COVID COVID-19 Coronavirus Containment Efforts

[chemisttree]

There are 9 provinces with 2600 confirmed cases, yet no deaths.

...And I have a bridge I’d like to sell you!

 

[OmCheeto]

...And I have a bridge I’d like to sell you!

No thanks.

Btw, did you notice that if you ignore the numbers out of Hubei, the mortality rate in China and the rest of the world matches very closely. I found that interesting.

This is also interesting. In wiki's "List of human disease case fatality rates", they've got lots of "tildes". I'm guessing that means there's some variability to be expected.

CFR	Disease
~1%	Mumps encephalitis
~1%	Pertussis

Ha! I just noticed COVID-19 already has an entry:

CFR: 2% according to China's Ministry of Health. Other estimates range from 0.1% to 15%.​

I guess my new 0.5% estimate fits in there.

 

[kadiot]

There are 9 provinces with 2600 confirmed cases, yet no deaths.
At the Hubei rate of 1 death per 37 cases, 70 of those people should be dead.
The mortality rate in the remaining 20 provinces, is about 1 death per 160 confirmed cases.

I was thinking about death cases. Perhaps the virus spread by animals? The high fatalities on animal-human infection, less fatalities on Human-human infection. And human-animal reversal infection impossible?

 

[Rive]

Instead of those speculations I would rather suspect the local authorities first: nobody wants to end like Wuhan (city), so things will be kept under the rug as long as possible.

 

[chemisttree]

Btw, did you notice that if you ignore the numbers out of Hubei, the mortality rate in China and the rest of the world matches very closely. I found that interesting. GIGO is GIGO regardless of province. I only believe the numbers that have absolutely no connection to China at this point. And that indicates its easy to transmit, a large fraction of patients have a mild case with minimal symptoms and a fairly low death rate if heroic measures are employed. The first patient in the US was given Remdesivir for crying out loud! How many in China have that level of care? Mumps and pertussis have effective vaccines. Danger isn’t even in the same league, in my opinion.

 

[kadiot]

How can "patient zero" be from Singapore? Singapore does not have exotic meats market.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/cor...d-coronavirus-globally-from-singapore-2179821

 

[OmCheeto]

...The first patient in the US was given Remdesivir for crying out loud! How many in China have that level of care?
...

I don't know, as they didn't provide a number.

U.S. officials confirmed last week that physicians in Wuhan, China, have begun testing an experimental drug called remdesivir on Coronavirus patients.​

[ref: Washington Post]

 

[chemisttree]

How can "patient zero" be from Singapore? Singapore does not have exotic meats market.

It’s obviously a person to person transmission. There were Wuhan attendees at the conference.

 

[kadiot]

It’s obviously a person to person transmission. There were Wuhan attendees at the conference.

Thanks. This is understood. However, community outbreak seems inevitable because, look, in the Philippines, the Department of Health (DOH) started the contact tracing coverage (4 seats in front and 4 seats in back of the patient on the plane, which is appropriate for droplet transmission protocols. They contacted 100% of those guys within 48 hours (the 17% of the ENTIRE plane). It was later that they MODIFIED it to include the whole plane in case the patient MAY have walked around. Close contact definitions preclude casual contact but they expanded it TO BE SURE. Problem is how DOH-investigators will be able to trace the movement of infected persons from the time the plane landed to the discovery of infection. This is of course an ideal case scenario, and would never happen in actual reality, but going to fictitious extremes sometimes puts certain things into a better perspective. Any lapses on tracing movement means there is a possibility of spread then it will multiply. Now, let's go back to Singapore setting, why not make it a given that outbreak is inevitable? What would be the next step? I think, that way, we have a better chance of winning this fight. Hunting on a Patient Zero merely distract us from the larger and more important task like containment and treatment.

 

[kadiot]

I hope this is already true. But it looks like they already have the vaccine before the virus was released.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/california-lab-coronavirus-vaccine-3-hours

 

[kadiot]

Another positive developments for treating Covid-19

 

[Ygggdrasil]

I hope this is already true. But it looks like they already have the vaccine before the virus was released.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/california-lab-coronavirus-vaccine-3-hours

Making a vaccine is pretty easy. Showing that it is safe and effective is the hard part (manufacturing and distributing mass quantities is also hard).

