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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: 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...
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