Not getting any better, on the contrary

The COVID-19 devastation is becoming more obvious, not by the day but by the hour.
Shocking to read that in Antwerp (Belgium) 5 older people in the same service flats building died in one week; 3 men and 2 women, ages between 65 and 80. It shows how this virus can be a ruthless killer.
With incompetent leaders like Trump and Boris, as well as in other EU countries, this is going to get worse. Good luck for Easter Holiday.

At least, slowly, the situation in China is getting better, but I don’t expect restrictions to be eased soon in Beijing. See what people arriving to Beijing will face. Those trying to fool the health people by taking fever medicine will end up in prison. Because a urine test will be used to detect that.

Meanwhile Beijing mentioned the wide application of TCM in the hospitals. Over 90% of the patients treated were given TCM treatment and 90% have shown improvement.
Read: http://covid-19.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202003/24/WS5e79429fa310128217281624.html

And read here the 6 effective TCM recipes for COVID-19:
http://covid-19.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202003/17/WS5e702f52a31012821727fa19.html

Conspiracy story denied by … China

Interesting read:
22 March 2020 – Top Chinese official disowns U.S. military lab coronavirus conspiracy
https://www.axios.com/china-coronavirus-ambassador-cui-tiankai-1b0404e8-026d-4b7d-8290-98076f95df14.html
No, Americans did not bring it to Wuhan.

On another note, memory being short in China (and USA), Xinhua had a name for the virus in the early stages. Needless to say, most cleaned up on the Internet. But the Internet has a memory…

Airborne, again again

WHO considers ‘airborne precautions’ for medical staff after study shows coronavirus can survive in air
16 March 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/who-considers-airborne-precautions-for-medical-staff-after-study-shows-coronavirus-can-survive-in-air.html

WHO reversed their earlier position that COVID virus is not air borne.
Copper, Steel – 2 hours
Paper, Plastic – 3-4 hours
Air – 8 hours or more depending on conditions.
Well, I mentioned this earlier already on 18 March 2020:
COVID-19 newsletter

Trump is married to the stock market

Trump is only concerned about the stock market (and his election). Screw the hospitals and the sick. He cut the budgets of CDC in the past(*), resulting in today’s mess. Does not mobilize manufacturing of the critically needed equipment. He wants to help companies and industry but never mind the workers. Oh yes otherwise he could be called a “socialist”.

Also, several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned.
The American disease expert, a medical epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency, left her post in July, according to four sources with knowledge of the issue. The first cases of the new coronavirus may have emerged as early as November, and as cases exploded, the Trump administration in February chastised China for censoring information about the outbreak and keeping U.S. experts from entering the country to help.

Let’s guess and bet who will be right for USA by 1 May; see also further down:

1. 300,000 infected 5,000 dead
2. 1.5 million infected 20,000 dead
3. Not close to any of the above, less or much more

(*) speech senator Sherrod Brown, see:

According to U.S. CDC projections:

– Between 160 million and 214 million people could be infected. That could last months or even over a year.
– As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.
– 2.4 million to 21 million people could require hospitalization, potentially crushing the nation’s medical system, which has only about 925,000 staffed hospital beds.

Next virus epicenter?

No comments. Read the article.
24 March 2020
U.S. could be next ‘virus epicenter’ as India locks down, global recession looms
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus/u-s-could-become-next-coronavirus-epicenter-who-says-idUSKBN21B1RJ
GENEVA/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – The United States could become the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday, as India announced a full 24-hour, nationwide lockdown in the world’s second-most populous country.

Comments AXIOS (repeating what I said several times):
Millions of Americans are losing their jobs at the same time as their families face a once-in-a-century pandemic.
The lockdown is particularly devastating for service workers, blue-collar workers and small businesses, and Senate Democrats today blocked the Phase 3 stimulus bill for the second time in 24 hours. (They want more protections for workers and more strings attached.)
White-collar workers are obviously not immune from coronavirus hardships, but their jobs are the simplest to make remote.
Another short news flash: Las Vegas completely stopped. 200,000 people without work. Just one example of the many.

Bill Gates and other prophets of doom

Unfortunately they were right.
Bill Gates talked in 2015 of the impending catastrophe with a virus. What will kill is not nuclear missiles. It will be a coronavirus.
Could not be more clear.
“In his 2015 TED talk, Gates does not specifically call out the coronavirus but does predict the impact of a potential epidemic and lays out a path for preparing for it. Based on our research, we determine the claim that Bill Gates nominally predicted the coronavirus pandemic – and the world’s ability to respond to it – to be TRUE.”
Read: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/03/22/coronavirus-fact-check-did-bill-gates-predict-outbreak-2015/2890900001/

Link to the TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

More chilling even is the warning of the research team that worked on the SARS virus.
They published the paper in October 2007.
They wrote:
“The presence of a large reservoir of SARS=CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats. together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb.”
The bomb exploded in November 2019 as far as we know.
And I immediately commented on it. Read my earlier post:
Virusland is back
Posted on 30 January 2020
Nothing was learned.

Japan July 2020 Olympics

As predicted, not this year. That was pretty obvious.

