Italy also has a prestigious music school that basically just said "You Asian? Stay home." Italy is definitely more racist than the U.S., so good call. The worst part of all this, aside from those actually exposed to it and suffering/dying and their families, is it gives a bunch of people the excuse to be the racist dipshits they are with little pushback. Meanwhile, the flu will continue to kill so many more.
I get the flu will kill many more but isnt the fear that if this is unchecked (to the level of the flu) that it would likely have more devastating numbers?
Perfect word choice. The issue is that there a lot of unknowns at this point. A lot of that lies at the feet of the CCP. I would guess one big reason the world is freaking out is that the CCP actually is asking for help on this, which is not SOP. The key to remember is that it's going to get worse and then the odds are incredibly high that it will be an afterthought as quickly as it became news. It's going to get worse because we're only 7 days beyond when most people started traveling for the Spring Festival. The numbers are going to spike for another week or two. Beyond that, we'll then have a better idea of what we're dealing with. I imagine the other reason countries are getting strict is that you'll also have people who went back to China for the Spring Festival returning to the countries of residence or citizenship. Precautions are certainly warranted, don't get me wrong there. I think there's a middle ground that can be met and don't see why being a citizen grants you the right to being quarantined, whereas not being a citizen gets you shipped right back where you came from, despite both individuals possibly trying to get back to the same job on Monday. Sure, inherently the two individuals have different status, but yeah...I don't trust that all these decisions are being made in the interest of public health alone.
I agree with all of that last paragraph...was more referencing why comparing it to the yearly flu strain may not be apples to apples
It's not apples to apples. The flu is king and champion year over year. It's also caused by a variety of virals strains and doesn't have a single source that simple humans can use to blame and comfort themselves against something they're several orders of magnitude less likely to be exposed to. It's not an either or thing. It's important to take the unknown seriously, but it's also important to keep things in perspective. We devote a lot of resources to the big bad bugs, and this often results in other, everyday diseases spiking. Also, the economic impacts hurt those at the bottom of society disproportionately. Human psychology is all so very fascinating and terrifying. For as smart as we are, we're also really really dumb.
Case Report for the first U.S. case, fully recovered: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191
I wasn't posting as a stamp of approval of the practice, just a statement that's the route that countries are starting to adopt as I hadn't seen it posted yet.
What I would really like to see is a comparison of a ~week ago vs recent days. Of the people they are screening that flag as potential to have the virus at transit centers, are the positive results in those pools of people rising or declining now that travel restrictions have been implemented
Won't tell you much if you're talking here in the U.S. or other countries outside of China. There weren't that many cases a week ago in China. It's going to blow up and then recede. That's how these things work. Possibly a bit of a lag if it does take hold in any foreign countries. Korea has 11 cases last I saw. I believe that's the highest outside China. A week from now will be interesting for sure.
Really kind of pisses me off that the husband of the Wuhan virus in Chicago went to work and traveled. I’m sure it was before she was diagnosed though.
tbh I had never heard of Chongqing before looking at that list, much less knowing it was the largest metropolitan area in the world.
It's the largest city proper, not metro. China doesn't really do suburbs unless there's another large-ish city right next door.
It’s super Hugh but scary long. I got the flu this week and it last two days but I ripped out at 103.1 and was above 102 for like 8 hours. My brain still doesn’t feel like it’s hitting on all cylinders 48 hours later with no fever at all for 24 hours.
People worry about fever too much. It’s a natural response, don’t need to treat it unless it’s making you uncomfortable (generally speaking, you can ride 102-103 I won’t bat an eye).
Even the city proper is third largest metro area on that Wikipedia list. I always thought of Beijing and Shanghai as the two largest cities in China.
Yeah, from everything I've heard and tasted, Chongqing is a bit of a hidden gem. It's not on the coast, so it doesn't get nearly as much love/notoriety. Plan on visiting there a few times in the near future.
While we are on the subject of virus and China; they have just confirmed a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu H5N1 in a farm in Shaoyang City. When this strain jumps to humans the mortality rate is something not to be fucked with.
