Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A horrific though unverified video has leaked out of China, allegedly from a hospital in Wuhan, showing dead bodies laying in a corridor unattended, with sick people sitting next to them waiting for treatment.
Chinese ‘nurse’ claims corpses of coronavirus victims are left lying in a Wuhan hospital crammed with patients as she warns ‘everyone will end up being infected’ in desperate plea for help
- Self-proclaimed medic filmed three corpses unattended in a hospital corridor
- In a post, she accused authorities of covering up the truth of the epidemic
- She claimed doctors refused to issue diagnoses to control the official figures
- She begged the public ‘to save the people of Wuhan’ in a heart-rending thread
- Outbreak of a new deadly virus has killed 26 people and infected 830 in China
By BILLIE THOMSON FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 23:34 AEDT, 24 January 2020 | UPDATED: 23:56 AEDT, 24 January 2020
Corpses of coronavirus victims are being left unattended in a corridor of a hospital flooded with patients in Wuhan as the Chinese city is ravaged by the deadly infection, it has been revealed.
The chilling scene, captured by a woman who claims to be a nurse, was posted to the country’s social media today but quickly censored.
Dozens of videos posted online appear show people lying in the street after collapsing where they stood as they walked through the streets of Wuhan.
MailOnline has been unable to verify the videos, which have been widely circulated.
In a post, the self-proclaimed medical worker described how patients were being sent in non-stop without any quarantine measures, warning that ‘everyone will end up being infected and dying’.
…
It was believed to be filmed at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital, one of the facilities appointed by the government to receive suspected and diagnosed coronavirus patients.
…
The following is the video reposted on Twitter;
The daily mail article also has an unverified video of people collapsing in the street, with medical attendants rushing to help them.
According to the Daily Mail, the woman who filmed the video claims authorities are concealing the true scale of the outbreak, keeping casualty figures artificially low, by refusing to issue formal diagnosis for many victims of the outbreak. She claims her husband is ill, but there is no hospital willing to accept him.
Nobody knows how contagious the deadly new virus is, but the Corona virus family includes the common cold. If the deadly new strain is a hybrid which contains DNA RNA from a common cold strain, there is a chance it is extremely contagious. Virus hybrids can occur when a person or animal is simultaneously exposed to multiple virus pathogens.
Obvious there is every chance this new virus will be contained; the Chinese government is sufficiently alarmed that their sclerotic bureaucracy is finally starting to respond appropriately, cancelling large public events and imposing travel bans and roadblocks. The USA has also been especially proactive about imposing border checks.
But its only a matter of time until something nasty slips past the watchers. Stories are appearing, people boasting on social media they took drugs to suppress their fever symptoms, to evade airport biosecurity so they could flee the Corona virus outbreak zone.
I understand the temptation to flee at any cost. Fear of deadly infection is a very primal survival instinct, as strong as our fear of heights or fear of fire. You can’t know what it is like until you have felt it yourself.
I once spent a week in a SARS hotzone on a business trip.
All good until I arrived, then it hit me. I was terrified of the possibility of being alone, sick and vulnerable in a foreign country, far away from people who cared about me. I had horrible nightmares of being misdiagnosed and locked in a quarantine facility with genuinely ill people.
Based on my experience I believe the people most likely to flee are people who have the early symptoms of the virus, who have maybe seen some of their friends and family die, but who are still able to move and hide their symptoms with fever suppressant medication, and who are clinging to the irrational hope that what they have is just an ordinary cold.
The world has worse problems than global warming.
Ric Werme provides a link to a virus expert who helped contain the SARS outbreak, who thinks the Corona outbreak is far worse, and that authorities in China missed the opportunity to contain the virus.
Update (EW): South China Post reports the virus has appeared in 29 of China’s 31 provinces, and that large numbers of doctors and nurses are infected.
The world still needs more doctors, nurses, and people who can make anti-virals, and less climate scientists.
Probably fake news. I can’t believe that a city of nine million could not cope with 26 bodies.
Unless they’re ate many more that 26 bodies? Duh!
I hope hunger hasn’t gotten that bad.
🙂
I’m very good at proofreading everything except my own writing…
Soylent Green…
They’re not dead. They’re pining for the fyords of Norway.
“Probably fake news”
That was a lot of actors to stage all that. And for what purpose. But you never know.
or just covering their heads to block the light and get some sleep.
What does the writing on the blankets say?
Exactly what i thought!
“That was a lot of actors to stage all that. And for what purpose. But you never know.”
Why were the chemical attack bodies staged in Syria? Who knows why certain images are shown or what the context is. I liked Wuhan and found the people there competent when I was there in 1998. I can’t imagine that they have taken steps backwards. The best explanation is that people are dying because of decision paralysis on the part of the administrators. I expect more people to die from pneumonia and another resperatury-related disease than from the latest coronavirus. To keep things in context, SARS killed fewer people than the flu the year we were all shaking in fear.
Normal death toll on Wuhan should be about 350 per day. Claiming the toll to be 40 in about a month should be in the margin of error for the wider area. Absolutely not the reason closing down 18 cities. Now up to 50 million people in lock down. Quarantine.
I friend of my wife is working as a nurse in Wuhan. Two days ago, at her hospital alone the death toll was miss than 40 due to the virus. There is more than 20 hospitals in Wuhan.
The major of Wuhan arrested yesterday. Very little coming out on internet, wechat and weibo.
A doctor died in nine days, seem strange as well.
Now to the rumor section. Chinese are talking about 300.000 got out of Wuhan before it was closed. Mainly going to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenszen, but also Singapore Thailand and other countries. People who came to HK, went directly to hospitals. Wuhan
Vehicles are banned from buying gas at nearby locations. Even daily mail is moderating all articles about the outbreak.
Conclusion. This may be worse than reported. Way worse. Prepare for the worst, be very happy if it’s not.
Re the Daily Mail, and western press in general. Fridays front pages here in the UK were dominated by Killer Virus headlines. On Saturday most papers had Taylor Swifts dietary predilections on the from page, with the couple that did give front page space to the virus merely saying that there was noting to worry about.
It may be fair to surmise that word has gone out to editors to maybe not provide cause for panic ? That being the case, it would probably be wise to prepare whilst still hoping this will turn out to be a dud.
using the Chinese time scale, its unlikely that things will become undeniable for 2 to 3 weeks yet ?
