Reposted from the Fabius Maximus website
By Larry Kummer, Editor / 7 Comments / 15 February 2020
Summary: The coronavirus epidemic provides amazing news. About the epidemic, about the barrage of fake news (that we love), about the fear it creates (that we love), and the wonderful hidden news that makes this a milestone in history.
“We need a vaccine against misinformation {and} a communications vaccine. We need to be able to communicate in a much more effective way.”
— Dr. Michael J Ryan at WHO’s Feb. 13 press briefing. He is Executive Director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme.
“News” about the coronavirus global pandemic!
If you have been reading the headlines from the “right” sources, you are terrified of the coronavirus pandemic. Pants-wetting is America’s new national pastime. No wonder our rulers and foes have contempt for us. Coronavirus disease is now known as COVID-19, the virus is SAR-CoV-2; details here.
Jan 23: Coronavirus Pandemic Simulation Run 3 Months Ago Predicts 65 Million People Could Die.
Jan 23: “Doomsday Clock Hits 100 Seconds To Midnight As Viral Pandemic Sweeps Globe.”
Jan 24: Coronavirus Pandemic Simulation Run 3 Months Ago Predicts 65 Million People Could Die.
Jan 25: “Martenson: The Risk Of A True Pandemic Is Higher Than We’re Being Told.”
Jan 26: “Is Another Black Death On The Way?”
Jan 29: “How Viral Pandemic Benefits The Globalist Agenda.”
Jan 30: “GnS Economics: Coronavirus Has The Potential To Trigger A Global Depression.”
Feb 1: “Fear Of The Coronavirus Is Spreading Like Wildfire All Over The Globe.” – I wonder why?
Feb 3: “Petition For WHO Director-General To Resign Reaches Over 210,000 Signatures.” – From where comes the misinformation about WHO?
Feb 3: “Brace For Impact: Global Pandemic Already Baked In” – “If we accept what is known about the virus, then logic, science and probabilities all suggest we brace for impact.”
Feb 5: “The Lies We Are Being Told About The Coronavirus.”
Feb 6: “Mish Exposes WHO’s Historical Controversies” – The usual nonsense. When dealing with disasters, some people always accuse agencies of acting too slow or too small. But I never hear people offering to give them the money to stand ready for any disaster, anywhere.
Feb 8: “The Pandemic Isn’t Ending, It’s Just The Beginning Of Global Disorder & Depression.”
Feb 10: “Even The Mainstream Media Is Now Admitting That Humanity Is Facing ‘A Perfect Storm’.”
Feb 11: “Why Is The Government Turning 11 Military Bases Inside The US Into Quarantine Camps?” – Remember the big camps supposedly being built before Y2k?
Feb 12: “‘All Disasters Are Not Created Equally’ – CDC Powerless In Halting Spread Of Covid-19.”
Feb 13: “In Shocking Admission, WHO Advisor Says Coronavirus May Infect Over 5 Billion People.”
Feb 14: “Chaos Is Coming: US To Start Testing People With Flu Symptoms.”
Feb 14: “What If… The November Election Has To Be Postponed?”
Feb 14: “Harvard Expert Warns, Coronavirus Likely Just Now ‘Gathering Steam.’”
These headlines are from ZeroHedge. These stories are not all exaggerations and misinformation. Some quote actual experts seeking their 15 minutes of fame. But they fail to provide any larger context, such as that by the experts at WHO and CDC. It adds up to fake news. They publish this because they are smart.
Gallup’s surveys of Confidence in America’s institutions show a collapse during the past four decades. Especially the well-deserved collapse of our confidence in newspapers from 41% to 23%. So, many Americans have turned to vendors of exciting misinformation (see other reasons for this here). This makes fake news a fast track to success on the Internet.
The bottom line: the scarier the story, the less accurate the stories. That’s true from Climate Change to Coronavirus. Institutions trying to keep us informed about these complex and poorly understood issues (e.g., IPCC and NOAA) are attacked all sides. Sadly, Americans often express the most confidence in the most bogus sources.
