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Medicine

WHO Raises Coronavirus Threat Assessment To Its Highest Level (cnbc.com) 236

World Health Organization officials said Friday they are increasing the risk assessment of the coronavirus, which has spread to at least 49 countries in a matter of weeks, to "very high" at a global level. From a report: "We are on the highest level of alert or highest level of risk assessment in terms of spread and in terms of impact," said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's health emergencies program. The group isn't trying to alarm or scare people, he said. "This is a reality check for every government on the planet: Wake up. Get ready. This virus may be on its way and you need to be ready. You have a duty to your citizens, you have a duty to the world to be ready." The world can still avoid "the worst of it," but the increased risk assessment means the WHO's "level of concern is at its highest," he said at a press conference at WHO headquarters in Geneva. World leaders still have a chance to contain the virus within their borders, Ryan said. "To wait, to be complacent to be caught unawares at this point, it's really not much of an excuse."
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WHO Raises Coronavirus Threat Assessment To Its Highest Level

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28, 2020 @04:14PM (#59779136)

    The US has the best health care system in the world, and just this week Donald Trump put the VP, Mike Pence, in charge of managing the situation. If you look at Pence's history, you'll see he has dealt with outbreaks before, even compromising his strongly held beliefs to ensure that appropriate measures were taken.

    • It's just science and stuff. You can ignore it and the world will continue to behave the way you believe it should.
      • Science makes no distinction between every living human dying, and nobody dying.

        If you want some reason for action on that, you'll have to look elsewhere.

        Or, just go with what you've already socially assimilated, theism, as you attack yourself.

        • Science makes no distinction between every living human dying, and nobody dying.

          If you want some reason for action on that, you'll have to look elsewhere.

          Or, just go with what you've already socially assimilated, theism, as you attack yourself.

          Survival is not mandatory. - Edwards Deming

        • by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Well, actually science does make a distinction, but it doesn't specify actions to be taken in response. If every human dies, then you just evolve something else. If people act wisely and survive, then you don't. It's a distinction.

    • I am waiting for Pence to suggest we kill a lamb and put some of the blood on our doors. Hey worked for Moses.
  • by rlp ( 11898 ) on Friday February 28, 2020 @04:15PM (#59779140)

    Perhaps it's time to get that airline ticket to Madagascar before they shut down everything.

    • Perhaps it's time to get that airline ticket to Madagascar before they shut down everything.

      If the great oracle, Mr. King, is accurate, we might need a little more distance than Madagascar [youtube.com].

      And Elon Musk is right, too: "[which do we want,] Lipstick or a colony on Mars?" [youtu.be]

      This virus is bad, but it's not Captain Trips. This is a wake-up call to remind us that extinction-level events remain possible and arguably become more likely as our technology reduces our individual isolation.

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Ok. But I prefer an more dispersed solution at an ultimate goal. Living on Mars might be a useful intermediate step, though.

        That said, we really need to disperse well beyond the solar system to be approximately safe (for a reasonably long time). And planets are not the right place to hold an industrial civilization. (But we probably need controlled fusion to do it properly. Fission is too hard to refuel.) I think a dispersal rate of about 0.1C, or possibly a bit slower, is optimal...which means the ha

        • Ok. But I prefer an more dispersed solution at an ultimate goal. Living on Mars might be a useful intermediate step, though.

          That said, we really need to disperse well beyond the solar system to be approximately safe (for a reasonably long time). And planets are not the right place to hold an industrial civilization. (But we probably need controlled fusion to do it properly. Fission is too hard to refuel.) I think a dispersal rate of about 0.1C, or possibly a bit slower, is optimal...which means the habitats need to be durable and maintainable, and able to survive on stuff harvested in passing. So we've a ways to go before that becomes possible. And Mars might be a good intermediate step. (OTOH, if FTL is possible, all bets are off. But I don't expect that, or we'd have believable visitors.)

          All well and good, but you have to master crawling before you can walk, and master walking before you have any chance of becoming an Olympic sprinter.

  • by Strill ( 6019874 ) on Friday February 28, 2020 @04:15PM (#59779150)

    Youtube already banned a video of a US senator explaining the current state of the coronavirus, supposedly for inciting panic. You can bet they'll ban this announcement too.

    • Naw, that senator and a certain fixed income website got banned because they didn't follow the script.

      The WHO is playing by the official playbook. Folks are already past the point of being shocked to the level that they will cause excessive social and economic disruption, so it's OK to be a bit more open now.

      Note that it is actually probably a good and necessary thing to keep the machine that is society running when this sort of black swan event hits. Folks get so shell shocked by what's happening that th

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        The thing is, it's not that severe a problem. It's less bad than traffic accidents. But it's a problem that is new and could become persistent and mutate into something worse.