In life, I’ve come to find that the advice of John Mortimers father is often correct, to wit, never believe anything until its been officially denied. 🙂
“This may be worse than reported. Way worse. Prepare for the worst, be very happy if it’s not.”
As I noted above, only around 600 died due to SARS. Sorry but I do not see this coronavirus to be much more dangerous than the cold. That does not mean that the cold virus can’t kill you. Clearly those with compromised immune systems and those that are weak in general are more susceptible to other complications that lead to deaths, particularly when hospital administrators are not doing their jobs and the level of care is inadequate.
The flu kills about 0.1% of infected people. Coronavirus is at 3% if we believe the official figures, but can be much higher than that. And the number of confirmed cases and deaths doubles every 2 days. Play with the calculator and start multiplying 200 death by 2 a few times and tell me what happens at the end of February.
This is no joke. China is under reporting, no doubts. They fire and jail people who report on social media.
The reaction of the Chinese government may well be a sign that this is much larger than being reported. The extreme measure of closing down/isolating a city of 11 million and stopping civilian traffic suggests they are scared to death of what is happening and that they think they have a much larger problem than they have let on to others. In addition the speed with which this has spread to other regions and nations seems to suggest this was ongoing well before the Chinese government shared the details of the outbreak publicly. I am an infectious disease specialist and was working in a middle eastern hospital when SARS erupted. I managed our hospital’s response to SARS (though fortunately we only ever managed suspect cases, none of whom turned out to have SARS). From that experience I am quite surprised about the speed of expansion of the current epidemic and suspect that much of what is happening in China was hidden for some time and there may still be a very concerted effort to dramatically underplay the outbreak. It would certainly not be anything new from past experience with the response to contagion in China. One of the main reasons SARS became the outbreak it did was Chinese efforts to initially hide and or ignore the first signs of trouble.
And on another note I have no doubt climate alarmists are currently drafting their wholly unsupported theories about how this is related to global warming. Sigh.
“The reaction of the Chinese government may well be a sign that this is much larger than being reported.”
I don’t think so. I think that the reaction may be out of fear of criticism of how the system has reacted rather than the danger of the virus.
Your suggestion is also possible, but having experienced and tracked prior epidemics I think the speed of spread geographically is yet another suggestion that this epidemic is larger than being portrayed in China. I may be wrong but events so far have definitely raised my suspicions.
Today it was reported the new coronavirus was spreading in China in late November and only reported to WHO late December.
Hi Andy,
Your fear and suspicions are right. The real number of death and infected people are way higher than what had been reported by the officials.
I’m a Chinese who lives in the U.S. with my husband and kids. Our parents are relatives are all in China at this moment. Thus, I have been following on Chinese twitter- Weibo and Wechat since the outbreak. to my fear, SOS posts are been deleted within hours since posted. Those were the posts that were sent out by people who are still in Wuhan. I have seen so many of them and I feel their desperation. Basically what is happening there is horrific: infected people cannot get tested because of lack of the test kit, they cannot get admitted into hospital for a bed without been tested positive. ( this is the rule that our government made) So only a very small portion of people get tested and admitted and reported. According to an interview to a doctor in one of the front line hospital (the report that has been deleted but reposted back and forth), their hospital sees 120 cases of patient with elevated temperature, out of them, 80ish has viral lung infections on CT scans, but only 5 can get tested and admitted. The rest were been sent back to home with meds. If this is true, every number you see on the official report needs to be at least 16 times. Don’t forget the ones that are not even seen by the docs. So the true number of confirmed infection should be around 200,000 . I have read many many SOS posts saying that their whole family has been infected but no hospital have a bed for them. I wish they were fake posts but as you may or may not know, almost all of the Weibo and Weixin accounts are linked to the owners real Chinese national ID. Plus, the new strain of virus is way more contagious than SARS.
I’m scared, and so are my families in China. I checked US CDC’s announcement and their guidance to health providers: they obviously are unaware of the unreported numbers. I am just a general public who knows the language and have sources to glance a bit of the true situation in China.
Is there a way to warn the CDC to be more cautious? I see that they are using the official numbers to estimate the contagious level of this virus. But the number is way under reported! I just want to protect my family and everyone else here around us. The first case of US patient was diagnosed in the great Seattle Area, which is where we live.
I’m actually a bit surprised that WUWT, founded on scientific veracity, is running an “unverified” report that was later taken down and may well be other than it appears. Seconding the above that 26 bodies (or even 260) should hardly strain the systems of a city that size.
These days it seems ALL media have a mission to stampede the herd . . . off a cliff.
Would be a whole lot better investment of the tax dollars.
I am terrified of that Zika virus. We need to make that a priority because it might be killing ten people per year. Maybe twenty. How can mankind survive such threats? We need to bring back the good old days when nobody died from disease.
The single most stupid thing iv’e read today. How about the world just needs more people who care about our health, environment and future generations well being. Climate change and the evolution of novel diseases go hand in hand. If we don’t find solutions for both then we are doomed as a species.
Corona viruses are RNA virus and do not contain DNA. RNA viruses are prone to rapid change, ‘evolution’ if you want, which makes them adapt to new circumstances very rapidly. This one appears to be a new virus which has recently jumped the animal-human barrier. And unlike SARS twenty years ago it appears to have jumped the much too late implemented quarantine barriers as well. We are in for a rough ride.
Corrected, thanks. Me bad, I read RNA and wrote DNA…
A cold is a group of symptoms not a virus. The majority of common colds are rhinovirus infections.
suggestion:
the corona virus family includes some of the viruses which cause the common cold.
On the subject of whether we are in for a rough ride, I think there is still a chance it will be contained, but I agree this one is scarier than SARS, cases are starting to pop up around the world. Lets hope President Trump has his travel ban pen handy.
Ninth circuit will probably estop it.
“We are in for a rough ride”
Perhaps this is the Apocalypse Now virus that’s we’ve seen so many post apocalyptic youtube shorts on. Stock up on food and stuff.
The Spanish flu epidemic was a bit over a hundred years ago. The largest quake to hit Puerto Rico before the 10th of this month was a bit over one hundred years ago. One of the largest eruptions of the Taal volcano since the 12th of this month occurred a bit over one hundred years ago. Makes you wonder.
Here we are at solar minimum which also correlates with the PR quake and the recent and previous Taal eruption.
