The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 coronavirus

[ray245]

Everything I've seen says that was a local Wuhan government fuck up, and that even that was likely exaggerated.

No mention plenty of Wuhan officials were being fired left, right and centre for any perceived fuck ups.

[The Romulan Republic]

Hey dipshit, when you toss a country's government with Trump and Hitler 'as an afterthought' everyone can damned well see what you're trying to do whether you focus on them or not.

Yes, I'm trying to say that the actions of multiple governments, including but by no means exclusively China's, are making worse a crisis that could result in the deaths of hundreds of millions of sapient beings.

Framing this as me trying to single out China specifically is a deceitful attempt to attack my motives and character because I had the temerity to criticize a dictatorship you support.

Everything I've seen says that was a local Wuhan government fuck up, and that even that was likely exaggerated.

Sources?

Frankly there are situations where there are good reasons to downplay the seriousness of a potential pandemic, at least in the near term. It becomes much harder to implement effective quarantine and isolation if people get it into their head that they need to GET THE FUCK OUT MOVE MOVE MOVE OR YOU'RE GOING TO GET INFECTED AND DIE.

That is, at least, a valid argument. It could have been made without the defamation and ad hominem, but that's probably too much to ask for.

I think the issue is whether you are conflating local bureaucrats messing things up with the actions or inaction of the central government. China is massive, and there are significant difference between the work of the local bureaucrats covering things up from saying the central government is covering things up.

My articles cited examples of the central government downplaying things. If you have evidence to the contrary, please post it and I'll do my best to evaluate it fairly and determine which source is more likely to be correct.

That's like conflating the US state government from the US federal government. Yes, officially they are part of the same government and the federal government should take responsibilities of any mess-up.

Sounds like you're conceding the responsibility of the central government here, so I'm not sure where the disagreement is.

But that's like blaming Obama for the actions of Mike Pence when he was the governor of Indiana for messing up the AIDS epidemic in his state.

While acknowledging that China is a large and diverse country and actions by local officials do not necessarily reflect the positions of the central government, I would note that the US system in particular gives a high level of autonomy (mistakenly, in my opinion) to states on many issues. Do Chinese provinces have the same level of autonomy versus the central government?

[ray245]

My articles cited examples of the central government downplaying things. If you have evidence to the contrary, please post it and I'll do my best to evaluate it fairly and determine which source is more likely to be correct.

Downplaying is not the same as covering it up? The ones that tried to cover it up seems to be local authorities, and when the Central government realised the extend of local government mishandling things, they fired a number of senior local officials. Given that in the early weeks of the outbreak, people knew very little actual information about the virus, the government downplaying it isn't all that surprising. People in the initial stage were assuming the virus to be more akin to SARS in terms of infectious rates, only to realise it's not the case.

Sounds like you're conceding the responsibility of the central government here, so I'm not sure where the disagreement is.

It's the job of the central government to take responsibility for local officials, which was why the local officials got fired. But any bureaucracy in a big country is going to have problems in terms of making sure the local officials do what they are supposed to do. If the central government failed to fire any local officials, then you have a real issue.

While acknowledging that China is a large and diverse country and actions by local officials do not necessarily reflect the positions of the central government, I would note that the US system in particular gives a high level of autonomy (mistakenly, in my opinion) to states on many issues. Do Chinese provinces have the same level of autonomy versus the central government?

It's a big country. The more officials you need to manage a large country, the higher the chance of you finding it difficult to monitor the job performance of local officials. Autonomy will naturally exist because of the sheer layers of bureaucracy.

Instead of a system in the US where poor-performing local governors and officials could in theory be replaced by local state level democracy, in China the system is centralised so its the job of the central government to replace poor performing local officials. But I doubt there's any system where a central or federal government can effectively monitor the actions of nearly all local officials.

If local officials is actively hindering the flow of information upwards, what can senior central officials do?

Of course a free press can greatly help the situation, but given that the free press is also happily enabling panic with poorly vetted information especially in cases of pandemic, it's trading one set of benefits for another set of problems.

Look at Indonesia or Iran if you want to look at governments that did not handle the flow of information well at all.

