Mass Quarantine Camps and Wartime Conditions
Quarantines are in place by land and by sea. People cannot leave their homes but once in three days in at least 6 Chinese cities.
The death toll in China is at least 565 as the lockdown enters a third week.
10 More on Cruise Ship in Japan Test Positive
Close confinement on a cruise ship is not exactly where you want to be as 10 More Test Positive for the coronavirus.
About 3,700 people are facing at least two weeks quarantined on the cruise ship. “Experts are worried the virus could spread in such a congested and enclosed space,” he said. “They have also advised passengers not to leave their rooms.”
Taiwan has banned all international cruise ships from docking on the island effective from Thursday.
It earlier turned away the World Dream liner that is now docked in Hong Kong. Three passengers on board have shown symptoms of coronavirus.
Wartime Conditions
The city of Wuhan is in wartime conditions as officials Round Up the Infected for Mass Quarantine Camps.
Sun Chunlan, a vice premier tasked with leading the central government’s response to the outbreak, said city investigators should go to each home to check the temperatures of every resident and interview infected patients’ close contacts.
“Set up a 24-hour duty system. During these wartime conditions, there must be no deserters, or they will be nailed to the pillar of historical shame forever,” Ms. Sun said.
The city has set up makeshift shelters in a sports stadium, an exhibition center and a building complex. Some went into operation on Thursday.
When Ms. Sun inspected a shelter set up in Hongshan Stadium on Tuesday, she emphasized that anyone who should be admitted must be rounded up, according to a Chinese news outlet, Modern Express. “It must be cut off from the source!” she said of the virus. “You must keep a close eye! Don’t miss it!”
Rising Count of Americans Quarantined on Military Bases
Two more flights evacuating Americans from Wuhan, China, the center of the coronavirus outbreak, are scheduled to land in the United States this week.
The first carried 195 Americans out of Wuhan last week; they are quarantined on a military base in Riverside, Calif. Two more flights landed in the United States early on Wednesday morning, and the 348 passengers, mostly American citizens, will be held at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, Calif., and at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego.
All of the passengers have been ordered to remain in quarantine for 14 days from the time they left Wuhan.
Bianco Update
This story confirms my argument that this chart is not of the virus growth (we don’t know what that is) but of the Chinese Health system’s capacity.
The fact that “suspected” cases fell (red) might mean they are at 100% capacity and not the virus is abating. https://t.co/QexitSHyCi pic.twitter.com/ejb1xOtv9k
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 6, 2020
Coronavirus Deaths Surge, No Containment In Sight
Yesterday, I commented Coronavirus Deaths Surge, No Containment In Sight
Nothing changed today.
Is this a Hospital or a Coronavirus Deathatorium?
Also yesterday I asked Is this a Hospital or a Coronavirus Deathatorium?
Today, whatever you want to call these structures, people are being forced into them.
Report Your Temperatures Daily
Bloomberg reports China Doctor’s Fate Is Murky; Social Posts Deleted
There was confusion about the status of a Chinese doctor who had issued an early warning about the coronavirus, after social media posts by Chinese state media saying he had died were deleted and replaced by messages saying attempts were being made to save him.
The city of Wuhan told residents to begin reporting their body temperature daily, and the large port city of Tianjin said it would restrict residents’ movement, part of steps across the country to stop the coronavirus outbreak from spreading. In Beijing, the Chinese government voiced anger as countries placed more restrictions on travelers.
Dr. Li Wenliang aged 34, has died from the virus he alerted authorities to in December
Urgh. Waking up to this bad news. Seriously grateful for his efforts – he tried to help us all & hope his parents recover! RIP 🙇🏻♀️.
In HK, people are worried & have bought all the rice, toilet paper, soap, & basically all cleaning supplies on the shelf🧻! https://t.co/n4jFB46zvn
— Trinh (@Trinhnomics) February 6, 2020
So the chronology of the event was:
30 December he discussed in a chat group about a SARS-like virus
1 Jan reprimanded for “illegal activities” w/ 7 other doctors
3 Jan posted police letter on Weibo & back to work!
10 Jan started coughing
11 Jan hospitalised
7 Feb died. pic.twitter.com/mtYrFWZldi
— Trinh (@Trinhnomics) February 6, 2020
Locked In, Literally
Also imagine taking temperatures with a thermometer and spreading the virus by mouth to everyone, in a foolish attempt to determine who doesn’t have it. https://t.co/j0e2DXL2vr
— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) February 6, 2020
China is forcing people into quarantine camps, restricting movement, locking people in their homes (literally), demanding daily temperatures updates from everyone, and now bitching about about travel restrictions of other countries.
This is truly a WTF state of affairs.
China is now in a state of panic.
No official counts are believable.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Interesting backhanded statement made by the President’s Coronavirus Task Force in today’s press briefing. They said U.S. hospitals are nearly full handling this year’s Flu cases and they separately emphasized that everyone needs to get a Flu vaccination shot.
