Coronavirus (COVID-19) Respiratory illness - Effect on Travel

[Must...Fly!]

Aside from the health issues we know there will be delays of goods shipments out of China now with Chinese New Year being extended to February 2nd and government offices closing thru to February 9th. These dates may get extended depending on what happens over the next few days.
Thanks Quickstatus for putting this virus into perspective. It is possible that China is not currently reporting true numbers of cases as the news is released from Beijing rather than the provinces where the cases are being treated.

I broadly agree however given the initial response from the local government in Wuhan, I have less trust in the provincial governments than the central government.

It may well be that it's just taking a long time to get samples, tests processed and results back. The real numbers could easily be in the tens or hundreds of thousands. The real question for me is how severe are the symptoms across the demographic.

 

[drron]

So it can be spread human to human. That’s been kind of denied until now, and as recently as on tonight’s media news.

China admitted human to human transmission a week ago.

COVID-19 and travel

Read our advice on COVID-19, including leaving Australia, trying to get home, arriving in Australia and staying overseas.

www.smartraveller.gov.au

 

[burmans]

So it can be spread human to human. That’s been kind of denied until now, and as recently as on tonight’s media news.

Kind of amazed by this. I've been in Asia, Laos, Thailand, Singapore and back in Oz since a Friday. In each case they have been reporting that China reported H2H over a week ago. As an aside I was fairly impressed by the news reporting, just the facts, no hysteria, shame this doesn't seem to be the case here.

 

[Must...Fly!]

China admitted human to human transmission a week ago.

COVID-19 and travel

Read our advice on COVID-19, including leaving Australia, trying to get home, arriving in Australia and staying overseas.

www.smartraveller.gov.au

The prevailing "western" view (CDC etc) has been that there is no proof of this. Which is kind of curious in itself.

 

[Quickstatus]

As this is constantly evolving situation, the requirement of proof is unhelpful in the overall actions to mitigate the spread.
Logically there cannot just be animal to human spread. Too many people are now involved.

Again I think we should not discount the expertise of the Chinese in this matter as per the above post. They have moved fast - finding the virus then sequencing its entire genetic code within a couple of weeks.
It is not even 1 month since China alerted the WHO

 

[Must...Fly!]

The first person to have coronavirus in Germany was infected by a Chinese colleague who attended a company training in the state of Bavaria a week ago, health officials said on Tuesday.

The colleague, a woman from Shanghai, "started to feel sick on the flight home on January 23," Andreas Zapf, head of the Bavarian State Office for Health and Food Safety, said at a press conference.

The 33-year-old man who contracted the virus lives near Starnberg, 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Munich, and is in a "medically good state," according to the health authority.

People who had come into close contact with either of the infected persons have been informed and are being monitored for any signs that the disease has spread.

The health authorities released a statement on Monday saying he was under surveillance in an isolation ward and that the risk of infection for the people of Bavaria is currently considered to be "low."

"People who have been in contact (with the patient) have been informed in detail about possible symptoms, hygiene measures and transmission channels," it added.

Germany confirms human transmission of coronavirus – DW – 01/28/2020

Health authorities say a Bavarian man contracted the virus from a colleague visiting from China. It is believed to be the first case of human-to-human transmission in Europe.

www.dw.com

 

[Quickstatus]

Suggests she may have been well at the time she gave it to the German guy.

the first H-H I think is earlier.

 

[p--and--t]

China alerted WHO on Dec31 about what is now called n-COV. The first confirmed case outside China was 13 January, and soon after that there was a suspicion of H-H transmission beause none of the international cases were near the live wild animal markets.
Initially thought to be animal to human contact - live animal markets were the first suspected ground zero but within weeks China has said H-H transmission is occurring.
bear in mind this is all occuring very fast and the timeline is a bit compressed. This has been going for less than a month but may have been occuring for several weeks before that until the Health authorities noted a jump in respiratory disease in a large city.

SARS-COV and MER-COV were both from bats

Initially n-COV also though to be from bats as similar genetic sequence found but with later studies thought to have originated from Snakes. But complication is snakes hunt bats so it is also likely bat gave it to snakes as the intermediate host and then snakes to humans. How snakes gave it to humans was probably at the time of slaughter. The wild animal market sold snakes and bats. In the Middle East the MER-COV intermediate host was camel and Civets

Snakes are cold blooded and bats warm blooded. That the virus could adapt meant a certain level of mutation and then from snakes to humans. WHO is reporting that the virus is mutating rapidly making it difficult to get a workable vaccine going.

Much is know already about the virus - there is evidence that the virus is a combined version of a bat COV and maybe a snake COV. The entire genetic sequence is already known since January 12 when China posted it but for the mutations. Mutations can also be bad for an organism. If an organism is perfectly adapted to its environment it is better to have zero mutations.
This virus like many viruses have a spike which helps it attach to and inject its DNA into the host cell.

The take home message for China is to reduce of consumption of wild animals. But the Chinese have demonstrated a sophisticated scientific, virology and public health expertise.

n-COV now called 2019-nCOV

New word for AFF members:
Zoonosis: a disease that be spread from animals to humans.

I'm sure I read somewhere in the last week that patient zero was recorded 8th December 2019. Not sure when this first case was first reported to authorities outside China.

 

[Quickstatus]

First one outside China was 13 Jan - Thailand IIRC

 

[juddles]

Hmmmmm....

so yet another virus appears....

There are two ways to take this - and perhaps they are the same. It is an inevitable historical fact that from time to time new diseases develop. So on the one side we could all take it as yet another iteration of the constant evolution that plagues this planet. On the other hand, far more philosophically, you could take it that the planet has a certain knack of readjusting populations of whatever organisms when they get too plentiful - in this case the Chinese...

