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The govt is starting to get people prepared for what’s coming. So much denial at present, people regarding this as only a Chinese problem, or “just another bird flu scare” ( poll results at the top of this page)!

New emergency laws to enforce quarantine.

www.bbc.com

Coronavirus: UK cases double as four more people diagnosed

The government issues new powers to force people into quarantine as UK cases double to eight.
www.bbc.com

Here is the statement on the DoH website
www.gov.uk

Secretary of State makes new regulations on coronavirus

New regulations made by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to delay or prevent further transmission of the virus.
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk
 
Part-timah said:
I’m not a health care professional but risk is what i deal with as a day job. Humans are incredibly bad at intuitively judging risk appropriately. We have so many biases in our overworked brains. To judge risk any where near accurately is a slog. You have to do the hard yards, the analysis, the calculations and tables for even relatively simple scenarios. What I’m saying is you can’t “feel” risk and expect it to be reliable, especially for things you have no experience of. The posters here who have knowledge and experience aren’t doom mongers, the information here has been delivered in a sober way. There is a wide margin of error with predictions but the tone and message of those with the background have made more assertive warnings in the last few days.
Click to expand...

The fun part is that even if you know about every inherent bias and heuristic process in human thought, they still affect you just the same.
 
These new cases are all connected with the Brits in France that have gone down with it, all seem to have been infected by one 'super spreader', the UK's third case & first Briton, the guy from Hove.

Officials are now scrambling to identify the hundreds of people the man in his fifties may have come into contact with, including 183 passengers and six crew on an Easyjet flight from Geneva to London.

The man, understood to be the first UK national to contract the virus, is said to be linked to cases in England, France and Spain. He is believed to have caught the virus during a four day trip to Singapore for a sales conference for a gas analysis company.

He then took a flight to the Alps to ski in Les Contamines-Montjoie in late January where five more Britons including a nine-year-old boy became infected.
Click to expand...

metro.co.uk

British 'super spreader' gave at least seven people coronavirus

The businessman is believed to have caught the virus after a trip to Singapore.
metro.co.uk metro.co.uk
 
MrCurry said:
The govt is starting to get people prepared for what’s coming. So much denial at present, people regarding this as only a Chinese problem, or “just another bird flu scare” ( poll results at the top of this page)!

New emergency laws to enforce quarantine.

www.bbc.com

Coronavirus: UK cases double as four more people diagnosed

The government issues new powers to force people into quarantine as UK cases double to eight.
www.bbc.com

Here is the statement on the DoH website
www.gov.uk

Secretary of State makes new regulations on coronavirus

New regulations made by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to delay or prevent further transmission of the virus.
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk
Click to expand...

According to BBC website, the new regulations are because one of the evacuees currently in quarantine has threatened to abscond
 
Details from Brighton:
  • A chef at a pub in Hove only found out the infected businessman had visited and that his colleagues were 'self-isolating' when he read it online
  • A Brighton health centre has been closed after four more cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the city
Five staff at The Grenadier in Hove, his local pub, have been instructed to self-isolate for a fortnight after he went there for a pint on Saturday February 1.

Other staff and drinkers there on a busy Saturday evening have claimed they learned of the development on Facebook or via the local paper, the Brighton Argus.
...
And a student at Portslade Aldridge Community Academy in Brighton has also been told to stay at home for two weeks amid fears he came into contact with the so-called 'super spreader'.
 
andysays said:
According to BBC website, the new regulations are because one of the evacuees currently in quarantine has threatened to abscond
Click to expand...

I wish the media and government were less coy about which regulations. I'm assuming that stuff in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 has been activated, but it will take me a while to check.
 
cupid_stunt said:
These new cases are all connected with the Brits in France that have gone down with it, all seem to have been infected by one 'super spreader', the UK's third case & first Briton, the guy from Hove.



metro.co.uk

British 'super spreader' gave at least seven people coronavirus

The businessman is believed to have caught the virus after a trip to Singapore.
metro.co.uk metro.co.uk
Click to expand...
Metro :rolleyes: superspreader :rolleyes: I think it's worth keeping in mind that the protocol for follow up of a positive test will be to test any contacts. It would not be unusual to find those in close quarters with a positive testing person may also be positive. I think the term superspreader is tabloid headline bullshit to 'sell' more papers (yes the metro is free)
 
When talking about the WHO, I might have made it sound like I think they are always overly reassuring with their message. I dont actually think thats the case, it varies and is an awkward balancing act.



I post that in part because its another example where there are signs of the evolution of the message. Specifically, the idea that the containment strategy wont halt this thing, it will slow it, creating a window of opportunity. Thats a way to manage public expectations about how much containment will achieve, without dumping the containment strategy completely. I believe that in the USA the CDC message has also evolved in this manner recently.
 
Callie said:
Metro :rolleyes: superspreader :rolleyes: I think it's worth keeping in mind that the protocol for follow up of a positive test will be to test any contacts. It would not be unusual to find those in close quarters with a positive testing person may also be positive. I think the term superspreader is tabloid headline bullshit to 'sell' more papers (yes the metro is free)
Click to expand...

