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surprised there's no topic on this. LOL.

I remember there was a huge one on Ebola here back in the day.

Anyone worried about this new virus?

This one actually has the potential to be a problem, unlike Ebola. Ebola is too easily contained and too deadly to spread in anything other than poor hygiene environments.

Coronavirus's real benefit over Ebola is that it can spread during the incubation phase and isn't too deadly. Which means this disease actually has the potential to spread even in societies that practice basic hygiene.

We're not at the stage where anybody should be panicking though. For all the hype, we're still talking about something only a few thousand people have contracted. If we assume the Chinese are heavily downplaying the number of people getting sick and say maybe its tens of thousands instead, that is still a tiny number of people.

The real test will be, now that it is in the US, if the # of US cases skyrockets to a few thousand in the next week or so then we might have a real issue.

As for how fast its spreading in Asia, I actually wonder if the cultural inclination for habitually wearing face masks and over-sanitizing everything contributes to weaker immune systems which leads to diseases spreading faster when they do occur. You might not catch the flu as often, but you're more vulnerable when a real disease comes along.

Just the latest in a long, long, long line of things that will supposedly endanger/kill huge numbers of people.

 Grey Templar wrote:
This one actually has the potential to be a problem, unlike Ebola. Ebola is too easily contained and too deadly to spread in anything other than poor hygiene environments.

Coronavirus's real benefit over Ebola is that it can spread during the incubation phase and isn't too deadly. Which means this disease actually has the potential to spread even in societies that practice basic hygiene.

We're not at the stage where anybody should be panicking though. For all the hype, we're still talking about something only a few thousand people have contracted. If we assume the Chinese are heavily downplaying the number of people getting sick and say maybe its tens of thousands instead, that is still a tiny number of people.

The real test will be, now that it is in the US, if the # of US cases skyrockets to a few thousand in the next week or so then we might have a real issue.

As for how fast its spreading in Asia, I actually wonder if the cultural inclination for habitually wearing face masks and over-sanitizing everything contributes to weaker immune systems which leads to diseases spreading faster when they do occur. You might not catch the flu as often, but you're more vulnerable when a real disease comes along.

agreed. make or break time coming up.

Is China playing it up to look worse or something to scare the rest of the world? They're making it look really terrifying!! the conspiracy theory part of me says this actually has something to do with the trade war.

Fearmongering of the highest order?

Probably.

I believe the Fatality rate is around 2%, where the 1917-18 Spanish Flu was closer to 18%? Meanwhile, the normal Flu has killed something like 2K people in the US this year and no one is losing their mind.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/12/flu-activity-high-least-2100-deaths-season

To be fair though, the Spanish Flu struck at the tail end of World War One, and we've got much better health care systems today than a hundred years ago.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
To be fair though, the Spanish Flu struck at the tail end of World War One, and we've got much better health care systems today than a hundred years ago.

True, but that is the last Pandemic we can compare for future/current pandemics.

We also travel a lot more than we used to. From what I understand the incubation period of the coronavirus is 10-14 days, and its fully infectious even when you have no symptoms, which makes it pretty hard to contain. Doesn't matter if its only 2% lethal if a billion people get it.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Just the latest in a long, long, long line of things that will supposedly endanger/kill huge numbers of people.

Yep, I'm more worried about the drinking games on my up and coming rugby tour. One threat at a time

Because of their high population densities many diseases that start or have a major outbreak in China can appear to be far worse than they actually are to the general world population; especially once you add proper safeguards and medicalcare on top.

It's a bit like how Ebola was all the fear for a year or so, but it wasn't actually a massive threat once you took into account the fact that it only spread so fast and so heavily in its originating country due to poverty, education and social reasons (I believe one big reason was that women preparing bodies for burial were coming directly into contact with infected body fluids which is primarily how Ebola spreads).


I'm afraid that the media does somewhat hype things up from time to time with things like this; a bit like how each year the UK gets "worst weather on record predicted for winter" and "snowstorms could cause chaos" etc.... even when we go through an exceptionally mild winter where much of the country hasn't even seen more than one or two short morning frosts, let alone actual ice or snow.