[The Romulan Republic]

A new whistleblower complaint reveals that the Trump Regime sent health workers to evacuate people from Wuhan without proper training or protective gear. The whistleblower alleges they were reassigned after voicing concerns, and told that they would be terminated if they did not accept the reassignment within 15 days:

https://washingtonpost.com/health/2020/ ... lower-says

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services sent more than a dozen workers to receive the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, without proper training for infection control or appropriate protective gear, according to a whistleblower complaint.

The workers did not show symptoms of infection and were not tested for the virus, according to lawyers for the whistleblower, a senior HHS official based in Washington who oversees workers at the Administration for Children and Families, a unit within HHS.

The whistleblower is seeking federal protection, alleging she was unfairly and improperly reassigned after raising concerns about the safety of these workers to HHS officials, including those within the office of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. She was told Feb. 19 that if she does not accept the new position in 15 days, which is March 5, she would be terminated.

AD
The whistleblower has decades of experience in the field, received two HHS department awards from Azar last year and has received the highest performance evaluations, her lawyers said.

The complaint was filed Wednesday with the Office of the Special Counsel, an independent federal watchdog agency. The whistleblower’s lawyers provided a copy of a redacted 24-page complaint to The Washington Post. A spokesman for the Office of the Special Counsel confirmed that it has received the complaint and assigned the case.

The complaint alleges HHS staff were “improperly deployed” and were “not properly trained or equipped to operate in a public health emergency situation.” The complaint also alleges the workers were potentially exposed to coronavirus because appropriate steps were not taken to protect them and staffers were not trained in wearing personal protective equipment, even though they had face-to-face contact with returning passengers. The workers were in contact with passengers in an airplane hangar where evacuees were received and on two other occasions: when they helped distribute keys for room assignments and hand out colored ribbons for identification purposes.

In some instances, the teams were working alongside personnel from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in “full gown, gloves and hazmat attire,” the complaint said.

“We take all whistleblower complaints very seriously and are providing the complainant all appropriate protections under the Whistleblower Protection Act. We are evaluating the complaint and have nothing further to add at this time,” HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said.

The whistleblower, in her complaint, states that “appropriate steps were not taken to quarantine, monitor, or test [the workers] during their deployment and upon their return home.” The repatriated Americans were among those evacuated from Wuhan and quarantined on military bases in California and Texas because they were considered at high risk for contracting the flu-like illness.

About 14 personnel from the Administration for Children and Families, or ACF, were sent to March Air Force base in Riverside County, Calif., and another team of about 13 ACF personnel were sent to Travis Air Force in Solano County, Calif., according to the complaint and the whistleblower’s lawyer, Ari Wilkenfeld. In Solano County this week, the first U.S. patient was confirmed to be infected with coronavirus who did not travel to a region where it is spreading or have known contact with someone diagnosed with the disease.

Several people within HHS voiced objection to sending the ACF personnel to receive passengers, according to a person familiar with the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

A second person familiar with the situation said the workers were not tested for coronavirus because none of them met the criteria, which was restricted at that time to people with symptoms and either a recent trip to China or close contact with a person confirmed to be infected with covid19. If the workers had exhibited symptoms, appropriate protocol would have been followed.

The deployments took place Jan. 28 to 31, around the time when the first planeload of evacuees arrived at March, and Feb. 2 to Feb. 7, during the time when additional flights were arriving at Travis. The planes each carried about 200 Americans who were repatriated from Wuhan.

After their deployments, the workers returned to their normal duties, some taking commercial airline flights to return to their offices around the country, the lawyers said.

“Our client was concerned that ACF staff — who were potentially exposed to the coronavirus — were allowed to leave quarantined areas and return to their communities, where they may have spread the coronavirus to others,” said Lauren Naylor, one of the whistleblower’s lawyers.

The whistleblower is also seeking assistance from the office of Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), a member of the House Ways and Means committee and vice chair of the House Oversight Committee, according to a Gomez spokesman.

During a hearing Thursday, Gomez asked Azar whether any employees from ACF could have been sent to help with the repatriation of Americans from Wuhan without any training in emergency response. Azar replied that some ACF employees were involved.

