To not get the panic about Corona Virus?

[speakout]

I am not getting it- can someone explain?

Less than 1000- people infected, 26 dead. Why the hype?
I understand a few pharma companies making anti virals have made a stack of money in the past week.
In global health terms these stats are insignificant surely.
Why all the headlines?
I suspect we have many pathogens jumping species barriers on a regular basis, most probably fade away and don' t make headlines.

Can someone explain.

@Piggywaspushed Davos in hiding here?😂

No point in panicking as that will not change anything. But it makes a lot of sense to start stepping up hand washing etc to reduce risks.

It also makes sense for Public Health England to prepare for an increase in hospitalisations etc as a result of the new virus. Even a small increase in inpatient numbers among the elderly/vulnerable will have a huge knock on effect on the NHS as a whole.

Interesting that all the overseas cases identified to date have been in countries with a developed health service infrastructure. There are also likely to be significant numbers in Africa and Latin America where patients are unlikely to have been isolated. So the risk of spread there and from there is also real.

Good we have a "hubby expert" to mansplain things.

I don't think you understand what 'mansplaining' means.

Flu or just a cold?.

How can you tell if someone has a cold or the flu?

Put the victim in a room facing the garden.

Go outside and put a 20 pound note where they can see it.

If they "can" go and get it they only have a cold.

Simple as that!!!!

I think part of the reaction in China is that it is New Year, lots of people will be/are/have travelled to see relatives so there are a lot of chances to pass infection on.

Someone mentioned the rates of flu, that rate is going to go up if you are on a crowded train for 20 hours.

It's quite scary how many people you can come into touch with.

During the swine flu I had 3 part time teaching jobs, two involved teach health and social care to teenagers.

I happened to get a cold so I was told to stay home.

It was a cold, not flu, but I worked out I would have taught 100 different people, 95 of those people had a work placement in a childcare, health or social care setting.

One of the colleges I was teaching at did have a number of people taken ill.

My ds has a renewed interest in Plague Inc (an online game where you can model pandemic spread and casualties) - it's quite uncomfortable watching the spread. Apparently it's the top downloaded game again in China this week?

No need to panic.
It’s less infectious than influenza.
We don’t know the mortality rate until the numbers of asymptomatic and recovered cases are better known.
Everyone’s doing their best to get this information.
No need for pharma as infection control practice will prevail and transmission reduces below 1:1.
The media are rather blowing it up, I’m afraid.

It is concerning. Both me and Dh work a universities that have a high number of Chinese students and a high number of staff travelling to and from China ( my uni has as office in Wuhan)
Term has only just started so there has been an increased amount of travel over the last few weeks. It's important to be aware and cautious.

Good we have a "hubby expert" to mansplain things.
This has to be the most ridiculous comment. Men are allowed to be experts 🙄

I don't see anyone on this thread panicking. People are having a discussion.
I don't see any authorities panicking either, they are reacting to a situation, trying to keep it under control, and trying to keep us informed.

@Justaboy yeah , real scientific..
If you have a fever it’s probably flu, colds you don’t normally have a temp .

No, it’s a 1970s fizzy pop virus. (Just wait for the alpinevirus, then you’ll be sorry.)

What better way to go than death by sugary dandelion and burdock? It’s only down to an administrative typo that people are now getting plague in their system via a buildup on their teeth.

Anyway, I WANT to panic. It’s the only thing I’m good at.

@speakout Why the sarcasm? You asked a question and

@HuloBeraal. gave you a full and succinct answer.

OvenGloves I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers Corona fizzy pop being delivered by the milkman back in the 70s. If it still existed it would be in need of a hasty name change!

One of the reasons swine flu didn't turn into a pandemic may well have been due to the quick response by the Mexican government. Shutting down cities etc. So there was a risk of pandemic, it was taken very seriously, no pandemic....this combination of events doesn't mean the media is "whipping up hype". It's easy to look back and say it would never have happened when it didn't. It doesn't feel like that at the time and taking these things seriously means they are less likely to turn into pandemics

If it still existed it would be in need of a hasty name change!

You know there's a hugely popular international beer brand called Corona, right? I don't think they'll be changing their name!

Diego Actually I didn't! I'm a beer drinker, too, but I normally stick to UK brewed real ales rather than the lighter style of beers that are popular internationally, so perhaps that's why it's passed me by.

Isn't the panic all about distrust in institutions (nothing to do with real hazards). Conspiracy theories by the dozen.

Highest r0 I've heard estimated for the Wuhan coronavirus (max of 95% confidence interval) is around 2.5. Maybe similar r0 to H1N1 flu.

Most people seem to get only mild illness from it. The problem is that it's brand new so a huge world population vulnerable to it (no existing immunity). Imagine if "everyone" had a bad cold at once, how disruptive that would be to every part of modern life.

@HuloBeraal thank you for the good explanation. Not sure why the OP had to respond sarcastically

Twitter is bursting at the seams with fake video and claims of 90,000 infected. Trump is going to love that, gotta be someone to blame.

We have TOO much access to ‘news’ now and the media manipulates the masses as it sees fit. I will calmly watch and wait. If there is going to be a problem then our own authorities will tell us. I have a heart condition but I really don’t see anything for the UK to worry about at the moment.

I’m more worried that IF it does turn into a problem for the UK we will be by then out of the EU, no extra border forces and complex and untried routes of getting medical supplies in. But Brexit’s brilliant, right?!

Twitter is bursting at the seams with fake video and claims of 90,000 infected. Trump is going to love that, gotta be someone to blame.

I agree that the video from a distance of the man falling over forwards, he puts his arms out, is probably fake but I'm not sure they all are, especially the hospital videos

To the poster, hulo?, who asked her husband who is a specialist in ID and quoted his reply. Thanks for the information

For those interested in such things - This Podcast Will Kill You is an interesting listen.

I'm no more worried than I am with usual winter flu/NHS fooked with sheer weight of numbers season... I worry for the kids, especially after DD2 had really nasty pneumonia a couple of years ago - but then again, she came down with that in the middle of a flipping heatwave and not at a time that the media were at all drumming up hysteria!

I'm fairly resigned it's going to reach the UK - and I'm at a university with a huge population of Chinese students in the building near me but for the bulk of people it's relatively mild, and yes, when you scale it up the numbers can get scary but the percentage risks still stay the same which is what I'm trying to stick to (I have anxiety problems so try to rationalise things which are out of my control so I can actually sleep at night!)

On top of being at university I commute on a crammed commuter train and also do a placement with school kids so if the plague is going around I'm pretty much going to get exposed to it!

Because it has a greater mortality rate (three times as high) as the regular flu. Measures need to be taken to prevent it from spreading widely. Far more people are killed by seasonal flu than by terrorism yet I imagine you don't consider anti terrorism measure unnecessary panic. The Spanish flu pandemic killed 50 million. Surely you understand the need to take action before hundreds of thousands of people die? I genuinely don't understand the anti scientific, anti medicine idiocy that seems to proliferate these days.

No point worrying about it. Stress doesn't do us much good.

Because it has a greater mortality rate (three times as high) as the regular flu

I don't think the mortality rate is known yet since they don't know how many people are asymptomatic or get mild symptoms and thus don't report.