Either way, I also like to inject an even more significant reality - the constantly dwindling attention span of the modern world. Thus what is yet but a trivial blip now (seriously - a couple of hundred dead??!!) gains so much attention. Seems no one can remember the Plague or the Spanish Flu - the latter killed 50 million people, when the world had far less people. And the Plague an even greater amount on a percentage basis. And this was way before carbon was the true Evil...

As always, our improvement in medical processes (which are astounding) are outweighed by a population that is now truly global - every single sniffle manages to cross the globe in a week, far oess than the time for symptoms to be known.

The fact that the numbers of dead are so low means to me that this is just another storm in a teacup. A super-mild flu. But it should invoke the reality of what could happen if an actually serious disease sprouted.

With the current world population, coupled with the extreme facilitation of spreading, we should not be surprised if one day a flu appeared that took out 100's of millions.

Yet most are more concerned with the share market dipping, housing prices, and bushfires in a continent that has burned for eons.....

 

[p--and--t]

for those who are interested in reading up in great detail on coronavirus research there is a summary of a significant relevant articles here . They are all free and not behind paywalls.

(and NO I haven't read them and don't think I will read more than a fraction of what is presented)

 

[p--and--t]

Airlines Have Started To Pull & Suspend China Routes

Airlines have started to pull and suspend China frequences and routes.

loyaltylobby.com

 

[Isochronous]

Taiwan has banned arrivals from China and HK has sealed its border. More countries need to look at doing this.

 

[Pushka]

Hmmmmm....

so yet another virus appears....

There are two ways to take this - and perhaps they are the same. It is an inevitable historical fact that from time to time new diseases develop. So on the one side we could all take it as yet another iteration of the constant evolution that plagues this planet. On the other hand, far more philosophically, you could take it that the planet has a certain knack of readjusting populations of whatever organisms when they get too plentiful - in this case the Chinese...

Either way, I also like to inject an even more significant reality - the constantly dwindling attention span of the modern world. Thus what is yet but a trivial blip now (seriously - a couple of hundred dead??!!) gains so much attention. Seems no one can remember the Plague or the Spanish Flu - the latter killed 50 million people, when the world had far less people. And the Plague an even greater amount on a percentage basis. And this was way before carbon was the true Evil...

As always, our improvement in medical processes (which are astounding) are outweighed by a population that is now truly global - every single sniffle manages to cross the globe in a week, far oess than the time for symptoms to be known.

The fact that the numbers of dead are so low means to me that this is just another storm in a teacup. A super-mild flu. But it should invoke the reality of what could happen if an actually serious disease sprouted.

With the current world population, coupled with the extreme facilitation of spreading, we should not be surprised if one day a flu appeared that took out 100's of millions.

Yet most are more concerned with the share market dipping, housing prices, and bushfires in a continent that has burned for eons.....

The Spanish flu didn’t kill that many people in a week or so though.

 

[Quickstatus]

. Seems no one can remember the Plague or the Spanish Flu - the latter killed 50 million people, when the world had far less people.

Perspective is rare as is the sense of proportion, history and time. They can’t even remember the mortality from last year’s influenza

 

[Quickstatus]

The Spanish flu didn’t kill that many people in a week or so though.

Most of the Spanish flu deaths occurred between Oct and Dec 1918 IIRC

.........

actually serious disease

Interesting how even with 1000 deaths from influenza in AUS (2017) there were no calls for quarantine etc etc etc. why is this one more serious than influenza?

 

[Pushka]

Most of the Spanish flu deaths occurred between Oct and Dec 1918 IIRC

It seems to have occurred in several waves with the first wave being mild but still deadly in March April in the USA. . With troop movement It spread so that in September the second wave had started and once it arrived into the weakened troops and camps in WW1 then it was rapid. There was a final wave that was less deadly and by then countries had better containment and isolation.

Given the history no one knows if this is the first wave as the fatalities didn’t really ramp up until it had spread in the second wave.

 

[Quickstatus]

There were several waves but the very big one was in Oct-Dec 2018 when people were dying within days - even healthy people. At the peak in those months the death rate was peaking at a 250/1000 population. It is suspected that this big peak was due to a mutation that made the virus much more virulent - therefore different to the other waves. It’s the second wave that is considered to be the “Spanish Flu”
They had all sorts of containment procedures during the second wave as well.
It subsided I believe because the virus mutated itself out of existence. The faster and more extreme the mortality the less chance the virus has to spread.

IIRC

 

[Pushka]

There were several waves but the very big one was in Oct-Dec 2018 when people were dying within days - even healthy people. At the peak in those months the death rate was peaking at a 250/1000 population. It is suspected that this big peak was due to a mutation that made the virus much more virulent - therefore different to the other waves. It’s the second wave that is considered to be the “Spanish Flu”
IIRC

Yes thats my point - the first wave wasn’t that deadly. It is only with hindsight that we know that the deadliest period was the second wave, when it circulated more widely. We are currently in the first wave. There may or may not be a second deadly wave. It is suggested that the second wave was deadlier simply because by then it reached the war-sickened and malnourished and incredibly cramped troops and people of WW1 and they didn’t stand a chance.

 

[Quickstatus]

No the first wave was considered to be a milder form. Healthy people were not as affected as the second wave.
Now in the 2019-nCOV, it is understood that the virus has mutated which enabled animal to human transmission. It has yet to be seen how this plays out.
But the same could be said of every flu season. We seemed complacent then compared to now??