Anchorage school officials say there’s no cause for virus fear after student returns to Chugiak from China

Anchorage Daily News ^ | 2/07/2020 | Matt Tunseth

[nerdgirl]

Anchorage school and health officials are working to allay concerns from parents in Chugiak about the new coronavirus after a student at Mirror Lake Middle School returned to class after a visit to mainland China.

In a letter sent to parents Wednesday, Mirror Lake assistant principal Suzanne Brown said there is no cause for alarm.

"The collective medical and epidemiological assessment that there is no current concern for possible novel coronavirus at our school,” she wrote.

Brown said the school has been following all protocols set out by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is working closely with the Anchorage Health Department and the Alaska Division of Public Health.

[nerdgirl]

Really selfish and ignorant that these people would put the other families at the school and in the community through this by refusing to self isolate. Are these kids a huge risk? No. But is there a chance they could have the coronavirus? Yes. To wait until they are "showing symptoms", and could have infected other children at school, is just unthinkable when you are talking about a virus that could have a 10% mortality rate.

The Alaska state medical officer is a moron, in particular with his often cited and completely erroneous comparison with the threat of influenza, with its .01% death rate.

[nerdgirl]

Sorry if anybody can’t get past the paywall. If you are using Chrome, open the menu, then “More tools” > “Developer tools” - then navigate to the “Application” tab. Then click on the left where it says “Clear storage” - and look on the right for a button that says “Clear site data”. Once you click that the paywall is gone until you’ve read maybe 3 articles in a week. Should work for some other paywalls as well :)

[RummyChick]

I might pull my kid out for two weeks. That kid should have self quarantined.

China is acting like they let loose a bioweapon

[PIF]

China is acting like they let loose a bioweapon

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They did

[nerdgirl]

Luckily this is a community outside of Anchorage proper, but for example, is there my daughter has a volleyball game tonight! Mine aren’t in the public school district, but the vb game shows how there really isn’t a way to protect yourself if people are willing to let it into the community, there is no telling where it can spread to.

Why not just self isolate? I see with my daughter who has therapy for her autism - that our in home therapist is sick about 1/2 the time. She works with about 4-5 other families, many of whom do NOT cancel her visits when their entire family is sick, or the kid is hacking up a lung. So she takes the brunt of that.

I am not perfect by any means but when my kids seems sick we cancel all therapy - both so we don’t get anything else, and so we don’t pass it on.

Many, many people just don’t care about passing it on - they only care if THEY are at risk from YOU.

Many people also feel they are entitled to “time away from their kids” each day - and are loathe to give that up.

But in the case of people who arrived at the end of January from China to our community - self isolation for 2 weeks should be mandatory.

[Zhang Fei]

[China is acting like they let loose a bioweapon]

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Based on the fact that the infected outside of China have not died in any numbers, I wonder if the numbers provided by the Communist Party are in fact accurate. Perhaps all the activity in China is cover for something else. It’s possible someone was mounting a coup and these ructions are a way of moving troops around without giving either domestic or foreign observers the idea that turbulence lies beneath the surface.

Or perhaps the regime is covering for an economic tsunami that it sees on the horizon because of all the bad debts that are coming to a head. Figuratively-speaking, it’s possible the hamsters keeping the Ponzi scheme going are running out of gas. Maybe they are trying to stave off an Albanian-style economic apocalypse that might very well bring about an end not just to Xi Jinping’s rule, but to the Communist Party. In Albania, the collapse was fairly civilized, with a body count in the thousands. In China, millions of Party members could end up being slaughtered in the streets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_Civil_War

[nerdgirl]

I agree that something seems weird when you see that the smart & very measured epidemiologist from the UK Neil Ferguson said they think this is likely spreading at the rate of something like 50,000 per day in China - it doesn’t jive very well with how few are popping up in countries that have a crapload of travel from China - including the US. They only stopped flights what - a week ago?

Shouldn’t we have more cases here?

I don’t think their numbers are close to real - but maybe they aren’t nearly as bad as some of the experts suspect.

[TangoLimaSierra]

“If at any time the student begins to exhibit any symptoms, we are prepared to take appropriate actions to safeguard the student and the school.”

Of course, by then he will have infected the whole school, but, hey, whataya gonna do?

[nerdgirl]

My hub thinks I’m paranoid. I am. I would rather be paranoid and wrong now, than relaxed and sorry later.

[TangoLimaSierra]

A little paranoia can be a good thing.

[ASOC]

Or dead later.

ASD screwed the pooch on this one. Liberals will wind up killing us all

[RummyChick]

Part of it has to do with Asians and that ACE-2 receptor (or something like that) makes them more vulnerable.

If your Asian you need to be concerned..not sure if the rest of us do...other than normal flu protection

Something is off about the whole thing

[DIRTYSECRET]

germs freeze up there once you cough.

[DIRTYSECRET]

germs freeze up there once you cough.

[Zhang Fei]

[Part of it has to do with Asians and that ACE-2 receptor (or something like that) makes them more vulnerable.

If your Asian you need to be concerned..not sure if the rest of us do...other than normal flu protection

Something is off about the whole thing]

---

My guess? Most of the people infected outside of China have been Chinese, and probably immigrants, for the simple reason that usually only immigrants ever visit the old country. The fact that these are Chinese immigrants suggests that their social circles are probably composed mostly of Chinese immigrants as well. Which is why the low death rate outside of China suggests that the Chinese mortality numbers might not be too whacked - just higher because the standard (and cost) of Chinese medical care is far lower than what we would see elsewhere.

[tomkat]

officials say there’s no cause for virus fear

'Famous Last Words'

[Prolixus]

Are the Anchorage officials offering to allow the possibly infected persons to share a room with the officials’ young children or grandchildren?

[sauropod]

Yep.

[null and void]

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

[null and void]

“Only the paranoid survive.” Andy Grove, founder of Intel...