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Day 30: CoViD-19 Outside of China
The slope, as Chris Martenson is observing, is tilting ever upward. Singapore, our “canary in the mine” is currently at 84 cases:
5 cases at 5 days, 10 cases at 8 days, 20 cases at 13 days, 40 cases at 18 days, 80 cases at 27 days. This in a city/country on high alert on February 1.
It looks as if the repatriated Americans from the cruise ship will continue to be included in the data for the cruise ship (621 cases currently) and not aggregated with cases first discovered in persons on American soil. So American case numbers remain at 15 cases. If we can hold at the level or close throughout the end of February that would be a good thing. I don’t know much about the Chinese-American communities in the US. The Chinese community in Singapore is substantial and its connections to Hubei explain the outbreak there. Was there no similar connection with the American communities? A few of the American cases involve a Chinese tourist rising relatives here, and one or more members of a Chinese-American couple having visited relatives in Hubei. And yet our numbers have not (yet) grown. Here’s keeping our fingers crossed. And yet, even if there is no outbreak here, the reliance on China in our supply chains is going to hurt.
Published in General
There are two directions the first derivative of that curve can go tomorrow: 1) up, or 2) down
If it weren’t for the stupid ship quarantine in Japan, the outside of China numbers would be much lower. It is a special case.
I’m not sure why the Japanese cannot properly respond to crises. Northridge Earthquake had 50 deaths. Kobe, a year later and identical magnitude, 2,000.
I don’t want to attack Japan, but bottling all of those people on the ship was a terrible idea.
Absolutely correct, @clavius. But it’s important to not be complacent about the data trends excluding the cruise ship. Numbers are rising in Japan (although I assume it is centered around Tokyo and the apparent “patient zero” that took a taxi ride from the cruise ship in to town. If the asymptomatic period is 24 days (as some believe) there could be a large number of “taxi drivers” that are making their way in urban centers.
We are going to have to wait a couple of weeks to see if the cruise ship is most of the story.
Yes, it’s important to recognize how much we don’t know. With only 1,000 confirmed infections outside of China, we have no idea of the future. There is just not enough data.
But we can hope and pray.
There was a huge jump in reported cases in South Korea today. The Korean Herald (English) has good reporting. There are articles on the economic impact (emergency actions are being taken), a new cluster (see below), and worries about 50,000 Chinese college students returning for spring semester.
Another data point. A Chinese friend of mine is planning a trip to NYC this weekend. She tells me that Uber and taxi drivers are refusing to pick up Chinese fares.
That was happening in San Francisco, too. And given the power of Asian politicians locally that did not go over well.
There are approximately 370,000 students from China studying in American colleges and universities. I am wondering if those students are stuck in China having gone home for the Spring Festival (formerly called the Lunar New Year), or if they never went back to China for that holiday because it didn’t jive with their American holiday breaks.
Perhaps my worries are groundless. The universities seem to be on top of this problem.
Looking at what they are doing it’s basically… nothing. If individuals can spread the disease while asymptomatic ( and it has been proven they can) letting the recent returnees from China mingle with the other students pretty much guarantees there will be cases on college campuses with Chinese foreign students.
S. Korea cases are now over 100. The number of cases has tripled in the last 24 hours.
The graphs are a bit unhelpful: it would be better to show new diagnosed cases rather than total accumulated. After all, people who have recovered are no longer a risk to themselves or others.
We have a Chinese manufacturer and a major university near here (Go Cocks). Also, we have Chinese students in our ESL classes. I no longer teach but am often asked to assist in pre and post testing since I am one of only two here certified to give that standardized test. Canary? I sure hope not.
Comparing the Northridge and Kobe earthquakes solely on the basis of magnitude is like comparing apples and oranges. The two places have completely different tectonic and geographic situations. The Japanese pack many more people into a much smaller area using taller buildings, and due to the mountainous terrain, many of them have to live on landfill. The Kobe-Osaka region has at least 3 times the population density of LA, with the port area being even higher. The biggest cause of death in Kobe was from fires that couldn’t be put out, because the roads had been demolished in the hardest-hit areas. They applied lessons learned afterward, and having built a house here, I can attest to how seriously they take earthquake standards in the construction industry.
