The number of people in China infected has now surpassed that of SARS nearly two decades ago.
The totally inept World Health Organization (WHO) will weigh in on Thursday
Meanwhile, airlines led by actual humans, have started to act rationally.
For example, a growing number of Airlines Suspend Flights to China
British Airways and Indonesia’s Lion Air said on Wednesday they would halt all flights to mainland China, and American Airlines said it would suspend flights from Los Angeles to Shanghai and Beijing, citing a significant decline in demand for travel.
In a matter of weeks, the pathogen has killed at least 132 people and infected 5,997 people in China, according to the World Health Organization. That latter number topped SARS, which also originated in China, killing 349 people and infecting 5,327 on the Chinese mainland during its nine-month outbreak in 2002 and 2003. The number of SARS infections world-wide—8,098—is still higher than the total for the new coronavirus—6,065, according to the WHO.
Evacuations Then Detentions
- US: A plane carrying more than 200 Americans arrived on Wednesday morning at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, Calif. The passengers were screened multiple times—twice in China before being allowed to board the flight and again after the plane stopped in Anchorage, Alaska, to refuel. They will be screened again in California and temporarily housed there for a period of time, according to Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services.
- UK: Matt Hancock, secretary of state for health and social care in the U.K., tweeted Wednesday that the government is working on evacuating its citizens from Wuhan and that all passengers would be isolated for 14 days upon arrival.
- Australia: The country has roughly 600 citizens in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, said it would also evacuate its citizens and quarantine them in a detention center on remote Christmas Island, an Australian territory typically used to house asylum seekers.
Some US citizens are still stranded in Wuhan.
Other Actions
- UAE The United Arab Emirates’s Health Ministry said Wednesday that a family of four visiting from Wuhan had contracted the new coronavirus.
- Kazakhstan Which shares a border with China, said Wednesday that it would suspend all transport links to the country in addition to stopping the issuance of entry visas to Chinese citizens over the coronavirus.
- Georgia was suspending all direct air traffic with China as a preventive measure
- Russia all tour operators have stopped selling tours to China, including charter flights, according to Russia’s national tourism agency, Rostourism.
- Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday urged residents to return home from the mainland immediately and to quarantine themselves at home for 14 days after.
Airline Cancellations
CNN has an even bigger list of airline cancellations.
British Airways, United Airlines, American Airlines, Air Asia, Cathay Pacific, Air India, IndiGo, Lufthansa and Finnair have announced plans to slash the number of flights they are operating to China or stop flying to the country entirely. Other airlines are offering customers refunds.
Thinking People Lead to Cancellations
- United Airlines said “significant decline in demand” had forced it to suspend flights from February 1 through February 8 between its US hubs and Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
- Air Canada (ACDVF), which has 33 weekly flights to China, has also canceled select flights due to a reduction in demand.
- Air Asia (AIABF), which has flights from Thailand and Malaysia to Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, said it has suspended all flights to the city until February 29.
- Air India said on Twitter that its flight between Shanghai (PVG) and Mumbai, which goes via Delhi, has been canceled from January 31 to February 14. IndiGo, its rival, has suspended flights from Delhi to Chengdu (CTU) from February 1 until February 20 due to a high number of cancellations by customers.
Expect that list to grow as taunts come in.
For those who could not read things the first time, here is the statement regarding Coronavirus Geometric Progression once again.
To be absolutely clear, this is NOT a prediction that 100 million people will be infected by Feb 20. Rather, this has been its growth rate for the last 12 days. A vaccine, mutation or successful quarantine/isolation could help reduce this growth rate.
Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man blog chimed in “The mocking may well be a kind of contrary indicator. As one guy sagely remarked, it would be quite odd for China to basically shut down large swaths of its economy for a harmless little cold In fact, they seem extremely concerned.“
60 million people in China are locked down and charlatans pass this off as if it’s nothing. The economic hit to China is already huge.
But oh, the Flu is worse (based on “official” reports from China that are dismissed as lies by those on the front line). The death total is a guaranteed lie as well.
The fact is, we don’t know what the facts are.
Emergency at Hand
Outside China, people have seen the WHO and CDC inaction and have decided they will not wait for an official declaration of an emergency.
And if the virus does stop spreading globally, which by the way I actually suspect, it will not be due to the WHO, but citizens and airlines acting responsibly, refusing to take more risks.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Talking about W.H.O look at how they handled ebola outbreak…inefficient and always in wait mode until things getting worse. these old protocol obviously need changes and evolve. We need to act based on dynamic evaluation not based on a piece of standard chart/number. Do we have to wait until more dead/infected people before we take action for this case. Just another money pit organization, comes down to inefficient/unqualified leadership. Doctors, nurses, scientists, front lines work their asses off and risks their lives but W.H.O leadership is pure BS.
I wonder how the Corona Virus will affect Tesla’s China production? Shanghai is only 500 miles from Wuhan. If Musk’s Gigafactory has to shut down for an extended period, he can’t sell as many cars which means he has less revenue to service that debt.
Hysteria Defined
“To be absolutely clear, this is NOT a prediction that 100 million people will be infected by Feb 20. Rather, this has been its growth rate for the last 12 days. A vaccine, mutation or successful quarantine/isolation could help reduce this growth rate.”
That was in red by Bianco, and in Bold by me. I cannot do colors.
For sure, deaths and stats are underreported
And how did you conclude from@KeetoG tweet that he doesn’t understand science? Is what he wrote incorrect? Have there been deaths reported outside of China?
I think his figures are wrong. For a start first figures
show infection in young has been avoided in initial reports, and elsewhere I am just reading that 5 of 11 mortality were over 60, the rest below. You cannot chop and dice different figures, and who knows what were being used by OP, but they are certainly not properly representative of what this virus is up to or capable of.
