Broward/dade county florida has about 8 million in a 60 mile radius. My Brother has been sick there since the 21 or so of Jan and has had a recent down turn. His symptoms are consistent with the kung flu and he has had a history of travel with high population of asians in mid Jan.
I am scheduled to go with a group to Croatia for 2 weeks. We will be meeting with 100 women from that area of the world. I fly from CO to Amsterdam to Croatia…and back.
My concern is not so much getting the virus but the possibility of getting stranded somewhere along the line due to travel restriction or anything else.
I appreciate the efforts of people here to understand what we are facing and how to respond as wisely as possible in light of significant unknowns. My doctor wrote scripts for me to stock up on required meds. I expect significant economic impacts and supply chain issues. I plan to use masks and gloves while traveling though I do understand the limitations of them.
Open to feedback and suggestions. How would you advise your sister? Assuming you like her…
I have never been to China so I don’t know the configuration of the sewer system.
For much of our city (Atlanta), the storm system and sewers run together. Often, in low places on the street, one can smell the sewers. Today as I was walking through a strong odor in a low spot, I wondered if a virus that can live in feces and has airborne capability could be intermingled in some way with that odor.
Is this a possible explanation for the videos we have seen of the street spraying operations in Wuhan? And could it be the virus is spread, even on the streets, through the city sewer system?
Chris,
Thanks again for all the great work. I am still amazed at how many in the USA are shrugging this off as “just another flu bug, nothing to worry about”. Can you try to answer these questions or offer any opinions on these? I have read that warm weather kills off the flu bug. Any thoughts on if warm weather (spring-summer) will kill this thing? If that is true, then why is this spreading in Thailand where it is currently very warm? Next question, any thoughts on this impacting China much more than elsewhere being due to Asians having a higher ACE2 receptor level? Finally, could the slower spread outside of China possibly be due to a much longer incubation period than we currently think? Or do we have enough data to say the incubation period is on the order of 2 weeks. Thanks again for the great work, not only on this but all your other peak oil, podcasts, and crash course work!
For some reason, the video just before this one posted on 2/11 has not been put up here on the site. Here’s a link.
Coronavirus, the potential for a vaccine, and the cytokine storm!
To remind anyone new here, we have an ongoing discussion on things you can do to help yourself, preparation and deep pantry, and sanitation, mask and personal protection on this thread from earlier in the week.
Great hints and information. The discussion will continue there.
“Coronavirus: What We Can Say Publicly & What We Can’t”
Chris,
Do you think that the long-term exposure of the Chinese population to serious air pollution, especially in the large cities, might explain in part why the Chinese appear to have more incidence of serious coronavirus pneumonia? I spent 3 days in Beijing one August outdoors sight-seeing. After those three days, my sinuses were on fire and I came down with a bad sinus infection on the flight home. I don’t know how people can live in that every day.
I had read that China had removed the people who were tested and found having Covid-2019 but who hadn’t shown any symptoms from the total numbers of infected. Am I reading this right, now they are adding the people who are confirmed to have symptoms based on scans? And those that died who showed scan symptoms?
With the article about the over worked crematorium operators, and the guestimate that they had disposed of 4000+ bodies since 1/22, I’m finding it hard to believe anything coming out of China.
In the last 5 weeks I’ve been on the road constantly. I’m in Fort Worth Texas this week for a trade show with 1300 people from all over the world. My Uber driver was from China and emigrated 1 month ago to Dallas. The guy at the booth next to me at the show works for a Chinese company headquartered in Hubei province where he visited in mid-November. Another guy I met at the show is off to India next week. Everyone I speak to is concerned about the virus. I’m better informed than most thanks to this site, but even so, what can I do? This is my job. So I shake their hands and exchange nervous snide comments and then sneak a dollop of hand sanitizer before my next meeting. I’m wearing masks on my flight but I’m the exception and that’s far from my only risk vector. My 3 year old is in preschool in snohomish county which has the distinguished honor of being the first US county to receive a diagnosed case of wuful. Seems they caught that in time as we haven’t had a reported out break but with a potential 24 day incubation period this unholy bitch could be anywhere.
Chris can list the reason why you are calling this a ninja virus?
Skid Row, LA
My wife works as a training manager for the nursing department at one of the private hospitals here in Ulaanbaatar. She just heard this morning at work that there is a coronavirus case in Mongolia (Khuvsgul province), and that person has died. The area was already under a state of caution (bars & clubs closed, food & clothing markets closed for a couple days for disinfection), but it sounds like gov’t will now be quarantining the area and is sending a response team. I guess she’ll be attending a conference call soon between the Health Ministry and management from all the other hospitals, where they will be given the official status and their marching orders. It hasn’t been 100% confirmed ant it hasn’t hit the public news yet, but no doubt will tonight.
