Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away

[ChiTownDoc 21154]

5 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I’ve never understood how the public can be fooled each year into panic over swine flu, bird flu, sars, whatever while the regular flu and pneumonia kill thousands and nobody reports it. 

nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people

[Somnio 751]

Probably bullshit, but I just read someone now predicting Coronavirus will infect 20% of the world's population, and approximately 10% of those infected will die.

Again probably just fear mongering, but that would be 150 million deaths worldwide.

I'm not sure where that ranks on the horrid factor of pandemics, but it seems pretty fucking bad if it turns out to be correct.

[Deej 76796]

And people in China will revert back to eating bats when it's over.

[atomheartbevo 89674]

MERS and Ebola have far higher mortality rates.   10% rate would see bodies in the streets, trees, shrubbery, etc. and rioting.

Speaking of, pay attention to Hong Kong, still a lot of recent demonstrations fresh in memory (before people started retreating indoors) and now the people are pissed that the leadership was partying in Europe while this virus was ramping up.  

I would not want to own airline or aerospace stocks right now.  We may not be far off from shutting down air travel to Asia (hint it’s mostly too late).    Olympics are gonna be a ghost town.  

[atomheartbevo 89674]

2 minutes ago, Deej said:

And people in China will revert back to eating bats when it's over.

How else are you supposed to level up and build up your immunity?

[Colonel Sanders 1336]

19 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I’ve never understood how the public can be fooled each year into panic over swine flu, bird flu, sars, whatever while the regular flu and pneumonia kill thousands and nobody reports it. 

Agree that we've been fooled before, but China's response to this scares me.  How bad is it if they are willing to effectively quarantine 40 million people?  They economic and social impact of doing that is staggering. 

[Deej 76796]

The good news? Fewer Netflix series with celebrity chefs eating weird street food in China.

[Stella Link 534]

I bet the folks at Corona Beer are pissed right now.....

[Neonmoon 38129]

43 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I’ve never understood how the public can be fooled each year into panic over swine flu, bird flu, sars, whatever while the regular flu and pneumonia kill thousands and nobody reports it. 

It is reported. People are idiots. See Anti-Vax movement. It is the reason the annual Flu vaccine rollout gets more play than South Austin’s mom. 

15-50K die every year from a flu strain we have a vaccine for. The ones you think people are panicking about are new strains we don’t have a vaccine for. 

Edited January 25, 2020 by Neonmoon

[ABSR 5313]

48 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I’ve never understood how the public can be fooled each year into panic over swine flu, bird flu, sars, whatever while the regular flu and pneumonia kill thousands and nobody reports it. 

The difference is in the amount of people who die from being infected.  Flu on the US in 2019 killed about 35,000 of about 35,000,000 infected.  As a comparison the Spanish Flu had about a 10%-20% mortality rate and it killed healthy middle aged people as much as very young  and very old.  
 

This virus transfers very easily, has a long gestation period so infected people don’t know it and can spread it unknowingly, it has been killing younger and healthier people and has a much higher mortality rate.  Officials are saying 4% mortality rate, but that is based on the Chinese government’s BS reporting of infections and deaths.

So while regular flu and pneumonia is are under emphasized in deaths, the percentages killed of those infected are much lower and don’t reach pandemic status that this virus could possibly reach.

[FORTY NINE TO ZERO 2652]

You know it’s bad when Starbucks pulls out of China

[Telegraph_it 3357]

This guy read The Strand. 
 

 

 

[Hate 20108]

I need to hear Daryl Morey's thoughts on this before I weigh in.

[ConferenceRoom 6141]

This guy read The Strand. 
 
 
 

Used to be a pretty good sandwich shop in Sunrise Beach called the Strand. Now it’s a realtor. I don’t eat realtor.

[Radical Larry 28621]

Well, you will once this shit turns you into a zombie.

[atomheartbevo 89674]

Official stats:

1126 cases. (Unofficial 1,300+)

41 deaths

Holding steady to older people dying, with around 3% mortality.  

[atomheartbevo 89674]

While I think they will eventually get a grasp on this, we need to shut down air travel with China in the meantime.  
 

[atomheartbevo 89674]

This whole thread is nuts, and I wonder about his math but I’m not an epidemiologist like he is.  
 

