Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

[g.sarkar]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/worl ... china.html
Coronavirus Updates: The Illness Now Has a Name: COVID-19
The World Health Organization said it had chosen a name for the disease that makes no reference to places, animals or people to avoid stigma.
Here’s what you need to know:
World health authorities now have a name for the coronavirus illness.
The Fed is closely watching the outbreak, its chairman told U.S. lawmakers.
Thousands were ordered into quarantine after a cluster of cases linked to department store.
An American evacuated from Wuhan tested positive for the coronavirus.
Back to work: That’s the message Beijing is sending companies and farms.
World health authorities now have a name for the coronavirus illness.
The World Health Organization on Monday proposed an official name for the illness caused by the new coronavirus: COVID-19. The acronym stands for coronavirus disease 2019, as the illness was first detected toward the end of last year.
The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that the new name makes no reference to any of the people, places or animals associated with the coronavirus. The goal was to avoid stigma.
Under international guidelines, the W.H.O. “had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease,” he said on Twitter.
.....
Gautam

[Atmavik]

Not allowed to enter Wuhan or would’ve reached Pakistani students, says envoy to China

https://www.geo.tv/latest/271444-not-al ... y-to-china

Ambassador of Pakistan to the People’s Republic of China, Naghmana Hashmi, said on Sunday that due to lack of permission to visit the coronavirus-hit Wuhan and Hubei, they could not reach stranded Pakistani students.

The Pakistani envoy said that until the quarantine period is completed there is a complete lockdown in Wuhan, otherwise, they would have reached the Pakistani students.

She said that the Pakistani officials are in contact with their Chinese counterparts in Beijing and Wuhan and will promptly reply to any query by a Pakistani citizen in China.

The envoy said that they are also giving psychological assistance to the citizens stranded in the quarantined areas.

Special Assistant on National Health Services Dr Zafar Mirza and the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan also reiterated that they ‘care’ about the stranded Pakistanis in Wuhan.

Dr Mirza said that the situation is being intensely discussed and best decision will be taken after keeping in view all the factors.

“Rest assured you are our own & we care!,” he tweeted.

Meanwhile, the Chinese embassy also took a similar stance, saying it understands the situation of Pakistani students in Wuhan and Hubei. “China will care about you as our own. Things are getting better, and please rest assured you are well protected,” said the official account.


Chinese Emb Pakistan
✔
@CathayPak
We have full understanding of the situation of the Pakistani students in Wuhan and Hubei Province. China will care about you as our own. Things are getting better, and please rest assured you are well protected.#coronavirus @ImranKhanPTI @SMQureshiPTI @zfrmrza @ForeignOfficePk https://twitter.com/zfrmrza/status/1226466196045926400 …

Zafar Mirza
@zfrmrza
210/ My very dear students in China & ur respectable family members, v r intensely discussing the situation @ highest level & will make the best decision in view of all factors with ref to devastating #coronavirus potential global pandemic. Rest assured you are our own & we care!


The death toll from the novel coronavirus surged past 800 in mainland China on Sunday, overtaking global fatalities in the 2002-03 SARS epidemic, even as the World Health Organization said the outbreak appeared to be "stabilising".

With 89 more people dying — most in Hubei, the province at the centre of the outbreak — the toll is now higher than the 774 killed worldwide by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome nearly two decades ago, according to figures from national health authorities.


the university has been converted into a makeshift hospital. some video msgs posted by Pakistani students are desperate

[Amber G.]

Latest updates (WHO etc): Another 94 deaths - 1115 total and 45,182 total cases..
Another paper - which studied 1000+ patients has more data, for me the one outlier was that incubation period reported in one case was 20 days... (median 3 days)... perhaps primary/secondary infaction.
https://globalbiodefense.com/novel-coro ... 19-portal/

[nandakumar]

They have to put on that suit on if they want to reuse and if it isn't thoroughly disinfected, they risk breaking containment (not that it is contained now, but it's the principle of the thing I'm talking about here.) or catching that disease and passing it on to the rest of the medical staff. If there is no other recourse and they will reuse that suit. If the situation gets worse, they'll be forced to, but at this point, they are trying to stretch out the inventory long enough in the hope that they'll get replenished.

