This video is from The People's Daily, so it's the imagery that the PRC wants you to see about their response in Wuhan. For me it provokes a series of questions:
* What are these substances they are spraying with trucks all over town?
* What is the stuff they are spewing with hand sprayers? It's not the same stuff, judging by the much more dense fog.
* Is any of this stuff safe to breathe? Is it better for you than the virus?
* Why are they washing the outside of a jet plane?
29 comments:
PR
Meanwhile, channeling Sallah, Xi sends Li to Wuhan to scope things out and to show the...flag...while Xi makes a deal out of his trotting around Beijing to pretend to show interest.
Eric Hines
The confirmed cases on that ship in yokohama have been more or less doubling almost every day. If the trend holds, tomorrow there will be over 100 new confirmed infections. Japanese math, not chi-com.
Water. They're spraying water. If there's something else in the water, I'd be surprised. Yes that's a thick "fog" from the hand sprayers, but without any contrary evidence, I'm still going with "water" or maybe "carbon dioxide fog". And why are they spraying water? The same reason they're spraying the outside of the plane. To appear to be doing something. There is exactly nothing here that convinces me that the PRC is doing anything except PR (pun not actually intended, but I'll take it), because they can't actually do anything useful without revealing how incompetent they are at it.
As for the infection spreading on the cruise ship in Yokohama... well, that's because it's a cruise ship and not a hospital. Yes people will catch the flu-like disease on a cruise ship (i.e. not a sterile environment). I never tried to imply it wouldn't spread (especially in a close environment like that). Only that people wouldn't DIE from it (save perhaps the very elderly and very young) for all the reasons I explained elsewhere.
The interesting question is how many of the yokohama passengers become gravely ill and how many die. The demographics of the passengers may be important--I'd guess cruises tend to skew higher in age, so more people might be in the high risk group.
So I decided to look into the Yokohama quarantined ship. here is what I found.
135 of the 336 passengers who have been tested are positive for the coronavirus. This is out of the roughly 3,600 people aboard the ship. Testing has been prioritizing the elderly and those who are presenting symptoms. The Japanese government has provided medication to approximately 750 of the 1,850 passengers who have requested it and is working to supply the rest.
Please note something important which is missing from this information... the death toll. That would be because that death toll is precisely zero. Zero passengers and crew of the Diamond Princess (the quarantined ship) have died. As of the result of the coronavirus or of any other cause.
Now, if you want proof that this is not some out of control bioweapon, I give you a quarantined cruise ship, the Diamond Princess. In the course of one week (the amount of time the ship has been quarantined in Yokohama harbor) it has failed to kill anyone whatsoever. If this is a bioweapon, it is likely the least competent and efficacious bioweapon ever given the name.
If this is a bioweapon, it is likely the least competent and efficacious bioweapon ever given the name.
Or it escaped confinement very early in its development. Still, I tend to discount the likelihood of bioweapon here.
As to the Diamond Princess, of course the infection is spreading at a rapid clip. The folks on board are not in quarantine from each other--they can't be, given ventilation techniques, for instance, and meal access/delivery--only from the outside world. There's another cruise ship trotting around the region, denied porting in Philippines, Thailand, Guam, Japan--still at sea, since it left Hong Kong, for 14 days (the nominal incubation period/quarantine period) and counting with zero infections, so far.
Eric Hines
As for the bioweapon theory, the best evidence for it is also evidence against it: the reported presence of structures that make the gene more effective against Asians than others. If it's a doomsday bioweapon meant to allow the PRC government to corral its own population should they turn against Communism, that makes sense. But it's also exactly what you'd expect from a wild-grown virus that happens to have success infecting people in Asia.
What I'm waiting to see is less how many people die than the facts around full recovery. I've had lots of viruses in my life; they're all just bad memories at most. Will people recover from this as completely, with the death rate remaining at flu-like levels? If so, this is analogous to the flu. But so far we haven't seen many recoveries, even though we also haven't seen many provable deaths.
And I doubt Japan wants to cover up for the PRC. I figure a couple more weeks will give us certainty about this strain.
I don't quite understand the death rate in China, then. I'd not have thought health care was _that_ bad in the big cities.
But maybe there's a second disease going along with it.
