Tag: Wuhan Coronavirus

Wuhan Coronavirus/2019-nCoV Update: January 30th, 2020 (Including Some Tips on How to Spot Fake News Reports)

UPDATE Jan. 31st, 2020: You can view my latest daily update here.

At this moment, the World Health Organization’s emergency committee has reconvened to discuss the current situation and to decide whether or not to officially declare the Wuhan coronavirus/2019-nCoV a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Overnight, there’s been another sizable jump in new infections and new deaths in mainland China, with new cases popping up in places like the United Arab Emirates, India, the Philippines, and Finland.

UPDATE 2:14 p.m.: The WHO has indeed declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), citing, among other reasons, a concern that those countries with weaker healthcare systems could be severely impacted by the 2019-nCoV virus (please see the Forbes infographic I shared with you in yesterday’s blogpost).

The World Health Organization (WHO) has posted a couple of videos which you might find useful. First is a quick question-and-answer session about the Wuhan coronavirus with Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove:

Second, did you know that the most effective way to stay healthy and avoid getting the virus is to wash your hands, properly and often? Proper hand hygiene, either with soap and water or with an alcohol-based sanitizer, is one of the best ways to avoid getting sick and spreading infections to others.

This one-minute video from the WHO demonstrates how to wash your hands in the most effective way to ensure that they are virus-free:

Beware of Fake News About 2019-nCoV

Unfortunately, social media has become a breeding ground for gossip, rumours, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation about the Wuhan coronavirus. Read the following articles to better understand the different kinds of “fake news” that are currently being disseminated via social media.

Politifact (U.S.): Fact-checking hoaxes and conspiracies about the coronavirus

Global News (Canada): Fact check: A look at common coronavirus misconceptions

The Independent (U.K.): Coronavirus: The truth about the conspiracy theories and fake news on China’s outbreak

BuzzFeed News: Here’s A Running List Of Disinformation Spreading About The Coronavirus (this article is updated as new ones come out)

Bloomberg: Coronavirus Misinformation Is Spreading All Over Social Media

UPDATE Jan. 31st: The Guardian: Bat soup, dodgy cures and ‘diseasology’: the spread of coronavirus misinformation

Remember to be a discriminating information consumer, and double check and verify any news you hear via social media channels before you accept it as fact, or pass it on to others. (The next section will give you some tips on how to do that.)

Some Tips on How to Spot Fake News

Media Smarts, an education and public awareness program launched by Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy, has a website, BreaktheFake.ca, with an excellent set of one-minute videos which provide some helpful consumer tips which you can use to quickly determine whether the information you are reading online is true or not:

Tip 1: Use Fact-Checking Tools

Tip 2: Find the Source

Tip 3: Verify the Source

Tip 4: Check Other Sources

Another useful resource with some tips, written specifically for the current situation, is:

Huffington Post: Coronavirus Hoaxes: How To Separate Fact From Fiction

Good Sources of Information on 2019-nCoV

Here is my updated list of good, authoritative resources to learn more about the Wuhan coronoavirus (more formally known as 2019-nCoV):

If you want a quick, up-to-date overview of the current situation, here are two good places to check:

Sources of Fast-Breaking News on 2019-nCoV (WARNING: News You Read Here May Not Be 100% Credible!)

PLEASE READ: In addition to the sources listed in the previous section, there are other places you can check, which might have reports (including translated links to local social media in China) that have not yet made the mainstream news media. Please keep in mind that the situation in China is chaotic, and that some of the information you find in the sources I list below might be gossip, rumours, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, misinformation, or disinformation! Please review the information and videos I posted in the How to Spot Fake News section above, before you dive in here.

Stay healthy!

Wuhan Coronavirus/2019-nCoV Update: January 29th, 2020

UPDATE Jan. 30th, 2020: You can view my latest daily update here.

(Source: BBC)

The World Health Organization (WHO) held a press conference on the growing crisis today.

(Source: The Globe and Mail)

The Globe and Mail reports:

“The whole world needs to be on alert now,” Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said during a news conference in Geneva. “The whole world needs to take action.”

Dr. Ryan and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, spoke publicly for the first time after returning from Beijing earlier this week, where they were meeting with Chinese health officials about the situation in China.

And the World Health Organization’s emergency committee is meeting again on Thursday, January 30th, where infectious disease experts from around the world will determine whether to officially declare the Wuhan coronavirus situation a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC for short). The Evening Standard reports:

Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director at the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, said the decision to reconvene was due to the increasing number of cases and evidence of person-to-person transmission of the virus.

…

Dr. Ryan said multiple countries implementing measures at different times based on their individual risk assessments was a “potential recipe for disaster, at least politically, economically and socially”.

The WHO said person-to-person transmission had been confirmed in three countries outside China – Japan, Vietnam and Germany.

The official WHO declaration of a PHEIC will help manage global, coordinated efforts between countries to stem the spread of 2019-nCoV.