The bird mortality will be 100%. The protocol is full depopulation to avoid spread which we kinda know already. Several reasons to watch this but if you look at the current landscape of the protein business in China it is complete chaos. And... H5N1 makes coronavirus look like a runny nose.
As New Coronavirus Spread, China’s Old Habits Delayed Fight https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share Spoiler As New Coronavirus Spread, China’s Old Habits Delayed Fight By Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers Published Feb. 1, 2020 At critical turning points, Chinese authorities put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis and risking public alarm or political embarrassment. Officials at the scene on Thursday where a man collapsed and died on a street near a hospital in Wuhan. It was unclear whether he had contracted the coronavirus.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images WUHAN, China — A mysterious illnesshad stricken seven patients at a hospital, and a doctor tried to warn his medical school classmates. “Quarantined in the emergency department,” the doctor, Li Wenliang, wrote in an online chat group on Dec. 30, referring to patients. “So frightening,” one recipient replied, before asking about the epidemic that began in China in 2002 and ultimately killed nearly 800 people. “Is SARS coming again?” In the middle of the night, officials from the health authority in the central city of Wuhan summoned Dr. Li, demanding to know why he had shared the information. Three days later, the police compelled him to sign a statement that his warning constituted “illegal behavior.” ADVERTISEMENT The illness was not SARS, but something similar: a coronavirus that is now on a relentless march outward from Wuhan, throughout the country and across the globe, killing at least 304 people in China and infecting more than 14,380 worldwide. Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Spread of the Outbreak The virus has sickened more than 14,500 people in China and 23 other countries. The government’s initial handling of the epidemic allowed the virus to gain a tenacious hold. At critical moments, officials chose to put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment. A reconstruction of the crucial seven weeks between the appearance of the first symptoms in early December and the government’s decision to lock down the city, based on two dozen interviews with Wuhan residents, doctors and officials, on government statements and on Chinese media reports, points to decisions that delayed a concerted public health offensive. ADVERTISEMENT In those weeks, the authorities silenced doctors and others for raising red flags. They played down the dangers to the public, leaving the city’s 11 million residents unaware they should protect themselves. They closed a food market where the virus was believed to have started, but didn’t broadly curb the wildlife trade. The Wuhan Red Cross Hospital on Jan. 25 — five days after China acknowledged a new virus could pass from human to human, but weeks after it had started to spread.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Their reluctance to go public, in part, played to political motivations as local officials prepared for their annual congresses in January. Even as cases climbed, officials declared repeatedly that there had likely been no more infections. By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals, public health experts say, the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic. ADVERTISEMENT “This was an issue of inaction,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies China. “There was no action in Wuhan from the local health department to alert people to the threat.” The first case, the details of which are limited and the specific date unknown, was in early December. By the time the authorities galvanized into action on Jan. 20, the disease had grown into a formidable threat. Dr. Li Wenliang It is now a global health emergency. It has triggered travel restrictions around the world, shaken financial markets and created perhaps the greatest challenge yet for China’s leader, Xi Jinping. The crisis could upend Mr. Xi’s agenda for months or longer, even undermining his vision of a political system that offers security and growth in return for submission to iron-fisted authoritarianism. ADVERTISEMENT On the last day of 2019, after Dr. Li’s message was shared outside the group, the authorities focused on controlling the narrative. The police announced that they were investigating eight people for spreading rumors about the outbreak. That same day, Wuhan’s health commission, its hand forced by those “rumors,” announced that 27 people were suffering from pneumonia of an unknown cause. Its statement said there was no need to be alarmed. “The disease is preventable and controllable,” the statement said. Dr. Li, an ophthalmologist, went back to work after being reprimanded. On Jan. 10, he treated a woman for glaucoma. He did not know she had already been infected with the coronavirus, probably by her daughter. They both became sick. So would he. Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan on Jan. 11. It was shut on Jan. 1 — for renovation, state media said.Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images ADVERTISEMENT Hazmat Suits and Disinfectants Hu Xiaohu, who sold processed pork in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, sensed by late December that something was amiss. Workers were coming down with nagging fevers. No one knew why but, Mr. Hu said, several were in hospital quarantine. The market occupies much of a block in a newer part of the city, sitting incongruously near apartment buildings and shops catering to the growing middle class. It is a warren of stalls selling meats, poultry and fish, as well as more exotic fare, including live reptiles and wild game that some in China prize as delicacies. According to a report by the city’s center for disease control, sanitation was dismal, with poor ventilation and garbage piled on wet floors. In hospitals, doctors and nurses were puzzled to see a cluster of patients with symptoms of a viral pneumonia that did not respond to the usual treatments. They soon noticed that many patients had one thing in common: They worked in Huanan market. On Jan. 1, police officers showed up at the market, along with public health officials, and shut it down. Local officials issued a notice that the market was undergoing an environmental and hygienic cleanup related to the pneumonia outbreak. That morning, workers in hazmat suits moved in, washing out stalls and spraying disinfectants. ADVERTISEMENT It was, for the public, the first visible government response to contain the disease. The day before, on Dec. 31, national authorities had alerted the World Health Organization’s office in Beijing of an outbreak. How Bad Will the Coronavirus Outbreak Get? Here Are 6 Key Factors Here’s what early research says about how the pathogen behaves and the factors that will determine whether it can be contained. City officials struck optimistic notes in their announcements. They suggested they had stopped the virus at its source. The cluster of illnesses was limited. There was no evidence the virus spread between humans. “Projecting optimism and confidence, if you don’t have the data, is a very dangerous strategy,” said Alexandra Phelan, a faculty research instructor in the department of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University. ADVERTISEMENT “It undermines the legitimacy of the government in messaging,” she added. “And public health is dependent on public trust.” Nine days after the market closed, a man who shopped there regularly became the first fatality of the disease, according to a report by the Wuhan Health Commission, the agency that oversees public health and sanitation. The 61-year-old, identified by his last name, Zeng, already had chronic liver disease and a tumor in his abdomen, and had checked into Wuhan Puren Hospital with a raging fever and difficulty breathing. The authorities disclosed the man’s death two days after it happened. They did not mention a crucial detail in understanding the course of the epidemic. Mr. Zeng’s wife had developed symptoms five days after he did. She had never visited the market. The intensive care unit at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 24.Xiong Qi/Xinhua, via Associated Press ADVERTISEMENT The Race to Identify a Killer About 20 miles from the market, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were studying samples from the patients checking into the city’s hospitals. One of the scientists, Zheng-Li Shi, was part of the team that tracked down the origins of the SARS virus, which emerged in the southern province of Guangdong in 2002. As the public remained largely in the dark about the virus, she and her colleagues quickly pieced together that the new outbreak was related to SARS. The genetic composition suggested a common initial host: bats. The SARS epidemic began when a coronavirus jumped from bats to Asian palm civets, a catlike creature that is legally raised and consumed. It was likely that this new coronavirus had followed a similar path — possibly somewhere in or on the way to the Huanan market or another market like it. Around the same time, Dr. Li and other medical professionals in Wuhan started trying to provide warnings to colleagues and others when the government did not. Lu Xiaohong, the head of gastroenterology at City Hospital No. 5, told China Youth Daily that she had heard by Dec. 25 that the disease was spreading among medical workers — a full three weeks before the authorities would acknowledge the fact. She did not go public with her concerns, but privately warned a school near another market. By the first week of January, the emergency ward in Hospital No. 5 was filling; the cases included members of the same family, making it clear that the disease was spreading through human contact, which