        I notice that WHO still hasn't called it a pandemic. That would just mean it's all over the place, it wouldn't say anything about how serious it was. And it preferentially afflicts those whose health is already failing with the worse cases. (IIUC, it's the secondary infections that do the real damage.) This could be a full pandem

        • by Baloroth ( 2370816 ) on Saturday February 29, 2020 @12:34AM (#59780868)

          It currently has around a 2% fatality rate, which is devastatingly high if it infects a significant fraction of the population. Swine flu (aka H1N1) is estimated to have infected around a billion people (but only killed a fraction of a percent of those infected: this is about 50 times more lethal). If this takes a similar path, that means 20 million people dead (or 16 years of traffic accidents worth of deaths). And a staggering impact on the health systems of every country (no country in the world has the health care system to handle 10-20% of it's people getting sick at nearly the same time), so the mortality rate might be even higher if it spreads too fast. Panic might kill even more people. So even if the probablity that you, as an individual, will die from it is very low, it's still potentially a really, really big deal. We're probably past the point where it can be contained entirely, so that means minimizing the spread rate so it doesn't infect everyone all at once. That gives the health care systems time to deal with it, and minimizes panic (and hopefully the total infected population).

    • by iikkakeranen ( 6279982 ) on Friday February 28, 2020 @04:58PM (#59779442)

      I'm somewhat more concerned about the White House censoring the CDC than anything senators and Youtube do. The people who are actual experts on infectious disease and knowledgeable about what is going on are not allowed to inform the public. All statements go through a political process whose agenda is to make Trump look good at the expense of our safety. Just like China, only less competent.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by toed ( 131743 )

        If you take a look at the CDC's own materials, they say straight out that there's a balancing act they take on to maximize effectiveness while minimizing economic and social costs. Don't need a White House bogeyman.

        Their "Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza â" United States, 2017":
        https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volum... [cdc.gov]

        • by iikkakeranen ( 6279982 ) on Saturday February 29, 2020 @02:47AM (#59781078)

          Of course they do. They have had many years to plan for such events and come up with reasonable protocols for keeping the public informed without causing harm. The White House has nothing going for it except for Dear Leader's whims, and those whims are now in charge of communicating to the public about the pandemic. It's not a "bogeyman" when it's official policy. All the actual experts are prohibited from communicating with the media without first clearing their statements with the White House.

  • All the self appointed geniuses on slashdot keep telling me the flu is worse.

    • I have to admit I was in that camp, mostly, for a while. But I've now upgraded my worry a bit. Definitely worse than flu in terms of impact on my life even in the best case (what we see now). The likely case is considerably worse, and the very worst case (which I still think is unlikely) is pretty fucking bad.

      As of now my main expectation is economic pain.

  • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Friday February 28, 2020 @04:37PM (#59779304) Journal

    RAHH ( 5900166 ) said: "That being said, this coronavirus is being blown way out of proportion and the fickle sheep are going crazy because of media fear mongering."

    But WHO says: "We are on the highest level of alert or highest level of risk assessment in terms of spread and in terms of impact," said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's health emergencies program.

    Let me think, who's more likely to know what the fuck they're talking about- a random slashdot poster named "RAHH", or Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's health emergencies program?

    Yeah, that sure is a puzzler....

  • "It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear."
    • "It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear."

      Like he and everyone in his Administration will, just not nearly soon enough.

    • I'll put you on the survey for "opposed to a miracle", then.

  • by LatencyKills ( 1213908 ) on Friday February 28, 2020 @04:47PM (#59779364)
    I mean, sure, we're panicking along, and we've raised the threat level as high as it can go, we're maxed out all the way across the board. your media feed is at 10, your pundits are at 10, your situation room is at 10, but you want to get that one more bit of threat level out, so where can you go? Normally, nowhere, except this threat level goes to 11. Puts you right over the top.
  • by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Friday February 28, 2020 @05:04PM (#59779474)

    When:

    "The U.S. Surgeon General is the Nation’s Doctor, providing Americans with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury. The Surgeon General oversees the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps, an elite group of over 6,000 uniformed officers who are public health professionals. The USPHS mission is to protect, promote, and advance the health of our nation."
    "

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It's an election year. The responses to coronavirus from both Republicrats and Fingerlickans has been mainly concerned with political posturing ahead of the election* - any actual health concerns are far, far secondary.

      *so pretty much like it's been with every other issue.

  • Just in case you were not panicky yet, this should do it.

    So we have highest threat level. In other words, we should do... umm... well ... beats me...

  • WHO down plays travel restrictions as over bearing and counter productive isolating the affected area so discourage open communication. Heck of a rationalization when it was China on the end of travel restrictions. Now China requires quarantine of people coming from South Korea and Japan in their institutions. Planes from S. Korea apparently had passengers with Coronavirus. The irony is China censors significantly and the Wuhan local officials suppressed the medical warnings early on before anyone banned tr

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