Talk:COVID-19

See also

• Symptoms
• Treatments given
• Patients' characteristics (Jan. 24th)
• Cities and areas under quarantines

Yug (talk) 07:22, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

• The "treatments given" template was removed by another editor citing WP:MEDRS. This is the first time the symptoms template has gone up here, but it is based upon the same data, so it would be worth checking whether the same issue applies. Dekimasuよ! 08:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Dekimasu: your deletionism approach goes too far and prevent us from reasonable building up. For both template, we can take precautions in citing the source via some "according to this study" or alike. The source is of quality, state of the art actually (as we already discussed). The data is emerging and must be declared as such, simply. *Removing* such well sourced info is not the solution. While "/Treatments given" is ambiguous medically (it's the treatment chosen in these 99 cases by the local medical staff, mainly to prevent or cure complications), it's not the cases for /Symptoms, which are rigorously observed, documented, and published is this reliable academic source. Yug (talk) 14:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I did not remove either one of the templates. In fact, I believe I improved the "treatments given" one a bit. Dekimasuよ! 15:31, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

(@Dekimasu: i believe i misread your message and shot an undeserved arrow at you, my apologize. I will enquire on this mishap when back on desktop PC) Yug (talk) 19:43, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

New case fatality and infection fatality estimates

MRC outbreak research centre has come out with new estimates for both case fatality rate and infection fatality ratio: https://twitter.com/MRC_Outbreak/status/1226765905306234881, https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/news--wuhan-coronavirus/ (COI declaration: spouse is co-author of https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-2019-nCoV-severity-10-02-2020.pdf)

• Estimated infection fatality ratio: 1%

• Estimated case fatality ratio for travellers outside mainland China (mix severe & milder cases): 1%-5%

• Estimated case fatality ratio for detected cases in Hubei (severe cases): 18%

The difference in these numbers is infection fatality ratio refers to overall mortality rate for *all* cases, including people who have very mild cases and do not go to hospital. This is by definition estimated .

Case fatality rate refers to people who have a confirmed case of the disease. This is necessarily higher because their condition is more severe; and it varies quite a lot, hence the difference between confirmed cases outside mainland China, which have been caught by screening people for mild illness, and in Hubei province where the outbreak is the most severe. Mvolz (talk) 08:13, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

We have to be cautious here. The Imperial College paper is not WP:MEDRS compliant. Furthermore, is it usual practice to quote separate fatality rates for asymptomatic and symptomatic infections? I think quoting a rate of 18% is misleading. The Guardian quotes a more cautious 2%.[1] This is probably more accurate. Graham Beards (talk) 12:34, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Agreed we should use caution, especially about including that 18% figure.

It is *not* usual to talk about asymptomatic versus asymptomatic rates, so that part of the article should be fixed/made more clear, if you are misinterpreting it like that! The article it isn't strictly wrong - it says "including asymptomatic" not "only asymptomatic" but I agree it's easy to misinterpret that, we should just all "all infected, including undiagnosed" or something similar.

It *is* usual to talk about the infection fatality rate (IFR) versus the confirmed case fatality rate (cCFR). IFR is an estimated rate for *everyone* infected, which includes asymptomatic and also subclinical cases, which may or may not be diagnosed, as well as those cases which are confirmed and diagnosed.

From an epidemiological standpoint, infection fatality rate (IFR) is much more useful than confirmed case fatality rates (cCFR), because of course those vary a lot depending on whether or not people are being screened, how the health system is faring, etc. So I think the IFR is much more useful/important to include than the cCFR, which can cause unnecessary panic. The 18% is of course terrible on a human scale, but people will see those numbers and confuse it with the IFR, i.e. they'll think that if they contract the virus they'll individually have an 18% chance of death which just isn't true. There's also a good thread explaining the difference here if that explanation didn't help: https://twitter.com/SRileyIDD/status/1220464674476625921 Mvolz (talk)

I think the Imperial study is close to MEDRS compliant in the circumstances of everything moving very quickly. It's better than a bunch of sources currently used. When quoting its conclusions, I think we should take their topline estimate, as per my initial edit, rather than the current text that tries to go into more detail. Bondegezou (talk) 17:28, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Precautions explainers

• Devlin, Hannah; Wishart, Ellen (2020-02-03), How to protect yourself from coronavirus, The Guardian
• Coronavirus: Everything you need to know in a visual explainer, South China Morning Post, 2020-02-07
• Coronavirus: Symptoms, Treatments and Science, The New York Times
• Coronavirus: All you need to know about symptoms and risks, Aljazeera, 2020-01-xx {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Yug (talk) 14:18, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Treatment research section title - now Management

Somewhere in this series of edits, the section Treatment research was shifted in position and renamed to Treatment. The reason for the word research in the section title is in the spirit of WP:MEDRS, to clarify that presently there are no "treatments", there is only research into treatments, which after appropriate peer review and later meta-review of multiple peer-reviewed literature, will achieve the status of "knowledge" about treatments. I'm not an expert in the medical meaning of "treatment", so either way would be OK by me.

