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China's virus slowdown offers hope for global containment

28 Comments
By LINDSEY TANNER

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widespread quarantines, lockdowns and travel bans of the sort ordered by China's regime are unlikely to be used in other countries. 

China’s draconian measures to contain this virus won’t work in free, Democratic countries. Imagine what the gun nutters in the US would do if the military were sent into the streets to enforce a quarantine. It would be a blood bath with the gun nutters losing to the military.

7 ( +9 / -2 )

Statistically, it doesn't seem like a massive outbreak at all.

Still downplaying the seriousness of this issue. I wonder why.

5 ( +9 / -4 )

Ask any epidemiologist and they will tell you we are now past the containment stage.

8 ( +8 / -0 )

We heard the same thing a month ago, yet the number of reported infections has barely changed.

Wholly inaccurate.

How many more months of being on the brink of a pandemic before people start actually subjectively looking at the data.

The experts have looked at the data subjectively. Why are you arguing with them? (I know it’s a hallmark of Donny’s fan bois to know more than the experts, so that was a bit of a rhetorical question.)

1 ( +5 / -4 )

"Statistically, it doesn't seem like a massive outbreak at all."

Totally agreed. The media is stoking this fire. Don't believe the hype. Don't buy toilet paper. Don't wear masks. Don't hoard rice. Put down your phones and social media, and think for yourselves! Take a breathe and look at the numbers.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Err.. Ok. Umm.. Which expert is claiming that there is a mass infection in Japan and what data is he/she referring to?

You've changed the sample from worldwide to Japan. That’s bad faith in your part.

Japan, however, is under suspicion for not doing enough tests to determine who has the coronavirus, so we don’t know the actual situation here. Nice attempt though.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

Thank you China. You have saved the world from big troubles.

-13 ( +1 / -14 )

Is 1 per 83,000 considered a pandemic or an outbreak? What do you think?

Are we taking about a massive outbreak or a pandemic? You keep changing the topic of discussion, which is bad faith, so it’s impossible to refute your baseless assertions. Choose a standard by which to measure things and stick to it.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

Thank you China. You have saved the world from big troubles.

Yes, thank you China for not having uniform health standards to prevent outbreaks of diseases in your filthy wet markets and for not being transparent so this thing got out of control before you shared information with the rest of the world, which affected the response.

Also, thank you China for being an authoritarian government that is capable of locking down entire cities of millions.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

Burning Bush, had China not taken the measures, 50 millions would have been hospitalized by now, to say least.

-3 ( +5 / -8 )

Northernlife, say whatever you say, and lie whatever you lie, China saved you, as simple as that.

-9 ( +1 / -10 )

"We scrutinized this data and we believe this decline is real,"

I'm sorry but I find 'the WHO scrutinizing China' to be a very disingenuous concept akin to a fox scrutinizing a hen house for safekeeping.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

"While the crisis appears to be easing in China, alarming clusters of thousands of cases each have turned up in Italy, Iran and South Korea and Japan."

Thousands of cases in Japan?? This is very careless and unprofessional journalism. There are currently 331 cases in Japan:

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

Even if you include the Diamond Princess in Japanese figures, which would make no sense, that comes to 1037. That is NOT 'thousands'.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Virus slowdown? I doubt it.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Thank you China? Yeah, thanks for creating this mess in the first place.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

While the crisis appears to be easing in China, alarming clusters of thousands of cases have turned up in Italy, Iran and South Korea and Japan.

I am happy Iran is not going along with the Covid-19 BS, they are calling it as it is. They know. That said, with 92 deaths the Iranian variant is 16 percent lethal so far. Iran is going to be interesting to watch, because they are trying to independently find ways to stop the virus from being so deadly, and they are brilliant. I believe Iran is going to be a lot more creative when it comes to finding treatments for this than any other nation because they are not subverted and do have substantial talent.

https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2020/03/04/2216856/552-coronavirus-patients-in-iran-recover-health-official

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

How many more months of being on the brink of a pandemic before people start actually subjectively looking at the data.

You need to start by looking at the right data. Comparing current infections/deaths to a country's population is not the right data! What you should be looking at is, how infectious is this (i.e R0)? And what is the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) and serious complication rate. These numbers don't tell you how bad it will be, they tell you how bad it could be if we don't take appropriate action. And if you look at those numbers it is clear this could be incredibly serious. China is only able to control this through extreme measures it has taken. If we are a little more cautious now, we can avoid having to go through the same thing.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Thousands of cases in Japan?? This is very careless and unprofessional journalism. There are currently 331 cases in Japan:

It may be careless to those who have their heads buried deep and in complete denial. You should be questioning why the number of test is not increasing despite alot being known about this virus.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

A lot of numbers distortion going on here. Until the outbreak has finished, trying to look at things from a global perspective is a waste of time. You can only look at populations that have been infected and even trying to compare countries is almost pointless.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

While this is good news speculative speaking, the questions 1. who will be responsible to pay for the losses incurred as a result of being the root cause 2. what purpose was the research if the source country is crying in the name of peace research, yet conducted this research in a military bio weapons lab?

0 ( +1 / -1 )

A lot of numbers distortion going on here

...and IMHO, barking up the wrong tree too. It could have been JUST CHINA, for 4 weeks max and it'd be all over. Instead we have a global advocate for health, the WHO, advocating for noncontainment, for eventual infection of the world's population.

We should be barking at the WHO's HQ in Switzerland, and tear it down (Berlin wall style) for making itself irrelevant, like the Berlin wall.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

CDC has developed a new laboratory test kit for use in testing patient specimens for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19. The test kit is called the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time Reverse Transcriptase (RT)-PCR Diagnostic Panel.”

Straight from the CDC website.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/testing.html

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The test kit is called the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time Reverse Transcriptase (RT)-PCR Diagnostic Panel.”

Sheesh that’s wordy... is that why it has taken so long to be developed? Thinking of a name so long that people hate to ask for it?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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