slade's Link
Can you give me/us your take on this info?
I was reading an article about the spread last night that dealt with the effects of global travel (by air)and had a graphic showing the vast number of flights with arrows linking origin and destination. The flight vectors covered the entire globe.
Being a new novel virus infection, there is no present way to protect by immunization. However, since the genetic structure has already been sequenced, a vaccine might be available relatively rapidly dependent upon testing. Not one health agency would approve of such without determining both its effectiveness and potential problems...which means if created today, wouldn't be available for the public for at least a year or two.
The best way to deal with this (and any spreading infections) is practical. Keep your hands away from your face (mucus membranes), wash them, avoid crowds in enclosed spaces, etc. These protections have been touted often. I see that in China there is a shortage of face masks and prices have increased. I'm not sure just how effective they are, but they would certainly keep material from coughs and sneezing from being aerosolized.
Mike...Ebola is spread via different vectors. ;o)
Annony Mouse's Link
Annony Mouse's Link
There are more than 800 cases total, with several cases outside of China, in the first several weeks of this outbreak. By Chia-Yi Hou
There are now more than 800 cases of the new coronavirus in a month and a half since the earliest cases. A previous large outbreak of SARS lasted about six months. We won’t be able to compare the fatality rates until we know more about the disease and how many people it has affected.
As of today (Jan. 24), there are 846 cases of people with the new Wuhan coronavirus and 26 deaths. This week, Chinese officials blocked travel out of Wuhan by train and plane, new potential cases are under investigation in Canada and Australia, and a second case is confirmed in the U.S. A lot has happened in only the last two weeks, but how does this current coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan compare to the timeline of past large outbreaks, like SARS and MERS?
What happened with SARS
The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, which happened in 2002-2003, is caused by a coronavirus. But the way things unfolded then is partly why that outbreak was an alarming event, experts say.
The first case is thought to have been reported on Nov. 16, 2002. Health officials didn’t know what it was, and SARS was categorized by its symptoms, which were similar to pneumonia. It took several months for the outbreak to be reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on Feb. 14, 2003, when there were already more than 300 cases. At that time, Chinese officials were not sure what caused the illness. By March 21, there were cases in 13 countries and 10 deaths.
The entire SARS outbreak lasted about six months, resulting in more than 8,000 cases and killing 774 people. It took months for the virus to be identified as the cause of the illness, and the genome sequence was published in April 2003. Granted that technology for sequencing has advanced since 2003 allowing for faster work, this still means that it took a few months from the first knowledge of the outbreak.
The MERS outbreaks
Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is caused by a coronavirus, named MERS-CoV. It was first identified in Saudi Arabia in Sep. 2012, and about 35 percent of infected patients die from the virus, according to WHO. MERS-CoV doesn’t pass easily from person to person unless there is close contact like physical touch.
By June 2013, there were 55 laboratory-confirmed cases reported to WHO. Cases were reported in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates and some infected travelers were reported in the United Kingdom, Italy, France and Tunisia.
In 2015, there was a separate outbreak of MERS-CoV in South Korea. The first patient of the outbreak developed symptoms on May 11, 2015. WHO and the South Korean government estimated that the outbreak ended in July 2015, after about two months. By the end, there were 186 confirmed cases and 38 deaths.
The early days of the Wuhan coronavirus
The illness caused by a new coronavirus in Wuhan, currently being called 2019-nCoV, was first reported to WHO on Dec. 31, 2019 as a “cluster of cases” in Wuhan. The earliest cases were estimated to have started on Dec. 8. The virus’s genetic material, the RNA, was sequenced and made public information on Jan. 10. That’s a relatively quick turnaround time.
This past week, researchers published their analyses of the new coronavirus (Jan. 22) and diagnostic tools for testing people for the virus (Jan. 23). Researchers are sharing what they are learning about the virus much earlier than in past outbreaks.
