Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[DiegoDiego]

As well as the schools, all swimming pools, gyms and cinemas here have been closed and all sports training cancelled. No Fat Tuesday parties tomorrow will thankfully protect me from the flocks of children it normally brings.

I'd be rereading Camus' The Plague right now if it wasn't so terribly dull.

[The Moonster]

One of our engineers was working in Italy over the weekend, he phoned his doctor today complaining of cold and flu like symptoms and he's just been told to leave immediately and not come back for a week. The c**t has not stopped smiling, leading me to believe that he's not experiencing cold or flu like symptoms at all. 

[pandarilla]

"...and Milan fashion week was also affected"

First class gif usage right there.

[Sergeant Wilson]

7 hours ago, staggy1929 said:

2 of them in the article I read that I listed there

You can't count the one from Exeter. 

 

[Theroadlesstravelled]

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-51609712/coronavirus-drone-captures-massive-queue-for-masks-in-south-korea

Those crazy Koreans. The correct course of action to all health problems is to man up and get on with it.

[Guest JTS98]

16 hours ago, virginton said:

What action could feasibly be taken to stop the spread of a virus that is contagious from people showing no symptoms of ill health whatsoever?

They should have taken the steps they eventually took much earlier.

At a local level it was known what was going on. That's the crucial point.

Instead of acting on the information, the local health professionals who raised the alarm got nothing but hassle from the police and told to STFU.

This meant that Wuhan spent weeks shipping folk off on direct flights to Dubai, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul etc, as well as transporting people around China instead of listening to what was being said at a local level and locking the place down. Weeks of flights, train trips, bus trips etc that should never have happened from an area where it was clear something bad was going on.

That's what happens when you have a shite form of government where bringing and acknowledging bad news is seen as worse than the existence of bad news.

 

[Guest JTS98]

5 hours ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-51609712/coronavirus-drone-captures-massive-queue-for-masks-in-south-korea

Those crazy Koreans. The correct course of action to all health problems is to man up and get on with it.

Not at all.

My ex-colleagues in Seoul are reporting more or less zero customers. Empty cafes and bars. General hysteria.

Worth pointing out that Korean social media has seen a lot of criticism of those queuing up. Koreans have been told to avoid public gatherings, and queuing up like that is seen as irresponsible and selfish.

If there's one thing Korea does expertly, it is flock-of-sheep-style public mood. The whole country is one of happy/sad/terrified/defiant/angry etc all in one go at all times. It's a very strange country.

Should also be noted that it's pretty common for Koreans to wear masks in public all the time anyway.

The picture of Koreans as a type of 'man up' tough people who battle through adversity is not one held by anyone I know who has ever lived there. They have an even more hysterically xenophobic and panic-inducing media than we do, they are very quick to panic and take offence, they love a public hysteria event.

Soft as shite, basically.

For what it's worth, I think they are right to respond with concern in this instance. We're talking about an event of the type that the WHO has previously said is one of the most pressing and under-prepared for threats to humanity and which governments have taken seriously enough to quarantine entire regions and close schools etc, while airlines have cost themselves money by cancelling routes etc.

I don't buy the 'it's just a flu blah blah' reactions at all. Serious people in serious jobs with serious levels of qualifications and expertise take this thing very seriously.

Edited February 25, 2020 by JTS98

[bendan]

1 hour ago, JTS98 said:

They should have taken the steps they eventually took much earlier.

At a local level it was known what was going on. That's the crucial point.

Instead of acting on the information, the local health professionals who raised the alarm got nothing but hassle from the police and told to STFU.

This meant that Wuhan spent weeks shipping folk off on direct flights to Dubai, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul etc, as well as transporting people around China instead of listening to what was being said at a local level and locking the place down. Weeks of flights, train trips, bus trips etc that should never have happened from an area where it was clear something bad was going on.

That's what happens when you have a shite form of government where bringing and acknowledging bad news is seen as worse than the existence of bad news.

 

I think you're exaggerating the time frame. It's easy with hindsight to say they should have locked down Wuhan the moment Li Wenliang warned his colleagues there was something like SARS about, but realistically you can only argue it should have been one to two weeks earlier. 

Edited February 25, 2020 by bendan

[Guest JTS98]

6 minutes ago, bendan said:

I think you're exaggerating the time frame. It's easy with hindsight to say they should have locked down Wuhan the moment Li Wenliang warned his colleagues there was something like SARS about, but realistically you can only argue it should have been one to two weeks earlier. 

The reason he did that was that he was concerned that nobody else had. Extremely unlikely he was the only one who knew, but political process meant the info went nowhere.

Besides, two weeks of all that uncontained travel, or one week, is still really bad and was completely unnecessary.

Edited February 25, 2020 by JTS98

[bendan]

55 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

The reason he did that was that he was concerned that nobody else had. Extremely unlikely he was the only one who knew, but political process meant the info went nowhere.

Besides, two weeks of all that uncontained travel, or one week, is still really bad and was completely unnecessary.

I think you're making a lot of assumptions. Li Wenliang posted to a small group of colleagues some information from his hospital, so obviously others knew, as he himself was an opthalmologist. He warned of an outbreak of SARS, which China had previous experience of and was not known to be especially easy to transfer.

We don't know when the information was passed beyond city/provincial level, but even if it was known at that time (end of December), the main criticism would be that they didn't inform the WHO. Chinese cities were not locked down during SARS in 2003 - I was living in Tianjin at the time - so it's understandable that in the beginning they thought they could get it under control without shutting everything down. Things definitely went too slowly in January, but we don't know how much of that is down to mistakes and lack of resources and how much is down to an unwillingness to admit bad news. I'm not denying at all that the system has negatively impacted on the situation, but it's much easier to criticise with the benefit of hindsight.

