Assuming that these official statistics from China bear a faint connection to reality (in trend, if not number) this may be a sign that the draconian quarantine is starting to work. If real, it is only a slight slowing in the rate of growth, but it’s a good sign — one I have been looking for. It is a barely visible slowing of the rate of change in the cumulative tally of victims. The exponential curve is slowing. Of course, if this takes off in Africa this would be but a pause…
The virus which had been growing at 50% a day two weeks ago, slowed to 20% last week, and 11% today. One week was such a long time ago in exponential land. Last Friday night the tally was 9,700 infected, and 213 deaths. At that point, no nation had cut off flights or refused visas. UPDATED: Saturday.
..
Sadly the brave doctor who tried to warn the world has been taken by the virus. Ominously he was only 34 — presumably with no “underlying disease”. Instead of listening to him, the Communist Govt tried to silence him. Consequently, there is anger and outrage in China and his death may become a lightning rod. The Party has created so much unnecessary pain and suffering.
Outside of China the news was as good as we could hope — everywhere bar the hapless Diamond Princess Cruise Liner in Japan but with a sudden 61 recorded infections (UPDATE: Now 64 cases). Apart from that — what matters most (selfishly) is that we are not seeing a pattern of doubling in the West. This is significant as we approach a point 6 days after flights were closed in Australia. Though there is potentially a 14 day incubation, the average is around 6 days. Thus in theory, if the virus had made it to the first world and was sufficiently infectious, we should already be seeing half the first “uptick”. Instead most of the small number of new cases are immediate family members of people who flew in from China, usually from Wuhan. We know 5 of Australia’s 15 cases have been sent home apparently fully recovered and noninfectious.
No news is not necessarily good news — Indonesia has no cases, but apparently hasn’t done any testing either:
There is growing concern that the new coronavirus may be going undetected in Indonesia, where officials have not confirmed a single case of infection among the 272 million-strong population despite the country’s close links to China, reports Rebecca Ratcliffe, the Guardian’s south-east Asia correspondent. As of Thursday, Indonesia said it had no confirmed cases of the coronavirus and that 238 people evacuated from Wuhan. The Australian.
The “virus ship” is now a must-see experiment. (Apologies to those involved).
Details are scarce, only that the latest Australian diagnosed says she feels fine, and that 21 of the latest batch that tested positive, are Japanese. The Australian was on the same bus as the 80 year-old man who got off the ship in Hong Kong carrying the virus. When figuring out viral behaviour, all these forensic details are important at this early stage. Epidemiologists will be tracking the boat closely.
We all want to know the health status of the 61 (hoping they are well), and to trace the path of infection. Was it only one source or were there others from the Hubei province? Were the 61 mostly close contacts or is this spreading at random through air conditioning or door knobs. Is the cabin air finely filtered?
UPDATE:Worldometer does not record any severe cases in Japan yet (and they include the ship in this tally). Only 4 “recovered”. But if this is accurate hopefully it means none of the Cruise Ship passengers has the severe form.
If these were my relatives on board, I’d be asking the government for assurance that they were not at risk of acquiring a new infection now. If so, a fully fledged quarantine flight rescue would seem humane.
UPDATE:Cruise liners are starting to ban anyone who is Chinese or has been in China in the last 30 days. It is sad to see this apply to Chinese passport holders who may not have been near China. Presumably Cruise liners are desperate to reassure passengers to stop mass cancellations.
UPDATE: The Diamond Princess visited Taiwan on the way to Japan, and the government of Taiwan is now advising thousands of people who were near the tour group at any time that day to self isolate. This shows just what a huge logistical problem the containment of an asymptomatic spread can be. Scores of healthy people may put thousands at risk.
In other news: Hong Kong is going to jail people who breach quarantine and come in from China. This may get ugly if things don’t improve in China. They may find themselves locked up for six months in Hong Kong, which still may be better than being locked in a demountable pop up hospital back in China.
A short video from the same two guys as previously, this time talking about the censorship in china (12 minutes) and that brave doctor.
So much for the “hotter drier” future they were warning us about 3 weeks ago
As predicted, droughts in Australia often end in floods. It is the way it has always been. Today people are already being rescued from the rising water and possibly another 200 -300mm of rain may fall before Sunday warns the BOM. Many fires have been extinguished.
Forecasters become increasingly concerned that even more rain could fall even faster than expected as five people have been rescued from floods.
The NSW State Emergency Service issued a flood warning for Sydney’s metropolitan areas, saying forecast weather conditions were “likely to cause widespread flooding”.
Flooding has already occurred in Roseville in Sydney’s Upper North Shore and the north-western suburb of Putney, where commuters are advised to allow extra travel time.
Meteorologists have said they are increasingly worried about the unfolding weather events in New South Wales and have “great concerns” that “intense bursts” of rain could see hundreds more millimetres fall far quicker than originally expected.
The NSW Rural Fire Service said the heavy rain was welcome in bushfire-ravaged parts of the state.
“We were over the moon to see rain arrive across many parts of NSW, with decent falls in the state’s north,” the RFS said on Thursday night.
When will our climate experts and the ABC “Science ” team mention that the solar cycles and ocean currents are linked to rainfall all over the world, and their models contradict each other, show no skill and are useless at rainfall.
Western Samoa and American Samoa are side by side islands in the Pacific. When the Spanish Flu arrived in 1918, one would instigate a quarantine while the other had a trading community that did not want to stop trade. American Samoa survived the Spanish Flu without a death. Western Samoa kept trading and lost a quarter of the population.
In 1918 the Samoan archipelago was split between American Samoa (a United States territory) and Western Samoa (previously a German colony but under New Zealand governance from 1914). The 1918 influenza pandemic killed a quarter of Western Samoans, while leaving American Samoa unscathed.
The dangers of ship-borne disease were well known, and exclusion of many diseases, especially plague, had been implemented since the imposition of colonial governance nineteen years before.
On 30 October 1918 the Union Steamship Company’s Talune left Auckland for its run through Polynesia… The new, more lethal influenza variant had arrived in Auckland with the spring, and several crew members were ill.
