Wenzhou, Pop 9 Million, Bans People From Leaving Their Home
BREAKING: Wenzhou, a city of 9 million in Zhejiang province, bans people from leaving their home in effort to stop coronavirus; 1 person per family can leave every other day to buy basic needs
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) February 2, 2020
BNO says this is confirmed with local authorities.
Coronavirus Global Map
The above map from NYT Tracking the Spread of the Outbreak.
The Wuhan coronavirus has sickened more than 17,300 people in Asia, according to statements from health officials. Many other cases are suspected but not confirmed. As of Monday morning, at least 362 people have died, all but one in China.
The NYT comments “Various epidemiological models estimate that the real number of cases is100,000 or even more. “
Death Total Hits 426
The death count is at least 426 Confirmed, and I suspect far more in actual practice.
Officials in China’s Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, announced 64 new deaths from the novel coronavirus on Monday. That brings the overall death toll from the virus to at least 426: 425 deaths in China, and one in the Philippines.
Officials also announced 2,345 new cases of the virus, bringing the total number of cases to more than 19,700.
You don’t lock down tens of millions of people over 426 deaths.
Secretly Hiding Body Bags
Whistleblower arrested in China after secretly filming ‘piles of body bags at a hospital in coronavirus ground zero Wuhan’ #CoronavirusOutbreak https://t.co/cz4hZhP95a
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) February 3, 2020
Jim Bianco Update on Non-China Infections
Coronavirus Uncertainties
Accuweather comments Death toll rises as public health officials work to combat coronavirus
“Though we may be in clinical trials within a year, I do not expect a coronavirus vaccine to be commercially available within a year,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told U.S. News and World Report.
“At this time, it’s unclear how easily or sustainably this virus is spreading between people,” CDC officials said.
“We’re not 100 percent certain how close you have to be to somebody to get this virus. We’re certain that if you’re within 6 feet of them for some sort of a prolonged period of time, that would put a person at risk,” Glatt continued. “We’re not sure if there’s a greater distance that would also put a person at risk. And we’re not sure exactly how long a period of time you need to be exposed to somebody.”
China Accuses US of Spreading Fear
China blames @StateDept for “creating and spreading panic” about coronavirus.
The Chinses government officially has announced 17,000 cases.
Researchers in Hong Kong estimate the number is much closer to 76,000. https://t.co/CgoL6uudgk
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) February 3, 2020
Excuse me for pointing out China has locked down 60 million people and has undoubtedly hid the number of deaths.
China has a lot of gall to bitch about flight bans
Carnival Princess Cruise Ship Quarantined
Japan. Diamond Princess currently held under quarantine at Yokohama port, after somebody who got off the cruise ship in HK on Jan 25 developed symptoms of #coronavirus 6 days later
Via YT https://t.co/oJJofRVPy3 pic.twitter.com/ofR5vTnIuQ
— woppa 🎗😷 (@Woppa1Woppa) February 3, 2020
Two New Cases in Germany
Germany reports 2 new cases of coronavirus, raising country’s total to 12; nearly all cases are linked to the same company https://t.co/eUoE2b20hL
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) February 3, 2020
Oil Down 20%, in Bear Market
*WTI FALLS BELOW $50/BBL FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MORE THAN A YEAR
—
Bloomberg reports Chinese oil demand is down 20% since Ncov19 outbreak. This is 3m barrels/day.
This is huge and a potential “glut” for the oil market. pic.twitter.com/GiQLwxYb3d
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 3, 2020
Oil prices fell into a bear market, down more than 20% from their recent peak, on worries the coronavirus may affect global growth https://t.co/gnuu6WdQra
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) February 3, 2020
Confirmation that the Chinese economy (16% of global growth and second largest after the US) slowed like it “hit a brick wall” in the last several days.
*CHINA OIL DEMAND IS SAID TO HAVE PLUNGED 20% ON VIRUS LOCKDOWN
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 2, 2020
How much of that is slowing global economy in general?
