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China Battles Coronavirus Outbreak: All the Latest Updates:
The virus thought to have originated in a Wuhan food market continues to spread as China steps up containment efforts.
[...] China is extending the Lunar New Year holiday for three days and enforcing strict containment measures in an attempt to curb the spread of a new coronavirus that has killed 80 people and infected at more than 2,700, most of them in the central province of Hubei where the virus first emerged.
The holiday season was due to end on Friday but will now be extended until February 2.
More than 56 million people in almost 20 cities, including the Hubei capital of Wuhan, have been affected by travel restrictions, introduced amid fears the transmission rate will balloon as hundreds of millions of Chinese travel during the Lunar New Year celebrations.
[...] Health authorities around the world are taking action to prevent a pandemic as more countries report cases. Confirmed cases have so far been announced in several Asiancountries, Europe and North America.
[...] The World Health Organization (WHO) has acknowledged the respiratory illness, which has been traced to the city of Wuhan, is an emergency in China but the organisation said on Thursday it was too early to declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
Previously:
- Coronavirus: Millions Quarantined in Wuhan City
- China Reports 3rd Death, Nearly 140 New Cases of Coronavirus
- China Confirms Human-To-Human Transmission of New Coronavirus; CDC Confirms First US Case
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @10:16AM (6 children)
To solve our problems for us..
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @12:41PM (5 children)
You mean this virus only targets Trump voters?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:57PM (1 child)
Virus sprouts in communist third world hell whole. Several current cases in the US had been infected while traveling, now doing well and recovering. >50 dead in communist China. Very effective plan.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Monday January 27 2020, @05:22PM
Have a source on this? Have been wondering about how they were doing
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @03:01PM (2 children)
Actually the opposite. Trump voters tend to be in more rural areas, and stay away from highly populated "liberal" cities. They also don't travel globally very much.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @04:51PM (1 child)
I do travel globally alot. Of the other foreigners I bump into I think there's a decent dividing line between two groups. The first are your younger silver spooner kids and/or backpackers (often the exact same group, contrary to stereotypes). They tend to be ultra-liberal. But most of everybody else tends to lean conservative at a pretty high rate. One exception are your weird older sexpats in places like Thailand. The types that probably could not get laid wherever they came from. They also tend to be ultra-liberal.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday January 27 2020, @11:09PM
No you don't.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by aiwarrior on Monday January 27 2020, @10:17AM (39 children)
I trust health authorities but I would like some explanation on why is this such a severe problem. In 56 million people there are 2700 infected and 80 people dead. This is an infection rate of 0,0048214% and a death rate of 0,0001429%. These seem so low odds that i think there way more things that can kill.
Can anyone explain me why this is so serious? The last time i remember something similar was H1N1 which my country spent fortunes on vaccines that ended up being expired and for nothing. The danger of people not believing health authorities is much bigger than 0,0001429% death rates, and leads to idiots like anti vaxers, so explaining to people why this is important would be much better than hand waiving.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Monday January 27 2020, @10:25AM (3 children)
A cynic might suggest that the serious problem that the Chinese authorities are dealing with is Hong Kong.
https://variety.com/2020/biz/asia/hong-kong-declares-emergency-coronavirus-response-1203479971/ [variety.com]
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Monday January 27 2020, @10:34AM (2 children)
Noo. I am going to Hong Kong and Macau in March :(
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday January 27 2020, @01:07PM (1 child)
Your trip is cancelled.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 27 2020, @11:12PM
not necessarily... but I would not pay in advance for the return leg.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Monday January 27 2020, @10:42AM (3 children)
up to 100,000 infected [theguardian.com] with confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission.
No one knows how severe it is, yet.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday January 27 2020, @04:49PM (2 children)
Actually, the claim of an upper limit is a bit forced. It's not that easy to detect, and there are indications that one is contagious before symptoms appear.
OTOH, it may well be a high estimate, because so far it doesn't appear to be very contagious. Apparently close contact is required to transmit the disease.
At this point I think ALL estimates of how dangerous it is should be doubted. It may be trivial. It may be horrendous. But apparently most people live through it without treatment and without permanent damage, so it's not critical...except, or course, on an individual level. Sort of like traffic accidents, only with a lot fewer people killed.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 27 2020, @06:27PM (1 child)
That's kind of the point, though, the uncertainty IS the risk.
We know it's dangerous, but not how dangerous.
We know it's contagious, but not how contagious.
And we know it's a pandemic* already, but not how serious of one.
With that many unknowns, extreme caution is advised.
*pandemic just means it has spread to multiple continents.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:38PM
More recent information makes things look more serious:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2020/01/even-more-draconian-quarantines-are-needed-to-stop-coronavirus-2019-ncov.html [nextbigfuture.com]
It's not a primary source, but it seems like a reasonable one.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @11:12AM
you should be comparing number of infected people versus number of exposed people, not total number of people.
if there are 3000 infected people out of 4000 exposed people, that is a very big deal.
but the numbers are off anyway, see reply quoting the guardian above.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday January 27 2020, @11:14AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @12:47PM
Exactly. The R0 estimates have gone from 3.5 to 2.5 to 3.3 to 5.47 and mortality is around 5% (76 dead from 1423 confirmed Hubei cases). An R0 of ~5.5, asymptomatic patients being infectious and people collapsing in the street isn't enough to convince some people.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 27 2020, @11:39AM (13 children)
The jury seems to still be out.
I hope they're overreacting. But, it could be they are under reacting. It has a toe-hold right now. It could sweep the globe in the next ten days, and decimate the human population, or worse. More likely, it's going to kill a few hundred to a few thousand more, then recede into mankind's nightmares.
How many scares have we had in the past decade? Nothing to get worked up about at this point, really. Sit back, relax, and let the medical professionals deal with it. It sucks when politicians and click-bait news agencies get involved in this stuff.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @12:19PM (11 children)
Side note: the original meaning of "decimate" was "one in 10 is killed" (original i.e. 2000 years ago). It has over the years become "9 in 10 are killed, or more".
As far as I can tell if every human on Earth is infected it's possible to reach a death-rate of around 1 in 100, which is technically less bad than "decimate" in any of the two meanings. It would be a horrible situation and I really hope it doesn't come to this. 1 in 1000 would still mean 70 million people (about the population of the UK). It's a number I can write and I can speak, but I doubt I understand the actual consequences. What is scary is the infection rate, and the fact that it's contagious before symptoms become apparent. Even with 1 in 10000 dead, it's a big number if everybody on Earth is infected.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Muad'Dave on Monday January 27 2020, @12:25PM (7 children)
The 1918 "Spanish" Flu Epidemic [history.com] killed up to 50 million people worldwide. That's about 1 in 3.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday January 27 2020, @02:01PM (6 children)
What's always worth noting about the spanish flu is that it was dead in the middle of WW1 where it broke out, and there were basically no doctors around in the areas most badly hit. It was called the spanish flu because spain wasn't involved in the war and actually tracked, treated, and reported on the disease.
It's not a glimpse at how dangerous a strain can be, it's a glimpse at what a total lack of public health infrastructure can allow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:19PM
They were plenty of people who got treated with toxic doses of aspirin. Many others were malnourished.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday January 27 2020, @02:21PM (4 children)
While true, it was a particularly nasty strain that 'preferentially' killed healthy adults. It wasn't the flu bug per se that killed you, it was your body's (over-)response to it. People with strong immune systems died in disproportionate numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:25PM
Who said they had strong immune systems? They were on war rations before most vitamins were easily available or even identified.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday January 27 2020, @02:35PM
Yeah, but we've had h1n1 outbreaks many times since then, and the world's more connected, not less. The magic formula is bombed out cities with widespread malnutrition, miserable soldiers packed in muddy holes with weakened immune systems, no one tracking and containing the spread, and nowhere near enough doctors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @03:04PM (1 child)
Also it was secondary bacterial infections that did a lot of the heavy killing after infecting a host already infected by influenza. Antibiotics were no where near as effective nor widely used at the time to have an impact on the death toll. Same thing today, most people who die of influenza either die from secondary bacterial infections or have bad bacterial pneumonia first then further get infected by influenza.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday January 27 2020, @04:53PM
Of course, antibiotics are no longer as effective as they were...
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @12:37PM
Are you paid to post this?
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Monday January 27 2020, @01:11PM (1 child)
Death rate currently seems to be about 3%, not 1%.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Monday January 27 2020, @11:47PM
That rate would be deaths/confirmed_cases - but the rate of deaths/actual_cases would be a much smaller ratio.
There would be a LOT more sick right now that haven't been confirmed. These will either incubate into confirmed cases or the mortality rate is actually smaller by (probably) orders of magnitude.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @05:54PM
Exactly, This is only 2019-nCoV. You can get worked up when 2020-nCovfefe hits.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @04:00PM
Here you go [newscientist.com] and the paper referenced above [biorxiv.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 27 2020, @04:16PM (4 children)
Simple: It's such a severe problem because fear generates ad revenue.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @04:35PM
Don't underestimate the fun level of a habbening.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday January 28 2020, @03:15AM (2 children)
Not in China. It's clearly pretty bad since the Chinese government is unable to censor how bad it is any more.
if it wasn't serious, then the initial wave of silencings^]^Hcorrections would have been the last anyone heard of it.
