Forums / Discussion / General

I know in China at least it's super serious mainly due to poor health conditions in various parts of the country, but seriously in a first world nation like the United States or Canada is there really any serious cause for alarm or is it all a case of "people need to fucking calm down, it's not the fucking black plague circa middle ages Europe where medicine wasn't as advanced as it is now"?

The infection rate is incredibly rapid, with unpredictable incubation periods so quarantine will be tedious and probably erroneous. To me, it is quite serious, but not how it currently stands. The mortality rate is incredibly low and it's so meager with the symptoms – now imagine if it mutated. This could very well be a big epidemic in the making.

Man oh man, the outbreak just only recently started to subside in mainland China, but then we get huge clusters in Korea, Italy and Iran. I think we're going to see some serious shit in the upcoming weeks if the virus keeps spreading out of control worldwide. I've made a thread about this earlier, and I'm worried sick about how long this country (Indonesia) can remain untouched.

I've been trying to keep a cool head over this matter, but I'm getting seriously concerned over its exponential growth in the past week or so.

It's also difficult to know fatality rate because usually it takes less time to die after infection than to recover after infection. It doesn't help that China is not known to be a reliable source of information as well.

Regardless of the spread people do need to calm down. Panicking will only destabilize us further. The economic fallout from the Coronavirus fear is probably going to have more effect on the world than the virus itself.

The disease has not yet been categorized as a pandemic, so it is uncertain if its virulence is self-sustaining enough to spread out of control. China's reportedly able to treat the virus, but their staff are worked to their limits right now. Fatigue, outdated gear, and constant exposure to the virus is weakening hospital workers, which is limiting their ability to treat it. With all that being said it will remain to be seen if other nations will have the same issue as they treat their smaller cases.

Right now the best thing that can be done is to limit non-crucial international travel/trade and continue sending aid to China. It's going to REALLY SUCK for certain industries (especially the tech industry) but limiting the spread and containing the largest outbreak is priority no. 1.

Just another SARS/h1n1/ebola
(though unlike this ebola is actually really deadly)

Ebola killed 11,310
h1n1 killed between 8-18 thousand

It ain't that serious. At a lethality of 2-3% (SARS is literally three times as lethal) and a recovery rate of 37%, and with 80% of cases exhibiting mild or no symptoms, this virus clearly doesn't lift. The only reason it spread so fast and far in the first place is because it struck during the holidays and the Wuhan government was actively suppressing information about its existence during December and January because apparently, keeping people spending and traveling for New Year's is more important than keeping them healthy. The virus has neither of those things on its side now and everyone is watching out for it, so the odds of it spreading beyond the few pockets it has now are low.

my bad, I believe its killing at a faster rate then? dunno

Hardly, over the same timeframe seasonal flu killed over 75,000, and that has a typical mortality rate of I believe 0.2-0.4%. Based on available data, most of these deaths were people who were either elderly, had pre-existing medical conditions, or both. Among patients with no prior medical history, the death rate is just under 1%, and among patients younger than 50, it starts at half a percent and goes down the younger they are.

Granted, that's based on data that was collected on 2/11, so the numbers today might be different, but they're probably not too different.