youve had good takes ITT and I agree that the media or china or whoever is in mass hysteria and blew it out of proportion however, it is truly better safe than sorry

I go back to the flu... more deadly (or at least close) and infects/kills a lot more people. If you think it's better safe than sorry WRT this novel coronavirus, we all should basically stay home.

idk how many the flu kills each year but imo this seems more than the flu. the flu has a vaccine. the flu is the flu, ok. this is 1. contagious in the incubation phase. 2. deadly to more than just the very old and young. yes, more deadly to 60 plus and babies...but deadly, ok. 3. 300 plus dead up from 200 yesterday from 150 day before from 120 from 100 from 80. same with who have it...15000 now (they say, as of yesterday) up from 9000. up from 4k up from 1500. in a week.

do u trust the Chinese govt? not trying to be a conspiracy theorist...i am not a doctor, i am an idiot, in fact....just sayin...this seems like some serious bs.

I linked this before.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

CD estimates, for 2018-2019 season, 490,561 hospitalized (probably akin to the diagnosed number for the coronavirus since they only have tests for the really sick now) for the flu and 34,157 dead. That's a death rate of about 7% with hospitalized in the denominator. The novel-Coronavirus is at just over 2% with "diagnosed" in the denominator.

The panic over the novel coronavirus is a combination of the seriousness of the virus being overblown and people vastly underestimating the flu.

As for the young dying:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...r-impact-cases
Looks like they are still really outliers. The Guardian article lists 5 deaths under the age of 60. 4 are 50 or over. 1 is 36.

There is another recent pandemic that claimed more of the young proportionally speaking and in terms of absolute values: the Swine Flu of 2009 caused by a strand H1N1. An estimated 80% of deaths were in people younger than 65.
https://www.healio.com/infectious-di...usly-confirmed

H1N1 was one of the most common forms of flu in 2019.
https://newsroom.osfhealthcare.org/h...son-for-alarm/

In fact, last week was a pretty bad week for flus in the US.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/usmap.htm
With the exception of DC, Hawaii, Virgin Islands, and Guam. All of US is reporting widespread cases of the influenza.

Get your flu shots. Practice good hygiene. Live your life. Otherwise you just have to stay home or wear a hazmat suit everywhere you go.

got my flu shot in December. If you haven't...go to cvs, target, etc. say, i need a flu shot. ez pz.

Caved to social pressure and bouht some "allergy masks" that were N99 without N99 in the search terms. They sold out soon after.

Out of curiousity I looked into N100 masks that are really for industrial applications and cost ~10 a piece. Even those are sold out.

Keep in mind those masks are 1 time use items.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCoC47do520os_4DBMEFGg4A

Really amazing channel of making traditional Sichuan food

+1. I've watched a bunch of those and they are great.

Look up Dr Li Wenliang to get an idea of how China botched their response to ncorona virus from the beginning. Bunch of goons running that government

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/03/asia/...hnk/index.html

Overall I still think post-coverup, CCP has been as transparent and as up to date with the data as they could be because Xi publicly vowed transparency and snuffing the virus out. The officials have repeatedly said that they are operating with a severe shortage of testing kits and they are testing people who are showing severe symptoms first. That twists the data a certain way (making it look more deadly and less contagious). But they have been transparent about why.

Xi doesn't have a reason to risk his own political capital by hiding data anymore. The decision had already been made to sacrifice local officials and blame foreign forces. Under those circumstances, the smart thing is just to maximize reporting of the damage now and blame it all on... whatever. This is the same kind of behavior publicly traded corporations engage in: if you have to report an unexpected loss anyway, just report the maximum loss possible. It makes it easier to turn a profit next quarter.

State communism always follows one maxim above all others, the communist party can not be blamed. It is inherently flawless, while people are not. To suggest otherwise is tantamount to treason (or sedition, which seems to be the cool accusation in China these days). Your survival in the higher ranks then largely depends on whether you are the party or not. As long as you are, you are implicitly flawless.

The main problem in this culture is the absolute terror it instills in functionaries. Criticism is dangerous, errors are dangerous, critical situations are horrifying. The instinct becomes to bury anything controversial, as your career and even your life and health might may very well be on the line.

It isn't unique to state communism, but state communism is unique in how pervasive the phenomena is. It is the foundation on which all decisions rest.

Latest articles making rounds:
America needs to answer for why it didn't try to inform the Chinese public of the issue when it first heard of the disease in early January. A lot of the articles refer to USA as "美帝“, or Emperor America.

They are literally blaming us for the jailing of the 8 "heroes" that Chinese government called "rumormongers."

I thought my head was going to explode.

Then I read the comments. Some comments pointed out they have to write the articles this way to avoid censors, pretty much implying by America they really meant the CCP.

Then my brain just melted.

Some good posts here, but we need:
#dead/#infected

Not:
#dead/#hospitalized

We still don't have dead/infected and we probably won't before the virus levels off and gets out of the public sight. But we do have from two days ago:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/04/coro...ina-hubei.html

"The fatality rate within China outside of Hubei province is 0.16%."

A few days before that same number was quoted as 0.3%.

This is still dead/diagnosed in the context of shortages of testing kids to increase the denominator. Dead/infected is almost certainly something smaller.

china totally quarantines 60 million people every flu season
its basically the mild shivers
people who die of pneumonia are being sent straight to the crematorium with no coronavirus diagnosis so we'll never have the real numbers

Expect the "diagnosed" and probably "dead" numbers to skyrocket in the next few weeks because testing kits from WHO/CDC (they've been developing independently) and Chinese companies (they got licenses ~10 days ago) are starting to go out.

The kits should start to filter down to people that aren't very sick and are just suspected cases. This will give us a better idea of the ratio of n-coronavirus/(other causes of cold/pneumonia symptoms) and that will give us a much better idea of infection rates (R_0) and death rates.

Although there are already indications that the virus is not particularly deadly and even some signs the spread is slowing, the headlines over the next few weeks will still revolve around the number diagnosed (news outlets call it "infected") and deaths attributed to the disease. With more testing kits, the numbers being reported in the media will see apparently exponential growth although the growth wouldn't be representative of the virus spread on the ground.

The disease spread slowing doesn't mean it's dying out or the spread won't accelerate again. I actually do think the spread will resume once the draconian measures China has implemented are removed after they realize the cat's already out the bag (they may have already realized this judging by Chinese ambassador comparing the coronavirus to a flu) and figure out a way to climb down.

Meanwhile, Xi's conspicuously out of sight, quite probably regretting giving a public order to snuff the virus out.

Authoritarianism 101. The leadership is always beyond reproach.

Dude just died. Strange for a mid 30's guy to succumb.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51403795

The news is just surreal.

Unless Chinese media outlets just had bad information, it seems the Chinese authorities decided to artificially keep the guy's heart beating and his body oxygenated after social media posts went crazy and censors couldn't keep up.

Then he died anyway, officially.

Right. Although, I think we do get the number by finding a reasonable number we would expect to die over this time period, and compare that to the number that actually died. The difference is how many died from corona.

FWIW, I think the videos and images that you find on twitter tell us more about how serious of a situation this is than any statistics.

There's only one place that's quarantined that I know of, but I'm hearing that a lot of the cities have turned into ghost towns. When has an event of this magnitude happened? Cities being quarantined, and major cities that never slept going lifeless...

It is absolutely fascinating to see censorship and attempts to subvert censorship in real time. I only see the parts that go through WeChat and I suspect behind the Great Firewall there is more going on.

It would appear the censors’ image recognition capabilities still suck. People are circulating screenshots of censored posts, some of which are insinuating the CCP somehow caused the doctor to die. CCP censored posts calling Li a hero. Now they call him normal person with an image that says there are no heroes, only normal people that stand up for what’s right.

This coronavirus is going to be a defining moment in the modern Chinese consciousness, in large part due to CCP’s own doing. I don’t think Dr. Li was part of the definition CCP had in mind.

The ghost town coverage actually pisses me off a bit. Like 95% of every city dweller was born in the countryside and they all go home to their ancestral villages this time of year anyway.

Many businesses straight up close for up to a month in the cities this time of year as a result. When I stayed in Beijing during New years I'd literally need to hoard and stock up on supplies because everything would be closed. The city would appear post apocalyptic as a result. Massive city streets normally flooded with traffic and busy shops and restaurants all closed and empty.. Totally surreal experience.

My point is that whether or not the Coronavirus happened, if you sent a film crew to Wuhan or any other major city it would look like a ghost town no matter what.

Also, the dead doctor is for sure causing an uproar

Very scary a healthy 34 year old died from it

So info thus far is the Dr. was put into ICU early January. Kept testing negative until the end of January.

Two strong possibilities IMO:

1. The tests CCP are using (or used) are turning in a lot of false negatives until very late into the disease. Note even if this is the case, it is likely WHO and CDC tests are significantly better since they are already identifying asymptomatic people.
2. The conditions in Wuhan are terrible and the hospitals have turned into death traps. Dr. Li’s ICU has other patients in it is telling. So are social media posts saying the newly erected hospitals are lacking in everything.

Both would contribute to the abnormally high reported death rates inside Hubei while we already have about 10,000 diagnosed outside of Hubei with only 26 dead out of those 10,000.

tried not to touch my face. failed majorly.

my step daughter and boyfriend went to china. Beijing. Dec 15-Jan 5. They aren't sick.

just sort of typing low content i guess. idk if im right, but i imagine death by this is like drowning in your own fluids, like your lungs are just so infected...you cant breathe. idk though. maybe its the fever. you just burn. horrid stuff.


this doctor. 34. such a shame. and so mistreated. china is a disgrace in general imo. they must stop this wild animal eating stuff. a lot of it is for some imagined libido purposes i hear. it's just not safe.