Novel Coronavirus

[epoxyboy]

Woohoo, and I'm off to Sarawak (Borneo) next week, via Singapore and KL, both of which have large Chinese populations. I'll just hold my breath, and hover over the airplane seat LOL.

Pete

[George.]

The Washington Post reports that China is hiding the body count, having people cremated immediately without being including in the statistics:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...4b4_story.html

[wizbang 13]

Well, We would not want the world to go into a PANIC !!! now would we?

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I think that we have to give the medical profession some time and space.

[George.]

The medical profession is clamoring for reliable information in order to know how to prepare. They can tell that the official story is BS.

It would be a lot easier for people to calm down if they could trust what the Chinese government says. However, now their actions are starting to not match their words.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

George. Because nobody trusts the official media and everyone knows that the Internet is equally untrustworthy, people depend on rumours. No rumour in history ever under stated a threat, so nobody knows what the facts are. Because rumours are all that people have to go on, people tend to assume the worst.

[epoxyboy]

Regardless of how trustworthy the Chinese government is or not, given the number of people travelling, and the speed and distance that aircraft allow, by the time you even figure out you have a problem - the horse has well and truly bolted.
First death mid December (you don't know you even have a problem at this stage) to Wuhan locked down five weeks later, is probably pretty damn good in reality.

Pete

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Regardless of how trustworthy the Chinese government is or not, given the number of people travelling, and the speed and distance that aircraft allow, by the time you even figure out you have a problem - the horse has well and truly bolted.
First death mid December (you don't know you even have a problem at this stage) to Wuhan locked down five weeks later, is probably pretty damn good in reality.

Pete

I agree.

[ingo]

My daughter Franka is studying physics in Wuhan (in Mandarin, but that is another story). I am glad she left the city at the 8th of January to visit friends in yunnan province. But she wrote in her blog - https://tiantiankaixin.home.blog/ - that today chinese air force was involved in desinfection of the city. She is in close contact with her study friends in Wuhan.
I am afraid what will happen in the next days and weeks. I am thankful that i have close connections to Huawei (that is another story) and they offered any help that is needed to me.

[willmarsh3]

New Year festivities in China is a really huge thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Train_Home_(film)

To have to cancel this is really significant.

[skuthorp]

The shut down has been extended to other cities.

"

• China has extended travel restrictions to two more cities as part of an unprecedented quarantine to try and control a coronavirus that has killed at least 17 people.
• The city of Wuhan, where the virus originated, shut down transport links inside the city on Thursday, leaving 11 million people cut off and stockpiling food and fuel.
• Now the city of Huanggang has joined the quarantine, and the city of Ezhou is closing its train stations. This means a total of 19 million people are now cut off from the rest of the world.
• The World Health Organisation said cutting off a city as large as Wuhan is “unprecedented in public health history,” and isn’t sure if the strategy will work.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/c...cut-off-2020-1

[Hugh Conway]

Regardless of how trustworthy the Chinese government is or not, given the number of people travelling, and the speed and distance that aircraft allow, by the time you even figure out you have a problem - the horse has well and truly bolted.
First death mid December (you don't know you even have a problem at this stage) to Wuhan locked down five weeks later, is probably pretty damn good in reality.

Pete

they knew they had a problem in mid-December or late-December if reports the hospitals were refusing to treat workers from the market are correct. Authoritarian states aren’t good at dealing with bad news especially in political gathering times (January meetings)

[skuthorp]

Make that 8 cities closed up. Seems like the virus is out and running.

Very scary indeed.

[wizbang 13]

How cool would it be if all the flying aluminum jet tubes were stopped worldwide for a month to sort things out!

[bluedog225]

Everything is fine....

[TerryLL]

Reported mortality rate for this virus is 4%, but many early cases may have been misdiagnosed. The global mortality rate for the Spanish flu was 10%. The extraordinary steps the Chinese government has taken to isolate millions indicates there is significant fear this could turn really ugly. Washington state and Texas have cases.

[epoxyboy]

they knew they had a problem in mid-December or late-December if reports the hospitals were refusing to treat workers from the market are correct. Authoritarian states aren’t good at dealing with bad news especially in political gathering times (January meetings)

Link?
By the 30th December they were requesting hospitals to report pneumonia cases. So yes, they knew they had "a" problem. But even if they'd locked the place down then, it would have been too late.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soci...lness-unfolded
Can you imagine the outcry if NYC got locked down over a few more cases of pneumonia than usual! It's a brave person who's going to make that call, anywhere in the world.

Pete

[LeeG]

I think that we have to give the medical profession some time and space.

Worth repeating.

[Ted Hoppe]

Also worth repeating

The 1918 influenza pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920; colloquially known as Spanish flu) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus. It infected 500 million people around the world,^[2] including people on remote Pacific islands and in the Arctic. Probably 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million (three to five percent of Earth's population at the time) died, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify with certainty the pandemic's geographic origin.