Another important difference, especially when compared to the SARS outbreak, is the speed to take action, to disseminate warnings and recommendations to the general public and to put restrictions on travel as the number of cases increased. When cases jumped up from 68 on Sunday, Jan. 19 to more than 800 cases on Thursday, Jan. 23, officials put a clamp down on public transportation out of Wuhan.
Looking back at SARS, the fatality rate for SARS varied by age, “less than 1 percent in persons aged 24 years or younger, 6 percent in persons aged 25 to 44 years, 15 percent in persons aged 45 to 64 years, and greater than 50 percent in persons aged 65 years and older,” according to WHO.
So far, the deaths from 2019-nCoV have mostly been in older people, many with existing health problems. However, the most recent death is of a 37-year-old man who is now the youngest fatality in this outbreak. As more reports of cases and deaths come in, we will have to wait to understand how dangerous this virus is and how it compares to past coronavirus outbreaks.
Annony Mouse's Link
Maybe I’ve just become callused because of all news that has turned up sickness that was not as bad as predicted, but I’d rather think that here in the USA, we have the best professionals working on all of the, to squash them before they become something that wipes out 1/2 the worlds population.
PANDEMIC1 PANDEMIC! PANDEMIC! (And their readers immediately focus on the zombie apocalypse)
slade's Link
No need to worry. You can also get your magic elixir of ""APEX WATER DIRECT OXYGEN INFUSION""
Annony Mouse's Link
See link that explains about R0 which is used by epidemiologists to study spread of disease. This new virus is genetically related to MERS and SARS.
If interested, here is the link to ProMed: https://promedmail.org/ Click on this article: Novel coronavirus (19): China (HU) transmission dynamics Best read after seeing link/video.
Annony Mouse's Link
WeGotThisCovered-
While the world watches anxiously as the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, some eagle-eyed gamers have noticed a couple of seriously bizarre connections between the deadly virus and the Resident Evil franchise.
Firstly, we’ll get the obvious connection out of the way. As you probably know, Capcom’s survival horror series revolves around contagious viral outbreaks, which clearly echoes the very real outbreak that originated in China recently. However, here’s the weird part: it turns out that there’s a biological research lab in Wuhan, China with an official logo that looks exactly like a colour-swapped Umbrella Corporation logo. Seriously, we kid you not.
As you may or may not know, Wuhan is one of the real-life cities that has been quarantined by the Chinese government in an effort to keep the coronavirus outbreak from becoming an all-out epidemic. The Umbrella Corporation, on the other hand, is ostensibly a harmless pharmaceutical company, that doubles as a secret biological weapons division that develops deadly pathogens that turn folk into vicious zombies with a penchant for human flesh. Of course, we’re not saying that the research lab in Wuhan is secretly developing killer viruses. We’re simply pointing out what a creepy coincidence this all is.
Click on broken image icon.
Salagi's Link
Annony Mouse's Link
Racoon City...the real world?
Understanding this virus is still an ongoing process...
Annony Mouse's Link
CONVIN-19 may be the ultimate solution to the California homeless problem...
Thanks for the heads up itshot
Good article with some good suggestions.
Best one: "...Fourth Point: Tune out the mainstream media.The press wishes to induce economic turmoil to harm Trump’s re-election and to make the coronavirus into his Katrina..."
What the new phase of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. means for you
"...One reason some infections may be going unnoticed is because it’s the season for respiratory diseases. Influenza and the common cold have similar symptoms as COVID-19 — and are the likely culprit in the majority of respiratory disease cases in the United States, where the coronavirus risk is still relatively low — which can make the new coronavirus harder to detect..."
"...the coronavirus’s prevalence of mild and undetectable cases and airborne transmission are bigger challenges. People may catch the virus without ever knowing they were exposed and may develop mild cases that wouldn’t cause them to seek medical attention and get tested. Those people may unwittingly start epidemics in new places. “We just see this as inevitable..."