In the present version, the title was changed again, to Management. If people disagree about the best section title, please sort this out on this talk page and come to a consensus - I tend to think that it's good to show that research is being done on the treatments, but "Management" is also reasonable. In any case, if there are any new changes to the section title, please update the link in Template:2019-nCoV. Lots of readers will be seeking information on "how can this be cured? how can it be prevented?" Providing clear answers ("not yet; here's the research being done") is the best way to minimise the growth of conspiracy theories. Boud (talk) 18:04, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I think that "Treatment research" does a better job at making the scope of the section clear, which will help with the "management" of the article. It's also the most robust section we have at the moment. Overall, while I understand that most of the sections we have now are suggested by WP:MEDMOS, the reason why most of them are extremely short is not that no one has bothered to add more information, but rather that more information does not yet exist. For that reason I would further suggest that we reduce the number of sections in the article for the time being. For example, I don't think we really need "Cause: The cause is the virus provisionally named 2019 novel coronavirus." Sure, that hasn't been mentioned after the lede so technically it can (or should) go somewhere in the body of the article. But it's literally six lines down from the last time that was said, and we don't expand upon what was in the lede, so what's the purpose of including it? It's just pushing more essential information down the page right now. Dekimasuよ! 03:08, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Psychological

Could someone double-check the psychological section please. Whispyhistory (talk) 18:47, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Talk pages

It is confusing to have to go to Talk:2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak and Talk:2019 novel coronavirus to find the renaming discussions. Is there not a better way to keep all the discussion and archives on one talk page? Carcharoth (talk) 17:33, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I see. The discussions are still ongoing... Carcharoth (talk) 17:35, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Alternative article titles for COVID-19?

WHO just announced the name for the disease as "COVID-19" and it has become the title of this article, but is there any better alternatives? It seems to me that this title is not the WP:COMMONNAME. Maybe we can use "Coronavirus disease 2019" instead? Not starting an official move request discussion for now until there's some input from you all. –Wefk423 (talk) 18:01, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Moved back to prior name. Move requires discussion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:39, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I cannot foresee any reader looking-up "COVID-19" in years to come – or even now come to think of it. We need to stick with a common name "2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease" is the best we have thus far although it is far from perfect. We can set-up a trail of redirects to bring the reader here if deemed necessary. (Imagine being told you have "COVID-19" - it sounds like a sci fi DVD).Graham Beards (talk) 20:49, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes we should use the long form "coronavirus disease 2019" if anything, but happy were it is now as well. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:01, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree but perhaps we should leave it as it is for the time being.Graham Beards (talk) 21:05, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree with the long form. --Eric1212 (talk) 22:05, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I also agree that the long form is better. Even among medical professionals who aren’t virology researchers I don’t see this bad joke of a short name being used outside of a particularly pedantic chief resident trying to catch someone unprepared (I believe this gets called “pimping” these days). As I’ve said elsewhere, we aren’t WHO’s press desk. We don’t have to do exactly as they say. 199.66.69.88 (talk) 23:38, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

We should request move protection if the move war continues - this move shifted the title to COVID-19 again. The requested move over at Talk:2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak#Requested move 11 February 2020 is was close to WP:SNOW in favour of COVID-19 (still a 2/3 !vote supermajority). In principle, a decision for this article could be made independently, but it seems reasonable to me to match the decision over there. Except that the latest comment over there refers back here, leading to circular reasoning... Boud (talk) 23:40, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

The title of the article should reflect the official name, which is now COVID-19. However, it would have been good to give it 24 hours to catch on a little before changing. Searches for COVID are rising fast: Google Trends (7-day). The WHO, CDC and NHS still haven't updated their pages with the new name yet. - Wikmoz (talk) 01:24, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes so we wait. And we need a move request.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:07, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

If we are to move it to anything I would suggest Coronavirus disease 2019 Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:21, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

