I find the analysis from this link very interesting. It suggests that Ro is higher than initially estimated at 3-4 (rather than 1.4-2.5 by WHO) but the national China mortality rate drops to 0.3% if the province of Hubei is excluded (the reported mortality rate of Wuhan alone is 5.5%). This would be consistent with the theory that the number of cases are underreported in Wuhan, due to a shortage of testing capacity and perhaps under reporting. A recent Lancet report by Professor Gabriel Leung from University of Hong Kong https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30260-9/fulltext estimates 76,000 cases in Wuhan as of Jan 25th based on a Ro of 2.68, more than 30x reported, which would put the mortality rate at well under 0.5%.
This suggests the pandemic could be more difficult to control than expected but mortality rate is also much lower (perhaps in the region of 3x flu).
This may also mean the main damage could be through economic impact.
I am extremely skeptical of the high R0 estimate for one reason: SARS has a lower R0, but was much worse overseas than nCov currently is.
According to the Lancet report you linked, SARS has an R0 of around 2 in China, so substantially lower than nCov. However, we know how the first cases abroad spread. Compared to the current situation, it was far far worse, by mortality and by number of cases. The first case in Toronto infected first her family, then some hospital works who in turn spread it further until the whole hospital had to be closed. Eyeballing the graph for Canada found here, this really does not look like the situation we currently have, despite higher interconnection and more rigorous testing (more testing → more discovered cases).
So far the majority of overseas cases are still travelers from China; the people that they infected are generally close contacts; it is positively surprising how few spouses seem to get the virus. This can also not just be attributed to higher awareness I think. Even before the news story of a new dangerous story broke, there were no human-to-human transmissions overseas despite some travelers already present.
Great thanks for this and the link. I am still trying to understand this more as it evolves. I guess as the monitoring and control is now much stronger hopefully Ro will come down also.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
I find the analysis from this link very interesting. It suggests that Ro is higher than initially estimated at 3-4 (rather than 1.4-2.5 by WHO) but the national China mortality rate drops to 0.3% if the province of Hubei is excluded (the reported mortality rate of Wuhan alone is 5.5%). This would be consistent with the theory that the number of cases are underreported in Wuhan, due to a shortage of testing capacity and perhaps under reporting. A recent Lancet report by Professor Gabriel Leung from University of Hong Kong https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30260-9/fulltext estimates 76,000 cases in Wuhan as of Jan 25th based on a Ro of 2.68, more than 30x reported, which would put the mortality rate at well under 0.5%.
This suggests the pandemic could be more difficult to control than expected but mortality rate is also much lower (perhaps in the region of 3x flu).
This may also mean the main damage could be through economic impact.
I am extremely skeptical of the high R0 estimate for one reason: SARS has a lower R0, but was much worse overseas than nCov currently is.
According to the Lancet report you linked, SARS has an R0 of around 2 in China, so substantially lower than nCov. However, we know how the first cases abroad spread. Compared to the current situation, it was far far worse, by mortality and by number of cases. The first case in Toronto infected first her family, then some hospital works who in turn spread it further until the whole hospital had to be closed. Eyeballing the graph for Canada found here, this really does not look like the situation we currently have, despite higher interconnection and more rigorous testing (more testing → more discovered cases).
So far the majority of overseas cases are still travelers from China; the people that they infected are generally close contacts; it is positively surprising how few spouses seem to get the virus. This can also not just be attributed to higher awareness I think. Even before the news story of a new dangerous story broke, there were no human-to-human transmissions overseas despite some travelers already present.
For posterity, I was wrong here because I was unaware of the dispersion parameter k that is substantially higher for SARS than for Covid-19.
Great thanks for this and the link. I am still trying to understand this more as it evolves. I guess as the monitoring and control is now much stronger hopefully Ro will come down also.
The link to the Lancet study seems to be broken when I click on it, although the text of the link itself is correct. This should be (hopefully) a working link: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30260-9/fulltext