Coronavirus numbers rocket

By in Carbon Economy

| 67 comments

Fresh from Reuters, it’s now 830 cases and 25 deaths in China.

Accelerating transmission and the mortality rate has jumped to 3%.

Alas, it’s on like Donkey Kong.

Markets up.

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Comments

          • PeachyMEMBER

            You don’t get it. You don’t get risk management.

            If we get the virus here and 1,000 people die, that’s going to be unfortunate. But most people will be fine. And it will take just 3 or 4 plane loads of vibrants to replace the dead people.

            If we stop the planes and the one pillar supporting our whole way of life (house prices) collapses, that will be a disaster of unspeakable proportions. There would be no fixing it. No going back.

          • fisho

            Mind you this virus seems to be most fatal in the elderly …so maybe it’ll rip our Boomer landlords a new one and result in lots of housing stock (in desirable areas) hitting the market simultaneously.

          • PeachyMEMBER

            Elderly. And chinamen. Apparently everyone who had died has been oriental. So maybe there is very little to be afraid of!

    • Thomas Nykirk

      yep – the last plane out of Wuhan landed in Sydney yesterday. 300 passengers and crew spreading the virus right now.
      Why it wasn’t just sent back or people quarantined I dunno.

      Australia is a strange place, try and bring one apple in from New Zealand and you’re looking at jailtime, but no human biological security.

      • Arrow2MEMBER

        Hey as long as they can buy up some houses here before they get carted off to hospital… all good right?

        • ZuluMEMBER

          You only need to survive a week affair purchase & profit on said house would pay for your funeral. 😉

      • NorthMEMBER

        And let’s not forget “Pistol” and “Boo” ………..the minnature dogs beloning to Johnny Depp and squeeze.
        They had to produce an appallingly insincere apology video because Barnaby got his knickers in a twist (not sure if they were on at the time).

      • NikolaMEMBER

        “Nothing to worry about, our organisations have got this covered.” – same as they had it covered with the bush fires.

      • Ronin8317MEMBER

        A good start is to turn off the air conditioning at the airports : the virus thrives in climate with low humidity and temperature of 22-25 degree. That’s why SARS ran rampant in HK but not so much in other less air-conditioned Asian cities.

    • mike mb

      Inside the Wuhan China Corona virus death zone.

      Leaked video showing people on the street falling over as they succumb to the Wuhan Corona Virus.

      White full bio suit / helmeted officials driving around in vans picking them up from the street.

      #china #Wuhan #Coronavirus https://t.co/mMZtmhGUkl
      https://twitter.com/Terrence_STR/status/1220615475513700357?s=20

      10 cities and 33 million Chinese have now been quarantined.
      Food shortages and fear as the cities go under martial law.

      Australia.
      We need to shut down entry to all Chinese and travellers from China.
      Waving some brochures at Chinese fleeing China to Australia for safe haven & asking them ‘how do they feel’ 10 days before their disease even becomes apparent is not protecting anyone.

      The virus has a 2 week incubation period with ‘mass spreaders’ and a 3.1% mortality rate (in the range of the most effective ratio of host transmission spread to mortality) the Spanish Flu was 2.8% and that killed over 50 million globally.

      The virus is transmitted by air & touch.
      It’s not known how long or persistent the virus is in contagion.

      If it goes global pandemic.
      If…
      All aeroplanes that have had Chinese Nationals in them need to be disinfected.
      The airlines don’t know what to do. Air travel to & from China and other infected countries will be likely shut down.
      That will generate mass exodus’s by boat ship by the Chinese and other infected countries trying to land into safer countries.

      All goods / imports from China and then other infected countries will need to be disinfected.

      If there is a Pandemic Australian outbreak.

      We have 1.3 million mainland Chinese Nationals as non Australia citizens sole China passport holders onshore. As PR & TR plus Tourist Visitors.
      87% or over 1.1 million are in Chinese enclaves in Sydney (0.6 million Chinese National sole foreign passport holder non citizens) and Melbourne (0.5 million Chinese Nationals as non citizens).

      This will most likely be the Australian hub and vectors of this Wuhan disease into wider Australia.

      That may require lockdown of Chinese high density suburb or districts to stop the onshore spread of the disease.
      Many Australian will then try to flee to regional towns or the bush but that just spreads it out and to areas with low capacity in health services.

      Australia may need to consider the quarantine if not deportation of lot of these Chinese Nationals (0.8 million of them are here on some pretext TR or Tourist visa & working illegally) to reduce the Chinese to Australian disease transmission & the burden on our already overloaded health care system.

      Does it kill just the old people?
      In China so far that appears to be the case – a number were old or both old & medically compromised.

      A solution for China / North Asia & the rest of the world aging population burden?
      Perhaps – a virus will typically mutate to target the largest sector of the population in transmission and infection spread – with a good period of incubation before mortality, so it’s too early to say.

  5. fisho

    It might seem strange to some but I’m relatively comfortable that Chinese health officials can and will shut-down the transmission of this Virus within China. That said I’m much less confident that the rest of the world can contain this Sars like virus if it really escapes China’s borders and gets established elsewhere.

    • bda2206

      I’m sure they can. and the death toll estimate while they wait for things to die down (as it were)?

    • Ronin8317MEMBER

      The initial local Chinese government response is to bury the news to avoid panic. Beijing has decided they can’t leave it to the local authorities anymore. Quarantining the cities means they have no confident in the local authority to contain the epidemic. For all intent and purpose, Beijing see the entire Hubei province as a lost cause.

