The biggest breakdown yet of novel coronavirus cases suggests that 80% are mild. Some patients never show symptoms

Business Insider ^ | 02/20/2020 | Morgan McFall-Johnsen

[SeekAndFind]

• About 80% of novel coronavirus cases are mild, according to China's most comprehensive report about the outbreak published so far.
• Many patients experience only a fever or dry cough, while some never show no symptoms.
• The new numbers, along with the fact that 322 out of 621 confirmed cases on a quarantined cruise ship involved people who showed no symptoms, suggest that many mild cases of the new coronavirus are going unreported.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The death toll from the novel coronavirus that originated in China crossed 2,000 this week, but new research suggests that most cases of the illness are mild.

A new report from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed records of all of China's reported cases of the virus from December 8 to February 11 — a total of 72,314 patients. (For the latest official case total and death toll, see Business Insider's live updates.)

The researchers found that 80.9% of the confirmed cases were mild. Those patients might experience a fever or dry cough but weren't likely to have difficulty breathing or to develop a severe lung infection. The study also found that infected people could show no symptoms at all — that was the case for 1.2% of the patients.

A far higher portion of asymptomatic cases, however, has been found on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. The ship is host to the largest number of diagnosed COVID-19 cases outside China: at least 621. But 322 of those patients showed no symptoms, according to Japan's Ministry of Health.

[SeekAndFind]

Severe coronavirus cases seem to be rare, and some cases go unreported

Shoppers at a supermarket following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, on February 10. China Daily via REUTERS

Of the patients in the Chinese CDC report, only 2,087 — 2.3% of all cases — developed symptoms the report defined as "critical": respiratory failure, septic shock, or organ failure. All of the deaths came from that group.

"In severe cases, you basically flood your lungs and you can't breathe," Dr. Matthew Frieman, an associate professor who researchers coronaviruses at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told National Geographic. "That's how people are dying." 

Overall, however, the COVID-19 fatality rate is far lower than that of past coronavirus epidemics. Based on the ratio of deaths to confirmed cases so far, it appears to be about 2%. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), by contrast, killed 9.6% of those infected, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) killed 34.4% of cases.

[Ken H]

Killjoy. Doom and gloom is so much more fun.

[JonPreston]

And here comes an article constructed on #FakeNumbers from communist China.

flu

[Vermont Lt]

It’s, literally, the 20% that will kill you.

But seriously, the issue is how it affects the economy, not that it will kill you. Because odds are, you’ll get a headache...

[null and void]

Translation: The actual number of infected is at least 4x the number of confirmed cases, with the sub-clinical out and about spreading the virus.

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.

[Nuke From Orbit]

ok where did this guy get his “Insider Information”? I am a firm believer not to trust a word coming from any Chinese agency. Its a matter of numbers and I don’t think they have a clue of how many have been infected let alone the death rate. Are they out in every village and surrounding areas to check these people? Unless the army was brought in and went door to door checking all of them I might have a shred of belief but as it stands no way in hell.

[Red Badger]

... some never show no symptoms.

Are there no editors at Business Insider?....................

[iontheball]

A mild case leaves open the question of whether once infected always infected like the herpes and chicken pox viruses because there are documented cases of getting this flu a second time. Mild cases are a good thing but also permits an infected individual a greater means to spread around the virus by being able to carry on daily activities.

[Kozak]

20% is rare ?

It’s not the Black Death.
But it sure isn’t the flu either.

[the_Watchman]

I’ve been following the John Hopkins site since the second week of January. Some non-Chinese cases seem to be lingering a really long time. It is easier to follow cases in the States since they give the cases by city. There is an unrecovered case in Phoenix which has lasted 6 weeks.

Many countries have had cases which have been lingering for over 6 weeks.

It occurs to me that countries have an incentive to under report recoveries. Any country which has a record of clearing cases quickly could become a magnet for people escaping highly involved areas or quarantines. It would be better to not report recovered cases in order to keep the influx of prospective patients down.

[Hoffer Rand]

Are they contagious even when asymptomatic? That would be truly frightening.

[lepton]

Based on the ratio of deaths to confirmed cases so far, it appears to be about 2%.

---

That’s a silly way to count.

As example, using that method:

If you were to replace “Coronavirus” with “Ricin”, and inject 100 people with a dose which would kill 100% in a week, then every day double the number of people you give the injection, after one week you would have a fatality/injection ratio of 0.8% (100/12,700), for a 100% fatal toxin.

[BusterDog]

“Most cases are mild,” sounds so much better than, “If you get it, there is a 20% chance you’ll require hospitalization and a 2% chance you will die.”

[bIlluminati]

Yes, it’s contagious when asymptomatic. That’s been known since early January. Meanwhile, non-Chinese were debating whether SARS2 spreads person-to-person as late as last week.

China is underreporting deaths by 10-100x, and cases by 5-25 times. Notice that the number of countries reporting at least one death has doubled this week.

If you naively divide reported deaths by confirmed cases in China, that number has been 2.1% every day for a month. If new cases were slowing down, that number would rise to 4-12%. But Chinese reporting makes analysis of the daily numbers a case of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).

U.S. numbers of cases are also underreported, because we are not testing cases unless there is an established Chinese connection. By the time U.S. authorities get on this, these united states numbers will be almost as bad as China’s true numbers, and definitely worse than China’s reported numbers.

Worst for last: this was not designed as a bio-weapon. But anyone with access to CRSP technology can do this. And SARS2 now has Cas9 in its genome.

[bIlluminati]

2% chance you will die

---

90% mild first week. 80% mild 10 days in. 20% in hospital within 10 days. 5% in ICU within 10 days. 2% dead within 10 days. Oops. Cases doubling every 4 days early on. So ...

8% of cases from 8 days ago dead within 10 days. Etc.

[WildHighlander57]

If it’s mild, then why the drastic quarantines?

[SeekAndFind]

Because it is SUPER INFECTIOUS, 10 Times more contagious than the flu and still twice more fatal.

[GOPJ]

Don’t know if you saw this one:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/china-communist-government-technological-revolution-orwellian-dictatorship/#slide-1

from link:

If the Chinese Communist Borg is willing to put millions of its own citizens at risk of infection and death, why would it care about foreigners’ complaints that China is getting rich and powerful by breaking international trade rules?

[Valpal1]

Because they didn’t actually know when it started spreading, probably last November and were unaware of it until it got into the population enough that severe cases started swamping the hospitals so they thought it was newer and more virulent than it actually was.

I was reading about the new South Korean patient that doesn’t seem to have any outside travel or travel connections. This could mean it’s actually been circulating for months mistaken for a cold or without symptoms and has now worked it’s way deep enough into the exposed populations to reach the mostly stay at homes of elderly or unwell populations where it becomes deadly serious.

Just like the flu, it is very dangerous to the old, the young and the chronically ill.

Before they had all this rapid genetic testing and coding technology, just about everything that had similar symptoms was called “the flu” and that was that. Some years were worse than others but nobody knew why.