Coronavirus - International stories and thoughts

Health care professionals are at the forefront of this. Someone comes in with a cold? How do you know what it is or your risk factors?

 

From a long-term perspective, it will be difficult to get China to give up its system of using wet markets for handling food and wildlife, and wet markets are believed to be the source of Coronavirus.

It looks like the Chinese are going to outlaw the consumption of wildlife for food, but possibly continue to allow wildlife to be used for Traditional Chinese Medicine. And that means allowing people to eat it if that is what the doctor (or grandma) ordered. In October, Xi Jinping had a statement claiming that traditional Chinese medicine was a "treasure of China". It is doubtful that he will turn around and admit that TCM was a curse of China.

Xi stresses role of traditional Chinese medicine for "Healthy China" - Xinhua | English.news.cn

Premier Li Keqiang also put forth initiatives to preserve and expand TCM.

It's most likely that allowing TCM to continue is a way of appeasing the populace, and preventing the issuance of laws that would be difficult to enforce with a superstitious population of 1.4 billion people. When people realize that Coronavirus is an indirect result of these practices, some of them will insist on banning at least the wildlife aspects of TCM. So there will be friction regardless. Just no real leadership on the issue.

China could probably allow wildlife to be used for TCM and food if the wildlife could be raised in isolation from other species of wildlife, and harvested in a sustainable way. They would have to embrace the use of refrigeration to preserve meats, and develop a system of FDA-type inspectors for these farms. The Chinese do not trust refrigerated meats because the chances are too great that the meat might be adulterated in some way, or not kept cold during transportation, etc. The Chinese have 2 million people monitoring internet usage by Chinese citizens, but probably only a few dozen monitoring food safety.

 

Family of Missouri's first coronavirus patient broke self quarantine, St. Louis County officials say

 

should be prosecuted.

 

If the father and daughter knew of older sister's illness - and it appears they did - their attendance at the social events was immoral and irresponsible. They intentionally and willfully put their own desires ahead of the common good. It was selfish on their part.

 

Might come down to what was legally declared by the governor in the state at that time and how they were instructed to do that.

 

Whatever it was I'm glad you recovered. We never know what we might catch - my mother's mother died from the Spanish flu when my mother was only 5 years old. Trucker and I have both had the swine flu and he had it so bad he 2 needed shots of adrenalin at one point. He was so feverish he was heating the water in the cooling tub of water he had been placed. He thought he was dying. and I felt so sick I wanted to die at one point. Scariest part was the fact I was 6 weeks pregnant with my youngest.

 

Interesting. I wonder what we might possibly find out down the road sometime?

 

A lot of Italy on lockdown

Italy coronavirus: Italians who attempt to flee lockdown may face jail - CNN

 

Tracking the spread of the novel coronavirus

 

Man, that’s hard to imagine ...

 

I was thinking about N. Korea and how little we would know if this stuff got loose in their country. I don't know, but I have a feeling, their health services are not up to dealing with a large outbreak.

 

I'm pretty sure anyone who caught the virus in NK would be executed and cremated, in order to stop the spread.

 

Wonder what would happen if the illustrious leader contracted it? Other than executing everyone who had been in contact with him over the last couple of weeks.

 

It would mean that people went undetected and thus the disease spreading further than what is known.

 

Donald would be inconsolable if lil’ rocket man got sick. US flags at half staff?

 

There is some question about whether it is actually contagious prior to symptoms presenting themselves, but if it winds up being the case then it certainly complicates things further.

We should treat all these facts, numbers, developments etc. with some caution since it's a novel virus and thus still much to understand, which takes time.