"It appears that the risk of getting severely ill is fairly low for many people. About 80 percent of COVID-19 cases are mild, according to a report on more than 44,000 confirmed cases in China (SN: 2/25/20). "
Age and preconditions are the main factors WRT severe cases.
"...In a related article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, along with his co-authors, wrote that the COVID-19 outbreak poses “critical challenges for the public health, research, and medical communities,” but that the actual death rate from the disease is likely lower than the rate reported by the Chinese researchers. The reason, they say, is that many cases are mild and thus are not being reported.
“If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%,” wrote Fauci and his colleagues in the letter.
Assuming this is correct, that means the health consequences of COVID-19 are more akin to severe seasonal influenza, which is associated with a 0.1 percent death rate, or the pandemic influenza outbreaks of 1957 and 1968, according to Fauci et al. These figures are mercifully much lower than the fatality rates of two other notorious coronaviruses, namely SARS (death rate between 9 and 10 percent) and MERS (death rate of 36 percent), according to research published in Nature Reviews Microbiology in 2016..."
How will mitigation measures influence the course of the epidemic Date: Mon 9 Mar 2020 Source: The Lancet [abridged, edited]
Anderson RM, Heesterbeek, Klinkenberg D, Hollingsworth TD. How will country-based mitigation measures influence the course of the COVID-19 epidemic? Lancet. 2020; pii: S0140-6736(20)30567-5. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30567-5 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In a Comment to The Lancet, Anderson et.al. discussed observations on the impact of mitigation measures on the course of the COVID-19 epidemic at the country level.
Excerpts below: "Governments will not be able to minimise both deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the economic impact of viral spread. Keeping mortality as low as possible will be the highest priority for individuals; hence governments must put in place measures to ameliorate the inevitable economic downturn.
"What has happened in China shows that quarantine, social distancing, and isolation of infected populations can contain the epidemic. This impact of the COVID-19 response in China is encouraging for the many countries where COVID-19 is beginning to spread. However, it is unclear whether other countries can implement the stringent measures China eventually adopted. Singapore and Hong Kong, both of which had severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemics in 2002-03, provide hope and many lessons to other countries. In both places, COVID-19 has been managed well to date, despite early cases, by early government action and through social distancing measures taken by individuals.
"The course of an epidemic is defined by a series of key factors, some of which are poorly understood at present for COVID-19. The basic reproduction number (R0), which defines the mean number of secondary cases generated by one primary case when the population is largely susceptible to infection, determines the overall number of people who are likely to be infected, or more precisely the area under the epidemic curve. For an epidemic to take hold, the value of R0 must be greater than unity in value.
"The speed of the initial spread of the epidemic, its doubling time, or the related serial interval (the mean time it takes for an infected person to pass on the infection to others), and the likely duration of the epidemic are determined by factors such as the length of time from infection to when a person is infectious to others and the mean duration of infectiousness.
"First among the important unknowns about COVID-19 is the case fatality rate (CFR), which requires information on the denominator that defines the number infected. We are unaware of any completed large-scale serology surveys to detect specific antibodies to COVID-19.
"The 2nd unknown is whether infectiousness starts before onset of symptoms. The incubation period for COVID-19 is about 5-6 days. In one study of 17 patients with COVID-19, peak viraemia seems to be at the end of the incubation period, pointing to the possibility that viraemia might be high enough to trigger transmission for 1-2 days before onset of symptoms.
"The 3rd uncertainty is whether there are a large number of asymptomatic cases of COVID-19. Estimates suggest that about 80% of people with COVID-19 have mild or asymptomatic disease, 14% have severe disease, and 6% are critically ill, implying that symptom-based control is unlikely to be sufficient unless these cases are only lightly infectious.
"The 4th uncertainty is the duration of the infectious period for COVID-19.
