Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)
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The curves are only as good as the data, which is the number of people tested.
It took Hubei 12 days after its lockdown, before the number of new infections peaked , so I think we can expect something similar.
That would be consistent with:
1. a typical 5day incubation period (although some are longer)
2. a delay in testing
3. the rate of infection peaking, but working with a larger infected base.
We're only in Day 8 after the Italy lockdown, so yeah, 5000 new confirmed infections per day looks realistic.
No, once the virus made the jump to a human, it would have gotten out of China even if China had done everything right. It's just the nature of the disease. Front line doctors in Wuhan only became aware of COVID-19 late into December, but by then the virus had already been spreading for weeks. Given the amount of both national and international traffic from Wuhan, it's almost a mathematical certainty that someone outside Hubei or even outside China would have already been infected.
At the end of December, we knew almost nothing about the disease. Even assume the government took it very seriously and engage the response for a SARS-level threat, it wouldn't be enough to stop the spread, because SARS-COV-2 behave very differently from SARS. It's far far more infectious. The only way to stamp it out was to put the whole country under the max-level quarantine for two months, which was a far more strict measure than a SARS-type threat would have called for. It's a far more strict measure than pretty much any known virus would have called for. Even two month quarantine does not guarantee success.
The first death of a confirmed COVID-19 patient occurred only on 13 Jan (or was it 12?). NO government would devastate its economy and ruin the finance of countless of its own citizens and companies to stop a new disease that hadn't even produced a single death. To suggest otherwise is just ludicrous.
One can argue that had the Chinese system functioned better, the spread of the virus would have been held back for an additional week or so. One week would have saved over a thousands lives in China, but it wouldn't have prevented the international spread, only delay it.
There were mistakes made by the Chinese government. But those mistakes had hurt mostly Chinese people, in particular the HCWs in Wuhan, but had minimal impact on the international spread.
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Firstly, the theory that the Wuhan seafood market is the source of the virus has been refuted. We simply don't know where the virus originated. Unless proven otherwise, your argument is flawed. Secondly, there are hundreds of new virus and bacteria that cause harms to humans over the years. If you wanted to play the blame game, then no country on earth is innocent. Thirdly, China isn't the only one that consume bushmeat. I would argue there is pretty much no country on earth that don't consume bushmeat in one way or another. Lastly, no sane government would lock down their countries for an unknown virus that have not caused any death yet.
If everything went 100% right, that is a big if. All the westerners and liberals in China seems to think China should do everything 100% right. If not, China is evil. The only difference in outcome from a more competent government in Wuhan is that China might have flatten the curve a bit and a lockdown might be enacted a few days early. That's still a big if.
Who is downplaying the risk right now. It is Trump, Boris and endless western politicians. If you have done a better job than China to contain the virus, then you can play the high moral ground. The truth is most countries just downplay, contempt, and deny when confront with this new virus. What we witness is that many western countries who play moral high ground just display that they simply would rather lie and let their people died. that means their initial criticism of China is BS because they are willing to let hundreds of thousands of their people died for sake of their economy and reelection.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
I ventured outside as Trump was declaring a national emergency and soon afterwards parking lots were full and there was stop and go traffic going to Costco. Last week I was at Costco, even though there was more activity than usual, the store seem to be well stocked but when I passed the rice section, the Asians took all the rice. First time I ever saw all the rice gone at Costco. Asians are like the canary in the mine but some are excessive. Everything is the apocalypse to them. Here in Northern California last year PG&E was cutting power in rural areas during heat waves that they said would be prone to wildfires to lessen the fire danger. An Asian I know bought a lot of bottled water thinking all the power was going to be turned off thinking the whole Bay Area was going to be shut down. It turned out to be only a minor inconvenience. But today because of the coronavirus, didn't need to buy water but bought a lot of toilet paper and paper towels before the rush.
Well a lot of the older gen and immigrants are shellshocked from poverty. They have hoarding issues on a regular basis.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
The ones I know were middle-aged and most were born in the US.
I'm in this wechat group and a bunch of stay home moms are bragging about how they pretty much looted every CVS and walgreens for masks and now they're saying how they got masks from China to resell in the US. Idk why they're letting people know about this.
Idk what to think.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Well they might end up like this guy.
If they try to sell them on like on Amazon, Amazon can get sued if they're defective.
It's a private chat group. I suppose they didn't think anyone outside it would know.