Western Samoa was a German colony that had three times as many foreign ships visiting as American Samoa which was a semi-neglected military base. Western Samoa had been handed over to New Zealand management. But when the Talune arrived the sailors that were sick hid their illness (captains orders). The Governor of Western Samoa, Colonel Logan, hadn’t been warned of the new Flu, the traders didn’t want a quarantine, and Logan decided to wait for orders. American Samoa was a military base, and it was easy to set up quarantine.
To officials in Washington, American Samoa was a naval station with an incidental indigenous population. There was scant need for traders to maintain a permanent presence in the colony and no effort to attract settlers. This facilitated the American Governor’s use of quarantine: the absence of a trader community allowed General Poyer to impose measures without resistance, and the small number of ships visiting Pago Pago made such an effort manageable. When descriptions of the flu reached Poyer, he acted decisively. Quarantine was established, and implemented under the leadership of traditional chiefs. With modifications, the quarantine in American Samoa continued, with no fatal cases of influenza reported, until late 1921.
In contrast, Western Samoa suffered the highest known mortality of any state during the 1918-1921 pandemic. At least 24 percent of the population died, and most who died were between 18-50 years of age. Half of the most productive age cohort of Western Samoa, and the chiefly and religious elites, died. Western Samoa collapsed.
It was a “bungle that amounts to a crime”. The rampant influenza in New Zealand should have been noted in the ships “bill of health”. It was a reportable disease by the time the ship arrived in Western Samoa.
Even though the virus will arrive eventurally, despite the best efforts, the delay by quarantine is very useful. It’s a general rule of infectious diseases that viruses often mutate and become more infectious but less deadly with time. Natural selection naturally selects the more “fertile” virus, not the one that kills the host in 24 hours before they can spread it to Aunt Martha and her six kids.
… there may be some benefit to keeping the virus out for as long as is possible. American Samoa implemented a five-day quarantine for all boats that kept influenza from its shores until 1920. When it finally did arrive, the virus appears to have lost much of its sting and there were no deaths attributed to influenza in a population of more than 8,000. The main island of Samoa to the northwest, however, lost around a fifth of its population to the pandemic.
Gray looked at all the pockets in the US that escaped the worst of the Flu:
“These communities basically shut themselves down,” explains Howard Markel, an epidemiological historian at the University of Michigan who was one of the authors of the study. “No one came in and no one came out. Schools were closed and there were no public gatherings. We came up with the term ‘protective sequestration’, where a defined and healthy group of people are shielded from the risk of infection from outsiders.”
The people of Gunnison managed this by erecting guarded barricades on the main highways in and out of the surrounding county. Railway passengers were forced to submit to two days of quarantine upon arrival.
Tasmania had a quarantine too
A similar story unfolded on the on the Australian island of Tasmania, which implemented strict quarantine measures for boats arriving on its shores that required all passengers and crew to be isolated for seven days. When the infection penetrated the island in August 1919, medical officers reported that it was a milder infection than that on the mainland. The death rate on Tasmania was one of the lowest recorded worldwide.
Villagers in Barrow and Wainwright in north Alaska posted armed guards around their villages and travel between settlements was prohibited. When scientists tested people living in a number of remote settlements in north Alaska, they found they too were free of antibodies, suggesting they had never been exposed.
It appears that many of these villages were given advanced warning of the oncoming virus as it spread across Alaska by dog sled teams that raced ahead of the infection to alert villages. It was an incredible gamble – mail delivery teams and seal hunters moving through the region were already spreading the virus from settlement to settlement – but one that paid off.
Delaying an infection has other benefits too. It can help spread the peak, thus making resources more available. There are around 2,000 ICU beds in toto in Australia, that’s about 1 bed per 12,000 people. The high Ro infections (which rise and fall the fastest) will be bad news if they are also nastier germs and a high proportion of people need an ICU bed. The system gets overwhelmed.
Remember those exponential curves are so unforgiving. If CoronaVirus has a 6 day doubling period, without any quarantine China is potentially only three months away from having 300 million cases. Officially some 12% or so get the severe form. In the Lancet study 29% got acute respiratory distress syndrome.
Watching those CoV numbers (not the Chinese ones so much as all the other nations.) The good news is that in the Western world the numbers don’t seem to be growing rapidly. We are only 5 days in from stopping the flights, but that’s getting close to the average incubation period. The few new cases in Australia and the US still seem to have come direct from China or through a close relative.
Ooh. Are these the real figures? Is someone on the inside trying to leak out the truth?
There are claims tonight that a flickering set of figures have appeared that are much higher than the official tolls. These ghostly statistics have appeared three times then switched to the much lower official tally. But each time they grow — almost as if there are two sets of data, one for officials, and one for the public.
Ominously, the flickering death tally was 80 times higher than the official one. The infections were ten times higher. If it’s true the death rate may be far worse than the 2% bandied about.
If they are real, this changes everything. If they are fake, who or what would benefit? A glitch?
From Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, and the Taiwan Times, h/t David E.
Tencent briefly lists 154,023 infections and 24,589 deaths from Wuhan coronavirus
Taiwan Times
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As many experts question the veracity of China’s statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Tencent over the weekend seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of infections and deaths, which were astronomically higher than official figures.
On late Saturday evening (Feb. 1), Tencent, on its webpage titled “Epidemic Situation Tracker”, showed confirmed cases of novel coronavirus (2019nCoV) in China as standing at 154,023, 10 times the official figure at the time. It listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808, four times the official figure.
The number of cured cases was only 269, well below the official number that day of 300. Most ominously, the death toll listed was 24,589, vastly higher than the 300 officially listed that day.
The image on the left below, shows the numbers that appeared briefly on Saturday. Beside it are the official figures that appeared soon after.
The odd glitch (left) the official figures (right) Columns: Confirmed cases, suspected cases, recovered, deaths.
Ten days ago, shortly after China first started reporting the cases and deaths associated with the coronavirus epidemic, a UK researcher predicted that over 250,000 Chinese would be infected with the virus by February 4. And while according to official Chinese data, the number of infections has indeed soared in the past two weeks, at just under 25,000 (and roughly 500 deaths), it is a far cry from this dismal prediction
On Jan 25th experts from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) estimated that the number of cases in Wuhan were as high as 44,000. So the larger viral infection figure would fit.
The ghost figures come from China’s Tencent — one of the largest video game tech companies in the world. It has a webpage “Epidemic Situation Tracker”. Late on Saturday night briefly it listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808 when the official figure was about one quarter of that.
Ominously, the figure for deaths was 24,589 which reverted back to 304 soon after.
2019-nCoV
This is not how a nation reacts to “the flu”
If this is true, it explains the incredible images coming out of China — of deserted streets, armed patrols, people forcibly boarding up apartments to stop others from leaving, and of forced evictions. Hazmat suited people can be seen coming to take patients away who really really don’t want to go and who are being dragged into ambulances. It explains why the communist government suddenly launched into building new pop up hospitals, and it explains the images of hundreds of beds, in row upon row in town halls and large buildings.
Perhaps it even explains why the position of leaders like Trump and then Scott Morrison suddenly took such decisive action on Saturday. If there were spies on the inside reporting out, perhaps a few key leaders were informed things were were worse than they seemed.
Probably, the spies only needed to be watching #coronavirus on twitter.
(These should show images and movies, if not, try another browser).
#Coronavirus Wuhan starts to disinfect in the night! The question is how long the virus is gonna survive in the air and attaching to objects? It will be horrible if it can survive a long time in the air! pic.twitter.com/mwn8DhtBD7
Wuhan is converting Hongshan Stadium and Wuhan International Conference & Exhibition Center into makeshift quarantine centers with 1,000 more beds to treat #coronavirus patients with less severe symptoms. pic.twitter.com/QNCl1aFujf — A Point News (@APointNews) February 4, 2020
video from #Wuhan resident @fiteray
look at how many corpses left in the corridor of local hospital
forget about the fast bulit new hospital
forget about the low death rate of #Coronavirus
forget about all propaganda from China
There are some truly awful things on #coronavirus. Animals being burned alive. People saying goodbye to loved ones who are medical workers as if it may be the last time they see them. People refusing to get their temperature taken and being beaten.
We are fortunate that numbers are not increasing in the West as fast as the 20% (whatever that means) increase daily that was officially stated in China. So far people appear to be suffering lower grade, and recoverable infections.
There is still the possibility that there are thousands of unrecorded infections in China where people recovered or didn’t even get sick — that could bring the death rate back down.
This week Chinese University of Hong Kong professor David Hui-Shu-choeng said the official tally could be the “tip of the iceberg” as it only reflected those who were in hospital.
“There are many community cases that remain undiagnosed – unlike in Hong Kong, where cases are more carefully handled, including the mild ones. Of the 15 confirmed cases [in Hong Kong], 10 of [the patients] didn’t even need to be put on oxygen,” Hui told the South China Morning Post
“So we’re talking about different denominators here. For an actual picture, one usually has to wait until after the outbreak settles for a general population, zero-prevalence study to be carried out – where blood tests would reflect the number of positive cases containing the antibody without presenting the symptoms,” Hui said.
Donald Trump’s State of the Union is being described as one of the best ever. It was a magnificent campaign speech. Even the LA Times calls it “a pretty effective one”. I don’t watch many political speeches, but this one could be a “how to” guide.
The dour faced white suits of the #Metoo look decidedly unAmerican and self centred when Trump announces great results for all their token mascots and they can’t even clap. Nancy Pelosi petulantly rips up the speech that Trump had to provide her with at 1:42:50. Some news services are trimming that bit off…
Trump shamelessly plugs his heroes and basks in their greatness. Rush Limbaugh gets a Presidential Medal of Honor. Buzz Aldrin singled out early at the start. (6:30)
“This year American Astronauts will go back to Space on American Rockets.”
This puts the Democrats in a tough spot. Through the first half of the speech, President Trump reeled off one item of good news after another: Record low unemployment! Lowest black unemployment ever! Lowest Hispanic unemployment ever! Rising wages, especially at the bottom! Median net worth skyrocketing! And so on. The Democrats greeted all of this with stony silence. When Trump announced that in the last three years, 10 million people have gotten off welfare, the Democrats looked as though they were ready to cry. …
The latest news coming out is mixed. The live map and latest count of 2019-nCoV shows 20,000 confirmed infections, 426 deaths, and most importantly, a spread to 28 countries. It’s slightly encouraging that there are no extra cases in Australia and good to hear 3 of the 12 have been sent home, declared “recovered”. However the incubation period since flights were closed is still only halfway to the average (of 5 – 6 days) so it’s too early to tell.
A South Korean has tested positive after visiting Thailand (not a good sign, but the statement didn’t “rule out China”). Japan has quarantined a whole cruise ship (like Italy did). One passenger came down with the virus in Hong Kong. The whole ship of 3700 is confined to rooms, awaiting test results. It’s reassuring that so many tests can be done. (Yay, Japan). Meanwhile door handles can carry the virus. Soap and hand sanitizer could help a lot.
On the plus side, one team in Thailand say they have treated one patient successfully with anti-virals. It’s only one case, but a nice thought. How big are those stockpiles? The other plus, is that summer may slow it down. Best case is this might be “like a new flu”. We just don’t know.
Statistics Feb 4th, 2020 Click to enlarge.
Worryingly there are reports of thirty year olds coming down with the severe form. Though again, this happens even with the normal flu. Another downer is that the latest Ro estimate appears to be around 4.0 much higher than the Flu. Meaning it may spread even faster. Though I’m skeptical as that’s calculated from Wuhan data, which is both “uncertain” and there is always the possibility that the Ro may be lower in different countries. For comparison the Flu causes around 300,000 to 600,000 deaths every year. The fear here, justifiably, is the death rate might be quite a lot higher. The next few weeks are very important.
There are no recorded cases in Africa yet, though that seems hard to believe given the large Chinese workforce. It’s still possible perhaps for the rich western nations to curb the spread domestically, but if this spreads to Africa, India (3 cases) etc, and possibly to animal populations too, it’s difficult to imagine how it will not become endemic. Most African airlines have stopped flights to China, though not Ethiopia (perhaps something to do with the Belt and Road debt trap and the man running the WHO?).