The article says that the company plans to start phase I trials (the shortest and easiest of the three phases of clinical testing) in the summer, when hopefully the outbreak is already abating.

 

[kadiot]

Making a vaccine is pretty easy. Showing that it is safe and effective is the hard part (manufacturing and distributing mass quantities is also hard).

The article says that the company plans to start phase I trials (the shortest and easiest of the three phases of clinical testing) in the summer, when hopefully the outbreak is already abating.

With AI and other advanced technology, would it be possible to develop vaccines and release them immediately whilst still being safe?

 

[BWV]

several secondary transmission cases in Japan, where patients had not been to China
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2...h/tokyo-taxi-driver-coronavirus/#.Xkd91i9MFvI

a real test will be if the virus established itself in warmer clients like Singapore and India, which would imply that it won't simply go away with spring like a typical flu virus

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

Remarks by Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme at media briefing on COVID-19 on 13 February 2020

13 February 2020
News release
Geneva
https://www.who.int/news-room/detai...edia-briefing-on-covid-19-on-13-february-2020

 

[kadiot]

Remarks by Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme at media briefing on COVID-19 on 13 February 2020

13 February 2020
News release
Geneva
https://www.who.int/news-room/detai...edia-briefing-on-covid-19-on-13-february-2020

WHO is saying “do not mislead.”

 

[kadiot]

a real test will be if the virus established itself in warmer clients like Singapore and India, which would imply that it won't simply go away with spring like a typical flu virus

Looks like the weather factor is not so plausible. A virus can leave only inside an organic cell unlike bacteria which can live in many different environments. A virus can only replicate from inside a human cell it successfully penetrate. A virus cannot live by itself unlike a bacteria.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

With AI and other advanced technology, would it be possible to develop vaccines and release them immediately whilst still being safe?

How do you think AI would help speed up this process?

 

[mfb]

Looks like the weather factor is not so plausible. A virus can leave only inside an organic cell unlike bacteria which can live in many different environments. A virus can only replicate from inside a human cell it successfully penetrate. A virus cannot live by itself unlike a bacteria.

The flu has clear seasonal patterns in places with seasons. It's not so much how the virus reacts to the temperature, it's how the people react to it: Spend more time indoors, in closer contact with others, and so on.

 

[chirhone]

I hope the situation improves and the Coronavirus manace disappears by April or May. My nightmare is reading one day this tweet "We are now facing a global threat the likes of which the world has never seen before. But rest assured they will be met by fire and brimstone..."

Can normal fire destroy viruses? what temperature before they are extinguished?

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

Author :Dr Takeshi Kasai
Regional Director for the Western Pacific
World Health Organization

Coronavirus outbreak shows Asia needs to step up infection preparation

Region is safer after epidemic lessons but new diseases always arising

15 January 2020

[. . .]

###
https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/commentaries/detail-hq/china-virus-outbreak-shows-asia-needs-to-step-up-infection-preparation

 

[chemisttree]

Singapore appears to be experiencing geometric growth with cases doubling every 6-7 days. Same with Japan but that includes the cases from the cruise ship which complicates things a bit.

If it holds in Singapore, they will be at ~100 cases in 3 or 4 days. If they have an asymptomatic super spreader things will develop quickly. Not good news.
https://www.gov.sg/article/covid-19-cases-in-singapore

I have been so impressed with the Singapore Government’s transparency and flow of information. Really a model for how outbreaks should be handled!

 

[mfb]

Doesn't look very exponential to me. The linear fit is not worse than the exponential one:

 

[chemisttree]

The first 20 cases were imported and should be excluded from the curve fitting probably.

 

[mfb]

If you just take the last 10 days you can fit anything to it. A linear fit works very well for them.

 

[atyy]

The Singapore cases have several clusters. See the second or third figure in
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/new...0?cid=h3_referral_inarticlelinks_24082018_cna

 

[kadiot]

Singapore appears to be experiencing geometric growth with cases doubling every 6-7 days.

13 of the 72 cases are linked to the Grace Assembly of God church. When these 13 sneezed surely no one will say, "God bless you". It's good that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Singapore, which oversees 32 Catholic churches around the island, advised parish priests and the lay communities that all other public events with large numbers of people attending, such as faith formation sessions, retreats and seminars and the Mass should be suspended. Very wise and timely decision by the Archbishop Goh! Holy water isn’t magic. If it’s contaminated, it’s contaminated.