the government had said was not likely. ADVERTISEMENT No one realized, the doctor said, that it was as serious as it would become until it was too late to stop it. “I realized that we had underestimated the enemy,” she said. At the Institute of Virology, Dr. Shi and her colleagues isolated the genetic sequence and the viral strain during the first week of January. They used samples from seven of the first patients, six of them vendors at the market. On Jan. 7, the institute’s scientists gave the new coronavirus its identity and began referring to it by the technical shorthand 2019-nCoV. Four days later, the team shared the virus’s genetic makeup in a public database for scientists everywhere to use. That allowed scientists around the world to study the virus and swiftly share their findings. As the scientific community moved quickly to devise a test for exposure, political leaders remained reluctant to act. ADVERTISEMENT Wuhan on Jan. 27. The city went ahead with a giant potluck dinner in mid-January.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images ‘Politics is Always No. 1’ As the virus spread in early January, the mayor of Wuhan, Zhou Xianwang, was touting futuristic health care plans for the city. It was China’s political season, when officials gather for annual meetings of People’s Congresses — the Communist Party-run legislatures that discuss and praise policies. It is not a time for bad news. When Mr. Zhou delivered his annual report to the city’s People’s Congress on Jan. 7 against a backdrop of bright red national flags, he promised the city top-class medical schools, a World Health Expo, and a futuristic industry park for medical companies. Not once did he or any other city or provincial leader publicly mention the viral outbreak. ADVERTISEMENT “Stressing politics is always No. 1,” the governor of Hubei, Wang Xiaodong, told officials on Jan. 17, citing Mr. Xi’s precepts of top-down obedience. “Political issues are at any time the most fundamental major issues.” Shortly after, Wuhan went ahead with a massive annual potluck banquet for 40,000 families from a city precinct, which critics later cited as evidence that local leaders took the virus far too lightly. As the congress was taking place, the health commission’s daily updates on the outbreak said again and again that there were no new cases of infection, no firm evidence of human transmission and no infection of medical workers. “We knew this was not the case!” said a complaint later filed with the National Health Commission on a government website. The anonymous author said he was a doctor in Wuhan and described a surge in unusual chest illnesses beginning Jan. 12. ADVERTISEMENT Officials told doctors at a top city hospital “don’t use the words viral pneumonia on the image reports,” according to the complaint, which has since been removed. People were complacent, “thinking that if the official reports had nothing, then we were exaggerating,” the doctor explained. Even those stricken felt lulled into complacency. When Dong Guanghe developed a fever on Jan. 8 in Wuhan, his family was not alarmed, his daughter said. He was treated in the hospital and sent home. Then, 10 days later, Mr. Dong’s wife fell ill with similar symptoms. “The news said nothing about the severity of the epidemic,” said the daughter, Dong Mingjing. “I thought that my dad had a common cold.” The government’s efforts to minimize public disclosure persuaded more than just untrained citizens. “If there are no new cases in the next few days, the outbreak is over,” Guan Yi, a respected professor of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong, said on Jan. 15. ADVERTISEMENT The World Health Organization’s statements during this period echoed the reassuring words of Chinese officials. It had spread. Thailand reported the first confirmed case outside China on Jan. 13. Health officials in Hangzhou, China, taking train passengers’ temperatures after they arrived from Wuhan on Jan. 23.China Daily, via Reuters A City Besieged The first deaths and the spread of the disease abroad appeared to grab the attention of the top authorities in Beijing. The national government dispatched Zhong Nanshan, a renowned and now-semiretired epidemiologist who was instrumental in the fight against SARS, to Wuhan to assess the situation. He arrived on Jan. 18, just as the tone of local officials was shifting markedly. A health conference in Hubei Province that day called on medical workers to make the disease a priority. An internal document from Wuhan Union Hospital warned its employees that the coronavirus could be spread through saliva. ADVERTISEMENT On Jan. 20, more than a month after the first symptoms spread, the current of anxiety that had been steadily gaining strength exploded into public. Dr. Zhong announced in an interview on state television that there was no doubt that the coronavirus spread with human contact. Worse, one patient had infected at least 14 medical personnel. Mr. Xi, fresh from a state visit to