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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 11 2020, @08:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe-it-is-not-such-a-bad-time-to-be-living-alone-in-someone's-basement dept.

[Editor's note: We had been gathering together COVID-19 stories for eventual release as a round-up story. I lack time at the moment to personally gather all those together with this most recent submission. We will run the next round-up in the next few days. But given the significance of this submission, I wished not to delay it from being immediately released to the community. --martyb]

World Health Organization declares the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic:

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on Wednesday as the new coronavirus, which was unknown to world health officials just three months ago, has rapidly spread to more than 121,000 people from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

“In the past two weeks the number of cases outside China has increased thirteenfold and the number of affected countries has tripled,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva. “In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries to climb even higher.”

Tedros said several countries have demonstrated the ability to suppress and control the outbreak, but he scolded other world leaders for failing to act quickly enough or drastically enough to contain the spread.

“We’re deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” he said, just before declaring the pandemic. “We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear.”

[Ed. addition follows.]

Also at Ars Technica and cnet.

For those who might not be aware of the distinction, Wikipedia helpfully provides these summaries:

An epidemic (what we have had up to now with COVID-19):

An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί epi "upon or above" and δῆμος demos "people") is the rapid spread of infectious disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time, usually two weeks or less.

[...]An epidemic may be restricted to one location; however, if it spreads to other countries or continents and affects a substantial number of people, it may be termed a pandemic.[1] The declaration of an epidemic usually requires a good understanding of a baseline rate of incidence; epidemics for certain diseases, such as influenza, are defined as reaching some defined increase in incidence above this baseline.[2] A few cases of a very rare disease may be classified as an epidemic, while many cases of a common disease (such as the common cold) would not.

By comparison, a pandemic (which has just now been announced for COVID-19):

A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" and δῆμος demos "people") is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic. Further, flu pandemics generally exclude recurrences of seasonal flu. Throughout history, there have been a number of pandemics, such as smallpox and tuberculosis. One of the most devastating pandemics was the Black Death, which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century. The current pandemics are HIV/AIDS and Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).[1][2] Other recent pandemics are the 1918 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu), and the 2009 flu pandemic (H1N1).


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @08:50PM (3 children)

    by Beryllium Sphere (r) (5062) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @08:50PM (#969812)

    This is what Mother Nature came up with, and far from her worst.

    We have enemies, and they are cooking up horrors in their biowarfare labs.

    What happens when we are hit with something much worse than SARS COV 2, with nothing more than our current ability to respond?

    This is a national security issue and people who want strong national defenses should be all over it.

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:11PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:11PM (#969832)

    This is a national security issue and people who want strong national defenses should be all over it.

    As long as our frightened leader can have his hand sanitizer, big macs and can continue fleecing the country, it's all good. No one cares about anything else -- well, some do, but they've all been fired and replaced by those who only care about that.

    Nothing to see here, folks. COVID-19 doesn't exist. There are no cases -- anywhere. In fact, China, South Korea, Italy and the dozens of other places that *claim* there's a problem are all just tools of the DNC trying to make our wonderful, stable genius (who, if he wasn't so busy making us great, could have a vaccine ready in three or four days, but since it doesn't exist, there's no point) look bad so they can import millions of big, strong, Muslim men to impregnate your wives and daughters.

    It's all a lie!

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Freeman on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:03PM

      by Freeman (732) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:03PM (#969870) Journal

      Our hand sanitizer kills 99.99% of germs!

      https://xkcd.com/1161/ [xkcd.com]

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 12 2020, @04:48PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 12 2020, @04:48PM (#970286) Journal
    Our current ability is already evolving. We're probably only a decade or two away from real time sampling for novel infectious disease in public spaces, for example.

    And you and a bunch of like-minded friends can help with the more paranoid scenarios by creating your own enclave with extremely restricted interaction with the outside world. For example, a self-contained bunker or ship might work.