Hussman on Slowing Number of Cases
Coronavirus update (my chart): Gradual slowing in growth of reported cases to 16-23% /day based on 2/2/20 data (Johns Hopkins CSSE). Ascertainment still an issue with estimates of actual/reported cases between 10x (JH-CSSE) and 38x (Wu, et al, Lancet). Still, a hopeful sign. pic.twitter.com/Hl2rejIp2V
— John P. Hussman, Ph.D. (@hussmanjp) February 3, 2020
260 US Cases Under Investigation
CDC has investigated 260 US patients for coronavirus
#CoronaVirus pic.twitter.com/3Rd6jjrj1V— #CoronaVirus Updates (@CoronaNumbers) February 3, 2020
Coronavirus Can Survive 5 Days Outside the Body
The #coronavirus can survive for five days maximum on smooth surfaces under suitable circumstances: experts from China’s Health Commission pic.twitter.com/UEBl0lksq0
— Hassan Nasser Fawaz (@HassanNFawaz) February 3, 2020
Even on a Doorknob
In in China’s Guangzhou Province Coronavirus Detected on a Doorknob
And in Feces
2019-nCoV virus discovered in patient stool and rectal swabs.
Question of the Day, Yesterday
@DrEricDing @chrismartenson @ErikSTownsend @MishGEA @AndyBiotech https://t.co/bQ8pDhCCJz
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 2, 2020
Wuhan Ghost Town
ABC News (US) posted this drone footage of what is happening in Wuhan … a city with a larger population than NYC.
Nothing … no economic activity at all.https://t.co/ndqY91jYfu
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 2, 2020
Economic shutdown in a town of 11 million. The video shows footage of Wuhan, unfortunately with verbal BS about the impeachment.
More than 100 Princeton Students in Self-Isolation
Do we have the number of suspected cases and/or shelter in place cases? https://t.co/Z3bD5lhIKW
— Jeeps in Motion (@debsbluskyz) February 3, 2020
https://twitter.com/JH55487554/status/1224248241623052288
About That Greatest Trade Deal Ever
I’m not suggesting it was is somehow Trump’s fault … I was noting that 2 years of work on a deal, that seem to paralyze the business community for months on end, is literally being undone in less than 12 hours after its signing by this virus. https://t.co/iw9XDzIe0x
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 3, 2020
Other than these items, everything is under control.
Jim Bianco just pinged me with this comment “Not all countries update everyday. Japan reported 20 on Friday. Has not updated since. Ditto Singapore (which was at 18 on Friday).“
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
A sober analysis in MoA shows the rate of infection and death are slowing down / flattening. We can expect an end to the nCoV epidemic in a few weeks.
Aggressive controls have definitely kept the Coronavirus in check. If they can keep it in check for a few more months, and if it does not return in the fall, it may vanish forever. On the other hand, it may become a part of the future virus landscape. Only time will tell.
Global rates of growth have dropped to 12% a day if you exclude Hubei, which is still growing at about 20% a day. That may be a function of catching up with the data. With one new hospital open, and another open this week, they finally should be able to test all those who should be tested, and give medical care to those who need it, which will also decrease mortality.
It is possible that not using bleach and other cleaning agents (like Lysol) will kill you. From my travels in Asia, bleach and cleaning agents are not used in most places. Maybe doing that would have prevented the spread of all viruses including coronavirus.
Hey CO, I don’t think it would have helped in this case, at least in the beginning. If it was transferred in the market via fresh-killed wild meat, bleach wasn’t an option. Mad cow disease was spread under very sanitary conditions in Europe.
In the modern world it is interesting how the imagining of people’s control of their world requires the nefarious plots of humans as opposed to the random reinventions of the natural world.
Man’s worst enemy is ….
AussiePete, curiously, viruses often kill only certain groups of people and skip others, such as the SARS virus not affecting children as you mentioned. Sometimes they know the reasons and sometimes they don’t get it figured out. The Spanish flu was odd in that it didn’t kill anyone over the age of 65, which is normally the age group that suffers the highest mortality rate. But when you factor in that they were all exposed to the 1889 Russian flu and apparently had enough immunity from that, then it makes sense.
Here’s the most encouraging thing I’ve seen so far about the coronavirus. The link below is a study that indicates that Asian men are way more susceptible than females in general, white men, and African American men because the ACE2 receptors where the nCoV enters human cells are more widely distributed within Asian men. The sample size is small but will hopefully translate to a much lower infection rate among non-Asians.
Also, this coronavirus is still showing to be most closely related to a bunch of coroaviruses carried by wild bats, so I’m having a hard time swallowing the bio-weapons theory.
That is based on a very, very small sample. It appears to be 6 women (.41% ACE2 receptors), 1 non-Asian Male (.82% ACE2 receptors), and 1 Asian Male (2.5% ACE2 receptors). I’m not sure how much you can conclude from such a small sample.
I agree with you, that’s why I said, “The sample size is small but will hopefully translate to a much lower infection rate among non-Asians.” No conclusions drawn yet, just hoping. 🙂
The ACE2 receptor was also posited as a therapeutic target during the SARS epidemic.