It's a worrying pattern because it means when we do get something major that is an actual threat in a big way, many will overlook it as "media hype". [and yes I do realise that me saying this means that I'm already buying into my own theory - potentially).

We will have to wait and see what happens in the next two weeks. As mentioned above the incubation period is up to two weeks and asymptomatic carriers apparently are infectious. It's estimated there could be 100,000 people going about infected but so far without having fallen ill.

All that being said, so far we have 81 deaths in a city of 11 million people. China kills 5.5 people a day in road accidents, which will have dropped significantly during their current transport lockdown.

This blew my mind. China reckons they can get a new hospital built for this in 6 days...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51245156

It uses prefab buildings.

China has thrown insane money into their construction though. So not only can they do it, but they've got the prefabs and infrastructure already in place to allow building on that kind of scale. It's the same way they can build new cities and towns and such in a fraciton of the time it would normally take most countries.

Though I've heard that their construction industry is basically a ticking time bomb before they basically run out of stuff to build/demand for building and it implodes and contracts

Well i just lost a gakload of money on my stock market investments. WHO raises risk from moderate to high. over 100 dead now.

This is getting pretty sketchy.

kb305 wrote:
Well i just lost a gakload of money on my stock market investments. WHO raises risk from moderate to high. over 100 dead now.

This is getting pretty sketchy.

Comparatively, the response has been pretty good. (The last major disease outbreak, which was SARS, they tried to hide it). This time they're doing the right things, though the infectious incubation period complicates it.
The real risk is other countries are pretty varied in locking down travel, and in many cases waited too long to start screening arrivals from Wuhan and the surrounding regions, but so far international cases are very low.

We're actually past due for a major epidemic (they happen on fairly predictable cycles, and crowded urban conditions should make them much worse than they are, thanks to science and medicine), and by the standards of such things, this is looking pretty mild (2% death rate is fairly low). It may well get worse, but so far the deaths are largely elderly or had existing respiratory problems. Its not the kind of disease that has healthy people dropping dead in the streets.

Crispy78 wrote:This blew my mind. China reckons they can get a new hospital built for this in 6 days...

Like others have said, prefabs. We're not talking about a state of the art hospital, but a big series of buildings with space for a lot of beds, and maybe some decent lab space with some passable isolation doors.
They'll roll in mobile equipment and generators while they hook into local power and hope they don't brown-out the district.

Its a good thing to do, because they'll be able to sort and isolate the infected from the general population, but at best its warm beds and functional facilities for a few months.
At worst it'll be a plague pit with additional complications from the rushed construction, particularly in the area of sewer/water.

 Overread wrote:
I'm afraid that the media does somewhat hype things up from time to time with things like this

I have to speak out here--it is unfair to lump the overreaction on media. Media is just perpetuating the response, regular people are perfectly capable of starting an overreaction on their own. Not only that but it is people's desire to view over-reactive content that pushes the media to produce such content.

Plus, I am sure there is a certain element that would rather talk about this than....other news going on at the moment.

Quick, someone fire up the Peter Wiggin symbol!!!

What I think is interesting is that just prior to hearing about the Coronavirus, I saw a few memes about how there have been epidemics/pandemics in the 1920s, 1820s, 1720s and all the '20s of each century going back to the Black Plaque of the middle ages.
Don't know how true it is, but it would certainly be an interesting thing to study.

-

 Galef wrote:
What I think is interesting is that just prior to hearing about the Coronavirus, I saw a few memes about how there have been epidemics/pandemics in the 1920s, 1820s, 1720s and all the '20s of each century going back to the Black Plaque of the middle ages.
Don't know how true it is, but it would certainly be an interesting thing to study.

