COVID-19 in Japan and Japanese waters

[lovetravellingoz]

You have suggested upthread that the virus won’t be an issue during the Olympics because the virus will go dormant in the warm weather. Singapore is always warm. Yet the virus is still being transmitted there. So why the confidence that it’s weather/warmth based?

My comment was to do with water sprays during the olympics in the height of summer, by which time I doubt that Covid-19 will be running rampant. You seem to be of the believe that a few cases in Singapore means that Covid 19 will run riot in the summer months. I doubt it will if it acts like other corona-viruses.


Your logic seems to be that just because there have been some cases spread from active carriers in Singapore that it is somewhow different from the flu in spreading behaviours. I doubt this, and there is nothing in your links to suggest that it is different.

Past history shows that corona-virus's are more virulent in the colder months and tend to dormant in the hotter months. However that does not stop carriers still carrying and spreading flu's etc. History shows however that such outbreaks tend not to spread in the hotter months at the same rates they spread in the colder months.

In the link you provided it also stated
“Therefore we could identify the specific source (ie The Chinese)… If we are able to ringfence this particular cluster, we can control the spread. Therefore we say it is a limited local transmission.”

I very much doubt that Covid-19 is very much different from the common cold and flus. ie People in Singapore have caught them, and will continue to catch them, but transmission is likely to be at a much lower rate than if it had a wintry climate.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

I hope you are right. That is does go dormant with warm weather. But the message that is being received is that it is going to get much worse than current, regardless of climate.

1/ Just to be clear I am not stating that it goes 100% dormant, just that if it is like many corona viruses there will be seasonality to its spread.

2/ Yes it will continue to spread like any new flu. The genie is out of the bottle. Personally my view is that this is so. However other things are a bigger threat at present including the common flu (ie 10,000 flu related deaths in the USA and 430 in Australia in 2019).
Once a vaccine is developed the mortality rate (which is low) will reduce.

 

[Tropic]

Two words: asymptomatic carriers...

No symptoms = no test = no detection = no quarantine = uncontrolled contagion.
Mortality low currently, mainly immunosuppressd geratrics but a few young healthy individual outliers.
Rx continue normal personal hygiene, avoid obviously sick people and areas with known infection clusters, and cross your fingers....


QF style fine print: this is not medical advice.

 

[trevella]

There’s a *much* better place for this sort of stuff. Please check your Bloomberg email for details.

Your advice as to how this thread would evolve proved uncannily accurate.

As I said earlier, I am not a social media person. I’ll stick with somewhere a little more filtered.

 

[tgh]

Very sorry to see you leave Trevella , you have made a significant contribution to my understanding , thank you

So the helpful posters who were attempting to keep us informed have retreated to a less confrontational zone and are now replaced by street opinion and scuttlebutt… wow .. that's just dandy….
I guess I should now start cross posting some of these wonderful conspiracy theories floating about to maintain the current integrity of the thread …...

 

[Tropic]

Just read all of the information from various sources you contributed to this thread Trevella. Only being a recent participant and non FB user myself, the enthusiastic contributions of other AFF members in threads of great interest to all can result in a robust contest of ideas and opinion, facts and fictions, but never in a mean spirited way in my experience.

update: Um having read some of the contributions of a few posters to this thread in other threads, might have to qualify my previous statement with mostly not mean spirited I think

 

[RooFlyer]

Yet again, the facts get drowned out by squabbling.

Feel free to contribute the facts. What has 'the band' discovered?

 

[RooFlyer]

As I said earlier, I am not a social media person. I’ll stick with somewhere a little more filtered.

Would like to see you stick around. It's helped me significantly, at least. We can all filter the noise

 

[moa999]

Will given the comments from the Japanese Infectious Disease expert who was on the ship for a day the quarantine practices were lacking and seem to be a case of where a little bit of knowledge is dangerous.

Reportedly his video has been removed.
While there are no doubt some issues raised, he seems like a bit of a disgruntled observer having not been selected as part of the Japanese response team initially and then forcing his way onboard via other means only to get kicked out within 24 hours.
While no means an infectious disease expert myself the comments on red/green were interesting. A ship is not like a newly constructed tent hospital where everything starts as sterile and then you create red areas. Until everyone onboard has been tested (and that still hasn't happened) I'd think you are assuming every cabin, every hallway etc is a red zone.

American tweeter Matthew Smith has just posted photos of him walking off the dock.

The Australian family with the positive child is still on board as the authorities try and find a hospital that can take the family. Not clear if the other kids are now isolated.