This is an interesting point. I do think that COVID-19 is going to be the runaway WP:COMMONNAME winner. Regarding the official name though, it's interesting… WHO Situation Report 22 reads: WHO has named the disease COVID-19, short for "coronavirus disease 2019." This was reiterated in the Director-General's remarks. Weirdly, it almost seems like the abbreviated form IS the preferred name and "coronavirus disease 2019" is just the explanation of how they got there. It goes against historical precedent. I guess we'll know soon enough when WHO and CDC roll it out on their websites, presumably later today. - Wikmoz (talk) 08:19, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Here's the ICD-11 Maintenance Platform entry for COVID-19 - Wikmoz (talk) 08:27, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose - we should keep the wikipedia page at COVID-19 until further notice

The more and more I edit these Wikipedia pages, the more and more that I have realised how politically motivated most editors are despite the fact that this is an ongoing medical emergency. The main article on the outbreak is unreadable because it's written so simply... readers who don't speak fluent English aren't coming here and we can compute technical terms. The facts are as follows:

SARS-CoV-2 is the official name of the virus and hence should be the title of the virus's wikipedia article. The article is mostly technical anyway so WP:COMMONNAME is stupid.

COVID-19 is the official name of the disease and this article is also mostly technical so hence should be the name of the disease

2019-20 COVID-19 epidemic should be the name of the article, which is similar to the conventions established previously through articles such as 2009 flu pandemic, which would be called Swine flu if it were COMMONNAME. Furthermore, using people or using locations to refer to epidemics is disliked by the political and medical community, except to refer to the disease WITHIN a locality or person, such as referring to the "Princess Cruise Outbreak" about the COVID-19 epidemic within the confines of the cruise (currently docked in or near Japan). I notice that it's mostly the same people who constantly revamp the pages to suit their political agendas.

SomethingNastyHere (talk) 08:41, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

I still don't get the system that the World Health Organization is adopting (if any political reasons are excluded of course, since as we all know the current chairperson of WHO is quite controversial). Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) & Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) end with "syndrome". Now, it seems that all diseases will end up with the layman word "disease" in their names after the pathogenic type (like Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever --> Ebola Virus Disease ). I personally think it'd be more consistent to call this disease "Wuhan Respiratory Syndrome" (WHRS) or "2019 Coronavirus Respiratory Syndrome" (CVRS-19). P.S. I know that "avoidance of stigmatization" is the reason of excluding any geographic locations or groups of people in the name. Can anyone tell the reason of using "disease" instead of "syndrome" in the nomenclature? PanVoyager (talk) Wednesday, 12 February 2020 10:08 (UTC)

Doc James obsession with oversimplifying these articles to the point there are unreadable

User:Doc James seems to have an obsession with over-simplifying articles to the point that the majority of English speaks find these articles unreadable and stupid. I can't understand what the reason is beyond some political agenda sweeping the Wikipedia establishment currently. I don't regularly write on Wikipedia but I do read it occasionally, and I've seen the gradual simplification of Wikipeida articles especially on US political pages, hence why I think that the same Wikipedia users are trying to simplify these articles as well. The facts of the matter are that anyone who doesn't speak fluent English isn't going to seek medical advice or information in English, they will seek information in their own language. Please stop over-simplifying these articles to the point that they are becoming useless for the majority of the population.

Furthermore, the same principle should be applied with deciding what the names of these articles should be. Unless you're a five year old, anyone should be able to parse "2019-20 COVID-19 epidemic" even if it's clumsy because we've all been exposed to technical terms within our own fields. COMMONNAMES vary between culture and people (and I've never heard the term "Wuhan coronavirus" being used).

I have certainly never heard "2019-nCov acute respiratory disease" being used to refer to this. It's usually just called "flu" or "pneumonia" if it were common parlance. The actual medical condition seems to be just pneumonia and the complications that follow on from it. SomethingNastyHere (talk) 09:17, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

I see your point. Do you think using the word "disease" from WHO is also oversimplification? (You may refer to my opinion above?) PanVoyager (talk) Wednesday, 12 February 2020 10:09 (UTC)

Requested move 12 February 2020

2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease → COVID-19 – The current page isn't the common name nor the official name 935690edits (talk) 10:33, 12 February 2020 (UTC) I am creating a new section so that this can be discussed more clearly. 935690edits (talk) 10:33, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

• Strong Support - The current page isn't the common name nor the official name. Wikipedia needs to choose either the official name or a truly common name, the latter of which I am fully opposed to. 935690edits (talk) 10:33, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

