The Chinese government had posed very strict measures to limit the movement of people since Jan. 23, including but not limited to the following. The Chinese New Year holiday, which was originally from Jan. 24 to Jan. 30, was extended to Feb. 2. In most provinces, enterprises were required to delay the resumption of production until Feb. 10. They have also been advised to let their employees work from home and reduce the number of people working together in offices. Many of them require employees coming from outside the city of their working location to quarantine at home for 14 days. Right now daily operations at many enterprises are still suspended or gradually resuming. People have been advised to stay at home and avoid going out, especially gathering together. Many young people at large cities did their grocery shopping primarily online, including shopping foods such as vegetables and meat. Outdoor celebrations for the festival were cancelled all over the country. Most places have closed public services such as museums, parks, libraries, and tourist zones. Some cities temporarily stopped public transportation and even taxis during the holiday. Schools that were supposed to resume classes after the winter break have been closed until further notice and students are now asked to stay at home and take online courses. Local governments were doing their best to track down everyone coming from Hubei as well as their close contacts. Those who intentionally hid their travel or contract history to Hubei were arrested once confirmed. The infection path and movement history of every confirmed case were analyzed by disease control staffs and the police. Body temperature of people has been taken at not only public places such as airports and train stations but also at many local communities. Public channels have been established to receive reports on misconducts such as withholding information of the epidemic. Several government officials who failed to meet their duties to control the spread of the epidemic were sacked. Many cities and local communities require people who return from outside to register personal information for better tracking. Meanwhile, a huge amount of work is put into meeting the sudden increase of the demand of medical supplies and services, especially in the Hubei province. Manufacturers of medical supplies resumed production during the holiday and lots of supplies were transported to Hubei. Two hospitals were constructed in Wuhan within a week to treat severe cases and 14 public venues have been renovated as temporary hospitals to quarantine and treat confirmed cases with light to mild symptoms. More public venues are still being renovated. Thousands of healthcare workers from all over the country were sent to Hubei to ease the shortage of medical staffs. Advanced AI technologies have been applied in several areas such as aiding diagnosis, drug repurposing, and collecting information within local communities. I doubt any other country would make so much financial sacrifices and is capable of mobilizing so much resources in such a short time to control the spread of the epidemic. The hope is that government officials from other countries had been on the lookout early on and are better prepared to combat the disease. We'll see how well Japan and South Korea can do in the next month to control the epidemic.
Part of this is that the US doesn't really test for it. The CDC's test is flawed, and only 3 states have testing capabilities right now. So it's possible some people here have it but we just don't know it. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/cdc-coronavirus-116529 Problems with a coronavirus test developed by the CDC have delayed the Trump administration's efforts to expand screening to state and local public health labs, more than two weeks after the FDA granted permission to distribute the CDC test nationwide. Only three of the more than 100 public health labs across the country have verified the CDC test for use, according to the Association of Public Health Laboratories. ... CDC confirmed the problems with the coronavirus test, and with using its flu-surveillance network to screen for the virus. But the agency declined to answer further questions on the matter. https://www.reuters.com/article/chi...or-coronavirus-public-lab-group-idUSL4N2AL3U1 Feb 21 (Reuters) - California, Nebraska and Illinois are the only U.S. states that can currently test for coronavirus, the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) told Reuters on Friday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week said some of the testing kits sent to U.S. states and at least 30 countries produced "inconclusive" results due to a flawed component and the CDC planned to send replacement materials to make the kits work. (reut.rs/2Vae2Dx)
Italy has more cases than Hong Kong officially has. Everyone shutting down borders with Iran. I’m guessing the 2020 Olympics are in jeopardy too.
China ****ed up badly and now we are all paying the price for that. Which other civilised country would wait for 3 months for the virus to get a big foothold and only implement a quarantine in the middle of the peak travel season after 5 million people had already left Wuhan? Which other country would prosecute their doctors and threaten them with prison and losing their job because they just wanted to do their job and protect the people? So spare me with the propaganda because we arent stupid. The number one goal is prevention. The number two is early detection and containment. Fail in both.
You are misinformed. The Spanish influenza spread for a year with much less lethality and then came back the next winter mutated and then it killed in the hundred of thousands. The time to develop a vaccine with all the best of modern sciense is at least 18 months so we arent prepared to face a new spanish influenza at all. Sure there are protocols now, but the world is also interconnected like never before. People straight from the epicenter flew to all over the globe infecting others literally MONTHS before there was any alarm bell for a new disease. I want to see how you find such certainty that the coronavirus will not mutate when mutation is the characteristic of viruses and there have been mutated strains already observed in China outside of Hubei, Iran and Italy. The only good thing compared to the Spanish Flu is that this one is merciful to the young ones. The Spanish flu left the old alive and targeted the youth.
There was a problem with a BATCH of the testing kits. Not all of them. Thats why they test TWICE and if someone has a history with contact they still enforce a quaratine for 14 days or order self isolation. Also the testing kits are now improved because they have developed new ones that detect antibodies and not antigen so they are much more sensitive.
a small bottle of alcoholic gel in Italy used to cost 3 euros. Today they are selling them for 95 euros and you can only buy them through the internet. Absolutely immoral greed.
