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WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

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Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#31

Post by reaperducer »

durpleDrank wrote: post #17

Can we PLEASE collectively put our manners aside and confront people who are not covering their mouths when they cough? I'm very aggravated that people don't. What is going through the mind of a person who deep coughs, open mouth, without cover, in public transport? It's depressing.

Or people who don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom.

I'm tired of dumb people saying, "Well, I don't pee on my hands!" Yeah, but you touched your junk, rocket surgeon.

Even worse are people who use their phones while going to the bathroom or even at the urinal, then bring their nasty phones back into the office and put them on other people's desks. Gross.

On the other hand, there are a few people in the office who go all Lady MacBeth every time they flush. Good for them.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#32

Post by burundi_coffee »

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #21

Coronavirus: -5,974 confirmed cases -170 deaths [1]For comparisons the SARS outbreak of 2003: -8,098 people worldwide became sick -774 died [1] https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html

There are already 8243 confirmed cases.

https://thewuhanvirus.com/

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#33

Post by CamelCaseName »

emptysongglass wrote: post #12
gruez wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. >At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation. but it's true though. there's limited evidence that travel bans will stop the spread of the infection. the evidence ranges between "no effect at all" to "de…

This doesn't make any sense if I step through it mentally. If you're a carrier of a virus and you have to hoof it to my end of the world, it's going to take you a whole lot longer to get there than if you flew. This is absolute fact. The faster vectors you give to something to transport a thing, that thing will move to its destination that much faster. You don't need science to grok this.

A few passages from the article:

> But the trouble is, they don’t appear to be helpful. At best, travel restrictions, and even airport screenings, delay the spread of disease but don’t impact the number of people who eventually get sick. Instead, they make it harder for international aid and experts to reach communities affected by disease. They are also expensive, resource-intensive, and potentially harmful to the economies of cities and countries involved.

On the H1N1 travel bans:

> Again, reduced travel delayed (by three days!) but didn’t stop disease spread. The authors wrote, “No containment was achieved by such restrictions and the virus was able to reach pandemic proportions in a short time.”

So, why?

> It’s expensive and nearly impossible to seal off the borders of a country, the authors of the paper wrote. People will inevitably move — even indirectly from the countries that are quarantined.

---

The article gives a number of examples as well.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#34

Post by fasthandle »

splittingTimes wrote: post #13

How is this worse than your normal influenza cycle with 3-5Mio infections and 290k-650k death to warrant such an emergency?

While infected to mortality is 3% according to official numbers, which is bad, recovered:dead is less than 50% by the same numbers. Ok have trouble with these reported numbers however, and believe recovered higher. We just don't know. Cross species infection vectors are never good.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#35

Post by mrb »

It's about time... All early characteristics of the novel coronavirus indicate it's far more dangerous than SARS/MERS/seasonal flu (which kills 30-60k/year in the US) so, unless a cure is found soon, we should expect it to kill more people than these other diseases combined : https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/122263149332482867...

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#36

Post by m_alexgr »

feanaro wrote: post #4

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation.

Some recent virus science for you: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.920249v1....

"Notably, the new coronavirus provides a new lineage for almost half of its genome, with no close genetic relationships to other viruses within the subgenus of sarbecovirus. This genomic part comprises also half of the spike region encoding a multifunctional protein responsible also for virus entry into host cells[30, 31]. The unique genetic features of 2019-nCoV and their potential association with virus characteristics and virulence in humans remain to be elucidated."

Hmmm... interesting.

Edit, full title of article. "Full-genome evolutionary analysis of the novel corona virus (2019-nCoV) rejects the hypothesis of emergence as a result of a recent recombination event"

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#37

Post by reaperducer »

Velofellow wrote: post #25
durpleDrank wrote: post #17

Can we PLEASE collectively put our manners aside and confront people who are not covering their mouths when they cough? I'm very aggravated that people don't. What is going through the mind of a person who deep coughs, open mouth, without cover, in public transport? It's depressing.

Go for it. See if your action pulls us towards collective action. Do you chastise every person you see breaking this social norm?

Do you chastise every person you see breaking this social norm?

It's not a "social norm." It's a public health issue.

When I see a little kid in a public bathroom go straight from stall to door without looking at the sink, I'll shout at them.

100% of the time they turn around and do the right thing.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#38

Post by odiroot »

durpleDrank wrote: post #17

Can we PLEASE collectively put our manners aside and confront people who are not covering their mouths when they cough? I'm very aggravated that people don't. What is going through the mind of a person who deep coughs, open mouth, without cover, in public transport? It's depressing.

People have been assaulted for less in the city I live in.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#39

Post by jdlyga »

feanaro wrote: post #4

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation.

You can get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit for it. The WHO wants to stop the spread of the virus. If buttering up China and praising them in public gets this done, then so be it.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#40

Post by carapace »

durpleDrank wrote: post #17

Can we PLEASE collectively put our manners aside and confront people who are not covering their mouths when they cough? I'm very aggravated that people don't. What is going through the mind of a person who deep coughs, open mouth, without cover, in public transport? It's depressing.

Keep an unopened travel packet of tissues in your pocket and offer it.
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