New Chinese publication in French

“La Chine au Présent” has a new magazine, well done, see:

https://flbook.com.cn/c/gt1kJZhtH1
And yes, focus on COVID-19!

No more international flights

Lots to report, more COVID-19 (bad) news. More tomorrow.
Flights to Beijing Diverted to 12 Other Cities Over Imported Coronavirus Concerns – Caixin
The move comes after all arrivals to Beijing, one of China’s top international gateways, were initially required to undergo 14 day quarantines at designated local hotels. As those hotels filled up, the city rolled out a new policy last week requiring many inbound flights to stop first at a handful of other cities to relieve the pressure.
Under the latest policy, China’s aviation authority has designated the 12 airports in Tianjin, Hohhot, Taiyuan, Shanghai’s Pudong New Area, Shijiazhuang, Jinan, Qingdao, Nanjing, Shenyang, Dalian, Zhengzhou and Xi’an to act as first port of entry for all inbound flights destined for Beijing.

See here one hotel where fellow Rotarians are currently in quarantine. One unlucky lady landed in a room without WIFI and it cannot repaired because nobody can enter the room… Otherwise nice prison.

Lijingwan International Hotel Beijing
No. 28 North Shilipu, Dongsihuan Road, Beijing, China

Chinese economy

See the latest from China Economic Review, basically what I already wrote a few days ago.

Foreign orders at Chinese exporters plunge as pandemic widens.
As Chinese manufacturers return to work following a nearly two-month shutdown during the COVID-19 epidemic, many are finding they have no work because foreign clients cancelled or slashed orders as the pandemic spread globally, reported Caixin.
China’s Ministry of Commerce Monday warned that the foreign trade sector may face a decline in orders even though two-thirds of key manufacturers outside of Hubei, where the outbreak hit the hardest, have resumed more than 70% of operations. Several exporters told Caixin that their business is worse than after the financial crisis of 2008. “The whole world feels paralyzed,” said one.

In Yiwu, the world’s largest small-commodity wholesale market in East China’s Zhejiang Province, a jewelry exporter said 5% of its orders have been canceled since last week, and those that haven’t done so are considering scaling back or delaying shipments. “Last week, an Italian client suddenly told us they don’t need the goods anymore,” the jewelry exporter said. “Some clients are asking for a two-month delay in shipment.”
March is usually the business peak for jewelry exporters. Orders for the spring and summer collections are usually fulfilled at this time, and clients begin to place orders for their fall and winter collections. But this year the company hasn’t received any new orders and expects a 30%-40% decline in total orders for the year, the Yiwu jewelry exporter said.

The Tip of the Iceberg

Virologist David Ho (BS ’74) Speaks About COVID-19
20 March 2020
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/tip-iceberg-virologist-david-ho-bs-74-speaks-about-covid-19
You are warned…

Extract:
In New York, we know that we are in the exponential growth phase of the epidemic.
Looking back at what has transpired throughout the world, we saw the first wave hit China; the second wave hit South Korea, Italy, and Iran; and then, trailed by only about a week or so, France, Germany, Spain, and the U.S. We all know that China went through a period of great devastation. It has over 80,000 cases. Italy is rapidly catching up, with over 31,000 cases. We suspect that in the U.S. this will rapidly sweep from the coastal regions and it will hit middle America. It is already there, but we will see exponential growth very, very soon. Then of course we are all worried about what would happen when this epidemic strikes places like Africa and India where the health care system is less developed.

Silent carriers

A third of coronavirus cases may be ‘silent carriers’, classified Chinese data suggests
More than 43,000 people in China had tested positive without immediate symptoms by the end of February and were quarantined. It is still unclear what role asymptomatic transmission is playing in the global pandemic.
SCMP 22 March 2020
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3076323/third-coronavirus-cases-may-be-silent-carriers-classified

The number of “silent carriers” – people who are infected by the new coronavirus but show delayed or no symptoms – could be as high as one-third of those who test positive, according to classified Chinese government data seen by the South China Morning Post.
That could further complicate the strategies being used by countries to contain the virus, which has infected more than 300,000 people and killed more than 14,000 globally.
More than 43,000 people in China had tested positive for COVID-19 by the end of February but had no immediate symptoms, a condition typically known as asymptomatic, according to the data. They were placed in quarantine and monitored but were not included in the official tally of confirmed cases, which stood at about 80,000 at the time.
Scientists have been unable to agree on what role asymptomatic transmission plays in spreading the disease. A patient usually develops symptoms in five days, though the incubation period can be as long as three weeks in some rare cases.

The approach taken by China and South Korea of testing anyone who has had close contact with a patient — regardless of whether the person has symptoms — may explain why the two Asian countries seem to have checked the spread of the virus. Hong Kong is extending testing to airport arrivals in the city, even if travellers have no symptoms. Meanwhile in most European countries and the US, where only those with symptoms are tested, the number of infections continues to rapidly rise.