James, I'd look at the basic health level of the people in Wuhan. My dad was part of the medical response to Chernobyl, and what struck him and the others was the lousy basic health of people - from industrial pollution and malnutrition, not radiation. If you have a population that is somewhat lung-damaged (air pollution) and immune weak (malnutrition, chronic ailments, parasites), anything is going to hit them a lot harder.
LittleRed1
I don't quite understand the death rate in China, then. I'd not have thought health care was _that_ bad in the big cities.
But maybe there's a second disease going along with it.
Even with influenza, it's generally the secondary infections that kill. But as LR1 points out, this is likely not a "healthy" population to begin with, add to that the overcrowding, lack of adequate heat and nutrition, and you've got a recipe for disaster. For all their talk of feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, actual Communists do a lousy job of both. Partly by design, but mostly by incompetence.
Couple more thoughts. One, concerning the infection spread rate in the PRC--that's also been exacerbated by government secrecy and government need to save face, which has badly inhibited communications and ability to share threats and solutions--and delayed quarantine efforts.
Regarding the possible bioweapon aspect, keep in mind that bioweapons don't need to be themselves fatal. A large part of any combat is upsetting the enemy's time table more and sooner than he upsets yours, and incapacitating the enemy's combatants and support--including deep rear civilian--facilities so he's less able to respond to an attack or an ongoing engagement/campaign of engagements.
With civilian populations inhibited, even for just a couple of weeks, the engaged forces and those immediately behind, themselves perhaps also sick (depending on where and in what sequence the bioweapon is released), also are not going to get the resupply or reinforcements they need when they need them. And an advantage of a non-lethal bioweapon: there's something left worth occupying and a population left worth the conquering and enslaving.
Eric Hines
So far I'm seeing two pretty consistent numbers: the cases double every two days (or is it really twice that fast on a crowded ship?), and the death toll is about 2%. That's a much higher death rate than normal flu, but obviously we have many viruses with a higher one.
I too am curious to see what the death toll is like in a population with access to better medical care.
Sadly, your curiosity is likely to be satisfied.
The problem we are failing to see , is simple. Scale.
Regardless of how superlative western medical care is,
it is irrelevant if the system is overloaded with patients.
Yes, any western hospital may deal with one or two, or two hundred cases. How about two thousand? Twenty thousand?
That's what worried me when Ebola cases cropped up here. We're great at handling a few, but we could quickly be overwhelmed. In the Ebola situation we nipped it in the bud, but Ebola transmission is surprisingly difficult. Flu is very easy to transmit. Of course it's also far, far less deadly than Ebola.
Of course it's also far, far less deadly than Ebola.
I'd say so! Ebola averages a 90% death rate. Coronavirus hasn't broken 1% yet (again, assuming we can trust the numbers out of China where most of the cases, and nearly ALL the deaths, are). But again, we're now on day 8 of the quarantine for the Diamond Princess (not 8 days since the first infection, just 8 days of quarantine in Yokohama harbor), and there's still not been a single death. And as has been pointed out, cruise ships tend more towards the elderly end of the spectrum, especially this time of year (i.e. while school is in session).
So the population most at risk of death is what we're talking about, on a cruise ship (far from a healthy/sterile environment in the best of times), and we're just not seeing anything even mildly frightening about this bug. Quite literally this bug, while infectious, is not spreading like wildfire through a cruise ship in a manner that even common stomach bugs manage to do. Sure there still may be (and I'd bet likely are) undiagnosed cases aboard among the 3,600 people trapped there. As of the latest update, there were only 39 new cases found (versus the 65 the day before). So much for the doubling daily prediction. They've still got 6 days to go through the quarantine protocol (it's got a 14 day incubation period), so that number will likely rise, but I'm sorry, I'm just not seeing anything to panic about.
You must understand, I'm very skeptical of most panics that the media covers, because it's a pattern with reporters. Reporters are very nice people (for the most part), but they do not understand anything even slightly science related. They understand journalism and that's about it. So they hear something that sounds scary to them and it's all bets off for how they're going to report it. They take all quotes that make it sound scary, run those, and ignore any dose of reason from their interviews. Because that's what they're primed for. I know, I work with these people daily. They're not bad people, nor do they particularly try to blow things out of proportion, but they have no sense of what proportion IS with this stuff. God, you should hear them talk about just about any topic they're ignorant on. GUNS! Lord's sake, you'd think the things are zombies that creep out of your gun safe at night and roam the neighborhood looking for children to murder! And when you see them report on stuff YOU KNOW ABOUT, you can see how full of it they are, but then you see them report on something like this and just don't make the connection that they're equally clueless!!!