I assume that they can easily set up super-disinfected pakistans. 200-proof vodka, imported straight from Vladivostok. Truly the Pure Land(ing seat) of The Pure. Also same with sanitized food areas. Cheen are not that clueless: they have survived under uber-baboon for ages. Hooctchie-kootchie... now THERE's a small problem. Maybe population will be down below that of desh's by end of the year, and through a decrease in the Source Term, not the Sink Term.

Didn't astronauts use some special kind of diet so that they didn't have to do 'SuSu' or 'potty' in outer space?

[Arun.prabhu]

Perspective:

The Japanese have tested approximately 500 of the passengers and crew on the diamond princess and turned up 175 infected. A 35% infection rate. Think on that. Now, the ship is a closed environment below decks and infection rates are going to be very high, but the Chinese authorities in Wuhan turned a blind eye to the disease for 50 days from the official patient zero. That, I’d approximate, equalizes the infection friendly atmosphere onboard a cruise ship, extrapolate the cruise ship infect rate to Wuhan’s initial population of 14 million and you get 5 million infected. The current nine million gets you 3 million infected. If you half the numbers to be conservative, it’s 2.5 million or 1.5 million . That’s just the folks out of Wuhan. Now , does the panic in the Chinese reaction make sense?

There are potentially one or two million disease carriers from Wuhan alone spread throughout the country. God knows how many more they have infected! Chinese communism - Enlightened one party rule - has pronged itself good.

[Arun.prabhu]

Feeding specialised meals for a few astronauts is not the same as feeding 170,000 (this was the count of medical personnel responding to the crisis in Wuhan last week). No one has those kind of foodstuffs for astronauts in stock. For sure and certain, the Chinese with their pitiable manned space exploration program don’t.

They have to put on that suit on if they want to reuse and if it isn't thoroughly disinfected, they risk breaking containment (not that it is contained now, but it's the principle of the thing I'm talking about here.) or catching that disease and passing it on to the rest of the medical staff. If there is no other recourse and they will reuse that suit. If the situation gets worse, they'll be forced to, but at this point, they are trying to stretch out the inventory long enough in the hope that they'll get replenished.

Didn't astronauts use some special kind of diet so that they didn't have to do 'SuSu' or 'potty' in outer space?

[sanjaykumar]

The significant point about that ship is that there have been no deaths reported. Cruises generally cater to the elderly.

[Arun.prabhu]

The disease becomes deadly on the third week. We’ll see how many die in another week or two.

[nandakumar]

Feeding specialised meals for a few astronauts is not the same as feeding 170,000 (this was the count of medical personnel responding to the crisis in Wuhan last week). No one has those kind of foodstuffs for astronauts in stock. For sure and certain, the Chinese with their pitiable manned space exploration program don’t.

Didn't astronauts use some special kind of diet so that they didn't have to do 'SuSu' or 'potty' in outer space?

Thanks for the clarification. I suspected it would something special. But didn't realise how difficult to replicate much less on a mass scale as is the case with the numbers in question.

[SriKumar]

The significant point about that ship is that there have been no deaths reported. Cruises generally cater to the elderly.

AS has been posted by Ldev, for death to happen, the symptoms have to get severe- typically pneumonia or other breathing-related issues. The only way to keep a patient alive is to treat the symptoms aggressively (there is no medicine yet, those who recovered had their immunity fight it off). This means providing oxygen, saline drip (hydration, nutrition) and whatever else they do in an ICU until the patient builds up some strength and immunity.

This is easily possible if there are well-equipped facilities, which exist anywhere in the world if you need to treat only 150 infected patients- as on the cruise ship in Japan. If you have thousands (or more) of such cases, it will overwhelm the existing resources, in this case- ICU beds. I think in Wuhan and Hubei this might have occurred. In the article linked by arun.prabhu ...the Wuhan doctor said something like 16 ICU beds were there in South Central Hospital in Wuhan. They might have added a few thousand since then , but only God knows how many of them are equipped for a full-scale emergency.

[sanjaykumar]

The key piece of equipment is the ventilator. Death does not happen abruptly. These infected people should include severely hypocxemic cases by now. Certainly there are no ventilators and staff on that ship.

[Arun.prabhu]

There are doctors and nurses on-board now. Thr medical bay will not be enough. I guess they’ll commander a large hall or something or carry out the infected to properly quarantined treatment facilities.

