Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Muajin76]

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200305003656320

South Korea's coronavirus caseload rose above 6,000 on Thursday, with most new virus infections still identified in the southeastern city of Daegu, the epicenter of the virus outbreak here. A third virus-stricken area near Daegu was designated as a "special care zone."

The 322 new cases, which were identified over the past 16 hours on Thursday, brought the nation's total number of infections to 6,088, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said.

...

So far, 41 people, mostly elderly patients with underlying illnesses, have died in South Korea from the respiratory virus that emerged in China late last year, according to the KCDC and local governments.

The fatalities have surpassed the country's death toll of 39 recorded for the 2015 MERS outbreak. South Korea reported 186 confirmed MERS cases.

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Lol, some places/events are banning foreigners from entering to prevent spread of the virus. As if banning foreigners helps against that.

[/i]

I used to live remotely near there in Gumi, for one year.

[shadowmouse]

@Jinro Thanks!

Meanwhile, CNN was up for a short while. I noticed this: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/05/a...hnk/index.html

Disclaimer: Let me highlight this one first. I don't read Chinese and haven't been following Chinese media on this beyond reading what students and former students send me. I'm sure that some will be quick to assert this somehow proves I'm following a state media script.

China's effort to prevent imported cases comes amid rising nationalist pride that the country's sweeping measures to contain the outbreak -- and the self-sacrifice of the Chinese people -- offered other nations a crucial window to prepare for its spread. There is also growing criticism online against other governments for their allegedly slow response to control the outbreak. Both sentiments have been played up in state media.

Now, on to the point I wanted to hit:

So far, China has confirmed 20 imported cases, mostly expatriate Chinese who returned to their hometowns as the outbreak flared up in their host countries.
By the end of Tuesday, 6,728 overseas passengers had arrived in China showing symptoms of infection, according to the General Administration of Customs. Among them 779 were suspected coronavirus cases and 75 showed positive results from initial nucleic acid tests, the administration said in a statement on its website.
Some local governments in China have urged overseas Chinese to reconsider their homecoming plans for the sake of their "family's health and safety."

Zhejiang, an affluent province on the country's east coast with a large number of emigrants, reported seven new imported cases Tuesday.
According to local authorities, all of them are Chinese nationals returning from Italy, which is facing the biggest outbreak in Europe with 3,089 confirmed cases and 107 deaths as of Thursday.

The seven people, who worked and lived in the northern Italian town of Bergamo, returned to their hometown of Qingtian county via Shanghai last week. They tested positive for the coronavirus on Monday, according to the Qingtian government.

None of them had been to Hubei province or its capital Wuhan, where the outbreak first emerged, the government said.

Well, I guess I'd might as well take an extra bag for groceries tomorrow. @Muajin76 @Zatheyll I suggest you guys do the same. Be prepared to have to fill out more of the usual paperwork. My landlady forwarded the questionnaire to me, the paperwork was from the community level. The other side of Hanlon's Razor is a quote from Heinlein: “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.” I'll let you know if I get quarantined on a "just in case" basis, which I consider more likely than not.

[Remilia]

Hanlon's Razor is not a fact, and it is simply weird you've tried to spin it as if I think it is. Hanlon's, like Occam's, is a tool in logic and nothing more: "A logical razor is a rational principle used to shave off possible but unrealistic or unlikely explanations for a given phenomenon." https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_razor

You want records to be kept a certain way because that is what makes sense to you. I think anybody who has to deal with how Chinese handle record keeping can find dozens of horror stories. They're quite capable of just having lousy records that don't seem to make sense, I deal with that constantly. I've spent the last two days dealing with it and I'm damned annoyed. I'm on my third passport since I came to China and only this year did the data base for my visa hook up with the data base for my residence permit because that was kept primarily on paper files in a regional sub station. Thus, stupidity does not necessarily show malice.

Cause you've been literally using it as your main argument as you quote it. Your situation is not the same as this. Apples and oranges.