As for the Diamond Princess (DP), what other options were there? Japan had trouble finding places to quarantine 4 plane-loads of Japanese citizen evacuees from Wuhan, maybe one-sixth of the number on the DP. Japan didn’t have to let it moor at Yokohama, it would have been much easier if they had refused it entry into Japan and treated it like the Westerdam, which was forced to remain at sea near Southeast Asia for most of the last couple of weeks. By allowing the DP pierside, but keeping everyone onboard (the same status as if it was underway), they were able to provide medical support but limited the possibility of spreading the coronavirus in Japan. Whenever someone on the ship showed signs of possibly being infected, the Japanese tested them right away. For people who tested positive, they removed them from the ship and put them in a Japanese hospital for treatment. At this point in time, there’s no way to know whether people who’ve popped positive over the last couple of weeks were infected before or after this quarantine began. The Japanese have shown a willingness to put their own medical personnel in harms way, as a few of them have caught the coronavirus. One more constraint is that Japan has a limited amount of equipment to do the testing, and the testing regime has been evolving as virologists have learned more about this coronavirus. By allowing the DP pierside, I think they took a more humanitarian approach than other options available, a move more valuable than worrying about the number of infected. If it turns out to be the wrong approach, then the WHO will have also learned something.
“Comparing the Northridge and Kobe earthquakes solely on the basis of magnitude is like comparing apples and oranges.”
Number of points:
• As an one who inspected earthquake damage in the Northridge quake, magnitude is not always a good indicator. In the Northridge quake there seemed to be tributary faults that generated great damage over 30 miles from the epicenter in places like Santa Monica and Santa Clarita, while leaving closer areas relatively unscathed. Very little is known about earthquakes. Also the Northridge quake of ’94 had almost the same magnitude ( only slightly higher) than the Sylmar quake of ’71, but anyone who experienced both quakes like I did will tell you that there was a world of difference between the two.
• Many of the older homes in Kobe had heavy tile roofs which upon the earthquake acceleration created a huge moment force from the roofs ripping the houses apart. The Japanese freeway concrete bridges are also much heavier than those in California, because the Japanese thought more is better. Big time Wrongo. The California bridges are honey-combed with empty voids while the Japanese are solid concrete which again created this huge moment force which when hit by the earthquake was much harder for the structure to resist. Downed freeway bridges were a big problem at both Northridge and Kobe but bigger at Kobe.
• Also say what you want about LA , but it has probably the toughest earthquake codes in the world and much the housing and building is relatively new so it is much more likely to be designed to resist earthquakes. There are places like Seattle, Portland and Tacoma which could be hit with a much, much bigger quake than LA would ever get but have not been designed for it potentially creating a huge disaster if the really Big One hits those areas like it did in 1700 AD.
@iwe, you may prefer https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/.
I don’t feel like copying and pasting–sorry!
http://ricochet.com/652840/archives/pit-19-no-not-that-way/comment-page-1893/#comment-4708205
See this and following comments for my new numbers today and brief analysis. (One comment, I believe, is on the following page.)
The main number I follow is like a deal with Darth Vader, getting worse all the time.
However, the number of recovered people factors into the death rate among final outcomes: deaths/(deaths+recoveries). An important figure. (The rate of deaths/infections doesn’t indicate actual death rate when new infections are coming in faster than old infections are moving on their final outcomes.)
A great site. Also Johns Hopkins site here and the SCMP widget here. There are probably other great sites, but those are the ones I know.
There’s actually too much data for laymen like me to manage. I figure a guy just picks 1-3 sites giving data he can understand and keeps an eye on things there.
This is a bad time to leave the country for business or vacation….you might have trouble getting back in.
My brother (cancer researcher for a big pharmaceutical company) texted the siblings yesterday that there’s no need to panic, but that we should probably sock in enough supplies for 3-4 weeks in case of the need to stay in our homes for a period of time (my three siblings all live in metro areas). My brother said he’s making preparations because his company is now asking all employees who travel abroad to self quarantine for 14-21 days. His company produces vaccines and he said and if they’ve raised their level of alert we probably should too.