If Coronavirus takes hold in other nations, then flights to those, and not just China will need to be stopped to contain it. At that point the question becomes “is it worth it” — which depends of course on the death and incapacitation rate — something we still really have no idea of. There are reports from China both of people who just got the flu and recovered, suggesting that for most people and the young and healthy, it isn’t a major threat. But there are also reports of quick and unrecorded cremations, and we know the Communist party has been suppressing the bad news. Photos on twitter imply the army is being brought in. This virus appears to cause the full spectrum from asymptomatic to “needing ICU”.
The prospect is daunting. A pandemic — an ongoing epidemic on two or more continents… The Wuhan coronavirus is spreading more like influenza, which is highly transmissible, than like its slow-moving viral cousins, SARS and MERS, scientists have found.
“It’s very, very transmissible, and it almost certainly is going to be a pandemic,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. “But will it be catastrophic? I don’t know.”
Stopping the spread
For those wondering how the SARS and other potential pandemics were stopped — it takes laborious tracking of contacts, which is difficult with symptomless transmission. The response team must isolate high risk contacts, and sometimes even treat them with anti-virals or vaccinations (if we only had one) pre-emptively. Health workers need to wear Hazmat suits and also get the pre-emptive options. We have to ring fence every single outbreak — something we can do when there are very few cases, but quickly becomes impossible if enough infectious people walk through shopping malls and schools.
In this case, if the virus doesn’t cause a severe illness in all people, it will likely spread further and faster, as asymptomatic people don’t need to report to hospitals or even doctors, and may not realize they are spreading it. Only mass testing around a small caseload would solve that. On the other hand, if there is a significant pool of people who didn’t get sick, if we can figure out why, it may give us another treatment tool. And once many have recovered, there may be potential for antibodies against corona virus to be gathered. In the case of Ebola, the antibodies from recovered people seemed to be the only useful medicine at one point in the battle.
New hospital built in ten days: (*Works in Chrome, but not in Firefox)
FYI, The videos here don’t display in all forms of Firefox, but they do display in Chrome.
China’s 1st hospital for #coronavirus build in 10 days! Construction live-streamed online with 10 of millions viewers at anytime. PLA medical team already took over the facility. It will open tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/KfO7J0Moxj
CNN —Doctors in Thailand said they have successfully treated one Wuhan coronavirus patient with a combination of antiviral drugs, according to a briefing on Sunday from the Ministry of Health.
Dr. Kriangsak Atipornwanich, a doctor at Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok, said he treated a 71-year-old female patient from China with a combination of drugs used in HIV and flu treatments. He said the patient had previously been treated with only anti-HIV drugs.
“I had treated a patient with severe condition, and the result has been very satisfactory. The patient’s condition has improved very quickly within 48 hours.
Divestment Snowflakes protesting at St Johns College Jan 30th
Students at St Johns College were protesting last week at the fossil fuel investments that help keep the College running. Even camping out in the quadrangle in the middle of winter:
Oxford students have occupied St. John’s College since Wednesday, demanding that the College divests its £8.1 million of disclosed investments in fossil fuel companies and all undisclosed fossil fuel investments from its £551 million endowments.
Dozens of students have set up camp in the front quad of St. John’s equipped with banners and placards, to demand that it takes the climate emergency seriously and measures to remove the social licence of fossil fuel companies.
As of Thursday afternoon, there are allegations that St. John’s College had disabled student’s room keys. Instead, they are allegedly doing manual Bod card checks, escorting students to and from their rooms, and are not allowing non-residents to enter the college. There are reports of students bringing protesters food as they have remained on the quad since yesterday.
A solidarity rally has been taking place outside the front gates of the College.
Professor Parker responded with a provocative offer. “I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice,” he wrote. “But I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect. Please let me know if you support this proposal.”
One of the students wrote back and said he would present the proposal but he didn’t think Parker was being appropriately serious. Professor Parker responded to that note saying, “You are right that I am being provocative but I am provoking some clear thinking, I hope. It is all too easy to request others to do things that carry no personal cost to yourself. The question is whether you and others are prepared to make personal sacrifices to achieve the goals of environmental improvement (which I support as a goal).” The best part of the story is the response from the organizer of the protest:
Fergus Green, the organiser of the wider protest, who is studying for a master’s degree in physics and philosophy at Balliol College, said: “This is an inappropriate and flippant response by the bursar to what we were hoping would be a mature discussion. It’s January and it would be borderline dangerous to switch off the central heating.”
From the other side of the world comes this extraordinary collection of data that few in Australia seem aware of.
File this fact away: Satellite datasets show that in an average year 50 million hectares burns around Australia. In a quiet year, it’s only 20 million hectares, but in a busy year it gets close to 100 million hectares. A lot of this land area is in the far north and western part of the continent, which is hot and often arid. It’s not the same as the cool wet corner of South East Australia which has some of the tallest trees in the world. The fuel loads in the north are much lower (like the trees).
Some parts of the top end burn nearly 100%, year after year. It’s no accident that the awful devastation this year was not in the red hot firezone on the map below, but in the South East corner where less than 5% of the area burns each year. The rarely burnt is the risky zone where there is a 20 year build up of fuel. Some areas are on a 1 in 100 year rotation or even slower. There were places this year that a whole century of fuel went up to help make that stratospheric pyroconvective fire and deliver some leaves and ash to New Zealand. (Lucky them).
Mean annual area burned in Australia, Source Giglio et al 2013
So far this season the fires that gained so much attention around the world have burned around 10 18 million hectares, which is only a fifth 36% of the usual area burnt, though presumably that will increase after satellite data is analyzed and the rest of the fire season plays out.
Pasi Autio points out that ten years ago a researcher showed there was a link between a strong Indian Ocean Dipole and bad forest fires on the other side of Australia in New South Wales. This year the Indian Ocean Dipole was one of the strongest in the last 60 years, so the pattern repeats. Nothing to do with “climate change” and everything to do with natural cycles of drought and rainfall.
