2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2435520 10-Mar-2020 10:50

GV27:

tdgeek:

Phase 5: Spread of disease between humans is occurring in more than one country of one WHO region.
Phase 6: Community-level outbreaks are in at least one additional country in a different WHO region from phase 5. A global pandemic is under way.

Those things seem to be pretty obviously happening (Italy, Iran, France, Australia) etc.

Yes, there is severe sensationalism, but the ability of a command-control economy with an authoritarian state apparatus like China to 'stop the spread' used measures that would be unfathomable in the Western world i.e. locking people in their homes and shutting down a population centre bigger than NZ's entire population. I feel like this is getting lost here.

I dont see any sensationalism or clickbait. Every site says Italy has been locked down, or in full, thats correct.

China. No, no one was locked inside. You can walk outside even though you are not supposed to. Food is delivered to your door. If you are badly sick they take you to a medical facility. Italy has told everyone to stay inside. 60 million, thats also bigger than NZ. If you dont comply you get arrested. Italy has allowed its workers to go to work, that pretty much is the only difference. And I assume, quickly pop to a supermarket. They are following a policy that has worked, and its till 3 April, over 3 weeks. Its not really getting lost, yes China can more easily shut things down, but Italy is well into that also, they just had to run emergency government meetings to pass the law.

MikeB4

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#2435521 10-Mar-2020 10:51

GV27:

Those things seem to be pretty obviously happening (Italy, Iran, France, Australia) etc.

Yes, there is severe sensationalism, but the ability of a command-control economy with an authoritarian state apparatus like China to 'stop the spread' used measures that would be unfathomable in the Western world i.e. locking people in their homes and shutting down a population centre bigger than NZ's entire population. I feel like this is getting lost here.

There are 195 countries in the World. The percentage with person to person outbreaks is still small. There is a epidemic in several countries but a pandemic has not yet been reached.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

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#2435523 10-Mar-2020 10:56

MikeB4:

GV27:

Those things seem to be pretty obviously happening (Italy, Iran, France, Australia) etc.

Yes, there is severe sensationalism, but the ability of a command-control economy with an authoritarian state apparatus like China to 'stop the spread' used measures that would be unfathomable in the Western world i.e. locking people in their homes and shutting down a population centre bigger than NZ's entire population. I feel like this is getting lost here.

There are 195 countries in the World. The percentage with person to person outbreaks is still small.

Over half that 195 has infections. Italy had 7300 yesterday, over 9000 today. Those are 99% human to human spread. 9000 people didnt just arrive from Wuhan or Teheran recently. Well over 100,000 are infected or have been, maybe 100 ate bad food from Hankow market in Wuhan, the rest are human to human. I dont folloow where you see human to human is very low

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#2435525 10-Mar-2020 11:02

@tdgeek That is epidemic not pandemic. Country(eg Italy) =Epidemic, Region(eg Europe) = Regional Pandemic, majority of geographic regions = Global Pandemic

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

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#2435527 10-Mar-2020 11:03

A long article, but worth reading on-line, behind the paywall.

Not mentioned is the Trump administration overruling the CDC Advice for seniors not to fly.

Squandered time: How the Trump administration lost control of the coronavirus crisis

Washington Post

The coronavirus had already begun to spiral out of control around the world when Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, during routine Senate testimony, made a surprising claim.

“As of today, I can announce that the CDC has begun working with health departments in five cities to use its flu surveillance network to begin testing individuals with flu-like symptoms for the Chinese coronavirus,” Azar said. “This effort will help see whether there is broader spread than we have been able to detect so far.”

But there were two major problems: The cities weren’t ready, and the tests didn’t work.

In fact, when Azar’s team had sent his prepared remarks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before delivery, the agency pushed back and urged him to soften his language. State health departments had not yet been informed of the plans — and were certain to be upset by them — and the coronavirus test kits contained a faulty component that caused a spike in inconclusive results. Azar announced the plans anyway, in part because “it would be really valuable for him [to] have the news,” as one HHS official put it in an internal email.

Two senior officials said they wanted Azar to share the information because they expected the CDC to make its announcement shortly.

Azar’s bungled announcement before the Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 13 was just one of many preventable missteps and blunders in the federal government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis — the embodiment of an administration that, for weeks, repeatedly squandered opportunities to manage and prepare for a global epidemic that has killed thousands worldwide and at least 19 so far in the United States.

