It just amazes me when they said Wuhan was the size of London, 10 million or so. Imagine any city of that size being quarantined in any other country. There are Youtube videos being made by westerners in Wuhan showing how it is.
My kids got home from Thailand yesterday and said Bangkok airport was full of coughing Chinese returning home from the holidays.
My daughter lives in Cambridge in the UK. It is a major tourist destination for Chinese folks. Her housing this year is in a lovely new-ish college, with a large proportion of foreign grad students, especially from the Pacific Rim.
Fingers crossed. If she sticks to her usual lifestyle of living in the sub-basement of some forgotten library reading through 1200 year old manuscripts, she'll be fine.
TT, the latest I have read is that Thailand is up to 14 cases and with your son's experience at the Bangkok Airport, I'm all about holding off on a visit to Bangkok until we see how this virus is going to play out. Something positive for once about this virus - if this indeed can be considered positive per se - is that the mortality rate thus far is averaging 2.1% - I'm still taking goldenseal and eating onions anyway, and I'm also stocking up on oil of oregano, also an over the counter antibiotic. On the offhand chance a worst case scenario indeed arrives in North America, I'm already fully stocked up on garlic.....one of the world's best antibiotics and reputed to kill off almost anything. Under a worst case scenario, social approval matters zilch and garlic breath may very well become trendy and a sign of common sense/intelligence. I hope we don't find out if this is indeed the case but I believe in stocking up, just in case. And if not necessary, I still have garlic for cooking at home. Rob
Scary, yes. I'm just glad Thailand has socialized medicine. There is poverty for sure in Thailand and some of the conditions which spread viruses/disease - poverty, crowding, and inadequate sanitation. But look at Hong Kong - it has cases of this virus and great sanitation and little grinding poverty - crowded living conditions seem to be enough with this virus. Very scary - think of Seattle, New York, Philadelphia, Boston - all crowded space-at-a-premium cities. At least people in Thailand can access some level of health care by virtue of being a human being with Thai citizenship, unlike in the United States. Perhaps, if this virus does blow up - America will be exposed for the extreme citizenship risk human life not being worth socialized medicine truly is. Sad that it would take many deaths for more Americans to realize this - but it is what it is. Rob
I understand that at 20 US airports, which handle 90% of deplaning passengers from China, there is medical screening (Does each passenger have a fever? do they appear to be sniffling or coughing?) Passengers also fill out a questionnaire before the plane lands.
Passengers who are suspected of being sick may be assigned to one of 20 regional quarantine stations... and I think they can be held a couple of weeks.
The excuse doctors use for over-prescription seems to be "You may have a concomitant bacterial infection, too--so just to be sure..."
Australian researchers have managed to clone the virus, so a vaccine is likely in the works.
I wonder if existing anti-virals work on this strain.
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