Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 (nCoV-2019)

[Admiral Beez]

Oh for Christ’s sake, what’s this creature they’re eating in China?!!!

It may be the missing link in the coronavirus outbreak. So ... what is a pangolin?

 

[Richard White]

Oh for Christ’s sake, what’s this creature they’re eating in China?!!!

It may be the missing link in the coronavirus outbreak. So ... what is a pangolin?

This is the main reason China has so many outbreaks.

Culturally speaking different animals have different properties relating to health and wellness in China. This leads to eating animals like Bats, Sharks, Rabbits, etc in less than sanitary conditions.

I am all for cultural sensitivity but Chinese culture needs to change in order for these outbreaks to stop.

Bats, Pangolins and Raw Meat won't increase libido, stop aging or make you energetic. It will however get you very sick.

 

[wild goose chase]

TBH, I'm not particularly buying the xenophobia-and-racism-is-causing-a-drop-in-business angle that mass media is eagerly pushing these weeks- yes, there will be stupid people looking for opportunities to flex their racism (and who should always be publicly exposed and condemned)- but I think it's not a particularly good take to suggest that the people staying away are always whites. There are plenty of Chinese and other Asians taking precautions, and going out less often. Again, with the asymptomatic spread of the virus, I can understand why people are being cautious.

Some succinct comments from Reddit:

Tloy said:
I don’t understand why these businesses that are losing sales in Chinese predominate areas (Markham, Richmond Hill, North Scarborough etc.) are claiming xenophobia and racism is driving their sales down.... the majority customer base of the restaurants in these places is MAINLY Chinese or other East Asian descent.

https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/f08j98

To be fair, you could technically still have someone of East Asian descent be xenophobic towards another East Asian (e.g. Hong Kongers disliking mainland Chinese or even born-and-raised East Asian Canadians vs. someone newly arrived). You could very well have someone fear actual people who arrived from overseas, but not fear someone of the same race, who is a local and speaks, walks and talks like a local.

I could imagine that people who fear foreign diseases may avoid gatherings of places where they perceive there to be lots of people who have done foreign travel (but not say, their local work or school cafeteria, even if that cafeteria is ethnically or racially similar, because the cafeteria is full of "familiar" people, not foreign).

After all, xenophobia and racism aren't quite the same thing even if they are often conflated and even if indeed they often do go together in many situations; specifically xenophobia is geared towards "foreigners" (or those perceived as foreign), which may or may not be related to race or physical appearance.

 

[tiffer24]

TOKYO (Reuters) - Testing aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan has revealed 60 more confirmed cases of coronavirus, media said on Monday, as quarantined passengers took to social media to warn of depression setting in over their confinement.

Monday’s figure takes to 130 the number of infections on the ship docked in Yokohama, domestic broadcasters TBS and NHK said, citing Japanese health ministry sources.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...s-on-cruise-ship-in-japan-media-idUSKBN2040FG

 

[Admiral Beez]

TOKYO (Reuters) - Testing aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan has revealed 60 more confirmed cases of coronavirus, media said on Monday, as quarantined passengers took to social media to warn of depression setting in over their confinement.

Monday’s figure takes to 130 the number of infections on the ship docked in Yokohama, domestic broadcasters TBS and NHK said, citing Japanese health ministry sources.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...s-on-cruise-ship-in-japan-media-idUSKBN2040FG

Is anyone going to book a cruise, especially anything that touches China or Japan in 2020?

Going on a cruise? Here's how the coronavirus will change your trip

Cruise companies are taking extraordinary measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, from taking passengers' temperature to banning people who've recently been to China.

www.cnn.com

 

[W. K. Lis]

Is anyone going to book a cruise, especially anything that touches China or Japan in 2020?

Going on a cruise? Here's how the coronavirus will change your trip

Cruise companies are taking extraordinary measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, from taking passengers' temperature to banning people who've recently been to China.

www.cnn.com

Can see sales to sail the seas around China or Japan.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Can see sales to sail the seas around China or Japan.

