Watching South Korea — it appears to have stopped the exponential spread of Coronavirus
Heartening. At its peaks last Saturday and Tuesday, South Korea acquired 800 new infections per day. Since then, whatever it is doing, South Korea has managed to keep the new daily cases between 300-800. That may not sound like much, but in exponential terms it could have been a lot worse. Is this the future for us in the West? Perhaps with aggressive action, and local or statewide lockdowns, wealthy western nations may get outbreaks under control. Will we spend the next year with periodic major lockdowns as outbreaks occur, but manage to keep the virus from en masse spread without hospitals being overwhelmed? But can poor countries achieve this? If not, we will have to close flights to stop repeated debilitating and deadly outbreaks, while doing our best to help them. The world will become divided into nations which have this controlled, and those who don’t. This is still the pandemonium I’ve been talking about for six weeks; we could have avoided it, but it’s better than other scenarios. It’s a middle-run scenario.
We are fortunate that this is not as airborne and infectious as measles, which might have made even this impossible. (Note that Coronaviurs is perhaps 500 or more times more deadly than measles, whose fatality rate is 1 per 100,000. Note the mass panic those outbreaks cause.) Keep the pantry stocked. Reduce your risk. Travel less. Avoid crowds. Wash hands. etc.
The death toll so far in South Korea is 48. Theoretically, even if they have passed the peak of new cases, the death toll will still double in coming weeks. In this one outbreak, 100 people may die, 10,000 plus people will have suffered a potentially debilitating disease, and tens of thousands will have been inconvenienced by quarantine and travel bans. There is also the financial cost of closing workplaces. Note also that there are major privacy issues with the South Korean approach to mapping and tracking victims and their movements by their phones.
When will the Australian Government stop telling people to keep going about their business as if nothing is happening? Presumably when there is an outbreak and it’s two weeks too late?
South Korea, new cases Coronavirus
South Korean cases of Coronavirus.
Extrapolating further than I should, if this is the peak and the decline starts soon and there are no new outbreaks, then in a month or so it may be safe to open flights again to South Korea. (Though if our outbreaks are not controlled, they won’t want our planes.)
The daily growth rate is shrinking — yesterday increasing by 7%. This is ideally a bell curve type rise and fall, and the huge spike on the 20th Feb is probably the discovery of all the cases that existed but weren’t detected in the days before. Is that what we are about to see in the US, which hasn’t been doing nearly enough testing?
Growth in Coronavirus cases in South Korea
Two weeks ago South Korea had only 200 cases, now it has 7,000. So the death toll of 48 (with a two week lag) is not a number we want to calculate, because it’s surely a wild overestimate. South Korea had more undetected cases then. Guess. Guess. Guess. O for data.
Deaths still rising following that “new cases” curve with a two (or three week) delay.
It will be at least another week before it levels off.
….
The first few cases in South Korea were very early (11 cases on Jan 31). It was doing well, but lost control.
Taiwan is worth watching:
How Taiwan managed to avoid a coronavirus outbreak
Taiwan is 81 miles off Mainland China. It is a highly urbanized state of 24 million people with an extremely high population density. It is also one of the first places where the new coronavirus epidemic manifested itself. All things considered, Taiwan was expected to have the highest number of cases outside China. Yet Taiwan successfully managed to avoid an uncontrolled outbreak and only has 44 confirmed cases.
Less than one year after the SARS outbreak, a National Health Command Center (NHCC) was established. The NHCC is meant to serve as a disaster management center command point…
Technology is a key ally when you’re fighting an outbreak, Taiwan realized. So they leveraged the national health insurance database to create a smart system to warn citizens and keep an eye on the situation.
The database was integrated with the customs information to generate a pool of big data. This data generated real-time alerts based on people’s travel patterns. It used QR code scanning and online reporting of travel history and documented health symptoms to classify passengers’ infectious risks. Then, Taiwanese authorities acted based on what the data suggested — and took some pretty draconic precaution measures.
People with the lowest risk were issued fast travel clearance, but people with higher risk were likely to be quarantined at home, whether they liked it or not.
Obviously, there is a lot of big government involvement. Again, we see hi tech tracking. Is that necessary? How much freedom will we have to trade in order to reduce the toll and curb the rising fear? Can we control this just with old fashioned quarantines and public information updates?
______________________________________________
Coronavirus Background: ☀ The Demographics: the young are spared, but the severity increases with age, and slightly more for men than women. ☀ The Ro is 2 – 3 and exponential curves are steep. See the importance of an ICU unit in treating ARDS (the severe respiratory disorder). ☀ Illness progression: Dry coughs and Fevers, Aches. In 15% of people, by day 5 breathing trouble starts. In 3% (?) by day 8 they may need an ICU (intensive care unit). ☀ The good case of Singapore but the ominous calculations of how fast the ICU beds may run out. ☀ The story of how American Samoa avoided Flu Deaths with quarantine in 1918. ☀
Who needs studies? CSIRO doesn’t need any evidence to tell Australians how things work
Senator Matt Canavan asks Dr Peter Mayfield of CSIRO why an explainer document they put out about the bushfires didn’t include a sentence he found in another CSIRO study.
“No studies explicitly attributing the Australian increase in fire weather to climate change have been performed at this time.”
A record breaking ten long seconds of silence in Senate estimates this week.
Matt Canavan has recently given up his role as a Cabinet Minister to support a leadership challenge by Barnaby Joyce in the Nationals party. Unleashed!
Amazing what people can achieve from the back bench. Make this man PM!
The evidence is overwhelming but the names of 85 unconvinced experts threatens the Earth. Shield your eyes, sinner, lest ye faith be tested!
…
The Religion of Carbonoid-Weather-Control is so fragile, and Wikipedia so captured by philosophical fruit flies, that 35 editors voted down 19 other editors and now The List does not exist. Thus do 35 editors keep safe the minds of Wikipedia babes who might get confused when they see Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencers names and mistake them for actual climate scientists… oh.
Here’s the reasoning for the censorship given by one of the Wiki editors:
“The result was delete. This is because I see a consensus here that there is no value in having a list that combines the qualities of a) being a scientist, in the general sense of that word, and b) disagreeing with the scientific consensus on global warming.”
