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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / Novel Coronavirus Update – Thursday / Friday

Novel Coronavirus Update – Thursday / Friday

by Anne Laurie|  February 7, 20204:48 am| 19 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Foreign Affairs, Healthcare

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LATEST: Coronavirus global death toll rises to at least 638 as confirmed cases reach more than 31,000 in mainland China. https://t.co/ZshjJl47Qh

— NBC News World (@NBCNewsWorld) February 7, 2020

I repeat: the numbers of people who have completely recovered from #nCoV2019 #coronavirus has doubled. https://t.co/hElmeB6qhc

— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) February 6, 2020

Li Wenliang, a Chinese doctor who was one of the first to sound a warning about the coronavirus and was reprimanded by police for doing so, has died after contracting the disease https://t.co/ZTNJuV3tK9

— Bloomberg (@business) February 6, 2020

The death of whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang in China highlights the human rights failings in #Coronavirus outbreak. It’s a tragic reminder of how Chinese authorities’ preoccupation with maintaining ‘stability’ drives it to suppress vital info about matters of public interest.

— Amnesty International (@amnesty) February 7, 2020

We maybe found the potential ? orgin host of the #Coronavirus – the pangolin. A virus strain isolated from it has 99% March with 2019-nCOV. And it was found previously at the market. https://t.co/wzaVd8nT4Z pic.twitter.com/vmDsjh8Dsk

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) February 7, 2020


“Silver lining” (if true) — pangolins are teetering on the edge of extinction due to ‘wild food market’ hunting; taking them off the menu would be really helpful.

Why is a banner saying "Don't Panic" not reassuring to me? https://t.co/Gl3BUELzXm

— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 6, 2020

BREAKING: Coronavirus outbreak alert upped to Orange in Singapore as more cases surface with no known links; more measures in force https://t.co/lTBFMJONUp

— The Straits Times (@STcom) February 7, 2020

EXCLUSIVE: Hong Kong airport to segregate all flights from and heading to mainland China from other international flights, as part of tougher coronavirus checks, quarantine measures ⁦@SCMPNews⁩ https://t.co/NdDKw4El3g

— G-DLEE (@JournoDannyAero) February 7, 2020

#Taiwan is becoming more vocal about its position in the world, especially its exclusion from the #WHO amid #coronavirus spread. https://t.co/s0EP4dyuS2

— Nikkei Asian Review (@NAR) February 7, 2020

#Thailand's tourism sector suffers from China's #coronavirus outbreak pic.twitter.com/c9FrpOydd5

— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) February 7, 2020

I don't mean to make light of the situation the folks on this cruise ship find themselves in. Sress levels there must be very high.
But this is a #2019nCoV transmission study happening in real time. I hope they've flown in some scientists to study it. https://t.co/pk98S9fxy7

— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) February 7, 2020

And, just a reminder, people in glass houses…

A 4-year-old in Colorado died from flu this week. Days before, his mom reached out to Facebook's biggest anti-vaxx group. Members told her not to take the Tamiflu a doctor had prescribed, but give him oils and elderberries and put potatoes in his socks. https://t.co/wHrt1qY898

— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) February 6, 2020

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Reader Interactions

19Comments

  1. 1.

    bjacques

    February 7, 2020 at 5:17 am

    The new season has delivered plenty of surprise twists; a Chinese Doctor Who is really stretching it.

     

     

    I’ll get my coat

  2. 2.

    Rusty

    February 7, 2020 at 5:20 am

    A more current fatality tally is 636.  That is a big jump.  The cured number is nice but that will matter more when the death toll stops accelerating.

  3. 3.

    Rusty

    February 7, 2020 at 5:35 am

    Oops, the first article had the more updated number, I ended up focussing on the larger picture.  All this hot takes a week ago about how SARS killed a lot more people are looking really stale right now.

  4. 4.

    rikyrah

    February 7, 2020 at 5:50 am

    Thanks for the update??

  5. 5.

    satby

    February 7, 2020 at 5:51 am

    CDC updates on the flu burden for this year, to continue the last item in the post.

  6. 6.

    WereBear

    February 7, 2020 at 6:26 am

    Whatever the flu was last year, it nearly killed Mr WereBear. He’s STILL recovering from it.

    Climate change and clueless authoritarians who think they can order anything around: very bad combo platter. Do not want.

  7. 7.

    Cermet

    February 7, 2020 at 6:27 am

    So a child dies and likely anti-vaxxiers helped to kill this child. These are evil monsters; also, this mother was determined to use ignorance to treat her son. Unfortunately, she can still breed – too bad she’s the one who deserves the Darwin award, not her poor child. I also bet, the child never had the flu vaccine. Just disgusting how people in this modern age still cling to any mythology rather than science.

  8. 8.

    Princess

    February 7, 2020 at 6:39 am

    This cruise ship…basically there are 3000 people who are spending their days doing nothing but breathing in the recirculated air of coronavirus victims. Every time a new case is found, the quarantine starts all over again. They’re all going to get it, one by one. If I had a family member on that ship, I would be raising hell (no doubt without result).

  9. 9.

    Elizabelle

    February 7, 2020 at 6:48 am

    They’re eating pangolins?  How dare they.

  10. 10.

    Anne Laurie

    February 7, 2020 at 6:57 am

    @Elizabelle: Hopefully, not any more!

  11. 11.

    Starfish

    February 7, 2020 at 7:13 am

    @Cermet: Her behavior is commonly propped up by libertarians in Colorado. The governor refused to sign a bill to make personal philosophy exemptions ever so slightly more difficult last year.

  12. 12.

    WereBear

    February 7, 2020 at 7:20 am

    @Starfish: Proof that libertarians are not expressing a philosophical stance so much as they are showing they never grew out of, “And you can’t make me!”

  13. 13.

    Fair Economist

    February 7, 2020 at 7:40 am

    The healthcare approach to this virus is wrong. Quarantines and even contact tracing won’t stop this (details to follow). 2019-nCoV is going to be a pandemic, and to limit its spread we will have to test every possible carrier – meaning everybody with a cough or fever on the entire planet. This will be an enormous undertaking and we must gear up for it as soon as possible.

    Why won’t current approaches work? Suppose a newly infected individual shows up in a naive group or area. There is about an 80% chance according to WHO they’ll never have serious symptoms. Suppose they infect 3 other people. About half the time *none* of them will ever have serious symptoms either. So the first person that shows up at a doctor’s office meriting testing by current protocol doesn’t show up until the 3rd generation of infections, about a MONTH (1 week 1st + 1 week 2nd + 2 weeks incubation) after the first infection.

    Further, when the first evidence of spread shows up the index case is now SEVEN degrees of separation from a few dozen asymptomatic carriers wandering about (3 back to the first infection, and four forward to the most recent infections.) Remember the story is it’s only six between any random two people in the country! This can *never* be stopped with any kind of quarantine or contact tracing.

    The only stop is to assume *anybody* with mild symptoms could be a carrier, test them rapidly, and if positive *isolate* them at home because there will not be facilities to handle the enormous numbers. That means we will have to test on a regular basis almost *everybody* on the planet with a cough or with fever. That is an enormous number of tests and it’s going to take a war footing approach to make enough. If we can test new carriers fast enough we can get R0 below 1 and control the disease long enough to produce a vaccine. Otherwise, we are all Wuhan, and I don’t mean that in a metaphorical supportive sense.

    Yes, producing billions of 2019-nCoV tests is going to be very expensive BUT it’s still a lot less expensive than tens of millions dead and a worldwide economic shutdown for the better part of a year, which is what we’re going to get otherwise.

  14. 14.

    PenAndKey

    February 7, 2020 at 8:57 am

    @Princess: Pretty much. If this were Hollywood that cruise ship would be replaced with a plucky band of heroes stuck in small town America with a military blockade and a countdown before an aerial firebombing. There’s no real good answer to the ethics involved, but they’ve essentially condemned the entire ship complement to this disease. If it goes on too long, and based on the apparent transmission speed it very well could, I expect to hear at least one story of someone trying to escape.

    @Fair Economist:

    From everything I’ve seen this is likely to be the fifth endemic coronavirus and most likely we’ll be stuck with it long term. That’s cold and flu level severity, not tens of millions dead annually pandemic levels of danger. At a 2% death rate among hospitalized patients it’s bad, but given that when it’s not a severe case the symptoms basically boil down to “what you get when you get the common cold” I would be absolutely shocked if that was even close to the actual percentage. It’s likely far, far lower and more in line with the other already endemic coronavirus strains.

  15. 15.

    Dupe1970

    February 7, 2020 at 9:28 am

    @Rusty: The mortality rate seems to be between 1.5% and 2.0%. That is concerning.

  16. 16.

    Fair Economist

    February 7, 2020 at 9:55 am

    @PenAndKey: The death rate is 11-15% among hospitalized patients. The vast majority of the current hospitalized patients haven’t been there long enough to die, which is 2-3 weeks on average. Mortality on out-of-China patients has been better because many are mildly symptomatic patients who got picked up on virus checks.

    Long-term it will probably be comparable to seasonal flu, but there will be a lot of deaths between here and there if we don’t control it.

  17. 17.

    brettvk

    February 7, 2020 at 10:29 am

    What both the antivaxxers who helped kill a child and the Asian wild food consumers have in common is a stubborn determination to embrace their ignorance and reject science. If Chinese citizens are eating wildlife for health/medicinal reasons they’re no better than the Goopsters; but I don’t know if there’s a skeptical science-based element in China pushing back against nonsense. I’m all for people living with cultural traditions if they’re harmless but I think rhinoceroses are more important than a rich guy’s worries about his penis.

  18. 18.

    Achrachno

    February 7, 2020 at 10:53 am

    What?  Putting potatoes in my socks won’t prevent disease?

  19. 19.

    Tehanu

    February 7, 2020 at 9:50 pm

    @Cermet:  She ought to be charged with manslaughter at the very least, and the people who told her that crap should be shot. Potatoes in his socks? What is this, the fkg Dark Ages?

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