Archived Facebook Coronavirus Posts: Jan 30th

[I'm transitioning a bunch of Facebook posts I made on the Coronavirus to my blog.  This was from January 30th]

Typical symptoms of the new coronavirus (2019-nCoV):

98% of the time: Fever
76% of the time: Cough
55% of the time: Shortness of Breath

*Note the absence of sneezing and runny nose.*

I've been following the news on the coronavirus pretty closely for the past few days. I believe that it's too early to say yet how severe this disease will become, worldwide. I think that those news outlets that are already saying, "hey, the flu is a bigger problem than the coronavirus" are being premature. Obviously it's not right to panic or stress out about this, but I think it's good to get some information out at this point.

Specifically, I think it's wise to be aware of the particular set of symptoms that are characteristic of this virus; if in the next few weeks you come down with specifically that combination of symptoms, then either get tested or stay home--especially if you have been travelling or have been around people who have been travelling. (I mean, "stay home if you have a fever" is good advice regardless.) And if you come down with just a normal cold or flu--with the sneezing and the runny nose--then *don't* run to the hospital panicking about the coronavirus.

Why am I concerned? There are a few things that concern me about the infection data that's been coming out on 2019-nCoV, which you can see here: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/…/opsdashboa…/index.html…

1. The graph of confirmed cases over time (the yellow line in the bottom left) has been following an exponential curve and is not leveling off.

2. The ratio of confirmed cases to confirmed fatalities is sitting at around 2.1 % for the whole dataset *but* if you look specifically at Hubei (the origin of the virus and where it has had the longest chance to play out), the ratio is actually 3.5%. I'm thinking maybe the 3.5% is the more accurate number? For reference, the ratio for the typical flu is 0.1% and the ratio for the 1918 Spanish Flu was 2.5%.

So we *may* be looking at something that spreads aggressively in a flu-like manner but kills 35 times as much.

3. This data is primarily from China, and I take it as a given that China is strongly disposed to downplay bad news as much as it can get away with.

4. There are only about 100 cases outside of China so far, and so far no deaths from these cases. *Hopefully* this means the mortality rate of the disease isn't as bad as the Chinese data makes it seem--*but* since the rest of the world is clearly multiple weeks behind China in the timeline, I don't think we can say that is the case *yet*. The non-Chinese mortality rate is something I'm going to be paying particular attention to going forward.

So, I'm currently in a cautious, "let's pay close attention in case this is a real serious problem", state right now, because I think that's what *could* happen.