Dettol cannot kill the deadly coronavirus, its manufacturers reportedly confirmed today.
Shoppers had insisted they’d seen claims on the anti-bacterial spray’s bottle that it could destroy “cold viruses (human coronavirus and RSV)”.
Experts expressed their doubts at this and, today, it is reported Dettol’s manufacturer has offered clarity itself.
Pretty much impossible to determine whether the drugs helped or whether the pt just improved naturally. I’m fairly skeptical tbh
Gonna need a larger sample but it’s hopeful I guess
“It’s very, very transmissible, and it almost certainly is going to be a pandemic,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
“But will it be catastrophic? I don’t know.”
In the last three weeks, the number of lab-confirmed cases has soared from about 50 in China to 14,000 in 23 countries; there have been over 300 deaths, all but one in China.
But various epidemiological models estimate that the real number of cases is 100,000 or even more. While that expansion is not as rapid as that of flu or measles, it is an enormous leap beyond what virologists saw when SARS and MERS emerged.
…
It is “increasingly unlikely that the virus can be contained,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who now runs Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit devoted to fighting epidemics.
“It is therefore likely that it will spread, as flu and other organisms do, but we still don’t know how far, wide or deadly it will be.”
IMO the next 4-5 days are when it’ll become clear how big a deal this is. The graph at the bottom of this live map (shared here before a couple of times) is interesting. If we don’t see a significant spike in the number of detected cases, particularly outside China, then I think we’re OK. ‘OK’ here means this isn’t The Stand and probably no-one you know will die because of it, but it obviously is still terrible.
Cheering to note that the number of ‘recovered’ now outstrips those killed by 50%. Doesn’t mean all that much yet, I suppose, but still. Not bad news, so far.
Seems like the former director of the CDC is a bit of a worrywort.
I think bigger outbreaks in some others SE-Asian and African countries are basically inevitable by now. Especially considering that they will not be able to shut down cities or set their health system on this like China can.
What happens in Western countries remains to be seen, but given some of the number a flu epidemic regularly reaches, I do not think the results will be far worse than that.
The bigger impact all of this will have seems to be the countermeasures and their economic consequences. It seems really likely Chinese and Australian stocks will most likely take a plunge. Other countries might follow. Given the state of the global economy I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what starts the next recession (and a bad one to boot with interest rates already being pretty low).
Kind of curious what happens when Chinese stock markets reopen tonight.
Further down that NYT article btw:
At the moment, it seems unlikely that the virus will spread widely in countries with vigorous, alert public health systems, said Dr. William Schaffner, a preventive medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
“Every doctor in the U.S. has this top of mind,” he said. “Any patient with fever or respiratory problems will get two questions. ‘Have you been to China? Have you had contact with anyone who has?’ If the answer is yes, they’ll be put in isolation right away.”
Beyond that, the ultimate fate of developed countries is just way too uncertain to say anything about. The range of possibilities encompasses there only ever being a scattering of cases in places like the US and Australia all the way through to a full global pandemic, with about 50 different factors in play.
Likely pandemics are not a good sign for the markets, imo.
I get it. But the market has been closed for a week or more so tonight could be wild.
Probably move down 5%+.
In recent days, some say they have called 120, China’s equivalent of the emergency number 911, only to be told that there were already hundreds of people in the queue.
…
On Sunday, city officials announced plans to set up quarantine stations around Wuhan for people with symptoms of pneumonia and close contacts among coronavirus patients. But just over a week into the lockdown, many residents believe the virus has already spread much further than the official numbers suggest.
“The situation that we’ve seen is much worse than what has been officially reported,” Long Jian, 32, said outside a hospital where his elderly father was being treated. Mr. Long said his father had to go to six hospitals and wait seven days before he could even be tested for the coronavirus.
Just steps from where Mr. Long spoke, beds could be seen lining both sides of a narrow corridor in the emergency room. One man was getting an intravenous drip outside in his car.
“Those who can get diagnosed and treated are the lucky ones,” Mr. Long said. “In our neighborhood, many who weren’t able to get diagnosed ended up dying at home.”
Aside from hopefully keeping the patient from spreading the virus father, from a treatment perspective what good does a coronavirus diagnosis do? Is there a coronavirus-specific treatment? Does a super-sick person with coronavirus get treated differently than a super-sick person with non-coronavirus flu or pneumonia?
Down 9% at the open.
Yikes. I had a hunch to short the ETF that tracks their market but I have no balls.
Jesus, how are futures looking? We can be down another 3-4% tomorrow
Chinese commodities trading already hit downward trigger and trading in commodities is halted for the day.