Suggest the Chinese are keeping a lid on the actual numbers.

what will the numbers look like in a week? 10,000?

in the last few days would have had over 7000 confirmed cases.

So perhaps the containment effort is starting to pay off... of course we will need some more time to evaluate....

Who knows how many have it but haven't been tested?

how many people typically fall ill from anything at all each day in China? How many people die each day from all causes?

Another question: is the fact that the vast majority of deaths are in Wuhan, where this particular corona virus apparently originated mean anything other than it's been there a bit longer than anywhere else?

Yet another question: What is the typical length of time from onset of symptoms to death?

Bonus question: At what point, or for how long, is someone contagious?

Extra bonus question: How virulent is this, meaning how readily to people get sick from this corona virus once exposed?

Answers would be far more illuminating than simple numbers.

I read a very good article on that. A few days ago someone on DU posted an OP where the title said something like "OMG a 2.8". Now I understand what that number means (a measure of infection tendency) and the article gave some perspective in terms of human mortality. The current virus is actually a 2.6 on the transmission scale. The SARS virus was about a 3.8. The different strains of flu virus run 11.0-14.5, as does the measles. Each year 10,000-60,000 people worldwide die from flu related causes, 800 people in ~1.3 years died from SARS and the current virus has killed just over 100. So far people are over-reacting, especially if some of those people chose not to get a flu shot.

Has nothing to do with this.

I agree that there may be some unnecessary hype or panic. But this virus won’t be impacted by a flu shot.

What could help is getting a pneumonia vaccination if you are in a susceptible group. And a booster at the recommended interval. Most deaths are due to the pneumonia that is secondary to flu, SARS or this.

Maybe I should have been clearer. Some people are panicking over an as yet low mortality level virus, but they didn't protect them against one that is four times more deadly, given what is known so far.

It is high mortlity - low prevalence (so far), but increasing exponentially.

This virus (based on death/confirmed infections) is about 16 times more deadly as last year's influenza virus. (The estimates based on the first 40-ish patients was 15%. Currently it is 2.3%. Last year's influenza mortality rate was about .14% (1/16 of the current coronavirus mortality rate), for reference.

If the death rate from the Wuhan virus doubled or tripled worldwide, it would kill only 2500-5000 people, at the most one half of what the flu kills. It is way too early to panic about the virus. I am not talking blindly, experts in virology are saying that people should not panic.

Now. I am not saying that we are not at the start of a 1918 Spanish Flu like pandemic, it is just experts at such science believe that we are not remotely there and have more risk of dying from the flu.

and you don't seem to understand exponential growth.

Death rate = the rate at which the virus kills infected people. Roughly - # dead/# infected. The rate at which an illness causes death is not likely to double or triple. Once we are past the initial experience stage (until we find a cure/vaccine), the death rate is likely to remain fairly stable.

If you mean increase in number dead, or increase in infected population, you don't understand exponential growth.

The number of infected (and the number dead) is growing exponentially, not linearly. With an R0 of 2.6 (the most recent estimate I've seen), the number of infected will grow by a factor of 2.6 (i.e. double) in one generation of the virus. It took from Saturday around noon until today to grow by a factor of 2.8. That's 3.5 days for a generation.

That means that by Saturday at noon the number of infected is likely to have gone up by a factor of 6.76. By Tuesday midnight (a weke from today) by a factor of 17.6, by a week from Saturday - up by a factor of 46. That's nearly 100,000 people by a week from Saturday. At the current death rate, 2,550 dead - in a week and a half.

There are factors that could moderate that (a high number of infected, but not diagnosed individuals would decrease the death rate - but likely increase the transmission rate); the death rate could increase as more of the just-barely-infected individuals have a chance to reach the stage at which they die; we could effectively contain the virus - or find a vaccine.

You may not be talking blindly - but you are throwing around terms you apparently don't understand and misrepresenting facts (like the relative mortality rate of flu v. the coronavirus), and the transmission rate for the flu.

