Corona Virus in Chiang Mai

[spidermike007]

Let us look at this with a bit of perspective. This particular strain seems to be a type of flu virus. In the US alone, 80,000 people died from the flu last year. Worldwide it is 291,000 to 646,000 people annually! The flu attacks the immune and respiratory systems, and those that are older, weaker, or the youth seem to be more susceptible. It is usually respiratory issues, linked to the flu. So far, with 6,000 cases and around 130 deaths, this is a mere blip on the screen, in terms of the devastation that the typical flu virus wreaks annually. So, no need to panic. Only a 3% mortality rate, and mostly older folks. 

 

However having said that, there is no avoiding panic, on the part of the public. And since Thailand is making zero effort to limit the amount of incoming tourists from China (numbers are everything here), it is bound to spread more, and tourism is going to take a massive hit. What the grossly incompetent authorities do not seem to get is that quantity over quality is never a good thing, unless you are selling one dollar items at a swap meet. It just lowers the quality of the experience for all. The tourism industry is teetering on the edge of a tragic drop, and has already been devastated by this highly destructive administration. All it needs now is a spread of this virus. It could crush millions of families dependent on tourism. 

 

Why take a chance? Who can trust the Thai authorities, and what they say? Why trust them? What have they done to earn that trust? And how many flights from China, are still coming into Thailand daily? That is a scary thought. I like the Chinese people, but do not want to be anywhere near them right now! My guess is that most of the world's people feel the same way, at this moment. 

 

An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter — the disease’s highest death toll in at least four decades.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, revealed the total in an interview Tuesday night with The Associated Press.

 

https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter/

 

The CDC said between 291,000 and 646,000 people die from seasonal flu-linked respiratory illnesses. Earlier projections from the WHO of deaths from seasonal flu — 250,000 to 500,000 per year — “are outdated,” according to the study published Wednesday in The Lancet. 

 

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/cdc-says-more-people-die-of-influenza-worldwide-than-who-estimated

 

In a typical season most flu-related deaths occur among children and the elderly, both of whom are uniquely vulnerable. The immune system is an adaptive network of organs that learns how best to recognize and respond to threats over time. Because the immune systems of children are relatively naive, they may not respond optimally. In contrast the immune systems of the elderly are often weakened by a combination of age and underlying illness.

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-the-flu-actually-kill-people/

 

 

Edited January 30, 2020 by spidermike007

[Dcheech]

Just now, spidermike007 said:

So far, with 6,000 cases and around 130 deaths, this is a mere blip on the screen,

You have just stated that it is over 10 times as lethal as the regular US flu. I am assuming this in not what you want to say.

[TheAppletons]

1 hour ago, Dcheech said:

You have just stated that it is over 10 times as lethal as the regular US flu. I am assuming this in not what you want to say.

  Thank you.  Finally, we can get over this "but the regular flu kills more people each year".  It does but it also infects a hell of a lot more people each year.  The coronavirus mortality rate is significantly higher than "the regular US flu".  

Edited January 30, 2020 by TheAppletons

[bkk6060]

2 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

So far, with 6,000 cases and around 130 deaths, this is a mere blip on the screen, in terms of the devastation that the typical flu virus wreaks annually. So, no need to panic. Only a 3% mortality rate, and mostly older folks.

Good post, but this is just the beginning. This started what just in the past month? What will the stats be in 6 months? As others have reported, Sars lasted almost a year.

People are starting to panic and it will just get worse.

Edited January 30, 2020 by bkk6060

[ThaiBunny]

Just now, bkk6060 said:

Good post, but this is just the beginning. This started what just in the past month? As others have reported, Sars lasted almost a year.

People are starting to panic and it will just get worse.

Of course they will - they all read and believe every word on Fakebook

[XGM]

There is little point comparing the number of flu cases to those of a new virus, that still shows exponential growth despite the precautionary and very restrictive measures (e,g. millions under travel ban) applied.

 

It is encouraging though that the mortality rate is significantly lower than what we've seen with SARS and MERS.

Edited January 30, 2020 by XGM

[spidermike007]

1 hour ago, Dcheech said:

You have just stated that it is over 10 times as lethal as the regular US flu. I am assuming this in not what you want to say.

No. It is not even close to the standard flu levels of mortality. Far lower. This appears to be a low grade virus.

 

During the 2017-2018 season, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) was at or above the epidemic threshold for 16 consecutive weeks. During the past five seasons, the average number of weeks this indicator was above threshold was 11 (range of 7 to 15 weeks). Nationally, mortality attributed to P&I exceeded 10.0% for four consecutive weeks, peaking at 10.8% during the week ending January 20, 2018.

 

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.htm

[bkk6060]

Maya/Nimman.

Eerie feeling here today around lunch time.

