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China Battles Coronavirus Outbreak: All the Latest Updates:
The virus thought to have originated in a Wuhan food market continues to spread as China steps up containment efforts.
[...] China is extending the Lunar New Year holiday for three days and enforcing strict containment measures in an attempt to curb the spread of a new coronavirus that has killed 80 people and infected at more than 2,700, most of them in the central province of Hubei where the virus first emerged.
The holiday season was due to end on Friday but will now be extended until February 2.
More than 56 million people in almost 20 cities, including the Hubei capital of Wuhan, have been affected by travel restrictions, introduced amid fears the transmission rate will balloon as hundreds of millions of Chinese travel during the Lunar New Year celebrations.
[...] Health authorities around the world are taking action to prevent a pandemic as more countries report cases. Confirmed cases have so far been announced in several Asiancountries, Europe and North America.
[...] The World Health Organization (WHO) has acknowledged the respiratory illness, which has been traced to the city of Wuhan, is an emergency in China but the organisation said on Thursday it was too early to declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
Previously:
- Coronavirus: Millions Quarantined in Wuhan City
- China Reports 3rd Death, Nearly 140 New Cases of Coronavirus
- China Confirms Human-To-Human Transmission of New Coronavirus; CDC Confirms First US Case
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @05:02PM (3 children)
Nobody gave the simple and correct answer. Linear vs exponential growth. Viruses grow exponentially, which means they never seem scary early on. For an example:
Week 1: 10 infected
Week 2: 20 infected
Week 3: 40 infected
Who cares?
Week 13: 40,960 infected
Still not such a big problem...
Week 23: 42 million
Okay well this is pretty terrifying but still that's only like 0.5% of the world's population.
Week 33: 100% infection.
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This will probably just end up like the swine flu or bird flu (both of which I caught - I run good) and be a somewhat nastier flu that fades in a relatively short period of time. But at the same time things like this also need to be taken extremely seriously because the times when a virus like this mutates or when it can spread without visible symptoms (both of which are true in this instance) then you risk creating a global pandemic that could completely devastate the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @05:36PM
Multiple comments mentioned the R0 [healthline.com] estimates and this can be spread by asymptomatic carriers (which is why current estimates for R0 are 3-5). The WHO believe the virus to be stable (low mutation risk).
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday January 27 2020, @05:40PM (1 child)
On the other hand, the exponential growth slows as there are fewer people left to infect. This happens locally as entire towns are infected, which leaves the people who don't travel unable to infect others, slowing growth of the infected population.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:48AM
And you have to get it into Madagascar before they close the ports.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek