Hysterical coronavirus babble — the uselessness of news media

03 February 2020

A lack of quantitative medical sense?

Regarding Wuhan's coronavirus, Britain's The Guardian published this sensationalized report:

Coronavirus: death toll passes Sars virus as dozens more die in Wuhan.

Dozens more people have died in the city at the centre of China’s coronavirus outbreak, where hospitals are severely undersupplied and understaffed and residents have described increasingly desperate conditions.

Chinese state media reported 57 new deaths on Monday, all but one in Wuhan, the capital of the central province of Hubei which has been under lockdown for almost two weeks as authorities try to contain the outbreak.

The foreign ministry issued an urgent appeal for protective medical equipment as the total number of casualties reached 361, surpassing deaths in mainland China caused by the 2002-03 Sars virus. The number of infections also jumped, passing 17,200.

The New York Times was slightly more responsible . . .

. . . but it also dropped the Big Picture ball:

The death toll from the new coronavirus has exceeded that of the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in 2002 and 2003 in mainland China. But the number of people who have recovered nationwide has also risen in recent days, suggesting that the new virus’s fatality rate is relatively low.

China’s Health Commission reported on Sunday that there were 475 recoveries and 361 deaths nationwide. During the SARS outbreak, 349 people died in mainland China.

Health experts say they are encouraged by the steady rise in the number of recoveries. They take it as evidence that the treatments meted out have been effective and that the virus does not appear to be as deadly as SARS.

SARS had a mortality rate of 9.6 percent, and about 2 percent of those reported to have been infected with the new coronavirus have died.

The Times missed persuasively addressing two pertinent quantifiable points

First of these is infectiousness.

One can roughly calculate a virus's ability to infect people, under normal societal conditions:

Who gets it?

How easily?

The second is, once that a patient is infected, the virus's ability to kill her or him. The Times says 2 percent. But it fails to say what this number is based on.

In an epidemic like this one — with patients presenting with relatively common symptoms — it is very difficult to know who is actually infected — as well as who died from exactly which pathogen.

Let's use influenza to illustrate some points

Flu is easy to catch.

But its mortality rate — compared to routinely deadly (hemorrhagic fever) viruses like Ebola and Marburg — is low.

Nevertheless, by infecting so many people each year, influenza reaps large death tolls:

The CDC estimates that up to 42.9 million people got sick during the 2018-2019 flu season [in the United States], 647,000 people were hospitalized and 61,200 died.

That’s fairly on par with a typical season, and well below the CDC’s 2017-2018 estimates of 48.8 million illnesses, 959,000 hospitalizations and 79,400 deaths.

Historically, there are impressively scary numbers:

The Spanish flu [1918-1920] claimed the lives of 2–5% of world's population, far exceeding the death toll of WWI.

© 2019 David E. Bloom and Daniel Cadarette, Infectious Disease Threats in the Twenty-First Century: Strengthening the Global Response, Frontiers in Immunology 2019; 10:549, DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2019.00549 (28 March 2019)

According to the same research article, Asian flu (1957-1958) killed up to 2 million.

And Hong Kong influenza (1968-1969) followed with possibly another 2 million deaths.

So — should we be really afraid of Wuhan virus?

No one has admitted to knowing.

But that didn't stop Yahoo News from flinging a wild guess around, more than a week ago.

Here is what Yahoo said. I resequenced the article's facts, so as to correct their illogically presented order:

Chinese officials have confirmed 440 cases of the new coronavirus strain - 2019-nCoV - so far, with 17 deaths.

Based on existing data, the disease is said to have a 2% death rate. This means that for every 50 people who catch the infection, one will statistically die.

To put this into context, around one in every 1,000 who develop flu die, giving it a death rate of 0.1%.

China’s deadly coronavirus may have the same death rate as Spanish flu, an expert has warned.

Professor Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London, said the current rate of disease could be comparable to the death rate of Spanish flu.

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 is widely regarded as “the deadliest in history”, and is believed to have infected around 500 million people worldwide, killing between 20 and 50 million.

In the UK, it is thought around 228,000 thousand people died of Spanish flu from around 10 million people who were thought to have been infected - a death rate of around 2%.

© 2020 Alexandra Thompson, China's coronavirus could have same death rate as Spanish flu outbreak in the UK, Yahoo News (20 January 2020) (resequenced — with later sentences now first — so as to put Dr. Ferguson's reasoning into understandable context)

That's quite a projection on Professor Ferguson's part . . .

. . . given the lack of dependable data to back it up.

I highly doubt that Chinese officials were in a reliable data collection position — at the time that Yahoo quoted him — to peg even roughly estimated mortality rates.

Usually, the initial days and weeks of epidemics are scientifically confusing.

Today however, China may have the numbers . . .

. . . to make educated guesses as to contagion and virulence.

Those estimates (and contexts) would be helpful to other nations.

But instead of publicly releasing helpful statistical data — the official Chinese line appears to be that other nations (especially the United States) are maliciously out to get it:

The US government hasn't provided any substantive assistance to China, but it was the first to evacuate personnel from its consulate in Wuhan, the first to suggest partial withdrawal of its embassy staff, and the first to impose a travel ban on Chinese travelers.

What it has done could only create and spread fear, which is a very bad example . . . .

Even US media and experts doubted the US government's decision, saying that the US government's restrictions on China are precisely what the WHO rejects, that the US is turning from overconfidence to fear and overreaction, and that banning the entry of visitors who traveled to China in the past 14 days is suspected to violate civil rights instead of reducing risks of virus spreading, Hua said.

Chinese analysts labeled the US government's move as "immoral" and US politicians failed to honor their promises to assist the control of the coronavirus epidemic, a global concern, as of now.

On one hand

I see China's point, having commented myself that the United States arguably both over and underreacted to the outbreak.

On the other hand

As a scientifically sophisticated Great Power, China arguably needs to put its Big Boy Pants on. And start acting with medical self-confidence.

I fail to see how a PRC-originated epidemic is the United States' responsibility to graciously contain inside PRC boundaries.

I suspect that the real motivation for China's (officially sanctioned) finger-pointing is its hostility to US travel restrictions.

Those unquestionably damage China's economy. But that's what happens, when a nation casually introduces zoonotics into human circulation on a repeated basis.

Racism, arguably, has nothing to do with the American bias. It's simply a bias toward protecting public health.

The moral? — We do not yet know how dangerous the Wuhan virus is

From that perspective — rather than blasting other nations' travel restrictions — China would be more helpful, if it provided them with the medical epidemiological data that they need to competently protect their own populations.

This is an opportunity for China to demonstrate world leadership. It could use its controlled news media to make the point.

China might even receive spoken and unspoken gratitude in return. Certainly respect.

PeteFree.com

Hysterical coronavirus babble — the uselessness of news media