Category: Wuhan Flu

Why is it wrong for a US President to Protect Americans?

2020 Wuhan Flu 32 Comments

One major disappointment throughout the Wuhan flu crisis has been the constant injection of politics by those trying desperately to defeat Donald Trump in November. Conrad Black opines on the 3M masks “controversy”:

It has been disappointing to read of Canadian outrage at the treatment of 3M Corporation by the U.S. government, which interrupted its exports of respiratory masks. At the time, the scientific experts that U.S. President Donald Trump elevated to the vice-president’s emergency task force (to protect himself from the frenzied attacks of the Democratic media and office-holders that he was a flat-earth philistine who opposed science in general), were telling him that the American health-care system could collapse under the weight of the coronavirus. The Imperial College of Medicine in London had helpfully predicted that it could kill over two million Americans. The governor of New York was predicting a requirement of 20,000 ventilators, and the president had invoked the National Emergencies Act. An American company seemed to be selling to foreign countries articles required to save the lives of Americans. The administration’s reaction was unexceptionable and no other national government would have acted differently. Fortunately, the projected death toll has been revised down drastically.

If the roles were reversed and a Canadian Prime Minister refused to do the same then she [sic] should be removed immediately.

h/t Ontario John

Wuhan Flu

Wuhan Flu 66 Comments

An R0 of 6???

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is the causative agent of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease pandemic. Initial estimates of the early dynamics of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, suggested a doubling time of the number of infected persons of 6–7 days and a basic reproductive number (R0) of 2.2–2.7. We collected extensive individual case reports across China and estimated key epidemiologic parameters, including the incubation period. We then designed 2 mathematical modeling approaches to infer the outbreak dynamics in Wuhan by using high-resolution domestic travel and infection data. Results show that the doubling time early in the epidemic in Wuhan was 2.3–3.3 days. Assuming a serial interval of 6–9 days, we calculated a median R0 value of 5.7 (95% CI 3.8–8.9). We further show that active surveillance, contact tracing, quarantine, and early strong social distancing efforts are needed to stop transmission of the virus.

And now more evidence of reinfection or reactivation.

A documentary from Epoch Times: Tracking Down The Origin

Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors

Media Wuhan Flu 19 Comments

As Scott Adams might say — two movies on the same screen! While the right was suspicious of COVID-19 modelling as part of a sinister Deep State plot to take down a roaring Trump economy, the left is now eyeing the same models as a sinister Trump plot to set himself up as a hero:

“The most cynical interpretation of all this, one I can’t quite bring myself to accept,” wrote Hayes, “is they rolled out the model showing 100k deaths after they knew it would be less than that so they could anchor everyone to that # and take a vicotry(sic) lap when ‘only’ tens of thousands died.”

(And whether you’ve realized it yet or not, the world of climate change science will never be the same again.)

WHOhan Flu

Wuhan Flu 69 Comments

He’s acting a little touchy these days:

The leader of the World Health Organisation has gone on a bizarre rant attacking Taiwan while claiming to be the victim of racist comments and death threats.
 
WHO general manager Tedros Adhanom was responding to calls he should resign for failing to condemn China’s role in covering up the coronavirus crisis which has since killed more than 87,000 people.
 
“This (racial) attack came from Taiwan,” he said.
 
“We need to be honest. I will be straight today. From Taiwan.

I wonder what set him off?

Wuhan Flu: A Lung Disease Or A Blood Disease?

Wuhan Flu 14 Comments

The evidence grows;

But as the pandemic has ground on, doctors say, they’ve found it increasingly difficult to rule anyone out as a possible COVID carrier. “We’re just seeing so many strange presentations of this that basically we’re in a state where almost anybody coming in with anything is a potential COVID case,” said Dr. Brett Belchetz, who practises emergency medicine in Toronto.
 
For hospitals dealing with limited protective equipment and long backlogs for testing, that’s a problem. It means there’s no easy way to triage patients, conserve supplies or give medical staff a mental break. “We’re taking precautions with everybody now,” Belchetz said. “We’re treating every single patient as a potential COVID patient.”
 
