There are a lot of panic-inducing threads out there about #COVID2019 and the #coronavirus that are going viral, so I thought I'd put together some much more reassuring facts for you to all think about



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FACT 1: By every indication,
#COVID19 responds extremely well to public health measures such as social distancing and quarantining3 replies 25 retweets 120 likesShow this thread -
This new paper from Wuhan found that the reproduction rate (how many people each sick person goes on to infect) dropped from nearly 4 at the start of the epidemic to only 0.3 once measures were put in place https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20030593v1 …pic.twitter.com/Sy6JnyaVLj
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FACT 2: The virus is likely to be significantly less deadly than our current estimates suggest
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The problem here is that our current estimates are based on CONFIRMED cases. From that, the WHO has announced that the case-fatality ratio currently stands at 3%, meaning 3% of people who get the disease die
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HOWEVER, most experts agree that there are a lot of people who get only very mildly sick from
#COVID2019, never get tested, and so don't contribute to our case-fatality ratio One paper estimates this is up to 80% (!) of all cases5 replies 15 retweets 107 likesShow this thread -
FACT 3: The TRUE case-fatality rate is likely to be between 0.3-1% (this is still high!) This is an estimate from the journal Lancet in the UK, and is echoed by a number of other publicationspic.twitter.com/GjlnmUaXFl
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Outbreaks of infectious disease usually start with an exponential growth curve but then flatten off In the case of
#COVID2019, you can see the actual vs predicted numbers based on exponential growth in these graphspic.twitter.com/Av5XYtqLSM
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Replying to @GidMK
This is because China barricades people into their houses. And China’s numbers are highly suspect. Justify your claim that the growth curve flattens out using only data from Italy and South Korea. I don’t believe you can
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SK epidemic growth as percentages by day. They've done a truly remarkable job in many wayspic.twitter.com/HPDqTnn0vQ
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