new deadly human-to-human-transmissible coronavirus emerges out of China
POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 22:21
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Dr. Tom Frieden
Former Director CDC
New study an eye-opener on how coronavirus is spreading and how little we know
(CNN) A study published Friday in the medical journal JAMA found that 41% of the first 138 patients diagnosed at one hospital in Wuhan, China, were presumed to be infected in that hospital.
This is big news. In plain English, it means that nearly half of the initial infections in this hospital appear to have been spread within the hospital itself. What's more, most spread doesn't appear to have been the result of a so-called "super-spreader event," in which a single patient transmits infection to many other people.
This would be a concern, but not nearly as much as what appears to have happened: Many health care workers and many patients got infected in many parts of the hospital. What's more, since there's a broad spectrum of infection and only patients who were sick were tested, it's quite likely that there was even more transmission in the hospital.
The virus appears to be quite infectious, health care workers are at especially high risk, and we urgently need more information about just how infectious the virus is. The virus might well be impossible to contain -- just as the common cold and influenza can't be stopped, but the health and societal impacts can be blunted.
What more do we need to know?
We are learning more, but unfortunately, the answer is, a lot.
We still don't know the basics about who has been tested, what proportion are positive, how this is changing over time, and what the positivity rates are by location, week of testing and patient age. This is basic information.
The answers to these questions will help determine whether the virus is already circulating widely (i.e., has become endemic and can't be stopped), what proportion of all with infection have serious illness, and whether the epidemic is peaking or not.
Where is the novel coronavirus going next?
Only time will tell. The next few days and weeks will determine:
§ If sustained transmission begins in other countries, which unfortunately seems likely.
§ If it does, whether it can be contained, which unfortunately seems unlikely.
§ How severe the illness is among those who are infected, which we still don't know.
Until we know this critical information, we won't be able to assess how bad this novel coronavirus is going to get and which control measures have the best chance of slowing spread.
see the entire letter at the link: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/08/health/coronavirus-hospital-infecti
ons-frieden/index.html
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Dr. Tom Frieden
Former Director CDC
New study an eye-opener on how coronavirus is spreading and how little we know
(CNN) A study published Friday in the medical journal JAMA found that 41% of the first 138 patients diagnosed at one hospital in Wuhan, China, were presumed to be infected in that hospital.
This is big news. In plain English, it means that nearly half of the initial infections in this hospital appear to have been spread within the hospital itself. What's more, most spread doesn't appear to have been the result of a so-called "super-spreader event," in which a single patient transmits infection to many other people.
This would be a concern, but not nearly as much as what appears to have happened: Many health care workers and many patients got infected in many parts of the hospital. What's more, since there's a broad spectrum of infection and only patients who were sick were tested, it's quite likely that there was even more transmission in the hospital.
The virus appears to be quite infectious...
Yeah, no shit. That may have to do with those four (or three?) inserts that have to do with host recognition and docking.
Been saying for a while that the idea of building hospitals where everyone ... the infected, the suspect infected, the ordinarily sick, the worried-well, and their relatives all mingle together, is completely bass-akwards.
IMHO people should STAY HOME. They should be tested AT HOME. Food should be delivered to them. Yanno, maybe put something like crime-scene tape *that can't be easily removed across the door, or paint some sort of symbol and date on their door so they and their neighbors know that status (possibly infected, keep out/don't leave; infected keep out/don't leave; cleared OK to leave)
I understand needing to xfer people to hospital for care, but they should be tested BEFORE they go to hospital, and the infected should go to the special hospsital.
Here's another case of bass-akwards quarantine
Quote:
Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantine extended after Japan finds 3 more cases of coronavirus on board
Three more passengers stranded aboard a quarantined cruise ship off the coast of Japan have tested positive for coronavirus, the country’s Health Ministry said on Saturday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases on the vessel to 64.
While the quarantine period for the ship was initially set for two weeks, a health official has clarified that it would be extended each time a new case was confirmed on the vessel, currently stuck at the port of Yokohama with around 3,700 people on board.
https://www.rt.com/newsline/480380-japan-cruise-ship-coronavirus/
Yep, just jam everybody ... the sick, the healthy ... together. THAT'LL help!!! [/snark] Unless they confine everybody to quarters, serve meals to their cabins and disinfect everyone and everything that moves from cabin-to-cabin, this sounds like a perfect way to spread the virus ... and the only way to escape the hellhole is to get sick! Is that backwards, or what?
I know those cabins are pretty small ... cases of cabin fever ... but how about removing people from the ship and quarantining them individually in some place more comfortable, and releasing them once they'e tested negative? (BTW, do we have any idea what the incubation time is?)
China, so far as I know, has still not shared a live virus sample with Russia. nor have they shared their animal testing data with anyone which might demonstrate which intermediate hosts (if any) can harbor or spread the virus.
But the data is trending to show that the virus is exceptionally infectious and its death rate in somewhere in the 2-2.5% range (far above the usual 0.08% for a regular flu) and - quite honestly- I'm a little pissed off at the stupidity of the Chinese government in managing this outbreak, which has spread t
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Apparently the cruise ship tourists ARE being confined to cabin, and food is being served in-cabin. No dining-room buffets and entertainment, no siree! There are fears that the virus is being spread by the ship's ventilation system or by the food, or the servers.
Too bad for them, but this will be a great test case of how the virus is spread, once they tease out how the sick became infected.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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Cruise ships, huh?
