Trump’s China Problem
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, February 1, 2020
This is Chinese privet.
Chinese privet
Chinese privet
This is the Chinese coronavirus flag.
The coronavirus has now infected more than SARS ever did
One month after the new coronavirus was discovered, the virus has infected more people than the related SARS coronavirus did when it broke out in 2002/2003.
BY KEVIN GREENERpublished:
The newly erupted coronavirus has now infected more people than the related SARS coronavirus did during the SARS outbreak in 2002/2003. The latest official figures released by the Chinese authorities on Friday show that 9809 people have been infected with the new coronavirus. In comparison, a total of 8422 people were infected with SARS between November 2002 and July 2003, after which the WHO declared that the risk of infection at SARS was over. In addition, the Chinese authorities suspect that an additional 15,238 people are infected with the new coronavirus.
213 people have so far died of the new coronavirus, while the SARS outbreak killed a total of 916 people.
Chinese authorities have previously said that the coronavirus, which is still only officially known under the name 2019-ncov, had a mortality rate of about 2% – that is, about 2% of the infected door.
A study of 99 patients from Wuhan, published in the medical journal The Lancet on Thursday, showed an 11% mortality rate, which is the same mortality rate that the SARS virus had.
The SARS virus never reached Denmark, but spread to 29 other countries.
Coronavirus Report: 75,815 infected Wuhaners
Findings by scientists at Hong Kong University based on the assumption that each infected patient could have infected 2.68 others
Meanwhile, numbers of new infections and deaths set daily records.
On Friday, the US government declared a public health emergency and announced that it would deny entry to foreigners travelling from mainland China to prevent the new coronavirus from spreading.
The Trump administration has also ordered US citizens, permanent residents and immediate family members arriving in the country from Hubei be quarantined for 14 days starting Sunday at 5pm Eastern Time.
A physician checks on a patient in the isolation ward of a hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, on Thursday, 30 January 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE
One of the biggest problems facing authorities trying to tackle the outbreak in China is a shortage of vital supplies.
In a bid to ease the situation, the State Council, China’s cabinet, said on Saturday it would waive its trade war tariffs on US imports of such products as medical protective gear and sanitizers.
It said also it would freeze taxes on all vehicles donated to help fight the outbreak, including ambulances and those used to spray disinfectant.
As well, both exemptions would apply retrospectively from January 1 until the end of March, so companies that had bought such items since the start of the year could apply for a tax refund.
Nowcasting and forecasting the potential domestic and international spread of the 2019-nCoV outbreak originating in Wuhan, China: a modelling study
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30260-9/fulltext
(A) Cumulative number of confirmed cases of 2019 novel coronavirus as of Jan 28, 2020, in Wuhan, in mainland China (including Wuhan), and outside mainland China. (B) Major routes of outbound air and train travel originating from Wuhan during chunyun, 2019. Darker and thicker edges represent greater numbers of passengers. International outbound air travel (yellow) constituted 13·5% of all outbound air travel, and the top 40 domestic (red) outbound air routes constituted 81·3%. Islands in the South China Sea are not shown.
Background
Since Dec 31, 2019, the Chinese city of Wuhan has reported an outbreak of atypical pneumonia caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Cases have been exported to other Chinese cities, as well as internationally, threatening to trigger a global outbreak. Here, we provide an estimate of the size of the epidemic in Wuhan on the basis of the number of cases exported from Wuhan to cities outside mainland China and forecast the extent of the domestic and global public health risks of epidemics, accounting for social and non-pharmaceutical prevention interventions.
Methods
We used data from Dec 31, 2019, to Jan 28, 2020, on the number of cases exported from Wuhan internationally (known days of symptom onset from Dec 25, 2019, to Jan 19, 2020) to infer the number of infections in Wuhan from Dec 1, 2019, to Jan 25, 2020. Cases exported domestically were then estimated. We forecasted the national and global spread of 2019-nCoV, accounting for the effect of the metropolitan-wide quarantine of Wuhan and surrounding cities, which began Jan 23–24, 2020. We used data on monthly flight bookings from the Official Aviation Guide and data on human mobility across more than 300 prefecture-level cities in mainland China from the Tencent database. Data on confirmed cases were obtained from the reports published by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Serial interval estimates were based on previous studies of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV). A susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered metapopulation model was used to simulate the epidemics across all major cities in China. The basic reproductive number was estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods and presented using the resulting posterior mean and 95% credibile interval (CrI).
Findings
In our baseline scenario, we estimated that the basic reproductive number for 2019-nCoV was 2·68 (95% CrI 2·47–2·86) and that 75 815 individuals (95% CrI 37 304–130 330) have been infected in Wuhan as of Jan 25, 2020. The epidemic doubling time was 6·4 days (95% CrI 5·8–7·1). We estimated that in the baseline scenario, Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen had imported 461 (95% CrI 227–805), 113 (57–193), 98 (49–168), 111 (56–191), and 80 (40–139) infections from Wuhan, respectively. If the transmissibility of 2019-nCoV were similar everywhere domestically and over time, we inferred that epidemics are already growing exponentially in multiple major cities of China with a lag time behind the Wuhan outbreak of about 1–2 weeks.
Interpretation
Given that 2019-nCoV is no longer contained within Wuhan, other major Chinese cities are probably sustaining localised outbreaks. Large cities overseas with close transport links to China could also become outbreak epicentres, unless substantial public health interventions at both the population and personal levels are implemented immediately. Independent self-sustaining outbreaks in major cities globally could become inevitable because of substantial exportation of presymptomatic cases and in the absence of large-scale public health interventions. Preparedness plans and mitigation interventions should be readied for quick deployment globally.
Funding
Health and Medical Research Fund (Hong Kong, China).
“Scientists in China have figured out the genetic code of the Wuhan coronavirus. When researchers compared it with other coronaviruses, they found it to be most similar to two bat coronavirus samples from China.””But further analysis showed that the genetic building blocks of the Wuhan coronavirus more closely resembled that of snakes. According to the researchers, the only way to be sure of where the virus came from is to take DNA samples from animals sold at the Huanan market and from wild snakes and bats in the area.” (https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-chinese-wet-market-photos-2020-1)”As news of the Wuhan virus spread online, one video became emblematic of its claimed origin: It showed a young Chinese woman, supposedly in Wuhan, biting into a virtually whole bat as she held the creature up with chopsticks. Media outlets from the Daily Mail to RT promoted the video, as did a number of prominent extremist bloggers such as Paul Joseph Watson. Thousands of Twitter users blamed supposedly “dirty” Chinese eating habits—in particular the consumption of wildlife—for the outbreak, said to have begun at a so-called wet market that sold animals in Wuhan, China.”
“There was just one problem. The video wasn’t set in Wuhan at all, where bat isn’t a delicacy. It wasn’t even from China. Instead it showed Wang Mengyun, the host of an online travel show, eating a dish in Palau, a Pacific island nation. Sampling the bat was simply an addition to the well-trodden cannon of adventurism and enthusiasm for unusual foods that numerous American chefs and travel hosts have shown in the past.” (https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/27/dont-blame-bat-soup-for-the-wuhan-virus/)
Bat soup – Some scientists think the coronavirus came through bats.
Dogs and dog meat readied for slaughter and sale at a wet market in Guilin, China, on June 19, 2014. Image by David Wong, South China Morning Post/Getty
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