[Ed P]

Well our half-assed Government have at last realised that returnees should not make their own way home by public transport etc and then self-quarantine having visited the nearest supermarket to stock up on supplies. They will now be quarantined on one of our many redundant Army bases.

I guess we should be grateful that it only took our Government a week to realise their stupidity! We certainly cannot throw stones at the Chinese for their efforts.

I guess in future we will be relying more on our own resources to uncover Government stupidities as the BBC have been forced to slash their journalistic news gathering. (Censorship in a subtle form!)

[The VFM Addict]

Heaven knows how anyone can know the death ‘rates’ yet although we can know the number of deaths to date.   Many of the infected may still peg it.   Of course current deaths are despite many receiving intensive supportive care which most would be unlikely to receive once numbers swamped care capacity.    So if anything 2.5% of those infected must be considered the absolute smallest number likely in the case of a full pandemic.

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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.

[Ed P]

I cannot disagree with your view that we only have a snapshot. However I tend to think <5% deaths is likely as the current death rate is mainly from a swamped Wuhan infrastructure which is as close as you can get to simulating a pandemic.

One caveat is that the virus does not learn to be more efficient. If Bird Flu is used as an analogue, death rates climbed as human-human infections progressed. Lets hope that Snake Flu does not behave in a similar fashion.

[The Duke]

Cnn has this real time map of the virus. Not sure if anyone has posted it yet.

 

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

[Ed P]

The map is interesting as based on early info each confirmed case has generated two to three additional ones. That leaves it uncertain whether symptomless contagious victims also infect two or three others. Regardless of this, we can obviously expect growth in each red dot as well as a lot of new ones.

[The VFM Addict]

Ed P wrote:

I cannot disagree with your view that we only have a snapshot. However I tend to think <5% deaths is likely as the current death rate is mainly from a swamped Wuhan infrastructure which is as close as you can get to simulating a pandemic. One caveat is that the virus does not learn to be more efficient. If Bird Flu is used as an analogue, death rates climbed as human-human infections progressed. Lets hope that Snake Flu does not behave in a similar fashion.

I’m not sure, Ed.   The figures from Hubei, the epicentre of this, strongly suggest we will be looking at a fatality rate well over 5%.   There are currently 125 deaths from the 3,554 confirmed cases there.   That is  over 3.5% fatality rate already.    But only 88 of the 3,544 cases have so far recovered.   So that’s 3,466 who have not yet recovered and we must assume it more than likely that a significant number of those won’t recover.    I don’t think we will know what fatality rate we are actually looking at for another week or so.

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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.

[Ed P]

The Snake Flu pandemic will also have tech impacts in the short/medium term due to the city-wide lockdowns and people extending their New Year holiday. El Reg identifies SSD and Nand manufacturers that could be badly hit.

[Les.]

I have been watching that distribution graph since VFM first linked to it. Yesterday it took an anomalous “slow down” in cases and deaths, but all corrected today. it started as a natural growth rate, but it RATE OF INCREASE seems to be reducing. Not the INCREASE of course. Population growths can NEVER be truly exponential, as they start to lose the “feed stock”. This looks typical and frightening. Currently 170 deaths, 133 “recovered”, whatever that means. not uncommon for recovered people to get big problems later. Remember the Scottish nurse and her ebola attack.

Les.

[Richard]

Several points come out of today’s news. The virus is now being talked about as being bat ‘flu and suggestions abound that its genetics point to a single source origin. I cannot see the attraction of eating bats under any circumstances. We have them roost on one of our walls for a week at a time in the fly catching season and one was found dead one morning, it weighed almost nothing and was a most unappetising sight. I buried it where the dogs would not get to it and made sure even back then to avoid touching the remains, probably based on previous bad press.

While the repatriation arrangement for nationals stuck in China are almost complete, at least from the UK end, it appears that relations with China are still not good enough, even after giving some Huawei ground to allow the evacuation plan to land in China so urgent negations are ‘still in progress’. I wonder what the hold up is.

[Ed P]

I think we need to put the Snake flu panic in context. Bird flu pandemics have a death rate of around 2.5%, and similar proportion of serious cases. So Snake Flu is bad in terms of its spread rate and probably higher death rate, but it is certainly no Ebola, SARS or Smallpox in its lethality.

[The VFM Addict]

@Les

Yes, China’s ‘lock down containment strategy’ seems to be reducing the exponential growth, probably because those infected are infecting fewer others themselves.    However, I simply cannot see any state this is less authoritarian than China ever being able to deploy that strategy as effectively.    The populations of most Western states are not as automatically compliant with government instructions as are the Chinese.    Sooner or later this little nasty is pretty certain to stage a significant breakout and gain a significant foothold outside of China.    So its all a race against time; which will occur first that breakout or the development of a vaccine or anti-viral effective against it?    I understand that treatments currently being used to treat and control HIV are also being looked at to see if they have any effectiveness against this virus.

