Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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Yep, it also provides protein. That is, if you don't mind the cyanide content.

We are heading back to the Jurassic Era level of CO2 and temperature. So, everything is getting bigger and nastier.

... Newsom declared a state of emergency over coronavirus in California, which has more than 50 confirmed cases, according to health officials. ...
... "Approximately 515 persons have been tested to date," the California Department of Public Health says. ...

A family member who is a nurse at a Hospital told me they got an email that is it hard for the hospital to get PPE equipment because of issue in China and also because people have been buying up the PPE equipment online and that is the reason why the Gov and Doctors have been on TV and the Net saying the masks and equipment won't help you
you just need to wash your hands because they are concerned the health care workers won't be able to get replacement PPE.

Officials from King County in Washington state are urging elderly people, pregnant women and others at higher risk from the coronavirus to stay home and avoid large gatherings as much as possible.

Public health officials in Seattle and King County said Wednesday that “people at higher risk of severe illness should stay home and away from large groups of people as much as possible.”

People at higher risk are classified as people age 60 and older; people with underlying health conditions such as heart disease, lung disease or diabetes; people with weakened immune systems; and people who are pregnant.

“We understand these actions will have a tremendous impact on the lives of people in our community,” the public health department for Seattle and King County said in a statement. “We are making these recommendations in consultation with [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] based on the best information we have currently to protect the public's health.”

Officials said the steps are not mandatory but are recommended to keep people safe.

Just a day after a Westchester County man was confirmed as New York’s second case of the new coronavirus, the authorities revealed on Wednesday just how readily it was spreading, saying that nine people connected to the man had all tested positive.

The sudden jump in positive results — from one on Sunday to 11 by Wednesday — reinforced what officials had warned about for weeks: As investigators traced the virus’s spread and began to test more people, the number of cases was likely to grow.

The state’s disease detectives continued working furiously, sorting through the circle of friends, family and co-workers of the people who had tested positive for the virus. State officials said they had asked more than 1,000 people to voluntarily isolate themselves.

Late Wednesday, New Jersey officials announced the state’s first case of the coronavirus, a man in his 30s who had been hospitalized since Tuesday in Bergen County, just across the Hudson River from New York City.

The nine new cases in New York on Wednesday included the Westchester man’s wife; his son, a 20-year-old college student in Manhattan; his daughter, 14; and a neighbor who drove the man to the hospital.

A friend of the man who spent time “in close proximity” with him also tested positive for the virus, as did that friend’s wife and three of their children, Mr. Cuomo said.

Officials said they were still uncertain how the man, 50, who had not been to any areas with widespread transmission of the virus, had become infected. He became ill on Feb. 22 and was admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, N.Y., five days later.

So far, public health workers have focused their efforts on determining whether any other people connected to the man were infected. They advised some nurses and doctors at the hospital in Bronxville that they would need to be quarantined. Eight employees there were being tested for the virus, Mr. Cuomo said on Wednesday.

The man is the only one of the people confirmed to have the virus to be hospitalized so far. His family is quarantined at home in New Rochelle, just north of New York City.

On Tuesday night, restaurants on a main avenue in New Rochelle were nearly empty, and store shelves had been cleared out of spray disinfectant, rubbing alcohol and bleach.

Among those asked to self-quarantine were a group of people who had come into contact with the man and subsequently attended the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington this week, the event’s organizers said in a note emailed to conference attendees and posted on Twitter on Wednesday.

The conference organizers said in the note that “to our knowledge” no one who attended the event — which typically draws thousands of people, including many members of Congress — had tested positive for the virus.

The lawyer’s 20-year-old son, a student at Yeshiva University in Manhattan who lived in campus housing, had not been at the school since Feb. 27, officials said. He had shown symptoms of the virus but was “getting better,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Classes at the university’s campuses in Washington Heights and Midtown will be canceled until Friday, school administrators said.

On Wednesday, the typically bustling campus seemed largely deserted, with streams of students hailing taxis or heading toward the subway to leave campus with luggage in tow.

In and around the university, the coronavirus was the major topic of conversation, with many students saying that anxiety had steadily risen.

“You can’t even cough without people losing their minds,” Jared Weinstein, a freshman, said as he walked through campus.

New York Law School in TriBeCa also canceled classes and closed its facilities after a student there reported having contact with the Westchester man.

The Westchester man’s daughter, who was asymptomatic, is a student at the Salanter Akiba Riverdale High School in the Bronx. The school had been voluntarily shut down by administrators on Tuesday and Wednesday and would remain closed until after the Purim holiday on March 10, Mr. Cuomo said. An associated school, the SAR Academy, would also be closed through Friday as a precaution.

