Europe Is Now the 'Epicenter' of the Coronavirus Pandemic, WHO Says (cnbc.com) 195
Europe has become the new epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic as cases in China slow and the deadly coronavirus runs through Italy and nearby countries, World Health Organization officials said Friday. CNBC reports: "More cases are now being reported [in Europe] every day than were reported in China at the height of its epidemic," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference at the organization's Geneva headquarters. WHO officials declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on Wednesday as the virus spreads rapidly across the world from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and now parts of the United States.
"When the virus is out there, the population has no immunity and no therapy exists, then 60% to 70% of the population will be infected," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference in Berlin on Wednesday, according to Reuters. The country has a population of more than 82 million. Italy currently has the most cases outside of China with at least 15,113 infections, followed by Spain at 4,334, Germany at 3,156 and France at 2,882, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Other countries in Europe are seeing cases soar. Switzerland currently has 1,125 cases, followed by Sweden at 809, the Netherlands at 804 and Denmark at 788. The United States had at least 1,701 cases as of Friday morning, according to Hopkins.
"When the virus is out there, the population has no immunity and no therapy exists, then 60% to 70% of the population will be infected," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference in Berlin on Wednesday, according to Reuters. The country has a population of more than 82 million. Italy currently has the most cases outside of China with at least 15,113 infections, followed by Spain at 4,334, Germany at 3,156 and France at 2,882, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Other countries in Europe are seeing cases soar. Switzerland currently has 1,125 cases, followed by Sweden at 809, the Netherlands at 804 and Denmark at 788. The United States had at least 1,701 cases as of Friday morning, according to Hopkins.
Cue the people who says Europe doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, where are all the people saying Trump was stupid to block travel from Europe...
Why it's almost like he is busy talking to high level leaders across the world and various scientists, instead of you armchair assholes!
P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Insightful)
Forgot to add, the whole reason why Europe is so much worse off, most countries there did not block travel from China as early as the U.S. did. Of all actions a country could take, that was probably one of the most crucial early on (or at least that's what the official numbers to date tell us).
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Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Informative)
I work in clinical healthcare, in the Midwest, and we already have at least 20 cases that aren't being officially reported yet. There are hundreds if not thousands walking around that have no idea that they are carrying and spreading Covid-19.
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't you officially report them ?
Still, slowing the virus spread is a good idea, is it not ?
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, we need to postpone ppl from visiting retirement homes (esp. ones that have been to China or any location that is active).
Need to postpones large gatherings, such as concerts, sport events (arghhhh. I miss the avs).
Stop school temporarily. Once open, consider the idea of going virtual. etc. etc.
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:2)
blocking ppl from coming here will slow NOTHING. That is a waste of effort. Instead, we need to postpone ppl from visiting retirement homes (esp. ones that have been to China or any location that is active).
WindBourne logic.
Stopping infected people at the old folks home = good.
Stopping infected people at the border = bad.
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Why? I doubt it's a sufficient step but it certainly seems a useful one. Why are you suggesting it won't slow anything? What's the reasoning behind that?
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh, why must we always have this discussion about any kind of security. The point of any kind of security is not 100% protection, it's to slow down the attacker, perhaps until he gives up. Or, in this case, to spread out the infections over a large time window, so that people who will need a ventilator to survive will have one available.
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:3)
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Insightful)
If you work in healthcare you should know, the point is not to stop the spread, it's to limit and slow the spread. If you are going to have thousands of infections, as the Trump administration has been saying all along, it's better to spread those thousands over a longer period so your systems can deal with the issues. No country is prepared to deal with 10%+ of the population sick at once.
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Insightful)
If you work in healthcare you should know, the point is not to stop the spread, it's to limit and slow the spread.
China has stopped the spread. [wikipedia.org] South Korea has stopped the spread. [wikipedia.org] Why is the US unique in being unable to stop the spread?
In China, stopping the spread has meant a total of 80k cases (maybe 800k if there is massive underreporting), while slowing the spread would mean hundreds of millions of cases. That's not a significant difference?
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Informative)
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So it looks like the CDC is slower than a turtle in reacting to potential disease spreads.
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Give nations with no wuflu more time to get ready.
No accept random sick people in from EU nations quicker.
Travel restrictions worked well in parts of Asia vs failed EU nations like Italy that stayed open to the world.
