The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 coronavirus

[aerius]

Further elaboration, previously the virus was diagnosed by detecting its RNA. Unfortunately they don't have enough PCR kits to do this, so patients were having delayed diagnosis and treatment. So now they are ALSO reporting those as having the virus based on CT scan results, so why there is added patients.

But I think people will already start saying that the numbers had been deliberately kept under reported as a cover up.

Interesting. The good news is it should get anyone with a respiratory infection from the virus. On the other hand, potential for lots of false positives as well since anyone with pneumonia or something similar will also get dinged.

---

In other news, the industrial shutdown looks to be pretty extensive. Air pollution and energy consumption appear to be way below normal, score one for the environment I guess...
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/chi ... e-scenario

[ray245]

Further elaboration, previously the virus was diagnosed by detecting its RNA. Unfortunately they don't have enough PCR kits to do this, so patients were having delayed diagnosis and treatment. So now they are ALSO reporting those as having the virus based on CT scan results, so why there is added patients.

But I think people will already start saying that the numbers had been deliberately kept under reported as a cover up.

Interesting. The good news is it should get anyone with a respiratory infection from the virus. On the other hand, potential for lots of false positives as well since anyone with pneumonia or something similar will also get dinged.

---

In other news, the industrial shutdown looks to be pretty extensive. Air pollution and energy consumption appear to be way below normal, score one for the environment I guess...
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/chi ... e-scenario

Including false positives is a way of isolating cases and stopping the spread, and it is not necessarily the same as providing people with treatment. If you want to contain the virus, a better way would be trying to isolate as many cases as possible, rather than leaving it too late because it takes too long to diagnose the condition.

[mr friendly guy]

Interesting. The good news is it should get anyone with a respiratory infection from the virus. On the other hand, potential for lots of false positives as well since anyone with pneumonia or something similar will also get dinged.

You may even get fluctuations down in the numbers throughout the day as false positives are ruled out. Cue conspiracy theorists coming in shortly.

[aerius]

Including false positives is a way of isolating cases and stopping the spread, and it is not necessarily the same as providing people with treatment. If you want to contain the virus, a better way would be trying to isolate as many cases as possible, rather than leaving it too late because it takes too long to diagnose the condition.

Absolutely.

You may even get fluctuations down in the numbers throughout the day as false positives are ruled out. Cue conspiracy theorists coming in shortly.

Yup. Problem now is we'll have to wait another week or so to see what the new data trend looks like.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Including false positives is a way of isolating cases and stopping the spread, and it is not necessarily the same as providing people with treatment. If you want to contain the virus, a better way would be trying to isolate as many cases as possible, rather than leaving it too late because it takes too long to diagnose the condition.

While that's true, it is ALSO true that the most common breaking point for a national healthcare system is when the physical resources of the that system (in terms of material and manpower) become strained by having to take in caseloads far in excess of what they are really capable of managing. While China doesn't seem to lack in raw resources to throw at the problem, it is important to remember that China is a vast and heterogeneous country, and the capabilities of local healthcare systems to effectively respond to an epidemic will vary greatly from place to place. There is a balance to strike between heightened surveillance and control measures and having the system inundated. Especially since we don't yet have a rapid diagnostic test for 2019-CoV, any case presenting to the hospital takes a relatively substantial amount of time to process.

Remember, it's not JUST false positives that are an issue. It's ALSO true positives who are not mildly ill. At this point, the cat is already out of the bag with the virus going pandemic. And since it will be at least 3 months before a vaccine becomes available in the first place (nevermind the timetable for manufacturing in sufficient quantities and delivering it), you don't WANT people who don't truly need medical care going to a hospital and potentially transmitting the virus even more. You want people with ILI who do not require urgent medical assistance to stay at home until the illness clears.

