1/500 needs a citation. Because the WHO and CDC as of a few days ago said 1/50. But even 1/500 is an incredibly high mortality rate for something as infectious as the flu, and to make light of it is bizarre. Even your number would make catching it about 1000x more dangerous than skydiving.
What bothers me is the difficulty in interpreting such numbers because they’re not normalized to health.
E.g. dropping sperm counts in men. Is that dropping in all men? Or is it a side effect of rising obesity in enough men to dent the average?
Is the mortality 1/500 here because a good health 30 year old has a 1/500 chance of dying? Or because the 1/100 30 year olds with poor health have a 1/5 chance of dying?
So 1/500 sounds like a correct ballpark. A few days ago there was some data released by China on some 40,000 cases. When you age adjust the mortality stats by:
- Assuming uniform age distribution
- Accounting for the age distribution of the population.
You get something like .4% for the 30-40 age range. This was a crude estimate... but that's why I say ballpark. It also could go up/down as we get more data.
I agree the risk here is considerably high. People just don't understand scale well. Assuming the R0 is high, it could eventually sweep through the majority of the population. IIRC, the 1918 flu pandemic is estimated to have infected 80% of the population. So in the US alone that's 6,000,000 deaths, or one Sept 11. like attack every day for 200 days.
Deaths are a lagging indicator. 2119 deaths as of yesterday / 0.004 = 530,000 cases that are ~2+ weeks old. In other words 530,000 infections around February 5th. That seems extremely unlikely based on the data we have.
For a reasonably accurate estimate you need to look at percentage of total infections detected, and the lag between detection and death. Using say 50% detection rate and 7 days between detection and death you get 2119 / (63,851 / 0.5) = 1.7% fatality rate. That’s about as optimistic as I think is reasonable.
PS: A 50% detection rate may be high or low, but that’s the real unknown.
I don't disagree that the data has very large error bars. I'm simply saying that, using the current best guess we can do the following:
- Stratify relative risk based on population distribution.
- Guage the impact of the expected bad case of ~2% mortality.
Will mortality rate come down? Very likely. But it may not... And if not, what is the outcome at scale?
Beside the discussable mortality rate among healthy adults, and beside surving with permanent lung damage, many people who are 30-40 have kids who are 0-10. Things take a whole new dimension there.
The mortality rate of kids 0-10 has been extremely low.
As for permanent lung damage, it's hard to say. From what I've read about ARDS, as expected, if you're young, lung function and general physical function can improve back close to baseline over time (e.g. 5 years). So it's not like you're going to be confined to a rocking chair but you won't be winning any marathons either.
ARDS is not permanent lung damage. You may recover lung function after ARDS. You will not recover from permanent lung damage. It will even deteriorate and your prognosis is less than 5 years to live. Stratification is a red herring, but feel free to do so.
Coronavirus isn't like the flu in this regard, and is actually less severe the younger you are, including children.
No one under 10 has died from it, and only one person under 20. The mortality rate for people under 50 is about .2% (compared to 2.3% for all cases).
So far it's basically a logarithmic function of age.
The lung damage piece is obviously frightening, and we obviously still have a lot to learn about it as we're not sure why children are able to fend it off so easily yet.
From SARS we can guess at the long-term effects, including permanent fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, necrosis, breathing problems, chronic lung and kidney problems.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a mortality rate of 2.3% is a lot more than 23x higher than the flu, which the CDC says has a mortality rate of 2 per 100,000.
According to the WHO the case fatality rate is 2.3%. However the CFR is not the real mortality rate of the disease and is a changing number. Here’s an excerpt from the latest Situation Report about the CFR and what it means.
“The confirmed case fatality ratio, or CFR, is the total number of deaths divided by the total number of confirmed cases at one point in time. Within China, the confirmed CFR, as reported by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention,9 is 2.3%. This is based on 1023 deaths amongst 44 415 laboratory-confirmed cases as of 11 February. This CFR does not include the number of more mild infections that may be missed from current surveillance, which has largely focused on patients with pneumonia requiring hospitalization; nor does it account for the fact that recently confirmed cases may yet develop severe disease, and some may die. As the outbreak continues, the confirmed CFR may change. Outside of China, CFR estimates among confirmed cases reported is lower than reported from within China. However, it is too early to draw conclusions as to whether there are real differences in the CFR inside and outside of China, as final outcome data (that is, who will recover and who will die) for the majority of cases reported from outside China are not yet known.”
They are defining the term "confirmed case fatality ratio" as something different from the CFR that cannot be directly compared. The way they say it is misleading because people will parse it like: "{confirmed case fatality ratio}, or CFR", but they're actually saying "confirmed {case fatality ratio, or CFR}". You can tell because CFR doesn't have enough letters to have "confirmed" in it, and it usually has a different definition. That's also why they never call it "the CFR", they call their thing "this CFR" or "the confirmed CFR".
Their confirmed CFR is not a good measure of anything because the conversion rate to CFR depends on average time between case confirmation and death. It effectively assumes that everyone diagnosed but alive will recover.
"According to CDC, this year's flu season has led to at least 12 million medical visits and 250,000 hospitalizations. In addition, CDC found that the percentage of outpatient visits for influenza-like illness increased to 6.8% in the week ending Feb. 8, up from 6.6% in the week ending Feb. 1. The national baseline for those visits is 2.4%. Between 14,000 and 36,000 flu-related deaths overall occurred from Oct. 1, 2019, to Feb. 8, CDC estimated."
It can be confusing to compare the mortality rate of cases in hospitals (which are be definition the worst cases) to the mortality rate of all infections (many of which never get to hospitals or get officially diagnosed). Gotta make sure we compare apples to apples.
Many people are pointing out that the 2.3% rate is just the case fatality rate (so known cases) -- probably the most cited source right now for infection fatality rate (which makes corrections for unreported cases) is this: https://institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV-public/an...
The trick to no infections is not testing. Poland is still clear of infections, in other news Poland has no working tests to use on suspected patients/dead.
According to the estimates in the article -- predicted infections: 60% of 7.8 billion, current known fatality rate: 2.3% -- this virus is on track to kill roughly 108 million people. That's more than the Spanish flu of 1918 (high estimates put that at ~50 million).
I believe there was a quote from the Twitter account of an epidemiologist in Hong Kong to the effect that if the disease was left unchecked it would reach that many people.
> COVID-19 could infect 60 percent of the globe if left unchecked
Clearly the outbreak is not unchecked. Many measures have been put in place already. I am pretty sure the global community isn't going to just standby and allow the virus to communicate freely.
They've been vigilant in their testing and transparent in their results, and it's making their numbers look bad. It doesn't look like any other country will follow their lead.
At least they are doing something (or probably the right thing to say is that they are the only country with competent measures) and because of transparency you can see what's going on almost in real time. I think their numbers look bad now, but the measures look solid and to be honest Singapore is probably the only country with adequate response. So if things go bad there, i'm pretty sure it will go bad everywhere.
> At least they are doing something (or probably the right thing to say is that they are the only country with competent measures) and because of transparency you can see what's going on almost in real time.
Oh absolutely. In these crucial moments seeing every other country failing in its own way, Singapore's response impresses me. I think this crisis is acting as a child/adult/senile test. Some countries are not developed enough to handle this; they are denying anything is wrong and trying to delay the economic impact as long as possible. Some countries have been stable long enough to ossify; each is failing due to its own unique type of entrenched-power disease. Singapore is grown up enough to have the right resources to fight, and young enough to have control of its faculties.
> So if things go bad there, i'm pretty sure it will go bad everywhere.
I'm not sure about this. Singapore is one of the most polluted cities in the world, due to Indonesia being chronically on fire. There's some research that suggests that air pollution upregulates ACE2 receptors, which would be expected to increase transmissibility for a virus known to use those receptors to enter cells. We don't know much yet about its spread in populations with low smoking rates and cleaner air.