That seems like solid reasoning to me, but they should have directly made the point rather than sounding as though they were concerned about the Flu. That point being: “Everyone who has not had a flu shot, please get one so that there will be space in the hospitals for 2019-nCoV if we need it.”
The progress of this virus seems to be exposure to first symptom in about a week or so. Then, not so different than a cold for the first week. On the seventh day or so ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) will start for some and force them into the hospital. The hospitalization will last for two plus weeks.
I have no idea what proportion of the infected population will require hospitalization but just for example–if 1 or 2% of the population requires isolation hospital care for a period of two or more weeks, I can confidently say that there is not a hospital system in the world that is prepared for this.
The US hospital system has been trending toward stays of a day or so for all but the most critical cases and there are few, if any, public hospitals with large isolation units.
It is easy to see how overwhelmed any medical system will be.
And who will pay?
Not just healthcare costs either.
Got a “death in service” policy with your employer? Think again – epidemics/pandemics are probably not covered.
The Chinese response to this has been very authoritarian and obviously has not yet succeeded in halting the spread of this disease.
However, I’m not at all certain that the United States would do better in a similar situation.
Right now, the President and the Speaker of the House won’t even shake hands. They don’t treat each other with the same level of courtesy and decorum that two complete strangers would show to each other in almost any place in America (some parts of some cities, such as Baltimore and Chicago, are exceptions to this rule).
If these are the people who will be in charge of the American response to a similar epidemic of coronavirus, are they likely to make things better, or are they more likely to make a bad situation even worse?
I suspect that even the need to prevent a pandemic is not sufficient reason to force our politicians to cooperate for the greater good.
I’m kind of mystified as to why people think this won’t spread around the world. The world is acting as if China is the moon. This will be everywhere guaranteed. How do people keep thinking this is a China problem. When have we ever been able to stop the cold/flu from travelling around the world. And this is multiple times more infectious it seems.
I think people’s complacency is going to be shattered in the next week as they realise that this is in multiple cities in their country. The main take for me is that it’s not going to affect most people too badly. It will be very bad for the most vulnerable.
Maybe people are still in the bargaining stage of the 5 stages of loss.
Again.. can’t reiterate enough how mystified I am that people talk about this in the abstract as if they won’t be affected. It’s as if they never took a science or maths class. This went from about 10 confirmed cases to 10,000 cases in China in a little over a month, and it was reported that that could have been 10 times less than the actual number infected. There are hundreds of cases outside of China already, could even be well over 1000 if they were properly able to identify them.
Many people I talk to say “oh yes, but the fatality rate is much lower outside of China, nobody is dying”.
And they are right, we can relax.
Right until the vanishingly small number of intensive care beds in each state fills up, in about a fortnight from now.
I am starting to worry. Less about the overall fatality rate but more by the number of people who will die because systems are overwhelmed.
It isn’t that they think it can be permanently kept out. The hope is that they can keep it from spreading around the world for another month and a half, and that when flu season ends, this will die on it’s own, and that if it returns in the fall, by there there can be a vaccine. I don’t think anyone knows for sure what will happen. We need to just stay away, and hope for the best, and plan for the worst.
I’m pretty sure a vaccine would take a minimum of a year.
Ensign_Nemo: “Right now, the President and the Speaker of the House won’t even shake hands” – hey, neither did famous genius scientists Issac Newton or Henry Cavendish, and it kept them from getting ill! They intuited something? 🙂
When will Mr Market realize the effect this is going to have on world trade? I keep thinking the smart money has been setting up a bull trap the last few days so they can get out at higher prices (helped by the PPT of course).
Every time I see this story I am wondering how those “quarantined” people get food & other basic necessities.
Well I guess if you’re barricaded you don’t. Unless you realize you can make your own door unless you have concrete walls. Problem is if you are sick you wouldn’t be able to do that.
If positive and death numbers reported by China are real, this would be one mysterious virus where it effectively maintain 2.1% death rate at all times.
Feb 3, 2020
20,438 positive, 420 death, fatality rate = 2.1%
Feb 6, 2020
with more than 31,000 cases, 636, fatality rate = 2.1%
Now, why would a government want to manufacture numbers like this? What is the motive? What good can possibly come of this?
The numbers are slightly different and not exactly 2.1%. Not to say you are wrong in being suspicious, but it’s not true to say that it is 2.1%.
The motive is avoiding panic. People will start to flea if they know they are going to die. If China started reporting a 25% fatality rate people would freak out and run.
The numbers started at 2.9% and have been steadily declining. they are actually at 2.02% now. In any case, that’s not a useful measure of anything. The people who are dying today were listed as infected perhaps a week ago, and maybe two weeks ago. Thus, you would come closer to the real CFR by dividing the deaths as of today with the infections perhaps 5 days ago. That would give you 3.7%.