The range of possible COVID symptoms has already expanded dramatically from the early days of the pandemic. One colleague told Belchetz about a patient who came in with a head laceration. “Everyone assumed it was nothing to worry about,” he said. Head wounds are bread and butter stuff in the ER. But after some detailed questioning, the patient revealed how he got the cut: He had passed out and fallen. He didn’t have a cough or a fever. But he wasn’t getting enough oxygen. He got swabbed. The test came back. He had COVID-19. […]
 
For Miller, the stakes of this situation didn’t fully set in until he saw his first atypical presentation of the disease. In the early weeks of the pandemic, a woman with an erratic heartbeat came in to his ER. She had a history of what’s known as atrial fibrillation. And her heart was beating wildly, at almost twice the normal rate.
 
Miller and his colleagues focused on that; they wanted to get her heart rate under control. “A few hours later she spiked a fever and then we realized, ‘Oh gosh, there’s more to this story than just atrial fibrillation,” he said. They sent her for a swab. She had COVID-19.

Emphasis mine.

Related — As seen dropping in the streets in Wuhan: The new health struggle for COVID-19 patients: Heart failure (link fixed!)

Wuhan Flu: An Antibody Problem?

Wuhan Flu 37 Comments

Two stories out in the last few hours that I hope aren’t related.

Independent;

The UK government’s new testing chief has admitted that none of the 3.5 million antibody tests ordered from China are fit for widespread use.
 
Professor John Newton, who was appointed by health secretary Matt Hancock to oversee testing, reportedly said the tests were only able to identify immunity in people who had been severely sick with coronavirus.
 
The tests did not pass the evaluation stage, and he was quoted by The Times as saying they were “not good enough to be worth rolling out in very large scale”.

Or, there may be another explanation.

Researchers in Shanghai hope to determine whether some recovered coronavirus patients have a higher risk of reinfection after finding surprisingly low levels of Covid-19 antibodies in a number of people discharged from hospital.
 
A team from Fudan University analysed blood samples from 175 patients discharged from the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre and found that nearly a third had unexpectedly low levels of antibodies.
 
In some cases, antibodies could not be detected at all.
 
“Whether these patients were at high risk of rebound or reinfection should be explored in further studies,” the team wrote in preliminary research released on Monday on Medrxiv.org, an online platform for preprint papers.
 
Although the study was preliminary and not peer-reviewed, it was the world’s first systematic examination of antibody levels in patients who had recovered from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, the researchers said.

Meh. Probably nothing.

Related.

Wuhan Flu: Politics

Political Animal Wuhan Flu 36 Comments

Random Wuhan Politics finds and links, I may update with new content as the day goes on.

Rand Paul has recovered and is volunteering at a local hospital. Hate Twitter hardest hit.

Fire them all: Last year the WHO added traditional Chinese medicine, which uses animal body parts, to its influential global compendium. And that may yet happen.

Are you working for China? The answer: yes.

The Sanofi Smear: Or, “another day, another #fakenews hit job from the New York Times.”

Joe Biden, with an encrouaging mesasge;

Bannon On China

Chinada Wuhan Flu 22 Comments

Personal comments — I not so certain it was projection models that persuaded Donald Trump to suddenly ban flights from Europe in mid-March.

The EU condemned the measures, which it said were taken “unilaterally and without consultation”.
 
The new rules go into effect on Friday at midnight EDT (0400 GMT) and mark a major escalation from the US president, who has been accused of inaction over the coronavirus.

I think it may have been information gathering by intelligence services that pushed the red button. Epidemiologists (unbeknownst to them) provided the cover.

Related.

What if this were 1944?

Media Wuhan Flu 44 Comments

Do the press corps have amy responsibilities to the public during a wartime like situation? Or is it perfectly fine to scream the equivalent of “Fire, Fire!” in a crowded theatre?

If President Trump is a wartime president, does that make Washington reporters wartime correspondents?

Even before coronavirus, I often wondered if today’s press corps had covered the allied landing at D-Day in June 1944, if their stories would have led with the disastrous American landing on Omaha Beach, the paratroopers who dropped miles away from their targets and the submersible tanks that sunk to the bottom of the English Channel before ever touching land.

Indeed, if each of these genuine military setbacks had been the lead story, the American people might have lost the will to fight the rest of the war.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation