At present we have almost 2.5x the number of confirmed cases of the Coronavirus compared to SARS in its entirety, however the mortality rate is currently lower and with these numbers in mind...
Speaking as a statistician, The Wuhan virus is much, much worse than SARS. There are two bounds on the death rate, deaths/cases will give you a lower bound, deaths/(deaths+cured) gives you an upper bound. (This assumes that everyone in China learned from SARS that supressing information is a very bad strategy. Mostly the national government seems to have learned this. Provicial and city governments? Not so much.)
How do you create a better estimate? If you have all the data available to you, you can create an estimate of when a (counted) case is first reported, and when those in the cohort from a given day die. Gruesome, I know, but this is a time to look at reality. Wuhan is apparently more easily communicated than SARS, and has a longer incubation period before it can be diagnosed.
What can you do? First, face masks may help, but in any situation where a face mask is appropriate, you also want to protect your eyes and wear gloves. The gloves do not have to be rubber, and even ordinary glasses or sunglasses will protect your eyes somewhat.
I'm not following as to why "the Wuhan virus is much much worse than SARS"?
Is it because it is going to be a bigger outbreak due to the ease of transmission and even though the mortality rate is lower the total number of deaths will be greater?
I am not remotely qualified to provide an answer, but my congecture is:
Seems like more contagion, longer incubation and posibility of contagion from non symptomatic patients makes this much more difficult to contain.
It is possible that we have less deaths at the moment simply because they take a lot longer to die, if they do so. The people dying now might be those of the first, smaller, batches of people infected. There is in affect a sort of greater lagg between the number of infected people and the number of deaths.
It could also happen that it is less lethal than the SARS and is more contagious. I have no idea wich is wich.
I would honestly not go to Computex and risk my life to (a virus yet uncured and possibly uncurable and no-vaccine) just cover some shiny new tech toys. There's going to be more computexes and technology releases for your entire lifetime.
The honest dangers of the Wuhan coronavirus are the long gestation period (a person might have 0 symptoms for weeks at a time, but may still spread the coronavirus unknowingly) and the fact that there's tens of thousands of people at these trade shows, touching public facilities like escalators/elevators/toilets, etc. You could contract coronavirus, show no symptoms during the entire tradeshow and even a week after you get back home, then start getting deathly ill and possibly also spread it to other local coworkers unknowingly.
I'd urge people to just take vacation or time off. You could always just reference other people's coverage or something with your articles.
Am I the only one thoroughly unimpressed by these virus outbreaks? So 8098 people got SARS and of them 774 died - that is indeed a high mortality rate, but it's also a rather shockingly low total number of infected. Remember that this was happening in some of the most densely populated areas on Earth. On the other hand the CDC estimates that 10 000-25 000 people DIED between Oct 1st 2019 and Jan 25th 2020 from influenza. In the US alone. That is more people than were infected with SARS in total, and that's just in one season, for a disease that's relatively well known even if there are always new strains.
Sure, the majority of these deaths were likely people already very ill. But the scale of these "pandemics" is laughable in comparison. The only dramatic thing to me seems to be that the virus in question is new and unknown and we thus don't know how it will develop - but the reality tends to be that they peter out after a few months. Caution is always a good idea, but let's not pretend this is the end of the world.
I wouldn't consider it a pandemic, but I don't want to be one of the first guinea pigs to get a brand new illness that doctors don't know how to treat, of which one that nobody knows if there's lasting side-effects from. Chances are you're going to die from something as easily preventable as just not going into China.
There's internet hearsay (which is dubious at best) that the genome of the Wuhan coronavirus was bio-engineered in a bioweapons research facility just 11 mi (still in Wuhan) from ground zero of the first confirmed infection, and that the genome was mapped to be similar to the SARS and HIV virus genomes. And if it's like HIV, then there might not even be a good vaccination for it for people that haven't contracted Wuhan coronavirus yet.
Stop spreading that nonsense. If claims are dubious, then just don't repeat them.
First, it is *not* related to HIV, which is a retrovirus.
It *is* very similar to SARS, though I don't see why it should be difficult to believe that relatives of SARS remain in the wild, and could transfer over to humans as SARS did.
The problem with your reasoning is in the mortality rates, and what *could* happen if nCOV-2019 isn't contained. The new coronavirus is much more lethal than flu. If it's able to spread globally, then we'll likely see absolute fatality numbers that dwarf those killed by recent influenza strains.
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19 Comments
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boozed - Tuesday, February 4, 2020 - link
The loss of PRC-based exhibitors from the Taipei Cycle Show simply means fewer knock-offs on show...levizx - Saturday, February 8, 2020 - link
What a stupid trollPeachNCream - Tuesday, February 4, 2020 - link
Poor journalists. Take along lots of hand sanitizer!coburn_c - Tuesday, February 4, 2020 - link
Just apply the sanitizer directly to your mucus membranes. Feels refreshing.mode_13h - Sunday, February 9, 2020 - link
They need lung sanitizer!eachus - Tuesday, February 4, 2020 - link
At present we have almost 2.5x the number of confirmed cases of the Coronavirus compared to SARS in its entirety, however the mortality rate is currently lower and with these numbers in mind...Speaking as a statistician, The Wuhan virus is much, much worse than SARS. There are two bounds on the death rate, deaths/cases will give you a lower bound, deaths/(deaths+cured) gives you an upper bound. (This assumes that everyone in China learned from SARS that supressing information is a very bad strategy. Mostly the national government seems to have learned this. Provicial and city governments? Not so much.)
How do you create a better estimate? If you have all the data available to you, you can create an estimate of when a (counted) case is first reported, and when those in the cohort from a given day die. Gruesome, I know, but this is a time to look at reality. Wuhan is apparently more easily communicated than SARS, and has a longer incubation period before it can be diagnosed.
What can you do? First, face masks may help, but in any situation where a face mask is appropriate, you also want to protect your eyes and wear gloves. The gloves do not have to be rubber, and even ordinary glasses or sunglasses will protect your eyes somewhat.
mkaibear - Wednesday, February 5, 2020 - link
I'm not following as to why "the Wuhan virus is much much worse than SARS"?Is it because it is going to be a bigger outbreak due to the ease of transmission and even though the mortality rate is lower the total number of deaths will be greater?
valinor89 - Wednesday, February 5, 2020 - link
I am not remotely qualified to provide an answer, but my congecture is:Seems like more contagion, longer incubation and posibility of contagion from non symptomatic patients makes this much more difficult to contain.
It is possible that we have less deaths at the moment simply because they take a lot longer to die, if they do so. The people dying now might be those of the first, smaller, batches of people infected. There is in affect a sort of greater lagg between the number of infected people and the number of deaths.
It could also happen that it is less lethal than the SARS and is more contagious. I have no idea wich is wich.
Unashamed_unoriginal_username_x86 - Wednesday, February 5, 2020 - link
How will you eat all the wafers with a face mask?! D;mode_13h - Sunday, February 9, 2020 - link
Good question! Ian will need a new gag.Anyway, Intel will probably not let him near another wafer, after the devastating analysis he published from CES.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15380/i-ran-off-wit...
JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, February 5, 2020 - link
I would honestly not go to Computex and risk my life to (a virus yet uncured and possibly uncurable and no-vaccine) just cover some shiny new tech toys. There's going to be more computexes and technology releases for your entire lifetime.The honest dangers of the Wuhan coronavirus are the long gestation period (a person might have 0 symptoms for weeks at a time, but may still spread the coronavirus unknowingly) and the fact that there's tens of thousands of people at these trade shows, touching public facilities like escalators/elevators/toilets, etc. You could contract coronavirus, show no symptoms during the entire tradeshow and even a week after you get back home, then start getting deathly ill and possibly also spread it to other local coworkers unknowingly.
I'd urge people to just take vacation or time off. You could always just reference other people's coverage or something with your articles.
levizx - Saturday, February 8, 2020 - link
Are you illiterate? What part of "727 recoveries" made you think it's "a virus yet uncured and possibly uncurable"mode_13h - Sunday, February 9, 2020 - link
From what I've heard, asymptomatic spreaders are not typically the main transmission vectors, in viral outbreaks like this.Valantar - Wednesday, February 5, 2020 - link
Am I the only one thoroughly unimpressed by these virus outbreaks? So 8098 people got SARS and of them 774 died - that is indeed a high mortality rate, but it's also a rather shockingly low total number of infected. Remember that this was happening in some of the most densely populated areas on Earth. On the other hand the CDC estimates that 10 000-25 000 people DIED between Oct 1st 2019 and Jan 25th 2020 from influenza. In the US alone. That is more people than were infected with SARS in total, and that's just in one season, for a disease that's relatively well known even if there are always new strains.Sure, the majority of these deaths were likely people already very ill. But the scale of these "pandemics" is laughable in comparison. The only dramatic thing to me seems to be that the virus in question is new and unknown and we thus don't know how it will develop - but the reality tends to be that they peter out after a few months. Caution is always a good idea, but let's not pretend this is the end of the world.
JoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
I wouldn't consider it a pandemic, but I don't want to be one of the first guinea pigs to get a brand new illness that doctors don't know how to treat, of which one that nobody knows if there's lasting side-effects from. Chances are you're going to die from something as easily preventable as just not going into China.There's internet hearsay (which is dubious at best) that the genome of the Wuhan coronavirus was bio-engineered in a bioweapons research facility just 11 mi (still in Wuhan) from ground zero of the first confirmed infection, and that the genome was mapped to be similar to the SARS and HIV virus genomes. And if it's like HIV, then there might not even be a good vaccination for it for people that haven't contracted Wuhan coronavirus yet.
mode_13h - Sunday, February 9, 2020 - link
Stop spreading that nonsense. If claims are dubious, then just don't repeat them.First, it is *not* related to HIV, which is a retrovirus.
It *is* very similar to SARS, though I don't see why it should be difficult to believe that relatives of SARS remain in the wild, and could transfer over to humans as SARS did.
mode_13h - Sunday, February 9, 2020 - link
The problem with your reasoning is in the mortality rates, and what *could* happen if nCOV-2019 isn't contained. The new coronavirus is much more lethal than flu. If it's able to spread globally, then we'll likely see absolute fatality numbers that dwarf those killed by recent influenza strains.SirFlamenco - Thursday, June 4, 2020 - link
You were right!SirFlamenco - Thursday, June 4, 2020 - link
Well that didn't age well