Scrutable

sewage use can actually be safe if ambient temperatures are high, the problematic gut fauna can't survive and you're just left with a substrate. Not sure if viruses are transmitted that way though.

four suspected cases in Scotland. That didn't take long.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 23, 2020 3:01 pm

Re: meat consumption - the outbreak's origin seems to have been confirmed as (marine) meat. The WHO has confirmed that the seafood market is the likely origin https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2020/0 ... -who-says/

The Guardian explains here that the origin may be seafood:

What is the virus causing illness in Wuhan?

It is a novel coronavirus – that is to say, a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals – possibly seafood. Many of those infected either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the centre of the Chinese city. New and troubling viruses usually originate in animal hosts. Ebola and flu are examples.

This raises questions about the relevance of husbandry. Aquaculture for (especially) shrimp is common in that part of the world, and can use sewage as a feedstock, but I've not seen any suggestion that this has contributed to the coronavirus outbreak.

Prob not started from shrimp or similar. The market in question (probably typical of China food markets in general) has a ton of other animals right alongside. Chickens for example, good for transmitted bird flu. And things like civet cats, which kick started SARS. One published paper (behind a paywall, which is poor form) reckons snakes. That would be surprising, but not impossible. Coronaviruses tend to do best in mammals (including bats).

mikeh wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 23, 2020 3:58 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 23, 2020 3:01 pm

Re: meat consumption - the outbreak's origin seems to have been confirmed as (marine) meat. The WHO has confirmed that the seafood market is the likely origin https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2020/0 ... -who-says/

The Guardian explains here that the origin may be seafood:

What is the virus causing illness in Wuhan?

It is a novel coronavirus – that is to say, a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals – possibly seafood. Many of those infected either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the centre of the Chinese city. New and troubling viruses usually originate in animal hosts. Ebola and flu are examples.

This raises questions about the relevance of husbandry. Aquaculture for (especially) shrimp is common in that part of the world, and can use sewage as a feedstock, but I've not seen any suggestion that this has contributed to the coronavirus outbreak.

Prob not started from shrimp or similar. The market in question (probably typical of China food markets in general) has a ton of other animals right alongside. Chickens for example, good for transmitted bird flu. And things like civet cats, which kick started SARS. One published paper (behind a paywall, which is poor form) reckons snakes. That would be surprising, but not impossible. Coronaviruses tend to do best in mammals (including bats).

Lots and lots of different kinds of land animal: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/a ... d=12302979

Breakdown of the 17 reported fatalities seems to suggest it's not too bad - not killing fit young people like 1919.

8 in their 80s
2 in their 70s
5 in their 60s
1 in their 50s
1 in their 40s

Lots of pre-existing conditions - the youngest fatality was 48 with diabetes and a stroke.

Youngest known patient is 15.

lpm wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 21, 2020 3:23 pm

A Homo sapiens species that evolved to be vegan almost certainly wouldn't have had such a range of stuff like mumps, polio, measles - all from prehistory, possibly all the way back to Africa / early middle east. When we began farming we got diseases from rodent pests, which wouldn't have been avoided, but keeping chickens and pigs alongside us massively ramped up the potential for crossover. By the time of Ancient Egypt there started to be proper epidemics. By Ancient Rome there were pandemics across continents.

Today we think of China for highly dense populations living closely alongside their meat, but across history plenty more viruses emerged from the same cause in Europe, Africa and India.

A vegan homosapiens (presumably one that made its own B12) would still have needed to live close to animals if it was to develop agriculture. Before the 20th Century fields needed to be fertilized with manure and animals were needed for ploughing fields, transporting food, and other tasks requiring strength.

Horses. Lots of horses. No viruses (ok, hantavirus). But can cause long term damage to bank accounts.

Not seen original WHO reference to this, but from twitter, reckoning WHO have said we've got R0 estimate of 1.4-2.5 (basic reproduction number) so each case may cause, give or take, 2 more cases in a susceptible population.

Assuming that is borne out, that's slightly higher than most flu seasons and pandemic flu's we have seen down the years. Prob means here human-to-human transmission is a bit more extensive than has been indicated before.

So in summary, bad as it is in China right now,.its unlikely to be as bad as SARS. Luckily for the rest of the world, China has a modern, well organized,
scientifically based health care system which has been able to identify the virus and take extra ordinary measures to quarantine the population and limit the spread. I dont think this could have happened anywhere else.

This virus has most likely come to humans from bats. No real indication that the virus transferred via fish or bird markets, except maybe to the extent that they attract rodents, as mammal to mammal is way more likely for a bat sourced virus.

https://twitter.com/antonioregalado/sta ... 25344?s=19

The snakes paper has a massive gaping hole in it.

https://twitter.com/tony_gamble1/status ... 72417?s=19

dyqik wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 24, 2020 2:59 am

This virus has most likely come to humans from bats. No real indication that the virus transferred via fish or bird markets, except maybe to the extent that they attract rodents, as mammal to mammal is way more likely for a bat sourced virus.

https://twitter.com/antonioregalado/sta ... 25344?s=19

The snakes paper has a massive gaping hole in it.

https://twitter.com/tony_gamble1/status ... 72417?s=19

That should say "... seems to have most likely come to humans..."

Someone at work is wearing a mask.

lpm wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 24, 2020 9:38 am

Someone at work is wearing a mask.

Aren't the masks most effective if worn by people experiencing symptoms, rather than the general population?