"A key issue for epidemiologists is helping policy makers decide the main objectives of mitigation, such as, minimising morbidity and associated mortality, avoiding an epidemic peak that overwhelms healthcare services, keeping the effects on the economy within manageable levels, and flattening the epidemic curve to wait for vaccine development and manufacture on scale and antiviral drug therapies. Such mitigation objectives are difficult to achieve by the same interventions, so choices must be made about priorities. For COVID-19, the potential economic impact of self-isolation or mandated quarantine could be substantial, as occurred in China.
"No vaccine or effective antiviral drug is likely to be available soon.
"So what is left at present for mitigation is voluntary plus mandated quarantine, stopping mass gatherings, closure of educational institutes or places of work where infection has been identified, and isolation of households, towns, or cities. Social distancing measures reduce the value of the effective reproduction number R.
"Therefore, broader-scale social distancing is likely to be needed, as was put in place in China. This measure prevents transmission from symptomatic and non-symptomatic cases, hence flattening the epidemic and pushing the peak further into the future. Broader-scale social distancing provides time for the health services to treat cases and increase capacity, and, in the longer term, for vaccines and treatments to be developed. The greater the reduction in transmission, the longer and flatter the epidemic curve (figure), with the risk of resurgence when interventions are lifted perhaps to mitigate economic impact.
"Individual behaviour will be crucial to control the spread of COVID-19.
"Data from China, South Korea, Italy, and Iran suggest that the CFR increases sharply with age and is higher in people with COVID-19 and underlying comorbidities. Targeted social distancing for these groups could be the most effective way to reduce morbidity and concomitant mortality."
slade's Link
Annony Mouse's Link
What are all these “underlying conditions” everyone keeps talking about? Does the virus go after certain other illnesses, or diseases more actively? If 90% of the people who get this Covid-19 show very little to no symptoms, then what do the 10% have in common that nobody is coming out and saying?
I’d hate to think we are being mislead or worse, lied to, just to push an agenda to put a screaming stop to the entire US economy, but they have proven to us time and time again (to no end) that they will stop at nothing to ruin this President, and his ability to get results. What’s really sad is after what they put Kavanaugh through, they could never again, in my life, be trusted. People’s memories are way to short.
slade's Link
Can anyone explain why the CDC started hiring Quarantine Health Advisors starting in November of 2019, prior to any health epidemic, and oddly in the same cities that are currently experiencing high numbers of CV19?
this is gorbal hockey, but with giant sharp teeth
Annony Mouse's Link
The point is that in their daily tallies of death from Covid-19, they pool the deaths into a single statistic, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of those who have died fall into specific identifiable categories.
See my post above and this one.
Be safe and sane, friends.
HA/KS's Link
Try finding that in the press.
HA/KS's Link
You can rank by each category of information by clicking on the column headings.
HA/KS's Link
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency authorization on Friday for a new coronavirus test that can deliver results in just 5 minutes and is so small that it can be used nearly anywhere.
“The medical-device maker plans to supply 50,000 tests a day starting April 1, said John Frels, vice president of research and development at Abbott Diagnostics,” Bloomberg News reported.
I loved this tongue-in-cheek comment
This seems great and everything, but before we celebrate this breakthrough, we need to know the following:
A) How much more does their CEO make than the third-shift janitor?
B) How many persons of color are on their board of directors?
C) What are the gender identities, sexual proclivities, and preferred pronouns of the scientists who developed this?
D) How many Trans-friendly bathrooms do they provide for their employees?
E) Is this test carbon-neutral?
F) Are there any petroleum-derived products involved in the manufacturing process?
Please provide this information ASAP so we can know whether to be happy about this or not.
Dead Is Forever
n light of yet another China virus outbreak, It’s time to ban China. As RealClearScience reports:
The Asian Flu in 1956 killed between one and four million people worldwide. SARS in 2002 infected 8,098 and killed 774 in seventeen counties. H7N9 emerged ten years later to strike at least 1,223 people and kill four out of every ten of them. Now, the milder, yet more infectious COVID-19 has sickened more than 70,000 across the globe, resulting in 1,771 deaths.
