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Day 29: CoViD-19 Outside of China
We have breached 1,000 cases outside of China. And sadly there are some indications that just like China’s numbers may be suspect, there are some other countries that may not be entirely scrupulous in their counting. North Korea is reporting no cases (unlikely) and a Thai official in Phuket has admitted to underreporting. The news from Phuket is disturbing because it is a major tourist area in Thailand.
Fourteen cases have been added to the count for the US. Presumably, there are the Americans returned from the cruise ship in Japan.
While I am focused on whether CoViD-19 is a “pandemic” (it is), there are sad stories coming out of China. As reported in Variety:
A Chinese film director and his entire family have died from the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.
Chang Kai, a film director and an external communications officer at a Hubei Film Studio subsidiary, died in hospital on Feb. 14 from the virus now called COVID-19, according to a statement from the studio. He was 55.
But Chang’s death was not the first in his family—the Chinese media reported that Chang’s father and mother were infected and died one after the other. Chang and his sister, who looked after their parents at home, were both infected with the virus as a result. His sister died just hours later. Chang’s wife is also infected, still alive, and is still battling the virus in an intensive care unit.
A note written by Chang, said to be his last words, has gone viral on the Chinese Internet. Chang wrote that his father succumbed to the illness on the first day of the Lunar New Year (January 25). “My father had a fever, cough and trouble breathing. [We] tried to send him to the hospital but none of the hospitals we visited took him, because they had no more beds,” he wrote.
Instead, Chang brought his father home where ha died a few days later, having passed on the virus to the other family members. Chang’s note said that he and his wife were denied the opportunity to be treated early. Wuhan< built a new hospital in six days, but capacity to handle the virus remains strained. Chang bade farewell to his family, friends and his son, who is reportedly studying in the U.K.
Chris Martenson’s latest video on CoViD-19 is here.
Published in General
This is an interesting–and encouraging–story about the ongoing Covid-19 vaccine research happening in Boston and around the world.
Outside of mainland China. A number of cases are in Hong Kong and Macau.
On the HK side, expect protests to focus on virus-related stuff–like the Fo Tan quarantine area, where I believe Diamond Princess escapees are due to arrive tomorrow–until coronavirus fades somewhat and the Legislative Council elections loom closer.
Clash Cam–http://tiny.cc/clashcam–is often active for live feeds. There’s one now.
For news, Hong Kong Free Press and South China Morning Post go-to sources.
I get most of my coronavirus news from SCMP, and get number updates from the SCMP widget, Worldometers, and the Johns Hopkins site. Worldometers is good for calculating the death rate among out-of-mainland China cases that have reached their outcome. (In recent memory, it flits around between 2 and 4 percent.(
Surprisingly, considering their reputation for competence, the Japanese have completely mismanaged the situation with the cruise ship.
Apparently the quarantine run was lax to the point of idiocy. The infectious disease specialist who was on board for less then 6 hours was so disturbed he has separated himself in self quarantine for at least 14 days ( evidence is out there of 21-24 day incubation periods) to hopefully avoid spreading disease to his family and local hospital. The quarantine ends today, and passengers are being released, although most face another quarantine when they arrive at their home country. What happens in between is currently unknown. Worst case scenario they are going to go to Tokyo and potentially spread infection in a city of 33 million.
Kozak, do you have a link or links you can share? I live in Tokyo — albeit I am very likely to head back to the US in under 2 weeks, at this rate…
@dannyalexander
Kentaro Iwata
And this
I am beginning to think that our attitude toward CoViD-19 is going to need to be more focused on “living” with it than “beating” it. We need to understand the fatality rate and the probability for a cytokine storm of previously exposed people. We already do this with many influenzas. It does kill but, as with traffic fatalities, it is “priced in” to the way we live our lives.
If we panic there will be disruptions in both health care and the supply chain beyond that which will otherwise occur. I think that explains difficult to understand reactions reflected in certain public pronouncements by officials.
There will be economic constriction as the workforce globally is affected by illness. Loss of productivity is loss of economic activity. That seems unavoidable now at some level. But if the fatality rate can be managed going forward, then CoViD-19 may not be disaster. What we have learned is that warehousing people makes it worse.
I think you are right about this.
I watched an interesting short video on why and how the Europeans ended up bringing incurable diseases to the New World where the Native American population, but not the European migrants, was decimated by those diseases. In short, it was not some diabolical plot to destroy the Native Americans. It was the result of the close and squalid quarters Europeans were living in at the time.
This new type of infectious agent, the corona viruses like SARS, needs to be accepted as a part of modern life on this planet. It’s the result of urbanization more than anything else.
While we are figuring out how to prevent or cure this new type of infection, we need to create better and bigger quarantine facilities. The Japanese government did not have access to a quarantine facility big enough for 3,500 people. To me, this was an oversight on the part of the cruise industry. The industry leaders have known for the last twenty years that these ships can turn into the perfect hosts for bacteria and viruses. The industry should have anticipated this type of event. The industry leaders should have built quarantine facilities large enough to accommodate their largest ships. They could have done this if they had worked together on the problem that affected all of them equally.