“Here we are at solar minimum which also correlates with the PR quake” I’m finding studies that showed decrease in earthquakes during solar minima, others show an increase?
Not talking about an increase in quakes, but a higher probability for major quakes during the solar minimum, and especially in a Gleissberg cycle. Same with eruptions such as was just seen At the Taal volcano. For example, most of the largest eruptions at Taal occurred at solar minimum.
Whoa, big 7.7 quake just struck at Jamaica.
Here is another example. There was a big 7.7 close to Jamaica this morning. The previous large 7.4 quake to hit Jamaica was on June 7th of 1692, during the solar minimum, and towards the latter part of the Maunder Minimum.
A stopped pocket watch found in the harbor back in 1959 indicated that the quake occurred around 11:43 am. What an incredible find. I’m going to look at jsOrrery to see what planetary alignments were in the sky, plus the position of the moon.
Then, there is this problem, as well.
From this article:
“Based on my experience I believe the people most likely to flee are people who have the early symptoms of the virus, who have maybe seen some of their friends and family die, but who are still able to move and hide their symptoms with fever suppressant medication, and who are clinging to the irrational hope that what they have is just an ordinary cold.”
Some people trying to get out of infected areas of Africa during the Ebola crisis, did this as well. We were fortunate that did not spread as feared, though, I suspect it spread more than governments admitted and information was suppressed. I DO NOT KNOW THAT FOR A FACT, just from reading some interesting reports from some hospital staff regarding aggressive efforts by US Government to hide their Ebola patients and make sure no reports got out. Who knows?
I know I trust the Chinese Gov. far less than our own. Nothing they do or say would surprise me.
How long will it take, before this new coronavirus is blamed on climate change?
Until yesterday, of course. (Here’s a strikingly-poorly-written article on the crackpot WhatsOrb Global Sustainability X-Change site, dated yesterday.)
That didn’t take long…
LOL, I had just copied from the article:
and was going to point out that everything is a result of global warming and “this is just what our models predicted” etc .
Hmm,
Problem:
– Socialist/Communist country tries to suppress reporting of a dangerous pathogen outbreak.
– Under-reports impact, causing more problems, forcing drastic measures by this same country to contain pathogen.
Reaction:
– Blame this on Climate Change
Solution:
– The rest of the world needs to become Socialist/Communist yesterday because reasons.
Joe,
Excellent summation, sir!
3…2…
I wonder if this is the same thing?
https://patents.justia.com/patent/10130701
The Wuhan virus does not appear to be attenuated.
Like the polio vaccine virus that can reproduce in hosts (the allegedly protected persons who have been vaccinated for the good of the community) and spread from that host (mostly in the African countries the good doctors like Bill Gate pretend to “protect”), it may have un-attenuated itself.
niceguy – Not to go too far off-topic, I believe you are referring to Simian Virus 40, an oncovirus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_contamination_with_SV40
The main difference between this Wuhan corona virus and the SV40, was that SV40 was introduced into the human population purposely via contaminated polio vaccines – both Salk and Sabin preparations – by an attempt to vaccinate, as opposed to what appears to be inadvertently through improper food preparation for the corona. The SV40 has now effectively mutated into Human Virus (HV) 40.
Strangely, SV/HV40 is also associated with an increase in asbestos-initiated mesothelioma cases – by ‘turning off’ the P53 gene – the ‘programmed cell death’ gene – that acts to prevent improper cell mitosis, leading to increased cancer risk.
Fascinating – but off topic. This corona virus appears much more virulent than SV/HV 40 – it is an aerosol vector transmitter after all…
Regards,
MCR
interesting re the mesothelioma mention as people without asbestos contace also get mesotheliomas , the polio jab or an ongoing affect from mums vaccinations? might be a factor.
re coronaviruses almost evey species has its own varieties I gather but they do seem all too happy to cross species and mutate
that said the Aussie Hendra virus (from bats to horses to humans) dogs get it but remain healthy and produce antibodies( so far our authorities have killed both dogs found to be helthy after contact) has a related variant found in Aus snakes in qld and theyre obviously living near bat habitat for a feed, as,it appears ,do chinese snakes.
Yikes, this is scary. If you can’t trust the Chinese media, who can you trust?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7920373/Expert-warns-Chinese-coronavirus-outbreak-10-TIMES-worse-SARS.html
‘This time I am scared’: Expert who helped tackle SARS warns the Chinese coronavirus outbreak could be at least 10 TIMES worse than the 2003 epidemic that left 775 dead
Warning was issued by a leading virologist who helped identify the SARS virus
He told reporters the situation in epicentre Wuhan was already ‘uncontrollable’
He also claimed the authority missed the ‘golden period’ to control the outbreak
Wuhan, a provincial capital of 11million people, has been put under lockdown
Two more Chinese cities in the same province are shutting down transport today
The virus has killed 25 people, sickened 800 and spread to eight other territories
A leading virologist who helped tackle the SARS epidemic in Asia in 2003 has warned that a new strain of deadly coronavirus from China could lead to an outbreak at least 10 times worse than the health crisis 17 years ago.
Dr Guan Yi, director of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Hong Kong, confessed to Chinese media that the situation in Wuhan – where the virus originated – was already ‘uncontrollable’.
He also claimed that the Chinese authorities missed the ‘golden period’ to control the virus and prevent it from spreading.
‘I have experienced so much and never felt scared. Most [viruses] are controllable, but this time I am scared,’ Dr Guan told the press, predicting the worst is yet to come.
The expert, who was in Wuhan this week, claimed he had to ‘escape’ from the city yesterday after noticing the ‘jaw-droppingly’ poor preventative measures enforced by the local authorities.
When it comes to corrupt governments admitting disasters, I typically assume a 20:1 ratio as a best case scenario. If 25 deaths are officially acknowledged, then reality is probably closer to 500.
Quarantining a city of 11 million is an incredibly desperate move. That’s 2.4 million more than the population of New York City, or 2.1 million more than London.
I would have zero confidence in official reports. The video is almost certainly real. Who benefits from it if it were a hoax?
I did some work for a company in Wuhan and have spent a fare amount of time there and in other cities. Wuhan is a second tier city. A few of the hotels are nice, and the subway system is modern and probably better than those in most western cities, but overall it’s not that nice. Someone here said that it is their Silicon Valley. Actually, they do pride themselves on their expertise in optics, but overall Wuhan is industrial and more like Detroit. Air pollution within miles of the main power plant is something to behold.
