https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/cdc-coronavirus-116...

For example, if you're a doctor with a case of atypical pneumonia, there's no way to actually test a patient for it unless there's clear China (possibly Hubei!) travel history. And that could take 3-7 days. However, consider the Canadian ER doctor who a few days ago decided to ask for a test for a woman who had traveled back from Iran recently - turned out she had it, and it revealed to us unexpected, but very real vectors of transmission.

These technical issues have to be solved, otherwise there's no way to distinguish this from regular seasonal flu cases and pneumonias, until - like in Wuhan - the atypical cases bubble up. At that point, it's really too late to do much containment.

Keep in mind, many of these decisions to avoid "pandemic" talk try to take most holistic views in regards to public safety/health. There is a lot of consideration regarding deaths cause by panic actions which are often estimated/modeled as well and if panic related deaths and side effects are higher than a current actual threat, it's often viewed that the best course of action is to suppress panic until warranted.

So lack of pandemic talk doesn't inherently mean there is a legitimate reason not to panic, just that you're being given limited information. At the same time you shouldn't assume experts, the media, etc. are somehow mass conspiring against your health/safety. Assessments are probably reasonable to follow.

The best course of action is to also take a holistic look at situations independent of these groups and make your own rational assessment of risks and impact.

If you don't already have some non-perishable food supplies, you should have completely irrespective of this specific recent viral outbreak--its basic preparedness for emergencies.

Some basic preparedness (I'm not talking bunkers and 2 year food cache craziness) are warranted in general for unpredictable disaster cases so these situations are good reminders for people to check their pantry for food, etc. just in case something awful was to happen, those supplies can help significantly.

Since I hadn't lived thru anything that threatened my society, I never believed in stocking up on non-perishables.

However, the fact that I'm living thru a potential pandemic convinces me that we as a race aren't nearly as resilient as our modern amenities and high QoL suggest.

There’s a flu pandemic (several, actually), that are far more immediately threatening to you than this virus. Society has not yet fallen.

Also many at-risk patients are vaccinated against the flu.

Besides, even if you are likely to survive and all, it's still wise to plan for everybody else to panic ;)

Ironic that you should bring up flu vaccination...despite the risk of death from flu being the average person’s greater concern (by far), we still have to beg people to get vaccinated, and the rates are low.

I’d wager that most of the folks fear-mongering about covid-19 on this thread haven’t had a flu shot this year.

Also, I’m kind of horrified at how indifferent you are across many comments to the prospect of tens of millions of elderly and sick people dying. Just because you’re young and healthy, no one should be very concerned about this?

For those with no pre-existing medical conditions, 0.9%:

http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9...

Death rates for flu vary widely by age, race and location, but these numbers are not out of the ordinary for influenza.

I’m not “indifferent”, I’m calmly assessing relative risks. You, on the other hand, are simply spreading FUD. Go breathe into a bag.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm

So using your most optimistic number of 0.4%, that’s a fatality rate 20x as high.

And again, you have many comments downplaying the significance of this virus based on your own assessment that it kills young and healthy people at acceptably low rates. What about the billions of people who are older, sick, or have the misfortune of being born in a country without access to decent medical care? Pretty easy to calmly assess relative risks to other people, especially if you get them wrong by a factor of 2000%.

Maybe play some relaxing music and light a candle. (Be careful, though: you’re many hundreds of times more likely to start a fire with the candle than die from covid!)

If things do start getting bad, I expect it might happen rather suddenly.

Also, not for nothing: most people don’t get the flu vaccine, despite endless begging on the part of health officials.

This virus disproportionately kills old and sick people. Aside from the fact that over 80% of cases are mild, the death rate in patients under 60 is well under 1%:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia...

Even these are based mostly on statistics from Wuhan, where a “confirmed infection” has to be severe to begin with; these rates are going to be overestimates of the real rates.

Why shouldn’t we care about a virus that mainly kills old and sick people? Especially when that alone can overwhelm our medical infrastructure.

Additionally, even a 0.5% mortality rate for young and otherwise healthy people is much higher than the flu, and serious cause for concern. I’ll take a 0.5% chance of dying over 2% any day, but I still will take a lot of actions if I can to avoid a 1/100 chance that my daughter has to grow up without one of her parents.

As long as we’re talking about facts and misinformation, let’s talk about your assertion that mortality rates are going to be lower than Wuhan. They may be, but it’s way too early to say. We don’t yet have reliable data on how many mild cases are missed in the official figures, how the remaining unrecovered patients will fare, or how many deaths have been caused by the virus but are not attributed to it in official figures.

Look, I get that you’re scared and lashing out at people who are saying you have reason to be, but you’re not going to make any difference here. This is a serious global issue, which is why every country with significant infections is going to incredible lengths to try and contain it. I’d suggest you stop trying to police people on the internet who aren’t meeting your personal standards for reacting to this and instead do some prep to keep you and your loved ones safe and secure.

Nobody said you “shouldn’t worry” about a virus that kills old people. But if you’re not old or sick, you should worry about it less than other things. Like getting the flu.

”I get that you’re scared and lashing out”

What manner of gaslighting is this? I am absolutely not scared, and I am trying to spread accurate information, in order to counter fear-mongering posts like your own.

If denial makes one feel better, go for it. Post it here though, and expect to be rapidly disabused.

The latest numbers from the WHO and the CCDC are an average case fatality rate of 2.3%. This is highly likely to be an overestimate, and the deaths are skewed heavily to the old and infirm.

From the most recent CCDC report [1] those under 40, case fatality was 0.2%. Under 50, 0.4%; under 60, 1.3%.

For those with no pre-existing illnesses, case fatality was 0.9%, across all age groups.

[1]http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9...

But draw your own conclusions:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

The case fatality rate is the number of deaths divided by confirmed infections. This is what is being reported.

Infection Fatality Ratio changes the denominator to a model for the currently infected population. This is a smaller number, because the denominator is much larger.

There is no mortality metric being reported by reputable sources that is multiples higher than the CFR, as you suggest.

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...

The most useful number I know is, survival chances. How many in 100 stand to be alive say 2 months later. The numbers seem worse than 98, by a good margin. At least worldwide.

I'm of course completely factually correct that there is no vaccine for COVID-19 (although there is a SARS vaccine that may help). Which, even if it is only as deadly as the flu, is still a huge issue. I have immune-compromised family members, so I get the flu vaccine. I have no such luxury in this case.

The fact that the symptoms are mild for most people only makes it more of a danger, because people are less likely to self-quarantine if they only have cold-like symptoms.

All the confirmed cases in the U.S. are currently under quarantine. However, the CDC does fully expect that the disease will spread free here in the states.

Northern Italian states have closed all public schools, universities, and public events.

You’re panicking, you don’t understand what you’re reading, and (assuming that you aren’t just trying to spread fear) you should stop posting on this subject.

You are paranoid. Stop pointing fingers, stop making accusations, and back up your points.

True, but it's also not their job to work for my personal benefit. Mine is. Their job is to do the greatest good for the greatest number, but what is good for the most people is not always good for me. My job is to keep myself and my family safe, and I don't trust bureaucrats enough to make the call that I have to lose out for the "greater good".

All that aside, at least according to China, the mortality rates aren't all that high (a few percent). We'll see what happens elsewhere, but I don't think there's reason to panic yet.

That's about the same mortality rate as the pandemic flu of 1918, which wasn't exactly a walk in the park.

10% of all settled cases resulted in death. That is far higher than the 3% of Spanish Flu and reasonably close to SARS. Median time to death is around 12 days which is similar to time to recovery meaning the 10% seems likely to be an accurate metric.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/clinical-features.html

The most interesting part is the ages of cases. Last I checked, there were ZERO deaths of children 9 and under. Mortality rates hover at around 0.2 to 0.3% until over 50.

The really big unknown for me is the weird SARS antibody Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) effect. Basically, if the antibody levels get too low and reinfection occurs, the disease becomes much more lethal than if no antibodies are present at all. This effect is now known to be the reason mortality rates for a second case of Dengue fever are so high. In SARS, the disease disappeared before reinfection was an issue. In the case of a pandemic, a second, more lethal wave could be disastrous (if this is also possible with COVID-19). This could also complicate naive vaccines that don't account for possible secondary, enhanced infections.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X1...

All that said, I'm not super-worried.

> By the numbers, 2,470 deaths, 23,419 recoveries, and 53,105 undecided cases. 10% of all settled cases resulted in death.

The mistakenly low estimates of mortality rate are likely due to use of the wrong denominator. As Worldometer [1] explains correctly in their summary of Ghani et al. [2]:

> Once an epidemic has ended, it is calculated with the formula: deaths / cases. But while an epidemic is still ongoing, as it is the case with the current novel coronavirus outbreak, this formula is at the very least “naïve” and can be “misleading if, at the time of analysis, the outcome is unknown for a non negligible proportion of patients.”

[1]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-... "Worldometer Coronovirus Mortality Rate"

[2]: https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwi230 "American Journal of Epidemiology Volume 162, Issue 5, Pages 479–486"

As the parent calls out, a better estimate of mortality rate for an ongoing epidemic is deaths / settled cases where settled cases is the sum of deaths and recoveries.

[1] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi...

Mortality rates are easy to compare - they are numbers that take healthcare and disease intensity into account because they are statistics from observation.

If anything, the numbers suggest that had the covid-19 struck in 1918, the mortality rate would have been higher.

Non-adjusted comparisons to medical outcomes in 1918 are useless.

(pre-empting the criticism: antibiotics absolutely matter for a viral outbreak like this. Many people who die from respiratory illness actually die from secondary bacterial pneumonia.)

People aren't saying this acts like the 1918 disease so it should have the same mortality rate. People are saying the observed mortality rate is the same. That's in spite of medical advances.

But since none of those things are true, you can’t. It’s not like these parameters are fixed; they’re dramatically affected by the time and context in which they’re measured.

The US is barely doing any testing, so if there was community spread of COVID-19 in the US right now, there's a good chance they wouldn't even know about it.

Communities aren't just made of public health organizations and hospitals and emergency workers, they're made of individual citizens and their families and friends. Communities should be made prepared from both the top down, and from the bottom up.

But yes, definitely less edgy and out there.