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The Costs of Secrecy - Science Magazine
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Responding to Covid-19 - a Once-In-A-Century Pandemic (New England Journal of Medicine)
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Let's not fool ourselves. Despite draconian measures, China has failed to contain it and it appears that no other countries will be able to either. Some countries reported an initial case or cases and then have gone silent. Trillions of dollars in tourist and other travel revenue is at stake and I'm sure some nations have decided to simply keep quiet. Look at how quickly cases have shown up globally that can be traced to Italy or Iran. I even wonder if cases are already present where testing hasn't occurred because of people traveling from China in December. If tissue samples are available from suspected flu deaths, we might find that COVID was the cause.Originally posted by gsgs View Post
I don't believe that any numbers coming out of China are reliable. Their economy is suffering badly and they are desperate to make it look as though they have contained it primarily to Hubei province and that things are improving in Wuhan. They need the world to believe that their control measures are working. Non-government sources do not support this story line and, in fact, I would bet the opposite is true. The Chinese government has never accurately reported data related to disease outbreaks or even natural disasters and with so much at stake, why would they start now? And realistically, they don't have enough test kits to test even a fraction of the suspected cases.
The outbreaks in Europe and the Middle East will, unfortunately, reveal more about this pandemic than what limited information has come from the Chinese government. At this point, all we can say is that it originated in China, was circulating H2H weeks or even months before it was reported to the WHO, and it has spread broadly from there. Most other information related to what has been happening in China is mired in politics."I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much." - Mother Teresa of CalcuttaComment
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China gets back to work — sort of — as number of new COVID-19 cases wanes
Feb 28, 2020
Several economic metrics tick upward in the country where the coronavirus crisis began as the rest of the world begins to cope
Signs of life are emerging in China’s coronavirus-stricken economy — even as the epidemic is exploding around the world.
A number of key metrics of economic health have ticked up in the last week or two. Workers are returning, factories are firing back up, and even consumer-facing businesses are opening their doors.
This is the immediate result of the abatement of COVID-19 in China and the government’s relaxing of policies that had essentially halted economic production, except at hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and delivery services.
"Addressing chronic disease is an issue of human rights that must be our call to arms"
Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief The Lancet
~~~~ Twitter:@GertvanderHoek ~~~ GertvanderHoek@gmail.com ~~~Comment
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From the American Council On Sciene And Health:
BBC Report: 210 Dead in Iran from Coronavirus. How Many Are Infected?
By Alex Berezow, PhD — February 28, 2020
A lot remains unknown about how many people are infected with coronavirus. One of the few certainties is that far more people are infected than official numbers suggest. A rough calculation suggests anywhere from 150,000 to 3 million global infections... Read more at: https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/02/28...infected-14602Comment
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Positive RT-PCR Test Results in Patients Recovered From COVID-19
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2762452Comment
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Thank you Mcphilbrick
snip "After hospital discharge or discontinuation of quarantine, the patients were asked to continue the quarantine protocol at home for 5 days. The RT-PCR tests were repeated 5 to 13 days later and all were positive. All patients had 3 repeat RT-PCR tests performed over the next 4 to 5 days and all were positive. An additional RT-PCR test was performed using a kit from a different manufacturer and the results were also positive for all patients. The patients continued to be asymptomatic by clinician examination and chest CT findings showed no change from previous images. They did not report contact with any person with respiratory symptoms. No family member was infected." !
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Virus cake anyone? Italians fight fear with silliness
28 Feb 2020 11:41PM
(Updated: 29 Feb 2020 12:00AM)
ROME: Crack that prosecco, it's aperivirus time. And why not accompany your bubbly with a slice of virus ice-cream cake, fresh from the area of Italy worst hit by the disease?
Italy has the most coronavirus cases in Europe and highest death toll but rather than succumb to fear, wisecracking Italians have opted to laugh in the face of danger with a slew of parodies, jokes and general silliness...
