Wuhan virus (coronavirus) arrives in the USA

[Anonymous]

Overnight, cases continued to climb outside China.

Korea has 46 new cases and 1 new death. Totals:602 and 5

Italy has 34 new cases. Totals:113 and 2

Japan now has 138 cases. Deaths remain at 1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any more suggestions on what to stock up on? Food wise that is.
Also, besides Tylenol and Advil, what meds to stock up on?

Toilet paper. Coffee/tea if you drink it. Powdered or shelf stable milk.

Honestly, just look at what you eat, focus on what you can get that you will eventually use and buy that - pasta, sauces, rice, beans, frozen veggies and fruits, kids stuff, treats like granola bars, bags of chips, crackers, bottled juice, Oatmeal/muesli, nuts.

Many of these are in my regular shopping list so I’ve just been doubling up on some when I shop.

The only thing I intentionally went out and bulk purchased was toilet paper because it is so big and bulky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Besides, do look at the rest of the China cases outside of Hubei, it is not anywhere NEAR the same situation. The other provinces have anything from few cases to 1000 case per province and each of those are 50 to 100 million people.

Right , but realize that China took proactive steps to keep those provinces to just a few cases. They have CLOSED ALL SCHOOLS, across China, indefinitely. Kids are staying home, even in places that just have a few cases.

S. Korea hasn't closed schools yet and neither has Japan. Both have numbers that are growing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you think the WHO is waiting for other countries to catch up to China outside of Hubei Province before calling this a pandemic?

Even China is still to catch up with Hubei Province. The virus is way less present then Hubei.
Cases for individual Chinese provinces reported: 2020-02-21 T10:13:09
When you look at the numbers Hubei is unparallelly to any other province. I am not an expert on Chinese geography but I would assume a province or a large city is a huge population unit and most of them have under 1000 cases if not less.

Hubei
62662

Guangdong
1333

Henan
1267

Zhejiang
1203

Hunan
1011

Keep in mind, China took extreme measures to keep the spread in these cities slow. Remember? Some of the cities are on almost total lockdown. Everything closed. One person from each household may leave the domicile every 3 days to get groceries. Most businesses shut down. All schools and universities closed.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/01/coronavirus-more-of-china-extend-shutdown-accounting-for-80percent-of-gdp.html

[Anonymous]

Is it safe to eat in a Chinese restaurant? I’m in the US.

[Anonymous]

This is a journalist who has been following covid19 since the start and the whole thread is in line with what I think, but it’s still alarming to read.

The cat’s out of the bag and we need to start planning for an extended quarantine. Best case scenario we just have some extra shelf-stable food laying around in a few months!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it safe to eat in a Chinese restaurant? I’m in the US.

Judging by how crowded the rest we went to was last night, most people seem to think yes. I’ll report back in 14 days.

[Anonymous]

Mayor of Milan has proposed closing the schools. I'm not sure about the translation and politics but it appears that the Givernor of Lombardy Province is going to close all schools in the province and is writing an order to take other measures (close meeting places, cinemas, theaters and museums:

Sunday morning began with the proposal by the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, to close all the schools in the city. But it is a measure ( after that of the government on Saturday) which must be hired by the Lombardy Region to be extended at least to the whole province. However, from this initial very restrictive approach to the capital, as reported by Corriere from internal sources in Palazzo Lombardia, a practically total blocking line of the entire field of education throughout the region would be mounting. Between the morning and the early afternoon of Sunday, the technicians of the governor Attilio Fontana would therefore be at work to write a very extensive and very restrictive ordinance that from tomorrow, Monday 24 February, will lead to the closure of all the schools in Lombardy. Not only that, but all events will be suspended and meeting places, cinemas, theaters and museums will be closed - in addition to schools and universities. And the shops? "We are also going to evaluate this possibility"

https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_febbraio_23/coronavirus-milano-sala-scuole-chiuse-petr-settimana-ma-non-immagino-citta-blindata-4e9ef6b2-5622-11ea-b447-d9646dbdb12a.shtml

[Anonymous]

South Korea decided to delay the start of the second semester till later in March at least.

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200223004851315?section=national/national

I didn't realize how long a winter break these schools got around Lunar New Year. It's over a month?

