new coronavirus outbreak China, Korea, USA - mod warnings in OP (updated 24/02/20)

igCorcaigh

Legacy Better Explosion wrote: »

The WHO are set to meet later today

6pm our time.

I expect them to declare a public health emergency of international concern. Expect travel advisories and increased screening at airports following the announcement.

saintsaltynuts

Beeping Kitchen Appliances wrote: »

The Who and the Coronas. Anyone else confirmed yet?

Ye China Crisis and The Killers.

Graces7

Well, I am staying right where I am. on this small island. Safest place.

The possibilities are scary.

Ipso

saintsaltynuts wrote: »

Ye China Crisis and The Killers.

And Anthrax.

igCorcaigh

Graces7 wrote: »

Well, I am staying right where I am. on this small island. Safest place.

The possibilities are scary.

Not to worry Grace.

No puny virus could survive the harsh conditions of your island.

Graces7

I know! Great! lol...


QUOTE=igCorcaigh;112321625]Not to worry Grace.

No puny virus could survive the harsh conditions of your island.[/QUOTE]

Yurt2

Chinese officials now urging people not to enter or leave Wuhan. Not sure what good this will do around Chinese New Year unless they cancel trains and flights.

Absolute worst time of year for this to break-out, literally hundreds of millions will be on the move around China. 440m journeys on the national railway network alone.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-asia-china-51202000

Ipso

Time to read World War z.

Quantum Erasure

just saw a comment on a reddit thread:

China had said 90 people, and then three people showed up in other countries with the disease and epidemiologists said that, statistically, in order to have three random foreigners have it the number of infections would have to be closer to 1400.

China then said that 400 people were sick.

17 dead, 540 confirmed cases now

TuringBot47

Feck... not sure if I'll risk the Chinese takeaway this weekend now.

RebelButtMunch

Quantum Erasure wrote: »

just saw a comment on a reddit thread:



17 dead, 540 confirmed cases now

Still not as bad as current Ebola outbreak.

ebbsy

TuringBot47 wrote: »

Feck... not sure if I'll risk the Chinese takeaway this weekend now.

Not even the fly lice ?

Quantum Erasure

RebelButtMunch wrote: »

Still not as bad as current Ebola outbreak.

give it time, reports that it's mutating now, first confirmed case in Russia also

Dick phelan

Im in China right now!, No doubt this will spread with Chinese New Year, hundreds of millions of people moving around over the next few days. Hopefully it's not too bad, for context plenty die of the flu every year at the moment this doesn't seem much worse but if it mutates it could be a different story.

Hego Damask

Always China , why is it always in China this crap starts ?

Manach

For people interested in worst case societal breakdown scenarios, as written by SciFi writers, might I recommend the author John Ringo.
> The Last Centurion
> Black Tide Rising series

From a non-fiction historical perspective there is the excellent "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History" by John M. Barry

LaFuton

china still cool!

4068ac1elhodqr

Press conference (WHO) delayed to 7pm GMT

Thought (earlier) LHR had x3 daily (direct) flights to Wuhan, but it's only x3 per week.
One such flight just landed about an hour ago, ideally they can be put into isolation even for a very short period, before jumping on the nearest tube/taxi/bus.

Edit: (DfH): The captains of the planes flying to Heathrow will have to radio ahead to confirm if anyone board is showing symptoms of the illness. Passengers will be met in a separate part of the airport to other travelers and will be greeted by a Port Health team who will check for symptoms.

Bobblehats

Ipso wrote: »

Time to read World War z.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OL8qUr1kPo

archer22

Oh well the dangers of meat eating I guess Bird flu, Swine flu, mad cow disease etc.

Nobody ever got Potato Flu, Apple Flu or mad Carrot disease

sabat

Yurt! wrote: »

Chinese officials now urging people not to enter or leave Wuhan.

They're obviously taking this very seriously-a Wuhan ban ain't nothin' to f*ck with.

Jurgen Klopp

Was there as much furore over SARS and swine flu can anyone remember? Like screening passengers and stopping flights?

Looking at the figures the deaths etc don't seem to much different to the normal flu?

