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Coronavirus Roundup
Both c0lo and takyon write in with today's coronavirus collection of stories:
Why are children 'missing' from coronavirus outbreak cases?
So far, it seems that youth protects against the worst effects of 2019-nCoV.
The outbreak of a new coronavirus in China has killed more than 900 people, but one group has escaped with minimal damage: children.
Youth can certainly contract the virus. Among the infected are at least two newborns, according to Chinese health officials. But few children are among those sick enough to be diagnosed with the coronavirus, according to an article published Feb. 5 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. According to the data analyzed in that article — and numbers are changing quickly as the outbreak evolves — the median age of patients skews older, between 49 and 56 years old.
It's not entirely clear why children seem to be escaping the worst effects of the virus, dubbed 2019-nCoV. But a similar pattern holds for many infectious diseases, from the familiar, such as chickenpox and measles, to the newly emerged, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), doctors say.
According to a report in local news site China Daily, the deputy head of the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, Zeng Qun, revealed the potentially troubling development over the weekend at a media briefing concerning government efforts to contain the virus' spread.
Mr Qun said transmission routes of the coronavirus included direct transmission, contact transmission and aerosol transmission.
'Aerosol transmission refers to the mixing of the virus with droplets in the air to form aerosols, which causes infection after inhalation, according to medical experts,' he said.
'As such, we have called on the public to raise their awareness of the prevention and control of the disease caused by family gatherings.'While Associate Professor Ian Mackay, a virologist at the Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre, told newsGP he would not be surprised if coronavirus could be transmitted by an airborne route, he said there is 'zero public-reviewed experimental evidence' to support the claim.
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Meanwhile, doctors in New South Wales have reportedly made a 'research breakthrough', according to the state's Health Minister Brad Hazzard. Minister Hazzard said extensive testing on an isolated patient at Westmead Hospital has allowed scientists to isolate the virus and study eight variants, producing two full genome sequences in the process.
Scientists worry coronavirus could evolve into something worse than flu, says quarantined expert
The seasonal flu has killed more people than the coronavirus, but that is not why the outbreak is so concerning, infectious disease expert Ian Lipkin told CNBC on Monday.
"It's a new virus. We don't know much about it, and therefore we're all concerned to make certain it doesn't evolve into something even worse," said Lipkin, speaking from his New York home on a 14-day self-quarantine after traveling to China to work on the outbreak.
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Lipkin, who worked on the 2003 SARS outbreak, said it is true that seasonal flu presents its own kind of problem, noting that globally up to 650,000 people die from it each year.
So far, more than 900 people who had the coronavirus have died.The coronavirus is "not nearly as challenging for us as influenza" when seen strictly by the number of deaths, Lipkin said.
But that is not the only lens through which the outbreak should be viewed, he cautioned.
"We don't know much about its transmissibility. We don't necessarily have accurate diagnostic tests. And we don't really know where the outbreak is going to go," Lipkin said on CNBC's "The Exchange."
"The only thing we have at present, absent vaccines or drugs, is containment," he added.
Coronavirus affects supply chains
With China's unique position in the global economy, 2019-nCoV has the potential to seriously disrupt manufacturing. It may seem crass to worry about something as trivial as this when people are suffering, and of course our hearts go out to the people who are directly affected by this virus and its aftermath. But just like businesses have plans for contingencies such as this, so too should the hacking community know what impact something like 2019-nCoV will have on supply chains that we've come to depend on.
Chinese automakers retool production lines to make face masks
A shortage of face masks has prompted Chinese companies from car manufacturers to energy providers to start making their own to help fight the coronavirus.
Auto companies including BYD Co. have reconfigured production lines to churn out masks that can help block particles and germs, with petroleum giant Sinopec and iPhone assembler Foxconn joining the fray. Some are also dabbling in disinfectant and goggles.
(Score: 5, Informative) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 11 2020, @11:41AM (9 children)
China changes counting scheme to lower Wuhan virus numbers [taiwannews.com.tw]
China stops counting confirmed asymptomatic patients in Wuhan virus statistics
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The daily reports of Wuhan virus infections in China will likely begin to drop as the government has decided to stop counting patients who test positive for the disease but do not exhibit symptoms as "confirmed cases."
In a notice issued by China's National Health Commission (NHC) on Feb. 6, it wrote that the classification of new Wuhan virus infections will be divided into four categories: "suspected cases," "clinically diagnosed cases," "confirmed cases," and "positive tests." Among these, "positive tests" refers to "asymptomatic infected patients" who test positive for the disease but have no symptoms.