The main non-Asia ground zero for SARS was Toronto. Obviously many of the cases were imported but take a look at the below. Only three health care workers died – all of Asian origin. Too small a sample, and there could be many reasons (eg lots of Chinese/Philipinos working in western hospitals).
Maybe I’ll megadose on some Astralagus capsules from the health food store. That inhibits ACE2 apparently.
I’m not decided either way on bio-weapon, it is a possibility. Because these would be created using natural viruses (e.g. bat) , they will look like them but with some minor adjustments. These adjustments might occur in nature also, but some are much more unlikely to. So it is hard to have definitive proof just by looking at the virus, because there is always some possibility that even the oddest combinations occur naturally.
However, and for example the HIV sequence, some are very unlikely. They pulled that paper temporarily – it was placed for open review anyway – and they will be taking up suggestions to fully calculate on the difficulty of the combination they studied I think. If you read the comments at the original journal, a lot of the attempts to discredit it were not valid, because they focused on the common presence of one part of the sequence or another in nature, not the total combination which is unusual. They also tried pointing out that bat virus sequences also had similar combinations, but it turns out that the only one that compares was introduced to the virus registry after the study was conducted.
So it is something of an intrigue, and a question that needs answering if possible.
I’ll post below the link to where the article was so people can read the comments. The most useful ones are the oldest ones so read those first.
The main problem with that HIV/CoV paper is that it wasn’t peer reviewed. Had it been properly peer reviewed as it should have been, it never would have seen the light of day. The segments they were looking for were so small they are commonly found in a multitude of organisms from HIV to plants to bat coronaviruses. Several of the commenters who appear to be the kinds of scientists who would have been their peers doing a review of the paper, noted that when they did a BLAST search, they got over 1,000 hits, none of which were HIV sequences in the first 1,000. This paper was withdrawn because they were trying to make the data fit their theory instead of doing real science and seeing where the data took them.
Yes, I have read that and all the comments. If you read them all, the counter argument is that the matches
are based on one segment, but to find all four is with HIV. Now, they have to calculate a coincidence for those four appearing together, there will always be a possibility, but they are working stats and using them to deduce the likelihood as a pointer, i.e. not likely to be by natural crossover.
Will see where it all leads I guess once they include recommendations. I’m glad it was not peer reviewed and binned. As long as it is understood as work in progress then transparency and open source critique, as well as pooling thought, has a lot going for it.
It’s why we write here as well no ?
I’ve already known the surface to host transmission is what’s going to be the problem. Then you have people that think they’re ok with just face masks. So let’s say you concoct a full body suit then you will have decontamination issue. Everything you touch with your gloves will have it. How and where would you remove your suit? Go in to store and undress before getting in your car? Then what about all the crap you bought in the store? Poop is my last worry and at that point I wont be using public restrooms their bad now as it is.
You should know that all it takes for the spread of intestinal-based illnesses is the guy that doesn’t wash their hands after using the toilet. It could be anyone, anywhere, and it is the worst with those that handle foods. Have you ever seen the signs telling employees to always was their hands after using the bathroom?
People bring a lot of bacteria into bathrooms, the researchers found. Within an hour of normal use, there were 500,000 bacterial cells per square inch on the bathroom surfaces, on average. “The bacterial load shed by the people using that space was extraordinary,” Gilbert told Live Science.Mar 28, 2016
http://www.livescience.com › 54195-how-dirty-are-public-restrooms
How Dirty Are Public Restrooms, Really? | Live Science
We are going to have to wait for a country other than China to be invaded sufficiently by this virus to get accurate contagion and death rate.
My initial guess at the death rate is about 2%. A week ago there were 105 cases outside of China, and now there are 2 deaths outside of China.
I crunched some numbers about 5 days ago and came up with 2.8%. Then I looked at some demographics, just China as a whole not just Wuhan, and the population distribution is skewed to a large elderly population (1 child policy). Combine that with a high percentage of smokers and other factors, I’d bet your 2% estimate is much closer to what we would see in the US.
Initially SARS was though to have a death rate of around 4%. In the end the death rate was close to 10%. There’s no reliable way to even guess at it since we don’t know how long it takes to go from diagnosis to death.
The next country to go will be a country with very little infrastructure, data collection or reporting to handle it. In fact, it may be underway right now and you wouldn’t know it for another month or two.
Dont count on the US. 10000 deaths reported as 1, DOW +5000
Bioweapon?
