Get best of the week

State Panic: An Unobvious Look at the 2019-nCoV Coronovirus Epidemic

In December-January 2019, an outbreak of a new disease began in the province of Hubei, China, caused, as it later turned out, by the 2019-nCoV virus strain. The author of these lines in early January was in China, namely in Beijing, and visited the Shansi province neighboring Hubei. At the beginning of January, according to my feelings, there were no signs of concern: mass festivals and colorful shows were held on the main street of the Shansi province capital, Xian, and all public places were open for visitors. However, then everything changed (I found out after returning), the Chinese authorities ordered the closure of almost all museums, public and cultural places. The development of the situation after January 10 is known to almost everyone thanks to the extensive media coverage.I would like to present here my personal opinion regarding the potential risks of this epidemic and possible emergency events for all of us. Continued under the cut.

UFO Care Minute


The pandemic COVID-19, a potentially severe acute respiratory infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (2019-nCoV), has officially been announced in the world. There is a lot of information on Habré on this topic - always remember that it can be both reliable / useful, and vice versa.

We urge you to be critical of any published information.


Official sources

, .

Wash your hands, take care of your loved ones, stay at home whenever possible and work remotely.

Read publications about: coronavirus | remote work

What we currently know about the 2019-nCoV virus. This is an RNA virus, the closest relative of the bat virus, which seems to have passed into the human population through a third carrier that is still unknown to us. Epidemics of this type have been and will be. But let's look at the most important “statistical indicators” of the new virus.

According to the WHO , the coefficient R0 (that is, the average number of people who can be infected by the diseased) of the 2019-nCoV virus is 1.4-2.6 According toHarvard University researchers 2.0 - 3.1 This is comparable to regular flu, and significantly lower than for the vast majority of viruses. For example, for smallpox this number lies in the range of 5-7, the leader is measles in which this indicator lies in the range of 12-18. That is, nothing extraordinary in general.

Mortality rate is still difficult to assess, for this you need to do a mass screening for the presence of antibodies in the population after the epidemic, to take into account all the patients. However, according to current estimates by WHO representatives, mortalityabout 2%, which is several times less than indicators for other, really deadly infections. It should also be noted that mortality statistics are extremely biased towards the elderly and weakened people, which is absolutely consistent with the situation with the flu. The risk for influenza age 65+ is 10 times higher and about a quarter of the risk for coronavirus. Please note that the 2% figure was not taken from the news of journalists, but from official WHO sources, and most likely was calculated using a mathematical model (I did not find evidence to support this).

That is, we have before us the usual, if not ordinary virus. Representatives of this type of virus circulate around us constantly. What caused the panic? According to the author’s personal opinion, only one thing is that the genetic sequence of this virus is similar to the epidemic causing virus SARS and MERS, which have a higher mortality rate. Having no real data on mortality, the Chinese authorities received a sequence of the virus and fell into a state of “panic”, which launched the whole chain of further events.

Panic is much more dangerous than an epidemic. Currently, China is a “global factory” and many industries around the world are critically dependent on the supply of components or raw materials from Chinese manufacturers. Mass quarantine in this case will result in an almost complete “shutdown” of the global economy for an indefinite period of time, which with a high degree of probability can lead to negative consequences, up to a crisis comparable to the 2008 crisis. The other day, a brief report on this was released by Moodys. And here we have to accept the obvious fact - any crisis is human sacrifice. Unfortunately, I could not find any reliable sources of estimates of the number of victims of the crisis, there are only estimates of its impact on individual causes of death, but they are also impressive. According toresearchIn the 2016 edition of The Lancet, the economic crisis caused an additional 260,000 deaths in member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. And this is only the tip of the iceberg, most likely the impact of the crisis on the quality of life, health and mortality was very multifaceted and dramatic. However, remember how you felt then, even if you did not survive the loss of work or any other bad events, most likely the crisis affected you in one way or another. Here I can ask a somewhat cynical question: what is “better" to survive the disease, plus or minus equivalent to ordinary flu and lie in bed for a week or face all the consequences of the economic crisis? Can 2019 die from nCoV? But even from ordinary flu, you can die with a probability of 0.1 to 3%. And answer yourself honestlywere you very interested in mortality from normal flu until december 2019?

The real problem is that once a triggered wave of panic is very difficult to stop. By and large, government officials of other countries in this situation can only do one thing: close borders and cancel flights. In the midst of a general panic, if other countries of the world begin to close the borders en masse, the officials of the conditional aph ... Czech Republics are unlikely to dare to publicly say something like: “according to the analytical report prepared by a group of scientists, no special quarantine measures are required at the moment.” Rather, they will do the same as other countries. The situation of “everyone is running and I am running” can be not only among people but also companies and states. The economic problems that have arisen because of these solutions, as well as the lives lost because of them, will be “spread out” on a time scale.

There are special protocols in aviation and at sea to prevent panic among passengers, as there is a clear consensus on how deadly it can be. However, all over the world there seem to be no protocols protecting companies and the state from “panic”. I put the word “panic” here in quotation marks, since I admit honestly, I don’t know how much state and corporate officials are panicking about people's health, but they can definitely panic about losing their place. The last, excuse me, parade of idiocy we observed during the one-time ban on Boeing 737 MAX flights in Europe, when airplanes and their passengers were ordered to return to departure airports even if they were already close to their destination. “Dear passengers, we flew 3 hours in the most dangerous airplane in the world,and now we have to fly back. ”

There are a lot of examples when people incorrectly assess risks, the most colorful is aerophobia: giving preference to car travel, people put themselves at much greater risk. Examples of “panic” of states are also sufficient, but so far they have not led to fatal consequences for the global economy. But I do not like the trends, if what we spend on, conditionally, the fight against terrorism of money more than oncological screening generally reduces our chances of surviving to a more advanced age, but does not break the economic system in which we all live, then the 2019-nCoV case could be disastrous for the whole world.

The editors of The Lancet and WHO report that extraordinary measures are not required, but their voices are hardly heard in the stormy stream of panic rumors and “state-approved” decisions that only add fuel to the fire.

What do we do? Most likely it’s easy to prepare mentally that your plans for the near future may suffer and you may suffer financial and moral losses. If the events continue in the same vein, there may be minor troubles such as disruption of participation in conferences and business trips, vacations. If the wave of panic continues and the world begins to slide into a recession, more serious financial and moral losses are possible. But you will not die from the coronavirus, here you can be almost sure.

We will most likely be able to develop a serum and / or vaccine for this virus, but we don’t even have the slightest idea of ​​what kind of vaccine is needed to prevent a panic wave spreading over entire states.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/undefined/

More articles:


All Articles