Thanks Four, and a thank you to Q too for his graphical stuff. Interesting. Maybe as things develop DrM will do a bit of interpretation for us. Best not to jump to any conclusions. I'm going to give it a couple of days...

I recall a 'flu season years ago when I remarked to a local Dr I had not had 'flu - to which he replied "How do you know that?" The problem may well be wider that we can see just now, as Ben's pointed out.

R.

https://t.co/Hr0XIfK6M1?amp=1

Mortality rate in Wuhan hospital is 11%

You will recall my own estimate was 10%.

It should be noted though that many of those in this small sample did have underlying health issues.

One thing that does seem clear is that patients do respond well to treatment even if the treatment is only for the symptons which is obviously good news. The severe:mortality rate seems very high. So one source of concern is that if it becomes an epidemic in the UK is our health system being able to cope which I am skeptical of.

So the UK needs to be putting emergency contingency plans into practice to temporarily raise the capacity of the NHS to deal with the problem if necessary.

What are the "treatments"? Staying hydrated and anti-viral drugs? 

Great - thanks DrM. I'll look out for your thoughts on the progress of the outbreak when a bit more is known.

I'm just an ancient zoologist with some animal heath background - mainly tropical.

Roger

Most common treatements in that sample were Oxygen, Antibiotics, Antivirals and Immunoglobuin.

Japenese evacuation flight had positive tests.

Don't know how reliable this source is, but the stuff being said here is credible.

https://twitter.com/beeylat/status/1222684624716881925

The papers I've read on SARS suggest the virus becomes easily inactivated at high temps. This seems to confirm it and suggest that it's actually even more vulnerabe to heat than SARS.

According to the map on Wikipedia India may have had its first case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavirus_outbreak

MM feared this could come to pass. Its not yet listed on their table of affected countries though, so will need to verify further.

I have been to India and generally hygiene is poor. 

EDIT: I have just checked again and this has now been confirmed.

Crosses painted on doors and cries of "bring out your dead" come to mind, Gandalf. But against that you can sent the courage and humanity of the medical teams which dealt with Ebola. We have tackled Polio and Smallpox and many other serious diseases, so there is no reason to think we won't get on top of this one.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. That's social media for you.

R.

Perhaps my No Deal stockpile will come in handy after all 

I have now taken delivery of a large supply of medical masks which are now becoming difficult to source.

Will you be shooting rabid Brexiters?

No - they have promised to change all our lives for the better with their Brexit.

Interesting (if slightly disturbing) tool developed by the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine:

https://cmmid-lshtm.shinyapps.io/traveller_screening/

"We find that airport screening for initial symptoms, via thermal scanners or similar, on either exit or entry is unlikely to detect a sufficient proportion of 2019-nCoV infected travellers in order to avoid entry of infected travellers and therefore the potential for seeding of local transmission."

Excellent, Ben. I shall have a play with that and see what I can make of it. Well spotted.

Roger

Neither can I, SS!

I am still suffering from this XxXxXxxX cold which is driving me and the wife mental.

Quite enough for me - don't want a dose of "Metal Rat 'Flu". [Reaches for guitar and and plays a 12-bar blues intro....]

I was interested to read somewhere that current therapies for countering this new corona virus include "oxygen and raised temperature".

After my cardiac procedure last year I got a chest infection in ICU and eventually came round to find myself breathing hot stuff through my oxygen mask. Didn't like it much - it was surprisingly hot. I wonder if that's what they were talking about? I must ask DrM. I was not very communicative at the time and did not remember to ask the team about it.

R.

Russia has closed its Border with China

Phillipines case confirmed 9 days after she arrived.

That's quite worrying.

This is what bothers me about countries outside China. They have a few confirmed cases which have been isolated, but since the incubation period is up to two weeks without obvious symptoms necessarily being present during that period and since we know asymptomatic carriers can pass on the infection (witness the German confirmed cases), it is surely probable that many people have been infected in third countries who have not yet presented to the authorities and who themselves are infecting others.

Russia has closed its border with China.

York hotel in lockdown after Chinese national taken ill last night.

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/18198268.chinese-national-taken-hospital-taken-ill-york-hotel/