Wuhan virus (coronavirus) arrives in the USA

[Anonymous]

3 caregivers at Tenon Hospital in Paris have tested positive and another 50 have been placed in home quarantine.

https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/maladie/coronavirus/direct-coronavirus-covid-19-emmanuel-macron-preside-un-conseil-de-defense-et-un-conseil-des-ministres-exceptionnels_3846311.html

[Anonymous]

The latest discussion has CV pegged at a lethality 7x higher than the flu with a conservative estimate. The flu has a morality rate of 0.1%, thus if CV has a mortality rate of anything near 1-7% that's BAD. That's 10-70x greater than the flu.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/25/new-data-from-china-buttress-fears-about-high-coronavirus-fatality-rate-who-expert-says/

I did a 30 page paper on the 1918 La Grippe Pandemic back in my undergraduate days. It was almost 20 years ago, but IIRC, the 1918 pandemic started similarly where it spread rapidly, mutated in the spring and summer to become a lot more lethal, and then came back ferociously in the fall and winter. If the mortality rate is 7x or worse for mortality than the flu it is quite worrisome, and we still don't know how it may mutate. This may not be over until 2021 to 2022 even if there is a lull this spring or summer.

We've always been battling these types of pandemics. The 1957 flu from China killed 75,000+ Americans and over one million world wide. The 1968 flu from Hong Kong killed another million +. There's very real possibility of a loss of a significant amount of life. We shall see.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All you people stockpiling rice .. do you actually eat rice?

Indian-American here. We do eat rice, it’s not my favorite starch under normal circumstances but I know in a supply shortage situation it will be my best bet with beans, lentils and soupy curries.

[Anonymous]

In mid-February I got very sick. Headache, low grade fever, horrible horrible congestion. Haven't been that sick in five years. Am I nuts to think I could have had it? I'm kind of hoping I did, as it means I was able to eventually fight it off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All you people stockpiling rice .. do you actually eat rice?

We generally go through about ten pounds a month, and that’s just for dinner. In an emergency situation, we could easily double or triple that.

[Anonymous]

In an open letter to the Belgian Minister of Health, Marc Wathelet, a Belgian researcher in the US who works at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque and is an expert on SARS, states that the R naught of COVID-19 is much higher than generally reported:

"The basic reproduction number of the new coronavirus is between 4.7 and 7 according to the calculations of different epidemiologists, which is different from the effective reproduction number calculated by the WHO (2.5), the difference being that the number base corresponds to the situation without isolation measures, and the actual number changes depending on the implementation of different isolation measures."

(Machine translation.)

https://www.rtbf.be/info/opinions/detail_lettre-ouverte-a-la-ministre-de-la-sante-publique-coronavirus-il-faut-savoir-ecouter-la-peur?id=10443799

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In mid-February I got very sick. Headache, low grade fever, horrible horrible congestion. Haven't been that sick in five years. Am I nuts to think I could have had it? I'm kind of hoping I did, as it means I was able to eventually fight it off.

DH, my kids, and my coworkers got this too. We’ve all wondered the same thing.

[Anonymous]

Random question - Could this virus be not so novel after all? Is it possible that it’s been around for a while, but it was never tested for? If most cases are mild, maybe we we’ve been passing it to each other and treating it like a cold/flu?

I am not a scientist and I have not read all of this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In an open letter to the Belgian Minister of Health, Marc Wathelet, a Belgian researcher in the US who works at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque and is an expert on SARS, states that the R naught of COVID-19 is much higher than generally reported:

"The basic reproduction number of the new coronavirus is between 4.7 and 7 according to the calculations of different epidemiologists, which is different from the effective reproduction number calculated by the WHO (2.5), the difference being that the number base corresponds to the situation without isolation measures, and the actual number changes depending on the implementation of different isolation measures."

(Machine translation.)

https://www.rtbf.be/info/opinions/detail_lettre-ouverte-a-la-ministre-de-la-sante-publique-coronavirus-il-faut-savoir-ecouter-la-peur?id=10443799

That’s a huge difference. Unfortunately, that will be the case here because Americans will not self isolate nor allow broad travel restrictions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Random question - Could this virus be not so novel after all? Is it possible that it’s been around for a while, but it was never tested for? If most cases are mild, maybe we we’ve been passing it to each other and treating it like a cold/flu?

I am not a scientist and I have not read all of this thread.

No it is new. They genotyped it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Random question - Could this virus be not so novel after all? Is it possible that it’s been around for a while, but it was never tested for? If most cases are mild, maybe we we’ve been passing it to each other and treating it like a cold/flu?

I am not a scientist and I have not read all of this thread.

The mortality rate, especially in older people, is significantly higher than the flu. So is the rate of development of severe, but not fatal, symptoms like pneumonia. I don't know the exact details, but I think these were the differences to even a particularly bad flu season that caused a couple of doctors in China to start raising alerts that this was a new virus. Upthread, someone suggested that similar reasoning is why some people were tested in Washington state despite not meeting CDC criteria for being at risk.

DH works at a company with frequent travel to China (Wuhan specifically), South Korea, and Japan. A couple of his employees developed pneumonia in Dec/early January, which is unusual for the age and general health of his coworkers. They did not meet specific criteria for testing (i.e. were not in Wuhan 14 days before they got sick), but it's hard not to speculate that they had it. We are in SF Bay Area, BTW, and a huge fraction of his company lives in/commutes from Santa Clara county where yesterday's suspected community spread case happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Random question - Could this virus be not so novel after all? Is it possible that it’s been around for a while, but it was never tested for? If most cases are mild, maybe we we’ve been passing it to each other and treating it like a cold/flu?

I am not a scientist and I have not read all of this thread.

Unlikely when 98% of the psychiatric hospital in South Korea caught it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All you people stockpiling rice .. do you actually eat rice?

We are a Chinese American family and eat rice probably 4x a week. 10lbs a month easily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In mid-February I got very sick. Headache, low grade fever, horrible horrible congestion. Haven't been that sick in five years. Am I nuts to think I could have had it? I'm kind of hoping I did, as it means I was able to eventually fight it off.

I think even mild cases last weeks, so likely just the bad flu.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has this been discussed yet? Person on Reddit claiming they were in affected areas (Japan), came back to US, got sick, had symptoms matching COVID19, but CDC would not perform test. He's in NY.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/fayko1/my_covid19_story_brooklyn/

https://abc7ny.com/5974999/ He spoke to the media.