Wikipedia
I’d like to thank those 35 Wiki editors for telling the world how weak the consensus is and giving skeptics another excuse to highlight this dangerous list. Go Streisand Effect.
Cap Allon at Electroverse captured the Wikipedia list. So have Fandom. KEEP!KEEP!KEEP! Those listed are not noteworthy? “Any utility it ever had is long past?” It’s a list of cranks? Absolute rubbish. There are 4 explicit criteria for inclusion. 1) the individual must have published at least one peer-reviewed research article in the broad field of natural sciences; 2) he or she must have made a clear statement disagreeing with one or more of the IPCC Third Report’s three main conclusions, and 3) the scientists has to have been described in reliable sources as a climate skeptic, denier, or in disagreement with any of the three main conclusions. Additionally, to ensure notability, only individuals with a wikipedia article can be included. Someone advocating for deletion, if the article is a mishmash of miscreants . . . I DARE YOU TO STOP BEING INTELLECTUALLY LAZY!
Dr Roger Higgs notes:
By the way, note three BBC-style disingenuous omissions in the title alone: “List of scientists who disagree with the scientific consensus on global warming”:
(1) these are not just any scientists, but well-known and, in many cases, distinguished scientists (Happer, Soon, Lindzen, etc, etc; see below), in diverse fields of science;
(2) they disagree with the consensus on man-made global warming (no educated person denies global warming; Earth has always alternately warmed and cooled);
(3) the consensus is only among climate scientists (whose salaries, research grants, and reputations depend on public belief in man-made warming).
Time to share far and wide. If Wikipedia is serious they have to kick out the editors with political or religious bias.
This 25 year old British man caught the virus in Wuhan on November 25. He must have been one of the earliest cases, and it was only recognised belatedly that he had Coronavirus. Twice, he thought he was well, only to relapse. But he does recover. I suspect this is the rarer “severe” type case in an otherwise healthy young man. Theoretically 80% of people get the easier five day version and recover. Notably, for him it’s 24 days before he feels well properly. Can this disease affect pets, which is very ususual? If so, can it affect other mammals, like livestock?
Day 5: I’m over my cold. It really wasn’t anything.
Day 7: I spoke too soon. I feel dreadful. This is no longer just a cold. I ache all over, my head is thumping, my eyes are burning, my throat is constricted. The cold has travelled down to my chest and I have a hacking cough.
If solar power and batteries were a winner anywhere, we’d hope it would be in remote Australian communities. But a cyclone clouded over Central-Australia for a few days and the batteries ran out. People had no money, no phone and no landline either. To boot, the rain flooded the roads, so people were cut off in every sense.
Welcome to Renewable World:
Telstra says the stations that provide landline and mobile phone coverage to some remote communities in Central Australia are not robust enough to withstand several days of cloud cover.
The communities of Santa Teresa and Titjikala, south-east of Alice Springs, were without mobile and landline coverage for over thirty hours in a recent outage.
In the most recent outage, Santa Teresa was also cut off by road because of flooding.
Santa Teresa parish assistant Sister Liz Wiemers said being that isolated was alarming.
“We couldn’t use ATMs, couldn’t buy fuel, community members couldn’t buy power cards,” Sister Wiemers said, referring to the pre-paid electricity system used in remote communities.
Obviously they need diesel-gens as a back up. But because the roads were blocked Telstra couldn’t send any technicians out with one. They said they need to replace those batteries, but may not be able to for a while (busy repairing things in the fire-zones presumably).
This is what 100% renewable looks like. Hope no one needs a doctor.
[BBC] Travellers from countries with severe coronavirus outbreaks who arrive in some parts of China will have to undergo a 14-day quarantine, state media say.
Travellers from the virus hotspots of South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy arriving in the capital will have to be isolated, a Beijing official has said.
Shanghai and Guangdong announced similar restrictions earlier.
Authorities are worried the virus might be imported back into the country.
Although most virus deaths have been in China, Monday saw nine times more new infections outside China than in.
Shanghai said it would require new arrivals from countries with “relatively serious virus conditions” to be isolated, without naming the countries.
Chinese official statistics suggest they are getting the outbreak under control, which is hard to believe, but they are acting like they do. If most of their population is still at risk of further outbreaks, then they would care about risky incoming flights.
Meanwhile our health ministers tell us it’s too late to stop the planes.
Cost of importing viruses *might* be more than cost of closing borders x 1000
Has the Prime Minister done the right cost-benefit calculations?
Forget the tens of thousands of deaths, pretend those lives are worthless, and add up the cost of shutting down schools, factories, public transport, sports events, conferences, concerts and everything else, because that’s not the cost of closing flights, its the cost of keeping them open. Factor in $5,000 a day for intensive care beds, plus workers staying home to look after kids, plus job losses. Include the costs of putting off most elective surgery for six months. Don’t forget people who will get sick of something else this year but will have to wait longer for help, so add some cancer patient deaths to the tally.
Ponder how much cheaper it is to live in a country free of this scourge? If Australian domestic tourists knew travel in NSW was safe, and if people in Sydney weren’t afraid to eat at Chinese restaurants, then Australian citizens could enjoy those holidays and dinners and thousands of tourist-related businesses might not go bust. If we let in risky flights then we earn two more weeks of tourism cash but maybe wipe out the small mum and dad businesses who can’t survive the cash crunch.
The Tasmanian Government has just announced they will be “200% renewable” by 2040 — a feat only possible because they have an umbilical cord to hostages in the mainland who have to pay for irrelevant surges in electricity that arrive when they don’t need it. The same hostages will send back fossil powered electricity every week to keep Tasmania running when the wind and sun stop and the water is worth more in the dam than out of it. Not to mention container-ships of GST cash to support the state with the second highest unemployment in the nation.
This is the same state that went 100% renewable for three months in 2015 and launched itself into an electricity crisis. They decommissioned the last fossil fuel power station, just in time to get islanded by a break in their umbilical cable and thence had to order flying squads of diesel generators to keep the lights on at a cost of at least $140m. They also had to restart the same plant they just closed. The state lost half a billion dollars in the crisis — nearly twice the cost of the newish gas plant which had only built in 2009.
All these quarters in the red below are ones where Tasmania needed to import up to 30 percent of its own electricity from the mainland. Not visible here are all the days during the blue “export” quarters where generators in Victoria kept the lights on in Hobart.
All the high export “blue” quarters in 2013 -2015 were during the carbon tax era. Tasmanian Hydro was running the dams down in El Nino conditions through carbon tax funded greed. The state got so desperately short of water in 2016 the intellectual giants in charge of Tas Hydro paid to do cloud seeding to fill the dams. Which would have been fine if they weren’t trying to do it in the face of a monster storm front that created flash flooding.
Too bad the Sun shines and the wind blows at the same time in Tasmania as it does in Victoria
Wind farms in both states are highly correlated so the extra energy will be pushed onto Victoria when it doesn’t need it. More unreliable power dumped on the National Grid just means that last reliable generators run less efficiently and have to raise their prices or go broke.
Droughts in both states are also “correlated”. The government hopes Tasmania will be the battery of the nation, but short of moving the island to Peru, when there’s a drought in Australia, the battery might be flat.
Money from the mothership is probably also coming for the Hydrogen Projects the state is planning, and possibly (who knows) to fund the unneeded second undersea interconnector which will benefit foreign companies like UPC Renewables who want to build the largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s a project so unpopular even the Greens in Tasmania don’t want it.
Interconnectors are always sold as “opening up potential” but they are hugely expensive, the potential they open isn’t economic in its own right, and the billion-dollar cables wouldn’t be needed if states were self-sufficient with baseload stable power like they all used to be, and could be again.
Preliminary findings from that study indicate that the benefits of a second interconnector could outweigh the costs by $500 million.
[ABC News] The Federal Government has expanded its coronavirus travel ban to include South Korea, and added additional precautions for travellers from Italy, amid fears about the spread of the disease.
The revised bans will be in place until Saturday, March 14 but the Government will review the situation within a week to determine if the travel restrictions need to be extended further.
Since the government was at least one week too late with the Iranian block, how will the medical experts stay ahead of the curve on other countries with no testing? Eg Indonesia? Or in this case, Europe and Dubai?
The woman in her 30s from Perth’s southern suburbs returned a positive result after holidaying in Iceland and the UK, and returning to WA via Dubai on Monday.
The World Health Organization had said last week that the mortality rate of COVID-19 can differ, ranging from 0.7% to up to 4%, depending on the quality of the health-care system where it’s treated.
Don’t look now: Big Numbers Coming. Assuming 60% of people catch it before some treatment appears, a death rate of 0.7% – 4% means bad news for some furry number from 100,000 to 600,000 Australians. Double that for the UK. And 1.4m – 8m in the United States. There is a wide range of mortality rates, which may reflect that there are two kinds of mortality rates here — one where people get great ICU care, and one where hospitals are overrun and they don’t. We’ll probably pin that to the low end if we keep cases limited, we eat well, don’t smoke, don’t have wild pollution, and hopefully we’ll get better and better at treating it. But even the low end numbers here are Not Nice. What this means is mass disruption to keep those numbers down — schools closing, factories stopping, no parties, delay the Olympics, etc etc.
The long lag is a bomb. It can be five weeks from infection to death and bureaucrats are weeks behind the virus.
Train meets hospitals
Let’s look at the Worldometer daily numbers, to get an idea of how many cases from 2 weeks ago have died, and how many cases from 8 days ago have got into breathing difficulty rates as “severe”. The data is starting to accumulate (unfortunately).
Hunting for good news, on the Diamond Princess, numbers are not so awful: based on 691 cases eight days ago, five percent are now classed as severe and the mortality rate of 454 patients two weeks later is only 1% (assuming all the deaths are correctly recorded there by Worldometer, and the severe cases stay on the “severe” list if they get well, which they might not). The Diamond Princess would be an older demographic too — so these numbers suggest that mortality is at the lower end of the WHO range. Maybe even “only 0.5%”. Clutch at good straws and hold on to that thought.
Looking across lots of countries (but not China, Korea, Italy or Iran) and based on 867 cases that were known just over two weeks ago, the mortality rate is a daunting 3.7%, and based on 1334 cases eight days ago, the rate of progression of all known cases to severe is 7%. If correct (and they may not be) these are the kind of numbers that would freak a hospital manager out. These don’t come from China, South Korea, Iran and Italy — all of which clearly have a lot more cases that they didn’t know about two weeks ago. So, see the table below, this is data from nations like Japan, USA, Hong Kong, Germany, France and the UK. They’re rough, not always taken at the same time of day, they may double-count Diamond Princess deaths (in national tally’s and boat tallies — any one know?) Feel free to point out mistakes.
These numbers are a train wreck for hospitals, even at the lower end. State Ministers in Australia got briefed recently and appear to understand that now as they they tend to be using the phrase “we may not have the resources”. Translated, that’s the code for “not enough hospital beds”. They’ve already warned people with symptoms to stay home. How fast we shift from chartered rescue flights and individual attention to “just call us, and stay in bed”. A few weeks is a long time in an unfolding pandemic.
Governments have been consistently two weeks behind this virus.
Everything they’ve done would have been so much more effective if they did it two weeks before they did. Now is the time to leap up and get ahead. Look at where South Korea and Italy are now, and just do it. We’re going to have to do it soon anyhow.
The curve we want to flatten. The Ro, Reproductive curves of infectious diseases. ResearchGate
It doesn’t have to be that way. No cases confirmed yet in WA (apart from the Diamond Princess cases). Thousands of deaths are coming, and don’t forget mass disruption to schools, uni, businesses, factories and elective surgery. All that in the offing and no one wants to cancel some holidays and flights to slow the train down? Are we so addicted to weekends in Bali and interstate footy trips that it’s unthinkable to just say “hang ten for a few weeks?”
WA’s chief medical officer Andrew Robertson said an outbreak in the state was now “probably inevitable”. “There are measures that could help delay it, certainly some of the border measures, [plus] self isolation and possibly quarantine if needed,” he said.