The timing of the Chinese lunar new year is significant. Sick people will want to be home with thier families. Traveling and doing everything they can do to get home regardless of risk or spread of disease.

[Ted Hoppe]

According to the WHO, signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties.
In more severe cases, it can lead to pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death.
The incubation period of the coronavirus remains unknown. Some sources say it could be between 10 to 14 days.

[Canoeyawl]

A virus with a long incubation period, add in airborne transmission, and maybe some mutation along the way, and you've got the basis for most every zombie novel.

So we've got one out of three right now.

The method of transmission is thought to be by "airborne respiratory fluid". I.e. a microscopic droplets from a cough or sneeze...

I think that makes 2 out of 3

(Our son's business trip to Korea was abruptly cancelled yesterday)

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

From ”Train to Busan” to
”Train from Wuhan”...

[TerryLL]

It's the same scenario as the Spanish Flu, although that bug was an H1N1 strain. This new virus is highly contagious and transmits human to human without an intermediary host. The Spanish Flu infected a third of the world's population, about 500 million, and killed 10-20% of those infected, about 50 to 100 million. This coronovirus so far has a reported mortality rate of 4%, but it is cropping up in lots of places after only a few weeks.

A similar infection rate as the Spanish Flu, with a 4% mortality rate, would be.......100 million dead, if my math is right. Could get ugly.

[George.]

Now they are saying it spreads before symptoms develop, and each infected person infects 2.6 others on average.

The Chinese response certainly seems out of proportion unless things are more serious than they are letting on.

[StevenBauer]

My daughter Franka is studying physics in Wuhan (in Mandarin, but that is another story). I am glad she left the city at the 8th of January to visit friends in yunnan province. But she wrote in her blog - https://tiantiankaixin.home.blog/ - that today chinese air force was involved in desinfection of the city. She is in close contact with her study friends in Wuhan.
I am afraid what will happen in the next days and weeks. I am thankful that i have close connections to Huawei (that is another story) and they offered any help that is needed to me.

Wow, Ingo, you must be so worried. I’d be freaking out. This is the little girl you’ve posted about on your sailing trips all grown up. I hope all goes well for her, so glad it seems she’s in a safer place now.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

It is now being said that the virus may be spread by people with no symptoms. That explains a great deal.

[TerryLL]

This is the third coronavirus outbreak in recent years. MERS in 2012 had a mortality rate of 34%, SARS in 2002 had a mortality rate of 10%. Wuhan is already global, and the infection and mortality rates are mostly unknown.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsan...he-common-cold

[StevenBauer]

France is going to evacuate all French citizens from Wuhan this week. I hope they’ll be brought to a quarantine area once back in France.

[TomF]

As my public health colleagues have been trying to tell us, we are well overdue for a big and deadly pandemic.

[George.]

And now China has banned the sale of wildlife... temporarily.

They won't give up their "traditions" until they brew the Big One and release it upon the world.

If only rhino horn was found to be the vector...

[George.]

With the Chinese government you have to read between the lines:

Mayor Zhou Xianwang of Wuhan, the outbreak's epicenter, said Sunday evening that he expected an additional 1,000 infections to be soon announced since at least 2,000 patients are waiting to be tested.

Meaning: 50% of people with flu-like symptoms are expected to have it.

Think about how many people have flu-like symptoms in the middle of winter in a city of 11 million.

Add to that the number of cases popping up all over the world in a short time, mostly travelers from Wuhan. If we consider them to be a random sample of the population, there should be thousands more cases back at their place of origin.

No wonder some UK researchers are estimating infected people in Wuhan in the hundreds of thousands.

[skuthorp]

As my public health colleagues have been trying to tell us, we are well overdue for a big and deadly pandemic.

this……and have been for some time. It's not as if we haven't known about it. Countries with a comprehensive public health system in place may find coordinating a response easier than those without. A big homeless population or one the have little contact with health measures can make for an infection pool that is mostly unidentified and movements impossible to control. You can't arrest or imprison your way out of an epidemic.

[WX]

China, 2,000 infected and 56 dead so far.

[bluedog225]

It is surprising, and not at all surprising, that we don't have any cases reported from Africa. Quite a large Chinese element.

[Gerarddm]

Is China being too drastic in shutting down cities? Hell no.

You know it has the potential to be very big when it depresses the US stock market, as it has this past week. ' Follow the money ', and all that.

That patients have NOT been exhibiting fever is a really serious problem, as testing for fever was one was one of the ways to eventually corralling SARS and MERS. However, comparisons with the 1918 flu pandemic are overblown, at least at this stage - yes the world travels more, but we know a lot more about medicine and disease now.