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:4, Informative)
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Informative)
Covid-19 is not the flu and it's not related to the flu. Stop calling it flu or however you want spell it. They are unrelated pathogens.
But "wuflu" works so well with the "foreign virus" meme... it's those yellow people's fault.
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Italy is the only EU nation that blocked traffic from China early on.
Didn't work, infection spread to Italy probably via a German manager who was asymptomatic.
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:4, Insightful)
It only takes one single person to infect an entire country. No amount of travel restrictions will stop the spread in the US.
I work in clinical healthcare
Well, you shouldn't.
If you don't understand that the fundamental issue here is about SLOWING the spread so we can respond to it, then you're unfit for whatever job you have "in clinical healthcare".
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:4)
you're unfit
Unless we restricted travel at the beginning of February, it was already too late.
Luxkily for me and the patients I work with, I am fit. I don't need Slashdot armchair medical personal telling me otherwise.
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The idea has never bee to completely isolste from the spread. That would be impossible. The selective ignorance of people is a little shocking.
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Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:2)
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Insightful)
All the countries that have managed to hold the coronavirus back so far - places like Taiwan and Singapore - have relied on both travel restrictions and aggressive contact tracing, testing, and quarantining of foreigners with potential symptoms and their direct contacts. Just one of those approaches alone isn't enough. Unfortunately China and the WHO persuaded Europe to not restrict travel when it mattered, whilst the US screwed up their testing program and took too long to fix it.
Heads need to roll (Score:3)
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It was unprofitable to hand them out for free? Duh?
Not to mention, if you don't test, you can always say that you have no known cases. Plausible deniability goes a long way.
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Unfortunately China and the WHO persuaded Europe to not restrict travel when it mattered
That's not the cause of the major spread in Europe. Europe has seen such a skyrocketting spread because it hit in the middle of carnival combined with the middle of school holidays. Pretty much every city in Europe hosted a big germ fest. A single case breaking quarantine (which would have happened even with the travel ban as shown by the USA which jumped on the opportunity to ban travel to China) is more than enough if your entire continent is in the street holding hands and kissing each other while dresse
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Pretty much this. If this had happened during Thanksgiving and Black Friday, it would very likely look the other way around.
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:4, Interesting)
I see that the difference in number of reported cases in the US compared to Europe is the health care system. The tip of the iceberg is smaller but the part we don't see is larger in the US.
Re:P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Insightful)
Forgot to add, the whole reason why Europe is so much worse off, most countries there did not block travel from China as early as the U.S. did. Of all actions a country could take, that was probably one of the most crucial early on (or at least that's what the official numbers to date tell us).
Italy enacted a ban on travel from China 4 days before the US did and it was more comprehensive than Trump's ban. They still got hit hard. On that topic, I'm very worried that the main difference between the US and Europe is that the Europeans have more comprehensive testing in place and so have a much better idea of their numbers.
Re:P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Insightful)
Italy enacted a ban on travel from China 4 days before the US did and it was more comprehensive than Trump's ban. They still got hit hard. On that topic, I'm very worried that the main difference between the US and Europe is that the Europeans have more comprehensive testing in place and so have a much better idea of their numbers.
I don't think we've nearly understood the scope yet. Here in Norway they're currently counting 995 cases, of which 377 are traced to Austria. But Austria has only reported 302 cases, which doesn't make any sense. If we got hundreds from them, there must be many thousands down there. So far we've tried to test and contain the spread, now they've given up that and called for home quarantine where only those who develop serious symptoms or work in healthcare get tested - it's no longer feasible to test every known contact. What it means is we had fairly clean data in the beginning on the lightly infected, and there's a lot of them. People who weren't really feeling sick, they just found the virus because they were tested as a contact. Which means it's going to be hard to put a cap on this just through medical treatment, we'll have to reduce contact enough that it fizzles. But for something this infectious, that's going to be tough.
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You need only one person to come back from Austria while infected to infect many others once home.
Re:P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:4)
Apparently you have no clue about how a virus spreads. You need only one person to come back from Austria while infected to infect many others once home.
No, I'm talking about lots of ski tourists returning from Austria (going to the Alps for skiing during Winter holidays is a pretty big thing, very bad timing for us) each with their own infections dotting the map. We also have 127 infected from Italy. So far we've tracked "only" 151 domestic infections and 182 of unknown origin, but we know it's spreading in the population right now so that number will go up.
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I don't think we've nearly understood the scope yet.
We can't understand the scope. Testing in most countries is poor by policy. I've been sick since Las Falas fireworks with the correct symptoms for COVID-19, my government's response? "We only test if you've been to Italy, S.Korea, China, Iran, or if you end up with pneumonia in hospital. Go home get some bed rest." Do I have COVID-19 or the common cold? I won't know as I clearly am not in the only 20% of people who actually end up with severe response to the virus.
Re: P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:2)
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Plus, if you don't get tested, the statistics look so much nicer than what they could if you tested positive.
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Italy only banned direct flights from China, which meant that everyone could just fly in via other cities in Europe and Italy no longer had a record of where they'd came from. It was a really terrible idea. Trump's ban and the ones that've worked elsewhere covered everyone who'd been in China in the past 14 days. Also, since there's no real border control between Schengen countries, it's about the equivalent of say Texas banning travel from China - the virus will just hit the next state over and spread acro
Re:P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Insightful)
the Europeans have more comprehensive testing in place
"Europe" is a very diverse place. Different countries have different rules and approaches. Many countries at this time test only cases already suspected of having been infected. That means a lot of cases with no or mild symptoms are still undetected.
There are also a number of anomalies. The death count in Germany is one order of magnitude lower than anywhere else in the world, including nearby countries with very similar standards of technology and healthcare. That's certainly a statistical anomaly and not a real difference.
We're still in the middle of it all. The hockeystick is pointing upwards, the important question is at which point the exponential growth stops and things start levelling out. China reached that point with measures that are impossible in Europe, both by law and by culture they are impossible to enforce so strictly.
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We're still in the middle of it all. The hockeystick is pointing upwards, the important question is at which point the exponential growth stops and things start levelling out. China reached that point with measures that are impossible in Europe, both by law and by culture they are impossible to enforce so strictly.
Impossible untll such time it's not-- that's quite a modifier, impossible. China's measures are not monolithic, but rank enterprise and activity by risk. Their implementation is comprehensive and measured (given degree).
Contagion is a word used to give emphasis to both the pathogen's characteristics and as equally to the conditions and circumstances of the hosts' behaviors to aid or diminish a pathogen's advance. I am too often reading opinion skewed toward a misgiving that the conditions and circumstances
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Impossible untll such time it's not-- that's quite a modifier, impossible.
You will not be able to forcefully confine people to their appartments for a month in Europe. Among other things, we simply don't have the necessary infrastructure to supply everyone with daily necessities. China managed to do exactly that. The European solution is to tell people to stay home and close all shops, but keep supermarkets open so people can supply themselves.
These measures certainly will be effective - but less so than complete isolation.
Re:P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Interesting)
You will not be able to forcefully confine people to their appartments for a month in Europe. Among other things, we simply don't have the necessary infrastructure to supply everyone with daily necessities. China managed to do exactly that.
STOP conflating enforced quarantine with advisory quarantine. The former was applied in Wuhan and two of its closest cities, the latter to the remainder of the country. China's quarantines are not monolithic, but rank enterprise and activity by risk. Their implementation is comprehensive and measured (given degree) over time. For example, the initial work stoppage excepted all enterprise dealing with food no matter the size-- small business owners or corporate-- to prevent panic hoarding. Two weeks later, the first exception I saw unrelated to food were hair salons. Next were hardware stores...on and on...until a franchise shopping mall that emphasizes fashion is open-- with reduced evening hours of operation.
Quarantines were, nor are still, a binary-all-clear implementation of social distancing. There are no bars or restaurants (take-out only) open throughout the country because it is unnecessary congregation.
China demonstrated an enforced quarantine of its "hot region", Hubei province, and advisory quarantine for the whole nation contained, for now, this pathogen.
Variables of latency, persistence, and transmissibility (suspension in air, fomites), and, gratefully, no known mutations to have made children as vulnerable, are all factors for which China's quarantines (still in effect) apply graded, incremental measures that avoided panic and hoarding.
READ AGAIN: Contagion is a word used to give emphasis to both the pathogen's characteristics and as equally to the conditions and circumstances of its hosts' behaviors to aid or diminish a pathogen's advance.
Re:P.S. Why Europe is epicenter (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow ignorant much? The reason Europe is worse off is because a virus spread in the middle of festival season / winter season. Half the continent went out, got smashed, and boinked strangers while wearing fancy dress during Carnival. The other half all flocked to the Italian alps for some fresh powder. The virus hit Europe literally just as school holidays started causing even more public congregations. And those people not wearing fancy dress or carving up the snow were most likely setting a city on fire for one of the many lit festivals further south like Las Fallas.
The USA proved quite well that blocking travel did fuck all. It only takes one case to break quarantine.
While we're addressing your ignorance, come back when you:
a) have tested even a small fraction of the people Europe has, and
b) when Trump actually bans travel from Europe, because presently he has only banned Europeans, and viruses don't give a fuck if you're a European or a US citizen (who are free to travel from Europe to the USA if they wish) when it comes to crossing borders. Trump's not stupid to block travel from Europe, he's just stupid period.
Inconvenient Facts (Score:2)
Forgot to add, the whole reason why Europe is so much worse off, most countries there did not block travel from China as early as the U.S. did.
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Prime Ministers wife caught it in London, UK.
Would that be the first one, the last one, or the next one? Please be specific. Or are you just making it up, because I checked all 3 in the news and nothing turned up.
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Sorry, also sorry for not noticing you replied twice.
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It was all over the news here, search for Sophie Grégoire Trudeau or for example, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politi... [www.cbc.ca]
Re:Cue the people who says Europe doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, where are all the people saying Trump was stupid to block travel from Europe...
Right here. Trump was stupid to block travel from Europe.
Let's do some math: There are about 30,000 known cases in Europe, The EU has a population of over 500 million. So that is one out of every 15,000 people. So if 100,000 people per day arrive on flights, then that is about 7 cases per day.
Since the US already has thousands of cases, and likely thousands more undiagnosed (since America is doing such a pathetic job of testing), that is negligible.
Also, flights go both ways, so we may be sending as many to Europe as we receive, making the ban a wash.
The ban is a stupid political stunt to make the public think Trump is "doing something" about the problem.
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The WHO says Europe is now the epicenter https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/1... [cnbc.com]
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Typhoid Kendall (Score:2, Informative)
Why would we want to test sick people when we can just block the few people still travelling by plane from coming.
And of course nobody is testing new arrivals. Hell, Trump is such an incompetent clown that we aren't even testing sick Americans.
But that's what you get when you vote for KING RETARD.
How many lies per post will you average today?
Looks like you are going for a Trumpian 6 lies per comment. So far you are off to a monumentally retarded start.
Re:Typhoid Kendall (Score:4, Insightful)
Americans have an un-rationed healthcare system.
And because you got an un-rationed healthcare system, no-one wants to pony up the dough to do those tests, which means no-one gets tested unless it's purely in their self interest to do so (for example if they would lose their job if they can't show their employer they're virus free).
Let me tell you something new. Some things need to be done despite having a free market because free markets will fuck them up and make slaves of people instead of empowering them by spending the money where the good things are. Things that human lives absolutely depend about are such things because ultimately you will spend every last cent you'll have and then sell yourself into slavery to not have to forego those. Like military to prevent foreign invasion, minimum standards in food and housing and.. healthcare. The power over life and death trumps the power of money (no pun intended).
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Only some sick Americans. The testing rate in the U.S. is far less than in many other countries, indeed a shameful embarrassment for a country supposed to be a leader in biotech. See https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2020-03/corona-virus-tests-8-countries.jpg [sciencealert.com].
Re:Typhoid Kendall (Score:4, Informative)
It's still rationed as you don't have unlimited healthcare, the difference is other countries go by need whereas in America, it is likely to be auctioned to the highest bidder or at least the prices will be high enough to ration the limited healthcare to those who can pay.
Re:Cue the people who says Europe doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, where are all the people saying Trump was stupid to block travel from Europe...
Why it's almost like he is busy talking to high level leaders across the world and various scientists, instead of you armchair assholes!
The US is a couple of weeks or so behind the Europeans in the spread of this epidemic just like the Europeans were a few weeks behind China. China is now getting some kind of handle on the pandemic and so will Europe. When that happens the epicentre will shift to the US. Trump has been ignoring the Covid-19 problem (he's good at that), he has defunded the CDC to pay for his tax cuts, he has neglected to adopt anything even close to the measures they have employed in the EU or Asia. Americans have about two or three weeks before the epicentre boot is on their foot.
P.S. If armchairs in America have assholes, do you connect them directly to the sewage system or do you guys still use those old fashioned chamber pots to deal with the mess they make?
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I don't think Europe (let alone the US) has the political will and capital to impose the kind of quarantine measures it took for China to get a grip on their outbreaks.
Downside is, the Chinese are still in the phase of the little dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. As soon as they relax those restrictions, it'll explode all over again.
Chinese and European cities are (by and large) much more compact and densely populated than those in the US, I'd imagine it easier to spread in those circumstances.
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No. Why?
Lookit, there's people in the US who think FEMA is a new world order front designed to subvert american democracy and institute a one world government.
How do you think they'd react to men in bunny suits coming to take them off to mandatory quarantine? How about bolting the doors shut to entire apartment complexes?
Re:Cue the people who says Europe doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
How naive do you have to be to believe that, when the source is the Chinese government? FFS!
I have lived and worked in China since 2014. My posts are anchored in a lived experience. Yours are predicated on political philosophy. Western media has poorly described the nuances of Chinese policies that balance risk and have achieved success. Howls, such as yours, are dismaying to read because I know they're convincing and dangerous to any who read them.
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I have lived and worked in China since 2014.
I'm sure your posts will continue to please the ever-watching Chinese government.
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I have lived and worked in China since 2014.
I'm sure your posts will continue to please the ever-watching Chinese government.
Omniscience noted.
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Yeah, Trump is a genius. (cough) (no, it's not COVID-19)
Now if only he can keep Americans from spreading the virus to other countries we will give him due credit.
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1) the bug is already here and spreading fast. As such, blocking travel from europe will not help much.
2) why did he not block UK? Oh yeah. He has a golf course there.
He was smart to stop the travel last month from China, Iran, and Italy, BUT, at this point, it no longer matters. We need to focus on simply slowing things down here. Blocking others from coming here will do NOTHING.
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The simple fact is, that blocking Europe accomplishes NOTHING (note that nobody who looks sick is allowed to travel). Had Trump done it early on, it would make a difference. At this time, this was as worthless and false as your post.
Re: Cue the people who says Europe doesn't matter (Score:2)
Re: Cue the people who says Europe doesn't matter (Score:2)
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There is a real crisis and people like you do politics. Despicable.
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You see a crisis, he sees an opportunity.
It's a crappatunity.
HE. EXCLUDED. THE UK! (Score:2)
Making the damn ban pointless!.
Yeah, your "Europe not important" strawman (which nobody ever said) is pathetic, and you're an overconfident moron of 0.67 Trumps (the new unit of overvonfident moronity).
Hell, you can't even fucking tell the EU amd Europe apart!
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Does anyone actually believe the US numbers?? Switzerland is a country of 8M people and does 2000 tests a day. The CDC did 77 tests all of last week.
Germany has the lowest Coronavirus death rate of any country in the world, in part due to aggressive testing rather than outright early travel bans. They also prioritize elderly care, which is part of the reason they were so slow to close schools-- many schoolchildren get taken care of by grandparents when there is no school while the parents have to work.
In It
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Unless they already are and just have artificially low numbers due to a staggering number of unreported cases.
We'll know in a few weeks. If Americans drop dead like flies, they learened from the Soviets: Try to keep the lid on it 'til it blows off.
False statements should not be moderated up (Score:2)
That comment is a lie. Why is it moderated "insightful"? A number of European leaders have already stated that there was no discussion or warning before Trump's new policy was announced.
The key phrase here is (Score:5, Insightful)
(emphasis mine)
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Chinese culture accelerated the propagation of the coronavirus from China to the rest of the world. An analysis [nytimes.com] published by the New York Times explains how the Chinese tendency to hide the truth allowed the coronavirus to spread quickly.
Get more info [blogspot.com] about Chinese culture.
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I can't help but think that we might have the same kind of culture on our hands in the US. Well, time will tell. Literally so, because death statistics ARE public, no matter what you try. You can't hide it when people are dying in countries like the US...
