Coronavirus - worldwide breaking news, discussion, stats, updates and more

[8ball]

Let us all pray covid away

I blowed my Covid away and miraculously am also no longer gay.
PRAISE JESUS!!

 

[zahir]

Government spokesman Stelios Petsas announced that the gradually lifting of lockdown restrictions may start in the first days of May and may be completed by mid-June, if the course of the coronavirus pandemic continues in the same modus, the virus curve flattens and there is no resurgence of the pandemic in the country. According to latest official data on Monday, death toll is at 99, total confirmed cases at 2,145 and total CoVID-19 tests conducted in Greece 43,417.

Speaking to Meta TV on Monday evening, Petsas said “until April 27, all data and thoughts about the gradual lifting of the restrictions will have been collected from all relevant ministries. It will be decided next week, so that all Greeks will know by the end of the month what will happen.”

Travel restrictions could be lifted after mid-June or in early July. Star TV reported that especially tourists from abroad will have to show an “anti-bodies certificate” before they go on board of an airplane.

“Gradual lockdown lifting in Greece to start early May,” says Gov’t spokesman - Keep Talking Greece

Government spokesman Stelios Petsas announced that the gradually lifting of lockdown restrictions ma

www.keeptalkinggreece.com

I suspect there may be a desperate desire here to salvage something of the tourist season.

 

[scifisam]

Well we will be on full lockdown this weekend again in Turkey. Great.

Not heard of any other country only doing this at the weekend.

That just seems like it's going to concentrate more people going out in a shorter space of time and getting closer to each other.

 

[Boru]

Investigation was launched when German health authorities made an upfront payment online of €1.5m for face masks,

Irish man questioned over €15m international virus scam

An Irish man has been questioned by gardaí as part of an international investigation into what is described as a sophisticated €15m Covid-19 scam.

www.rte.ie

 

[clicker]

“Gradual lockdown lifting in Greece to start early May,” says Gov’t spokesman - Keep Talking Greece

Government spokesman Stelios Petsas announced that the gradually lifting of lockdown restrictions ma

www.keeptalkinggreece.com

I suspect there may be a desperate desire here to salvage something of the tourist season.

I hope they're not being too eager. They've done so well up to now. But if they're insisting on an 'antibody certificate', do they exist yet?
Friends out there had already mentally written off this year. With a similar population to Italy and really low key hospital facilities, they'd struggle if it took hold.

 

[zahir]

I hope they're not being too eager. They've done so well up to now.

My thoughts as well. I can see why they’d want to lift the lockdown by the summer but there must be scope for things going very wrong.

But if they're insisting on an 'antibody certificate', do they exist yet?

Not that I’m aware of.

 

[zahir]

Outbreak in a care home near Athens. It looks like it’s being handled much better than it would be here.

Officials respond to coronavirus outbreak in nursing home | eKathimerini.com

A disinfecting crew in hazmat suits enters a retirement home at the seaside settlement of Nea Makri, east of Athens, Monday. The center was put under quarantine over the weekend after 12 people – 10 residents and two members of staff – tested positive for the coronavirus. The elderly were taken...

www.ekathimerini.com

 

[zahir]

How Greece is beating coronavirus despite a decade of debt

Country’s hospitals bore brunt of cuts but its efforts to contain Covid-19 appear to be paying off

www.theguardian.com

 

[zahir]

Marseille - A McDonalds requisitioned by employees and activist groups for food distribution.

 

[teuchter]

Here is another example of this stupid focus on cases per country rather than head of population. They say Belgium's fatalities are now the "fifth highest in Europe".


But the reality is that their death rate, per head of population, appears to be the third highest in the world at this moment in time, and the worst in the world if you measure at the equivalent point in time since the first death.




Useful I think to see it on a linear scale too:

 

[zahir]

Washington Post story suggesting the virus could have come from a lab in Wuhan. Does this sound plausible, elbows or anyone else?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/

 

[elbows]

Washington Post story suggesting the virus could have come from a lab in Wuhan. Does this sound plausible, elbows or anyone else?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/

I cannot read the article, paywall. I will try to somehow at some point.