In terms of forest fires rather than all fires, from 2011 – 2016 about 20 million hectares still burned each year. About a third of that was planned burns, and two thirds was wildfire. Since this is so much higher than the rotation of planned burns in the national parks of NSW and Victoria that burnt this year, presumably these planned burns were either on private property or in arid zones. The definitions of forest can vary hugely, and in this case also includes vast areas around Kalgoorlie, the Eyre Peninsula, and some “forests” near Bourke and Cunnamulla.
Many thanks to Pasi Autio for collecting together the data and research that no one at the ABC bothered to collect, and no one at any other government institute seemed to issue a press release about. Below, he concludes this season is not outside the bounds of normal by most fire related statistics, though he is not analyzing economic loss, animal deaths, media frenzies or political point scoring. Most of which have been far above normal.
— Jo
_________________________________________
Australian bushfire season 2019-2020 – Severity, reasons and conclusions
All-in-all the bushfire season in Australia is not abnormal
Consider Australia to be a continent of fire.
Most ecosystems in Australia are ecologically adapted to the fire and will even require it
The only way to manage the fire hazards in Australia is to manage the fuel loads
Natural Indian Ocean Dipole events (and ENSO events) has and will have the effect on droughts in Australia
Hazardous volume of fuel loads together with abnormally positive Indian Ocean dipole and the associated drought are the prime reasons for extreme bushfire season in Southeast Australia and especially in New South Wales during this season
The Australian bushfire season of 2019-2020 is now the climate topic of the year – the severe bushfire season has caused more than 2000 houses to burn in the state of New South Wales (NSW) alone. At least 27 people have died and likely over 1 billion mammals, birds and reptiles has been lost (1).
According to wikipedia pages for the 2019-2020 bushfire season (2) 18.9 million hectares of land has been burned as of 14h of January. This sounds severe, but how large is the amount of burned land when comparing to the earlier seasons?
Annual burned area in Australia
There are sources to place this bushfire season in the context like the study by Giglio at al 2013 (3). The paper describes a fourth generation Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED4). This data set combines satellite records like the 500m MODIS burned area maps with active fire data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) and the Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) family of sensors. The paper also provides burned area data for Australia and New Zealand (combined) for the years 1997-2011.
Luckily Louis Giglio and his team have continued to work and have created excellent source of all burned area and fire-based emissions datasets. MODIS Collection 6 (C6) MCD64A1 burned area dataset (4) provides satellite-based burned area data for all continents – and also for Australia.
The data and a great analysis tool are available at globalfiredata.org.The dataset provides burned area data for the years 1997-2016. It’s possible to select a continent or country and choose several options for the source data such as emission or burned area data.
Let’s start with burned area data for Australia:
Figure 1: Annual burned area in millions of hectares
Figure 1 shows the total burned area for each year between 1997 and 2016 in millions of hectares. Area burned every year was between 18.2 million hectares (2010) and 94.6 million hectares (2001). On average, the area burned during this time period was 52.9 million hectares. Since there is 769 million hectares of land in Australia, the area burned between 1997 and 2016 was 2.4 – 12.3 % of total land area – every year.
These figures seem very high, so let’s see were the bushfires typically happen. Giglio et al 2013 provides a view to that.
The WHO could have declared a state of emergency earlier. Instead it delayed the announcement, praised China’s transparency, and recommended countries allow planes potentially carrying a deadly virus continue to fly freely. The WHO waited until the 2019-nCoV virus had spread to 18 nations before declaring an emergency. Wasn’t it an emergency with the first foreign case or the first case of symptomless transmission?
Follow the chain, or rather the Belt and Road
The WHO Director General is Tedros Adhanom of Ethiopia. From 2012 – 2016 he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the one party government that rules Ethiopia. This is the same party that borrowed billions from China to build a railway line, then struggles to pay it back. In Africa, Ethiopia is the second largest debtor nation to China — owing $13 billion. As Foreign Minister Adhanom praised China for African loans, looks like he was the man to line them up. We also note that the one-party ruling party of Ethiopia is called the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front which was once a Marxist Lenninist far left group — labels it dropped after the Soviet Union collapsed. (Thanks Maurice for these tips).
Suddenly there might be a reason why Tedros went out of his way to praise President Xi of China, even though medical experts were already warning that there were thousands more victims, that China was hiding the severity, and punishing its doctors for trying to warn people.
Last Thursday ABC News Australia was broadcasting some of the rapturous praise below. I didn’t hear one word about the Ethiopians debts or any potential conflict of interest. How was the ABC serving Australians by uncritically parroting the lines of the Ethiopian apologist for China without doing the basic research themselves? There were no hard questions from the BBC either which refers to the WHO as the “global health officials”.
Tedros Adhanom
Does the WHO Director General serve the world or China?
It’s rare in politics to hear such an abject extended grovelling rave:
…Tedros said it is admirable that the Chinese government has shown its solid political resolve and taken timely and effective measures in dealing with the epidemic.
President Xi’s personal guidance and deployment show his great leadership capability, Tedros said.
He said that China has released information in an open and transparent manner, identified the pathogen in a record-short time and shared the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus in a timely manner with the WHO and other countries.
China’s measures are not only protecting its people, but also protecting the people in the whole world, he said.
Hailing the high speed and massive scale of China’s moves are rarely seen in the world, Tedros said it showed China’s efficiency and the advantages of China’s system. The experience of China is worth learning for other countries, he said, adding that he believes the measures China has taken will effectively control and finally prevail over the epidemic.
The WHO firmly supports China’s measures against the epidemic and stands ready to enhance cooperation with China and provide all necessary assistance, Tedros said. He said the WHO will make assessment based on science and facts, and opposes overreaction and groundless accusations.
The WHO speaks highly of China’s major role in and great contribution to the cause of global public health, and is ready to further conduct strategic cooperation with China, said Tedros.
Now ponder that Australia’s Chief Medical Officer — Prof Brendan Murphy — told us we should keep our borders open last week because the WHO advised it was better. The ABC didn’t ask him any hard questions on that either. Should we be getting advice from the former Ethiopian Foreign Minister of a government that borrowed billions from China?
Last Thursday Prof Murphy was explaining how there was no evidence of transmission from human to human “in this country” as if the virus touring downunder might not do the exact same kind of transmission as the Chinese one.
