SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
I agree. But short of banning Chinese nationals from entering the U.K. in January before any cases had even occurred here, what could have been done? And if that was done we all know the reaction that would have received.
Again, what confused you about my initial post?
There are lots of things the UK could have done. Even as far back as a couple of weeks ago when it started exploding in Italy, there were literally no checks in British airports for flights from Northern Italy.
Contrast this to a Chinese colleague of mine who recently returned to China from the UK:
-Every single passenger on the flight had their temperature checked
-Any passenger with a temperature was taken for quarantine
-Any passengers within a few rows also quarantined
-Asked multiple questions multiple times to ascertain your risk
-Bags sanitised multiple times throughout the journey through the airport
-People outside your apartment block checking temperature of people going in
-People outside supermarkets and shopping centres checking temperatures before being allowed in
-Hand sanitiser everywhere
Meanwhile, in our hospitals, we are currently struggling for wipes, alcohol gel and have had our PPE downgraded to surgical masks for patients who are confirmed positive.
Who on earth has said anything like this in bold?
It is not mutually exclusive to criticise China for the poor hygiene standards in wet markets, as well as their initial response (in fact, many Chinese people have done exactly this), while also thinking our responses in Europe and the USA, both governmental and societal, have been subpar. It is not an either/or.
How many people are being tested in the UK? Only a 100 new cases today? Was something like 2k tests yesterday? That's a bit of a joke frankly, it both underplays the severity of the situation to the general public and prevents the infected from knowing about it and elsewise not passing it onto others.
Even the US is doing like 10k+ tests a day now
Even the US is doing like 10k+ tests a day now
Did I imagine that we are on lockdown?
Just went to the park to walk the dog and the high street is jammed with people, coffee shops, fish and chip places, every shop open. Tons of people milling about, maybe one or two wearing masks.
we're not going to do this, are we?
Just went to the park to walk the dog and the high street is jammed with people, coffee shops, fish and chip places, every shop open. Tons of people milling about, maybe one or two wearing masks.
we're not going to do this, are we?
They spent , at least, 2 months denying it and putting doctors that spoke about it in prison. Then after publicly acknowledging it in January they still allowed people to travel abroad. Think think think
I looked out of the window today, saw no signs of social distancing at all.
It was for me. I just stopped one day.
Could very well be although apparently young people have much more contact in Italy with the elderly which could explain the high rate of infections and deaths - younger, healthier people with no symptoms carrying the virus. Despite lip service to the elderly in Japan, there is a callousness about them in Tokyo at least if they are not your immediate family.
Seeing them stand up on the train while the young and men of all ages sit in the designated priority seats for the elderly as well as people with disabilities or injuries is normal although quite despicable in my opinion. Suicide rates of the elderly in Japan and Korea are quite high compared to other countries pointing to more social isolation. A lot more of them live by themselves than you'd think and that might actually prevent some transmissions of this virus.
Although Japan is crowded in the big cities it is more spread out as a country than Italy - it's an archipelago, made up of 4 islands. Okinawa is the 5th but quite far away and was colonised. It's not really Japan - it's Ryukyu culture and people. The high number of cases and deaths in Italy also are down to high contact with an Asian virus in my opinion. Older Europeans don't tend to spend much if any time in south-east and east Asia and I think living here as well as previously in another east Asian country has probably helped my immune system.
I wonder if the infected and dead in the north of Italy have more A blood types although given the Germanic tribal origins of people like those in Lombardy I would have thought not. The O blood type has no antigens in blood cells - these are molecules in the other blood types cells and viruses can use them. It doesn't mean people with O blood types won't get and die from the virus but apparently it's more resilient against it.
If you believe that the Chinese Government did not know from their wing in Hubei Province in November, December at the latest that there was a rapidly spreading virus in Wuhan then you also believe in the tooth fairy. As it stands the Chinese Government for some time has had the most intense surveillance system of their citizens and residents ever witnessed in human history.
Not true. Dr. Li Wenliang, from Wuhan, tried to warn his colleagues about an outbreak similar to SARS in late December after having treated multiple patients with unexplained pneumonia who visited the wet market. Instead of acting, the authorities summoned and disciplined him for spreading rumors and making "false" comments on the internet. He died of the virus a month later.
So a cruise ship was docked, filled with primarily elderly people. 68 people from the ship were taken into quarantine for the last couple days. We finally got their tests back, and 40 of them are positive. From 9 to 49. Oh boy.
