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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 11 2020, @08:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe-it-is-not-such-a-bad-time-to-be-living-alone-in-someone's-basement dept.

[Editor's note: We had been gathering together COVID-19 stories for eventual release as a round-up story. I lack time at the moment to personally gather all those together with this most recent submission. We will run the next round-up in the next few days. But given the significance of this submission, I wished not to delay it from being immediately released to the community. --martyb]

World Health Organization declares the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic:

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on Wednesday as the new coronavirus, which was unknown to world health officials just three months ago, has rapidly spread to more than 121,000 people from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

“In the past two weeks the number of cases outside China has increased thirteenfold and the number of affected countries has tripled,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva. “In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries to climb even higher.”

Tedros said several countries have demonstrated the ability to suppress and control the outbreak, but he scolded other world leaders for failing to act quickly enough or drastically enough to contain the spread.

“We’re deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” he said, just before declaring the pandemic. “We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear.”

[Ed. addition follows.]

Also at Ars Technica and cnet.

For those who might not be aware of the distinction, Wikipedia helpfully provides these summaries:

An epidemic (what we have had up to now with COVID-19):

An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί epi "upon or above" and δῆμος demos "people") is the rapid spread of infectious disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time, usually two weeks or less.

[...]An epidemic may be restricted to one location; however, if it spreads to other countries or continents and affects a substantial number of people, it may be termed a pandemic.[1] The declaration of an epidemic usually requires a good understanding of a baseline rate of incidence; epidemics for certain diseases, such as influenza, are defined as reaching some defined increase in incidence above this baseline.[2] A few cases of a very rare disease may be classified as an epidemic, while many cases of a common disease (such as the common cold) would not.

By comparison, a pandemic (which has just now been announced for COVID-19):

A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" and δῆμος demos "people") is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic. Further, flu pandemics generally exclude recurrences of seasonal flu. Throughout history, there have been a number of pandemics, such as smallpox and tuberculosis. One of the most devastating pandemics was the Black Death, which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century. The current pandemics are HIV/AIDS and Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).[1][2] Other recent pandemics are the 1918 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu), and the 2009 flu pandemic (H1N1).


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  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:06PM (3 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:06PM (#969829) Journal

    It's also more dangerous than the flu because nobody is immune to any strain of it yet. (other than, potentially, recovered people)

    The real risk, as you note, is it spreading so quickly that it overwhelms out support services. And a lack of immunity will certainly contribute to that. Also, a lack of doing anything to stop it from spreading, here in the US.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:41PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:41PM (#969851) Journal

    Nah to a small part of your post, about 5% of common colds are caused by coronaviruses. That could imply that a fair number, though maybe not most, people have some level of immunity to similar infectious agents.

    Obviously nowhere near enough to curtail the rapid spread. Nor specific enough to provide what we conventionally call "immunity"

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @02:41AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @02:41AM (#970033)

    imagine this being a big thing not because of mortality rate but rather because it's a virus that the human immune system has trouble getting immune to.
    this might be the big news: getting it, being sick, getting over it, walking out the door and being right on straight up reinfected with no immunity to show for. back to bed for you, again.
    or maybe it's a "blow up" to distract or relable the impending global recession (that was looming on the horizon anyways)? or maybe that russian dirty open cycle atom splitting missile engine did work?

    • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @02:57AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @02:57AM (#970050)

      this might be the big news: getting it, being sick, getting over it, walking out the door and being right on straight up reinfected with no immunity to show for. back to bed for you, again.

      Except that this is not true, completely false, in error, mendacious, a lie, incorrect, not factual, fake news, and does not comport with reality. You are just jealous because you contracted Troll virus, which is very hard to transmit, unless you engage in mucous membrane intercourse. Ewwwwwwwww!