Coronavirus

Originally posted by Hairyback: ↑

Pollak: 5 Reasons to Stop Freaking Out About Coronavirus

Coronavirus is an “info-demic,” a panic caused by the spread of partial and often misleading information about a health risk, sometimes deliberately.
The virus is real, and a small number of people have been infected. But it is going to pass.
It is an unpleasant respiratory illness, but it is not an organ-destroying horror like Ebola. Precautions are being taken, a vaccine will emerge, and life will continue as usual.
Here are five specific reasons to chill out.
1. Coronavirus is a familiar illness, and not as bad as others. It is from the SARS family — and less deadly. As Ha’aretznoted, “the mortality rate from the current disease ranges from 0.5 to 2 percent, and is significantly lower than the mortality rate from the 2002 SARS outbreak (9.5 percent) and much lower than the 2012 SARS outbreak (34.4 percent). It may even be close to the mortality rate from an ordinary flu outbreak in the United States.”
2. The U.S. response has been exceptionally good. There have only been 16 cases thus far, none deadly. President Donald Trump bought precious time by stopping travel to China last month — a step critics said was overly drastic. Democrats are screaming about funding and staff cuts that never actually happened. The latest outrage: the White House is controlling the message. As they should! The people in lab coats are not always good communicators.
3. We are going to have a vaccine soon. There are private companies in the U.S. and around the world racing to develop a vaccine — not just because of the urgent public health need, but because whoever finds it first stands to make a lot of money. (This is where the profit motive, and the pharmaceutical industry, are so crucial — contrary to what Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, and other Democrats running for president have been saying about them.)
4. China is going to be all right. The number of cases in China sounds large — until you consider the size of China. True, the Chinese government has been duplicitous about coronavirus, as it is about everything. (Amartya Sen famously observed that India, unlike China, has never suffered famine because India has a free press.) And U.S. firms are learning a long-overdue lesson about the risks of investing there. But China will eventually pull through.
5. The same people who want you to panic about coronavirus want you to panic about everything. The news business thrives on chaos. In addition, the media want to destroy Trump, which is why they spread the Russia collusion hoax. Coronavirus is not a hoax, but pundits should be asked if they cared enough about flu — which kills far more people — to get their shot this year. If not, ignore them. Remember to wash your hands, and stay cool.

https://www.breitbart.com/health/20...ut-coronavirus/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

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Hey Hairyback,

I really enjoy reading your posts and have the highest respect for your posts.

I, like yourself are very sceptical of information obtained not from just the government but also the internet. These days it's so hard to try and ascertain which information is correct and which isn't... it feels like the equivalent of trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle blind.

Currently Im sitting on the fence when it comes to this virus and its potential impact. However I id like to respond to a couple of points you have made as I believe that some of the information could be understating the actual real figures.

1. Coronavirus is a familar virus and not as bad as others: Yes, it is from the SARS family and if we compare its mortality rate to the other SARS virus's it does have a lower mortality rate. As for the fact it is "less deadly" well from a percentage mortality standpoint yes, but as from the way it spreads, the incubation period and other factors including amount of deaths it may incur well that would be a no as we have already surpassed the amount of deaths from both previous outbreaks.
As for the mortality rate well that's still up in air at this stage. To say its between 0.5% - 2% with current statistics would be factually incorrect. At this stage no-one has any idea what the eventual mortality rate will be...all we have to go by is the current statistics which one can look up on the following site:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

current cases is 86,032
amount of people recovered is 39,800
current deaths is 2942

The standard approach to finding out the mortality rate is to divide current deaths by current infected which gives a mortality rate of 3.42% which is well above those figures pointed out by Ha'aretz of 0.5% - 2% so not sure where he got those figures from...
However, because there is such a lag factor involved in this particular strain ( due to long incubation periods ) some experts are saying a more realistic approach to factor in the lag would be to divide current deaths into those recovered to get a percentage then add this percentage to 3.42% and divide by two.
So the equation would go like this:

deaths / infected = 3.42%
deaths / recovered = 7.4%.
(3.42% + 7.4%) / 2 = 5.41% mortality rate

