regular flu vs coronavirus

billw1032's Avatar
And yet the same outlets refuse to acknowledge that much of the manufacturing in the Woo Tan (whatever) province of China is back in production if it was even taken off line. Originally Posted by FunMonday
The place is called Wuhan, and it's a city not a province. That's like calling Austin or Baton Rouge a state. Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province, and it's a large and important city, not a "whatever". At around 11 million people, it's more populous than New York City.

You are correct, however, that a lot of the manufacturing and business there seems to be getting back on track and running, at least according to the best information I can find. It's also likely that some of it never really shut down completely, although living conditions for most of the residents there have been pretty miserable for quite a while.
Ralph Fults's Avatar
Correct. The government and or health entities who make these projections really don’t have a base line for statistics. “Possible Positive Cases” employ a lot of conjecture while CNN is broadcasting some guy in Italy allegedly stuck in his house with his dead sister. Originally Posted by FunMonday
Governments certainly do have a baseline for pandemics.

There is a reason China locked down an entire province. There is a reason Iran is doing mass burials of the dead. There is a reason Italy is triaging patients over 65.

Johns Hopkins has a fascinating interactive map of current coronavirus cases:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/a...23467b48e9ecf6
They have a base line for actual confirmed cases yes. Not “possible positive cases” which is the exact wording used by Dallas County as of yesterday. Instead of the media showing footage of an Italian guy yelling in his home about his dead sister I believe it would have been more productive to educate the public on how the 1918 Spanish Flu was managed.
Predictive analysis for mortality rates at this point will be wildly inaccurate. Not every country will have state of the art facilities or responds times. The projections are only as good as the assumptions you can put into them but that’s splitting hairs.

I just think the media could have helped set expectations instead of turning it into a shit show
Sleepy363's Avatar
They have a base line for actual confirmed cases yes. Not “possible positive cases” which is the exact wording used by Dallas County as of yesterday. Instead of the media showing footage of an Italian guy yelling in his home about his dead sister I believe it would have been more productive to educate the public on how the 1918 Spanish Flu was managed.
Predictive analysis for mortality rates at this point will be wildly inaccurate. Not every country will have state of the art facilities or responds times. The projections are only as good as the assumptions you can put into them but that’s splitting hairs.

I just think the media could have helped set expectations instead of turning it into a shit show Originally Posted by FunMonday

They have the data to compare to other areas affected before us, like this comparing us to Italy :





We are tracking with Italy almost step for step and actually passing them at this point


Predicting mortality can vary wildly on how well we can manage the stress load on the hospitals and health care system. This was the american hospital association's estimates that they gave to the various hospital heads to prepare:





Hopefully the social distancing helps to lower those numbers. Don't be surprised to see at the very least major cities on mandatory lockdown like Italy in the next week or so.
Chung Tran's Avatar


I find it hard to believe that a “national crisis” is pending and yet not a word is spoken of martial law or rationing. It’s not a crisis until you see the US Military truck coming down your
street or at the very least you can’t go any where or buy anything

But at least we can all rest assured at Tom Hanks drug addict son, Chet something will give us his shirtless play by play on national news Originally Posted by FunMonday
we don't know the extent of the Corona impact in the US.. so few, relatively speaking, have been tested. China quarantined Millions of people to get Corona to a "manageable level", do you want us to do the same? or just assume it is similar to the Flu, and call the Media out for hyping?

I don't think business and schools would shut down like it has, if the threat wasn't reality-based. just because a small group buys up all the toilet paper, doesn't mean the Media controls every move.

by the way, "Chet" means "die" in Vietnamese.. ironic in a way.
I have seen the italy/u.s comparison graph. It is misleading on several counts. We (just the continental) are 32 times larger than italy with 6 times the population. So if we are tracking Italy number, we are doing extremely well. There are other significant life style factors that caused this surge in Italy.
I’m calling out the media. As usual they and the politicians take a shit on an issue and then add their agenda to it. Just look at hooking. After 2500 years they turned it into human trafficking. A guest commentator use the be a retired Dan Rather. Now it’s shirtless Chet.

The media spews chaos but then lectures people not to raid the supermarkets.
LustyBustyGina38FF's Avatar
billw1032's Avatar
It's hard to take that American Hospital Association slide seriously. Expecting 480,000 deaths in the U.S. doesn't seem within the realm of any kind of reasonable worst-case estimate. If it comes to that I hope they're preparing for it, but it boggles the mind to think they would publish such a statistic.

Even in China, where they horribly mismanaged the situation in the beginning and then locked down a whole province, the total number of deaths currently stands at 3194 (assuming that you believe the reported numbers). Most of those (3075 currently) have been in Hubei province (population about 58 million). China is now on the down-slope of the curve with relatively few new cases.

Europe seems to be the next hot spot. Most (but not all) countries in Europe are now seeing increases, so it seems like a good move to cut off air travel to Europe. I just hope it isn't too late to help.

*EDIT* Comparing the most recent few reports South Korea seems to have leveled off in the past few days and may be decreasing slightly, although it's kind of hard to tell and may not enough to tell if there's a statistically significant decrease.

WHO data is frequently updated here: https://www.who.int/emergencies/dise...ation-reports/
billw1032's Avatar
I’m calling out the media. As usual they and the politicians take a shit on an issue and then add their agenda to it. Just look at hooking. After 2500 years they turned it into human trafficking. A guest commentator use the be a retired Dan Rather. Now it’s shirtless Chet.

The media spews chaos but then lectures people not to raid the supermarkets. Originally Posted by FunMonday
Media AND Politicians. I think we're on the edge of being in a "boy who cried wolf" situation. The media seems to be endlessly repeating mostly the same information. Yes, it's important to get the word out, but at some point people have heard it so many times that they just tune out.

And the politicians are just as bad, or even worse. This is an opportunity for every governor and big city mayor to jump in front of a TV camera and put out almost the same information once again with very little new and useful, but at least they get their camera time.
Sherry of DFW's Avatar
billw1032----you have stated the truth exactly
Cumflywithme42's Avatar
A new virus introduce to a species is always very fatal. an it's nothing like the flu the flu has been around for thousands of years people can fight of flu
It is gathering of info from CNN..LMAO

Be safe!!
The media and the politicians might want to get their shit together. At approximately 3000 confirmed cases we have managed to run the store shelves bare. What would 100,000 or 1 million cases look like?

If those 3000 cases yesterday didn’t turn into 6000 cases today they might want to make that a news flash