Coronavirus could linger in Europe for two years, Chinese expert says

SCMP 22 March 2020
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3076339/coronavirus-could-linger-europe-two-years-chinese-expert-says

Edited extract:
‘It would be perfectly normal if the virus comes and goes’ with the seasons, Zhang Wenhong, head of Shanghai’s COVID-19 clinical expert team, tells Chinese expats, students in Germany.
‘If only the whole world could stop moving for four weeks, the pandemic could be stopped,’ he says.

A Chinese expert on infectious diseases said Europe must give up on the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic will be over soon and instead prepare for a battle that could last for up to two years.
The warning – from Zhang Wenhong, head of Shanghai’s COVID-19 clinical expert team – came as European countries, including Italy, Spain and Germany, are experiencing sharp rises in the number of infections and deaths, while China is working to keep out imported cases after reporting only one new domestic case in the past four days.

 “It would be perfectly normal if the virus comes and goes, and lasts for one or two years,” Zhang said during a videoconference organised by the Chinese consulate in the German city of Düsseldorf.
“I can tell you now, forget the idea that the pandemic will come to an end in Europe in the near future.”
Zhang, who is also director of the infectious diseases department at Huashan Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, earlier predicted that the epidemic within China would peak between April and June, before falling back in summer, returning sporadically through autumn and winter, and peaking again, though probably on a smaller scale, next spring.
 “To resolve this outbreak in a short period of time, measures have to be extremely radical,” Zhang said, adding that China was able to impose widespread city lockdowns thanks to the fact that the initial outbreak coincided with the Lunar New Year holiday, when schools and businesses were set to close anyway.
“If only the whole world could stop moving for four weeks, the pandemic could be stopped,” he said.

The case of South Korea

As reported in NYT on 24 March:
How South Korea flattened the curve:
South Korea reported its lowest number of cases since last month on Sunday — a remarkable turnaround from the several thousand cases that exploded there in late February and early March.
Its strategy was not the full lockdown that China employed, or even the widespread restrictions that the U.S. and Europe have implemented. Instead, it focused on swift, widespread testing and contact tracing, our Interpreter columnist writes.
In the week after its first reported case, South Korea moved rapidly, eventually opening 600 testing centers and keeping health workers safe by minimizing contact. Once someone tested positive, officials meticulously traced their movements using security camera footage, credit card records, even GPS data from their cars and cellphones.
Reminder: South Korean officials caution that their successes are tentative. A risk of resurgence remains, particularly as epidemics continue raging beyond the country’s borders.

Other good examples (source: AXIOS)

But while small towns can spark big outbreaks, they can also provide clues for how to fight them.
The town of Vò, home to Italy’s first death from COVID-19, tested all 3,000 of its inhabitants, quarantining those infected even before they showed symptoms. 89 tested positive, and the disease was defeated there within two weeks, per the Guardian.
Wakayama, Japan, had similar success. Authorities there traced the contacts of two doctors who had the virus (470 people), tested them (10 were positive) and ended the outbreak there, per the Washington Post.

AXIOS: not encouraging news

Yes of course many will dismiss it all but people need to wake up to reality. Good luck to those who ignore the pandemic. And continue not wearing masks when you need. Oh yes because the governments were totally clueless and did not react in time to the shortage (except increasing more red tape). See here part of their newsletter (edited).

Tens of thousands of Americans die, we have double-digit unemployment for months, countless businesses die, retirements are wiped out, and the nation is saddled with once unimaginable debt.
That, folks, is the best case scenario we’re facing.
That’s if we’re lucky — and doesn’t even mention the lost graduations, honeymoons, weddings, and other important missed milestones.

A survey of epidemiology experts, posted by a scholar at UMass Amherst and reported by FiveThirtyEight, predicted that the number of cases reported by the end of this month would most likely fall somewhere between 10,500 and 81,500.
We’re already right around 20,000 cases, so the lower end of those estimates is out the window.
The same survey anticipates about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. this year, but experts have established a range that stretches from as few as 19,000 deaths to as many as 1.2 million.

A true best-case scenario would look a lot like the response in places like Singapore and South Korea, which were able to quickly “flatten the curve” and bring the number of new cases under control.
But the U.S. simply has not been doing the things that worked in those countries, so whatever our best-case scenario may be, it’s not that good.

Containing the virus requires us to know where and how bad outbreaks are. The only way to get that information is through widespread testing, which the U.S. can’t do right now. The U.S. has been playing catch-up on testing this whole time, largely because of early decisions from the Trump administration that severely limited the number of available tests.

The coronavirus seems increasingly likely to plunge the world into economic times worse than anything we’ve seen in decades. In the U.S., layoffs have already started. As many as 2 million people could file for unemployment aid next week— and we’re barely two weeks into a widespread societal shutdown that could stretch on for weeks or months.

Meanwhile…

China 10 days for (big) hospital. France 5 days for a tent.

Humor, maybe, heavy dose of sarcasm, sure

Taking it easy.
A voice told me Horus and Thoth are admonishing to repent as they have unleashed the virus and locust plagues.

Oh yes, churches. mosques and all are closed. As all non-essential services are banned.

Meanwhile spring has arrived on my Beijing balcony. Have a nice Sunday. I might have a steak tartare this evening in my favorite restaurant. I’ll ask Horus first.