Myanmar, made his first public statement about the outbreak, issuing a brief set of instructions. It was only with the order from Mr. Xi that the bureaucracy leapt into action. At that point the death toll was three; in the next 11 days, it would rise above 200. In Wuhan, the city banned tour groups from visiting. Residents began pulling on masks. Guan Yi, the Hong Kong expert who had earlier voiced optimism that the outbreak could level off, was now alarmed. He dropped by one of the city’s other food markets and was shocked by the complacency, he said. He told city officials that the epidemic was “already beyond control” and would leave. “I hurriedly booked a departure,” Dr. Guan told Caixin, a Chinese news organization. ADVERTISEMENT Two days later, the city announced that it was shutting itself down, a move that could only have been approved by Beijing. In Wuhan, many residents said they did not grasp the gravity of the epidemic until the lockdown. The mass alarm that officials feared at the start became a reality, heightened by the previous paucity of information. Crowds of people crushed the airport and train stations to get out before the deadline fell on the morning of Jan. 23. Hospitals were packed with people desperate to know if they, too, were infected. “We didn’t wear masks at work. That would have frightened off customers,” Yu Haiyan, a waitress from rural Hubei, said of the days before the shutdown. “When they closed off Wuhan, only then did I think, ‘Oh, this is really serious, this is not some average virus.’” ADVERTISEMENT Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, later took responsibility for the delay in reporting the scale of the epidemic, but said he was hampered by the national law on infectious diseases. That law allows provincial governments to declare an epidemic only after receiving central government approval. “After I receive information, I can only release it when I’m authorized,” he said. Dr. Li in Wuhan Central Hospital on Friday. The official reflex for suppressing discomforting information now appears to be cracking, as officials at various levels seek to shift blame for the government’s response. With the crisis worsening, Dr. Li’s efforts are no longer viewed as reckless. A commentary on the social media account of the Supreme People’s Court criticized the police for investigating people for circulating rumors. ADVERTISEMENT “It might have been a better way to prevent and control the new coronavirus today if the public had believed the ‘rumor’ then and started to wear masks and carry out sanitary measures and avoid the wild animal market,” the commentary said. Dr. Li is 34 and has a child. He and his wife are expecting a second in the summer. He is now recovering from the virus in the hospital where he worked. In an interview via text messages, he said he felt aggrieved by the police actions. “If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier,” he said, “I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.” This article is based on reporting and research by Elsie Chen, Sheri Fink, Claire Fu, Javier Hernandez, Zoe Mou, Amy Qin, Knvul Sheikh, Amber Wang, Yiwei Wang, Sui-Lee Wee, Li Yuan, Albee Zhang and Raymond Zhong. Building a temporary field hospital in Wuhan on Thursday.Arek Rataj/Associated Press Chris Buckley is chief China correspondent and has lived in China for most of the past 30 years after growing up in Sydney, Australia. Before joining The Times in 2012, he was a correspondent in Beijing for Reuters. @ChuBailiang Steven Lee Myers is the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times. He joined The Times in 1989 and has previously worked as a correspondent in Moscow, Baghdad and Washington. He is the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin,” published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2015. @stevenleemyers• Facebook Correction: Feb. 2, 2020 An earlier version of this article said that a market tied to the coronavirus outbreak had been closed for renovations. It was closed for an environmental and hygienic cleanup related to the outbreak.
NY Times wrote an article where the people who model these thing suspect the actual number of infected are well over 100,000. Which makes it more of a pandemic than SARS or MERS, but also means that the mortality rate is very small and similar to the regular flu.
Curious, but do the reports that HIV treatments are effective against this give credit to the other report that this virus appears to have been artificially modified to resemble HIV?
What? the coronavirus uses a protease to chop up proteins and assemble itself, so using a protease inhibitor (like we use in HIV) is helping at lowering its ability to replicate. the Flu medication is due to the fact the coronavirus has a somewhat similar-ish hemagglutinin molecule on it, so they are proposing it could help in a similar way. this isn’t a manufactured virus, and there’s no evidence this is a bio weapon, if that’s what I’m assuming your post indicates