“While the virus spreads, misinformation makes the job of our heroic health workers even harder. It is diverting the attention of decision makers. And it causes confusion and spreads fear to the general public. At WHO, we’re not just battling the virus; we’re also battling the trolls and conspiracy theorists that push misinformation and undermine the outbreak response. As a Guardian headline noted today, “Misinformation on the coronavirus might be the most contagious thing about it.”
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, at a press briefing on February 8.
The hidden story
On January 25, I wrote that that “the 2019-nCoV virus shows that we’ve built a better world.” The response by public health agencies was faster and more powerful than anything before in history, a combination of global organization and high technology. China’s scientists isolated the virus on January 9 and sequenced it on January 10. On January 20 the CDC released a diagnostic test for the virus. On January 22, China quarantined the city of Wuhan.
Since then, China has implemented quarantines on a scale never before attempted. Coordinated by the WHO, the world’s nations implemented screening and research programs of unprecedented scale. See the full timeline here.
China has been hit hard by the epidemic. It combines poverty, high population density, and people living in close proximity with animals (even wild animals). It will have horrific epidemics. China’s people must deal with them. The rest of the world must act so that these epidemics do not devastate the other six-plus billion people
The great fear of the global public health agencies is that coronavirus would spread to poor nations with weak health infrastructure (those nations with strong ties to China are especially vulnerable) – from which it would spread around the world. So far that has not happened. WHO is working with those nations to make that less likely.
Every day the world becomes better able to defend itself against the coronavirus, with better screening mechanisms, better detection machinery, and better treatments (the first human trials of treatments have begun). Whatever happens next, this has made us better able to cope with it. That is why this is a milestone on the road to a better future.
The public health agencies are the core of our defenses. They are criticized for not accomplishing miracles with the small funds given them (see the Director-General speech yesterday). This shows the nature of our greatest problem: a failure to assume responsibility for our nation. But we can learn and do better.
From WHO’s February 14 Situation Report.
See the full report.
- Lots of bad news from China. But at their February 12 press conference, the Director-General said “The number of newly confirmed cases reported from China has stabilised over the past week but that must be interpreted with extreme caution.”
- No coronavirus cases have been reported in new nations since February 4.
- A total of 505 cases have been reported so far outside China, with 2 deaths (Feb 1 in the Philippines and in Japan on February 13).
- Other than those on the quarantined Japanese cruise ship (blue below), there have been few new cases reported outside China in the past 5 days. See the graph; ignore the blue segment (click to enlarge).
Conclusions
Events in the three weeks since my post have validated my original assessment. This is a milestone in history, no matter what happens next. But this is not the amazing news. It is that this remains hidden news.
The news media are no different than McDonald’s. Both work in the free market, serving us what we want. Americans today want exciting and scary news, not accurate news. We saw this in the hysteria during the 2009 swine flu and 2015 ebola epidemics. This weakness of ours almost guarantees that we will make poor decisions as citizens about America’s future – about coronavirus and our many other big challenges.
It’s easy to follow the coronavirus story
The World Health Organization provides daily information, from highly technical information to news for the general public.
- There is their daily situation report, with detailed numbers.
- The Director-General of WHO gives frequent briefings, which are quite insightful.
- Their daily press briefings have more information. An audio goes up quickly afterwards. A transcript is posted the next day.
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.
Please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Also, see these posts …
- See the ugly cost of the next big flu pandemic. We can do more to prepare.
- Stratfor: The superbugs are coming. We have time to prepare.
- Posts debunking the hysteria about the 2009 swine flu in America.
- Posts debunking the hysteria about the 2015 ebola epidemic in America.
A great film about epidemics in the 21st century
Contagion (2011).
This shows the progress of a pandemic from patient Zero, through global devastation, to eventual victory by the world’s scientists. The summary from the studio makes it sounds like a horror flick. It isn’t, or at least not entirely one.
“When Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns to Minnesota from a Hong Kong business trip, she attributes the malaise she feels to jet lag. However, two days later, Beth is dead, and doctors tell her shocked husband (Matt Damon) that they have no idea what killed her. Soon, many others start to exhibit the same symptoms, and a global pandemic explodes. Doctors try to contain the lethal microbe, but society begins to collapse as a blogger (Jude Law) fans the flames of paranoia.”
