COVID-19 virus thread (formerly Wuhan coronavirus)

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Aleksey_aka_al said:
Modern government should put mathematically significant things first, mathematically insignificant things second. Or why else do we need those governments at all? They are just parasites then.
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That's true, but sensationalism comes from media, not the governments. The governments reaction is IMO adequate, making people panic is certainly not in their interests.
 
Aleksey_aka_al said:
Uhan doesn't seem to be a village. It is a modern city. China is a stable country with at least above average healthcare system (and I suspect it is much better than in many Western countries). And it is XXI century we live in. Healthcare is everywhere. Information and management are instant.
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You are absolutely wrong on all counts above. Wrong in China, and even more wrong if it spreads in many any other parts of the world.

Aleksey_aka_al said:
There's really no need to mobilize a country like that because of some virus. Like if it is a war or something. Because almost everything needed is already in place.

That fuss doesn't save lives. What a hipocrisy to seriously say this. It is a waste of money on overdone measures. And any money is a fraction of someone lives. Taxpayers put their lives into those funds. So real lives are wasted.

Someone real was really dying and they didn't recieve help, because priority was changed into that fuss. And you will never learn their names or even let that thought into your head that they existed.
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So you don't think the chinese government knows what they are doing? Because they thought it was necessary, and have had ample time already to rethink. In fact the opposite happened: first they tried to downplay it, then they moved to restrict tre spread of the virus.

If hospitals are overwhelmed with this disease, or medical staff is sick, more people are going to die for lack of care. The money is an accounting fiction, the real resources are the people and material and those are what needs to be managed because those are limited. More money isn't going to buy you more medics where and when you need them. Letting a dangerous virus spread is a recipe for catastrophe. Unless you want to do things the medieval way: board up all the sick at home and let them fend for themselves? Which, ultimately, is what happens if no care is available. Containing infections diseases is a priority to keep healthcare systems working.
 
Birdjaguar said:
It is easy to look back at things and say the responses were over done because nothing cataclysmic happened.
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Similarly, people joke about Y2K like it was the dumbest thing ever because the worst that happened were some people got their Blockbuster overdraft fees blown up to a quintillion dollars. The truth was that there really was a global effort deployed en masse which headed off the problem by direct intervention. Y2K was not a joke.
 
hobbsyoyo said:
Similarly, people joke about Y2K like it was the dumbest thing ever because the worst that happened were some people got their Blockbuster overdraft fees blown up to a quintillion dollars. The truth was that there really was a global effort deployed en masse which headed off the problem by direct intervention. Y2K was not a joke.
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I've heard stories about programmers for the more obscure programming languages temporarily coming out of retirement and making a lot of money just to fix the Y2K problem.
 
No doubt. Wow what a windfall for those who saw and were able to take advantage of the opportunity!
 
Panic is spreading. :run:

People are being directed to stay away from hospitals except for dire emergencies. CavLancer lives 100 meters from me. He's locking down his place; no one in or out. :nono: His kids are being yanked out of schools. He has one worker staying on the outside to buy supplies and leave them at the gate.

We've avoiding hospitals but making no other changes (except now washing our hands with alcohol).

AFAIK, there's been no deaths nor cases on our island. :sleep:
 
Zkribbler said:
Panic is spreading. :run:

People are being directed to stay away from hospitals except for dire emergencies. CavLancer lives 100 meters from me. He's locking down his place; no one in or out. :nono: His kids are being yanked out of schools. He has one worker staying on the outside to buy supplies and leave them at the gate.

We've avoiding hospitals but making no other changes (except now washing our hands with alcohol).

AFAIK, there's been no deaths nor cases on our island. :sleep:
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At least Cav can live off pizza if he keeps the ingredients around. Be safe.
 
Does anybody have a more current GIF showing all the numbers going up and the countries changing colour?
 
Aleksey_aka_al said:
The world back then was still like a village with little to no healthcare. There was a global war happening. Healthcare was overloaded with this war; money, men-hours and lives were wasted on it.

Uhan doesn't seem to be a village. It is a modern city. China is a stable country with at least above average healthcare system (and I suspect it is much better than in many Western countries). And it is XXI century we live in. Healthcare is everywhere. Information and management are instant.

There's really no need to mobilize a country like that because of some virus. Like if it is a war or something. Because almost everything needed is already in place.

That fuss doesn't save lives. What a hipocrisy to seriously say this. It is a waste of money on overdone measures. And any money is a fraction of someone lives. Taxpayers put their lives into those funds. So real lives are wasted.

Someone real was really dying and they didn't recieve help, because priority was changed into that fuss. And you will never learn their names or even let that thought into your head that they existed.

Closing borders or taking radical precautions on another side of the globe is the same: hipocrisy, stupidity and waste of lives.

Here's a nice example:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...us-two-teens-arrested-for-prank-at-a-walmart/



Almost $10,000 are just wasted on nothing. Surely, there were enough people right in the vicinity of this Walmart in need of money. Well, police could use it to fight cocaine dealers there and save some extra lives. Real lives. These money could feed a dozen people somewhere else in the world like for a year.

And that is just a drop in the ocean of wasting.



Exactly this. China has a known problem with traffic deaths. The same money put into traffic safety would have saved more lives.
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Aleksey_aka_al said:
The world back then was still like a village with little to no healthcare. There was a global war happening. Healthcare was overloaded with this war; money, men-hours and lives were wasted on it.

Uhan doesn't seem to be a village. It is a modern city. China is a stable country with at least above average healthcare system (and I suspect it is much better than in many Western countries). And it is XXI century we live in. Healthcare is everywhere. Information and management are instant.

There's really no need to mobilize a country like that because of some virus. Like if it is a war or something. Because almost everything needed is already in place.

That fuss doesn't save lives. What a hipocrisy to seriously say this. It is a waste of money on overdone measures. And any money is a fraction of someone lives. Taxpayers put their lives into those funds. So real lives are wasted.

Someone real was really dying and they didn't recieve help, because priority was changed into that fuss. And you will never learn their names or even let that thought into your head that they existed.

Closing borders or taking radical precautions on another side of the globe is the same: hipocrisy, stupidity and waste of lives.

Here's a nice example:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...us-two-teens-arrested-for-prank-at-a-walmart/



Almost $10,000 are just wasted on nothing. Surely, there were enough people right in the vicinity of this Walmart in need of money. Well, police could use it to fight cocaine dealers there and save some extra lives. Real lives. These money could feed a dozen people somewhere else in the world like for a year.

And that is just a drop in the ocean of wasting.



Exactly this. China has a known problem with traffic deaths. The same money put into traffic safety would have saved more lives.
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Chinese healthcare isn't good, sanitation is also really bad.

There's YouTube videos that show things over there.

Even run down parts of places like Saratov are an improvement over a lot of China.
 
hobbsyoyo said:
Similarly, people joke about Y2K like it was the dumbest thing ever because the worst that happened were some people got their Blockbuster overdraft fees blown up to a quintillion dollars. The truth was that there really was a global effort deployed en masse which headed off the problem by direct intervention. Y2K was not a joke.
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I think most people realize there was an actual issue that needed to be addressed. The "joke" of Y2K and every other crisis like it, is how the general population panics and acts like the powers that be aren't going to do anything to address the issue. For example, all the people that stocked up on doomsday supplies out of fear that Y2K was going to be the end of civilization. That was a joke.
 
Kyriakos said:
Hm, I also got the flue or something flue-like, and I never do.
But I am better now :)
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You living close to the sea, fresh air with enough sun shining through it, the ample available UV is a perfect killer of airborne virusses and bacteria by damaging their DNA :)
(high up in mountain regions the same)

When closed public spaces would use UV to purify the air in their airco's the flu spreadings would easily go down.
We use this already century old technque now for food and drinkwater.

Using it directly in space where people move has the usual issue of UV: that it can cause cancer and damage to eye tissue.

But if you use far end ultra short wave UV this problem is gone because: the shorter the wave lenght, the less deep the wave penetrates into tissue. Far-UVC does not come deeper than the outer nonliving layer of your skin and eye.

Considering the high economical damage it is perhaps about time that hospitals start using far-UVC in their rooms to lessen the traditional disadvantage of hospitals that they are a source of spreading such diseases.

