I’ve not yet written a post about the new coronavirus…
…worrying the world. The reason is quite simple: much of what we know so far is fragmentary and suspect. The media loves to fan the flames of panic, anyway. But some is just lack of basic understanding as the authorities try to track its spread, plus skepticism about whether Chinese authorities have been forthcoming on this topic.
Out-of-control pandemics are the stuff of scary movies, but there are many times in human history when they have occurred. The 20th Century’s most enormous and out-of-control pandemic occurred right at the end of World War I and involved flu (I wrote about it here), the scope of which is difficult to comprehend even now. It is a terrifying prospect.
But each time a new flu comes along – and they come along with great frequency, often in China because of the vast urban populations and the close contact with animal vectors – it is hyped as the next enormous pandemic. Some day that may become true. But so far the flu pandemics of recent years, although they can do great damage (I had a friend who nearly died of H1N1, for example), have never reached anywhere near the scope of the 1918 pandemic. Fortunately.
So I will bide my time and see what happens before I hit the panic button that lies close at hand.
In the meantime, to learn about flu origins and China, see this from 2017:
Many Chinese people, even city dwellers, insist that freshly slaughtered poultry is tastier and more healthful than refrigerated or frozen meat. This is one of the major reasons China has been such a hot spot for new influenza viruses: Nowhere else on earth do so many people have such close contact with so many birds.
At least two flu pandemics in the past century—in 1957 and 1968—originated in the Middle Kingdom and were triggered by avian viruses that evolved to become easily transmissible between humans. Although health authorities have increasingly tried to ban the practice, millions of live birds are still kept, sold and slaughtered in crowded markets each year. In a study published in January, researchers in China concluded that these markets were a “main source of H7N9 transmission by way of human-poultry contact and avian-related environmental exposures.”…
These areas—often poorly ventilated, with multiple species jammed together—create ideal conditions for spreading disease through shared water utensils or airborne droplets of blood and other secretions. “That provides opportunities for viruses to spread in closely packed quarters, allowing ‘amplification’ of the viruses,” says Benjamin John Cowling, a specialist in medical statistics at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health. “The risk to humans becomes so much higher.”
All flu viruses probably originate in birds, and the best environment for making the jump to humans is one where densely packed people live closely with birds and animals.
“In Asia we have a huge animal population, a huge bird population and two-thirds of the world’s people living there,” said Klaus Stohr, chief influenza scientist at the World Health Organization.
The population of China alone is bigger than that of the whole of Africa, and 80 percent of the new human flu strains the last few decades appeared in China first.
Did the new coronavirus originate in birds? We don’t know:
On 31 December 2019, a novel strain of coronavirus, officially designated as 2019-nCoV by the World Health Organization, was reported in Wuhan, China, as responsible for the 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. By 24 January 2020, 25 deaths have been reported and 547 confirmed cases. The Wuhan strain has been identified as a new strain of Betacoronavirus from group 2B with an ~70% genetic similarity to the SARS-CoV. The virus was suspected to have originated in snakes, but many leading researchers disagree with this conclusion.
More on the disease’s origins:
The initial cluster of pneumonia-like cases showed up in the city of Wuhan mid-December, and most of those patients had some tie to a wet market there—a place where people sell both live and dead animals, including exotic species, from snugly-abutting stalls.
Though nothing has been confirmed, epidemiologists suspect that the novel coronavirus crossed over into humans somewhere inside the market, which has been shuttered since January 1. Tracking down the right viral culprit is paramount to preventing future interspecies spillover. In 2003, when SARS ipped through the same area of China, the outbreak was fully contained only when civet cats, which had passed the virus along to humans, were removed from the region’s markets.
A national task force of Chinese researchers working swiftly to isolate and sequence the virus shared a draft of its genome in a public database earlier this month.
The article goes on to say that a theory based on the DNA evidence indicated that the virus may have originated in snakes, but there’s been tremendous disagreement with that idea:
“It’s complete garbage,” says Edward Holmes, a zoologist at the University of Sydney’s Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, who specializes in emerging RNA viruses, a class that includes coronaviruses like 2019-nCoV. Holmes, who also holds appointments at the Chinese CDC and Fudan University in Shanghai, is among a number of scientists who are pointing out—in virology forums, science Slacks, and on Twitter—what they deem to be major flaws in the paper, and calling on the journal to have it retracted. “It’s great that viral sequence data is getting shared openly in real time,” says Holmes. “The downside is then you get people using that data to make conclusions they really shouldn’t. The result is just a really unhelpful distraction that smacks of opportunism.”