[Anonymous]

This is a really good article on what needs to happen now in terms of communicating with the public.

https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-it-will-probably-go-pandemic-and-we-should-all-prepare-now/

Yes, it is past time to say “pandemic” – and to stop saying “stop”

It’s a good time to think about how to use the “P word” (pandemic) in talking about COVID-19. Or rather, it is past time.

It is important to help people understand that while you think – if you do think so – that this is going to be pandemic in terms of becoming very widespread, no one knows yet how much severe disease there will be around the world over short periods of time. “Will it be a mild, or moderate, or severe pandemic? Too soon to say, but at the moment, there are some tentative signs that….”

The most crucial (and overdue) risk communication task for the next few days is to help people visualize their communities when “keeping it out” – containment – is no longer relevant. The P word is a good way to launch this message.

But the P word alone won’t help the public understand what’s about to change: the end of most quarantines, travel restrictions, contact tracing, and other measures designed to keep “them” from infecting “us,” and the switch to measures like canceling mass events designed to keep us from infecting each other.

We are near-certain that the desperate-sounding last-ditch containment messaging of recent days is contributing to a massive global misperception about the near-term future. The theme of WHO’s and many governments’ messages – that the “window of opportunity” to stop spread of the virus is closing – is like the famous cover page of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach: “There is still time … Brother.”

For weeks we have been trying to get officials to talk early about the main goal of containment: to slow the spread of the virus, not to stop it. And to explain that containment efforts would eventually end. And to help people learn about “after containment.” This risk communication has not happened yet in most places.

So here is one more pitch for openness about containment. Officials: Please read Containment as Signal, Swine Flu Risk Miscommunication, which we wrote in 2009.

One horrible effect of this continued “stop the pandemic” daydream masquerading as a policy goal: It is driving counter-productive and outrage-inducing measures by many countries against travelers from other countries, even their own citizens back from other countries. But possibly more horrible: The messaging is driving resources toward “stopping,” and away from the main potential benefit of containment – slowing the spread of the pandemic and thereby buying a little more time to prepare for what’s coming.

We hope that governments and healthcare institutions are using this time wisely. We know that ordinary citizens are not being asked to do so. In most countries – including our United States and your Australia – ordinary citizens have not been asked to prepare. Instead, they have been led to expect that their governments will keep the virus from their doors.

Take the risk of scaring people

Whenever we introduce the word “pandemic,” it’s important to validate that it’s a scary word – both to experts and to non-experts – because it justifiably contains the implication of something potentially really bad, and definitely really disruptive, for an unknown period of time. This implication is true and unavoidable, even if the overall pattern of disease ends up being mild, like the 2009-10 “swine flu” pandemic.

Validate also that some people may accuse you of fear-mongering. And respond that hiding your strong professional opinion about this pandemic-to-be would be immoral, or not in keeping with your commitment to transparency, or unforgivably unprofessional, or derelict in your duty to warn, or whatever feels truest in your heart.

It may help to consider the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” fallacy. Feel free to say that “Jody Lanard and Peter Sandman say” that officials or experts – in this case YOU – are “darned if you do anddamned if you don’t.” You’re only darned if you warn about something that turns out minor. But you’re damned, and rightly so, if you fail to warn about something that turns out serious.

It’s simply not true, in principle or in practice, that you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t! Over-alarming risk messages are far more forgivable than over-reassuring ones.

Push people to prepare, and guide their prep

This is the most culpable neglected messaging in many countries at this point.

The main readiness stuff we routinely see from official and expert sources is either “DON’T get ready!” (masks), or “Do what we’ve always told you to do!” (hand hygiene and non-mask respiratory etiquette).

The general public, and many categories of civil society, are not actively being recruited to do anything different in the face of COVID-19 approaching.

A fair number of health care workers and communication officers tell us their hospitals and healthcare systems are just barely communicating about COVID-19. They want to be involved in how to prepare for “business not as usual.” We’re guessing that many hospital managements are in fact preparing for COVID-19, but we worry that they’re doing it too quietly, without enough effort to prepare their staff.

Lots of businesses, especially smaller ones, are doing off-the-cuff pre-pandemic planning. Several trade journals have articles about how specific industries should prepare for a likely pandemic. Around February 10, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted interim guidance for businesses. But we have seen almost nothing in mainstream media citing this guidance, or recommending business continuity strategies like urgent cross-training so that core functions won’t be derailed because certain key employees are out sick, for instance.