[welshbairn]

Chinese scientist saves the World! Or deluded self publicist creates false hope?

Tianjin University develops oral vaccine to protect against COVID19

[Guest JTS98]

2 minutes ago, bendan said:

 the main criticism would be that they didn't inform the WHO. Chinese cities were not locked down during SARS in 2003 - I

but we don't know how much of that is down to mistakes and lack of resources and how much is down to an unwillingness to admit bad news. I'm not denying at all that the system has negatively impacted on the situation, but it's much easier to criticise with the benefit of hindsight.

This is not hindsight. This is the very criticism China received over SARS and which it had even acknowledged and 'honest guv' promised the international community it would not repeat. It is extremely generous to the Chinese authorities to say that they have improved or shown any signs of genuinely having taken on board any lessons from SARS.

One of the main criticisms of China over SARS was the over-centralisation of decision making and information control. Yet it's these exact issues that have been problems again. The WHO and foreign governments were falling over themselves to praise China's response early on, it's quite clear that this flattery was simply to ensure China wouldn't take the huff and withdraw cooperation.

Despite this we still saw clear fudging of the numbers and nothing like the transparency that everyone was so desperate to praise in public. As was observed weeks ago, the internal Chinese response to this was risible. It rarely made the top five stories on the news the government's immediate response, as with any perceived destabilising information, was to just not talk about it. So what lessons have been learned?

As to the second point quoted above, again I think you're being generous. Of course mistakes were made, but those mistakes are quite clearly a symptom of a system that does not encourage the passing on of bad news, and indeed punishes accurate reporting of what is happening on the ground.

 

[bendan]

31 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

This is not hindsight. This is the very criticism China received over SARS and which it had even acknowledged and 'honest guv' promised the international community it would not repeat. It is extremely generous to the Chinese authorities to say that they have improved or shown any signs of genuinely having taken on board any lessons from SARS.

One of the main criticisms of China over SARS was the over-centralisation of decision making and information control. Yet it's these exact issues that have been problems again. The WHO and foreign governments were falling over themselves to praise China's response early on, it's quite clear that this flattery was simply to ensure China wouldn't take the huff and withdraw cooperation.

Despite this we still saw clear fudging of the numbers and nothing like the transparency that everyone was so desperate to praise in public. As was observed weeks ago, the internal Chinese response to this was risible. It rarely made the top five stories on the news the government's immediate response, as with any perceived destabilising information, was to just not talk about it. So what lessons have been learned?

As to the second point quoted above, again I think you're being generous. Of course mistakes were made, but those mistakes are quite clearly a symptom of a system that does not encourage the passing on of bad news, and indeed punishes accurate reporting of what is happening on the ground.

 

I agree with most of your points to some extent, but I don't think so far we have evidence that there has been the kind of extended cover-up going on as was the case for SARS. What timeline do you think would have happened (without the benefit of hindsight) in a country with a more transparent system of government? That question isn't meant as a claim there's no difference - I think there is. I just think we exaggerate how much the difference is.

On another point, what do you think about South Korea not isolating Daegu/N Gyeongsang, which has close to a thousand cases now? 

[Guest JTS98]

1 hour ago, bendan said:

I agree with most of your points to some extent, but I don't think so far we have evidence that there has been the kind of extended cover-up going on as was the case for SARS. What timeline do you think would have happened (without the benefit of hindsight) in a country with a more transparent system of government? That question isn't meant as a claim there's no difference - I think there is. I just think we exaggerate how much the difference is.

On another point, what do you think about South Korea not isolating Daegu/N Gyeongsang, which has close to a thousand cases now? 

I think that following on from the SARS experience and given the claims of lessons learned, the quarantine of Wuhan should have been more or less immediate.

Also, I'd say the South Korean example at the moment is different, since the public there are now as well-informed about the virus as they need to be, clear processes for dealing with it have been put in place and the level of information on a daily basis being given to the public is very good.

The Chinese authorities spent a few weeks basically telling people there was hee haw to worry about, just carry on shopping and working.

[welshbairn]

Another potential vaccine ready for testing. This is incredibly quick if it works, WHO were estimating 18 months, could be by the summer.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/02/24/modernas-new-covid-19-vaccine-ready-for-human-tria.aspx

[Bully Wee Villa]

Is there any significance to the fact that the reporting website is fool.com?

[bendan]

11 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

I think that following on from the SARS experience and given the claims of lessons learned, the quarantine of Wuhan should have been more or less immediate.

Also, I'd say the South Korean example at the moment is different, since the public there are now as well-informed about the virus as they need to be, clear processes for dealing with it have been put in place and the level of information on a daily basis being given to the public is very good.

The SARS experience suggested it wasn't something that spread as easily as normal flu - when it became clearer that it was highly contagious (which wasn't until after mid-Jan), they locked down Wuhan, a massive city. Since late Jan, people (outside Hubei, at least) have been getting amazingly detailed information about cases in their local media, at least in cities I know people in. South Korea does not yet appear to have all the names of the people in the Shincheonji church,  despite 60% of cases being connected with it.

[bendan]

Lots of new entrants into the table the last couple of days, and lots of potential for the UK to bring in some cases from Italy after the mid-term break. What a mess.

[Ross.]

Given it seems to mostly be the old codgers who are dying as a result of this, a heavy dose of it in Scotland could have serious political consequences...

[Hedgecutter]

2 hours ago, bendan said:

Lots of new entrants into the table the last couple of days, and lots of potential for the UK to bring in some cases from Italy after the mid-term break. What a mess.

Bring back the 5 Nations imo.