The CFR computed that way should be a constant, but it is not. It has been declining sharply. It started at 10%. Why would it be declining? Other than the argument that the data isn’t accurate, the answer would be two-fold:
2.As the system is catching up, the total cases number is starting to include less serious cases. If you divide the same number of deaths by a higher number of cases, you compute a lower CFR.
Let’s use this method to compute 3 separate CFRs:
0.3%
The CFR from Wuhan is clearly very, very high, most likely indicating that both of the above things were true: There was low quality care, and mild cases weren’t included. The CFR from the rest of China is exceptionally low, which makes me suspicious that not all deaths are being reported. Those deaths should be in the 50-100 range. Consider Zhejiang, for example, with over 1000 cases, and no deaths at all. That’s the data I don’t believe, not that data from Hubei is being fudged to fit some curve.
The number you are looking at, Deaths/current cases, besides being meaningless, won’t move much from day to day because incremental changes in deaths and cases are small relative to the existing number. Incremental deaths yesterday was 73. Incremental cases were 3128. Those are only 10% of the cumulative data, so the cumulative ratio isn’t going to move much. Thus, if it seems pretty constant, that is because is should be fairly constant/
Maybe there is something to the “four fights and two balances” approach”
“The first is to fight the virus. We found that if we start antiviral treatment a day earlier, the rate of patients in critical condition decreased by 10 percent, and the mortality rate fell 13 percent,” she said in an exclusive interview by Xinhua Wednesday.
“The second is to prevent shock through supplementing a saline substance. The third is to prevent hypoxemia and multiple organ failure. The fourth is to prevent and fight secondary infections. We adopt antiviral treatment in the early stage, and use antibiotics when a secondary infection occurs,” she said.
The “two balances” refer to maintaining water electrolytes, acid-base balance and micro-ecological balance, Li said.
I can buy it if we have metadata on death data, something like number of deaths after x days. Otherwise, your choosing deaths / 5 days ago positive count, does it really provide more insight/accuracy/meaning? How do you know how many died from newly reported positives? Also I was not the one to have found 2.1%. It has been monitored by a TV program in Taiwan. If anything, we just do not enough data one way or the other.
Here is one of the links for the 7 day streak of 2.1% rate: link to news.ltn.com.tw
“Why is it that you, Mish, go into lurid details repeatedly about a household being quarantined in China, while ignoring the news about a cruise ship containing a huge number of passengers being quarantined in a Japanese port?”
1: Are there any lurid details on the passenger ships?
2: Any death hiding?
3: Are they putting up bars on people’s rooms locking them in?
4: Any cruise line doctors threatened for reporting details?
One can ask a dozen such questions. And there is no reason at all to believe anything China says.
Criticizing other countries over flights while doing what it is doing is contemptible. Locking people with bars is dangerous and criminal.
China deserves ZERO praise
That video about a household being boarded up, which you like to show repeatedly, appears to have been posted originally by an individual in his Twitter account. There is not much information there except the individual’s own self-introduction saying that he’s lived in Tokyo and now lives in America, and he is for a democratic, ruled by law China. So it looks like he has a critical bent towards the Chinese government. Is the video real or fake – I simply don’t know, and if you have a basis for its validity, please share. Also, even if the video is real, how do we know it’s not a local village security type of behavior – what is your basis for concluding that this represents the policy or protocol of the Chinese government per se? Are we to attribute every rogue behavior by some small town deputy to the US federal government?
BTW, I agree that the US is justified in putting controls in place on people arriving into the US from China. But come on, Mish, your coverage of China’s handling of the outbreak in general is quite far from a model of rationality and balanced discussion that I thought you wanted your blog to be distinguished as.
There is not one but two videos and a the badges in the first look real.
I was skeptical until I say the second video.
Faking this kind of stuff in China can get you killed.
People fear talking out in China so we don’t hear anything from the fourth estate but snapshots that might or might not be more widely representative.
The problem with how they are handling the cruise ship is simple. They are confining people who aren’t know to have it in close quarters with some who do. Each time they identify a new person with it, you lengthen the time people need to stay in quarantine. As the people watch the cases pile up, and people leaving only one way…with the Coronavirus, how long will it be before some start thinking “I need to escape or they will hold me here until i catch it!”
The cruise ship quarantine is a problem. It could have unintended consequences.
It can be used by some people to conflate with what is happening in China (which we don’t really know about)is about the only obvious problem, but the assumption is being made that those infected caught the virus after quarantine was started, that there is post quarantine infections. This is not right to do so. As far as I understand those quarantined are now confined to cabin (most have a balcony I think) , and are being served there.You have various direct media from them on any complaints and their overall circumstance.
So you have at least sixty people not loose spreading the virus around, you have those people taken care of from the start and everyone else under observation.
I don’t for now find any problem with this. Incidentally the person assumed to be the source of infection had left the ship before showing any symptoms.
Please imagine the economic effect of this (empty train stations & streets in Beijing) link to youtube.com
Well, now we know what the rows and rows of hospital beds in the Gym, Stadium, and exhibition hall are for. They are for confirmed cases that aren’t serious, so that they can confine the people and prevent them from spreading the disease. Are these measures draconian? Yes, but they are also necessary. The lesson here is that it is critically important to stop the spread early, when there are 10 cases, rather than when you get to 20,000 cases. If the virus breaks out in the US, the US will not be able to institute controls like this. China foolishly ignored it when it was at that stage, and now they face the consequences.
Is the US capable for containing the trickle of cases timely enough?
All it takes is one miss. 🙁
So far, so good. However, the explosion from 1 case to over 60 on the cruise ship shows how quickly it can get out of hand with just one miss.
And people were led to believe that “climate change” was a threat.
?? strange reply…I think the two issues are unrelated.
If you launched this virus at an opposing army it seems like it would do a great job in reducing fighting effectiveness rather quickly.
Not if they are AI powered robots.
Especially if the opposing army was primarily made up of males over the age of 60 with a history of smoking.
Hmmm.
We know of the fates of only about 5 individuals, to my knowledge.
Three Chinese doctors aged 62,44 (May have been 49) and 34.
Two people who died outside of China: 39 and 44.
Does it seem to you that this is exclusively targeting elderly immune compromised smokers?
You do realize that a germ doesn’t have to kill you to reduce your fighting effectiveness, right?
Good observation, and one implied by ZeroHedge the other day about a certain “Dr. Peng Zhou” (Google this), that the Wuhan contagion was man made. Dr. Zhou’s expertise? SARS, Ebola and Coronavirus as spread by bats… His location? Wuhan. His time of activity? Starting last fall, and he was overworked and looking for an assistant. Did he slip up and release the virus or is it merely a coincidence?
A news station from Taiwan indicated how the death toll number is released by China everyday happens to work out to be exactly 2.1%. This is another evidence that they are definitely manipulating numbers and not releasing true numbers, which has always been a concern.
Today – 2.02%
I’m not convinced.
This is good because it is lower if the numbers are true.
China may get this under control but you know it has to be in Africa, India, and Pakistan by now. Good luck stopping it in those regions.
Good point about India and Pakistan, but strangely, Africa’s isolation is one reason Ebola never got out of the jungle, and in time a vaccine was developed (which takes at least one year to develop). Can the world “hold their breath” (literally almost) with the Wuhan virus for a year? Time will tell.
I know a person that works in the California State Capitol. She told me that the Chinese knew about this way before December 2019. She has a background in this type of subject.
Don’t know if this is true or not, but way back during the California Energy Crisis I was told by a person working for PG&E about the crisis 6 months before it went public.
One party politics and central planning are common to both California and China
For what it’s worth, I saw a Youtube interview of an expat living in Wuhan who was asked how the outbreak started. He said there were some unexplained cases of pneumonia in the area in September, but they were told it was a normal part of the regular winter season. In hindsight, it seems those might have been 2019-nCoV infections.
Which is interesting if true.
Firstly, because if this thing is as infectious as claimed then either there are a lot more cases than admitted to, given the time since September and the posited 5–7 day doubling time.
Or there aren’t.
And if there aren’t, it implies that the virus acquired the ability to spread efficiently between hosts during a period when the Chinese were busy covering up.
With respect to comments about the lines of beds in the stadiums, China has officially explained these are emergency overflow for confirmed cases from the hospitals, which now only have capacity for severe cases. They anticipate mild cases (and presumably, recovering cases) will be placed in these shelters. If I understand correctly, a case that relapses to being “severe” would be readmitted to a hospital. (UPDATE 2-7-2020: Dailymail has a story that says all suspected coronavirus cases and close contacts are being put into the quarantine centers. Ugh. I guess they are “Deathatoriums”)
In the pile of poor information on the internet about this bug, there are a few that appear to be reliable. 2019-nCoV attaches to exactly the same receptors as SARS, deep in the lungs (ACE2). There may be excellent crossover from the previously developed SARS therapies to 2019-nCoV. The bad news is, the official W.H.O. case fatality ratio (CFR) for the SARS epidemic is high, depending on age (<24yr=1%, 24yr<45yr=6%, 45yr<64yr=15%, >64yr=50%+).{1} Nobody is saying the CFR rate of 2019-nCoV is as high as SARS, but in at least some cases 2019-nCoV is known to cause acute pneumonia and kill quickly after onset of symptoms if supportive care is not given. {2} A CFR similar to SARS would explain China’s tremendous effort to contain this. Their actions are certainly impressive. I hope they are successful.
