As a Canadian, I'm currently visiting my family in Changsha, a city about 4 hours of a drive south of Wuhan. In the city, everyone is on edge. All public places such as restaurants, gyms and night clubs are closed. And everyone on the street wears a surgical or N95 mask. Not only Wuhan, but the entire country is also on lockdown.
It sucks but the people and the government have aligned themselves together to do whatever it takes to contain and control the coronavirus. Let's be strong and have faith.
> Approximately 58 million in lockdown, this is apocalyptic.
Seem the right thing to do when you have 1.3 thousand millions of people. I wonder if bad air quality in China could have boosted the problem in any case. It seems that Wuhan area today ranks from 'moderate' to 'unhealthy for sensitive groups'.
Thus the problem could quickly scalate if the coronavirus manages itself to reach the northern areas tagged in red or purple. International trade of chinese products could be hurt also. There is a lot at stake for the country.
I don't mind that ZeroHedge as it often cites news that isn't picked up on MSM. However, I have a massive concern about the bias in ZeroHedge. I remember once reading an article in which the final lines are something bold and along the lines of "remember they hate you and are coming for you" type rhetoric. That was completely not cited. I find that extremely concerning.
Also, similarly, they at one point ran an article about a John Hopkins doctor who is against gender affirmation treatment towards trans people. I googled more about their papers and the like, only to find that the doctor only published their work in religious-oriented research and has actually be disavowed by several medical practitioners who specialize in trans medical concerns. None of this was cited in the article.
This has overall made me quite leery of the validity of ZeroHedge on anything but the links that ZeroHedge cites.
Generally with zerohedge I mostly stick to the financial stuff, since that is usually properly sourced, even if the site does have a bearish bias its still usually good info. There are definitely some heavily biased political articles though.
The restrictions on travel in China will be an interesting experiment in how much interurban travel is essential.
My take would be that with modern communications and IT infrastructure, there is actually very little need for interurban travel not associated with the movement of physical goods, i.e. not associated with truck drivers, rail crews, barge crews, air freight pilots, and so forth. Most other travel can be replaced by communications.
While much business travel may be inessential, family visits for Lunar New Year are surely essential for many people, so this is a tough time for such an experiment. I was surprised to learn that there are normally 3 billion passenger-journeys in China during the Lunar New Year period! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunyun).
There are other calls for help directly from hospitals. Some private hospitals may be in particularly bad shape. However shipping could be an issue if one doesn't want to use official channels. The government page does say that you could designate donees 定向捐赠.
Pretty much any country has some form of martial law. For example, the US very quickly shut down one of their largest cities and all air travel in the country on 9/11.
The FAA already had discretionary authority over US airspace. Saying “no” to everything all at once was unusual, but didn’t exercise any new power. Martial law is more like “sudo” for the executive branch, letting it do what would not otherwise be legal.
What can be presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. There was no argument in that post to disprove just baseless claims without evidence. Why would someone spend 10x as much time disproving a no effort no evidence post?
the onus is on the downvoted poster to support their own claims.
> I was born and raised in Wuhan. My father and a few friends are still in Wuhan, one of the friend is a nurse. Here's what they told me:
> * The hospitals in Wuhan are at absolute maximum capacity. they are lumping any fever cases (e.g. flu) patients with potential coronavirus patients in the same room.
> * People with mild symptoms are sent home due to capacity, they are instructed to be quarantined at home unless symptoms get worse
> * Despite reports, surgical masks are completely sold out in China, my dad is asking me to send him 3M (the brand) masks from abroad.
> * Even hospitals are low on surgical masks for staff. Each nurse is given one or two masks per day, but per regulation, they needed to replace the mask every 3 hours.
> * A wider scale locked down went in to effect in Wuhan this morning, forbidding anybody from entering or leaving on any roads, rail, water or flight.
> * Domestic news are filled with non-sense, top 3 news today are praising Xi's CNY speech, which has exactly zero word mentioning the pandemic or Wuhan.
> * This coronavirus is potentially deadlier than SARS. Most of the 25 deaths are from the original 47 cases that was reported a few weeks ago.
[Nurse estimating 90.000 infected](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQflXs0jZ9w), scolding the government, giving advice how to stay safe and encouraging people to donate disposable masks, goggles and clothes.
[Nurse estimating 100.000 infected](https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/etnc6g/hear_it_ursel...), the 10 doctors at her hospital treating more than 100 infected people per day, scolding government for false promises and lack of support, warning people not to trust anything the government says.
FYI, I've known a few nurses in Asian countries, including China, and it's extremely common for them to build a close relationship. I know in Thailand they're required to learn the names of all their seniors and form a bond with them, and will often have large group chats with former classmates and coworkers. A nurse I know in Thailand told me that she would no doubt know what the situation was like at her hospital (number of patients, workload of doctors, medical supplies), and she still keep touch with over a hundred different nurses working at other hospitals and nurseries, from whom she would be able to gather similar information. I imagine the situation is the same in China, and when we see two nurses (with Wuhan accents) give similar estimates, then I'd no doubt trust those numbers more than those of the government, especially considering the significant amount of videos of people collapsing and lying dead on the ground, as well as the fact that the government has expanded the lockdown to 56 million people, and shut down 70.000 cinemas all over the country.
The government spent several weeks suppressing critical information and arresting those who tried to warn others. Even now information is still being censored and people in China are not taking necessary precautions to protect themselves.
> and people in China are not taking necessary precautions to protect themselves.
Aren't they? News about the virus is all over Chinese social media. My relatives in China -- who live quite far away from Wuhan -- are following the news and closely, and have decided to stay home as much as possible.
