The 18% number is mostly useless because it's a textbook example of selection bias.
Isn't the same bias present in ILI (influenza-like illness) statistics?
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/coronavirus-spread-i...
"The claim was quickly challenged by an infectious diseases expert who serves on a committee that advises the WHO’s health emergencies program.
Gary Kobinger, director of the Infectious Disease Research Center at Laval University in Quebec, said it would be highly unusual for there not to be mild or symptom-free cases that are being missed. He pointed to the fact that outbreaks have popped up in countries far from China — including Iran and Italy — because people with mild infections were not detected and traveled to other places.
'There are mild cases that are undetected. This is why it’s spreading. Otherwise it would not be spreading because we would know where those cases are and they would be contained and that would be the end of it,' said Kobinger, who insisted that mild, undetected infections cannot be ruled out until people who haven’t been diagnosed with the illness can be tested for antibodies to the virus.
'As long as we do not have good serology data, I think that it is completely speculative to say that there are no undetected cases,' Kobinger said."
What Dr. Aylward says makes no sense and reads more like a PR fluff piece designed to praise China to keep them happy, and as Kobinger points out he's probably wrong. From the same press conference he says this "If I had COVID-19, I’d want to be treated in China."
Which is obviously bullshit.
1. For most people symptoms are so minor that they don't go to the hospital at all and don't get counted in the reporting stats. This means that the 18% number is higher than reality. How much higher we don't know.
2. The disease disproportionately affects older people: If you're between 0-50 your chances of dying are ~0.2%. From what I can tell these mortality odds are better than if you have the regular flu.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...
More deadly and more easily transmitted.
Also, people of all ages are dying.
If you're over 50, male, have a weakened immune system, and live in a location with high population density, there may be reason to be concerned.
We also have no idea if it's more transmissible than seasonal flu -- https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2020posts/how-scientists-quant...
Also, "the flu" covers a lot of ground, mortality-wise, as the history of 1918-1919 should remind us. Even in nations like Spain that were not in WW1, the flu of that season was a major deal, and if coronavirus turns out to be that bad (still an open question), it would be really, really bad.
No it hasn't. I can't find good numbers for China, but 80,000 died of the flu in the US in 2018 and china's population is about 4x higher.
>SARS
That's meaningless, SARS was contained without spreading to nearly as many people. It tells us nothing about the mortality rate, or the severity.
>We have some idea. It's a bad one, at least.
What I said was we have no idea if it's 20x as deadly. It's likely not 20x as deadly.
How can you make this statement? A lot of papers claim mortality (accounted for asymptomatic patients) to be around 5% (100x worse than flu) and 1% (20x worse than flu). What evidence do you have that these papers don't?
https://smw.ch/article/doi/smw.2020.20203
"The resulting number, however, does not represent the true case fatality rate and might be off by orders of magnitude. "
"The true number of exposed cases affected in Wuhan may be vastly underestimated. With a focus on thousands of serious cases, mild or asymptomatic courses that possibly account for the bulk of the 2019-nCoV infections might remain largely unrecognized, in particular during the influenza season.
Under-detection of mild or asymptomatic cases may be further fueled after further growth of the outbreak, as healthcare-facilities and testing capacities in Wuhan have reached their limits."
Are you also aware that seasonal flu doesn't completely take out medical systems? (see Wuhan)
2. All 4 people who died were in their 80s. Cruise ships skew much older than the general population, so there is limited information to learn from this.
3. If every single person who had cold or flu symptoms panicked and went to the ER, it most certainly would overwhelm medical systems.
4. I never said this wasn't worse than the flu, just that it seems likely that it's not 20x as deadly.
1. 4/700 is only the initial figure. Likely more people will die from cruise ship, COVID-19 takes about 2 weeks to develop severe pneumonia.
2. Since these patients are now not categorized as Diamond Princess, instead they're categorized under their countries' stats, likely we will never hear from them again in such an isolated fashion.
2. I'm sure all of their names are out there, and someone will eventually put together a study once it's been long enough to know their outcomes.
Note: data is from current cases, may vary as more data is accumulated.