Corona virus
 

The death toll from the corona virus has just reached 805 now 813 , 910 , 1013 on 12Feb with 97 103 deaths in China in 24 hours , making it a lot worse than SARS .A report published today estimates that there are over 75,000 infections which are estimated to double every 6 days . The good news is that the rate of infection can be slowed by 50% by wearing a mask which has more benefit in keeping your hands away from your face than anything else and frequent hand washing
HK academics have predicted that as of 31st Jan there were 151000 infected people . I just hope that they are wrong. The biggest issue with this virus is that the worldwide population as a whole has little or no immunity to it , having never been previously exposed. Air travel has massively increased the infection rate spread , made worse by the viruses ability to live on hard surfaces for up to 28 hours possibly up to 9 days .
The biggest problem is that despite the lessons from SARS the WHO and authorities in general have been sitting on their hands and were far too slow to address this pandemic and put in place effective travel bans.
so yes flu kills more people than this annually but the infection rate is exploding exponentially due to a lack of immunity which will lead to much higher mortality figures

still in HK? Good on you.
Stay there.
Don't go to other countries.

Flu kills more kills more than that. Does that make the flu worse than SARS? Raw numbers are not very useful for judging how bad something is. Im much more interested in knowing how likely it is I will die if I get the disease rather than how many people it kills.

Hong Kong is actually not a problem.. at the moment.

Are you very sure now?
Have you seen what is happening now?
Good on you.

Yup, I'm pretty sure HKG is doing pretty damned well - only 42 cases as of today vs 42,000 in China. Bloody remarkable really. I have no worries at all in HKG.

Seems some guys have sent their families back home till this blows over. Overall though most seem to be just taking sensible precautions.

SOHO bars seemed business as usual the other night

Many guys are making plans. Once the schools announce a further closure I think we’ll see quite an exodus out of here.

Hong Kong is a few weeks behind Wuhan that’s all.

Not worried about the virus, just tell me where I can get toilet paper, though...

SCMP cut into suitably sized squares makes a rough and ready alternative, and for aesthetic purposes can be string threaded and hung on an attractive nail in the door.

The plumber may be required on a daily basis to unblock your contributions, but it all gives work to the artisans.

Ha! Good one! I can't find any either. Panic reigns supreme...

Maybe I’ll be more accepting of the SLS deal if they pay me in toilet paper instead..

If it wasn't for so tragic, it would be funny. In years gone by, I'd be buying meat from Aus, SA and Europe, now I'm buying toilet rolls.

According to a top HK medical official , corona virus is expected to infect 60% of the worlds population unless containment measures are successful

If that's true, it will lead to 92 million deaths, assuming 2 percent fatality rate.

2 percent is unlikely. It doesn’t account for people who got infected but not sick enough to seek medical attention.

I saw this figure a couple of days ago, based on the infection rate of 2.5 new cases per case, and wondered how they got this figure.

Of course the answer is that if (almost) everyone around you is susceptible to the virus, then on average you infect 2.5 of them, but if 60% of the people around you are immune due to prior infection, then you'll infect only one new case, and of course as soon as R drops below 1, the pandemic fizzles.

Good on you. Now go and bury a few kolas in a mass grave.

China is now not counting non symptomatic positives for Coronavirus, so that makes it still 2 percent.