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[elbows]

Thats a biggie

It became somewhat inevitable for that show to be cancelled because too many of the important attendees had already announced they were pulling out over recent days.

I'd say its mostly about the timing and the whole global travel thing rather than the location of the conference.

 

[SpookyFrank]

AVANI RIVERSIDE BANGKOK HOTEL, THAILAND
Tue 1st - Thu 3rd December 2020


well quite:

Due to the recent Coronavirus outbreak in China,
the Steering Committee of the 6th AsiaBrake Conference and Exhibition
would like to announce the postponement of the conference
from the 16th – 18th February
to Tue 1st December – Thu 3rd December 2020,
at Avani Riverside Bangkok Hotel.

I love the fact that a conference about brakes has a steering committee.

 

[krtek a houby]

Saw a queue of maybe 70 people outside the drug store yesterday morning. Masks are still flying off the shelves.

 

[Baronage-Phase]

Saw a queue of maybe 70 people outside the drug store yesterday morning. Masks are still flying off the shelves.

Anyone wearing one?

 

[krtek a houby]

Anyone wearing one?

Around half, maybe more.

 

[Part-timah]

1,368 deaths now. Over 60,000 confirmed cases.

 

[cupid_stunt]

1,368 deaths now. Over 60,000 confirmed cases.

Blimey, that's a hell of a jump in cases, but it seems it is down to a new method of diagnosing in China, which has reported almost 15,000 new cases yesterday, taking the total there to 59,805.

Hubei’s health commission said on Thursday that it was now including people clinically diagnosed with CT scans as well as those who have been confirmed positive with testing kits. Previously, authorities had included only those cases confirmed by the diagnostic tests, which are in short supply.

The change in diagnostic criteria appeared aimed at heading off complaints about the availability of tests and treatment for residents, as well as questions about whether officials have been underreporting.

The shortage of the testing kits has meant that many sick residents have been unable to seek treatment, with hospital admission contingent on the test result. Health workers have been calling for authorities to broaden the parameters for diagnosing the virus in order to treat more patients. Some have also questioned the reliability of the tests.

SOURCE - The Guardian

Most of the new cases are in Wuhan, so assuming this method is rolled out across the rest of Hubei province, and indeed across China, I guess we can expect some more big leaps in the official figures over the next few days.

Of course, this opens up all sort of new questions about the data that has been coming out of China so far, and indeed moving forward.

On Sky News, Dr Derek Gatherer, a Virologist at Lancaster University, estimated the true number of cases in China is anywhere between 10 times, and as much as 25 times, of those actually confirmed.

Record number of deaths in China yesterday too, at 242. Meanwhile over on that cruise ship in Japan, reported cases are now up to 218.

And, a US cruise ship with 1,455 passengers & 802 crew, that was turned away by Japan, Guam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand over the last two weeks, has finally been allowed to anchor outside Sihanoukville, in Cambodia. Apparently 20 people on-board are ill, none actually have symptoms of COVID-19, but some more tests will be carried out before they are allowed to disembark.

 

[sihhi]

It doesn't seem properly managed.

“I left my workplace in a cab. I was wearing a medical mask with a filter. But the driver wasn’t wearing a mask."

She said: “Once you call NHS 111 and get through to Public Health England asking for advice on how to get tested, they say they’ll get back to you in a few hours.


“But it took them 15 hours to get back to me – and I’ve come into direct contact with someone who was in isolation. I’m a nurse, but someone else might think ‘Oh, they’ll get back to me eventually’, and go about their daily business. They could start spreading the virus.

“This is not being dealt with effectively. I thought there would be a plan in place for something like this, but in my case, I know there wasn’t one.”

The nurse said she has been left feeling anxious due to a lack of support. She said: “I’m feeling paranoid at home now. I’m scared to touch anything because I’m not sure how long the virus stays on surfaces. I’m going around scrubbing things as a precaution for when the kids get back.

“I’m not getting advice from anyone – not over the phone, nothing. I’ve just had to go inside and wait. And I’ve got a few of the symptoms of coronavirus, like a sore throat and a cough. It’s escalated into a full-blown throaty cold, but it’s too early to tell. I won’t know whether the person I was in contact with had coronavirus for a few days.”

 

[Pickman's model]

.

 

[Shechemite]

.

I don’t see the point

 

[Pickman's model]

I don’t see the point

it's clear there in the post you quote. see an optician at your earliest convenience.

 

[lizzieloo]

My GP was coughing as I went into his room the other day, I joked with him about it, he says no, it's not coronavirus although his student son does live in a houseshare with a chap from Wuhan.



I'm surprised he told me that cos I might be a Daily Mail type for all he knows.

 

[elbows]

Blimey, that's a hell of a jump in cases, but it seems it is down to a new method of diagnosing in China, which has reported almost 15,000 new cases yesterday, taking the total there to 59,805.

Most of the new cases are in Wuhan, so assuming this method is rolled out across the rest of Hubei province, and indeed across China, I guess we can expect some more big leaps in the official figures over the next few days.

Of course, this opens up all sort of new questions about the data that has been coming out of China so far, and indeed moving forward.

Some new questions, yes. But also some old ones, and many familiar themes, and perhaps even a few answers to previous areas of confusion. I dunno, I have to check a few things and see quite how this new stuff relates to the other end of the stick which people, including myself, were trying to grasp in recent days. Stuff that I made reference to when I said this yesterday:

For example there has been confusion in recent days about whether China changed the way they record numbers, to exclude cases that tested positive but show no symptoms. When it came up in a recent WHO press conference, they actually said sort of the opposite, that China has now broadened its case definition to include the sort of mild cases that would previously have been excluded. But where in the statistics those cases are listed is still not very clear to me. I mention it now only because there are mild and asymptomatic cases being picked up in China these days, though that does not answer the question of how many of those are still being missed.

The reason people were directing their attention towards that other end of the stick was because the context was falling numbers in recent days, and whether that showed something genuine or not. And now we've suddenly got rising numbers again and an explanation for those. What the WHO said also makes sense now, well it made sense too then but without the context of the latest numbers that reflect this change, I was still trying to fit the WHO words to the other end of the stick.

One of the complaints today is that it is now hard to compare previous trends in the numbers with new and future trends, because of the change in criteria of who gets counted. Well, it is a pain yes, but its one of the inevitabilities when it comes to stats relating to outbreaks, if the outbreak goes beyond a certain size. eg when the H1N1 swine flu arrived in small numbers in the UK, we would test every case we could and those were the numbers used. Once we had the first large wave of widespread community infection in July of 2009, they were not trying to test everyone, so numbers obtained in a different way became the focus and the official numbers. Add in whatever Chinas own intents in the realm of data manipulation have been at varying stages of this outbreak, and its no surprise that these numbers have not been telling the full story.

So hopefully todays news is not a terrible revelation for people. The media have been playing the usual game where they will include caveats in their numbers-driven stories, urging caution about interpreting recent numbers in a certain way, but will then proceed to make the positive or negative interpretations anyway. There was certainly a bit of this in recent days with the 'oh look the numbers are dropping' stories. And then they express indignation when the interpretation is superseded the very next day. This is one of the reasons I drone on about some stuff, I'm hoping it sometimes helps people, if not exactly to see this stuff coming, at least not have it all arrive out of the blue.

 

[elbows]

It might have been his way of adding to the joke.

 

[lizzieloo]

It might have been his way of adding to the joke.

No he was being serious, He's a very straightforward kinda person. It doesn't worry me though, his son doesn't live with him and I have no idea when the chap from Wuhan was last home.

 

[sihhi]

Area quarantine measures begin in Vietnam.

Vietnam quarantines area with 10,000 residents over coronavirus - France 24

Vietnam quarantines area with 10,000 residents over coronavirus

www.france24.com

Two French patients (I think the very earliest confirmed infected in France on 24 Jan) were released.

Singapore shows sustained spread (perhaps London in about a week or two??)

MOH | News Highlights

Find speeches, press releases, forum replies and parliamentary Q&A.

www.moh.gov.sg

By all I can tell the situation remains desperate in Hubei, there is a huge backlog of people not yet hospitalised, some are dead, some are still alive.

A chief respiratory doctor in China said the only way to defeat the disease is to suffocate out the virus, i.e. reduce inter-human contact to as little as possible in all cases.

Also Caixin reports the first time an infected patient was accepted for treatment in a Beijing hospital was on 12 January

 

[elbows]

Regardless of the reality, in my imagination Dr Deadpan is already being called urgently to containment pod 4.

 

[sihhi]

Add in whatever Chinas own intents in the realm of data manipulation have been at varying stages of this outbreak, and its no surprise that these numbers have not been telling the full story.

China leadership's interests according to some are spread to other competitors

 

[elbows]

Also Caixin reports the first time an infected patient was accepted for treatment in a Beijing hospital was on 1st December 2019

Are you sure you havent got the date backwards? Machine translation of that article says January 12th, Not December 1st!