 

[atomheartbevo 89674]

But still, he sounds like he’s wanting to freak people out.  
 

Edited January 25, 2020 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89674]

[Bevo 13577]

6 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

This whole thread is nuts, and I wonder about his math but I’m not an epidemiologist like he is.  
 

 

You are going to trust Dr. Feigl-Ding?

[Nice Guy Eddie 13512]

9 hours ago, Telegraph_it said:

This guy read The Strand. 
 

 

 

Side note: bs reporting that won’t commit to a story/rumor. And if a reporter wants to pass on a rumor at least use that word in your tweet. 

[SimonBolivar 10958]

Science Friday was interviewing an expert and talked about how the genome was solved in hours compared to weeks with SARS due to technological advancement in the last twenty years. He was saying that creating an effective vaccine wouldn't be difficult but that approval, manufacturing, and distribution can take up to a year to get it out en masse with the way we currently do it.

He also stated that the genome was as expected with a greater than 95% chance of it coming from a bat or other small mammal.

Edited January 25, 2020 by SimonBolivar

[MNLonghornFUKM 8817]

Is it wrong that I have held my breath when I walked past Chinese people in the airports today?

Yes, because what if they’re Japanese?

[Doc Reeves 6434]

4 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

Yes, because what if they’re Japanese?

maybe he can tell the difference?

[Blotto 23516]

[atomheartbevo 89674]

37 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

Science Friday was interviewing an expert and talked about how the genome was solved in hours compared to weeks with SARS due to technological advancement in the last twenty years. He was saying that creating an effective vaccine wouldn't be difficult but that approval, manufacturing, and distribution can take up to a year to get it out en masse with the way we currently do it.

He also stated that the genome was as expected with a greater than 95% chance of it coming from a bat or other small mammal.

Yeah, I saw something like that, that they are able to identify and track people much earlier in the process, and it will make a huge difference.   

And we can order N95 masks off of Amazon and have them the next day

Oh.  Skip that last part.  

[atomheartbevo 89674]

US Embassy in Wuhan finally evacuating

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-plans-to-evacuate-citizens-from-epidemic-stricken-chinese-city-11579951256

Also, incubation periods for the second or third round are starting to end. So we should see a huge rise in cases.
 

And 60 million are under quarantine.   

Edited January 25, 2020 by atomheartbevo

[Somnio 751]

I know no one wants to be that guy who freaks out over nothing, but look at what is currently taking place.  You have absolutely enormous cities quarantined, embassies being evacuated, corporations  (Disney, Starbucks) shutting down their operations in China, etc.

Isn't this unprecedented?  Are these governments and corporations overreacting, and being ridiculously, super cautious?  Or is there something much more serious going on here than is currently being made public?

This just seems different than anything I've ever witnessed.

[Telegraph_it 3357]

 

[Parliament 14260]

It's definitely unprecedented.  But societies are becoming more and more precautious about these things.  I love a good conspiracy, but I'm not ready this is teotwawki.

[Surly Bevo 24908]

16 minutes ago, Somnio said:

I know no one wants to be that guy who freaks out over nothing, but look at what is currently taking place.  You have absolutely enormous cities quarantined, embassies being evacuated, corporations  (Disney, Starbucks) shutting down their operations in China, etc.

Isn't this unprecedented?  Are these governments and corporations overreacting, and being ridiculously, super cautious?  Or is there something much more serious going on here than is currently being made public?

This just seems different than anything I've ever witnessed.

Maybe there is something there but a few things to keep in the back of your noggin:

1.  China was pretty embarrassed and publicly shamed by much of the world for the lackadaisical manner in which they handled the SARS outbreak in the early aughts.  So while the Chinese government doesn't give two shits about its people they do care about face and how they are perceived on the world stage  There were multiple offiicials whacked over the SARS handling, I am sure the current guys don't want to be accused of making the same mistakes as their predecessors. 

2.  Regardless of point 1 we now live in a world where the very possibility of a little ice or snow will shut a Texas school district down the night before and then the next day everybody sits around and looks at the dry ass ground from home.   The way large scale events are handled has evovled from a measured approach to push the button now now now and avoid even the slightest possible risk that something may happen.  