There were people eating at the bottom food court at Maya.  The top food court which is usually crowded maybe 4 people.

The rest of the place was basically empty.  Even Starbuck's empty.  Streets around Nimman not many people. The bottom photo is the main Nimman road usually many people walking to lunch or coffee.

I have never seen it like this.

Could be the low period after Chin. New Year?

Or the virus scare?

 

[BritManToo]

My misses just cancelled a table for ten at a restaurant popular with Chinese (near Ruam Chok Rimping).

She says no point in taking the risk. It would have been a free meal for me, but I'm OK missing it.

Edited January 30, 2020 by BritManToo

[bkk6060]

26 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

My misses just cancelled a table for ten at a restaurant popular with Chinese (near Ruam Chok Rimping).

She says no point in taking the risk. It would have been a free meal for me, but I'm OK missing it.

Get it to go.   ????

[orang37]

5 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

Let us look at this with a bit of perspective. This particular strain seems to be a type of flu virus. ...

Let us look at this for what it is: a corona virus, unique to the 21st. century, that has apparently transmigrated from animals to humans. While the symptoms (fever, secondary onset of pneumonia, etc.) may be shared with the regular annual influenza (types A,B) outbreaks, this is a different creature. Its ability to spread during the incubation period also distinguishes it from other viruses.

 

It is far too early, yet, to anticipate the peak infection rate and mortality outcomes. Mutations are occurring, and will occur; control efforts may be more/less successful. However, the potential for a catastrophic world-wide epidemic is there: and, it is recognition of that potential that is mobilizing governments to planning and action.

 

If you want to get paranoid: remember 1918 (clickee): the influenza epidemic of 1918

 

btw: pictures you posted without description or sources ... are those supposed to mean something ?

 

~o:37;

[Arthur Mullard]

On 1/24/2020 at 9:53 AM, opalred said:

there are virus everywhere /do we put our head in a plastic bag

 

[Arthur Mullard]

2 hours ago, BritManToo said:

My misses just cancelled a table for ten at a restaurant popular with Chinese (near Ruam Chok Rimping).

She says no point in taking the risk. It would have been a free meal for me, but I'm OK missing it.

Ruam Chok Rimping Chinatown? Has anybody given any thought to Chinatown, London? All those casinos and eateries? I hear from the UK no preventative measures in that area yet. Heathrow began screening a fortnight ago but we know that's not full proof. Not sure about Hubei travellers to the UK, not as many as here I bet.

[opalred]

china learned to be open about the outbreak /after the sars outbreak/ like here they kept it quiet 

i wish they will be open here/ not so far /telling local people to only allow Bangkok to put out reports

i was here on sars outbreak taksin told them to keep quiet as would affect tourist coming here 

i went to stay in Malaysia /they were open /thinking about there people /it hurt there economy real bad 

as a friend there had to shut her hairdressing shop  /when i came back here they were still silent about sars outbreak they should know all virus  outbreaks  have to be reported to w/h/o/

[orang37]

From the Stat website today, Jan, 30: (clickee): incidence of current corona virus epidemic may be under-reported in China

 

imho, goes to the issue of the limits of our current estimates of severity, spread, mortality.

 

~o:37;

[samuttodd]

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1.full

 

 

Hot off the press: 

This bodes poorly for white folks,  but much worse for asians.

 

 

East Asians have more receptors (over 5 times more) favoring the viral process, specifically ACE2-expressing cells.

 

East Asian A=1.00

African A=0.988

South Asian A=0.82

American A=0.79

Europe A=0.66

Edited January 30, 2020 by samuttodd

[orang37]

9 hours ago, samuttodd said:

This bodes poorly for white folks,  but much worse for asians.

This study had a sample size of only 8 people; only one was Asian. As the authors state in the last paragraph, that limits any ability to make inferences from it. There's also no data on how the human donors were recruited, the ages of all donors, etc.

 

The researchers are in Shanghai; if the seven out of eight non-Chinese in the study were resident foreigners, they could be a group with some special attributes, traits, exposure to environmental pollution, etc.

 

However, prospective studies that generate hypotheses may be useful.

 

~o:37;

[samuttodd]

This is all they've been able to put together thus far.

 

[samuttodd]

https://humansarefree.com/2020/01/bill-gates-pirbright-institute-cdc-patent-coronavirus.html?fbclid=IwAR0XWRIRsUG7Nr6wzwMp4i2yDLsp90-8lNq-zXmsh3Cd7sjaCV3FyXeU_xs

[samuttodd]

[WaveHunter]

N-CoV is FAR MORE SERIOUS THAN THE FLU...CHINESE AND INTERNATIONAL HEALTH ORGANIZATIONS AND THE MEDIA ARE GROSSLY MISINFORMING THE PUBLIC!