Yeah sure, China decided to kneecap their economy by releasing a bioweapon in a wet market.
There is no evidence that it was a bioweapon, and it wouldn’t make any sense as one, since it primarily kills people over 70, people with COPD, and people with compromised immune systems. For the young it mostly acts like a cold or flu.
So a weapon that kills the most expensive non productive portion of a population wouldn’t be good for an economy?
You can also add in the wealth will be passed down to a younger generation that might be more inclined to spend the unearned wealth.
Not in anyway saying it is a weapon but the pyramid is upside down is most country’s from a benefits standpoint. This is a cure for that.
Saying that China made this to try to deliberately eliminate their least productive people is an entirely different argument than saying that it was made for warfare, but accidentally escaped containment.
The flu can’t be eliminated for one simple reason, that being that there are so many variations, plus the fact that new genetic variants are constantly evolving. The ones that are active change every year. The cold is the same – i think there are about a hundred different viruses that cause “a cold”, four of which are caronaviruses.
This caronavirus may have a high enough R0 that it will stay around until we all get it. I can’t guess on that.
It checks all the boxes for a controlled government release. Hong Kong protest, crashing economy, rampant inflation, unfavorable demographics and breaking social contract. I just can’t wrap my head around people being that evil.
The flu and the common cold while evolving every year still have some markers that our immune system can identify and fight with the proper weapons. Very few healthy individuals die from the flu. While the virus writes enough new software every year to keep its dna propagated, it has figured out a way to live in harmony with us.
I read an interesting article a few months back that they had discover virus dna within out dna. Basically virus have tagged our dna with there dna.
I think most people greatly underestimate how sophisticated viruses are.
If we go into hypothesis, there are various scenarios that could place it as warfare agent.
Firstly here China is assumed as source of release, but to approach the question properly you have to consider it could have been released there by another country or entity.
A virus that is disruptive but not overly lethal has its place in warfare, for example if the aggressor has better means to handle the virus where disruption is the aim without greater danger.
We don’t know enough about the virus, more lethal versions might be introduced.
If China released it on its own people to reduce older population, that is still warfare.
And so on.
It is non conventional, strategy does not follow the neat presentation we are taught war is, where national political identity visibly takes an overt position.
I’m not claiming any of the above, but to consider these possibilities you really have to leave behind any preconceptions, look at how the world is in global terms, even to the point of ignoring nations, to try to understand what might be occuring and who might be sponsor to it.
It is not the sort of thing that can easily be discussed, because we, like the Chinese, have barriers to criticism of own nation. They aren’t forced on us but they exist, in terms of loyalty as an example. We tend to stick to preprepared narrative, even if it is alternative or rebellious , and we do that often in the name of what our nation should be. However, to the elites (and that can include military), nation might just be a theme or tool amongst many that can be used to whatever goal.
So, well what is possible is wide open and it is not a comfortable place to spend time contemplating, because it is full of uncertainty and contradictions that run against everything we understand our world to be.
There is so much unknown about this virus at this point.
I personally don’t think it’s stoppable. We will all be infected or vaccinated.
People keep comparing it to the flu.
The question I ask is why haven’t they eradicated the flu?
That’s the reason why we will all get it. It is smarter than us.
“The question I ask is why haven’t they eradicated the flu?”
^^This. Common cold and the Flu started as novel viruses at some point, and they have been reinfecting us every year ever since then. I wonder if future generations will be telling each other, “Sorry, I cannot come to work this week because I just came down with this year’s coronavirus.”
The very first year’s infection might be a doozy, however.
How bad it will be is a question no one can answer. Ever. They can’t even predict how bad the flu will be from year to year.
What scares me about this virus is it can go either way. Wether by chance or by evolution it could get worse or less invasive. We have no immunities against this virus so it basically gets to decide it’s evolutionary route it takes upon us. If it has better results being worse it will go that route.
Relating this to the common cold is about the same as saying we are like elephants. We are both mammals and share dna. In a few hundred years though the average American might weight as much as an elephant at current weight growth rates so there is that too.
Yeah, I agree….the bioweapon theory is on the opposite side of the conspiracy coins as the nothingburger theory.
I’m not sure the statistics bear out the “old and infirm” argument. I don’t want to wander into speculation, but neither of the non-China deaths were elderly (39 & 44) and most of the smuggled (and suspect) images emerging from China over the last few weeks showed younger people, not older people, collapsing in corridors. Of course, we don’t know whether they were collapsing from heart conditions or virus, but i just wonder if we are being told the truth.
