Covid-19 in China

[Randy W]

China Travel Advisory: Level 3: Reconsider travel, January 27, 2020

 

Reconsider travel to China due to novel coronavirus first identified in Wuhan,

ome areas have increased risk. Read the entire Travel Advisory.

A novel (new) coronavirus is causing an outbreak of respiratory illness that began in the city of Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. This outbreak began in early December 2019 and continues to grow. Chinese health officials have reported thousands of cases throughout China.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a Level 3 Warning: Avoid all nonessential travel to China. Chinese authorities are imposing quarantines and restricting travel throughout the country.

Level 4: Do not travel to Hubei province, China due to novel coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China:

There is an ongoing outbreak of respiratory illness first identified in Wuhan, China, caused by a novel (new) coronavirus. In an effort to contain the novel coronavirus, the Chinese authorities have suspended air and rail travel in the area around Wuhan. On January 23, 2020, the Department of State ordered the departure of all non-emergency U.S. personnel and their family members. The U.S. government has limited ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens in Hubei province.

Chinese authorities have imposed strict travel restrictions in the area around Wuhan. Travelers should be aware that the Chinese government could prevent them from entering or exiting parts of Hubei province. Travelers should be prepared for travel restrictions to be put into effect with little or no advance notice.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a Warning Level 3 Alert (Avoid Nonessential Travel) due to an ongoing outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel (new) coronavirus that can be spread from person to person.

If you must travel to China, you should:

Avoid contact with sick people. Discuss travel to China with your healthcare provider. Older adults and travelers with underlying health issues may be at risk for more severe disease. Avoid animals (alive or dead), animal markets, and products that come from animals (such as uncooked meat). Wash hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer if soap and water are not available. If you traveled to China in the last 14 days and feel sick with fever, cough, or difficulty breathing, you should:

Seek medical care right away. Before you go to a doctor's office or emergency room, call ahead and tell them about your recent travel and your symptoms. Avoid contact with others. Not travel while sick. Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or your sleeve (not your hands) when coughing or sneezing. Wash hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer if soap and water are not available. Please see https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/watch/novel-coronavirus-chinaand https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/novel-coronavirus-2019.html for further updates.

Continue to exercise increased caution in China due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws and special restrictions on dual U.S.-Chinese citizens:

The Chinese government has asserted broad authority to prohibit U.S. citizens from leaving China by using "exit bans," sometimes keeping U.S. citizens in China for years. The Chinese government uses exit bans coercively:

to compel U.S. citizens to participate in Chinese government investigations, to lure individuals back to China from abroad, and to aid Chinese authorities in resolving civil disputes in favor of Chinese parties. In most cases, U.S. citizens only become aware of the exit ban when they attempt to depart China, and there is no method to find out how long the ban may continue. U.S. citizens under exit bans have been harassed and threatened.

U.S. citizens may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime. U.S. citizens may be subjected to prolonged interrogations and extended detention for reasons related to "state security." Security personnel may detain and/or deport U.S. citizens for sending private electronic messages critical of the Chinese government.

Extra security measures, such as security checks and increased levels of police presence, are common in the Xinjiang Uighur and Tibet Autonomous Regions. Authorities may impose curfews and travel restrictions on short notice.

The Chinese government does not recognize dual nationality. U.S.-Chinese citizens and U.S. citizens of Chinese heritage may be subject to additional scrutiny and harassment, and the Chinese government may prevent the U.S. Embassy from providing consular services. Read the Safety and Security section on the country information page.

If you decide to travel to China:

Enter China on your U.S. passport with a valid Chinese visa and keep it with you. If you are arrested or detained, ask police or prison officials to notify the U.S. Embassy or the nearest consulate immediately. If you plan to enter North Korea, read the North Korea Travel Advisory. Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program(STEP) to receive Alerts and make it easier to locate you in an emergency. Follow the Department of State on Facebook and Twitter. Follow the U.S. Embassy on Twitter, WeChat, and Weibo. Review the Crime and Safety Reports for China. Prepare a contingency plan for emergency situations. Review the Traveler's Checklist. Last Update: Reissued with updates to the Travel Advisory Level: Level 3 for China and Level 4 forHubei province.



