No, We're Not About to See 'Contagion' Come True

Film School Rejects ^ | 01/21/2020 | Ciara Wardlow

[BenLurkin]

The thing about R0 values is that they are averages. And to explain why that makes a difference, we need to talk about Coronaviruses. Before 2019-nCoV, the most notorious Coronaviruses were MERS and SARS. MERS, or Middle East respiratory syndrome, has had several small outbreaks since it was first discovered in 2012, and while very severe in terms of mortality (the case fatality rate is around 30 to 40 percent), the virus’s R0 is very low.

And then there’s SARS. Because while SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, caused a huge uproar in its heyday of 2002-3, good old fashioned quarantining ultimately went a long way, and the virus is now considered functionally extinct.

While you’d have a better chance of surviving SARS than MERS (the case fatality rate of the latter was somewhere between 9 and 16 percent) it was considerably more adept at spreading person-to-person. At least, kinda. The weird thing about SARS was it displayed a pattern of “super-spreaders” — a select group of individuals, for reasons scientists don’t fully understand, were incredibly contagious.

Most people infected with SARS did not infect anybody; a select bunch infected dozens. At least one super-spreader infected over 100. It’s a weird quirk, but not unheard of. So the original projected R0 for SARS was between 2 and 4, and everybody panicked. One research team that later went back and factored out super-spreaders found that in their absence the R0 was more like 0.4, so containing SARS proved to be a matter of identifying and isolating super-spreaders as quickly as possible, which is a far more manageable task than a scenario where R0 is around 2 and all infected individuals prove more or less equally contagious — the maximum difficulty scenario that Contagion runs with.

[BenLurkin]

ping

[CondorFlight]

Nobody knows.

It’s not a mistake to do some kind of preparation, just in case. If nothing happens, then you’re only out a few bucks for supplies.

[null and void]

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

[abigkahuna]

If I remember correctly, they went back and discovered that SARS had a diarrhea element to it that shed the virus. It was discovered that most of the cases came from an apartment building in which had typical Chinese toilet system and thus the virus was everywhere. Fecal Spray... yummy, eh?

[oldasrocks]

Move to china and be provided your very own personal Honey Bucket.

[hardspunned]

How do you prepare if you live in a densely packed typical democrat run large city. If you’re one of the few who have prepared, how do you protect your family from the vast vast majority who have not? How can you avoid having your quarantine violated in this scenario?

[redgolum]

She may be wrong, may be right, but she is a movie reviewer.

[BusterDog]

Yeah we are. Maybe more so if you live in China than in Florida, but maybe Florida, too.

[Deaf Smith]

"personal Honey Bucket"

Or Alaska.

Alaska TV programs show Winters too cold for indoor plumbing to be usable. Waste is thrown out in bags onto the tundra.

[ealgeone]

Ammo. Lots of ammo.

[11th_VA]

Let me interject a snake analogy. The most deadly snake in the world (kills the most humans) kills less than 10 % of the people it bites - but because it’s so aggressive, it kills the most humans.

Likewise, the most lethal snake in the world (most toxic bite) kills much fewer humans because it’s less aggressive.

Time will tell what kind of ‘snake’ we are dealing with.

[Vermont Lt]

If you read the story, they don’t even discuss what the R0 is.

Based on a study from Wuhan last week it was calculated at 4.08

The flu is marginally over 1.2.

And the CFR is about 2% with Coronavirus. It’s something like .92% for the flu.

AndThis is the bio of the writer:

Ciara Wardlow
Human being who writes about movies and other things. Sometimes I try to be funny on Twitter

[bgill]

Do I want to know what happens in Alaska when the weather warms up in the summer?

Monsoon season starts in April for China. How good are their sewer systems and do they erupt into the streets when there’s too much rain?

[hardspunned]

Yeah, I saw that Chinese Academy of Sciences study that pegged the R0 at 4.08. Pretty scary, if true.

[datura]

That depends on what city.

I’ve seen open running sewers that merely had grates over them in sidewalks there in Xiamen. With restaurant tables straddling the grates.

Seriously.

And the tables were full of people.

[goodnesswins]

That’s disgusting...are they really that backward?

[dp0622]

Absolutely!

With what out government wastes, this would be something worthwhile.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

It’s a flu.

80,000 Americans died of the flu last year.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/01/11/flu-has-sickened-about-million-us-so-far-half-needed-medical-care/

It’s just another flu.

[DownInFlames]

Reported this virus has an HIV protein. If so, released from a lab.