Again, I want to stress, it's not that they're bad at their jobs, but remember their jobs are not to present an expert level analysis of what they're reporting on. It's to present their best interpretation of what someone else told them. PLEASE, I beg of you, whenever you read a story written by a journalist, PLEASE assume they've got no idea what they're talking about other than raw data. And maybe even give that a gimlet eye if it's given as "an estimate" or "approximately", because they can and will take the top or bottom of the range and use that if it swings the story in a particular direction.
Ebola's more like 50% on average. You don't get 90% except in extreme situations and particularly dangerous strains. And even 50% is a number for some pretty fragile third-world medical systems. The scary thing, of course, is that a disease that requires such extreme measures to contain and treat can overburden even a fairly good first-world medical system if you get too many cases at once. Anyway, 50% is bad enough and already 25x or more as deadly as coronavirus appears to be.
I agree we don't know that much yet about the death rate, considering that we are using as the denominator only cases that are bad enough to be reported and treated intensively. It will be a while before we know how many mild or even subclinical cases are out there. Nevertheless, coronavirus clearly can kill more of that subset of victims that it makes noticeably ill than an ordinary flu does. (A lot of ordinary flu also presumably goes unreported in people not even ill enough to see a doctor, let alone go to a hospital.)
Nevertheless, coronavirus clearly can kill more of that subset of victims that it makes noticeably ill than an ordinary flu does.
Honestly, I don't know that we can even draw THAT conclusion. As of today:
“As of 6 a.m. Geneva time this morning, there are 44,730 cases of COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) in China, with 1,114 deaths,” he said, adding that “outside China, there are 441 cases from 24 countries, and one death.”
One death outside of China. One. In contrast 80,000 AMERICANS died of the flu last winter. You begin to see why I am singularly unimpressed with the reported "lethality" of this "bioweapon". Hell, even the numbers coming out of the PRC (and again, I believe both the number of infected and dead are being severely underreported by the PRC) don't exactly scream "potential pandemic" here.
Sorry to keep harping on this... it irks me. Those numbers are insane. We're in a tizzy about coronavirus, and it's literally a joke compared to our yearly flu. From the CDC's own website:
CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.
Now, that's just in the US. And we're seriously questioning how coronavirus might "overwhelm" our ability to deal with infections? In a SLOW year, 9 million of US (in the US) get the flu and 140,000 are sick enough to be hospitalized. And worse, 12,000 of us die from it.
This thing hasn't infected 0.5% as many people as a slow flu year gets in the US alone, and hasn't killed 10% as many people as the flu kills in the US (and again, that's comparing worldwide numbers for coronavirus vs US flu numbers). Does that mean coronavirus is therefore 20x more lethal than the flu? Well, I mean you CAN read the numbers that way, but that's comparing ChiCom medical care to US medical care, and frankly, that's laughable.
We treat the flu as a yearly inconvenience, and coronavirus as if it's Captain Tripps from The Stand. And I'm sorry, it just isn't.
Now, if you want proof that this is not some out of control bioweapon, I give you a quarantined cruise ship, the Diamond Princess. In the course of one week (the amount of time the ship has been quarantined in Yokohama harbor) it has failed to kill anyone whatsoever. If this is a bioweapon, it is likely the least competent and efficacious bioweapon ever given the name.
I am not an expert on bio weapons... but even if I were, I would probably get red flagged for talking about this subject, so here we go.
One of the problems with bio weapon targeting is just that, it is as accurate in targeting as chemical weapons. Meaning, they function closer to terror weapons than anything that is actually useful in war.
So a genetically engineered bio weapon has to be two components, like a dual liquid explosive device. First, what virology calls the virus, which changes the DNA or uses the DNA to reproduce itself. If the DNA/RNA can be changed or affected via epigenetic markers, or specially targeted, then we have the issue of targeting actively addressed. But it doesn't make them target things, it just has to be highly contagious.