The problem with these numbers is that the majority of cases came from the cruise ship in Japan, which was apparently badly mismanaged. Outside of China, less the ship, is more interesting to see what is really going on.
I’m most worried about the virus getting established in areas where there is little effective public health organization, where it can fly under the radar until out of any possible control.
Agreed. That is why the report of a Thai official admitting undercounting in Phuket is problematic.
By the way, the data seems to be jumping around a little bit on the Johns Hopkins site. I try to wait toward the end of my day to update my chart. A moment ago the US number was showing as 15 again (rolling out the 14 cruise ship Americans returned to the US). We’ll see whether that changes later.
I was just thinking that this event should be an object lesson to China as to why their insistence on retaining 50 percent ownership in China’s businesses is such a big mistake. In the United States, the private health insurers will be on the hook for the whopping costs of treating people who succumb to these corona viruses. It behooves our insurance companies to find vaccines to prevent or treat these viruses quickly.
“There will be economic constriction as the workforce globally is affected by illness. Loss of productivity is loss of economic activity. That seems unavoidable now at some level. But if the fatality rate can be managed going forward, then CoViD-19 may not be disaster. What we have learned is that warehousing people makes it worse.”
A good comment, but let’s break this down:
• There will be economic constriction as the workforce globally is affected by illness.
Lots of questions here. Any business with a supply chain relationship at all with China may be screwed. We need to bring back production to America muy pronto. Chinese production may be lost entirely for the foreseeable future. The government needs to step in to make sure business loans are available for expansion down to the smallest plant ( they generally are not available now thanks to Dodd Frank and other brilliant Obama/Bush era banking regulations, and quick regulatory approvals need to be ordered and implemented. ) The years needed for approvals now need to be turned into days or hours.
• Loss of productivity is loss of economic activity. That seems unavoidable now at some level.
This could be a monumental problem. Loss of Production could translate to massive job losses very quickly. The economy can not take this hit. There is too much personal, corporate and government debt here and the situation is much worse almost everywhere else around the world. That is why it is absolutely imperative that the preparations for bringing production back to America start immediately because that work could offset the massive job losses that are already likely in the pipeline and baked into the cake.
• But if the fatality rate can be managed going forward, then CoViD-19 may not be disaster.
We really don’t know what the fatality rate is and what are the underlying conditions that help to cause death are. We still don’t know much about the disease even though it has been almost a month I think since the first case here. We have got to get a handle of this. Are the AIDS drugs effective? Do we need a vaccine? How long will that take? Economic activity could take a huge hit just from the fact that people may not want to be out in the public with lots of other people. Ways to prevent contamination are really important for that reason as well as reassuring ways to combat the disease and prevent death.
Modern society is not built to face a pandemic. Most cities only have a food supply of 3 days among other things. Any situation close to the situation now in China will be an absolute disaster.
It’s long past time to take this pandemic seriously and make preparations for it even though hopefully we somehow can avoid the consequences of what is happening now in China. Good and well publicized preparation will help avoid panic if the disease does hit America hard.
Very true.
Japan has just released new information about the quarantine, and Iwata Kentaro spoke to it this morning:
Again, I would caution people not to over analyze the data in this case. I don’t think I’ve seen any indications yet that this has gotten out of control. Even though we should always take information put out by the PRC with a large serving of salt, we should also keep in mind that keeping track of and accounting for a disease that take over a week to show symptoms, many of which are similar to symptoms of other very common and communicable diseases is no easy task. The situation deserves monitoring, but I think speculating about larger impacts on economies or what not seem premature to me.
I think that relevant institutions should make plans for dealing with the virus ie. Hospitals in big cities with international airports and the CDC for quick response to an area with an outbreak. But none of that necessitates general concern from the populace at large. Also these institutions generally have plans for such circumstances anyway, but this is a good time to review and refresh those plans.
Honestly, I think given what we know things are going kind of okay, given the nature of the disease. Good reason to be cautiously optimistic I say.
This is super confusing. The linked story does not say anything about Kentaro repudiating his prior video. Second, how exactly was everything he said about the laxness of the quarantine and the chaotic enforcement he witnessed suddenly reversed?
Finally, was he convinced enough to end his self imposed quarantine from work and family?
This is Dr Kentaro’s retraction on Twitter. I got to say it doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling.
Global numbers
75,773 confirmed infections, 2,129 deaths.
deaths/infections = 2.8%.
deaths/(deaths+recoveries) = 10.9% at Worldometers, 11.5% at SCMP.
Hubei Province (Official Numbers)
2,144 deaths, 11,788 recoveries (Johns Hopkins).
deaths/(deaths+recoveries) = 15.4%.