Preliminary analyses of the genetic data released by Chinese authorities suggest that 2019-nCoV is most closely related to a group of coronaviruses that typically infect bats. But for a variety of reasons—including that it’s winter and bats are hibernating—many scientists suspect that some other animal moved the virus from bats to humans.
We don’t know. And the other thing we don’t is how many humans will be infected, and what the death rates will be. Flu tends to kill a not-insignificant percentage of its victims, but usually the vast majority survive. In 1918, the flu was especially deadly not only because it infected huge numbers of people worldwide, but because it killed a higher percentage of those sickened, it often killed them very quickly, and it seemed to focus on an unusual group: 20- to 40-year-olds.
Let’s hope this one is much tamer, although the behavior of Chinese authorities doesn’t indicate business as usual for the flu. Then again, maybe they are just especially determined not to let this one get out of hand. Let’s very much hope it does not.
So I guess it is we don’t know what we don’t know. And the Chinese aren’t telling much.
I view with a bit of skepticism the “x takes better”. How many people have such subtle taste they can really tell the difference? And of those, how many really care?
The click bait panicking over the weekend was ridiculous. One of my go to sites is Instapundit but he/they fall into this as well. Yes, in this part of China I’m sure it’s alarming but most of that is because despite what our betters say China is still mostly poor with very suspect medical care. In this country that is not an issue.
The number of people that die from the flu every year is staggering but that doesn’t cause a run on surgical masks every year.
So, yeah they need to contain this but call me skeptical that it’s going to kill millions.
Griffin: I don’t believe the Wuhan virus is the Big One. However, it is, at least, a dry run for the next Big One and it doesn’t look like we, or the Chinese anyway, are doing a good job.
I’m not in favor of panicking, but at what point is it OK to be concerned about the emergence of a new disease, pray tell?
Some of my reaction to the harrumphing about 2019-nCoV is the condescending way the Obama administration handled the Ebola outbreak which reached the US.
There was a time when an outbreak of a deadly disease overseas would bring virtually unanimous agreement that our top priority should be to keep it overseas. Yet Barack Obama has refused to bar entry to the United States by people from countries where the Ebola epidemic rages, as Britain has done.
The reason? Refusing to let people with Ebola enter the United States would conflict with the goal of fighting the disease. In other words, the safety of the American people takes second place to the goal of helping people overseas.
As if to emphasize his priorities, President Obama has ordered thousands of American troops to go into Ebola-stricken Liberia, disregarding the dangers to those troops and to other Americans when the troops return.
What does this say about Obama?
At a minimum, it suggests that he takes his conception of himself as a citizen of the world more seriously than he takes his role as President of the United States. At worst, he may consider Americans’ interests expendable in the grand scheme of things internationally. If so, this would explain a lot of his foreign-policy disasters around the world, which seem inexplicable otherwise.
–Thomas Sowell
https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/10/ebola-and-obama-thomas-sowell/
Griffin: The number of people that die from the flu every year is staggering
I once spoke with a medical professional regarding winter mortality rates. He said, most of those who die are elderly and they have several simultaneous medical issues so they could have died from any one of them but when the death is recorded it is invariably consigned to the flu.
Andy,
Yep, and suspect the same is true of those dying from this virus. Mostly older often with other medical issues.
“most of those who die are elderly”
True, but for the 1918 flu pandemic I believe the deaths were primarily prime-age men and women. Some of that may have been due to WW I putting soldiers in nasty circumstances, but it was more widespread than that.
Huxley,
Concerned, yes. Especially in China or other parts of Asia. But I don’t think it’s wise to try to read too much into the Chinese govt reactions. They tend to downplay internal stuff and then wildly swing the other way as only an oppressive society can.
I guess I’ve just seen enough panics over the years that I’m leery of believing them.
Any comparison to 1918 has to come with a few caveats I think. Our communication is much better now and the medical field in all areas is dramatically better.
If we could just all come together and call this the Kung Flu it would save the reputation of an acceptable although mediocre beer.
