DOD travel ban.
Apple Stores outside Greater China are all closing.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/apples-covid-19-response/
I just saw that and was going to also post the details. Thanks for sharing
I am wondering what they will do regarding personnel that are currently on government travel? Hopefully mission critical personnel will still be able to get their jobs completed and get back home…
Another plug for keeping this thread going! It’s a public service during very difficult and anxious times!
Mods: please delete posts that cross the line and put posters in timeout so that this thread can continue!
Thank you in advance!
Also, @3SailAway – thanks to your husband for all he is doing right now. He’s a hero!
So there is a theory that the virus was brought into China from the United States military. I am not into conspiracy theories but I do find it odd that these small cases were found in the United States early on with no one connected to these countries.
Just wondering what people think
CNN: US summons Chinese ambassador over coronavirus conspiracy theory.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/politics/state-department-chinese-ambassador-coronavirus/index.html
And this is a major country not included in our travel ban because they are doing a great job…
I’m glad MOST countries are taking this seriously and trying to actually do something other than culling their population.
My thought is the first case in the US was a person that had recently returned from Wuhan China.
I think people will be theorizing about this virus for a century or so, and in the end, no one will really ever know.
I’ll freely admit I’m far more interested in living in the present and doing what we (humans) can now than trying to figure out the past with this sort of thing. I think we should learn from the past - have emergency stocks of basic things and have them made in this country, have a pandemic team/policy, let knowledgeable folks in the medical world be in charge and not politicians or businessmen - stuff like that.
I know some folks who thrive on contemplating all sorts of conspiracies though. Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
@kelsmom , interesting. I personally know two people here in NY who think they had COVID19 back in January. Both are native born Americans. One of them regularly visited China for business. She had every symptom back in January and went to the doctor. Was told it was “just a virus.” Others in her office got the same. My neighbor says she had a “ nasty cold”: was tested for both flu strains, both negative. Told same thing, that it was just a virus. Both felt sick for weeks, not just a week. They are both convinced they have had it.
I suspect the scale of people who have had it or carry the virus is far, far bigger than we realize.
From the tweet by the Chinese official, this is the part that I agree with, ‘Be transparent! Make public your data!’ The US has not done this so far in my opinion. The rest of the Chinese official’s tween is crazy talk, similar to things I have heard people say in the US about China. I think that this type of blame game is not productive, but then I don’t think any country would be stupid enough to try to release a new virus on another country and think it wouldn’t come back to the original country via the general spread of illness. So, I highly doubt any country did this purposely. Early on I heard Americans talking about whether China released the virus. On themselves? Really? They released the virus on themselves in order to ‘get us’. Absurd idea.
However, I mentioned this to my friend from China was was there as recently as mid-February and she said that people in China wonder if a virus accidentally got out of the lab in Wuhan. It isn’t manufactured. These viruses occur naturally in animals such as bats and other animals. The flu comes from chickens. But she said people there wonder if there was an accident from that facility. I doubt it. I think this is a natural, expected occurrence, and while very bad, it is fortunate it isn’t even worse. I am not someone who reads much on this topic but I always remember my friend who was obsessed with it back in the 90s telling me about the high likelihood of coming future pandemics and remember enough of what she said to not be surprised such a thing could happen.
I think China and the US officials are casting blame on one another to deflect public criticism over their handling of the response to the virus. Stirs up nationalistic sentiment and gains support for the leader. But not helpful to the effort to work together going forward.
3 years ago many people I knew got pneumonia. I got ‘only’ very bad bronchitis but my husband and son got pneumonia and both did not respond to the initial antibiotic and got very sick. it was really scary. I knew tons of others who got the same very bad pneumonia. I remember thinking at the time that I wondered if it was some government experiment to see the spread of pneumonia-causing virus (now I’m contradicting what I just posted above, but that was my thinking at the time, because it was so very strange for all these people to suddenly get so sick). We were told by doctors it was just a normal cold but it wasn’t a normal cold.
Another time my family all got similarly very ill and it was very scary. My inhalers didn’t work and we were snowed in and low on food and out of medicine and I remember worrying I might not survive it.
I say that because I think that periodically worse strains of virus that are not flu or regular mild colds circulate among humans pretty regularly. This new one is much more severe in effects in many, but it isn’t unusual for people to have very bad illnesses that aren’t normal. could the people you know, have had Covid 19 in early January? I think so but unlikely. The virus likely started in November in China. People fly back and forth between the two countries. One person could infect many others.
A strange virus went through my husband’s work place in early January where everyone was coughing and super sick. Everyone had a flu-like illness. One person he works with is Chinese American with Chinese family members. He didn’t ask if any of her family had recently returned from China. it’s possible DH already had the darn thing. DS got it 2 weeks later. I got the flu about 2 weeks after that. so, maybe we all had it. I don’t think so. But the coughing illness that went around his office was a pretty darn nasty thing and they all got it and got super sick. took him more than 6 weeks to stop coughing.
In March 2019, medical researchers in Wuhan published a study explaining why that area is a breeding ground for Coronavirus, and why the next human outbreak was likely to start there. And it did. Post #578.
None of this political posturing matters, nor is it helpful.
@doschicos since you are a great source here, are the numbers in Italy going down ? Has social distancing really worked?
Merkel expects 60-70% of Germans to get the virus.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/11/angela-merkel-most-people-will-get-the-coronavirus.html
I don’t think that is defeatist. Just realistic.
And its also not inconsistent with flattening the curve. No one is saying lets get everyone infected with the virus at the same time.
“Merkel expects 60-70% of Germans to get the virus.”
China has well over one billion people and only 80 thousand got it. What basis does Merkel have to throw around those percentages?
It can work even if just slowing the rate of spread. Going down will take a lot to happen as shown in China. Slowing the spread would be good.
Merkel consulted with Germany’s experts. She was a scientist before she became a politician. (Trained physicist). What Germany’s experts said isn’t far off from scientists in the rest of the world. If there is no vaccine, the virus will keep going until over 50% of people have had it. Then, herd immunity will start to kick in, provided immunity lasts more than a few weeks/months.
From the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/world/europe/coronavirus-merkel-germany.html?searchResultPosition=1
Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute for public health, said that while health experts currently believe that two-thirds of the population may become infected with the coronavirus, “we don’t know how fast that will happen.”
“But every one of us can figure out that the longer this takes, the better it is,” Dr. Wieler said. “On the one hand, because then the chance that a vaccine will become available increases, and on the other hand, because there is a chance that treatments will be available.”
One of the country’s top virologists recently said that it could take a year or two, or even longer, for that many people to become infected.
My only online newspaper subscription is to the Washington Post, because it publishes so many excellent stories. Now they are offering free access to stories about the virus if you sign up for their newsletter. If you’re interested, here is the link:
https://subscribe.washingtonpost.com/newsletters/#/bundle/health?method=SURL&location=ART
So far anyways. This isn’t over. It’s in the early stages and will ebb and flow until an effective vaccination has been developed, tested and given to the approximately 50% of the population that it takes to get herd immunity in play. Or it could be that once people have had it they have retained immunity, so we just have to wait until 50%+ of the population has had it, leaving 50% or so of the surviving population with immunity and get herd immunity that way.
Latest data from Italy.