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Discussion thread III - Covid-19 (new coronavirus)

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  • #76

    Pretty obvious that this is a pandemic. New Zealand and Nigeria announce their first cases within hours of each other.

    Comment


    • #77
      Shiloh, JJackson wrt. CFR in Iran (I don't know how to add comments to a post, as you did)
      I wrote that after reading the reports from the doctors in Iran. Before that I would just have argued as you did
      I'm interested in expert panflu damage estimates
      my current links: http://bit.ly/hFI7H ILI-charts: http://bit.ly/CcRgT

      Comment


      • JJackson
        JJackson commented
        Editing a comment
        gs re. comments. If you use the thread's 'latest activity' link you do not seem to get the full set of tools as you would if type the last page number into the box and jump to it.

    • #78
      Originally posted by sharon sanders View Post
      Pretty obvious that this is a pandemic. New Zealand and Nigeria announce their first cases within hours of each other.
      a pandemic without China then, they got it down with lockdowns (and some others (Russia ?) may succeed in the same way)
      I'm interested in expert panflu damage estimates
      my current links: http://bit.ly/hFI7H ILI-charts: http://bit.ly/CcRgT

      Comment


      • #79
        SARS+MERS ... if it gets the spike from MERS, we have a vaccine already ...
        I think this is unlikely to produce a new strain,
        I'm interested in expert panflu damage estimates
        my current links: http://bit.ly/hFI7H ILI-charts: http://bit.ly/CcRgT

        Comment


        • #80
          A senior official from
          the World Health Organization said earlier this week: "At present we believe
          that only one drug has a real effect, and this is remxivir."
          I'm interested in expert panflu damage estimates
          my current links: http://bit.ly/hFI7H ILI-charts: http://bit.ly/CcRgT

          Comment


          • #81
            Aylward , Feb.24 : "There is only one drug right now that we think may have real efficacy and that's remdesivir,"
            I'm interested in expert panflu damage estimates
            my current links: http://bit.ly/hFI7H ILI-charts: http://bit.ly/CcRgT

            Comment


            • #82
              Originally posted by gsgs View Post

              a pandemic without China then, they got it down with lockdowns (and some others (Russia ?) may succeed in the same way)
              I still think that you are putting too much faith in the Chinese numbers. For comparison the confirmed flu deaths in China for January 2016/17/18 were 56, 38 & 56 and they present these numbers as literal fact - there were no unmissed deaths according to them. That is a massive undercount for the height of flu season. This January, China reported 243 COVID19 fatalities. What makes you think that they are better at testing and reporting for a new disease than for an established one? Chances are that this years numbers are undercounts too. So we're looking at an outbreak wave of 6-10 weeks with pretty high mortality there. And you are assuming that there will be no wave 2. Too early to be that confident in my opinion.
              Twitter: @RonanKelly13
              The views expressed are mine alone and do not represent the views of my employer or any other person or organization.

              Comment


              • Shiloh
                Shiloh commented
                Editing a comment
                I agree with Ronan.

              • sharon sanders
                sharon sanders commented
                Editing a comment
                I agree with Ronan too. We do not post the monthly China disease report because it is fiction. A few years ago I did a calculation of new AIDS cases in China based on some other countries' averages of new cases count. The China numbers looked ridiculous in comparison.

            • #83
              I don't know about the flu-deaths , however this COVID is different.

              - undercounts do not change the trend.which is consistently down
              - You cannot hide an epidemic in a whole country for weeks
              - The numbers are very detailed by location etc. and explained and discussed in
              the press conferences and no major errors have been found afaik
              - WHo surveils the numbers, the Aylward-team confirmed them.
              - China's new declared openness (at least wrt. epidemics)
              I'm interested in expert panflu damage estimates
              my current links: http://bit.ly/hFI7H ILI-charts: http://bit.ly/CcRgT

              Comment


              • Shiloh
                Shiloh commented
                Editing a comment
                I do not doubt that the numbers are down and they are "winning" the war. However, I do believe that there is an undercount of deaths in the country. I don't believe the people who died at home in the first few weeks of the epidemic or even earlier before the virus was identified were counted. I don't believe that they've counted people who may have died as a result of being transferred out of the hospitals to accommodate Covid patients. I think we'll have a better idea of #s/death rates outside of China, with Iran being a glaring exception.