...Public health experts and officials faced a deluge of challenges, almost from the beginning. First there were the problems with the initial coronavirus test kits, which contained an unspecified problem with a compound that prompted inconclusive results; it took experts nearly three weeks of troubleshooting to find a workaround. Initial U.S. guidelines for testing also were overly narrow, only screening individuals who presented with respiratory symptoms and had either recently traveled to China or come in close contact with an infected person.

Infighting quickly materialized among agencies that have long had poor relationships — feuding was especially intense between the CDC and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response — and when the situation went awry, recriminations were swift. Public health officials and experts also struggled to find an uneasy equilibrium between doing their jobs honestly and transparently while trying to manage a mercurial president, who griped about what he viewed as overheated rhetoric by officials and the media.

At the White House, Trump and many of his aides were initially skeptical of just how serious the coronavirus threat was, while the president often seemed uninterested as long as the virus was abroad. At first, when he began to engage, he downplayed the threat — “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” he tweeted in late February — and became a font of misinformation and confusion, further muddling his administration’s response.

On Friday, visiting the CDC in Atlanta, the president spewed more falsehoods when he claimed, incorrectly: “Anybody that needs a test, gets a test. They’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful.”...

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#2435532 10-Mar-2020 11:13

I was speaking with our insurance broker this morning and it occurred to me in the course of that conversation that insurers are likely to actually make this worse.

Any travel booked now won't be covered for cancellation as a result of the virus so that fact might well encourage some to travel when they would be better cancelling it, adding to both their personal risk and New Zealand's collective risk.

Oddly, the broker did say that medical cover would still apply if you got sick overseas, so potentially the cost of a private jet and medical staff etc which might be $300,000 is fine, but paying to refund your $2,000 flight to avoid getting sick would not be...!

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#2435542 10-Mar-2020 11:14

MikeB4:

@tdgeek That is epidemic not pandemic. Country(eg Italy) =Epidemic, Region(eg Europe) = Regional Pandemic, majority of geographic regions = Global Pandemic

That sounds like you're shifting the goal posts honestly.

The WHO define a pandemic by: " A pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease. ". There are many experts saying that this disease qualifies as a pandemic by that definition, and others.

We're looking at Asia, Europe and Americas having sustained human to human transmission, with Oceania arguably getting there too. Obviously the goal is not to panic, but for goodness sake can we stop downplaying the issue?

I usually look to Geekzone to be a place of insight, but this thread has been an absolute mixed bag..

tdgeek

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#2435544 10-Mar-2020 11:15

MikeB4:

@tdgeek That is epidemic not pandemic. Country(eg Italy) =Epidemic, Region(eg Europe) = Regional Pandemic, majority of geographic regions = Global Pandemic

Is an infected country or countries on every continent except Antarctica not global? Its also 100 out of 195 countries.

tdgeek

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#2435546 10-Mar-2020 11:19

aspett:

MikeB4:

@tdgeek That is epidemic not pandemic. Country(eg Italy) =Epidemic, Region(eg Europe) = Regional Pandemic, majority of geographic regions = Global Pandemic

That sounds like you're shifting the goal posts honestly.

The WHO define a pandemic by: " A pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease. ". There are many experts saying that this disease qualifies as a pandemic by that definition, and others.

We're looking at Asia, Europe and Americas having sustained human to human transmission, with Oceania arguably getting there too. Obviously the goal is not to panic, but for goodness sake can we stop downplaying the issue?

I usually look to Geekzone to be a place of insight, but this thread has been an absolute mixed bag..

From BusinessInsider

Officials at the WHO have said they might have called the coronavirus a pandemic sooner, if it were a viral influenza, but since containment has worked well in countries like China and Singapore, they want to keep the focus on containment measures and not spread panic.

Not spread panic???? The pandemic that we can all see is everywhere and rampant in many areas is enougb to cause panic, it doenst need a WHO speech to do that

It's a pandemic, but we already can see that so its not new news

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#2435549 10-Mar-2020 11:23

Israel moving to quarantine everyone entering the country.

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#2435551 10-Mar-2020 11:34

Geektastic:

I was speaking with our insurance broker this morning and it occurred to me in the course of that conversation that insurers are likely to actually make this worse.

Any travel booked now won't be covered for cancellation as a result of the virus so that fact might well encourage some to travel when they would be better cancelling it, adding to both their personal risk and New Zealand's collective risk.

