I just try to figure out the odds. Something I am not that bad at. It is like buying a lottery ticket. Say you buy a ticket for a dollar and the prize is $200. As soon as you buy the ticket it is worth $2 until the drawing. Then it is probably worth $0.noddy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2020 1:38 am I do have breathing issues so perhaps should be frightened but cant say I particularly am.
I am interested in this however for several reasons
- the real mortality rate hasnt established yet but could be 5% ish and in populations of millions and hundreds of millions that still becomes an overwhelming amount of chaos, to be half prepared for. Even though modern medicine can carry someone through most of these diseases now that only works if the hospital isnt overloaded and you get the bed and respirator. In most countries hospitals run at close to capacity already and get overloaded very easily.
- this one is nasty because it has the worst aspect of the flu types , a long incubation of 2 weeks, which means lots of travel and infection can happen before you start showing symptoms.
- any test of global systems is an important test - ebola had too short an incubation to spread far but the worst case of any disease would be this one with ebola type outcomes, so how does that pan out, how effective are travel controls etc.
Given the unknown rate of transmission this could be really bad. But you have a good point about the long incubation time.
That could mean a lot of people got infected before anyone showed much in the way of symptoms. That would explain why the numbers are going up so fast. It could also mean there are a lot more infected people about to get sick. That would probably means this outbreak exceeds the SARS and MERS outbreaks. But with a magnitude lower mortality rate than SARS.
The Chinese Government keeps saying it is worried about mutations to a more deadly mutation. They may be hiding something. Anyway my guess(IE Pure speculation) is up to 100's of thousands of dead if it is generally contained in China.
It is somewhat concerning that Wuhan is the site of China's new and one and only Bio Safety Research Lab. Probably no conection. But the Chinese did discover and genetically sequence the virus amazingly rapidly. That may mean something. Maybe why the CCP is freaking out. They are holding back on something. But probably not.
Many member of the WHO worldwide and the CDC are saying that they are much more prepared to contain outbreaks like this because of the ebola outbreak. HOWEVER I still question how effective they have been fighting ebola outside of course developing a vaccination. While national and international med workers were quite heroic during the east African out break of a few years ago, it was mostly contained because people there adapted to it so it did not spread as quickly, and died out.
China and many of its people do not seem to understand that live animal markets are a serious threat for disease jumping from animals to humans.
The odds are if that continues sooner or later something will break out that rivals the plagues of the European dark ages. Something that kills off a 3rd of the population..
The number one natural reason for species extinction is over population and disease that can thrive with an abundance of hosts. Often because of weakened individuals for lack of food or other diseases that are not as fatal.