There is also a clear stipulation in the official document stating that "If the reported 'asymptomatic infected patient' has clinical manifestations, their status shall be revised to 'confirmed case' in a timely manner" (highlighted text in Tweet below). This indicates that even if a person tests positive for the disease but does not exhibit any symptoms, they will no longer be included in the daily infection reports.
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Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday February 11 2020, @01:02PM (8 children)
As far as I can see, there's nothing inherently wrong with the scheme, as long as one has all those numbers and adds the "confirmed cases" with the "positive tests".
In fact, it should be better to make the distinction, every bit of info may help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Troll) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 11 2020, @01:40PM (4 children)
However, human reactions and openness to information (e.g. news, medical advice) definitely do depend on how it's presented. You'd never teach the Ideal Gas Law as:
Penis . Vagina = Nigger . Rape . Tranny
for example.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @02:03PM
According to this funeral director they have been processing 4-5x the normal number of bodies and less than 10% are confirmed:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-KFxCqV1fPQ [youtube.com]
So most deaths are unconfirmed, many patients are asymptomatic, test kits are only 50% accurate (according to what gold standard?).
I'm still not 100% convinced they have the right virus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @09:30PM (2 children)
What the fuck? You look pretty fucking stupid for deliberately using offensive terms. You could easily have said apple . orange = hat . shoe . scarf, but instead you seeded terms so that GOOG can redirect people searching for hate to our community.
Which makes you an ASSHOLE.
Fuck off, fatphil.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @09:53PM
(((jihadi)))
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @10:38PM
P×V = N×R×T
Doesn't work well with apples and oranges.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @10:00PM
Are the asymptomatic positive testees capable of infecting others?
Maybe they should list them as "suspected cases," "clinically diagnosed cases," "confirmed cases," and "
positive testsTyphoid Mary's".(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @04:43AM (1 child)
Yes but a big question is... just how accurate is this test?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 12 2020, @05:12AM
Inaccurate as hell.
Don't you see? We are all gonna die [youtu.be]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @12:26PM (1 child)
It is possible that the virus requires docking sites to latch onto? And that those docking sites are on the chromosome 23? If so, the indeterminate nature of that chromosome in today's children would explain the statistics.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 11 2020, @12:46PM
The replication [wikipedia.org] takes place in ribosomes, not on the chromosomes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday February 11 2020, @01:26PM (3 children)
Various sources report on recent (last week) H5N1 bird flu [nhk.or.jp], H9 bird flu [scmp.com] (a child aged 7), H5N6 bird flu [reuters.com] occurrences originated in China.
This after the Chinese had big loses (of bacon) to swine fever in latish 2019 [nytimes.com]
Bird flu in UK [euroweeklynews.com] too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday February 11 2020, @01:49PM
I had heard about the swine flu and H5N1. I'm guessing they are just getting more attention because of the coronavirus hype.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @03:38PM
It's probably not far above normal.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/the-flu-has-already-killed-10000-across-us-as-world-frets-over-coronavirus.html [cnbc.com]
Following are estimates from the US CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html [cdc.gov]
34,157 deaths
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm [cdc.gov]
61,099 deaths (808,129 hospitalizations)
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2016-2017.html [cdc.gov]
38,230 deaths
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2015-2016.html [cdc.gov]
22,705 deaths
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2014-2015.html [cdc.gov]
51,376 deaths
p.s. Advice - stay warm, get enough sleep, take some zinc supplements. Zinc helps against very many types of viruses (helps with common cold, coronavirus, even delays progression of HIV). But a high zinc diet has been found to be not good for mice with C. difficile infections.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @04:13PM
and a lot of people in contact with said poultry. Totally no wonder that anything poultryish that has any chance to infect a human, does pull it off now and again somewhere in there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @01:35PM (1 child)
They will figure a solution soon
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday February 11 2020, @05:00PM
Wrong movie, I'm thinking more of an "I am Legend" kinda thing. 'eh, okay, probably not that bad.
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @06:22PM
n/t
(Score: 2) by tizan on Tuesday February 11 2020, @09:51PM (1 child)
there is most probably more than 10000 deaths due to the influenza in the US alone this season
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html [cdc.gov]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Tuesday February 11 2020, @10:54PM
But flu is in the wild across the world, OTOH the 900 coronavirus deaths so far are mostly within a relatively small area. For example coronavirus is not (yet) in the wild in the UK (all known cases so far have been isolated). So that 900 needs to be multiplied up by a very large area factor to understand its real potential
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @02:43AM (1 child)
Miley Cyrus has coronavirus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @05:58AM
The vocal cord surgery made her throat more vulnerable than usual.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 12 2020, @11:44AM