On the other hand, given the record of the Chinese Commies, and the Soviet Commies and all other governments of the totalitarian ilk, the likelihood is that what is actually happening is much worse than what is being said by the Chinese.
Not world ending but, simply, much worse.
Jimmy: but for the 1918 flu pandemic I believe the deaths were primarily prime-age men and women
Correct and that was likely due to the fact that the older generation had acquired a degree of immunity from a similar flu that had percolated through the human species a while before the Spanish flu. There were other factors that exacerbated the outbreak including mass movement of people and young men congregating in large numbers due to the conflict.
Had thought that the 1918 influenza hit the middle-young hard was said to be caused by healthy/vigorous immune response (termed a cytokine storm or some such?), causing their drowning in their own fluids. Anyway, it was an unusual bug.
Andy:
If it were just a question of acquired immunity or lack thereof, then why didn’t children die at very high rates in 1918? It was (as I wrote in my post) adults between 20 and 40 who were the most susceptible.
Actually the CDC site says that it did kill those under 5 at high rates. But I guess that means not 5 to 20. In any case, I’d also heard what sdferr said, that it was the excessive immune response of the 20-40 group that killed them. There were still plenty of deaths among the under 5 and over 65 groups, presumably for the usual reasons. (And Neo, sorry, I overlooked that you’d mentioned the 1918 flu in your post.)
I do agree with saying “the Chinese aren’t telling much.
The history of diseases and how much infected or deaths cause its quite know in history, these days were the communication/ movement of people so fast it becomes know all around the world very fast despite its minor or major it’s in the news everywhere.
As it reaches me, this disease might be transferred by eating bats as some Chinese restaurants offer them to customers.
I’m pretty much in agreement with Gerald V – this is bad in China, and the Chinese are keeping pretty closemouthed about it for all the usual reasons. It’s bad, perhaps a mild danger to the US and our public, but given our levels of better nutrition and better medical care … not another 1918 Pandemic.
This is a rather gratifying response, given that the custom in America and the West in general is to deny culpability, stonewall, and double-down, so that those responsible for bad events never suffer any consequences.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/wuhan-coronavirus-criticism-mayor-offer-resignation-as-apology
(Well, maybe never is too strong; it depends heavily on the perp’s actual power & relative position in the hierarchy of government. Also, this resignation is more likely symbolic than functional, as is that of the party chief of the region, but who knows what punishment will be exacted in China. It could be nothing, or draconian.)
On Neo’s post about the 1918 flu pandemic, and how quickly it was forgotten, this comment has good advice:
Lame-R on May 15, 2008 at 4:08 pm said:
I’m currently reading the Iliad, and it is interesting to me how many stories are interspersed through-out the story. In the heat of battle, the combatants will even stop to tell a miniature story, giving some kind of import to the situation.
Stories are our collective memory; in researching genealogy, my father has mentioned relatives who died in the influenza epidemic. Without that mention, I would’ve completely forgotten the very brief treatment given it by my grade-school history class.
The stories you tell on your blog add to my knowledge of ‘our’ memory. The burden rests on those that are older and wiser to choose and tell their stories wisely, that the younger ones such as myself may be able to contextualize our times and season our judgment by the experiences of our elders.
In other words, keep up the good work. ?
* * *
We are fast losing the will, and even the ability, to tell our tales to our children.
Ray Bradbury wrote some good short stories about acknowledging our elders as “time machines” and making the effort to listen to them.
The NBC post from 2004 contained this interesting info about the WWI pandemic:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4135122/ns/health-infectious_diseases/t/asia-traditional-cradle-influenza/#.Xi8uLYh7lLM
“What does this say about Obama?” – Sowell, quoted by huxley
His response to the Ebola epidemic said a lot.
If I had still had any respect for him (which I didn’t), that would have put the lid on the coffin, so to speak.
We get more hype with sudden outbreaks of a disease than with the worse (in terms of total fatalities), but more familiar, ones for the same reason we get more hype from plane crashes and multi-car pile-ups than we do for the worse, but more dispersed, highway accidents.
This excerpt from Dr. Sowell’s post is descriptive, and also predictive, given the last three years of the exploding epidemic of government malfeasance.
I too believe the corona flu is probably much more widespread than the Chinese government is stating. A government, even the Chinese, doesn’t quarantine tens of millions of people if the situation is not dire. There are also reports of problems in Shanghai.
