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Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

234 points| oska | 6 years ago |apnews.com | reply

234 comments

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[+] gzer0|6 years ago|reply
Around 99% of the patients developed a high temperature, while more than half experienced fatigue and a dry cough. About a third also experienced muscle pain and difficulty breathing.

Research from the Chinese Center for Disease Control suggests that around 80% of coronavirus cases are mild. Around 15% of patients have gotten severe cases, and 5% have become critically ill.

Here's how symptoms progress among typical patients:

- Day 1: Patients run a fever. They may also experience fatigue, muscle pain, and a dry cough. A small minority of them may have had diarrhea or nausea one to two days before.

- Day 5: Patients may have difficulty breathing — especially if they are older or have a preexisting health condition.

- Day 7: This is how long it takes, on average, before patients are admitted to a hospital, according to the Wuhan University study.

- Day 8: At this point, patients with severe cases (15%, according to the Chinese CDC) develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), an illness that occurs when fluid builds up the lungs. ARDS is often fatal.

- Day 10: If patients have worsening symptoms, this is the time in the disease's progression when they're most likely to be admitted to the ICU. These patients probably have more abdominal pain and appetite loss than patients with milder cases. Only a small fraction die: The current fatality rate hovers around 2%.

- Day 17: On average, people who recover from the virus are discharged from the hospital after two-and-a-half weeks.

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[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2761044

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-covid19-day-by-d...

Not allowed to do this and not sure how long this will be up; the entire UpToDate reprint on the latest we know about COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

[3] https://www.scribd.com/document/448592904/COVID-19

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Stay vigilant, stay careful, but most importantly, do not spread false information.

[+] oska|6 years ago|reply
Some further context on the discrepancy between this figure and official figures:

> The Iranian government has denied trying to cover up the full extent of the coronavirus outbreak after reports suggested that the death toll from the disease was more than four times higher than official figures claim.

> On Monday, a lawmaker from Qom – a Shia holy city 120 km (75 miles) south of the capital Tehran which has seen a cluster of cases – accused Iran’s health minister of “lying” about the scale of the outbreak.

> According to the semi-official ILNA news agency, which is close to reformists, the lawmaker, Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani, said there had been “50 deaths” from the coronavirus in Qom alone.

> “The rest of the media have not published this figure, but we prefer not to censor what concerns the coronavirus because people’s lives are in danger,” ILNA editor Fatemeh Madiani told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

> But the country’s deputy health minister rejected the report. In a news conference broadcast live on state television, Iraj Harirchi said that 12 people had died from the coronavirus and 66 had been infected.

> “I categorically deny this information,” said Iraj Harirchi.

> “This is not the time for political confrontations. The coronavirus is a national problem,” he added.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/feb/24/coronavir...

[+] jarmitage|6 years ago|reply
Reminder that WHO publishes a daily situation report about COVID-19, which is calmer and more informative than most headlines/media stories: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...
[+] hurricanetc|6 years ago|reply
The WHO has come across as pretty incompetent in my opinion. We could have stopped this disease from spreading outside of China but the WHO consistently downplayed the severity and claimed travel bans were overkill and would be too damaging economically.

Now they’re saying it’s likely too late to contain the virus.

Well I wonder what will be more damaging to the economy? The proposed travel bans or the catastrophic effects of a worldwide pandemic? How many people will die in underdeveloped countries because the WHO didn’t act aggressively enough when they had a chance? If this hits Africa 10 million could die.

Thanks WHO

[+] tree3|6 years ago|reply
Reminder that China has not allowed WHO to observe the outbreak closely. WHO is simply repeating China's likely fake numbers.
[+] ISL|6 years ago|reply
What is the difference between Figures 2 and 3 (besides n)?
[+] koheripbal|6 years ago|reply
Any organization that claims travel restrictions don't slow virus spreads are beyond incompetent.

Moreover, their blind acceptance of official Chinese data is so naive, it is ludicrous.

[+] rasz|6 years ago|reply
>calmer and more informative

Full of self reported made up numbers.

[+] tiborsaas|6 years ago|reply
With the 150+ Italian cases (3 dead), it's probably safe to say that the virus is out of our control... which we probably never had.

https://apnews.com/32540d09ec101aac057660ef1b0aa970

[+] hurricanetc|6 years ago|reply
We could have stopped it completely with total travel bans but the WHO advised against it because it could be damaging to the world economy.

Why is the WHO concerned about the economy? Well I have no idea. And is this virus going pandemic going to be more or less economically painful than the travel bans might have been? My guess would be we will feel significantly more pain from a pandemic.

[+] guidedlight|6 years ago|reply
Try 215 cases and 4 deaths
[+] swarnie_|6 years ago|reply
Its disappointing, China seemed a lot more open and transparent this time around compared to SARS. Unfortunately i still don't trust the numbers they publish.
[+] Merrill|6 years ago|reply
It seems odd that there are no cases reported in Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...

Possibly these countries have no way of monitoring and reporting COVID-19? In which case we are likely to have new, large clusters added in the coming weeks.

[+] mantap|6 years ago|reply
The thing is, although COVID-19 has a long incubation period in some cases, in many cases it has a short one. And about 15-20% of people will end up in hospital. So it can only spread under the radar for a limited period of time before it becomes obvious. The symptoms are well known by this point, dry cough, fever, shortness of breath.
[+] thrower123|6 years ago|reply
I am somewhat baffled that there have been essentially no reports of this disease in India.
[+] tomalpha|6 years ago|reply
> “No one is qualified to discuss this sort of news at all,” Haririchi said

This almost made me laugh out loud, tragic though any deaths and disablement are. It does seem to get to the heart of the matter, and not just in Iran either.