Protecting Australia amounted to teams jumping on planes with thermometers and brochures and hoping anyone who was infected, but didn’t know it, would be nice enough not to share their germs. It’s pathetic:
…every flight from China now is being met by border security officers who are going on the plane and distributing information to every passenger trying to identify any unwell passengers. The airlines are also required to identify any unwell passengers and if they are unwell, there’s a process of screening them. Every passenger on those flights from China is given an information sheet in Chinese and Mandarin, sorry, Mandarin and English and told to undertake, to watch themselves, and to contact their doctor or their emergency department should they develop symptoms over the following 14 days. In addition, because there are some people who could come from China via other countries, and other ports within 14 days, we are now making announcements in the arrivals halls of airports, again in English and Mandarin, pointing out that anyone who may have come from China from whatever flight or whatever port they’re on, pointing out the risks and identifying that there is printed material available for them to collect at the airport if they have come from China so that all of the people who may have come from China can get that information. Again, we have no evidence there’s a risk to the Australian public. There’s no human to human transmission that’s been identified in this country.
Australians are the masters of quarantine — we stop visitors with wooden sticks, but not novel diseases. Last week it was harder to bring in cut-flowers to Australia than to import a deadly new human virus with no known cure.
Sack Tedros Adhanom
There’s a petition to sack Tedros Adhanom which started last week and already has 135,000 signatures. Among his other achievements, by the way, he’s the man who appointed Robert Mugabe as the Goodwill Ambassador for the WHO.
Not only do we not need Tedros Adhanom, we don’t need the WHO, The UN, or The ABC and BBC either. None of them were serving Australians, Brits, or Americans, or even Ethiopians. How many will now succumb to Coronavirus that might have been saved?
US and Australia close borders and everyone outside China starts tracking contacts…
The official deaths tally has risen to 259, but for the first time the “total recovered” at 287 now exceeds the total deaths. Evidently it’s quicker to die than to recover.
Australia remains the “leader” of the Western nations with 12 confirmed cases. Thankfully, it and the US have finally got serious and both announced today that they would stop people from China from flying straight in. Citizens can return with a two week isolation or quarantine period, but foreigners cannot. This is very good news (as far as virus control goes). Now all the same nations will be furiously, laboriously tracking and tracing the hundreds of potential contacts. In a few weeks we’ll know how contagious it is, and how deadly. And maybe, with much money and dedication we’ll even stop it.
Though in a few weeks a host of secondary countries may develop their own epidemics and virus-free countries will need to block them too.
What’s really remarkable here is how useless, to the point of negligence, the World Health Organisation is.
BBC News: The US and Australia said they would deny entry to all foreign visitors who had recently been in China, where the virus first emerged in December.
Earlier, countries including Russia, Japan, Pakistan and Italy announced similar travel restrictions.
All of these countries are going against the World Health Organisation which appears to be using the medical handbook of 1917 — when people had to walk across borders, and no one had a phone. Follow this reasoning:
But global health officials have advised against such measures.
“Travel restrictions can cause more harm than good by hindering info-sharing, medical supply chains and harming economies,” the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
It’s like sickness and death, loss of production lines, and mass holiday cancellations don’t hurt the economy at all….?
The WHO seems to think we should allow 1,000 infectious people to cross borders just so one doctor can go the other way. Haven’t they heard of email? And how much tax did we pay for that advice?
Understandably the medicos in Hong Kong are at the end of their tether:
Hospital workers in Hong Kong have voted to go on strike from Monday unless the territory’s border with mainland China is completely closed. The Hong Kong government has refused to do so citing WHO recommendations.
How many people will the WHO kill with this advice?
It was reckless to allow borders to stay open once we knew it was transmissible without symptoms. With an Ro of 2 and a death rate of 2 – 10%, the spike in cases needing intensive care would have utterly overwhelmed the medical system in weeks as thousands of people turned up to Emergency Departments. Even if the late block doesn’t stop the virus coming eventually, it buys time to find anti-virals or vaccines and spreads the load on the medical system.
In true Big-Government-style the WHO are trying to save economies instead of people, and failing to do either.
This video next is long but candid and well informed — these two men live there, can read Chinese and know doctors on the inside (one is married to a doctor). The doctors don’t even have the right facemasks in China. They can’t speak up.
One of the standouts from this is the message of hygiene at the wet markets. Medieval is the word. This virus may or may not have arisen from the fishy fish market in Wuhan, but all its friends and cousins of the microbial world are incubating there — ready for the next one.
h/t to Steve H
LATE NOTE: I put these videos on 2 x speed, used auto subtitles, and watched “50 minutes”. (Yay, speed control!). Use the little cog symbol at the bottom right.
In China, firstly, this would have been prevented if they had free speech, and it would be minimized if they had the same culture of hygiene and handwashing and not spitting that the West has developed. I was astonished at the shots of crowded wet markets in the most upmarket city of China.
The eating of weird foods is a double edged sword. There is research showing that some Chinese traditional remedies and foods contain rare glyconutrients or other useful molecules. We eat a very sterile diet and miss out. On the other hand, if we were going to create novel diseases there a few “better” ways. It’s not too good for those endangered species either…
Been trying to do a Corona thread for three days, but every time it was half finished everything changed.
The WHO have finally declared a state of emergency, something that seemed inevitable as soon as we knew the virus could be transmitted by people without symptoms. Russia, Mongolia, and North Korea closed their borders Thursday. Hong Kong announced a temporary closure. Singapore has now closed its borders too. Mark Steyn meanwhile, marvels that healthy US citizens are being advised not to go to China, but it’s apparently fine for sick people to travel the other way. Extraordinarily a cruise ship with 6,000 passengers was “stuck” off Italy, waiting for clearance for two Chinese people who had symptoms like a flu. Fortunately they must have just had the flu. The ship was cleared. And so it is around the world with a mosaic pattern of super actions, versus business as usual.
British Airways has suspended all flights to and from China, as have many other airlines, but in a city by city way. The virus is now present in every region of China. It’s not clear why all flights to and from China have not been stopped. On ABC news Australia’s supposedly top medico didn’t explain why, just palmed off the decision as advice from the WHO. Red flags anyone? A union of pilots in the US is so concerned they are suing American Airlines in a bid to stop them flying there to protect crews. They are calling for staff to refuse work trips to high-risk locations. On #CoronaOutbreak there are photos of shelves emptying in Shanghai, people are wearing giant juice bottles on their heads, and not wearing a face mask is considered a bad thing — indeed, people are being arrested for not wearing face masks. Videos apparently show people being forcibly locked inside houses because of their suspected infections.
The first case of human to human transmission has been confirmed in the US and 168 people are now on a watchlist. Passengers on one flight in Australia have just been advised they were travelling on Monday night with a man who has been diagnosed. 200 people are being contacted. The plane flew another 13 legs or so before it got a proper clean and that contact list might, yeah, well… The sick man was part of a group of eight who toured the risky part of China, four of the eight have symptoms and all eight are in isolation.
The live map and official Corona Virus tally (for whatever that means) is 213 deaths and 9,776 confirmed infections, plus or minus 2,000 or 80,000 (Uni HK below). But 100 or so cases are now confirmed outside China, so we are on the cusp of a global epidemic.
Ominously, the “total officially recovered”, is just 187 — by this tally, more have died than survived. But this is probably just a measure of those who got the most severe form of the disease and also managed to survive an overcrowded and underfunded Chinese ICU. Added to this, Wuhan is an industrial town with heavy air pollution — known as “the Chicago of China” or China’s Smog City. That can’t be too good for local lungs. The guesstimate on the BBC is that about a quarter of people get “the bad form”.
It’s likely that many other people have already caught this in China, but didn’t get deadly sick, and didn’t go to hospital and are not counted here at all. The virus may even cause subclinical, or low grade barely detectable disease in some, though in this world of unknowns, there are undoubtedly other deaths that may not be included in the tally too — misdiagnosed or undiagnosed and just rushed to the crematorium.
WHO says the death rates are 2% though no one really knows. A recent paper in Lancet estimates 11%. The fact is, there are no facts we can rely on. (h.t Mishtalk) But if that Lancet paper is closer to the mark, there is a gargantuan trainwreck coming. Quick, someone explain exponential curves to the people in power. We need to act like lightning to head this off.
Some estimate put the number of people infected at tens of thousands higher (see estimates below). It did seem odd that a city of 11 million suddenly needed new “2-minute-hospitals” to cope with a few thousand patients. Someone knew something. Indeed, there are many fishy things about this, including those fish markets which may or may not be the source. There is that odd coincidence of China’s first high level biosafety laboratory being also in Wuhan and working with Corona viruses as well as Ebola and SARS. There were warnings.
Below is the official trajectory. What we really want to see on this graph below is any kind of leveling off. Instead, we see 1000 become 10,000 in a week. And the more people infected, the more opportunity for mutations. And if there are wildlife vectors, it will run amok and stick around.
Communist governments aside, the Chinese people are smart enough and motivated to slow things themselves. Social media and the rapid spread of fear is driving people to isolate themselves, so the epidemic may plateau sooner and lower than the worst projections. There is action. Some towns and even apartment blocks are getting organised and cutting themselves off. As long as people can stay inside and avoid public gatherings long enough, it will help.
The rate of spread
Estimates of the Ro or Reproductive number are in the 2 – 3 range (or lately 1.4 – 2.5) but changing fast. An Ro of 2 means one person is likely to infect 2 others, which makes it on par with influenza in terms of spreadability (and thus “stoppability” once it has gained a foothold).
Obviously Ro matters: Bigger numbers mean faster, higher peaks. Without intervention, the number starts to flatten when enough people are immune through having had it and recovered. Alternately, careful tracing of contacts with vaccination can slow the spread sooner. I’m guessing that even a vaccine with a short lived efficacy would slow transmission and be useful in an emergency situation.
Ro, Reproductive curves of infectious diseases. ResearchGate
Obviously an Ro of 1 or less means a disease will shrink away to nothing. So if quarantine measures are strong enough, and the effective Ro can be reduced, infections will plateau and shrink. But it will take aggressive and quick action to achieve that. Exponential curves are so unforgiving.
…experts from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) estimated that the number of cases in Wuhan as of Jan 25 was dramatically higher than the country’s official totals and may be as high as 44,000. They also estimated that the city’s cases will double over the next 6 days.
They said that about 25,000 people in Wuhan are likely symptomatic and the others are still in the incubation period.
Note that other estimates are very different (eg Uni of Lancashire = 11,000)
Estimates of epidemic spread, CoronaVirus, Jan 25th, 2020 |Mishtalk
They estimate the peak in China will not occur until April or May. That is a lot of doublings away…
Based on outbreak data and train, air, and road travel from Wuhan—which is central China’s transportation hub—they said Chongqing could be the next most affected city, because of its strong transport ties to Wuhan. They said outbreaks in Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen could peak in April or May and gradually slow in June and July.
With 8 to 12 doublings til the peak in China, if there are 80,000 infections now, in six weeks there could be 5 million. In 8 weeks 20 million, and in 12 weeks 320 million. If there are only 10,000 now, it may mean the same thing with a three-week delay. But that three weeks could make a huge difference to the final tally if the rate of doubling can be slowed aggressively now. Every day counts.
These estimates are jelly in every sense. The official graph from the John Hopkins live map above suggests the doubling time is much faster than 6 days.
What do you do in a lockdown?
Let’s not forget that in Wuham there are millions of healthy people (and we hope as many as possible stay that way).
How to survive staying indoors during #coronavirus lockdown according to these very important videos making their rounds on Chinese social media.
Chinese researchers have found three existing drugs with fairly good inhibitory effects on the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) at the cellular level, a local newspaper has reported.
The three drugs are Remdesivir, Chloroquine and Ritonavir. They are now under relevant procedures to gain approval for clinical use, said Hubei Daily on Wednesday.
It’s a moment in history. Congratulations to Nigel Farage.
Populism is becoming very popular
The Chairperson bureaucrat sums the petty pointlessness of the EU so well. As the Brits triumphantly and disobediently wave their flags, she tries to order them into submission: “Could we please remove the flags. ” “If you disobey the rules you get cut off” — she threatens to cut off the nation that’s celebrating that it has cut itself off.