-

Thing is with urban living, plagues and such can spread really fast through a population - especially if understanding of how disease spreads and basic facilities, living conditions etc... are really poor.
It also makes sense that after a lethal epidemic you'd have a period where the population density would have reduced which would then take time to recover. You might still get a major outbreak of something during the recovery period, but because the population would be much reduced and spread out chances are it would spread through far less of the population before it simply can't find means to get carried to a fresh uninfected population. Plus the numbers would be much reduced so it might not appear "as bad" even if it is far more lethal on a per infected person level.
Also when it comes to recovery remember that with reduced medical understanding and poor environments etc... the child mortality rate might be very high (especially in the poorer, more densely populated social groups). So chances are it would take time to build up to a critical point of high population density once again. Though that would get complex and other things can come in - such as the baby boom we saw after WWII

So it wouldn't surprise me if you could see this pattern happening over and over again, though it would honestly shock me if it hits every 100 years on the dot like that. I would assume that the meme might well be inaccurate in that regard. It might be they are using the wrong dates; or could even be that whoever came up with it cherry picked events to fit the timescale. Once you look at a global pattern you could pick different regions and likely get closer. If they then consider the 20s as a 10 year period rather than a single year - again you increase the chance that you could have an "accurate" meme. It just wouldn't mean that you get a global disease outbreak only every 100 years on the dot.



Nature can throw up some surprising cycles and patterns, but its rare that they are so perfectly timed to human timescales.

2019 flu deaths reached 57,000, out of 41.3 million sickened by it in a 21 month period.

Where does this virus stand in relation?


http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/04/us-flu-still-elevated-dropping-deaths-high-57000

The Flu usually gets the young, the old and the sick/compromised immune systems, doesn't it?

Is the Coronavirus having 'success' outside of those groups too?

Also, Peter Wiggin!

Now here's the scary part. Imagine someone infected with this virus working in a fast-food joint. Up to two weeks of working with people's food while being contagous but asymptomatic is scary.

That's how it's going to explode in America, if it gets that far. Just one fast-food worker could infect tens of thousands...

Thank God this happened in the Chinese interior. China has the infrastructure and civic doctrine to shut down a city. If case zero was in London we would all be fethed.
For once I am backing the CPC and wishing them well in their endeavours.
Build a 1000 bed hospital in four days, the West cant do that.
I am impressed frankly.

Now as for the bug. I would not be complacent it is already a big killer and has every chance to become a Pandemic. I suspect it already may be. Yes, it has under a 2% mortality, but that is in China, and China moved quickly and competently and Wuhan is an internal migration hub with a relatively younger healthier demographic. This could be almost as bad as Spanish flu, we will know if the natural death rate is higher once it hits places like Africa. 2% likely wont jump to 18% but it wont remain at 2%.
Meanwhile we have global communications far in advance of 1919 and a culture of take-a-pill-and-get-back-to-work due to current marketplace attitudes to sick time. We have only this early window to contain the virus, once we get a secondary breakout in a country with less centralised control and slower civic responces than China, which frankly means just about everywhere else, this has every chance to get very nasty indeed.

Keep an eye on this one, it will be a long campaign, if there is a major outbreak anywhere else it will then go global, you cant put a virus with a long latency period back in the box. Its a race for containment, then a race for vaccine.

 Orlanth wrote:
Thank God this happened in China. China has the infrastructure and civic doctrine to shut down a city. If case zero was in London we would all be fethed.
For once I am backing the CPC and wishing them well in their endeavours.
Build a 1000 bed hospital in four days, the West cant do that.
I am impressed frankly.

I fully expect CPC members to under-report or flat out lie about the number of cases and how fast it is spreading to both their own government as well as the WHO. CPC leadership had to pointedly threaten their own members about it.

Western governments haven't been ruthless about this sort of thing because we haven't had to be. If we needed to be, we would. It doesn't take much convincing to get police and military to use lethal force to keep potential plague carriers OVER THERE, NOT OVER HERE.

 John Prins wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Thank God this happened in China. China has the infrastructure and civic doctrine to shut down a city. If case zero was in London we would all be fethed.
For once I am backing the CPC and wishing them well in their endeavours.
Build a 1000 bed hospital in four days, the West cant do that.
I am impressed frankly.

I fully expect CPC members to under-report or flat out lie about the number of cases and how fast it is spreading to both their own government as well as the WHO. CPC leadership had to pointedly threaten their own members about it.

Western governments haven't been ruthless about this sort of thing because we haven't had to be. If we needed to be, we would. It doesn't take much convincing to get police and military to use lethal force to keep potential plague carriers OVER THERE, NOT OVER HERE.

Remember sars?
Yeah even their own people don' t trust their numbers.

