Prepping for a pandemic 2

[wheresmymojo]

Second thread on prepping for a potential Coronavirus pandemic...following the latest news and information as well as prepping info.

When quoting estimates like mortality rates, replication rates, incubation periods and similar I try to stick to evidence based, scientific studies and will link to sources (unless already linked to them previously).

Generally speaking I use reputable sources of information like well regarded news outlets for other information and will provide links.

Sometimes I may post things outside of this as 'interesting' or such like. I will always caveat these as to be taken with caution.

As much as possible I am attempting not to link to fake news. It's an evolving picture so may not be 100% successful but if something is later shown to be incorrect I will post a correction.

It's such a good example of putting potentially complex info in a readable format for the public!

I am also still crushing on Dr John Campbell's YouTube videos for the same reason
His old school 'I'm almost using an overhead projector' style is very endearing...

I’m a fan of MedCram ones. Very Americanised though, I like the whizzy pen.

Oh mojo sorry I completely missed your comment regarding the "Tencent leak", I completely agree with the photoshop comment, I only mentioned it due to the discussion about the numbers of cases etc not to cause any panic.

It's very easy to get sucked into the Twitter "hole" I only downloaded it yesterday to see what everyone's been talking about.

Hi shouldhave

"At the minute I'm swinging between anxiety/fear back to rationalising and denial"

^ This is me also. Which I think means the proper place is somewhere in the middle - it's not Spanish Flu but it could come here and it could be a bit bumpy (more than Swine Flu)...but who knows frankly!

swine flu and the pandemic centres, I set some of those up for the region I worked in at the time. Makes me misty eyed for the past.

Swine flu itself if you were in the designated vulnerable groups was terrible, but for the majority not much issue. IMO, not anything I’ve dealt with for work, n-cov Will be the same.

@Fairylights2021 I would really encourage your family to cancel. One of the most dangerous things is flying long haul ( along with going on cruise ships it seems!).
DH works for a mainland Chinese company and travels extensively and frequently throughout Asia. He and other staff will not be flying anywhere long haul for the immediate future from anywhere in Europe. Short haul flights will probably still go ahead .

Li Wenliang - I’m very sorry to hear the dreadful news, terribly sad that that such an intelligent & caring man was treat so badly & has died. He’s probably saved many lives & could have said so many more if he they hadn’t tried to to shut him down

Has anybody seen the videos by Dr Paul Cottrell? I'm staying off Twitter for the foreseeable. Im not a big user anyway.
I've been keeping track through work emails and phe updates. I have a close friend that works for phe and she's not concerned at all which I've found comforting.
One of my children has regular appointments (biweekly) at a really large hospital. It's not close to where we live and it's the kind of place where people travel a long way for treatment.
That's worrying me a little bit. Not to the point where I feel consumed but it's in the back of my mind.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/asia/coronavirus-china.html#click=t.co/Npf5xzWfhO" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/asia/coronavirus-china.html#click=t.co/Npf5xzWfhO

This is the situation @IsChinar (Harry Chen) has been posting about for a while. Scary to think how much truth there is on Twitter. I am desperately sorry for the people of Wuhan.

Li Wenliang is a hero - again according to Twitter there is utter outrage at the way he's been treated. I dread to think of the backlash from the Chinese police.

I found out recently that an area close to me (Surrey Heath) of 90,000 people has a max of 7 police officers on duty at any one time

Cue immediate increase in burglaries in Surrey Heath 😂

There are quite a few things to question and I doubt we will know the answers until months down the line.

To me ( I could be missing something here) it doesn't seem that the incubation times or length of illness is quite accurate. But I could be misreading things.

I do think the real figures from China are going to be proved wrong later. I think they are purely overwhelmed and trying to stop panic.

It's hard to say as mainstream news arent really reporting on the ground like the was a few weeks back.

After Chernobyl my old uni detected Plutonium in the London air the morning after the explosion during routine lab experiments looking at Radon levels. Before the news came out.

It's hard picking out the truth on Twitter. Why dont they use trolleys to transport bodies? If someone is beaten up because they refuse a temperature check then who is recording the officials openly in the apartment blocks. It worries me but I think inbetween thinking Wtf? And denial.