Is the media really stirring this up or what?

Like there's talk of Wuhan being completely quarantined

mikhail

Hego Damask wrote: »

Always China , why is it always in China this crap starts ?

Ebola wasn't China, but yeah. To answer your question: Very high population density. 20% of the world's population. Lower legal requirements on health and safety measures generally.

Jurgen Klopp wrote: »

Was there as much furore over SARS and swine flu can anyone remember? Like screening passengers and stopping flights?

Looking at the figures the deaths etc don't seem to much different to the normal flu?

Is the media really stirring this up or what?

Like there's talk of Wuhan being completely quarantined

Definitely comparable levels of media coverage. Screening measures are more available partly because of the previous outbreaks.

The media coverage is sort of okay. It's new, spreading quickly, and seems to kill a non-negligible fraction of those infected so far (~2.5% last figures I saw, but those are changing quickly). That's enough to warrant the kinds of measures from the WHO and the Chinese authorities we've seen so far. The total numbers right now are small in absolute terms, but diseases spread in an accelerating fashion - the more infected, the faster it spreads - so the absolute numbers aren't all that important to the epidemiologists. Right now it's worth the attention of the systems and experts that deal with these kinds of things. It is likely to peter out much like SARS and others, partly because of those measures to slow its spread while they try to figure out how to treat it. (E.g. if you catch ebola now, and get to a decent hospital quickly enough, you'll live.) There's a small chance it'll be a big deal in absolute terms - basically we can't know for sure yet. No reason to panic, but it's worthy of the coverage.

bnt

This new update to Plague Inc. is pretty realistic, isn't it? They've even integrated it in to the CNN News app for extra verisimilitude.

seamus

Jurgen Klopp wrote: »

Was there as much furore over SARS and swine flu can anyone remember? Like screening passengers and stopping flights?

Looking at the figures the deaths etc don't seem to much different to the normal flu?

Is the media really stirring this up or what?

The answer to all of these questions is Yes.

SARS in particular there was a huge fuss made around it.

At present there doesn't seem to be any indication that this illness is particularly more contagious nor dangerous than other strains of coronavirus.

The media loves to stir it up though by saying things like, "It starts like a normal cold with a cough and a scratchy throat". This gets people wound up and paranoid that the tickle in their throat is this new super virus and they're going to die.

Even statistics can be very misleading. SARS recorded 8,000 cases, of whom 800 died. 10% sounds like scary ****.

But you have to consider that's 8,000 recorded cases. People who felt ill enough to go see a doctor and whose doctors were concerned enough about it to send a sample to be tested. For all we know there could have been 1,000,000 others infected who just powered through it for two weeks and got better.

Hector Savage

I do remember with SARS there were screenings at airports around the world, they were using heat sensitive cameras to monitor passengers...
and lots of coverage too....

I also remember this joke.

2 SARS bugs are walking back from the pub after having a few pints, one of them says to the other "Jaysus I'd f*ckin' murder a Chinese right now" ...

4068ac1elhodqr

3rd Chinese city now on lockdown (Wuhan, Ezhou and Huanggang). 20m total citizens.

The World Health Organization emergency committee were 50:50 on declaring a "global emergency" last night, so withheld.
Will ikely do so when they meet again today.

conorhal

Hego Damask wrote: »

Always China , why is it always in China this crap starts ?

Their perchant for massive corruption that ensures non existant disease control standards on farms, a tradition of 'wet markets' that keep wide varieties of live animals cheek to jowl for slaughter and consumption on site and their willingness to eat anything that moves, including raw bats (not even kidding) which are among the worst animals for driving disease contagion.
And that's all without the utterly crazy stuff that happens there like 'pork speculator's using drones to infect heards with African swine flu so that they can buy cheap and sell high.


There's a reason Max Brooks 'World War Z' starts with an outbreak in a remote part of China.

Mrcaramelchoc

Apparently some quarters are putting it down to the eating of bat soup.jesus is there anything they won't eat over there.

Hector Savage

Mrcaramelchoc wrote: »

Apparently some quarters are putting it down to the eating of bat soup.jesus is there anything they won't eat over there.

filthy kernts