------------------------------------

On a different note, the probability of this becoming epidemic in the U.S. is quite high (I said above 3 months for a vaccine, but it will likely take another 3 months before the FDA approves it, so it will take longer for a vaccine to be deployed in the US than in China, even if it is developed here). In fact, there is a pretty strong chance that this virus becomes endemic in the US, and becomes a component of the annual seasonal influenza outbreaks. This means that the next few winters we are likely to see higher prevalence of ILI, since CoV is more aggressive than the normal influenza As and Bs (since we haven't evolved a resistance or tolerance for it). That said, that's no reason to panic, since you would still expect <2% of cases to require supportive medical care (and there is likely to be a vaccine within a year). It just means there will be more people with less severe ILI symptoms the next several flu seasons.

[Broomstick]

By the way - any information on what sort of resistance a person acquires from covid19? If you catch it and recover do you get lasting immunity or not? Or is it too soon to tell?

[ray245]

By the way - any information on what sort of resistance a person acquires from covid19? If you catch it and recover do you get lasting immunity or not? Or is it too soon to tell?

From what I hear, it's not lasting immunity. Although the plasma from the recovered patients seems to help.

[mr friendly guy]

By the way - any information on what sort of resistance a person acquires from covid19? If you catch it and recover do you get lasting immunity or not? Or is it too soon to tell?

Chinese scientist are saying it might not. This is really hard to say, but lets just go into the basic medical science of this.

One of the factors of immunity is your body's ability to make and retain antibodies. Antibodies are proteins designed to attack a foreign antigen. Antigens themselves are a protein which is part of the foreign substance (ie virus, bacteria). And yes, Star Trek Voyager tends to use those terms interchangeably.

In the early stages you make immunoglobulin M (IgM) type and then later you make immunoglobulin G (IgG). As a very basic rule, you first make IgM, and then these tend to disappear to be replaced by IgG. Think of the former as the advance guard of an army, and the latter as the main army. Depending on the disease, IgG may take around a week to appear. So doctors can infer whether the presence of antibodies to a disease is due to having recent exposure to the disease or exposure in the past based on the antibody type.

This becomes a bit more complicated as a quick google search shows that sometimes IgM persists. Ok, so if doctors can measure both IgM or IgG antibodies to Convid 19 in survivors, then we have immunity right, and if they don't we say they aren't immune? Based on usual principles, if they are a certain amount of antibodies we do consider them immune (levels vary between diseases). For example with hep B vaccine, not everyone takes it up, and so back in the day, health workers would get a blood test to measure the antibody, and if its low, we get booster vaccines.

However there is a caveat to this principle. Your body should still remember the foreign antigen, so you can still make more antibodies when the need arises (think of these as the army reserves), and they can make it faster because your body has the "immune memory" of this particular antigen. So back to hep B example, its now considered that even if your antibody levels are low post vaccine, you're most probably immune due to the immune memory.

So summary, if you antibodies sometime after you're most probably immune, if not, you still might be. And we don't know how long antibodies persist.

As has been pointed out, China has used the plasma of survivors to treat patients due to the antibodies present. We don't know how long they last. I hope someone has the presence of mind to get volunteers from survivors and measure the antibodies to improve our knowledge. They should be able to do this outside of Hubei, as infections outside of Hubei are falling, and the rising numbers are from Hubei.

[mr friendly guy]

This is too funny not to share. Apparently the Antisemetic Times had a such an awesome idea about how to blame China, they are now slamming quarantine measures.


Here is a tweet from the NYT China correspondent with this relevant line.
https://twitter.com/amyyqin/status/1227403456484237312

On the mass quarantine centers in Wuhan: “This is taking us back to the 19th century,” Dr. Markel said. “It’s an old-fashioned approach to an epidemic, because you care more about the healthy than the people who are sick.”

Watch the mockery on twitter. Seriously. Quarantine is bad. I guess that cruise ship with infected people were subjected to 19th century medical treatment. I guess all those Australians being quarantine because of exposure risk are just having to deal with out of date medical practices. Heck every country doing quarantine is clearly using primitive medical techniques. I think the whole world needs to use more up to date medical techniques, like the US does with prescribing shit loads of opiods for minor ailments. I heard that's going well for them there.