Also of interest, the study about 2019-nCoV killing more men than women because of a greater preponderance of ACE2 receptors in Asian men is likely wrong. That study was too small to be meaningful. However, in China roughly 50% of men smoke whereas <2% of women smoke. A more likely explanation is that smoking is a bad risk factor for this bug, and that likely explains why more men than women have been afflicted in China. {3}
Sources:
{1} On the web: who.int/csr/sarsarchive/2003_05_07a/en/
{2} Dr. John Campbell and his Youtube Coronavirus videos.
{3} Dr. Seheult of “medcram.com,” Youtube Coronavirus Epidemic Update 12
I have monitored the spread of the virus outside the immediate Chinese vicinity. It is fairly uniform except for 2 areas. No cases reported SA and Africa. More likely is the inability to confirm cases. I worry what may be actually brewing there. The Chinese have a presence there, yet crickets?
I was just saying this. China may get this under control but you know it has to be in Africa, India, and Pakistan by now. Good luck stopping it in those regions.
You have ‘monitored’ this based on what? Reported numbers or satellite images of activity at key facilities? Very little seems to be getting out on the Internet.
Are there not many Chinese mega projects in play in the African continent? Do you suppose that chinese workers on those projects did not participate in the new year traditions of going home for the holiday?
Undoubtedly there is a dearth of test kits in those regions, so there are no “confirmed infections” there. (Confirmed infections lag behind actual infections by ten days or so anyway!)
check out link to gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com
It is going to run across Africa like wildfire. Same with the Middle East. There is no stopping this.
Perhaps it will spread in Africa, perhaps not. Viruses of this type don’t tend to fair well in humid environments, nor equatorial areas.
Just backing up your statement :). Old paper but covers it well:
However, as Tamerius and colleagues observe [20], hypotheses correlating AH and influenza epidemics are best suited to explain the seasonality of influenza virus transmission in temperate climates. While influenza virus transmission has been thought not to display marked seasonality in the tropics, accumulating data suggest that equatorial regions can experience not only year-round transmission (such as Colombia; 4°N) [36] but also distinct annual epidemics that are unimodal (Fortaleza, Brazil; 3°S) or bimodal (Singapore; 1°N) [20]. In other tropical areas, influenza epidemics correlate with the rainy season, when AH is highest (such as Dakar, Senegal; 14°N [37], or Belem, Brazil; 1°S [38]). The question remains to what extent the seasonality (or lack thereof) of influenza epidemics is attributable to seasonal factors like humidity and temperature, what other environmental or seasonal variables matter, and which variables are causative and which are merely correlated or even confounding [20].
In a fairly limited study of pediatric influenza virus infections in an urban slum in Bangladesh (23°N) in 2007, 77% of the influenza B cases occurred during the monsoon season (July to September); conversely, 70% of the influenza A cases occurred during the pre-monsoon period (April to June) [55]. This study also did not determine statistical significance, and has several limitations in the study design, including the retrospective collection of samples from children who displayed clinical symptoms.
Good read but it has very little information in it. What it mostly said is more information is needed to make better conclusions. Contradictions where made in several places.
We no next to nothing about this virus. It could be better in the summer or it could be worse.
If it was engineered(big if) the creator could give it traits that would make it worse in the summer and better in the winter. We just don’t have enough information at this point.
The models say this thing is unstoppable though.
Look, I think that, whether or not the latest coronavirus outbreak originated from a wet market in Wuhan, the Chinese government should have cracked down hard a long time ago on the trade in bats and snakes and the like for food – it’s just plain unsanitary.
On the other hand, I fail to see the constructiveness of the damn if you do, damn if you don’t type of posting on the coronavirus that you are engaged in, Mish. If the Chinese don’t urgently adopt stringent measures to control and contain the spread of the coronavirus, commentators like you would be quick to blame them for incompetent handling of the situation. However, now that we are seeing these stringent measures – which by their nature is not pretty, especially as they bump up against resource constraints – the Chinese government is being accused of engaging in authoritarian and inhumane practices?
I for one have to give the Chinese government some credit for doing things like building a huge hospital in 10 days or so to house the sick. At least they are trying to deal with the problem with concrete action intended to help the sick. A purely authoritarian regime probably would just be interested in using its military to cordon off affected cities without much regard to treating the illnesses.
Why is it that you, Mish, go into lurid details repeatedly about a household being quarantined in China, while ignoring the news about a cruise ship containing a huge number of passengers being quarantined in a Japanese port? Rather than admitting the passengers into a quarantined medical facility for treatment and observation, the Japanese government is simply keeping this ship off its land, while the coronavirus continues to spread among the passengers, as you can imagine it would do in such a crowded and confined space. Why are you not lambasting this type of practice, but repeatedly criticizing the Chinese government for trying to build temporary hospitals for the sickened and then a permanent hospital in 10 days, and working hard to do triage in the mean time? Is it because China insists on being a sovereign, rising power, whereas a US “ally” like Japan bends like a reed to US wishes?