They’ve all been taken to one of the containment hospitals since they’re all in the primary at risk age group.
They’ve all been taken to one of the containment hospitals since they’re all in the primary at risk age group.
Why are the coffee shops open? Ridiculous to shut pubs and restaurants and leave coffee shops and tea shops open.They all serve some kind of food, so they should be closed. And chippies?
Funny thing, I told @Arruda that I heard about a virus in Wuhan in December and he replied
“source? hint you won’t find one”
but has since deleted his response... I really can’t stand people who are too stuck up to admit they are wrong
John Lewis to close all its stores on Monday. The British public is so thick. I've an uncle who went to a wedding today - stupidity at its finest.
I mean we all had our suspicions during the last few elections and whatnot but this has really hammered home that a large % of the population is thick/ignorant/arrogant. Christ
Several posts up when he said the Chinese gov only knew about it Jan
We aren’t Announcing new cases in England till much later.
Any word form the Portuguese newsreaders?
Meathead Matt doesn't grasp the fundamental issue here - although it's true we should pay more attention to flu, how to contain it and prevent so many unnecessary deaths.
COVID-19 is such a nasty virus as its infectiousness is much higher than that of different kinds of flu. Swine flu was fairly bad in Korea when I worked there and it didn't go for people's lungs necessitating the kinds of equipment many countries are in short supply of. It was also not as easy to catch.
When there was a SARS outbreak in Hong Kong I was there for vacation but couldn't leave when I had planned. It didn't spook me as it was only infectious when symptoms showed. This virus is different. For example in one confirmed case here in Japan a woman caught COVID-19 by sitting on a couch where an infected person had sat. She had not been in direct contact with him.
In Singapore a cluster has been traced to a business conference but some of the later infected had only shaken hands with those who unknowingly had the virus. There was little other contact.
COVID-19 lives on surfaces much longer although it's suspectible to being weakened and broken up through hand washing even with usual soap.
Yep. Guy behind me in the queue for the pharmacy this morning was talking about continuing to go to the local pub as it is having lock ins.
This is where you get it a bit wrong. Dr. Li did mention about a new virus to the Wuhan health authorities. He and other doctors were warned not to say things like that by the Wuhan authorities. Even the Wuhan police threatened him too. But that was not the central government authorities. Once they came to know about it they sent an investigation team to find out what was going on. By January they realised that this was a new virus and dangerous. In January also Chinese government informed WHO about it. In January Chinese doctors and scientists wrote in the Lancet medical journal about this new virus. The medical journal then informed the British government about this article. The British government ignored it.
Yes the Chinese took their eyes off the ball but western governments have no excuse because they had 3 months notice of what was going on in China and should have taken measures to stop it.
The Chinese high court has also reprimanded the Wuhan authorities for their treatment of Dr.Li and has been praised by the central government.
I don't know about the UK but here in Canada some alcohol producers are switching to making hand sanitizer.
Think about how stupid the average person is, then realise that half of all people are more stupid than that
Speak for yourself. I once met Neil Buchanan at Sea World.
None of that is true.
Let me explain you how things work in Medicine.
- Doctors treat patients, even when they don't know what they have. One of these conditions would be called "pneumonia of unknown etiology" or something to that effect. It happens pretty often, here and there.
- By mid-December doctors in Wuhan got concerned about a cluster of patients with this sort of pneumonia; on the 18th there were 8 patients identified. One patient isn't enough, neither are two... You, as a frontline doctor, need a reasonable amount of "strange" clinical cases to even realize something is wrong, so that the specialists who study this kind of outbreak can be called upon to act.
- Genetics, mode of transmission, epidemiology, take some time to study. There may have been many occasions where perhaps wrong decisions were made and time was lost but this is not only expected, it's unavoidable. It takes time to be sure what you're dealing with.
- China started imposing measures in Wuhan very fast, and by 23rd January the city was in full lockdown. This was insanely swift, given that the knowledge of the disease was still being compiled. The results are there for everyone to see. They contained it, after extending measures to other cities. They took maybe two weeks to decide this. When you compare the magnitude of the decision (Economics), and how long western countries are taking to make the same decisions, there is no way it's hypocritical to criticize western leaders. They were far slower, with plenty more information. Do you really think if the outbreak had been in one of these countries it would have been better contained than China? No way.
- After all this is done, "backtracing" allowed them to conclude that the first confirmed patient was in the 1st of December. This is hindsight. Not knowledge at the time. We may even conclude in the future that first patients were in October in some random village in the mountains. Without large clusters it would be natural they would have gone undetected on a national scale, let alone studied. This is why you "heard" of a virus in November. You heard it now, not then.
