Feb 6, 2020 07:17 AM
I suspect that this is a lot worse than we are being told. It's not just the equivalent of a new strain of flu.
There's lots of scary stuff on twitter. Hospitals mobbed, people dropping dead in the streets...
January 22: Soldiers blocking the Wuhan train station.
https://twitter.com/HuXijin_GT/status/12...2716691456
January 23:Hospitals totally mobbed.
https://twitter.com/Taihoku1895/status/1...7954226176
January 24: People collapsed on hospital floor
https://twitter.com/Taihoku1895/status/1...5328859137
January 24: Corpses in overcrowded hospital
https://twitter.com/Taihoku1895/status/1...5659597824
January 25: Medical worker claims situation far worse than is being reported
https://twitter.com/Terrence_STR/status/...29377?s=20
January 27: People dropping dead in the streets
https://twitter.com/Maheen83086711/statu...0381471753
Feb 4: body bags awaiting cremation
https://twitter.com/jenniferatntd/status...6200083457
Feb 5: Military quarantine camp
https://twitter.com/jenniferatntd/status...5621751808
Feb 5: Collecting dead bodies
https://twitter.com/HimalayaGlobal/statu...9591037952
There are even unconfirmed (and likely false) rumors circulating on the Chinese internet that this is something that escaped from a biological warfare laboratory. Here's an Israeli biological warfare consultant commenting on that.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/202...ed-chines/
......................................................................................
Numbers from Johns Hopkins University
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...g&sle=true
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/...7b48e9ecf6
As of 2-5-20, 16:43 (local time, I assume):
16,678 confirmed cases in Hubei province alone. (It was 1/10 that a week ago.) And this is just the official number, the real number might be 10x this.
479 reported deaths in Hubei.
And 538 reported recoveries in Hubei.
So...
If we calculate mortality rate by reported deaths/confirmed cases, which is how it's normally done, it's something like 2.87%. Not too bad. (This seems to assume that everyone infected who hasn't yet been reported as having died isn't going to die.)
but...
If we calculate mortality rate by reported deaths/all the cases whose outcomes we know (reported deaths + reported recoveries), it's a whopping 47.09% mortality rate!
I expect that's much too high, but I also suspect that the 2% number is way too low. The most accurate number might be somewhere in the middle. 20-30% perhaps. Some of the others probably only survive with aggressive medical care, which won't be possible as numbers of stricken increase.
If many sick people linger before dying, so that most of the people dying now were infected when the disease was much smaller (just a week ago!), we would expect the number of fatalities to grow exponentially into the thousands (or even tens of thousands), just like the rate of infections already is. And this is just one Chinese province. It's spreading all over China. There's also the problem that an unknown number of people may be infected but not obviously ill, but still contagious.
The truth is that we don't know what the real situation is. The way that the Chinese and now the world are responding makes me suspect that it's much worse than they are telling us. (You don't lock down 50 million people with armed soldiers and military roadblocks for a new strain of flu.)
So I'm just not convinced that the numbers that we are getting are entirely reliable. I still suspect massive scale underreporting by the Chinese government, perhaps unintentional because hospitals are swamped and are turning people away, and perhaps intentional to prevent panic and preserve social stability.
I believe that the United States has advised all US citizens in China to leave. All visitors from mainland China are temporarily excluded. (China isn't happy about that. It will play havoc with some companies' supply chains.) Two additional US evacuation aircraft have arrived from Wuhan after collecting more of the estimated 800 Americans trapped there. I think that one went to northern California (Travis air force base?) and the other to southern California (March air force base, which received the first batch?) The US says they will all have to undergo testing and 14 day quarantine.
gb
There's lots of scary stuff on twitter. Hospitals mobbed, people dropping dead in the streets...
January 22: Soldiers blocking the Wuhan train station.
https://twitter.com/HuXijin_GT/status/12...2716691456
January 23:Hospitals totally mobbed.
https://twitter.com/Taihoku1895/status/1...7954226176
January 24: People collapsed on hospital floor
https://twitter.com/Taihoku1895/status/1...5328859137
January 24: Corpses in overcrowded hospital
https://twitter.com/Taihoku1895/status/1...5659597824
January 25: Medical worker claims situation far worse than is being reported
https://twitter.com/Terrence_STR/status/...29377?s=20
January 27: People dropping dead in the streets
https://twitter.com/Maheen83086711/statu...0381471753
Feb 4: body bags awaiting cremation
https://twitter.com/jenniferatntd/status...6200083457
Feb 5: Military quarantine camp
https://twitter.com/jenniferatntd/status...5621751808
Feb 5: Collecting dead bodies
https://twitter.com/HimalayaGlobal/statu...9591037952
There are even unconfirmed (and likely false) rumors circulating on the Chinese internet that this is something that escaped from a biological warfare laboratory. Here's an Israeli biological warfare consultant commenting on that.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/202...ed-chines/
......................................................................................
Numbers from Johns Hopkins University
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...g&sle=true
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/...7b48e9ecf6
As of 2-5-20, 16:43 (local time, I assume):
16,678 confirmed cases in Hubei province alone. (It was 1/10 that a week ago.) And this is just the official number, the real number might be 10x this.
479 reported deaths in Hubei.
And 538 reported recoveries in Hubei.
So...
If we calculate mortality rate by reported deaths/confirmed cases, which is how it's normally done, it's something like 2.87%. Not too bad. (This seems to assume that everyone infected who hasn't yet been reported as having died isn't going to die.)
but...
If we calculate mortality rate by reported deaths/all the cases whose outcomes we know (reported deaths + reported recoveries), it's a whopping 47.09% mortality rate!
I expect that's much too high, but I also suspect that the 2% number is way too low. The most accurate number might be somewhere in the middle. 20-30% perhaps. Some of the others probably only survive with aggressive medical care, which won't be possible as numbers of stricken increase.
If many sick people linger before dying, so that most of the people dying now were infected when the disease was much smaller (just a week ago!), we would expect the number of fatalities to grow exponentially into the thousands (or even tens of thousands), just like the rate of infections already is. And this is just one Chinese province. It's spreading all over China. There's also the problem that an unknown number of people may be infected but not obviously ill, but still contagious.
The truth is that we don't know what the real situation is. The way that the Chinese and now the world are responding makes me suspect that it's much worse than they are telling us. (You don't lock down 50 million people with armed soldiers and military roadblocks for a new strain of flu.)
So I'm just not convinced that the numbers that we are getting are entirely reliable. I still suspect massive scale underreporting by the Chinese government, perhaps unintentional because hospitals are swamped and are turning people away, and perhaps intentional to prevent panic and preserve social stability.
I believe that the United States has advised all US citizens in China to leave. All visitors from mainland China are temporarily excluded. (China isn't happy about that. It will play havoc with some companies' supply chains.) Two additional US evacuation aircraft have arrived from Wuhan after collecting more of the estimated 800 Americans trapped there. I think that one went to northern California (Travis air force base?) and the other to southern California (March air force base, which received the first batch?) The US says they will all have to undergo testing and 14 day quarantine.
gb