brand new virus has made the jump to humans. Probably from bats.
this is very similar to SARS or MERS
the epicentre is wuhan. A city of 11 million people.
official tolls are 700 plus infected, with 41 dead.
Wuhan plus a number of other cities, encompassing 30 million people, have been locked down
exactly how infectious the virus is, is not clear
isolated cases have been found in the UK, the US, Australia, Japan and a number of others
the Chinese government is of course treating this with full transparency, so we aren’t relying on guesswork and half baked conjecture…
likewise. If the pandemic gathers speed, we can all rely on our governments to respond with rational, science led approaches.
There is some suggestion that carriers can be asymptomatic. There is also info that a 4th generation patient has been identified.
The medic nerds are running models, but with incomplete information the outputs range from “Probably fine eventually” to “catastrophic” depending on the variables.
My wife is currently in Wuhan with her family celebrating Chinese New Year. If I were a better son-in-law I’d be getting evacuated by plane by the US government from Wuhan tomorrow.*
My wife and I have been living in Taiwan this year but she went back to Wuhan in December to handle some work/business issues and spend CNY with her family.
Shits fucked.
*I actually do spend lots of time in Wuhan with the in-laws and thus usually get a pass for CNY from my wife.
It’s not when you realize that old people die all the time, because they’re old. Pneumonia often is what finishes many old people off, but they’re usually at the point where they’re going to get finished off by something soon.
Artistic license! Have you seen the coronavirus? It looks downright friendly. That phage looks like a demonic robot from War of the Worlds that wants desperately to get up in ya.
“In Beijing, five new cases have been confirmed, according to Chinese National Radio, including two patients who had not recently travelled to Hubei, the centre of the outbreak. In all previous cases in the capital, patients had reportedly visited the province.”
As of now she’s quarantined in Wuhan with her family. She’s a PRC national without a foreign passport.
After seeing the news that there’s a charter flight for US citizens in Wuhan tomorrow I kind of wonder what would happen if I was there and said I’m not leaving without my wife (she has a valid US visa). I don’t know how many consular staff there is there (when I lived there consular stuff was all through Guangzhou) but outside of that I can’t imagine there’s more than a few Americans who didn’t get out before this week. To put it bluntly, as an American even if you are staying in China for CNY (you probably aren’t), spending it in Wuhan would be miserable under the best circumstances. I’m sure Superuberbob can back me up on this one.
Supposedly as of 8 hours from now all non-special vehicles are banned from the roads in Wuhan. They’ve already been blocking people leaving by road. Wuhan is a huge city. When my wife and I were dating to get from the area we lived to her parents home took over three hours via bus-metro-bus. Its also a city that is constantly under construction and there are many areas of it that are completely unrecognizable from when I first lived there in 2013.
Wuhan is a city that has swelled as the urban center that Hubei’s countryside have flocked to since the 1980s. It also has the highest university student population in China and a significant population of foreign students from Africa and south Asia. It is also a transport hub connecting central China with Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. So a great choice for the virus.
Like, im happy about this, but that makes everything a million times scarier, right? The only reason researchers would be willing to pass on millions for being the first to a cure is if they think millions wont be worth anything if this spreads.