Second bold face sentence in the blog post (fifth line down), Mish wrote “10 More on Cruise Ship in Japan Test Positive”
Not sure why China waited over a month before doing anything to control the outbreak.
Seriously doubt that a “10 day hospital” with beds spaced that close will isolate the infected from each other much less the uninfected. Seems like putting people that close together… no walls, not even a curtain separating them… makes it easier for the disease to spread
I was asking why Mish seems not critical – ignoring the inhumane way the passengers have been treated – of the way Japanese authorities have handled the cruise ship as compared to the way he’s covered the Chinese handling of the outbreak.
You would think a cruise ship would be a sort of luxury quarantine ? Anyone who needs attention on it will surely receive it. Otherwise what , try to build 3700 similar places that already exist on the ship ?
As for Mish’s approach to Chinese management, I guess he does not trust it. As someone noted previously, the lack of transparency, the curtailing of freedom of speech, is a real problem as far as gaining any sort of trust from the west is concerned. In this case it also directly concerns us because our reaction to an outbreak of virus in China will rely on proper reporting of its nature, and that seems denied us. So it creates a resentment and sense of threat for this being so. Mish is challenging the official version, which you stand by. Why shouldn’t he, until there is some kind of proper accountability and transparency ?
It is not like everyone in the west is simply unconcerned for China or Chinese people either, here it is combined with or balanced against their own wellbeing, depending on the character of the person.
Why would you think that the cruise ship is a “luxury quarantine” – seems like a callous way of describing a situation where the virus has been reported to be spreading due to the crowded and congested space on the ship. How would you feel about being in this luxury quarantine if you were not yet sick? I don’t think that Japan needs to make available 3700 beds – they should at least allow the sickened to be treated at a proper medical facility on land and relieve the pressure on the rest of the passengers and crew members.
BTW, I don’t necessarily stand by the Chinese official version of events just because I am asking for a more objective and rational discussion of China’s handling of this outbreak. It is the WHO itself that has praised China for being open and forthright regarding information about the outbreak.
The WHO is not a credible source on reporting on China so far.
You will find that all quarantine facilities are basically a room. On the ships they are confined to their rooms mostly. Passageways and access to outside facilities would be same as any building. Likely because ships are compartmentalised and air systems well designed they will be as effective as land based quarantine.
Being in quarantine when not known to be infected, well that is a legal question and involves acceptance and means of repatriation by own country. Japan has every right not to accept potentially infected passengers as long as they are cared for adequately on board. Personally I don’t know if those showing symptoms are being transferred to shore care or if full medical facilities are being set up on ship. I expect one or the other.
(Edit in : “Japan says 273 people on the cruise ship were tested and 61 were found positive, and the 41 new patients have been sent to hospitals in 5 separate prefectures.”
Passengers can relate their experience openly.
Yes, updates continue to pour in about that cruise ship in Japan. Latest I can find is that thus far, only 273, out of 2700 passengers and crew, have been tested, and 61 of those 273 tested positive for the virus (which seems to be an alarmingly high proportion). This pace of testing sounds painfully slow, and may appear that way to many passengers, some of whom have complained, according to news reports, that they are in a “floating prison”. And as you point out, some (but not all) of the confirmed infected have been taken to local hospitals, but I base my concern mainly on reports of experts who warn that being confined to the tight and congested space on the ship only facilitates the spread of the virus onboard (since it is still a big question mark as to who else onboard is infected). I don’t mean to bicker about the details of the cruise ship situation – I just think that coverage of the cruise ship situation by Mish seems to give a free pass to the Japanese government (even though the available information in press reports suggests that such government could be doing a speedier and more effective job of screening of people onboard the ship and protecting the uninfected from the higher risk of infection onboard that experts have warned about). I don’t mean to single out Japan for criticism – my real aim in bringing up the cruise ship situation, as I hope I’ve made clear, is to invite a more objective and balanced discussion about China’s handling of the outbreak.
Correction to a number I cited (3700 not 2700): I meant to say “… thus far, only 273, out of 3700 passengers and crew, have been tested, and 61 of those 273 tested positive for the virus…”
Lock downs, building more hospitals, shutting down business, and all the rest do not jibe with the reported data–on par with seasonal flu. Ergo, this is far worse than the Chinese government is admitting in public
Chinese controls are too little, too late. Now, even if there are “hospital beds”, there are not enough breathing assist/O2 machines that are necessary to support a patient in the latter stages of this “flu”.
Why don’t you let people who actually live in China and suffered from this chaos to comment on whether Chinese government deserves blame or credit? This credit that you are giving to China came at the heavy expense of many people’s lives and ruined families. It never needed to happen this way. And WHO director-general is also a shill for China, you only need to see the blunt lies came out of it versus the warnings many sensible experts from different parts of the world were giving.