The Hastings-on-Hudson and Mount Vernon public school districts in Westchester County also closed schools through Friday to sanitize them “out of an abundance of caution” after learning that a parent in Hastings-on-Hudson and two students in Mount Vernon were under self-quarantine after possibly having been exposed to the virus.

With the virus spreading, around 300 students and faculty at State University of New York and City University of New York campuses who were studying abroad in China, Italy, Japan, Iran and South Korea — all of which have been epicenters of the illness — would be asked to come back to the United States, Mr. Cuomo said.

They would travel back to the U.S. on a chartered plane and be quarantined upon arrival for two weeks, Mr. Cuomo said. The state was identifying dormitories where they would be isolated.

Several New York City employees not connected to the Westchester case, including five police officers and one public-school teacher, all of whom had traveled to an affected country, were self-isolating as a precaution, Mr. de Blasio said. Officials had not yet tested them for the virus but planned to, he said.

Asked about potential public school closures, Mr. de Blasio said the city had a “basic capacity” to provide remote learning.

The city schools chancellor, Richard A. Carranza, said that school closures would represent a “last resort” because of the many issues that significant closures would create.

My dad was telling me about a big pandemic scare being talked about on usenet a long time ago. He found one thread that had the following post:

"We are becoming a nation of cowards and whiners... scared silly by
politicians and the media.

A plane flies over NY and there is panic in the streets. The newest version
of the flu arrives and we have the media with their "instant updates" and
dire scenarios of "what might" happen. PANDEMIC! People killing pigs.
Contaminated peanuts/spinach/beef. Mad cow, ebola, bird flu, swine flu,
boo-hoo.

It is the End Of The World As We Know It!! ! ! ! ! !

Film at 11."

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searc ... uvrP6w8zkJ

A plague was moving across the U.S. last week. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were sniffling, hacking, running low fevers and complaining that their bones ached. The vast majority of adults said they had "the flu," and many tried to show their medical sophistication by identifying it as "Hong Kong flu."

In most cases, the precise identity of the affliction and the microbe causing it was unknown. Cautious doctors described their patients' illnesses simply as "URD" or "URI" (for upper respiratory disease, or upper respiratory infection) and let it go at that. Whatever its nature, the illness was emptying schools and offices, stripping military installations of active-duty personnel, and decimating Broadway casts. Jane Morgan in the title role and eight other players in Mame had to yield their places to understudies. The cast of George Ml had five out. Playing the barber in Man of La Mancha, Leo Blum became so ill that he fell off the stage, and since his understudy was ill, the stage manager had to pinch-hit. At the Metropolitan Opera, John Alexander had to give up after two acts of La Sonnambula. And in Philharmonic Hall, Pianist Jose Echaniz could not even make it past intermission.

I am old enough to remember the 1968 Hong Kong Flu Pandemic that killed an estimated "1 million worldwide and about 100,000 in the United States.Notice
1. The cavalier tone of the reporting.
2. The show went on, crowded theater and all.

Either people were not snowflakes or stupid or both.

If it only killed 1 million worldwide then it was a lot less deadly, 10 - 100 times less deadly, than the current virus. But even so it "emptied schools and offices" etc.

But yes, the attitude of the journalist is indeed quite astonshingly matter of fact, laconic even, with a touch of dead pan humour, which you almost certainly wouldn't see/get away with today.

I think that people were more used to death, to people dying around them, than now. Almost all adults had lived through a "great war".

People *seem* to be much more risk averse than they used to be. You see it in the design of children's playgrounds, etc.

I don't know how much this is because a price has been put on almost every single kind of damage that it's possible to suffer, ie how much it's going to cost the individual, their family, society generally, or the insurer.

But on the other hand the vast majority of people regularly and routinely consume huge amounts of substances which have a well documented negative effect on health and life expectancy.

In fact many humans seem in many ways to have become in fact more careless of risk, less careful with their bodies ...

[ ref Hong Kong flu 1968 ]

Just saw a headline that the death toll in China has reached 3,000.

The city of Wuhan where it started has a population of about 11,800,000.

I am no good at math. What percentage is 3,000 out of 11,800,000?

This thread started Jan 22 which was 43 days ago.

This virus is a bad thing. But it is no "Captain Trips" (name of killer super-flu bio-weapon that got lose in The Stand by Stephen King).

3000 out of 11.8 million is 0.025 percent