I keep pointing you to what experts in the field are saying and you keep indicating that they must be mistaken. I gave you a string to query, I did and what I read backs what I am telling you that I had read earlier.

basic high school math terms like (death) rate, and seem not to understand the exponential implications of an R0 of 2.6.

You're comparing the number of dead per week in a disease that is already global - and close to the peak of the season - to a total number of dead in a disease that has been in existence (and growing exponentially) for not much more than a month to imply that the latter is less deadly than the former, despite an R0 of double the former, and a death rate of about 16 times the former. That lacks basic mathematical integrity.

that is not right. I can take your small dataset and draw maybe five different conclusions from it, all defensible. That is why I have kept telling you that I was repeating what experts in the field of Virology are saying in news article. The numbers that I gave were quoted by those people.

It is not basic high school math numbers, it is just that as an experienced engineer, I know not to develop exponentials from a very small dataset, I have too much experience to fall into that trap.

Until their opinions change, I will listen to the experts, they almost certainly have access to far superior data than you have.

flu season.

You're still not demonstrating basic mathematical literacy when you compare the absolute numbers of dead from an established illness at the peak of its season to those of a brand new illness - an illness that is growing exponentially at a rate faster than the flu (R0-2.6 for the coronavirus, from published epidemiological literature, to the flu R0 = 1.3),an illness that is currently killing at a rate of 15-20 times that of influenza - and declare the former is more deadly based on those absolute numbers (while putting on blinders to what we know about how rapidly the latter will outpace the former at the R0 numbers the experts are calculating - and the current data about numbers of infected people.)

You are taking limited data for coronavirus and extrapolating exponentials, that is insane for such a small data population, my guess is that is why experts, who deal with population statistics regularly ARE NOT ALARMED by coronavirus.

I totally agree with you that coronavirus is new, so we don't know where it is headed yet, but again, people that work with viruses are not alarmed, so I will go with their advice. It could be that the mortality statistic for coronavirus is much lower than influenza once all is known, or it could be higher, right now there doesn't seem to be enough data on the new virus to say one way or another and you are making a mistake be extrapolating from very limited data.

What is happening with coronavirus reminds me of what happened with SARS over a decade ago. It turns out when it was all said and done, even a mild influenza was much deadlier.

Not an argument that helps make your case.

You might want to check with the CDC, which has issued an uncommon Level 3 alert for travel to the entire country of china.

You might want to check with epidemiologists who are calling for a global emergency to be declared.

You might want to check with China - which has imposed unprecedented quaranties on several major cities.

As for extrapolating from small numbers - I've acknowledged that in most posts I've made and been very clear where my numbers are coming from. When I have a choice betwen a conservative number and one that would exaggerate the risk, I've used the conservative number. And - as I indicated in at least one post - when I use today's numbers and work my way back, the numbers are not perfect - but they are close, which suggests a relatively accurate model.

The basic risk is that you will get the power of the exponential totally wrong. There is a rather dramatic difference between an exponential with a power of "X" and one with a power of "1/2X". The conclusions that a person who has some familiarity with exponentials will be vastly different between the two. You simply are not using enough data to draw the conclusions that you are drawing. I have repeatedly admitted that your conclusion could turn out to be right since we are near the start of the coronavirus epidemic, it could in fact become the Spanish Flu of 1917-1918 that wiped out a good percentage of the world's population. The CDC and other groups are likely exercising caution because they don't know enough about the nature of the virus to decide whether it is capable of causing a large worldwide pandemic. On the subject of our central debate, the CDC and other experts state that given what is known so far about the two, the coronavirus IS NOT deadlier than this season's influenza strain.

I don't know how you have concluded that the coronavirus is deadlier than SARS. SARS ran for about a year and a half and ended up killing around 800 people worldwide. The majority of the deaths took place early on as scientists and the medical community were trying to figure out what therapies worked against SARS. I assume that the same dynamic is happening with the coronavirus. If the coronavirus kills more people that SARS did in a year and a half then it would indeed be deadlier than SARS, because it would have killed as scientists figured it out and therapies against it were applied.