Somehow calling the NYT fake news is bad apparently. I thought the NYT was shit when Bari Weiss called Tulsi Gabbard an Assad toady and one minute later shows she doesn't actually know what the word means or when the NYT confused the Polish president for Vladimir Putin. But arguing against quarantine measures actually causes harm and takes the cake.

Here is the original article from where that line comes from
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/heal ... ntine.html

[AniThyng]

Mmm, isn't there a nuanced difference between isolation quarantine and mass quarantine though? That seems evident from the quote. even the cruise ship afaik has people confined to quarters individually.

[Broomstick]

Yeah, that's what I got from the article - cramming the sick together in warehouses a la the 1918 Spanish Flu is bad, isolating in small groups/at home better. Most other nations are isolating people in small groups, or at home for the not-sick and/or mild cases. Then again, other nations don't have tens of thousands of cases to deal with.

The cruise ship, although passengers were mostly confined to their rooms, was not an absolute isolation as people were allowed out on deck from time to time. Also, the crew were not as well isolated and it may be that the crew members were infecting each other in their more densely packed quarters and while eating communally. So... isolating people on the cruise ship in Japan almost certainly protected people on shore, but it may have resulted in more infections in the people on board than under other possible circumstances.

[mr friendly guy]

Mmm, isn't there a nuanced difference between isolation quarantine and mass quarantine though? That seems evident from the quote. even the cruise ship afaik has people confined to quarters individually.

The article from which the quote was taken is more nuanced, but even that boils down we don't know exactly what China is doing in these centres, we don't know if they have medical staff, so we will assume the worse case scenario, and individual isolation works better than worse case scenario. At least they have that disclaimer. The tweet has not.

[Ziggy Stardust]

But the tweet is correct? Pretty much any epidemiologist is going to tell you that these types of mass quarantine measures are outdated (there is a decent amount of evidence that they aren't as effective as you would expect anyway ... for example, quarantine was not particularly effective in the SARS epidemic a couple decades ago). Generally speaking, small-scale to individual isolation is a preferable strategy, except in fringe cases with very high asymptomatic transmission rates and intermediate asymptomatic carriage periods (we still don't have much evidence on covid-19 of where it might fall on this spectrum, admittedly). I don't really understand what your problem with it is, other than that it is taken somewhat out of context in the tweet.

[mr friendly guy]

The figures for yesterday show the number of cases has dropped by 211. Its the first time I think the total has dropped. The number of cases in China outside of Hubei has been falling for some time. Deaths is at 2006 and recoveries is 14387.
https://ncov.dxy.cn/ncovh5/view/pneumon ... ame=iossmf

Still early days yet before we can call it a trend, but I think with winter ending in China shortly the virus will find it harder. Unfortunately it seems to have higher cases reported outside of China.

On a personal note, my sister was asking me whether it will be safe for her to go to Japan, a trip she had been planning for a while now. Initially Australian recommendations were so stringent about Japan, but in my email that day was a message from the college and Japan has been added to the countries GPs should ask patients whether they have visited. So she decided to Europe instead and in the process of getting refunds for her hotels and tickets etc.

[mr friendly guy]

Interesting stuff I am hearing in trying to treat this.

1. As mentioned, they are using the plasma from recovered people to treat other patients. The reason is due to antibody formation in the plasma. Initially China was just reported medical staff doing it (as there is some degree of reluctance to donate blood in china), but now they are reporting average people donating blood as well.

2. Xinhua is reporting using chloroquine to try.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-0 ... 792545.htm

Its interesting because chloroquine is an old antimalaria drug, but then this caught my eye with the suggested mechanisms.

Previous in vitro experiments showed that it can block virus infections by changing the acidity and basicity value inside the cell and interfering receptors of SARS coronavirus.

It also shows immune-modulating activity, which may enhance its antiviral effect in vivo and is widely distributed in the whole body, including the lungs, after oral administration.

Basically they are saying it alters pH value in cells which can interfere with how the virus reproduces. The article doesn't tell us do we lower it down (ie more acidic) or high ie more alkaline.

