Coronavirus vs Flu

[Owen Densmore]

I'm reading an NYTimes piece on the Coronavirus containing:

But one of the attendees, a public health student, had had enough. Exasperated, she rattled off a set of statistics.

The virus had killed about 1,100 worldwide and infected around a dozen in the United States. Alarming, but a much more common illness, influenza, kills about 400,000 people every year, including 34,200 Americans last flu season and 61,099 the year before.

I had looked that up previously and was also puzzled .. Flu is way more deadly .. those numbers are staggering.

The article was less on the mortality rates etc but on: 

    Coronavirus ‘Hits All the Hot Buttons’ for How We Misjudge Risk

.. and goes on to explain the lopsided response.

BTW: the Flu numbers were a wakeup call! I hope we all have one!

   -- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Russell Standish-2]

Flu is already pandemic. COVID-19 looks like it will go pandemic, but
maybe quarantine will buy us enough time for vaccine. COVID-19 has
twice the mortality of flu, but don't know how transmissible it is. I
currently get a bad flu about once every 5 years, and even then I'm
probably only confined to bed for a day or so. Must be hell for the
more vulnerable amongst us though.

So, no - I'm not overly afraid of it, but it does have an impact on
everyday life (eg quarantine provisions are impacting this workshop
I'm running right now).

Cheers

On Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 10:21:00AM -0700, Owen Densmore wrote:

> I'm reading an NYTimes piece on the Coronavirus containing:
>
>
>     But one of the attendees, a public health student, had had enough.
>     Exasperated, she rattled off a set of statistics.
>    
>     The virus had killed about 1,100 worldwide and infected around a dozen in
>     the United States. Alarming, but a much more common illness, influenza,
>     kills about 400,000 people every year, including 34,200 Americans last flu
>     season and 61,099 the year before.
>
>
> I had looked that up previously and was also puzzled .. Flu is way more deadly
> .. those numbers are staggering.
>
> The article was less on the mortality rates etc but on: 
>     Coronavirus ‘Hits All the Hot Buttons’ for How We Misjudge Risk
> .. and goes on to explain the lopsided response.
>
> BTW: the Flu numbers were a wakeup call! I hope we all have one!
>
>    -- Owen
>

> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish                    Phone [phone] (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders     [hidden email]
                      http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Gillian Densmore]

Or that we generally don't die from the common flu. While that isn't the case with this. It might turn out to be a SARS thing (sureal, and scary, but we made a vacine). 

On Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 4:09 PM Russell Standish <[hidden email]> wrote:

Flu is already pandemic. COVID-19 looks like it will go pandemic, but
maybe quarantine will buy us enough time for vaccine. COVID-19 has
twice the mortality of flu, but don't know how transmissible it is. I
currently get a bad flu about once every 5 years, and even then I'm
probably only confined to bed for a day or so. Must be hell for the
more vulnerable amongst us though.

So, no - I'm not overly afraid of it, but it does have an impact on
everyday life (eg quarantine provisions are impacting this workshop
I'm running right now).

Cheers

On Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 10:21:00AM -0700, Owen Densmore wrote:
> I'm reading an NYTimes piece on the Coronavirus containing:
>
>
>     But one of the attendees, a public health student, had had enough.
>     Exasperated, she rattled off a set of statistics.
>   
>     The virus had killed about 1,100 worldwide and infected around a dozen in
>     the United States. Alarming, but a much more common illness, influenza,
>     kills about 400,000 people every year, including 34,200 Americans last flu
>     season and 61,099 the year before.
>
>
> I had looked that up previously and was also puzzled .. Flu is way more deadly
> .. those numbers are staggering.
>
> The article was less on the mortality rates etc but on: 
>     Coronavirus ‘Hits All the Hot Buttons’ for How We Misjudge Risk
> .. and goes on to explain the lopsided response.
>
> BTW: the Flu numbers were a wakeup call! I hope we all have one!
>
>    -- Owen
>

> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish                    Phone [phone] (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders     [hidden email]
                      http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[George Duncan-2]

"I think it is likely we'll see a global pandemic," Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health professor Marc Lipsitch told the Journal. "If a pandemic happens, 40% to 70% of people worldwide are likely to be infected in the coming year.  