Forbes published an infographic on January 27th that answers the question: which countries are best and worst prepared to deal with an epidemic? The article explains:

Last October, the Global Health Security Index was released, exploring that very issue. It was the first comprehensive assessment of global health security capabilities in 195 countries. The index analyzed preparation levels by focusing on whether countries have the proper tools in place to deal with large scale outbreaks of disease, with scores measured on a scale of 0 to 100 where 100 is the highest level of preparedness.

As you can see, most of Africa is ill-prepared to deal with a potential pandemic. If cases of 2019-nCoV begin to pop up here, it will be very difficult to contain human-to-human transmission in these countries.

What Happens Next?

All travel, including tourism, will be severely impacted. Many airlines around the world announced today that they were suspending flights into and out of mainland China, and we can expect that trend to continue as other outbreaks of 2019-nCoV occur. Many countries have now advised their citizens to avoid all travel to China. Expect global travel tourism to go into a free fall; nobody wants to be trapped away from home during a global health crisis. This is going to be a very difficult time for the travel industry as a whole.

The growing health emergency will trigger a global recession. The current situation in China will have a direct impact on the production of goods in that country, including the manufacture of ingredients used in many medicines, as STAT News reports. Many corporations have announced that they are shutting down their Chinese locations and asking their employees to curtail travel to/from and within China, and work from their homes. You can expect to see growing disruptions in product deliveries to stores, and potential shortages of products that come from Chinese factories: everything from clothing to electronics.

Anxiety, fear and panic will begin to take hold. People can react irrationally during times of stress. Unfortunately, social media has already become a breeding ground for wildly unfounded conspiracy theories. We have already seen incidents of anti-Chinese racism occur in Canada. Again, the best response is to remain calm, cultivate resilience, and be a discriminating information consumer. Double check and verify any news you hear via social media channels before you accept it as fact. Don’t panic, but prepare.

What is the Best Way to Prepare?

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. And the worst thing that could happen is that you will be asked to stay in your homes for a period of several weeks, limiting your outside contact with other people, as a wave of illness caused by the Wuhan coronavirus sweeps through your community, forcing schools and workplaces to close.

That means that you need to prepare by stocking up on food and other supplies to last you at least two or three weeks. The time to go shopping is NOW. Start by reviewing the Personal Health Preparedness lists provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention here.

Second, inform yourself. Learn as much as you can about the virus and the illness it causes. Dr. Roger Seheult is posting short videos to his YouTube channel, explaining the medical concepts behind the Wuhan coronavirus in an easy-to-understand way. Here is a sample from today:

Good Sources of Information on 2019-nCoV

Here is my updated list of good, authoritative resources to learn more about the Wuhan coronoavirus (more formally known as 2019-nCoV):

Sources of Fast-Breaking News on 2019-nCoV (WARNING: News You Read Here May Not Be 100% Credible!)

PLEASE READ: In addition to the sources listed in the previous section, there are other places you can check, which might have reports (including translated links to local social media in China) that have not yet made the mainstream news media. Please keep in mind that the situation in China is chaotic, and that some of the information you find in the sources I list below might be gossip, rumours, hoaxes, misinformation, or disinformation! If you are already feeling anxious, I would recommend you avoid these sources, but if, like me, you want to get a fuller picture of what’s going on, then I provide the links below.

Stay healthy!

Wuhan Coronavirus/2019-nCoV Update: January 28th, 2020

UPDATE Jan. 29th, 2020: You can view my latest daily update here.

Current extent of the 2019-nCoV outbreak in China (source: BBC)

I am growing increasingly worried as I continue to monitor news reports coming out of China.

Overnight, there was another huge jump in cases reported by China, as indicated by the graph on this up-to-date statistics panel created by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University, drawing from credible, official case reports from health agencies worldwide:

To me, the graph of the number of cases within mainland China is starting to look like an exponential growth curve. It is the first indication that we are facing a situation where each new case of the 2019-nCoV virus is infecting two, three, or more people in turn. It means that the Wuhan coronavirus could well spread worldwide, despite our best global efforts to stop it through travel restrictions and quarantines.

TIME magazine reports that researchers in Hong Kong are warning that the number of people infected with the coronavirus in Wuhan could already be more than 30 times higher the the official tally of cases released by the government, in this new, two-minute YouTube video:

Helen Branswell, a reporter for STAT News (a new U.S. website focusing on health, medicine and life sciences from Boston Globe Media Partners), and formerly a 15-year medical reporter for The Canada Press who very capably covered previous health crises such as SARS and Ebola, wrote yesterday in an article for Scientific American magazine:

Some infectious disease experts are warning that it may no longer be feasible to contain the new coronavirus circulating in China. Failure to stop it there could see the virus spread in a sustained way around the world and even perhaps join the ranks of respiratory viruses that regularly infect people.

“The more we learn about it, the greater the possibility is that transmission will not be able to be controlled with public health measures,” said Dr. Allison McGeer, a Toronto-based infectious disease specialist who contracted SARS in 2003 and who helped Saudi Arabia control several hospital-based outbreaks of MERS.

If that’s the case, she said, “we’re living with a new human virus, and we’re going to find out if it will spread around the globe.” McGeer cautioned that because the true severity of the outbreak isn’t yet known, it’s impossible to predict what the impact of that spread would be, though she noted it would likely pose significant challenges to health care facilities.

