that has been
reported in the past... as if there is an exponential increase in the
deaths as the number having infections is not linear and they don't seem
to recover as fast the new become infected, creating more and more that
are actually still sick and being infected faster than they recover from
the virus... Either that or the Chinese and/or others are lying to us
and have been lying about the past death rate of the virus or it has
changed and is more deadly or there are multiple strains of the virus,
or maybe the systems are overwhelmed and so with no care there are more
and more dying and the 1%-2% death rate is only with a level of medical
care that can't be delivered as the numbers of infected increase and the
medical staff able to work decreases due to the infections and deaths.

But any way you look at it, it seems to be getting worse NOT better and
as more systems and more medical staff are overwhelmed by the virus the
care goes down and the death rates will go up.

>
> Even as the number of new coronavirus cases in China appears to ebb, experts
> say they’re preparing for a future with a disease that past pandemics have
> only hinted at.
>
> China’s lockdown of Hubei province, where the outbreak began, gave the world
> several weeks to throw up its defenses, global health officials said Tuesday.
> But it hasn’t stopped the virus, with new cases popping up around the globe,
> potentially seeding a pandemic to come.
>
> “Every virus is different,” said University of Michigan medical historian
> Howard Markel, who has studied influenza epidemics. “If anything the study of
> past epidemics has taught me is that anyone who predicts the future based on
> that is either a fool or lying because we don’t know.”

This virus may be multiple strains as it evolves... they can't seem to
test for it and keep finding new cases where they think there is none.

>
> The virus has brought together elements that scare public health experts as
> well as average citizens. In less than three months, it’s infected tens of
> thousands of people. Humans have never faced it, leaving their immune systems
> vulnerable. And there are no vaccines to prevent 2019-nCoV, as the virus is
> called, or to treat the disease it causes, Covid-2019.
>

80,000 and that rises by 2000 every few days. As the deaths also rise
by 200 every few days. How many of the infected are no longer sick and
are still living?

Some people say they had a slight fever for a short time while others
seem to die.... Are they even the same virus? Or is it like Typhoid Mary
where immune people are carrying it to those with ZERO immunity.

And what will the number of deaths be when lots and lots of those people
don't show up for work and school because they died and no one has found
them yet?

> People rest at a temporary hospital in Wuhan on Feb. 17.Photographer: Xiao
> Yijiu/Xinhua via Getty Images
> On the virus biology side, researchers still don't know many basic
> parameters. One of the most crucial unknowns is whether the virus can spread
> when people aren’t showing symptoms. If a large fraction of people can catch
> and transmit the virus before becoming seriously ill, the odds of halting it
> with existing measures plummet, according to computer simulations run by the
> London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
>
> “This virus has a firm foothold,” said Steven Riley, professor of infectious
> disease dynamics at Imperial College London’s MRC Centre for Global
> Infectious Disease Analysis. “There are many more people with it than there
> ever was with SARS. We don’t want this virus to become an established human
> pathogen. If it takes off in other parts of the world and remains a
> relatively severe virus, it would become a new kind of thing.”
>
> The world should get a better view of how significant the outbreak will be in
> the next few weeks, as additional surveillance gives clearer insights into
> the virus's spread by mid-March, said Michael Osterholm, an expert on
> infectious diseases at the University of Minnesota.
>
> “We are just getting started,” he said. “If this spreads around the world,
> this will be just south of the 1918 pandemic,” he said, referring to the
> pandemic flu that killed millions a century ago. “The next three weeks are
> going to be critical.”

We are critical at this point.... when somewhere between 2% and 10%
have been dying and it's spreading by 1000 people a day and that number
is looking to be able to expand to being what is an exponential increase
in places where there is little medical or government suppression of the
virus, it looks like things can only get worse from here.

So far all we did was to decrease the rate at which the virus spreads,
but it's still spreading and when it hits another vulnerable population
it will explode again.





--
That's Karma

*Liberalism is unsustainable, self destructive and contradicting*

["Sir Hømer Hall, Esq."]

IAWTP. It's gonna get a LOT worse before it gets better...

Those not taking all the precautions they can NOW are leaving
themselves exposed. I have read that the incubation period has
now been bumped up to 27 days. That's almost a month where
asymptomatic victims can spread it by contact, by aerosols and
simply through the air like those poor souls locked up on the
Diamond Princess who got it through the ventilation system.

Also, I've read that many who get it and then "recover" can get
it AGAIN, often with more severe symptoms. IOW, they didn't
really become resistant to it. And, getting it twice in a row
often has deadly consequences because the second time around
the infection is much more severe and deadly.

I've seen videos of Chinese men walking down the street and
falling over dead. Not a pretty picture. I never in my long life have
seen any "flu" do that.

--
Yours Truly, Sir Gregøry

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only
the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to
teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
--Henry David Thoreau