My son-in-law who is an infectious disease doc at Harvard Medical School says Marc Lipsitch is the world-leading authority on pandemics.

If Lipsitch is right we are in the early stages of Covid-19 and so comparisons with current levels of the flu are irrelevant.

 

On Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 10:21 AM Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'm reading an NYTimes piece on the Coronavirus containing:

But one of the attendees, a public health student, had had enough. Exasperated, she rattled off a set of statistics.

The virus had killed about 1,100 worldwide and infected around a dozen in the United States. Alarming, but a much more common illness, influenza, kills about 400,000 people every year, including 34,200 Americans last flu season and 61,099 the year before.

I had looked that up previously and was also puzzled .. Flu is way more deadly .. those numbers are staggering.

The article was less on the mortality rates etc but on: 

    Coronavirus ‘Hits All the Hot Buttons’ for How We Misjudge Risk

.. and goes on to explain the lopsided response.

BTW: the Flu numbers were a wakeup call! I hope we all have one!

   -- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[_ Bruno W]

Hey George, First of all, thanks for hosting the wonderful party and thanks to Sherry too!

I agree with your statement.  I'm hopeful this thing will pan out much like SARS did.

I've followed with interest the "conspiracy theories" that the virus actually leaked from

the BSL 4 lab there which houses hundreds of bats, presumably for SARS corona virus research.

Over a dozen of the initial 44 cases have no link to the fish market, and it's thought the common ancestor

of those cases dates back to October 2019.  When I was at LANL I analyzed the SARS genome and

it actually had a cloning site (which could have happened by chance, but most coronaviruses didn't have it).

There was a university research lab at that time near the center of the outbreak that was doing cross

species infection experiments between chickens and monkeys.  The SARS virus had similarity to both

kinds of corona virus.  That theory got knocked down when I found other sequences in GenBank from pig that

looked more similar to SARS than anything else, and eventually when the Chinese isolated SARS in bats.  But I thought

it was strange that a year after the outbreak when the WHO was worried it might come back, China seemed sure

it would not and lifted the restrictions on civet cats in the markets.

On Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 4:20 PM George Duncan <[hidden email]> wrote:

"I think it is likely we'll see a global pandemic," Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health professor Marc Lipsitch told the Journal. "If a pandemic happens, 40% to 70% of people worldwide are likely to be infected in the coming year.  

My son-in-law who is an infectious disease doc at Harvard Medical School says Marc Lipsitch is the world-leading authority on pandemics.

If Lipsitch is right we are in the early stages of Covid-19 and so comparisons with current levels of the flu are irrelevant.

 

George Duncan

Emeritus Professor of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University
georgeduncanart.com

See posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Land: [phone]  

Mobile: [phone]

 
My art theme: Dynamic exposition of the tension between matrix order and luminous chaos.

"Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion."

From "Notes to myself on beginning a painting" by Richard Diebenkorn. 

"It's that knife-edge of uncertainty where we come alive to our truest power." Joanna Macy.

On Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 10:21 AM Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'm reading an NYTimes piece on the Coronavirus containing:

But one of the attendees, a public health student, had had enough. Exasperated, she rattled off a set of statistics.

The virus had killed about 1,100 worldwide and infected around a dozen in the United States. Alarming, but a much more common illness, influenza, kills about 400,000 people every year, including 34,200 Americans last flu season and 61,099 the year before.

I had looked that up previously and was also puzzled .. Flu is way more deadly .. those numbers are staggering.

The article was less on the mortality rates etc but on: 

    Coronavirus ‘Hits All the Hot Buttons’ for How We Misjudge Risk

.. and goes on to explain the lopsided response.

BTW: the Flu numbers were a wakeup call! I hope we all have one!

   -- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove