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

[cupid_stunt]

A member of the IOC has said that if things are not under control in Japan by May, the Tokyo Olympics could be cancelled.

International Olympic Committee member says Tokyo 2020 could face 'cancellation' if coronavirus isn't under control by May

If coronavirus isn't under control, the Olympics are too big and have too many moving parts to change locations or delay the games.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[two sheds]

Did I read earlier in the thread that someone in authority in Japan said doctors didn't need to take precautions against catching it - or did I hallucinate that? I hope I did hallucinate it, otherwise not much chance of getting it under control by May I wouldn't have thought unless everyone will have caught it by then.

 

[cupid_stunt]

This is not good news.

Cransley School in Northwich, Cheshire, and Trinity Catholic College, Middlesbrough, took the decision following advice for Britons returning from northern Italy to self-isolate.

Cransley head teacher Richard Pollock said some pupils on the trip to Bormio were "showing flu-like symptoms".

Coronavirus: Two schools shuts as pupils return from Italy trips

Schools in Cheshire and Middlesbrough close after pupils show "flu-like symptoms" after skiing trips.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Kilgore Trout]

A comprehensive article issued yesterday on cases so far looking at has fatality rate at 2.3%. The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Outbreak in China—Summary of a China CDC Report

They report on ages 20-29 and then 30-79. 30-79 is a pretty broad age range. I would have thought over 65ish was relevant.

 

[NoXion]

So we can partly blame Typhoid Tarquin and his poncey school skiing trips for crowning this now-septic isle?

 

[Fez909]

So we can partly blame Typhoid Tarquin and his poncey school skiing trips for crowning this now-septic isle?

Farmers markets and ski trips - it's Classwar 2: Germ Warfare

 

[Supine]

I'm not calling the p word yet but I am starting to think about what I'd do if I caught it.

Problem is I work away from home 27-28 days per month. If I went home I'd be in close proximity to my mum who is 78. I'm thinking I'd need to go home and pack her off to stay with my sister. Can't see I could stay in hotels for two weeks while ill.

 

[Supine]

I'm not calling the p word yet but I am starting to think about what I'd do if I caught it.

Problem is I work away from home 27-28 days per month. If I went home I'd be in close proximity to my mum who is 78. I'm thinking I'd need to go home and pack her off to stay with my sister. Can't see I could stay in hotels for two weeks while ill.

 

[mauvais]

At least all is well on the German/Italian border.

 

[weltweit]

Is there a summary of how long it lasts on surfaces, how it can be killed (temperatures?), how to protect against transmission etc? A bit early to ask for the UK yet but worth knowing I think.

We were wondering about this earlier. I recall someone earlier in the thread wondering if the virus could stay active on surfaces for up to 9 days. (might have been me!) Anyhow we are starting to receive air freight from China now - which only takes a few days. Our feeling was that the carrier companies wouldn't be permitted to ship boxes if they could be also be transmitting the virus.

Vitamin D I think is the main vitamin that's been demonstrated effective for resisting flu-like diseases, 1000 IU per day. Having said that I've been taking them for ages and I've just come down with an evil cold.

Oh, good I take lots of vitamins, perhaps I will be immune yay off shortly to have a fruit blend!!

 

[weltweit]

dp

 

[elbows]

Maybe most important (and bad) news: Aylward says mission found no evidence of lots of undetected mild #covid19 cases. That would mean percentage of severe cases and percentage of deaths we’re seeing now is real. Not what anyone wanted to hear.

I have endured listening to a rather tired but interesting Bruce Aylward for ages, and he finally got to this point just before opening up to questions. I have paused watching it for now and can expand on what he said about this point.

He mentioned the fog of war. He mentioned people talking about the tip of the iceberg, and suggested that actually he hadnt seen evidence of huge community transmission beyond that which could be seen clinically. He mentioned existing influenza-like illness sentinel surveillance systems and how when China went back to look, these didnt show anything of the Covid-19 outbreak in November or December, but did in January, but only in certain locations, not nationally. He also gave an example of a location where they tested 320,000 people and had positive rates of 0.49% that later fell to 0.02%

But, crucially, he went on to mention a topic that came up earlier in this thread on a number of occasions - serology surveys. Thats where you sample the population and look for signs of past covid-19 infection in their blood, rather than looking for cases that are infected with the virus at that moment in time. And he said that China has now just started doing these tests. So then he joked that maybe in a weeks time he will be sitting here giving a different picture about how widespread mild cases have actually been.

 

[TopCat]

if that's true, then ~2% of predicted 70% infection rate worldwide = 109 million deaths.

Would be one of the worst pandemics ever.

ouch

 

[two sheds]

We were wondering about this earlier. I recall someone earlier in the thread wondering if the virus could stay active on surfaces for up to 9 days. (might have been me!) Anyhow we are starting to receive air freight from China now - which only takes a few days. Our feeling was that the carrier companies wouldn't be permitted to ship boxes if they could be also be transmitting the virus.


Oh, good I take lots of vitamins, perhaps I will be immune yay off shortly to have a fruit blend!!

1000 IU is quite a high dose - higher than you'd get in normal vits I think. I get these Vitabiotics Ultra Vitamin D3 Optimum Level – 96 Tablets (although I get mine from different supplier - these look cheaper, but need to consider postage too).

 

[elbows]

The latest BBC piece on whether this is pandemic or not had a bit at the end that made me shout at my screen.

Officials now say the WHO will not formally "declare" a pandemic for the new coronavirus, though the term may still be used "colloquially".

In 2009, the organisation was criticised when it declared swine flu a pandemic.

It based the decision on a criteria it no longer uses.

The virus did spread round the world - but it proved to be relatively mild, leading some to argue the organisation had been too hasty.

A mild pandemic is still a pandemic. They were slow to announce it, not too hasty. The problem, apart from the politics and economics of the matter, is that a lot of pandemic planning was setup with assumptions about disease severity built in, and so there were various aspects where the pandemic planning was a poor fit for what the world actually ended up having to deal with.

I would be delighted if we had the same problem this time. Its more likely to be the opposite problem though, especially as China took various extreme measures to get things to the stage they are at there now, and also have some interesting capacity and surge capacity in their healthcare systems. The likes of Bruce Aylward were clearly in awe of how many ventilators and ECMO machines they had at a single hospital. If the UK and other countries do little of the containment that China did, then given the limited capacity of our healthcare systems there could be a very bad situation. I just hope the 2009 pandemic didnt introduce complacency, because in partnership with austerity things could get very grim.

 

[elbows]

 

[Artaxerxes]

Unless your Muslim

 

[elbows]

The test kits that have recently been approved:

Antibody test kits for rapid novel coronavirus detection approved in China

 

[two sheds]

colloidal gold eh

good news though

 

[Supine]

At least all is well on the German/Italian border.

View attachment 199813

Germany doesn't have a land border with Italy

 

[elbows]

colloidal gold eh

good news though

Unlike the number of deaths in Italy. They are up to 11 already.

 

[NoXion]

A "mild pandemic" sounds like being "a little bit pregnant".

 

[elbows]

Well the word pandemic does not say much about disease severity, so these other words are tacked on to describe that side of things.

Meanwhile the US CDC are taking their own approach to public comms.

"It's not so much a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen," Dr Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), said.

"We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-51628990

 

[Supine]

It's looking like a shame that Trump sacked the entire pandemic response leadership team at the CDC and never replaced them

Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response

As it improvises its way through a public health crisis, the United States has never been less prepared for a pandemic.

foreignpolicy.com

 

[elbows]

I wonder if there was some petty bureacratic argument about the UK cruise ship cases being added to the main UK total.

 

[weltweit]

I wonder how many of the tests were the same person being tested more than once?

 

[elbows]

I wonder how many of the tests were the same person being tested more than once?

I asked that earlier but I note that today they have changed the wording of the daily report to say people instead of tests.

 

[elbows]

I don't think there have been any Americans so far. They'd (the US) probably want to get their hands on a couple.

NIH clinical trial of remdesivir to treat COVID-19 begins

Study enrolling hospitalized adults with COVID-19 in Nebraska.

www.nih.gov

A randomized, controlled clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the investigational antiviral remdesivir in hospitalized adults diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has begun at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha. The trial regulatory sponsor is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. This is the first clinical trial in the United States to evaluate an experimental treatment for COVID-19, the respiratory disease first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.

The first trial participant is an American who was repatriated after being quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship that docked in Yokohama, Japan and volunteered to participate in the study. The study can be adapted to evaluate additional investigative treatments and to enroll participants at other sites in the U.S. and worldwide.

 

[Marty1]

It's looking like a shame that Trump sacked the entire pandemic response leadership team at the CDC and never replaced them

Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response

As it improvises its way through a public health crisis, the United States has never been less prepared for a pandemic.

foreignpolicy.com

According to Trump America is well prepared with everything under control regarding the Coronavirus

But - I think we can expect to see the Coronavirus situation being heavily used against the Trump administration by the Dems as there next method of attack, moving on from recent impeachment attempt and prior Russian coercion attempt to remove him from office.

 

[two sheds]

According to Trump America is well prepared with everything under control regarding the Coronavirus

But - I think we can expect to see the Coronavirus situation being heavily used against the Trump administration by the Dems as there next method of attack, moving on from recent impeachment attempt and prior Russian coercion attempt to remove him from office.

How do you feel about this quote from above?

For the United States, the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion.

and

In the spring of 2018, the White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Under fire from both sides of the aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later. But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.

You think criticisms of this are just party politics?