Personal hygiene is not a high priority there. Most restrooms have squat toilets, which by smell I would guess do not have traps. In the main office and university lab where I worked, the restrooms had running cold water but no towels or hand dryers.
In the company cafeteria, when finished eating you placed your tray and dishes onto a rack and there was a team of ladies squatting behind the racks that hand “washed” the dishes in big tubs. Their water may have started out hot but there was no dishwashing machine with water hot enough to do much good.
Culturally, the Chinese tend to share food dishes, everyone dipping their chopsticks into common plates. At least at the table they do like most of the dishes to be hot, often using hot plates or burners akin to sterno. Chinese men really like to hack it up and their spitting habits to me is disgusting.
If this virus, is spread by contact with contaminated surfaces, this outbreak is going to be devastating because they really don’t have the practices or infrastructure in place to prevent it from happening.
When I was in Tokyo, the office where I worked, the toilet didn’t have towels or hand dryers either. I was told that you were expected to bring your own towel.
Oh yeah that reminds me, soap is absent from many restrooms in China. One company I visited in Japan had a sign in the restroom that said, “towels for guests only.”
I always carried a small roll of toilet paper with me, but I didn’t carry hand soap.
My experience of hygiene (or lack thereof) in China matches yours. I once stayed in a hotel in Northern Sichuan. The kitchen staff would return from the (unspeakably filthy) toilets and would go straight back to work without washing their hands.
Worse.
No-one is allowed to enter, no-one is allowed to leave the city of Wuhan.
That includes food deliveries.
China could set up a food delivery by rail where they disinfect the entire train when it leaves a quarantined area.
Except, the period to effect a reasonable quarantine was likely several weeks ago. At this point, all of China and Southwest Asia should be quarantined.
This virus is obviously caused by global warming. We must take steps immediately.
shrnfr: “We must take steps immediately.”
Raise taxes, eliminate fossil fuels, stop eating meat, and form a One World government. It’s the solution to every problem.
Yes, this is indeed a real emergency, rather than one of the fake climate variety. If this virus isn’t contained quickly then it will become a terrifying ordeal for the global community and a disaster for the global economy, possibly beyond anything we have faced in our lifetimes. The global focus must be on quickly developing a vaccine and containing the situation. Let’s hope the left-leaning media don’t try and link this virus to climate change. This situation is far too grave for their cheap political point scoring.
nothing is too grave for their cheap political point scoring! There is evidence of this.
Have a little respect for the dead and dieing
Never let a crisis go to waste.
The worst is yet to come, and it will come very quickly I am afraid. A world-wide pandemic is underway.
I’m sorry, I must have missed the notice of hundreds of millions of people worldwide, now sick, now clogging the overtaxed emergency response teams. That’s what PANDEMIC means, reactionite! ⋅-
⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
Sagi, it is not a pandemic yet. It’s frustrating when the noise from wrist-wringing drowns out what’s really going on. It happens with every major disease: mad cow, SARS, avian flu, west nile.
Spanish flu was a true pandemic, spanning many countries and impacting millions of people. The corona virus isn’t anywhere close yet.
Respectfully, please stop, or a pandemic of panic will spread and cause a whole hell of a lot of unnecessary problems.
But…but..I saw a video of people sleeping in a hospital hallway.
Just a reminder, in the case of Mad Cow Disease the governments chief veterinary officer went on primetime TV and emphatically stated that it could not cross the species barrier. only for it to show up as Variant CJD.
If any regime could heavy-handedly contain such a pandemic, it would be the Chinese. Once it spreads out of Wuhan, it could get very messy, especially as it is RNA based.
Interestingly, in an interview with the Guardian, Christiana Figuerres of the IPCC said-“Democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. Communist China is the best model.”
There are 3 cases in France and 2 in the U.S. already.
Yes, and between 12,000 and 82,000 people ~DIE~ every Flu season, here in the U.S. Every year! What’s your point?
Maybe Scissor is trying to suggest the whole thing is being blown out of all proportion which it seems to me to be the case. More people died of ‘flu right after WW1 than those who died fighting WW1.
It probably is being blown out of proportion but who knows? We’ll find out.
“Maybe Scissor is trying to suggest the whole thing is being blown out of all proportion which it seems to me to be the case. More people died of ‘flu right after WW1 than those who died fighting WW1.”
Doc, with all due respect, that is not something that proves your point, which may well be valid. The Spanish Flu was a horrible, world-wide flu that decimated populations.
From the CDC:
“The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919. In the United States, it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918.
It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States. Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic.
While the 1918 H1N1 virus has been synthesized and evaluated, the properties that made it so devastating are not well understood. With no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.”
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm
Do recall, we don’t have a vaccine for the Corona virus and many, many areas of the world do not have antibiotics to treat secondary infections nor do they have a good record on isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings. For those areas, it might as well be 1918.
I happen to live in a US town that is reported to have had the first US victim of the Spanish Flu, a soldier. The history of it is terrifying.
Yeah so imagine what a far worse viral infection could do in the US if it were to spread here.
My point is that it has not been contained, i.e., the horse is out of the barn. I have no idea how bad this virus is or will be.
Someone pointed out that the toll from the Spanish flu today would not be as bad today because of better hygiene and medical knowledge and modern treatment. I hope that is the case.
But I don’t think that the Chinese are well equipped to deal with these kind of diseases.
Those figured rely on news that’s probably false to stop more panic . Looking at that video…if you end up in that hospital you probably are already thought to be walking dead . Just by the look of those suits they’re wearing. I’d take it seriously.
Our doctor offices have sick and not sick sections. Cities that suffered the most in real pandemic didn’t close theaters and held parades etc. We are more cautious now.
Rule one don’t go to hospital for mild symptoms. Stay home. That’s what was advised here at one point without people screaming pandemic for bug that was going round.
That is precisely the point I made in the comments section at the DM . The MSM don’t carry banner headlines screaming that an epidemic will kill 80,00 in the USA this winter, because that’s not news; it’s just olds. Didn’t get past moderation, of course. Dratty, drat, drat, drat – Rissoles!