Its a phrase and concept the media love for sure. There is actually some truth to it, and its probably a phenomenon in the spread of more common illnesses too. Its just we dont really get to catch a glimpse of it during normal outbreaks because the transmission, contacts etc are not tracked under those circumstances.

edited to add - see the wikipedia entry, which is certainly not taking all its cues from tabloids. And SARS in 2003 involved some well documented super-spreader events. Super-spreader - Wikipedia
 
Callie said:
Metro :rolleyes: superspreader :rolleyes: I think it's worth keeping in mind that the protocol for follow up of a positive test will be to test any contacts. It would not be unusual to find those in close quarters with a positive testing person may also be positive. I think the term superspreader is tabloid headline bullshit to 'sell' more papers (yes the metro is free)
Click to expand...

The term 'super spreader' is being used by a lot of media outlets, including TV news channels, in respect of this man, and it was used before to describe at least one case in China, where someone had infected 14 people.
 
elbows said:
I wish the media and government were less coy about which regulations. I'm assuming that stuff in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 has been activated, but it will take me a while to check.
Click to expand...

Had a quick look, seems more likely to be done under the Health and Social Care Act 2008, and the ability it grants the Secretary of State to make 'health protection regulations'. I havent read up on this properly yet, I will.
 
Callie said:
Metro :rolleyes: superspreader :rolleyes: I think it's worth keeping in mind that the protocol for follow up of a positive test will be to test any contacts. It would not be unusual to find those in close quarters with a positive testing person may also be positive. I think the term superspreader is tabloid headline bullshit to 'sell' more papers (yes the metro is free)
Click to expand...

Every infected body can become a 'superspreader' depending on what is happens to them.
In MERS one patient spread the disease to
82 people (33 patients, eight health-care workers, and 41 visitors) being infected following exposure to Patient 14 on May 27–29 in the emergency room.


A lot of super-spread events can occur in health facilities, hotels, cruise ships which are not aerated as much as needed.
Norovirus on the Mediterranean cruise ship was another example.
 
sihhi said:
A translation from China Newsweek about the crucial months December and January in Wuhan

The Regret of Wuhan: How China Missed the Critical Window for Controlling the Coronavirus Outbreak

By Li Xiangyu (李想俣), Li Mingzi (李明子), Peng Danni (彭丹妮), and Du Wei (杜玮), in the February 10 issue of China News Weekly Out of mountains of reports about the coronavirus epidemic, we at China Change…
chinachange.org chinachange.org
Click to expand...

Good stuff, lots of useful info regarding January there. Plenty that points to control of information and failures at the national level. Local failings too, but pinning the blame mostly on them for failures during a crucial period in January would be a deflection.

December on the other hand remains murky. I do not, for example, consider the assertion that much earlier closure of the market would have changed the nature of the outbreak to be safe. Because it makes assumptions about how much the market was involved in continual transmission beyond the initial infections, and the limited data we do have suggests a more complex picture, and more human to human transmission, even at that stage. Nor can I take at face value the idea that days immediately after December 8th were an early opportunity to do something, because I will need to check whether such an early date for cases was only discovered with the benefit of hindsight. I will try to scape together various parts of the December picture and see if I can make a little more sense of this period.
 
cupid_stunt said:
The term 'super spreader' is being used by a lot of media outlets, including TV news channels, in respect of this man, and it was used before to describe at least one case in China, where someone had infected 14 people.
Click to expand...

At least it gives us the people to blame for the spread. :)
 
One of the 4 cases confirmed earlier (caught via the French ski resort Brit who travelled from Singapore) was said to be a doctor, so I suppose its reasonable to think that the doctor worked at the County Oak Medical Centre. As opposed to an infected patient spreading it to a worker at that centre. This also explains why this case was actually detected, ie likely via contact tracing rather than general surveillance.
 
Only have to look at the various dates related to confirmed UK cases to see why this will be so difficult to contain.

eg the easyjet flight of January 28th. The pub visit on Feb 1.

1-2 weeks detection & information lag behind the reality is to be expected, but it sure does add to the sense of futility.
 
Singapore is already setting the scene for the next phase. These quotes are from a statement from their PM that was delivered on Saturday 8th Feb.

But in the last few days, we have seen some cases which cannot be traced to the source of infection. These worried us, because it showed that the virus is probably already circulating in our own population. This is why we raised the Dorscon (Disease Outbreak Response System Condition) to orange yesterday, and are stepping up measures.
Click to expand...

Right now, we are continuing to do contact tracing and to quarantine close contacts. But I expect to see more cases with no known contacts in the coming days.
Click to expand...

If the numbers keep growing, at some point we will have to reconsider our strategy. If the virus is widespread, it is futile to try to trace every contact. If we still hospitalise and isolate every suspect case, our hospitals will be overwhelmed. At that point, provided that the fatality rate stays low like flu, we should shift our approach. Encourage those who only have mild symptoms to see their family GP, and rest at home instead of going to the hospital, and let hospitals and healthcare workers focus on the most vulnerable patients - the elderly, young children, and those with medical complications.
Click to expand...

We are not at that point yet. It may or may not happen, but we are thinking ahead and anticipating the next few steps. And I am sharing these possibilities with you, so that we are all mentally prepared for what may come.
Click to expand...

www.straitstimes.com

PM Lee Hsien Loong on the coronavirus situation in Singapore

SINGAPORE - Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke about the coronavirus situation in Singapore on Saturday (Feb 8) . Read more at straitstimes.com.
www.straitstimes.com www.straitstimes.com
 
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