Have there been any deaths outside of China? No.
The existing geographic reach of the virus is not relevant to its potential.
We know it has the potential to become pandemic, i.e. like China but in many other countries. So his statement on mortality outside of China is basically pointless beyond saying that the effects of its transmission outside of China are too recent to have caused mortality.
It’s not pointless. Somehow we don’t believe China, yet we believe them at the same time.
Sorry to post this here, but I still can’t make a comment other than reply to someone else’s. Screenshot wouldn’t upload either.
Also I can’t use Ask Mish
Scooot what OS and Browser?
IPad Pro, iOS 13.3.1 using Safari
Windows 10 on the PC, I’ve tried Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome
I do not use Ask Mish or Politics and need to remove them.
FWIW, I see a global recession on the horizon b/c of coronavirus. The supply chains are going to get royally screwed up. Companies are issuing supply risk assessments to external facing staff in order to deal with supply issues/continuity questions from suppliers, vendors and customers. I deal quite a bit with Asia excluding China and given entire supply chains for many products use southeast Asia, Taiwan and South Korea, I see no way this doesn’t impact growth.
I can agree with that.
Speaking of definitions, please define your understanding of the word “hysterical.”
Excellent question by CautiousObserver.
I can only find one case of what I would label Hysteria
A contrarian is literally “a person who opposes or rejects popular opinion”. Are the skeptics the same as popular opinion? Doesn’t seem to me like that.
All media, mainstream and “alternative” are being hysterical about this, but a few skeptical people are a “contrary indicator”. Must be some new definition of the word “contrarian”
Speaking of definitions, please define your understanding of the word “hysterical.”
Only after someone explains why and how a few skeptical people are a contrary indicator.
Fair enough. The idea that a few skeptical people are correct depends on who the skeptics are. Sometimes, they know something which is not generally known. In that case, the skeptics with special knowledge can be correct and the herd of others can be mistaken. However; fairly often the small group of contrarians is full of misinformed loudmouths, in which case the “contrarian indicator” is total BS.
Thanks, but you didn’t answer my question. Your argument about the skeptics being a BS contrarian indicator is fair, but Pater Tenebrarum, whom Mish quoted, claims that the skeptics themselves are a contrarian indicator. That seems like nonsense to me. A tiny minority of skeptics can’t be a contrarian indicator by definition. If anything, it’s the exact opposite of that.
That being said, the person who tweeted at Mish and whom Mish dismissed as “not understanding science” is making a valid point that is being simply waved away. There could be more context to that exchange but it is not being shown in this article.
I think what PT meant was that the fact that some mocked China’s version (and Mish’s) underlines that China would not act with the urgency it has unless the threat was serious, for fear of looking foolish. So by that view the mocking is a contrarian indicator, in a round about way, because it reminds that China would not act this way without strong cause.
?
A contrarian is literally “a person who opposes or rejects popular opinion”. So, by the definition, this is wrong.
As for China, who knows what is really going on there. Apparently we are now fine with picking and choosing data and information provided by them that fits our narrative.
Here is an IMO reasonable suggestion – since the virus is already spreading in multiple countries, let’s wait and see how it behaves outside of China. Not just the rates of infection, which by themselves are not that interesting, but the mortality rate.
“Here is an IMO reasonable suggestion – since the virus is already spreading in multiple countries, let’s wait and see how it behaves outside of China. Not just the rates of infection, which by themselves are not that interesting, but the mortality rate”
What do you mean by wait & see? Cease attempts to stop it spreading further?
As cautious observer says to my reading – the term used was “indicator”.
As for waiting to see what the virus is capable of, very frankly you wouldn’t know unless you were infected. We often have the sensation, due to media and other influence, of being permanent observers to outside events, but there is an illusion to this. In other words you have to respond by action to the reality a viral pandemic might bring. You might choose to delay, others however , and even if out of a premature frustration at lack of knowledge combined with whatever information actually is public, are acting and expect action now. These aren’t stupid people, and I don’t fault you because something of this (potential) magnitude is hard to comprehend, but you know you aren’t inviting anyone to any kind of solution.
There is an obvious danger, I suggest you take simple steps to mitigate that danger, and not discourage others from doing the same. At the very least this will help people to be partly prepared, including psychologically, for if indeed we are confronted with a lethal pandemic. It takes time and energy and planning to act, you cannot cram that into a panic moment, but just by building on some basic prep. you will get a much better idea and feel more confident for it, and will move past the various psychological barriers that often get in the way.
IMHO
“Thanks, but you didn’t answer my question.”
Here is what I think Tenebrarum meant:
“The mocking may well be a kind of BS contrary indicator.”
FIFY.
You don’t have to fix it for me. Tenebrarum (or Mish) should, if that’s really what he meant.
As the Dread Pirate Roberts once said: “Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.”
Here is a meaning of “contrary indicator” that does not require any rewording of Tenebrarum’s quoted statement:
Contrary Indicator: n, An indicator that is contrary to being correct; in other words, an incorrect indication.
“The fact is, we don’t know what the facts are.”
…
Yes. I do admit a chuckle at some in MSM questioning China’s interpretation … the same people who, though, take their word as gospel on economic numbers.
Common sense says nobody with an IQ higher than body temperature would go there, and airlines don’t like flying empty planes. Unless I was seriously into bat soup, or snake steak, I would even cancel any future plans.
We are debating cancelling a domestic trip we have planned for the week of February 16th to a large populated city with international flights to everywhere. A lot of it will depend on what happens between now and the week before.
You wonder if coronavirus is really that bad, or if the CCP is sees an opportunity to be the responsible adult in the room. I suppose the two are not mutually exclusive…..