Wuhan virus.

[cromwell]

Never, would be my guess.
Essentially we have all but open borders now, by the wishes of big business; and I can't see that changing.

[Suff]

It is a problem. Because of the 12 day incubation period where infectious people are not symptomatic, politicians are not geared up to cope.

Politicians don't like taking steps until someone is visibly sick, but as we have seen on the cruise ship off Japan, that doesn't work. They had 21 infected when they sent everyone to their cabins. Now they have 64. Had they just quaranteened the sick, eventually the entire ship would have become infected.

China, belatedly, is doing the right thing. The rest of the world is doing what politicians do. Apart from the closest, higherst risk, countries.

As for the car parts issue, there are more factories at risk of shutdown, some of which are in Europe.

[Suff]

Yesterday they updated their accounting and an additional 14,887 cases were added in one day. Taking the virus to 60,000.

There is some dissent here about whether this is adding detected cases where there were no symptoms. Maybe.

But there were also 245 deaths in one day too. Which is around 2.5 times the previous daily average.

[cromwell]

The first case was detected in London yesterday, a Chinese national.

[Workingman]

I do not know if any of you watched the BBC programme "Contagion" shown the other night.

It was an exercise run in 2018 (so before this Covid-19 thing) and was as near to a 'real world' experiment anyone could do without actually making people ill; it used a smartphone app to 'infect' people - 28,000 users.. The methodology was supported by academics, the NHS and ONS statisticians and the numbers were crunched by a team from Cambridge University. The infection rate was left open, but the ratio of infected to deaths, the R0, was about the same as normal flu at 1.8.

The first infected case was in Haslemere in Surrey and then the exercise began. We were presented with all sort of facts about epidemics and pandemics and how they worked, what we could do to protect ourselves and what the authorities could do to mitigate or end them. Then we got the results.

If it was simply left to run wild without any checks and balances then in about four months it would reach almost all parts of the UK, save for a few very remote areas. Some 43 million people would become infected and there would be about 880,000 deaths: that was very much the "worst case". However, by doing a few simple things such as closing schools and isolating (some) people the numbers dropped to 30 million infected and about 540,000 deaths: this was the "middle case".

Those were the only two "cases" we got. We did not get a "better case" scenario where people self-isolated and there was the use of quarantine units, but if we had those things the numbers would have dropped again to, say, 15 million infected and 270,000 deaths. The "best case" i.e. all the above but with a vaccine, would likely have been similar to what we have with seasonal flu and the death rate very similar.

The thing about the exercise was that the "virus" was very virulent - all that was needed was contact. That is not the case with Covid-19 and so we could probably be somewhere between the "better" and "best" cases except for a few things: 1. Viruses tend to weaken as they spread - the app virus did not. 2. There has to be droplet to person contact either directly or from uncleaned surfaces: simply being near or in the same area does not definitely mean infection. 3. Washing hands or wearing masks would not have offered any protection from the app virus. 4. We might still get a vaccine.

Given all of that we are probably in not much worse of a situation than we are with the flu. There could be deaths from Covid-19, but they are not likely to be anywhere near the hundreds of thousands some of the media would have us believe: hopefully.

[Suff]

Well they said the extra 15k on the list was a one off exception. But today it is up by just short of 5,000 with 124 new deaths.

Up until they added the new 15k, the stats were starting to show a decline in new cases. Now they are showing close to double the previous growth rate.

This is far from over but the Chinese government is keen to get the economy going again.

[Kaz]

A public health spokesperson on the news the other day said they were expecting the virus to peak in May!

[Workingman]

I heard the end of March or mid April, but May is fine. It would show that the virus is not spreading like wildfire, as the media keeps claiming. The spike in those thought to be infected in recent days is because the Chinese are now counting all those with coughs and fevers as possible cases.

I looked at the data from Wuhan, which has a population of 11 million and where 60,000 have or had the virus. That is 5.45% of the population. If it became as infectious in the UK and 5.45% of us contract the virus that means 3.5 million people become infected

The WHO says:

Of them 82% develop mild symptoms = 2.9 million
Of them 15% develop severe symptoms = 435,000
Of them 3% become critically ill = 13,000
Of them 92% die = 11.960.

If it does take hold, and that is a big "if", we could be looking at about 1,200 deaths per month and that is not much more than for the flu.

The latest scare story is about the bus conference in London where one infected person attended out of a total of 450. That one person might have only had the sort of contact required to potentially pass it on with maybe a dozen or so others and yet they are making out that all could be infected. The thing is that that the carrier has not been identified so everyone will be looking at everyone else. Put up a photo, FCOL, then only those who recognise the person initially need to come forward.

[Suff]

The biggest issue is the epidemiology. If China fudged the figures, then the total number could be massively higher and they won't be prepared for it.

It is why you don't lie when tracking and controlling a disease outbreak.

If it is massively more virulent than the health services think, then they won't be taking enough precautions.

I read, today, that 1,700 doctors treating the patients had caught it.... That is not a good statistic.

[Workingman]

I read, today, that 1,700 doctors treating the patients had caught it.... That is not a good statistic.

Yes, 1,716 health workers are infected and six have died, not a good stat in itself.

But look at it another way. Those thousands of health workers are in constant contact with infected patients and have been since day one; they are right in the thick of it day and night yet even their numbers are relatively low. We have all seen the pictures and they are not in hazmat suits and wearing breathing apparatus, they are pretty much in scrubs, latex gloves and wearing face masks. OK, the face masks are a grade up on the ones out in the streets, but they are not even the filter type as worn by spray painters.