As cases of the novel coronavirus known as 2019-nCoV continue to rise worldwide. The respiratory illness, which can cause pneumonia and symptoms like fever, cough and shortness of breath.
The death rate which has widely been reported as between 1-2% is not necessarily true across all age groups and preliminary estimates suggest that the people who are at higher risk for severe disease and death are those who are older and with underlying health conditions.
We are going to have to stick to our good hygiene practice for quite some time I think.
This is the age related mortality rate from what seems like the latest research Jackie which I posted on another thread. Looks very similar.
‘The study also showed that older adults have been hit hardest by COVID-19.
Among those ages 80 and older, the death rate was 14.8%, compared with 8.0% for those ages 70 to 79; 3.6% for those ages 60 to 69; 1.3% for those ages 50 to 59; 0.4% for those ages 40 to 49, and 0.2% for those ages 10 to 39. No deaths have been reported among children from birth to age 9.’
Just like any virus if your immune system is weakened you are vulnerable compared to a healthy person and usually elderly have weakened immune system to the average person.
Here is a great website for all up to date information on Coronavirus
It’s dangerous as it spreads fast and a pandemic would flood every health. Care system
*Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) = probability of dying if infected by the virus (%). This probability differs depending on pre-existing condition. The percentage shown below does NOT represent in any way the share of deaths by pre-existing condition. Rather, it represents, for a patient with a given pre-existing condition, the risk of dying if infected by COVID-19.
PRE-EXISTING CONDITION
DEATH RATE
confirmed cases
DEATH RATE
all cases
Cardiovascular disease
13.2%
10.5%
Diabetes
9.2%
7.3%
Chronic respiratory disease
8.0%
6.3%
Hypertension
8.4%
6.0%
Cancer
7.6%
5.6%
no pre-existing conditions
0.9%
*Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) = probability of dying if infected by the virus (%). The percentages do not have to add up to 100%, as they do NOT represent share of deaths by condition.
"Rather than focusing so much on trying to quarantine and prevent this from spreading — it's going to spread — all effort needs to be on what can we do to best prepare." Michael Mina, MD, assistant professor of epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The tips on infection prevention shared regularly in this community should help us all reduce our risk.
With respect to the graphic which illustrates in part the reduction in immunity we have with age, I suspect that we will see lower fatality rate in the elderly outside of China. That's because of the very high rate of tobacco smoking in China, particularly among men, with male doctors setting a poor example. (It's probably not helped by the poorer air quality in Chinese cities either.) A 2004 study found 41% of male physicians reporting to be smokers but only 1% of female physicians. (In 2009, a Chinese state run newspaper reported an incidence of 60%). Chinese physicians have a substantially higher smoking prevalence than doctors in the United States (3.3%) or United Kingdom (6.8%). en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smo...
Indeed a recent Medscape article Coronavirus' Top Targets: Men, Seniors, Smokers noted "It's possible, several experts told The New York Times, that because Chinese men are more likely than women to be smokers, they could be hit harder than women. A World Health Organization study from 2019 found that 47.6% of Chinese men smoke, compared to only 1.8% of Chinese women. Women also generally mount stronger immune responses than men."
So members who have quit smoking now have an extra reason to be thankful for making that lifestyle change.
With the demand for wipes and hand sanitisers/gels increasing, hopefully we will see an overall reduction in the incidence of all communicable illnesses, but it's a pity it took a still very low likelihood of infection to scare people into regularly washing their hands! healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...
Makers of wipes and hand sanitizers step up production as coronavirus spreads
Thanks for sharing. I still think at the moment the absolute risk of flu is higher for us, and certainly the risk of pneumonia. Though of course that does depend a lot on how far this spreads.
My gut feeling is that this must be a lot less infectious than the common flu or else we would probably be seeing a much larger problem already. I’ve certainly personally had a gastric flu virus once which I passed to about ten people in one evening! People at close quarters eg on a cruise ship seem to be at greater risk. And I’m willing to bet that a good deal of that is hand washing and the lack thereof. I do wish that when they speak about hand washing they’d talk about the need to dry them NOT with a shared towel or a hand air dryer both of which just spread the germs again! Kitchen roll all the way at home.
That and prolonged time spent close to an infectious person (an hour on a crowded commuter train might well be enough!).
It does look a bit like the virus very much looks like it is about to escape. It might make a lot of sense for companies already to be trying to increase working from home where that is feasible. Think of it as a trial run for the worst case scenario. Surely if trains were half empty then they’d present less of a risk.
Infection prevention is definitely the way forward but unless this becomes huge (and by that I mean more of a generalised problem than it has been so far in China our absolute risk is still going to be higher for the more common flu and pneumonia. But for sure I understand the concern.
Of course if this actually helps people in general to learn to be a bit more sensible about things like not going out when you are sick and hand washing etc this might help us in a weird sort of way.
The challenge is going to be for governments and others in charge to weigh up the economic and social costs of social distancing vs the risks of this pandemic. In a strange sort of way society is going to have to think in a similar way to what those of us with CLL and regular infections tend to think anyway. Ie we weigh up our own sense of risk of various situations vs the benefits to us of that situation.