I am familiar with the broad topic.

Lab accidents are a thing. An entire influenza pandemic (1977, H1N1) was probably caused by one, which I have spoken about several times before. Since that involved a strain that had previously been in humans several decades earlier, it wasnt a terrible pandemic, it largely affected the young who were not around to catch that flu in the 1950s (or was it the late 1940s? I forget). Sometimes the 1977 event is referred to as an epidemic rather than a pandemic, or as 'a pandemic in children'.

Propaganda is also a thing. Deflection and blame games are a thing. As are cover-ups of high-consequences accidents.

As such, I cannot exclude the possibility of a lab accident being involved. But other possibilities exist, and I'm not sure we will ever know. Maybe one day a suitable clue will emerge. In the meantime I will probably be bored to death by people who want certainty, not open questions and open minds.

 

[2hats]

GSK and Sanofi reported to be joining forces to create a vaccine. They don't expect it to be widely available until the second half of 2021 if it is successful in clinical trials (no group is, so far, reporting that they expect to have a viable vaccine for at least 12-24 months).

GSK and Sanofi join forces to work on coronavirus vaccine

Two companies jointly have capacity to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses

www.theguardian.com

 

[zahir]

I cannot read the article, paywall. I will try to somehow at some point.

The start of the article:

Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.

In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.

What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.

“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)

The Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The cables argued that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further support, mainly because its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous.

As the cable noted, the U.S. visitors met with Shi Zhengli, the head of the research project, who had been publishing studies related to bat coronaviruses for many years. In November 2017, just before the U.S. officials’ visit, Shi’s team had published research showing that horseshoe bats they had collected from a cave in Yunnan province were very likely from the same bat population that spawned the SARS coronavirus in 2003.

 

[zahir]

Continued:

“Most importantly,” the cable states, “the researchers also showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and prevention.”

The research was designed to prevent the next SARS-like pandemic by anticipating how it might emerge. But even in 2015, other scientists questionedwhether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks. In October 2014, the U.S. government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments.

As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley.

“The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not being adequately conducted and protected,” he said.

There are similar concerns about the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab, which operates at biosecurity level 2, a level significantly less secure than the level-4 standard claimed by the Wuhan Insititute of Virology lab, Xiao said. That’s important because the Chinese government still refuses to answer basic questions about the origin of the novel coronavirus while suppressing any attempts to examine whether either lab was involved.

Sources familiar with the cables said they were meant to sound an alarm about the grave safety concerns at the WIV lab, especially regarding its work with bat coronaviruses. The embassy officials were calling for more U.S. attention to this lab and more support for it, to help it fix its problems.

“The cable was a warning shot,” one U.S. official said. “They were begging people to pay attention to what was going on.”
No extra assistance to the labs was provided by the U.S. government in response to these cables. The cables began to circulate again inside the administration over the past two months as officials debated whether the lab could be the origin of the pandemic and what the implications would be for the U.S. pandemic response and relations with China.

Inside the Trump administration, many national security officials have long suspected either the WIV or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab was the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak. According tothe New York Times, the intelligence community has provided no evidence to confirm this. But one senior administration official told me that the cables provide one more piece of evidence to support the possibility that the pandemic is the result of a lab accident in Wuhan.

“The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on the other side,” the official said.

As my colleague David Ignatius noted, the Chinese government’s original story — that the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan — is shaky. Research by Chinese experts published in the Lancet in January showed the first known patient, identified on Dec. 1, had no connection to the market, nor did more than one-third of the cases in the first large cluster. Also, the market didn’t sell bats.

 

[zahir]

Shi and other WIV researchers have categorically denied this lab was the origin for the novel coronavirus. On Feb. 3, her team was the first to publicly report the virus known as 2019-nCoV was a bat-derived coronavirus.