CDC: The containment phase is really to give us more time. This virus will become a community virus at some point in time, this year or next year. [...] Right now we're in an aggressive containment mode, we don't know a lot about this virus, this virus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year, and I think eventually the virus will find a foothold and we will get community-based transmission.
Add asymptomatic transmission in an incubation period of ~14 days and there is not much to check. Also, since China waited months, the virus was already left unchecked, resulting in an estimation ~1 million infected: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022434v...
It's interesting that in your other comment you referenced another paper for a higher IFR although in this reference the model suggested 0.07%. So what do you believe? A higher total infection with a much lower IFR, or a higher IFR? Or you just pick papers that support your viewpoint for the sake of argument?
> Or you just pick papers that support your viewpoint for the sake of argument?
This. (Actually I believe both numbers are optimistically correct: 1 million infected and 50k death, but I also realize that's crazy talk and panic time. If that is what is really happening in Hubei I would quarantine 10% of the world's population).
I don't think CCP can cover 50k death with ease. Unlike many western people assumed, CCP is not omnipotent in China. There are checks and balances of power. Not distributed democratically, but still distributed in some opaque ways. 50k death can lead to some pretty serious power dynamics change if true.
Btw it's not too far off that right now 10% of world's population is more or less under some level of quarantine.
Yes, however because it spreads so easily (even in the period without symptoms!) it is likely to spread outside of China. Singapore has done well to contain it, but not all countries have great health and control systems and it will eventually be just spreading everywhere, it's almost impossible for it to be entirely contained based on the pure fact of how large China is and how hard it is to detect.
Yeah just like it is in Iran, where they diagnosed a case posthumously in somebody who hasn’t travelled abroad, which means it’s been in the country for at least three weeks and they just learned about it last night.
Real rates are probably more nuanced with many under 50 at very low risk and those above 60 at higher risk. A serious case can present as a viral pneumonia, if there is a break down in health care system and those who need oxygen on a temporary basis cannot get it or if they develop a secondary bacterial infection and antibiotics are not available then mortality will go higher among those cases.
I think this year will be remembered by many as "the year my grandfather died of pneumonia."
That's inaccurate. The known case fatality rate is 2.3%, but that's of cases which presented to a hospital and were diagnosed.
It's likely that 90% of the infections are asymptomatic, or close enough to be mistaken for a bad cold. That's bad, because such people are hard to quarantine, but it's good, because it means the true fatality rate may just be 0.2%.
Not that 0.2% of five billion wouldn't still be a horrible tragedy.
It's not always clear when to use absolute and when to use relative units.
I would suggest that each dead person is mourned by approximately the same number of people, and therefore absolute units are more appropriate.
Also, the world of 1918 was much less interconnected. It's not clear if that makes losing n% of the population better or worse, but I would bet on worse.
LOTS of countries don't have a health system as advanced as China, this is where the risk is. You can't dismiss the risk based on the fact that China is overworked because it is likely that other countries could end up in that situation with sufficient amount of cases.
If this gets to where most of the people in the world are, ie: India/Bangladesh/Pakistan/Africa, do you think their health care system will be better than China currently or worse?
Dividing current deaths by current cases is just about the worst way of estimating CFR of a developing epidemic. Try current deaths vs cases from 5, 7, 10 days ago or deaths vs (deaths + recoveries).
8 out of 1073 = 1.34125% as of 20.02.2019 [1], looks like it rises 1% per day;p but we both know that it's false assumption. And numbers we have right now doesn't matter really because it is too early to tell. Half of the world doesn't even have a capacity to test for COVID-19. And impact on developing countries will be on completely different level [2] (or maybe not, because population is much younger there)
Clearly the long term health implications of a severe case of the virus are worrying, however its not clear to me from this article what the implications (if any) are if you get a mild case? Are there any articles discussing this?
> “It’s highly possible to get infected a second time,” one of the doctors, who declined to be identified, told the outlet.
> The physician said that medication used to treat the virus can have negative side effects on patients’ heart tissue, making them more susceptible to cardiac arrest.
> “A few people recovered from the first time by their own immune system, but the meds they use are damaging their heart tissue, and when they get it the second time, the antibody doesn’t help but makes it worse, and they die a sudden death from heart failure,” the doctor said.
It was the WHO who claimed on 4 jan that person-to-person transmission was impossible. It was CDC and WHO who said asymptomatic transmission was unlikely ("not a driver of the outbreak", "unclear"). It was the WHO who said closing borders and stopping Chinese from entering the country had zero effect on spread. It was the WHO who still claims that packages from China can't cause infection, despite science showing it can survive on plastics for up to 9 days.
China should have all the data on reinfection, and thus, if they share this data with the WHO like they are supposed to, there should be a factual source from the CDC or the WHO. Where is it?
If we stick to the official facts every time a whistle blower opens their mouth, there would be no point in blowing the whistle. Only one who benefits from that are the authorities.
Like the UK government: If China does not share more information, we are forced to assume the absolute worst.
It was actually just the WHO saying all those things, parroting the information released by China's health services.
The CDC did not make any statements about the transmissibility of WCV because they didn't have the information to make any statements. In fact, in one of their first press releases on the WCV they even noted that it might be possible for person-to-person transmission to occur because not enough was known about how the virus was spread. https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/han00426.asp
Article is unhelpful since it says in the title that reinfection is possible but doesn’t qualify it to with the use of the medication. Also, doesn’t say what medication.
Like said, China should have all the data on reinfection and severity of reinfection. It is China that is being unhelpful, not the New York Post doing its job of a free press.
It is good to see that the generally accepted media is finally picking this up.
2 weeks ago talking about potential upcoming supply line issues and speculating about the virus / disease (most of what turned out to be true) got me and others banned, censored, quarantined (because of "spreading misinformation") and even threatened over PMs on several of the other social networks.
I'm sorry but what, lol? The media has barely talked about anything else for more than the past two weeks. If you got banned somewhere it's probably because you were spreading misinformation or suggesting there are conspiracies, kind of like you're doing right now.
This is a case in which the sketchier internet sites have proven their typical worst and best: they've got all the correct info hot off the presses, mixed in with the worst wrong info.
I recall a similar reaction, in early January, when I heard about the likely protracted latent transmissible phase.
I'm looking forward to reading, ten years from now, about how this virus and the rise of Xi Jinping's dictatorship coincided and erased China's imminent global hegemony, and nobody at all was aware while it was happening...
The Chinese regime has no clothes. This is the Great Leap Forward for a new cohort. Deng Xiaoping attempted to prevent the rise of another idiotic Mao, but he would have had to reconstitute the state from scratch with a strong democratic tradition. So it happened, anyway.
Xi Jinping is a singularly insecure leader doomed to create a brutally inefficient cult of personality. The only purpose of the Chinese state is slowly becoming the protection of Xi's crippled ego, which can never be made whole, all because Mao didn't like Xi's father and treated him and his family badly. To Xi, the only success is shitting on others. It is a tragedy. What should have been a leading nation is regressing and diminishing so fast that consensus media will take at least a decade to begin to comprehend it.
> Unlike their common-cold-causing cousins, these emergent coronaviruses can spark a viral-induced fire throughout many of a person’s organs, and the new disease—dubbed "COVID-19" by the World Health Organization—is no exception when it is severe.
> That helps explain why the COVID-19 epidemic has killed more than 1,800 people, surpassing the SARS death toll in a matter of weeks. While the death rate for COVID-19 appears to be a fifth of SARS, the novel coronavirus has spread faster.
That is bungled logic.