[+] Angostura|6 years ago|reply
Sounds like a slightly mangled quote - I think he's saying that no-one outside of the ministry has access to the Coronavirus mortality figures, so the lawmaker is presumably pulling the figures out of his butt.
[+] _pmf_|6 years ago|reply
50 deaths mean nothing if you don't have the number of deaths due to more classic strains to compare it against.
[+] yyyk|6 years ago|reply
Iranian 'supreme leader' playbook:

1) Find out about disease outbreak before elections.

2) Tell your people that the reports are a Western conspiracy to lower turnout. (e.g. [0])

3) Get utterly shocked when people die. How could you have known!?

[0] https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1231530523740266496

[+] dogma1138|6 years ago|reply
The turnouts were very low this time because they allowed only conservative candidates to run, they have enough ways to rig their elections they'll do #2 just for fun tho.
[+] hu3|6 years ago|reply
> Health Ministry spokesman Iraj Harirchi rejected the Qom lawmaker’s claims, insisting the death toll from the virus remains at 12.

Who to trust?

[+] jeltz|6 years ago|reply
Neither of them. Both have plenty of motive to lie.
[+] sudoaza|6 years ago|reply
USA unilateral sanctions of Iran are not only ilegal but inhumane and criminal.
[+] dntbnmpls|6 years ago|reply
Many view sanctions as war crimes because sanctions, though they superficially target officials/companies/etc, are meant to undermine a nation's economy and hurt the civilian population to pressure foreign governments. Essentially the goal is to starve the men, women and children in order to punish foreign governments. If it was iran or china or russia doing it, we would be calling it a war crime or a crime against humanity. But since we are doing it, we just call it "economic warfare".
[+] allovernow|6 years ago|reply
Is it time to start treating this like a big deal yet? Their first case was three weeks ago and 50 deaf already? This virus is unprecedented and it is only responsible for individuals with means to start preparing. No reason to wait for the government to tell you to do so. Plus each person that does it early is one less for the potential store rush.
[+] akie|6 years ago|reply
> This virus is unprecedented

I think you need to read up on your history.

[+] afthonos|6 years ago|reply
I don’t know in what way it isn’t treated as a big deal. There are daily updates from every country; the news covers the epidemic in detail; China quarantined tens of millions of people; major trade shows are being cancelled. Unless you literally mean bubonic-plague levels of panic, I’m not sure what else remains to be done in places where the disease has not yet fully spread.
[+] thdrdt|6 years ago|reply
It is bad, but your are still more likely be killed by cancer or a car accident.

Ebola is a virus that could be unprecedented. That's a serious killer and I am glad it is not traveling as fast as Corona.

[+] LatteLazy|6 years ago|reply

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[+] Zenst|6 years ago|reply
Politics operates at a level beyond the common senses of public.

Sure that would be great but if USA offers aid, it could be viewed as an insult as if they are unable to handle things themselves and with that - pride comes into play (often does with country politics). If Iran asks for help, they would probably have the USA low down on that asking list and again, pride also comes into play.

But let's put all that aside and ask the question: what could the USA do that Iran could not do currently in this situation?

[+] ramblerman|6 years ago|reply
That seems mildly optimistic. Fear of corona (an invisible enemy) seems to increase xenophobia overall.

Hell in the Ukraine they were throwing rocks at busses repatriating their own countrymen who had caught corona virus

[+] JPKab|6 years ago|reply

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[+] heartbeats|6 years ago|reply
No, it would be a terrible one. Geopolitical power is a zero-sum game. From the perspective of the US/Israel/Saudi Arabia: the more dead Iranians, the better.
[+] rapsey|6 years ago|reply

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[+] squiggleblaz|6 years ago|reply
There's a cluster in Singapore that spread at a church.

But what does it mean? In Berlin or Paris it could suddenly spread on the trains, or at a spectator sport event. Being secular isn't going to stop you from breathing in air that other people are breathing out.

Everyone's susceptible to this.

[+] coconut_crab|6 years ago|reply
I believ the sanction put on Iran by the Trump administration is of the main factors for very high mortality rate of Covid-19. This has caused suffering not just for the Iranian people but the whole region as now Iran lacks the equipments and medicines to put the epidemic under control. But I doubt the current President cares about that...

https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/10/29/maximum-pressure/us-ec...

[+] microcolonel|6 years ago|reply
I've seen speculation that the virus in Iran has mutated (or the environment is somehow different), and is producing extremely aggressive complications, killing patients within hours of their hospitalization.

At this time of year, there will be even more mass face-kissing and hand-shaking going on than usual. There are entire communities of travelling super-spreaders in Iran right now, this is extremely serious.

[+] RandomInteger4|6 years ago|reply
Fucking hell, these politicians are as much a virus as the virus itself. 100% that number was pulled straight from their hindquarters.
[+] aaron695|6 years ago|reply
This is a excellent case of the total failure of the media.

Iran had obviously lost total control two days ago.

Yet the media is still going on about South Korean and Italy, it seems clueless.

We also need the immediate relaxation of sanctions around this on Iran. I 'think' WHO might be breaking some sanctions by currently helping Iran.