My wife and I took a cruise from Seattle to Alaska last August. Before we boarded in Seattle we went to CVS and bought two aerosol cans of disinfectant spray plus a big tube of wipes. We then went to town on our room, sanitizing every drawer handle, faucets, cupboard pull, toilet handle, TV remote, telephone, light switch, etc, etc. There are over 500 guest rooms on those big ships and there's no way the staff can clean them all properly in the 2-3 hours between the last group disembarking and the new arrivals embarking. I do the same, minus the aerosol on airplanes, wiping down everything with disinfectant wipes, since you know the plane's never been cleaned and people change their baby's diapers on those tables. As for China and Japan cruising? No thanks. I'd still visit China and Japan, but no way I'm getting stuck for two weeks on a germ filled ship.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

My wife and I took a cruise from Seattle to Alaska last August. Before we boarded in Seattle we went to CVS and bought two aerosol cans of disinfectant spray plus a big tube of wipes. We then went to town on our room, sanitizing every drawer handle, faucets, cupboard pull, toilet handle, TV remote, telephone, light switch, etc, etc. There are over 500 guest rooms on those big ships and there's no way the staff can clean them all properly in the 2-3 hours between the last group disembarking and the new arrivals embarking. I do the same, minus the aerosol on airplanes, wiping down everything with disinfectant wipes, since you know the plane's never been cleaned and people change their baby's diapers on those tables. As for China and Japan cruising? No thanks. I'd still visit China and Japan, but no way I'm getting stuck for two weeks on a germ filled ship.

That doesn't protect you from contamination via HVAC; nor post-departure spread of illnesses (there is a reason why norovirus outbreaks happens). The danger isn't from emptied rooms - but your fellow passengers.

AoD

 

[W. K. Lis]

Why Is The Air Inside Airplanes Always So Dry?!

From link.

One factor that contributes to this dryness is the filtration system. It has to circulate the air from outside to ensure the craft’s air stays as clean as possible to keep passengers healthy. The problem is that the air outside is quite dry, which is another factor.

Why is Humidity a Big Deal?

Normally, a person is going to be comfortable with a humidity of about 30 to 65 percent.

That is definitely not the environment people on planes are exposed to. Most people on an aircraft are exposed to humidity levels somewhere between 20 to 30 percent, which is devastating o a person.

Humidity is vital in a number of ways; it helps the skin retain moisture, and without it, the skin feels dry, and that is what happens on a plane. The eyes also go through their own turmoil while up in the skies.

Now, the eyes don’t necessarily rely on humidity to retain moisture. What the eyes do is use the tear film to keep the eyes comfortable. The problem is that while the eyes have their own functioning moisturizer, the low humidity evaporates that moisture quicker than the tear film can work.

This is when the eyes start to become tired, dry, irritated, stinging, and some even get sensitive to light given enough time.

Things get even worse for passengers who are focusing on books or screens, which further contributes to the issue. This is because this focus forces a person to blink less, and that means the film isn’t spread as it should be.

The mouth and nose feel dry because of the environment. The lack of humidity ends up evaporating the moisture one might find in a regular person’s mouth and nose. No matter how much the body fights it, the moisture simply goes away.

Things get worse for a person’s mouth and nose because most folks are not drinking enough water when they are on a plane. Some people skip drinking water because it cost too much money to purchase it.

Scientists Have Mapped How a Virus Spreads Through an Airplane Cabin

From link.

If you often find yourself coming down with a cold after taking a flight, take note: by mapping the spread of a virus through an aeroplane cabin, researchers have found that your chances of getting the sniffles largely depend on how much you move about.


Based on influenza models, the new study shows you have an 80 percent chance of getting the flu off someone if you're sitting in the row in front or the row behind, or within two seats to either side. Otherwise, your chance of infection drops all the way down to 3 percent.

But... that's assuming you stay still. Move around the cabin, and you're more likely to come into contact with a passenger or a crew member suffering from a cold. The advice seems to be, if you want to stay well by the end of your trip, try and limit the amount of walking around you do while up in the air.

"We found that direct disease transmission outside of the 1 metre [3.2 feet] area of an infected passenger is unlikely," says one of the team, mathematician Howard Weiss from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Very little research has actually looked at this question before. In this case, a team of 10 people flew on a total of 10 different transcontinental flights, armed with iPads to make observations about passenger and crew movements.

They backed up their observations by taking 229 samples from the air and surfaces on board the planes, looking for traces of 18 common respiratory viruses.

There's one important limitation we should talk about: the researchers didn't actually track the spread of flu or any other virus. Instead, they tracked passenger and crew movement, and then applied existing models of how flu spreads to this data.

"The simulations provide compelling evidence that for influenza, if you are not seated within a metre of an infected passenger, and you practice careful hand hygiene, then you are unlikely to get infected during flight," Weiss told George Dvorsky at Gizmodo.

That was backed up by those 229 samples – not a fully comprehensive sweep of the planes, of course, but nevertheless there were no traces of bugs in any of them.

The research showed that around 40 percent of passengers never get up on these shorter, transcontinental flights. Another 40 percent get up at least once, and 20 percent get up two or more times.

You're more than twice as likely to get up if you're sat in the aisle than when you're sat by the window, the study suggests. Meanwhile, the average time passengers spend away from their seats is 5 minutes.

A wandering member of the cabin crew can infect an average of 4.6 passengers on a flight, the research model also showed – so whether you're working or travelling on a plane, it's best to stay home if you're ill.

As we've said, the research uses models of flu patterns rather than actually tracking the spread of bugs around a cabin, and the observations were also restricted to focus on shorter flights of up to 5 hours.

Those shorter flights mean smaller, single-aisle planes as well – and we already know they're better at limiting the spread of infection.

All that said, this is still a useful and pretty rare look at the way sickness can make its way around an aeroplane, and particularly our movement habits.

We definitely need to understand more about why people get sick when they travel, and how those colds and coughs can spread, according to molecular biologist Edsel Maurice Salvaña, from the University of the Philippines Manila, who wasn't involved in the study.

"The study team did a good job with mapping patient movements and going the extra step of testing for a panel of 18 respiratory viruses using highly sensitive nucleic acid testing," Salvaña told Gizmodo.

So why is it that so many of us seem to pick up bugs when we're on flights – is it just our imagination, or is there really an uptick in illness for travellers? Infections could be caught at the airport, suggest the researchers behind the study, or on other, longer connecting flights.

More detailed studies are going to be required before we can work out what's really going on, but in the meantime your chances of getting a bug may not be as high as you thought – and you can minimise the risk by washing your hands, which protects against indirect transmission.

"Passengers and flight crews can eliminate this risk of indirect transmission by exercising hand hygiene and keeping their hands away from their nose and eyes," says Weiss.

The research has been published in PNAS.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Here’s how coronavirus spreads on a plane—and the safest place to sit

Global travel opens new roads for outbreaks, like coronavirus and the flu—but which is more dangerous, and how can you stay safe?

From link.

When an outbreak strikes, it is natural to become leery of hopping on an airplane. It is even more alarming when two serious viruses are circulating at once.

The world is gripped by a new coronavirus that started in China and has since moved into more than two dozen other countries, including the United States. Meanwhile, it is also flu season, which so far has caused 10,000 deaths in the U.S.

Major airports have begun screening passengers for the coronavirus, and more than three dozen airlines—including Delta, American and United—have cut their flights to mainland China. But those measures may not provide much solace to anyone who has to board a flight.

After all, you can avoid the person who is sneezing in line at Cinnabon, but you’re more or less left to fate once you’ve strapped on that seatbelt inside a flying metal canister.
While there is still much to learn about the Wuhan outbreak, scientists do know a bit about similar coronaviruses and other respiratory illnesses like influenza. So how do those viruses spread—and specifically on airplanes? And how serious is the coronavirus threat compared to the likes of influenza? Let’s take a look.

How do respiratory illnesses spread in general?

