Novel coronavirus cases reignite SARS fears - the epidemic mess foretold

What will all the English teachers in China do?
I just met one who is here on holiday and can’t really go back now.

Goolag translate is your friend.

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Yeah, the police bolted the doors of households with people from Wuhan, leaving them with no way out and not planning to provide them any supplements to sustain themselves either.

Thanks to any and all supernatural beings for me to live in a true democracy…

“Just like the common cold.”

wtf

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Why, in your country the army has never locked you in your house after they found out you got a cold?

Pfff…

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No. Just for being crazy.

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Apparently one of the main reasons WHO is not declaring emergency is because they are afraid of China. Even SCMP is reporting on this:

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This is hilarious.

At another session of parliament on Wednesday, Conservative Party member Michael Cooper deliberately spelled out “T-a-i-w-a-n” and added, “This is a question about Taiwan!” He said the health and safety of Canadians rely on an effectively coordinated international response to the coronavirus and pointed out that Taiwan had previously confirmed five cases (now eight).

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Ugh. Just do it for god’s sake. Enough pussyfooting around China.

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Here’s a lengthy article called “The Truth about ‘Dramatic Action’”, by “a veteran journalist living in the city of Wuhan” writing under a penname - it attacks the dismal response by the local government (and praises what scientists were doing in the meantime), with the government’s focus on keeping people in the dark about the disease as long as possible … oh, now that I post this, discourse informs me that @ma3xiu1 posted it yesterday! I’ll add a couple more quotes:

Everyone must understand, first of all, that this epidemic was allowed to spread for a period of more than forty days before any of the abovementioned cities were closed off, or any decisive action taken. In fact, if we look at the main efforts undertaken by the leadership, and by provincial and city governments in particular, these were focused mostly not on the containment of the epidemic itself, but on the containment and suppression of information about the disease.

Politics first. Stability preservation first. In such an environment, science can only sit by and watch. The scientific results could not be clearer, and the authorities likely had a decent grasp of the real situation. But nevertheless they could not speak the truth, and they spared no effort in keeping the outbreak under wraps. Front-line doctors who spoke up about the outbreak were taken in for questioning. Eight Wuhan citizens who dared to post about the outbreak online were summoned by the police and singled out in public announcements through official media in order to terrify the public and force people to remain quiet.

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Science stuff: CNN piece on the likelihood that this virus came from bats, and why bats seem to carry so much viruses. (Apologies if this was linked to above - you go out for the day and there are a couple hundred more posts to go through!) Some quotes, first on how often bats are reservoir for diseases:

The winged mammal has been the reservoir for several different deadly viruses like Marburg, Nipah and Hendra, which have caused disease in humans and outbreaks in Uganda, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Australia. Bats are thought to be the natural host of the Ebola virus, rabies, SARS and MERS, with the latter two both coronaviruses similar to the one that’s now emerged in Wuhan.

Often, there’s an intermediary involved as was the case with SARS in 2003 — the civet cat — and MERS, which emerged later in the 2000s and was carried by camels.

And conjecture about why bats carry so much of this stuff:

One theory posits that flight, which is shared by all bats but no other mammals, has allowed bats to evolve mechanisms that protect them from viruses. Flying elevates the bat’s metabolism and body temperature — similar to a fever in humans and other mammals — and scientists say this, on an evolutionary scale, could boost a bat’s immune system and make it more tolerant of viruses.

Interesting points about how people in the Yunnan area living near bats had similar coronaviruses in their systems (but no symptoms) in prior studies - just from living near bats, echoing @Hanna’s “Like mainland yokel with bats living in his attics level of mundane” comment earlier (even if I’d have chosen a word other than “yokel”!):

scientists have found about 50 SARS-related coronaviruses in bats all across China and the SARS coronavirus had been found in people in the southwestern province of Yunnan who lived near caves where the virus had been found in bats — although they showed no symptoms of respiratory illness during sampling.

“These viruses are a really high risk for pandemic emergence. They’re in bats, they’re across Southeast Asia, people are exposed to them regularly, and they’re actually getting infected,” Daszak said.

And how bats weren’t sold in the seafood market that may or may not be at the center of this current mess (remember that some reports have the first case unconnected to the market):

the data was pointing toward the virus going from bats to another, unknown wild animal, and then to humans. She said no bats were sold or found at the seafood market and the outbreak was first reported in late December when most bat species in Wuhan are hibernating.

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I do. I make a point to replace it after 3-4 hours and wash my hands before wearing and after removing it.

They do help you not spreading your version of corona-virus to others.
Any discussion whether to wear a mask or not is mute.

I forgot, you are not infected.
I apologize.

Reminds me of SARS. I use to ask the kids, Nimen yo mei yo SARS? and all the 5 year old answered absolutely synchronized, ‘MeiYO!’

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Quite a few interesting points there courtesy of Forbes.

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Good advice.

there’s no sign yet that it’s spread from person to person.

:face_with_monocle:

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Is there though? Maybe they all ate the same bat soup.

There are confirmed human to human transfer cases in Taiwan. A family member returned to Taiwan from Wuhan and passed it on to two other family members.

Unless he also brought some of that bat soup back with him, I think it’s a pretty clear indication.

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It has to be a typo. I got an email from a plastics factory in dongguan that says they cannot work until 9/2/2020. It’s in the email twice.

Surely it’s 9-Feb - and even that’s a long break for most biz.

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