Could the article be even more stupid? Probably not. The virus is extremely dangerous, and the Chinese failed to contain it despite all the drastic measures (blocking people inside their homes, shooting people fleeing quarantine, violently arresting people not wearing masks). Nothing has worked. Just remember, it took China a month from first pneumonia to the first dead. It took them another month to a thousand dead. We just had the first dead outside Asia. We are on the same track. And we won’t implement the same stringent measures. In fact Chinese airplanes still lands daily here in Frankfurt. Nobody goes through a quarantine, they go to a fair instead, communicating with thousands of people and going back to China. Meanwhile a single Chinese woman from the company Webabsto infected 14 people in Bavaria. Detected more or less accidentally. With R-nought around 4 and lethality around 10% this is the perfect disaster. All thanks to the “better”, globalized world. Could the article be any more stupid? Nope.
Van Doren,
The exact same bogus logic of the climate extremists.
I suggest you read some of the reports from the CDC or WHO. You are quite wrong on a number of points. But there’s no point in replying to such hysteria – as 30 years of talking to hysterics about climate has proven.
Nobody can tell what the future holds in an epidemic, but your confident predictions of doom are like those for Ebola and SARS – which proved wrong.
By the way,
I’ve read most of the medical scientific papers on the topic that came out in the last month. I don’t need the political WHO for that.
About China’s numbers
The most frequent comment I’ve gotten in response to my three posts about the global spread of coronavirus is “China’s numbers aren’t accurate.” It’s like a mantra, or the key to life.
Everybody knows that. What difference does it make? If God told us that the number dead in China was 2x or 3x the reported numbers, what would the rest of the world do differently?
What if the number of cases and deaths were 5x more? The number of foreign cases – which indicates the spread – would still be the same. The number dead from the 526 cases would still be (so far) two (more are coming).
China’s numbers are bad news for China. If they are worse than reported, they’re very bad news. But there is nothing any other nation can do to help – other than produced treatments and vaccines. That effort is already running at high speed.
Regarding China’s numbers, “Everybody knows that. What difference does it make?”
A great deal, as if China had been honest the world could have reacted sooner and WHO would have not intially downplayed the situation.
I agree global response has improved. Yet the economic consequences of China’s extreme but late reaction is powerful motivation ( for good and bad reasons) for other nations to likewise be less then forthcoming in what they tell the ROW.
If Africa, North Korea, and other nations, as a consequence of seeing the damage to China’s economy, likewise hide the initial extent of infection, then it may make a great deal of difference.
Used the word k!ll in first post, so itt went into moderation. Repost
About 68% of Chinese men (approximately 500 million) smoke cigarettes, and most start before age 20. A Lancet study concluded that 20% of male deaths this decade will be from smoking, so it’s a serious national health issue.
Most CVirus cases are men between 50-65 (one study said 68%). Smoking cigarettes for 30-45 years tends to make people very unhealthy. I want to see the data showing what percentage of corona virus victims are/were smokers because that can shed some light on whether this is a virulent virus, or merely an opportunistic one, i.e., only kills the immuno-compromised . Typically, opportunistic diseases k!ll the very young, the very old and people with low immunity or serious health issues. This disease, however, basically leaves children untouched, which makes sense if this is an opportunistic disease preying largely on unhealthy smokers, because children don’t smoke.
Smoking is probably a contributiing factor
SARS and Covid Virus both share the same ACE2 receptor
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202002.0051/v1
Holy smokes, Batman!
Mods: Please delete my prior two comments
About 68% of Chinese men (approximately 500 million) smoke cigarettes, and most start before age 20. A Lancet study concluded that 20% of male deaths this decade will be from smoking, so it’s a serious national health issue.
Most CVirus cases are men between 50-65 (one study said 68%). Smoking cigarettes for 30-45 years tends to make people very unhealthy. I want to see the data showing what percentage of corona virus victims are/were smokers because that can shed some light on whether this is a virulent virus, or merely an opportunistic one, i.e., only k!lls the immuno-compromised . Typically, opportunistic diseases k!ll the very young, the very old and people with low immunity or serious health issues. This disease, however, basically leaves children untouched, which makes sense if this is an opportunistic disease preying largely on unhealthy smokers, because children don’t smoke.