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Even death per capita will not give you the whole picture, because DPC will look very favorable for China, with a huge population and most of them unable to travel a lot. Sure, Wuhan and other infection centers will have a staggering body count, but remote areas that still account for a few 100 millions will have few, if any, cases. Compare that to smaller countries where the population is mostly concentrated in a few cities or countries that effectively ARE a city and you'll have an infection count that bo
Tedros? (Score:2)
He probably got instructions from Winnie the Pooh to say this.
http://et.china-embassy.org/en... [china-embassy.org]
True US totals unknown (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
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Given the US serious shortfall in testing
We talk about the US but really you should look at countries which are testing right and then you can see they can be counted on one finger. The USA has a testing shortfall due to lack of kits. China has a testing shortfall due to ... well they are China, maybe they are testing more than they are reporting, but I'm guessing they aren't testing much. Most of Europe doesn't test much by policy. I'm home sick right now, my own government's advice is they won't test you for the virus unless you've been to Italy
I expect people to avoid testing (Score:4, Insightful)
Point being, expect people to actively avoid being tested, and to spread the virus far and wide at work.
Re:Yes in fact there is a way - math (Score:4, Interesting)
This would work if people who die from the disease in the US were tested for it and counted. They are not. If you die from COVID-19 today in the US, the chances of it being attributed to the virus are almost zero unless you have a history of traveling to Wuhan or contact with a known case.
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Sweden has stopped testing for the virus (Score:5, Informative)
I would take our Swedish numbers with a grain of salt.
We've stopped testing people for the virus since 2-3 days back. We have not enough test kits.
Only old people and people working with healthcare gets tested. The rest of the people showing symptoms just gets sent home with general flu recommendations.
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I work in the Australian healthcare sector. We have 14 000 staff, and provide healthcare (primary, secondary and tertiary levels) to over a million people, a quarter of the state. New rules for testing for everyone came out today:
Iran ? (Score:4)
Other reports indicate that the actual hotbed may be Iran - the regime just doesn't report the vast majority of cases.
There's a bunch of evidence that their official number of 6-7 k is utter bullshit. Extrapolating from the known cases among public figures and probabilities leads to 100k infected as the low end of a range of possibilities, with the upper extreme guesses in the millions.
This might turn out to be a huge problem. The country has been under sanctions for years and its healthcare system is certainly not comparable to Europe. The thing it has going for it is that the population is much younger.
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Extrapolating from the known cases among public figures and probabilities leads to 100k infected as the low end of a range of possibilities, with the upper extreme guesses in the millions.
Now just imagine if it were a country with 1.38 billion people, a country who dragged it's feet and tried to cover up the response, a country which reported no new infections in most of its provinces a cool week before they even considered quarantines.
Make no mistake, China is still the epicenter of the virus. Europe is just reporting higher numbers. I don't doubt the numbers are really high in Iran too.
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nonsense, China is taking draconian measures, not even allowing people to leave housing compounds.
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Except that China has nothing to win and no way to actually cover things up. The standstill of its production lines are immediately obvious to the rest of the world.
Iran is a closed country. If it went on full stop, nobody would notice - not even the oil price as that had been dropping from overproduction and Iran is just #18 in the list of oil exporting countries.
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Confirmed by the satellite images of the mass graves in the city of Qom.
WTF is "epicenter"? (Score:2, Insightful)
The prefix epi means "above" — "epicenter" thus means "above center". This makes sense, when describing an earthquake — its actual center is deep underground, so whatever town gets destroyed is at the epicenter [princeton.edu].
Laymen — layjournalists among them — use the term to mean "the centerest", but Slashdot editors should know better. Should they not?
nice collection of charts about the virus (Score:3)
Nice collection of charts about the virus:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo... [medium.com]
Brace yourself, the US are where Europe was a few (Score:2)
All the discussions and the behavior I see in US is exactly where Europe was a few weeks ago, like itâ(TM)s something happening over there in the East. Truth is, US got the virus in the country already, in about 2-3 weeks latest you will also have lockdowns and cancellations, every country went through the same phases so far and it always ended in lockdowns to slow it down because nothing else helped. So I hope you are not living paycheck to paycheck and I hope your healthcare system will be somehow af
Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now (Score:3)
Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now [medium.com]
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It's like you don't even understand that this is a simile, not a metaphor.
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It's like you don't even understand that this is a simile, not a metaphor.
Maybe he needs to go to Simile School [youtube.com].
In Europe... (Score:2)
No, only in the UK and Ireland (Score:2)
The only anglophone countries on th So good thing you said Europe instead of EU.
P.S.: Touch screen "keyboards": (Score:2)
Seriously, whoever came up with them, needs to die a slow and horrible death!
Also: Panels that slide in and out and content that moves up and down under your fucking fingers while you are trying to do shit!
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How? Does it spread via Twitter?