It’s not the wild animals per se. a lot of SE Asian countries and even Japan eat a lot of what we’d consider wild animals.

The main issue is Chinese food hygiene practices are terrible. Blood and other body fluids are allowed to just drip onto the floor and fester. Even in Flushing I have seen butchers do this right next to boxes of vegetables on ground (so the boxes are literally soaking up the blood.) Animals are not chilled upon slaughter and are often left on tables (openly too) at room temperature exposed to elements (not in cases, just on tables) for the whole day. There is an obsession with buying “live” basically everything. As it turns out, live fish, live crabs, live chickens, and in current case, allegedly snakes and bats. Even live snakes wouldn’t be a problem if properly handled (you can find this in Japan.)

That’s a recipe for disease transmission even if the Chinese never ate anything we can’t find at Whole Foods in Manhattan.

that's good information, ty

absolutely sicks what happened to that docter who died and he was around 40 years old and he had pnemona + corona? thats super unfortunate. he should be considered a hero for trying to help and spread awareness. also not a good look for china.

I gues this virus is either stronger than we thought or its getting stronger? idk how much pnemonia had to play a part w his death

People are routinely "disappeared" in China and it's not like it's even attempted to be hidden too much so the Dr was just business as usual.
Will be an interesting day the regime finally falls but who knows when that will be.

Asymptomatic people are contagious.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/31/healt..._blogfooterold

China's extended holiday is over.

I think it's a lock we'll see the disease spread faster over the next few weeks.

They just renewed the holiday another week, it will end on the 17th. Main issue is there is a mask shortage because all supply is going to Hubei Province and people were refusing to go to work without adequate precautions

This is going to be highly studied. Regardless of whether this is tulip mania or the remake of outbreak the global community is going to learn a lot about disease outbreaks and control going forward.

I teach Chinese kids English over the net and I generally speak to 15-20 a day for the past 3 years.

All public schools in the entire country are closed at least til March 1. The entire country is at a basic stand still. You don't close the schools nationwide unless the authorities are scared shitless of something.

I know a few wealthy families that have left China for San Francisco in the last ten days.......

CNN says they fired two more health officials.

I think the officials are terrified. The recipe for the terror seems to be:
Xi: We are going to snuff this virus out.
Experts on diseases: Cat's already out the bag.

Under those circumstances, I'd be like "prudence be damned" too. I'd do everything possible just so I could say "I did everything possible" when heads start to roll.

they said it was slowing down, but just now, 252 new dead and 15000 added. we got 2 here in San Diego. They let one out of the hospital or wherever for the night. some mistake.

Supposedly China said 160 million went back to work today.

They CDC said the US should prepare for some type of secondary outbreak.

I've been saying the whole time "diagnosed" was going to skyrocket because it's being suppressed by the availability of testing kits. (early reported daily capacity was 1500-2000. Not surprisingly about the same number that diagnosed has been going up by till today)

China just gave up on testing kits. They are including "clinically diagnosed" now, which is really not good data collection because the symptoms are basically identical to the flus and other common causes of pneumonia. They are essentially guesstimating.

It's basically certain we got a lot more infected in China... hundreds of thousands at least.

In all likelihood, we got undiagnosed infected in USA, especially in major cities with significant Chinese populations.

finally got around to watching it, pretty shocking how frontline sides with protestors despite filming them beating up random tourists from the mainland and how a gang of them are clubbing to death a cop and they show one of them fired back and paint him as the bad guy

if a gang of protestors went after two cops with clubs in the US and were surrounding one of them beating the life out of him there would be a whole lot more than a single shot fired and it would have been fired long, long before that cop finally shot the kid

Update: Building management still has security by each entrance checking temperatures of everyone going in an out. Only residents who show proof of residence allowed in and out. People traveling outside the city requested to check in and let the government know so they can better manage (ie locate and quarantine you if the place you are going to/coming from has a outbreak). If someone in a building gets sick the entire place gets quarantined. Elevators are santized hourly, they have toothpicks for pressing the buttons. Everyone wears masks, many wear gloves as well. Most people stay cooped up in their apartments working from home.

Having said that, things are getting back to normal. More and more people outside taking casual walks and you are seeing more and more cars on the road.

If anything, the response is what is terrifying. It's likely just a "better safe than sorry approach" but you can't help but wonder if they'd be taking such extreme measures in areas hundreds of miles away from any centers of infection if it were simply another flu variant.

Either way, going to be interesting looking over how this was handled in a year or two when we have all the data regarding both total disease impact as well as economic impact.