 Overread wrote:
Because of their high population densities many diseases that start or have a major outbreak in China can appear to be far worse than they actually are to the general world population; especially once you add proper safeguards and medicalcare on top.

The reason people get worried about a coronavirus say above others is that it is a virus that only has a single strand RNA. Us, for example, have a double helix DNA structure which provides advantages in that any random mutations are usually locked away behind the still functioning properly 'other part' of the instruction. This breaks slightly during reproduction as it splits and you merge two strands (which is why certain disabilities can be hereditary and stronger in boys/men) - but effectively this is the dirty side of evolution and I digress.

With the coronavirus with only one strand of RNA means that it can mutate rapidly. As it grows and divides rapidly then the number of potential mutations that can arise can be staggering. It might not be too lethal now (although there is one report of a doctor dying from it), however a mutation could make it more infectious, easier to transmit and potentially more lethal. This is where the risk lies. Without any effective antivirals it could mutate and become devastating in a short period of time. Cities aren't isolated now because of the current risk, it is because of the future risk. The wider it gets into the population the more likely it is to mutate (just statistics) but also if it does mutate to lethal levels then you have already contained (sacrificed) the population in that area but that lethality is much less likely to get out.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Thank God this happened in China. China has the infrastructure and civic doctrine to shut down a city. If case zero was in London we would all be fethed.
For once I am backing the CPC and wishing them well in their endeavours.
Build a 1000 bed hospital in four days, the West cant do that.
I am impressed frankly.

I fully expect CPC members to under-report or flat out lie about the number of cases and how fast it is spreading to both their own government as well as the WHO. CPC leadership had to pointedly threaten their own members about it.

Western governments haven't been ruthless about this sort of thing because we haven't had to be. If we needed to be, we would. It doesn't take much convincing to get police and military to use lethal force to keep potential plague carriers OVER THERE, NOT OVER HERE.

Remember sars?
Yeah even their own people don' t trust their numbers.

That was then, this is now. China has contingencies, which is why they had a prefab hospital ready to build at short notice. I very much doubt we are as well prepared. China learned from SARS, one of the lessons is that the CPC doesn't need a propaganda reaction, plagues are not their fault, cover ups do not work and have no value. The talk about unreported cases is just scaremongering, the numbers are quickly quietly rising because latent cases develop into symptomic illness, not because Chinese propagandists are losing control of the numbers.

I can imagine what will happen if this reaches a city in the UK. Mass handout of masks like in China? No. First there will be a select committee to make the action, lets us say it moves quikcly. Then they have to find contractors they will milk the system, civil servants will get procedural and politicians will dither. considerations over cost will be raised by the Treasury and the NHS will grandstand because it may mean a bigger departmental budget next year. A massive amount of talk and paperwork will be generated before anyone actually does anything tangible about the problem.

Then what happens if you needed to lockdown Birmingham or Glasgow because there are seventy cases recently found (hypothetical). First the police will be sleepy, and at most semi-competent, the local authority will be unresponsive and leaders will be more concerned with their reelectability than solving the problem. Then along comes human rights groups protesting any seal, other groups demanding that not enough is done for one or other subsector of the community when resources will be scarce in total, meanwhile the press goes ape and dials everything to 11.
Meanwhile infected people who dont give a feth about anyone will take some cold remedy and go back to work as usual, either out of denial or because they work the gig economy and if they don't work they don't get paid.

 Orlanth wrote:


That was then, this is now. China has contingencies, which is why they had a prefab hospital ready to build at short notice. I very much doubt we are as well prepared. China learned from SARS, one of the lessons is that the CPC doesn't need a propaganda reaction, plagues are not their fault, cover ups do not work and have no value. The talk about unreported cases is just scaremongering, the numbers are quickly quietly rising because latent cases develop into symptomic illness, not because Chinese propagandists are losing control of the numbers.

Ever heard of the Mandate of Heaven? In China, disasters are viewed as the fault of the current government. If it happens on your watch, you're at fault because it's on your watch.

Just maybe China has learned they can't keep stuff like this under wraps anymore. Not like they could during SARS.

As for that hospital, we'd probably just set up tents, because that prefab hospital will be abandoned and fall apart within a few years, just like the one they built for SARS was. A 'permanent' structure is overkill.