/facepalm I'm glad you "figured out" something that I have right there in my sig.

Probably cause I don't bother reading signatures.

Or what? What exactly do you think is going to happen? In case you haven't noticed, China already has a starring role in what some like to call the New Cold War.

Like it or not, the billiard table example for political science is a thing. There is no world government, and the same views of sovereignty that let the US say they're not going to go along with anyone outside conducting investigations leave us stuck with little to say.

Difference between should and would. Realistically nothing much will happen. What should happen is trade restrictions and what not for shit like this.

No, you "don't" do you ... except that you then go on to mention that bitching about China is about all you post about. That's an interesting construction of don't.

Okay and? You claim I talk about Taiwan a lot, I don't. Or is this one of your got ya moments that you love. I don't hide how I feel about China and as anyone is freely allowed to post about any content.

Hand me the popcorn. It is your thing. In your own words, that's about all you post on and we're unlikely to see you take part in any of the other discussions here.

It's like you haven't read at all. Literally before this entire chain was about reinfection and such where I was in the wrong about aspects and potential of it.

I don't have a handy list of what they specialized in, but Dr. Li has been the main face for the breaking news. He seems to have been good at his specialty. After the fact, we find he was right or close enough to right; however, there is a reason that it is rarely mentioned that he was an ophthalmologist. His specialty matters because people listen to experts according to their experience and specialty.

Turn back time in your imagination and imagine the same stories that ran in non-Chinese news rewritten as "ophthalmologist" instead of doctor. As I said, in hindsight it is simple to say things might have been different, but do you think anyone would have taken the story seriously? Seriously enough to change where we are today? No.

Complain about China's numbers and handling all you like, consider though what would have happened without the extensive quarantine and travel restrictions. They bought most of the rest of the world at least a few weeks to get ready, but many countries didn't and that's where we are now. Had things played out differently, had this fizzled out early on, want to make any bets about how many stories would have run about how horribly China treats people?

In practical terms, what have those numbers you want done to limit the spread of COVID-19? Look at South Korea, the cult leader made a public show out of apologizing. I'm not Korean and don't speak Korean, so I have no way to judge how sincere it was, but prostrating himself on the floor is usually a fairly extreme display. Did it change the numbers of infected? Get anyone out of the hospital? Give people time lost in quarantine back? Bring back any dead? That's what apologies and blame are worth at this stage. That's not a defense of anything, it's simply being realistic -- apologies, blame, even 100% transparent reporting world wide -- none of those things will directly get a vaccine out a bit sooner.

And a lot of words amount to nothing other than trying to excuse the whole thing.
You talk as if only one thing can go on in this world like a single core CPU. Scientists are the ones to develop a vaccine. Having completely unrelated people do other things does not make the scientists suddenly stop developing a vaccine. Talking as if information isn't important. Not everything must and can realistically affect the then and now. Reality is most of us will not be able to directly affect the progress of it, doesn't mean we have to drop things you don't find pertinent to it.

[shadowmouse]

@Remilia This is a difference of opinion between two people that is a significant derail. Thank you, but given your status as a moderator I decline further continuation of the derail. Your last two posts have been direct personal attacks, so have fun.

[Fuiking]

Yesterday: 28 people.. today: 84. Goes quick now.

[Up The Gary]

Hmm, because of a simple flu the factory we work with is closed and my 40 HQ container of raw silicone is not shipped.
China must have a great plan while ruining their own economy. Oh i see now..they won't sell to me so I won't have anything to sell and bankrupt.

Right, and our local major shopping mall infected hundreds with Legionnaires' disease through the air conditioning, but still... it wasn't reported on.

[XangXu]

I keep having these fucked up dreams. Something about trying to find guitar music in a corn field...

[Zan15]

The finally tally for the Senate vote was 96-1. Sen. Rand Paul was the lone senator to vote against the measure. Ahead of the vote on final passage, the Kentucky Republican also offered an amendment to the coronavirus funding package that would offset costs by canceling some foreign aid spending. But the Senate voted to table, or kill, the motion.


