Gates Foundation donates $100 million for additional Novel Coronavirus response.

freitasm:

Gates Foundation donates $100 million for additional Novel Coronavirus response.

Oblivian:

freitasm:

 

Gates Foundation donates $100 million for additional Novel Coronavirus response.

 

Bill to the rescue again

Seen the Netflix doco on him? Since stepping down this is his jam
How do we make the world better. Not just better, healthier. And throwing money at viral research was only a fraction but a big focus

Yes, great doco. It was fun and a power trip making all that money, now he can double dip and enjoy putting it to good use for others. He is having his cake and eating it too, of sorts

Official update for China for today:

　　From February 0 to 2 on February 5, 31 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reported 3694 new confirmed cases, 261 new cured cases, and 21,365 close contacts who were released from medical observation on the same day. There were 640 new severe cases, 73 new deaths (70 in Hubei Province, 1 in Tianjin, 1 in Heilongjiang, and 1 in Guizhou), and 5328 new suspected cases.
　　As of 24:00 on February 5th, 31 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps had reported a total of 28,018 confirmed cases, a total of 1153 cases were cured and discharged, 26,302 cases were isolated (including 3,859 severe cases), and a total of 563 death cases. Cases, there are 24,702 suspected cases. A total of 282,813 close contacts were traced, and 186,354 close contacts were still in medical observation.
　　A total of 42 confirmed cases were reported from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan: 21 in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (1 death), 10 in the Macao Special Administrative Region and 11 in Taiwan.

 

It's starting to look more clear that exponential growth rate of new cases is reducing in China.  But total "deaths + cured" and discharged is still well under half severe cases. Can't extrapolate anything definite from that, except to say that if the epidemic was stopped, then there would still be about at least 1,000 more deaths from existing severe cases.

The Chinese Civil Service, of all levels, formerly known as Mandarins, which has been a model of bureaucratic excellence for centuries and has even been copied by western governments, use the below TV series as an educational aid for "The Need Know" and "obfuscational" doctrine and this would explain why the reporting of the 2019-nCoV has been less than truthful let alone accurate by some officials in some areas within China.

wellygary:

 

Fred99:

 

The number of confirmed cases in Japan has jumped sharply.  They had a confirmed case with an unwell cruise ship passenger, and have subsequently confirmed "more than 10" cases in fellow passengers.  So, the relatively high number of confirmed cases in Japan does not indicate that the disease has established as an epidemic.

 

 

Having an outbreak on a cruise ship will actually be very useful from an epidemiological point of view,  It will give a very good insight on the transmissibility of the disease, and the ability to control infection....

 

I'm guessing they are dropping bulk hand and surface sanitiser to this ship..

 

Historically gastro diseases like Norovirus can spread like wildfire on cruises,  

 

They've now got 20 confirmed cases from the cruise ship - but they've only tested 102 out of 3,700 (passengers and crew). 

One of them who tested positive is a NZer.

So the NZ Herald allowed a Chinese official to post an opinion piece to talk up China in the wake of coronavirus. Not much objectivity and not exactly the full story as far as facts are concerned: 

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12306528

Wonder if he's a regular columnist? :D I mean virus issue aside... hope I'm not the only one that sees a problem with letting officials from a communist dictatorship write opinion pieces in New Zealand...

NZME (NZH owners) happens to have 50% ownership of the Chinese New Zealand Herald; that newspaper has an interesting record...

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/06/17/636037/chinese-nz-herald-retracts-misleading-article#

Fred99:

 

 

 

They've now got 20 confirmed cases from the cruise ship - but they've only tested 102 out of 3,700 (passengers and crew). 

 

One of them who tested positive is a NZer.

 

I noticed that one of the alerts I got today was , NZer tests positive for Coronovirus. Total clickbait heading, as it failed to say that they weren't actually in NZ, and were on that cruise-ship that already has a lot of cases. 

arcon:

So the NZ Herald allowed a Chinese official to post an opinion piece to talk up China in the wake of coronavirus. Not much objectivity and not exactly the full story as far as facts are concerned: 

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12306528

Wonder if he's a regular columnist? :D I mean virus issue aside... hope I'm not the only one that sees a problem with letting officials from a communist dictatorship write opinion pieces in New Zealand...

• Much of the piece is dedicated to talking up china's response to the virus. I don't think anybody has any doubts that china response as been insufficient, particularly in the last three weeks. The quarantining of 50m people is epic, and possibly unprecedented.


• "open, transparent" -The Arrest of doctors, and the citizen journalist that publish accounts & videos seems to contradict this


• "The rapid increase in the number of confirmed cases in recent days is due to the new methods which help to quickly and efficiently identify the infected" - This is consistent with unofficial accounts that indicate the number of confirmed cases is constrained by the number of test kits available.


• Obviously very disappointed at the for NZ (and other contries) to go against the WHO recommendation by placing travel restrictions. - Fair enough.


• "In my view, as long as effective prevention and control measures such as enhanced quarantine for international passengers, isolation and public health observation are in place, the spread of the virus to other countries can be minimal and slow. Therefore, there is no need to resort to political means to cut off the normal movement of people between these countries and China." - Fair enough - in the mid to long term we will need to look at setting up monitored quarantine facilities, allowing Students, work visa holders etc to return to NZ, in a way that does not put our population at risk. There is a argument that this should be done without delay.


• "Medical experts expect the coming week to be crucial for the quarantine measures to take effect, and the outbreak to peak within 7 to 10 days before it can be effectively controlled" - I wish you the best.

In closing, I doubt that NZ would / could implement such dramatic measures as china has to control the virus, although factors like a lower population density, less use of public transport, being in summer, and having a good health system would help us.

I commend china on taking such drastic action to control the virus, but in the area's of open and transparent reporting there is room for improvement.

Scott3:In closing, I doubt that NZ would / could implement such dramatic measures as china has to control the virus, although factors like a lower population density, less use of public transport, being in summer, and having a good health system would help us.

I'm not sure how well NZ's "good" health system would cope.  With a few cases or a very small outbreak, sure.  But our hospital system gets clogged up fast with seasonal flu - when it's a bit worse than normal in numbers or virulence.  

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures show New Zealand languishing at just 2.8 beds per 1000 people - the same as Ireland and United Kingdom - but well below leaders Japan, on 13.4, Korea, 10.3; Germany 8.3 and Australia 3.8.

Here's the WHO guidelines for clinical management of severe acute respiratory infection (from nCoV).  If there was a large scale outbreak here, then our system would be overwhelmed - fast, and it's not going to possible to effectively treat severe cases "at home".

Half of the world media seem to be reporting that Li Wenliang has died.  The other half are reporting that he's still alive.

Assuming that he is dead, then the timeline for his case seems to be:

Infected early January.  Fever and cough 8 Jan.  ICU 12 Jan. Required ECMO at some time when in ICU.  Died 6 Feb, aged 34.

I dont think there's a country in the world that would "cope" with a new virus outbreak in a major city. Almost nobody has surge capacity, Ground zero would almost always be a lock down and recover/die at home setup once ICU's are full 

Beccara:

 

I dont think there's a country in the world that would "cope" with a new virus outbreak in a major city. Almost nobody has surge capacity, Ground zero would almost always be a lock down and recover/die at home setup once ICU's are full 

 

I'm not sure what the up to date NZ figure is, but ~ 6 ICU beds (incl. 4 ventilated) per 100,000 population indicates maybe 300 total.