The Coronavirus was designed after a Bill Burr comedy special on Netflix.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Wow, that's some sick (but well thought-out) humor!!! I guess it takes a comedian to go where no one has dared to go before!
All I can say is... it's a good thing I don't like the idea of taking a cruise!
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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Quote:Sadly, many details aren't in the news. Regarding screening - there are all of 400 test kits prepared by the CDC here in the US and distributed to various agencies across the states for more rapid screening v sending them to the CDC. It's known that China is short of test kits. So I don't imagine Japan is in any condition to test all 4000+ people (passengers and crew) even once on the one ship that was quarantined (there are 2 that I can think of offhand, btw). I imagine they only tested 'for cause'. I didn't find any reports of how many were tested v how many were positive.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Excellent test environment model.
Are you keeping track of the various models? Obviously, some will be faster moving, some slower. But having a range of the accurately-known cases can be enlightening.
Do you give credence to the report of 16% death rate?
Or have you seen or confirmed credible figures for rate of spread (?contagion rate?) versus rate of fatality after contracting the case?
For the cruise ship, I'm not sure if you found these details: When testing/screening, were all passengers screened? Meaning, were they screened once, then after some days, screened again positive? Or were the screenings just progressive, not the whole manifest screened each time, just however many test kits they had available?
The death rate is extremely difficult to determine, I think. Unless you test everybody, you don't know how many people are sick. And then you have to accurately determine the cause of death. So I don't give too much credence to any death rate at this point.
As for the various models, they exist under various conditions. So for example there is the cruise ship model which I think is a good representation of free spread, and I think the most salient model for a sick person moving though a dense population. Then there's the JAMA-reported model of spread in a Chinese hospital. Then there's the US-based model which is spread after identification (for cause) and quarantine. So ... it depends.
Are they taking the sick people off the boat? Or are they keeping them on the boat so they can infect as many as possible?
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They're taking sick people off the boat.
Here's my beef with that: Apparently, it is possible to be contagious even before symptoms show up. If you wait until people LOOK sick before you test them, you're too late.
Keep everyone isolated. (They're doing that already.) TEST EVERYONE. It's not like they have to test a million people! Take off everyone who tests positive and quarantine them individually onshore.
Wait five days and TEST EVERYONE AGAIN. Take off everyone who tests positive as before. Wait five more days and TEST EVERYONE AGAIN. If you have two shipboard tests in a row where everyone tests negative then let them all go. They're just going to have to take their chances onshore like the rest of us poor sods
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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The reason why I'm so heated up about hospitals (and doctors offices) as a source of contagion is because it happened to us.
You know when you take your sick kid to doctors and there you are in the waiting room with a bunch of sniveling, coughing, vomiting, feverish children? I used to think rather sourly what a petri dish!
We never got sick then. But we got a bad cold (not the latest flu, just a bad cold) maybe nine months ago and we were left wondering where we got it from. Since I always wind up with a post URI wheeze, it's kind of a big deal for me.
Well, i coincidentally had a doctor's appointment a few weeks later and was chatting with the receptionist about our family bad cold, and she said "Oh yes we all had it here. I had it really bad"
Oh, really???
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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Quote:It sounds like they don't even have enough test kits to screen a fraction of the souls aboard the ship. Testing the people who have symptoms is the prioritization they are using.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
They're taking sick people off the boat.
Here's my beef with that: Apparently, it is possible to be contagious even before symptoms show up. If you wait until people LOOK sick before you test them, you're too late.
Keep everyone isolated. (They're doing that already.) TEST EVERYONE. It's not like they have to test a million people! Take off everyone who tests positive and quarantine them individually onshore.
Wait five days and TEST EVERYONE AGAIN. Take off everyone who tests positive as before. Wait five more days and TEST EVERYONE AGAIN. If you have two shipboard tests in a row where everyone tests negative then let them all go. They're just going to have to take their chances onshore like the rest of us poor sods
If they had a supply of test kits, then your complaint would have merit.
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I just want to say that I haven't opined as much as I might. But I thought an unstoppable global contagion was a possibility since I concluded early in the thread that the spread was 'explosive', before officials concluded it was transmissible between people. But we won't know what happens TO US, until we know.
So, aside from health-care facilities being a nexus of infection, imo the biggest problem is unidentified carriers - like the 80 year old man who boarded the cruise ship where 70 have now tested positive.
Again, imo, unidentified carriers could make hash of the US 'quarantine for cause' approach, and I see no guarantee it'll be effective enough to keep coronavirus from spreading through the general population. But I see no effort to address what might be unidentified carriers. So either we're all part of some grand epidemiological calculation and they've got a pretty good idea of what they need to do, or they're putting on a good show when our fate is already in the cards.
As I also posted earlier, neighborhood doctors will know in a week or two if the virus is 'out there', and the neighborhood will know in a week or two after that, not because of any announcement, but because they'll be seeing a lot of sick people around.
And as far as I can tell, there is NO plan B. (But if there is, they're not telling us.) What if, for example, a sick person happens to show up in - oh, let's say Compton? That indicates the virus is already 'out there'. Then what? Try and trace and test everyone that person contacted? There simply aren't enough test kits around. Quarantine the entire neighborhood? Yanno, wall it off with no one in or out? Good luck, you're on your own, and hope and pray you've isolated it in time?
BTW, I think Signy's ideas have a lot of merit. I'd also like to suggest mandatory mask-wearing, and alcohol sanitizer everywhere. That could slow the unidentified carriers from spreading it around.
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