I too believe the corona flu is probably much more widespread than the Chinese government is stating.
parker: Yes. I just checked the GIS web page and noticed it had shot up 60% from 2886 total cases this morning to 4474 now. I suspect the real number is 2-5x higher.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
We don’t know how far this goes. Instapundit links a report that Mongolia and North Korea have closed their borders with China.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/coronavirus-outbreak-mongolia-closes-china-border
Instapundit says, “My assumption: They know more than we do about what’s going on in China.”
A couple of points to consider.
First that, according to reports, Wuhan, the epicenter of this infection, is the site of one of several projected level 4 National Biosafety Labs China is constructing to study the most dangerous and highly infectious diseases, and that reportedly the lab in Wuhan is already up and running.
(I’m reminded of the 1979 outbreak of Anthrax at Sverdlovsk in Russia which, despite early government denials, the Russian government finally admitted was caused by a faulty filtration system at a secret Russian biological warfare lab located in that city.)
Second, that this outbreak couldn’t have come at a worse time, since it coincides with the traditional Chinese New Year, in which many tens of millions of Chinese travel to return to celebrations in their home villages, greatly facilitating, one must assume, the spread of this communicable virus.
P.S.–As I understand it, given our ability to quickly travel world wide, once a highly infectious disease gets rolling, it can spread incredibly fast.
Thus, if I were the President, I would already have stopped any travel to or from China, economic consequences be damned.
It’s really just another manifestation of climate change. You heard it here first? /sarc
Where is Saint Greta when you need her?
What if you traveled to China and, then, the goverment there decided that you might have been exposed, and refused to let you leave to return to the U.S.?
It seems so much of our supply chain has been moved to China, even if the virus doesn’t come here, there might be disruptions. So being slightly preppy, and susceptible to catching germs, I’m making sure to have extra water, prescriptions filled, food that will keep and that the propane, gas and oil tanks are full.
China certainly has a dysfunctional relationship with birds. Maybe all these avian flu mutations are revenge for Mao’s slaughter of the sparrows.
Guns, Germs, and Steel seems to be the consensus science view that many animal diseases mutate and become infectious for humans.
I believe this, as well as the idea that smallpox and other Euro brought diseases literally decimated the Native American population. Allowing Cortez to conquer Mexico, and Pizarro to take all the gold from Peru — which later caused big inflation in the Old World.
There’s a cute / tricky mobile phone game, Plague Inc., which simulates the spread of a pathogen, as well as an AI which simulates possible responses of the plague to various anti-plague strategies of humans. My doctor wife & kids liked it.
https://www.miniclip.com/games/plague-inc/en/
The end of the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes also has a cute “infection graph” related to an early infected person at an airport and the infections rapidly spreading from there.
I’m so sad for the victims, yet also glad about the “self-negating prophecies” from dystopian novels, movies, and games. The more realistic the prophecy, the more likely to avoid it. Then I think of the hysterical anti-Trump wrong “fears”, which wanted to be self-negating, and worry about too much acceptance of too many fears.
My bet would be 60% right now that we are under-reacting. This will cause 100 or more deaths than if we, as the world, had reacted in some “optimal” way. That’s mostly because of commie Chinese. Glenn R. says we should have stopped flights from China days ago; so he’s on the under-reacting side. There’s actions, and hype — maybe a bit too much hype, but too little action.
I hope there are “prizes” for fast development of vaccines. Big money prizes, in the 10s & 100s of millions of dollars. We shall see.
The reasons we have not had an 1918 style pandemic is because we keep getting better and better at detecting them early and containing them to prevent them from achieving the critical mass needed to affect a significant portion of the population.
The people who do this stuff (CDC and their foreign counterparts) are dedicated and apolitical. When and if there is something to panic about, the first we will hear of it will be when the Government announces draconian quarantine measures.
If you look at the mini-graph for Total Confirmed Cases on this page:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
…you will see the curve is exponential. The total cases statistic has more than doubled in two days, which means one can expect, if the trend continues, that the total will be > 10,000 cases within 48 hours.
Which is another reason we shouldn’t yawn at an emerging disease. China missed its window to control the virus in its early stages and they are now paying the price.
