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Post by ironhammer on Jan 23, 2020 23:58:15 GMT -5
So I've been hearing in the news about an outbreak of a new pneumonia strain in China, from Wuhan specifically, with cases also appearing in the US? What exactly is this new type of pneumonia? How deadly is it exactly? All I know is that it is caused by a new type of coronavirus, the same virus family that caused SARS. Although so far the news are reporting that this new virus is not as deadly as SARS but appear more infectious and easily transmitted.
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Post by BearClause on Jan 24, 2020 1:35:24 GMT -5
It's not pneumonia per se. It's as you stated a coronavirus, which doesn't exactly explain how bad this one is. This one has a name - 2019-nCoV. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel_coronavirus_(2019-nCoV)Viruses mutate. Something that could be relatively mild could mutate into something far nastier. Some coronaviruses cause the common cold.
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Post by ironhammer on Jan 24, 2020 1:40:37 GMT -5
It's not pneumonia per se. It's as you stated a coronavirus, which doesn't exactly explain how bad this one is. This one has a name - 2019-nCoV. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel_coronavirus_(2019-nCoV)Viruses mutate. Something that could be relatively mild could mutate into something far nastier. Some coronaviruses cause the common cold. It's the coronavirus that causes the pneumonia in this case. Prior to SARS, people didn't treat coronavirus so seriously since it only causes relatively mild respiratory illness like common cold. But SARS was deadly. What about this outbreak?
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Post by XAsstCoach on Jan 24, 2020 2:36:54 GMT -5
So far I think 9 deaths, where some had medical conditions or were elderly people.
Government essentially shut down Wuhan to stem the outbreak. But honestly, they’re too late. By the time they fully informed the public, too many people already have come and gone through Wuhan. I say fully inform because some of our workers said they only heard about this virus for the first time last Sunday (19th) in the local news.
Funny thing is the Chinese govt website is trying to show it’s not bad by pointing to a CDC report where they estimated 6,600 people have already died from the flu this season in the US.
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Post by mikegarrison on Jan 24, 2020 2:49:54 GMT -5
Apparently it's not nearly as deadly as SARS, but obviously some people have died. The Wikipedia page on SARS says that disease caused 774 known deaths. (As compared to, for instance, the 10,000-60,000 deaths from the flu every year, or the half a million deaths from malaria every year.)
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Post by XAsstCoach on Jan 24, 2020 7:28:04 GMT -5
I stand corrected...26 dead so far.
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Post by ironhammer on Jan 24, 2020 7:49:33 GMT -5
Apparently it's not nearly as deadly as SARS, but obviously some people have died. The Wikipedia page on SARS says that disease caused 774 known deaths. (As compared to, for instance, the 10,000-60,000 deaths from the flu every year, or the half a million deaths from malaria every year.) It's the unknown and the uncertainty that cause concern I think. Flu is something humans are familiar with and we have flu vaccines updated annually to ward it off or reduce the severity of the symptoms. But this new type coronavirus has a lot of vital information that we still aren't entirely sure of, like the mortality rate, incubation period, how infectious it is, how and from which animal it made the jump to humans and so on. That causes worries. Not to mention that China does not have a history of transparent disclosure of health information related to epidemics. So this creates a lot of speculation. Speaking of which, someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I think as a matter of clarity it's best to clear up the most common respiratory diseases, since unless you are a doctor, nurse or other healthcare workers, the average person on the street frequently mixed these illnesses up. In order of severity, the least serious is the common cold, caused most frequently by rhinoviruses and picornavirus (and sometimes the more mundane types of coronaviruses). No otherwise healthy human will die from it, although in a minority of cases, it can develop into more serious conditions like pneumonia because of the underlying health problems of the sufferer. Common cold symptoms include cough, sore throat, runny nose and mild fatigue. Fever and chills is less common for adults with cold, but if it does occur, the fever and chills would be mild. Depending on your type of job, you may be able to still go to work, although your productivity will be impacted, and of course you should wear a mask and ensure personal hygiene to prevent you infecting your co-workers. The onset of cold symptoms tends to be more gradual, sometimes taking up to a few days for the full symptoms to appear. Influenza (flu) has similiar symptoms to cold but appear in more severe form. Most people think it is simply a more severe form of cold, but in fact it is caused by an entirely different virus, the influenza viruses. In addition to cough, there will be stuffy nose, sore throat, with fever (sometimes high fever) and much greater fatigue along with muscle aches or headaches. Unlike cold, you cannot go to work with flu, as you likely will be bed-ridden. Unlike cold also, people can be killed by flu, although those are mostly elderly people, those with other chronic illnesses or have their immune system compromised in some ways. The fatality rate of flu is quite low, but taken in aggregate, as you mentioned, the number of deaths globally is sizeable. So it is always a good idea to take a flu jab. The onset of flu symptoms is also more rapid than cold, occurring in a matter of hours. So you may feel well in the morning and come down with the full symptoms by lunch. Pneumonia is the most severe of the three diseases, it is inflammation of the lungs, caused by viral, bacteria or fungal pathogens. Normally healthy people will seldom get it, unless we are talking about some new unknown pneumonia strains (which may be the case in Wuhan). Apart from the above-mentioned symptoms of fever and cough, there can be chest pains and difficulty breathing. The severity of the infection varies considerably, ranging from mild to life-threatening. The fatality rate however is the highest among the three diseases, which is why it is prudent for the authorities and the general public to be concerned about this unknown outbreak. There are also other diseases which share one or more symptoms with the above three, like tuberculosis, a lung infection caused by mycobacteria. Untreated, fatality rate can be 60%+ of cases and SARS, cause by a then unknown type of coronavirus.
