I think the major factor why people are freaking out is that there is no vaccine for this particular virus. If you’re in an impoverished community, are immunocompromised, etc. this might be a bigger deal than to someone who is perfectly healthy. I’m just saying.
ETA: That and the virus has many virulence factors, such as mutating at a high rate. It’seems like shooting a moving target.
A retrovirus is a class of RNA viruses. The coronavirus is a family of RNA viruses. Coronaviruses are not retroviruses, however.
In retroviruses, the viral RNA is converted back to DNA (I say “back” because typically DNA is translated into RNA), which is then spliced into the host DNA. The host doesn’t know any better, so that spliced DNA is then translated into viral RNA. That RNA is then used to make proteins/replicate.
Coronaviruses also use RNA, but there is no backward translation into DNA or splicing of host DNA. The viral RNA uses the host to replicate additional RNA and make proteins/replicate.
A retrovirus changes the genes/DNA of the host it infects (HIV is probably most well known example). The coronavirus (technically called a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA virus) does not.
Here is the latest map of the virus. See those little dots in the non-China countries? They’ve been pretty much the same for a couple weeks now.
An initial breakout from the region (aided by the global travel network) followed by practically stasis everywhere except China.
That’s not the sign of a virus about to go hog wild or one that (in one claim I heard) seems ready to infect 60% of the world’s population.
Stay on top of it? Yes
Fear it/panic over it/over hype it? Not in the slightest.
Of course…doing the latter keeps eyeballs on media sites…
I’m not ignoring anything.
Why do you think over 50 countries now have enacted travel bans and quarantines?
This is serious, we still don’t know just how serious but it’s already proven to be deadlier than SARS.
It first appeared in November and was first made public in December.
It’s a brand new virus.
Does anyone know where can I find stats on race, gender and ages of those worst affected by the virus? That data doesn’t come up in searches.
The real question about the effects of the coronavirus is the number of people who will be infected. In the case of the flu, there have been about 20 million cases and about 20,000 deaths. There coronavirus has 66492 reported cases and 1523 deaths, which means that at the reported death rate is about 20 times higher than that of the flu. The US could see several hundred thousand deaths if the coronavirus becomes as common as the typical flu.
There is evidence that the coronavirus is more contagious than the flu. In addition, since the virus is new, people are unlikely to have immunity based on previous exposure to similar viruses.
The extreme measures in China may be successful in controlling the coronavirus, but the consequences of a failure to control could be enormous.
The Chinese government has a policy of severely restricting any news that they find to be unfavorable or embarrassing. That has certainly been the case with the coronavirus, and the policy allowed the virus to spread rapidly in secrecy before the government belated admitted that there was a crisis. Private individuals that have reported information that contradicts the official version of events continue to disappear:
The spread of the virus continues to accelerate in China in spite of extreme measures that have locked down the entire country. If the government continues to be unsuccessful in controlling the disease, it demonstrates that the policy of restricting free speech and centralized command and control are inherently flawed.
Right now the government has been pinning the blame on local officials, who have little real power:
The Chinese government created this virus in a biological warfare lab. 
A similar virus has been found in bats according to researchers:
It is possible that a research facility was studying the bat virus and accidently released the virus. Alternatively the virus may have come from live bats sold as food at markets in Wuhan.
It is also possible that a strain of virus weaponised by the biological weapons research lab escaped and they injected it afterwards into bats to have a fall-species that doesn’t look like biological weapons researchers
The coronavirus would make a really bad biological weapon. Most of the deaths have been older men. Children and young people rarely have serious problems.
Years ago there was a vicious rumor that McDonalds was putting earthworms in their burgers. McDonalds ended the rumors when they pointed out that earthworms cost several times as much a beef on a per pound basis. Why would they use $5/lb worms instead of $1/lb beef?
The coronavirus has done a good job of killing older Chinese men. How could that make a good biological weapon?
Very James Bondish…but not likely.
Using confirmed cases to calculate mortality rate is inaccurate. To determine mortality rate, you need to know how many people were infected in total, not how many confirmed cases there have been. I have not seen any consensus calculations of total infected with 2019-nCoV.
For instance, the CDC’s flu surveillance system only covers 8.5% of the US population. As of last week, there have been about 180,000 confirmed cases of influenza in the United States. However, the CDC calculates there have been at least 26 million total Americans infected. They have also calculated at least 14,000 deaths from influenza. That number is much more accurate because it is much easier to test those who have died from a flu-like illness.
If you simply divide total deaths by total confirmed case, this years seasonal flu death rate is 7.6% which is nowhere near the typical 0.05% in the US. Using the calculated infected, you get 0.05%.
We do not know the total infected with 2019-nCoV. However, we know that it is more than what the confirmed cases are.
Even using worst case scenario confirmed cases (which I used in previous posts), both mortality rate and reproductive number have remained steady. There is no data to suggest this is some runaway train picking up steam. It continues to chug along as expected. If people want to be precautious, great. People thinking this is some Hollywood armageddon movie come to pass are mistaken.
Precisely.
I had a mild case of the flu last week (well AFAIK that’s what it was).
But I was in Boston the week a confirmed case was found there.
For all I know I had coronavirus and didn’t even know it.
(Unlikely because absolutely no one else in my household has gotten sick).
There have been accounts of people diagnosed with the coronavirus having symptoms just as mild as the ones I had. So there are a lot of cases going unreported.
The figures for cases and deaths outside of China are arguably more accurate since China appears to have problems with testing all the likely cases.
There have been 600 reported cases outside of mainland China and there has been one death each in France, Japan, and the Philippines. That gives a death rate of 3/600 = .5% of reported cases outside of China.
The real question is whether the spread of the virus can be controlled. Estimates are that 28% of the US population got the Spanish flu after World War I. If a similar number got the coronavirus, the number of US deaths could exceed 400,000 based on the death rate outside of China.
Where are you getting the demographic data re deaths from? I can’t find any
Just as a follow up, I tried to find some estimates of total infected. Best I could do was for the end of January.
The total confirmed cases on 1/27/2010 was 4,515
The Lancet estimated cases as of 1/25/2020 was 75,815.
They used some pretty aggressive numbers to come up with that (a higher R0 than what appears to be the case), but it does give some perspective. The true amount of people infected could be 17 times higher than confirmed cases given their numbers. Even if it was 10 times times higher, the mortality rate would drop by a factor of 10 (as compared to those using confirmed cases to calculate mortality rate).
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30260-9/fulltext
The data is in the fox news link. Here is a link to the original source from Johns Hopkins:
The newest figures show 67178 cases of which 66497 are from mainland China.
There is also one additional death from Hong Kong, which is not included in the mainland China numbers. That gives 4 deaths out of 681 cases outside of mainland China. The death rate is .59% of reported cases.
Given the concerns from foreign governments I doubt there are a significant number of cases that are not reported. International travelers are arguably healthier than the general population since people with severe medical conditions are unlikely to travel.