Freed from the self-serving undemocratic conglomerate meddlers. Brilliant, and best wishes to the UK.
With populist members lukewarm,
The E.U. fast needs some reform,
As the Brexiteers show,
How to pack up and go,
To the exits, could be the new norm.
— Ruairi
If only they had overwhelming evidence they could post YouTubes that were popular
As Steve Milloy says“Not only are we winning the debate… we are forcing our opponents to show who the actual would-be-dictators are. “
Here’s Dem Kathy Castor writing to the YouTube CEO to ask him to stop YouTube suggesting skeptical videos as “up next” or earning advertising money.
To Sundar Pichai,
CEO, Google, CA
[snip intro]
As we all work together to solve this crisis [climate change], we must also eliminate barriers to action, including those as pervasive and harmful as climate denial and climate misinformation.
That’s why I urge you to ensure that Youtube is not incentivising video’s by removing them immediately from the platform’s recommended algorithm;
Add ‘climate misinformation’ to the platforms list of borderline content;
Stop monetizing videos that promote harmful misinformation and falsehoods about the causes and effects of the climate crisis;
Take steps to correct the record for millions of users who have been exposed to climate misinformation on YouTube.
Please respond by Friday February 7, to describe any efforts you plan to take in order to address these important issues.
YouTube has been “actively promoting” videos containing misinformation about climate change, a report released Thursday by campaign group Avaaz claims, despite recent policy changes by the platform intended to drive users away from harmful content and conspiracy theories.
Avaaz examined 5,537 videos retrieved by the search terms “climate change,” global warming” and “climate manipulation,” and then the videos most likely to be suggested next by YouTube’s “up next” sidebar. For each of those search terms respectively, 8%, 16% and 21% of the top 100 related videos included by YouTube in the “up-next” feature contained information that goes against the scientific consensus on climate change – such as denying climate change is taking place, or claiming that human activity is not a cause of climate change. Avaaz claims this promotion process means YouTube is helping to spread climate denialism.
Stephan Lewandowsky, chair of the cognitive psychology department at the University of Bristol, who studies climate misinformation… (and practises it himself) isn’t sure if YouTube has the political will to censor “for the climate” and mentions how it might be harder to block deniers while there are still politicians who aren’t reciting the permitted lines.
“With climate denial, even though it is a scientifically totally absurd position, there are plenty of politicians in the U.S. and Australia, for example, who are immersed in this stuff.”
Dang voters. Should we ban them too?
Youtube are being squeezed between a rock and a wall
Bullies demanding censorship can get what they want, either by leaning on Youtube, or on its advertisers. Campaigns to scare off advertisers cost the company millions when Youtube clients pulled out of posting “ads near extremist content” in 2017. But if YouTube censors even more of the most popular controversial material, they risk losing everything. Bored audiences will head for competitors.
None of this would be possible if children were taught about free speech at school.
Who knew that the whole point of financial winds is to kill off dumb investments in the first place? Not the socialist ABC.
If the ABC weren’t an advertising agency for Big Gov dependents, the headline could have read:
Artificial solar bubble busts in Australia: green investors burnt
What big government giveth…
There goes another solar powered Boom and Bust. | Greenenergy markets / Wattclarity
Solar no longer ‘a licence to print money’
Investment has ” has fallen off a cliff.” And there is more of that coming: “Queensland and South Australia have been at the forefront of depressed solar prices, but Mr [Tristan] Edis argues News South Wales and Victoria will not be far behind.
By business reporter Stephen Letts, (Are they kidding? Business?)
Independent wholesale energy market consultant Allan O’Neil has waded through the 660 pages of the ‘Generator Statistical Digest (GSD) 2019’ and found one of the key themes was the struggle new solar farms were having “with the messy reality of the electricity market”.
Back then, NEM wholesale prices were averaging close to $100/MWh (megawatt/hour)…
And which poor suckers paid those bonanza prices …. oh wait….the same ones who pay for the ABC? Stephen Letts doesn’t ask. It’s all about corporate capitalistic projects…
…and the renewable generators’ other key source source of income, Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) were roughly similar — around $80-90 MWh per certificate — an indication of the paucity of renewable energy in the system at the time.
The profits looked so good, but they were all fake, from subsidies and forced payments. Solar panel investors were investing in big government whims, not in energy generation.
Almost all the research and info in this came from Allan O’Neill at WattClarity. In a nutshell, solar isn’t profitable even in Queesland because the lines are long, transmission loses are large, the electricity comes when customers don’t need it, and the government keeps insisting the solar farms pay for “grid stability” (FCAS) because the grid needs it, and solar doesn’t supply it.
As I said last year: Random Energy is the gift you don’t need
Random gigawatts has the illusion of looking useful, but it’s the gift of a spare holiday house you don’t know if you can use til the day before. It’s the spare fridge in the garage that overheats in hot weather, the extra turkey for thanksgiving that might not arrive til the day after. The bills, the storage, the clutter, the chaos.
POST-NOTE: It’s what they don’t tell you.
As usual, the lies by omission change the whole story. Stephen Letts writes about the cost of solar power:
Mr O’Neil said falling construction costs also helped spur the investment boom, with some projects then reportedly being economic at all-up revenues in the $60-80/MWh range.
… but he doesn’t mention that brown coal was not just economic, but profitable at $30/MWh.
The $80-90 MWh price for Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) had nothing to do with a paucity of renewable energy in the system. The price reflected the penalty for a power retailer who failed to buy sufficient certificates which was a non-tax deductible fine of $65 per MWh (indexed for inflation). The non-tax deductible provision meant that the cost to the retailer was around $87. Of course renewables generators set their price close to that. In order to temporarily bring retail prices down the regulator has authorised retailers to defer purchase of certificates for three years, at which time they had to procure them. Demand for certificates dropped and the non cost effective renewables industry, needing the subsidies represented by the certificates offered low cost deals to retailers. When the three year hiatus ends and retailers have to purchase outstanding certificates as well as the certificates for that year, prices will return to previous levels. The large and small scale certificate subsidies are nothing more or less than a price on carbon (dioxide) by stealth.
Brian
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