The other tidbit is interesting, about immune modulation. Because similar drugs like hydroxychloroquine is actually used to treat some autoimmune diseases like Lupus, so there may be something there.

3. Trying antiflu meds (or more specifically a Russian made one Umifenovir/Arbidol.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/925402

One study being done at the Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital in China is testing Kaletra against Arbidol, an antiviral drug approved in China and Russia to treat the flu. Two groups of patients will take the medications along with standard care. A third group in the study will receive only standard care, typically supportive therapy with oxygen and IV fluids that are meant to support the body so the immune system can fight off a virus on its own.

Now umifenovir is not one we use in Australia. We tend to use oseltamavir or tamiflu, and even then, in someone who is not that sick, its only useful if given within the first 48 hours and that just speeds up recovery time. According to the wiki article on umifenovir, it supposedly has similar effects to tamiflu. Even if all it does is speeds up recovery rates, it can still be useful as they are still building new temporary hospitals to help in Hubei province.

4. Anti ebola drugs are being tested based on what we now in vitro they do coronaviruses
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/925402 (same link as above)

An Ebola Drug Gets a Second Look
One repurposed drug generating a lot of buzz is an experimental infusion called remdesivir. It was originally tested against Ebola. While it didn't work for that infection, it has been shown to shut down the new coronavirus, at least in test tubes.

It's been given to a small number of COVID-19 patients already, including one in Washington state.

In order to have better evidence of how well it may work in people, two studies in Beijing are comparing remdesivir to a dummy pill to see if the drug can help patients with both mild and severe symptoms recover from their illnesses.

There is more which is promising. Remdesivir is a nucleotide analogue. Some antiviral drugs against hepatitis works on this premise where we trick the virus into subtituting one its building blocks. Some drugs are nucleotide analogues and some are nucleoside analogues, the difference is in the structure to make one a nucleotide or another a nucleoside.

5 another antiviral tested is Favipiravir

https://www.plenglish.com/index.php?o=r ... t-covid-19
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favipiravir

Never heard of this one myself, wiki says its manufactured by a japanese company and thought to work by inhibiting RNA replication in viruses.

So lets see what happens, but the world is reacting quite fast to testing new treatments.

[J]

FDA press release
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-a ... and-abroad

Excerpt:

The FDA plays an essential role in overseeing our Nation’s medical products as part of our vital mission to protect and promote public health, including during public health emergencies. The FDA is an active partner in the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) response, working closely with our government and public health partners across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as well as with our international counterparts. Our work is multifaceted, focusing on actively facilitating efforts to diagnose, treat and prevent the disease; surveilling the medical product supply chain for potential shortages or disruptions and helping to mitigate such impacts, as necessary; and leveraging the full breadth of our public health tools as we oversee the safety and quality of FDA-regulated products for American patients and consumers.

Active Supply Chain Surveillance
We are keenly aware that the outbreak will likely impact the medical product supply chain, including potential disruptions to supply or shortages of critical medical products in the U.S. We are not waiting for drug and device manufacturers to report shortages to us—we are proactively reaching out to manufacturers as part of our vigilant and forward-leaning approach to identifying potential disruptions or shortages. The FDA has dedicated additional resources to review and coordinate data to better identify any potential vulnerabilities to the U.S. medical product sector, specifically from this outbreak.

We have been in contact with hundreds of manufacturers of human and animal drugs and medical devices, as well as syncing up with global regulators, like the European Medicines Agency, to assess and monitor for indications and early warning signs of potential manufacturing discontinuances or interruptions due to the outbreak. It’s worth noting that there are no vaccines, gene therapies, or blood derivatives licensed by the FDA that are manufactured in China. Raw materials used in manufacturing do come from China and other locations in Southeast Asia and we are in contact with biologics manufacturers to gauge any supply concerns regarding raw materials.

This remains an evolving and very dynamic situation with respect to potential shortages. We are tracking reports of increased ordering of some essential medical devices through distributors, such as personal protective equipment (PPE) (e.g. respirators and surgical gowns, gloves and masks).

If a potential shortage or disruption of medical products is identified by the FDA, we will use all available tools to react swiftly and mitigate the impact to U.S. patients and health care professionals. These tools include closely working with manufacturers and expediting review of alternate supply to prevent shortages, among other measures, with the common goal of minimizing any negative impact to public health in America.

The FDA will continue to closely monitor the domestic and global supply chain during this evolving situation. Should the Agency be alerted to a potential shortage of a critical medical product, we will be as transparent as possible in sharing updates as they develop.

I'd feel more comfortable if they already have the alternative supply sources lined up and ready to go, though they are at least aware of the issue and taking steps to deal with the situation.

I think the big supply chain issues happen in the restart whenever that occurs. A lot of the companies & factories will be low or out of cash after a prolonged shutdown & unable to pay their workers until product starts shipping. Government bailouts & intervention may be required for a successful restart.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Remdesivir studies are already at Phase 3, so it is likely to be the first treatment actually rolled out (unless no efficacy/safety is demonstrated in the Phase 3) barring some major breakthrough. I believe chloroquine is the next furthest down the testing pipeline.

[Broomstick]

Al-Jazeera is reporting two deaths in Qom from Covid - I've been trying to double-check that it's not MERS (a related corona virus) but haven't seen much else on this - anyone else have information?

[Ziggy Stardust]

Although there isn't a rapid diagnostic test for covid-19 yet (or MERS, for that matter), standard laboratory methods can distinguish between them pretty reliably (the full genetic sequences for both are publicly available and relatively simple to compare). Even without laboratory methods, the presentation of symptoms follows a different pattern between the two (MERS is more aggressive), and given Iranian doctors certainly have experience with MERS they are unlikely to conflate them. Middle Eastern health systems take MERS very seriously, since it is much, much, much deadlier than covid-19 (~30% mortality for MERS, less than 3% for covid-19); in addition, those health systems are currently gearing up to prepare for the expected seasonal flare-up of MERS in March-April.

This wonderful tracking tool developed by Johns Hopkins confirms 2 deaths in Iran (as well as 9 cases in the UAE).

[Broomstick]

While I have confidence in the doctors of the Middle East making the distinction I am less confident about journalists understanding that MERS and Covid are two different diseases.

Isn't Qom something of a pilgrimage destination? That could explain both the how the virus got there and be a concern regarding the number of potential contacts.

[MKSheppard]

Corona can be passed through poop and urine.

There was a famous 2003 SARS case in Singapore or Hong Kong of an entire apartment building being infected through leaky sewer lines -- the sewer lines for each apartment aren't 100% airtight; this may be what's happening on the death princess.

[The Romulan Republic]

Looks like Lord Vladimort is using the coronavirus scare as an excuse to racially target Chinese people in Russia:

https://cbc.ca/news/world/coronavirus-r ... -1.5473035

Bus drivers in Moscow kept their WhatsApp group chat buzzing with questions this week about what to do if they spotted passengers who might be from China riding with them in the Russian capital.

"Some Asian-looking (people) have just got on. Probably Chinese. Should I call (the police)?" one driver messaged his peers. "How do I figure out if they're Chinese? Should I ask them?" a colleague wondered.

The befuddlement reflected in screenshots of the group exchanges seen by The Associated Press had a common source - instructions from Moscow's public transit operator Wednesday for drivers to call a dispatcher if Chinese nationals boarded their buses, Russian media reported.

A leaked email that the media reports said was sent by the state-owned transportation company Mosgortrans told dispatchers who took such calls to notify the police. The email, which the company immediately described on Twitter as fake, carried a one-word subject line: coronavirus.

Since the outbreak of the new virus that has infected more than 76,000 people and killed more than 2,300 in mainland China, Russia has reported two cases. Both patients, Chinese nationals hospitalized in Siberia, recovered quickly. Russian authorities nevertheless are going to significant — some argue discriminatory — lengths to keep the virus from resurfacing and spreading.