[SriKumar]

Perspective:

The Japanese have tested approximately 500 of the passengers and crew on the diamond princess and turned up 175 infected. A 35% infection rate. Think on that. Now, the ship is a closed environment below decks and infection rates are going to be very high, but the Chinese authorities in Wuhan turned a blind eye to the disease for 50 days from the official patient zero. That, I’d approximate, equalizes the infection friendly atmosphere onboard a cruise ship, extrapolate the cruise ship infect rate to Wuhan’s initial population of 14 million and you get 5 million infected. The current nine million gets you 3 million infected. If you half the numbers to be conservative, it’s 2.5 million or 1.5 million . That’s just the folks out of Wuhan. Now , does the panic in the Chinese reaction make sense?

There are potentially one or two million disease carriers from Wuhan alone spread throughout the country. God knows how many more they have infected! Chinese communism - Enlightened one party rule - has pronged itself good.

This logic does make sense, even though numbers seem high and scary. I would have expected a LOT more infected cases than the 45,000 that is being published. Considering that the virus may have infected patient zero somewhere in mid-December (is this right), the number of new cases on January 22 is about 125 or so- per the histogram posted by Amber.G in previous page. I cannot imagine that only about 100 people in a population of 11 million were infected by Jan 8th (i.e. 2 weeks prior, the time it takes the symptoms to develop) in the 3 weeks the virus roamed undetected. Possible but not plausible. We now know that the virus transmits from person to person.

[SriKumar]

The key piece of equipment is the ventilator. Death does not happen abruptly. These infected people should include severely hypocxemic cases by now. Certainly there are no ventilators and staff on that ship.

Not the ship. Cases requiring treatment have been evacuated and treated on shore. It would be the height of cruelty to leave severely ill passengers to die on a docked ship.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/ ... kOspmhKjIU

[Gyan]

This disease primarily medicines & life support. In fact, ship with its halls & cabins would be as good as any Hospital, provided necessary equipment is given

Docked ship will only be inadequate if there was requirement of surgery, blood transfusions etc.

[Gyan]

What's are latest reports about effectiveness of Anti Viral medications? I think by now China would have tested the drugs on adequate number of patients.

Additionally, we need the chaart of age group/s of deceased patients, which will give us an idea about the ability of healthy person to fight off the disease.

[Rony]

Wrongly believing he has coronavirus, Andhra man kills self in order to 'stop spread'

According to his son, the man went to Ruia hospital for a checkup, as his heart rate was high. The doctors told him about the problem ‘in their style’, his son said, but Balakrishnayya believed it was coronavirus.

His wife told reporters that the doctors told him he had an infection and told him to wear a mask to avoid contracting other infections. “He didn’t have much awareness. He started to behave strangely on Saturday. And by Monday morning, he killed himself,” she said.

According to his son, Balakrishnayya had panicked immensely, and started to believe he was a threat to the family and the village. “He started slinging stones at us when we tried to go near him. He said he needs to end his life immediately as he was a danger to the village. He told us not to come close and locked himself in,” he said.

Balakrishnayya’s case seems to have been aggravated due to widespread misinformation on the disease, combined with insufficient measures by health officials in spreading awareness and calming people in such cases of false alarm.

His son said that the man saw a lot of videos on symptoms of coronavirus, and became convinced that he was affected. “I had made calls to contact those who could create awareness and help him. I called 1100, 108, 100 but did not get a proper response. In the future, please respond and spread awareness,” he said.

Chittoor District Medical and Health Officer (DMHO) Dr M Chenchulayya said that awareness programs are being held across the state. “There are no coronavirus cases anywhere in the district or the state. We are creating awareness daily through the papers and ensuring people know about it,” he said.

“We are conducting meetings in hospitals, we have printed pamphlets and banners for every village with information regarding coronavirus. All the PHC doctors have also been provided with training and awareness, and funds for printing awareness pamphlets,” Chenchulayya added.

[Amber G.]

Lots of interesting and detailed things in this paper (which was source of my previous post here)..
This is arxiv pre-print (and not yet peer reviewed and published) but it has clinical data from 1000+ patients ..
(For scientists who like to do modeling etc)

Epidemiological and clinical features of the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak in China ..