It's getting hard to find now, but if you look around, you can still find a few references to all the people getting censored for posting non-conforming narratives about the outbreak.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:04AM (1 child)
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/reasons-for-china%E2%80%99s-unreliable-death-and-infected-statistics--finally-revealed-insufficient-test-kits,-also-cambodia-reports-first-case [thailandmedical.news]
So finally we get some good numbers. There were 7 million people with symptoms, and 100 deaths. Assuming the number of deaths is correct, that gives a lower bound on mortality rate at .0015%. The upper bound is deaths/confirmed cases of 2.5%, right? I mean people who do not get confirmed are not going to be dying any faster than those sick enough to be tested.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:59PM
In Wuhan they were only counting cases that they had accepted into hospitals, and some of the more elderly possible infections were sent home to work it out on their own. This information came from messages between police officers, but everything can be faked these days. I lean more toward this being worse than what the CCP says, but by how much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @05:02PM (3 children)
Nobody gave the simple and correct answer. Linear vs exponential growth. Viruses grow exponentially, which means they never seem scary early on. For an example:
Week 1: 10 infected
Week 2: 20 infected
Week 3: 40 infected
Who cares?
Week 13: 40,960 infected
Still not such a big problem...
Week 23: 42 million
Okay well this is pretty terrifying but still that's only like 0.5% of the world's population.
Week 33: 100% infection.
---
This will probably just end up like the swine flu or bird flu (both of which I caught - I run good) and be a somewhat nastier flu that fades in a relatively short period of time. But at the same time things like this also need to be taken extremely seriously because the times when a virus like this mutates or when it can spread without visible symptoms (both of which are true in this instance) then you risk creating a global pandemic that could completely devastate the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @05:36PM
Multiple comments mentioned the R0 [healthline.com] estimates and this can be spread by asymptomatic carriers (which is why current estimates for R0 are 3-5). The WHO believe the virus to be stable (low mutation risk).
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday January 27 2020, @05:40PM (1 child)
On the other hand, the exponential growth slows as there are fewer people left to infect. This happens locally as entire towns are infected, which leaves the people who don't travel unable to infect others, slowing growth of the infected population.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:48AM
And you have to get it into Madagascar before they close the ports.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 27 2020, @07:06PM (1 child)
20+ Apple Suppliers Located In City Affected By Coronavirus Shutdown [wccftech.com]
Drop everything. This is OFFICIALLY serious.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:51AM
I don't eat Chinese apples.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Informative) by maggotbrain on Monday January 27 2020, @09:20PM (1 child)
Since this is still a relatively new outbreak the exact numbers are still being debated and media panic is apparently confounding the issue. My 0.02. YMMV.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @10:22PM
Media panic? They haven't even figured out that it is an escaped bioweapon yet.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Bot on Monday January 27 2020, @10:49AM (11 children)
Somewhere in planet earth, some human being are offering sanctuary to rare endangered variety of coronavirus, which, despite the corona- prefix which means crown, is totally not monarchic. Sometimes the virus kills the host, it's a cultural thing, payback for our discovering penicillin, not enough to deny sanctuary.
If you are somewhere in planet earth and notice a fellow human being feeling sick, there's nothing you can do.
Especially you cannot define borders and policies for people who want to cross the aforementioned borders. Borders are inherently evil and any excuse for building one is a right wing conspiracy that wants to bring Hitler back from the grave.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @12:21PM (10 children)
I really have no idea what you're trying to say.
but please keep in mind that penicilin is an antibiotic, and absolutely no antibiotics will help to fight off a viral infection.
maybe if the viral infection weakens you such that you get a bacterial infection on top, then antibiotics will help to at least keep the bacteria in check.
please don't take antibiotics for the flu. it will not help.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Bot on Monday January 27 2020, @12:28PM
> penicillin is not antiviral.
Yes, and I committed no violence ever against the paki guys who come here molesting our 14 year olds. See what I meant?
But if you did not get the rest I doubt this makes any difference.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @12:35PM (8 children)
Your advice is wrong. Usually people die or have complications from bacterial pneumonia, which takes hold after the tissue is damaged by viral replication and immune response. So antibiotics can be very helpful in cases of the flu. Of course, even more useful is sufficient vitamin c to prevent the damage to begin with.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Monday January 27 2020, @01:16PM (7 children)
I thought vitamin C against the common cold was debunked long long ago. Even a vitamin C manufacturer was unable to fabricate any evidence for it.