I actually know people in China and they tell me that, although they wish the government could do more to contain the spread of the virusand alleviate the suffering of the sickened, they understand that the government is working toward those goals, and take some comfort in that. I assume that you actually live in China?
I have families and friends living in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. To say China is handling the situation poorly is a huge understatement. At WHO, China has the guts to announce that they have always disclosed every data to Taiwan so that Taiwan is well informed and should not be permitted to observe at WHO. While other countries have already evacuated their citizens from China many days ago, Taiwan wrestled with China to only have the first ever flight to return Taiwanese citizens back to Taiwan last night. And Hong Kong’s leader has been refusing to close all ports to China while the risk is still developing. If anything, China is barely catching up only to stop a possible nation wide revolt, not because they care about people’s lives. Praise for China is premature IMO.
I started my original comment with a criticism of the Chinese government. I also don’t like how they shut down that Chinese doctor who originally sounded the alarm about a new strain of coronavirus. However, I do want to give some credit to the Chinese government where it is due, based on what I consider to be legitimate sources of information. My goal – or at least wish – is a more balanced discussion about the handling of this outbreak. You are obviously entitled to rely on your sources of information from within China – which is the starting point of your comments – and I have no basis to believe or not believe your sources. However, I find your view about a possible nationwide revolt over this outbreak rather absurd. If your sole interest is axe-grinding, grind away but I may not further participate in it.
And in case this is not known yet, check this out:
I mean really? I would have imagined that the government would be busy producing more drug to treat the sick rather than worrying about registering a patent that is already own by the supplier 3 years ago. Stupidity and greed have no bounds.
There were 8 people who all warned of this very early on and they were all arrested for spreading rumours. Now one of the whistleblower, who was a doctor too, died. link to wsj.com
Hmm, I can’t seem to know how to properly post a comment here. My previous replies seem to have disappeared.
You seem to suggest that I make up stories, you can Google translate it, link to ntdtv.com
and one can decide whether it is a reliable source of news/facts. From histories we have seen time and again, outsiders never really get the full pictures of what really went on inside a country. The balance I want to bring to this is exactly that, believing in only data supplied by Chinese government alone is not the full picture.
Dow 30,000 by next week. Maybe tomorrow.
#Winning
Apparently, the robots like it when all the humans might be getting sick.
For all the criticism of stereotypical behavior, the Chinese government itself is a stereotype that is totally predictable. You are never going to get the truth out of them because truth is the threat. A small number of old (Chinese) men and a few women own and run all of China, and stereotypically, there is nothing an old man wants to hear that is a challenge to his authority. Why did the people flee the farms when dictator Farmer Brown owned everything he surveyed (including his wife)? We can only hope that dictatorships around the world (and potentially here in America in the next 5 years) achieve red-hot moments where the country’s old bossy guard comes crashing down.
Do you mean when the USA rejected the party favorites (Ted Cruz and Hilary)… putting in Trump, someone the political class despises?
Do you mean when the UK rejected Corbyn and Theresa May… putting in Johnson, someone the political class despises? Giving the Brussels establishment the ol’ heave-ho in the process?
Or do you mean the yellow vest protests that have been going on in France for more than a year, even though the political class has worked tirelessly to keep it out of the news cycle? Or maybe that Parisian fire fighters recently joined the yellow vest protests?
Do you mean the anti-EU politicians in Italy, Germany and all over eastern Europe?
Canada’s government will collapse at the end of February, as the Grande Sissie has to choose between energy, jobs and solvency …or his eco-terrorist support base. He loses either way.
Dont know what this has to do with Chinese govt …
Mass quarantine situations with hundreds of beds next to each other pretty much guarantee mass infection (read about army barracks and Spanish flu). But who to trust with self-quarantine? Once a couple of people in the mass quarantine situation comes down with the Coronavirus, it guarantees that all of the others are stuck there for the duration in the plague-house.
Abbott: Hu has this under control.
Costello: That’s what I’m asking! WHO has this under control?
Abbott: Exactly! Hu is the previous President. WHO has this under control
YEAH… whatever Mish…. your doom and gloom stories don t take root, that ‘s obvious ; stocks are up worldwide, algos seem to know more than you do ! The Corona virus won’ t end the world…just yet ! Since TBFC I ve been thinking it would be the financial system collapsing, creating Mad Max situations, but now, more and more I think we re safe for a long stretch, there simply ain t no no fckn alternative for the mess Sapiens apes created, when you come to think of it…..Is there ?
I understand your line of thought. I personally believed that we were in huge trouble during the 2008 crisis and did not expect we would be able to extend and pretend for this long without severe consequences.
However, it’s becoming clearer that the catalyst for “collapse” won’t be a market crash. It could be civil unrest, war, or even a pandemic. All we know for sure is that the day it all finally unravels, the algorithms won’t care and markets will still be green.
