China Reports More Than 200 Infections With New Coronavirus From Wuhan (sciencemag.org) 36
The outbreak of a new virus that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan last month appears to be far from over. Today, Chinese health authorities reported that over 130 new pneumonia cases caused by the virus were identified over the weekend, bringing the total in China alone to 201, including three outside Wuhan. From a report: There has also been a third death from the infection, and South Korea now has reported a case as well -- the third country outside China to do so. Meanwhile, the pattern of spread makes it increasingly unlikely that the virus does not transmit between people, some experts say. "Uncertainty and gaps remain, but it's clear that there is some level of person-to-person transmission," Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust in London, said in a statement today. "The sudden spike in cases is disconcerting, but not entirely unexpected," says Adam Kamradt-Scott, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Sydney. As more people learn about the disease, more will go to doctors, Kamradt-Scott says, even with mild symptoms, whereas previously they might have just stayed home. And doctors are now on the lookout for the new disease. "The result is that you see a sudden surge in cases," he says. But âoeif we continue to see this trend continue over the next week where there are 50 to 100 new cases every day, then that would be cause for further concern."
In other news (Score:2, Insightful)
In New York there have been 200 new flu infections the last 12 minutes.
Coronavirus is not flu. (Score:4, Informative)
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"Coronavirus is not flu. https://www.itv.com/news/2020- [itv.com]... [itv.com]"
We know. But it also goes from human to human, also comes from animals and people are actually _dying_ from it every single day while this is just another stupid scare.
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Maybe. We don't yet know how good it is a human-to-human transmission. If it's new to that, then it may improve rapidly, and if it's easily transmissible, then it has no reason to evolve to be less deadly.
Still, the numbers are pretty low so far. Perhaps it's not usually bad enough to notice. And most viruses don't evolve as rapidly as influenza does. (Perhaps their "critical regions" are more easily recognized by the immune system. They generally do mutate as much.)
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It takes 6 months or so to ramp up production of a vaccine against a particular strain of virus. 6 months ago this virus didn't exist, or wasn't identified. So no, the shot you got in November isn't gong to help you against this one. Just the ones it contains. And even then, not 100% of the time.
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Apparently it wasn't just a stupid scare for the 4 or so people who died from it.
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The flu vaccine is phamas and CDC's best estimate of what flu viruses will be percolating among the proles in any given year. And it is never touted as a 100% effective vaccine. It turns out the world is a complicated place, there are many viruses and the mutate.
SARS (Score:3, Insightful)
This reminds me of the SARS epidemic where everyone died.
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Indeed. 1.5 Billion people, 200 of them have a booboo and cough.
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Indeed. 1.5 Billion people, 200 of them have a booboo and cough.
You're right. With public health issues it's much better to wait until the outbreak becomes widespread before doing anything about it.
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The US was first!
Actually, the US wasn't first. That's so far back in history we can't follow it. But the US has been documented testing bio-weapons on it's own citizens two times that I'm aware of. And a few more times where it tested chemical weapons. Some of the times, admittedly, it was just testing dispersal rates with something nominally harmless.
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Doubtful. The CCP realizes it has no legitimate claim to power. Anything that reflects badly on it like releasing a bioweapon on their own people isn't something they'd go for. Now releasing it on Uighurs or Tibetans or Taiwanese, that's more likely. However, the CCP has been Hanifying Xinjiang province and Tibet, so they probably don't want to bio-kill their own usurpers. They still think they can Hanify Taiwan but that boat won't float for a long while after the crap they're puling in Hong Kong.
And the CC
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Basic Facts ... (Score:2)
It is the same family of viruses as the common cold, SARS (2002-2004), and the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, originated from camels).
These are the basic facts about the coronavirus outbreak [www.cbc.ca] in China, where it originated, what are the symptoms, ...etc.
WURS (Score:4, Funny)
Wuhan Upper Respiratory Syndrome.
Think you have the flu?
It could be WURS.
Conspiracy theory (Score:1)
Could this be a manufactured virus for either use as a bio-weapon that somehow got out, or maybe not as bio weapon but a synthetic strain for research got out, or from China's reputation maybe a population control solution? /sarcasm of course... Product of overactive imagination thinking it'd make a good book or b movie. hehe
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Has Xi Jinping recently acquired a gauntlet of some kind?
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China's pop. has been dropping for years, they aren't likely to encourage its fall as that would mean less economic power. The world is full of viruses, and some of them do jump to humans from animals. A real conspiracy theory would that the CCP is caused by a virus that jumped from an animal like Mao to the general pop.
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The end of the world happens the day you die.
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I didn't mean "you" as in "sirv", I meant "you" as in "whoever is reading this".
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Double negatives (Score:4, Insightful)
[--] makes it increasingly unlikely that the virus does not transmit between people
I find it highly unlikely that using double negatives is not a bad thing. It doesn't make the text not less easy to understand, it isn't not on the contrary! I don't propose that we shouldn't not take it to the next level and not leave triple or higher-order negatives not unused (okay now I didn't not lose track of my own levels of negatives).
So yeah, why not just write "[--] makes it increasingly likely that the virus transmits between people"?
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Phew (Score:1)