On the plus side, there is now a vaccine ready for human trials they think could be available to the mass market as early as this summer so even if it is indeed the black death 3.0 then it's just a matter of not catching it for a few more months.

**** has hit the fan in Italy..

Where in China are you rickroll? How's the situation?

Which vaccine?

Where are you getting your info on the vacccine timeline? I've heard way way longer than that, well into 2021. No idea how you'd fast track trials like that before something most of the world is gonna take.

I have a stupid question. Why is the level of alarm so much higher for the Wuhan coronavirus than it is for seasonal flu? Once all the data is in, it seems like the mortality rates for both will be in the same ballpark.

I'm sure there is an explanation. I just don't know what it is. Is coronavirus more easily transmitted than the flu? Does coronavirus have more potential than the seasonal flu to mutate into something more deadly? Is it because the coronavirus might survive the summer, whereas seasonal flu will not?

Probably because unknowns are more worrisome than knowns. And this is a trait that I am sure has been extremely highly selected for in the history of life, forget human history, for good reason.

At the individual and cultural level, there would probably also be a heavy selection for strong paranoid responses to new/foreign pathogens; as the population (and the pathogen itself) hasn't had time to evolve to mitigate the effects. As much as we like to focus on more macro issues; the truth is the most evolution and selection in the history of life has been because of the arms race between pathogens and hosts evolving to get the upper hand on each other.

This kills 14% 80+, 8% 75+, 4% 60+.

Worse than flu. The 2% is just the whole distribution.

My understanding is that most of the serious complication are from secondary pneumonia infections in the lungs.

I do wonder how much smoking plays into it. My understanding is in China smoking is still much more of a thing than in the US, and even during the time when baby boomers were young, chain smoking among men was more of a thing there. I do wonder if we could control for smokers vs non smokers if the %'s might drop even further. Of course, that being said the vulnerable group (older men) in the US had a huge % heavy smokers (although certainly less than China, and the cigarettes here were probably filtered better too I imagine), unlike following generations.

Flu of 1918 :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu












htt

This might explain it.

As background on this flu many of the deaths were complications in which bacterial infections ran rampant due to the debilitating nature of the initial influenza impulse.

As would be expected the old and infirm were especially vulnerable. Penicillin was first discovered in 1928 and first used as an antibiotic in 1942.

Hopefully, in the case of severe contagions we have the remedies to avert the critical episodes.

The CFR is higher than for flu and according to WHO the data collection is excellent and followup is too, and they dont expect the numbers to fall the way they usually do.


Sure it is political, but the WHO report on China's response is glowingly positive, and much of what China has done, while repeatable in community oriented socieities like italy, is just hopeless in the US or poor countries.

Besides that time in December when a Dr warned his colleagues about a SARS like pneumonia popping up and they sent the secret police to pay him a visit and threaten to put him in a reeducation camp if he didn't shut up.

not a stupid question, i see the statistics and tell myself this is nothing, who cares, people are just freaking out because of something new just like zica etc etc

but then i see the reaction to it, not from people but from government, a government with a poker player's mentality of rational thought and making EV decisions. I see this government take actions that are essentially shutting down their entire country, a country with a landmass and population much larger than all of Europe... all because of a flu variant that's largely isolated to one greater metropolitan region

i see the reaction and can't help but wonder which of the following possible scenarios are the reality

1. "better safe than sorry" they'd rather shut everything down to get this dealt with quickly because
a. because they don't fully understand the disease yet or are afraid of a mutation that makes it really deadly
or
b. they did the math and decided it's better to shut down country and get this dealt with than let it drag out as a stronger than typical flu - ie gross national triage
or
c. they are worried people will panic and freak out so they decided against educating them and instead reassuring them via action (don't believe this is possible given effectiveness of their propaganda and people's trust in government decision making)
or
d. this is an excuse for some high level political manuevering a la the cultural revolution (also don't believe but hey it's china - for example modern and technology companies are thriving because everyone is at home and online and those industries employees can remotely work so in a way this has been a boon for them with a literal captivated audicence and an employment force able to continue working from home)

2. It's far, far worse than what has been released and they are appropriately freaking out but making it all apear to be just simple precautions because they don't want the markets to crash etc etc - this is a terrifying thought that gets realer with each day passing day as the entire country is now on like two months now of people staying home alone and not going to work or school

either way, i'll be reading up heavily on this all once all the dust settles - going to be really interesting once we can take a step back and review it all clearly