Edited January 25, 2020 by Surly Bevo

[TwiceHorn 31475]

On 1/22/2020 at 10:18 PM, gsoda3 said:

the crazy thing is wuhan has close to 20 million in its metro area.  other megacities you may or may not have heard of are chengdu, tianjin, chongqing, dongguan, chengdu, shenyang, and guangzhou.  

You said Chengdu twice.  He likes Chendgu.

Try Chonqing for your beautiful body.

 

Edited January 25, 2020 by TwiceHorn

[Neonmoon 38129]

1 hour ago, SimonBolivar said:

Science Friday was interviewing an expert and talked about how the genome was solved in hours compared to weeks with SARS due to technological advancement in the last twenty years. He was saying that creating an effective vaccine wouldn't be difficult but that approval, manufacturing, and distribution can take up to a year to get it out en masse with the way we currently do it.

He also stated that the genome was as expected with a greater than 95% chance of it coming from a bat or other small mammal.

To add 

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/where-coronaviruses-come-from-67011

Quote

TS: Is it known what factors determine whether a spillover event will become much bigger, like what’s happened in Wuhan?

PD: There’s a virological side to it, and then there’s a human dimension to it as well—a population-level dimension. [On] the virology side, it’s pretty clear that some of these viruses don’t bind very well and have trouble developing a raging infection. And some of them do and it’s difficult to predict that. 

From a human population side, I think the real issue is if one of these viruses gets into a wildlife market where the chance of one animal infecting multiple people is much higher, that’s where the risk is highest. If you think about a bat cave in Yunnan . . . people don’t go into the cave much. . . . The bats fly out of the cave and and eat food, they eat insects in the surrounding villages. So the interface expands to a few thousand people. But still, it’s a low probability of the virus getting in, because it [requires] exposure to feces—in bats, these viruses are within the intestine. But if you start hunting bats in the cave, and then you bring them into a market live, then the bats are shedding feces in the market. And then you can infect things like civets and pigs and people. . . . Or if a bat . . . starts foraging for insects around a farm like a pig farm, and pigs get infected, or some of the other animals in the farm, [like] civets and bamboo rats, then suddenly you’ve got 100 animals infected, [and] you can infect a lot more people. I wouldn't be surprised if we find out somewhere in the next few weeks that actually the initial exposure was from another animal—it’s bats, then to another animal, then to people. 

 

[Blotto 23516]

24 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

Maybe there is something there but a few things to keep in the back of your noggin:

1.  China was pretty embarrassed and publicly shamed by much of the world for the lackadaisical manner in which they handled the SARS outbreak in the early aughts.  So while the Chinese government doesn't give two shits about its people they do care about face and how they are perceived on the world stage  There were multiple offiicials whacked over the SARS handling, I am sure the current guys don't want to be accused of making the same mistakes as their predecessors. 

2.  Regardless of point 1 we now live in a world where the very possibility of a little ice or snow will shut a Texas school district down the night before and then the next day everybody sits around and looks at the dry ass ground from home.   The way large scale events are handled has evovled from a measured approach to push the button now now now and avoid even the slightest possible risk that something may happen.  

The power of social media makes it difficult to control the narrative and forces these entities to publicly demonstrate they are taking all possible measures. But hey, the stakes are high, so I'm not terribly bothered by the over-reactions. Personally, I've pledged to stop ordering my bats from Alibaba til this blows over, and will instead subside on  the free-range, locally sourced supply I find lying on the bike path under the Congress Ave bridge.

[0xdeadbeef 1651]

37 minutes ago, Somnio said:

I know no one wants to be that guy who freaks out over nothing, but look at what is currently taking place.  You have absolutely enormous cities quarantined, embassies being evacuated, corporations  (Disney, Starbucks) shutting down their operations in China, etc.

Isn't this unprecedented?  Are these governments and corporations overreacting, and being ridiculously, super cautious?  Or is there something much more serious going on here than is currently being made public?

This just seems different than anything I've ever witnessed.

The fear is real and justified, but is based on two critical pieces of information WE DON'T YET KNOW for sure.   The virus has an incubation period of upto 14 days. So for upto 14 days you can be infected and not know it yourself.  The first key piece that is not yet known (or is not yet being publicly released) is how long you are contagious for those 14 days.  The second unknown is how contagious it really is.  i.e. how easy is it to transmit.    