We have to still live.
Ironically many of us report with our incresed efforts to hand wash well, social distancing from public transport and even keeping a bit of physical distance from others (the six feet rule) works quite well For most viruses. It’s the bacteria that are harder to prevent that way as we have bacteria living in our throats anyway that can go infectious. I get frequent throat chest and sinus infections but almost no viral colds or flus. (Feel like I’m tempting fate by saying that!)
we’re in northern Italy, so number 3 on the ‘precarious’ list. We have been hit extremely hard but the concern is that the hospital where my husband goes for his visits, 2 doctors have come down with the virus! My panic is not the virus itself, because logically, I know that 80% is media frenzy, but schools are closed and Wednesday we have a specialist appointment at the hospital. I am already anxious as it is for the appointment but now it’s double stress because of the virus
Maybe you could have the appointment remotely? Ie by phone? Not sure if I would want to be going to a northern Italy hospital right now to be honest. Certainly not for a specialist appt unless I was very sick indeed.
All I can say is that in the Uk we have had a couple of situations where a GP pracrice shut down completely because they had a patient or member of staff test positive. Close contacts are advised to self isolate and we have had quarretine talked about as compulsory if necessary. I guess it’s hard to shut down a Hospital. But quarantine measures seem to have been working in China too. So sorry things are so hard for you in North Italy. Are people simply staying home?
Well last week we were in total shut down! No one went out and people worked from home. Things were stable for a while. Then again those infected doubled in 2 days and do did the deaths. I sm not a hysterical person but my husband is insisting he cannot not go, hence my dilemma. Are schools closed in the UK as well?
How infectious it is (ie how many people one carrier will infect).
How severe it is (ie how many people who it infects will actually die).
I think experts are agreed that it is definitely more severe than, especially for the elderly and those with underlying problems.
I’m not sure that is is clear at this point if it is as infectious as flu or not. We keep hearing of schools or health centres being shut down because of a case. And yet what we are not hearing is that (except on board the cruise ships) that high numbers of people are infected as a result of the teacher pupil or GP. Think about flu season when it feels like flu goes round the whole classroom and literally say 80% get infected. We don’t yet know that it is that infectious. Though it —-might— be.
It does however seem to be more infectious than SARS or MERS the last two Coronavirus to make the jump from animals to humans. They killed a higher proportion of patients than covid19 but fortunately were really hard to catch and so the outbreaks were more limited.
Truth is we don’t actually know yet what the degree of severity or infectiousness really is. Both estimate will become More clear.
I was just saying that due to the numbers involved so far (note that in China for example the numbers are not really going up at the moment so it looks like quarantine may be working) it looks like for most of us the risk in the next month or so of getting the ordinary flu is much higher. Of course that could change.
We will see how many corona kills in the US. The bar is high, the flu killed 80000 two years ago. It was backpage news.
I am not trying to downplay the seriousness of a very infectious disease. I am just trying to understand the hysteria associated with it when we have had various flus and viruses that have been deadly too that we hardly ever hear about.
The things we are doing to protect ourselves against this virus are exactly the same things we should have been doing anyway. Avoid sick people. Wash our hands frequently. Be careful about touching surfaces in public places. For those of us who have more severely compromised immune systems, we have to think about more drastic measures like not using public transportation at all, staying at home more and using gloves and masks in public.
Corona is at one death in 2020 in US. It has over 79k to get to the flu deaths we never heard of two years ago. Can you imagine the hysteria if corona kills even half of what the flu did, where there was almost zero publicity?
Will corona end up killing many more than 80k? It might, I don’t know. As new information comes in, my views on the precautions I need to take will evolve, I am sure. As of now I am not changing anything I do, I was already doing the things they say I should do anyway.
I might have second thoughts about a cruise if I had one booked (I do in 2021). Cruise ships are confined environments and if one person has some super contagious illness it could run through the ship. But even that is nothing new. Cruise ships have periodically had virus outbreaks on them forever.
We are missing one crucial thing here. If the China stats are to be believed . 20% of people infected with this virus have severe infections. Hospitals get overrun. And so this has a major potential to be hugely disruptive in a way that flu simply isn’t. Also doctors don’t generally die of flu and several Chinese doctors have died from this.
Also the flu deaths are so concentrated in the elderly that to be honest most people are less concerned about it than they should be. I mean if people could get a vaccine right now for this new Coronavirus I think even the anti Vaxers would probably bite their own hand off to get it. Yet the flu vaccine take up is terrible. Vaccination is a civic duty. In the UK Doctors and nurses are encouraged but not forced to take it to protect their patients. Truth is if the whole population took the flu vaccine each year many of those 80,000 deaths could be prevented.
Perhaps one of the most important things we can do in the future is to advocate for a much more serious push to take all viral illnesses more seriously and campaign for vaccines to be more readily available. That might save many lives including many of ours.
In the uk we are at least one step towards encouraging vaccination for the protection of others. If you live with someone with CLL or any other form of immune compromise (and yes we are ALL immune compromised from the moment of our diagnosis) then you can have the flu vaccine for free.
If you are willing to pay a few pounds then you can have it anyway. I don’t understand why the health service doesn’t just make it free for everyone.
