re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

Due to all the uncertainties about Chinese data, it may be more useful to track the spread/morbidity/mortality numbers in the rest of the world. Of course, any government could lie (or misinterpret/miscalculate/be overwhelmed by the data) if a problem becomes serious enough, but as of now the reporting should be more reliable outside of China.

Budget cuts and staffing issues.

I give the posted the benefit of the doubt in that he probably really did hear this from someone who believes it.

But you never know what rumors are flying in which places. That person on the ground could be looking at data and be dead on, but it could also be heresay from other medical staff.

Like the poster above said, the truth probably lies in the middle. Who knows where in the middle it lies.

For now, my uneducated guess is that this is a highly infectious virus and is not especially deadly to healthy individuals and most people with access to health care would probably think they just have a normal respiratory infection.

Another problem with calculating mortality at this point is you don’t know the average time from diagnosis till death. If it’s 10 days then you’d have to divide the 80 by how many cases they had 10 days ago.

So far the number of deaths per day has gone up by 50% every day. That would mean roughly 40 deaths today. 60 tomorrow and so on.

Wrong thread

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You also have to consider the ability to test for the diagnosis. When did China first have the ability for widespread reliable tests? Maybe confirmed fatality counts are rising in part due to better diagnosis.

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Sure. My point is I don’t think you can assume a low mortality rate at this point. Could easily be 1% or more.

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she’s been communicating through What’s App and saying the numbers are terribly off. She said last night that it’s believed to be 200,000 infected.

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It's important to remember the difference between confirmed cases and reports of how many are likely infected.

If you use something like the season flu in the US, the CDC lists an estimate for "influenza-like illness" because very, very few cases are ever actually confirmed to be influenza. The CDC estimates that less than half the people who get the flu even go to a doctor, and when they do, they rarely need laboratory confirmation.

The point is, it is assumed that the actual cases are much higher than the confirmed cases (because that is essentially the case with every infection ever), but it doesn't mean the confirmed cases are a lie.

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We have a suspected 10-12 day incubation period. So when we are watching these other cases around the globe, it is going to take another 6-8 days (Essentially 10-12 days after people started evacuating Wuhan before the quarantine) before we start realizing how contagious this thing is in regards to people outside of ground zero (Wuhan).

Is my timeline inaccurate or any info from that inaccurate?

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CDC says the incubation period is between 2-14 days.

CDC

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Director of Public Health, Dr Caroline McElnay, told Checkpoint health authorities were preparing for the arrival of the illness in New Zealand, as there is a high likelihood of cases here.

"We've been looking at our risk assessment, and I think it is fair to say that… there is a high likelihood that we will see a case here in New Zealand, and that's what we're planning for."

She said it was not as infectious as other viruses like measles or seasonal influenza, and the fatality rate is around three to four percent. The mortality rate for the SARS virus was 10 percent.

"This virus doesn't have a particularly high mortality rate and it's not particularly transmissible, but of course what we're seeing is a number of cases popping up across [China] and that comes back to our assessment of risk.

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rnz.co.nz

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CDC says the incubation period is between 2-14 days

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With the bulk of those turning symptomatic in 3-6 day window.