Politics The COVID-19 pandemic news and discussion.

[Junglejim]

PH suspends issuance of visa on arrival to Chinese nationals amid coronavirus alarm

The Immigration Bureau clarifies there is no order stopping Chinese nationals from entering the country.

cnnphilippines.com

 

[Ivan le Fou]

Half of Wuhan fled before lockdown, raising risk of coronavirus spread

Nearly half the population of the Chinese city at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak left town before it was put on lockdown, officials have revealed. Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, said on Sunda…

nypost.com

 

[Mordoror]

Confirmed secundary contamination in Japan and Germany ( patients that never traveled to China)

 

[Junglejim]

God damn it... so possible scenarios just went bigger

 

[Junglejim]

My only source of positivity is I live in a country where an entire town ate Anthrax and they just got a hurt tummy.

 

[Mordoror]

Last data updates
4474 confirmed infections
65 in countries outside China (including Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Ivory Coast, where the potential for transmission is great because of poor health infrastructures
107 Deaths (mostly 48y old and more with pre-existing diseases)
2 secundary infections confirmed outside China (one in Japan, a bus driver that drived Chinese turists and one in Germany)
The German case is interesting because the source is seemingly an asymptomatic patient meaning that the virus is contagious even if you don't have symptoms
Which means that the R0 (rate of transmission) may be greater than expected (a model of a team of Hong Kong speaks about a R0 between 3.5 and 5.5)

 

[Mordoror]

Update (it is evolving quickly)
5947 confirmed cases
132 deaths

 

[Picanha]

Yeah right besides me, I also work close to Starnberg. The infected are Webasto employees which had a Chinese women visiting for training. Her parents are from Wuhan and also sick.

Webasto closed office today until sunday.

There are 4 infected collegues of the man and he had contact with 40 other people.

Meanwhile we hear "stay calm" "infection super unlikely", but in todays world things are really only a plane ride away.

The EU and German gov. act irresponsible again. All flights to China should be cancelled immediately and quarantine for those coming in.

Only money talks.

Because if this would happen the stock exchanges would crash, better to take the risk of a pandemic.

 

[bdpopeye]

Aerial photos taken on Jan. 28, 2020 shows the construction site of Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province.



A laborer works at the construction site of Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Jan. 28, 2020.

The construction of Huoshenshan Hospital, a temporary hospital for treating patients infected with the novel coronavirus, is underway in Wuhan. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)

 

[Ivan le Fou]

I wonder what they'll do with these once the crisis is over. Decontaminating these buildings is going to be a pita.

I am a surprised they didn't go for military NBC field hospitals.

 

[colin traveller]

Six Seafarers Fall Ill as Coronavirus Outbreak Continues

Six seafarers aboard a French-operated container ship have fallen ill during a voyage from China to...

maritime-executive.com

 

[BravoZulu]

Australia is going to airlift 600+ Aussie citizens from China but will be quarantining all of them on Christmas Island detention centre which has a medical centre

 

[Euroamerican]

^---Good! That's what everyone should be doing with its inbound travelers.

 

[Picanha]

I also find this very odd. Either their health system offers no immediate resources and the spreading virus is already clogging available hospital and quarantine facilities or the amount of patients is expected to rise exponentially. In any case a country of 1 billion should be able to quarantine a few thousand patients without having to immediately build new hospitals. A worrying sign to me.

 

[Mordoror]

I also find this very odd. Either their health system offers no immediate resources and the spreading virus is already clogging available hospital and quarantine facilities or the amount of patients is expected to rise exponentially. In any case a country of 1 billion should be able to quarantine a few thousand patients without having to immediately build new hospitals. A worrying sign to me.

Nope
Nobody can with such transmission rate
Medicalised quarantine rooms are complex systems (with over-pressure/under-pressure air flow, filtered air, several sas and doors and a specific architecture). Most western countries have at most a handful of them. In France we have 4 to 6 by hospital and i guess that this is the norm in Europe and USA. With 32 major hospitals that gives a capacity of less than 200 patients, 300 max if my numbers are not correct.
I dunno how much major hospitals they have in China but don't forget that to the contrary to small europena countries, they won't transfer a patient from a region to another. So i can understand how they have their hands full with around 5000 confirmed cases quanratined in a single region.

 

[Junglejim]

I stand by my statement that the best country for this to happen to is China. From the looks of it they are trying to get on top of it and have been open. I want to see any other country build hospitals that fast and quarantine, what would be an entire population of some western countries.

If this happened somewhere else, there would have been conspiracy theorists and people busting out of quarantine.

As for those two hospitals, they seem to be more triage centers to isolate the rest and keep the other hospitals from being flooded

 

[PEMM]

I stand by my statement that the best country for this to happen to is China. From the looks of it they are trying to get on top of it and have been open. I want to see any other country build hospitals that fast and quarantine, what would be an entire population of some western countries.

If this happened somewhere else, there would have been conspiracy theorists and people busting out of quarantine.

Of course we have to remember that the conditions for outbreak like this (market that sells live wild animals for food, butchers them on the spot, drains the remains to public drain and doesn't use refrigeration), and very high population density, don't exist in most of those other countries. In these small population density countries, it's going to be simpler to quarantine those who are infected and find people they were in contact with.

So no, I think best place for such outbreak would have been some small, rich island nation with small population that could easily have been quarantined and cut off by other countries. It would only have been on the minor news for a short period of time. This happened in the worst possible time in high population density area.

I caught the swine flu while in Army, and in those conditions (12 people / room) it spread like wildfire, unlike in civilian world. I'm just saying this to remind that conditions matter, a lot.

And if I remember correctly from earlier discussion, 50% of the people had already left. So it's not like China succeeded that much better than other states would, when trying to stop movement of large populations.

 

[Picanha]

Nope
Nobody can with such transmission rate
Medicalised quarantine rooms are complex systems (with over-pressure/under-pressure air flow, filtered air, several sas and doors and a specific architecture). Most western countries have at most a handful of them. In France we have 4 to 6 by hospital and i guess that this is the norm in Europe and USA. With 32 major hospitals that gives a capacity of less than 200 patients, 300 max if my numbers are not correct.
I dunno how much major hospitals they have in China but don't forget that to the contrary to small europena countries, they won't transfer a patient from a region to another. So i can understand how they have their hands full with around 5000 confirmed cases quanratined in a single region.

Hm maybe I overestimated the numbers of hospital beds in general they are ranging from 3 to 9 per 1000 inhabitants.

It makes more sense what Junglejim said them just being triage centers.

Quickly built without basement etc.

 

[Fluff]

Hm maybe I overestimated the numbers of hospital beds in general they are ranging from 3 to 9 per 1000 inhabitants.

It makes more sense what Junglejim said them just being triage centers.

Quickly built without basement etc.

Sort of, because if they are just wards, then either military 'temporary' buildings would suffice, or just take over a hotel etc, everything you need is there, ship in a few hundred nurses and off you go.

This could be 'make work' so we can all see them doing something, but gathering a few thousand builders and then sending them home once work complete is probably not the best plan in a pandemic...….

 

[Ivan le Fou]

That being said, if these building are up to the stereotypical Chinese standards, and thus prone to, let's say, collapsing...

I mean... that's one way of dealing with sick people! Technically, if you are dead you are not sick anymore and even less likely to spread the disease!


edit: fifth patient detected in France. Two have been placed in intensive care.
edit: Beijing has allegedly sent the genome of the coronavirus to Moscow in order for a vaccine to be elaborated.