 

 

For the UN health body to finally acknowledge this as a global health emergency, yet add the caveat that travel and trade need not be affected is really astonishing.  The actual facts suggest this is a very serious crisis that is being minimized by official agencies, certainly in China but also in many countries abroad as well.  The facts are that this virus has a very long incubation period, it's highly infective, it's got a very serious complication rate, and it's got a fairly elevated death rate.  That sounds pretty serious to me and yet WHO is not recommending the limiting trade or travel.

 

This sounds like WHO is acting on a more political manner than they should.  This is even more apparent when they praise China for their efforts at preventing and containing the outbreak. 

 

Nothing could be further from the truth.  China has done a horrible job of it so far, and being very deceptive in reporting the true extent of this crisis.  There has been a complete lockdown of any information from people on the frontline of this crisis now (i.e.: no actual and verifiable video footage inside hospitals in over 6 days now).  All we know is what the Chinese government is allowing us to know, which is mainly in the form of propaganda.

 

A number of doctors who have tried to report the actual facts on social media have been arrested by the Chinese government.  Under the "rumours law" in China you can go to jail for 7 years and as China ramps up its' propaganda as the virus spreads, they are cracking down on criticism. 

 

I have begun seeing many news story in the last 24 hours that suggest that China is possibly cremating bodies in secret as coronavirus deaths begin to spike.  There are anecdotal reports that the crematoriums in Wuhan have been running 24/7 the last few days.  If this were true it would mean they are managing hundreds of bodies per day instead of the official total of only 213 deaths.  Granted this in not confirmed by any means and sounds ghoulish for sure but given China's past practices at concealing the truth at any costs, not at all out of the question.

 

The latest stats I've seen are 9,776 confirmed cases and 213 deaths yet many media such as CNN are still comparing this virus in terms of severity to the common flu, and a CNBC interview was aired yesterday with former White House Health Advisor who made the statement that the death rate is much lower than SARS.  Both reports are INCREDIBLY MISLEADING!

 

For those who claim that the flu is a far more serious danger, you're wrong!  Consider this:

Note that the curves for SARS and Swine flu are NOT exponential as would be expected in a pandemic, but the curve 2019nCoV IS VERY INDICATIVE of one! 

 

CNN's report yesterday with its' "Click Bait" title shown here is completely misleading the public as to the seriousness of nCoV, inferring that the Flu is far more serious than nCoV, and THAT IS WRONG!!!:

 

Why do I say this?  Consider this:

 

First of all, consider that when influenza hits, a huge cohort of the population already has immunity to it which really stops the spread.  However nobody has been exposed to nCoV until now so there is no immunity. 

 

The most critical factor to consider right now is the virus's R0 value (pronounced “R-naught”).  The R0 is the mathematical representation of how well an infection might be able to spread.  With an R-Naught of 1.0, a virus will persist but not grow appreciably in the population.  After 10 cycles or "hops", the virus will be spread to only 11 people.  In the case of Flu with an R0 of 1.28, the virus will not only persist but spread to a greater number of people.  After 10 hops 15 people will be infected.  With an R-naught of 2.0 (such as in the Spanish Flu), after 10 hops, the virus will have spread to 2.048 people.  Now consider what happens after 20 hops...2,097,157 people will have been infected!

 

NOW consider n-CoV with a R0 of 2.5-3.5:  Using the more conservative R0 of only 2.5, here is a comparison of the Flu at 1.28 R0, and the Novel Coronavirus at the conservative R0 of only 2.5 after 20 hops:

 

That is 227,373,675 people infected from nCoV after 20 hops, compared with 178 people infected from Swine Flu!

 

To downplay the seriousness of this 2019 Novel Coronavirus and compare it with Influenza or even SARS is just ridiculous and totally irresponsible!

Edited January 31, 2020 by WaveHunter

[samuttodd]

That NewCorona is Powerful bad.   Do you Realize how many Hops that is?

Edited January 31, 2020 by samuttodd

[connda]

My wife told me that a Chinese woman died in CM a few days back.  Makes me wonder if the Thai press and the English-language press are publishing different stories.  Anything and everything to protect 'tourism'?   And yet every expat here is considered a national security risk.  But the welcome mat is still out for the sought after Chinese big-spenders.  Amazing Thailand.

[connda]

On 1/24/2020 at 2:29 PM, Krataiboy said:

Don't panic!  You're far more likely to die on Thailand's deadly roads than as a victim of the latest "global epidemic".

https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/01/24/man-who-pushed-sars-dud-now-pushing-new-chinese-virus/

But I also agreed with this.  Your much more likely to die or be messed up for life by driving on Thai roads.  60 people a day die and how many hundreds injured on Thai roads each day!  - and nobody bats and eye-lash.  Keep it in perspective. 