Rand Paul...…

His state really needs to dump his ass.

[Shadowferal]

The finally tally for the Senate vote was 96-1. Sen. Rand Paul was the lone senator to vote against the measure. Ahead of the vote on final passage, the Kentucky Republican also offered an amendment to the coronavirus funding package that would offset costs by canceling some foreign aid spending. But the Senate voted to table, or kill, the motion.

Rand Paul...…

His state really needs to dump his ass.

Wait until it his the state.
Hell, wait until it hits Florida...(general politically speaking it'll be a shitstorm then, since fatalities are typically the elderly)

[Zan15]

LOL my god this country.....

The social media team behind Tito's Vodka has been hard at work telling people that its liquor should not be used to make hand sanitizer.

[Katchii]

Lol, some places/events are banning foreigners from entering to prevent spread of the virus. As if banning foreigners helps against that.

It does though. If the foreigner has it, banning them from entering would help prevent the foreigner from spreading it to people there. If the people there have it, it helps prevent the foreigner from getting it and bringing it back to wherever they came from.

[GreenJesus]

The company I work for that owns billions of dollars worth of apartment style assets has cancelled all air travel for the month of march due to coronavirus. It would probably be bad if a regional manager or something got the coronavirus and then spread it to several senior communities within a week or two.

[Shadowferal]

Two different strains of this COVID-19? The one a mutation....interesting.

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I am behind on things; CDC confirms 4th Florida coronavirus case in Florida

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday announced that a man in Florida’s Panhandle had tested positive for the coronavirus, or COVID-19. Later in the day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the case in Santa Rosa County as the fourth in Florida.

According to the Florida Department of Health website, there are 69 patients awaiting test results in Florida. As of Thursday, 248 residents are being monitored for symptoms, either due to having close contact with someone who was diagnosed with the virus or because they’ve recently traveled to an affected area.

[mmoholist]

60 infected in sweden now. Our government said there's very low risk of it spreading here. Like proper retards. Why would it not spread here? Especially when we had no travel restrictions? As if the air in sweden is somehow magical.

It appears most of the new infections in Europe are from people who traveled to Italy. I do wonder what is more retarded, doing nothing, or trying to stop a flu from spreading.

[Zatheyll]

Colorado ended up with two cases, the first in the airport the same day I was. I feel like it followed me back from China.

Might end up being safer for me to have stayed in China rather than come back with how things are going.

[Corvus]

This is not good - there are cases emerging where victims who had recovered from the virus (and should therefore have been immune) are contracting it again and, in at least one case, dying from it.

Meanwhile in Australia, not only do we have ridiculous panic buying going on, but it appears to have breached containment in Sydney, with an 1100-sudent high school, an aged care facility and a child care facility all in lock down after cases appeared there, as well as a doctor contracting the virus from a patient.

[Daedius]

I don't agree with the name change. This must be called Wuhan virus since there are many types of Corona virus.
This must stand like Spanish flu.

Idiots relating the virus to the beer has caused their stocks to take a dip.

[Omega10]

Colorado ended up with two cases, the first in the airport the same day I was. I feel like it followed me back from China.

Might end up being safer for me to have stayed in China rather than come back with how things are going.

You aren't the first person to make the observation. Fingers crossed that things don't get too bad here.

[Themius]

If you run the numbers the virus is actually spreading slower than it was in China.

Are we so sure about that? Being we aren’t even testing properly

[Breccia]

This is not good - there are cases emerging where victims who had recovered from the virus (and should therefore have been immune) are contracting it again and, in at least one case, dying from it.

There are multiple strains, apparently.

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This is not a drill. ... This is a time for pulling out all the stops. Countries have been planning for scenarios like this for decades. Now is the time to act on those plans.

-- the WHO

The article cited above suggests China's problems aren't as bad, because China's willing to just lock people up. Most countries won't do that.