 

[disruptivedolphin]

13 more infections from the cruise ship including a couple that was less than happy to have their 'escape' thwarted.

 

[amaroo]

Your advice as to how this thread would evolve proved uncannily accurate.

As I said earlier, I am not a social media person. I’ll stick with somewhere a little more filtered.

That's the total pits! Thank you, and please stay!

 

[disruptivedolphin]

Chiba case confirmed yesterday creating some ripples... lady in her 70s came down with a fever on the 14th, but then tested negative for regular flu and went on a three-day bus tour with her sister (and around 40 others) travelling through multiple prefectures and starting and finishing at Haneda Airport. Visited four medical institutions all up. No overseas travel during the two weeks prior to symptom onset.

 

[disruptivedolphin]

In other news from yesterday, two men in their 40s who were managing staff at the Snow Festival in Sapporo have tested positive.

Offical attendance for the festival this year was 2.02 million, down 716,000 from last year.

 

[disruptivedolphin]

Haven't seen this elsewhere yet, so apologies if I'm doubling up, but two Aussies have reportedly tested positive after returning home on the charter flight from Japan.

So I'm going to call the decision to let people just walk off the boat and go home a 'fail'.

Coronavirus cases confirmed among Australian Diamond Princess evacuees in Darwin

Authorities confirm four people evacuated to Darwin from the Diamond Princess cruise ship have tested positive for coronavirus.

www.abc.net.au

 

[moa999]

So I'm going to call the decision to let people just walk off the boat and go home a 'fail'.

Depends on who it was.

They letting people who tested negative yet had spent 14 days onboard with someone who tested positive to fly home.
Some people in that group were highly likely to later test positive.

 

[disruptivedolphin]

Reuters:

The Japanese government said on Thursday that (...) another two government officials have tested positive for the infection.

One of the officials was from the Health Ministry and the other from the Cabinet Secretariat, and both had worked on the Diamond Princess, a health ministry official told a news conference.

Three other officials, from the health ministry and quarantine office, had previously tested positive for the virus.

 

[disruptivedolphin]

Japan's government has failed coronavirus communications test

Instead of data and reassurance, Shinzo Abe leads with aloofness

asia.nikkei.com

On January 22, when the world was just waking up to the news of an unclassified virus associated only with Wuhan, China, JHU's Center for Systems Science and Engineering launched a real-time dashboard map of its spread.

"We built this dashboard because we think it is important for the public to have an understanding of the outbreak situation as it unfolds with transparent data sources," co-director Lauren Gardner said.

Nearly a month later, the virtual red splotch of outbreak has seeped across Northeast Asia. Although far down the scale, Japan ranks second to China in contamination spread when one adds the over 600 confirmed infections from the Diamond Princess.

Imagine if the Japanese government had had its own Lauren Gardner team to build a communications dashboard to keep the public informed in real time. But that did not happen.

***

Some people here are no doubt aware as to why.

 

[Pushka]

Haven't seen this elsewhere yet, so apologies if I'm doubling up, but two Aussies have reportedly tested positive after returning home on the charter flight from Japan.

So I'm going to call the decision to let people just walk off the boat and go home a 'fail'.

Coronavirus cases confirmed among Australian Diamond Princess evacuees in Darwin

Authorities confirm four people evacuated to Darwin from the Diamond Princess cruise ship have tested positive for coronavirus.

www.abc.net.au

I know that it would have been a logistical and impossible nightmare to do so, but only by testing everyone on Day 1 would we have been clear about the net effect of the 14 day isolation period. But maybe not even then. I do agree that just letting people walk off the ship was something I found very hard to believe that Japan would allow.

 

[disruptivedolphin]

I know that it would have been a logistical and impossible nightmare to do so, but only by testing everyone on Day 1 would we have been clear about the net effect of the 14 day isolation period. But maybe not even then. I do agree that just letting people walk off the ship was something I found very hard to believe that Japan would allow.

The evidence for concluding definitively that the threat had passed appears to be insufficient, and the downside of being wrong is quite large to say the least. It just seems like a risk that didn't need to be taken, especially since Japan could have saved some face by simply following the leads of other nations.

 

[disruptivedolphin]

While there are no doubt some issues raised, he seems like a bit of a disgruntled observer having not been selected as part of the Japanese response team initially and then forcing his way onboard via other means only to get kicked out within 24 hours.

Pretty offensive characterisation in my opinion.

Government officials were in charge, and lo and behold, government officials ended up being infected.