My GP practice nolonger gives the Flu Vaccine to CLL partners, and won't discuss the logic behind the change. My partner very kindly goes to a well known supermarket pharmacy to get the jab. They do a good job. Simple.
Ernest, I strongly suspect this GP practice are acting outside the commissioning guidelines on vaccinations from the CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) who direct which services they provide.
I’d be putting a letter in to the Practice Manager asking for an explanation of this refusal because it flies in the face of all recommended practice that I’m aware of.
That is worthy of a complaint as it is against government recommendations. I hope the pharmacist gives it free as there is a form that just requires your partner to tick a box. Perhaps your GP needs education from the green book that anyone with a leukaemia is considered immunocompromised (see the pinned post on vaccinations). Would that same GP also be too reluctant to give you an antibiotic I wonder.
Mortality rate is indeed higher. What is not yet clear is whether it is going to spread as readily as the flu or whether it is going to be possible to constrain it by more aggressive quarantine procedures or indeed how prepared countries other than china are going to be to attempt to contain this. How infectious this is going to be and are we going to be able to stop it from simply infecting as many people as it wants.
It looks a bit as though what is happening in china might be working since their numbers are not going up as rapidly now (BUT we do not know if they are detecting all the cases). One concern has been that some countries are not testing anything like enough people so we don't actually know how this is going to evolve. If you are interested in the data this is updated several times a day:. worldometers.info/coronavirus/
I am finding that it depends on the angle from which a given expert is presenting data, and which strains they are comparing. As AndreaJo recently pointed out to me in yesterdays post "specifics".
None the less, Good measure is always Good measure, especially for high risk folks like us.
I am headed to WVCI tomorrow for a post treatment BNB, and I am not looking forward to the exposure at Seatac. But there again, "If it is, So is it".
Are you getting any relief from the arthralgia yet?
Not having any defenses for a new virus because it is new/just being sorted for specific identity as well as not having any developed vaccine, makes this a bit more concerning than the flu (even with the apparent different strain that has shown up in this year's flu).
That makes for the kind of situation RomildaG has identified as happening in Italy.
And, it makes for a need for due-diligence in every nation and esp. in those already needing to take care with any exposures to viral infections in general.
For sure we all need to be careful. And I’m a little concerned that some countries are not being careful enough. But please understand that the flu vaccine probably only works for about 40% of the normal population and less for us. It’s true if we get flu even despite being vaccinated it might help us have a slightly less severe variant of the flu (but only if we get one of the stains vaccinated and only if the vaccine actually took). Flu vaccines reduce the overall death rate by reducing transmission in the population and therefore reducing the chance of us getting it. If only healthy people took getting a flu vaccine done, and taking steps to avoid passing it on to others then we would potentially save many thousands of lives a year. I think everyone should be vaccinated against flu. Just because the death rate is very low it’s still likely that since it is so very infectious more people worldwide are likely to
Die of flu this year than Coronavirus (tho again if it does turn out that the this new virus really is as infectious as the flu then we’d need to revise that prediction.
If 80% of the worlds population were to catch Coronavirus and 2% or more of them were to die clearly that would be a major event. But so far it’s not looking like the illness will be quite that pervasive.
I work in IT and disaster recovery and business continuity,
already preparing for work from home scenarios and quarantined areas , business ,schools, the threat is real. We all should consider to prepare for the worse and hope for the best. Many unknowns. With the virus the threat of cancelling the Olympics and many business developers conventions are being cancelled for March and April.
I agree and wonder why we are not already trying to implement work from home say 2-3 days per week for anyone who possibly can. Ie a step down in risk that doesn’t have as many drastic effects as actually shutting down businesses.
The disease if it comes to us could be spreading for weeks in a community before we realise it (this seems to be what happened to Italy).
I’m reassured somewhat that the uk and some other governments are implementing widespread testing even of people who don’t have a travel history so we hopefully get a sense of any increase in an area more rapidly.
I know that today for example a case was reported in Essex the county I live in which so far is the only case so far which seems to have been caught actually in the uk without a known close contact who’d travelled to a danger zone.
Quartz Journalism (I don't know who that is) but their site says the virus can live on the tech screens (glass was mentioned, so cell phones) for up to 96 hours. I'd say best to not share those until this threat has passed.
Here is an easy-to-use (at home) UV phone sanitizing product I learned of from someone else's prior post on this forum. Sorry I cannot find the original post using search feature.
Do we need immediately stop driving cars, as death toll in car accidents is 20-30 times higher the corona?
Therefore, the governments should stop traffic and forbid smoking at all. instead of sitting at home and waiting corona will go away, peolpe should go out on fresh air for 2 hours daily and go to the gym three times a week. that helps ten times more than panic.
I recall a recent report that suggested that older people without underlying medical conditions had a much reduced mortality. It seemed to suggest that poor mobility and muscle strength was the real killer.
Content on HealthUnlocked does not replace the relationship between you and doctors or other healthcare professionals nor the advice you receive from them.
Never delay seeking advice or dialling emergency services because of something that you have read on HealthUnlocked.
New Frightening Discovery About COVID-19