Moscow officials ordered police raids of hotels, dormitories, apartment buildings and businesses to track down the shrinking number of Chinese people remaining in the city. They also authorized the use of facial recognition technology to find those suspected of evading a 14-day self-quarantine period upon their arrival in Russia.

"Conducting raids is an unpleasant task, but it is necessary, for the potential carriers of the virus as well," Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a statement outlining various methods to find and track Chinese people the city approved as a virus prevention strategy.

Identifying citizens on buses, subway trains
The effort to identify Chinese citizens on public transportation applies not only to buses, but underground trains and street trams in Moscow, Russian media reported Wednesday.

Metro workers were instructed to stop riders from China and ask them to fill out questionnaires asking why they were in Russia and whether they observed the two-week quarantine, the reports said. The forms also ask respondents for their health condition and the address of where they are staying.

South Korea taking 'unprecedented' steps as Italy, Iran also struggle to contain COVID-19
In Yekaterinburg, a city located 1,790 kilometres away from Moscow in the Urals Mountains, members of the local Chinese community also are under watch. Self-styled Cossack patrols in the city hand out medical masks along with strong recommendations to visit a health clinic to Chinese residents.

Human rights advocates have condemned the targeting of Chinese nationals as racial profiling, not an effective epidemic control strategy.

"Prevention of any serious virus, be it a flu or the new coronavirus, should involve a proper information campaign and not discrimination of other people," said Alyona Popova, an activist engaged in a year-long court challenge of Moscow's use of facial recognition technology.

Land border with China remains closed
The containment measures in the capital came as the Russian government instituted an indefinite ban on Chinese nationals entering the country that could block up to 90 per cent of travellers coming to Russia from China. Weeks before, Russia shut down the country's long land border with China, suspended all trains and most flights between the two countries.

An employee of a Moscow-based company that employs Chinese nationals told the AP on condition of anonymity that police officers came to their office on Thursday and asked a dozen Chinese staffers to stay home for two weeks. The visit took place a little more than two weeks after these staffers returned from China and went through health checks at the airport, the employee said.

The employee spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about what had happened.

The Moscow Metro confirmed to The Associated Press that the underground system was "actively monitoring the stations" and has a protocol in place for dealing with people who "have recently returned from the People's Republic of China."

"We ask to see their documents and to show us documents (proving) that if they have recently returned from the People's Republic of China, they have undergone a two-week quarantine period," Yulia Temnikova, Moscow Metro's deputy chief of client and passenger services, said.

Transit workers lacking instructions
If an individual does not show proof of completing the quarantine, Metro workers ask the person to fill out the form and call an ambulance, Temnikova said.

Bus and tram drivers contacted their labour union about the instructions to look for Chinese nationals and report them to the dispatch cente. The drivers were outraged and didn't know what to do, Public Transport Workers Union chairman Yuri Dashkov said.

"So he saw a Chinese national, and then what?" Dashkov said. "How can he ascertain that he saw a Chinese national, or a Vietnamese national, or a Japanese, or (someone from the Russian region of) Yakutia?"

Planes of foreigners leave China as coronavirus death toll rises, infection spreads
Dashkov showed the AP a photo of the email that officials at Mosgortrans were said to have sent out. He also showed three photos of on-bus electronic displays reading, "If Chinese nationals are discovered in the carriage, inform the dispatcher."

The AP was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the email and the photos. Dashkov shared screenshots of what appeared to be a genuine bus drivers' group chat in WhatsApp.

While Moscow public transit operator Mosgortrans dismissed the email as phony on its official Twitter account Wednesday, the company told the AP in a statement two days later that it does "conduct monitoring" and "sends data to the medics when necessary."

Mosgortrans referred additional questions to the detailed statement from Moscow's mayor, who on Friday acknowledged the sharp focus on Chinese people in the city's virus-control plan.

Facial recognition technology
Officials ordered everyone arriving from China to isolate themselves for two weeks, and those who skip the quarantine step will be identified through video surveillance and facial recognition technology, Sobyanin said. The systems give authorities the ability to "constantly control compliance with the protocol," he said in the statement.

The mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment on the city's containment approach and the accusation that it's discriminatory. But rights activist Popova insists the facial recognition program is unlawful whether the searches are seeking Russian or Chinese faces.

Number of coronavirus cases in China passes 75,000
"We have a constitutional right to privacy, and citizens of (other countries) have it according to foreign and international legal norms," she said.

Temnikova from the Moscow Metro rejected accusations of racial profiling. Subway workers "mainly look at the passenger's (health) condition," she said, and approach "people who need help."

Addressing identification questions like the ones that worried the bus drivers, Temnikova said it should be "clear who could have arrived from China" because "it is obvious."

The Cossacks of Yekaterinburg - men in conservative, often pro-Kremlin groups claiming to be successors of the proud guards who policed the Russian Empire's frontiers - took fighting the virus into their own hands three weeks ago. They also have a system of sorts for deciding who needs a face mask and advice to see a medical professional.

'Window of opportunity' to contain coronavirus is now, health officials say
"Mainly (we approach) people from China because it is from them that the coronavirus came. They are the main source," Igor Gorbunov, elder of the Ural Volunteer Cossack Corps, told the AP during one such patrol Friday.

"But not only them," Gorbunov continued. "There are different nationalities, there are many people of Asian appearance, and they seem to be vulnerable to this disease, the coronavirus, because it is them who are most often affected. Europeans are not yet affected much."

The viral outbreak that began in China has infected more than 78,000 people globally. The World Health Organization has named the illness COVID-19, referring to its origin late last year and the coronavirus that causes it.

[Ralin]

Sorta doubt Putin takes much personal interest in the day to day policies of the Moscow city bus and train system.

On that note, here in Shenzhen the city government has warned people not to be lulled into a false sense of security about going outside by the nice weather today. Though it has been several days since there any been any confirmed new coronavirus cases.

[The Romulan Republic]

Sorta doubt Putin takes much personal interest in the day to day policies of the Moscow city bus and train system.

Its his lackies who control everything, and I doubt anything happens that he would strenuously object to.

Trump doesn't personally sign off on every awful thing his administration does, but he's still responsible for them if he creates a climate in which such things are allowed to happen.

On that note, here in Shenzhen the city government has warned people not to be lulled into a false sense of security about going outside by the nice weather today. Though it has been several days since there any been any confirmed new coronavirus cases.

Well, there's some good news.

[mr friendly guy]

On that note, here in Shenzhen the city government has warned people not to be lulled into a false sense of security about going outside by the nice weather today. Though it has been several days since there any been any confirmed new coronavirus cases.

Well, there's some good news.

The numbers have been dropping for days in parts of China that are outside of Hubei province. So far total numbers look to be plateauing in terms of new cases, and patients in serious condition has been dropping as well. By now the recovered is 9 -10 times the number who have died. To put fatalities inperspective, the daily number of fatalities is less than the daily fatalities for opiod overdoses in the United States. Obviously the numbers most probably are higher if the Chinese didn't implement their quarantine policy.

Edit - and if we are going to go on about how bad some countries are, I would also like to add in the mix

1. Ukraine - attacked a bus with evacuated nationals back to Ukraine, some of who may have Chinese ancestry (remember people, there are Chinese people in a lot of non Asian countries). Vice covered this one.

2. Hong Kong - Doctors striking if the government refusing to completely close the border with the mainland, even though the WHO did not at that part recommended it. Followed by the "democratic," civic party slamming the government when they evacuated HK citizens from the boat because... wait for it... wait for it... they also evacuated mainlanders, and never mind the guy who organised the bus to take the evacuees was a mainlander. And never mind that China despite having a shortage of masks, still supplied 19,000 to HK. Or how HK "pro democracy" protesters are gloating that some police officer has covid 19. But the free liberal media will look the other way on this one.

3. Chinese people are facing discrimination in Europe.

Plenty of other places have shown how shit they are, including western countries and western supported ones.