Interestingly, I recently read an article that claimed that the lufe expectancy disparity between men and women was likely to have been at least influenced by the fact that more men smoked than women. It even suggested that it could have been a cause of the entire disparity, but I doubt that myself.
Certainly flu and any respiratory disease will be influenced by smoking. As someone who have up 10 or 15 years ago, I am very aware of how much better my lungs are, although permanently damaged unfortunately. At least I’ve convinced my children never to smoke, and I’m working on the great-nephews and nieces.
The figures I read were 68% of men smoke, and only 3% of women smoke. So it’s a huge difference.
Well, because so many baby girls were aborted, that will maybe help even out the millions of more men in the ready to marry category than the women who don’t smoke. That is a good question about the smoking issue, since this is a lung issue when mortality strikes and the person is deceased from Covid-19, being similar to pneumonia for the final cause. Would also be interesting to see some stats how many men vs. women get infected and the mortality rate of both. And ages, and whether they smoked. A fair number of people who have expired from pneumonia related illness at an early age were heavy smokers. Combined with the overall pollution and smoking, things don’t bode well for these parts of China that are heavily populated and polluted from unrestricted industrialization. Not to mention general sanitation and the wet markets with dead and live animals being sold and processed in pro sanitary urban settings. China is going to have to do some soul searching for the way their society operates with regards to food markets from whence this appears to sprang, at least from a perspective of public health.
Icisil: “About 68% of Chinese men (approximately 500 million) smoke cigarettes”
Smoking could really play a role, together with polluted air. Men are smoking much more and according to the WHO (in the end of January) more than 70% of all confirmed cases was men. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#age
I thought to have seen later a lower percentage for men, more into the direction of 55%, but still a higher percentage.
I read the same thing. Apparently those two figures were from two different studies.
So that image with the biohazard symbol is from the very popular mobile and computer game called “Plague Inc”.
Please read the text here and ignore the graphics. I see the same graphics show up repeatedly, representing different headlines on this blog. Don’t be distracted by that.
I wish China had cracked down much more on these live animal markets, before this virus jumped to humans. After SARS and swine flu there really is no excuse.
I don’t know enough about the virus. My speculation is that if flu cannot be contained I don’t see how this can be contained, since apparently this virus is more contagious than the flu.
If it does get out, and we have a good vaccine will it mutate like the flu so a new vaccine is needed every year ?
There are many questions that need to be answered.
Patient zero had NO connection with the market, as well as 30% of the initial cases.
Just read where the Chinese scientists are now admitting the virus came from their highly controlled lab and that they were weaponizing it – just like I said two days ago.
People seem to think that this was a “natural” occurrence but they are failing to see that with SARS there were few human deaths because it is a difficult virus to catch because only certain people in constant contact with birds such as chickens, ducks, etc. catch it.
However, with this virus – it apparently “jumped” from bats to humans quickly and then like a slow moving train picked up speed as more and more people were infected. This is not a zoonotic transmission this is a human who became contaminated with the virus who went home and gave it to his/her family and anyone they came into contact with.
It is moving through the Chinese population very fast and must have been incubating long before December when it “suddenly” appeared because so many people were entering hospital with an odd type of pneumonia and many were beginning to die before they could actually be helped.
This leads me to believe the Chinese government knew about this virus, was encouraging scientists to work on weaponizing it way back in 2018. Then for some reason there was a breech in containment and rather than report it the researcher got scared and kept his/her mouth shut hoping they would not come down with whatever they were weaponizing.
This will someday make a great book and then translate into a great movie as more and more information drips out of the Chinese government – if there are any of us left when this is all over…
Wait just one minute! . . . the above article did not include a single reference stating that SAR-CoV-2 was caused by AGW. How is that possible within today’s MSM?
a better movie would have been “OUTBREAK” with Dustin Hoffman.
