^ yeah, I read that too. Americans at home with their guns and laws to protect their home if need be...
...
Below, is interesting regarding new cases and how the government is dealing with travellers:
The last bit about mortality rate is kinda interesting because Korea has been as transparent as any country, with lots of testing and good hospital treatment, so perhaps with the right management and healthcare a rate of 2% is ballpark? Nothing more than indicative, but probably as good an indication as any?
With poorer healthcare or less testing, I suppose that rate could rise or fall quite a lot.
Last edited by Bettyboo; 11-04-2020 at 09:29 PM.
Cycling should be banned!!!
The UK has joined the black club
China Is Reopening Its Wet Markets. That's Good
"Hold the outrage. Far from being cesspits of disease, they provide clean, fresh produce.
By David Fickling
4 April 2020, 07:00 GMT+7
Here's one more issue to add to the bonfire of tensions with China brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. The country is reportedly reopening its wet markets, the fresh produce stalls associated with Covid-19's early spread in Wuhan.
It's understandable that countries now in the grip of the first wave of infection might be outraged. Many blame wet markets for starting the outbreak in the first place. Opening them again, at a moment when thousands are dying overseas, seems emblematic of Beijing's increasingly chauvinistic approach to world affairs.
Animals in wet markets are penned and slaughtered or sold live right next to stalls selling fruit and vegetables. Conditions, as my colleague Adam Minter has written, are often less than hygienic.
Places where a range of common and exotic animals mix together while bodily fluids flow freely may seem a fertile breeding ground for the virulent novel diseases that cross the species barrier to humans and occasionally become pandemics.
At the same time, let’s put the outrage on pause. Wet markets are increasingly losing ground to supermarkets in China. If they're showing resilience as suppliers of fresh goods, it's precisely because consumers regard them as a healthier and more sustainable alternative.
Supermarket Sweep
Modern stores are taking an ever-larger share of China's grocery wallet
That perception isn't inaccurate. The prevalence of food-borne microbial illness in developing East Asia suggests that far from being cesspits of disease, wet markets do a good job of providing households with clean, fresh produce. And while the origins of coronavirus remain obscure, they may have at least as much to do with more worldwide activities such as intensive farming as practices specific to Asia.
The attraction of wet markets isn't so different from that of farmers’ markets in Western countries. In contrast to a supermarket model where multiple layers of retailers, wholesalers and logistics companies stand in between the consumer and the grower, wet markets offer a personal and direct connection between shopper, stallholder and farmer.
Consumers know the food is fresh because there's generally little refrigeration, so everything must be sold on the day. If in doubt, they can ask the stallholder what's in season and which produce is best at the moment. If they think one market looks unsanitary, they can choose to shop at another.
That helps explain how wet markets have managed to hold their own in spite of the growth of store-based retail in recent years. Supermarkets now account for about half of all grocery spending in China, up from about 36% in 1995, according to Euromonitor International. Add in convenience stores and the like and so-called modern grocery has about 68% of China's retail wallet, giving wet markets less than a third.
Still, that store-based spending is overwhelmingly concentrated in packaged, rather than fresh produce. Foreign retailers that once hoped to dominate China's staple goods sector such as Carrefour SA and Metro AG have struggled and sold out of local ventures — but wet markets are still going strong.
Food for Thought
Rates of food-borne microbial illness in emerging east Asia are relatively good for developing countries
The evidence suggests this consumer loyalty isn’t misplaced. One 2015 study for the World Health Organization compared the number of years of life lost per 100,000 people due to food-borne sickness, disability and death. The region encompassing the wet market zone from China and South Korea down through most of Southeast Asia has the best record for microbial infections outside the Americas, Europe and the rich countries of the Pacific Rim.
What about Covid-19 itself, though? There's good evidence that the virus has genetic characteristics from another pathogen found in pangolins, an exotic mammal sometimes sold in Chinese markets. And it circulated extensively around one of Wuhan's seafood and meat markets last December, although the earliest infections don't seem to have been connected to the site.
Only a small minority of wet markets sell such exotica, though, so you can close down the wild animal trade without shutting the places where most Chinese people get their daily sustenance. And don't overlook the possibility that a key ingredient in Covid-19's genetic cocktail isn’t wild game, but domesticated livestock. The high-density conditions on farms are far more conducive to cooking up novel diseases, as we've written — and even pangolins are farmed in China these days.
To the extent that the mix of the raw and the cooked in Asia's wet markets is a health problem, it can easily be mitigated by better building design (such as separating meat, vegetable and livestock areas and keeping markets fully enclosed), plus the sort of mandated cleaning regulations found in places like Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.
There's plenty to complain about in the way that China downplayed and hushed up the initial outbreak until it was all but inevitable it would become a worldwide pandemic. Closing all wet markets, though, isn't the solution.
Indeed, the data suggest the problem with Asia's appetite for "warm meat" isn't that fresh-slaughtered produce is less healthy than the chilled meat from an abattoir, but that local preferences for undercooked meat and fish lead to unusually high burdens of tapeworms, flukes and other parasitic worms. That's not something different retail formats can solve."
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...n-t-a-solution
A tray full of GOLD is not worth a moment in time.
In 2021, we will be lucky to get a vaccine that is a) proven to work b) is safe and c) using tech that is able to be mass produced and so it gets started to be manufactured.. 2022 you might see it as ‘generally available’ that is outside of ‘front line’ usage and into a wider set of countries. Unfortunately it’s not like releasing a new flavour of cola NPT
Our village markets, we have two which open on different days are similar, but not being used every day the stalls are cleared every evening.
As the reporter points out, the fruit and vegetable vendors compete on freshness, ripeness and quality. The "wet" meats, fish and seafoods likewise and some are alive in aerated tanks. The discerning housewife buys from the same tried and tested vendor, until the quality falls or price increase. Similar to how quality restaurant chefs shop allegedly.
Not the "developed world's" industrial product. Which will be processed and packaged some time ago, delivered long distances and stamped with the obligatory "best by" date stamp.
But some country's "fast food" sellers style themselves as "restaurants". Go figure how they get away with it.
Last edited by OhOh; 11-04-2020 at 10:52 PM.
^^ KIL i am aware its normally an 18 month development period, this though is a global effort and certain usual process elements maybe relaxed to speed up the pipeline. We shall see.
Hmmm Coro Cola does have a nice ring to it.
^ You said it right NPT, ‘development period’, that’s the Pharma equivalent of working out what flavour cola works for your market and starting to think where to launch it. In parallel, figure out how to make it on industrial scale and start to distribute that process, materials, method and knowledge to transfer across the globe. Now you can start to gear up the few factories and supply chains that can handle that (assuming they are allowed under license from the IP holders) and finally start cranking out batches at a volume of very small % of population a month.
I ain’t being negative, but I expect what you will see being implemented and effective prior to vaccines being available is a level of biometric / electronic surveillance, control and testing that will make Orwell need to rewrite 1984. When people say everything will be different after Corona it is not that we will all be wearing masks.
^ Coro Cola 555, if you can taste it you ain’t got it
I invited a friend to TD a while back, and over the months he's popped in for the occasional look but hasn't taken up the offer; never mind the reasons, because at TD they're not going to change. Anyway we have these chats, bugger all else to do nowadays, today's got quite hectic, and these are my thoughts with his dispassionate prompting.
In most situations with an unknowable outcome the assumed worst case scenario does not happen, so pessimism is the best place to start with assumptions because then you're likely to arrive at a better than expected outcome; for the benefit of our resident naggers: you fall off a cliff and are happy to end up with a couple of broken limbs, against your expectations before the bump.
Where is our worst case scenario? I can't imagine the consequences of the world on lockdown for a whole year, you mentioned a year, and in these early days we could take that to be the worst case scenario; some prophets are predicting even farther reaching gloom, and if a year is not enough then we can expand our horizon next April. Fact is not even the experts know what this thing is, only that it's a nasty fcuker, and many measures in place today around the world are based on guesswork and common sense, but with no guarantees that they will be effective.
In terms of dead, a year from now we're likely to be in 7-digits at current rates of spread, but this should be no surprise because:
a) it's early days and we're already 10% there, with an expected surge to come, so a million dead is tragic but not unexpected, and amounts to 4 days worth of global population increase;
b) many of that million would have died anyway during the year, of age related ailments or perhaps regular flu;
c) add up the 'good result' numbers being touted by country, and you're not far off a million, as a 'good result'; these estimates were made with thoughts of the pandemic running for a couple to a few months before it either burns itself out or a vaccine is developed, which is not the end of the tunnel as it would still take more months to distribute and immunise first the world's most vulnerable and on from there;
d) the real scary bit is not 7-digits but the potential for 8- or even 9-digits.
Not sure we need to discuss what happens to the global economy after being locked down for a year, though it would probably result in far more deaths than the virus has already claimed, especially if the physical and fiscal effects are mismanaged by leaders that haven't done such a great job so far. Anyone care to kick this off, you're welcome.
^ a very unscientific analogy for what we are asking of the vaccines companies; drive a tuk tuk from Bang Na to Bang Khae in rush hour, in 15mins, carrying a grenade without a pin.. and then once they arrive, you tell them what you actually said was Birmingham via Baghdad, with a live nuclear warhead.
^ we are involved in one of the biggest guessing games we've ever known but there are many experts. Its like economists, they rarely get it right.... one of my sisters worked for GSK and no one there has a clue..but they are pinning their hopes on cola.
Not sure is this is positive or not.....
US institute revises down forecast for UK coronavirus deaths
A US institute that predicted deaths from Covid-19 in the UK would be the highest in Europe at 66,000 has revised down its forecasts as a result of new data.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, based at the University of Washington in Seattle, now predicts 37,494 deaths in the UK by 4 August, although it said the figure could be between 26,000 and 62,500.