I have to get around to two things. The first was the influential numbers that you questioned. Because of the nature of population statistics, a number can be very large at the onset of something, but the steady state number that characterize something much lower. What I may have read was an expert doing a calculation of the ONSET of this season's influenza to the onset of the coronavirus, what I likely missed is that that person did a comparative extrapolation using a constant timeframe from the start of the onset, by that logic, if coronavirus is a 2.6, since the onset of this season's influenza killed a lot more people in the same amount of time, it's comparative number would be something like 11-14, WHEN compared to coronavirus over the same timeframe from onset. The steady state number for coronavirus, once more data is gathered AND clinicians use newly developed methods to fight it could end up being much smaller that 2.6, or much worse (a seriously deadly pandemic) - it is too early to tell which, as opposed to what you seem to be concluding.

The last point on on the coronavirus exponential plot that you or someone posted here. Initially things escaped my notice because I glanced at the chart for maybe a second or two. But having remembered what I saw, there are a couple major problems with it that makes me suspicious about how it was generated. The first thing is that none of the datapoints had noticeable residuals, that is not what one should see with properly graphed natural population data, the exponential curve should be a smoothed curve that runs through a "cloud" of individual datapoints, each having a residual value attached to it (a residual for an individual datapoint is a value that defines how far that point sits off a smoothed line through a datacloud of datapoints) - so that fact alone makes me suspicious of the plot that was shown, the plot appears to be a manufactured interpretation of natural data and as such tells the story that it's creator wants to tell, IMO. The second problem that I have is the steep slope of the exponential curve, properly sampled natural data would most likely not yield a curve that looks like that, but I touched on this observation when I talked about the possibility that the power of the exponential that you are relying on could be way off from what the steady state one will be once more is known about the coronavirus and clinicians have new tactics to fight it.

And never mind that flu vaccine doesn't guarantee that you won't get the flu.

The flu kills around 210 people every week at the lowest estimate, the corona virus has killed about 100 people in three weeks.

I am not pulling stuff out of the air, experts in virology are saying what I am repeating.

by using the number of people killed at the very beginning of what appears to be exponential growth - in comparison with a long-standing, relatively well-known.

By your reasoning, we should wait - say - another 3.5 days (at the current growth rate) until it has killed more than 200 people in those 3.5 days before we start being concerned?

By the way - in the 3.5 days afer that - at the current death rate - another 600+ people will die.

The reason it has only killed 100 people in 3 weeks is because it has barely been in existence much longer than that.

Let me give you some numbers from the last few days.

2019 confirmed infected as of Saturday at noon.
5578 confirmed infected as Tuesday at midnight.

R0 estimated (at the low end) at 2.6.

Increase in diagnosed infections in 3.5 days: 2.7 - roughly matching R0 (which suggests a each "generation' of the virus is about 3.5 days)

Using those numbers (and the current death rate calculated using #dead/# confirmed infections = 2.35 - calculating backwards for a reality check on numbers- .0235 x 2019 = 47 dead (the actual number was 51, I believe). Not perfect - but not outrageously off.

So - from Tuesday at midnight - going forward - assuming a 3.5 infection period -

Saturday - noon - 2.6 x 5578 = 14,503 infected; 340 dead
Next Tuesday - midnight 14503 x 2.6 = 37708 infected; 886 dead
A week from Saturday - noon - 2.6 x 37708 = 98,040 infected; 2,304 dead

In case the timing is not clear - that's 10.5 days from now. That's 1418 dead in a 3.5 day period.

There are lots of factors that might slow that down - BUT - that's why the Harvard epidemiologist was so freaked out by an R0 of 3.6 (an earlier estimate) - and has called for a global emergency declaration. That's also why the CDC Has issued a Level 3 warning to avoid all non-essential travel to the entire country if China - and China has closed transport, quarantining several major cities.

and how to fight it over periods of several weeks or months. So, to figure out the pure deadliness of a virus, you would look at the death rate when relatively nothing is known about it other that it is killing people. Once therapies start being used, that is a horse of a different color. This year's influenza virus has been around since like October, a lot has been found out about it and therapies to fight it applied, for you to use a smoothed outcome that resulted is wrong, even I was wrong to use an average for this year's influenza because given that it onset as an unknown, untreatable virus (the vaccine for the season was ineffective against it), it's death rate was likely much higher in the first month.

Seasonal viruses change all the time. That does not mea that scientists are not reacting to this year's virus to plan this year's treatment plan. What changes from year to year is which strains they predict and include in the vaccine (and that is based on experience outside of the use, using the strains that are prevalent in parts of the world that have a different flu cycle than we do.) That is one of the primary reasons for the extremely low effectiveness of last year's influenza virus (14%). The second half of the season was a dramatically different virus than the first half, and barely anyone was protected by the vaccine - because the predictions about what strains would be prevalent throughout the season were flat wrong. But it is not treatment that changes based on what they learn about the flu in recent (6 months to a year) history - it is prevention.

In terms of treatment, they are not applying different therapies to treat it now than they did in October. The treatment they rely on is based on decades of information about how to treat influenza. The only "recent" change in treatment is the availability of antiviral medications.

The death rate of influenza is not (as a general rule) dramatically different from one year to the next (or within a flu season). If there is a particularly deadly strain, the death rate will be higher for the season - the only significant in-season variation when it is a more deadly variation, comes from public awareness that the strain this year is deadly, so they are more liikely to seek help early than if they think it is the same-old/same-old. Seeking help early (and being able to start the antiviral regime), or early awareness of the need to treat deadly symptoms, is what decreases the death rate within a season - not that we have changed how we treat the flu since October, based on what we have learned about this particular flu.

Since we don't have a history with this brand new virus, the death rate is likely to change as we learn how it kills - so we can focus on minimizing the impact of the particular mechanism of death. If you look back at my posts, you will see that I already discussed that.

from 20,000 to 60,000. So the severity does change depending on the strain.

I thought I was clear that treatments change as scientists find out more about a virus, you are disputing that, but past experience seem to contradict what you claim. We are at the highest risk point in this year's flu virus, but the death rate is declining, how can that happen if what you claim is true?

BTW, a lab in Australia has replicated the coronavirus through culturing. They took a culture from a sick patient then replicated it. The discovery opens up a variety of avenues to attack the virus. I seriously doubt that more people will die than died total from SARS. Currently the coronavirus death toll stands at 132, I believe almost all in China, over 800 people died from SARS worldwide.

not death rate. The absolute numbers of deaths tells you nothing about how deadly the virus is.

If you calculate the death rate every year from 2010-11 to 2018-19, it has ranged between .096% and .176% from 2010 to present, with an average of .12%

In other words the entire variation between the worst year and the best year is .08% less than one tenth of one percent variation between the most deadly year and the least deadly year. Six of the 10 years of those years were in the range from.126 to .135 - a variation of .009% (a variation of less than 1/100 of one percent in the death rate.)

The years in which more die are generally years in which more people become ill. That doesn't make the virus itself more deadly - it means for some reason more people were infected (colder weather, more people inside; a slightly heigher R0, a newer strain of influenza so fewer older people had residual immunity from childhood, a bad prediction of which strains were likely to be circulating - resulting in an ineffective vaccine). When more people are infected, more people will die - even if the flu is exactly as deadly from year to year.

As to SARS - it circulated 7 months, infecting 8098 people, causing 774 deaths. At three months in, there were 305 infections with 5 deaths.

In comparison, at roughly one month into the coronavirus, outbreak there are 6165 infections (nearly the same number of infections as the full 7 months of SARS),and has already caused 133 deaths - 26.6 times as many people as the SARS outbreak did in 3 months.

You're dreaming if you think the death toll won't pass the SARS death toll. I predict it will pass the SARS death toll by a week from today.

I'll let WHO address whether there is significant cause for concern:

2%. The death rate of SARS was 8% and MERS was 80% (though it sickened very few people, getting it was close to a death sentence). The death rate of this year's flu in the USA is just over 5%. People should worry more about the flu until that changes (and pray that MERS don't pop up again). So far, of the major outbreaks since 1968, the Wuhan Coronavirus is by far the least deadly so far.

In the same article a Harvard Medical School Doctor who is also head of the Infectious Disease Department at a wellknown Boston hospital said that the flu kills more people so far.

Now I am not saying that we are not at the start of a deadly worldwide pandemic, but if the experts don't see that, then my simply washing my hands properly while out in public and after coming home before touching my face or household items is sufficient until expert advice changes.

On a bad year the flu kills over 60,000 people. This year, over 13 million Anericans have been sickened by the flu, 120,000 requiring hospitalization as pointed out.

In a country of around 1.2 billion, the coronavirus has sickened 4,000 and killed over 100.

Like I said, we could be seeing a 1917 Spanish Flu like pandemic, but experts in the field don't think so.

You don't have to take my word. Do a search with the string "Is coronavirus deadlier than Influenza" and read for yourself what the experts are saying.

Let's focus on that a bit. You said that coronavirus has a number of 2.8.

China is isolating a population of around 50 million at my last reading. Out of that 50 million, 4,000 are got the illness and last I read, 106 had died in about 1 month. In the USA, to use an average, ~ 25,000 people per month have been sickened in the approximately 5 months so far of this year's flu season, about 1260 per month have died on average. But my USA numbers are for a population that is 6.5 times larger than the 50 million in China. The point is that even if compensation is made for the population sizes, the flu kills at least twice as many people in a country with a medical system that is far better than China's and which treats people and worry about bills later (unlike what someone said about China) - but even if I assume that the medical systems are equal and produce equal results the flu is > 2 times deadlier based upon numbers that I have read - if the sizeable differences in medical care are taken into account, the difference grows even larger.

It started out with a single patient - and too bad for those killed when it grew exponentially. We couldn't have seen that coming becuase the absolute numbers were so smal in the beginning of the epidemic.

And - after saying you were going to focus on the infection rate, you quoted it and did nothing with it, reverting to your absolute number argument which, again, lacks mathematical integrity. Simply put, you are comparing apples to cucumbers.

As for the death rate that you keep suggesting is higher in the flu than coronavirus: Look up both death rates - or calculate both death rate.

Approximately 61,000 people died from the flu last year, out of about 45,000,000 infected. That's a death rate of .135% (less than one percent). The initial death rate for the first 40-ish coronavirus patients (who have all recovered or died) was about 15%. The current death rate is about 132/6057 = 2.17% (i.e. more than 2%). 2.17%/.135% = 16 times deadlier.

The 2.7 death rate is likely an underestimate, since many (rougly 2/3 now) have only been diagnosed in the past 3.5 days and have not had time to die yet. Estimates from epidemiologists I've seen suggest it will settle at closer to 4% once we have a better handle on matching completed disease course to deaths. If it is 4%, it is roughly 30 times more deadly than the flu.

It is not killing more in absolute numbers - YET - because it does not - YET - have a sufficiently large population of infected individuals. But that is rapidly changing. At the current rate of growth, in about 5 weeks the infected population will surpass the entire number of influenza infections last year and - at the current death rate - will have killed 30 times as many people.

a comparative number that the expert that gave it extrapolated from what he knew about the onset of the coronavirus and this season's influenza. He would have used a constant time from onset and then looked at the comparative number of deaths from each. This season's flu strain was not susceptible to the vaccine that was made before the flu season, so it's onset was an unknown virus, scientists had to figure it out and give information on how to treat patients to clinicians - since the coronavirus onset has similar characteristics, then a comparative analysis using a constant timeframe from onset would be legitimate.

