Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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Coronavirus cases: 96,898.

Deaths: 3,308.

Recovered: 53,975

Currently infected: 39,615

33,194 (84%) in mild condition.

6,421 (16%) serious or critical.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

There is some more drama happening. This time in California.

So let us recap what we know. The virus infects people. Most of the people experience symptoms similar to the common cold but a little more severe and recover. But in a certain group, those that are elderly and those with preexisting medical conditions that compromise their immune system, they begin to recover but very suddenly take a turn for the worse and die.

Therefore most deaths from this coronavirus occur in high concentrations of the most vulnerable individuals. These are places like nursing homes, cruise ships and hospitals.

At the moment there is another cruise ship called the Princess Grand in trouble.

The [i]Princess Grand embarked on a 15-night cruise from San Francisco to Hawaii on Feb. 21. It is currently at sea with plans to skip the last port of Ensenada tomorrow and return to San Francisco, ahead of its scheduled arrival on March 7. [California Governor] Newsom said the ship will be held offshore until testing kits can be flown to the vessel. Of the 21 with possible coronavirus symptoms, 11 were passengers and 10 crew members.[/i]

So I hope the governor is not using the lack of test kits as an excuse to not unload passengers into quarantine sites upon arrival. Trying to quarantine passengers at sea (or on the dock) is a bad decision. See what it did to the passengers aboard the Diamond Princess. In a weeks time instead of 21 passengers, we will see a hundred infected.

These cruise ships are not designed to become quarantine facilities. California is a major hub for cruise ships. They sail out of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. So it is important for the state to get their game plan in order and quickly.

Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a coronavirus state of emergency Wednesday, hours after California announced its first death, involving a person who got sick on a cruise ship possibly more than half-filled with passengers from the state.

The death announced Wednesday involved a 71-year-old man from Rocklin, in Northern California’s Placer County, who had tested positive for COVID-19 after returning from a cruise to Mexico. The man first developed symptoms while on a Princess Cruises voyage from San Francisco to Mexico that returned Feb. 21, said Dr. Aimee Sisson, Placer County’s public health officer.

He continued to show symptoms while traveling through the Port of San Francisco, then called 911 and was transported by ambulance to a hospital in Roseville on Feb. 27. He was tested for COVID-19 on Sunday, and the results returned positive Tuesday. The patient died the next morning, Sisson said.

By one estimate, more than 50% of the roughly 2,500 passengers who returned on the Princess Grand on Feb. 21 were Californians,

The Princess Grand has now brought to surface another problem with cruises. The cruise ship he was on was the Princess Grand. After the ship returned to port it was refilled with passengers and then went on a cruise to Hawaii. The company said that 62 guests on that voyage remain onboard for a current trip to Hawaii. So now you have passengers from one voyage infecting the next round of passengers on a cruise ship. This will be a major issue for the cruise lines to solve. They will really need to determine root cause of cross contamination and take measures to combat this threat.

And the state of California needs to get these passengers off the ship and into quarantine and tested to control this outbreak.

Sources: Coronavirus cases on Grand Princess cruise ship pose new danger in California

21 people on Princess cruise ship heading toward Calif. show possible coronavirus symptoms: officials

Princess Cruises issues coronavirus 'Health Advisory Letter' warning Grand Princess passengers of connection

The main question is: do people want containment or not?

You cannot have the pie and eat it too. You need to make a choice.

The containment route is an expensive route. The free-virus-for-all route sounds cheaper, but when you start to have so many dead bodies that you need to increase your cadaver transportation staff and your cremation staff, and work in shifts, there is a social cost as well. (These are not imaginary situations: they already happened in China.)

Containment often works. Ebola, MERS, recent swine flu (on pigs, not humans), all were successfully contained.

As for the current COVID-19, there are two camps. Some people like the German Minister of Health, is ready to throw in the towel, and shift to the free-virus-for-all approach. However, WHO's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is still insisting that containment can be done and should be done.

At the beginning of H1N1, the world tried containment, but very quickly realized that (1) it was too difficult, and (2) the virus wasn't that lethal, at all. So, after one month or so, everyone switched to the free-virus-for-all approach.

Containment for COVID-19 certainly has been extremely successful in Taiwan, so far. But that's one single spot in the whole world. Containment won't work if other countries don't pour in the necessary resources. At the same time, there is a limit to each country's pocket. Germany's Minister of Health sees it as a hopeless effort to contain the virus.

The thing is, in the free-virus-for-all scenario, unless you have sufficient negative-pressure isolation rooms, or miracle drugs, you are basically letting people die like flies. I mean, look at Iran: even high-rank politicians are dying. So don't try to minimize the impact of this virus. When the virus gets close to Trump's cabinet, I think a lot of people will switch their tone. You think US has advanced drugs? Then how come people are still dying left and right?

US will surely put up a fight. Whether it'll break its bank like Germany, before the arrival of summer, is anyone's guess.

150,000 people die each day across the globe.

There is news out of the Seattle area. ASPartOfMe has touched on this.

A Washington state county, where 31 coronavirus cases and 9 deaths have been reported, has recommended to its 2.2 million residents that they should work from home to help slow the spread of the infectious disease, and further urged everyone over 60 to stay indoors.

Public Health officials in King County on Wednesday recommended that businesses allow their employees to telecommute throughout March in an effort to reduce the amount of face-to-face contact between large numbers of people during this “critical period” in the COVID-19 outbreak.

They also recommended that residents over 60, people with underlying health conditions and weakened immune systems, and those who are pregnant stay home and avoid large gatherings "as much as possible."

Tech giants in the Seattle area have implemented precautionary measures to protect their employees after two workers, one from Facebook and one from Amazon, tested positive for the virus.

An Amazon employee who works in the company's "Brazil" office in Seattle left work on Feb. 24 due to an illness, which the company later learned was COVID-19, according to an internal email on Tuesday.

Facebook alerted employees about an infected worker who was last in their Stadium East office on Feb. 21. The office will be closed until March 9 and employees were encouraged to work from home until the end of the month.

Microsoft is also taking steps to protect its roughly 50,000 employees in the Seattle area from coronavirus, advising all employees to work from home until March 25 in accordance with guidance from local health officials.

While health officials are not recommending school closures at this time, the Northshore School District in King County announced Wednesday that all school sites would be closed on Thursday for up to two weeks.

Of Washington’s 10 deaths, nine of those who died were residents of Life Care Center, a nursing home in Kirkland, a suburb east of Seattle. At least 39 cases have been reported in the Seattle area, where researchers say the virus may have been circulating undetected for weeks.

Source: Washington county recommends all 2.2M residents to work from home, tells over 60's to stay indoors

So although I do not read this as a total mandatory lockdown, it does come somewhat close.

In another interesting development - its MUTATED.

The novel coronavirus that has infected thousands of people across the world may have mutated at least once — meaning there may be two different types of the virus causing illnesses, a new study conducted by Chinese scientists suggests.

Scientists with Peking University’s School of Life Sciences and the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai in a preliminary study found that one strain — type “L” — of the virus was more aggressive and accounted for about 70 percent of the strains analyzed. The second — type “S” — was less aggressive and accounted for about 30 percent of analyzed strains.

“Although the L type (∼70%) is more prevalent than the S type (∼30%), the S type was found to be the ancestral version,” they noted.

Source: Coronavirus has mutated at least once, second strain detected: study

This may account for why the rollout of Coronavirus test kits were delayed.

It is interesting the take that radical environmentalist have concerning the coronavirus. Green fanatics are celebrating the coronavirus epidemic.

A new sickness, COVID-19 known as Coronavirus 2019, has become one of the most worrying problems on the planet these days. Certainly, it could be a serious thing in many aspects, especially for the people who become infected and, consequently, for the health systems of many countries if this number were to extend to large portions of the population. Nonetheless, there are also positive aspects. As said by the proverb, every cloud has a silver lining.

