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Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

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Not all heroes wear capes.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

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If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

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The revolution will be supervised.

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Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

It’s a new day. Light all those Biden polls of young people on fire and throw away the ashes.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

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Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

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Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update (International) – Thursday/Friday, April 2/3

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update (International) – Thursday/Friday, April 2/3

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I’ve been collecting, but not posting, a vast number of China-related coronavirus links; at the moment, it’s impossible for me to sort out the valid information from the propaganda, from both sides. But one thing we know: China had the misfortune of being first in this particular pandemic, so the rest of us look to Wuhan and environs for clues for what we should expect in the near future…

Speaking of countries where we can’t tell what’s real and what’s propaganda — especially given the current Oval Office squatter:

Elsewhere…



Ramadan begins (approximately) April 23, this year:

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  1. 1.

    raven

    A widely beloved restaurateur has killed herself here in Athens. She’d faced many hurdles in the past few years and no one really knows what pushed her over the edge but this can’t have helped.

  2. 2.

    debbie

    A FB friend shared this BBC article: How Will Coronavirus Change the World?

    Also, NPR reported on individuals’ efforts to make masks and other PPE. A university in Iowa has remained open so they could produce face shields on their 3D printers. A guy proudly stated they had delivered their first shipment of 1,500 shields to the government stockpile. Great, there they will sit until they rot away, part of Jared’s personal hoard.

  4. 4.

    debbie

    @raven:

    I saw you posting about this last night. Horrible and sad at the same time. I’m so sorry for your community’s loss. Everyone matters.

  9. 9.

    Mary G

    The EU lady used Hillary Clinton’s slogan Stronger Together. I think she’s the one that snubbed Ivanka too. I love her.

  10. 10.

    Skepticat

    The medical supplies going to and from between the U.S. and China are like a demonic ping-pong game. But nobody wins.

  11. 11.

    Amir Khalid

    I reckon it’s better than even odds that Eid al-Fitri celebrations in the traditional style — Eid prayers, the obligatory visit to family members’ graves, visiting friends and family — will not be happening this year. What’s more, Saudi Arabia is already telling Muslims around the world to hold off on their Haj plans (for late July) until further notice.

  12. 12.

    Amir Khalid

    At a time like this, organisations like WHO need to ignore the political fiction that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China. That history is not what’s important now.

  13. 13.

    YY_Sima Qian

    I am rather annoyed by the WAPO article speculating on the number of COVID19 deaths in Wuhan, utterly shoddy journalism, credulous regurgitating wild claims made in the Radio Free Asia report. There are a number of glaring logical fallacies that should have been blindingly obvious to anyone with a brain:

    1. The 42,000 and 46,800 figures are guesstimates of all deaths in Wuhan during the two months of lock down. It should not take a genius to figure out that people still die of other causes in Wuhan even if there is no COVID-19 epidemic, so to assign all of the guesstimated numbers to COVID-19 related deaths is either idiotic or transparently dishonest. Since the speculations concern seven funeral homes in Wuhan, they cover the entire metropolitan region. The three larger funeral homes serve the urban area (~15 million residents, ~ 11 million permanent residents, ~ 9 million with residential permits, ~ 10 million at the start of the lock down), three smaller ones serve the outlying townships and villages (~ 8 million residents), and one small one serving the Muslim population. I can’t find reliable statistics for annual death rate for Wuhan, so I will use NYC as surrogate, both having ~ 81 yrs of average life expectancy. NYC has ~ 800 deaths / 100,000 per year. If we assume the same for Wuhan, that translates to 30,000 “baseline” deaths if one uses the normal 23 million population for Metro Wuhan, or 24,000 “baseline” deaths if one uses the 18 million population for Metro Wuhan at start of the shut down. I think it would be much closer to the former, as the 5 million people who left Wuhan since the start of Chinese New Year travel period from mid-Jan. are young students (1+ million) and factory workers, and middle aged menial workers and professionals. These people are not likely to suddenly drop dead. On the hand, there were very few traffic and industrial accidents during lock down. Call it ~ 27,500 deaths as baseline.
    2. The speculation based on urns is also baseless, convincing only to people without any first hand knowledge of Wuhan. The speculative back of the envelop calculation assumes 500 urns given / day (Hankou Funeral Home on 3/23, as reported by Caixin) X 7 funeral homes X 12 days = 42,000 deaths. Problem is, there is no confirmation that Hankou Funeral Home will give out 500 urns of ashes everyday until the Tomb Sweeping Festival. Furthermore, Hankou Funeral Home is also the largest of the seven serving Metro Wuhan, so one cannot just assume all of the other funeral homes are also giving out 500 urns a day, every day until Tomb Sweeping Festival.
    3. I will not even attempt to work out the assumptions used for 46,800 deaths, from 84 furnaces. First, I highly doubt there are 84 furnaces across the seven funeral homes in Wuhan, the largest may have 12. Second, it seems to assume all furnaces were running 24/7 for 30 consecutive days (46,800 / 1560), but no furnace can run non-stop for that long without maintenance. Third,  Finally, there is no way to divide any of the numbers claimed in the RFA article without ending up with partial bodies, which does not make sense for a back of the envelop calculation.
    4. The one person quoted in the RFA article is a “Mr. Zhang”, Wuhan resident? No other information? Is he a mid-level functionary with some inside information, or some random guy on the internet making idle speculation?
    5. My own WAG is that there may have been 32,500 to 37,500 deaths during the two months of lock down in Wuhan. 5000 extra deaths due to the COVID-19 epidemic, both directly from the disease and other causes from lack of medical resources. May be as high 10,000, as an upper bound.