People only recently began to talk about the virus on social media - at least in my circles. I imagine your relatives also just recently began to stay and eat at home as much as possible, and probably didn't pay too much attention to wearing proper disposable masks, using hand sanitizers whenever possible, keeping distance from people coughing or showing fever symptoms, etc.
It's also just a few days ago the government began sending doctors and nurses to Wuhan en masse, despite the fact that the medical workers in Wuhan have been completely overwhelmed, and that we've known about the virus for over a month. It's also very few people who realize the severity; many still go to crowded places and don't wear proper protection. Several friends have reached out to me for videos (some of which are shadowbanned on WeChat) and news since the amount of information shared is heavily censored in China. Even had a Tsinghua friend refer to some of the videos I posted as 'fake news'.
You also have Tsai Ing-wen asking China to share truthful information about the virus and for WHO not to exclude Taiwan from collaboration on the outbreak for political reasons. It's just now that people are beginning to realize the severity of the situation. In Bangkok the hospitals (at least one of those a nurse I know is working at) are checking everyone before they're allowed to enter the hospital.
I'm not sure, this is the only list with detailed info I can find: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1itaohdPiAeniCXNlntNz..., but even that list is severely lacking in information, and seem to rely on official reports that have proven untrustworthy. I imagine the person I quoted got the information from his nurse friend/family in Wuhan.
Official numbers (2020 confirmed cases, 100 deaths and 49 recoveries as of right now) also seem very worrisome. That's a 20% death rate without taking into account that we still don't know the outcome of the remaining 1871 confirmed cases that has neither died nor recovered.
An optimistic person might say that confirmed cases primarily consist of those showing the most significant symptoms since everyone else would be sent away as there's not enough room at the hospitals. A pessimistic person might say that the government has proven completely untrustworthy and incapable, that the number is much more likely to be ~100.000 as reported by the two nurses, and looking at the many mental breakdowns of medical workers, videos of people collapsing or seemingly lying dead on the ground, the fact that the virus has already spread to numerous countries and throughout all provinces in China, as well as the lockdowns all over the country, then there are reasons to believe the number of infections and deaths are severely under-reported by the government.
Can't edit the comment, but 100 deaths in 2k cases is of course 5% and not 20%.. must have had a brainfart. Anyhow, it's still important to keep in mind that the outcome of the other confirmed cases that hasn't recovered remain unknown, something most people seem to ignore when they say the death rate is 2-7%.
Although one aspect that it's very hard to get true information for the citizens. You'd also need to be very good at doublethink, I would assume many are not, and thus we see mass panic & chaos on the streets.
>> The most interesting part of this whole episode is the Orwellian efficiency communist China can control their population at will.
Say what you will about authoritarian societies, but one of their advantages is the ability to impose a direction to their population. There are certain situations this can prove very useful.
I don't know...a (competently run) FEMA could probably quarantine a US state relatively efficiently. Once the "disaster" mindset kicks in, things happen relatively efficiently as the motivation is there.
Recognizing it is a disaster is another thing...was the CCP late on this part of the Wuhan outbreak? Orwellian efficiency may be countered by Orwellian denial of problems...
Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (Harvard): " HOLY MOTHER OF GOD - the new coronavirus is a 3.8!!! How bad is that reproductive R0 value? It is thermonuclear pandemic level bad - never seen an actual virality coefficient outside of Twitter in my entire career. I’m not exaggerating..."
The public health scientists wrote in his first tweet that he's "never seen an actual virality coefficient outside of Twitter", i.e. he's admitting to not being a subject-matter expert. So getting corrected by someone who's done their research is not that surprising.
It doesn't say "larger" in the tweet. Edit: or is "outside of Twitter" supposed to refer to a region in the space of possible coefficients that are past the values observed in the spread of viral information on Twitter?
Spreading a tweet from a doctor who is acting like the world is about to end is a worse action than a rebuttal questioning his fear mongering that goes against both the WHO and CDC.
Reports I've seen suggest 1.4 to 2.5, but it's early days. Essentially if the R factor (number of people infected by a single case [0]) is less than 1, it'll die out, otherwise it'll grow.
However, that's very simplistic; one would like to think the R factor would be lowered by better hygiene.
Separately, it seems that (unlike say Spanish Flu) this tends to be worse for people who have pre-existing health issues.
There is concern that possibly people who are asymptomatic could still be infectious.
Time will tell. One number (that'll take quite some time to even have a stab at) is the mortality compared to, say, common flu.
Are you asking if there is a phase of the disease where the body temporarily wins most of the battle but the virus continues to inhabit the host? Sort of like hiv? Maybe even a phase where the immune system keeps the virus count so low only fluid transmission? Given the way the virus progresses this seems unlikely but new viruses can have new behavior...too early to tell.
Other diseases are worse. Measles is a lot worse, with an R0 estimated at between 12 and 18. But R0 is a measure of propagation rate in an undefended population. For most highly infectious diseases with known R0 values, we have defenses, typically vaccination which leaves the population, as a whole, a lot less vulnerable. So, in those cases, R0 is a measure of how bad things can get. Not for this new thing -- there's been no time to put defenses in place, so R0, whatever its actual value, is a measure of how bad things are.
Probaly alot of shorthand writing, anything with an R0 rating below 1 tends to die out. therefore you compare the sars rating of 1.49 and the novel corona virus of 3.8 by seeing how many times .49 fits in 2.8 which is around 5.7 times more infectious instead of 7.75 mentioned in his tweet (He probaly divided 3.8 by .49 instead of 2.8)
Ratings are just approximations and i'm no expert in virology to say wether this means anything at all.
It sucks but the people and the government have aligned themselves together to do whatever it takes to contain and control the coronavirus. Let's be strong and have faith.