Sounds like the initial gov’t recommendations she heard included having 2 months’ of food stored. Our family has that no problem (thanks in part to following this site since late 2008!), but our extended family? Not so much. They have full freezers of meats, berries, and such, but not so much shelf-stored staples. They need to get on that.
Our children and their cousins have been staying outside the city for five days now with their grandparents, and it sounds like this is likely to continue. I’m honestly more concerned with the impacts to supply chains and the local economy than I am with us directly catching CoVid19, but I’m still happy to spare our kids from that possibility.
I would suggest taking a small backpack/shoulder bag and take essentials to keep with you at all times. Include meds, airborne, vitamins, change of underwear, snacks, water, chargers, sanitizers, masks etc. Eat healthy, take extra supplements to offset the stress of traveling. A neck scarf can help to keep you warm and doesn't take up room. Think of the bag as if you got stranded what would you be really glad you had. Good luck!
I’ll tell you what I tell everyone who leaves the country, (and that is not with a pandemic in China). “They ought to have you sign a wavier that says, I am an adult and if something bad happens to me or I get sick I am on my own. I will not expect anyone to save me, I accept this risk and responsibility knowing full well that I may never see the USA again.”
(hat tip to Saxplayer, who posted this article from USNews on the “24-day incubation period” thread):
WHO Denounces Claim of Potential 60% Coronavirus Infection Rate (Source)
'“Everyone is talking about social media. Everyone is talking about staying calm and keeping our populations calm. Yet every chance we get we seem like we want to accelerate the infodemic and not contain the epidemic,” said Mike Ryan, the executive director of World Health Organization’s health emergencies program. "
'“Let’s be careful in throwing around figures, speculation and scaring people,” Ryan continued. “I just caution everybody to not start throwing around figures that there is no basis for at the moment.” ’
The “basis” for the figures being “thrown around” is highly-credible research shared and discussed with the WHO, CDC, CCP, HK officials, and others in January. The problem seems to be that the public is starting to notice that the virus is indeed spreading and is concerned that it may not be under control after all.
Apparently WHO officials took issue with an estimate provided by Dr. Gabriel Leung, renowned epidemiologist and Chair of Public Health Medicine at Hong Kong University, that 60% of the world’s population could be infected by nCoV/COVID-19 if left “unchecked”, as reported in this article by The Guardian:
Coronavirus ‘could infect 60% of global population if unchecked’ (Source)
“The coronavirus epidemic could spread to about two-thirds of the world’s population if it cannot be controlled, according to Hong Kong’s leading public health epidemiologist.”
“At the end of January, he [Dr. Leung] warned in a paper in the Lancet that outbreaks were likely to be “growing exponentially” in cities in China, lagging just one to two weeks behind Wuhan. Elsewhere, “independent self-sustaining outbreaks in major cities globally could become inevitable” because of the substantial movement of people who were infected but had not yet developed symptoms, and the absence of public health measures to stop the spread.”
Not only did Dr. Leung and his fellow researchers break with the WHO/CDC/CCP narrative that the virus was contained, he enlisted the public to become informed and take precautions. This recent WHO denouncement may have also been triggered by Dr. Leung’s comment below, which is at odds with the CCP’s laws concerning “spreading harmful rumors” and promoting social “disharmony”.
“Hong Kong, which has 36 confirmed cases of coronavirus, was in the worst possible set of circumstances for fighting a raging epidemic, said Leung.
“You need extra trust, extra sense of solidarity, extra sense of goodwill, all of which have been completely used up – every last drop in that social capital fuel tank has been exhausted after now eight months of social unrest, so it couldn’t have come at a worse time,” he said.”
Dr. Leung is very brave, and hopefully his very high professional standing and his international visibility on this pandemic will insulate him from retaliation. In contrast, WHO and its leaders are really beginning to look ineffective and less concerned about pubic health than currying political favor and trade stability.
I think that all of the videos should be posted on the ‘Complete Coverage’ page. For instance, the one on Cytokines is not here (as far as I can see; correct me if I’m wrong). There has been at least one other that I found on YouTube, but could not find here. And it would be nice to number the videos or have a date in the Title. Would be easier to keep track.
Thank you for your coverage, Chris and Adam.
Granny, if he’s going to meet a 100 Croatian ladies I would suggest he just take his shaving kit, some breathe mints and few nice ties. LOL!
Good to see some logical warnings being communicated to Senate committee members. Hopefully they are taking action accordingly!
Quotes:
“Some of the modeling out of the U.K. suggests that we’re capturing about 25% of cases at best. So for every case we identify, there’s three or four that we didn’t identify.”
“One or a few breakouts may happen on a local level, but until there is a trend or deadly case, local governments may not realize or be able to sound off and at least some of those cases, probably are propagating at a local level, but not enough cases have accumulated yet to be identifiable.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/health-experts-warn-congress-coronavirus-may-hit-us-hard-in-next-two-to-four-weeks