BREAKING: NIH doctor says 25% of Coronavirus cases in China are ‘very serious,’ requiring ‘intensive care’

CNBC ^

[GulfMan]

Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health told CNBC on Monday that a quarter of China’s coronavirus cases require intensive treatment.

“About 25% of them have very serious disease, requiring relatively intensive or really intensive care,” said the director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

[laplata]

I saw that report. That poor guy probably won’t live for long.

[DoughtyOne]

The outside of China number of cases grew by 5 cases so far today, from 183 to 188.

[Ancesthntr]

“You calculate the number who have completed the cycle dead to recovered not number of infected to dead. That number is nowhere near 2.145% and lets you know why the we have quarantines going on.”

---

Exactly. This disease (like most) takes a while to kill you if it is going to do so. First they get the virus and its symptoms then, after several days to as long as 10 or so days, they get a real bad case of pneumonia - and after a few days or longer, THAT kills you. So to calculate a mortality rate by looking at the number of dead TODAY vs. the number of patients today (most of whom have only had symptoms of the disease for a few days or a week, is a logical absurdity.

Let’s see figures that compare the number of infected on, say, January 7 with the number of THOSE SAME EXACT PEOPLE who have died since then. Regretfully, the mortality rate is likely to be upwards of 15%, perhaps as high as 25% - because the Chinese are NOT reporting a large number of people “recovered” (in fact, from what I have seen, the number of dead exceeds the number recovered).

This is a BIG deal. It is HIGHLY communicable (about twice as much as the flu, and that regularly hits 10% - 15% of the population even with mass innoculations), and its mortality rate is - AT BEST - 20 times as high (2.0% vs. 0.1%). More realistically, this thing and its complications are lethal to at least 10%, making it 100 times worse than the flu, multiplied by twice the number likely to get the thing. Oh, and here is what a very quick Google search showed:

“In total, the CDC estimates that up to 42.9 million people got sick during the 2018-2019 flu season, 647,000 people were hospitalized and 61,200 died.”

OK, do the math - 61,000 people died from influenza last year, and if this thing is 20 times worse then we will lose 1.2 MILLION dead. If it is 100 times worse, over 6 MILLION will die. And that is if only the same number get infected - what if that is a higher number due to its easy communicablity?

[DoughtyOne]

I hate seeing something like that.

Stay away from the family for a while, but don’t assume you won’t be one of the 60% that makes it.

People get beaten down in a situation like this and can’t think clearly.

[xkaydet65]

Horse, door, barn. 25,000 mainland Chinese students returned in January to Boston area schools alone. NYC, Philly, Chi, LA, SF all have colleges with substantial numbers of mainland Chinese students who’d gone hone forsemester bresk and had returned beginning in mid January.

[Lady Heron]

They are stacked on top of each other like sardines in those tiny apartments in China. There is no way to get away from family once one has it. It was a noble thought and incredibly sad but the rest in his apartment probably already have it also.

[Lady Heron]

I would bet, each state will have been told to track down any student from infected cities and call them in for tests.

[DoughtyOne]

using this formula

mortality rate = mortality rate / sum(mortalities + recoveries)

The figure on the 27th of January was 62.94% and 40.27% at 15:32 EST today.

The recovery percentage is outpacing the mortality figures, so that 40.27% figure should be dropping each day, if this trend continues. It has steadily since the 27th.

[Ancesthntr]

“As of the 15:42 reading from the JHU website, the numbers of deaths to recovered patients is 426 to 622.

Is it your contention these are the figures that should be used to calculate the mortality rate, and it should be pegged at 40.649%?”

---

1) With this disease, like any other that infects you, you either survive it or you die. Unless I’m missing something, those are the only 2 choices.

2) If the Chinese, who do NOT like to lose face, are saying that only 622 people recovered so far, then that figure might, itself be overstated. But, for the purposes of this discussion, lets’s assume that it, and the death figures, are accurate. I don’t really believe that, but we have to have a theoretical basis for understanding how to calculate a mortality rate.

3) Mortality takes a while with this disease, as does recovery. First you get the disease, then symptoms manifest themselves as much as 14 days later, then you have those symptoms for a while until you get pneumonia, then you have that for a while, and then you die. Or, perhaps (and hopefully), you beat the disease before getting the pneumonia or afterwards. But you CANNOT get a mortality rate by using total deaths to date vs. total infected to date. No, you HAVE to take a particular date several weeks back - so that it allows the disease and treatments to run their course, for either death or recovery to occur - and run the number off of THOSE figures. Ideally, you would do it at least once a week (e.g. Jan 1, Jan 8, Jan 15, etc.) and see how many of those EXACT SAME PATIENTS were dead 3 or 4 or 5 weeks later from the disease or its complications.

4) Clearly, a 40% or so mortality rate is horrifying - that’s Ebola level. But this has happened before - the Black Death on several occasions killed 1/3 or more of the population of an entire continent - that at a time when mobility was severely constrained vs. today. Just because we have a better understanding of how pathogens operate and are transmitted, just because we have tests to diagnose disease faster, and just because we have better medications than our ancestors did 700 or more years ago, does NOT mean that something with similar lethality is impossible today.