There is no denial that local governments in Wuhan and Hubei made mistakes in the early prevention of the disease. But what you said about 3 months is definitely exaggerated. I share with you some of the timeline based on public information. Dec. 1 - First known symptomatic case occurred (another source suggested that it was at Dec. 8) Dec. 27 - Local hospitals reported to local CDC about the epidemic as more symptomatic cases started to occur Dec. 30 - Doctors from local hospitals spread information of the epidemic online with their friends Dec. 31 - First group of investigators from national CDC were sent to Wuhan Jan. 3 - China reported to the WHO about the disease and completed gene sequencing of the virus Jan. 4 - HK government raised alert level on the disease Jan. 5 - WHO first published information about the disease Jan. 7 - Disinfection measures were taken at airports in Wuhan Jan. 8 - Second group of investigators from national CDC were sent to Wuhan Jan. 10 - National CDC shared the gene sequence with WHO and other countries Jan. 12 - First confirmed case reported in Thailand and body temperature was taken at Wuhan airport Jan. 17 - One investigator reported to the head of CDC of the threat of human transmission Jan. 20 - One expert from the National Health Commission, which supervises the CDC, warned the public of the threat of human transmission. The central government also started to take more active actions. Jan. 23 - Wuhan government decided to shut down the city. Many other local governments also started to take active actions. From all the information that I have received, national CDC and the local governments could've taken more active actions in early January or at the latest in middle of January. Unfortunately, there were important city and provincial annual party meetings going on during the two weeks before Jan. 17 so the media kept a controlled tone on the disease (by the way, I have been in China and there had been news on the disease since early Jan.). What was worse, Wuhan waited until Jan. 23 before eventually quarantining the whole city. There were also some hints suggesting that experts from the national CDC were too strict in classifying patients as being infected by the virus at the early stage of the epidemic when no or few test kits were available. Therefore the severity of the epidemic was underestimated. So CDC also had responsibilities on the delay. The doctors who first spread the information online were asked to keep quiet on the topic by the police but I have not seen any information suggesting them being actually prosecuted. The Supreme People's Procurator, the highest national-level agency responsible for prosecution, had publicly acquitted the doctors of any wrongdoings in late January. Many people were dissatisfied with the local police and government in Wuhan on what they did. Based on all the information above, how much better do you think other countries could do when no knowledge of the virus (e.g. the potentially long incubation period) is known? More information of the disease could definitely be published earlier to raise public awareness -- if their CDCs react fast enough -- but I doubt any actions like quarantining a whole city would take place. Do not forget that even countries like Japan and South Korea who have been on the lookout since late January are now on the verge of an outbreak.
No, many meta analyses done in the first 41 known cases suggest that the virus was spreading at least since November and most likely October.That includes studies done by Chinese scientists in Wuhan. "A new study, published on January 24 in The Lancet, helps explain why. The authors — Chinese researchers, and doctors working in Wuhan — paint a very different portrait of the first days of the outbreak. They suggest the virus, and its spread among humans, took off weeks earlier than Chinese officials said. The researchers reviewed the clinical charts, nursing records, lab findings, and chest X-rays of the first 41 patients who had confirmed 2019-nCoV infections. Among other things, they reported that the first case of 2019-nCoV wasn’t even linked to the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market at the center of the outbreak. This indicates spread of the virus in Wuhan was likely happening months sooner, as early as October, Daniel Lucey, an infectious diseases physician and adjunct professor of infectious diseases at Georgetown University Medical Center, told Vox. It also indicates that there may have been multiple places in the food supply chain where people were exposed to animals with the virus, he added." I don't expect any country to raise the alarm in the first weeks, but we are talking about 3 months here. And also how you say they werent prosecuted when the doctors were called in the police station and forced to sign prepared statements denouncing that a new virus existed? When their posts and profiled were deleted by censors? Under threat of losing their jobs or going to prison? I mean sure maybe for CCP standards who is sending people to concetration camps, that isnt prosecution but for western democratic countries' standards it is prosecution.
Here is the paper and here is the news article you cited from. It suggested that the first known symptomatic case, who was likely only linked to the disease much later, occurred at Dec. 1. He could be infected days earlier. The highlighted sentence was an educated guess on the earliest possible time of the very first animal-to-human or human-to-human transmission to occur. It was solely based on the fact that no epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases. Note that a new disease like this wouldn't raise enough awareness until a significant number of distinguished symptomatic cases occurred in one place. Based on the current information on the spreading speed of the virus, had a small-range outbreak of 20+ people happened before December, do you really think that there would only be around 12000 confirmed cases outside Hubei in China? Or do you think the number is significantly underestimated? By the way, the situation in Japan right now is similar to Wuhan in early Jan. except that the Japanese people and the government now have more awareness of the disease. Japan had their first confirmed case on Jan. 16, who was symptomatic on Jan. 3 and was treated as having a flu. To me a prosecution is a government attorney accusing a person of violating the criminal law. There needs to be at least a prosecutor involved. This one is more or less as severe as someone got an unjustified speeding ticket and fined without being convicted of reckless driving & facing jail time. The doctor called the cases as a reemergence of SARS (rather than a new virus) in his original message which was widely spread. That was the technical reason used by the police to justify the claim that the statement was untruthful.