Read more:
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Agenda Free TV said :
> Might be time to just say, it's spreading around the world, whoever's gonna get
> it will get it, and let's deal with that
no !!! that's the Trump/USA/Germany etc. agenda ;
anti China, anti WHO ,
WHO recommends the drastic Chinese measures to stop it.
hopefully there will be some papers, some modelings soon.
Those who survive will make the statistics what method was better in the end.
Both for economy and #of lives, diseases.
These successful Chinese measures had been absent from all the
previous modelings, AFAIK. We _urgently_ need the updates
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I'm interested in expert panflu damage estimates
my current links: http://bit.ly/hFI7H ILI-charts: http://bit.ly/CcRgTComment
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Gsgs, I'm not anti-China, but I think it is time to change gears. An effective anti-viral will save lives. The vulnerable should be assisted. Most people with serious immune issues already take care to avoid infections at this time of year. The quarantine of everyone in China has done more harm than good. I'm not criticizing the initial choice, but now it is time to move on, IMO._____________________________________________
Ask Congress to Investigate COVID Origins and Government Response to Pandemic.
i love myself. the quietest. simplest. most powerful. revolution ever. ---- nayyirah waheed
"...there’s an obvious contest that’s happening between different sectors of the colonial ruling class in this country. And they would, if they could, lump us into their beef, their struggle." ---- Omali Yeshitela, African People’s Socialist Party
(My posts are not intended as advice or professional assessments of any kind.)
Never forget Excalibur.Comment
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Latest presumptive positive in Oregon began to experience symptoms on Feb19. Did not get tested until Feb 28. Contact tracing, if it's attempted at all, would be a nightmare.Twitter: @RonanKelly13
The views expressed are mine alone and do not represent the views of my employer or any other person or organization.Comment
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The following will be helpful given the global short supply now of alcohol hand sanitizers. Note alcohol based sanitizer (65%+) will destroy sars-cov2 within about one minute. Chlorhexidine and some other sanitizers are not effective against Coronovirus. Guide for how to make your own ALC Hol hand sanitizer with moisturizer to prevent dehydration of the skin.
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WHO have recipes and production methods. https://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Guide_...Production.pdf with cautionary notes.
Good idea mscox. I did also read that peroxide is very effective - so would be happy to use both the WHO recipes.
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Could not agree more and, as an explanation of why would be too long for this thread, I have posted one here.Originally posted by gsgs View Post
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Agreed. I was very surprised to see this onset date.Originally posted by Ronan Kelly View PostComment
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Everyone seems torn between two explanations for the decline in case counts in China: either the numbers are wrong (and China is missing cases) or the numbers are right, and the quarantines are working. I'd like to propose a third possibility: Cases are declining in China due to herd immunity; the virus has already infected a significant proportion of the population.
Wuhan has 11 million people. Hebei has 60 million total. There were estimates a month ago that up to one million people might have already been infected. It's been two incubation periods since then. At R0 = 4, that would make for 4 million cases in the next generation, and 16 in the one after that. Ignoring logistic effects (running out of people to infect), that would be 21 million cases, and attack rate of 35%. That's pretty much the point where pandemic flu begins to burn itself out because the chance to find new victims drops.
The Diamond Princess has a confirmed attack rate of over 20% by now. Perhaps large parts of China do as well.Comment
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I think your third choice is playing a role. This would not be the first time natural herd immunity has benefited the human race as a whole. Containment is a great tool for slow moving pathogens like TB, but I'm not sure if it was effective with this one. I can understand trying to avoid health system overload. We'll see how we do here on the west coast.
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Emily - Contact tracing will save lives. It is way too early to give up. The people doing it are exhausted. This is a life/death emergency. Their work is heroic.
Alert - I wish you were right. Take a look at the data in the WHO team report on China. The prevalence of the disease in the general population is not as high as they hoped it would be - is in fact low outside Hubei.
Guandong province is an example. Chains of transmission are also very clearly related to close contact and clusters. If we can contact trace, quarantine and isolate these clusters, we can decrease the impact significantly.
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