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A comment on MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns. Parent comment

Re:MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns by merqurio on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @05:54PM (#22313697)
It makes sense total sense to compare, it's another respiratory virus, from a family of viruses already known. We must not reinvent the wheel when we know the dynamics of these viruses and the countermeasures to take.

The key metric that determines whether COVID-19 can establish and generate a sustained outbreak is it's ability to reproduce, "R", which represents the average number of individuals to which each transmitter transmits the virus.

- If "R" is greater than 1, the transmission may become sustained; - If “R” is less than 1, then the transmission will simply dissipate.

In the current outbreak, it represents an R of 2.2 [1], meaning that on average each patient has been spreading infection to 2.2 other people.

Only a little bit more than half of the infections should be avoided so that R falls below 1. Preventive isolation and the measures established by the protocols should be sufficient.

Besides, there is little evidence to suggest the presymptomatic transmission of COVID-19

[1]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316

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Re:MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns by jpdus on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @06:14PM (#22313825)
This is outdated information. Most newer studies put R0 >3 (e.g. [1]) and there are many well documentated cases outside of China now which confirm at least partial presymptomatic transmission (German cluster, Signapore Conference, British prisoners).

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.10.20021675v...

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Re:MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns by merqurio on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @06:41PM (#22313992)
This paper suggest even a bigger R0, I'm still going through the details.

[1]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.07.20021154v...

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Re:MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns by koheripbal on Saturday February 15, 2020 @07:32PM (#22339034)
The German case was later found that the woman did indeed have mild cold symptoms while in Germany.
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