The Chinese government, meanwhile, has put a total lockdown on information related to the virus origins. Beijing has yet to provide U.S. experts with samples of the novel coronavirus collected from the earliest cases. The Shanghai lab that published the novel coronavirus genome on Jan. 11 was quickly shut down by authorities for “rectification.” Several of the doctors and journalists who reported on the spread early on have disappeared.

On Feb. 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a new biosecurity law to be accelerated. On Wednesday, CNN reported the Chinese government has placed severe restrictions requiring approval before any research institution publishes anything on the origin of the novel coronavirus.

The origin story is not just about blame. It’s crucial to understanding how the novel coronavirus pandemic started because that informs how to prevent the next one. The Chinese government must be transparent and answer the questions about the Wuhan labs because they are vital to our scientific understanding of the virus, said Xiao.

We don’t know whether the novel coronavirus originated in the Wuhan lab, but the cable pointed to the danger there and increases the impetus to find out, he said.

“I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. I think it’s a legitimate question that needs to be investigated and answered,” he said. “To understand exactly how this originated is critical knowledge for preventing this from happening in the future.”

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Here is another example of this stupid focus on cases per country rather than head of population. They say Belgium's fatalities are now the "fifth highest in Europe".
View attachment 206715

But the reality is that their death rate, per head of population, appears to be the third highest in the world at this moment in time, and the worst in the world if you measure at the equivalent point in time since the first death.

View attachment 206716


Useful I think to see it on a linear scale too:


View attachment 206717

Yep, Belgium's in a mess. If you're breaking things down to more like Belgium-sized chunks, it also makes more sense to view the states of New York and New Jersey as one unit. London on its own, or perhaps London plus its commuter belt (which would be about Belgium-sized), would also not look too pretty.

 

[Favelado]

Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through the postpandemic period | Science

science.sciencemag.org

This seems to be very significant. I'm reading it bits at a time but it really brings home how this is not a question of a bit of a lockdown and then life gets back to normal - we're in for a long, slow struggle.
Hard work but I think it's essential to getting a better handle on this.

 

[scifisam]

I cannot read the article, paywall. I will try to somehow at some point.

You get four articles a month for free if you register.

 

[Favelado]

Washington Post story suggesting the virus could have come from a lab in Wuhan. Does this sound plausible, elbows or anyone else?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/

That is absolutely fascinating. I can believe in a cock up more than I ever could a conspiracy. The type of thing you might want to cover up too.

 

[weltweit]

Washington Post story suggesting the virus could have come from a lab in Wuhan. Does this sound plausible, elbows or anyone else?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/

It isn't the first time I have heard of this possibility but perhaps the first time in a reputable paper. The existence of this particular lab and apparently doing this specific work with security concerns does make one wonder. If not this story then what a coincidence the virus emerges from a wet market so close to a lab apparently doing this specific work?

 

[Azrael]

Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through the postpandemic period | Science

science.sciencemag.org

This seems to be very significant. I'm reading it bits at a time but it really brings home how this is not a question of a bit of a lockdown and then life gets back to normal - we're in for a long, slow struggle.
Hard work but I think it's essential to getting a better handle on this.

Once I got past my Pavlovian response to "herd immunity", some interesting things there. Ongoing suppression could put immense strain on societies for years to come, and is no guarantee against fresh outbreaks getting out of control. The dance will be exhausting.

Just makes the case for throwing every resource we have at eliminating SARS-CoV-2 from the general population ASAP all the stronger. A vaccine may well be needed to complete the work, but there's nothing stopping us from starting at once with the test-trace-isolate methods that annihilated the first SARS virus. If they succeed, fantastic; if they don't, our suppression strategy will be bolstered.

 

[William of Walworth]

Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through the postpandemic period | Science

science.sciencemag.org

This seems to be very significant. I'm reading it bits at a time but it really brings home how this is not a question of a bit of a lockdown and then life gets back to normal - we're in for a long, slow struggle.
Hard work but I think it's essential to getting a better handle on this.