“And we will continue to try and contain this disease. But we accept that we have to prepare for the next stage and make sure that our systems are best prepared for the likely pandemic.” Many non-emergency elective surgeries are expected to be cancelled and doctors and nurses working desk jobs may be redeployed to treat patients on busy hospital wards. — ABC News
‘We may not have the resources’: Minister
If there are no nice wildcard surprises coming (new antiviral, lucky break, freak discovery) — the aim of the game is to flatten the curve, slow the exponential growth and keep as many people as possible uninfected and out of hospital. That means no more unnecessary flights, no mass events, close the schools, do church online, get people to work from home if they can and do mass hygiene lessons for our nations.
Everyone needs to know how to wash hands seriously well, and not touch the tap or the handle in a way that undoes the point of washing in the first place. Did you leave those germs on the doorknob on the way in, and collect them again on your way out?
The have-cake eat-cake experts. When will the media pin them down?
Meanwhile last night the experts were still saying there was no evidence of community transmission in Australia and simultaneously that there was no need to stop the flights to Italy or South Korea. Go figure. If there is no community transmission, it’s not too late to stop the flights. If there is community transmission– then stop telling people not to wear masks, keep shaking hands, going to parties and the football. It can’t be both ways.
When community transmission is obvious and undeniable they’ll say “we expected this”.
Don’t let them get away with their double-speak.
Scott Morrison is choosing to let the virus fly in, can someone tell him these are not the deaths we have to have?
Scott Morrison almost got a hard question on the ABC last night. But he weaseled out of it — just following the expert advice, he said. No, dear leader. Do your own research. Ask some different experts. Ask some different questions. People’s live depend on you. Please send him the message (and tell Boris, Jacinta, Justin, and DJT too).
Given the gravity, we should call a halt to all flights without a two week quarantine (not pretend quarantine loopholes through Dubai, Thailand and Bali). Do it just for a few weeks til we get more data. Winter is coming downunder. The best way to avoid this virus is to minimize trips, shopping and crowds. Start thinking about the long run.
Amazing: LA Times finds a WHO expert who makes sense:
Mike Ryan, who runs the agency’s [WHO] emergencies program, pushed back against officials who wanted to “wave the white flag” and surrender to the disease’s hold. China took drastic steps to fight the virus, he said, and case numbers are now on the decline there.
Countries such as China and South Korea “implemented very, very strong measures that have affected their own economies and their own societies,” Ryan said. “It’s really a duty of others to use the time that has been bought. “That is not a reverse you can achieve with influenza. If that is a failure, we’ll have slowed down the virus.”
There can be a big benefit in slowing the virus’ arrival in a country for a few months, Ryan said. Many countries, including the U.S, are in the middle of flu season, so large numbers of coronavirus cases would overwhelm the health system.
Too many in the deep state are waving the white flag.
A carrier’s 26% reduction across their entire operation in comparison to last year.
A hub carrier reporting bookings to Italy down 108% as bookings collapse to zero and refunds grow.
Many carriers reporting 50% no-shows across several markets.
Future bookings are softening and carriers are reacting with measures such as crew being given unpaid leave, freezing of pay increases, and plans for aircraft to be grounded.
It almost gives me hope that people are smart enough to outwit their governments and protect themselves despite the incompetence at the top. But it doesn’t get the governments off the hook — it just shows how easy it would have been to stop the flights. The problem is that while the people who are afraid of getting sick are staying home, the people who are surrounded by the sick would want to fly in if they could. Therefore countries that want to stop their hospitals being overrun still need to stop those flights.
With only two cases of Covid-19 here in Western Australia (both from the Diamond Princess) and no sign of community spread, the state government just declared that all international school camps are henceforth cancelled (including for private schools — see how “private” they really are?) So kids without the virus can’t fly out, but people with the virus are welcome to fly in.
Our chief medical officer says ” it was no longer possible to completely prevent people with the coronavirus from entering the country”. Ironically, because the sick people can come here, soon healthy ones won’t want too. Voluntarily, the people we do want as tourists will all stay home. The borders will semi-shut without government action anyway, but it’s the most useless kind of border control.
Let the pandemonium begin
Two weeks and two days ago South Korea had 30 cases. Now it has 5,186. Of those, twenty eight people have died, which sounds not-too-awful til you realize that it’s a two week lag to death (or even three), and 28 out of 30 is a 93% mortality rate. Except, of course, it isn’t. It means South Korea had far more cases two weeks ago than they realized. It’s the same for Italy and Iran. How many other places are about to leap forward…?
A Chinese man believed to have contracted the coronavirus during 14 days of supposed self-quarantine in Dubai has raised a red flag about the “back door” for fee-paying university students entering the country.
More than 11,000 Chinese university and high school students have used the third-country layover mechanism to sidestep the ban on Chinese nationals flying direct to Australia.
(CNN)Up to 1 million people could be tested for coronavirus by the end of week, the FDA said, as cases across the US rose to more than 100 and health officials warned the number will keep climbing.
People don’t believe the government when they say there’s no need to stock up on supplies either
It’s the first run on shop shelves I’ve ever seen.
For some reason Australians are buying lots of toilet paper and tissues, but leaving some tinned fish and soup in the stores. The Lucky Country is not well trained in the prepping culture. Anyone would think we ate toilet paper and tissues.
…
It’s too expensive to close borders, they say, but who can afford to import this virus?
Should we stop holidays and conferences, or most of the economy?
The monthly PMI figures show that in February about four fifths of China’s economy was shut down. Locking people in apartments and hospitals being not very productive. Strangely, all the economists watching the mainstream news and official Chinese figures did not expect this. They were shocked when the monthly PMI result was announced. The drop from 50 to 35 was more than twice as bad as the economists expected.
The market had expected a reading of around 46, according to a Reuters poll and this shocking data had analysts recalibrating their numbers.
The ANZ economists said this implied the utilization of only a fifth of the country’s full economic capacity, much lower than the high numbers claimed by authorities.
Satellites show nitrogen dioxide emission over China: NASA
Junk journalists copied junk news from China and they all fooled the economists
The February result came in far below the median forecast of 43 by economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal.
Saturday’s results show a “relatively large impact” from the epidemic, Zhao Qinghe, an analyst with the statistics bureau, said in a statement accompanying the data release, according to the Wall Street Journal. March’s readings should improve because of authorities’ efforts to help companies, especially manufacturing firms, resume production, he said.
“The situation on the ground [in China] is materially worse than what has come out in the media,” Leland Miller, CEO of the China Beige Book, a research firm that collects Chinese company viewpoints, told MarketWatch in an interview.
Xi wants to be emperor of the whole world and can see a path to achieving that. But he has kicked a couple of own goals…
Xi’s first own goal was to suppress privately owned business activity in favor of state-owned companies. Workers in state-owned companies have about a third of the productivity of those in businesses run by their private owners….
His [President Xi’s] second own goal was to delay the news of the coronavirus until after the trade deal was signed with the United States. Xi did not want to show any sign of weakness while the deal was being negotiated. China’s relative position had been deteriorating since 2015, when its share of world exports peaked at about 15%. Trump wanted a trade deal because he would like China to remain stable through the election cycle. The language of the trade deal included a lot of “China shall,” indicating that China needed the deal more than Trump did. We infer that the anti-China efforts will be ramped up again after the election.
The first coronavirus case was reported on December 1, 2019, and the trade deal was signed on January 15, 2020. Wuhan was put under quarantine lockdown eight days later on January 23. In the meantime, some five million people left Wuhan, as estimated by Wuhan’s mayor, a case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted. So, as a result of waiting for the trade deal to be signed before acting, Xi changed a controllable outbreak into an out-of-control epidemic.
The Chicoms are pathological liars, as they regard anyone who is not in a more powerful position in the Chinese Communist Party with contempt, thus they reported daily deaths as a percentage of cases as 2.1%, 2.1%, 2.1% until they gave up lying about it. But the hit to China’s economy is real and huge. Coal consumption is half of what it should be at this point after the end of the lunar new year holidays. Air pollution, as measured by satellites, is down 20% to 50%.
China’s ability to threaten its neighbors will be much weakened as its government revenues crater. There is a good case for nominating the coronavirus for the Nobel Peace Prize. The humble virus has certainly done far more for world peace than Greta Thunberg, the current frontrunner.
The PLA can’t attack anyone until there is a vaccine for the coronavirus. It’s been reported that the PLA pulled out of Wuhan after 3,000 of its troops became sick. Collecting dead bodies is now on a bounty system, similar to how bodies were collected in Europe during the plague.
Another beautiful outcome from the coronavirus is that it should, in a rational world, eliminate China from the world’s supply chains. It might be good for a couple of million jobs in the United States alone.
Reuters, meanwhile, are reporting that things are picking up in China
Apparently Chinese official data shows there are more lights and more people driving around and we all know the Chinese government would never make that sort of thing up.
BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Nearly 300 million people have gone back to work in China since the Lunar New Year break as more companies restart business and coronavirus travel restrictions ease, although many small firms are still struggling to find enough workers to run plants.
Coal consumption is making a slight recovery.
Chinese coal consumption data
We hope things are improving for the people, if not for President Xi.
On the news tonight various officials told us that now “we can no longer stop the virus coming into the country”. It was some kind of self-soothing abject nonsense to calm themselves down. What they meant to say was that we can no longer stop the virus running amok inside our country (because we didn’t stop flights from Iran a week ago).
Obviously we could still block flights tomorrow and stop the virus coming in. And given that we may run out of hospital beds in weeks, it still seems sensible to stop potential virus-shedding people from romping through our cafes and shops. The main aim now, surely, is to delay the peak til after winter. Adding random virus generators doesn’t seem like a good way to reduce the use of ICU beds, even though there will come a point where there will be so much virus in Australia that bringing in a few more won’t matter. But when a single superspreading tourist can double the national toll, we’re not there yet.
Right now, there may be people who live in Indonesia, Africa, or anywhere, noticing that people are getting sick all around them. While the Australian government is waiting for the WHO to tell them what to do, these same potential carriers are thinking of boarding a plane to come to Australia. (Same for the US and UK, NZ and Canada obviously).
Preparing is quite good advice,
With lentils, beans, nuts and rice,
But if COVID should spread,
Best take to your bed,
And hope that your stocks will suffice.
No seriously, this is matter-of-fact, youtube-at-its-best, concise, cartoony, and smart.
Think of doctors as Body-Engineers. The problem to solve today Engineer-readers — is how to keep blood supply oxygenated when lungs are highly inflamed, filling with fluid, and the delicate thin membranes of lung tissue can’t cope with the sheer forces of rapid collapse and expansion. As well, if oxygen levels drop, even unconscious patients will breathe involuntarily — out of synch with artificial ventilation machines. The sensation of suffocation creates the urge to breath faster and harder.
.
The great news is ICU staff are getting much better at keeping people alive when they get ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) which can happen with other diseases (like Influenza). Seems, the ICUs can keep 84% alive while they wait for the inflammation to subside and the damage to heal. Though the DIY version at home probably won’t be so effective.
Not enough beds
Obviously, this explains my obsessive interest in the percentage needing ICU care and also the Ro (rate of reproduction or spread). With a shortage of ICU beds, slowing the spread makes a life-and-death difference to state the bleeding obvious. To bore you again: in Australia we have about 1 ICU bed per 12000 people or 2,000 ICU beds nationally.
Check out the Ro epidemiology curve written here Jan 31st: Corona virus and those exponential curves. Note that current estimates of Ro are between 2 and 3, so higher than these (meaning the curve will hit harder, faster and peak higher unless we bring it down through draconian isolation measures). An Ro of 1.8 peaks in just 60 days. Sometime in the last few days a medico in Japan got this through to the guy in charge, which is why with only 200 patients he realized that closing schools was imperative across the whole country. The only way to reduce the R0 to zer0 is to “Stop The Flights”. The next best option (far distant second) are mass lockdowns, closure of factories, schools, offices, etc.
