China scrambles to contain 'strengthening' virus

Reuters ^ | January 26th, 2020 | Unattributed

[Mariner]

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Jan 26 (Reuters) - The ability of the new coronavirus to spread is strengthening and infections could continue to rise, China's National Health Commission said on Sunday, with more than 2,000 people in China infected and 56 killed by the disease.

Health authorities around the world are racing to prevent a pandemic after a handful of cases of infection were reported outside China, including in Thailand, Australia, the United States and France.

The mayor of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, said he expected another 1,000 new patients in the city, which was stepping up construction of special hospitals.

The newly identified coronavirus has created alarm because much about it is still unknown, such as how dangerous it is and how easily it spreads between people. It can cause pneumonia, which has been deadly in some cases.

China's National Health Commission Minister Ma Xiaowei said the incubation period for the virus can range from one to 14 days, during which infection can occur, which was not the case with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

SARS was a coronavirus that originated in China and killed nearly 800 people globally in 2002 and 2003.

"According to recent clinical information, the virus' ability to spread seems to be getting somewhat stronger," Ma told reporters.

[Mariner]

The R0 was already above 3.

An RNA virus mutates with each new generation. This virus is different than the one which first emerged from the bowels China's filthy markets.

[datricker]

There modern world did just fine without China. All they do is cause problems and make the world a worse place

[RummyChick]

Everyone who gets the flu will be worried they were exposed to Coronovirus by the Chinese person at the supermarket, ball game etc.

The Drs will say ignore it and say it is the flu

where it comes out in the end is unknown.

There certainly aren’t enough test kits.
Insurance isn’t going to want to pay for a test for common flu without some kind of exposure.

This will be a battle of Joe SIx Pack versus Insurance Industry with Docs caught in the middle

[Mariner]

“where it comes out in the end is unknown”

And government officials in every country of the world, except China, say there’s nothing to worry about.

And that’s a rational position for them to take.

Because this virus will run its course, whatever it may be, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

[independentmind]

And the don’t want a panic in the financial markets, which are heavily invested in international trade.

[catnipman]

in situations like this, viruses essentially can spread exponentially regardless of mutation rate; my guess is that the word “strengthening” is a subtle mistranslation, and the wuham mayor could easily have been trying to say that the spread of the virus was getting worse or “intensifying”

btw, there’s quite a bit of research that indicates that the coronavirus family, because they are very large viruses, don’t mutate all that fast compared to smaller viruses, and it was established that the SARS virus (a coronavirus) didn’t mutate at an unusual rate and that its mutation rate was less than other RNA viruses ...

[null and void]

Too little, too late.

[null and void]

(previous post exposed names on ping list, I asked the Mod Squad to remove)

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

[Grampa Dave]

RO# : Virus Basic reproduction number
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

In epidemiology, the basic reproduction number (sometimes called basic reproductive ratio, or incorrectly basic reproductive rate, and denoted R0, r nought) of an infection can be thought of as the number of cases one case generates on average over the course of its infectious period, in an otherwise uninfected population.[6]

This metric is useful because it helps determine whether or not an infectious disease can spread through a population. The roots of the basic reproduction concept can be traced through the work of Alfred Lotka, Ronald Ross, and others, but its first modern application in epidemiology was by George MacDonald in 1952, who constructed population models of the spread of malaria.

When:

R0 < 1
the infection will die out in the long run. But if

R0 > 1
the infection will be able to spread in a population.

Generally, the larger the value of R0, the harder it is to control the epidemic. For simple models and a 100% effective vaccine, the proportion of the population that needs to be vaccinated to prevent sustained spread of the infection is given by 1; 1/R0.[citation needed] The basic reproduction number is affected by several factors including the duration of infectivity of affected patients, the infectiousness of the organism, and the number of susceptible people in the population that the affected patients are in contact with.

Values of R0 of well-known infectious diseases[1]
Disease Transmission R0
Measles Airborne 12–18
Diphtheria Saliva 6-7
Smallpox Airborne droplet 5–7
Polio Fecal-oral route 5–7
Rubella Airborne droplet 5–7
Mumps Airborne droplet 4–7
HIV/AIDS Sexual contact 2–5
Pertussis Airborne droplet 5.5[2]
SARS Airborne droplet 2–5[3]
Influenza
(1918 pandemic strain) Airborne droplet 2–3[4]
Ebola
(2014 Ebola outbreak) Bodily fluids 1.5-2.5[5]

In populations that are not homogeneous, the definition of R0 is more subtle. The definition must account for the fact that a typical infected individual may not be an average individual. As an extreme example, consider a population in which a small portion of the individuals mix fully with one another while the remaining individuals are all isolated. A disease may be able to spread in the fully mixed portion even though a randomly selected individual would lead to fewer than one secondary case. This is because the typical infected individual is in the fully mixed portion and thus is able to successfully cause infections.

In general, if the individuals who become infected early in an epidemic may be more (or less) likely to transmit than a randomly chosen individual late in the epidemic, then our computation of R0 must account for this tendency. An appropriate definition for R0 in this case is “the expected number of secondary cases produced by a typical infected individual early in an epidemic”.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

[Bon mots]

Taxi Driver in Beijing:

For real.

[justa-hairyape]

Fools. It is not increasing, it has been this bad from the start. Stop lying.

[SamAdams76]

There modern world did just fine without China. All they do is cause problems and make the world a worse place

I do like the teriyaki beef and egg foo young that you get at the chinese restaurants. Also, the fog cutter and scorpion bowls can be pretty potent rum-based drinks. (Make sure you remove the cherry and pineapple as you don't know where they have been).

But other than that, I can pretty much do without anything Chinese.

Well, Confucius had some pretty wise sayings. You cannot open a fortune cookie without learning something. Just don't eat the fortune cookie. It's basically all sugar and you don't know where it's been.

[PIF]

I’d want to look at a more reputable source - wiki is good for a quicky, but often wrong. and sometimes outright false

[PIF]

I do like the teriyaki beef

---

Does your restaurant use dog or cat? teriyaki beef, beef its not

ask around the neighborhood about missing pets is quick way to know the source of the meat.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

catnipman:" ..the wuham mayor could easily have been trying to say
that the spread of the virus was getting worse or “intensifying”>

Exactly !
There is no new information about disease virulence,
but rather acknowledging the increasing spread in the Chinese community.

[Grampa Dave]

Most of the time I would agree with you.

Check the footnotes, 1-7, and where that data came from.

[PIF]

Wiki can be edited by anybody who can say anything - even in the footnotes, which have proven, over the years, to be as unreliable as the rest of the info.

[snoringbear]

“ But other than that, I can pretty much do without anything Chinese.”
*

Don’t eat the bat soup....

[grey_whiskers]

Stopping ALL travel out of China would still help some.