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https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/01/27/coronavirus
As the world knows, we face an emerging virus threat in the Wuhan coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak. The problem is, right now there are several important things that we don't know about the situation. The mortality rate, the ease of human-human transmission, the rate of mutation of the virus (and how many strains we might be dealing with – all of these need more clarity. Unfortunately, we've already gone past the MERS outbreak in severity (which until now was the most recent new coronavirus to make the jump into humans). If we're fortunate, though, we'll still have something that will be worrisome, but not as bad as (say) the usual flu numbers (many people don't realize that influenza kills tens of thousands of people in the US each year). The worst case, though, is something like 1918, and we really, really don't need that.
[Ed note: The linked story is by Derek Lowe who writes a "commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry". He is perhaps best known for his "Things I Won't Work With" blog entries which are as hilarious as they are... eye opening. I have found him to be a no-nonsense writer who "tells things as they are", holding no punches. The whole story is worth reading as he clearly explains what a coronavirus is, about the current one that reportedly originated in Wuhan, China, what could be done about it, how long that would likely take, and what can be done for those who have already been infected. --martyb]
Previous Stories Referencing Derek Lowe:
Machine Learning Comes to Biochemistry
Ignition! The Funniest, Most Accessible Book on Rocket Science is Being Reissued
Another Failed Alzheimer's Disease Therapy
Marathon Pharmaceuticals is Part of the Problem
Lobbying Results in FDA Approval for Controversial Drug
"Right to Try" New Experimental Medicine and the Value of Experts
Cancer Hazard vs. Risk - Glyphosate
A Terrific Paper on the Problems of Drug Discovery
Things I Won't Work With
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:02AM (5 children)
His right to not be willing to work with some sorts of things, but it turns out some compounds he doesn't want to work with are accessible to (literally) "shed synthesis" for determined-enough humans that lived to tell the tale.
Example: Azidoazides azides [sciencemag.org] - shed synthesis [youtube.com] and demo [youtube.com].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:37AM (1 child)
I'm an embedded software engineer, not a chemist. Found Things I won't Work With maybe 5-10 years ago, and have made his blog a daily destination ever since. Once or twice a week he has something I find interesting, plus as others have said the guy is a helluva writer.
It's just a fact of life that people with brains the size of grapes have mouths the size of watermelons. -- Aunty Acid
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:00AM
See also appeal to non-authorities [wikipedia.org].
The "tells things as they are" part may not be such a clear cut verdict when it comes from a S/N editor/submitter. Taking Derek's or anyone's choices as "the things that are" means one may never discover an actual value or less dangerous paths in things he deemed useless or too dangerous.
Granted, internalizing the cautionary messages on his writings is a thing that may make all the difference in regards with the life and limb of the daredevils who wander in dangerous territories.
The above being said, nothing wrong in enjoying his style and picking whatever information one finds useful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:43AM (2 children)
Unless the laws of physics are different for sheds, everything Mr. Lowe is not willing to work with are accessible to shed synthesis. The shed might not be around afterward, but it's quite feasible to do suicidal chemistry out of your shed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:45AM
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 29 2020, @06:09AM
Theoretically, you are right.
Practically, it may hinge on what one is willing to include in the definition of "shed" - e.g if you include "availability of pressure [sciencemag.org] in 10+GPa range [nature.com]" and/or "controlled fluid speeds in continuous flow reactions [sciencemag.org]" and/or "appropriate conditions to settle matters of honor [sciencemag.org]" in the definition of "shed", you may end with out-of-this-world meanings for the word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:15AM (31 children)
China demands apology over Danish newspaper’s cartoon flag 'insult' [thelocal.dk]
How about releasing the real death counts.
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(Score: 5, Informative) by Bot on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:32AM (3 children)
China does worse things like asking, oh wait I mean demanding, foreign people to boycott Tibet.
The funny thing is that Italy and possibly other EU countries have signed treaties with China that makes the country liable for any loss any Chinese enterpreneur should encounter, so the situation is like this:
- your country lets the Dalai Lama speak
- chinese decide to go nuclear and pull some investment
- your country must pay damages to the enterpreneur
So, if your prez is paid by Israel and Russia, our politicians and mainstream media and "grassroots" movement leaders are literally lapdogs for China, unless of course they interfere from the obligations from mr. Soros.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:11AM (2 children)
We've been pretty fucked by China as well. They've stolen almost all of our technology, worked with Jews to subvert America culturally and especially at the college level, buying up expensive American properties with dirty money and exerting the leverage those property values have on "Fifth-columnist Feinstein" (herself having a Chinese spy as her confidant for over a decade) and now they might even be bringing us lethal diseases when we realize the jig is up and want to get both Feinstein and her Chinese handler death-sentences at Gitmo.