I think the truth is somewhere in between. I feel for those people in Wuhan. That much I'm sure about. It looks awful

flutrackers.com/forum/forum/-2019-ncov-new-coronavirus/sinapore-2019-n-cov/824035-singapore-2019-ncov-cases-information/page2 Info about Singapore in this thread.

Op hope your dh is ok
With regards to the numbers, it's not going to be accurately reported because they can't test them as quickly as they need to. The numbers of people needing tests are bigger than tests available. And even the ones they are testing, it can take days to test, the tests can be false negatives or positives, and they can physically only process so many each day.
That leaves the other cases out of the numbers. And the ones that died without testing are just deaths. No matter how huge that number is, officially they are just deaths.

There are rumours online amongst staff (yes I know just rumours at the moment, and no I'm not trying to create panic but thought it may be worth mentioning) of two suspected cases at a hospital in Derry. Mother and child

The hospital issued a statement that the Derry case is just testing. The vast vast majority of cases tested in Europe have been negative.

Hubei's stats for today:

2,447 new confirmed cases
69 deaths
Critical cases have increased from 3,084 to 4,002

That's quite an increase in critical cases.

That being said they are rounding everyone up from self-isolation and bringing them in so it might just represent the poor buggers who were in critical condition at home...

Hmmm...some are reporting a slightly different number for the new confirmed cases but it's in the same ballpark

There's a population in Hubei of 58.5 million. For reference.
Has anybody seen any estimations as to what the real figures most likely are?

So the flu trackers forum mentions a case in Malaysia who had been to a conference at the Hyatt Hotel in Singapore. I'd like to think Brighton man was proactively identified along with everyone else who attended.

Good News

Some good news - this isn't exactly a scientific study but the head of the clinic treating the German patients agrees with those saying that the mortality rate is likely lower than expected - maybe more like 1% or even less.

I would say though this is when there is no overwhelm of the health system.

The potential for it to be higher comes when there are more patients needing oxygen / respirators than can be made available (like Wuhan).

This is still a risk with the potential transmissibility (and still massively sucks for the 1%) but definitely improving news on the mortality front

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChinaFlu/comments/f001h8/chieffdoctoroffthepatientssbeingtreateddin/

Teta (sorry I’m not sure how to link your name properly) thank you that’s useful to know. Think I’m going to have to try and talk to them properly about it again. They seem totally set on going as they’ll loose a huge amount of money if they don’t but I think it’s madness! I’ve been waiting to see how the situation develops as they fly a week today but I’m massively worried about it.

Thank you very much for these well considered threads wheresmymojo
Very interesting article in the Times, Oxford and Imperial going head to head with a vaccine- with very different ideas.

Liking the German optimism but what is it based on? Their 12 patients? Hardly enough to draw any real conclusions from.

I really want to believe that it's no more dangerous than influenza but if that's the case why would China jeopardise their economy and the lives of so many people quarantined in cities?

It's the way that things don't add up that makes me most afraid.

Has anyone seen any reports/accounts coming out of China that are along the lines of, 'we had a bad cold and now we are fine'? I haven't, and I'd like to. I suppose people who aren't ill enough wouldn't be tested though, so wouldn't know whether they have Coronavirus or regular seasonal viruses.

I've been guilty of watching terrifying news footage and horrific twitter videos and then letting my imagination fill in the blanks; in my head Wuhan is pretty much an apocalyptic nightmare with people dying behind closed doors on every street. Completely illogical of me given that even the most pessimistic estimated figures of infected would only represent a few % of Wuhan's 11 million population, but I suppose it's hard to get a real feel for context when everything you see online looks like something out of a disaster movie.

@AvocadoOwl I haven't seen any reports like that. But on balance, I've seen lots of reports explaining that the virus attacks your ace2 receptors and shuts down responses so for example when your blood pressure gets too low your body can't respond to pick it back up again.
I have seen multiple reports about the number of Ace2 receptors being higher in older males, and specifically older Asian males.
This could explain both why it's affecting people in China more severely than in other places and why the numbers are larger. It may effectively be much more dangerous to that demographic. The Dr Paul Cottrell video explains it quite well.
There are also concerns over the vaccine in terms of being reinfected but having a worse reaction second time around as a result of the vaccine.