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Russia has closed its border with China in a desperate bid to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus that has so far killed 170 people. The drastic measure was announced on Thursday after every corner of China was confirmed to have cases of the highly contagious disease. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said the drastic measure was necessary because the country 'had to do everything it could to protect its people'. He said it would come into effect immediately. As well as shutting off the Far East border, Russia has limited all railway links with China from January 31, leaving...

The US government is rushing to evacuate Americans from the coronavirus-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan as officials warned the deadly strain's spread is picking up speed. A charter flight is scheduled to fly from the Wuhan Tianhe International Airport to San Francisco International Airport on Tuesday. The US consulate in Wuhan began reaching out to all Americans registered as living in the city - of which there are said to be roughly 1,000 - last week to offer them a seat on the plane. The State Department warned that the single flight will have 'limited capacity' to transport private US...

Containment of nCoV is, and should be, the highest priority in China. This requires gov, health care/PH system & the public to work together to ID those w/ sx, get them tested rapidly, get them isolated (home or hospital), provide good med care while keeping HCWs protected. (2/x)The global community should be doing all it can to be helping China w/ the terrible set of challenges it is facing in its effort to contain nCoV. It is not only the right thing to do for China, but it is critical in trying to help prevent global spread. (3/x)We don’t know...

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD - the new coronavirus is a 3.8!!! How bad is that reproductive R0 value? It is thermonuclear pandemic level bad - never seen an actual virality coefficient outside of Twitter in my entire career. I’m not exaggerating... #WuhanCoronovirus #CoronavirusOutbreak 2/ “We estimate the basic reproduction number of the infection (R_0) to be 3.8 (95% confidence interval, 3.6-4.0), indicating that 72-75% of transmissions must be prevented by control measures for infections to stop increasing... 3/ ... We estimate that only 5.1% (95%CI, 4.8-5.5) of infections in Wuhan are identified, and by 21 January a total of 11,341...

BEIJING: President Xi Jinping said China was facing a "grave situation" as the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak jumped to 41, overshadowing celebrations of the Chinese New Year that began on Saturday (Jan 25). China also announced further transport restrictions. With more than 1,400 people infected worldwide, most of them in China, Hong Kong declared a virus emergency, scrapped celebrations and restricted links to mainland China. Australia confirmed its first four cases on Saturday, Malaysia confirmed four and France reported Europe's first cases on Friday, as health authorities around the world scrambled to prevent a pandemic. The United States...

As infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists race to contain the outbreak of the novel coronavirus centered on Wuhan, China, they’re getting back up that’s been possible only since the explosion in genetic technologies: a deep-dive into the DNA of the virus known as 2019-nCoV. Analyses of the viral genome are already providing clues to the origins of the outbreak and even possible ways to treat the infection, a need that is becoming more urgent by the day: Early on Saturday in China, health officials reported 15 new fatalities in a single day, bringing the death toll to 41. There are...

Thought it may be a good idea to have a place to follow all the fast moving events in one place updates coming in fast

The country is facing a "grave situation" Mr Xi told senior officials, according to state television. The coronavirus has killed at least 41 people and infected some 1,400 since its discovery in the city of Wuhan. Travel restrictions have already hit several affected cities. And from Sunday, private vehicles will be banned from central districts of Wuhan, the source of the outbreak. A second emergency hospital is to be built there within weeks to handle 1,300 new patients, and will be finished in half a month, state newspaper the People's Daily said. It is the second such rapid construction project:...

SEVENTEEN people have died from coronavirus as more than 500 cases of the killer strain were confirmed, officials have said. Latest figures reveal 471 cases in China, with four in Thailand, two in Hong Kong and one each in the US, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. There is also unconfirmed reports of a case in Mexico. It comes as British experts said up to 10,000 people could already be infected - adding that we can't rule out the possibility" there could already be a case in the UK. Professor Neil Ferguson, an expert at Imperial College London, said the new...

A measure of international trade often seen as a bellwether for the global economy has crashed to its lowest level ever, fueling fears we could be heading for another 2008-style crash. Back in November, the Baltic Dry Index dropped below 500 for the first time in recorded history, and it has kept falling ever since. On Wednesday morning it fell to a low of 369. To put that into perspective, the index was as high as 1,222 in August, and it has fallen 84% from a recent peak of 2,330 in late 2013. The Baltic Dry Index measures how much...

But I must tell you, to IMF officials, all of these crises looked depressingly similar. Each country, of course, needed a loan, but more than that, each needed to make big changes so that the loan could really work. Almost always, countries in crisis need to learn to live within their means after a period of excess—exports must be increased, and imports cut—and the goal is to do this without the most horrible of recessions. Naturally, the fund’s economists spend time figuring out the policies—budget, money supply, and the like—that make sense in this context. Yet the economic solution is...

Roger Revelle's Discovery Before scientists would take greenhouse effect warming seriously, they had to get past a counterargument of long standing. It seemed certain that the immense mass of the oceans would quickly absorb whatever excess carbon dioxide humanity might produce. Roger Revelle discovered that the peculiar chemistry of sea water prevents that from happening. His 1957 paper with Hans Suess is now widely regarded as the opening shot in the global warming debates. This essay describes Revelle's discovery in detail and places it in the context of Cold War and other contemporary concerns which gave him essential material support...