All of these outbreaks originated in China, but why? Why is China such a hotspot for novel diseases?
“It’s not a big mystery why this is happening… lots of concentrated population, with intimate contact with lots of species of animals that are potential reservoirs, and they don’t have great hygiene required. It’s a recipe for spitting out these kinds of viruses,” Dr. Steven Novella recently opined on an episode of the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe.
South Central China is a noted “mixing vessel” for viruses, Dr. Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance, told PBS in 2016. There’s lots of livestock farming, particularly poultry and pigs, with limited sanitation and lax oversight. Farmers often bring their livestock to “wet markets” where they can come into contact with all sorts of exotic animals. The various birds, mammals, and reptiles host viruses that can jump species and rapidly mutate, even potentially infecting humans. Experts are pretty sure this is precisely what happened with the current COVID-19 coronavirus, which is why, on January 30th, China issued a temporary ban on the trade of wild animals.
China must be forced to close down its live markets, and also its virus research facilities like the one in Wuhan. And the only way to do that is boycott.
[…]“Many Chinese people, even city dwellers, insist that freshly slaughtered poultry is tastier and more healthful than refrigerated or frozen meat,” journalist Melinda Liu wrote for Smithsonian in 2017. “The public’s taste for freshly killed meat, and the conditions at live markets, create ample opportunity for humans to come in contact with these new mutations.”
Moreover, when stricken with an illness, many Chinese first seek out traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), where practitioners regularly misdiagnose symptoms, then offer acupuncture or ineffective herbal or animal-based remedies as treatments. This drastically increases death rates during outbreaks and allows infected individuals to return to the public where they can infect more people. Widely viewed TCM posts in China have already misleadingly promoted an unproven liquid composed of honeysuckle, Chinese skullcap, and weeping forsythia as a treatment for COVID-19.
[…] Without countrywide action, it’s a near certainty that China’s 1.4 billion citizens will once again be exposed to novel and dangerous infectious diseases.
So far we in the West have been relatively lucky. The next virus that comes out of China may not only have a long incubation period but be airborne too.
We have no choice. We must boycott China. That means all goods, all immigration banned. No imports, no nothing. And while we’re at it lets rinse every politician who has relations with China or has dirtied their hands with Chinese money.
Will there be pain? Definitely. But pain is temporary. Dead is forever.
I will pass this article on to everyone I know. Thanks!
Mike the Carpenter's Link
By the time the pandemic is over, everyone will be convinced that…
1. Open borders are a menace.
2. Globalization is a menace.
3. Public transportation is a menace, while private cars keep families safe.
4. Public schools are a menace.
5. Homeschooling is great.
6. Gun owners have fewer anxieties to deal with during a crisis.
7. Hollywood is a bunch of nincompoops.
8. The mainstream media is a useless menace.
9. Communists can’t be trusted and are a menace.
10. Capitalist enterprise reacts to emergencies faster and more efficiently, while the obstructionist bureaucracy is a menace.
11. All essentials must be manufactured within our own borders.
12. A businessman makes a better president than a career politician.
The Democrats running the media have bent over backward trying to exploit the crisis to their political advantage, but the long-term effects may not be in their favor.
Annony Mouse's Link
The first two reported cases in Illinois was at least 2+ months back, and that was a couple that had been to China. They fully recovered. Now, I have personal FIRST HAND knowledge of 3 people who had it and recovered. Two of them were the Mayor and Chief Of Police in a nearby city, and the other was a cousin of an acquaintance of mine. So just MY records already increased the entire State recovery total by 150%!! WTF?????
Right now, I no longer believe ANYTHING that's being told to us by the government. Something stinks, and it stinks BAD.
I remember reading a post about scientists looking at the Covid-19 China virus found genetic sequences in the virus that were similar to that of HIV. Article referenced the thought that this corona virus had escaped from a Chinese research laboratory. Hmmmm...