Rather than pointless speculation based on insufficient information, what say we just wait a week and see if something like real data and a trend develop? “3 cases in France and 2 in the U.S. already” is not a trend…. at all.
curious how a few deaths in usa led to glabal pandemic declared for swine flu, and a very lucrative billions in sales of tamiflu( pretty shoddy) very quickly
yet this yr and last swine flu was circulating widely in aus and no one bothers?
there are now more deaths officially admitted for this virus but the CDC and WHO mobs wont declare pandemic?
hmm
no ones got a dodgy pharma they can flog??
of interest wuhan opened a biolab 4 rated “study centre ” in wuhan in 2018 to study SARS MERS and african haemorrhagic viruses
with their iffy record on standards being adhered to…(not unlike UK and usa having sewer and decontam fails and releases to waterways etc of some nasty pathogens/viruses. )
anything is possible. the possiblyinfected bats and snakes may have been caught or lived in a nearby area before sale at the markets for eg
There are 4 types of bat that have this new virus called 2019nCoV – there is a cave near Wuhan where the bats are living – it was found some years ago. – Bats are used as food. Maybe it should be banned worldwide – it has been banned by the Chinese authorities since January 20 this year in China. Here is what Wikipedia writes (notes the comment about the bat only eating fruits therefore clean). It’s been discovered that bats are teeming with as many as 200 types of coronaviruses. And a lot of other viruses.
Paniki prepared with fruit bat meat cooked in spicy Rica green chili pepper. A Minahasan dish. Manado, North Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Bats are a food source for humans in some areas. Bats are consumed in various amounts in China, Seychelles, Indonesia, Palau, Guam, and in some other African, Asian, and Pacific Rim countries and cultures. In Guam, Mariana fruit bats (Pteropus mariannus) are considered a delicacy.
Bats were also eaten in parts of Europe and the Middle East in the past to a lesser extent. Bats are still eaten in parts of Africa, wherein one method of capture, a cave is raided and the escaping bats’ wings snagged on prickly branches.
The 1999 version of The Oxford Companion to Food states that the flavor of fruit bats is similar to that of chicken and that they are “clean animals living exclusively on fruit”. Bats are prepared in several manners, such as grilled, barbecued, deep-fried, cooked in stews and in stir frys. When deep-fried, the entire bat may be cooked and consumed.[1] Bats have a low-fat content and are high in protein.
During cooking, bats may emit strong odors reminiscent of urine and feces. This may be reduced by adding garlic, onion, chili pepper or beer during cooking. – :-O
““3 cases in France and 2 in the U.S. already” is not a trend…. at all.”
It’s a straw in the wind. The “insufficient information” isn’t necessarily a cause for complacency, but rather for alarm, as being an indication that information about the severity is being suppressed, which is what China has done in prior epidemic cases.
“Interestingly, in an interview with the Guardian, Christiana Figuerres of the IPCC said-“Democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. Communist China is the best model.””
Dear Christine thinks democracy is a poor political system period, no matter what the problems are. The world needs to be turned over to those of superior knowledge, experience and wealth so it can be run in the “right” way.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 – you choose the number. It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.”
Christiana Figueres
She adores the Communist model wherein we pesky peasants have no say and the world is run by the enlightened, such as herself and her pals.
It sounds like it might be serious.
The virus starts with a mild fever, for those who have symptoms.
Some Chinese had been taking anti fever medicine, to fool airport fever sensors. as they were told that this virus could not be spread by humans and stopping people with a fever from traveling was only a precaution.
A key concern is this virus has a long incubation period, 7 to 10 days, before people get very sick.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51048366
How severe are the symptoms?
It seems to start with a fever, followed by a dry cough and then, after a week, leads to shortness of breath and some patients needing hospital treatment.
Around one-in-four cases are thought to be severe.
How deadly is it?
Twenty-six people are known to have died from the virus – 3-4% of the known cases, but this figure is unreliable.
But the infection seems to take a while to kill, so more of those patients may yet die.
And it is unclear how many unreported cases there are.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51240355
….We have a crucial new piece of information – people with no symptoms of infection may be able to spread the virus.
Scientists in China have published detailed information, in the Lancet medical journal, on the first cases in the country.
It includes information on a child with no outward symptoms, but a clear coronavirus infection in their lungs.
Prof Kwok-Yung Yuen from the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital said “asymptomatic infection appears possible”.
How often or easily this happens is far from clear, but it could make the virus far harder to contain.
Prof Yuen said if this was the case, then controlling the epidemic would rely on isolating patients and quarantining anyone they came into contact with “as early as possible”.
Researchers also said the new virus was closely related to one found in Chinese horseshoe bats.
“….We have a crucial new piece of information – people with no symptoms of infection may be able to spread the virus.”
that not “new”, that is always the case. Someone infected but not yet showing symptoms are still infected.
Case in point.
Person enters Australia last Sunday with no symptoms.
On Tuesday starts feeling ill so goes to the doctors on Wednesday. Sits in waiting room sneezing and coughing with half a dozen other patients waiting to see the doctor. Doctor sees the patient, diagnoses common flu, sends patient home with common flu ailment medications and advice. Patient gets worse overnite.
Comes back to doctors office next day. Sits in waiting room with half a dozen other persons coughing and sneezing all the while. Doctors diagnoses severe flu virus possibly turning into pneumonia, prescribes Pneumonia medication and sends patient home.
Next day patient worse again. Goes to hospital emergency room. Sits in waiting room with dozens of other people coughing and sneezing over everyone.
Finally hospital does some checks and quarantines the patient.
So what happened to all those other persons some of which have most likely been contaminated?
This is what happens when we as a species lose all respect for Nature, all common sense, all personal responsibility and the most basic knowledge of biology. I call it Peak Human Stupid.
Maybe it’s time we did more business electronically instead of running around the world like rat fleas, eh?
Part of the problem is the naive belief that “doctors” posess some magical power of instant gratification; the truth is that except for nursing support (IV’s, O2) at the point a virus is truly life-threatening, there is very little their prescriptions can do. That goes for the common cold, kids’ middle ear infections, influenza, etc. GO TF HOME!! and STAY away from other people unless you are in actual acute respiratory distress–and then call an AMBULANCE whose personnel will use proper protocols to avoid spreading your virus to the whole town.