 

[kadiot]

Can normal fire destroy viruses? what temperature before they are extinguished?

I'm not sure what temperature they can't withstand.

 

[chemisttree]

Did 2019-nCoV originate in a Wuhan government research lab? A new paper by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao points to the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Wuhan CDC is just 300 yards from the seafood market and they were studying a SARs type Coronavirus in bats.

“The principle investigator participated in a project which generated a chimeric virus using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, and reported the potential for human emergence 10. A direct speculation was that SARS-CoV or its derivative might leak from the laboratory.'

The report here. Get it while you can...

 

[Ygggdrasil]

That paper literally presents no data other than a picture from Google maps showing that the lab is close to the seafood market. Other researchers have reported finding coronaviruses in pangolins that are 99% similar to the 2019-nCov, providing a much more plausible explanation for the current outbreak: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00364-2

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Please exercise more skepticism before posting conspiracy theories here.

 

[chemisttree]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00364-2

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Please exercise more skepticism before posting conspiracy theories here.

I would caution you as well. The claims you posted are backed up by... nothing. A press conference. Unpublished research? Maybe they have conducted a pair by pair analysis or maybe they have just looked at it under an electron microscope and judged it to be 99% identical?

“Molecular biological detection revealed that the positive rate of Betacoronavirus in pangolins was 70 percent among the small number of samples analyzed. Researchers further observed its structure with an electron microscope. They found that the sequence of the Coronavirus strain assembled from metagenomes was 99 percent identical to that of infected people in the recent Coronavirus outbreak.”

Huh?

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Here's the relevant quote from the Nature article:

Now, the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou says that two of its researchers, Shen Yongyi and Xiao Lihua, have identified the pangolin as the potential source of nCoV-2019 on the basis of a genetic comparison of coronaviruses taken from the animals and from humans infected in the outbreak and other findings. The sequences are 99% similar, the researchers reported at press conference on 7 February.

I agree that the question of the origin of the Coronavirus is not yet solved and we should await publication of the results suggesting pangolin as an intermediary vector for the present outbreak. However, this finding has been reported on by a reputable scientific news outlet and represents a more plausible explanation in the absence of other data linking the virus to other origins.

 

[OmCheeto]

Here's the relevant quote from the Nature article:

I agree that the question of the origin of the Coronavirus is not yet solved and we should await publication of the results suggesting pangolin as an intermediary vector for the present outbreak. However, this finding has been reported on by a reputable scientific news outlet and represents a more plausible explanation in the absence of other data linking the virus to other origins.

I'm curious, are humans on the list of potential source species?
Or is that a stupid question?

 

[Ygggdrasil]

I'm curious, are humans on the list of potential source species?
Or is that a stupid question?

COVID-19 can be transmitted person-to-person, so in that sense, you can consider humans a source of the virus. Most of the new infections occurring around the world are likely due to human-to-human transmission rather than animal-to-human transmission. One worry among epidemiologists is that the virus will become endemic and human hosts will continue to spread the disease in the future.

However, COVID-19 had not been seen in humans before late 2019, so scientists have been trying to understand where the virus responsible for the disease originally came from. Nearly all new human viruses come about from transmission of a virus from animals to humans (e.g. HIV, ebola, bird flu, to name some recent examples). Comparing virus sequences isolated from various individuals shows very little variation among different isolates, suggesting a very recent transmission from animals to humans. Because the virus is a coronavirus, and bats are a known reservoir of coronaviruses, scientists suspected that bats might be an origin, and indeed, the virus looks genetically similar to coronaviruses found in bats (see for example, this Nature paper for comparison of the genetics of the novel Coronavirus outbreak to several bat Coronavirus species).

However, we have observed in previous Coronavirus outbreaks that intermediary species were involved (e.g. in the case of the SARS outbreak, it is thought that a bat Coronavirus infected civet cats and was transferred to humans, and in the MERS outbreak, it is thought that bats infected camels who infected humans). Intermediary species could have allowed the virus to adapt to a host more similar to humans than bats, making it easier for the viruses to infect humans and spread person-to-person (many viruses cannot be spread between species and many of those that do, cannot efficiently be transmitted person-to-person). As mentioned above, preliminary research suggests pangolins as a plausible intermediary species for the COVID-19 coronavirus, though the results have not yet been published in a peer reviewed journal.