What we do know, if the statistics are believed, is that the ratio of male to female is 3:1. IF it is killing YOUNG males and the overall fatality rates are much higher than being admitted to, then that has very serious implications for the Chinese economy and might explain the heavy handed quarantine tactics. Or they could simply just be that China knows it needs to eradicate the virus quickly to regain international trust. In that context, locking a few people into their apartments may be reasonable (from the Chinese perspective).
One of the initial research articles from China on the coronavirus estimated an R0 of 4.08, and a motality rate of 6.5%. It further estimated that if the time people were allowed to spend in public once infected was reduced to less than 2.3 days, the R0 could be reduced to less than 1, and the virus would die out on it’s own. We can question whether we believe this, but we can’t doubt that the Chinese believed it, because they took immediate action in the only rational way to react when faced with such data: They instituted a massive curfew and quarantine.
If the R0 is really 4.08, and death rate is really 6.5%, taking no action would mean than virtually everyone in the country would get it within months, and 6.5% of them would die. But, with a massive curfew, it could be contained, so what else would they have done?
Now, it is possible that the data was skewed by two things. The first was the massive buffet for 50-100,000 held in Wuhan even as it was starting to spread. Add in a few people who infected 1,000 others, and the R0 you compute will be extremely high. The second is that because of the rapid and massive spread following the buffet, Wuhan’s medical facilities were immediately overwhelmed, resulting in substandard care and a higher death rate. So, is the R0 really 4.08? Is the death rate really 6.5%? I doubt both, and certainly hope they are wrong. My guess is that the R0 is closer to 2.5 and the death rate about 1.9%.
The R0 is such a flexible number. Hand washing and awareness can drive the number down greatly. That of course depends on the amount of exposure to be infected, the ability to remain air born, time to clear contagions, and the most importantly the asymptomatic contagious timeframe.
I have only heard one person talk about R0 and cell phones. Cell phones could be the human achilles’ heel. How often is the cell phone exposed to everything we touch?How often is it washed or alcoholed? We wash our hands at home and then touch the cell phone again.
Humans carry around a personal Petri dish.
How this factors into this virus I don’t know. I suspect it has factored into the spread of the flu in recent years especially in children.
Quarantine is an interesting subject also. The theory it should slow a virus spread. In practice it might make things worse. People can only be quarantined for a short period of time. After the food runs out they will leave to get food. Because of hoarding and panic this leads to long lines and large groups waiting for supplies. They may actually come into contact with more people in this scenario than a normal day. You can also bet money in a city of 11,000,000 people are sneaking out because of the situation. There is no perfect answer at this stage. Something had to be done.
Check out this predicted cases website.
If the virus can be carried in the intestine, when does that infected person stop being a vector for the virus???
If the answer is never, we’re in trouble because there will be a lot of carriers that don’t wash their hands.
Like the nasty bastard at the restaurant last night that took a crap and walked out. Thank god it wasn’t a buffet which is something I usually avoid.
Over-played. Mortality #s nowhere near that level. But highl-disruptive disease, none-the-less. Maybe not a mature bio-weapon but an experiment?
Real death toll,half a million? This is what happens when you mess with bio weapons and you have no real clue what you’re doing!Chicoms will have to put down millions or whole cities will go dark…..and that’s what coming to a Walmart near you.
It’s not just “China”, virtually all of the deaths are from Hubei province (Wuhan). Of the 427 deaths reported so far, all but 13 are from Wuhan. Furthermore, 72% of today’s newly reported cases are from Hubei as well. Today China reported 3269 new cases, of which 2345 were from Hubei.
While we don’t know how accurate the data from China is, the data from the rest of the world seems to indicate that with maximum healthcare, the death rate is lower than the early Chinese data indicated, probably in the 2% range, not 6.5%, and that if countries act quickly to ban travel and to aggressively quarantine suspected infections, it can be controlled, at least for awhile. Now we have 2 deaths outside of China mainland, one in Hong Kong, and one in the Philippines (one was also reported in Malaysia, but doesn’t count for some reason). If you divide 2 by the number of infections 7 days ago outside China, you get 2/105=1.9%. That still makes it 40 times deadlier than the regular flu.
I suspect that the extremely high immediate spread in Wuhan was due to the idiocy of hosting a massive buffet for 100,000, or whatever it was, at a time when the virus was already known to be spreading. That gave the virus a massive jumpstart, allowing it to spread from just people who went to the Wuhan Wet Market, to people from all over China. It also led to a surge of patients so large that it totally overwhelmed the medical facilities in Wuhan, and a very high initial death rate. It also led to dramatically overestimating R0, and the fatality rate.