Perhaps “Outbreak” would have been a better movie at the beginning of this but “Contagion” is how the Chinese government is handling their people now – welding doors shut, blocking windows so people can’t get out of apartment buildings where ONE person has been infected. No food was allowed in, the electricity and water were cut off to the buildings as well. This is what the government did to people in this movie. If anyone attempted to escape these death traps the government had snipers and military personnel ready to shoot them down and in the movie they did exactly that. The Chinese government is following this movie to the T.
Really appreciate all this rational and useful corona virus info. Thank you wuwt.
I had several item deliver from China the last week.
Have I imported this Virus?
Just asking, people need to know?
The human corona virus is believed not too survive ‘on surfaces’ 9 days. Often much less. A study about former corona type virusses states that:
“For veterinary coronaviruses 28 days is mentioned in the study, for other human coronaviruses (not 2019-nCoV) just 9 days.
“Human coronaviruses can remain infectious on inanimate surfaces at room temperature for up to 9 days. At a temperature of 30°C or more the duration of persistence is shorter. Veterinary coronaviruses have been shown to persist even longer for 28 d.”
The conclusion:
Human coronaviruses can remain infectious on inanimate surfaces for up to 9 days. Surface disinfection with 0.1% sodium hypochlorite or 62-71% ethanol significantly reduces coronavirus infectivity on surfaces within 1 min exposure time. We expect a similar effect against the 2019-nCoV.
Source: https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(20)30046-3/fulltext
Thank you for the link.
I will now spray any thing delivered with 70%abv Vodka.
I have upped my intake of Cod-liver oil and Vitamin C.
Novalsan Wim…..
Possibly. Have you handled the outside packaging or items that were inside the shipping container, including its internal packaging/cushioning material? Was the original of any of these items from cities near Wuhan?
Watch for symptoms (just like the flu, except for the body aches) over the next 24 days (addition incubation margin added, just to be safe).
Addendum to above:
“A coronavirus can also be transmitted by touching an object where airborne droplets have settled.
The viruses can survive briefly on surfaces depending on conditions of humidity and temperature.” —source https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-we-know-about-the-wuhan-virus-11579716128
Note: the word “briefly” in the above quote was not quantified. The term “airborne droplets” refers to atomized saliva from sneezes or coughs from an infected individual, who may asymptomatic at the time of the sneeze or cough.
Thank you for the reply.
Just got the head cold.
I have had several flu.
the worst being in the 70’s
You Know when its flu,
when if you saw a £50 not on the front lawn,
It would stay there.
A fair question, what is the life of the virus on a contaminated object?
Pandemics have always been a risk, but modern medicine will find a way to reduce the threat.
And then there has been that evolutionary step whereby if the pathogen kills its host quickly it is game over for the disease.
But one the greatest threats to mankind has been totalitarian governments with a magnificent passion.
Such as the current mania to ensure that the temperature of the nearest planet is set at the “perfect” level.
Thereby wasting trillions of dollars on what is essentially another promotion to control people.
China’s attempts to control people have had horrendous results.
With the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s some 30 million died. Famine, executions and massacres.
While the immediate passion is to control a disease, the real motivation is to control the people.
And as with the earlier disasters–always for the “good” of the people.
The state could be a greater threat than the pandemic.
I have also read that Vitamin D can cure this thing in a few days, especially with the help of vitamin C and other immune boosters. One source–might be true, might not. But the vitamin remedy has withstood millions of years of trial and error, with numbers beyond comprehension.
Remdesivir will undergo some infinitesimal fraction of such testing–too small a fraction for words.
All the quarantines are in dark (sunless) conditions, and mostly depleted foods. That is a recipe for scary death rates.
I am still not convinced it is even an especially bad cold–even if it does contain a gene insertion tool in its genome as claimed.
I think most of us will be exposed to this within the next few years–and most of us will never even know it.
Larry, thank you for this post.
Also, bravo for responding to an amazing number of comments on this thread. From past experience (years ago) I know how draining that can be.
Regards,
Bob
There is am ancient b/w movie starring Terry Thomas called “A Matter of WHO” worth looking at
Just ignore the China data. Numbers from the rest of the world are less ‘adjusted’, and shoukd be analyzed on their own.