From Nature:

Far-UVC light: A new tool to control the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases
Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number: 2752 (2018) Cite this article

Abstract
Airborne-mediated microbial diseases such as influenza and tuberculosis represent major public health challenges. A direct approach to prevent airborne transmission is inactivation of airborne pathogens, and the airborne antimicrobial potential of UVC ultraviolet light has long been established; however, its widespread use in public settings is limited because conventional UVC light sources are both carcinogenic and cataractogenic. By contrast, we have previously shown that far-UVC light (207–222 nm) efficiently inactivates bacteria without harm to exposed mammalian skin. This is because, due to its strong absorbance in biological materials, far-UVC light cannot penetrate even the outer (non living) layers of human skin or eye; however, because bacteria and viruses are of micrometer or smaller dimensions, far-UVC can penetrate and inactivate them. We show for the first time that far-UVC efficiently inactivates airborne aerosolized viruses, with a very low dose of 2 mJ/cm2 of 222-nm light inactivating >95% of aerosolized H1N1 influenza virus. Continuous very low dose-rate far-UVC light in indoor public locations is a promising, safe and inexpensive tool to reduce the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases.

Introduction
Airborne-mediated microbial diseases represent one of the major challenges to worldwide public health1. Common examples are influenza2, appearing in seasonal3 and pandemic4 forms, and bacterially-based airborne-mediated diseases such as tuberculosis5, increasingly emerging in multi-drug resistant form.

A direct approach to prevent the transmission of airborne-mediated disease is inactivation of the corresponding airborne pathogens, and in fact the airborne antimicrobial efficacy of ultraviolet (UV) light has long been established6,7,8. Germicidal UV light can also efficiently inactivate both drug-sensitive and multi-drug-resistant bacteria9, as well as differing strains of viruses10. However, the widespread use of germicidal ultraviolet light in public settings has been very limited because conventional UVC light sources are a human health hazard, being both carcinogenic and cataractogenic11,12.

By contrast, we have earlier shown that far-UVC light generated by filtered excimer lamps emitting in the 207 to 222 nm wavelength range, efficiently inactivates drug-resistant bacteria, without apparent harm to exposed mammalian skin13,14,15. The biophysical reason is that, due to its strong absorbance in biological materials, far-UVC light does not have sufficient range to penetrate through even the outer layer (stratum corneum) on the surface of human skin, nor the outer tear layer on the outer surface of the eye, neither of which contain living cells; however, because bacteria and viruses are typically of micron or smaller dimensions, far-UVC light can still efficiently traverse and inactivate them13,14,15.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21058-w/
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It is just a matter of money: cost versus benefit.
 
The Wuhan Coronavirus has spread to the point where it is disrupting China's space operations. It is notable that China's space operations are usually totally opaque to Western observers, so just knowing this level of impact is quite telling and means the situation is probably worse than they're letting on.
https://spacenews.com/chinas-space-industry-faces-impacts-of-coronavirus-outbreak/
rocket-assembly-masks-capital-aerospace-machinery-co-ltd-CALT-feb2020-879x485.jpg

To be fair, that picture is a bit misleading because assembly workers on rocket stages are always going to be wearing masks, gloves and hats (or even spacesuits-like gear) even without the virus.

This is kind of funny from the article -
The Chinese run a social media account for their lunar lander and they have that account sending out anti-virus government slogans.
 
Surprisingly enough, Thailand is in the top 10 countries in the world that's ready for an epidemic. According to an article I was looking at the other day

Vietnam on the other hand.. is not ready at all. IMO if Vietnam can contain this, it's a great sign. I am a bit worried for some of the people I met there. They aren't very well off and live in very dense and quite populated parts of the country..
 
Birdjaguar said:
It is easy to look back at things and say the responses were over done because nothing cataclysmic happened.
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El_Machinae in 2014 said:
Every successfully prevented pandemic will always look like an over-reaction in retrospect.
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It's just math and it will always be true. The only intelligent response to an exponential threat is an over-reaction. The over-reaction will be cheaper than an under-reaction. And when it's successful, it will always look like an over-reaction.

The problem kicks in when the over-reaction is authoritarian rather than humanitarian. But for those who like to under-invest in a humanitarian over-reaction, it's a bad policy.
 
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