Despite the lower figure, it still predicts the UK will have the highest death toll in Europe.
How can coronavirus models get it so wrong?
Read more
Daily deaths at the peak, which the institute still says should be around 17 April, are predicted to be 1,674, or within a range of 650 to 4,000.
The IHME is the leading collector and analyst of global disease data in the world. It says it now recognises that its prediction last week of 66,000 deaths caused alarm. Models are only as good as the data that goes into them. Having included more recent figures, as the institute said it would, the picture has changed.
“IHME expects, going forward, that as the model has more data, the range of possible forecasts likely will narrow,” said a spokesman.
The 66,000 figure was disputed by scientists whose modelling of the likely shape of the UK epidemic is relied on by the government. Prof Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London, said last week when the prediction was published that the IHME figures were twice as high as they should have been.
In a note on its website, the IHME explained how it came to the earlier high figures. “Our initial release of EEA country predictions included reported daily deaths through 5 April. For the United Kingdom, daily death data during the week prior to 5 April showed sharp and steadily increasing cumulative daily deaths,” it said.
“Since our last release, we have been able to include four more days of reported daily deaths for the UK (6, 7, 8, 9 April).” A slower rate of increase in deaths, which will have been due to the physical distancing measures taking effect, and better data on what happened in other places in the world where epidemics had peaked, “has resulted in notably lower average projections for the UK,” it said.
It had also received updated information on bed capacity and ICU capacity, it said, and had reduced its forecasts on shortages of those.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/11/us-institute-revises-down-forecast-for-uk-coronavirus-deaths
A remote Amazonian tribe has got it.
I might put tomorrow's trek to the 7 11 on hold now.
How did the IHME do at predicting Seattle area deaths?
China sends virologists & aid to Russia ahead of its Covid-19 peak
Just out of its own fight against the coronavirus, China has sent several tons of medical supplies as well as a team of virologists and doctors that will share their firsthand experience with their Russian colleagues.
Invited by the city authorities of Moscow, the Chinese medical team boarded their flight on Saturday, Russia’s consulate in Harbin, China said. The task force is comprised of “renowned Chinese virologists and doctors who have huge clinical experience and practical knowledge,” the consulate stated.
The mission, run by China’s National Health Commission, isn’t restricted to experience sharing only. Heilongjiang province, which borders Russia’s Far East, has also sent “several tons” of protective gear and equipment to support Russia’s frontline hospitals and first responders.
Last week, 26 tons of humanitarian cargo arrived from China, with face masks, respirators, hazmat suits, and infrared thermometers donated by Beijing.
In February, when the coronavirus epidemic was raging through Hubei province and the rest of China, Russia sent similar cargo of protective suits and masks, along with crucial medicine and other essentials.
Beijing officially claims to have largely defeated Covid-19 following several months of stringent lockdown and enormous effort made by the government and medical community.
Recently, it emerged that Wuhan, the epicenter of the crisis, has recorded no new cases in a week; the city is steadily opening up, as are other places throughout China.
China sends virologists & aid to Russia ahead of its Covid-19 peak — RT World News
^^ i think that is low. The current reported figures are hospital identified deaths from COVID, the unreported numbers i.e nursing homes and home deaths may never be known for lack of testing. We are at 10k and i reckon that could be 40%+ adrift. I doubt we'll ever get a real number in the UK or worldwide.
Some interesting stats from the Beeb, if you are fat bloke who's older hazza you could be fooked.
Breakdown of UK patients in critical care -Richard Warry BBC News
An analysis of 3,883 Covid-19 patients admitted to 229 critical care units in England, Wales and Northern Ireland up to Thursday has been published by the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre.
Of these patients, 871 have died, 818 have been discharged, and 2,194 were last reported as still receiving critical care.
The average age of the patients was 59.8 years. Some 72.5% were male, and 27.5% female. Some 66.4% were white, 14.4% Asian, 11.9% black, and 1.3% of mixed race.
Nearly three-quarters of the patients had a body mass index higher than the recommended healthy level of 18.5 to 25. Some 35% had a BMI of 25 to 30 - the overweight range. And 38.5% had a BMI over more than 30 - putting them in the obese range.
93.2% had previously been able to live without assistance in daily activities. Only 6.7% previously needed some assistance, and just three needed total assistance.
Focusing on the 1,053 patients who needed advanced respiratory support, the average age on admission was 61.9 years. 73% were male, 27% female. Out of this group, 66.3% died, and 33.7% are alive.
Examining the final outcome for patients admitted to critical care, for the 133 aged 16-39, 76.7% were discharged alive, and 23.3% died. For the 484 aged 60-69, 43.6% were discharged alive, and 56.4% died. For the 434 aged 70-79, 31.3% were discharged alive, and 68.7% died. And for the 107 aged over 80, 27.1% were discharged alive, and 72.9% died.
Anyone know the Polish stats?
They are sneaky bastards.
With some hot chicks.
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