And yet the Jewish gatekeepers keep awarding Chinese "academics" and other suspect solicitors open arms into our security industries. My question is, where were the fuck all of you who were supposed to stand watch on our security industries? Are you all Jews? Were you too cowardly to not say anything about that?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:59AM (1 child)
I can't believe that someone as obviously retarded as you could possibly figure out how to use a computer to post here. Did your boyfriend help you?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @02:01AM
Ah, so the 50c army strikes back in a little over 2 hours, I see.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:01AM (2 children)
I think we should first talk about the Jews seeking to work with China [nbcboston.com] against America's best interests. It's not the first time the Jews helped facilitate the transfer of America's secrets to its enemies.
There are 3 things working to destroy the United States of America now, and they are: Jews, Chinese, and Mexicans. The sooner we send all those chucklefucks back to their home nations or put them in camps, the better.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday January 29 2020, @06:03PM (1 child)
I've seen your ID for a long time here, and I had no idea you were like that. You should change it to Cocaine-fueled [npr.org]
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @08:29PM
Most of us think stupidity-fueled would be more appropriate.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:19AM (18 children)
Total symptomatic patients was 7 million:
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/reasons-for-china%E2%80%99s-unreliable-death-and-infected-statistics--finally-revealed-insufficient-test-kits,-also-cambodia-reports-first-case [thailandmedical.news]
Max mortality rate is deaths/confirmed (because only the sickest will get confirmed) = 2-2.5%
So max mortality rate is 0.25*7e6 = 175k deaths.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:21AM
Sorry, max death count = 175k.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:27AM (14 children)
Bird flu. SARS. China coronavirus. Is history repeating itself? [statnews.com]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:38AM (12 children)
So you think the death rate is even higher in the unconfirmed cases? Or that more than 7 million people went to the hospital (most being turned away for having moderate symptoms0?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday January 29 2020, @02:01AM (11 children)
I think the death toll is probably higher than officially reported, and 3% could be an optimistic death rate. People are just not getting treated, dying, and not being counted. Hence the rapid construction of field hospitals and videos of crowded hospitals.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/china-coronavirus-outbreak-us-plans-wuhan-evacuation-death-toll-number-cases-rises-today-2020-01-28/ [cbsnews.com]
The irony could be that uninfected people are crowding into the hospitals and getting infected there.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @02:34AM (6 children)
But basically you have to be proposing that it is not the sickest people who are getting tested for the virus.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 29 2020, @02:45AM (5 children)
Just give them vitamin C at the door. That will sort it out.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @02:55AM (4 children)
No, I mean you are saying that the Chinese are specifically not testing the patients most likely to die, or are hiding those test results. This is a level of corruption above and beyond what most are proposing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:11AM (3 children)
I would agree with that conclusion, but I don't have any hard evidence to support it.
You can find unverified videos floating around on social media of doctors and nurses contradicting official numbers and painting a grimmer picture than ~132 deaths.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/deadly-coronavirus-throws-china-hospitals-into-chaos [thedailybeast.com]
There is undoubtedly heavy censorship on Weibo et al. no matter what the real situation is.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:26AM
There are also a bunch of disturbing videos of people supposedly suddenly fainting/collapsing due to this virus but that is not a symptom according to any authority (WHO/CDC/etc).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @05:37AM (1 child)
If you are going to accept that degree of lying why not assume it is all fake and mean to suppress protests?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:13PM
Coronavirus: China accused of 'burning bodies in secret' [nzherald.co.nz] (Associated Press)
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:04AM (2 children)
We don't have a cure so I don't know what that's about.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:25AM (1 child)
One is right to say chicken soup doesn't actually fights the cold away, yet it's helping.
Measles - once infection is on its way, it is mostly deadly without proper health care; becomes just a nuisance with supportive treatment [mayoclinic.org].
Symptom relief treatment may make all the difference on a patient's life or death - just help the body fight the virus better may be all that it takes to survive the infection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 29 2020, @05:54PM
When there's a flu outbreak the last place you want to be is the ER. Unless it turns into pneumonia, everyone is better off if you just stay home in bed.
So what did they want to inject ? My guess is that it wasn't a doctor telling him this, just someone like a security guard, so no harm done that he didn't get the mystery injection. You don't give antivirals to everyone who walks in the door, so the injection was fake news.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:00PM
You could probably cross out the not getting treated part. The causes of death per wikipedia seem to be:
The problem is:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2909231/ [nih.gov]
Would seem to imply, because China is large, that the government approved low fake number is around 2.5M pneumonia cases per year is normal and 125K pneumonia deaths are normal. A western non-government approved number being thrown around was 21M cases per year mostly in kids.
Statista claims there's 3.8 million doctors in China. Admittedly a podiatrist or psychiatrist isn't going to see many emergency room pneumonia cases, but its an upper bound, at least.
