Re:Clinical characteristics of 50k patients with 2019-nCoV i...
by rndgermandude on Tuesday February 25, 2020 @04:59AM
(#22412024)
They give a "cough" incidence of 70.8% and a acute respiratory distress syndrome incidence of 14.8% in their paper. Meaning even a lot of people diagnosed with the infection show no respiratory symptoms, let alone severe ones. I therefore wouldn't dismiss the possibility of a high number of unreported cases, where people didn't develop any major symptoms and thought it was a cold or flu if they noticed symptoms at all.
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Re:Clinical characteristics of 50k patients with 2019-nCoV i...
by rpeden on Tuesday February 25, 2020 @06:44AM
(#22412386)
Since the common cold is caused by coronaviruses a decent chunk of the time, I'm not sure it's even inaccurate for someone with a non-severe case of covid-19 to conclude that they have a cold.
Maybe that's the tricky part that helps it spread. Having a cold isn't enough to stop most people from going out in public. In my experience among people I know in the US and Canada, having a mild cold isn't enough for people to stay home from work.
But while a covid-19 infection might really be just a cold to a large chunk of people who get it, it's unusually deadly to a non-trivial percentage of people as well.