As a reader wrote to me yesterday: It’s not practical to close the borders. My reply: It’s not practical to kill 100,000 people either but one or the other may happen. Do the maths, WHO estimates 1% CFR (Case Fatality Rate. Let’s be optimistic, call it 0.5%. Deaths in the next six months: Australia, 125,000; Canada, 175,000; New Zealand, 25,000, USA, 1.6m; UK, 300,000. Geddit?
Ro, Reproductive curves of infectious diseases. ResearchGate
Next post: stock up at home. Panic buying is what happens when people wait for the government to tell them to prepare. Think of long lasting food that you will eat anyway, and don’t forget soap, toilet paper, toothpaste, disposable gloves, plastic bags, detergents, medicines (prescriptions). Mail order deliveries are a good option. The less physical shopping you need to do in the next few months, the better. Do it for your country. If you can stay out of the shops, and out of the hospital, that’s going to help the people who can’t.
Amazing. Sinbad reports on the situation in Iran. He is a commenter here who speaks the language. I can’t confirm this except to say that #Coronavirusupdates Iran looks like everything he is describing. Officially there are only 388 cases and 34 deaths. But on twitter, just like China, censorship and denial and so much more. Mass graves. Corrupt officials. Mass spraying of the streets. But if there is no attempt to stop it spreading (no lockdown like China has done) this will truly run wild. Those poor people. Germany closed flights in January, related to other problems in Iran. In the last week Iraq, Oman, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, UAE, Kuwait all closed borders with Iran. Australia, with lower medical standards imported a case from Iran today instead. – Jo
UPDATE: Finally, today the Australian government banned arrivals from Iran without a two week holiday stopover somewhere. That’s a lot better but should be mandatory proper quarantine. The government now has the arduous job of tracking the 40 people (or more) she may have infected and the people those victims may have infected (their families). Those 40+ people now have the stressful wait to find out if they got “lucky”. Hopefully they’ll all survive and the virus doesn’t spread wildly. Why did we take this risk?
“How to prevent and stop the spread is easy. But it will not be done.
The virus has no legs nor wings. It can not move from country to country on its own.
Stop international and inter regional travel for 40 days. During that time, test everyone from any region with disease. Those infected go off to disease camp and stay there until dead, or cured plus any relapse time possible. Workers in the camp have separate quarters area from the sick and do not return to the outside population until 40 days after the last case is discharged.
From Sinbad:
Hi all,
A bit of update on the Iranian front since my last post1- The regime has no plan to quarantine. Multiple officials including the ‘president’ have come out and refuted it as ‘unscientific’ and ‘backward’.2- The regime views everything from a security lens. Consequently, regime mouthpieces have already stated that the ‘enemy’ will seize upon any chance to bring the country to a standstill in turn leading to the toppling of a an extremely hated and weakened theocracy. The fascisti are extremely paranoid at this stage. This means that the mullahcracy is committed to the exact opposite of what the rest of the world is doing. As i stated in my original post, they have no intention of controlling it. As the architect in Matrix put it ‘there are levels of survival we are prepared to accept’. The population is expendable.
3- An MP for the city of Rasht, capital of Gilan province along the Caspian sea, has described the situation as ‘horrific’, based upon burial numbers from the city’s main cemetery, claiming that the number of deaths are much higher. However, he does not dare to tell how many due to ramifications.
4- The above is mirrored in reports of 2000 freshly dug graves in the city of Qom over the last week or so. Chinese despots build hospitals in 7 days, the mullahs dig thousands of graves in one week. There are multiple reports, citizen journalism, of people of all ages and sexes dying quite quickly, 2-3 days, and being hurriedly buried covered in lye. Relatives either being told to keep their mouths shut or bought off with some small lump sum. This common practice by the regime.
5- Another council official from Tehran has made a claim of 15000 infected for the entire country. This was a few days ago.
6- The actual numbers? No one knows. The regime is not interested. They are not monitoring nor do they have any protocols in place. The numbers of available kits are minuscule.
7- However, arguably the number one authority on this thing Dr. Drosten at Charite, believes numbers of infected to be very high, at least between 5000-10000, and probably much higher. Of all the countries, he is most worried about Iran. This podcast is in German but i have read a Persian excerpt. It would be good if German speakers could translate the gist of this podcast. https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html
9- Most pharmacies in Iran have run out of masks, hand sanitiser and gloves. Some people have attempted 50 pharmacies in the capital in vain being forced to travel to the neighbouring provinces to secure some. There are reports on shortages of alcohol as well. Some medical staff have died already. Some in their 20′s.
10- There are recordings coming out with medical staff telling about the chaos at hospitals and lack of supplies, equipment, plan or proper protocol. Many hospitals have been turned completely into corona wards, turning away everyone else. There are reports of 20 people dying in one Tehran hospital in one shift alone. However these cannot be corroborated independently since the government has begun a vast censorship effort.
11- One thing is certain, the brave medical staff are doing their best to combat this thing on their own. Correction, Khamenovsky did release a clip form an undisclosed location praising their efforts. Staff have been told by senior doctors and specialists that the time to leave would be now since they may not be able to later on due to coming down or putting their families at risk. However, it should be too late for that already. As far as i am aware, staff have rejected these offers although many are really scared since they are pretty much operating in darkness. Some are reporting family breakdown and a sense of paranoia since support or accurate information from above is non existent.
12- The WHO should have taken over the Iranian situation last month but as always the UN is doing the usual vacillation routine. Rwanda anyone?
13- So is the mullahcracy doing anything? Absolutely. How about this; 3 year sentences and lashing have been introduced with 24 ‘rumour mongers’ arrested already. All ‘Israeli and CIA agents’ no doubt! Some have been cautioned and released. A team of the country’s top medical experts were told at a meeting with health ministry officials a few days ago that the minutes should be treated as top security material. They were later warned by IRGC to keep their mouths shut or else. A few have broken ranks and revealed what happened during the meeting. In short; all proposals by the experts, following international efforts and guidelines, were dismissed. In other words, there is no plan. ‘Things must flow as normal, disruption are foreign enemy efforts etc.’.