The cruise ship off of Japan shows that the virus is significantly contagious in a densely populated situation. There is also evidence that some may be ‘super-carriers’ with high R0 potential, but the typical infected person, substantially less.
What is encouraging is that the death rate in industrialized countries has been low. Perhaps the most susceptible groups will be those in retirement homes, prisons, any type of other lock-down facilities, where the environment is similar to the cruise ship. But even then, it looks like a los mortality rate for first-world countries.
As usual, it is the rest of the world that will pay the price. India, Pakistan, Nepal, Egypt, and other such countries will be the ones to watch. Hygiene is more difficult; hospitals easily overwhelmed.
It’s a little early in the story for people to start clapping each other on the back about how well COVID-19 is being handled and belittling the concerns of others.
I’ve been following the statistics from Johns Hopkins (https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6) and it is heartening that the numbers outside China haven’t gone exponential, but no one knows for sure where this lands, including Larry Kummer.
How contagious is COVID and under what circumstances? How lethal is it and under what circumstances? Why has it hit China so hard? Why hasn’t it hit other countries as hard? There are plausible responses, but experts disagree and I haven’t seen solid answers to these questions yet. The next couple weeks will give us a better idea if there is a hidden reservoir of carriers outside China.
I’ll keep reading and thinking for myself.
Good comment.
If this COVID-19 brings about the collapse of the Kim Dynasty in North Korea, then something good will come of it.
How many tens of millions of NorthKoreans have died by the hand of their own government the last 70 years? By some estimates, 60 million dead at hands of their own government and famines from policy since the end of Korean open conflict in 1953.
So a couple million dead there from corona virus and 5 million sick more including most of their military would probably collapse North Korea’s fragile top-down built infrastructure. Top-down built social-political structures are fragile to these kinds of events going back 5,000 years in human societal history.
Yes, that is horrific, buyt how else can a country ruled by a despot with the most riuthless suppression tactics be overthrown by a downtrodden, pacified people?
In the aftermath, maybe South Korea could come it, will world assistance from China and US to funding to stabilize the situation and begin the long 30 year process to re-integrate the 2 Koreas under South Korean leadership.
That’s the only bright spot I can see.
Pelosi with weird speech, along with Batman and Robin Pompeo and Esper are frothing at the mouth right now at the Munich Security Conference. Now we have the missing Joker – give ’em a call.
You think a couple of million dying is a bright spot?
I had a quick look at those stories and I have read some before. Behind the headlines, mostly written by none person, there is a lot less of the fear mongering than Jude Laws character in Contagion.
And he is right that we will get a pandemic one day that if it doesn’t have a high death toll will cause a lot of economic grief as we try to control it. As long as he doesn’t encourage people to quit and hide in the hills, not an issue.
Have any non-Orientals died of this? It seems Occidentals carry it but no deaths reported, AFAIK. News reports rarely give racial breakdowns.
ethnicity not likely a factor
As of Feb 16, only 5 non-Chinese nationals have died from this virus. How many of those 5 people were ethnically/genetically Chinese I can’t determine. Just based on the Japan cruise ship, that does seem to point towards an ethnicity bias for mortality, though not for being infected, yes.
There is now a theory circulating that the ACE enzyme may play a part in where, how fast, and to what degree the virus spreads in the body. As it happens, Asians have more of that enzyme that Europeans.
You might maintain your near-perfect record of being wrong.
Ethnic-oriented protein match, probably. That may mean immunity for others, until mutation, and probably carriers that place the so-called “herd” at risk.
90% of the Asian have higher expression of ACE2 in the lungs, which makes them more susceptible to the disease, but 50% of the European have this phenotype as well.
I had not seen the 90%, where’d you read that
Now will you believe we’re doomed?
“It has not taken hold in countries outside of China”
True, but it has taken ~ 3 months to get to the stage we see in China now. What will be the situation in SE and Sth Asia (India) in 3 months time?
