Coronavirus, what's all the fuss?

[HelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHello]

I know this will sound ignorant, but I'm struggling to understand!

Flu kills many thousands of people each year. So far, the coronavirus is not looking to be as deadly as most annual strands of flu.

So why the mass panic?

My he higher death rate than flu. Long incubation period means it will spread widely

It’s unknown how it might mutate yet. If it becomes endemic in a country with poor healthcare infrastructure and mutates then we are seriously screwed.

It’s proven to be highly contagious. And there is no cure.

Heard today that it is basically a slightly more dangerous flu.

There's no cure for coronavirus unlike the common flu.

If everyone was purposely infected by the coronavirus what percentage of the human population do you think will be wiped out?

It’s basically the flu and the flu has higher death rates. I’m not worried about it at all but I’ve never bought into sensationalist headlines.

This reminds me of some of the Brexit arguments............

Year 2k one springs to mind

If everyone was purposely infected by the coronavirus what percentage of the human population do you think will be wiped out?

It only affects the elderly or people with existing health conditions, also smokers are at a higher risk so not many.

the completely panicked reaction from governments and health officials make you wonder...

The common flu kills less than 1% of the population a year whereas the coronavirus is currently killing at a rate of more than 2%.

How is it basically the flu when it has none of the characteristics of flu

Flu: my elderly parents would be extremely vulnerable if they caught it, fortunately my brother and I can have a flu jab and carry on supporting them.

Coronavirus: If my brother got it Mum would have no carer, although if she got it she'd be seriously ill pretty fast.

If I got it I might not be in the obviously going to fight it off with my own immune system group. I got Swine flu and got extremely ill before Tamiflu was posted through my door. Long recovery, lungs not the same afterwards. Not a lot of treatment for coronavirus lung problems as I understand it. Tamiflu & similar about as useful as olbas oil for a heart attack.

Being seriously ill while responsible for a young child with additional needs is a pretty grim prospect.

I think the real panic is what it will do to the economy if we’re all ill in bed.

How is it basically the flu when it has none of the characteristics of flu

The flu and the common cold are both corona viruses. It's to do with the shape of the virus.

It has a far higher infectious rate than flu.

It does not only kill elderly or smokers.

We don’t know the official death rate but I suspect it will be far higher than 2%

We've had similar reactions to flu. A flu pandemic would be a very serious thing. Even if no-one died, if even 10% of the population are too sick to work at the same time that's going to have a massive impact on public services.

I would like to know what “prexsisting conditions” covers I was reading today that this includes high blood pressure and things like type 2 diabetes and asthma- so surely that means quite a high proportion of adults are actually in the higher risk group?

My DH for example is a generally healthy 36 year old but has ankylosing spondylitis and so gets a flu jab each year from the gp as this puts him more at risk. So is HE in the high risk group

I have had pneumonia and sepsis in the last 3 years does that put me in it?

It seems really easy to say “it only affects the old and Ill” until it’s you or people you know!

People keep saying this but No one has immunity to this so it’s likely to infect way more people than the seasonal flu would and therefore cause many more deaths than the seasonal flu would. People need to stop comparing it to the flu when we have had vaccinations against lots of different flu strains for years as well as some natural immunity.

I think there should be a coronavirus topic, OP, there are loads of coronavirus threads with some good information that have been posted over the last couple of weeks.

They are claiming it has a low death rate. That’s not necessarily true. China has a history of lying about death statistics. And it could be one of those diseases that disproportionately kills healthy young people age 20-50, rather than children or elderly. Even if it’s relatively benign, if it’s very contagious and millions or billions of people have it at the same time, the world will grind to a halt and essential services will be affected.

"it only affects the elderly or people with existing health conditions,"

That includes HIV and the Heps, so that's most of Africa gone.
Then we have the Eastern block countries were people have poor health. Then India!/Bangladesh etc, again were people have poor health.

Then we don't know if the virus will mutate.

These threads are very 'I'm alright jack'.

The response wasn't just for the UK,

@Urkiddingright that’s what they have been saying, but the young doctor who wanted to tell everyone in December has died. Early 30s with no existing health problems.

Our health service is buckling already; a major flu epidemic could be catastrophic. Healthcare workers may be exposed to higher levels of the virus and as PP have said, with 10% population in bed and with little slack anywhere in any system it could be a very difficult period ahead. The minimising is either out of blind hope or ignorance of a potentially serious issue.

Coronavirus and Influenza are different types of virus.

The nCov virus is new and even though we are trying, we do not yet know what it's capable of and it's too early to come up with solid statistics about the spread and mortality. There's also concerns that Chinese authorities are not sharing the real numbers.

At present we are told that 40,655 are infected with 910 deaths and 3669 recovered.
Apparently 6,495 cases (18%) are serious/critical. This number is worrying were there to be mass spread in the UK, given the current state of our NHS.

If you consider that 3,669 have recovered and 910 have died, thats 20% of cases that have resulted in death.
This doesn't take into account the people who are currently infected in a mild condition (82%), as we don't know what will happen to them. Do they go on to recover, or do they then go on to become critical and pass away. Some people die upto a month after becoming ill. On the other hand it's possible that many more thousands have been infected and not tested, and then survived, which would also completely change the stats. Basically we just don't know at the moment. Given that we now have infections in the West, we should be able to get reliable data about how dangerous, or not dangerous it is.

There is also a discrepancy about the rate of spread, and how it is spread, with some estimating 1 person infecting 2-3, but now we are seeing what's happened with the British super spreader.

I'm relatively young, so have not lived through many disease outbreaks, but as others have said the reaction from the government does make you wonder, and I have not seen a reaction like this before.

The minimising is either out of blind hope or ignorance of a potentially serious issue.

it's mainly to avoid an absolute panic, as always. Otherwise, things won't run, and only get worst.

We don't know what the 'kill' rate will be

Just over 40,000 confirmed cases. Of those 910 deaths, 3400 recovered. Heck of a lot still unknown.

We also don't know how many in the population have had a mild form.

No-one is immune. With flu, there is a good chance that new types will be included in the vaccine, giving immunity to many. Or perhaps that it's not drifted too far, so people who have had related strains in the past have a milder form.

And of course this is emerging during the northern hemisphere flu season, so it's considerable extra demand, and we don't have that many isolation beds (let alone things like ECMO kit)