*Please see WP:RM#Nom. Dekimasuよ! 11:12, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose - the name seems to change every five minutes. It's probably going to end up being called SARS (which will require a merger). Let's leave it as it is for the time being. I cannot understand the mad rush over this. (And the requesting editor should not support twice. The entry above should be amended accordingly).Graham Beards (talk) 11:24, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Now the disease name has been designated by WHO and the virus name by ICTV it is unlikely to change Legendiii (talk) 12:59, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose - It should be WP:CONSISTENT with other disease articles like Severe acute respiratory syndrome or Middle East respiratory syndrome. COVID-19 (COronaVIrus Disease 2019) is more like a code name, even if we really need to change the title, it should be Coronavirus disease 2019, as discussed above. This would follow WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONSISTENT. It would be better if we discuss and give out more ideas first before initiating an official move request. –Wefk423 (talk) 11:43, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
• Move to Coronavirus Disease 2019 per Wefk423 as it need to be consistent with other articles such as SARS and MERS which use long-form name, not that acronym. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.76.229.147 (talk) 11:55, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment - I am from Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and I remember that back in 2003 when the term "SARS" first came out, some radio host complained that the "name of the disease" sounds similar to the "name of the city". The acronym SARS implies that the disease originated from HKSAR. The other "SAR" is Macau by the way. My point is, there is always problem with acronym. You never know what "COVID" stands for. Computer Virus Dog? Malairen (talk) 12:24, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
    • This is indeed a very interesting point and one that everyone was super keen not to repeat. --Almaty (talk) 12:59, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose wait till it is used in secondary sources, provide evidence that it has become the common name and then reconsider. Please read WP:Official name, and COVID-19 is not even official yet! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:57, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
• Strong support News Corporation is on the bandwagon, super early! Other reasons in the related move discussions. Impressive work all contributors :) --Almaty (talk) 12:55, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

• Move to Coronavirus Disease 2019, per past practice, but mentioning COVID-19 as the acronym on the first line and using that for the rest of the article. Things have changed in the last few hours. COVID-19 is now the official name,[2] and also being used by reliable secondary sources. See [3], [4]. -- The Anome (talk) 12:57, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

• Support WHO states "We now have a name for the disease and it's Covid-19", and indicated that etymologically it is derived from COronaVIrus Disease 2019 (but the name remains Covid-19 not coronovirus disease 2019). The BBC and other outlets have updated style guidance to use Covid-19 (usually alongside the term 'coronavirus' which actually refers to the subfamily of viruses Orthocoronavirinae and should not be used as the common name). I have not seen coronovirus disease 2019 or 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease anywhere. Legendiii (talk) 12:59, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

• Weak support or Move to Coronavirus disease 2019, per Wefk423. --hueman1 (talk) 13:07, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment It is very interesting to discuss this comment as this move request will only involve English Wikipedia which will know as Coronavirus Disease 2019 in long-form name if moved, not Wikipedia's in other languages as other languages will keep short-form name (COVID-19) in that article title along with names in local languages in description to avoid mistranslation and confusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.76.229.147 (talk) 13:20, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

• Support - I am one of the editors that has contributed somewhat to this article. I am making one generic comment to cover all three article pages, with a general "support" to all the moves except in terms of the technicalities of the name... I consider the name of the virus to be "SARS-CoV-2" so precedence would suggest that the name of the virus article should be "Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2". The WP:COMMONNAME appears to be "coronavirus" and "novel/new coronavirus" which make for unencyclopedic article titles and should remain nothing more than placeholder names... The disease is called "COVID-9" so similarly the article should be "Coronavirus disease 2019". The usage of the word "novel" should be discouraged as per comments above... The outbreak article should be "2019-20 coronavirus outbreak" (similar to the Zika virus outbreak) or as suggest in other comments "2019-20 COVID-9 outbreak" (similar to the 2009 flu pandemic as suggested elsewhere). I disagree that the name would confuse people because the vast majority of people are either going to be confused with "coronavirus" (in which case the Simple English Wikipedia would help) or they would be able to deduce what it means. There are numerous WP:COMMONNAME that can be used so I think that all of them should redirect to a more formal name... Putting together all these arguments, which aren't related to the arguments about whether a virus/disease/outbreak ought to be named after cities, I am against the usage of the word "novel" in article titles and supportive of using official names across the virus, disease and outbreak articles. I also disagree that there is an established WP:COMMONNAME out there and the Wikipedia article may in fact be "forcing" the "Wuhan coronavirus outbreak" onto society. Tsukide (talk) 13:31, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

• Support It's a fast-moving situation, but WHO are using Covid-19 and reliable sources are following, so so should we. Bondegezou (talk) 13:40, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Changing source

This is a statement from World Health Organization:

• "and in January 2020 the WHO suggested that the case fatality rate was approximately 3%."

This statement is from Japanese source (NHK), but I found the same statement in NYpost source:

NYPost

As this is English Wikipedia, can someone replace Japanese language sources with English language equivalent or complement it aside Japanese source? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.76.229.147 (talk) 11:49, 12 February 2020 (UTC)