1. COVID-19 is very severe.
2. Because COVID-19 is so severe, in just few weeks it has killed more people than another famous severe disease SARS.
3. But wait, the death rate of COVID-19 is only 1/5th that of SARS, so it is actually less severe.
4. Right, okay, so COVID-19 has killed more people than SARS because it spreads faster. Why were we comparing SARS and COVID-19 severity again?
Bungled logic can consist entirely of propositions that are individually all true statements about the world.
"Socrates is a man. Socrates is mortal. Therefore, all men are mortal."
Here, we can verify the facts that Socrates is a man, that Socrates is mortal and that all men are mortal.
So as far as "extracting data points" goes, everything is cool. We just ignore how the data points are related together, and pretend we don't see funny terms like "therefore", or "that explains why" and such.
If we just look for data points to extract, we are not engaging the arguments, though, It's an understandable reaction to the world though, in which we are bombarded on all sides by material trying to persuade us to believe or do something.
> R0 and lethality are unrelated.
Calling the bluff. You didn't extract this data point from the quote: it's something you already know. Nothing like vocabulary you're using appears in the quote.
COVID-19 is like comparing AIDS to HIV. HIV causes AIDS without medication. Similarly, SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 is very spreadable, and in 18% of cases, turns into COVID-19. COVID-19 is life-threatening.
Does anyone else find it annoying that people are calling this the coronavirus rather than it's actual name? What happens when the next coronavirus comes up?
One thing that I found interesting in the article was the fact that people seem to be suffering from Cytokine Storms, which people think is one of the reasons the 1918 Spanish Flu was so deadly for young adults who have the best immune systems. Basically the immune system overreacts and starts killing everything. [1]
94 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 251 ms ] threadE.g. dropping sperm counts in men. Is that dropping in all men? Or is it a side effect of rising obesity in enough men to dent the average?
Is the mortality 1/500 here because a good health 30 year old has a 1/500 chance of dying? Or because the 1/100 30 year olds with poor health have a 1/5 chance of dying?
You get something like .4% for the 30-40 age range. This was a crude estimate... but that's why I say ballpark. It also could go up/down as we get more data.
I agree the risk here is considerably high. People just don't understand scale well. Assuming the R0 is high, it could eventually sweep through the majority of the population. IIRC, the 1918 flu pandemic is estimated to have infected 80% of the population. So in the US alone that's 6,000,000 deaths, or one Sept 11. like attack every day for 200 days.
For a reasonably accurate estimate you need to look at percentage of total infections detected, and the lag between detection and death. Using say 50% detection rate and 7 days between detection and death you get 2119 / (63,851 / 0.5) = 1.7% fatality rate. That’s about as optimistic as I think is reasonable.
PS: A 50% detection rate may be high or low, but that’s the real unknown.
Will mortality rate come down? Very likely. But it may not... And if not, what is the outcome at scale?
As for permanent lung damage, it's hard to say. From what I've read about ARDS, as expected, if you're young, lung function and general physical function can improve back close to baseline over time (e.g. 5 years). So it's not like you're going to be confined to a rocking chair but you won't be winning any marathons either.
EDIT: sourced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulmonary_fibrosis which we saw in SARS coronavirus-induced pulmonary fibrosis.
> There is no known cure. [...] Life expectancy is generally less than five years.
No one under 10 has died from it, and only one person under 20. The mortality rate for people under 50 is about .2% (compared to 2.3% for all cases).
So far it's basically a logarithmic function of age.
The lung damage piece is obviously frightening, and we obviously still have a lot to learn about it as we're not sure why children are able to fend it off so easily yet.
11.5 is 2.3% of 500, thus 23 out of every 1000 would die at that rate if accurate.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022418v...
From SARS we can guess at the long-term effects, including permanent fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, necrosis, breathing problems, chronic lung and kidney problems.
