nk15

Good points. I am curious what are the ID containment/slow down/ disease management models and theories (goals and methods) in the field, how nuanced they are, and how they are actually implemented across countries and cultures, especially with what seems to be limited international coordination.

The US news report that two US cities are now fighting plans to quarantine US citizens next to them. This and the population reactions in Italy and Ukraine show how unprepared we are to deal with this.

adrianlondon

Only for a few hours.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...utbreak-spread

anacapamalibu

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notquiteaff

They apparently didn’t send the samples to the CDC, otherwise the train would have been stuck for days. :/

Seriously, did they run an actual Covid-19 test or did a physician clear them based on other factors?

helvetic

https://nypost.com/2020/02/22/dont-b...ed-from-a-lab/

More conspiracy theory. This one seems somewhat plausible
@trueblu and other experts thoughts? Doesn't seem entirely inconceivable.

notquiteaff

I heard the Russians planted it, to cause turmoil in China, and that they have the vaccine ready.

Seriously, I heard that today at a party.

Always consider the source of the “information”.

doctoravios

I'm not best placed to answer as I'm not a specialist in public health/infectious disease but the techniques would vary depending on the cause. For a pathogen where transmission only occurs following onset of symptoms, contact tracing and quarantine are very effective. Where a vaccine is available then ring vaccination could also be used (i.e. vaccinate close contacts). If the pathogen is zoonotic (i.e. transmits only from animals to humans and not from human to human) or if it resides in an intermediate host then removing this reservoir can be helpful but then again it is not clear cut (e.g. the culling of badgers to reduce the spread of bovine TB). There are also specific protocols for dealing with infected human matter/bodies depending on the disease (e.g. in the case of ebola, the infected deceased pose a significant threat and there are specific protocols for burials).

The biggest obstacle with COVID-19 is the fact that transmission occurs during the incubation period and when people remain asymptomatic during infection. This makes contact tracing difficult because it's hard to track who is infected in the first place and we don't know who to quarantine or for how long. The thermometer scans being conducted around the world are therefore almost completely futile (I say almost because there is still a possibility you can pick up true positives with this method but with such a high false negative rate, it is probably not worth wasting resources on this). In some ways the process of responding to Ebola was clearer to implement because people are not infectious until they are symptomatic.

Given that they managed to "test negative" within the space of four hours I do wonder what they mean by this. Was it just a temperature reading? I can't believe it would have been possible to do a laboratory test within this timescale. In which case it was completely pointless stopping the train in the first place! This is the kind of bureaucratic, uninformed chaos we have to look forward to in mainland Europe over the coming year.

Smiley90

that "author" has... a ton of very questionable articles, just look at what else he's published. Pure trash/sensationalism/conspiracy disguised as journalism with no sourcing.

nk15

Excerpts from the worldometer below:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

- "Serious mistake was made not to quarantine people who arrived in Italy from China" said Walter Ricciardi of the WHO, adding that "within two weeks we will know if we are facing an epidemic" and advising that, for the next two weeks, people "should avoid crowded places: metro, buses, trains, schools, discos, and gyms."

"Armed forces and police forces have been mobilized to form an insurmountable "health belt" around contagion areas. Roadblock violators risk up to a 3 months prison sentence."

iahphx

Living in Wuhan the past month would be very scary, but you would figure you had a decent shot avoiding the virus. The problem would be getting medical care if you got infected, On the DP, basically a virus petri dish, you'd almost certainly get the virus and then hopefully get treatment. I would prefer to be in Wuhan, I suppose.

If things got bad in the US (which I do not expect), we'd need the CDC to essentially stop paying attention to nonsense lawsuits. Something like the equivalent of suspending habeas corpus? Not sure of the how the legality of this would go. But we could not tolerate the many people who will want "changes" in the emergency response. We'd have to trust the health authorities. Not something Americans will be happy about, but necessary. It would be like a war. There aren't on-the-spot courts in war.

notquiteaff

Also... if numbers of new infected fall tomorrow, it might be due to lack of test kits. From the same page:

"Mayor of one of the towns in lockdown says they've run out of coronavirus testing kits. [source]"

RetiredATLATC

Had the same thought and went ahead and canceled my Penang and Belgrade trips. Sad as all the long hauls out of ATL were going to be Qsuites.

Global Adventurer

Ok. Didn't see the mentioning of four hours. Thanks.

wco81

Why Belgrade?

If Europe has an outbreak, chances are US will too.

Stgermainparis

Are you guys seriously canceling trips as far out as July? No judgement, just wondering if my own thinking is off. We've got a 2-week family trip to Tokyo, Kyoto, Beijing for the first half of July, and I wasn't going to pull the plug until late May (when maybe the virus would slow down due to warmer weather). And even then, I figured we'd just cut Beijing from the itinerary. My thinking has been if things are so problematic in Japan that travel there is unwise then travel anywhere in Asia and/or Europe at this point (Italy!) or even Hawaii will likely be unwise (in which case we're all stuck home for the foreseeable future). I mean, I'll cancel the trip if I have to, but I don't want to do it prematurely. And if I do Europe or Hawaii instead, for example, that may blow up, too. And then if we hunker down at our Florida condo, we are then in a building with 100s of others, including tourists coming and going, unlike being home in our single unit house with tourists unlikely and only neighbors coming and going. Just seems like so much is so unpredictable right now.

My more immediate concern has been the family spring break in LAS in two weeks. All those buffets...egads.