Oddly, the broker did say that medical cover would still apply if you got sick overseas, so potentially the cost of a private jet and medical staff etc which might be $300,000 is fine, but paying to refund your $2,000 flight to avoid getting sick would not be...!

This varies from insurer to insurer so be careful with a statement like that.

My daughter was due on a school trip to Greece and Italy which has been cancelled. The insurer, Allianz, has issued a statement that they have invoked their "epidemic" clause which means that regardless when the policy was purchased, there is NO COVER for COVID-19 related claims.

Gotta love insurance companies, they'll cover you for unexpected events, but if there are too many people that need cover, they can deny everyone with some piece of fine print. What a bunch of crims

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#2435552 10-Mar-2020 11:36

@Gordy7:

FineWine:

... snip ....

Our household has been using the cheaper option of a hose bidet, like they use throughout Asia, for well on 25 years. We then use 2 or 3 segments of toilet paper to pat dry. It then also doubles as a skid mark or splatter cleaner as well, as opposed to the toilet brush that is one of the worst harbinger of germs in that little room. Best hygienic thing ever.

@Finewine

I have often considered a bidet hose sprayer after using them around the middle east where the water temperature is a lot higher in winter.

Is the colder water temperature spay in NZ something you get used to? Need a heater? :-)

Yes it is. But you get used to it. Also be aware that on really hot days it is the opposite, well in our house anyway, as the plumping comes down the inside of the walls from the roof space.

These toilet bidet hose sets are becoming popular now in the western world and you can now buy the sets from bathroom supply showrooms. 25 years ago you could not buy them in Aussie or NZ.

Some advice:

1) ensure you have a really good hose. Our original cheap Asian one only lasted a year if that. The one we got whilst we lived in Sydney is: SILVERFLEX SHOWER HOSE 1750MM CHROME we paid about A$80.

2) ensure you have a good T-piece with a separate tap off the main cistern supply. The separate tap to adjust the water pressure.

3) the actual nozzle also needs to be of good quality as well and only needs to be no bigger than 2.5cm dia at the head. Ensure you have a moderately tight spray pattern. Strangely, we are still using the original hand piece we bought in Bali 25 years ago.

4) ensure you have a really good wall mount. The plastic ones will break quick time.

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

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#2435555 10-Mar-2020 11:47

CNN started calling it a pandemic last night our time based on official definition. WHO will change status to pandemic sometime today it is expected. Pity the NZ government is so far out of touch and seems to be betting on it not hitting our shores in large numbers. Their response to both the medical and financial is woeful imo.

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#2435557 10-Mar-2020 11:48

kingdragonfly: A long article, but worth reading on-line, behind the paywall.

Not mentioned is the Trump administration overruling the CDC Advice for seniors not to fly.

Squandered time: How the Trump administration lost control of the coronavirus crisis

Similar article here (free) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51649897

But it just reinforces what I posted #2429527 1-Mar-2020 10:03

Last week I read somewhere that Humpty Trumpy had stripped millions from the Health, Sciences & Environment budgets, including the CDC but I read yesterday he is now demanding Congress release $2.4 Billion to fight this virus and the Democrats have countered requesting it should be $8.5 Billion.

Instead of listening to public health and medical experts he has been downplaying the potential impact of the virus for over a month or thereabouts. Well, from another item I have read in the last month, that is because he fired all the NO people in those departments that he stripped money from and either didn't replaced them or he put Jawohl Mein Führer people in.

Well, he is a big enough arse for it to be bitten lots times, I suppose.

So now it really is coming back to bite him and the White House. But wait isn't it all just "Fake News" blown out of proportion by the Democrats to embarrass Herr Trump during an election year.

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

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#2435564 10-Mar-2020 11:58

Geektastic:
I was speaking with our insurance broker this morning and it occurred to me in the course of that conversation that insurers are likely to actually make this worse.

Any travel booked now won't be covered for cancellation as a result of the virus so that fact might well encourage some to travel when they would be better cancelling it, adding to both their personal risk and New Zealand's collective risk.

Oddly, the broker did say that medical cover would still apply if you got sick overseas, so potentially the cost of a private jet and medical staff etc which might be $300,000 is fine, but paying to refund your $2,000 flight to avoid getting sick would not be...!

Oddly, the big statement on front page says no cover for any covid related claims. So I would take it as no medical cover surely.

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