Seaspray

Okay thank you all. Flying out in three weeks anyway and I have an embassy letter, but it sounds bad there so figured I'd go for the 60-day instead. Hopefully it's relatively quiet at the normal office!

Am I correct in assuming I can avoid the stadium and still go to Jomtien if I am filing a 60-day extension based on marriage? It looks like the alternate location is ONLY for 30-day extensions right?

3 hours ago, WaveHunter said:

These are absolutely undeniable facts from extremely reliable sources, the most noteworthy being The Lancet in the case of the initial NCOV-19 cases, and I provided links to well vetted sources on the other two points even though most people widely accept them as facts now.

I wouldn't bother. They aren't going to download the PDF and supplementary materials, read it thoroughly, understand it, and be able to synthesize it into a composite picture with all of the other studies available to figure out what is actually going on. That takes time, application of reason, and a little bit of inductive intuition to see beyond the surface that is presented in the New York times. Digging deeper than Twitter to learn about virus recombination during zoonotic transmission and that little nugget the Lancet gave is beyond keyboard warriors in general.

Far better to run off existing heuristics embedded in the mind from past events and implanted during indoctrination at your favorite institution. Then regurgitate it as if it was actual knowledge, and laugh at those analyzing real-time reports from respected and credentialed epidemiologists. So much easier.

I would suggest dropping any discussion of the 'origin' in this thread you started since it obviously touches some 'cognitive dissonance' circuit within many, and focus on the clinical presentations of the disease itself, recent accredited studies, and possible actions to prevent rapid spread. Otherwise this will likely be shut down, serving no one.

Some interesting findings from a recent Chinese study of 1099 confirmed cases from 31 provinces:

Quote

This study has shown that fever occurred in only 43.8% of patients with 2019-nCoV ARD on presentation but developed in 87.9% following hospitalization. Severe pneumonia occurred in 15.7% of cases. No radiologic abnormality was noted on initial presentation in 23.9% and 5.2% of severe and non-severe cases respectively while diarrhea was uncommon. The median incubation period of 2019-nCoV ARD was 3.0 days and it had a relatively lower fatality rate than SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. Disease severity independently predicted the composite endpoint.

Quote

Notably, fever occurred in only 43.8% of patients on initial presentation and developed in 87.9% following hospitalization. Absence of fever in 2019-nCoV ARD is more frequent than in SARS-CoV (1%) and MERS-CoV infection (2%) [19] and such patients may be missed if the surveillance case definition focused heavily on fever detection [14]. Consistent with two recent reports [1,12], lymphopenia was common and, in some cases, severe. However, based on a larger sample size and cases recruited throughout China, we found a markedly lower case fatality rate (1.4%) as compared with that reportedly recently [1,12]. The fatality rate was lower (0.88%) when incorporating additional pilot data from Guangdong province (N=603) where effective prevention has been undertaken (unpublished data). Our findings were consistent with the national official statistics, reporting the mortality of 2.01% in China out of 28,018 cases as of February 6th, 2020

[my emphasis]

Also...

Quote

The median age was 47.0 years (IQR, 35.0 to 58.0), and 41.9% were females. 2019-nCoV ARD was diagnosed throughout the whole spectrum of age. 0.9% of patients were aged below 15 years. Fever (87.9%) and cough (67.7%) were the most common symptoms, whereas diarrhea (3.7%) and vomiting (5.0%) were rare. 25.2% of patients had at least one underlying disorder (i.e., hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). On admission, 926 and 173 patients were categorized into non-severe and severe subgroups, respectively. The age differed significantly between the two groups (mean difference, 7.0, 95%CI, 4.4 to 9.6). Moreover, any underlying disorder was significantly more common in severe cases as compared with non-severe cases (38.2% vs. 22.5%, P<0.001).

Clinical characteristics of 2019 novel coronavirus infection in China

34 minutes ago, PingRoundTheWorld said:

This is just a calculation based on data which may or may not be correct/full. Also you have to take temperature and humidity into consideration - from studies we know that similar viruses remain airborne up to 24 hours in cold and dry weather, and can live on surfaces for up to 28 days(!) at 4 degrees celsius and low humidity. In high temperature (20+ celsius) and high humidity tests done on guinea pigs had ZERO airborne infections, while in cold (5 celsius) and dry there were 100% infections. In cold and humid conditions there were less infections, but still high. The virus remained active on surfaces only 1-2 hours at 40 degrees celsius and high humidity.

 

Now let's consider Wuhan/Hubei weather in January - it is usually humid year-round, but January is the dryest month of the year, and some days in January were significantly colder and dryer than others. This explains the shift in R0 between different periods you look at. In all likelihood infections will slow down as temperatures and humidity rise in China, but that of course may take months.

 

Thailand on the other hand is hot and humid year-round, including right now, so the virus is a lot less likely to spread by air or on surfaces. You'd need to be in close contact with someone sick to get infected. If there was a massive rise in cases here we would've already known about it as it's been weeks since Chinese new year. Unless government and hospitals are withholding data, of course, but I doubt they could do that at scale.

All very clearly argued and logical... except if you look in the Supplementary Materials, Table S1, you will find this calculation was based of off 140 individual case studies ranging from Beijing to Macau, South Korea and Japan, Mexico, Thailand, and Taiwan...

This is Los Alamos National Laboratory we are talking about after all, so I wouldn't discount the new estimate offhand. As you stated however, nice hot and humid Thailand would likely have slower spread, meaning hopefully medical facilities would never be overwhelmed. Let's hope.

The wife has a niece onboard as crew. Seems happy to stay. Still... reports are that 20 are sick and are being tested for the virus. Hope it's not like the Diamond Princess.