Coronavirus - International stories and thoughts

RIP · May 10, 2020

duchen said: ↑

No worries. The virus spreads differently in the US.
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It only spreads by Bald Eagle.

duchen · May 10, 2020

RIP said: ↑

It only spreads by Bald Eagle.
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And by Blue Dragon and those two cute snakes you were talking about.

RIP · May 10, 2020

duchen said: ↑

And by Blue Dragon and those two cute snakes you were talking about.
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Also direct snuggles with murder hornets.

duchen · May 10, 2020

RIP said: ↑

Also direct snuggles with murder hornets.
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I forgot about the murder hornets

dingyibvs · May 12, 2020

6 new local cases reported in Wuhan on Sunday, and now China plans to test the entire city of 11 million within a 10 day period.

Wuhan plans to virus test 11 million residents

chemgator · May 12, 2020

If a hospital asks if you want to try a Russian ventilator, say "Nyet".

Russia examines ventilator type sent to U.S. after fires kill six

Moscow has begun investigating the safety of a Russian-made medical ventilator, some of which have been sent to the United States, after six people died in hospital fires reported to involve two such machines.

Five people died at Saint George's Hospital in St Petersburg on Tuesday - including four in a coronavirus intensive care unit, according to a local lawyer. A source told the TASS news agency that the blaze erupted after a ventilator - used to help severely ill COVID-19 patients breathe - burst into flames in the ward.

A similar fire - caused by the same model of ventilator, according to a law enforcement source speaking to TASS - killed one person in a hospital in Moscow on Saturday.

Roszdravnadzor, Russia's healthcare watchdog, said it would check the quality and safety of the ventilators in the two hospitals, and the St Petersburg hospital said it would stop using the model in question for now. At least two Russian regions told Russian news agencies they would also suspend use of the ventilators.
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So, did the manufacturer apologize and issue an immediate recall of all of their ventilators?

The manufacturer urged people to avoid rushing to conclusions.
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"Izt only tree fiye-hers, and hospital nyet burn down. Vee must have at least zixt fiye-hers to conclude manufacture problem."

chemgator · May 12, 2020

London railway worker dies 14 days after getting spat upon by someone who told her he has coronavirus.

UK railway ticket office worker dies from Covid-19 after being spat on - CNN

A British railway ticket office worker has died from Covid-19 after being spat on while she was working at Victoria station in central London.

Belly Mujinga, 47, was working with a colleague when a member of the public assaulted them, spat and coughed over them and said he had the novel coronavirus, said her union, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA), in a statement Tuesday.

Mujinga, who had an underlying health condition, was working for Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) on the station concourse at the time of the incident on March 22.
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I wonder if they got the S.O.B. on video--London has some of the most video cameras watching its citizens of any city in the world.

GatorJMDZ · May 12, 2020

gaterzfan said: ↑

Is it surprising the staff on a major CNN broadcast slot are so out of touch with current events (and/or lacking in even basic intelligence)would be allowed to transmit such erroneous information with an edit by another party? Maybe that edit is required and
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LOL. Try editing YOUR sentences first...both of them.

dingyibvs · May 13, 2020

Sweden has been an interesting case to follow. Today they just notched their 4th highest daily deaths at 147. Adjusted to US population it would be ~4500 in a day.

mjbuf05 · May 13, 2020

dingyibvs said: ↑

Sweden has been an interesting case to follow. Today they just notched their 4th highest daily deaths at 147. Adjusted to US population it would be ~4500 in a day.
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What would be your guess as to why Sweden had a higher death rate than its 3 neighbors but has about the same amount of cases relative to the population of the other 3 countries (Denmark, Finland and Norway?)

chemgator · May 14, 2020

Doctors in Italy see Covid-19 cases in children result in inflammatory disease reactions. Apparently it is similar to something called Kawasaki disease, which has nothing to do with motorcycles.

Doctors in Italy make a link between Covid-19 and rare 'Kawasaki-like' inflammatory disease in children - CNN

Doctors in Italy have become the latest to raise the alarm over a worrying spike in children getting sick with a rare but serious inflammatory syndrome they say is tied to the coronavirus pandemic.

A new study, published in the medical journal The Lancet on Wednesday, found a 30-fold rise in the number of cases of the syndrome in the Bergamo province of Italy shortly after the coronavirus pandemic spread to the region.
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The findings of the Italian doctors are similar to the observations made in recent weeks by health officials in the United States. Doctors in the United States are investigating cases of the syndrome in at least 150 children, most of them in New York. At least 17 states and Washington, DC are checking into suspected cases, according to a CNN survey.

The syndrome, now frequently referred to as "multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children," resembles another childhood condition known as Kawasaki disease which typically affects children under the age of five. The disease causes inflammation in the walls of medium-sized arteries and can damage the heart.
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chemgator · May 14, 2020

Herd immunity may take years:

No place on Earth is anywhere close to herd immunity for the coronavirus

This week, studies in Spain and France suggested that no more than 5% of those populations have developed COVID-19 antibodies. Each country has reported more than 27,000 deaths from the virus as of Thursday.

Spain's evidence shows that "large outbreaks and excess mortality do NOT produce meaningful herd immunity," William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard, said on Twitter.

In the US, where nearly 85,000 people have died, the prospects for mass immunity are no better. In April, a study in Santa Clara County, California, estimated that between 2.5% and 4.2% of residents there had antibodies. A study of Los Angeles County made a similar estimate: 2.8% to 5.6% "seroprevalence" (the term for the percentage of people who have antibodies in their blood).

A New York antibody study found that 13.9% of New York state residents had been infected with the coronavirus. In New York City, seroprevalence was as high 21.2% — but that was among people who sought out tests (meaning they might have thought they had symptoms). That's still a far cry from the 50-70% required for herd immunity.
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As contagious and stealthy as this virus is, I suspect that you will have to get to 80-90% infection rates before you get to herd immunity. When you have one person in an African slaughterhouse responsible for infecting over 500 people, that tells you that one person is capable of infecting hundreds of people under the right circumstances. If 90% of the people he is exposing to the virus already have immunity, he can still infect 50 people. That is crazy-high.

chemgator · May 15, 2020

German cafe (in Merkel's homestate of Mecklenburg) requires customers to wear pool noodles on their head to enforce social distancing.

German cafe tells customers to wear pool noodles to enforce social distancing - CNN

A cafe in Germany has celebrated its grand reopening to customers after lockdown by handing out pool noodles to maintain social distancing.

Last Saturday the owners of the Cafe Rothe in Schwerin -- a town in German Chancellor Angela Merkel's home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania -- were allowed to reopen their doors to visitors after coronavirus restrictions were lifted.

While people enjoyed the company and the weather, the motto at the cafe was: "Keep the social distance."

Rather than using floor markings and perspex screens to keep people apart, the owners of the cafe distributed straw hats with two colorful swimming noodles attached to the top.
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RIP · May 15, 2020

chemgator said: ↑

German cafe (in Merkel's homestate of Mecklenburg) requires customers to wear pool noodles on their head to enforce social distancing.

German cafe tells customers to wear pool noodles to enforce social distancing - CNN
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I'm sure you know this but it was a joke. From the article

"It was a perfect gag and of course it was funny, our customers were really into it. But what it did show to us (was) how difficult it is to keep a distance of 1.5 meters (4.9 feet),"

chemgator · May 15, 2020

Malaysia developed hostility towards foreigner immigrants due to coronavirus spreading, so they kicked out many of their immigrants (from Myanmar), and now have a shortage of 25,000 people to do things like work in rubber glove factories (Malaysia is the world leader in rubber gloves and condoms). Malaysians are unwilling to work these jobs, so deliveries on rubber glove orders have gone from one month to five months.

Coronavirus Is Bringing Out the Worst in Malaysians

Apparently, the author does not understand paragraphs.

The sequence of events is familiar. As the coronavirus spreads across an economy, livelihoods are lost and futures are imperiled. Looking for someone to blame, populists and opportunistic politicians turn to migrants and refugees. Soon, the local social media fills with xenophobia and hate, along with demands that the foreigners "go back to where they came from."For weeks, this pattern has played out with particular vehemence in Malaysia. The targeted foreigners are the Rohingya, a largely Muslim ethnic group that has faced decades of persecution in nearby Myanmar. In recent days, the situation has become so extreme that 83 human-rights groups demanded that Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin intercede. He should pay attention: Calming these tensions will ultimately protect the public health and livelihoods of all Malaysians — and quite possibly provide an example for other countries grappling with the same poisonous problem.Southeast Asia's economic development has long coincided with vast inequalities. As fast-growing Malaysia developed, low-income rural workers from neighboring countries flocked to work at palm-oil plantations, factories and the homes of the rich. Today, Malaysia has as many as 5.5 million migrant workers, the majority of whom are illegal and undocumented, out of a total population of 32.7 million. Although they’re critical to the economy, these migrants are denied basic public benefits and prohibited from formal employment. One result is that shadow-economy employers often take advantage of them.For the Rohingya, the situation is especially bleak. They make up about 56% of the 179,000 people in the country who are recognized as refugees and asylum seekers by the United Nations. Because Malaysia isn’t a party to international refugee agreements, however, they have no official recognition locally and little help from the government. Allegations that Rohingya are a drain on public resources have nevertheless persisted for years, and have only worsened amid the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.The xenophobia started boiling over in mid-March, after a Facebook post claimed that activists were demanding citizenship for Malaysia's Rohingya. Within days, racist and threatening comments were spreading across social media. At least five petitions demanding the deportation of the Rohingya were posted to Change.org, where they garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures (they've since been removed). The government only made matters worse by rounding up undocumented migrants for fear that they’d spread coronavirus, and placing them into camps (where coronavirus will spread). Fears of violence are now pervasive, but the government appears to have little interest in tamping down the hostility.It’s hard to think of a more shortsighted response. Whether the populists like it or not, Malaysia's millions of undocumented migrants aren't going anywhere amid a health crisis that has shut borders worldwide. And the government’s efforts to control the virus internally will by necessity require testing and treating the populations it has long refused to recognize. So long as refugees are demonized, they’ll be discouraged from seeking out help or agreeing to critical measures like contact tracing.Meanwhile, Malaysia’s reeling economy can ill afford to simply jettison so much of its essential workforce. Last year, the country’s rubber-glove industry — the world's largest — had to cut output after the government cracked down on undocumented labor, leaving a shortage of 25,000 workers. Once the pandemic took hold, and recruiting foreigners became untenable, locals turned out to be less than enthusiastic about working with hot rubber all day. At Top Glove Corp., the world's largest maker of medical gloves, the lead time required to fill an order has climbed from 30 days to as long as 150.In the short-term, Muhyiddin should call off raids and other actions against the undocumented, while calling for a cessation of the heated rhetoric on social media. Over the long term, Malaysia should finally sign onto international agreements that protect such migrants, including the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, while finally cracking down on widespread discrimination. Doing so would not only help the economy and public health, but bolster a fragile multi-racial democracy that can't afford additional division. Malaysia might even show the world how to rise above the hatred.
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BLING · May 15, 2020

chemgator said: ↑

Herd immunity may take years:

No place on Earth is anywhere close to herd immunity for the coronavirus

As contagious and stealthy as this virus is, I suspect that you will have to get to 80-90% infection rates before you get to herd immunity. When you have one person in an African slaughterhouse responsible for infecting over 500 people, that tells you that one person is capable of infecting hundreds of people under the right circumstances. If 90% of the people he is exposing to the virus already have immunity, he can still infect 50 people. That is crazy-high.
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Nobody even knows how long the antibodies last, or if there is even any "immunity" 6 months or a year down the road.

It's possible there is no such thing as "herd immunity". One can't really know that without an actual understanding of how long an individual immunity is good for. I've seen nothing on that.

gator7_5 · May 15, 2020

chemgator said: ↑

Doctors in Italy see Covid-19 cases in children result in inflammatory disease reactions. Apparently it is similar to something called Kawasaki disease, which has nothing to do with motorcycles.

Doctors in Italy make a link between Covid-19 and rare 'Kawasaki-like' inflammatory disease in children - CNN
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It was all over CNN today. Scary! 200 kids in the US have it (implied to have gotten it from covid?). What they failed to tell you is this rare disease affects over 3,000 kids (and as many as 20k according to Cdc) in the US alone annually anyway. Oh, and it’s pretty easily curable.

It’s almost as if CNN purposely left out historical context and information on the disease for shock value. Almost. But they are better than that.

intimigator1 · May 15, 2020

chemgator said: ↑

Malaysia developed hostility towards foreigner immigrants due to coronavirus spreading, so they kicked out many of their immigrants (from Myanmar), and now have a shortage of 25,000 people to do things like work in rubber glove factories (Malaysia is the world leader in rubber gloves and condoms). Malaysians are unwilling to work these jobs, so deliveries on rubber glove orders have gone from one month to five months.

Coronavirus Is Bringing Out the Worst in Malaysians

Apparently, the author does not understand paragraphs.
Click to expand...

The same issue is coming to the Maldives. They are shipping out all their "slave" labor from Bangladesh and now the Indian/Sri Lankan are going. My wife and I joke that Maldivians are too "special" to pick up garbage or cook food etc. so this is going to disrupt their way of life a ton. The resorts rely heavily on the Bangladeshi and Indian workers and there is no way the Maldivians can fill those positions. The resorts are going to be hurting.

G8trGr8t · May 15, 2020

Mexico oil workers covid death rate higher than Mexican nurses

Pemex’s Virus Death Toll Soars Higher Than Nurses in Mexico

A report from the health ministry released on Monday showed that 16 nurses have died from the deadly virus. Petroleos Mexicanos, the state oil company, reported the deaths of 28 workers and one contract worker over the same period. Pemex has about 30% fewer employees than there are nurses in the public health care system.

While it may be less dangerous to be a nurse, numbers for deaths of doctors are slightly higher than for Pemex workers, at 66 as of Monday.

Another eight Pemex workers have died since Monday from the fast-spreading coronavirus, with as many as four reported in a single day. The 36 deceased Pemex workers represent almost 1% of the 4,477 registered deaths from Covid-19 in Mexico.

Pemex has been criticized for not moving quickly enough to prevent the virus from spreading. It began evacuating offshore platform workers in late April. In March, hundreds of people including Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gathered at Pemex’s offices in Mexico City to celebrate Mexico’s oil expropriation of 1938, a holiday, even as coronavirus cases surged globally and international health authorities urged countries to practice social distancing.

chemgator · May 16, 2020

China confirms U.S. accusation that they destroyed samples; claims that they did it for "bio-safety". Apparently, even their Level 4 Biohazard personnel were scared of it.

China confirms US accusations that it destroyed early samples of the novel coronavirus, but says it was done for 'biosafety reasons'

China acknowledged that it instructed unauthorized laboratories to destroy samples of the novel coronavirus — but for "biosafety reasons."

An official with the Chinese National Health Commission said on Friday that the samples were destroyed in line with public health laws and to "prevent the risk to laboratory biological safety."

But he insisted that it was not done to cover up or hide samples from other countries — an accusation that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had previously made.

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