Mankind now finds out the price of the “liability revolution” where California “progressive” judges bought arguments from “progressive” California litigators and DAs arguing that liability should be seen as a way to achieve distributional and redistributional goals. As a result no one can any longer sign a binding release of liability, which was a death knell to industries that require such releases to be viable, such as the vaccine industry.
This is why we have no vaccine industry! All we have is academic research and chartered government efforts using ancient technology to produce yearly flu vaccines which are typically wide of the mark. There is no rapid vaccine industry. It doesn’t exist. There are some university-based efforts. That’s it. There is no INDUSTRY, and there hasn’t been one for DECADES.
All because a cadre of radical stinking leftists decided to hijack liability law to promote objectives that they lacked the public support to advance through the legislature. There is a great little book on the subject by Peter Huber: “Liability, the Legal Revolution and its Consequences,” written in 1988. That’s how long this travesty has been going on!
Without this crippling subversion of our fundamental liberties, blocking our basic right to contract, we would have thirty years of the same kind of progress in vaccines and other biomedical research as in other areas of tech. We can only pray that this snake virus is not the big avoidable hit. The real pestilence is the liberty hating left.
C’mon
This is supposed to be a site that cares about science
Now we are supposed to believe a video where someone topples over in the street onto their face, without even trying to break their fall?
Let’s be sceptical about these claims until there is some basic verification
I agree. This post is a great place to post that basic verification.
I agree with AndyL. It seems there are panic-mongers even among climate skeptics. Forgetting some perspective, are we? There hasn’t been a devastating global pandemic for over a century. People are much better at recognizing, reporting, and containing it now. And modern medicine. Some of the scariest, deadliest viruses in recent years like Ebola and Zika now have effective treatments and even vaccines to minimize casualties. Contracting HIV/AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence with treatments that reduce symptoms and prolong life.
For perspective, the H1N1 influenza virus of 2009 resulted in around 12,000 deaths in the U.S., mostly people with weakened immune systems or some other chronic disease. Sounds like a lot, but the CDC estimates about 36,000 die on average each year in the U.S. from influenza, varying between 3,000 and 49,000, in bad years; again mostly those with already compromised immune systems. Death isn’t caused directly by the virus but from a secondary viral or bacterial pneumonia. The H1N1 virus was in the middle of the range of deadly flu seasons. A vaccine was developed later the same year and by November the outbreak was in steep decline.
Relax, practice good personal hygiene, and resist the impulse to fearmonger. That is all.
I believe the Ebola vaccine was developed in the Winnipeg vaccine development centre – Canada’s top facility. They will be working on something for this new pneumonia as quickly as possible.
Due to experience with SARS, Canada will be implementing controls sooner and better than before.
I find a video where someone doesn’t try to break their fall (incapacitated, dead, etc.) far more convincing than one where someone does try to break it (conscious, acting, etc.).
How many people pass out in public daily in a city of 12million?
Wouldn’t be surprised to find that it is a daily occurrence.
Hope the powers that be keep this virus well away from Africa, particularly the DRC. One theory holds that RNA viruses easily mutate with other RNA viruses present in the same host. At the moment there is a different RNA virus outbreak in the DRC, Ebola.
A mutation between a respiratory virus which is easily transmitted, with the ebola virus which has a high mortality rate, is too chilling to contemplate.
It has happened. Ebola mutated and became airborne. Luckily the resulting strain was not dangerous. We dodged a bullet there.
Hmmmm. China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the many Chinese nationals in Africa.
Not that I would stoke this fire.
If it bleeds, it leads. I am not saying this isn’t a dangerous virus that requires appropriate steps. I am saying that the media hypes a disease every winter. When was the last winter we didn’t have a flu “pandemic”? Yes, coronavirus is serious. Yes, people are dying from it. Yes, we need to quarantine people and areas that have this virus. But I am convinced the media is making this out to be worse than it really is.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/basics/past-pandemics.html says the last pandemic was 2009. So to answer your question, 2019.
Feel free to search out media pandemic stories.
It was a pandemic only because WHO “hacked” the word.
LOL
You neglected to post your sorce. The best I could find was http://pdf.bestthingsforyou.com/two/?a_aid=49db2e4d&a_bid=9099cfe0&chan=op_eng&data1=hacked+pandemic+american+swine+flu&data2=op_eng which didn’t tell me much, but you might like it.
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/01/24/man-who-pushed-sars-dud-now-pushing-new-chinese-virus/
And what does this piece prove? Nothing.
Yeah, the SARS epidemic. How is it that it appeared in only one city in North America (Toronto), and nowhere else? The reason there was a SARS panic in Toronto is that the medical authorities in Toronto held a press conference and fomented a panic. It was hype. Nothing happened in Toronto that didn’t also happen in Seattle or Vancouver or New York or anywhere in Europe, for that matter, but the health authorities in those cities didn’t react to a new strain of pneumonia as if it were the bubonic plague.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome the “Country or Region” “Cases” “Deaths” “SARS cases dead due to other causes” and “Fatality (%)” are:
China, People’s Republic of 5,328 349 19 6.6
Hong Kong 1,755 299 5 17
Taiwan 346 37 36 11
Canada 251 44 0 18
Singapore 238 33 0 14
Vietnam 63 5 0 8
United States 27 0 0 0
Philippines 14 2 0 14
Mongolia 9 0 0 0
South Korea 4 0 0 0
Kuwait 1 0 0 0
Macau 1 0 0 0
Republic of Ireland 1 0 0 0
Romania 1 0 0 0
Russian Federation 1 0 0 0
Spain 1 0 0 0
Switzerland 1 0 0 0
Note that “didn’t also happen in Seattle or Vancouver or New York” isn’t in the detail, but do note the zero deaths in the United States.
For a while I kept SARS stats in a spreadsheet and was alarmed at the near exponential rise until it suddenly leveled off. Stopping SARS was a very impressive accomplishment in my book.
What is the source for your claims?
For a while I kept SARS stats in a spreadsheet and was alarmed at the near exponential rise until it suddenly leveled off.
I did that too, and just right now I can’t find my old Excel file. Over the weeks it formed a perfect curve of new cases and finally went to zero.
I wasn’t in Toronto, I was in Taipei.
So Ian, there were 257 cases of SARS and 44 deaths in the Toronto area “because the medical authorities panicked” and no deaths elsewhere in North America because their authorities didn’t panic?
