You know how we look back at the state of medical knowledge from a couple hundred years ago, and it all seems so primitive? Contagion was explained by miasma rather than germs, leeches and trepans were best practices, and even basic surgical sanitation was an uphill battle. From our point of view, they didn't even understand the basics! Easily cured diseases were just left to run their course!

Events like this are a reminder that there is still so much that is beyond the abilities of current medicine. As a prominent doctor, he almost certainly got the best care that is currently available, and yet he still died from a simple virus. Our ability to treat viruses today is where our ability to treat bacterial infections was 100 years ago. We knew that germs existed, but penicillin was still a decade away. The standard of care was to keep the patient well hydrated and hope that they don't die.

Similarly, we know today that viruses exist, but in most cases the best care we can offer is to keep the patient hydrated and hope that they don't die. With sufficient luck, in a hundred years we'll have progressed to the point that people look at us and marvel: "They didn't even know the basics! When people contracted a virus, there was nothing they could do but let the disease run its course!"

First, condolences to Dr. Li’s family. As we speak of epidemiology and statistics, let’s not forget that every single “case” is an individual with family and friends, and behind each individual are doctors, nurses, and caretakers who risk their own health to help another.

Second, as noted by nkurz the contrast between bacterial and viral treatments is striking. Whereas we expect bacterial infections to be treatable and are alarmed when they aren’t (MRSA), we expect viral infections to simply run their course except for the few instances where they’re treatable (HIV, influenza) or even (gasp!) curable (HCV). We explain away the sad state of antivirals by pointing to the inherent biochemical challenges of fighting viruses [1] but maybe what we really need is a breakthrough — perhaps a miraculous fortuitous “penicillin” moment — so 100 years from now antivirals will also be a matter of course.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiviral_drug#Approaches_by_l...

I'm concerned about this virus. Most people I talk to (in the UK) think it's being over-hyped but I can't help but think it's being under-played.

The virus seems, in my completely inexpert assessment, to occupy a sort of sweet spot in a terms of virulence, mortality and incubation period, for wreaking maximum damage.

Based on its current trajectory I can't see any reason to believe the whole of the world won't be affected on the same scale as Wuhan at some point this year.

Am I right to be concerned, and if so what should I be doing about it?

I think what triggers an enormous amount of panic are the stories from Chinese social media - contradicting official Chinese reports. I cannot tell what's true and what's hyperbole... The government numbers don't seem so bad - but then some of the quarantine measures seem oddly harsh if the numbers were true.

Stories of Tencent "accidentally" leaking numbers online that are 10x what the government is reporting - stories of crematoriums being inundated with corpses - pictures of death certificates omitting the cause - the banning of funerals - videos of women being pulled off the street to be forcibly transported to a quarantine center (that one was particularly concerning) - etc...

The numbers from China are suspect of course - it's statistically hard to imagine such a global contagion last week with the small number of confirmed cases the Chinese gov't was publishing.

I don't want to overreact... but I also don't want to underreact.

> Chinese social media has been awash with anger over the death of the whistle-blower

How about going out to protest? Oh wait, you can't...bravo for your virtue signalling.

The fact that the hospital lied about Dr. Li Wenliang dying goes to show you how absolutely dystopian China is. How afraid (or corrupt) do you have to be to continue to claim someone who died was alive?

The coronavirus is devastating for the Chinese Communist Party.

Basically, the deal with the populace was people gave up their freedom in exchange for competent government and economic growth. In the last several decades, this was seen as a good deal, by a lot of people both inside and outside China. China had massive economic growth and modernization.

Now, however, the handling of coronavirus was a huge blow to the perception of competency of the government, and is likely to have big economic implications as well, thereby threatening the foundations of this deal.

567 deaths, 1,341 recovered, 28,403 cases.

It's remarkable that humanity can globally track such things.

He was only a few years older than me.

How does the coronavirus kill? I tried searching, but the first five results were all paywalled. I'm curious about what specifically makes the coronavirus deadly compared to the flu.

Interestingly and rarely, instead of covering up or Force deleting the posts, this time the Central government treat this seriously with several investigation announced and official mourning. This news does go viral among Chinese internet and triggered huge criticism of the government so it might be impractical to censor it. All in all, it could be a good thing to CCP since they showed iron hand in the right way this time

Why does this media make such a big deal about a virus with such a low mortality rate?