SARS II: Respiratory Boogaloo

SARS didn’t happen right before China’s top holiday when hundreds of millions are set to travel. Quarantining an entire province may seem like an overreaction in the West, but not when you’re a techno-authoritarian superpower obsessed with controlling people. And the WHO has applauded their efforts.

I’ve been away since this virus broke out, but Chinese social media is buzzing with hysteria (and comedy). We’ll see what happens before I’m scheduled to return in two weeks. I already got my surgical masks ready.

Guangdong that sounds like a very painful and humiliating medical condition!

My point is that we can't assume anything based on population size and location. If, for example, a particularly nasty disease showed up in say, Los Angeles, and the government quarantined the city, that would in no way tell us if it had spread beyond it, or the nature of the impact it was having on the residents.

To shift it into technology terms, lots of people today think that Y2K was no big deal, since there were no major disasters caused by it, but we all know that the reason for it not being a big deal was because lots of dedicated programmers busted their asses to fix the problem. It may be that the only reason SARS got legs is because the Chinese were unwilling to address the issue. By clamping down now, the Chinese may well be preventing this from becoming as bad as SARS was. We don't know, and we can't know, due to the fact that China is a relatively closed society.

If you want something to worry about, then consider the fact that games which reference a pandemic are suddenly very popular in China right now.

Hopefully the experts contain this one better than the TDS outbreaks.

It's too late.

If the news is to be believed there are already suspected cases in America, the UK, and several Asian countries.

Though the quarantine might help slow it down.

Guess what is in Wuhan and only 20 miles from this seafood market?

It's the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory. The only one in China designed to study wonderful things like Ebola and SARS.

For all we know someone got infected in the lab and to save face they are blaming it on the seafood market.

^Yes, but otoh TDS had a full 90% of the corporate media spreading it daily throughout the country, 24/7, for 3 years, so the two viruses are not really comparable anyway. Still, it's infected the minds of more 1/3 of our country.

Chinese were probably making bio weapons in the plant in Wuhan and it got loose.

Now we are all going to die when it mutates to it's final form.

Quarantine is up to 35 million people.

There’s a nurse on YouTube claiming to be from Wuhan and that 90,000 people are infected. I actually hope that’s true, because it means the mortality rate is significantly lower than reported so far.

The Chinese are supposedly rushing to build hospitals to handle all the cases.

the conspiracy theory train is already rolling! Supposedly the U.S. deliberately released the virus in China. Oops! I see in post #46 The Night Funky bought a ticket! Okay maybe he's just passing info along not necessarily believing it..........or so the Germans would have us believe!

Building a functioning hospital within the planned ten day time frame would be nothing short of a miracle. If they can get even remotely close to doing it minus all the bells and whistles, then staff the place with triage and admissions procedures ironed out I'll take my hat off to them. Two years ago I was involved in the planning for a new build which is still not up and running.

I've heard that this seems to be the case, it has a lower mortality than Ebola or SARS thus far, which is encouraging. What we don't know is how long it's incubation period is or how readily it is transmitted. If it's typical for similar viruses we are looking at something which is primarily a danger whilst airborne if good hygiene practises are observed as most viruses die quickly on dry fabrics and sterilised hard surfaces.

Sadly they keep insisting on using face masks in public places which given the humidity would seem to me to actually increase the infection risks.

Initial reports out of Harvard were that it had an R_0 of 3.8; I think I read current reports putting it at 2.5.

China has a great chance of succeeding - there is little room for dissent which of course slows down progress. This is not because of an authoritarian regime, it's a Confucian values cultural thing. It's all about "harmony" above all else - going along to get along. South Korea is a free & democratic country but their mindset is similar. Deference to your superiors, respecting social rank in all areas, knowing your place in society, and fear of standing out in a crowd. Nothing promotes a "team effort" on a grand scale like an entire society on the same sheet of music, for better or worse.

Many Chinese also think ground up bones of endangered species give you a better boner too. Interesting about face masks not necessarily being an asset versus a liability - basically it's a crapshoot whether they will catch it or not. And damn if those incubation periods are long.....wow this could end up getting pretty bad on a near global scale.

That's high and obviously represents a rapid spread, but not sure why it's being touted in such hyperbolic terms by someone as respected as Eric Feigl Ding, especially as he's putting unreliable data on Twitter and he should know very well we've seen a 5.0 in recent years during the South Korean outbreak.

Impressing the risks upon the public is one thing, but using terms like "holy mother of god.....never seen....outside of twitter in my entire career" seems irresponsible to me and very possibly attention grabbing.

Absolutely. Couldn't agree more for once

What I'm expecting this to mean in practise is something akin to a concrete version of a disease outbreak centre, which will operate in the short term as a holding and triage facility and staffed by volunteers brought from around the country, rather than a rounded and functional hospital which could operate in it's initial form as a public facility after the immediate crisis.

In other words a basic structure which serves a similar role to a field hospital.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/mani...y-lab-scientist-investigation-china-1.5307424

Probably evacuations.
There are a couple thousand Americans in the Wuhan area. There is a consulate as well.

That or they're delivering CDC folks.

Probably both if China is letting CDC people into the country.