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Post by azvb on Jan 24, 2020 11:12:35 GMT -5
I saw a sign at Walgreens the other day highly recommending flu shots for the elderly. I thought of several people who need to get one. Then I realized, I am considered elderly. It never enters my mind that I’m “at risk” because of my age. Kinda sucks.
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Post by mikegarrison on Jan 24, 2020 11:58:11 GMT -5
I saw a sign at Walgreens the other day highly recommending flu shots for the elderly. I thought of several people who need to get one. Then I realized, I am considered elderly. It never enters my mind that I’m “at risk” because of my age. Kinda sucks. Kids and teenagers are also especially vulnerable, but for reasons opposite why older people are vulnerable. Older people are vulnerable because their general health is more fragile. They have fewer reserves. Less margin. Young people are vulnerable because their immune systems are too strong. They fight back too hard, which can also be life-threatening. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_release_syndrome
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Post by BearClause on Jan 24, 2020 13:24:49 GMT -5
What we know of as the common cold is frankly about as non damaging to the human body as pollen that might also cause an allergic response. The body simply overreacts to it, and the symptoms are just the immune response. Some who are infected don't have symptoms, and it doesn't appear that they take any longer to fight off the infection.
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Post by ironhammer on Jan 24, 2020 21:08:00 GMT -5
What we know of as the common cold is frankly about as non damaging to the human body as pollen that might also cause an allergic response. The body simply overreacts to it, and the symptoms are just the immune response. Some who are infected don't have symptoms, and it doesn't appear that they take any longer to fight off the infection. Yes, you are right, but only for normal healthy adults.
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Post by volleykenzie on Jan 24, 2020 21:35:30 GMT -5
basically it started because someone from china ate either a rat or bat and turned out the animal had the coronavirus. since the person ate the animal, they now became infected and the human host for the virus. now that the person has the virus, the virus quickly adapted to the human immune system and is now able to spread airborne, like coughing or sneezing even breathing. so that’s how it started spreading over china. NOW, since someone who had the virus, PSA the symptoms weren’t showing until he showed up to seattle, it is now airborne in the USA. Let me make it clear, it’s only really deadly because there is no specific vaccine for it (which is what i’m going to school for . It’s nothing to worry about though. For a perspective, in the winter of 2017, 80000 people died from the flu in the US. Granted, that was the worst flu in four decades. But on average, tens of thousands of people in the US die from the flu. so summary: the coronavirus is nothing to really worry about unless you are either a child, pregnant, old or immune compromised
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Post by volleykenzie on Jan 24, 2020 21:39:53 GMT -5
but if there isn’t a vaccine or cure for it soon, it will mutate and become something worse. so that’s why the CDC and WHO try to isolate the disease.
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Post by mikegarrison on Jan 24, 2020 21:48:51 GMT -5
basically it started because someone from china ate either a rat or bat and turned out the animal had the coronavirus. Don't know where you heard this, but it sounds like racist xenophobia. Zoonotic diseases are not often caused by eating something. Typically they are spread the same way the diseases are spread among people -- through the air from breathing or sneezing, through blood contact (which might happen when preparing an animal for eating), through contact with an animal's urine or feces, by being bitten, or by skin-to-skin contact (especially if there are any open wounds). Most zoonotic diseases come from farmers, because farmers spend a lot of time with animals. And yeah, usually those animals are raised or kept for food, so in a sense the diseases come from eating them. But usually not directly, unless the meat is eaten without being cooked.
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Post by ironhammer on Jan 24, 2020 21:49:12 GMT -5
basically it started because someone from china ate either a rat or bat and turned out the animal had the coronavirus. The original host is likely to be a bat, these animals were the ones who had the SARS coronavirus. But in this case, there is likely to be an intermediary host between bats and humans and it likely did not jump directly from bats to humans. So let's say the bat virus passed to a snake, and that snake was in turn caught by humans and from there it pass to humans. In any case, people should leave bats well alone. They are the reservoir of many nasty and deadly diseases like ebola, rabies and various coronaviruses, among other diseases.
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