14- The German government has finally revoked the infamous Mahan Air’s, Corona Air or Terrorist Air, operating permits in Germany. Unfortunately, the damage is already done.
16- Here is for those who believe mullahs to be serious die hard fanatics with apocalyptic ambitions. Reports were made this week about 53 prominent mullahs from the epicentre, Qom, packing their families and relatives into a privately chartered passenger plane and flee to the port city of Mah-Shahr in the south. Apparently, they have been housed in a guarded area in the outskirts. Once locals found out, they rushed the local government building demanding an answer in regards to why such large number of people from this virus hotbed had been flown in. They received the usual answer; disappear or disappear.
17- The above is mirrored in other reports of some officials moving their families abroad or leaving Tehran and other major cities. Some regime henchmen have openly admitted that the country will be facing ‘very serious next 7-10′ days.
18- I would caution against believing these numerous reports of regime apparatchiki coming down with the virus. As Iranians say; once they’re dead, we’ll believe it. The regime exercises something called Taqiya or outright pretending/lying as a legitimate tenet of their creed. Projecting one’s own attributes to these criminals is a serious mistake. They have no morals or principles. Would they fake illness to pretend ‘we are all in the same boat’? Absolutely. The reality is that they are hunkering down in safety allowing the pandemic to burn itself out.
19- Remember our friend Harirchi the deputy health minister promising to resign if the numbers were even close to 25% of the stated 50 Qom casualties? The hospital official death toll of 210 as of Thursday evening has been released. The Qom MP Frahani who released the initial 50 number has maintained a daily death rate of 10 per day for the city but that was a few days ago.
20- Actual numbers? I am guessing since there is no way of knowing for sure. 100,000 – 200,000 infected and an actual death toll of 1000 already. As i mentioned in my original post, Iran will surpass China. Iran’s death toll cannot be compared to the rest of the world due to factors mentioned in earlier post i.e. systemic malnutrition and the government being the enemy of the people. North Korea, Yemen or Syria would be equivalents in regards to malnutrition and lack of infrastructure with only North Korea matching mullahcracy in its hatred of its own population.
21- How widespread is it? How about this; 7 Iranian passengers arriving at Kuwait this past week tested positive. All of them. What does that tell us?
22- 20 million Shia pilgrims visit Qom alone every year. Domestically and from Africa, India, the Gulf sheikdoms, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan etc. Major source of revenue, indoctrination, propaganda and recruitment. The show must go on at all costs.
23- This thing has not even taken off in the city Mash-had, the number one pilgrimage site. However, numbers of dead are starting to trickle through.
24- The pandemic is entrenched in Tehran now. It has started at the southern part of the city, traditional, more impoverished and more dense, and spread to the rest. As of Thursday evening, Tehran is reporting 100 dead followed by Qom at 80. In my view, the above numbers are worthless. The regime is already changing the designation to ‘respiratory related deaths’ in order to bring down the numbers.
25- Remember the sage words of the officials in regards to quarantines being ‘dated’ and ‘unscientific’? This is apparently scientific. Burning of Peganum Harmala seeds to ‘purify’ hospitals. This is an ancient folk remedy of the region lacking scientific evidence. Can you imagine? As a patient suffering from bone crunching pain, fever and reduced breathing ability being exposed to the thick pungent smoke? I can assure you, it is pretty strong. See, it’s all under control, the smoke will take care of it.
26- The virus has spread to prisons, already notoriously overpopulated and unsanitary, and some of the military bases all over the country. Suffice to say, none of these institutions have adequate measures to deal with the issues.
27- Business as usual. Visitors arriving at Qeshm island in the Persian Gulf. According to Rouhani the so called president; everything will go back to normal on Saturday! This should tell you why postmodernist/post structuralist left is so in love with religious fundamentalism. There is no objective reality, just project own radical subjective wishful thinking onto external universe.
28- Finally, as others have pointed out, Friday prayers have been cancelled, not just in the capital but in 23 cities. However, senior mullahs are raging already, demanding a return to normal claiming that; 1) having not been consulted, and 2) the virus being a product of ‘the world of infidels’ thus a potential attempt to disrupt the unity of Umma. Consequently, an urgent return to mass gatherings is needed.
I will post more in the coming days. Please ask any questions you may have and i will try to answer.
Overnight, people woke up to the real threat and markets crashed appropriately. Unless we take massive action immediately, the exponential curve is about to lift off. And if we don’t act now then massive action is coming anyway in a month, along with major disruption, pandemonium, and worse.
There are now 5,300 cases outside China. If it doubles every 5 days (as it just has) then 40 days from now 5 million people will be infected.
What does massive action look like? A bit like this:
In Japan some are in uproar — they’re the ones who don’t understand how 226 infections becomes a national hospital crisis in weeks. Japan (like most nations) is theoretically only 19 doublings away from 100% infected.
Lies are killing people in Wuhan. We don’t know the real situation, not even the situation of our own residential building. But we deserve the right to know everything, which can only help us to control the contagion. We were told that buildings with red tape indicate that no residents are infected by the virus, but the ones with white notices posted outside indicate infections. But our building has no such notices, and we have no way of knowing who’s infected.
On the lockdown:
The first problem, however, is that the rules for the isolation facilities have been loosely applied, which I can still observe today [Feb. 18] from my apartment, a high-level unit. The second problem is that security measures have turned out to be a mere formality. I saw with my own eyes that security guards were often absent from their posts. Many of them let people through…
WHO says 1% mortality rate in China
The high mortality rate is not the tip of the iceberg — it is the iceberg.
At the start of an outbreak the apparent mortality rate can be an overestimate if a lot of mild cases are being missed. But this week, a WHO expert suggested that this has not been the case with Covid-19. Bruce Aylward, who led an international mission to China to learn about the virus and the country’s response, said the evidence did not suggest that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg. If borne out by further testing, this could mean that current estimates of a roughly 1% fatality rate are accurate. This would make Covid-19 about 10 times more deadly than seasonal flu, which is estimated to kill between 290,000 and 650,000 people a year globally.
A virus with a 1% case fatality rate– that’s ten times worse than The Flu — could kill 70 million people.
