Why is Coronavirus 2019 ncov More Dangerous Than SARS?

Information is Beautiful has a chart of how contagious and deadly many different diseases are.

The chart has coronavirus 2019 ncov as slightly less deadly and spreadable than SARS. Spanish flu was ranked less deadly and less contagious than SARS.

Coronavirus 2019 ncov is a Big Problem Because It Spreads for About Ten Days Before You Show Symptoms

The deadliness and contagiousness of a disease does not predict how many people die from the disease. SARS is more deadly and contagious than the Spanish flu.

SARS was successfully contained but Spanish flu was not. Spanish flu killed tens of million but SARS killed about 800.

SARS was only contagious when symptoms were shown. This made it easier to contain. Coronavirus ncov 2019 is contagious during the incubation period of 1-14 days. An average of ten days before you show symptoms with Coronavirus ncov 2019 you are contagious.

Spanish flu occurred during world war 1. People were less knowledgable about containing disease outbreaks. Countries kept the disease secret during the world war so that the enemy did not know how many soldiers were dying from flu.

The current estimate is that Coronavirus 2019 ncov is slightly less deadly and spreadable than SARS. However, current estimates are the coronavirus 2019 ncov was not well contained in its early phases. This means current estimates are that coronavirus 2019 ncov will have a higher death toll and impact than SARS.

26 thoughts on “Why is Coronavirus 2019 ncov More Dangerous Than SARS?”

  1. There’s one good thing that they currently believe. That is, it’s for the most part being spread to people in close contact with those that have the disease, that is family members and health care workers. I’m really glad my wife, a nurse, isn’t involved with direct patient care anymore.

  2. I’ve been doing a running computation on the case-related death rate for cov-2019. It’s about 2.6% right now. For comparison, the CDR for the 1918 Spanish Flu was 2.5%. But SARS was about 11%.

  3. In a city you have running water, which is unlikely to be contaminated during a standard outbreak. Especially if it’s viral – even if some viruses find their way into the supply, they can’t reproduce there, so your likelyhood of catching them is next to zero. Besides, just boiling the water before using it should kill most bacteria and viruses.

  4. He said chart, not image, so I assume that’s what he was looking for.

    The title image is clearly visible here. It’s only a little bit cut off at the top. It’s from the Wikipedia article on R0.

    And I only see one link in this article.

  5. Chronovirus = 10 times more deadly in China because Chinese have no concept of personal space… they live in a hive with other bees…

  6. A couple of times the latency period is maybe 6 weeks. You won’t need to be growing your own food and hunting rabbits to make it through 6 weeks. That’s just a shelf of canned food, maybe a box of dried soup and a 5 kg bag of rice/pasta/whatever.
    That should fit into any apartment I’ve seen. Except maybe the 7 sq. m one I saw in Paris once…

    Water is the difficult one there. Though if you are just worried about germ free water, a couple of kg of potassium hypochlorite will disinfect multiple tonnes of water for about $10 or so.

  7. Like VD, you just have to work backwards. You need to find and isolated the people the sick person live with and the people the sick person work with.

    We also need a quick test for the disease.

  8. I think that’s over-played, total breakdown of morality makes for great fiction, (See Mad Max.) but people actually pull together in emergencies, not turn into vicious beasts.

  9. Yes, the very fact that this bug is communicable before symptoms appear makes that almost certain.

    I believe DARPA has been working on some sort of environmental DNA sequencing sensor, that’s supposed to be able to track biological warfare agents by detecting them in the air. That would be helpful, but I don’t think it’s ready for prime time.

    Back in the day we had duck and roll drills. Maybe we need to institute “mask and wash hands” drills. I doubt we can easily accomplish the social changes to make America hostile to the transmission of diseases like this all the time, but we might be able to muster a few weeks of it in emergencies. Fines for being seen in public without a breath mask during pandemic alerts, maybe.

  10. Of the times I’ve felt like that would have been a good idea, I’ve lived in an apartment. So I’ve felt sort of screwed. Though, maybe not. It depends on how bad an issue becomes. So that’s always been a worry for me. I really should just bite the bullet and buy some land. But, of course, food and water become a concern if you live outside urbandale centers and the soil isn’t suited for growing, and there isn’t a sizable animal population to hunt. I know there are ways around this. Always wanted to read a really good survival book.

    Also, once a pandemic is over, I always wonder what society and culture will be like in any given area, afterward. The total breakdown of morality concerns me.

  11. This virus is a real showstopper. I assume from the data, that this beast cannot be contained.

    I predict 100-300 million deaths in 4 months. Maybe it can be slowed down a little bit, but it will go around Earth really fast.

    If in the following months it gets to 5 billion infections, and it has a 4% deadliness rate (this number pops up, but nobody knows it for sure yet), that will mean 200 mill. victims.

    Here’s a quasi-real-time map of the cases (these are just the official numbers of course).
    https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

  12. Pretty sure that the cases that were found here in the US as well as in other countries, had already infected others, we just don’t know about it yet. Even more than a vaccine we need an on the spot saliva or other type detection kit, it may be easier to develop than a vaccine.

  13. I don’t know what all the fuss about corona virus is about. When my house was being built, during football season my contractor (Hispanic guy) had “Corona” virus every Monday. My house finished behind schedule but the contractor was fine.

  14. A general rule of thumb: Have enough water and non-perishable food on hand to last for a couple times the latency period of the pandemic pathogen.

    There’s no more effective last ditch response to an epidemic, than holing up and waiting for it to burn out. That will generally get you through the worst epidemic imaginable, if you can pull it off.

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