A posting place for news from places around the globe, outside of the US/Europe.
This also kills otherwise hale people, where as far as I know influenza only kills the infirm. I suspect mortality ends up being >4%.
Well google tells me the fatality rate of the new virus is two percent, much higher than seasonal flu although lower than SARS. This could be exaggerated by where the majority of cases have occurred so far and the quality of healthcare there. The fatality rate is likely to be lower in Europe I presume.
Anyway, as someone who gets a flu vaccination every year and practices preventative hygiene, I’m also concerned about this outbreak.
Sure, but virulance is a combination of transmissibility and severity. While you could argue that the published fatality rate right now is 2% (I agree that this number is probably a reflection of local healthcare quality and would likely be substantially lower in the USA and Western Europe), it doesn't seem to be a particularly transmissible virus. This is compared to something like Measles, which has a transmission rate exceeding 90%. If someone on an aircraft has Measles, every unvaccinated person on that plane is almost certainly walking off infected. With the latest coronavirus? Probably not.
I'm not saying that it isn't worthwhile to keep an eye on it for more concerning signs, but I do wonder how many people who are running out to buy (fairly pointless) face-masks and are waving their hands in the air about the new doom virus are the same people who skipped their flu shot and declined to vaccinate their kids with MMRV.
Locally, we have a plan in place to handle it just the way we would any other infectious agent. But until it proves to be something more in the vein of SARS or MERS, I think the media coverage is perhaps a little breathless. Quarantined cities make for dramatic news though, so I don't expect it to stop.
...influenza only kills the infirm.
Uh, no. Traditionally the very young and very old are vulnerable. As are the immunocompromised and those with significant pulmonary comorbidities (e.g. COPD). However, the H1N1 ("Swine flu") strain killed somewhere in the region of 17,000 people in the USA, and was notable for actually being worse in young, healthy individuals with strong immune systems. The 1918 "Spanish Flu" killed indiscriminately, irrespective of age or health status, and killed so many millions of people that to this day we don't have an accurate idea of the actual number of deaths.
Trust me, there's no such thing as "just the Flu".
I feel like "it's just the flu" is a thing said exclusively by people who've never really had a case of it. Even for a healthy person it is pretty debilitating.
I feel like "it's just the flu" is a thing said exclusively by people who've never really had a case of it. Even for a healthy person it is pretty debilitating.
Wife and I just got over the flu and it messed us up something fierce. She was bed ridden for three days and I had to go to emergency once I started coughing up blood. Luckily, the blood part was unrelated and had to do with a minor bacterial infection in my lungs and a post-viral cough. The flu SUCKS and if you have it, you're out for a while.
I really wish people were this concerned about Influenza, which is staggeringly more virulent. Thus far the CDC reports that in the USA alone there have been 13 million influenza illnesses, 120,000 hospitalizations, and 6,600 influenza-related deaths. In contrast, China has had only 4,500 coronavirus infections and 106 coronavirus-related deaths.
Influenza is a known threat with a known virulence level. The CDC isn't screaming about the influenza numbers because they are entirely consistent with previous years. We've also distributed 173 million doses of vaccine for it since September of last year.
The coronavirus, on the other hand, is an unknown threat that was discovered less than a month ago. We currently don't have a vaccine or know how long it would take to develop and then distribute said vaccine. That 2019-nCoV apparently spread from animal-to-human contact is exceptionally concerning because, historically, diseases that make that jump are on the deadlier side (which was why everyone was worried about SARS and MERS).
Sure, but virulance is a combination of transmissibility and severity. While you could argue that the published fatality rate right now is 2% (I agree that this number is probably a reflection of local healthcare quality and would likely be substantially lower in the USA and Western Europe), it doesn't seem to be a particularly transmissible virus. This is compared to something like Measles, which has a transmission rate exceeding 90%. If someone on an aircraft has Measles, every unvaccinated person on that plane is almost certainly walking off infected. With the latest coronavirus? Probably not.
I'm not saying that it isn't worthwhile to keep an eye on it for more concerning signs, but I do wonder how many people who are running out to buy (fairly pointless) face-masks and are waving their hands in the air about the new doom virus are the same people who skipped their flu shot and declined to vaccinate their kids with MMRV.
Locally, we have a plan in place to handle it just the way we would any other infectious agent. But until it proves to be something more in the vein of SARS or MERS, I think the media coverage is perhaps a little breathless. Quarantined cities make for dramatic news though, so I don't expect it to stop.
Humanity is long overdue for a pandemic. The last one was the Spanish Influenza in 1918 that managed to infect half a billion people globally--a quarter of the world's population back then--with only slow-ass boat travel. 50 million people died.
Now the world's population is four times as large--with most people living in crowded cities--and someone can travel half the globe in a day.
And public health officials are concerned that our healthcare infrastructure isn't quite up to the task of a pandemic. In the states we haven't organized a country-wide vaccination program since we eradicated polio in the 50s. And now we have to deal with HMOs, privatized hospitals, and the fact that there are about 45 million Americans who don't have any health insurance.
