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MERS discussion thread

Re: MERS discussion thread

Time will tell. SARS seems to have been a phenomenon that occurred mainly in the first world, it was it not?

MERS, via the Hajj, would be vectored into third world and first world settings in very significant numbers if sustained H2H and a smaller but still significantly large number if H2H is still inefficient but more than 2013.

like I said (stating the obvious) time will tell.
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

Where are the updates from the World Health Organization? The last update was last summer. See here:

http://www.emro.who.int/surveillance-forecasting-response/outbreaks/outbreaks.html

What, if anything, is the WHO doing to rectify the lack of information? Viruses have a sad history of ignoring a nations borders. A virus this deadly must be constantly studied. Is it mutating, how fast and how is that affecting the victims? What are all the vectors? How many are h2h? How many cases are there? What has been tried to alleviate the suffering of the patients? Who is getting sick? What is being done to stop the virus? Unless we start getting answers to these and other questions the world lies helpless to the threat. The lack of leadership by not only the WHO, but all world health organizations is despicable.

We have a growing crisis and virtually no one is paying attention. Oil may be a powerful influence but it cannot be allowed to cover up what may turn out to be a catastrophic threat to the world. We have no way of knowing if it will turn out to be the next world 'plague' or not, because we are deliberately being kept in the dark. The Saudi's are censoring all reports. We only discover new victims after they have been diagnosed for over a month. We do not know how many of these victims are actually health care workers. We do not know how they became infected. The behavior of the Saudi government is reprehensible. There is no excuse for lying to the world. There is no pardon if this virus becomes a pandemic and the Saudi government just lets it happen. And there is no excuse for any news gathering organization or government, who blithely ignores the threat because of the power of big oil. It is well beyond the time for some serious pressure to establish exactly what is occurring with MERS.
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

The problem is that WHO can't force any member country to do anything. WHO has to be invited. So, as a consequence, the WHO reports lag the Ministry of Health reports by as much as two weeks - in some instances.

I am very encouraged that the Saudi government has finally realized that they might need some real help in this situation.

Hopefully representatives of the WHO can visit in a few days as the above press release indicates. It would be really great if someone with experience from the SARS outbreak in 2002/2003 could be involved.
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

Forcing is out of the realm of possibility. However, pressure from multiple sources is not. I too am glad the situation appears to be changing.

SARS experts would be ideal but, help from all corona virus experts is needed. The more researchers we can devote to the developing threat the better.
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

A small point of note: many international infectious disease experts have been drafted to west africa to help contain the Ebola outbreak (which is still far from being under control). China is busy withH7N9. Expert resources globally are very limited. If international experts are also required in SA/ other affected countries in the Middle East to help with MERS, it is going to leave experts in home territories very thin on the ground, at a time when/ where many countries serious pandemic preparation and planning is poor, to put it mildly.

Whilst the US takes preparedness seriously, there is little movement e.g. in the UK at present which is why the WHO panel needs to up the ante and declare this an outbreak of international concern, as there are then obligations that must be met for individual countries to prepare and make plans. Without said experts in place, and in thier home territories, then such planning will likely prove challenging, and at the same time, if the situation is allowed to deteriorate overseas, more and more of those health experts will be drafted overseas to try and help contain the problem. The time (in my opinion) to get things moving is now, whilst we are not yet in 'crisis' mode.
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

As if the Malaysia hasn't already seen more than their fair share of tragedy, now they have the first NCoV death in that part of the world.
see here:
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=221664

Sixty-four people are now being quarantined for evidence of the virus. Those 64 are from his village. I cannot help but wonder if he was shedding virus prior to reaching his village. The virus is obviously still inefficient so hopefully if he was spreading the virus there are no more victims.
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

http://www.arabnews.com/news/557376

Rumors are running rampant throughout the country. Schools are empty, shops and restaurants have no patrons because of fear. When it comes to disease, especially one as dangerous as this one appears to be, a forthright response from the government is mandatory. Lies, cover-ups and shifting the blame to innocents only means new fodder for social media users. When you cannot trust the government to give you the truth people turn to whatever they can find to learn more. And that is exactly what is going on now inside Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the world waits in ignorance as to exactly how many victims there are, who they are, when they were first diagnosed, what their professions are, their age and so on, ad infinitum.

We learned again today there are more victims. As to when they were first diagnosed we have no idea. We do know one is dead. Past bungling means that now it will be difficult to believe what comes out of the Ministry of Health is truth. If the initial cover-up was to prevent social and market disruption the experiment was a failure. The only way to fix the problem is to adopt complete openness. Only then will anyone, anywhere in country and without, believe anything that the Ministry of Health says.
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

I agree with you Shannon. There should be a lot more communication from the government (and the WHO) to the people on this situation. Not just the cases that currently exist or are detected, but WHY they think the situation is NOT urgent. The "MERS does not spread" and the "Can't get MERS from camels" comments are very strange and so against any of the data out there.