And the various January dates throughout the article are entirely consistent with the period in January which we already know clearly shows authorities had an evolving picture of the outbreak that they were not shared publicly. A period that ended in a transition to a more serious picture given to the public during the week of Jan 20th.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Is it paranoia? I'd say it's probably quite sensible at this point for people in the groups most at risk to consider postponing any hospital appointments that aren't urgent.

Probably won't be long before non-urgent stuff is getting cancelled en masse tbh.

 

[Cid]

Looked a bit more into universities in China... looks like most are moving to online teaching for the time being.

 

[maomao]

Probably won't be long before non-urgent stuff is getting cancelled en masse tbh.

That's been happening for nearly a decade. More to do with Tory government than coronavirus.

Apparently the Lewisham case went to hospital in an Uber. Uber drivers can knock out five or six fares an hour when it's busy. And hopefully the driver was who they thought it was in the first place (Uber have form on that one).

 

[elbows]

The situation with various boats really is a terrible disgrace.

Japan talking about letting people over 80 off if they test negative, taking the piss. Talk about doing as little as possible, as slowly as possible.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

I work in a London hospital and we are quite surprised that so far, not one of our patients has cancelled their appointment. That could change of course.

 

[SpookyFrank]

The situation with various boats really is a terrible disgrace.

Japan talking about letting people over 80 off if they test negative, taking the piss. Talk about doing as little as possible, as slowly as possible.

That one that was 'turned away' by half a dozen countries, fucking hell.

 

[elbows]

That's been happening for nearly a decade. More to do with Tory government than coronavirus.

Apparently the Lewisham case went to hospital in an Uber. Uber drivers can knock out five or six fares an hour when it's busy. And hopefully the driver was who they thought it was in the first place (Uber have form on that one).

Unlike the case labelled super-spreader the other day, who was hailed by the authorities as a great example of following the advice (call 111, dont travel around and visit healthcare facilities of your own accord), this London case will now be held up as an example of someone disregarding all the advice.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I work in a London hospital and we are quite surprised that so far, not one of our patients has cancelled their appointment. That could change of course.

Hospital appointments are gold dust these days, I wouldn't cancel one unless the place was actually on fire.

 

[elbows]

That one that was 'turned away' by half a dozen countries, fucking hell.

Yeah. The WHO were not happy about this yesterday.

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on Ebola and COVID-19 outbreaks

www.who.int

Now we have three cruise ships that have experienced delayed port clearance or have been denied entry to ports, often without an evidence-based risk assessment.

Together with the International Maritime Organization, we will issue a communique to all countries to respect the principle of “free pratique” for ships and the principle of proper care for all travelers, in accordance with the International Health Regulations.

We have also established lines of communication with IMO, the Cruise Lines International Association and the major cruise operators to ensure we have accurate information and can provide the right advice.

WHO has published guidance on how to handle public health events like this on ships, and we urge countries and companies to follow that guidance.

I’m also pleased to announce that today Cambodia agreed to accept the Westerdam cruise ship, which has been stranded at sea for several days.

Based on what we have been told, there are no suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 on board the Westerdam.

The ship will arrive in Cambodia tomorrow morning.

This afternoon I spoke to Cambodia’s Minister of Health to thank him for allowing the Westerdam to dock in his country, and I would like to use this opportunity to appreciate the government, especially His Excellency the Prime Minister.

This is an example of the international solidarity we have consistently been calling for.

Outbreaks can bring out the best and worst in people.

Stigmatizing individuals or entire nations does nothing but harm the response.

Instead of directing all our energy against the outbreak, stigma diverts our attention and turns people against each other.

I will say it again: this is a time for solidarity, not stigma.

 

[elbows]

Coronavirus: medical chief says UK hopes to delay any outbreak until summer

Prof Chris Witty says a four-point tactical plan is in place to help country cope with virus

www.theguardian.com

While he said it was possible that “an epidemic is rolling our way”, Whitty said he would only talk about the potential number of people who could be affected when the facts were clear. Commenting on the figures that came out of China on Thursday, which rose sharply after authorities changed the way they calculate the figures, Whitty said any irregularity in the numbers coming out of the country were not “deliberately misleading” but instead the “reality is taking a long time to catch up with the facts”.

Well as I've long been saying, its true that established facts and data lag behind the reality, even if an authority is not deliberately distorting the picture. But this does not rule out the prospect of deliberate distortion being present on top of the unavoidable lag.

Also hasnt he got that last statement the wrong way round? Surely its the known facts that have to catch up with reality. To express this the other way round could almost be a wry comment about authoritarian attempts to create their own reality, although I doubt that was the intent in this case. And it was in the Guardian, maybe they scrambled it.

 

[CNT36]

I wouldn't cancel one unless the place was actually on fire.

Seems rash.