All 2019-nCoV infected patients reported to Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention up to 26 January 2020 were included for analysis. Disease and death incidence were compared between demographic groups and baseline conditions. Case fatality rates (CFRs) and the basic reproductive number R0 was estimated with a transmission model. Results: As of 26 January 2020, a total of 8866 patients including 4021 (45.35%) laboratory confirmed patients were reported from 30 provinces. Nearly half of the patients were aged 50 years or older (47.7%). There was a clear gender difference in incidence with 0.31 (male) vs. 0.27 (female) per 100,000 people (P<0.001). The median incubation period was 4.75 (interquartile range: 3.0-7.2) days. About 25.5%, 69.9% and 4.5% patients were diagnosed with severe pneumonia, mild pneumonia, and non-pneumonia, respectively. The overall CFR was estimated be 3.06% (95% CI 2.02-4.59%), but male patients, ≥60 years old, baseline diagnosis of severe pneumonia and delay in diagnosis were associated with substantially elevated CFR. The R0 was estimated to be 3.77 (95% CI 3.51-4.05), ranging 2.23-4.82 in sensitivity analyses varying the incubation and infectious periods. Conclusions: Compared with SARS-CoV, 2019-nCoV had comparable transmissibility and lower CFR. Our findings based on individual-level surveillance data emphasize the importance of early detection of elderly patients, particularly males, before symptoms progress to severe pneumonia.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20020974v1

****
One thing did jump out to me was one incubation period of 24 days.. (Up till now every expert considered that 14 days is the upper limit for isolation etc..). Median is 3 days. Hopefully there is some explanation.

****
Some comments:
- No doubt that that WHO/CDC/CCDC reported data is incomplete and vastly under-reported. But that is what we (or I) have at present. Main thing is there is no = = with this and any random CT.

- Some *very* important information and useful conclusions can be drawn, specially from some detailed data - even if the sample size is small. (Scientists do not have luxury to have "good" data all the time)

*****
It looks like (my impression - consistent with recent data and experts opinion etc) that we are looking till end of April before things turn around and we are in control.

[SriKumar]

From the above link:

We extracted the data on 1,099 patients with laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV ARD from 552 hospitals in 31 provinces/provincial municipalities through January 29th, 2020. Results: The median age was 47.0 years, and 41.90% were females. Only 1.18% of patients had a direct contact with wildlife, whereas 31.30% had been to Wuhan and 71.80% had contacted with people from Wuhan.

SO, of the people who had significant symtpoms (ARD), 71% of them got it from contact with someone who visited Wuhan, and had not visited Wuhan. Now, combine this with the 5 million who left Wuhan before lockdown. I am thinking they are probably still out of Wuhan city because Wuhan (I think) is still in lockdown. There is an article somewhere that tracked the traffic out of Wuhan. More than 60% was localized to province Hubei.

Question at large: Is there any formal document talking about when and where the first official patient(s) were discovered. The start date for this still feels a bit murky.

[madhu]

****
One thing did jump out to me was one incubation period of 24 days.. (Up till now every expert considered that 14 days is the upper limit for isolation etc..). Median is 3 days. Hopefully there is some explanation. .

Can this be due to double infection. Say person got cured but got reinfected before conformation of cure.

[Amber G.]

****
One thing did jump out to me was one incubation period of 24 days.. (Up till now every expert considered that 14 days is the upper limit for isolation etc..). Median is 3 days. Hopefully there is some explanation. .

Can this be due to double infection. Say person got cured but got reinfected before conformation of cure.

This is what quite a few people have pointed out - and according to them, it is entirely possible (IMO likely) with the methods they used.. (Paper is still not published in peer-reviewed journal - it is a Medarxive pre-print)
(Authors have worked 12+ hours shift and then did writing etc..so these papers may not be perfect)

[chetak]

****
One thing did jump out to me was one incubation period of 24 days.. (Up till now every expert considered that 14 days is the upper limit for isolation etc..). Median is 3 days. Hopefully there is some explanation. .

Can this be due to double infection. Say person got cured but got reinfected before conformation of cure.

hearing that the overloaded doctors are working in adult diapers without the time to take even a small break.

with exposure to this much of a viral load, not many of the medical and nursing staff are going to survive.

every reinfection leaves the patient weaker than before.

the chinese are hiding the real scale of the pandemic but videos are leaking out of china showing the devastation that has followed in the wake of the spreading infections

[Amber G.]