 

[OmCheeto]

Intermediary species could have allowed the virus to adapt to a host more similar to humans than bats ...

Ding ding ding ding ding!

Having zero formal training in biology, my knowledge of diseases generally focuses on ones I've been infected with. A while back, I came down with a fungal lung infection. The one I suspected, killed just about every mammal it came in contact with, including dolphins!
Fungi only need to adapt to a warm moist environment, while viruses need a specific cellular host.

Thanks!

 

[StatGuy2000]

I see a lot of panic-sounding messaging regarding COVID-19 (the new coronavirus). Perhaps it's important to see the current epidemic in perspective. Here is an interesting Scientific American article on this topic.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-the-new-coronavirus-compare-with-the-flu/

 

[chirhone]

I see a lot of panic-sounding messaging regarding COVID-19 (the new coronavirus). Perhaps it's important to see the current epidemic in perspective. Here is an interesting Scientific American article on this topic.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-the-new-coronavirus-compare-with-the-flu/

Very glad to know the COVID-19 stuff is not an ELE.

Also how come the flu viruses can't be eradicated?

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

I found this interesting:

The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine

The Novel Coronavirus: A
Bird's Eye View
Parham Habibzadeh1, Emily K. Stoneman2

[ . . .]

The novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, which initially began in China, has spread to

many countries around the globe, with the number of confirmed cases increasing every day.

With a death toll exceeding that of the SARS-CoV outbreak back in 2002 and 2003 in China,

2019-nCoV has led to a public health emergency of international concern, putting all health

organizations on high alert. Herein, we present on an overview of the currently available in-

formation on the pathogenesis, epidemiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, and treatment

of this virus.

[. . . ]

Vol 11, Num 2:April 2020
###
https://www.theijoem.com/ijoem/index.php/ijoem/article/view/1921/1195

 

[chemisttree]

I see a lot of panic-sounding messaging regarding COVID-19 (the new coronavirus). Perhaps it's important to see the current epidemic in perspective. Here is an interesting Scientific American article on this topic.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-the-new-coronavirus-compare-with-the-flu/

China has shut down and quarantined a huge fraction of their population, perhaps 700-800 million people. They did this quite early but probably not early enough. It has spread to dozens of other countries and is seems to be undergoing exponential growth in new cases in at least one and perhaps two of them. Heroic measures of isolation and ICU measures are required for a large fraction of cases, enough to overwhelm the medical system of the advanced health care system in China. The WHO has declared an emergency. China is on a wartime footing fighting this! Our own experts are warning of 60-70% infection rates in the not too distant future worldwide with 70-80 million deaths expected.

Are we not supposed to be concerned because of the flu we know? A virus I can easily innoculate against?

 

[OmCheeto]

...
Our own experts are warning of 60-70% infection rates in the not too distant future worldwide with 70-80 million deaths expected.
...

What article did you read these numbers in?

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Also how come the flu viruses can't be eradicated?

Essentially, this happens because the influenza virus mutates fairly rapidly, making it difficult for people to acquire long-term immunity to the disease. This is why you can acquire the flu multiple times throughout your lifetime (compared to some other diseases, like chickenpox, where being infected confers close to life-long immunity to subsequent infection), and why you should get a new flu vaccine every year. Many have worked to try to develop "universal" flu vaccines to counter all strains of influenza, but no one has been successful yet.

Furthermore, influenza can reside in other species (e.g. birds and pigs have spread influenza to humans in the past), so even if we could eradicate influenza from human populations, the possibility of acquiring new influenza strains from wild reservoirs would still exist.

 

[chirhone]

Essentially, this happens because the influenza virus mutates fairly rapidly, making it difficult for people to acquire long-term immunity to the disease. This is why you can acquire the flu multiple times throughout your lifetime (compared to some other diseases, like chickenpox, where being infected confers close to life-long immunity to subsequent infection), and why you should get a new flu vaccine every year. Many have worked to try to develop "universal" flu vaccines to counter all strains of influenza, but no one has been successful yet.

Furthermore, influenza can reside in other species (e.g. birds and pigs have spread influenza to humans in the past), so even if we could eradicate influenza from human populations, the possibility of acquiring new influenza strains from wild reservoirs would still exist.