              • Ronan Kelly
                Ronan Kelly commented
                Editing a comment
                3.8 million Chinese have died since January 1. (1.4 billion population with an annual fatality rate of 1.7%) How many tests do you think the Chinese managed to conduct each day.

            • #84
              what's probably even larger is the indirect deaths from the measures, travel restrictions isolation economic problems.
              But they stopped it, they prevented major outbreaks outside Wuhan (so far) . Which is a huge gain.. Worth to be repeated elsewhere.
              Which other country will go full China ?
              I'm interested in expert panflu damage estimates
              my current links: http://bit.ly/hFI7H ILI-charts: http://bit.ly/CcRgT

              Comment


              • #85
                China lied about SARS and I am not in a position to comment on any other disease - Sharon looks at far more China data. On COVID they have been amazing and the numbers are real, or as real as they can be in the midst of a major epidemic. As gs points out you can not hide the numbers when an epidemic is spreading wildly through your country, yes if there are a handful of cases you can hide them but not 10s of thousands. The WHO international team, which included US and EU members, to a man believed the numbers are truthful. Iran has not taken the same actions and the outbreak there is likely to be much faster and more deadly as poor containment will lead to insufficient hospital capacity. One thing that shocked me in China is how well equipped they were for a medium per capita GDP country. Aylward said they asked one hospital they visited about how many ventilators they had and if they had an ECMO machine the answer, from memory, was 30 respirators and 5 ECMO. CT scanners were everywhere and they did not bother with X-rays. A big UK hospital would not be able to say the same let alone sanctions hit Iran. The ECMO machines may not be of much use as I have read that they do not have the same use in COVID as in the severe flu cases, where they do increase survival chances.

                Comment


                • Shiloh
                  Shiloh commented
                  Editing a comment
                  In the early days of the epidemic, it took more than one test to determine a case...they did not have the regents to test people. Those folks were sent home. How many were infected with flu and covid, since they were rounding up everyone with fever? How many flu cases became Covid cases because of lumping them together? The stats are what they are...and that is what the health care pros are going with. I am not a health care pro.

              • #86
                Canada is reporting cases using confusing terminology, at least to me:

                ? As of January 25, 2020, Toronto Public Health (TPH) has received notification of Toronto’s first presumptive confirmed case of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in a resident ?

                ? presumptive confirmed ? is a contradiction of adjectives for the single noun ?case?

                perhaps they mean ? presumptive case based on symptoms ? or ? confirmed case based on tests and symptoms ?

                J
                Last edited by Shiloh; February 28, 2020, 12:33 PM. Reason: The reason it is presumptive is that to confirm it, another test has to be done at the national lab in Winnipeg to verify

                Comment


                • cartski
                  cartski commented
                  Editing a comment
                  Yes, I get that. But it doesn't make sense to combine time periods like that. t=1= presumptive case. t=2=after Wpg level 3 lab results = confirmed. I'll assume that the author just took the phrases from the data base or spread sheet of the cases. Language used for reporting doesn't work when just the column headings are used.

              • #87
                So this is on the BBC website, and it seems they misquoted the WHO, as the first three bullet points are not to protect you, they protect others! They are correct practices, but are terribly mislabeled - sloppy reporting!

                To protect yourself, the World Health Organization (WHO) says it's more important to:
                • cover your mouth and nose while sneezing, with a tissue or your elbow
                • put the tissue straight into a closed bin
                • wash your hands afterwards, and then frequently, with soap or sanitiser
                • keep your distance from people who are coughing and sneezing (at least one metre)
                There is no need to avoid Chinese food or keep your pets at a distance - we give you the facts.

                Comment


                • #88
                  I see there is a big debate on the China COVID-19 numbers. If you look at their extreme measures like restricting almost 1/2 of their population to semi-home quarantine, shutting down entire cities including their capital, physically locking some of the population in their homes, cancelling mass events almost country wide, spraying individuals and entire city blocks with disinfectant, cancelling schools almost country wide, giving national advice on what to do with orphans, etc. etc. etc.

