2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2417387 13-Feb-2020 14:07

I'll post tonight, comments from my wife, ex Wuhan, as they have frequent contact with rellies up there, and her and the mum in law (who now lives here but has the apartment still in Wuhan) are on a video right now. Just a small sample, but may be of interest.

freitasm

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#2417395 13-Feb-2020 14:19

kobiak:

TBH, I'd want customs/government/any authority in NZ to advice all incoming passengers from anywhere in the world to take self controlled 14 days quarantine (who bloody knows who was next to arriving passenger on the plane and where that fellow passenger arrived from to take flight to NZ). There should be official statement and if leave needs to be taken - this should become sick leave.

I don't think it's racist to ask everyone to be aware they might be infected.

It sounds racist when only a set of people - mainly Asians - are currently being asked to be quarantined... Even if they've been in a flight with lots of other non-Asian people. Why not ask everyone landing here then?

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kobiak

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#2417397 13-Feb-2020 14:21

freitasm:

kobiak:

TBH, I'd want customs/government/any authority in NZ to advice all incoming passengers from anywhere in the world to take self controlled 14 days quarantine (who bloody knows who was next to arriving passenger on the plane and where that fellow passenger arrived from to take flight to NZ). There should be official statement and if leave needs to be taken - this should become sick leave.

I don't think it's racist to ask everyone to be aware they might be infected.

It sounds racist when only a set of people - mainly Asians - are currently being asked to be quarantined... Even if they've been in a flight with lots of other non-Asian people. Why not ask everyone landing here then?

that's what I want :D

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Scott3

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#2417418 13-Feb-2020 14:54

kobiak:

that's what I want :D

I would question if "self quarantine" would be effective. Many people will just ignore the request, especially those coming from countries with no cases.

If it was effective (or enforced), it would pretty much close our tourism industries (apparently the incubation period can be as long as 24 days, and I can't think of many holiday's that would justify that long in quarantine).

It would cause a lot of harm in other industries too, and the economic harm to NZ would be immense. That economic harm also costs lives.

What is unclear is if the above is justified. At the moment it appears low. Countries (other than china) appear to be able to manage infection, and keep numbers infected low. In this case, the benefits of long quarantine periods would be small relative to the harm caused.

Of course, the asymptotic period might mean that the appearance is completly wrong.

Fred99

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#2417421 13-Feb-2020 15:01

Fred99:

That could actually also apply for the death total - seems they've included "clinical diagnosis" to "confirmed by rRT-PCR" there, so presumably a death from pneumonia but not yet (or maybe not ever) confirmed by the RNA test may explain the sudden large increase.

That seems to be what's happened. Google translate wasn't so good on the daily report, but re-reading what didn't at first make sense, then 134 of the 243 new deaths reported were attributed to Covid-19 based on clinical diagnosis, the reported deaths of cases confirmed by rRT-PCR wasn't up as much as it first appears (109). OTOH that raises questions about what the total death toll actually is - presumably many won't have been reported in the past as being caused by Covid-19 (and probably never will be).

Fred99

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#2417426 13-Feb-2020 15:09

Scott3:

close our tourism industries

Has anybody in the industry given a forecast or even made a guess?

I have a suspicion that the door's probably already half closed - but for various reasons people don't want to talk about it.

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wellygary

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#2417431 13-Feb-2020 15:18

And now we have this: its getting murkier and murkier

China's health authorities have decided to no longer count as confirmed cases those patients who test positive but don't show symptoms. Scepticism was immediate.

The news was abrupt and, to some, surprising: Overnight, Heilongjiang, a Chinese province near Russia, had cut its count of confirmed coronavirus cases by more than a dozen.

The revision stemmed from what appeared to be a bureaucratic decision, buried in a series of dense documents from the national government. Health officials said that they would reclassify patients who had tested positive for the new coronavirus but did not have symptoms, and take them out of the total count of confirmed cases.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12308337

msukiwi

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#2417444 13-Feb-2020 15:29

Doing anything to keep the numbers down.

frankv

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#2417449 13-Feb-2020 15:39

Fred99:

I think it's a good move to include clinically diagnosed, there are cases with ie lung opacities and other symptoms highly indicative of Covid-19 who test negative. If it's deep in the lungs, it's hard to get a sample.