The WHO is rarely worth quoting, (because of this kind of conflicts of interest) but they’ve been playing this disaster down. When the team run by an apologist for Xi says “1%” and it matches the shocking stories on #Covid2019, it’s time to pay attention.
As bad as it is, its a relief after weeks of watching this build while leaders were asleep the wheel. Finally, some action. If a few major economies launch into action — others will suddenly follow. Like fish flipping from “don’t want to look alarmist” to “don’t want to look inept”.
The non-binding unenforceable Paris agreement was always a theatre show on the international stage, where most countries promise to do nothing, and the rest make promises they don’t keep. But it’s an excuse for the domestic Deep State to do whatever they want.
The zero carbon goal by 2050 was also a Grand Theater Promise. But here the two symbolic acts of nothingness met like anti-matter and threaten to blow up an economy.
Controversial plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport have been thrown into doubt after a court ruling.
The government’s decision to allow the expansion was unlawful because it did not take climate commitments into account, the Court of Appeal said. Heathrow said it would challenge the decision, but the government said it would not appeal.
The judges said that in future, a third runway could go ahead, as long as it fits with the UK’s climate policy.
Since when were Judges appointed to decide if an elected government stuck to its policies? Isn’t that what the voters are supposed to do?
British ambitions of becoming a global economic power after Brexit suffered a major blow yesterday after a court ruling suggested future airports, motorway and energy projects could all be blocked to prevent global warming.
Join these dots. Our universities took a huge bet on Chinese students that is falling apart. They’ve creamed the profits, but taken no insurance and stand to lose billions if they can’t get students to Australia — An extraordinary 65,000 of whom got caught in China by the quarantine. In China, travel agents are marketing 14 day holiday stopovers in Thailand to students, who are then flying on to Australia to get around the ban. But this is not quarantine. Thailand is open to China, and considered so risky that Israel has already banned flights from Thailand. What’s next? Australia imports the virus, tens of thousands may die, and all so the ivory tower smug academics can make their profits, while weak politicians sell out the nations citizens — especially the senior, longest serving ones?
How long before Israel bans Australian planes? We could be one the highest value clean nations in the world, waiting out our first winter of this pandemic until there is a treatment. We could be a place that wealthy tourists come to stay safe (after a two week real quarantine) and spend months of money. Perhaps we still can? Some students in Wuhan are offering to pay for a Charter Flight to Christmas Island if we’ll let them.
Martin North interviews Salvatore Babones and he is eloquently savage about the “mindbogglingly illogical” move of Australia to allow Chinese students to come in without proper quarantine. h.t David E.
Is Scott Morrison selling out the nations health for arrogant academic investors?
Read Australia’s gloriouspreparedness plan for Coronavirus it’s as Babones said — “56 pages of platitudes” — the plan Scott Morrison and Greg Hunt waved so passionately today is a recycled seasonal flu plan. It lacks almost all useful details barring advising people in Aged Care to get their Wills in order. (h.t Bill H)
Where are the Labor Party? Whining about sports allocations (minor junk pork barrelling). They could be scoring major points for senior citizens, the sick, the vulnerable. Or are they under the thrall of the Big-Government-loving universities even more than the Liberals are?
Salvatore Babones is an expert on the academic sector and points out how extreme the gamble has been by Australian universities. The most “Chinese” university in the US is Uni of Illinois, with 5,700 students. Uni of Sydney has four times as many students as this. The Uni of Illinois were so worried about that exposure they took out insurance with Lloyds of London against exactly this kind of event. He warned Uni of Sydney six months ago, but they didn’t buy the insurance. And there are many universities in Australia in a similar position. They took the taxpayer dollar, and took the profits but now that trouble has come, they want the government and the people to bail them out and foot the bill — with their health, even their lives.
The mineral sector is not putting public health at risk…
The Tourism sector was highly dependent on China, but no one is talking of rerouting tourists through secondary nations to keep that alive.
The people pushing hardest on the politicians to risk Australians health are the smug ivory tower academics who recklessly bet too much on this.
The two week unsupervised holiday in Thailand is not a quarantine. Thailand is not wealthy, but is one of the only countries still allowing Chinese flights. It’s only kept its border open because of pressure from China. Australian universities are exploiting that “loophole”.
Chinese travel agents are marketing bespoke “14-day, 13-night” packages to third-country transit destinations to help Chinese students enrolled at Australian universities get around the federal government’s coronavirus ban for as little as $2700 each.
Agents said the packages, which are being micro-targeted on Chinese social media, are selling well, as almost 65,000 Chinese students look for ways to get around the federal government’s travel ban on all non-Australian citizens and non-permanent residents coming from mainland China. “Thailand and Malaysia are the top two choices. Next is Cambodia,” said an education agent in Beijing.
Scott Morrison imposed the travel ban on February 1, when almost two-thirds of the 109,000 Chinese students enrolled in Australia were in China for the Lunar New Year break. Estimates suggest the ban could cost universities up to $2bn in deferred fees.
Stopping flights for a few more weeks — and from other locations too — will buy us time to find out more about this virus before we decide what to do for winter. Singapore and Hong Kong appear to be managing the virus, and we were containing it, perhaps with some help from summer — which ends today.
Do the maths
Look behind the marketing — for most people it’s like a cold. True – but for 5 – 10% it’s a hospital stay, and for 70 – 79 year old people in China it’s an 8% case fatality rate. In the 80 plus cohort 15% passed away. The death rate will be lower — the Chinese didn’t test the non serious cases who stayed home. The air is polluted in Wuhan and rates of smoking are high. But the rate of hospitalization for health workers was 15% too. Even a few young healthy nurses and doctors have died (which happens with the flu sometimes too). Does this virus leave lasting lung damage or scarring? We don’t know. Can people develop immunity to it? Another mystery. Is the Iranian version more deadly?
Flu kills 0.1% but we have antivirals, vaccines, and partial immunity thanks to other strains. This is not the flu.
The non-binding unenforceable Paris agreement was always a theatre show on the international stage, where most countries promise to do nothing, and the rest make promises they don’t keep. But it’s an excuse for the domestic Deep State to do whatever they want.
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