“The confirmed case fatality ratio, or CFR, is the total number of deaths divided by the total number of confirmed cases at one point in time. Within China, the confirmed CFR, as reported by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention,9 is 2.3%. This is based on 1023 deaths amongst 44 415 laboratory-confirmed cases as of 11 February. This CFR does not include the number of more mild infections that may be missed from current surveillance, which has largely focused on patients with pneumonia requiring hospitalization; nor does it account for the fact that recently confirmed cases may yet develop severe disease, and some may die. As the outbreak continues, the confirmed CFR may change. Outside of China, CFR estimates among confirmed cases reported is lower than reported from within China. However, it is too early to draw conclusions as to whether there are real differences in the CFR inside and outside of China, as final outcome data (that is, who will recover and who will die) for the majority of cases reported from outside China are not yet known.”
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...
Their confirmed CFR is not a good measure of anything because the conversion rate to CFR depends on average time between case confirmation and death. It effectively assumes that everyone diagnosed but alive will recover.
"According to CDC, this year's flu season has led to at least 12 million medical visits and 250,000 hospitalizations. In addition, CDC found that the percentage of outpatient visits for influenza-like illness increased to 6.8% in the week ending Feb. 8, up from 6.6% in the week ending Feb. 1. The national baseline for those visits is 2.4%. Between 14,000 and 36,000 flu-related deaths overall occurred from Oct. 1, 2019, to Feb. 8, CDC estimated."
The season is far from over.
The current estimate is 0.94 (0.37, 2.9).
> COVID-19 could infect 60 percent of the globe if left unchecked
Clearly the outbreak is not unchecked. Many measures have been put in place already. I am pretty sure the global community isn't going to just standby and allow the virus to communicate freely.
[1] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/image/12436712/0x0/3000/5883...
[2] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/image/12455138/0x0/2316/3209...
[3] https://coconuts.co/singapore/news/covid-19-heres-every-nove...
[4] https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=14y9TsLoO2Y6bLj...
Oh absolutely. In these crucial moments seeing every other country failing in its own way, Singapore's response impresses me. I think this crisis is acting as a child/adult/senile test. Some countries are not developed enough to handle this; they are denying anything is wrong and trying to delay the economic impact as long as possible. Some countries have been stable long enough to ossify; each is failing due to its own unique type of entrenched-power disease. Singapore is grown up enough to have the right resources to fight, and young enough to have control of its faculties.
> So if things go bad there, i'm pretty sure it will go bad everywhere.
I'm not sure about this. Singapore is one of the most polluted cities in the world, due to Indonesia being chronically on fire. There's some research that suggests that air pollution upregulates ACE2 receptors, which would be expected to increase transmissibility for a virus known to use those receptors to enter cells. We don't know much yet about its spread in populations with low smoking rates and cleaner air.
Add asymptomatic transmission in an incubation period of ~14 days and there is not much to check. Also, since China waited months, the virus was already left unchecked, resulting in an estimation ~1 million infected: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022434v...
This. (Actually I believe both numbers are optimistically correct: 1 million infected and 50k death, but I also realize that's crazy talk and panic time. If that is what is really happening in Hubei I would quarantine 10% of the world's population).
Btw it's not too far off that right now 10% of world's population is more or less under some level of quarantine.
I think this year will be remembered by many as "the year my grandfather died of pneumonia."
It's likely that 90% of the infections are asymptomatic, or close enough to be mistaken for a bad cold. That's bad, because such people are hard to quarantine, but it's good, because it means the true fatality rate may just be 0.2%.
Not that 0.2% of five billion wouldn't still be a horrible tragedy.
I would suggest that each dead person is mourned by approximately the same number of people, and therefore absolute units are more appropriate.
Also, the world of 1918 was much less interconnected. It's not clear if that makes losing n% of the population better or worse, but I would bet on worse.
Interviews of crematoriums in China claim that two thirds of the bodies they are picking up are from homes, not hospitals.
China is an outlier because their health system is overworked.
[1] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...
[1] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati... [2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-...
> “It’s highly possible to get infected a second time,” one of the doctors, who declined to be identified, told the outlet.
> The physician said that medication used to treat the virus can have negative side effects on patients’ heart tissue, making them more susceptible to cardiac arrest.