Pandemic planning research suggests that employees are likeliest to say they will show up for work during a pandemic if three specs are met – if they think their family is reasonably safe; if they think their employer is being candid with them about the situation; and if they have a pandemic-specific job assignment in addition to or different from their routine “peacetime” assignment.

Hardly any officials are telling civil society and the general public how to get ready for this pandemic.

Even officials who say very alarming things about the prospects of a pandemic mostly focus on how their agencies are preparing, not on how the people they misperceive as “audience” should prepare. “Audience” is the wrong frame. We are all stakeholders, and we don’t just want to hear what officials are doing. We want to hear what we can do too.

[Anonymous]

Another 57 cases on the Diamond Princess. All but 2 are crew. Total is 691.

A passenger previously identified and under treatment has died, bringing the total for the ship to 3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it safe to eat in a Chinese restaurant? I’m in the US.

Is it safe to eat at McDonald’s?

[Anonymous]

And from the article linked to just above, the concrete things those experts are telling their friends and relatives:

We’d like to share with you some of our recent everyday life experiences in talking about pandemic preparedness with people who perceive us as a bit knowledgeable about what may be on the horizon. Some of this overlaps with the more generic comments above.

1. We’ve found it useful to tell friends and family to try to get ahead on their medical prescriptions if they can, in case of very predictable supply chain disruptions, and so they won’t have to go out to the pharmacy at a time when there may be long lines of sick people. This helps them in a practical sense, but it also makes them visualize – often for the first time – how a pandemic may impact them in their everyday lives, even if they don’t actually catch COVID-19. It simultaneously gives them a small “Oh my God” moment (an emotional rehearsal about the future) – and something to do about it right away to help them get through the adjustment reaction.

2. We also recommend that people might want to slowly (so no one will accuse them of panic-buying) start to stock up on enough non-perishable food to last their households through several weeks of social distancing at home during an intense wave of transmission in their community. This too seems to get through emotionally, as well as being useful logistically.

3. Three other recommendations that we feel have gone over well with our friends and acquaintances:

a. Suggesting practical organizational things they and their organizations can do to get ready, such as cross-training to mitigate absenteeism.

b. Suggesting that people make plans for childcare when they are sick, or when their child is sick.

4. And the example we like the best, because it gives every single person an immediate action that they can take over and over: Right now, today, start practicing not touching your face when you are out and about! You probably won’t be able to do it perfectly, but you can greatly reduce the frequency of potential self-inoculation. You can even institute a buddy system, where friends and colleagues are asked to remind each other when someone scratches her eyelid or rubs his nose. As we noted earlier, someone should develop a face-touching app – instead of a step-counting app to encourage you to walk more, how about an app to encourage you to auto-inoculate less! And track your progress, and compete with your friends, even!

The last message on our list – to practice and try to form a new habit – has several immediate and longer-term benefits.

Having something genuinely useful to do can bind anxiety or reduce apathy. You feel less helpless and less passive.

And you can see yourself improving.

And you can work on your new habit alone, and also in a pro-social communitarian way. Others can help you do it, and you can help them.

And it yields real harm reduction! It is arguably the endpoint of what washing your hands is for, and it helps when you can’t wash your hands out in the world.

Like all good pandemic preparedness recommendations, it helps you rehearse emotionally, as well as logistically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it safe to eat in a Chinese restaurant? I’m in the US.

Is it safe to eat at McDonald’s?

why wouldn't it be?

[Anonymous]

Venice carnival called off due to coronavirus dears.

https://www.dpa-international.com/topic/regional-president-venice-carnival-called-coronavirus-urn%3Anewsml%3Adpa.com%3A20090101%3A200223-99-33037

Venice's famous carnival is going to be suspended due to the new coronavirus outbreak in northern Italy, the President of the Veneto Region Luca Zaia said on Sunday.

"We have to adopt drastic measures," Zaia told reporters.

Asked if that means calling off the carnival in Venice, which runs until Tuesday, he replies that measures about to be announced will cover that "and even more."

Zaia said the number of Covid-19 infections in Veneto has risen to 25, including two elderly people hospitalized in central Venice, the first cases reported there. The region has one cluster of 19 cases.