The Anti-Targ Posted February 3, 2020 Share Posted February 3, 2020 28 minutes ago, Platypus Rex said: So … what you are trying to tell is that somewhere in this world of 7 billion people, some troll (or frightened person) said something racist. And you felt it was important to point this out so that you could make sweeping, unflattering, generalizations about entire groups of people. Nope. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted February 4, 2020 Author Share Posted February 4, 2020 2 hours ago, Platypus Rex said: So … what you are trying to tell is that somewhere in this world of 7 billion people, some troll (or frightened person) said something racist. And you felt it was important to point this out so that you could make sweeping, unflattering, generalizations about entire groups of people. Were are you going with this? Fear isn’t justification for being an ass to Asians. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Anti-Targ Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: Were are you going with this? Fear isn’t justification for being an ass to Asian. Don't bother, it's just a bait trying to start a bad faith argument. Not worth the energy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platypus Rex Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 9 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: Were are you going with this? Fear isn’t justification for being an ass to Asian. Why are you pretending I was justifying "being an ass to an Asian"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platypus Rex Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 +3323 new cases lab-confirmed cases today brings the total lab-confirmed infections to 20,625 +64 new deaths brings the death total to 426. The death rate continues to accelerate, but not as rapidly as before. It is doubtful, though, that this represents the slowing down of the virus in China. More likely it represents the health services in China being overwhelmed. Multiple reports coming out of China suggest that at the epicenter, symptomatic patients are being turned away from hospitals are being turned away undiagnosed to self-quarantine at home, where many of them die. Even when they do gain admission, it is unlikely the receive priority in the use of available lab-test kits, which are presumably needed to track down and isolate the virus outside of quarantine areas. It seems likely that a great many are dying undiagnosed and being left off China's official death lists for the disease. + Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted February 4, 2020 Author Share Posted February 4, 2020 43 minutes ago, Platypus Rex said: +3323 new cases lab-confirmed cases today brings the total lab-confirmed infections to 20,625 +64 new deaths brings the death total to 426. The death rate continues to accelerate, but not as rapidly as before. It is doubtful, though, that this represents the slowing down of the virus in China. More likely it represents the health services in China being overwhelmed. Multiple reports coming out of China suggest that at the epicenter, symptomatic patients are being turned away from hospitals are being turned away undiagnosed to self-quarantine at home, where many of them die. Even when they do gain admission, it is unlikely the receive priority in the use of available lab-test kits, which are presumably needed to track down and isolate the virus outside of quarantine areas. It seems likely that a great many are dying undiagnosed and being left off China's official death lists for the disease. + Where are you seeing these reports? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platypus Rex Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: Where are you seeing these reports? Which ones? The raw numbers should be easy to find. Or are you referring to my supplemental remarks? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted February 4, 2020 Author Share Posted February 4, 2020 Just now, Platypus Rex said: Which ones? The raw numbers should be easy to find. Or are you referring to my supplemental remarks? The supplemental remarks about symptomatic patients being turned away from Chinese hospitals. And the death rate being higher than official figures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott_N Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 It's been reported locally/regionally for some time, Scot. Here's an example from today's SCMP which is the paper of record here: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3048792/coronavirus-tally-epicentre-wuhan-may-be-just-tip-iceberg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Anti-Targ Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 Under-reporting of illness and death happens for every disease. It's not unique to this disease. There will be people who get this disease who choose not to seek medical help, because they are afraid of what will happen to them and their families, and possibly not without reason. The officially recorded stats are likely to remain a pretty reasonable estimate of the overall impact of the disease, unless there is deliberate manipulation happening. But I can't see any reason to piss about trying to make things look less bad. 20K official cases of a disease that could realistically turn into a pandemic is already really, really bad. It makes no material difference if it's 40K from an optics perspective. A health system that is creaking under the weight of demand should be taking in the worst cases and sending less serious cases home with "two aspirins and call me in the morning". If they are taking this approach then death rates of officially diagnosed cases may be a high estimate of total death rates, because the medical system is seeing the worst affected people. It's a bit misleading to say that fatality rates are (or have been) accelerating. The case fatality rate has been 2% for a couple of weeks now. So that means the fatality rate has been unchanged. It has probably been around 2% ever since the disease emerged as a significant concern. Obviously 2% of a growing number of people with disease means there is an increase in the number of deaths, but that absolute number of deaths should not be used to whip up panic. The death rate is no worse than it was 2+ weeks ago. Effort needs to go into containing the spread, not worrying about death rates. Comments from health experts I've heard on radio interviews is that a vaccine is likely to be some time off, which means it's not really an option for containment. The process for getting a working vaccine into production is just so much longer than they make out in the movies. Anti-virals are more likely to be deployable sooner and might help with containment, treatment and survival. If a decent oral anti-viral can become available en mass then for most patients home-based treatment will be the best option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted February 4, 2020 Author Share Posted February 4, 2020 30 minutes ago, Scott_N said: It's been reported locally/regionally for some time, Scot. Here's an example from today's SCMP which is the paper of record here: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3048792/coronavirus-tally-epicentre-wuhan-may-be-just-tip-iceberg A Hong King paper? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Anti-Targ Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 Looks like we'll be taking in some of the Aussie evacuees. Not quite sure why we are a better quarantine option than somewhere in mainland Australia, but happy to do a favour for a friend in need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott_N Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 22 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: A Hong King paper? Yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platypus Rex Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: The supplemental remarks about symptomatic patients being turned away from Chinese hospitals. And the death rate being higher than official figures. There was, for instance, an article in The New York Times today: "A Fever of 104, Hours to Wait, And No Relief: Bed Space and Hope Dwindle in Wuhan": focusing on the example of a 67-year old patient in Wuhan, with 104 fever, being turned away from multiple hospitals, and being sent, undiagnosed and untested, to be treated at home. The family was told she probably had the new virus, but could not be admitted without a diagnosis, at least until her condition worsened. The article goes on to assert that this is not atypical, and one Wuhan resident was quoted as saying he or she knew of multiple examples in the immediate neighborhood of patients dying at home, presumably undiagnosed and untested. (Of course, Wuhan residents can only know of their immediate neighborhood, by talking to each other; as the Chinese government is aggressively scrubbing social media of any negative content concerning the tragedy). Several days ago, an article in the South China Morning Post indicated that the Wuhan authorities were offering free/cheap cremation to people whose relatives had died of a "pneumonia-like condition". This rather vague diagnostic criterion was a pretty big clue that many were dying without a lab-confirmed diagnosis. Adding 2+2, I'd say it is fairly obvious that if a patient dies without a lab-confirmed diagnosis, due to the lack of testing kits, the Chinese government has no particular motive to add that patient's death to the official tally. It would not even be strictly accurate, as it would distort the per-case mortality rate. Leaked tales of the horrific situation in hospital wards in Wuhan and their overworked staff go back at least a week or more, to a time when the official figures were far far lower than they are now. Tales of patients on cots in corridors, some right next to the bathroom, most hooked up to tubes and/or oxygen. Tales of fever patients being turned away from hospitals in Wuhan also go back a week or more. And of course, we are dealing with the Chinese Communist Party. This is what they do. They lie. And they don't care about saving lives, only about saving face. They did it with SARS. They did it with this disease too, until the sheer scale of the outbreak overwhelmed their ability to suppress it and cover it up. Now they are making a hero out of one of the doctors they tried to bully and threaten into silence. They have given him an apology. But nothing really has changed. They are still lying, still censoring, and still bullying. The leopard has not changed his spots. They have merely shifted the lies to something they can get a few dumb people to actually believe, and their faux repentance is merely intended to make the new lies seem more plausible. We probably won't see the true effects of this disease until it manages to run amok in some overcrowded impoverished city in India or Africa or South America. But it is likely that even an impoverished third world country can respond to such a tragedy more efficiently and effectively than a bunch of lying, censorious, communist bullies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platypus Rex Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said: It's a bit misleading to say that fatality rates are (or have been) accelerating. The rate of deaths per day has been accelerating. Today it was 64 deaths; yesterday it was in the 50s; the 2-3 days before that it was in the 40s each day; etc. etc. etc. And I am convinced that number only includes those who got lab-tested before they died; which apparently is not happening for a lot of Wuhan patients. The severe shortage of testing kits is a pretty infamous problem there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platypus Rex Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said: Under-reporting of illness and death happens for every disease. This is not "every disease". It is a disease in China, that the authorities already tried and failed to cover up, just as they did before with SARS. Now they have been aggressively scrubbing social media, to make sure they have a tighter control on information. That is their solution to the problem. That is their repentance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Isis Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 17 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: I traveled to San Diego for work last week and saw lots of people wearing masks while I was waiting in Atlanta for my flight. I made a point to wash my hands religiously. Are the masks everyone was wearing helpful at all? They are useful for people who are infected/potentially infected - to stop them infecting others. For people who are not infected, I wouldn't bother - unless you knew you were going to be exposed - e.g. if you had to go to a hospital for another reason and thought there might be infected people there. I'd maybe consider it then. For anyone who wants to learn a little bit from the experts we have a series of short podcasts available (there are three so far) of about ten minutes each. You can listen on Spotify. Just search for LSHTM Viral. ETA: NB there is a bit about facemasks in podcast no.3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teng Ai Hui Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 I live in Tianjin, China. It has a population of about 8 million people, so its streets are usually always crowded. Yet, nowadays when I go outside, I feel like I’m walking the streets in my podunk hometown in the Midwest in USA, which has only 3,000 people. Today, as I was walking to the grocery store, a city truck was spraying chemicals along the sidewalk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted February 4, 2020 Author Share Posted February 4, 2020 3 hours ago, Teng Ai Hui said: I live in Tianjin, China. It has a population of about 8 million people, so its streets are usually always crowded. Yet, nowadays when I go outside, I feel like I’m walking the streets in my podunk hometown in the Midwest in USA, which has only 3,000 people. Today, as I was walking to the grocery store, a city truck was spraying chemicals along the sidewalk. Do you think the PRC authorities are deliberately underreporting the disease’s impact? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platypus Rex Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 @Ser Scot A Ellison Here's another article for your curiosity: "Wuhan's Defiant Citizen Video Journalists" https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/02/04/wuhans_defiant_citizen_video_journalists_122269.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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