Posted on 01/24/2020 9:51:30 AM PST by Zhang Fei
China's communist rulers draw on a deep well of public acquiesence -- partly due to control of the internet, no free press and a brutally efficient security apparatus.
"I can't imagine there would be too many countries that would be able to do something on this scale as quickly as China has done," Kamradt-Scott said.
Even so, Kamradt-Scott warned a lockdown that extends for a week or more would produce "growing levels of discontent and frustration".
- Quarantine 'illusion' -
Kamradt-Scott said that, even though the virus would inevitably spread, the quarantine appeared designed to buy authorities time to put in place other measures.
He cited China's plans to build a 1,000-bed hospital in Wuhan in just 10 days.
Zi, from the S. Rajaratnam School, also said there was some hope the quarantines would have a level of success in containing the outbreak.
"I believe it is possible given China's expertise in this area of population control, or urban control," Zi said.
Yet the history of quarantine suggests controls will be far from watertight.
The concept emerged in Venice in the 14th century, where ships arriving at the city state from infected ports were held offshore for 40 days.
Over the centuries the US attempted quarantines to combat yellow fever, European nations tried to subdue cholera outbreaks, and several West African nations sealed off townships to hem in Ebola in the last decade.
Quarantine is "purely an illusion", said Bruno Halioua, a historian of medicine at the University of Paris IV.
"Quarantine has never worked. Each time, there have been problems."
And after seeing the situation in Wuhan first-hand, Guan Yi of Hong Kong University shared an equally pessimistic outlook.
"I've never felt scared," Guan said. "This time I'm scared."
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
So many misconceptions on these threads...
The question of China opening up the Internet is a multi-edged sword for them, and somewhat irrelevant, here, speaking to “getting a handle on it” (the virus) promptly.
In this case, actually, the Chinese doctors were working with outside experts almost as soon as the problem manifest itself seriously. For one, the virus genome was mapped exceptionally early on, and published*, due to a group of Chinese doctors working with the University of Sidney (Australia.)
*I’ve read the documentation online, not that I understand the mapping! I do have a question though, for any FReeper knowledgeable: Once that genome is mapped, how much does that tell the experts?
I can speak to that personally. My brother, a few years back, got a viral respiratory infection (not flu, the Dr.’s said) which lead to bacterial necrotic pneumonia. It was touch and go there for a few days. Lots of heavy antibiotics and other treatments / care pulled him through, and he came out of it (including initial rehab) with about 75% reduced lung function. Time and therapy restored that to about 1/3 of what he had going in to the whole ordeal.
Secondary (and often fatal) bacterial infections were quite common with Spanish flu victims who survived the initial viral infection (and sometimes immune system over-response).
I would expect the mortality rate in any area to go down... unless or until the health care system is overwhelmed. This must be the reason China is scrambling to build, not one, but TWO large hospitals* in the Wuhan area in the next several days. They expect to be overwhelmed, otherwise (and may be anyway - we shall see.)
*I just saw that on CBS this evening, with vids of the construction.
(Yeah, I know, CBS, but we are helping out my elderly Mom and she flipped it on.)
IF this virus gets here in a big bad way, thank God we have Trump, because this is exactly the sort of action (”Jump! Jump NOW!!”) that may be needed.
And now, according the Canadian National Lab, patients are contagious up to five days prior to the manifestation of symptoms. Current R0 is between 3.6 and 4.0. On par with Rubella.
So it is interesting to consider the firing of a husband-wife Chinese team of scientist that led Virology at the same lab in March 2019 after they were caught in the smuggling of coronavirus from that same lab to China.
Son’s trip to Singapore just got cancelled. Thank God.
Hey! I was wondering how that all turned out. This is good news for you(and of course you son too).
That’s how I feel too. The media makes everything into a crisis SARS Ebola Y2K ... the list goes on and it always is nothing.
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