A designed bio weapon does not have to be highly lethal either. The lethality can come from the second component of the weapon, the nano tech frequency directed energy weapon.
Meaning, broad spectrum sound, vibration, and light weapons can be further used to mutate or directly activate epigenetic markers and triggers, which were created or affected by the "virus" itself. Thus what might seem like a relatively warm microwave radiation broad spectrum beam that has little to no negative effects fired from "orbit" over a city, would mutate in combination with the survivors of the "virus" causing intended or unintended mutation effects.
With modern and ancient technology, these stages can be expanded into 3rd stage, 4th stage, and 5th stage, just like rockets can be.
Much of the weaponization of DNA research is not given to the public, for good reason. It is classified or need to know. Humanity has come a long way from the atom bomb and spreading small pox on blankets... be proud humanity, be proud.
Has anyone wondered why the Pentagon is not freaking out over China landing probes on the moon including the dark side of the moon?
Maybe they and NASA know it is all a joke, but if it is not a joke, I suggest Americans get serious about their "orbital security". Because if you think the moon is solid, then maybe you might want to not let enemies take Control of Your Orbitals... eh.
Also, for those that think none of what I have said exists... welcome to the world of recently de classified American military tech.
This thing hasn't infected 0.5% as many people as a slow flu year gets in the US alone, and hasn't killed 10% as many people as the flu kills in the US (and again, that's comparing worldwide numbers for coronavirus vs US flu numbers). Does that mean coronavirus is therefore 20x more lethal than the flu? Well, I mean you CAN read the numbers that way, but that's comparing ChiCom medical care to US medical care, and frankly, that's laughable.
no, what it means is that the Deep State has been using engineered flu as a bio weapons test on the clueless Americans for decades now.
Hehe. See how that works?
The thing about American knowledge... is just how limited it really is, even amongst the military or Presidential "need to know" list. What is the truth? If the truth you have is based on media reports, how good is it? Not very good for Wuhan, AMericans can see... but they don't actually look in the mirror at their own country, which has flu data that is often much more... interesting.
It is two components.
The flu spread. And the Vaccine.
How many Americans have access to independent testing of the flu mutations and the vaccine components?
Or is the media just reporting what the Authorities tell them?
The problem with skeptical and Spy/Trade Craft thinking is... we have to always consider the scenarios nobody else wants to deal with.
What does every First World country do when a flu or similar out break happens? They provide vaccines.
Why can't vaccines be engineered to be the 3rd or 2nd component of a bio weapon test? If it fails, no biggie, the government will just say "we cured it". They didn't cure jack, nor did the CDC, but whatever, that is what people will think.
Humanity has a brain but they often times "think" less than ants do. The problem with First World reactions to certain issues is that it is Too Predictable.
China just changed its definitions, leading to a small spike and also making comparison much more difficult.
Reference to "normal" flu caseloads and deaths invariably leave out a critical component- Time. In order to have any reference point, it is necessary to know WHEN the counting started.
Bear in mind, we have about one month of counting for the cv.
if the seasonal counting for flu started four months ago, we need to wait three months before an accurate comparison can be made.
If it is a one year average, then we need a years worth of CV infections to compare.
You're certainly right on that raven. But even with that being true, the Kung Flu has a LONG way to go to catch up. Again, the numbers I gave for influenza above from the CDC are just the US numbers, not global. The numbers I gave from coronavirus are global. And even still it's not infected half a percent as many people globally as the flu does in the US alone. It's going to need to get REALLY busy to make up those numbers, because there aren't 200 more months left this year for it to grow at its current rate of 45,000 per month. Now, if it manages to double every month, it can actually manage to get to flu-like levels by this time next year.
Now, I fully concede, the PRC is in for a bad time. But that's due to the twin prongs of their own incompetence and unwillingness to admit they need help (because of the prior reason). So it's going to be much, much worse in the PRC. But I think in the long run, this thing will end up in the dustbin like SARS (at least as far as the rest of us are concerned).
But that's due to the twin prongs of their own incompetence and unwillingness to admit they need help (because of the prior reason).
No, it's because the gods have told you humans that if you do certain things, plagues will come.
That got mixed or corrupted into this Authoritarian version of a serial killer god sending plagues to punish people. Humanity is not... that important to most of the elohim.
The cruise ship just lost one: an 80+ year old woman.
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