That China is quarantining entire cities should give you pause. They are clearly worried about the disease spreading.
More like worried about the perception of not taking action to stop the disease from spreading. They don't want to lose face, but in reality there's really nothing they can do at this point because people are stupid.
Living with the Coronavirus
More like worried about the perception of not taking action to stop the disease from spreading. They don't want to lose face, but in reality there's really nothing they can do at this point because people are stupid.
I agree with you, in part.
But quarantining cities is also what public health officials would argue for rather than waiting to shut the barn doors after the horse has bolted.
Now the world's population is four times as large--with most people living in crowded cities--and someone can travel half the globe in a day.
And with an ever growing segment of the population, at least in this country (can't speak to others) where people believe basically any vaccine is automatically worse than the thing it's preventing... or is some conspiracy by Big Pharma to make money... or is part of some other ridiculous conspiracy... All of which will only work to undermine any treatments/preventative measures we might take.
But quarantining cities is also what public health officials would argue for rather than waiting to shut the barn doors after the horse has bolted.
Except that public health officials outside of China are not arguing for that.
So disease response experts are having trouble figuring out what China’s public health officials plan to do here, how they’ll do it, or why. In an outbreak, by the time you try something as ambitious as quarantining a megacity, it’s already too late to quarantine the megacity.As a public health tool, quarantine has a deep history. For diseases against which you have no pharmaceutical defense—which was the case for basically every disease for most of human history—what else can you do? Large-scale ones chased and followed every great epidemic from the 12th century European plague to cholera to smallpox to influenza. But once people figured out that pathogens like bacteria and viruses cause disease, other interventions came to supercede if not outright replace quarantine, or what public health experts today call social distancing. “The problem with social distancing is that we have very little evidence that it works,” says Larry Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University. “At most, it might delay for a short time an outbreak, but it’s very unlikely to stop the progressive spread.”
By the time you quarantine a city—if it is even possible to do so—it would already be too late if the pandemic were really that bad.
Quarantine at that scale is big, flashy, headline-grabbing and dubiously effective or proportionate. Exactly the kind of thing a government does when it wants to look like it's responding to a crisis.
So far, the global health community is concerned by the new coronavirus but isn't raising the alarm. I suppose maybe China knows something we don't and is sitting on apocalyptic piles of bodies, but you would think that would have come out by now.
It got Hong Kong out of the news cycle too.
It got Hong Kong out of the news cycle too.
And, just to be paranoid, I don't think the Chinese government minds a little practice quarantining and isolating a city, or having a plausible excuse to do so again floating around.
I believe the group that approves candidates removed anyone not conservative from the ballot so yeah nothing will change.
Yeah I was going to ask is it a real election with different candidates or a sham election with only people the current power group supports?
Death toll from Delhi's worst riots in decades rises to 38
The death toll from Delhi’s worst riots in decades has risen to 38, as a political row broke out over the transfer of a judge who criticised the police and government’s handling of the crisis.Tensions remained high in India’s capital, as thousands of riot police and paramilitaries patrolled streets littered with the debris from days of sectarian riots.
Justice S. Muralidhar, a Delhi high court judge, sharply criticised the police and called on officers to investigate politicians from Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata party for inciting violence.
Muralidhar was transferred to another state court in a late-night order, prompting an outcry among opposition politicians and on social media. Manish Tewari, opposition Congress party leader, said every lawyer and judge in India should strongly protest what he called a crude attempt to intimidate the judiciary.
Ravi Shankar Prasad, the law minister, insisted it was a “routine transfer”.
The violence began over a disputed new citizenship law on Monday, which led to clashes between Muslims and Hindus in which hundreds were injured. Many suffered gunshot wounds, while arson, looting and stone-throwing also took place.
Why India doesen't explode like a powderkeg is a mystery to me. It seems to me as a shattered piece of plexiglass sagging under its own weight held together by a thin layer of plastic.
With Corona things are going to get ugly fast.
Yeah corona is terrible. Hopefully Zima will make a comeback to save us all from terrible beer. God I miss Zima, the nectar of the gods.
Yeah corona is terrible. Hopefully Zima will make a comeback to save us all from terrible beer. God I miss Zima, the nectar of the gods.
didn't they re-release it? or was that a limited run thing?
Baron Of Hell wrote:Yeah corona is terrible. Hopefully Zima will make a comeback to save us all from terrible beer. God I miss Zima, the nectar of the gods.
didn't they re-release it? or was that a limited run thing?
It's still available in some places. In naval aviation, it's used as a prank. The game is to get a person to accept the bottle, usually cunningly disguised or contained in something else. Once they are in possession, they are required to drink the entire bottle in front of everyone for our amusement. For the squadrons based in Japan, at least, it's a brave aviator who doesn't safety-check a gift for hidden Zima.
nvm
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