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[mikeymark]

Very good information all. Has anyone traveled through Beijing airport recently.

[Randy W]

from the Shanghaiist

 

^{_{Chinese villages set up roadblocks over Spring Festival to keep outsiders out}}

 

^{_{This Chinese New Year, there is no going home for many}}

 

Photos shared online show how these barriers look at a number of villages across China. Typically, they are just a table or two, with perhaps a piece of wood for good measure, manned by several villagers bundled up in winter jackets and masks.

 

Signs on the roadblocks warn that outsiders are not permitted to enter in order to prevent the further spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, which has killed at least 81 people across China.

 

 

 

Edited January 28, 2020 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

from the SCMP

 

 

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3047894/china-coronavirus-only-one-correct-way-wear-mask-says?utm_content=article&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1580200834

 

China coronavirus: only one correct way to wear mask, says Malaysian mythbuster. Here it is

• It doesn’t matter if you are wearing the mask because you are sick and don’t want to spread your germs; or wearing it to prevent yourself being infected
• Colour side out is only way to go, says Malaysian medical mythbuster

 

[Allon]

Here is what the CDC actually says about prevention:

 

 

• Avoid contact with sick people.
• Discuss travel to China with your healthcare provider. Older adults and travelers with underlying health issues may be at risk for more severe disease.
• Avoid animals (alive or dead), animal markets, and products that come from animals (such as uncooked meat).
• Wash hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer if soap and water are not available.

 

Nothing about using a mask. It might make you feel like you are preventing yourself from being infected but the efficacy of the mask (really any mask but a respirator type and that is 75% effective) is almost nihil. It may prevent infection from a splash sneeze cough that places sputum on the mask instead of you.

Isopropyl alcohol is actually a pretty good bug killer but not easy to carry on a plane.

[Randy W]

Yes, but using a mask is almost required and EXPECTED just about anywhere

[danb]

I have a question. How is this coronavirus different from the "flu" that I get a shot for ever year for? I was reading that about 60,000 people die from the flu ever year. Mostly old people and young people are affected. Seem like the flu kill more people. Aside from the a flu shot aren't they about the same? What am I am missing?

[Randy W]

Just the fact that it's a NEW virus for which there are no vaccines and is mutating

[Martin B]

I have a question. How is this coronavirus different from the "flu" that I get a shot for ever year for? I was reading that about 60,000 people die from the flu ever year. Mostly old people and young people are affected. Seem like the flu kill more people. Aside from the a flu shot aren't they about the same? What am I am missing?

 

 

FWIW the flu shot also doesn't even protect against all strains of the flu, just for the common strain(s) of the season. As an example, see: https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20200116/flu-shot-no-match-for-b-strain-season-rages-on#1

[Randy W]

from the WSJ via Drudge

 

 

The Latest: AP source: Plane leaves China with Americans. https://tiny.iavian.net/xgyi

 

 

 

[Greg.D.]

Influenza virus is a different beast from the coronavirus but when you're coughing your brains out, who cares?

 

The Wuhan coronavirus is killing between 3 and 4% of infected persons; influenza might kill around 0.1%. The 60,000 deaths in the U.S. per year might be a crude overestimate, it's an estimate and may include everyone who died from pneumonia. My toddler got a flu shot this year and a month later got a flu - they did a rapid flu test (got virtual nothing on a nasal swab) and said it was negative for influenza, but they'll put it down as an "influenza like virus" - but, we as a country don't bother to identify most pathogens, which is one reason we make crude estimates.

 

Because of the prevalence of influenza viruses in China, you are still more likely to die from the flu than from the new coronavirus. However, coronavirus is a better killer should you get it - though it is still rare to get it.

