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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to ask you if you are worried about the new Coronavirus?

999 replies

IvyBush123 · 04/02/2020 06:41

I am not sure if there is reason to worry about the new Coronavirus. I am not a medical expert but to be honest feel a bit scared because we know so little and some experts seem worried. How do you think?

OP posts:
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0DimSumMum0 · 04/02/2020 14:19

Yes I am worried. Living in HK people are definitely on edge here. Masks have all sold out or are being sold at ridiculous prices. Children are having to be home schooled, at the moment till the 2nd March but who knows and I have a son sitting GCSE's this year! Panic buying in the shops has started and hospital staff are striking to increase pressure on the government to close the borders. There are 3 still open. It's very stressful!

FudgeBrownie2019 · 04/02/2020 14:23

I'm not worried in the sense that it could have a massive impact on humanity, and nor do I believe it would end in a worst-case-scenario type of thing.

However, my dad has serious chest and heart conditions and at almost 80 he's a prime candidate to be wiped off his feet by something serious (although the realistic part of me is aware that that's true of flu and all manner of other illnesses at his age). DS2 has asthma that's controlled well, but I'm always a little more cautious with him than I would be with myself.

ofwarren · 04/02/2020 14:25

I didn't realise they had closed HK schools. Have they all closed or just international ones DimsumMum?

meditrina · 04/02/2020 14:26

FCO has changed travel advice, urging all Britons in China to leave if they can. They are also reducing Embassy staff.

I find that concerning, as it appears that despite efforts to curb Chinese New Year travel and the extended shutdown, it appears to be spreading quite rapidly

Lweji · 04/02/2020 14:29

I'm pretty sure governments across the world are well aware that China isnt being totally transparent and are planning with that in mind too.

The WHO keeps praising their openness, but it's probably more trying to encourage it than a recognition of a fact. Wink
At least, they haven't been as bad this time as for SARS.

starfishmummy · 04/02/2020 14:35

Absolutely. It has not escaped me that Coronavirus is in fact an anagram.

A person eating virus is very worrying indeed Grin

Lweji · 04/02/2020 14:39

@RedToothBrush Tue 04-Feb-20 13:51:35
Excellent post.

Thankfully, at least genetic data has been made available to the wider scientific community. Other countries have been more open about case detection, so researchers outside of China can draw their own conclusions.
Hence the paper concluding that the number of cases is more likely 10x what was reported. The official underreporting may be due to inability to detect most cases, or deliberate by the Chinese government.
It's possible that they're only building the hospitals in preparation for it getting a lot worse soon. Or that they have many more cases than we know.

0DimSumMum0 · 04/02/2020 14:44

Ofwarren - The EDB have closed all schools across HK both local and international. All universities as well.

Francina670 · 04/02/2020 14:50

It’s in the government’s interests to tell British citizens to leave now. Then they can be blamed for deciding to stay if the situation gets worse, thus absolving the government of any responsibility to get them out of the country. An airlift for 30,000 people would be quite some undertaking.

It’s really not that easy for people to just leave. Your spouse has no automatic right to live in the UK. Immigration rules require you to have a job paying over a certain salary which you’re not going to have if you up sticks at a moment’s notice.

RedToothBrush · 04/02/2020 14:56

I find that concerning, as it appears that despite efforts to curb Chinese New Year travel and the extended shutdown, it appears to be spreading quite rapidly

The idea that the measures aren't working is a premature one. We won't know if they have worked for a while yet.

The problem was already widespread before the controls came into effect.

The disease was first identified in early December and the Chinese government took the decision to build a 1000 bed hospital and shut down the city when only 500 cases were officially identified. That's a disproportionate response at that point - they had to have a fair idea it was much worse than that.

It was clear at this point it was probably already out of control.

Due to the incubation period and the fact that some areas were shut down earlier than others, you would expect the numbers to be going up still. Plus there the hospitals in Wuhan were clearly overwhelmed at the point controls were put in and couldn't take in and medically quarantine early cases (which is precisely why the controls were put in) meaning it spread in families and close associations even after lock down.

On top of this the sheer density of population is always going to be a particularly Chinese problem. If a tower block has one family with an infection, can that spread to neighbours (with SARs people who were in rooms adjacent to a carrier were infected and a block of flats had a spate of infection which was put down to shared sewage so there is this fear that lock down might not be 100% affective.)

If the measures have worked then the earliest this would show up would be a fortnight after they were introduced.

The reality is that was always unlikely to show up in figures after only a fortnight due to the fact that services were already so overwhelmed at the point of shutdown and there were large numbers of unidentified carriers.

I suspect its more likely going to be closer to a month before there is any indication of the situation being under control in Wuhan itself through the quarantine and shut down controls.