As you indicate, that article is very hard work -- ultra-hard-core science

Admirable, but there's no way I'll be able to get my head round it properly (or at all!) until someone on here manages to, and offers a layman-friendly summary ..... even the abstract threw me .... </humanities type >
No pressure on Urban science bods though!

 

[Favelado]

As you indicate, that article is very hard work -- ultra-hard-core science

Admirable, but there's no way I'll be able to get my head round it properly (or at all!) until someone on here manages to, and offers a layman-friendly summary ..... even the abstract threw me .... </humanities type >
No pressure on Urban science bods though!

Yeah some of it is beyond me but it seems worth the rereading. I really want to take in as much as the layman can.

 

[Favelado]

It isn't the first time I have heard of this possibility but perhaps the first time in a reputable paper. The existence of this particular lab and apparently doing this specific work with security concerns does make one wonder. If not this story then what a coincidence the virus emerges from a wet market so close to a lab apparently doing this specific work?

I mean - they broke Watergate. They nail the real conspiracies!

 

[William of Walworth]

Yeah some of it is beyond me but it seems worth the rereading. I really want to take in as much as the layman can.

OK, maybe earlyish tomorrow might be worth some more effort.
I'm not optimistic though, my far too literary and historical head doesn't like scientific codes, or stats, and that article's full of 'em .....

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It isn't the first time I have heard of this possibility but perhaps the first time in a reputable paper. The existence of this particular lab and apparently doing this specific work with security concerns does make one wonder. If not this story then what a coincidence the virus emerges from a wet market so close to a lab apparently doing this specific work?

Maybe. Is it that close, though? 5 km away iirc? (I can't read that link.) But Wuhan is a city the size of London. It's not exactly around the corner. And how unusual is it for a huge city to have this kind of lab somewhere in it?

 

[weltweit]

A couple of BBC articles on India

India's race against time to save doctors

..
In some cases, doctors were forced to use raincoats and motorbike helmets.

One doctor, who is working in the state-run hospital in the northern city of Lucknow, said: "We are not getting PPE kits as fast as we should."
..
PPE kits are also needed for law enforcement agencies who are helping health workers with contact tracing and the management of quarantine facilities.

from 13/04/2020 India's race against time to save doctors

Why India cannot afford to lift its lockdown

Will India extend its rigorous 21-day lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus beyond its end date next week? By all accounts, yes.

On 24 March, India shut its $2.9 trillion economy, closing its businesses and issuing strict stay-at-home orders to more than a billion people. Air, road and rail transport systems were suspended.

Now, more than two months after the first case of Covid-19 was detected in the country, more than 5,000 people have tested positive and some 150 people have died. As testing has ramped up, the true picture is emerging. The virus is beginning to spread through dense communities and new clusters of infection are being reported every day. Lifting the lockdown could easily risk triggering a fresh wave of infections.
..
For the moment, economists say, the government will have to prioritise farming over everything else to ensure the livelihoods of millions and secure the country's future food supplies.

Half of India's labour force work on farms. The lockdown happened at a time when a bumper winter crop had to be harvested and sold, and the rain-fed summer crop had to be sowed. The immediate challenge is to harvest and market the first crop, and secure the second.

from 09/04/2020 Why India cannot afford to lift its lockdown

 

[Favelado]

And how unusual is it for a huge city to have this kind of lab somewhere in it?

Good question. What's the answer?

 

[teuchter]

Yep, Belgium's in a mess. If you're breaking things down to more like Belgium-sized chunks, it also makes more sense to view the states of New York and New Jersey as one unit. London on its own, or perhaps London plus its commuter belt (which would be about Belgium-sized), would also not look too pretty.

Yes, I've not managed to find anywhere that will compare things on a graph at that level. The site I took those graphs from will break down by US state but not into regions of European countries.

I would be very interested to see things graphed against population density, in city-sized units, across a number of different countries.