Now if you go to the above link that i gave there is a link called "mortality rate" a bit further down the page that gives in depth information about the current mortality rates especially from Wuhan. Now you would assume Wuhan having the highest sample of infected would logically give the most accurate information relating to the virus and if you look at those statistics it certainly is a little bit of any eye opener. Ive been keeping an eye on the stats and I thought that the initial statistics on the mortality rate would surely come down as a larger sample gave a clearer picture. It was currently sitting at 4.9% as from February 4th as below:

Mortality Rate in China as of Feb. 4 (2.1% nationwide, 4.9% Wuhan, 3.1% Hubei, and 0.16% other provinces) reported by the NHC of China

However when the most recent update came in on February 20 I was a little surprised by the figures as below:

Mortality Rate in China as of Feb. 20 (3.8% nationwide, 5.8% in Wuhan, 0.7% other areas)

As there is a lag factor involved some of the deaths are occurring up to 25 days after the initial infection. The mortality rate across the board has gone up as the sample size has increased. Now these figures are based on the standard way of calculating the mortality rate so with the other way mentioned above it would be a higher...

Now in regards to the mortality rate in Wuhan (5.8%) the alternative way of calculating the mortality rate (5.41%) appears to be closer to the mark than the standard (3.42%) although yet again getting accurate and reliable information can be difficult especially from China who have constantly changed the way they decide on the infection rate...

Also as for the statement that it could be close to the mortality rate of the standard flu in the United States well that is certainly factually incorrect. Here is a copy and paste from the CDC website in regards to mortality rate of the season flu in the US:

The annual flu typically has a mortality rate of around 0.1% in the U.S. So far, there's a 0.05% mortality rate among those who caught the flu virus in the U.S. this year.

As you can see a mortality rate of 0.1% or even 0.05% is dramatically less than the current mortality rate of the corona virus ( based on current stats the mortality rate is 34 - 58 times higher). To put it in perspective 61,200 people died in the US from the seasonal flu in the 2018/19 season as per link below:

https://time.com/5610878/2018-2019-flu-season/

and if the mortality rate was to rise to just 3.42% based on current stats from around the world this figure would rise to 2,093,043 or if we were to add the figure of Wuhans current mortality rate of 5.8% then it would be 3,549,600. Again I must point out these figures are still a big unknown but it is based on the current figures and obviously as the sample size gets larger we will get a clearer picture.

Again for some reason people continue to compare the standard flu death rate with the Covid-19 death rate and keep saying the seasonal flu is much worse. Currently yes, the seasonal flu has killed way more people than the Covid - 19 virus however to be realistic and to compare apples with apples you would have to allow the Covid-19 virus to spread for 12 months before you could even consider comparing the two virus's. One doesn't have to be an Einstein to see the difference in mortality rates to come to the conclusion that if the Covid-19 virus took a hold like the common flu then the death rate would be much much higher.

The other factors that are a worry in regards to the Covid-19 virus is the incubation rate. We know that the common flu has a general incubation period of 1 - 4 days as per the link below:

https://www.healthline.com/health/flu-incubation-period

Whereas the Covid-19 has a known incubation period up to 14 days and possibly longer based on new information coming out but again this is still unknown. What is a worrying factor is China and a couple of other countries now stating that they have discovered the virus within patients who have had the virus, recovered, waited 14 days, released from quarantine and then over a week later discovered that the person still has the Covid-19 virus in their system. The unknown here is did the person get re-infected ( which is bad ) or did the multiple tests not pick up the virus ( which is also bad ) or possibly is the virus mutating?

So again very different to the seasonal flu and why you cant make direct comparisons between the two as they are vastly different in many aspects.

I would continue about the time it would take to get a vaccine however I have a 4yo daughter who is desperately wanting my attention so all i can say is I certainly hope that this virus gets contained very quickly but always remember, like anything you do in life including trading the markets -- hope for the best but prepare for the worst.