> “A few people recovered from the first time by their own immune system, but the meds they use are damaging their heart tissue, and when they get it the second time, the antibody doesn’t help but makes it worse, and they die a sudden death from heart failure,” the doctor said.
China should have all the data on reinfection, and thus, if they share this data with the WHO like they are supposed to, there should be a factual source from the CDC or the WHO. Where is it?
If we stick to the official facts every time a whistle blower opens their mouth, there would be no point in blowing the whistle. Only one who benefits from that are the authorities.
Like the UK government: If China does not share more information, we are forced to assume the absolute worst.
The CDC did not make any statements about the transmissibility of WCV because they didn't have the information to make any statements. In fact, in one of their first press releases on the WCV they even noted that it might be possible for person-to-person transmission to occur because not enough was known about how the virus was spread. https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/han00426.asp
Like said, China should have all the data on reinfection and severity of reinfection. It is China that is being unhelpful, not the New York Post doing its job of a free press.
2 weeks ago talking about potential upcoming supply line issues and speculating about the virus / disease (most of what turned out to be true) got me and others banned, censored, quarantined (because of "spreading misinformation") and even threatened over PMs on several of the other social networks.
You, the viewer, decide!
I'm looking forward to reading, ten years from now, about how this virus and the rise of Xi Jinping's dictatorship coincided and erased China's imminent global hegemony, and nobody at all was aware while it was happening...
The Chinese regime has no clothes. This is the Great Leap Forward for a new cohort. Deng Xiaoping attempted to prevent the rise of another idiotic Mao, but he would have had to reconstitute the state from scratch with a strong democratic tradition. So it happened, anyway.
Xi Jinping is a singularly insecure leader doomed to create a brutally inefficient cult of personality. The only purpose of the Chinese state is slowly becoming the protection of Xi's crippled ego, which can never be made whole, all because Mao didn't like Xi's father and treated him and his family badly. To Xi, the only success is shitting on others. It is a tragedy. What should have been a leading nation is regressing and diminishing so fast that consensus media will take at least a decade to begin to comprehend it.
Chinese regime deploys 1600 internet trolls to suppress information on Coronavirus.
> That helps explain why the COVID-19 epidemic has killed more than 1,800 people, surpassing the SARS death toll in a matter of weeks. While the death rate for COVID-19 appears to be a fifth of SARS, the novel coronavirus has spread faster.
That is bungled logic.
1. COVID-19 is very severe.
2. Because COVID-19 is so severe, in just few weeks it has killed more people than another famous severe disease SARS.
3. But wait, the death rate of COVID-19 is only 1/5th that of SARS, so it is actually less severe.
4. Right, okay, so COVID-19 has killed more people than SARS because it spreads faster. Why were we comparing SARS and COVID-19 severity again?
R0 and lethality are unrelated. COVID-19 has a higher R0 and a lower lethality than SARS.
COVID-19 has a higher lethality than the common cold.
Those are the data points I extracted from what you've quoted.
"Socrates is a man. Socrates is mortal. Therefore, all men are mortal."
Here, we can verify the facts that Socrates is a man, that Socrates is mortal and that all men are mortal.
So as far as "extracting data points" goes, everything is cool. We just ignore how the data points are related together, and pretend we don't see funny terms like "therefore", or "that explains why" and such.
If we just look for data points to extract, we are not engaging the arguments, though, It's an understandable reaction to the world though, in which we are bombarded on all sides by material trying to persuade us to believe or do something.
> R0 and lethality are unrelated.
Calling the bluff. You didn't extract this data point from the quote: it's something you already know. Nothing like vocabulary you're using appears in the quote.
Does that make sense?
https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=2...
The first was SARS. [0]
[0] - https://www.who.int/ith/diseases/sars/en/
Edit: As pointed out in the reply, only some colds are coronavirus. Wikipedia suggests ~15% [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold#Viruses
The name is COVID-19.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_release_syndrome#Hist...