Posted on 02/04/2020 8:46:45 PM PST by BenLurkin
Data on the virus is changing by the day, and some infectious disease specialists say it will take weeks before they can see just how contagious it is. What they’re seeing so far is concerning and leading U.S. and international scientists to believe the virus is more contagious than the current data shows, according to interviews with epidemiologists, scientists and infectious disease specialists.
The disease is spreading quickly. China’s health minister, Ma Xiaowei, told reporters last month that there is evidence it’s already mutated into a stronger variation that is able to spread more easily among humans. World health officials know the respiratory disease is capable of spreading through human-to-human contact, droplets carried through sneezing and coughing, and germs left on inanimate objects. The illness is cable of spreading before symptoms show, and about 20% of patients become severely ill, leading to pneumonia and respiratory failure, health officials say.
The so-called R naught of the disease, a mathematical equation that shows how many people will get sick from each infected person, is around 2.2, according to a report last week from the New England Journal of Medicine. That means two or more people will catch the virus from a person who already has it, making it more infectious than the seasonal flu and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which had an R naught of about 1.8 and killed at least 50 million people across the world. The current R naught of the new virus is lower than the 2003 SARS outbreak, which had an R naught of between 2 and 5.
World health officials caution that it may take months before the true R naught is known as more coronavirus cases come to light.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
ping
Let someone with it cough on Pelosi to see how contagious it really is
There’s a cruise ship stuck near Tokyo with thousands on it. So far they’ve tested 30 of them, 10 positive. When they see 500 to 1000 positive on that boat, do you think they’ll start to get concerned?
Might maybe want to start making plans to convert her into a hospital ship for the duration.
Serious suggestion.
Headline in a US media would be: “ No new US cases today”.
Of course that doesn’t apply to CNBC.
That’s because the current data are being fudged. A single undertaker in Wuhan is operating 24/7 and processing 100 bodies a day:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3813715/posts
In the press conference write-up, one speaker using the term "Arnot" over and over. That really made me scratch my head -- "what in the world is an 'Arnot'?" I kept wondering. Then it finally dawned on me that somebody had transcribed "R nought" as "Arnot."
The "basic reproduction number" (sometimes called "basic reproductive ratio") is the expected number of cases of disease directly generated by one case of disease in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection. It is denoted "R0" and is pronounced "R nought."
Forgive me for the nerd humor, there. You'll get it if you a nerd. Or even if you even just took high school physics or chemistry.
Are they taking drastic action? “Stay in your cabin and don’t come out until you’re better!”
I wonder if an infected ship can ever be successfully disinfected. Or will they have to scrap the ship?
We ought to have cruise ships sailing between here and China. Take long enough so that people can be tested/quarantined on the ship rather than coming here on a fast airplane with no symptoms.
This isn’t surprising, Cruise ships are like giant petri dishes.
The way China is reacting - it’s as if they *know*
“Might maybe want to start making plans to convert her into a hospital ship for the duration...Serious suggestion.”
Agree, safer than taking the sick on to land.
“Put a black light in here - it’ll be like a Jackson pollock painting!”
“I wonder if an infected ship can ever be successfully disinfected. Or will they have to scrap the ship?”
Apparently viruses can’t live forever, but they did find this one on a door handle 5 days after the infected person had touched it. They think that’s the limit...but then again, they don’t consider this bug to be contagious...LOL.
or they could just sink it with all hands, harsh I know, but a super contagious disease is already loose on the ship and the passengers are not getting off the ship. That means all of them will sooner or later get exposed to the disease. What can you do? You do not dare let anyone off that ship for the foreseeable future.
I suppose they could take all the passengers off and put them into a quarantine facility like at March AFB. Or maybe move medical staff onto the ship.
Can you imagine being a passenger on that ship and having been handed your death sentence? My God, what a nightmare.
It would be a very distressing situation to say the least. My mind cannot even go to that place.
Are you nuts? Sink the ship and kill all the passengers when only 2-10% of them might die from the disease. Why would you do that? In a month or less the virus will run its course on the ship.
And it is not a “super contagious disease”. Measles is.
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