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.

I think there is more than 200 million people worldwide.

There is 60 million people in the UK

Every now and then a virus “comes into fashion”, it becomes the flavour of the month/year then disappears. Remember bird flu and swine flu? There was a massive scaremongering campaign around those too, and I have never met a single soul who got them. Same with this corona virus. It won’t wipe out humanity.

This is hardly comparable with Spanish flu, given that medicine has advanced just a tad over the last 100 years.

It's more comparable with SARS, where there were 8,098 reported cases and 774 deaths. There were four cases in the UK that were thought to be probably SARS. That is still very serious, but not really at panic levels, I would suggest. A number of serious illnesses are much more infectious, e.g. Measles, which gave rise to around 7.8 millions cases and 142,000 deaths in 2018.

Tabloids like The Sun, Daily Star, The Mirror, Daily Mail thrive on giving out worst possible scenarios because it sells newspapers.

I don’t believe the UK is actually panicking but is watching with concern what happens with this new corona virus.

I for one am watching with interest and am looking at lots of different reports on it from different sources. It appears to be spreading more quickly than SARS did and although the death toll is lower than SARS it is still causing around 25% of sufferers to be seriously ill which is why so many more hospital beds are being needed in China hence they’re building a new hospital within a few days to treat at least 1000 patients infected with the Coronavirus.

If the need for hospital beds starts to outstrip the amount of beds available then more people will die. Which is why it’s important to try and control the spread of the disease as much as possible. Not intended to be alarmist or panic inducing, just fact.

@Equanimitas

What qualifications do you have to make that assertion? Experts have very clearly stated that another pandemic could occur despite advances in technology. It's also important to note that the advances in medicine you describe are largely preventative - including acting to prevent a pandemic - not waiting until we have one then complacently assuming we'll be able to prevent a huge death rate.

Some years over 10,000 people die as a result of flu in the UK alone. A worse strain of flu could cause many, many more depths and it's important to mitigate the effects.

@Smartanimal my husband had h1n1, he was sick for ages.
Over 18,000 people died from H1N1. It was hardly nothing

a couple of us on this very thread had swine flu.

It's irrelevant that you have never met anyone who got swine flu. It still happened, and people still got it. I have never met anyone who has been to Antarctica. That fact is irrelevant to it's existence.

@ALLMYSmellySocks Antibiotics weren’t available for the Spanish flu epidemic. The majority of people died from pneumonia - a secondary infection that is usually treatable with antibiotics. Having the treatments and the pandemic protocols that we have now would have made a massive difference to the mortality rate back then.

sorry I sound arsey, which is not my intention actually. Just that I simply do not understand when people say 'oh well that did not effect me' and so think it must mean it was not such a big deal for anyone. One of the great things about MN is that it allows people to look outside of their own experiences.

Viruses mutate quickly and usually in the direction of reduced virulence

The death rate is supposedly on the higher end for flus (I wouldn’t really know but this is what I’ve been told) and it seems to be spreading fairly quickly. In pandemic conditions death rates tend to rise as it becomes harder to care for the sick. It’s definitely something that people who are in a position to deal with these things should be worried about. For the average person there isn’t much to do beyond avoiding travel in the effected areas.

The majority of people who had swine flu had it asymptomatically or mildly.

Of course modern medicine has improved but the fact remains that experts agree that another pandemic is very possible. That's just the fact of the matter. Even without a disaster of that scale hundreds of thousands of people die annually from seasonal flu so a worse strain of viral infection would cause a very high death rate and this is something that needs to be avoided. I'm not panicking but the complacency of some people is staggering - we are much safer today because so much effort is made to prevent devastating outbreaks.

The NHS is strained in the UK to imagine that we could easily treat a great increase in people suffering from pneumonia or that pneumonia (which still has a mortality rate of 30% if people are suffering severely) is always straight forward to treat is ridiculous.

I'm not worried for myself (and I did have swine flu, and am prone to pneumonia and respiratory problems) but I am very concerned for the poor people in China, imagine how scared they must be, especially those with babies.

I have to admit to being very impressed that the Chinese can get a hospital built and running in a week. I’m trying and failing to imagine that happening here. The measures that are being taken in Wuhan would indicate more about the potential of the disease than the current death rates attributed to it.

1. The victims who have died have tended to already have compromised immune systems e.g. old people, people with cancer.
2. The mortality rate is considerably lower than other outbreaks.

Honestly, not the biggest concern at the moment.

I think the whole “hubby mansplaining” is that it’s frustrating when a woman comes on here, not being an expert herself, but says “ oh my husband is insert impressive professional thing”. He should come on here and explain it, rather than his wife.

I had swine flu and ive never been so ill. Temp of near 40 for 11 days!

When I had swine flu, I developed delirium, fell out of bed repeatedly and soaked my mattress with sweat. It was not asymptomatic or mild!

What I remember about swine flu is the terrible night sweats. Bed and nightclothes were soaked, night after night - I thought I'd wet myself the first time it happened. I was ill for about three weeks - awful.

Cross posts of experiences there!

Antibiotics weren’t available for the Spanish flu epidemic. The majority of people died from pneumonia - a secondary infection that is usually treatable with antibiotics.

Yes very much so at that time they didn't know what a virus was and antibotics were some 16 years away. As you say the secondary infection was the real problem and it seems from most reports this is happening again except the pneumonia is viral and that can't be treated and it seems also that anti virls arent working this is what i think is the main worry.

Coming back the 1918 flu the other issue was that those who had a very good immune system suffered a Cytokine storm thats where the immune system attackes the body and causes the greif if thats happening again this could be very nasty.

Thus far not enough is known so its wait and see in the meantime I think to their credit the Chinese are doing what they can after all if you keep the infected away from the non infected the ilness will stop not as easily done as said.

One worry seems to be that the ilness can be passed on whilst the carrier are not exhibiting any symptoms if that is the case then thats a big concern. Crafty little buggers these Virri course if you over do it and kill your carrier its not going to do you any good, just keep them around and alive whilst your perfecting yourself, big fail if you kill your victim carrier;(

Sounds like we had the same, Piggy!

I’m not ignoring the science and medicine. I’m ignoring tabloids and randoms on SM whipping up a frenzy. No one has developed it who wasn’t in contact with it via the epicentre in some way. There’s no person to person spread outside that area.

Calm the fuck down.

Plantain how is the pp quoting her disease expert husband( who one suspects is a tad busy at the moment) any diff to posters quoting newspapers/ news reports?

Frankly I’d prefer to hear from the wives of infectious disease experts than armchair experts using the Daily Mail as source material.