Asked what sort of health and safety training the personnel received and whether any of them were exposed to high-risk evacuees from China, Azar said: “They never should have been without P.P.E,” referring to personal protective equipment.

Asked whether any protocols may have been broken, given the urgency on the ground, Azar replied urgency was never a reason for breaking safety protocols.

“I don’t believe that has taken place,” Azar said said, adding that health and safety protocols “should always be followed.” He said he did not personally know the names of the team, but other department officials did. Pressed by Gomez what the department would do if untrained employees were exposed to the virus, Azar said: “I’d want to know the full facts, and we’d take appropriate remedial efforts.”

The whistleblower said she received an email Jan. 25 about a potential deployment within ACF to support repatriation of the evacuated Americans, according to her lawyer. She initially supported the efforts because they had the “appearance that this was within ACF’s scope,” Naylor said. But later, she discovered the teams were dispatched without her knowledge by other senior officials at HHS. It was part of the agency’s “all-hands-on-deck” mission, Naylor said, but it broke agency protocol about what kinds of employees should respond to health emergencies. The whistleblower said she later found out about the deployment when she heard directly from some employees and other senior officials at HHS.

Some workers expressed concern about the lack of protective gear to the ACF team leader on the ground. That person joined ACF in September and had “no training or experience in any federal emergency management, public health emergency response, or safety or operational protocols to run the mission,” the complaint states.

ACF personnel typically deal with supporting people recovering from natural disasters, such as floods and fires, and helping victims apply for temporary assistance, all of which are under the category of human services, the whistleblower’s lawyers said. HHS officials broke established protocols for emergency support by sending ACF workers to a health emergency for which they have no training, Naylor said. ACF, which has about 1,300 employees, has been criticized in recent years because of its role in sheltering and taking custody of migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border who were separated from family members by the Department of Homeland Security.

The workers’ concerns about potential exposure to coronavirus were not addressed, the whistleblower’s lawyers said.

“She was involuntarily assigned to a position in a subject matter where she has no expertise,” Wilkenfeld, her lawyer, said in an interview Thursday. The agency said the reason for the reassignment was “necessary to meet the needs of the department,” according to a memo she received. “If I did not accept involuntary reassignment, I would be terminated from federal service through adverse personnel action,” according to her complaint.

Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.

Every time I think I've reached the limits of my rage and disgust at this regime, they find some new low to sink to.

[Broomstick]

I shouldn't have to explain this, but "there's probably no way it could be completely contained" does not mean "How a government responds to it makes zero difference, and therefore any corrupt or incompetent response is fine."

The fact containment fails does not mean that those attempting it are "guilty" or "incompetent".

Please explain what, exactly, you think the Chinese government did or is doing wrong.

Yes, I do think you are wrong here on several points.

Primarily, supressing information about the severity of the crisis at various points, as noted above in both my reply to Ralin and articles I cited.

If you look at history it is pretty normal and typical for governments to deny the severity during the initial part of a large epidemic or pandemic. Denial is human nature, and governments are run by humans.

From what I've been able to glean - and I'm no expert on China and my sources are limited - the "middle management" of China government, the provincial officials, have long had incentive to only forward good news upwards to the top levels. At least initially, it was the middle-level people who suppressed information, or denied the seriousness of the problem. Then the top level got wind of what was going on and replaced the middle-level people. Unfortunately, they replaced them with the same folks who have been "managing" the Uighurs, basically a form of law enforcement, whose response has been to round up anyone sick or potentially sick like criminals and concentrate them in quarantine centers which is only going to exacerbate the problems. Meanwhile, everyone else in the affected areas are on a form of house arrest which is playing merry hell with the economy. It is pretty draconian, which might be justified if works but the jury is out on that. Of course, as I noted, my sources are scant so I could be wrong on all that.

In sum, at least initially the top levels of the Chinese government can not be blamed for the initial suppression of information. They are on the hook for what occurred after they removed the lower-level officials. Who were probably in a no-win situation because I'm not sure what the reaction would be if they had been forth coming and, shall we say, appropriately alarming from the beginning - "shoot the messenger" has happened a lot in history.

Also, I will remind everyone that I am by no means singling out China in this criticism. Iran is clearly being disingenuous about the seriousness of the problem, as is the Trump Regime, which has probably committed the most appalling response by cutting funding to the agencies tasked with preventing or combating a pandemic while this crisis is in progress.

Iran now has several high government officials who are ill with the disease, which is not going to help their response to this crisis. It was probably a level of personal denial that led the health minister to be exposed, which then lead to other government officials getting sick - a great illustration of how denial in a pandemic can be counter-productive.

As for the US - holy shit, they put Pence in charge? We're fucked. I say that based on his response to public health problems in Indiana while he was governor. Denial and injection of his bullshit religious morality resulted in delays in needed action, resulting in further damage and death. Trump is more concerned with the stock market, attacking the Democrats, and his re-election chances than dealing with how this will affect American citizens. In a press conference yesterday he literally predicted a miracle would occur and the virus would just go away.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, its not like there's an abundance of talent in this regime to draw on. They've pretty much purged everyone at a high level who has a) a conscience, and b) a brain.

[mr friendly guy]

From what I've been able to glean - and I'm no expert on China and my sources are limited - the "middle management" of China government, the provincial officials, have long had incentive to only forward good news upwards to the top levels. At least initially, it was the middle-level people who suppressed information, or denied the seriousness of the problem. Then the top level got wind of what was going on and replaced the middle-level people. Unfortunately, they replaced them with the same folks who have been "managing" the Uighurs, basically a form of law enforcement, whose response has been to round up anyone sick or potentially sick like criminals and concentrate them in quarantine centers which is only going to exacerbate the problems. Meanwhile, everyone else in the affected areas are on a form of house arrest which is playing merry hell with the economy. It is pretty draconian, which might be justified if works but the jury is out on that. Of course, as I noted, my sources are scant so I could be wrong on all that.

The suspicion that there was a new disease was already reported to the higher ups and they were still investigating it when Dr Li was asked to sign a statement cautioning against spreading rumours. Some of the allegations against the Wuhan government does leave them some mitigating circumstance. For example TRR's own Op Ed links to an article in the financial times about how the Wuhan government held a public feast which may have spread the virus on Jan 18. The problem with that narrative is, human to human transmission of covid 19 was only recognise on Jan 20. At that time the news was reporting that they thought it was from wild life in the wet market, and it was animal to human transmission, so there wasn't an obvious pressing reason not to hold it. Its these little facts that are missing from the anti China narrative.

The economy itself might be more resilient than expected. For example while small restaurants aren't allowed to have customers, they are allowed delivery services. China has excellent logistics service, so some are branching into home delivery. Other employees have lost their job and diverted to other jobs after retraining. The government is already compensating to some extent business losses.

There are other factors, such as this started during Chinese new year, where the economic activity is low. Other factors are they are bringing factories back on line, albeit with infection control processes. All these things are available in English. China publishes news in all 6 UN languages, but we both know articles from the Guardian will never bother to check such things as I already noted.

[madd0ct0r]

An anarchist chat I'm on has banned posts about Covid-19. Unless they come from WHO, CDc, NHS or similar national organisation.

This is to avoid misinformation and malicious scare mongering dominating the discussion.
Yes. Thus is the anarchist s

[Col. Crackpot]

Well the WHO has been acting like an extension of the CCP’s propaganda arm, and the CDC has to vet everything through Mike Pence, So they might as well ban them too.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/what ... ?r=US&IR=T

The rest of the world is 'simply not ready' for the coronavirus, according to a WHO envoy who just returned from China
HILARY BRUECK
FEB 26, 2020, 9:07 AM

A team of 25 health experts from around the world just returned from a trip to China’s Wuhan province, the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Team lead Bruce Aylward said Tuesday that the “big conclusion for the world is, it’s simply not ready.”
He talked about what conditions are like inside China, where trains roll through stations, makeshift sick bays are built in mere days, and hospitals are erecting walls to keep COVID-19 patients in isolation.
Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
COVID-19 appears to be loosening its grip on China, just as other countries around the world are starting to grapple with the effects of person-to-person spread of the deadly virus for the first time on their home turf.


The number of virus cases reported in China continues to decline. Doctors there say they have got beds available for patients, and the 31 affected provinces around the country are beginning to wake up from a quarantine-induced slumber. Some people in Hubei province, at the epicentre of the outbreak, are heading back to their factories. But schools are still closed, and street life in Wuhan, the province’s capital, has been relatively quiet for more than a month.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, a physician and public-health expert with the World Health Organisation, just returned from an independent fact-finding mission in China, along with more than 20 health counterparts from around the world, including the Chinese.

His message is sobering.

The world is not ready for the novel coronavirus
“Big conclusion for the world is – it’s simply not ready,” Aylward said just hours after disembarking in Geneva from his China trip. “Folks, this is a rapidly escalating epidemic in different places that we’ve got to tackle superfast to prevent a pandemic.”

That may be difficult in countries that don’t have the same disease-surveillance setup as China, a country that was hit hard by the deadly SARS outbreak in 2002-03.

Still, Aylward pointed to a few basic preparedness measures that are being used in China that other countries could mimic to help control the spread of this poorly understood virus.

“Hundreds of thousands of people in China did not get COVID-19 because of this aggressive response,” Aylward said, adding that the techniques were “old-fashioned public-health tools” but applied “with a rigour and innovation of approach on a scale that we’ve never seen in history.”

“In 30 years of doing this business, I’ve not seen this before, nor was I sure it would work,” he said.

Here are Aylward’s big takeaways from his time in China, where he traced the COVID-19 response.

Cordoning off sick people from society appears to be effective, but you don’t have to put a whole country on lockdown to do it
Aylward said the Chinese took a “tailored” approach to their response to the outbreak.

In the normally bustling New York-sized city of Wuhan, which has been under a strict quarantine for over a month, trains often roll right through the stations with the blinds down, he said.

The approach in other Chinese cities is different depending on how many people are sick.

“A lot of people say you can’t do this at scale because you will exhaust your response,” he said. “But the Chinese pragmatically said ‘not if you tailor this properly.'”

Other health and legal experts, however, have concerns that draconian and drawn-out quarantine measures may be unethical and inhumane.

Fostering a sense ‘that it’s our duty to help stop this virus’ can help
“It’s a ghost town,” Aylward said of Wuhan. “But behind every window and every skyscraper, there are people cooperating with this response.”

The same is true of the medical teams dispatched to help in the outbreak. More than 3,000 of those workers have gotten sick in the line of duty so far, though.

Aylward said one of these medical teams travelled on his train as it arrived in Wuhan.

“They had these little jackets on and a flag,” he said. “It was a medical team coming in from Guangdong to be part of the 40,000 healthcare workers from other parts of China that have come in, many of whom volunteered to go into Wuhan and help with the response.”

It’s not only medical workers who are chipping in, Aylward said. Many people, including Chinese forestry workers and toll-booth attendants, are doing their jobs differently now to respond to the outbreak, which began in December and is still sickening tens of thousands of people.


It’s important to prepare hospital beds, ventilators to help people breathe, and public health workers to trace close contacts

Prepping “hundreds” of hospital beds and ventilators and enlisting thousands of public-health workers are some of the most crucial “really practical things you can do to be ready,” Aylward said.

In China, makeshift sick bays in stadiums have been built in mere days during the outbreak, and Aylward said some hospitals were erecting new walls around entire wards to keep COVID-19 patients in isolation.

“We’re going to find every case,” he said. “We’re going to go after every contact. We are going to make sure that we can isolate them and keep these people alive so they survive the case. This is the way we’ve got to be thinking. It takes a real shift in mindset.”

Use ‘massive amounts of data’ to track the outbreak’s spread
China has harnessed data in its attempt to trace every case of COVID-19, Aylward said.

“Remember, you don’t have to find every single one ’cause you never will,” he added. “You want to find enough to break the big chains of transmission, slow this thing down, and get a grip on it.”

The technique might sound draconian, but it is how a lot of public-health work is done. (In the US, this is often a key part of how investigators pinpoint where foodborne illnesses come from.)

In addition to tracking the spread of the virus, technology also helped move entire workflows online, Aylward said, like prescription refills. This eased strain on the country’s medical system, even as many elective surgeries have gone undone in hospitals burdened with COVID-19.

Evolve with the science
Aylward said national guidelines on how to take care of severely sick patients had changed “six times by six weeks” in China as scientists learned more about how the disease works.

Wash your hands. Tell your friends to wash their hands too.
This is still one of the most effective preventive measures against the novel coronavirus. Avoid touching your face, and keep your hands as clean as possible.

“It looks like the main driver is not widespread community infection,” Aylward said. “It looks like it’s household-level infection.”

Because of all these different measures, Aylward said he was stunned to see the number of cases decreasing in China. But this does not mean the outbreak is coming to an end. Even in China, it’s hard to predict where the virus may head next.

“What was a rapidly escalating outbreak has plateaued and then come down faster than one would have expected,” he said. “You know, if I had COVID-19, I’d want to be treated in China.”

You know what. WHO is obviously giving the CCP blowjobs, because you know, everyone who says something good about China is obviously a shrill. Its much better to believe a dissident who thinks China under Xi is worse than the Great Leap forward. That's a trustworthy source if I ever heard one.

[Col. Crackpot]

You remind me of, well me defending George Bush in 2003. Hope that works out for you.

Statist nut.

[madd0ct0r]

You remind me of, well me defending George Bush in 2003. Hope that works out for you.

Statist nut.

It's like a lot of people have so simplified ideas in their head that they are reduced to 'china bad and draconian'. It's like they can't grasp that a place with a winnie the pooh dicator and a rampant mistreatment of the Uighers can get things right. Becuase in a country that size, it's oblvously the same ten people making all the decisions on everything, right?

What've they've done is a classic Public health response. The main sources of spread now appear to be a Korean chruch and most of italy. At time, in this thread I said I thought the chinese publich health team were over reacting. It looks like i was wrong.

[FireNexus]

I find it amusing, in grim sort of way, that this disease mostly will harm baby boomers. It doesn’t even appear to affect actual babies too badly. And nature loves to kill babies. Babies sometimes just stop breathing in their sleep for no reason. Every disease ever disproportionately kills babies. Not COVID-19.

The baby boomers in general have spent decades dismantling or fighting the implementation of the very social mechanisms which would protect them from this disease, all for their immediate comfort and at the expense of others.

Paid sick leave? Socialism!

Telework? It makes it harder to have fifty pointless meetings and also you’re just lazy for wanting to use technology to make your life easier.

Universal healthcare (whether multi- or single-payer)? No! The market should be free to let sick people die so I don’t have to wait a week to get my elbow looked at.

Government funding of basic research? Why are you taking one cent out of my paycheck to infect mice with herpes, exactly?! JUNK SCIENCE!

Unbiased media? You mean liberal witch-hunt media!

International cooperation? AMERICA FIRST.

I’m not sure how, but I suspect they blame my generation for this thing that they made worse at every step, which primarily harms them.

[Col. Crackpot]

Oh please. no Government is beyond criticism. Even (especially) ones that don’t take kindly to criticism.

If a western government was behaving in the manner, you’d be screaming bloody murder and sanctimonious mockery. Rightfully so.

The emperor has no fucking clothes.

[madd0ct0r]

Oh please. no Government is beyond criticism. Even (especially) ones that don’t take kindly to criticism.

If a western government was behaving in the manner, you’d be screaming bloody murder and sanctimonious mockery. Rightfully so.

The emperor has no fucking clothes.

No. I woudln't. I'd be a bit bloodier happier if Italy was acting like this. oh wait, they have.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51602007

Italy has imposed strict quarantine restrictions in two northern "hotspot" regions close to Milan and Venice.

About 50,000 people cannot enter or leave several towns in Veneto and Lombardy for the next two weeks without special permission. Even outside the zone, many businesses and schools have suspended activities, and sporting events have been cancelled including several top-flight football matches.

In neighbouring Austria, a train from Venice was stopped at the Austrian border after it emerged that two passengers had fever symptoms. Austria's Interior Minister Karl Nehammer later confirmed to the BBC that the pair tested negative for coronavirus.

"All authorities have acted quickly and with great caution in this case," said Mr Nehammer in a statement. "The reporting chain worked without delay."

China gets a lot of things wrong, pick on those, not what it is doing right.

[mr friendly guy]

Oh please. no Government is beyond criticism. Even (especially) ones that don’t take kindly to criticism.

If a western government was behaving in the manner, you’d be screaming bloody murder and sanctimonious mockery. Rightfully so.

The emperor has no fucking clothes.

Only if they are being hypocritical about it. So I don't have a problem with Italy doing exactly the same thing, which they are, by applying quarantines to entire towns. I do have a problem with those who criticise China was using draconian methods which they allege doesn't work suddenly keeping quiet when a Western country does so. Especially when Italy's lack of logistics vs China, arguably causes more hardship to the quarantine areas than China - ie shortages to goods whereas Wuhan's prices have been kept stable.

There is however another double standard at play here. Very few people have reflected and compared this to Obama's handling of the H1N1 outbreak. Objectively responses the Chinese have done to when covid 19 was first identified, to declaring an emergency has been faster than the US did with H1N1. Yet we are inundated with articles about how China was "too slow,", and too slow to boot because its not a democracy, and now its spread to the whole world, and not once have these people considered how poorly the US has reacted, and not once have these people gave a shit how H1N1 is now part of the diseases we now deal with during the winter.

[LadyTevar]

LINK

Six West Virginia residents self-quarantined due to coronavirus concerns

Six people in West Virginia, including four in Monongalia County, are in a self-imposed quarantine to monitor for symptoms of coronavirus, according to WBOY.

Five of those people recently returned from China, according to WBOY, which obtained the information from the Monongalia County Health Department. One interacted closely with those returning from China.

In Morgantown, one person going into self-quarantine is a WVU student, another is a chemical engineer and a third person is returning soon from China and works at the WVU School of Public Health. The other two West Virginians going into self-quarantine are in Wheeling, according to WBOY.

No cases of coronavirus are suspected or have been diagnosed in West Virginia.

[madd0ct0r]

A funny and interesting article from someone in quarantine in Wuhan. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n05 ... from-wuhan

Could someone quote Dr Zeng's speech for me?
Dr Zebfs

[Broomstick]

An anarchist chat I'm on has banned posts about Covid-19. Unless they come from WHO, CDc, NHS or similar national organisation.

This is to avoid misinformation and malicious scare mongering dominating the discussion.
Yes. Thus is the anarchist s

Better tell them that the US CDC will be force to have all communications vetted by Mike Pence, meaning official government pronouncements will no longer be reliable.

Otherwise... carry on.

(Yes, irony noted.)

[Broomstick]

I find it amusing, in grim sort of way, that this disease mostly will harm baby boomers. It doesn’t even appear to affect actual babies too badly. And nature loves to kill babies. Babies sometimes just stop breathing in their sleep for no reason. Every disease ever disproportionately kills babies. Not COVID-19.

The baby boomers in general have spent decades dismantling or fighting the implementation of the very social mechanisms which would protect them from this disease, all for their immediate comfort and at the expense of others.

The baby boomers and their parents (who I refuse to call the "greatest" generation) - unfortunately being over 50 and with asthma I'm not in a great position regarding this disease, but still better off than those older and sicker than I am.

Schadenfreude.

[Broomstick]

Yet we are inundated with articles about how China was "too slow,", and too slow to boot because its not a democracy, and now its spread to the whole world, and not once have these people considered how poorly the US has reacted, and not once have these people gave a shit how H1N1 is now part of the diseases we now deal with during the winter.

Funny - because since the beginning of this month I've seen plenty of articles about how only an authoritarian government could act as strongly and swiftly as China did.

[ray245]

Yet we are inundated with articles about how China was "too slow,", and too slow to boot because its not a democracy, and now its spread to the whole world, and not once have these people considered how poorly the US has reacted, and not once have these people gave a shit how H1N1 is now part of the diseases we now deal with during the winter.

Funny - because since the beginning of this month I've seen plenty of articles about how only an authoritarian government could act as strongly and swiftly as China did.

I think practically every government acted too slowly, because they assumed this virus is akin to SARs or MERS, which could be easily contained compared to COVID-19.

[aerius]

Apparently, you don't get much immunity from the virus after recovering.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chin ... SKCN20M124

SHANGHAI/LONDON (Reuters) - A growing number of discharged coronavirus patients in China and elsewhere are testing positive after recovering, sometimes weeks after being allowed to leave the hospital, which could make the epidemic harder to eradicate.

On Wednesday, the Osaka prefectural government in Japan said a woman working as a tour-bus guide had tested positive for the coronavirus for a second time. This followed reports in China that discharged patients throughout the country were testing positive after their release from the hospital.

An official at China’s National Health Commission said on Friday that such patients have not been found to be infectious.

Experts say there are several ways discharged patients could fall ill with the virus again. Convalescing patients might not build up enough antibodies to develop immunity to SARS-CoV-2, and are being infected again. The virus also could be “biphasic”, meaning it lies dormant before creating new symptoms.

But some of the first cases of “reinfection” in China have been attributed to testing discrepancies.

On Feb. 21, a discharged patient in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu was readmitted 10 days after being discharged when a follow-up test came back positive.

Lei Xuezhong, the deputy director of the infectious diseases center at the West China Hospital, told People’s Daily that hospitals were testing nose and throat samples when deciding whether patients should be discharged, but new tests were finding the virus in the lower respiratory tract.

Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at Britain’s University of East Anglia who has been closely following the outbreak, told Reuters that although the patient in Osaka could have relapsed, it is also possible that the virus was still being released into her system from the initial infection, and she wasn’t tested properly before she was discharged.

The woman first tested positive in late January and was discharged from the hospital on Feb. 1, leading some experts to speculate that it was biphasic, like anthrax.

A Journal of the American Medical Association study of four infected medical personnel treated in Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic, said it was likely that some recovered patients would remain carriers even after meeting discharge criteria.

In China, for instance, patients must test negative, show no symptoms and have no abnormalities on X-rays before they are discharged.

Allen Cheng, professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at Monash University in Melbourne, said it wasn’t clear whether the patients were re-infected or had remained “persistently positive” after their symptoms disappeared. But he said the details of the Japan case suggested the patient had been reinfected.

Song Tie, vice director of the local disease control center in southern China’s Guangdong province, told a media briefing on Wednesday that as many as 14% of discharged patients in the province have tested positive again and had returned to hospitals for observation.

He said one good sign is that none of those patients appear to have infected anyone else.

“From this understanding ... after someone has been infected by this kind of virus, he will produce antibodies, and after these antibodies are produced, he won’t be contagious,” he said.

Normally, convalescing patients will develop specific antibodies that render them immune to the virus that infected them, but reinfection is not impossible, said Adam Kamradt-Scott, a specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Sydney.

“In most cases though, because their body has developed an immune response to the first infection, the second infection is usually less severe,” Kamradt-Scott said.

Other experts have also raised the possibility of “antibody-dependent enhancement”, which means exposure to viruses might make patients more at risk of further infections and worse symptoms.

China has so far discharged 36,117 patients, according to data from the National Health Commission released on Friday, which represents almost 46% of the total cases on the Chinese mainland. If the 14% rate of reinfection is accurate and remains consistent, it could pose a wider health risk.

“I would say that it is less about if it is possible that re-infection can occur than how often it occurs,” Cheng said.

[mr friendly guy]

Yet we are inundated with articles about how China was "too slow,", and too slow to boot because its not a democracy, and now its spread to the whole world, and not once have these people considered how poorly the US has reacted, and not once have these people gave a shit how H1N1 is now part of the diseases we now deal with during the winter.

Funny - because since the beginning of this month I've seen plenty of articles about how only an authoritarian government could act as strongly and swiftly as China did.

Not from what TRR posted. Nor from the linked articles in those Guardian articles either.

[The Romulan Republic]

I don't think either dictatorship or democracy has a monopoly on effective action in a crisis, or on incompetence. Speaking generally, not just with regard to this specific situation, dictatorship can allow for more extreme actions to be taken more swiftly, but it also can make it more difficult and dangerous for dissenting voices to be heard or mistakes to be corrected, and is more likely to exploit a crisis to target its political enemies.