Public emergency declared by WHO on coronavirus

[JustonTime]

The extremes countries are going to in order to stop it spreading suggest that it is more deadly than we've been told i.e that it's like a flu? We don't shut down countries for flu. What are we not being told?

When have BA AND 'some other airlines' stopped flying into China or indeed anywhere before?

Well they stopped flying to HK during the protests - Cracking year it's been here. 🇭🇰

Look it's crap, special wave to those on mainland China where life is particularly crappy at the moment as well as MNs here in HK and Macau. But social media and 24/7 media fuel hysteria leading to shortages - which leads to more hysteria.

@LiquoricePickle, we’re fine. Kids are going stir crazy. I’ve resorted to making them do fitness workouts from YouTube 😁. How are you?

@LiquoricePickle
Am in Jiangsu, actually not there at the moment as we left on Tuesday for a holiday we booked last year. Prior to that we stayed at home from 23rd until we left for the airport. We will return on 10th Feb (assuming we can get from HK back to the mainland) and dd’s school closed until 17th at the moment, however this may change.
Luckily freezer is full and have 5 ‘tongs’ of water so should be okay for a bit.

@RevolutionofourTime - fitness workouts sound like a good idea.
@DarkMutterings - yes, not been a great year in HK.

It isn't 3 days. First cases are known to be almost 2 months ago, although human to human transmission was only confirmed more recently. It's been in the news regularly throughout January.

Feeling for folk stuck in China whilst all this blows over, and especially for HKers who, frankly, are having to fight on enough fronts as it is without this.

@RevolutionofourTime

Mine are 9 months (do she couldn't care less that we're stuck inside!) And 2. I am so so glad that we bought him a climbing frame for Christmas!

I've been doing YouTube workouts, too. Are your shops etc. open? Our corner shop and veg skip are still open, which is good. Managed to get some n95 masks yesterday!

@ShanghaiDiva we thankfully have a full freezer too and three rings. But I think our water guy is still bringing water. Safe travels.

"Do you think that Sky News, ITV, BBC don't have medical experts who can interpret prose like that for the common man?"

Yes. Well, not that they on't perhaps employ them, but when a scientce story becomes main news, the quality of reporting (from the science/evidence pov) drops rapidly.

The sciencific journals aren't impenetrable. Definitely worth a read.

As are science magazines - New Scientst has good articles

My ds had regular flu recently- it was really bad for him. If we all got that simultaneously it would be a disaster. No-one would be in work/school etc.

Thanks. We’re in HK, people here have no faith in the government- with good reason. The way they are managing shortages, information flow, borders etc is appalling. Hundreds of medics and nurses are threatening to go on strike next week. There are constant rumours going around, partly prompted by the lack of reliable information from the executive.

After a few unsuccessful supermarket runs (saw a picture of the bare shelves of our local Park n Shop in the Guardian yesterday!), I bit the bullet and went to an international supermarket, so we’re fully stocked now.

The main worries are around face masks and hand sanitizer, which are impossible to find unless you queue from 5am. I doubt either are particularly effective against coronavirus, but all the better if people use them more. DH assure me that he regularly sees colleagues in the men’s rooms who don’t wash their hands after doing their business. 🤢

Universities have now cancelled classes until March. I think it’s likely the schools will do the same. I really feel for students doing their GCSEs, that must be so disruptive and worrying.

That sounds really chaotic Revolutionfourtime. Have there been any cases local to you?

@RevolutionofourTime do you have friends there? That's how I managed to get masks. I suspect things will be easier when you get back to the mainland. The gov. is making sure that there are supplies and I know they are shipping masks daily here.

ragged

About 1/3 of people infected [with the flu] show no symptomsbut are still infectious to others

This is the most terrifying thing I have ever read on MN. I am now going to microanalyse everything I have ever done in the last 15 years, trying to workout if I could have been a symptom-free carrier of the flu, who passed it on to everyone else!

