‘I Was So Scared’: Infectious Disease Doctor’s Day on Japan’s Coronavirus Cruise Ship

WSJ ^ | 02/19/2020 | Suryatapa Bhattacharya

[SpeedyInTexas]

A Kobe University doctor touched off a furor with a firsthand account of a virus-stricken cruise ship in which he said the protections against infection were so weak he was scared he would get sick himself.

Kentaro Iwata, who made the allegations in widely circulated YouTube videos after spending Tuesday aboard the Diamond Princess, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that the crew should be removed as soon as possible because of the danger of catching the novel coronavirus on the ship.

[SpeedyInTexas]

Some people criticized me when I said many days ago that passengers on that shipped needed to be quarantined on land to prevent the spread of the disease. The evidence is pretty clear now that I was right.

Japan is in a bad spot right now. 1/3 of their isolation beds at hospitals countrywide have been taken up by cruise passengers.

Some highlights from the article:

"As of Wednesday, 621 people were found to have the virus out of 3,011 tested"

"he said the cruise ship shouldn’t be allowed to be used as a quarantine chamber for remaining crew or passengers. We have to assume every single utensil on that ship has been exposed to infection"

"Aboard the ship on Tuesday, he said he encountered widespread ignorance of proper quarantine practice. He said there were no clear barriers separating ship crew who were feeling ill and wanted to be tested for the virus from officials assigned to handle the requests. He said potentially contaminated “red zones” on the ship weren’t clearly marked out from non-contaminated “green zones,” which he described as standard practice in epidemics."

“The handling of infections was far worse than in Africa or China,”

Also of Note, the number of virus cases in Japan has doubled in the past week (excluding cruise passengers). There is a real danger of an epidemic in Japan. Trump needs to consider banning Japanese citizens from the US and cancelling all flights. We will likely be at that point within days.

Singapore and South Korea won't be far behind.

[Wayne07]

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/

Japan (excluding the cruise ship) has now caught up to Singapore in total cases, and will probably pass Singapore tomorrow. Singapore seems to be doing as good a job as possible at quarantining and tracking cases, so hopefully they can keep it under control. Japan is a shit show, and it could easily out of control in the next couple weeks.

[SpeedyInTexas]

Related Bloomberg article: “As Cases Mount, Japan Is Rapidly Becoming a Coronavirus Hotbed

https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/as-cases-mount-japan-is-rapidly-becoming-a-coronavirus-hotbed

Highlights:

“Japan is emerging as one of the riskiest places for the spread of the coronavirus, prompting criticism that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has misfired on its policies to block the outbreak. The number of infections in Japan has more than doubled in the past week to 74, rivaling Singapore as the country outside mainland China with the most cases. The government is being faulted for being too slow to bar visitors from China and too lax in its quarantine of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where infections surged during two weeks docked in Yokohama.”

“What appears to be more troublesome is that Japan is starting to see a surge in cases in multiple areas across the country — sometimes with little to link the outbreaks.”

“While a handful of the cases in the country are evacuees from Hubei province, the vast majority are Japan residents, many with no history of traveling to China. Among those have been several taxi drivers, suspected of having extensive interactions with the public before their diagnoses.”

“Tokyo rush-hour trains remained as packed as ever”

“With the cases mounting internally, Japan received a rare rebuke from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the way it managed the quarantine on the cruise ship, saying “it may not have been sufficient to prevent transmission.” The U.S. and others placed a 14-day quarantine on repatriated nationals, but about 500 people cleared by Japan left the ship Wednesday to go about their normal lives, and were told to call authorities if they feel ill.”

[SpeedyInTexas]

Japan is a “hotbed”: https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/as-cases-mount-japan-is-rapidly-becoming-a-coronavirus-hotbed

[Boogieman]

Welcome to the Hotel Coronavirus
Such a lovely place, such a lovely place

[nuconvert]

Japan - 84* cases (includes 14 who were evacuated from China) 1 death,.... 4 serious, 18 recovered

[SgtHooper]

“The evidence is pretty clear now that I was right.”

How? In what way is the quarantine different on land than on the ship?

[SpeedyInTexas]

Please read the 2 articles. CDC says Japan’s quarantine on the ship “may not have been sufficient to prevent transmission.”

If you don’t agree the quarantine on the ship was a failure after reading the 2 articles, then we just have to agree to disagree.

[null and void]

Ignorance is bliss. This guy knows it's not just a seasonal flu and isn't blissful...

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.

[PIF]

importantly, he said infectious disease specialists were banned from the ship

and importantly, japan has no cdc, just a large bureaucracy to deal with this sort of problem as bureaucrats will

in other words, japan is not set up to handle major outbreaks of disease.

[PIF]

ship had quarantine in name only

land trying but cannot handle massive outbreak

[nuconvert]

His YouTube video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtHYZkLuKcI

[circlecity]

I am told this virus is no more dangerous than the common flu which kills hundreds of thousands a year I’m told, but that’s mostly confined to the old, sick and infirm. So why do these, presumably young and healthy, health care personel seem so deathly afraid of catching it?

[Oatka]

“Tokyo rush-hour trains remained as packed as ever”

A conavirus paradise:

[ProtectOurFreedom]

CDC issued a "rare rebuke" to Japan -- “it may not have been sufficient to prevent transmission.”

THAT is a "rebuke"? You're kidding me. Any high school kid could see the truth of "may not have been sufficient."

[plain talk]

Yep. Not an easy task to set up weeks of isolation for 3,000 people. Who deals with it and pays for it? If it is not done properly you just spread the disease around.

This is a learning exercise. The next virus may be much worse so we will hopefully learn from this and set up facilities and processes to handle future events better.

There are plenty of arm-chair geniuses out there that think they have it all figured out but this is a difficult problem to solve in a global society.

[Wayne07]

Also Japan didn’t do a China travel ban. They only stopped travel from Hubei Province (Wuhan), so there still has been a large flow of Chinese tourists to Japan throughout this whole outbreak.

[dayglored]

You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave.

[SpeedyInTexas]

“no more dangerous than the common flu”

COVID-19 death rate is 2.67%, common flu is 0.09%.

COVID-19 is 30 TIMES deadlier.

[SpeedyInTexas]

It didn’t take an “arm-chair genius” to see what was happening.

I’m evidence of that.