Does it actually turn out to help with other viral infections?
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @01:28PM (1 child)
It wasn't debunked, they just tested very low doses and did pharmacokinetic studies in *healthy* people that showed they were pissing it all out after 100 mg/day. If you give the same dose to sick people it doesn't even get their blood levels back to normal:
"Using the pharmacokinetic data from the study by Levine et al. [23], we constructed a four-parameter log- logistic response model to predict the plasma vitamin C concentrations for the critically ill patients on the basis of their enteral and/or parenteral vitamin C intakes. The predicted plasma concentrations, although variable, were significantly higher at all time points than the measured plasma concentrations (P https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5725835/
Really the does required depends on the redox environment of your body, so a proper dosing requires measuring blood levels or titrating to bowel tolerance. It's possible someone with a cold can absorb a hundred grams in a day: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7321921 [nih.gov]
Basically, they need to measure the plasma vitamin C levels in just one of these patients. Then once they see it is depleted (which it is in every illness ever checked), see how much it takes to get them at least back to normal. Then assess the health effects. Just one patient. But they won't. They'll spend a trillion dollars on other BS and quarantining 100 million people, building a new hospital every week, etc. But they won't check vitamin C levels in a single patient.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @06:59PM
It's amazing to think of how fucked up the mind is of whoever downvoted this lifesaving info. Just check the vitamin c levels in the blood of one patient, what is there to lose?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 27 2020, @02:25PM (4 children)
In the statistical bubble of my own experience, vit C is more effective than flu vaccines. make of that what you wish.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @05:16PM (1 child)
They should start putting vitamin C in vaccines to screw with the anti-vaxers. They'll start getting it for the vitamin C. Add electrolytes and provitamins and they'll practically inject themselves with it in the eyeballs twice a day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @06:26PM
The vaccine wouldn't work if you added enough to matter. They need to add oxidative adjuvants to vaccines to cause inflammation, which vitamin c would neutralize.
I know you were kidding but it is just so funny to see the medical ignorance of people who push vaccines on such blatant display. You are not a help to your cause.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @03:46AM (1 child)
zinc helps too, and helps vs more different types of pathogens than a flu vaccine[1]. But it's not going to make any corporation rich.
[1]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31305906 [nih.gov] (antiviral)
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1007957 [plos.org] (antibacterial)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131111091136.htm [sciencedaily.com]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3986850/ [nih.gov] (coronavirus)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3273967/ [nih.gov] (common cold)
https://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/hiv-aids/news/online/%7B39b02257-e3cc-4ff9-be61-7015173ead93%7D/zinc-supplements-delayed-immune-failure-decreased-diarrhea-in-adults-with-hiv [healio.com] (HIV)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866616/ [nih.gov] (H1N1)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @12:48PM
Yes, all vitamins are needed when fighting an infection. But vitamin C's primary role is not as a vitamin. It is the terminal antioxidant with an insane safety profile so it can be taken in very large doses.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday January 27 2020, @12:54PM (8 children)
The Chinese are doomed because there is no way to stop them from spitting or getting them to wash their hands. Everyone else who has mastered such public health measures will come out alright, and Singaporeans will come away scot-free.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @01:00PM (1 child)
On the spot fines for this type of behavior in public.
Fixed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @01:27PM
They are still at the beating people up as they try to escape the death vans phase.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @01:54PM (2 children)
The revolution took no prisoners, only the borgeious washed their hands comrade.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @05:18PM (1 child)
The borgious sound gorgeous and homosexual all in one.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 27 2020, @07:18PM
"bourgeois" does not generate the squiggly red line, so it must be the one.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:35PM (1 child)
You underestimate the power of a totalitarian police state. If they can force people to have only one child at a time, they can make them do something simpler like forcing people into proper hygienic practices. Singapore imposed draconian punishments on people for such infractions and it will be even easier for the PRC to do something similar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @03:32PM
That would stress the population too much. The CCP's course, since the 80s, has been to give the people free rein to do whatever their urges call on them to do, until it starts affecting China's reputation or could jeopardize CCP ownership of the country.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @08:39PM
If by "scot-free" you mean "already has at least one confirmed case" then you would be right. It's amazing how many virologists there are on this website. I thought it was just a place for stupid trolls like ef.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:10PM (4 children)
i wonder how many of these 'em pandemics go unnoticed.
as far as i can remember, the last time i went to the doctor, feeling sick, he drew blood by the galon and sent it off to some high-tech biotech facility, same with spit, poo and pee.
i was stuck in a hermetically sealed room and observed with a diet of green apples, salt biscuits (non moldy) and hot-sugar tea for two weeks!