I don’t see that it is possible to contain this outbreak to any significant extent. The key question relates to the infectious lifetime of the virus. Spanish Flu was ~ 2 yrs. Given the current reaction in regards to travel e.tc. the world economy would buckle should the current restrictions stay in place and be extended in the West (imo). The Chinese student market alone is worth $ billions globally. Prices for commodities imported by China are taking a big hit: – 50% for NZ red meat. Logs are stuck on our wharves and forest workers have down-tools. Australia cannot be doing any better.
I have this feeling that a heavy-handed approach to trying to contain may be more costly (and be of limited effect) than letting the outbreak run its course (depending on how “costly” is defined) . The law of untended consequences applies.
The Chinese market is just too big. When China catches the flu the rest of the world will sneeze. Or worse.
I don’t know if it possible but I would like to see an opinion poll created on this site. I have seen it done on other forums.
I would like to see other’s opinions on such questions as:
– How long will outbreak last?
– Will the percentages of people infected and killed globally be similar to common flu (more/less)
– Will mortality rates be significantly higher in developing countries than developed ?
– Will developed countries contain the outbreak?
– Can the health systems in developed countries cope with an infection rate as high as in China?
– Is the actual mortality rate significantly higher than what is being reported?
– Will the virus mutate and start killing a different demographic group?
– Will the virus mutate and increase mortality rate?
– Will the outbreak trigger a global recession?
I guess it would have to be a tick-the-box version.
Cheers
M
‘I have this feeling that a heavy-handed approach to trying to contain may be more costly (and be of limited effect) than letting the outbreak run its course (depending on how “costly” is defined) . The law of untended consequences applies.”
Possibly, but that reaction on China, very extreme compared to the ‘ official” numbers, and many other reasons is why some fear that it is far worse then the official numbers.
China’s hospital situation was desperate. 20 percent of infections were leading to IC.
Thousands that needed treatment could not and likely cannot get it. In that situation not reacting would only lead to worse spread and panic. Millions in panic mode would mean far worse consequences.
Upthread commentators speculate why this Wuhan coronavirus seems potentially to afflict more the Chinese, than others somfar; & is the Chinese coronavirus crisis scope going to be replicated in the West. One feature to understand is that Asians have more of the enzyme abreviated “ACE2” than Europeans; I’m skipping parsing worldwide ancestries.
The relevance is that coronavirus uses the enzyme ACE2 to get at human cells. See free full text (2020) on-line: “The nicel coronavirus 2019 (2019-nCoe) uses the SARS-coronavirus receptor ACE2 and the cellular protease TMPRSS2 for entry into target cells”.
edit : “novel” is the correct 2nd word in cited title above & replace the “e” at end of parenthesis abbreviation with the letter “r” ….
Other reports indicate that smoking, not ethnicity, is the reason for the higher ACE2 count in the Chinese population.
Waiting for clarification on this.
To upset the Apple cart a little there is a new country to add to the list. Egypt has been added to the list today. Only one case was confirmed there but with the ability of this virus to pass on without the host showing symptoms is troubling. For all of the WHO’s faults with trying to downplay this outbreak at the start one of their biggest fears was if this virus got a foothold in an over populated country with marginal medical and sanitation conditions like Egypt. I guess we will have to wait and see.
“A better new world”
Is this a newspeak???
What we have?
1. Biolab Level 4 in Wuhan, where the corona viruses were studied, and where the outbreak originated
2. This happened in October-November 2019.
3. This virus became public only on December 31, 2019, after the regime failed keeping it secret.
4. We have 70,000 infected and 1700 dead now
5. The quarantine in China is drastic: empty streets, ceveral cities are locked. Everybody has to stay at home.
6. Even moving from one district to another in Wuhan is prohibited.
7. Latest news: death penalty for anybody, who keeps his dicease secret and does not inform authorities.
And yet, despite all these draconic measures, thousands of new cases and a hundred deaths daily.
70.000 infected makes 0.005% of China population. Yet, the virus already spreads worldwide.
Biolab in Wuhan was a copy of the U.S. biolabs, where outbreaks are also not uncommon…
Surely, a “better world”.
Has anyone yet claimed that Coronavirus is caused by Climate Change?