Thread by @Comparativist, Korea’s CFR just jumped to 2%. Pre-lockdown Wuhan R0 was just estimated [...]

Korea’s CFR just jumped to 2%. Pre-lockdown Wuhan R0 was just estimated by CDC to be 5.7. It’s very likely this burned through the US at 3.5 to 5.7 before the Shelter in Place orders.

The Imperial model assumed 0.9% and 2.4. https://twitter.com/realcandaceo/status/1248352293004759046

https://twitter.com/realcandaceo/status/1248352293004759046

I guess the ’good news’ is that a higher baseline R0 means this might be over soon? https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1248138980987551745?s=21 https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1248138980987551745

https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1248138980987551745?s=21

Classic SARS was containable b/c it was a first generation jump from an animal to a human. In 2003, we caught a civet virus that could get humans sick. This little f__cker has been bouncing around people and evolving for human hosts for quite some time. https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1247922712233652225?s=21

https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1247922712233652225?s=21

The opposite. If it came from wild animal sold at a wet market, that happened awhile ago. It probably wouldn’t be this efficient as a pathogen without evolution doing it's thing and the virus adapting for humans after a few generations of H2H transmission.
https://twitter.com/opinion_left/status/1248452160347443201?s=21 https://twitter.com/opinion_left/status/1248452160347443201

https://twitter.com/opinion_left/status/1248452160347443201?s=21

Maybe the R0 was always this high but the CFR was even higher. There's a lot of combinations where it could be hitting remote villages for years without anyone noticing b/c it didn't spread (being too lethal or getting the host very sick too fast, like MERS, stops transmission)

This little jerk is 10-20x 'stickier' on ACE2 cells than Classic SARS. That's not stochastic bad luck of someone eating the wrong pangolin in November... that's genetic selection for an evolutionary fitness landscape.
https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1247032529535692800?s=21 https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1247032529535692800

https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1247032529535692800?s=21

Here's the study (published in @nature) that first made this argument. It’s *such* a good fit for humans, they argue it might have been around “for years, maybe decades.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

The Nature article was trying to debunk the bIoWeApOnZ conspiracy theories.

TL;DR natural selection is far better at designing a nasty virus than ‘intelligent design’ at some lab.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
https://twitter.com/y_mariebelle/status/1248459486525681669?s=21 https://twitter.com/y_mariebelle/status/1248459486525681669

Rapid urbanization in China = most villages have populations that are 70-80% elderly. The model in my head is villages getting hit every year with something that looked like MERS. Quick spread, quick onset, small total # of dead, written off as pneumonia.
https://twitter.com/ostarrysky/status/1248461976218427394?s=21 https://twitter.com/ostarrysky/status/1248461976218427394

https://twitter.com/ostarrysky/status/1248461976218427394?s=21

i.e., imagine 5% of >60’s die in Pingzi, Guizhou from ‘the flu.’ What would that be? 5-10 people? Where’s the closest modern hospital? Villagers would isolate the infected automatically if symptoms came fast and quick. Repeat a dozen times over years.
https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1248463421458112513?s=21 https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1248463421458112513

https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1248463421458112513?s=21

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