Another notable thing (at least to me is CDC is now able to grow 2019-nCoV Virus in Cell Culture and the isolated virus will be used for research by the scientific and medical community.. and can answer more questions precisely.

From new reports: On February 4, 2020, 2019-nCoV was shipped from CDC to the BEI Resources Repository. The BEI Resources Repository is affiliated with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is a central repository that supplies organisms and reagents to the broader community of microbiology and infectious disease researchers.)

So I think now (or pretty soon) one (appropriate agency or research institute) can requested ... for:

- Antiviral research: (research aimed at testing the ability of existing or experimental antiviral medications to treat or prevent infection)
- Pathogenesis research: ( research to determine the various ways the virus can be transmitted to a host, the severity of illness it causes in a host, how much virus is produced in the body, and what organs the virus can spread to within the body.)
- Virus stability research: (This is research that indicates how long the virus can survive under certain conditions, such as how long the virus can remain viable and infectious on surfaces, and the temperatures at which it can survive)

So we will have *much more accurate models and understanding ..

[chetak]

Another notable thing (at least to me is CDC is now able to grow 2019-nCoV Virus in Cell Culture and the isolated virus will be used for research by the scientific and medical community.. and can answer more questions precisely.

From new reports: On February 4, 2020, 2019-nCoV was shipped from CDC to the BEI Resources Repository. The BEI Resources Repository is affiliated with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is a central repository that supplies organisms and reagents to the broader community of microbiology and infectious disease researchers.)

So I think now (or pretty soon) one (appropriate agency or research institute) can requested ... for:

- Antiviral research: (research aimed at testing the ability of existing or experimental antiviral medications to treat or prevent infection)
- Pathogenesis research: ( research to determine the various ways the virus can be transmitted to a host, the severity of illness it causes in a host, how much virus is produced in the body, and what organs the virus can spread to within the body.)
- Virus stability research: (This is research that indicates how long the virus can survive under certain conditions, such as how long the virus can remain viable and infectious on surfaces, and the temperatures at which it can survive)

So we will have *much more accurate models and understanding ..

all this only after mass graves and

"hua tho hua" in the immortal words of sam pitgaya.

[madhu]

the chinese are hiding the real scale of the pandemic but videos are leaking out of china showing the devastation that has followed in the wake of the spreading infections

9nly question i have is why are people falling on the road. There are many videos and photos people have suddenly collapsed. Medically what complication can happen that cause people to fall like that. Is that true or fake.

[SriKumar]

1.This unproof-read article in Nature pegs the start date as 12 Dec. 2019. Authors are from the govt Institue of Virology in Wuhan.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7

Start date is important 'cos if we know the infection rate, or assume an upper and lower bound for a rate, the number of infected patients over time can be calculated. This gives us an idea if the number of new cases on Jan 22 was indeed around 125 as published.

2. Cites potential source as bats because 80% of its DNA (RNA?) sequence matches one found in bats (is this enough to say the COVID-19 virus came from bats?).

3. So disease vector is: Bats > Wuhan wet market > Bat meat customers > their families > friends/co-workers of each family member> Wuhan city (so why did other bat wet markets not see this? Am sure bat meat sale is not recent, or restricted to Wuhan).

4. Noted a comment above about re-infection. That sounds a bit odd/interesting- since there is no medicine for this disease, only the native immunity of the patient can fight it off and cure him. For someone to survive, it therefore means that the immune system overcame the virus and can hold it off now (happens in many viral and bacterial infections). In such case, how is it possible for the cured patient to get sick again in a matter of days? Can the recently-gained immunity weaken enough in 3-4 days for the virus to infect again? Did the virus mutate? Either possibility is a sobering one.

5. People dropping dead: Am not a hakim but pneumonia can cause loss of the ability to breathe, and severe weakness. The primary symptom of this disease that kills people is respiratory problems. If a patient is turned away from a hospital, he will collapse and die of exhaustion in walking to another hospital. This happened more often in the early days where the facilities turned away people due to lack of beds. Maybe that is not the case now- I did not google for any videos.

