Coronavirus, what's all the fuss?

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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?

BBC News has just reported an estimated death rate of 1 in 100

What's the estimated flu death rate?

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

Agree - but would prefer it to be an 'emerging diseases' topic, so it can be re-used with each potential pandemic

I think it is just a good test run for governments. Computer simulations aren't always reliable and working together is always going to be difficult. Hopefully lots can be learnt from this.

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

There is no "cure" for the flu either

Going by the imperial college paper going around today, i can see why people are worried, because the numbers seem huge, but remember its only based on calculations of scenarios and timelines that havent happened yet.

Seasonal flu has a mortality rate of 0.1%

This has an estimated mortality rate of 1-2%

So 10-20 times more deadly than the flu.

Also highly contagious. It's currently estimated that c. 1 in 4 people could catch it.

Do the maths for c. 70m in the UK.

For those saying there is no cure, there is no cure for flu either - just antivirals prescribed in rare cases that may help shorten the duration.

The biggest risk posed by coronavirus is that its an unknown - we dont definitively know how it spreads, all the ways it presents, there's limited data on mortality rates due to its relative infancy. Therefore it has to be taken seriously as a huge potential risk

Is it worse than swine flu?

Because every man and his dog got that.

There’s no cure for flu either.

It only affects the elderly or people with existing health conditions, also smokers are at a higher risk so not many Eh, where are you getting that information from? A new baby in Wuhan was born with it, the doctor who whistleblew the severity of the virus died aged 42, previously healthy.

We keep saying "no-one is immune to it" -- but that is definitely not known.

There are 11,000,000 people in the city of Wahun, and at least 10,900,000 of them have not caught this disease. Of the 58,500,000 population of the Hubei province, how many of the 40,000 or so people who have not caught the new version coronavirus were immune to it? How many have simply not yet caught it but could do? There is absolutely no way of establishing the answer to those two questions.

Sorry, the all but 40,000 or so people.

I work in the central NHS. Coronavirus is worrying because it is a novel virus; we don't truly know its contagiousness or its virulence, and there is no vaccine as yet.

Each winter the NHS acute sector struggles due to the pressures caused by 'regular' flu for which we can vaccinate. As well as the people who sadly die from flu there are also others whose suffer from knock on effects because hospitals are full. Every winter elective procedures are cancelled because of pressures on the emergency side. If you are a patient waiting for a cancer surgery or an aneurysm repair that can have a big impact on your outcomes.

In the absence of a vaccine or without truly understanding fundamentals about the new virus the potential impacts on the health sector (and on the economy) are far reaching even if it's not full Shaun of the Dead scenes. So people are right to be concerned but there's no point in panic.

It’s far more deadly than flu. Swine flu killed 0.02% of people that had it.

You can’t simply divide the number of deaths by the number of cases because most people take 3 weeks to die or recover and the overwhelming majority of cases are more recent than that because of the geometric increase in cases.

The number of recovered people is 3,578 and the deaths are 910. So that’s a 20% death rate of those that are not still fighting the illness.

Source: gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

This is much more contagious than SARS and flu. Ro is currently estimated to be around 4.1, Ro if flu is around 1.3 and SARS 2.0. And that is why people are worried.

"how many of the 40,000 or so people who have not caught the new version coronavirus were immune to it?"

None of them. Because it's a novel virus which has not circulated before. People can only develop immunity after exposure. There has simply not been any chance for that to happen.

Establishing rates of sub-clinical infection (exposed, but beaten off without being symptomatic) or of mild disease easily confused with something else, may be established in slower time. Right now clinical and lab effort will be closely focussed on containment.

Thanks, scaevola. It's the way people seem to be assuming that to come into contact with it at all means you will inevitably catch it that is wearing on me: I am sure that is not true, just going by the numbers above.

Is there not such a thing as innate immunity, as opposed to adaptive?

I've been following this UK doctor's daily updates and I have to say, he sounds a lot more pessimistic tonight confirming the spread is by aerosol transmission.

I can’t get over people saying it’s just flu.
Flu is caused by the influenza virus and can be very serious, if results in lots of deaths every year.
This is a different and new virus. It seems to spread very easily, have a long incubation period, be contagious before any symptons appear and caused more serious illness and death in a higher proportion of cases. We know nothing about long term impact on the body. The Chinese reaction suggests the numbers may even be worse than what we are being told.

If the Tencent data that was posted "in error" is correct that would mean the death rate is 16%.

However the 2% quoted about applies to recorded cases only. As I said in another thread hospitals are only testing a limited number of patients there a day as they can't get through them all.

What is the cure for flu then???

People are frightened so they try to play it down to themselves. Anyone who dares to discuss it is called hysterical.
Reality is we dont know. China tend to hide information. We know that as the first people who tried to alert the world to the virus were locked up.
The truth is we are probably all vulnerable. If it spreads before a person is feeling ill then it will be hard to contain it.
Not much we can do about it, so just have to hope for the best.

No there isn't a cure for flu, but there is a vaccine. Also this virus isn't flu. Young and healthy people are dying, it's very contagious, it's unstable and no one knows when it's going to peak and decline.

Is it not worse than flu if you have a pre-existing condition, like lung disease? So the vulnerable are more vulnerable.

Yes the vulnerable people are the vulnerable people

No cure. Higher killing rate. And you wonder if you’re getting all the facts and correct figures form China.