Why Did The World Shut Down For COVID-19 But Not Ebola, SARS Or Swine Flu?

[gwb-trading]

Why Did The World Shut Down For COVID-19 But Not Ebola, SARS Or Swine Flu?
https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...for-covid-19-but-not-ebola-sars-or-swine-flu/

When reports of a new virus circulating in China’s Hubei province first began to emerge, I was cautious about overreacting. I’ve reported on health long enough to know that just because a pathogen is new doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a crisis.

Of course, I quickly realized this isn’t just any virus. We’re currently battling a global pandemic unlike any we’ve seen in over a century.

But it’s also not the first modern virus we’ve faced. In the past two decades, the world battled Ebola, SARS and more than one major flu outbreak. Those left tragedies in their wake but didn’t cause the same level of societal and economic disruption that COVID-19 has. As a result, they can help us understand this new coronavirus — to capture how unique our new reality is, it helps to look back at similar outbreaks that threatened to upend society, but ultimately stopped short.

SARS and MERS: Deadly, but not easily spread
In late 2002, an emerging pathogen that likely spilled over from the animal world started to cause severe respiratory illness in China. Sound familiar? Through the first half of 2003, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) spread through 26 countries, infecting at least 8,098 people and killing at least 774.

If the name didn’t give it away, SARS was caused by a virus similar to the one that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, but it didn’t have nearly the same impact. This is in spite of having a relatively high case fatality rate of 9.6 percent, compared to the current estimate for COVID-19: 1.4 percent.

(much more at above url)

 

[Dr. Love]

You post articles from 538, CNN, Daily Beast.

That disqualifies you as being objective.

 

[gwb-trading]

You post articles from 538, CNN, Daily Beast.

That disqualifies you as being objective.

If you can't address the facts --- then you just attack the source. This means "you have nothing".

538 provide in-depth statistical information -- reasonable people read it in detail and educate themselves.

 

[El OchoCinco]

This is interesting:

SARS and MERS didn’t cause the same level of devastation that COVID-19 has largely because they aren’t as easily transmitted. Rather than moving by casual, person-to-person transmission, SARS and MERS spread from much closer contact, between family members or health care workers and patients (or, in the case of MERS, from camels to people directly). These viruses also aren’t spread through presymptomatic transmission, meaning infected people don’t spread it before they have symptoms. Once people got sick, they typically stayed home or were hospitalized, making it harder for them to spread the virus around.

 

[El OchoCinco]

So why didn’t the swine flu overwhelm our health care systems and grind our economies to a halt? The main difference is that it ended up being a much milder and less deadly infection. There are a range of estimated case fatality rates for swine flu, but even the highest, less than 0.1 percent, are much lower than the current estimates for COVID-19.

“The 2009 pandemic, the H1N1 swine flu, that [disease] spread very, very well, but the fatality rate was quite low, and that’s the reason why it wasn’t dubbed as a particularly serious pandemic,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci

 

[gaussian]

So why didn’t the swine flu overwhelm our health care systems and grind our economies to a halt? The main difference is that it ended up being a much milder and less deadly infection. There are a range of estimated case fatality rates for swine flu, but even the highest, less than 0.1 percent, are much lower than the current estimates for COVID-19.

“The 2009 pandemic, the H1N1 swine flu, that [disease] spread very, very well, but the fatality rate was quite low, and that’s the reason why it wasn’t dubbed as a particularly serious pandemic,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci

This is mostly it. All of those are less deadly by the numbers. I'm no virologist but here's my understanding:

1. Ebola is deadly in an individual sense but it kills so quickly and violently isolation is "forced" out of shock and diseases that kill extremely quickly spread very poorly (a person with ebola doesn't have much chance to spread it before they literally melt).
2. SARS/Swine Flu are both significantly less deadly in a real sense, and significantly less infectious.

The takeaway is the "worst case" kind of virus possesses at least two of these traits:

1. Reasonable lethality (more infections with less lethality still makes more fatalities)
2. Long incubation/prodromal stage
3. Airborne/droplet spread mechanism (i.e. spreads to the lungs)

If it's missing two of these traits it's bad but not an emergency.

Moreover, during the swine flu epidemic we had a fully stocked CDC war chest. Obama decided to not resupply it, instead (iirc) purchasing more vaccines instead of PPE. This vastly increased the lethality of the virus because we were unable to respond appropriately in time (even if Trump decided to respond sooner).

 

[El OchoCinco]

Trump is in office 3 years and fires infectious disease person but still blaming Obama..

when does Trump actual assume the presidency and take office...waiting..

 

[DTB2]

Trump is in office 3 years and fires infectious disease person but still blaming Obama..

when does Trump actual assume the presidency and take office...waiting..

umm, I think he did take over military funding, Supreme Court and Federal court confirmations, the economy with actual jobs, the removal of regulations regulating regulations, the increase in mfg jobs, the exit from Paris climate accord, the exit from TPP

Now he's dealing with this, it will improve as well.

 

[easymon1]

Problematic Aspects of Prior SARS Corona-Vaccine Research.
from the "hurrier i go the behinder i get" dept.
"Immunization with SARS coronavirus vaccines leads to pulmonary immunopathology on challenge with the SARS virus."

whole-body inflammation
hyperimmune responses
lung infection and death.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22536382

 

[easymon1]

A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
cued...

By John P.A. Ioannidis
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17...e-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/
The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.

At a time when everyone needs better information, from disease modelers and governments to people quarantined or just social distancing, we lack reliable evidence on how many people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or who continue to become infected. Better information is needed to guide decisions and actions of monumental significance and to monitor their impact.

Draconian countermeasures have been adopted in many countries. If the pandemic dissipates — either on its own or because of these measures — short-term extreme social distancing and lockdowns may be bearable. How long, though, should measures like these be continued if the pandemic churns across the globe unabated? How can policymakers tell if they are doing more good than harm?

Vaccines or affordable treatments take many months (or even years) to develop and test properly. Given such timelines, the consequences of long-term lockdowns are entirely unknown.