First the swine flu kills half the pigs in China. Now this thing.
First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.
121–130 of 221 posts
Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.
#122China has been covering it up for 2 months. Minimal action was taken to prevent the disease from spreading and they kept denying until a couple days ago when it was no longer possible to cover it up because it is spreading to neighboring countries who have been complaining for the whole time. Regional/local governments have been trying to downplay it because it makes them "look bad". It is essentially a replay of SAR…
China doesn't get to decide the scientific consensus. Teams of scientists spanning multiple countries + NGOs like the WHO make the risk assessment. The reason the scientific consensus was that there was no human-human transmission was because...there was no evidence of human-human transmission. All previous cases could be directly traced back to the market, and there were previously no clear evidence of healthcare workers or relatives with no exposure to the market but exposure to an infected individual getting sick.
Unlike anonymous users online, professional scientists can't make a claim, especially a very serious one, without evidence. If they do so, later the public will crucify them if it turns out the virus actually cannot spread from human-human.
It's only in the past three days that it because clear that there is evidence of people who don't have a direct link to the market being infected. A big reason for this breakthrough was that the genome of the virus was identified (by, yes, Chinese scientists working within two weeks of realizing a novel outbreak, which is also impressive). This genome sequence makes possible very sensitive tests for identifying infected people more accurately.
Hence, in the light of this new information, the scientific consensus has been updated to reflect likely human-human transmission.
Please stop spreading false information and unnecessary hatred. This only makes the response to a crisis worse.
Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.
#123As someone who lives quite close to the hospital in the article, it was interesting seeing reactions this morning at the office. Some people immediately wondered about their immuno compromised friends and family, while others (myself included) just sort of said "huh" and went about our day. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I live in a building with a quite a few nurses that work at that hospital. It kind of scares me that one of them open mouth coughed in the elevator with me the other night. Probably nothing more than a tired nurse and a dry throat, but still kind of weird to read about a thing that is a block away from where you live.
Hah after reading this there’s no way I’m getting near the light rail for the next month or two.
It’s a direct line from SeaTac where people we be flying into from SE Asia after lunar new year is over, and is currently undergoing construction so railway cars are packed at rush hour.
Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was under that impression too! Maybe it’s because the Hajj has much more disparate travelers that I bin it under “migration”.
Whoops, confused Hajj with Arba’een. I did not know about the latter and I assumed that they were the same. Arba’een is much larger than the Hajj.
That's surprising, Hajj gets a lot more press/prestige it seems. Saudi is a similar sized population as Iraq, that infographic comparison is interesting to say the least:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Middle_Eastern_countri... (Iran, not listed, is 81.16M)
Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.
#125I read on Reddit that Chinese New Year is the largest regularly occurring human migration event in the world. Millions of Chinese people gather on public transport and planes To go home to celebrate. It’s in a few days I think. Also I’m not sure how the CDC is preparing for this under 45, but given the state of the federal government I would guess it’s less prepared than the days of the Ebola scare. Hopefully things…
It'll be on January 25th.
Like a coming tsunami of people travelling. At least it's all over the country, not just in one place, but still tons of close contact on the train systems.
There are some good docs on Chinese New Year transit on trains and it gets dicy and competitive for space.
Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.
#126Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Spanish Flu was almost exactly 100 years ago. Recent enough that we think of it as being in modern times with relatively modern medicine and hospitals. My grandmother lived through it, so this isn't the distant past. Current estimates are that it killed up to 100,000,000 million people, as many as the black plague. We have much better medicine now, thankfully. But we also live in a much more deeply connected worl…
It's curious how little cultural impact it has compared to the world wars or Black Plague despite the death-toll. I've never seen a TV series or film about it or any art, songs or phrases. There is no iconic photograph that comes to mind. It's just a minor footnote to WW1. I don't know if it's wartime censorship or just overshadowed but it's really quite odd.
It's 100% due to war time censorship. Unusually, it hit young able bodies people the hardest. ie, young men who were being conscripted into the war. There were huge problems with swaths of people in barracks all getting sick and messing with the deployment process. In every country involved in the war. And it absolutely couldn't be let known that anyone was having problems fielding new recruits. So the news was heavily censored.
Spain was neutral, and therefore didn't have tons of people packed into barracks waiting to be deployed. As a result, they suffered the least. Relatively few Spaniards got sick. However, since they weren't at war, there was no wartime censorship, and it was covered by the Spanish press. Therefore the pandemic came to be known as the Spanish flu.
Extra credits did a series on it, which is worth checking out IMHO. Six episodes, ten minutes each. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5BZ3gQleTk-...
Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.
#128Reports are that China has just quarantined Wuhan, a city of 11 million people.
"Zeng, who is leading the Chinese government's efforts to respond to the outbreak, made clear that his recommendation was not a government-imposed quarantine."
Flights are still departing Wuhan:
Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.
#129I read on the news first symptomes observed in USA,also here who[0] emergency prep. responses, given details about some cases
[0]https://www.who.int/csr/don/archive/year/2020/en/
Re: First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wearing an N95 mask and washing your hands properly will prevent the overwhelming majority of transmission. Could someone still sneeze in your eye? Sure. Could you wear your mask improperly because you haven't been fit tested, yeah. But you sure can reduce your risk a lot.
>Wearing an N95 mask and washing your hands properly will prevent the overwhelming majority of transmission. My understanding is that there is no evidence wearing an N95 mask reduces transmission to the person wearing it. It prevents transmission from the that person to others.
No, this is very wrong. You're thinking of surgical mask, in which case the standard precautions conform to what you said in their intent, and studies show both are actually effective in preventing transmission when worn by patients. [1]
An N95 is the current recommended standard (for medical works to wear) to prevent droplet transmission when working with high-risk patients on respiratory precautions since it is actually capable of filtering particles (like airborne droplets originating from the respiratory tract) down to 0.3 microns. These have been shown to be effective.[2] Interestingly, some studies show surgical masks are also effective.
A surgical mask is, I believe, still the standard to place on high risk patients on respiratory precautions to help prevent dissemination of droplets.