Heat and high UV will definitely help, but Singapore seems to have handled this really well in general. A model for other countries to follow.

 

 

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If I'm wrong on this point then that's excellent, because the idea of untested people leaving a quarantine freely is very scary indeed. I do try to check all the sources of information I get but sometimes I will screw up so happy to be corrected on the facts.

 

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The test isn't even very accurate and if repeated may give the opposite result.
It's possibly because samples taken from the upper respiratory tract have very low load in the early stages as it seems to start in the lower lungs for a while

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 2 deaths from Coronavirus in Iran. 22 cases today alone in South Korea. Are we inching closer to a Pandemic?

 

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Those of you already contributing to flusurvey will have had a reminder saying "We have a few changes to our survey this week; In addition to our routine weekly symptoms questionnaire; we would like to invite you to complete an additional questionnaire as a result of the current global public health incident to give us a better understanding of the general public perception."

Now's your chance to contribute to the national effort! Join the survey!
https://flusurvey.net/ 


Roger

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Well, we all screw up sometimes!  

I’m sure everyone’s hoping for a good outcome but the fact is, at the moment nobody really knows how this will go.

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If you want a cast iron example of everything that is wrong with Twitter and how it facilitates the dissemination of absolute garbage, just look at this:

https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1230164403993153536?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

 

Some truly, shockingly, woeful and ignorant tweets.

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A pandemic would require sustained local transmission.

It existed in France, Singapore among other places but was not sustained. Japan however looks like a different story. North korea, Iran and Indonesia are also countries I suspect may have completely lost control.

 

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There was never 'sustained local transmission' in Singapore: more misinformation.

Is that sufficiently informative for you?

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I literally said it wasn't sustained in Singapore. FFS leave me alone.

 

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Might have sustained local transmission now in South Korea another 31 cases this morning. 82 altogether.

Sadly 2 deaths being reported from coronavirus on the cruise ship.

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no surprise that there are deaths amongst the cruise ship considering the age profile. I believe that is now 10 deaths outside of China out of approx 1100 confirmed cases.

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I detect the media are now bored of this story as its not developing as they had hoped. I suspect in a months time it will be completely off the news agenda, even though the infections will rumble on at the present rate

President Xi has totally arsed this up. They should have just covered it up and no one would have even noticed - just a bad seasonal flu 

Now China will see a GDP contraction  with knock on effects globally

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Given the infection and death rates in Wuhan and Hubei province I assume you're just trolling.

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So in days Singapore has gone from being a stage set of the Walking Dead to a text book example of how to handle a new virus. According to this thread. Christ on a cracker. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing. 

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Joe did manage to upload a pic before succumbing

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Yeh add South Korea to the list along with Japan, Iran, Indonesia and North korea as candidate countries.

Japan/SK are potentially the most worrying due to how linked in intetnationally they are.

 

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Regarding mortality rates: newer estimates are probably closer to 2% after all.

Essentially it's two separate effects cancelling each other out. Unresolved CFRs significantly underestimate the mortality rate due to the very long lag times. However if, CFRs are underestimating by a factor of 4 and we are also underestimating the number of cases by a factor of 4 then they would cancel out. It really depends on how many asymptomatic or mild cases there have been that have gone undetected.

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Things could still get bad and don't take this personally Q, but a lot of the stuff you were posting about a month ago was too alarmist to say the least. Here are some of your quotes and I only checked a few pages:

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I think a 10% mortality rate is a conservative estimate.

Even if it's less deadly than sars it will be on the order of 100s times more dangerous than flu

So at the very least the risk of becoming critical is 1/4 but it could be even higher than that. How many of those in critical will eventually die? If it's, say, 1/2 then the mortality rate would be around 12%.

we arn't due to start seeing deaths in Europe until about the 3rd February.

The virus is out of control in Singapore

Some precautions I've taken:

• Stopped all social activities, limit travelling to the essential. Now working from home basically all the time. 


• Raised room temperature to 27C. Should expedite the denaturing of any viruses walked in. 


• Built up a sensible level of supplies such that I can completely isolate myself for a few weeks if it becomes necessary
  
  
  

 

LOL

You will have noted that those of us who have actually been there and look at the facts and reliable expert opinion (i.e. not YouTube or random Internet sites)  have been consistent about the low risk in Singapore.

I think that any country with a decent healthcare system will have this under control provided that the population follow the guidelines. It is not as if this is unprecedented; lessons have been learned from previous outbreaks of this kind.

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What would the consequences be if no attempt was made to control the spread of this disease? Treat it like the common cold.

Thats just speculation as usual from you. We don’t have all the figures yet and the figures we do have suggest a mortality rate outside of China of less than 1%

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Yes because you have to assume a worse case scenario. If it turns out this fizzles into nothing then it becomes an annoying inconvienience but that doesn't mean it can't spiral out of control. Also why don't you quote any of the more optimistic posts I've made? Yes the mortality rate looks lower than 10% now, but that's partly because it also seems much more infectious with studies suggesting that aerosol transmission is possible. And yes Singapore managed to get it's local transmission under control, but meanwhile it seems to be spiriling out of control in South Korea and Japan, and with something suspect potentially going on in North korea, Iran and Indonesia.

And yes even with a CFR of around 2% it has the potential to be hundreds of times more dangerous than flu particularly given how infectous it is. The severe/critical rate is still high and it has the potential to overwhelm the health service if it becomes an epidemic here. A global pandemic can happen if only one country drops the ball.

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For the hundreth time Naive CFRs are NOT mortality rates. 

 

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