Pandemic is more likely today than it was yesterday. Some recent Twitter info I've been following: And an article that is making the rounds for good reasons. Lots of good info in here: https://virologydownunder.com/past-...ly-go-pandemic-and-we-should-all-prepare-now/ On a personal note, we're at the point of "topping off" our social distancing preparations. Just bought extra hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, and other stuff to sanitize surfaces. Headed to the store later for extra cat and dog food. And you can never have enough toilet paper.
The issue is we kind of don't know how to control it, we don't know how long it lasts, we don't know how long it takes to cure someone on average, we don't have reliable tests for it, we don't have sufficient tests for it, and we don't even know how it started. I mean I hope for the best, but the only way we have found to control it so far is mass quarantines.
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-pers...19-virus-likely-has-multiple-infection-routes Studies show COVID-19 virus likely has multiple infection routes As the COVID-19 outbreak grows in China and abroad, new studies attempt to answer questions on how the virus is shed and the range of clinical outcomes, with two studies indicating that shedding—and therefore transmission—likely occurs via multiple routes. Currently, testing for and confirmation of infection with COVID-19 is conducted via oral swabs. But in a study published in Emerging Microbes & Infections, Chinese scientists report evidence of an oral-fecal transmission route for COVID-19 viruses and show that, in hospitalized patients, viral RNA was found in anal swabs and in blood samples. The study was conducted in a Wuhan, China, hospital, with samples collected from 178 patients. The study authors found viral nucleotide in anal swabs or blood even when it was not detected in oral swabs, especially in patients who had been receiving supportive care for several days. The results also showed that the timing of positive swabs changed. On the first day of illness, 80% of oral swabs were positive in a small group of patients, but by day 5, 75% of anal swabs were positive for COVID-19 virual RNA, and only 50% of oral swabs were still positive in the same patients with lab-confirmed COVID-19. "These data suggested a shift from more oral positive during early period (as indicated by antibody titres) to more anal positive during later period might happen," the authors said. The results of the study are the first to show COVID-19 could be transmitted via respiratory, fecal-oral, or body fluid routes, the authors say. They also warn that a patient with negative oral swabs after several days of illness may still be capable of transmitting the virus. In a report from the Chinese Center for Disease Control, authors describe how they isolated the virus from a stool sample of a patient with COVID-19 "Respiratory droplets and contact transmission are considered to be the most important routes of transmission of 2019-nCoV, but do not fully account for the occurrence of all coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, previously known as novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP), and the reasons for the rapid spread of this virus," they write. The finding suggests stool can contaminate hands, food, water, and, as with the other study, it points to multiple routes of transmission. Milder symptoms in non-Wuhan Chinese patients Today in The BMJ, Chinese scientists looked at the clinical findings of 62 COVID-19 patients from seven hospitals in Zhejiang province, China. None of the patients died, and only one patient was admitted to the intensive care unit. Of the 62 patients, 48 (77%) presented with a fever, 50 (81%) had a cough, 35 (56%) had a productive cough, 32 (52%) reported muscle pain or fatigue, and 21 (34%) had a headache. Only two patients (3%) developed shortness of breath on admission, the authors said. The authors said that, compared with patients in Wuhan, the patients seen in Zhejiang had relatively mild symptoms. None of the patients had exposure to the Wuhan seafood market linked to the origin of the virus, and all had contracted the disease front another infected person. Patients who experienced symptoms for the more than 10 days were more likely to have underlying health issues. The authors also provided a timeline for infection: "Among 56 patients who could provide the exact date of close contact with someone with confirmed or suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection, the median incubation period from exposure to symptoms was 4 days (interquartile range 3-5 days). The median time from onset of symptoms to first hospital admission was 2.0 (1.0-4.3) days." SARS-CoV-2 is another name for the COVID-19 virus. In a study from The Lancet Infectious Diseases, meanwhile, investigators detailed the first case of COVID-19 in a Vietnamese woman who acquired the virus in China. The woman lived in Wuhan for business for 2 months in December and January and did not report visiting the Wuhan seafood market or having close contact with any person with influenza-like symptoms. The woman lived with two other Vietnamese colleagues in Wuhan, and they also developed COVID-19 upon return to Vietnam. After being admitted to the hospital with fever and respiratory symptoms, the woman recovered within 9 days. "21 people with direct contact with this patient were also isolated. Until February 6, none of these individuals had developed symptoms. As the patient's two colleagues tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, this suggested transmission via respiratory droplets," the authors concluded.
I wonder if the method of infection has an effect on the severity of the symptoms? Basically receive a large 'dose' of the virus and it quickly ravages your system like a bad allergy attack or severe immune overload.
