Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

By a quick calculation I did (see below), it is predicted that by April 2020, there may be 2 billion Chinese infected with the Wuhan coronavirus, and 40 million deaths in China.

This is because if you look at the graph of the number of reported cases in this live updated page (bottom right corner), you can see that in China the numbers increase by roughly a factor of 4 each week.

Now there are nearly 30,000 reported cases in China at the moment, so if the virus cannot be contained, and this exponential trend continues, in each successive week, the number of infected cases in China may pan out like this:

Predicted Number of Cases of
Wuhan virus by Week In China
(Figures quadruple every week)

Friday 07 Feb 2020 — 30K
Friday 14 Feb 2020 — 120K
Friday 21 Feb 2020 — 480K
Friday 28 Feb 2020 — 1.9M
Friday 06 Mar 2020 — 7.7M
Friday 13 Mar 2020 — 31M
Friday 20 Mar 2020 — 123M
Friday 27 Mar 2020 — 492M
Friday 03 Apr 2020 — 2B

So in other words, by around April 2020, it's possible 2 billion Chinese citizens might have caught the Wuhan coronavirus. At the current death rate of 2%, that means there will be a predicted 40 million deaths in China by April.

On the other hand, since the vast majority of cases are still in the city of Wuhan, if the Wuhan lockdown successfully manages to limit spread to the rest of China, and if in the other infected regions of China they can track down and quarantine people with the virus, I guess it's still possible that a pandemic may be thwarted. Although it does not look good for the people of Wuhan.

 

There never was a true exponential trend, the big surge was a consequence of exposing over 100,000 people to the virus during the banquet and the Chinese government fudging (delaying) the reported numbers.

The rate of new confirmed cases per day is already decreasing.

 

That’s not good, by the 24th of April there will be 128 billion people in China infected!

 

The population of China is around 1.4 billion...

 

In a few years, the entire universe will be infected!

 

Are we totally certain that that isn't because the people doing the counting have succumbed?

 

Is the coronavirus like the flu virus where people get infected mainly in during the winter months?

 

Let's hope so.

What I find interesting is that if you look on the map at the Chinese cities far flung from Wuhan, these have in the range of around 300 to 1000 infected people at present. But percentage-wise there are a lot fewer deaths in those far flung cities.

For example, Guangzhou in the south currently has 1075 infected cases on the map, but only 1 death. Well that's a death rate of much less than 2%. Possibly the infected people in these far flung cities have not had the virus long enough for death to have occurred (maybe it takes a while for the virus to kill). We will have to see if more deaths occur in these far flung cities over the next week or two.

But anyway, if in a week's time those figures in the far flung cities quadruple, then that suggests the increases do not come from some pool of exposed people in the banquet, but from genuine exponential growth.

Yeah, epidemic outbreak modeling only follows an exponential curve at the early stages, while the population is not near saturation with infected cases. But once the number of infected starts to approach the total number of people in the population, then the growth curve levels off, departing from an exponential.

I believe I read once that the correct mathematical function to model pandemics is not the exponential function, but the sigmoid function. The sigmoid function curve looks like an exponential curve at the beginning, but then levels off later.

Nevertheless, for the early stages of a pandemic, when you are still far from saturation, the exponential function is accurate.

 

That's true! One should never attempt arithmetic when you have brain fog!

 

No Rosie, the yearly flu that makes its way around the globe is influenza virus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza
This current virus that emerged in China is a different kind of virus, from the corona virus family, which also causes a respiratory illness but seemingly these coronaviruses have been known to cause severe illness and mortality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus

 

That’s too many. Earth will tip over.*

*for those outside the US, that’s a reference to our fine congressman Hank Johnson, who objected to stationing more people on an island by opining that it might tip over. When informed that islands do not float and cannot tip over, he dug himself further in by claiming it was a joke.

 

But other cold-like virii flame out during warm weather, one would expect this one to do likelwise. Speculations: If your country can keep it out until late spring, you’re good until next winter. By then some sort of supportive treatment for what would be a fatal case now will probably be invented. It will probably not be invented by NHS.

 

Coronavirus is normally one of the viruses in circulation which cause the common cold (other cold viruses include: rhinovirus, adenovirus, influenzavirus, parainfluenza virus and respiratory syncytial virus).

Interestingly enough, Dr John Chia has observed that acute respiratory syncytial virus or influenzavirus infections can sometimes cure ME/CFS patients. Dr Chia thinks this occurs because these viruses shift the immune system back into a healthy state, which then results in clearance of the virus that may be causing the ME/CFS.

 

I was also interested in understanding the transmission curve of the coronavirus. Here is what I found:
(quote to the bottom of the page of french article )
"Professor Christophe d'Enfert, director of the Fungal Biology and Pathogenicity Unit of the Pasteur Institute, also spoke of the preponderance of these uncertainties on RTL: "Viruses, in particular this type of virus, mutate quite easily. And so we can imagine that it acquires mutations that will make it perhaps more contagious, or more pathogenic. It is impossible to predict it. " In the absence of firm predictions, governments continue to take containment measures for those at risk. At the moment, the coronavirus has not reached the pandemic stage according to the World Health Organization (WHO). https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/sante/coronavirus-a-quelle-date-le-pic-est-il-prevu_141264

 

We are in summer at the moment and so am hoping NZ will be spared for the next few months but we are not that far away from winter. Our weather can start getting chilly as early as April.

It could be that it helps some Hip. I caught a bad flu while spiralling down to severe ME and that particular flu locked me into severe ME for many years. I have noticed sometimes with a cold I feel my ME symptoms have eased up though, but then it may be just a ME fluctuation also.

 

I had a long term improvement with some unknown bug I cought in 2010, 1 year after I became ill with ME.

During the infection I was coughing and sneezing and everyone felt sorry for me, but I felt SO MUCH better...it was like a major, physical relief.

After it was gone I got worse again but remained probably 20% improvement compared to before.

Unfortunately, that never happened again.

 

Article from Columbia University|Mailman School of Public Health on response to Wuhan Coronavirus. Ian Lipkin has recently returned from China, but was not allowed to go to Wuhan himself due to U.S. travel restrictions.

https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/our-experts-respond-wuhan-coronavirus

 

How the hell is it transmitted?

Recent developments make me think there is more to it than is known now.

 

It has been talked about the last couple of days for the virus to be transmitted via aerosol (versus only droplets), they don't really know yet though.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202002/09/WS5e3fcfefa3101282172760f4.html

"There is no definitive answer as to whether the novel coronavirus can be transmitted via aerosols so far, according to medical expert on Sunday."

 

Well, in the WHO briefing (daily at 4pm) they just just called it "airborne" :/

Edit: They later rephraised - seems like these terms are used differently