I remember some microbes are present in our skin or bodies and when our immune system gets weak, it increases in size, is this true for the flu viruses, present in our body?

If the COVID-19 virus becomes as common as the flu. Then it will be part of everyone too? Only the mortality will be 4 times?

 

[Ygggdrasil]

I remember some microbes are present in our skin or bodies and when our immune system gets weak, it increases in size, is this true for the flu viruses, present in our body?

No, flu viruses or coronaviruses will not lay dormant in one's body. Some viruses, like HIV, that insert their DNA into the cells they infect, however, can lay dormant in the body and reactivate at a later time.

If the COVID-19 virus becomes as common as the flu. Then it will be part of everyone too? Only the mortality will be 4 times?

COVID-19 has the possibility of becoming quite widespread as it seems to be easily transmitted person-to-person, people have no pre-existing immunity, and no vaccine is available. Current observations suggest that while the vast majority (~80%) of those infected experience only mild symptoms, about 15% require hospitalization and about 2% could die from the disease. These numbers for hospitalizations and mortality are higher than for the typical seasonal flu, and could strain the healthcare resources of even developed nations if faced with outbreaks like those seen in Hubei province.

However, it is worth noting that we have been able to contain outbreaks of viruses that are similarly contagious as COVID-19 (e. g. the
2003 SARS outbreak in China, which was caused by a similar coronavirus), so well executed public health efforts to quarantine the infected and trace contacts can be effective in stopping the spread of the virus.

 

[chirhone]

No, flu viruses or coronaviruses will not lay dormant in one's body. Some viruses, like HIV, that insert their DNA into the cells they infect, however, can lay dormant in the body and reactivate at a later time.
COVID-19 has the possibility of becoming quite widespread as it seems to be easily transmitted person-to-person, people have no pre-existing immunity, and no vaccine is available. Current observations suggest that while the vast majority (~80%) of those infected experience only mild symptoms, about 15% require hospitalization and about 2% could die from the disease. These numbers for hospitalizations and mortality are higher than for the typical seasonal flu, and could strain the healthcare resources of even developed nations if faced with outbreaks like those seen in Hubei province.

However, it is worth noting that we have been able to contain outbreaks of viruses that are similarly contagious as COVID-19 (e. g. the
2003 SARS outbreak in China, which was caused by a similar coronavirus), so well executed public health efforts to quarantine the infected and trace contacts can be effective in stopping the spread of the virus.

2% is quite low fatality rate. If there were 10 billion humans and all got infected. Only 200 million would die. Not even 1 billion. So it's not a global catastrophic event..

Dozens of years back. The scare is ebola that can get airborned. Why didn't ebola become airborne? What's the mortality rate of ebola (this is to get perspective of the Coronavirus thing).

 

[Ygggdrasil]

200 million deaths is quite a lot of people. By comparison, World War II, the deadliest war in human history, killed about 85 million.

The 1918 Spanish flu is often seen as a global catastrophe, and probably killed 1-5% of the Earth's population at the time. Hopefully, this is not a worst case scenario for COVID-19.

For comparison, ebola has close to a 50% mortality rate. See this post for a nice graphic from the New York Times comparing COVID-19 to other viruses: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/wuhan-coronavirus.983707/post-6293570

 

[mfb]

@Chemistree: As this is a recent event we don't require peer review for everything but that doesn't mean every source is equally valid. The daily mail is a tabloid without any measurable quality and researchgate hosts everything without filters. Please don't use them as references here.

China has shut down and quarantined a huge fraction of their population, perhaps 700-800 million people.

Do you have a credible source for that? They have some restrictions in many places now, but that's not "shut down" or a quarantine.

However, it is worth noting that we have been able to contain outbreaks of viruses that are similarly contagious as COVID-19 (e. g. the
2003 SARS outbreak in China, which was caused by a similar coronavirus), so well executed public health efforts to quarantine the infected and trace contacts can be effective in stopping the spread of the virus.

