Ok, here’s a good and balanced article based entirely on fact and not on rumour or embellishment/misinterpretation of data.
https://khn.org/news/facts-vs-fears-five-things-to-help-weigh-your-coronavirus-risk/
No, the article you quoted is not good, not balanced, an not based entirely on facts.
The following are a few flaws I found:
For example, influenza kills 0.14% of infected patients, said Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics, molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. But because the flu is so common — infecting up to 45 million Americans a season — deaths could climb as high as 61,000 people each flu season just in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
True but very misleading.
The methodology CDC uses to estimate death toll of flu is totally defferent from that China NHC uses to count death toll of NCP.
In CDC's own word, "Seasonal influenza-related deaths are deaths that occur in people for whom influenza infection was likely a contributor to the cause of death, but not necessarily the primary cause of death." (source:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm#References)
making comparison without properly acknowledging methodological deviances is misleading.
NHC happens to count their own death toll of flu in China, and they are using the same methodology they count NCP casualties. According to their latest data, monthly death toll of flu in November 2019 in China was
5 out of 156,205 confirmed cases (source:
http://www.nhc.gov.cn/jkj/s7915/201912/1c872de08d834aa0b82d4b4b8cd78b8c.shtml), or a CFR of around
0.0032%, or about
1/718 as deadly as NCP.
Chinese officials Thursday suddenly changed their criteria for confirming the disease and added more than 15,000 cases to the patient tally
Ambiguous and misleading.
By changing their criteria (from PCR test to clinical diagnosis) on Thursday Feb 12th, Chinese officials only added 14,840 cases. That's below 15,000 cases.
There were other 313 cases added according to the original criteria, not the new criteria.
The World Health Organization “is relying on data from China and has no ability at present to independently verify those data,” Gostin said. That could change, he added, if WHO experts are allowed into the center of the outbreak, the city of Wuhan in Hubei province. “
False and very misleading. WHO experts have always been allowed into Wuhan, as well as other regions of China, from very early stage of the outbreak (source:
https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/22-01-2020-field-visit-wuhan-china-jan-2020;
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/17/c_138791946.htm).
Outside China, health officials test anyone with a cough and fever who has visited Hubei — a much larger number — producing a mortality rate of 1.2% to 5.6%.
False. As far as I know, at least health officials in Pakistan and Indonesia didn't do tests on anyone with a cough and fever who has visited Hubei. Sometimes they just isolated them without doing tests.
Moreover, the mortaility rate outside of China is false as well. It's nowhere near 1.2% to 5.6%. It was around 0.39% by the date this article published (source:
https://www.who.int/docs/default-so...00214-sitrep-25-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=61dda7d_2).
The rapid spread of the coronavirus suggests it is transmitted person-to-person,
much like influenza: An infected person coughs out moist droplets containing the virus and another person breathes them in, said Schaffner.
Yes and no.
Yes it's much like influenza; but no, both flu and NCP are not only transmitted via droplets from coughs, but also via aerosols from exhales.
According to this study, coughless guinea pigs still transmit influenza to each other within a distance of 0.91 meters. (source:
https://www.pnas.org/content/103/26/9988.short)
And according to this study, a flu patient exhales enough virus to infect a close contact within 15 minutes (source:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0002691)
And in the case of NCP, NHC already officially declared that aerosol transmission is possible, especially in confined space for prolonged exposure (source:
http://www.nhc.gov.cn/yzygj/s7653p/...c2/files/b218cfeb1bc54639af227f922bf6b817.pdf).
Because the moist droplets fall to the ground within 3 to 6 feet, patients are most likely to infect people with whom they are in
close contact.
False. the droplets travel up to 2.5 meters (around 8.2 feet) until felling to the ground (source:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...and-sneezing/475FCFCBD32C7DB6C1E49476DB7A7446).
While the Amoy Gardens outbreak was striking, experts believe it was a one-time phenomenon. No one has found another example of a coronavirus spreading through plumbing, said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.
Could be false, but the latest incident happened only a few days ago, so there's no academic paper available at the moment (source:
https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202002/11/P2020021100062.htm?fontSize=1)
Also, there are other means of airborne transmission than plumbing...
Anecdotal reports that patients without symptoms can spread COVID-19 have been widely publicized. But scientists have not confirmed such transmissions, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore.
Dr. Adalja might have missed a few interesting papers lately, such as this one (
https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiaa077/5739751), in which a paralyzed old gentleman (who's apparently unable to get out of his own bedroom) was somehow infected before all his close contacts showed any symptom.
The quarantines imposed in China on major cities and a Japanese cruise ship aren’t effective, Gostin said.
Yes and no. Yes for Diamond Princess, but no for China, especially its major cities:
“They are overbroad and under conditions that could fuel the epidemic,” said Gostin, who is also faculty director at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. “People are being forced to remain in close, congested conditions, so they are likely to spread infection among themselves.”
Depending on the situation, remaining in close, congested conditions doesn't always fuel the epidemic.
If everyone in the isolation ward is positive already, then there's no way the epidemic could get fueled up any further. Actually it's a very effective way to collectively quarantine the infected from the healthy majority.
The following is one of the newly built mega-size isolation wards in Wuhan, exclusively for the confirmed cases with mild or subclinical symptoms. Meals and basic supportive medicines are provided free of charge. Doctors are present 24/7. If someone turns negative s/he gets discharged; and if someone becomes sicker s/he gets transferred to a proper hospital.
Passengers should be asked to “shelter in place” at home for two weeks instead, he added.
Depending on their familial structures, self-imposed quarantine at home may or may not be a good idea, as familial cluster transmissions have been very visible in this outbreak (soure:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.03.20019141v3):