obviously this is all fake and non-sense. but this is the way a "new virus" would be discovered.
the "normal" way of "please take off your shirt and cough while i listen" and "please put this thermometer in your mouth" "ok, you got the flu. take this ibuprofene / aspirine /whatnot and drink plenty of fluids. thanks for visit" ... will probably not discover a new virus unless it makes your eyes turn blue ..uhm .. no .. uhm ... green, well some really strange color -or- make a greenish-yellow-glowing lump grow out the side of your head?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:23PM (3 children)
The same way the vaping illness started. It is idiopathic pneumonia, ie the patients test negative for all the usual stuff. Then they try to find some correlation with something. In this case even WHO admits this virus hasn't yet been verified as the cause of the symptoms.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 27 2020, @04:21PM (2 children)
PSA: For those not aware, the medical-speak qualifier "idiopathic" means "we have no fucking clue why this is happening".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 27 2020, @06:33PM (1 child)
AKA the exciting part of science.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 28 2020, @03:15AM
Indeed. Something you do not want to hear from your doctor though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday January 27 2020, @04:14PM (9 children)
So how many people, approximations are fine, die in like a normal outbreak or flu season etc in China? Considering there are billions of of them the number so far seem very low. Don't think there is reason to prep for the doomsday scenarios just yet.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @04:35PM
ok coofer
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @05:12PM (1 child)
Not sure how people do not understand this [soylentnews.org].
Linear vs exponential growth. If you ever reach the point that a new plague is scaring people who don't appreciate exponential growth, then it's far far too late to do anything.
And no, 99% of the time it will be fine - but that's only because people treat this things extremely seriously. China is literally canceling New Years festivities in most major cities in the country. New Years is a much larger celebration in China than the US so it's more analogous to something like the government 'cancelling Christmas.' The analogy doesn't quite work because of the difference between public and private gatherings, but I speaking of the magnitude of this act. The point being that this is an absolutely appropriate reaction on their part.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @06:31PM
Everyone understrands exponential growth, but only idiots spout off about it when that has never been observed to happen ever. The only way it continues into the summer is if we get one of those grand solar minimum years without a summer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Monday January 27 2020, @05:40PM (5 children)
I agree with you that it's not time to move into the bunker, but it is a reasonable time to have a conversation about tripwires.
e.g.
At what point are you no longer willing to fly to the source province in China?
To China generally?
To stop international air travel?
To stop all air travel?
To stop all travel?
To work only from home?
To pull the kids out of school?
To stay home, living off stored supplies?
To move into the bunker?
I travel for work a fair amount, mostly within the US. Speaking only for me, I will not travel to China now, and I'm hesitant to travel internationally or to any state with active cases. I'm following the cases here in the US to see the impact under competent medical care before making a decision about what moves us further down the list.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @06:28PM
i think you got your priorities wrong.
mean shouldn't you save your kids very early on?
i mean if you should run out of rations while in the bunker ... you still got the kids ...
(i kid, i kid(no pun intended))
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Monday January 27 2020, @06:32PM (3 children)
CDC has some information out now that is worth checking out. It would need verification (I don't have time right now) but I read last night on their website they were routing incoming flights from China through airports setup for testing everyone coming in from those regions. It might be worth it to avoid using those airports as hubs until we hear more.
The big concern I have is that the virus appears to be able to spread when the host has not shown any symptoms. Cities with universities that host large numbers of students from China might also be risky until we are outside of the window from where we started testing people coming in, although maybe longer as the virus appears to last at least 24 hours on surfaces.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @07:02PM (2 children)
What are they testing for?
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Monday January 27 2020, @07:35PM (1 child)
Evidently pointless to catch the people who are asymptomatic
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0117-coronavirus-screening.html [cdc.gov] from the 17th
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0124-second-travel-coronavirus.html [cdc.gov] from the 24th
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @07:52PM
So they are screening for symptoms of pneumonia, even though we are told you can spread the virus without showing symptoms. Ie, there was that guy who got surgery and only then became symptomatic (probably because surgery depletes vitamin c). But before that he had still supposedly managed to infect 15 healthcare workers.
And then there is the fact that I still haven't seen any proof this virus they have a sequence for is actually causing the symptoms. There are seemingly lots of cases with the same symptoms who test negative for the virus.
(Score: 2) by Mainframe Bloke on Tuesday January 28 2020, @04:34AM
This may be of interest, especially the yellow graph showing the increasing case count in China; 4400 cases in a week there, > 100 deaths so not a massive rate, but is it early days yet?
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 [arcgis.com]