- No doctors were arrested, or at least there is no reasonable evidence pointing towards this. What we do know is that a doctor, named Li Wenliang, was among the first persons to understand the world-changing nature of the outbreak being studied and try to speak publicly about it. I don't even know if he realized this because he had access to higher-level preliminary information or just out of his own reasoning (just like many "early warner" doctors did a bit everywhere - including, modesty aside, me in my own country, at a much lower and quieter level).
- Li Wenliang wasn't arrested. He was called by local government officials and told to shut up. Then he returned to his normal life and work, util he got ill and died - in absolute freedom (well, as absolute as freedom can be in a country like China)
- Silencing someone may look more daunting because it came from an autocratic country, but from a Public Health perspective it may very well be reasonable. I wish my government did the same around here with all the naysayers that have been causing damage. In hindsight, in China they were wrong, but the principle is the same.
- There will be a gazillion of unexplained small things in here, after all it's China, we are very distant from them, even at a cultural and communication level. It's stupid to conclude from these failures that they could have contained this. It's expecting more from them than you expect from your own leaders. All that matters from politics here is how they relate to Public Health, and on this, the Central Chinese Government has been spot on (so far) and fast. Mostof those "silencing" issues came from local government, run-of-the-mill local crap leaders, which exist everywhere
- Lots more to be said, but it's tiring. I've been thinking of writing a well thought and referenced artocle about this, but have had trouble focusing.
[Opinion, not facts]
- Don't fall for Propaganda. Fake news of "8 arrested doctors" and country-wide cover-up have been popping everywhere for weeks, bit increasing severely now. For anyone who has been studying this for weeks it's pretty obvious what the goal is - deflect blame from western leaders, who were, with no exceptions, far more inept than the Chinese at protecting their people.
I'm going to quote the famous Colin, chief: 'Never heard of him'.
They have quick take away services.Why are the coffee shops open? Ridiculous to shut pubs and restaurants and leave coffee shops and tea shops open.They all serve some kind of food, so they should be closed. And chippies?
This
That's true. It's a bit more complicated but equally bad. The local government suppressed it because if any trouble appears on your watch then you will very likely pay for it. Since then Beijing took over and have been handling it with the lockdown measures etc that we've seen. As I've posted before, China basically acted how you would expect. Terrible suppression and manipulation of speech initially, but also damn effective at mobilising and getting things done when they need to.
This is also true. Everyone knows the initial Chinese response was bad and even the CCP have acknowledged that. However this virus was well known about since early January. The west had all the time in the world to prepare for it, but they didn't want to, plain and simple. This is also not really surprising. Few governments come out of this looking good.
I have no idea where people get the confidence from that other countries would have handled an initial outbreak that much better. Didn't we just have governments saying a few weeks ago that it wasn't such a big deal? Not so different to the flu? Don't we still have many governments purposely fudging the numbers and statistics? Most countries wouldn't have suppressed it in the same way as the CCP did, but many would have certainly tried to downplay it to avoid economic turbulence and probably would have held off longer on implementing strict lockdown measures. I mean that's exactly what most did anyway! Even more reason to believe they would have done it in the initial stages when nothing really was understood about the virus.
Now I'm by no means trying to defend the CCP, far, far from it. The point is, shifting all of the blame to China is exactly what the self-serving, corrupt or inept leaders elsewhere want people to do. So that they can carry on shafting the common folk once this is over without facing the scrutiny that they deserve at home. Systematic dismantling of the NHS being an example. Demand better and don't fall for it.
Can someone tell Le Tiss that there's a vaccine available for the flu and your government strongly recommends people get it? Lots do but many more don't, which is a contributing factor in the number of flu deaths every year.
You should be wiser than call me naive on this. Read my long post above and re-think. There are ways to investigate this other than reading the increasingly shitty mainstream media.
Like ryansgirl, I refer you to my long post above.
Trinidad
Seems John Lewis and a lot of retailers are trying to make the most out of Mothers day before they close.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soc...nas-first-confirmed-covid-19-case-traced-back
https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2020/03/11/dr-ai-fen-the-wuhan-whistle/
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chinese-scientists-destroyed-proof-of-virus-in-december-rz055qjnj
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/asia/chinese-doctor-Li-Wenliang-coronavirus.html
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/...r-covering-wuhan-outbreak-tops-one-free-press