Suddenly, much to the surprise of the economic and political gurus, the solution is spontaneously arising in front of our very eyes: a virus. As in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, a microscopic Earth lifeform has finally proved to reverse the victory in what has so far been a losing war to reduce the excesses of a crazy, self-destructive world. Neither Greenpeace, nor Greta Thunberg, nor any other individual or collective organization have achieved so much in favor of the health of the planet in such a short time. A miracle happened, and, suddenly, all the excuses to avoid a reduction of contamination have been shown to be spurious. In less than two months, worldwide organizations have shown us how it is indeed possible to close museums, shut down whole towns, including such top touristic destinations as Venice, reduce the number of flights, and cancel many of the most important conferences and summits, etc. And this is only the beginning.

Source: The Benefits Of Coronavirus For The Health Of The Planet

In the face of rapidly spreading coronavirus anxiety, Americans must continue to live their lives, said emergency room [ER] physician Dr. James Phillips.

"Most of us are going to get this virus. It's undeniable. You won't find a single expert out there who is saying that this is going to be contained," said Phillips, who serves as the George Washington University School of Medicine's operational medicine fellowship director.

"And, the more we learn about it, the more we see that the spread is going to be global and, for the most part, that's OK because the data we know from China shows that roughly 98 to 99 percent of us are going to do very, very, well," he told Henry.

Most of those taken by the COVID-19 virus are older, infirmed, or those with weak immune systems and Phillips conceded that there is a "certain percentage" of Americans who are "going to get more sick than others."

"The way that this virus tends to make people sick is really by giving people pneumonia. So, a lower respiratory illness as opposed to most colds that cause upper respiratory infections." Phillips said coronavirus presented itself like pneumonia in its hosts, but the strength of the virus depends on the proximity from it and the amount of time spent around it. "The problem with pneumonia is pneumonia itself can be deadly," he said.

"Everyone," he said, "should take a deep breath."

Source: ER doctor: Americans must live their lives, 98 to 99% of people who get coronavirus will 'do just fine'

"take a deep breath" is an expression and should not be interpreted literally. It means, "stay calm and do not succumb to fear and anxiety." This term is derived for the approach of using deep breathing techniques to deal with stress and panic.

Governor Cuomo tweets
NY now has 22 confirmed #Coronavirus cases statewide – 11 new positive tests since yesterday.

Of the new cases:

-8 are in Westchester, all mild or no symptoms
-2 are in NYC, both individuals hospitalized
-1 is in Nassau County, a 42yo man, also hospitalized

undue anxiety and fear is a threat in itself. Let's fight fear with facts:

•80% of the people who get the #coronavirus will self-resolve
•Some context: There are thousands of people in the hospital today with the flu

Does anyone know how the spread of Coronavirus compares mathematically to the rapidity of the spread of Black Death?
Didn’t that disease kill 2/3 of Europe’s population?

i think it was 1/3rd, but it was ugly, yes...


also, work from home?? really, king county? how do you work from home when you make ends meet as a cashier, how do you work from home when you take inventory at warehouses 50 hours a week?

what does this even mean?

No panic here,all our shelves are still full of Purell and Lysol.They have some masks by the register but they aren’t selling.I was more concerned that no one seemed to be using the sanitary buggy wipes the store has out.

If containment is abandoned and the world basically throws up its hands and the powers that be tell all of us that basically all humans will get this virus and just deal with it, perhaps even get sick with it on purpose and get it over with then the world will be a very different place. Anyone who isn't 60-65 plus in age or isn't immuno-compromised will be potentially lethal to people who are in those categories.

China is choosing to report now that there were cases of people who recovered only to get reinfected with it again and the reinfection killed them.

Until proven otherwise, I do think there's fowl play here. I also think that the rest of the world knows next to nothing yet about this virus and that China isn't being forthcoming with information.

More likely they recovered from the virus, but succumbed to a secondary infection like pneumonia or meningitis.

That's my understanding; the virus weakens the system and an upper respiratory infection like a common cold bludgeons the immune system allowing for a lower respiratory infection like pneumonia to kill the person off. But I don't think they know if the body can build up even short term immunity to this virus. Perhaps a healthy body can fight it enough just to eradicate it and then the person can turn right around and be infected by it again thereby hammering people until they do end up dying from complications. Or it mutates so quickly that reinfections are a circular thing, weakening and killing en masse.

Rotten Cotton’s take on the origin.
It’s possible, but more likely it was just a sick animal that someone ate.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnew ... rigins.amp