Also the number of diagnosed cases going up is a fundamentally different thing to whether the situation is under control and being managed. You'd expect reported cases to go up after the situation had come under control due to authorities processing a backlog and getting even more draconian in control measures as they got better at identifying and reporting suspected cases too. The numbers of cases only mean so much and its important to understand this.

Lweji · 04/02/2020 15:01

Other European countries, including mine, have already taken citizens out of at least Wuhan.
I've just read (very recent news) that a Belgium citizen in one of those flights is infected. We'll have to see if he has infected anyone else or not, but I'd assume they all took basic preventative measures.

woodchuck99 · 04/02/2020 15:11

The fact they are telling people to leave suggests that they think they may close the border soon or that it will be hard for people to leave due to restrictions imposed by the Chinese. It would cost a lot to evacuate 30,000 people.

Maighdeann · 04/02/2020 15:11

They have also had a death in the Philippines

The death in the Philippines was a Chinese national. The news has skimmed over this bit to be a bit more alarmist.

^The poor man also had HIV so was immunosuppressed.

Maighdeann · 04/02/2020 15:13

Where on earth will they put 30,000 people for quarantine? Surely, that just increases the UK's chances of it spreading?

Lweji · 04/02/2020 15:13

I imagine that health services will be overwhelmed and food supplies will be strained soon, if not already.
No point in staying in China (or wherever conditions are difficult and getting worse) if you can go to your own country.

goldfinchfan · 04/02/2020 15:13

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woodchuck99 · 04/02/2020 15:47

Where on earth will they put 30,000 people for quarantine? Surely, that just increases the UK's chances of it spreading?

There not going to all arrive at once. At the moment the risk from other parts of China is reasonably low so they would be asked to self quarantine and we would have to hope they would do it.

PhilCornwall1 · 04/02/2020 15:51

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OriginalBleach · 04/02/2020 16:00

OMG I saw a video on Ytube showing a TV presenter demonstrating how to eat a bat. ugh

Oh FFS.

How ignorant. You are spreading misinformation.

According to the BBC

the video was not shot in Wuhan, or in China for that matter. Originally filmed in 2016, it shows popular blogger and travel show host Mengyun Wang during a trip to Palau, an archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean.The clip resurfaced on social media after cases of the new coronavirus emerged in Wuhan late last year.

PhilCornwall1 How rude. Mumsnet is not the right place for thinly veiled racist bs.

Gatewaytochocolate · 04/02/2020 16:02

*It almost certainly came from bats.

The shit they eat out there, it could have come from next doors dog*

I thought it came from poorly disposed chemical testing waste.

eeeyoresmiles · 04/02/2020 16:10

The thing is, would we have as big a yuk reaction if we saw someone eating a squirrel? Or a dormouse like the romans did? Is eating a snake really any worse than jellied eels, say? There are good reasons not to (protecting endangered wildlife for a start, the cruelty in some cases, plus now the disease risk), but a lot of the yuk factor is very subjective and culturally specific I think, or based on the idea that eating anything that might be a pet (or anything that gets anthropomorphised a lot in stories) is somehow fundamentally more wrong than eating farmed animals. That's an emotional reaction more than a logical one I think. I have it too and have felt quite shocked watching videos from those types of markets, but when you really think about it, a lot of what's going on there isn't that much more grotesque than what goes on in our own food production systems for meat (and the spread of foot and mouth came out of some pretty yukkky practices).

woodchuck99 · 04/02/2020 16:14

It's odd that the UK are suggesting people come home when no one else is. It makes me less concerned that they know something we don't although perhaps I will change my mind if more countries make the same announcement.

NemophilistRebel · 04/02/2020 16:28

Eeeyore - the difference I the yuk factor is eating things that are known to be diseased or high disease spreaders.

There are many delicacies that would be illegal to eat in many countries due to health risk

Fugu/puffer fish sushi in Japan
Century eggs
Cash Marzu in Italy

All could be fatal

Lweji · 04/02/2020 17:32

It's odd that the UK are suggesting people come home when no one else is.

What do you mean?
I've already posted that other European countries are bringing people in. Including one person who was infected, it turned out.

www.rfi.fr/en/europe/20200204-belgium-coronavirus-case-among-repatriated-europeans-reported-france
apnews.com/ee9c8fb693b06f1cf63f16e494333ce5

Lweji · 04/02/2020 17:36

Regarding bats, it's really not a good choice for food.

They are also thought to carry filoviruses (Ebola, Marburg, etc), which have also been found in Spain - www.diseasedaily.org/diseasedaily/article/ebola-virus-discovered-spain-102611

SARS has also been linked to bats.

A summary:
www.livescience.com/26898-bats-host-human-infecting-viruses.html