10 cities, at least, locked down. A new 1000 bed hospital to be built in a week.

Being an evil dictatorship means you can sure get things done.

"Is the Killer virus here?"
So many newspaper headlines*

Answer is yes - loads of them; How many die from flu every year? How many from measles etc that certain newspapers exacerbate by being anti-vax?*


*Yes Daily Fail, I'm looking at you especially

Pucksoppet wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 24, 2020 10:24 am

lpm wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 24, 2020 9:38 am

Someone at work is wearing a mask.

Aren't the masks most effective if worn by people experiencing symptoms, rather than the general population?

Bog-standard masks don't stop a huge amount of transmission, they still (obviously) allow people to exhale and inhale and thus the route of transmission is still available. Plus people don't fit them properly or tightly enough.
Their main benefit is to stop a bit of the splat from people who are sneezing in your face, and stop people touching their mouth and nose so easily , so there's less transfer of the virus to where it can have a lookaround and start up a respiratory party. Masks are also uncomfortable to wear for long periods.
They're pretty useful in hospitals, where the masks are better and also properly fitted, where even slight reduction in transmission is important.

Gentleman Jim wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 24, 2020 10:50 am

"Is the Killer virus here?"
So many newspaper headlines*

Answer is yes - loads of them; How many die from flu every year? How many from measles etc that certain newspapers exacerbate by being anti-vax?*

*Yes Daily Fail, I'm looking at you especially

Precisely that. I got phoned up by the Daily Mail to talk about this. Had a mostly-pragmatic conversation, with only one or two loaded questions, but I note I didn't end up in their coverage. Probably not sensational enough. Or not sufficiently interesting to quote. Or both.

Here's some modelling have a crack at working out likely cases and spread
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fz7Ewl ... ysukL/view

Reckons R0 is 3.5-4.0, higher than early official estimates of around 1.5-2.0.
Estimates 5.1% of infections in Wuhan are identified so far. Lots of cases in the community not picked up.
In 14 days’ time they predict 250k cases.
Also suggest travel restrictions will contain it a bit, but not greatly.

Sadly can't access at work.

An interesting counterfactual would be to delay the event by a week or two - so that the full new year travel happened without knowledge that a virus was out there. Surely switching from massive amounts of travel to slightly restricted travel (plus travel with more masks/sneezing hygiene) must make a big difference?

This is the para from that paper. Important caveats in that its only modelling air travel, not land travel.

Effectiveness of travel restrictions from/to Wuhan

From 23 January 2020, Chinese authorities will restrict travel into and from Wuhan by restricting air, rail and road access (New York Times 2020b), a public health measure unprecedented in scale. We explored the potential impact of a reduction in travel from and to
Wuhan, by reducing the appropriate airline traffic by 50%, 80%, 90%, 95% and 99%. Our model predicts that these reductions in travel results in 12.6%, 20.1%, 22.6%, 23.9% and 24.9% reduction in infections, respectively, elsewhere in China by 4 February. Our prediction is In line with other modelling studies of travel restrictions: reducing travel only serves to delay the epidemic reaching other locations, rather than suppressing the spread entirely (Figure 4). It is important to note that as our model only considered air travel, we do not
consider the potential impact of travel restrictions relating to land transportation.

mikeh wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 24, 2020 11:42 am

Here's some modelling have a crack at working out likely cases and spread
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fz7Ewl ... ysukL/view

Reckons R0 is 3.5-4.0, higher than early official estimates of around 1.5-2.0.
Estimates 5.1% of infections in Wuhan are identified so far. Lots of cases in the community not picked up.
In 14 days’ time they predict 250k cases.
Also suggest travel restrictions will contain it a bit, but not greatly.

That's quite a lot of cases - in total SARS was <10k cases and MERS <2.5k cases, weren't they?

Forgot I could read the paper on my phone. My interpretation is that R₀ of 3.6 to 4.0 is too high to make measures effective - but no idea how much of new year travel is by air rather than train/bus. And whether their model was based on routine travel from Wuhan as the base case, or if they took into account the exceptional levels right now.

The paper's pretty grim - 95% of cases unidentified, the 250,000 cases was for Wuhan alone by 4 Feb. But that must mean the death rate is correspondingly lower? Start at the official figures implying 3-4%, add a few unidentified deaths, but then divide by 20?

GeenDienst wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 24, 2020 10:38 am

10 cities, at least, locked down. A new 1000 bed hospital to be built in a week.

Being an evil dictatorship means you can sure get things done.

Puts me in the mind of this:

lpm wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 24, 2020 12:46 pm

The paper's pretty grim - 95% of cases unidentified, the 250,000 cases was for Wuhan alone by 4 Feb. But that must mean the death rate is correspondingly lower? Start at the official figures implying 3-4%, add a few unidentified deaths, but then divide by 20?

I was wondering this too. While both will be under-reported, wouldn't the fatalities be "less under-reported" than the cases where people recover?

TopBadger wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 24, 2020 1:07 pm

GeenDienst wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 24, 2020 10:38 am

10 cities, at least, locked down. A new 1000 bed hospital to be built in a week.

Being an evil dictatorship means you can sure get things done.

Puts me in the mind of this:

Wouldn't it be ironic if the sophisticated "democratic" western world was saved from a pandemic by an "evil" dictatorship?

Surgical masks are only effective for about 20-30 minutes. After that they get too damp to be effective