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posted by martyb on Monday January 27 2020, @08:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the stay-aware-and-wash-your-hands dept.

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:


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @12:19PM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @12:19PM (#949265)

    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)

    by Muad'Dave (1413) on Monday January 27 2020, @12:25PM (#949268)

    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)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 27 2020, @02:01PM (#949304) Journal

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:19PM (#949313)

        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)

        by Muad'Dave (1413) on Monday January 27 2020, @02:21PM (#949315)

        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

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:25PM (#949321)

          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

          by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 27 2020, @02:35PM (#949327) Journal

          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)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @03:04PM (#949342)

          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

            by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 27 2020, @04:53PM (#949393) Journal

            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

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @12:37PM (#949272)

    Are you paid to post this?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Monday January 27 2020, @01:11PM (1 child)

    by hendrikboom (1125) on Monday January 27 2020, @01:11PM (#949292) Homepage Journal

    Death rate currently seems to be about 3%, not 1%.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Monday January 27 2020, @11:47PM

      by Fluffeh (954) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 27 2020, @11:47PM (#949666) Journal

      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.