Ok, today , walking at the mall, there are two Chinese massage stores. First one I stopped at the guy didn’t speak English and thought I wanted a back rub! No
The next stop was a younger guy who did speak English. I asked how things were in Wuhan, did people need anything? He said no. no big deal people just staying home and yes they had food and all they needed. He said really only in Wuhan, not other areas. Everything ok again, no big deal.
So there you go.
So if I come down with it , you know where I got it! 🙂
us city 10% Asian pop
10% Asian – what percentage of that is Chinese? Of the Chinese, what percentage just went to Wuhan or another infected area in China and just came back, within the last several weeks?
Assuming you are still capable of learning new perspectives, here is a very thoughtful piece by a journalist (an expert on pandemics) about how pandemics or outbreaks can exacerbate or serve as excuse for xenophobia (and I would add racism):
And please don’t hide behind that smiling face emoji. Even racist jokes are still…racist (seeing as how there is no wit to the joke part).
Is this the bit where you assure us it is better to die of the flu than risk sounding racist?
Are you talking about the flu or the latest coronavirus? If the latter, take proper precautions without presuming that every Asian you come across carries the coronavirus (there are only 12 cases of infections so far in our entire country and they should all be under quarantine) – I hope that is not too cognitively challenging for you.
The window of time only people who came from Whuhan could pass this germ is closing …
Reminds the era that AIDS was predominantly a gay’s thingy. Not anymore…
Germs don’t have an ideology. Though, some practices might be more predisposed to certain outcomes.
Mish wrote: “No official counts are believable.”
Simple solution: have the DNC hire some ex-Obama bureaucrats to design an app for that.
Bernie thinks the same people who wrote that app (and the Obamacare website) should decide who gets medical care and who gets put into quarantine to die off the books
Mish
can you do one of your neat airplanes- in airplanes out graphics in china, and also ships going in and out? I would like to know how much movement in and out of china there really is. a few cruise ships doesn’t mean squat. maybe a report on real economic impact from curtailed movement or lack of . I rely on you! and feel free to throw in your humor. thanks for what you do.
Airplane traffic is very quite around Wuhan, too quiet.
link to flightradar24.com,109.79/6
Yep, but there’s still a heck of a lot internal travel going on and international flights into and out of China
The speed and efficiency with which this is being handled makes me want to vote for a socialist old man, force through an insurance scam that will bankrupt the country while creating partisan animosity, and have it controlled by the geniuses at the DMV / DPW / Post Office / TSA.
I especially like the tight spacing on the “quarantine” beds in the photo Mish included. Public healthcare is just like public housing projects. If you are not infected when you are shoved in their by an uncaring bureaucrat, you will definitely be infected by someone in a neighboring bed!
But this is America, so Bernie’s health disaster will be run by the corrupt wet farts that tried to count votes in the Iowa primaries.
The US health care system is a mess, but that doesn’t mean corrupt politicians and uncaring bureaucrats can’t make it much much worse
Mish – I agree that China appears to be in a state of panic. Someone (I forget who) likened this to a Chernobyl event, which was said to have hastened the fall of the Soviet Union. The CCP is always most concerned about social order.
But I have a question. How long should the US wait before it begins preparation for virus expansion out of an abundance of caution? The reasons we should be thinking about this are the apparently unknown incubation period, and the similarly unknown degree to which the virus is contagious from asymptomatic patients.
There is no evidence in my little state that any preparations are underway except recommending hand washing.
The virus cannot penetrate our skin barrier. The infection route must be through mucous membranes in our eyes, mouth, nose or inhaled. (The Kunh flu is droplet based, so it falls out of the air quickly) Thus, frequent hand washing and reasonable personal spacing in public ought to be sufficient to retard it’s spread. The virus persists on surfaces for very long periods (Days!) so touching one’s face with infected hands is the primary route of infection.
We will see a different rate of infection in western nations than in asia.
Though I agree with that, on the other hand because it will be mistaken for flu, and because its transmission will only be slowed, it sets up a scenario for a long presence (as in years) with spontaneous serious outbreaks occurring intermittently, almost at random . It is contagious enough not to be eradicated, will survive in different populations and then travel to return.
The new 42 cases on the Diamond Princess makes it look very contagious, though admittedly it is a confined space and was without any precautions. Another report was infection by standing next to someone for fifteen seconds, obviously no way to confirm that, but it was before the virus was widespread and so more likely to be true (no other known contacts in that case)
Viruses aren’t guided missiles. 15sec infection means quick kiss, a sneeze and inhale or touch (and then passing to oneself mucus membrane).
One might wonder whether the best reaction to this thing is to go outside to lots of diluting air.
At postmortem time, it might be interesting to compare the death tolls between those who were locked up and those who did the locking.
They know how bad this could become else why this reaction? The fear level is palpable.
What else is there hidden related to this virus? The real source? How it came about? Was it engineered?
No, it’s already bad not how bad it could become. Yes, it can get worse.