If you’ve ever sneezed into your arm or steered clear of an office colleague with a hacking cough, you already know the basics of how respiratory illnesses spread.

When an infected person coughs or sneezes, they shed droplets of saliva, mucus, or other bodily fluids. If any of those droplets fall on you—or if you touch them and then, say, touch your face—you can become infected as well.

These droplets are not affected by air flowing through a space, but instead fall fairly close to where they originate. According to Emily Landon, medical director of antimicrobial stewardship and infection control at the University of Chicago Medicine, the hospital’s guidelines for influenza define exposure as being within six feet of an infected person for 10 minutes or longer.

“Time and distance matters,” Landon says.

Respiratory illnesses can also be spread through the surfaces upon which the droplets land—like airplane seats and tray tables. How long those droplets last depends both on the droplet and the surface—mucus or saliva, porous or non-porous, for example. Viruses can vary dramatically in how long they last on surfaces, from hours to months.

There’s also evidence that respiratory viruses can be transmitted through the air in tiny, dry particles known as aerosols. But, according to Arnold Monto, professor of epidemiology and global public health at the University of Michigan, it’s not the major mechanism of transmission.

“To be sustained, to allow true aerosols, the virus has to be able to survive in that environment for the amount of time it’s exposed to drying,” he says. Viruses would rather be moist, and many fade from being infectious if left dry for too long.

What does that mean for airplanes?

The World Health Organization defines contact with an infected person as being seated within two rows of one another.

But people don’t just sit during flights, particularly ones lasting longer than a few hours. They visit the bathroom, stretch their legs, and grab items from the overhead bins. In fact, during the 2003 coronavirus outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a passenger aboard a flight from Hong Kong to Beijing infected people well outside the WHO’s two-row boundary. The New England Journal of Medicine noted that the WHO criteria “would have missed 45 percent of the patients with SARS.”

Inspired in part by that case, a team of public health researchers set out to study how random movements about the airplane cabin might change passengers’ probability of infection.

Passengers in window seats have the lowest likelihood of coming in contact with an infected person...

...but illnesses are most likely to be transmitted only to passengers within one row of the infected person.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Stop blaming the food. I've had lots of raw beef and pork in my time as well as some more interesting offal and blood dishes/bits and bobs and I'm fine. It's not the varied food choices, it's the hygiene and care with which they are treated and prepared.

Now, who wants some duck blood soup?

 

[SunriseChampion]

Mass arrest. China is dragging sick people out their homes like wild animals.

Video footage is like something out of a horror movie. What an awful country.

Coronavirus crisis: Video allegedly shows Chinese officials removing people from homes

Chinese authorities are growing more desperate to combat the coronavirus as the death toll keeps soaring: They’re pulling residents out of their homes and banning over-the-counter flu remedie…

nypost.com

What's your problem? Prosperity for some, social harmony for all, and forget you have rights as a human being!

Autocracies rule!!!2!34

 

[ushahid]

eating raw meat, you are 40 percent more likely to get sick.

 

[Richard White]

Stop blaming the food. I've had lots of raw beef and pork in my time as well as some more interesting offal and blood dishes/bits and bobs and I'm fine. It's not the varied food choices, it's the hygiene and care with which they are treated and prepared.

Now, who wants some duck blood soup?

I've had rare steak and had no issues.

I've also eaten Squab, Wild Boar, Emu, Kangaroo, Alpaca, Llama, Camel and Duck. I've never got sick but they are safely farmed.

Bats and Pangolins are wild animals and who knows what they are carrying.

 

[tiffer24]

A US citizen evacuated from China amid the coronavirus outbreak was mistakenly released from a San Diego hospital on Monday, after officials were told by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the person was in the clear.

The CDC subsequently advised that the patient had in fact tested positive for the virus.

The patient arrived last week on a flight carrying US citizens evacuated from China and was one of four admitted to UC San Diego and held in isolation.

After authorities said on Sunday tests on the four people for coronavirus came back negative, the individual was discharged to quarantine quarters at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...diego-us-citizen-mistakenly-released-hospital