Oh dear. This is not good. We feared this might happen. It’s coming to pass.

I wonder if this virus could soon mutate due to the volume of cases we are seeing.

My housemate is off to Tokyo I two weeks. I suspect he may be quarantined when he gets back

probably best to delete your account in case we can catch it over cyberspace 

According to the Guardian, a communist party newspaper has confirmed his death. He was 34. Doesn't exactly conform to the prediction that victims would be old and infirm. 

Already evidence of mutation, apparantely this virus mutates very quickly. Worst thing about that is that any future vacinne may be less effective.

God knows what's going on. Confirmation of death, then denied by hospital and confirmed again.

We could be playing cat and mouse with this one. 

I have a feeling that we are going to see a rapid uptick on cases across Japan and Singapore. 

This has a long way to go just yet I think. I know the percentage increase is dropping each, but I wonder if that’s more to do with the volume of cases they are able to diagnose in a given day.

And the timescale between reported onset of symptoms (10th Jan) and death (7th Feb) is very odd, and doesn't seem to fit the normal Coronavirus pattern. 

No, because the Tory  government leased the Olympic Stadium to the (Tory donor) Dildo Twins for 3 quid a year, and they've torn out all the athletics facilities. 

If it takes nearly a month to kill you then the mortality rate is ridiculously underestimated.

Forget 10%, 30%+

Should point out I'm not saying the mortality rate is 30%.

Thing that really worries me about this is the very high number of people in ICU. It does seem survivable but gets extremely dicey after 7 days of mild symptons. I suspect if our healthcare gets overrun people will start to die at home.

We cannot risk an epidemic here in the UK.

I suspect that such a large death toll would be hard to cover up even in China. 

Why?

Everything that is coming through the censors seems to suggest they just have crematoriums running on overdrive. And even then some hospitals (including makeshift hospitals) are apparantely not shifting dead bodies fast enough.

Who knows whether these reports are true or not, or whether anacdotes merely appear to exaggerate the problem (10 can easily feel like 100) but if even a fraction of any of this is true it doesn't bode well.

If this virus is as potent as you fear, we have to hope for a mutation to roll the dice in the hope it moderates its potency.

You would hope, but with such a long 'mild sympton phase' what possible environmental pressure would drive less fatal mutations to be selected? There is no evolutionary benefit since it has so long to infect others before it kills you.

Yes but that only works for the virus where people are allowed to interact freely to infect others. By keeping a lid on it, or attempting to, we have to hope we slow it down enough for it to not be transferred as efficiently before it seriously debilitates its host.

That's a good point. I suppose we may not be able to stop the virus but if we can slow it down it may become less dangerous.

Equally, though, we can't rule out it becoming even more dangerous.

41 more infected on cruise ship off Japan. 61 in total. Shows how easy it is to catch I think they need to get everyone off the boat.

We returned last night from cruising the Far East, so this is a bit worrying.  We left on 22nd January and were given no specific advice regarding the virus.  We boarded the cruise ship in Thailand and visited Cambodia, Vietnam, three ports in Malaysia, Singapore, then two ports in Thailand. At each port, we disembarked and were screened at every one by means of body temperature scanning, a requirement of the Asian authorities. 

On board the ship, hygiene was very good, with hand sanitisers everywhere and regular reminders over the ship’s tannoy for them to be used.  However, when we returned to Birmingham airport last night, after a 13 hour flight, we were not screened.  I would have expected UK authorities to have done at least some basic checks when over 300 people are returning on a plane from a cruise around the affected areas. 

Dilemma! Better for the people on the boat to get them off, but for the rest of the world to keep such a concentrated source of infection isolated. I think I would, rather uneasily, go for the latter.

Apparently Japan has taken the infected. Japan is probably the best country in the world to end up in if you have this virus.

The 61 is only out of 273 tested still 3700 untested. 

This was from one 80 year old Chinese individual apparently. It just goes to demonstrate that this corona virus is far more contagious than SARS was.

Hi Caz, glad you are back and hope you are well. Suggest you write to your MP about your experience - it is a complete dereliction of duty that you were not screened and given advice on return.