If it's deep in the lungs and hard to detect, then I guess it's also very unlikely to be infective.

Or do you need more than a droplet to detect it?

frankv

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#2417452 13-Feb-2020 15:46

msukiwi:

Doing anything to keep the numbers down.

Or, if the test gives significant numbers of false positives, doing anything to get the correct numbers.

Fred99

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#2417455 13-Feb-2020 15:52

frankv:

msukiwi:

Doing anything to keep the numbers down.

Or, if the test gives significant numbers of false positives, doing anything to get the correct numbers.

It shouldn't if they're using the lab procedure from WHO/US CDC. Supposed to run prepared known positive and known negative samples as controls with each batch of patient samples. False negatives is a proven fact (but this is because of sampling - not the lab). Widespread false positive, I very much doubt - with the proviso "who really knows what's going on?".

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Fred99

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#2417460 13-Feb-2020 16:06

frankv:

Fred99:

I think it's a good move to include clinically diagnosed, there are cases with ie lung opacities and other symptoms highly indicative of Covid-19 who test negative. If it's deep in the lungs, it's hard to get a sample.

If it's deep in the lungs and hard to detect, then I guess it's also very unlikely to be infective.

Or do you need more than a droplet to detect it?

What's definitively known / proven about how it's transmitted P2P etc seems to be quite close to zero. Reading between the lines of what CDC were saying about their case of having (one of?) the first US patient test positive one day, negative the next, positive the next...

So yeah - what you say seems plausible, then again 5 minutes later the patient might be sneezing or coughing out viruses anyway (or pooing etc).

Fred99

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#2417498 13-Feb-2020 16:50

218 is the confirmed total so far from the Diamond Princess.

Plenty of reasons to say "but this is different" - but wow anyway.

Scott3

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#2417517 13-Feb-2020 17:13

Fred99:

Scott3:

close our tourism industries

Has anybody in the industry given a forecast or even made a guess?

I have a suspicion that the door's probably already half closed - but for various reasons people don't want to talk about it.

In terms of what is in the media, the analysis seems limited to "we hurting" and that the last few weeks is peak time for visitors from china.

In the year ending Nov 2019, we had about 410,000 visitor arrivals from china, out of 3.9m visitors. For the year ended Sep 2019, spend from china was $1.8B out of international visitor expenditure of $11.3B.

If we assume the china origin market is gone, that means we have lost about 10.5% of our tourist volume, and 16% of tourist spend. Not a death blow to the industry, but might be for sectors of that industry that have mainly customers visiting from china (i.e. tour company who has mandarin speaking tour guides).

The real question is how this unfolds, and how that influences non-china markets. I imagine people from say Hong Kong would be pritty cautions to place thousands of dollars in bookings to a place like NZ, given that other countries (such as the Philippines) places travel restrictions on them with no notice.

The looming risk of a potential pandemic may sway people to avoid travel in general, or to travel domestically instead. It seems the cruise industry has copped more than it's share of bad press... I often book a mid winter break somewhere warm around now - planning to hold off another month or two to see how this all works out.

The counterpoint is possibly we could pick up tourists from places like the USA & Canada who were thinking of booking a holiday in Asia, but see NZ as less risky.

kingdragonfly

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#2417518 13-Feb-2020 17:16

A bit of levity in a dire situation.

Porn website offers free access to passengers quarantined on Diamond Princess cruise ship

New York Post

There is no cure for the coronavirus, but passengers stuck aboard a quarantined ship are being offered a cure for boredom – free webcam sessions with porn stars.

Adult site CamSoda is offering the nearly 3,700 people suffering from cabin fever on the Diamond Princess, which is docked in Japan, gratis access to its models.

“They are not only dealing with the fear of infection, which is terrifying, but boredom,” CamSoda VP Daryn Parker said in a news release.

“We like cruises just as much as the next guy, but without activities or human interaction, the boredom must be crippling,” he added.

“In an effort to keep their minds off of the coronavirus and to help with the boredom, we’re offering passengers and crews the ability to have fun in a safe and controlled environment with camming,” Parker said.

The offer also was extended to those cooped up aboard the World Dream — but all 35 people who had reported symptoms tested negative and everyone was allowed to disembark after a four-day quarantine in Hong Kong.
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