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[TamerVirus]

So with one voice you're overreacting to the virus and with another you're concerned about the economic repercussions of other people overreacting to the virus?

Perspective
Or rather, your perspective.
I get it now.

Further discussion of this matter with you is pointless.

I wish you and your loved ones good health this season

[scriver]

No, perspective of how much worse the seasonal flu is than the crow disease.

[TamerVirus]

In any case, I’d rather look like a lunatic and be proven wrong than be proven right.
I really hope I’m wrong

[Reelya]

The point here I think is worth mentioning. The flu has a death rate around 0.1%, while this virus is currently around 2.9% from the last estimate I saw.

So both are things to worry about, but for different reasons. Flu because it's endemic, so you're more likely to get it, and Covid-19 because it's more deadly, and it's highly contagious, so if that spreads out of control then we've got a serious problem on our hands. The flu in America can affect up to 50 million people per year, and at that rate, you get about 50 thousand deaths. Coronavirus could achieve that many deaths at 1.5 million infections.

However, there's a lot we don't know yet. Some believe the rate of infection of China has been seriously under-reported, meaning the fatality rate may be highly inflated. Also, these viruses really don't like warm weather and that's part of what did in SARS and MERS the first time.
https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/warm-weather-may-have-helped-suppress-coronavirus

[ChairmanPoo]

Amid severe cases (aka: those requiring hospitalization) influenza's death rate is closer to 20%

[Il Palazzo]

The point here I think is worth mentioning. The flu has a death rate around 0.1%, while this virus is currently around 2.9% from the last estimate I saw.

The latter is CFR, not IFR, though. I.e. taking into account confirmed cases only. Infection Fatality Ratio is about 0.3%-1% according to this:
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200219-sitrep-30-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=3346b04f_2
I see similar estimates in other sources.

[Reelya]

Amid severe cases (aka: those requiring hospitalization) influenza's death rate is closer to 20%

We need to go off raw infection rate however. If the odds of dying from infection are 0.1% and the odds of dying after hospitalization are 20% then that also means only 1 in 200 people get sick enough to require hospitalization.

The point here I think is worth mentioning. The flu has a death rate around 0.1%, while this virus is currently around 2.9% from the last estimate I saw.

The latter is CFR, not IFR, though. I.e. taking into account confirmed cases only. Infection Fatality Ratio is about 0.3%-1% according to this:
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200219-sitrep-30-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=3346b04f_2
I see similar estimates in other sources.

If that's the case then it's about the same as the flu. The main criteria then would be how quickly it spreads. You got that cruise ship with 634 people who got infected out of ... 4000? That would be pretty unlikely that the flu would spread that quickly among passengers on a ship.

[Il Palazzo]

If that's the case then it's about the same as the flu. The main criteria then would be how quickly it spreads. You got that cruise ship with 634 people who got infected out of ... 4000? That would be pretty unlikely that the flu would spread that quickly among passengers on a ship.

The current R0 estimates are higher than for the flu, but not that much. Let's not forget that being stuck on a cruise ship is a rather specific environment. Common cold spreads in kindergartens at a much higher rate than it does in the general population, too.

But yeah, we'll see. It might very well end up infecting more people than the flu - or not. Time will tell. But unlike some self-professed lunatics, I won't lose sleep over it.

[Trekkin]

If that's the case then it's about the same as the flu. The main criteria then would be how quickly it spreads. You got that cruise ship with 634 people who got infected out of ... 4000? That would be pretty unlikely that the flu would spread that quickly among passengers on a ship.

The current R0 estimates are higher than for the flu, but not that much. Let's not forget that being stuck on a cruise ship is a rather specific environment. Common cold spreads in kindergartens at a much higher rate than it does in the general population, too.

But yeah, we'll see. It might very well end up infecting more people than the flu - or not. Time will tell. But unlike some self-professed lunatics, I won't lose sleep over it.

Latest estimates are 2.2, I think, relative to 1.3 for flu -- and something like 15 for measles, to give a sense of scale.

Incidentally, we should also bear in mind that cures and vaccines are not far off, as both are currently being optimized. It would almost be funny if people weren't suffering: in just over a century, we've gone from viruses being this mysterious invisible killer to me not being able to go twelve hours without someone showing me a model of spike protein or some chunk of capsid and asking me to design something to stop it -- and I'm not wasting iron on it, because other efforts are already farther along.

[Il Palazzo]

and I'm not wasting iron on it

This is completely off-topic, but humour a foreigner. What does this mean? Is it some obscure idiom my google-fu can't find, or are people somehow using iron in doing this type of stuff (and I presume you mean the element, not the appliance).

[Naturegirl1999]

and I'm not wasting iron on it

This is completely off-topic, but humour a foreigner. What does this mean? Is it some obscure idiom my google-fu can't find, or are people somehow using iron in doing this type of stuff (and I presume you mean the element, not the appliance).

imam also curious on this

[Trekkin]

and I'm not wasting iron on it

This is completely off-topic, but humour a foreigner. What does this mean? Is it some obscure idiom my google-fu can't find, or are people somehow using iron in doing this type of stuff (and I presume you mean the element, not the appliance).

Sorry; I talk to computationalists so often that I forget how much jargon we use.

"Iron" is a hazy way for bioinformaticists and other big data scientists (including computational biologists, like me) to refer to computing resources in a general way. We often have several ways to solve any given problem that use completely different ratios of system resources, so specific references to CPU-hours and so forth aren't always informative. At some point we just started to refer to how much iron will be required to do a thing as a way to compare computational expense across systems.

[scriver]

Also, these viruses really don't like warm weather and that's part of what did in SARS and MERS the first time.
https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/warm-weather-may-have-helped-suppress-coronavirus

Global warming to the rescue!

[Teneb]

Sorry for lack of link, but: A bunch of repatriated brazilians (who were living in Wuhan before) who'd been quarantined have now been all tested and... they're not infected. So that's nice and they've been let go to their families/friends.

And thus South America continues to prove that it is superior to North America because we have 0 cases here so far.

[scriver]

FRENCH GUYANA THOUGH

MAPS DON'T LIE