                  The numbers have to be huge. A lot more than approximately 84k. What percent of their population is that? .00006% rounded up?

                  So are we to believe that for .00006% of the population they have put their entire economy in peril?

                  I don't think so.

                  Comment


                  • #89
                    Is there a sticky on the definitions or nomenclature of this virus, previous viruses, and the diseases? This article from another thread implies that the virus we are seeing in a SARS form that causes the COVID-19 disease.

                    Comment


                    • #90
                      Translation Google

                      Coronavirus in China perhaps as early as October

                      From December faster circulation

                      Write to the editorial staff
                      ANSA Editorial Staff February 28, 20203:33 pm

                      A circulation earlier than expected, starting from the period between mid-October and mid-November and therefore a few weeks earlier then compared to the first cases of pneumonia identified, and a real boost in the acceleration of the spread that occurred in December: this is what emerges from the analysis of the genetic heritage of the new coronavirus being published in the Journal of Medical Virology and accessible on the MedRxiv website.

                      The research was carried out in the Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences of the Sacco Hospital in Milan and in the Research Center for Epidemiology and Molecular Surveillance of Infections (Episomes), which belongs to the same State University of Milan. It is due to Alessia Lai, Annalisa Bergna, Carla Acciarri, Massimo Galli and Gianguglielmo Zehender.
                      The research was based on the analysis of 52 complete SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus genomes deposited in international genetic data banks as of 30 January 2020 and allowed to establish the period in which the virus began to circulate and to reconstruct the spread of infection in the early months of the outbreak in China.

                      In this work, fundamental epidemiological parameters were fundamental, such as the basic reproductive number (indicated with R0) which indicates the number of new cases that can be generated by an individual with the infection, and the doubling time of the infections.

                      It has thus emerged that from a very low reproductive number, less than 1, in December the virus passed to 2.6: a figure, this, which according to the researchers allows us to hypothesize the rapid acquisition of a greater transmission efficiency of the virus. The causes of this transformation are not clear at the moment: it could be due to changes that have allowed the virus to transmit more efficiently from man to man, or to the characteristics of the population mainly affected.

                      The analysis also showed that the doubling time of the epidemic is estimated, starting from December, in about four days and therefore less than that calculated on the basis of the number of cases notified in the same period, which was equal to about a week .

                      The hypothesis of the researchers is that the transmission of the virus from the host animal to humans and the first human-to-human transmissions had initially limited efficiency, to become faster and more efficient in December. "It is likely - the researchers note - that this rapid growth of cases has subsequently decreased following the restrictive measures adopted in China".
                      Further studies on genomes isolated in a more recent period may confirm the usefulness of these techniques also in evaluating the effects of the preventive measures adopted.

                      --------------------------------------------------------

                      Link to the research:


                      Early Phylogenetic Estimate Of The Effective Reproduction Number Of 2019-nCoV
                      View ORCID ProfileAlessia Lai, Annalisa Bergna, Carla Acciarri, View ORCID ProfileMassimo Galli, View ORCID ProfileGianguglielmo Zehender
                      doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.19.20024851
                      This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

                      To reconstruct the evolutionary dynamics of the 2019 novel coronavirus, 52 2019-nCOV genomes available on 04 February 2020 at GISAID were analysed. The two models used to estimate the reproduction number (coalescent-based exponential growth and a birth-death skyline method) indicated an estimated mean evolutionary rate of 7.8 × 10−4 subs/site/year (range 1.1×10−4–15×10−4). The estimated R value was 2.6 (range 2.1-5.1), and increased from 0.8 to 2.4 in December 2019. The estimated mean doubling time of the epidemic was between 3.6 and 4.1 days. This study proves the usefulness of phylogeny in supporting the surveillance of emerging new infections even as the epidemic is growing. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement No funding was received for this work ### Author Declarations All relevant ethical guidelines have been followed; any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained and details of the IRB/oversight body are included in the manuscript. Yes All necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable. Yes All sequences used are publicly available at GISAID(Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data)website <https://www.gisaid.org/>
                      "Safety and security don't just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear."
                      -Nelson Mandela

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