Is there a reason the international health community isn't jumping on this?
Are there investigation discoveries that indicate this is not an amplifying event?
Is this expected?
Why is there no concern with the increasing cases - over 20% greater in three weeks?

If there were valid concerns, wouldn't the World Health Organisation step up there response before April 28?
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

Here at Flutrackers, we are posting the machine translations of the Arabic language version of the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health (MOH) reports for MERS. It is interesting that the media reports on the MOH English language page are not only lagging but missing some of the cases reported on the Arabic pages. (link)

The Saudi Arabia MOH announced six new MERS cases in Riyadh today.(link) A cynic might suggest that these cases were announced to deflect attention from the growing Jeddah outbreak.
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=221854

I think if the situation gets noticeably worse in the coming months, social unrest will definitely be a problem. No one likes their government lying to them. Accusations of the government deliberately lying to the public went mainstream media today inside Saudi Arabia. A man who came down with the disease told papers he was one of hundreds of cases. He threatened to tell the world exactly how many cases there really are. He also said no one tested his family or friends for the virus after he was diagnosed.
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

Saudi Arabia is not the only "hotspot" for MERS. The report yesterday of infections among 12 additional health care workers in Abu Dhabi should be cause for concern. For comparative purposes, Saudi Arabia has a population of about 28,000,000 people. According to internet sources, the entire United Arab Emirates only has a population of about 9 million. The total population of a country needs to be considered when evaluating rates of infection.
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

Someone asked me today about what they could do to protect themselves re:MERS if it starts a pandemic and I had to say I was uncertain. There certainly seem to be a good number of asymptomatic cases, but do we have any idea what might cause fatal disease in some yet be eliminated without problems in others?

Are asymptomatic cases likely to be infectious? Do we have any data on viral load and shedding in asymptomatic cases?

Is it a question of the state of an individuals immune system? If so what are the weaknesses/ co-infections we should be looking at? Is there a supplement regimen or diet regimen for keeping immune systems in an optimal condition?

Whilst we are tracking case numbers very effectively, and there is a lot that is unknown about MERS, perhaps to be of most use (should this go global) we need to try and answer these questions from the data available as best we can?
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

The issue with asymptomatics are, among the Others:

-- time elapsed from a confirmed case / animal exposure to first positive molecular two-tiered test results,

-- type of clinical samples used for testing: upper or lower respiratory tract (nasopharyngeal swab / BAL / induced sputum, etc.): this may help to inform about viral carriage and possible route of shedding;

-- time elapsed from first positive molecular test to first negative mol. result;

-- follow-up of close contacts of asymptomatics;

-- other laboratory analysis to understand hematological changes in such cases (WBCs, RBCs, AST-ALT-ALP, S-creatinine, Protein C, LDH, CPK (to understand immune response, inflammatory resp. & renal function).

The molecular tests should be performed using two viral targets (in Italy ten HCWs tested positive at first instance, but WHO discarded them b/c only target was used).

An asymptomatic case may or may not be infectious and in other settings the WHO did not count such cases (see Beijing H7N9+ but without symptoms child).

Asymptomatics may carry the virus for some time (or not) and may develop symptoms for example if another respiratory pathogen is present (H1pdm09, bacterial superinfections): this must be clarified.

...
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

Vibrant I don't know of any supplement that will definitely help us. The obvious is to avoid situations that would be conducive to infection. Frequent hand washing and not touching your face is always good advice. We just do not know enough about the disease to offer any real solutions. Some things we might investigate are:

The virus is encapsulated so that might be a good place to start looking for the viruses weak point.

Using devices to add aerosolized droplets of oils know to be virucides might be helpful. Tea tree oil would be a good example of an oil that kills viruses. This action would help reduce the spread of the disease but I am wary of suggesting it would help cure the sick. Although it might reduce the viral lode in a patient.

Putting UV lights into use is another way to kill virus. If you have an HVAC system putting a UV light into the ductwork will kill all bacteria and viruses that pass the light. In office buildings this would be an excellent way to reduce all types of infectious disease. It is also fairly inexpensive if the building has an existing forced air heating and cooling system.

In any case, I think it is time those of us at FT that like the challenge of researching new ways to attack disease causing organisms go to work.
 
Re: MERS discussion thread

Reporting more cases in KSA - incl. a-symptomatic cases - lowers the mortality rate. % deaths in KSA is going down fast. In this way you can show the world you are doing a good job?
 
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