Of course it had nothing to do with a Chinese-Canadian lady being infected in Hong Kong and coming back to her home in a Toronto suburb before being diagnosed, and then infecting her family.
Brilliant analysis. Thank you so much. There’s a job waiting for you at the WHO.
I’ll tell ye something else: everywhere where they imposed the strict quarantine, that virus showed up in no time!
(/sarc)
Yesterday a reference to a Wuhan superspreader made me recall that the Toronto event was caused by a “superspreader”. It turns out that there were several superspreaders, and that the first instances of SARS were before it was identified as a new disease.
From a couple documents, I appears to me that the Toronto response was appropriate. If SARS were as transmissible on average as the superspreaders demonstrated, things would have exploded into a much worse event.
Written for a Toronto audience during the MERS event: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/health-headlines/superspreaders-could-turn-new-coronavirus-into-sars-like-event-experts-1.1210070
Dryer, but more scientifically useful: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92467/
I read it started from a bat that was cooked for food which the Chinese class as a aphrodisiac 😐
Why wouldn’t the chinese government do something, knowing that it could spread to other cities within china??
Then it was suggested it came from snakes.
There is also the concern it was something that “escaped” a Wulan research facility.
Michael and Sunny,
Yes, all of that is what I’ve heard in the news, too, except for the aphrodisiac part. Though, the aphrodisiac part wouldn’t surprise me. How a nation of 1.3 billion people can kill the rhinoceros, among other protected animal species, for aphrodisiacs is beyond me. It sure doesn’t look like they have any issues in that area, even with the despicable practice of forced abortions by the Chinese Government.
aphrodisiac , isn’t that something which makes you go stiff. I guess it works looking at all the stiffs in the hospital.
Anyhow, a culture which drops live bats into boiling soup in the naive hope that it will help their flagging libido deserve to die.
We are early in the progression of this disease and the worldwide implications remain murky. So far, the reported death rate (which may not be accurate this early) of this new coronovirus is <0.5%. SARS had about a 10% death rate and the MERS rate was about 30-35%. But, this virus should not be taken lightly.
My understanding is the Wuhan Virus has a bout a 2% death rate. That is on par with the Spanish Flu (1918). If that is true and it goes worldwide, in a big way, that’s about 200 million dead, or so I understand.
Yep. I just checked latest numbers and it about 2.8%, which will be a fluid number this early. Thanks for the correction!
Those figured rely on news that’s probably false to stop more panic . Looking at that video…if you end up in that hospital you probably are already thought to be walking dead . Just by the look of those suits they’re wearing. I’d take it seriously.
A solution to Fermi’s Paradox?
Except that in 1918 there were no effective treatments for viruses; no vaccines to prevent or antibiotics to treat secondary infections resulting from the Spanish Flu, like pneumonia, which was hat actually killed people. And no agencies to track the spread and contain outbreaks. If the Spanish Flu happened today, it would probably end up being no more than a slightly more severe flu season, as was the case with H1N1 back in 2009.
Actually the mortality rate for the 1918 influenza pandemic was higher than the combined deaths in WW1 and WW2. Factor in the more than four-fold growth in the world population and radius and frequency of travel (public and personal transport) since 1918 and the Coronavirus threat could be a pandemic of epic proportions.
What WHO was reporting yesterday:
“Symptoms in infected people have ranged from mild to severe. Around a quarter of confirmed cases are severe, according to the WHO. So far, the fatality rate is around 4 percent, though that could change as the outbreak progresses.”
From what I have gleaned, the mortality rate of the flu in the US is 0.1%. It was 2.5% in the 1918 pandemic. If you multiply the number of influenza deaths in the US last year, 56,300, by the higher mortality rate of this virus, you get two and a quarter million deaths. The only assumption is that the infectious rates are about the same.
The hospitals would be severely over capacity, but don’t know how badly that would affect the numbers.
It doesn’t take much for nature to devastate mankind.
Yes you’re good at scary bad math. Put away you calculator, Einstein. The Wuhan mortality rate is measured in a place with not very good medical treatment. Same with the 1918 Spanish Flu which happened back in the age of primitive medicine, long before vaccines and antibiotics existed. It’s amazing how much medicine has improved in a century. The mortality rate for the Wuhan virus will drop dramatically in cities and countries with modern medicine. Deaths from the H1N1 virus of 2009 were only in the middle of the range for a typical flu season in the U.S.
Well, the main point I was making was small numbers can produce catastrophic results – the reason the medical community becomes so alarmed at these outbreak.
You might do well with a course on diseases. Antibiotics do not help against a virus, but only opportunistic bacterial infections in these events.
I also pointed out that health facilities could be overwhelmed. Having the best medical care doesn’t help if you can’t get it.
Lastly, I made no appeal to being frightened, just that these situations are worthy of concern and a watchful eye.
If the math scares you, just stay in the basement.
stinkerp,
“The mortality rate for the Wuhan virus will drop dramatically in cities and countries with modern medicine.”
That is probably accurate. What about cities and countries without modern medicine which make up the majority of the world? Do they not count or, are they of no concern to you?
Actually, I’m surprised the AGW/CC/NWO types haven’t thought about unleashing such a virus already in the 2nd and 3rd worlds. Who knows, maybe they have thought about it? Depopulation of those places certainly appears to be one of their goals.
“David Attenborough says sending food to famine-ridden countries is ‘barmy’
Veteran broadcaster has called for a debate on population control.”
http://bit.ly/2Okcchp
Unlike Trump, Brexit supporters and anyone else who disagrees with the Progressive theology, they never get called racists for wanting to reduce the numbers of black, brown and yellow people in the world. Odd that, no?
I know a fair bit about this as former decade long CEO of a topical antimicrobial company effective agains both bacteria and viruses, so will offer some facts followed by speculations.
The common cold is actually symptomatic of a viral infection from three different viral families: rhinovirus, adenovirus, coronavirus, stated in order of prevelance. There are in total over 120 different cold causing human adapted viruses, which is why having a cold does not confer immunity. The next cold is just a different virus. And they morph, so immune memory of any specific birus is years, not decades. Same reason the annual flu shot is formulated for what docs think the next years three most common strains might be. They never get it right, so in a good year the flu vaccine might be 70% effective.
