It’s not a bad analysis but a bit muddled in its epidemiology.
One question to ask is the basic reproductive ratio/R0 of the COVID-19 coronavirus. Its R0 value seems pretty high, and a China-Sweden-Germany team estimated it’s higher than SARS. But R0 is not fixed. Behavioral changes can alter contact rates and cause R0 to drop. At the very least R0 should be recalculated periodically with those updated modeling assumptions.
R0 is not the same as the the case fatality ratio. CFR is a measure of what percentage of people will die of a disease once contracted. It does not measure transmissibility. It measures only the odds of dying once infected.
What’s odd is that the CFR for the Wuhan coronavirus appears to have remained high in China and low elsewhere. Researchers at the Imperial College London estimate that it’s between 1% (worldwide) and 18% (in China). What’s alarming is that they do not rule out the CFR being as high as 81% inside China.
By comparison SARS has an overall CFR of around 15%. In the Congo, Ebola had a CFR of around 52%.
A third question is whether certain populations are more susceptible to COVID-19 than others, meaning ethnic Chinese (especially with a specific HLA phenotype) might be more at risk than populations of European descent. Whether this is the case or not should become clear soon as the virus becomes established outside of China.
There are other questions but those are a start. Answering those will let us guess at which scenario is more likely.
PS: The author says in the “Ugly” scenario, “conferences would all grind to a halt” and “international travel bans would be put in place.”
We’re already there. Besides the travel bans that have been in place for weeks, Facebook canceled its Global Marketing Summit (5,000 attendees) in San Francisco that would have taken place last month. IBM pulled out of the RSA conference in San Francisco this month. Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was canceled. Citibank canceled its Singapore annual investor conference. The International Trademark Association canceled its annual conference in Singapore.
Also the author defines the “Unthinkable” scenario as a “global pandemic,” which is probably already the case. If the Wuhan coronavirus isn’t already a global pandemic, it will be one soon according to the former head of the CDC. The question is not the spread. The question is the severity.
It’s not a bad analysis but a bit muddled in its epidemiology.
One question to ask is the basic reproductive ratio/R0 of the COVID-19 coronavirus. Its R0 value seems pretty high, and a China-Sweden-Germany team estimated it’s higher than SARS. But R0 is not fixed. Behavioral changes can alter contact rates and cause R0 to drop. At the very least R0 should be recalculated periodically with those updated modeling assumptions.
R0 is not the same as the the case fatality ratio. CFR is a measure of what percentage of people will die of a disease once contracted. It does not measure transmissibility. It measures only the odds of dying once infected.
What’s odd is that the CFR for the Wuhan coronavirus appears to have remained high in China and low elsewhere. Researchers at the Imperial College London estimate that it’s between 1% (worldwide) and 18% (in China). What’s alarming is that they do not rule out the CFR being as high as 81% inside China.
By comparison SARS has an overall CFR of around 15%. In the Congo, Ebola had a CFR of around 52%.
A third question is whether certain populations are more susceptible to COVID-19 than others, meaning ethnic Chinese (especially with a specific HLA phenotype) might be more at risk than populations of European descent. Whether this is the case or not should become clear soon as the virus becomes established outside of China.
There are other questions but those are a start. Answering those will let us guess at which scenario is more likely.
PS: The author says in the “Ugly” scenario, “conferences would all grind to a halt” and “international travel bans would be put in place.”
We’re already there. Besides the travel bans that have been in place for weeks, Facebook canceled its Global Marketing Summit (5,000 attendees) in San Francisco that would have taken place last month. IBM pulled out of the RSA conference in San Francisco this month. Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was canceled. Citibank canceled its Singapore annual investor conference. The International Trademark Association canceled its annual conference in Singapore.
Also the author defines the “Unthinkable” scenario as a “global pandemic,” which is probably already the case. If the Wuhan coronavirus isn’t already a global pandemic, it will be one soon according to the former head of the CDC. The question is not the spread. The question is the severity.