So the fake "everything is awesome" government stats imply each doc in China sees one pneumonia case per year and realistic western data implies one pneumonia case per month. Obviously this is ER docs and as a smaller segment of the medical doctor profession the numbers seen are maybe 10 times higher. Figure the fake number for ER docs in china is a couple per week and the real world number is around one sometimes two per day.
Suddenly, one day, three cases show up; should the ER doc immediately detect its an outbreak and raise alarms and all that?
There's only been 6000 cases per wikipedia which may be false low stats; however; locally Wuhan has 11M people which is about one percent of China's population, so they should have somewhere around 1653 to 13888 pneumonia cases per month under normal circumstances depending on how fake the government figures usually are. Lets assume all 6000 wikipedia cases are in Wuhan, which they are not, as an extreme upper bound.
This is the real risk of fake government numbers, because docs on the ground can't assess risk properly. So if the fake government figures are real, normally docs in Wuhan should see 1653 pneumonia cases per year and they have 6000 pneumonia-like coronavirus infections and holy shit thats three times normal and why aren't they in outbreak mode? Or, more realistically, if the western non-propaganda figures are real, they usually see 13888 pneumonia infections per month and an extra unexplained wintertime 6000 pneumonia-like infections is "just another day at the office" random statistical fluctuations that appears to mean nothing.
This also makes me wonder about legacy media and attention whoring social media reporting megadeaths and hospitals in chaos. Outside "western civilization" hospitals are ALWAYS overcrowded in chaos with dead people, no outbreak needed. I'm sure those hospitals were really busy and crowded a couple months before the outbreak. So whats the real story?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:10AM
"Saving face" is not a "penchant for secrecy" and not specific to Chinese - you will see it in every bureaucracy.
Just look at Trump for examples of placing his face above public concerns.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:57AM (1 child)
Perhaps a better mortality definition at an early and exponential infection stage is number of death / (number of death + number of cured) and this one is ugly.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @05:11AM
That is the same as deaths/confirmed.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 29 2020, @02:10AM (4 children)
China will always seek to be outraged at the slightest provocation. It's one way to draw attention away from their 1 million Urgers in concentration camps.
If they're offended by a flag, they're really going to hate me. Every time I hear "coronavirus", I keep hearing the tune "9 Coronas."
It's like a virus ... " do dah do da do da Nine Coronavirus!"
I can't be the only one ....
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 29 2020, @02:13AM (1 child)
s/Urgers/Uyghurs/g
Speaking of them, I wonder if they will get the best coronavirus "treatments" in their vocational education and training centers. Cough cough.
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(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 29 2020, @02:18AM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by VLM on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:04PM (1 child)
We have an entire political party in the US devoted to self hate, which is actually pretty rare worldwide.
China is normal; it just feels weird for us, to see a government that doesn't hate its own people.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 29 2020, @06:11PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:42AM (6 children)
This seems a bit alarmist. I thought MERS had a staggering mortality rate compared to the estimates I've seen for the Coroaovirus. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:14AM (5 children)
The problem with the coronavirus doesn't seem to be the mortality rate (although that could be difficult to quantify given bad data from China), but the fact that it can spread easily and with asymptomatic transmission. Then you have people boarding planes and making it through screenings, masks not being very effective, etc.
The comparison to MERS is about quantity.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-new-wuhan-coronavirus-stacks-up-against-sars-mers [sciencenews.org]
MERS = 30% mortality, 2,494 cases
2019-nCoV = 3-4% mortality (supposedly), X cases
X is officially around 5,000 globally, more than MERS, but another estimate being thrown around is 100,000 [theguardian.com].
Mutations could also be a problem: Coronavirus's ability to spread getting stronger, China suggests [theguardian.com]
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:38AM (4 children)
A basic understanding of evolution would indicate that. If the virus is mutating then the variants that spread the best will be the ones that spread the most. It's practically a tautology. The only reason everything on the planet hasn't already been wiped out by disease is that efficiency in spreading usually involves becoming less lethal. After all, dead organisms generally don't move around much.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:48AM (3 children)
On the long run, the best parasite is the one that doesn't kill the host?
Take the herpes virus as example - still in the 'warts relief, no actual cure' state since forever (HPV and herpes are two different things [healthline.com])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:21AM (2 children)
Usually, but there are some pretty wacky parasites out there. Multi-host ones often need to kill the intermediate hosts. For instance that liver fluke one that gets in an ant and makes it climb up a grass stalk and wait to be eaten by a sheep.
Here's a fun read with nice pictures: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/body-snatching-parasites/ [nzgeo.com]
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:43AM (1 child)
Shit like this is why there are so many atheists in the life sciences. I do not blame them one bit.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @06:08AM
The curious thing is that God seems to love the pathogens as much as He loves the victims.