Corona viruses are enveloped (they have a part human/part viral outer envelope membrane that is acquired during budding). For this reason, an alcohol hand sanitizer is reasonably effective against corona and adeno induced colds (it denatures the envelope membrane rendering the virus unable to infect a cell). Most common cold transmission route is hands (flu is inhalationwhy more revalent in winter (indoors dry air keeps exhaled droplets afloat longer since they dry down). But alcohol sanitizers still don’t generally work against colds (proven in outcomes studies in 2007), because about 60% of colds are rhinovirus based, a naked virus with no envelope membrane to denature.
SARS was a civet corona virus that jumped species to humans in a Chinese wet market. Moderately infective to humans. MERS was a camel corona that jumped species in Saudi Arabia camel markets.
Not very human infective. Wuhan corona also jumped species in a Wuhan wet market, but we don’t know yet from which reservoir species.
Speculations.
It must be more infective than reported, or the Chinese would not have imposed the draconian Hubei province quarantine. Human to human transmission is proven, a big problem. Its virulence (mortality) is unknown, except perhaps to Chinese. Reported is 2%, while SARS was about 10%. The 1918-19 ‘Spanish’ flu pandemic was ‘only’ about 5% mortality but killed over 40 million in 18 months. (It wasn’t Spanish. It was an avian (wild duck) H1N1 that jumped to humans thru pig intermediaries after the fall midwest duck migration in Kansas, then spread globally by US WW1 troops.)
The Chinese face masks are ineffective. First, main corona transmission is not via aspiration, it is by touch. infected person wipes nose, touches a stair rail, then you touch the rail, then you touch nose or eyes (most people touch those several times an hour). Second, breathing thru the mask wets it, and any entrained aspirated virons have an opportunity to enter the nose or mouth, either way reaching their preferred mucosal membrane environment for infection.
Is serious, but no need to panic yet as this real bad internet stuff isn’t (yet) verifiable.
Thanks for this information. Based on what you said, it likely will be a bigger problem in China than here because we practice better sanitation.
Wow. Thanks!
I believe I read it was unusual as its apparently jumped from a snake to humans, which is a little odd.
Snakes may have gotten a bum rap. Snakes always get a bum rap.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/snakes-probably-not-source-spread-new-coronavirus-outbreak-china
Based on similarities between the virus’s codons and those of its potential animal hosts, “snake is the most probable wildlife animal reservoir for the 2019-nCoV,” the researchers write. Wei and his team suggest a virus from the many-banded krait (Bungarus multicinctus) or Chinese cobra (Naja atra) may have combined with a bat virus and sparked the new outbreak.
But “coronaviruses tend to be found in mammals,” says David Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. So it’s improbable the new virus came from snakes, he says.
Robertson and Holmes say that the study’s data don’t match its conclusions. The genetic results seem to suggest that the virus came from bats, not snakes, both scientists say.
Thanks for that, Rud. Very informative as usual.
Wondering about cancelling my travel plans to Hawaii…
Rud Istvan
January 24, 2020 at 3:41 pm
Many thanks for a calm voice and common sense backed by actual science.
The only question is: do we multiply the official Chinese reports by 10 or 10 thousand.
Right. Certainly more than 10x. I counted three dead. They would have us believe that more than 10% of the deaths were in that short video clip. If they are leaving the bodies in the hallway, there can’t be only 26.
But I also don’t think this should be assumed to be the start of the zombie apocalypse, just that things have apparently gotten out of control in China.
The % of deaths after infection is not the most important consideration. If it is so infectious that virtually everyone is infected, a 1% death rate in Wuhan alone could equate to 110,000. Let’s hope it’s not the case.
I counted 5 sleeping. Why do you assume they are dead? First fully covered appears to be on side in sleeping position with arrow in pic pointing to feet.
Fair point. They could be alive and the person making the video could be sincere but deluded. That’s putting a hopeful spin on it, ironargonaut.
On the other hand building a makeshift hospital in 6 days tends to argue for things being a bit less rosy.
Not saying it is rosy but I don’t speak chinese did she actually say they were dead? Chinese aren’t stupid or lazy, dead people leak body fluids. They would not be in hall. Several nurses in video, checking IVs etc. So not like only one worker to care for all and any idiot can move a body.
Asked a colleague who speaks Chinese to translate. The person speaking DID NOT say the people where dead. Someone else reposted with the dead claim.
A bit of history…
“A world-wide epidemic caused by influenza viruses led to between 50 and 100 million deaths in 1918 and 1919 (as much as 1 of every 18 people). Because neutral Spain was not censoring news it became associated with Spain but its origins are more likely to be the USA or France. It came in three waves (Spring 1918, Autumn 1918, and Winter 1919) and the second wave was unusually deadly. And unlike typical flu pandemics it disproportionately killed young healthy adults. Many researchers have suggested that the conditions of the war significantly aided the spread of the disease. And others have argued that the course of the war (and subsequent peace treaty) was influenced by the pandemic.”
Lmao. In other news:
https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-372-the-3rd-annual-real-fake-news-awards/
Oh, but I’m sure the virus is “contained.”
You don’t build a hospital in 6 days unless something has gone pear shaped in the quarantine area.
https://www.wsj.com/video/chinese-authorities-rush-to-build-new-hospital-to-contain-coronavirus/0F957767-9174-48CC-86FA-F4E0823DFD05.html
and would you enter a hospital built in 6 days?
if they cant provide masks and other requirements for the ones they have already how do they plan to equip a new one
Id be clearing an established hospital and making that a pandemic centre
far faster and more efficient surely?
Some level-headed information is at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-new-wuhan-coronavirus-stacks-up-against-sars-mers
Excerpt:
Epidemiologists are frantically calculating how infectious the new virus is, says Maimuna Majumder, a computational epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
The number that describes how many people a newly infected person is likely to pass a virus to is called R0, pronounced R naught (SN: 5/28/19). SARS, for instance, had an R0 between two and five, meaning that in a fully susceptible population an infected person could potentially spread the virus to two to five others. (Highly contagious measles, in comparison, has a R0 from 12 to 18.)
Estimates for the infectivity of the new virus range from the WHO’s estimate of 1.4 to 2.5 to a much bigger 3.6 to 4.0 calculation from Jonathan Read of Lancaster University in England and colleagues. Read’s group estimates that only about 5.1 percent of cases in Wuhan have been identified. The researchers reported the preliminary results January 24 at medRxiv.org.