      They key now is to watch the number of new cases outside of Hubei after the 12 days incubation period.

    • drsmithyMEMBER

      I’d tend to agree they shut it down (though probably fairly brutally) internally.

      I suspect they have rather less of a care about shutting it down internationally.

      You’d be brave to trust any of the numbers that come out of China about this sort of thing.

  6. doctorX

    after almost ten fake virus scares in last decade or so people still fall for these?
    almost a month after first case has been reported and only 800 cases confirmed and only 30 died in 20 million population area

    ordinary flu in Germany killed more people in last month or so

    after all of these bird, swine, chicken, … flus now they are trying to scare us with a snake coronavirus LOL

    • fisho

      Normally I’m rather skeptical about all the fuss over these new types of Flu but this time I’m not so sure.
      This virus looks like it is easily transmitted human to human with even just incidental contact, that’s a very worrying difference between SAR’s and H5N1.
      Look at the distance between infected individuals (geographic / social / economic….) this virus is leaping from one population set to another, which suggests it is easily transmitted and that the population has very low natural immunity. I’d be real surprised if the numbers on infected individuals didn’t double or triple within the week.

      • doctorX

        wouldn’t a virus that’s easily transmitted human to human with even just incidental contact report much larger number of cases than 1000 after almost a month of first record?

        this virus doesn’t look very contagious

    • desmodromicMEMBER

      Be sceptical DrX but I’d rather they inform than obfuscate. In 2009, WHO declared swine flu a pandemic and then it faded away. Nonetheless, there were 37,000 cases and 187 deaths in Australia–many among young adults. A common view among health professionals is that we dodged a bullet that time around. It will come again.

      All influenza has an avian origin and comes in 16 broad types, the H in H5N1, of which only a few types are known to infect humans. In general, infection can’t go directly from birds to humans and the most likely path for infection is via pigs. So the most likely source of a virus likely to infect humans is where pigs, poultry and people cohabit, that is China. Let’s hope Fisho’s confidence is well placed in the ability of the Chinese to manage an outbreak.

      • fisho

        Just to be clear, I’m confident that Chinese health officials will do a good job if the virus remains largely contained to China. I’m much less certain about the ability of say African countries to respond in the appropriate manner if this virus escapes China and truly takes off in Africa, same goes for most of South America or India for that matter. There are lots of countries that won’t be ready for a highly contagious deadly new flu virus. Once it really takes off in any one of these countries it’s game over world wide for any sort containment strategy.
        As I said above just look at the distance between infected individuals with this new virus. With Sars in HK most of the infections were restricted to several apartment buildings and the highest incident of infection was to close family members. This virus is behaving very differently.

    • bda2206

      and live koalas, which means theres a supply chain from Australia, some cvnts are ut there catching koalas and shipping them off.

    • The Claw

      Even bat faeces is purported to cure everything from bad vision to childhood malnutrition in Chinese medicinal circles, reports the Yin Yang House.

      How crazy is that?

  10. HadronCollision

    Asked the question internally re: travel for work (I work in health btw)
    Was told low risk
    I will revisit 1 week out from trip. thank gosh I cancelled the family coming with me

  11. BoomToBustMEMBER

    With our high proportion of international students how many people have considered the high number of students either already returned, on a plane flying back or about to board a plane ?? Some schools have already started, most gov schools start back Wednesday. Hygiene practices for many Chinese students is normally poor and we are allowing them into our schools with a long incubation period. This could get very interesting. Bad time of year for travel to get an outbreak in China.

    • Ronin8317MEMBER

      I know they call it a ‘hospital’, but in reality it’s a field hospital operating as an isolation ward. The one in Beijing was dismantled 7 years afterward. Doing it in a week is still ultra impressive though.

    • Frostilicus

      With that many excavators there, I think there’s a common grave under every bed… you know… ‘you rack’em, we stack’em’

      • Frostilicus

        Eeeeh, not that they have a chance… I mean, all they need is one of these Manchurian patients, and hey, suddenly they’re a minority. ‘Samoa has always been a part of China’ propaganda line has a certain…. je ne sais quoi, non?

  14. skippy

    Hay its just like those chicken pox party’s as a kid, better to sort it now than have it evolve without immunity built up and then get a real pandemic.

    • Frostilicus

      By that logic, I s’pose Reusa’s immune system is positively vibrant from all the dirty glasses he drank from…

        • RyanMEMBER

          How many people die due to et al. “events” in a year? The answer to that would be everyone that dies in a year.

          • skippy

            Its the psychological disposition towards risk that can end in death that is being discussed. I guess having a little virus take way your freedom and liberty freaks out some sorts ….

  15. blindjusticeMEMBER

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/24/coronavirus-uk-universities-issue-quarantine-warning-china-chinese-students-in-slugs

    British universities have warned students considering travelling home to China to celebrate Chinese new year that they will face quarantine on their return.

    The University of Chester said it had warned its Chinese students in the UK that if they return to their homeland they would not be readmitted without a suitable quarantine period.

    six people were being tested in hospitals in Scotland and Northern Ireland after showing symptoms. All the patients had been in Wuhan, which can cause lung disease such as pneumonia, first emerged, in the last 14 days.

    The Scottish patients all travelled from Wuhan, where the outbreak is thought to have originated, within the past two weeks and were showing symptoms of respiratory trouble – a red flag for the virus.

    the symptoms do not develop for five to seven days, and sometimes even up to 14, meaning the virus can circulate undetected.