First World medicine can easily this in small numbers.   The danger is IF you are contagious for most of the incubation period, and IF it is somewhat easy to transmit, we will can't treat everyone who is going to get it. There aren't enough doctors or hospital beds. 

How many total hospital beds are there in an area?  What's the population of that area?

The big tell will be the next few days in the free-press world. 

[GreenspointTexas 9602]

Soooo, basicallt, its pretty much the flu? So it will just wipe through the world, kill off 1-2% of the population (most of which likely are old and feeble or dont have medical care) and then thats it?

 

i mean, it sounds awful, but also sounds like it wont be as bad as... say... SARS or Ebola

[BillyGoatHill 4312]

14 hours ago, Deej said:

And people in China will revert back to eating bats when it's over.

^This. Along with the snakes, scorpions, narwhal penis, and any other item that they are putting the blame too. 

Any word if aggy quaratined their student that just came back from winter break after traveling to Wuhan (and has flu like symptoms)? Fucktards now trying to steal "What starts here....."

Somehow, I'm leaning towards this below.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7922379/Chinas-lab-studying-SARS-Ebola-Wuhan-outbreaks-center.html

Edited January 25, 2020 by BillyGoatHill

[Neonmoon 38129]

9 minutes ago, GreenspointTexas said:

Soooo, basicallt, its pretty much the flu? So it will just wipe through the world, kill off 1-2% of the population (most of which likely are old and feeble or dont have medical care) and then thats it?

 

i mean, it sounds awful, but also sounds like it wont be as bad as... say... SARS or Ebola

Yeah. Just 140 million people . That’s it. 

[Blotto 23516]

10 minutes ago, BillyGoatHill said:

Any word if aggy quaratined their student that just came back from winter break after traveling to Wuhan (and has flu like symptoms)? Fucktards now trying to steal "What starts here....."

Probably oughta quarantine all his livestock as well. 

[Doc Reeves 6434]

41 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Yeah. Just 140 million people . That’s it. 

 

[0xdeadbeef 1651]

49 minutes ago, GreenspointTexas said:

Soooo, basicallt, its pretty much the flu? So it will just wipe through the world, kill off 1-2% of the population (most of which likely are old and feeble or dont have medical care) and then thats it?

 

i mean, it sounds awful, but also sounds like it wont be as bad as... say... SARS or Ebola

SARS only killed under 800 people...Killing 1-2% of the population is a tad more than that. 

But yes, it's basically just a nasty flu. Nothing exotic like your brain dissolving or some sci-fi stuff like that.  Just a flu that can spread faster than we can treat it.

  

 

[tx 3 putt 76958]

Why would one eat a bat ?

[Pato del Muerto 52499]

Lay off them they’re starving

[Doc Reeves 6434]

3 hours ago, Telegraph_it said:

 

I think everyone who travels can agree cataclysmic plague aside, that should certainly make flying, visiting places and eating at nice restaurants abroad a lot nicer for the rest of us  

[BillyGoatHill 4312]

3 hours ago, Telegraph_it said:

 

https://memes.yarn.co/yarn-clip/bbd3eda6-fe3f-4fd1-b0ef-5707970d572a 

 

Joker,  I want you to get straight up to Phu Bai.

Edited January 25, 2020 by BillyGoatHill

[Telegraph_it 3357]

What the hell!?! Turn that plane around!

 

[Neonmoon 38129]

This better be fake 

 

[Surly Bevo 24908]

4 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

This better be fake 

 

Sum Ting Wong

Blo Die Kno

Sum Wil Die

[clapclapclap 9000]

In the Golly Gee, What a Huge Coincidence department:

Virus-hit Wuhan has two laboratories linked to Chinese bio-warfare program

I'm certain it just originated in bats, or snakes, or the latest theory, not a lab worker being careless or making a mistake.

Spoiler

The deadly animal virus epidemic spreading globally may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, according to an Israeli biological warfare expert.

Radio Free Asia this week rebroadcast a local Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory known the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Radio Free Asia reported.

The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses.

Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese bio warfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert biological weapons program.