@LiquoricePickle, we live in HK. But after today’s news (US airlines are cancelling flights to HK), and school being cancelled for at least a month, we’ve decided now is a good time to take a long break to the French Riviera. We’re out on Sunday. Need to start packing!

@JustonTime! There are officially around 15 cases in HK. Probably many more that we don’t know about yet. We live near one of the main hospitals, but I think all cases diagnosed there get transferred to another hospital.

It's not flu, it is a coronavirus not an influenza virus.

Coronavirus cause the common cold but they also cause MERS which has a case fatality rate of 35-40%.

Viruses have a tendency to mutate (hence how we came to be in this situation in the first place). It could mutate again in its human hosts, for better or for worse.

Flu has a fatality rate of around 0.01% novel coronovirus has a current fatality rate of 2-3%. Dying or surviving from coronovirus is not binary, there will be many people left with permanent lung damage, resulting in reduced quality of life, reduce life expectancy and increased long term burden on health services.

The treatments that have been used on the first cohort of patients in Wuhan (described in detail in the Lancet article published yesterday) are highly sophisticated, and require equipment and expertise that are limited. ECMO is only available in a handful of UK hospitals, non invasive ventilation machines will be limited to half a dozen or so in smaller outlaying District general hospitals, ICU beds are limited. Once these are full death rates will rise.

Poor countries with unsophisticated healthcare systems won't be able to offer the supportive care and treatments that China or the UK can and death rates will be higher there.

It's hardly surprising that China and the WHO are taking this seriously.

I'm a HCP and I'm concerned. It's not going to be pleasant when it makes it to the UK, and the best we can do is limit the number of cases we have going on at any one time, so we can provide the best possible care to those patients.

I agree Cyw2018.

Yes - the mortality is approx 2% but for the approx 20% of people with the virus - they will need respiratory support.

This is why China is building these extra hospitals so they can provide the high level support to these very unwell people.

It's reasurring that the number of cases outside China haven't accelerated as they have in the initial area.

All these precautions are being taken because each person who catches the virus will in turn infect, on average, between 1.4 and 2 other people. This means that the virus is not self limiting, ie - it won’t die out by itself. Therefore steps are required to contain it.

If the WHO have declared it an emergency, - Ebola was declared a Public Health Emergency. Were you worried about catching that?

All a PHE does is try to stop the disease spreading to countries that don;t have the medical access to fight it. A PHE means they can send money to help tackle it. It doesn't mean 'everybody panic its out of control'.

Two cases confirmed in Uk

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51325192

I thought the WHO definition rested on it
a) being a novel pathogen, so no one has any immunity, and,
b) being serious (causing death or serious illness which could swamp medical facilities), and

c) spreading person to person in more than one continent

It doesn't necessarily mean that it's about to be a pandemic, but that it has the features which mean it could become one.

There's an interesting balance to be had between preserving patient confidentiality, and the public interest in finding contacts of patients as quickly as possible and requesting self-isolation or imposing quarantine. Difficult to do without disclosing some information on where the people have been durung the incubatiin period

9500 known to be infected and 250 dead in a country with a population of 1.3 billion (all figures are approx). I would think there are probably a lot more people than that actually infected but if they don't seek medical advice or support then they're not going to be counted in official figures, are they? It's from the same virus family as the common cold and symptoms amongst those known to be infected range from mild to severe so not everyone infected is going ti be seriously unwell. Of the first 99 patients treated at hospital, all had pneumonia however they were the first 99 patients severely ill enough to require hospital so of course they were going to be in a bad condition.

As an aside, 9500 is only .0008% of the overall population of China so if China has accurately reported their figures then just .0008% of its overall population are a, confirmed as infected and b, unwell enough to require medical assistance.

nextstrain.org/ncov?c=num_date

flutrackers.com/forum/index.php

I don't know why people would be bothered about being on the Wirral.
They can't leave their rooms anyway.