Look, I appreciate your point about the AIDS virus and how it spread. But there were several reasons why it did not raise alarm, one was a very long incubation period of more than a year (versus two weeks for coronavirus and one week for this year's flu strain that has killed over 6,000 people so far), the second is that the people that did see a problem did not have enough data on which therapies were effective if any, so the people working against it had to develop data, as is happening now with the coronavirus and what happened earlier with this year's flu, third is that the President that AIDS spread under was hostile to providing money and other resources to understand the illness and come up with therapies.

You may be right that coronavirus will be scary, but as of now I think your rate data compares fighting a relatively unknown disease to fighting one that has been around for a few months and has had lots of research into it and clinical therapies developed to fight it. Also, you used last year's flu data, which is totally invalid since that is a big database that was generated WHILE effective therapies were being used to stop the flu from killing people. I am not sure that you appreciate the nuance, I do believe that people that have worked with large databases versus small ones do. What has to happen is a comparative number has to be generated during a constant time period of knowledge uncertainty near the onset of two diseases that are being compared, you aren't doing that, so your comparisons are likely way off.

And what method is that over-reaction taking?

while this year's fluenza virus is among them and is deadlier.

I just read that a lab in Australia has replicated the coronavirus, my guess is it's days are numbered pretty much in days. One of the problems with this virus and SARS is that they happened in China and wreaked the most havoc there. China isn't known as a country that shares information easily. The Australian lab has already offered to share how they replicated the virus and samples of the replicated virus with the rest of the world, this is a major step forward.

This IS something to be concerned about. The 'powers that be' recognize that as well - hence the economic chaos.

The WHO has now categorized it as a 'High' threat.

The Western world found out about it less than a week ago.

It is a time for clear thinking and CLEAN living. Most of us will be just fine, but this is a time to be Diligent and Aware. These events are unfortunately normal in the course of Homo Sapien Sapien History - Don't Panic, but be Aware.

WHO article -

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

And practice REALLY GOOD Hygiene.

It is contagious before you even get through the incubation period.

Shands before the touch their face or mouth.

The longest transmission time I've seen estimated is 14 days. So adding an extra 7 should account for any exposure on the flight over by not-yet-symptomatic individuals.

It is utter nonsense to bring around 1000 people from the epicenter of this infection to the United States without a mandatory preventative quarantine - when all indications are that asymptomatic individuals who are infected are contagious.

Screening on landing will do no good to contain the virus, since infected but asymptomatic individuals will be free to run around infecting people during the period becoming contagous and showing symptoms.

If they screen them upon arrival (which is what they seem to be planning to do), that sure doesn't guarantee they don't develop symptoms later.

Among those thousand of people, I am guessing it is quite likely that at least someone is infected.

Unless u are around people just back from China, its not much of a risk. All positive cases in US are from people from affected area in China.

That means it is loose in the wild un-quarantined in Europe now.

Health authorities say a Bavarian man contracted the virus from a colleague visiting from China. It is believed to be the first case of human-to-human transmission in Europe.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-confirms-human-transmission-of-coronavirus/a-52169007

This means that it was transmitted in the wild in Europe.

It is a safe assumption that both persons had encountered multiple people as well.

Hence, it is loose in the wild in Europe. You are contagious when asymptomatic.

Gonna be a nasty Spring in Europe, though I expect the overall death rate to decrease it will still likely remain more deadly than the flu.

It's the asymptomatic contagion that's the kicker here.

Nobody knows where they went in the world or how many were infected. I guess we'll know in about 10 days

Unless, of course, there is a major mutation of the virus in the meantime.

and doctored via video.

I am not thinking it is time to freak out but it certainly bares watching. About the numbers, I am not a numbers person just watching the trends and they are a bit concerning. It seems the total recovered has gone up quite a bit and that, in itself, seems encouraging. They either recovered or were misdiagnosed?

Not a time to panic for us over here but certainly not a time to tell people to stop worrying. Most of us, not all, but most of us have not one freaking clue what we are talking about.

at a rate of 2%. Also it reported that over 99% of the cases were in China, with it's developing healthcare system.

A lab in Australia has replicated the coronavirus in a lab setting, that is a major step forward.