SARS spread much slower.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

According to this infographic from the NYT, SARS has a similar r_0 as COVID-19:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/asia/china-coronavirus-contain.html

However, the graphic is somewhat old, so the r_0 estimate for COVID-19 may be put off date. I agree that the outbreak has seemed to spread more quickly, though this could reflect some of the different circumstances of the outbreaks. SARS was thought to emerge in among farmers in 2003, when China was much less modern and interconnected (both domestically and internationally). In contrast, COVID-19 emerged in a large city of 11 million with travel connections throughout the region and the world. Furthermore, rapid tests for the virus did not exist during the SARS outbreak and it is thought that China hid many of the cases, so it can be difficult to directly compare the numbers from the two outbreaks.

However, I do agree that the current data on COVID-19 present a pessimistic outlook for containment of the virus.

 

[StatGuy2000]

China has shut down and quarantined a huge fraction of their population, perhaps 700-800 million people. They did this quite early but probably not early enough. It has spread to dozens of other countries and is seems to be undergoing exponential growth in new cases in at least one and perhaps two of them. Heroic measures of isolation and ICU measures are required for a large fraction of cases, enough to overwhelm the medical system of the advanced health care system in China. The WHO has declared an emergency. China is on a wartime footing fighting this! Our own experts are warning of 60-70% infection rates in the not too distant future worldwide with 70-80 million deaths expected.

Are we not supposed to be concerned because of the flu we know? A virus I can easily innoculate against?

Of course we should be concerned -- if you think I'm not concerned, then you are resorting to straw-manning.

But frankly, your posts on this thread sound far more like panic. And when has panic ever done any good? Especially for a problem on which we don't have full knowledge of (even the quotes about the 60-70% infection rates are educated guesses, and the 70-80 million deaths are also estimates).

My stance is not to be overly concerned about problems for which we don't have control over, and to stay informed using the most accurate, reputable sources available.

[Aside: even from the information we've gathered thus far, it is far from clear that the growth rate in COVID-19 infections is actually exponential. It is certainly possible that better screening and testing techniques are identifying asymptomatic people or those who are only experiencing mild symptoms. This will also impact what the actual fatality rate of COVID-19]

 

[kadiot]

Of course we should be concerned -- if you think I'm not concerned, then you are resorting to straw-manning.

But frankly, your posts on this thread sounds far more like panic. And when has panic ever done any good? Especially for a problem on which we don't have full knowledge of (even the quotes about the 60-70% infection rates are educated guesses, and the 70-80 million deaths are also estimates).

My stance is not to be overly concerned about problems for which we don't have control over, and to stay informed using the most accurate, reputable sources available.

I agree that panic doesn't solve anything.
However, worry is about the future. Telling people not to worry about an emerging infectious disease because it isn’t a significant risk here and now is foolish. For example ... We want people to worry about measles when there’s very little measles around, so they will take the precaution of vaccinating their children before it’s imminently necessary. We want people to worry about retirement when they’re years away from retiring, so they will start saving now. We should be worst case scenario thinker so we keep the people vigilant through risk communication process . Transparency is equally important so people won’t be surprised with one death. One death is bad enough . A second death would be awful.

 

[StatGuy2000]

I agree that panic doesn't solve anything.
However, worry is about the future. Telling people not to worry about an emerging infectious disease because it isn’t a significant risk here and now is foolish. For example ... We want people to worry about measles when there’s very little measles around, so they will take the precaution of vaccinating their children before it’s imminently necessary. We want people to worry about retirement when they’re years away from retiring, so they will start saving now. We should be worst case scenario thinker so we keep the people vigilant through risk communication process . Transparency is equally important so people won’t be surprised with one death. One death is bad enough . A second death would be awful.

@kadiot, you seem to misunderstand my stance. I am not saying that we should not worry or be concerned at all. What I am saying is that we should conserve our worries and concerns to things that we have actual control over.

The examples you gave above are exactly those situations where we can take specific actions. For example, with measles, a vaccine is available so that we can vaccinate ourselves and our children to prevent outbreaks. Saving money for retirement is an action we have control over.

In the case of the current Coronavirus outbreak, there is very little we can do at an individual level to try to prevent an infection beyond what general hygienic practices to prevent other infections, such as frequent hand-washing and sanitizing door handles. So why should I expend my precious emotional resources in worrying or panicking about this?

BTW, I also fully agree with you that transparency is important to ensure that the public is kept aware of the situation regarding the Coronavirus and ensure public trust, as well as mitigate panic and conspiracy theories which can do far more harm than good.