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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.

[Ed P]

Although the real origin of Snake Flu is a hypothesis, this article traces the possible link between bats, snakes and humans.

Bays (mostly fruit bats) are known to be a causal agent for numerous diseases. Although some Asian peoples eat fruit bats this is not a widespread habit. The main link is bats roosting in fruit trees, dropping half eaten fruit and then defecating over it. The fruit is then consumed by foraging pigs, and then on to humans via either bad hygiene or cooking practices. IIrc in Malaysia in the late 90s the pig carcasses directly infected some of the food preparers via cuts/hands touching lips etc. In the Malaysia case I think chickens were also contaminated so muddying the waters in establishing a chain of events.

[The VFM Addict]

Ed P wrote:

I think we need to put the Snake flu panic in context. Bird flu pandemics have a death rate of around 2.5%, and similar proportion of serious cases. So Snake Flu is bad in terms of its spread rate and probably higher death rate, but it is certainly no Ebola, SARS or Smallpox in its lethality.

I agree its nothing like Ebola which comes close to 100% fatality and 2019-nCoV is not likely to be anywhere near as lethal as Smallpox.    I’m not sure though that we can yet say that it is not as lethal or almost as lethal as SARS; the jury is surely still out on that one.    In the early stages of the SARS epidemic, health officials estimated the mortality rate at less than 4%.   We are still in the early stages of 2019-nCoV so the 3.5% so far is not much different.   In the end SARS was more like 14% to 15%.    Realistically one can never know the true rate until the pandemic is over and there is a known outcome (i.e. either death or recovery) for each confirmed case.    As yet there are still one hell of a lot of confirmed cases with as yet no bankable outcome.

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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.

[Ed P]

I hope the Asian habit of wearing face masks spreads to the UK. Currently if I need to go to London via commuter train then I can pretty much guarantee that within a week I’ll be suffering from one darned virus or another.🤒

[The VFM Addict]

Once 2019-nCoV gets here there is not the slightest chance I will use any public transport; except possibly cabs.    The buses in London are often standing room only truly packed like sardines and the underground is even worse.

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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.

[Richard]

I see that the evacuation flight is now back on again, leaving at 21:00 hours tonight and that details of the temporary billeting arrangements for an ‘extended holiday’ have now been confirmed. No doubt the ‘holiday’ will be greeted with misgivings by those affected.

I agree that quarantining whole towns or cities here would be next to impossible, though selective closures and possible quarantine for those directly affected have proved possible in some past cases.

Public transport does sound like a brilliant thing to avoid if/when the virus does land here, but how practical a boycott would prove is another question. Another few weeks or months not using it would not trouble me at the moment and quite possibly for the rest of my life either. However, this is not because of infection control, it is simply less use to me than a bicycle is to a shoal of fish. It is slow, it leaves from points not too close to me and goes nowhere near any destination I might need. For others avoidance would not be so easy to achieve.

I understand the concerns about the death rates/ratios, but at this early stage it is hard to gain accurate an understanding of infection levels and even of death rates. There are deaths every day, many of are down to multiple causes so it can be hard to pin one thing down as the main problem and it can be subjectively recorded. Perhaps the weekly death run-rate is as much as the short-term statistics will achieve. Increases or hopefully decreases will be a key factor, provided that the reporting mechanisms are not altered in any way.

[Ed P]

The Government are billeting the evacuees in former NHS staff accommodation in the north-west of England. Just about as far away from London as you can go without putting it in Scotland.

Obviously BoJo’s policy of focussing on the North has been put into action!

[The VFM Addict]

Nothing to do with the siting of the isolation location but it suddenly occurs to me that this virus, in that it will inevitably kill more of the old who are more likely to be Tory voters than the young who are more likely to be Labour voters, could have a political impact directly.

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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.

[Bob Williams]

This link is very informative:   http://tinyurl.com/t4x3zss

Reading the genome and trying to trace its origins, in an effort to produce a vaccine. Apparently the evidence points to fruit bats, which I believe was mentioned here as a possibility, can’t recall by whom, possibly Ed.

I can’t get Ed’s description of Chinese Wet Markets out of my head, but I recollect similar markets elsewhere in the Far East, on a smaller scale probably. Then I recall as a kid, working weekends for the local butcher, who also slaughtered, and his words to me: “Everybody wants to eat meat (well they did in the ’50’s and ’60’s) but nobody wants to know where it comes from!” I suspect those words are even more true nowadays.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[The VFM Addict]

Your local butcher wasn’t wrong there, Bob.   And I’m sure you are spot on also about that being even truer today.  Folks don’t want to think where it comes from.     Its easy to demonstrate.   Tell someone there’s a Butchers at the end of your road and no-one bats an eye lid.    But tell them there’s a shop at the end of your road that sells chopped up animals and just watch their faces.

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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.

[Author]

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