The pessimistic assessment comes from both researchers studying the dynamics of the outbreak—the rate at which cases are rising in and emerging from China—and infectious diseases experts who are parsing the first published studies describing cases to see if public health tools such as isolation and quarantine could as effective in this outbreak as they were in the 2003 SARS epidemic.

Somebody asked me yesterday on the RyanSchultz.com Discord server if it wouldn’t be better if they just got infected with 2019-nCoV and be done with it, thinking that once you had it and recovered, you would be immune. I replied that, based on what I have read so far, approximately 20% of the people who catch the Wuhan coronavirus develop severe, life-threatening health problems: fever, pneumonia, liver and kidney failure, death. Would you take a one-in-five chance on that happening?

Or let’s put it another way. Let’s say you are young, perfectly healthy, and have nothing to fear from a virus. Scientists already have reported that you can transmit the virus to other people even if you do not feel sick yourself. Germany’s first case of 2019-nCoV was a man who was infected by a Chinese colleague who visited him in Bavaria, who did not begin to feel sick until her flight home.

Even if you are healthy and asymptomatic, are you willing to infect others who may develop a severe, life-threatening reaction: children, the elderly, people with underlying health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, cancer, or HIV+? It’s not just about you; it’s about everyone around you that you come into contact with over the course of your day. And who they in turn come into contact with.

A Jan. 24th report by WIRED on the mathematical modeling of the spread of the virus by researchers provides some worrying estimates:

Using case data scraped from official reports, a team led by Jonathan Read at Lancaster University plotted a temporal map of the coronavirus’s spread, starting on January 1, when local authorities closed the meat-and-animal market where the virus is believed to have crossed into humans from an unknown source. They worked under the assumption that any spread following the first of the year could only be between humans.

The models they constructed predict a dire start to February: further outbreaks in other Chinese cities, more infections exported abroad, and an explosion of cases in Wuhan. “In 14 days’ time, our model predicts the number of infected people in Wuhan to be greater than 190,000,” the authors write.

No hospital system, anywhere on earth, will be able to cope with tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people, becoming sick all at the same time, with approximately 20% of them having severe problems requiring intensive care. There simply aren’t enough beds. There have been reports that hospitals in Wuhan are already turning sick people away because they can’t admit any more patients, no matter how ill they are. It doesn’t matter how many prefabricated 1,000-bed hospitals that the Chinese Communist Party builds in Wuhan, or how fast they can build them; it will be a drop in the bucket compared to the number of cases that will arise.

I don’t know about the area where you live, but where I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, a first-world country with an excellent healthcare system, our hospitals are already being stretched to the limit, just dealing with the regular seasonal influenza cases that are coming in right now. There is zero extra capacity in our local hospitals to deal with a potential global pandemic. And I suspect that this is the case in most other cities and countries too.

Good Sources of Information on 2019-nCoV

Here is my updated list of good, authoritative resources to learn more about the Wuhan coronoavirus (more formally known as 2019-nCoV):

Sources of Fast-Breaking News on 2019-nCoV (WARNING: News You Read Here May Not Be 100% Credible!)

PLEASE READ: In addition to the sources listed in the previous section, there are other places you can check, which might have reports (including translated links to local social media in China) that have not yet made the mainstream news media. Please keep in mind that the situation in China is chaotic, and that some of the information you find in the sources I list below might be gossip, rumours, misinformation, or disinformation! If you are already feeling anxious, I would recommend you avoid these sources, but if, like me, you want to get a fuller picture of what’s going on, then I provide the links below.

Stay healthy!

Wuhan Coronavirus/2019-nCoV Update: January 27th, 2020

UPDATE Jan. 28th, 2020: You can view my latest daily update here.

I don’t have a lot of major news to report today. I’m feeling somewhat stressed out trying to keep on top of this, so I am probably going to turn off the news until later this evening, put up my feet, and try to relax.

I did watch the press conference held in Toronto, Ontario concerning the first Canadian case of 2019-nCoV, a man who flew from Wuhan to Toronto with his wife. The man’s case is now confirmed (by the Canadian national microbiology laboratory in Winnipeg), and his wife is now considered to be a second, “presumptive” case (verified by the Ontario Ministry of Health, to be verified by the Winnipeg lab before officially labeled “confirmed”). Apparently she is not as sick as her husband, and is under self-quarantine in her home.

The following infographic is courtesy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which also livestreamed the press conference earlier today:

Coronavirus Prevention Tips (source: CBC)

Please see yesterday’s update for a list of links to good, authoritative information sources about the 2019-nCoV virus, as well as a few links to places to check if you want information that has not yet reached the mainstream news media (but may be more suspect).

And speaking of suspect information, you might want to read this list of hoaxes and crackpot conspiracy theories about 2019-nCoV already making the rounds, courtesy of the Politifact website. (BuzzFeed News has a running list of coronavirus disinformation making the rounds of social media, too.) Forewarned is forearmed.

And that’s all for me at the moment! Keep your fingers crossed.