The tricky aspect of the Wuhan virus is a long incubation period in which the person is contagious, while showing no symptoms.
huxley:
But to me, the most important statistic by far is the ratio of confirmed cases to deaths. So far (at least, according to this article which is about a week old), the death rate is not especially high compared to other forms of flu. Of course, we don’t have really great data on that yet. And this article indicates that the deaths are mostly of patients who were already ill in some other way.
I see a lot of headlines that say “death toll rises.” Well, of course it does. The death toll will keep rising; it won’t decrease. The real question is what is the death rate, and whether it is rising.
Snow On Pine:
https://www.foxnews.com/health/coronavirus-outbreak-strands-ohio-teacher-wuhan
Roy Nathanson:
If you are really, really interested in the workings of the CDC and what they track
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/index.html
But to me, the most important statistic by far is the ratio of confirmed cases to deaths.
neo: Obviously that’s an important statistic. But if confirmed cases are exponential, then obviously deaths are exponential too, though lagging by a week or two.
How many deaths — on top of regular flu deaths — do you require to take this virus seriously? Or at least get beyond the “Yeah, but.”
I’m not saying this virus will usher in a Stephen King novel. But it looks serious enough to me. SARS cases topped out 8098 cases with 774 dead. 2019-nCoV will top 8000 cases probably by tomorrow night.
Plus it’s a new virus. It’s still mutating, adjusting to the human host. We don’t know how this works out.
Death to sudden disease is certainly bad, but the ruin disease like this brings is far more widely spread. If 2.4% mortality, then of those falling ill 97.6% are sidelined in incapacitation for days to weeks, with who knows what incidence of side effects or other opportunistic illnesses following on. These unfortunates’ miseries may in their totality be far worse than the toll of mortality left in the virus’ wake. Pandemic is an evil in every dimension.
neo: I was wondering if this topic title is an homage to Magritte’s painting of a pipe captioned (in French) “This is not a pipe.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images
huxley:
What on earth would make you think I don’t take the virus seriously? I hope that wasn’t what you were trying to say when you wrote: “How many deaths — on top of regular flu deaths — do you require to take this virus seriously?”
I take it extremely seriously. But there are flu deaths all the time. There are people I care about very very deeply who died from sepsis after getting what I suppose was the flu. It was tragic as far as I’m concerned, and any flu that increases the number of deaths is bad.
But the reality is that new flu viruses emerge quite regularly. They do not substantially alter the big picture and the need for panic is not there. And yet, one may emerge some day as in 1918 that alters the picture big time. It is that question – is this the Big One? – that I am attempting to deal with here, and so far I see no reason to say that the answer is “yes.”
Esther on January 28, 2020 at 12:53 am said:
…
China certainly has a dysfunctional relationship with birds. Maybe all these avian flu mutations are revenge for Mao’s slaughter of the sparrows.
* * *
Getting rid of perceivedpests without a solid grounding in ecosystems is usually a disaster.
He finally called it quits on the birds, and went after bed bugs instead, which is as it should be. I’m not sure if attacking the other three pests (rats, flies, and mosquitoes) did any damage to the biome or not.
And besides, his rationale was that the English sparrows eating Chinese crops were agents of capitalism, which means that once again ideology trumped science (seems to be a pattern here).
And to boot, the godless Communists forgot this:
Matthew 6:26
Look at the birds of the air: They do not sow or reap or gather into barns–and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
Matthew 10:29
(New King James Version)
Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will.
Wikipedia:
By April 1960, Chinese leaders changed their opinion due to the influence of ornithologist Tso-hsin Cheng[2] who pointed out that sparrows ate a large number of insects, as well as grains.[8][9] Rather than being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased.[10][9] Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with bed bugs, as the extermination of sparrows upset the ecological balance, and insects destroyed crops as a result of the absence of natural predators. By this time, however, it was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides.[10] Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which 15–45 million people died of starvation.[11][12]
Well strike me down, it wasn’t St. Greta, but our own esteemed Senator Elizabeth Warren who has declared that the Corona virus problem is a consequence of climate change:
https://www.redstate.com/alexparker/2020/01/29/elizabeth-warren-coronavirus-climate-change/
We can all rest easy, an adult will soon (January 2021) rectify the situation.
Has anyone seen a trustworthy R_0 published on 2019-nCoV? Initially one group published a calculated 3.8, then withdrew that (scary) estimate to claim an updated (better) 1.6-2.4 range. I haven’t seen any other since.