[Gyan]

I talked to some people still based in China (not Indians) The current rumour within China is that around 100,000 people are dead and there are 1 to 5 million infected. Chinese Govt is preparing for around 5 lakh dead people in next 2 weeks. Take it with pinch of salt.

[Amber G.]

...sequence matches one found in bats (is this enough to say the COVID-19 virus came from bats?).

You may already know this.. (may be some expert here put in more details).. but it is fair to say that virtually *all* such corona virus (SARS, MERS etc) originated from Bats.. IOW Bats are full of those viruses. For SARS it "jumped" from bats to civets to human.. for MERS from bats to camels and for COVID, it (or at least some think) it jumped from bats to pangolins ...

[Atmavik]

2. Cites potential source as bats because 80% of its DNA (RNA?) sequence matches one found in bats (is this enough to say the COVID-19 virus came from bats?).

3. So disease vector is: Bats > Wuhan wet market > Bat meat customers > their families > friends/co-workers of each family member> Wuhan city (so why did other bat wet markets not see this? Am sure bat meat sale is not recent, or restricted to Wuhan).

Bats are the source but usually, there is an intermediate animal that transmits to humans. in the case of MERS it was the camels and SARS had a smaller mammal involved.

I have been watching twitter and there is a lot of misinformation that goes either way. the best source is the cruise ship stuck in japan. looks like this virus spreads really fast but on the plus side has a low mortality rate. for china, this will get a lot worse in the next couple of months.

[Amber G.]

SriKumar - FWIW a few comments...
1. As said Covid19 is a betacoronavirus, ( like MERS and SARs) and have their origins in bats. (The sequences from U.S. patients are similar to the one that China initially posted - and from what I understand it suggests a likely single, recent emergence of this virus from an animal reservoir - where it jumped from bats to this animal..

2 Early on, many of the patients in the outbreak of respiratory illness China had some link to a large seafood and live animal market, suggesting animal-to-person spread. Later, a growing number of patients reportedly did not have exposure to animal markets, indicating person-to-person spread. Chinese officials report that sustained person-to-person spread in the community is occurring in China. Person-to-person spread has been reported outside China, including in the United States and other countries.

3.With all the criticism (much of it valid) I am still impressed that Chinese health authorities were the first to post the full genome of the 2019-nCoV in GenBankexternal -- the NIH genetic sequence database, and in the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAIDexternal icon) portal. This was good. It has facilitated detection of this virus. CDC is posting the full genome of the 2019-nCoV viruses detected in U.S. patients to GenBank as sequencing is completed. This is also good.

[sanjaykumar]

If this were 1980 and the Chinese had published the sequence when they did, that would have been impressive.

[SandeepA]

Reports coming now indicating things may have plateaued and the worst is over. Could be propa-panda..take it with loads of salt...

https://www.xjtlu.edu.cn/en/news/2020/0 ... ncov-cases

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/co ... 020-02-12/

[UlanBatori]

[url=ttps://www.theepochtimes.com/crew-member-found ... 32359.html]Here is an image of how they pass food into the isolation ward in WooHan.No idea how the food is protected from catch to plastic bag.[/url]

Looks like they just order a delivery from local Frying Bat Dericatessen. I imagined that they actually had a sanitized kitchen etc , but would you stick your sanitized food in styrofoam box and put it in a plastic bag and have someone ride a bicycle a couple of miles to deliver it through a small window? THAT keeps it safe?

[UlanBatori]

Comment on this:

The Japanese have tested approximately 500 of the passengers and crew on the diamond princess and turned up 175 infected. A 35% infection rate. Think on that.

I bet they tested only ppl exhibiting cold/flu symptoms. Not a random sampling. Most passengers are there to have a good time, and will be anyway either very mad at being quaratined, or delighted and drunk. And vodka kills nCOV, v know that..

Also, if the nCOV has only been isolated and identified now, how exactly do they catch early-stage infection? In Mongolia they have a "flu strip": they put blood sample on that and it turns blue or red (I don't remember). I was once told I had no flu when I had all the symptoms, and once told that I had flu when I also had symptoms. So I wonder. Of course if someone suddenly comes down with "Severe/Acute" respiratory problems etc, that would be a clear sign, but that's not early stage.

[ramana]

For reference:

Nipah outbreak in Kerala

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7648

[Gerard]

Didn't astronauts use some special kind of diet so that they didn't have to do 'SuSu' or 'potty' in outer space?

The Americans left 96 bags of human feces, urine, and diapers on the surface of the moon.

Feces is currently ejected from the International Space Station and left to burnup on reentry.

[chola]

Interesting video of the Costco in Shanghai. Looks pretty packed (maybe even chinis feel better that Costco won't stock civet cats and bats.)

Though kind of unnerving with everyone in masks. More unnerving is there are people without them. I see that and I'm heading in the other direction.

[Vamsee]

From twitter
==============

* 242 new coronavirus deaths recorded in China's Hubei Province
* Today's coronavirus death toll update is the highest recorded, almost double that of the second-highest day.
* Coronavirus death toll rises to 1310
* Number of coronavirus cases reaches 60,000 with over 8000 in serious condition
* Sharp rise in number of new cases of coronavirus is due to revised method for counting infections

[Amber G.]

With latest data (again WHO/DCD etc) some have a comparison of confirmed cases and deaths within China vs. countries outside China... few interesting items (for me): With data inside China - some say it is leveling off (new cases identified (dy/dx =0).. not so for cases outside China (where data is more reliable).

One very interesting practice to boost our immunity/immune response to viral infection is good sleep. (Many peer-reviewed studies confirm this - for coronavirus based viruses (or others too).. *sleep* specially early(evening) part of the sleep).

This is lacking, obviously for health workers in China (who are putting long hours) but one of the best way for others to improve their immune system. Get plenty of sleep. ..
Edited later: Latest data shows jump inside China too...

AAlso new case in US (14th) in San Diego:

Wuhan evacuee tests positive for coronavirus in southern California

A second person who was evacuated from Wuhan, in China, to southern California has tested positive for coronavirus.

The patient was in quarantine at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, in San Diego County, when diagnosed, Ana Toro, press officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN.

More details: This is the 14th confirmed case in the US and the eighth in California.

[SriKumar]

1. Thanks Amber.G. To your second point, the article you had linked (a scientific study from a govt/acaedmic source) placed the infection rate from person-to-person at 70% via people who come out of Wuhan, 1.18% due to wet market and the rest from people who visited Wuhan directly. So, person-to-person is easily the greatest threat.

2. Wuhan before lockdown: I looked for news items on Wuhan a few days before the lockdown (Jan 23) to see what the mahaul was like, how panicked or calm (dumb and happy) were the people or their red-suited officials. This news item dated Jan 21 show the officials slowly waking to a problem in Wuhan to a point they 'wanted' to quarantine 'a hotspot' within Wuhan. The only official urging was for people to not leave Wuhan (!). But Wuhan itself was not quarantined. So until Jan 22, all Wuhanese were free to roam around town. 11 million of them minus those who left for Lunar NY. Officials show a calm and measured demeanor (per pronouncements).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as ... story.html

3. We are getting estimates of infection rates (R0) from studies from Wuhan (and the cruise ship) that were done after quarantine was instituted. The Diamond princess was radioactive even before it docked in Japan, quarantine procedures were in place probably after it left Hong Kong (my guess); In Wuhan quarantine was put after Jan 23. I think there should be 2 different infection rates: before quarantine and after quarantine. I am betting it was far higher before quarantine was applied. The range of 1.2 to 3.5 is after Jan 23.

5. A Japanese medical official who boarded the ship on day one was found infected. JApanese are sticklers for procedure and cleanliness, and this still happened. He was wearing a mask and gloves but no full-body suit. Now extrapolate this situation to Wuhan on Jan 20. Not trying to be sensationalist, I just dont know. R0 values before Jan 23 should shed light.

https://fox8.com/news/japan-confirms-39 ... uise-ship/

6. I still think the date of first dectection of nCV, is significant. The exponential growth of cases starts from then on. Dec 12 is the best I have. If the infection rate simply doubled (very simplistic approach) things can get problematic in 3 weeks (2^ 21 days = ~2 million) but manageable in 2 weeks (2^ 14 days = ~16,000). A couple of days can make a big difference .Before the resident adhyaapaks jump on me....yes, I concede this is very simplistic 'model' so to speak. . I found some ODEs on the web but I dont have Matlab on my personal laptop......atleast that's my excuse.