There are parts of the world that a death here or there wouldn’t be noticed until truly epidemic deaths are underway. And that country will not have the means to do what China is doing. Given that you can travel virtually anywhere in the world in 24 hours then we’ll be off to the races.
About this time, today, the refusal to enter quarantine effect will start to kick in. Under-reporting and gambling on being in the 97% survivor club.
With any luck, faecal contamination is an important rout of infection. That would mean good sanitation can help limit spread.
Something I notice that is peculiar about the coverage on 2019-nCoV: there are zero cases reported in the continent of Africa. From what I have read, China has a tremendous amount of activity in Africa. Even if warm weather does hinder this bug from spreading, I would expect at least a few cases there from people who were originally exposed in Wuhan. Australia proves cases can be brought to warm weather locations via air travel. Are there no cases, or no tracking capability in Africa? If they do have a major outbreak of 2019-nCoV, would we know it?
Broadcast news reports are still pumping misinformation. No discussion about the R0. Bug compared to Flu with Flu shown as “killing less than 1%” compared to 2019-nCoV “killing 2% or less, depending on how many people are actually infected.” Also, there was this jewel: “The strain of Wuhan coronavirus is new, but the coronavirus is not new. Here are four examples of coronavirus that are harmless.” I wonder who writes the scripts for these broadcasts? Whoever they are, they sure feel it is their obligation to steer public opinion in a particular direction by presenting incomplete information as total fact.
I believe that the Australia cases are the only ones reported thus far from the Southern hemisphere, where is not flu season, and I believe all of those are people who became infected while in China.
There are suspected cases in Kenya, Ethiopia and Botswana. I’ve also read about a Cameroonian student who is supposedly the first confirmed case. Addis Abababa and Nairobi are the hubs for Ethiopian and Kenyan airlines, and on any given day they are packed full of travelers from all over Africa, Addis in particular. When I last flew through there, the transit “lounge” was so packed you could barely walk. African countries (particularly here in South Africa) are preparing themselves for the virus but my guess is it’s already here it’s just that the notoriously bad public health systems is going to take a long time to pick it up
Not strictly a reply to you but i don’t seem able to reply to Mish’s article.
There is a lot of information that can be gleaned from academic literature released over the past few weeks. A google search with “filetype:pdf” will pull up a fair few interesting papers. And a few wacky ones – including the theory that this virus fell from a meteorite that broke up over the region (letter to The Lancet – care to wager on that one never being published?).
The claims that this is a bioweapon seem to centre around a paper in which proteins “similar” (key word) to HIV have been found in the virus’ make up. The paper goes on to say that this is “unlikely to be fortuitous in nature”. But there are at least two ways of reading that statement: the first is “this is unlikely to happen by chance in the natural world”. The other is “this is unlikely to be good news”. The conspiracy sites seem to have read it the former way, but as a native english speaker i’m not sure i agree.
As for faecal spread, at the moment it is only posited – “traces” of RNA have been found which have led scientists to wonder if the virus lives in faeces. This would not be that unusual – seasonal flu patients CAN – albeit rarely – pass live virus in stool.
Also contained in the literature – there is so far very little change in the virus structure (ie mutation). Which is good and unsurprising. Coronaviruses have a proof reading function which limits that. Unfortunately, antibodies against coronavirus do not persist in the body for long, which is why we get colds regularly.
Also some papers discussing possible treatment while we wait for a vaccine. The HIV angle is one (Thailand, although just one case), others are compounds that suppress ACE2 expression.
I think you are very right about Africa but it is possible that the RO will fall there because of humidity, which slays respiratory virus particles, so it will take a while to reach critical mass and appear in statistics. Wuhan traditionally has very high rainfall but this year it has experienced a long drought, and the weather there is very cold at present. This means that the virus is essentially air dried (good for the virus, because water permeates it, which is why a 70% alcohol gel is better than a 100% alcohol gel) and people’s cilia cells are less effective at intercepting the particles because airways are drier. I suspect air pollution doesn’t help.
Sounds like you are well informed. Thanks for the info!
Thank you very much for the excellent information. I hope you continue to participate. As for the website, the developers keep making changes. A current bug is is you can have only one reply window open. Thus, if you have a reply box open for a thread, it prevents you from posting a reply to the article itself. Close it, and then you can reply directly to the article, if you choose.
Probably because 3rd world countries have no way to test for it.