Mainland China, Outside of Hubei Province (Official Numbers)
92 deaths, 6,237 recoveries.
deaths/(deaths+recoveries) = 1.5%.
Numbers outside of mainland China
1,197 infections, 11 deaths.
deaths/infections = 0.9%.
deaths/(deaths+recoveries) = 5.9% at Worldometers.
That last number is getting scary.
The mainland China sans Hubei Province numbers don’t cohere with the other data. See here:
In the space of one day (two days ago till yesterday) mainland China sans Hubei reports an extra 5 deaths, and in the space of the next day (yesterday till today) an extra 6 deaths. And a lot of recoveries.
In the space of one day (two days ago till yesterday) the rest of the world reports an extra 3 deaths, and in the space of the next day (yesterday till today) an extra 3 deaths. And a handful of recoveries.
The death numbers in Mainland China sans Hubei appear to be badly underreported.
Me neither. Almost as if he realized he had just publicly stated he had the goods on Hillary.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. There is absolutely nothing to be concerned about.
This Monday two young female Chinese university students came to stay with us. They are stranded in the U.S. due to the virus.
Every year a group of students comes to Charlotte, NC, from Zhijiang College of Zhejiang Technology University. They are in a program to become teachers of Chinese as a foreign language. They are lodged in private homes and do short internships in local schools, teaching Chinese. We usually don’t host anyone because we live too far outside of the city.
But their program ended last week and the organization that finds lodging for them was looking for new host families and we signed up to take two students. They are very friendly young women, from the cities of Hangzhou and Ningbo in Zhejiang Province, who speak quite good English.
We don’t know yet how worried they or their families are about the situation. Evidently, the students flew out of China on the Russian airline, Aeroflot, which (I read) has cut back its flights to China.
Poor girls; my husband has been teaching himself Chinese over the last two years (he’s a linguist and just the type to do such a thing) and now that he has native speakers to talk with, he wants to practice a lot and he has so many language questions for them.
Looking at these charts showing the spread of the disease yesterday, it occurred to me that perhaps there is some hope in the ability of human beings individually and in groups to fight off this infection. The bug is so infectious that I’m finding it somewhat encouraging that more people are not sick from it. I think there are millions more carriers than the numbers reveal. It seems that everyone, that every single person, on that ship, for example, had to have been exposed to it and should be sick and symptomatic. I’m wondering if there’s some sort of natural inoculation occurring now such that a tiny encounter with the bug has been enough to teach the immune system what this foreign invader is and how to get rid of it. In other words, unprompted by outside intervention or help, the human immune system is learning what this new bug and new type of bug is and fighting it off, and we’re getting to watch it unfold in real time. If I’m right, it’s really exciting and hopeful. :-)
That is what the immune system always does. Animals and Plants have been living with viruses for hundreds of millions of years. Your immune system is very robust mechanism for detection and eradication of viruses. What kills people during an infection usually is our own immune response to the disease (which includes fevers, inflammation, etc.) Often just being able to control these over reactions is enough to allow healthy adults to weather things like flu, cold, corona virus, etc. When you look at the death numbers being reported you should keep in mind that in places where people can get good treatment and care the death rate of the this virus is below 1%. The higher numbers in China are probably the result of their medical system not being able to treat people properly, because it is getting swamped with case and running out of resources and man power. Ideally, there would be a more concerted international effort to help bolster these areas with medical personnel, medicine etc., but obviously politics and geopolitical posturing is overriding this kind of cooperation to a great extent.
Right. But I think there’s something different about this bug.
The immune system is sort of like the autonomous nervous system: it has a life of its own. I find that fascinating.
I’m guessing that while we are still sorting out the behavior of the bug and our response to it, our amazing immune system will have already figured it out. :-) It seems like we’ve been playing catch-up with this thing since we first learned of its existence. :-) Our collective and individual immune systems are working faster than our fastest computers. :-)
I think it’s really cool. :-)
We designed one of those things. Someone smarter was involved with the other one.
That’s just not true. What usually kills you from an infection is the infection itself. Sometimes you get a hyperimmune response from an infection, but by far more common is the infection itself .
What happens is whenever a new disease appears, or an old one mutates, is a certain percentage of people are going to have little or no natural immunity to the disease and they die. Think of the Plague. 1/3 to 1/2 of Europe. Those who survived infection or didn’t get infected had something in their immune systems, a variation on a receptor protein, or a version of an enzyme slightly different then the others. They survive. And they pass that trait on to their offspring, essentially evolution in action. A certain percentage of people have a natural immunity and just don’t get sick. They survive and pass that on to their offspring. And so it goes till the next new disease rears it’s ugly head.
We can with modern medicine give antibiotics in bacterial infections and support them with other meds and treatments, until their own immune system can kick in. We have less we can do with viral infections.
Some numbers for this morning.
My daily brief analysis–here and in the next few comments.