 

Coronavirus will get you in the lungs and kill you via pneumonia. (I used to teach microbiology to nursing students). The flu shot this year is quadravalent, meaning it is targeting only 4 H1N1 influenza strains. That's standard operating procedure.

 

It would be great to eradicate this new coronavirus just as SARS was gone within a year.

[amberjack1234]

I was typing up what Greg posted but he beat me to it. I'll add one thing to it what makes this virus so scary is that you can pass it on to other people without you having any symptoms. So it can be spread by travelers more easily infecting other people without even knowing it. This is a completely new virus and they haven't even nailed down the incubation period of it yet.

 

I got the shot for old people that do have both A and B in it so I am hoping that will give me a little more protection plus I am staying home as much as possible and no visitors. Of course, I know it is not in my neighborhood yet. There was a person coming back from China that they have suspected of having it in Raleigh, NC. They have a very large Research facility there in Cary that scientists come from all over the world to do research and I suspect that this person was one of them. This facility is called Research Triangle.

 

I have a cold right now. Not the flu but if it is the flu the shot that I got is doing its job.

[eseum]

Flu shots are only considered to be 50% effective in preventing you getting the flu. Each year the shot may be different for the strain of flu that it will prevent. The experts try to predict what version of the flu will be prevalent in an upcoming year and that is what they vaccinate for. They may or may not make the right prediction. Older people and the young are more likely to end up dying from the flu so they are targeted for shots.

 

I am 67 years old but do not get the shot since it is only 50% effective. Also, I have not had any version of the flu since I was 6 years old. Don't know if I am just lucky or may have developed immunity. It certainly hasn't been because I haven't been around people with the flu though.

 

As an aside, Netflix has a documentary on right now called "Pandemic." It is pretty interesting.

[Randy W]

from the BBC on Facebook

"Jia You" is Cantonese for "Add Oil", shared with Mandarin

https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/576091536455476/

Edited June 8, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Allon]

Despite the new virus’s name, though, and as the people who christened it well know, nCoV-2019 isn’t as novel as you might think.

Something very much like it was found several years ago in a cave in Yunnan, a province roughly a thousand miles southwest of Wuhan, by a team of perspicacious researchers, who noted its existence with concern. The fast spread of nCoV-2019 — more than 4,500 confirmed cases, including at least 106 deaths, as of Tuesday morning, and the figures will have risen by the time you read this — is startling but not unforeseeable. That the virus emerged from a nonhuman animal, probably a bat, and possibly after passing through another creature, may seem spooky, yet it is utterly unsurprising to scientists who study these things.

---

One such scientist is Zheng-Li Shi, of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a senior author of the draft paper (not yet peer reviewed and so far available only in preprint) that gave nCoV-2019 its identity and name. It was Ms. Shi and her collaborators who, back in 2005, showed that the SARS pathogen was a bat virus that had spilled over into people. Ms. Shi and colleagues have been tracing coronaviruses in bats since then, warning that some of them are uniquely suited to cause human pandemics.

In a 2017 paper, they set out how, after nearly five years of collecting fecal samples from bats in the Yunnan cave, they had found coronaviruses in multiple individuals of four different species of bats, including one called the intermediate horseshoe bat, because of the half-oval flap of skin protruding like a saucer around its nostrils. The genome of that virus, Ms. Shi and her colleagues have now announced, is 96 percent identical to the Wuhan virus that has recently been found in humans. And those two constitute a pair distinct from all other known coronaviruses, including the one that causes SARS. In this sense, nCoV-2019 is novel — and possibly even more dangerous to humans than the other coronaviruses.

---

Mr. Daszak told me that, during that second study, the field team took blood samples from a couple of thousand Yunnanese people, about 400 of whom lived near the cave. Roughly 3 percent of them carried antibodies against SARS-related coronaviruses.

“We don’t know if they got sick. We don’t know if they were exposed as children or adults,” Mr. Daszak said. “But what it tells you is that these viruses are making the jump, repeatedly, from bats to humans.” In other words, this Wuhan emergency is no novel event

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/opinion/coronavirus-china.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits