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Comment by mikejb | Hacker News Reader

> the German man [...] said he had a mild fever in the weekend and slept it off, and came to work on Monday, which must mean he had recovered.

Unfortunately, this isn't a valid assumption. Lots of people come in to work sick - just yesterday we had to ask our boss to send someone home because they showed up to work caughing and sneezing all day (Today, two other coworkers aren't coming in because they're not feeling well...)

But reports at sueddeutsche.de say that the (by now) 4 individuals in isolation are feeling very well, and are not showing any symptoms.

I also don't think the virus is a death sentence. I haven't done sufficient research to strongly support this opinion, but from what I've read across news articles is that most fatal cases were individuals with certain pre-conditions. That doesn't mean there's nothing to worry, but this isn't humanities downfall.

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Also, just today there are reports [1] they released a 78 year old with both diabetes and hypertension - two of the six risk factors named so far - after he tested positive for nCoV-2019, went into critical condition, and fully recovered & tested negative.

Even for the elderly who have serious complicating health conditions, it's probably not a death sentence (unless you are immunocompromised). It's just a problem given how transmissible and sneaky this virus is.

[1] http://society.people.com.cn/n1/2020/0130/c1008-31564652.htm...

Less transmissible than flu, somewhat more deadly. But press needs sensational headlines...

I would turn that around. There is a substantial amount of healthy individuals who end up in in ICU or worse due to the virus. This is certainly different from the common flu, for example.

I may be misunderstanding you, but in case I was misunderstood: I didn't mean to say that the virus is harmless. It may have longer-term effects, and just because it is more deadly when certain conditions are met, we shouldn't just throw people who meet these conditions under the bus, or assume it's going to be harmless in other cases - it isn't.

But it's hard work not to fall for the paranoia that is fed (partly as side-effect) by the current attention-seeking headline-business formerly known as news.

According to Wikipedia, the flu causes 3-5 million severe cases and 650,000 deaths worldwide each year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza

Yes, but the mortality rate of the common flu is much, much lower. Mortality of admitted patients is around 11% according to latest Lancet article.

Mortality of admitted patients of influenza in the U.S. is ~9% (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html). That's not that much different, and the U.S. has a lower mortality rate than much of the world.

The key here is “admitted.” Reports from Wuhan all indicate the hospitality rate is much much lower than usual circumstances since the patient count is over the roof (due to CCP trying to cover up initial cases), and a lot of patients don’t get treatments at all as a result. The high mortality rate is expected sunce only the most acute cases are admitted.

The flu kills hundreds of thousands of people each year. So far, this virus has killed maybe 200, out of 7,000ish infections.

We’re a long way away from knowing how dangerous this virus is, but the media hype is waaaaay ahead of reality.

The flu has a mortality rate of something like 0.1%, 200 our of 7000 is already 3%, 30x as deadly. Of course these aren't final numbers but the flu infects and afflicts vastly many more people than it kills.

Those 7000 infections are 7000 confirmed infections. Actual infections are going to be way higher than this (and hence, the mortality rate is going to be way lower) because of what was being discussed up-thread and in the article, i.e. infected people showing only minor symptoms and never getting admitted into a hospital where they would be tested for nCoV-2019.

> Unfortunately, this isn't a valid assumption. Lots of people come in to work sick

In the context of the virus, to me it feels that means the virus isn't a killer, so he got a fever that he had to sleep in the weekend, but he still managed to show up to work on Monday, presumably because he felt better.

And it's Germany, where there's no notion of "We're only allocating you X sick days a year, if you're sick more than that you don't get paid."...

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