“Certain laboratories in the institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese BW alignment,” Mr. Shoham told The Washington Times.

Work on biological weapons is conducted as part of a dual civilian-military research and is “definitely covert,” he said in an email.

Mr. Shoham holds a doctorate in medical microbiology. From 1970 to 1991 he was a senior analyst with Israeli military intelligence for biological and chemical warfare in the Middle East and worldwide, holding the rank of lieutenant colonel.

China in the past has denied having any offensive biological weapons. The State Department, in a report last year, said it suspects China has engaged in covert biological warfare work.

A Chinese Embassy spokesman did not return an email seeking comment.

Chinese authorities so far have said the origin of the coronavirus that has killed scores and infected hundreds in in central Hubei Province is not known.

Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state-controlled media initial signs as of Thursday indicated the virus originated from wild animals sold at a seafood market in Wuhan.

One ominous sign, said a U.S. official, is the that false rumors since the outbreak began several weeks ago have begun circulating on the Chinese Internet claiming the virus is part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons.

That could indicate China is preparing propaganda outlets to counter future charges the new virus escaped from one of Wuhan’s civilian or defense research laboratories.

The World Health Organization is calling the microbe novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV. At a meeting in Geneva Thursday, the organization stopped short of declaring a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

The virus outbreak causes pneumonia-like symptoms and prompted China to deploy military forces to Wuhan this week in a bid to halt the spread. All travel out of the city of 11 million people was halted.

The Wuhan institute has studied coronaviruses in the past, including the including the strain that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, H5N1 influenza virus, Japanese encephalitis, and dengue. Researchers at the institute also studied the germ that causes anthrax – a biological agent once developed in Russia.

“Coronaviruses (particularly SARS) have been studied in the institute and are probably held therein,” he said. “SARS is included within the Chinese BW program, at large, and is dealt with in several pertinent facilities.”

It is not known if the institute’s array of coronaviruses are specifically included in biological weapons program but it is possible, he said.

Asked if the new coronavirus may have leaked, Mr. Shoham said: “In principle, outward virus infiltration might take place either as leakage or as an indoor unnoticed infection of a person that normally went out of the concerned facility. This could have been the case with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but so far there isn’t evidence or indication for such incident.”

After researchers sequence of the genome of the new coronavirus it might be possible to determine or suggest its origin or source.

Mr. Shoham, now with the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Israel, said the virology institute is the only declared site in China known as P4 for Pathogen Level 4, a status indicating it uses the strictest safety standards to prevent the spread of the most dangerous and exotic microbes being studied.

The former Israeli military intelligence doctor also said suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent samples to China of what he said were some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus.

In a July article in the journal Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Mr. Shoham said the Wuhan institute was one of four Chinese laboratories engaged in some aspects of the biological weapons development.

He identified the secure Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the institute as engaged in research on the Ebola, Nipah, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses.

The Wuhan virology institute is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. But certain laboratories within it “have linkage with the PLA or BW-related elements within the Chinese defense establishment,” he said.

In 1993, China declared a second facility, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, as one of eight biological warfare research facilities covered by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) which China joined in 1985.

The Wuhan Institute of Biological Products is a civilian facility but is linked to the Chinese defense establishment, and has been regarded to be involved in the Chinese BW program, Mr. Shoham said.

China’s vaccine against SARS is probably produced there.

“This means the SARS virus is held and propagated there, but it is not a new coronavirus, unless the wild type has been modified, which is not known and cannot be speculated at the moment,” he said.

The annual State Department report on arms treaty compliance stated last year that China engaged in activities that could support biological warfare.

“Information indicates that the People’s Republic of China engaged during the reporting period in biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raises concerns regarding its compliance with the BWC,” the report said, adding that the United States suspects China failed to eliminate its biological warfare program as required by the treaty.

“The United States has compliance concerns with respect to Chinese military medical institutions’ toxin research and development because of the potential dual-use applications and their potential as a biological threat,” the report added.

The biosafety lab is located about 20 miles from the Hunan Seaford Market that reports from China say may have been origin point of the virus.

Rutgers University microbiologist Dr. Richard Ebright told London’s Daily Mail that “at this point there’s no reason to harbor suspicions” the lab may be linked to the virus outbreak.