    I think such pieces are the fruits of the concerted effort by the Trump administration to push the narrative focus on China, as was leaked by the Daily Beast last week, to divert attention from their miserable showing do date. There is another article in NYT describing the CIA “hunting” for real numbers in China. A lot of verbiage, but the anonymous source quoted could not venture a guess of their own? The only speculated number of deaths refers to the same RFA report, which has also been passed along by Business Insider and Bloomberg. Any Chinese speaking contractor at the CIA, or evacuated embassy/consulate staff, could have perused Chinese media and social media in later Jan. to early Feb., and concluded that many cases and deaths were missed due to lack of testing capacity. Buried in the NYT article even the CIA concluded that the Chinese authorities may not know themselves, just like the authorities in Lombardia, greater Madrid, and NYC do not know, for some of the same reasons.

    The SARS-CoV-2 virus was only sequenced on 1/6. By late Jan. both test kit production capacity and lab testing capacity was still being ramped up in China, and the early test kits were not sensitive (30% false negative even for symptomatic patients). In fact, China is the only nation to date that, when faced with limited and inaccurate testing, went to confirmation by clinical diagnosis for a while, against WHO’s recommendations. That led to a 15,000 jump in confirmed cases on 2/12, a shocking number at the time. If the CCP regime’s overriding concern was suppressing the numbers and saving face, why would it have done that? In face, it appears that treating patients and saving lives is the overriding concern for the CCP regime in this emergency, because it is deemed to be critical to regime survival.

    So, something gets planted in the Radio Free Asia, then gets picked up by conservative media, and get spread via twitter and reddit, and finally reaches the pages of reputable MSM. We have all seen conspiracy theories get seeded on conservative websites, amplified by the more “reputable” conservative media, and finally picked up by MSM. This is a similar dynamic. I find the RFA to be analogous to Russia Today, and worse than Voice of America, which I find to be similar to the China Daily. I actually find CGTN (China Global Television Network) better than all four. Its news coverage and analysis is relatively straight and objective, its propaganda element not particularly nauseatingly, as long as the subject matter is not related to China.

  15. 15.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Good for Taiwan to be donating masks.

    Its early decision to ban export of masks to Mainland China at the start of the crisis in Wuhan, at a time when Wuhan was desperately short of PPE, earned her a lot of ill will on the Mainland. Even Taiwanese tycoons organizing mask donations to Wuhan was criticized by the Tsai government. Not even a symbolic donation, in stark contrast to Japan and South Korea (who gained a great deal of good will in China, at very little expense).

    Both the PRC’s and ROC’s donations of medical supplies are inherently political, aimed to serve political ends along side humanitarian objectives. The PRC is looking to gain influence, the ROC is looking to increase her profile. It is not a coincidence that 90% of Taiwan’s masks is going to rich countries in North American and Western Europe, who can easily afford to purchase masks, while 10% is going to her 16 impoverished diplomatic allies in the South Pacific, Central America and the Caribbean (Haiti comes to mind), who can’t. In the meantime, China is sending more of her supplies and medical teams to key countries along the Belt and Road: Pakistan, Iran, Serbia, Italy, Spain.

    But hey, if the PRC and ROC want to engage in competition to see who can provide more medical supplies, the more power to them!

  16. 16.

    Dirk Reinecke

    Here in South Africa it appears the situation is under control, but I am worried about the amount of testing done. The country was essentially shut down on the 28th of March and will be locked down until 16 September. The amount of diagnosed infections remains low, around 1500, and less than 5 deaths.

  17. 17.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Some interesting claims from the China National Health Commission: 4.4% of all cases to date in China have been truly asymptomatic (i.e., did not later develop symptoms), and that their infectivity is one third of that of symptomatic cases. Not sure how either number is arrived at. I guess we will have to wait for the papers to be published in scientific journals.

    By the way, South Korea’s CFR has now creeped up to over 1.7%, and will continue to creep higher as cases resolve. Germany’s CFR is now at 1.3% and increasing steadily, for the same reason. Anyone hoping that CFR under “normal” circumstances will be < 1% will likely be disappointed.es, Both countries have done massive testing, and should be catching most of the symptomatic patients, and even some of the asymptomatic ones via thorough contact tracing. In fact, the outlier so far is China ex-Hubei (also with thorough testing and contact tracing), with CFR of 0.9%. There are still a few hundred patients on ventilators and ECMOs, however.

  19. 19.

    Dirk Reinecke

    Doh, 16 April 2020. I don’t know why I typed September. 21 days of complete shutdown, with only essential services permitted to operate.

  20. 20.

    Fair Economist

    @L85NJGT: Doctors in Lombardy said the elderly came in first, and then younger people came in. They speculated it took longer for the young to need hospitalization. This is the back end of that, plus fewer elderly left as they have higher mortality. So possibly a good sign that the epidemic is slowing there.

  21. 21.

    Brachiator

    @raven:

    A widely beloved restaurateur has killed herself here in Athens. She’d faced many hurdles in the past few years and no one really knows what pushed her over the edge but this can’t have helped.

    This is very sad. She was clearly loved by many, her family, her friends, her community. Condolences to her family.

  22. 22.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @AnneLaurie up top:

    I’ve been collecting, but not posting

    I don’t say it enough, but I am infinitely grateful to you for these daily aggregations of COVID-19 articles and tweets and other links. Can’t imagine the sheer number of hours you must spend tracking them down, culling the irrelevant or duplicative material, and faithfully posting the remainder. You’re doing valuable work here. Thank you.

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