We are not gods - our bodies are mortal, like any living creature, and we are subject to the laws of biology, chemistry and physics just like them and just like our ancestors. We, too, can lose an immense number of people to a disease that seemingly comes from nowhere, just like happened with the Black Death in the Middle Ages. Now, do I expect this? No, but both individuals and societies have to be careful so as to ameliorate its effects even if it only has a 0.1% mortality rate like the flu, much less if the rate is substantially higher.

Just because a figure seems horrifyingly high does not mean that it is impossible or even wrong. Only time (and honest reporting of what is going on) will prove what the mortality rate actually has been for this disease. It is likely much higher than 2% or so, but also likely much lower than 40%...but we just don’t know YET.

[DoughtyOne]

Yes, that’s a sound point to make isn’t it.

the others already having it.

[Boomer]

There’s not a lot we can do if it makes it here like it is there.

If you’re one of those who fall into the high risk category other than infants, such as those who are immuno-compromised or over 65, then stock up on some immune system boosters like vitamin C and resveritrol 1000mg caps (same stuff found in grapes).

Drink a lot of water and do deep breathing exercises if you get it to hopefully keep it from turning into pneumonia.

[Lady Heron]

It keeps being posted that way to keep people from panicking but people need to at least think about what it would take if you had to get your family through a quarantine. The have barred the doors to apartments and apartment complexes so people cannot leave. The problem is that in China you go buy your food for that day and do not have long term food on hand. They have locked them up to starve in many cases.

[Ancesthntr]

“Healthcare is only as good as it is AVAILABLE. Many hospitals in Atlanta are already close to full with flu and other cases. My son at Grady today said they have triage tents outside. I would guess even 1000 patients would overwhelm the system.”

---

That is very true. I was even at Grady once, over 40 years ago. I had gotten a splinter in my eye while at 6 Flags that day, and I recall having waiting for HOURS in a very crowded ER waiting room to be seen. Our system will (not may, WILL) get overwhelmed quickly. It isn’t built for massive numbers of really sick people at the same time. You can’t just mint new doctors and nurses as you need them.

[GulfMan]

Interesting, if 647,000 people were hospitalized and 61,200 died that puts our rate at 10% of people in that go to the hospital for the flu die, much higher than I thought, of course, it’s much lower for the rate they use which is percentage of people that have it (a guess) divided by those that died.

[DoodleBob]

Going further, for the 2017-2018 flu season, the CDC estimated that 45MM people got the flu ("Symptomatic Illnesses"), 21MM sought treatment, 810k were hospitalized, and 61k died.

Per this document, America had 36MM admissions to hospitals last year and has 924k beds.

We survived.

As for where the fatality rate will go, here is a plot of that rate for SARS (click here for an explanation of the different patterns) :

Now, should we be protecting our borders, limiting entry from hot spots, and bolster our supplies etc? Of course. It's not like bad things can't happen here.

But the hysteria commingled with the smug, Democrat-like smarter-than-thou/you're-a-dumbass-unless-you're-as-willing-I-am-to-bow-before-experts attitude on display, is stunning. It is enough to turn off rational people, and lead them to do their own homework and ignore these climate-change philosophical cousins.

[DoughtyOne]

Thank you for your comments. I agree with your take on things, and the reference to the cases to present mortality figure as well. My apologies to Lady Heron for being hostile earlier. It’s more important to give out reasoned information than defend something that may be misleading. It was not my intent to do that, but I probably was.

I would suggest you take a look at the figures in this post using that formula.

You’ll note how the rate has changed since the 27th to today, for the better.

I agree with your thoughts on the figures we have been provided. I reference them, because there’s nothing else to reference in the way of documented information.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the resource and comments.

We’re all trying to make sense of this the best we can.

I try to give out information that may be more comforting, but it’s not my intention to provide information that may be misleading to attain that goal.

I appreciate your post.

[LilFarmer]

Exactly. And I don’t know about other states but in Georgia we lost a ton of healthcare personnel because of Obamacare, lots of wonderful experienced doctors and nurses decided to retire or not take on new patients. I used to be able to get in to see a family dr the same day and get necessary tests or scans that week. Now it’s months. I had to reschedule an appointment the other day and the next available is June.

IMO, healthcare is not ready for this.

[Ancesthntr]

“They have locked them up to starve in many cases.”

---

Well, that is one way to make a disease burn itself out fairly quickly, and with the use of minimal resources. It isn’t what any decent person would do...but we are dealing with the ideological descendants of a man who had 60 million of his citizens murdered for ideological reasons. This is about literal survival - even “dear leaders” can get sick, and so can their families - so they are unlikely to exercise even their customary level of brutality in dealing with problems. Expect more stories like that. Hell, they could (and perhaps are) doing it to entire apartment complexes or maybe entire cities - how much food is coming into Wuhan now that it has been quarantined?

[Valpal1]

And they have much heavier air pollution and 50% or more of the men smoke. They have a lot of endemic public health problems that we haven’t had for 50 years or more.

I think the mortality rate will be much higher in China than here in the US. It might not even break loose here if everyone follows quarantine precautions properly.