[MalibuJay]

Central Festival is quiet too, especially at night.  Never seen it like this before.  Photos of the main food court at 8PM on Wednesday night:

[WaveHunter]

Why the 2019 Novel Coronavirus is much worse than the Flu or SARS, yet being reported by mainstream media as exactly the opposite.

 

Consider the current statistics:

 

1 Case Fatality Rate

Comparatively, this is a huge fatality rate.

 

2 R0 (R-naught value of virus)

The R0 is significantly much higher.  The R0 is the mathematical representation of how well an infection might be able to spread.  Even with a conservative R0 of 2.5, this is huge!  (see my previous post about R-naught)

 

3 Serious Complication rate (ICU bed requirement)

If the current exponential progression does not break, by Day 30, there would be 115 million cases requiring hospital bed space for over 23 million people.

 

If you examine what follows, you will see that this potential progression is valid.  I'm not saying it will happen, but there is the potential for it to happen.

 

These charts compare swine flu with N-CoV as of January 28: 

As of today, the infections already exceeded 2009 Swine Flu and are currently around 10,000 (and probably much higher than the Chinese are reporting).

 

Looking at the confirmed death rate chart, N-CoV has already exceeded the entire 2019 year for Swine Flu!

 

Here is an example of how mass media (CNN) is misinforming the public with skewed data:

Again this chart is from January 28 so already both the confirmed cases and deaths have almost doubled in only a few days.  The reason I show this chart is that it is a box chart deliberately (I think) used to create a more comforting yet grossly misleading assessment of the crisis! 

 

First of all, the death rate shown for n-Cov here is not valid since they are only dividing number of deaths by confirmed cases.  The reason this is invalid is that there is about a 7 day lag time between when a case is identified and when the person dies, so really you have to compare the total number of deaths as of today, with the number of reported cases 7 days ago to get a realistic death rate. 

 

In actuality, you really can not do this; you must wait until that statistics can be viewed from an historical perspective.

 

Worse, they are comparing this with an accurate "historical" death rate for SARS.  So CNN is trying to say that compared to SARS, N-CoV has a much lower death rate...NOT TRUE!  There is simply no way to know the actual death rate of N-Cov until reported cases and death rates can be compared from a historical perspective.

 

If you look at the comparison on a time-series basis, the picture is MUCH different:

This is as of Jan 28.  Now of course it has exceeded SARS, but more importantly, you can see that it increased much more exponentially than SARS did.

 

If you look at the data on a log chart, you get this which shows that it is still flat-lin exponential and thus still in the logarithmic phase:

 

The point is that we are still in the log phase.  Maybe the containment actions being taken by the Chinese will dial this back but with over 5 million people from Wuhan that were able to leave right before containment, that means a containment rate of 50-60 percent at best, which is very low, and much lower than 90% which is what a lot of projections are being based on.

 

The present daily increase in cases confirmed is about 40%.  Here's a spreadsheet showing projected cases and projected cases requiring a hospital bed (based on the "serious complication rate of 20% shown above.  So far the projections are accurate of actual cases:

 

If the exponential progression does not break, by Day 30, there would be 115 million cases requiring hospital bed space for over 23 million people.

 

Just to put that into perspective, in the United States there are roughly under 100,000 ICU hospital beds (most of which are usually already occupied).

 

The real concern is simply that information coming out of China is being heavily filtered, especially in the last few days.  Almost no unofficial news is being heard from, only state-sponsored information, largely in the form of propaganda.  So, even if international media wants to report actual truth about what's going on, they can not.

Edited January 31, 2020 by WaveHunter

[orang37]

imho, there is not enough solid data, yet, to engage in apocalyptic extrapolation; there is enough data to warrant the mobilization of resources going on now, and intense use of public health services, scientific scrutiny, etc.

 

While we don't know all the behind-the-scenes activities in China, it does appear that they are handling this in a very different way than they handled SARS.

 

One thing for sure is that a variety of actors (states, groups) are spinning/fabricating the news we get with a variety of agendas.

 

As Rene Dubos pointed out in his seminal 1959 book, "The Mirage of Health," one of the major factors (equal to antibiotics, he proposes) in the decline of the mortality rate from tuberculosis/pneumonia in the 1920's was the mutation that made the virus less deadly.

 

To know we do not know is not ... ignorance. To not question what we read, hear, and observe is ... stupidity. To stop being curious is  ...fatal. To infer a piece of hail falling on our head is the sky falling is ... human nature ????

 

o:37;

 

[samuttodd]

Outstanding Work there Wavehunter

 

[Throatwobbler]

In two weeks time this will have blown over and people will have stopped talking about it.

[orang37]

2 hours ago, Throatwobbler said:

In two weeks time this will have blown over and people will have stopped talking about it.

 

It seems reasonable to assume the dead won't be talking about it.

 

~o:37;