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EV71 Outbreak In China Sparks Fears For Olympics
OMNIpotusCOM writes "CNN is reporting an outbreak of Enterovirus 71 (or EV71), that has affected more than 3700 children and killed over 20, is creating concern for the visitors and athletes expected for the Beijing Olympics in August. The virus can cause 'poliolike paralysis,' according to the article."
This is clearly Tibet's doing! Curse you, Dalai Lama!
I'm sure the Chinese have some sort of perfectly safe medicine for this.
You'd better be careful about that or you just might reincarnate as a Dali llama!
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I guess a gathering of people from all over the world, who stay for a while then go back home, does provide a certain degree of danger when it comes to spreading any type of contagious disease.
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So we'll soon have hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world traveling into a very densely populated area with a deadly virus which has no vaccine available (which hardy matters since the people would be unlikely to get vaccinated) and then all roughly at the same time traveling back across the globe. Add to this China's documented sanitary and even pollution problems. And a government with a history of hiding facts that might impact it financially or even just embarrass it. What could go wrong? Lets just pretend we didn't see this coming and act surprised when the pandemic hits.
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Let's cancel the olympics.
No, seriously.
The Olympics exists for two purposes - to allow athletes to compete against others around the world for sport and to promote the idea of international competition taking the form of athletic events instead of warfare. To promote sport and to promote peace.
In the case of the former, per-sport international athletics associations can more than supplant the role.
In the case of the latter, no one can take a look at the bloody history of the 20th and early 21st centuries since the modern olympics were founded and believe that the Olympics has been terribly successful at promoting peace.
Instead, what ends up is that every two years (now that they're staggered) there's a massive orgy of corruption and controversy; and from time to time we have to put up with someone like China or Nazi Germany hosting - or sometimes the U.S. will boycott Moscow or Moscow will boycott the U.S...
I think it's time to get rid of the Olympics.
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From Wikipedia, Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease the disease that results from this virus:
And outbreaks in April alone:
Now I'm not saying it's of absolutely no concern, but it's not as if there's some massive killer disease rampaging through China. The average adult has nothing to worry about, and even in children the effects are rather mild with appropriate medical care. This will burn itself out well before the Olympics, and in a year no one will remember it; use some common sense here. If you want to avoid the Olympics (or encourage others to do so) there are much better reasons than this.
virus crossover can occur when one species can be infected by viruses from more than one other species. Chickens can get avian type viruses. Humans can get human type viruses. Pigs, lucky them, can get some of both. And in china it's common to raise pigs and chickens together.
Perfect breeding ground for avian-to-human crossover viruses. And crossover evolution works a lot faster than regular evolution.
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I'm sorry, I think "news for nerds, stuff that matters" covers medicine, politics, and social sciences. Try to stop clicking your ball-point pen and snapping your suspenders in unbridled rage whenever someone suggests that something besides computers is nerdy, you're making the rest of us look like idiots.
Suppose that driving carries a 0.005% chance of death, and that a person drives an average of 2.5 times per day for 10 years. This person has a 45% chance of dying in a car accident during those years. Because this calculation is wrong by more than one order of magnitude, driving must actually carry less than 0.0005% of death. I rest my case.
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Try harder, read the whole sentence on CNN, and make sure that your source doesn't end up proving you wrong.
Enterovirus 71 (EV71)Enterovirus 71 (EV71)infection may be asymptomatic or may cause diarrhea, rashes, and hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD). However, EV71 also has the potential to cause severe neurological disease. To date, little is known about the molecular mechanisms of host response to EV71 infection. It is stated in [4] that: "EV71 infection led to increases in the level of mRNAs encoding chemokines, proteins involved in protein degradation, complement proteins, and proapoptotis proteins."
"Enterovirus 71 (EV71), one of the major causative agents for hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD), is sometimes associated with severe central nervous system diseases. In 1997, in Malaysia and Japan, and in 1998 in Taiwan, there were HFMD epidemics involving sudden deaths among young children, and EV71 was isolated from the HFMD patients, including the fatal cases. The nucleotide sequences of each EV71 isolate were determined and compared by phylogenetical analysis. EV71 strains from previously reported epidemics belonged to genotype A-1, while those from recent epidemics could be divided into two genotypes, A-2 and B
His/her maths is almost correct (i.e. wrong, but not enough to make his point invalid).
The calculation above doesn't take into account the fact that to die in a car crash on your second day (e.g. 5th drive), implies you already didn't die on the first day, so the actual chance of that is p*(1-p)^4, where p = 0.005% or whatever.
A quick spreadsheet exercise projecting this for 9125 drives (10 years @ 2.5 drives per day) shows the probability of death during the 10 years is 36.6%.
Another way to approach the problem that doesn't need either a spreadsheet or a geometric progression trick is to say that the probability of dying in this way during the 10 years is (1 - probability of not dying in that time). The probability of doing all that driving and surviving is (1 - p)^(9125), which = 63.4% when p = 0.005. (1 - 63.4%) = 36.6% giving the same answer as above.
However this doesn't change the fact that piojo's argument is 100% correct that the chance of death per drive must average lower than 0.0005%, as the 36% per 10 years rate is way too high.
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Oh, god, no... no god, please help me. I used "to" where I should've used "too". If I put my ear to the ground I can already hear the spelling/grammar cavalry charging.
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